As per tradition, here’s “First day of Spring” by London, Ontario’s The Gandharvas.

Fuck!

Okay so there’s this word of mouth campaign happening to pimp out the 2009 Nissan Cube in the way of a contest called Hypercube which I learned about from my friend Steph a few days ago who linked me to the contest’s Twitter account, @thehypercube. Enough links for ya in that run on sentence? Good because it’s a contest to promote the Cube (which I’m capitalizing even though Nissan doesn’t because it doesn’t stand out if I don’t) creatively by word of mouth and I have every intention of doing my best to at least make the top 500 applicants because as you all know, I’m, well, creative, but also beginning the baby steps into immersion therapy for my agoraphobia with the final goal to be able to drive again and it would pretty much make my life to win this adorable little car. Plus, if I had my own car, especially one that meets my criteria like the Cube does, maybe it would speed up the process.

Here’s what it looks like for those too lazy to click the damn link:

Anyway, from what I understand you’re supposed to sign up on the Hypercube website, which I did, then interact with the guy doing all the twittering, which I did and promote the contest until you’re sent further instructions, which I’m doing now. These instructions are apparently on how to create a profile on the Hypercube website and from what I understand, they will be choosing the top 500 contenders based on how creative these profiles are.

I have no idea what to expect from these profiles and I hope to god that they’re not html or CSS based “creativity” because if they are, I’m royally screwed.

Anyway, the reason for my “Fuck!” is because @thehypercube asked all of his followers today to describe themselves in one word and I tweeted back with my standard “Awesome.” I mean, I own the domain SunnyIsAwesome.com, it’s just what comes to mind. But in thinking about it afterward I thought “Fuck! I should have said ZENNISH!” because first of all, it’s a hell of a lot more creative and I totally made it up and second of all, it’s a pretty good description of me these days. Not totally zen, not freaking out, but zennish. If you’d like the history of the word, I’ll gladly tell you, but I’d rather move onto other things as this post is going to end up being long enough.

So, my grand plan for winning this contest is to simply be myself and do what I do and hope it all works out.

Many people so far are starting Facebook groups that are like, “Help So & So Win a Car!” which makes me laugh because that’s neither creative nor very good advertising on its own, which is essentially what the ad agency doing this wants us to do. I mean holy crap, at least put the product’s name in your title and list a few of its unique selling points such as its MP3 player compatibility, Bluetooth capabilities, or the crazy option to add SHAG CARPET to your dashboard. (For real!) I mean seriously, check this thing out, the more I look at it, the more I love it. And I’m not just saying that for the contest’s sake.

But I guess it’s not nice to pick on the competition, so that’s the last thing I have to say about them. I was just surprised at how many people jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, but I guess I shouldn’t have been.

Speaking of Facebook though, here’s linkage to my fan page for those who weren’t around the day I made it because come to think of it, I’m fairly certain I haven’t mentioned it since then. And while I’m throwing around all these links, feel free to add me on Twitter as well or friend me on Live Journal and allow me to welcome you to Sunnyland in advance – it’s a crazy place. :o)

Onto other things…

I’ve added a new page to this site, which you’ll find in the top left corner called “Playlist“. In the 8 year existence of SunnyCrittenden.com and my Live Journal blog, music has always played a big part in things as I