Okay first of all, Blake added a WordPress plugin for me last night where, if it’s working properly, this should get posted both here (on my site) and as a Live Journal entry. The plugin is called “Live Journal Crossposter” and was recommended to me by Halcyon Pink. Since I already have the RSS feed that people can add to their Live Journal friends pages, I don’t know if I’m going to keep this plugin, but for right now I’m experimenting with it.  Should I encourage people to add the RSS feed to their Live Journals or should I just cross post everything using this plugin? Live Journalers, let me know what you think! (Pending this plugin actually works as advertised, which I’m not sure it will.)

Anyway, the new drugs must be working because I’ve finally finished the mermaid painting I started ages ago and I’ve decided to call it “Mermaid Bait”. And actually, that’s sort of a lie, it’s finished but I still need to do one more coat of varnish on the main part of it. I decided to photograph it with only one coat as to ward off glare, but as soon as I’m done making this post, I’m going to start the second coat and it will be finished. (As an aside, I think it’s going to look even more bitchin’ with the second coat because I use a super glossy glaze varnish and it’ll really enhance the “under the sea”, watery look.)

So without further ado, here she be:

Being a stickler for details, she’s wearing a pearl necklace and has bejeweled boobies. The jewels are just plastic, but we’re pretending they’re precious stones, found in the wreckage of a pirate ship:

In her hands, she’s holding a sand dollar:

Fishermen above are trying to bait her with promises of love, but she’s not having it. Bringing new meaning to “mixed media”, actual fish hooks were altered and used, the hearts are made of fibrous mulberry paper on cardstock:

The sandy bottom of the painting was made using a mixture of wood filler, gesso and real sand, then painted in “Sand” by Americana and then dry brushed with “Fawn” by Americana to bring out the texture. Real shells and starfish were then added, using Krazy Glue:

(I remembered to sign this one!)

And finally, I took a picture of “Mermaid Bait” inside on my coffee table, at an angle, to show the silver sparkles that run throughout the watery background. These sparkles will be enhanced by the second coat of varnish:

So by now you’re probably asking, “Is she for sale?” Well, she sure is! First of all, she’s a big girl at 20 x 16 inches and there is over 60 hours of work put into her, plus more expensive materials than I usually use, so I’m asking $250 (US) + $30 (US) shipping = $280 (US). If you’re interested in purchasing “Mermaid Bait”, just shoot me an e-mail (Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com) or wait until I get her up on the Art For Sale page and use the buy button feature. SOLD!

And now I’m off to do some sketches for a commission. Interested in a commission? Take a peek at my commissions page for instructions and policies, then send me an e-mail and we’ll discuss the project!

Edit: Here I was thinking my new plugin wasn’t working, when in fact, I think I put in the wrong password. D’oh! Hopefully it works now…

…currently, I’m a pudge.

I wrote about this a couple of months ago in Live Journal in a friends only post because I was ashamed of my body, but now I figure “fuck it”, this is who I am right now and this is what I look like and it’s only temporary so if people are going to judge me on it and be mean about it well, I don’t have time for them.

As I’ve chronicled here and on Live Journal, I’ve gone through psychiatric medication hell throughout the past 2 years, trying to manage my “newly” diagnosed bipolar disorder. At this point, I’ve lost track of how many medications I’ve been on during this ordeal, but I think it’s safe to say that at one point or another, my shrink and I have tried combinations of every single mood stabilizer on the market, ffrom lithium (which gave me greasy hair and made me hate the world) to anti-epileptic medications that gave me heinous rashes in delicate places to atypical anti-psychotics, which is where the trouble with weight originated.

If you’re familiar with me at all, you’ll know that I’m a naturally thin person. This is what my body looked like one year ago:

Without effort, I have weighed between 105 and 110 lbs since I was about 13 years old and being 5 feet tall, this has always worked for me. But last winter my shrink put me on this mood stabilizer called Risperidone and all hell broke loose. Not only does this drug slow down your metabolism, but it makes you crave meals, akin to having the munchies after smoking pot, but constantly. In the first month of taking this drug, I gained 30 lbs.

I stayed on it for two months and after we decided that it wasn’t doing anything for me, other than making me fat and miserable, she took me off it and put me on lithium. Lithium was one of the worst experiences of my life and I could only deal with it for about a month & a half before I begged my shrink, over the phone, to take me off of it. Lithium is a salt and it messes with your thryroid. I was waking up with my sheets and my pillow all oily from my skin, my hair was perpetually greasy and stringy, I was breaking out like a hormonal  15 year old and I certainly wasn’t mentally stable. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t make art, I couldn’t function.

Being between visits (I only see my shrink once a month), and because we’d exhausted her drug repertoire, she put me back on Risperidone until I saw her again and we could figure something else out.

Well here’s the thing with Risperidone, you only gain weight when you first go on it and since I was  “first going on it” again, I gained another 30 lbs, making my total weight at the time a whopping 170 lbs on a 5 foot frame. None of my clothes fit anymore, I couldn’t have left the house if I wanted to.

But I did leave the house one fateful day, wearing track pants that I’d originally bought to wear when I was pregnant with my son, to go to Wal*Mart to buy clothes that fit my new girth. I cried while looking at all the “mom jeans”, but finally settled on a pair of khakis and a few t-shirts to match. A couple of months later, a good internet friend took pity on my lack of wardrobe and ordered me some new jeans from a store I like and a bunch of nice t-shirts from Old Navy, which I was grateful for.

Shortly after the Risperidone fiasco, Ziprasidone became available for use in bipolar patients in Canada and my shrink switched me to that, which, magically, ended up being the right mood stabilizer for me and the best part was that not only did Ziprasidone not cause weight gain, one of the possible side effects was actually weight loss.

Slowly but surely, between the weight loss effects of the Ziprasidone and doing 10 minutes on the elliptical (almost) every day, the weight has finally started to come off. Currently I’m sitting at about 155 lbs, which is still a far cry from my “normal” 110 lbs, but it’s much better than the 170 I was at before.

Since we found the right mood stabilizer, it was time to add an anti-depressant to the mix so I wouldn’t spend the winter wanting to kill myself and I was really nervous about that because I’ve known so many people who have gained weight due to anti-d’s and at this point, I’m terrified of even gaining another pound. But she put me on this drug called Gabapentin, which is considered “weight neutral” and so far it’s worked as advertised, except for the annoying side effect of feeling really flat, bored and unmotivated.

One of the interesting things about Gabapentin though, is that it also seems to neutralize certain types of anxiety and I’ve found this to be true in my case. In fact, I wouldn’t even be writing this if I weren’t on the drug, I don’t think. Prior to taking the Gabapentin, I cared too much about what people said or even thought about me, I was paranoid about people looking at me and thinking bad things about me. But now, on Gabapentin, I simply don’t give a fuck. This is true both online and meatside.

The way I see it is, I’m fat right now and not as attractive as I’m used to being, but y’know what? I know it’s only temporary and with time (and a bit of effort) I’ll be back to my old self eventually. I just have to tough it out right now. There are people in the world in way worse shape than me and most people who would judge, really have no room to do so, so I shouldn’t care what they think.

And with that (and some trepidation), I present to you some recent pictures I took of myself looking uncute, 50 lbs heavier than I normally am:

Those were taken last month in a fit of bravery, after not taking a picture of myself for over a year (which is a big deal when you’re a former camgirl, used to taking a cam pic of yourself at least every day).

The following pictures were taken this past Saturday in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t go to the MySpace school of photography, so I suck at taking pictures of myself in the mirror, but here they are anyway:

Bigger boobs are one of the plusses of this extra weight deal and I’ll miss them when they’re gone, but at the same time, I’ll be glad to see them go when I’m back to my normal size.

So there ya go, Sunny the Queen of Camwhores is now a fatty. But I’m confident that it’s only temporary and I’m losing weight every day, so soon I’ll be back to my old self and anyone who doesn’t want to be supportive can eat my fat ass. :o)

My Live Journal is updated just about daily and covers more personal things than this blog.

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(Note that I DO NOT follow comments there, though. Comment here instead.)

My Twitter is updated just about hourly and is…I don’t even know what I update there haha Gibberish?

My YouTube channel is here.

My photo galleries can be found here.

You can see me naked and archived here. [NSFW, duh.]

You can buy me shit here.

As an aside, I’ve decided not to renew my PO box this year because they raised the price ($120!) and I just didn’t have the extra money to spend on it. If you need to send me something, just e-mail me and if I decide you’re not a freak, I’ll just give you the house address.

I’ll make a “real” post later, but now I have to go eat dinner!

So, Wednesday night we busted out the miracle berry tablets and kicked off our New Year’s festivities by eating a ridiculous amounts of citrus fruits and salad dressing and eventually drinking our faces off.

Behold, the lone video of our initial foray into the mysterious world of miracle berries:

(I apologize for the shitty quality of the video. My video camera is a piece of crap and editing video is apparently not in my repertoire of skills.) I only took a little bit of video during the first few minutes of miracle berry madness because it’s hard to video tape other people while indulging yourself and I was giddy to try everything. So I set the video camera down and we all dug in.

Behold our bounty:

From left to right, front bit: Frozen grapefruit juice and margarita mix, cream cheese (none of which we actually tried), goat cheese, bowl of limes, oranges and apples.

Middle: Sour gummi bears, lemons and grapefruit (pink & red), watermelon, kiwi and pineapple, miracle berry tablets, super sour gumballs.

Back: Guinness Extra Stout, malt vinegar, plain yogurt, salad dressing, all dressed chips, sea salt & malt vinegar chips, dill pickle chips, salt & vinegar chips, ketchup chips, limonade, Keen’s mustard, tangy dill pickles.

Not pictured: Large jar of antacids.

To be totally honest, I didn’t end up being as into the miracle berry experience as I thought I’d be. To me, the lemons and limes still tasted sour, but with an aftertaste of intense sweetness that I didn’t particularly like. To me it was like the difference bewteen aspartame and sugar, it just wasn’t quite right. I’m also an absolute sugar junkie though, drinking my own weight in Coke and candy daily since teenagerhood, so maybe my sweetness receptors are off.

Ronny on the other hand, is diabetic, and things tasted ultra-sweet to him, so maybe because he’s not as seasoned to sweet things as I am. Blake and Alex seemed to like the effects well enough, as evidenced by the following pictures of them eating limes and lemons.

(Alex eating a lime.)

(Alex showing off her mad lime skillz.)

(Blake eating a lemon.)

(He likes it! Blakey likes it!)

Salad dressing did not taste so good, even with the effects of the miracle berries:

In my research online, people said that vinegar tasted like Coke – and they lied. It could be because I bought malt vinegar instead of balsamic, but we all agreed that vinegar still tasted like vinegar.

(Blake after taking a shot of malt vinegar.)

(Pixel Cat wonders WTF we’re doing.)

All in all, it was an interesting experience. Here’s a run-down of everything we tried and how it tasted:

- Lemons tasted like sugary lemonade.
- Limes tasted like lime candy.
- Watermelon tasted like watermelon (which I figured it would, I just got some to help us cut the acid in our stomach from all the citrus fruits).
- Sour pineapple was amazing, probably my favourite.
- Under ripe kiwis were probably my second favourite, they tasted like the most perfect, ripe kiwis I’d ever had. To Blake they were too sweet.
- Salad dressing and vinegar were both *thumbs down*.
- Grapefruit was great!
- To me the chips all tasted like chips, but the others found the sea salt & malt vinegar ones to be sweet and the sour cream & onion ones to have no flavour.
- The goat cheese tasted like nasty old goat cheese to me, but Ronny thought it tasted like creamed sugar.
- The super sour gumballs just tasted like super sweet gumballs.
- The Guinness Extra Stout tasted like absolute ass to me and not “chocolatey” as promised, but Ronny seemed to like it.
- The oranges were super sweet, like the best orange you ever tasted.
- The granny smith apples weren’t tart at all, they tasted like the apples in apple pie.

- The dill pickles apparently tasted like sweet pickles, but I despise dill pickles and even under the influence of miracle berries, I wasn’t trying them.
- If I recall correctly, the Keen’s mustard – a hot mustard – still tasted like mustard. (Blake tried that one.)
- Gin & tonic tasted sweet!

We promised the kids that they could try the miracle berries the next day, after the adults tried them and deemed them 100% safe, so they kicked off 2009 trying all of this stuff too.

Here’s Madison waiting patiently for us to get set up:

Wes and Madison waiting for their tablets to dissolve (no one liked the taste of the tablets):

Alex & Blake decided to give it another go too, so here’s the two of them eating a lime and grapefruit:

Trying V8 juice, I forget what they said it tasted like:

Madison trying a lemon:

Madison gnoshing on a lime:

Madison trying grapefruit, which she normally wouldn’t do because she doesn’t like it:

Ketchup chips are Madison’s favourite:

They tasted sweet!

Blake busting out the onions:

Onions were ungood:

Wes tries a lemon:

It’s still sour! (I don’t think he got the berry *all over* his tongue like you’re supposed to.):

But he kept eating it anyway!

Despite the face, Wes really liked the grapefruit:

Wes tries a lime:

Still sour!!!

Wes thought the kiwis were the bomb and ate most of what was left himself:

Ultimately Wes decided to hell with these crappy fruits and settled for the sour cream & onion chips for the rest of the party:

So all in all, it was an interesting experience for all of us and a good time was had by all. The miracle berries, to me, weren’t as miraculous as advertised, but they were still pretty neat and given the chance, I think everyone should try them at least once.

As an aside, I ended up taking over 60 pictures of our experience, but due to wanting to save bandwidth I didn’t post them all here. If you’re interested in seeing the rest, the gallery can be seen by clicking here.

And that was our miracle berry party. Happy New Year!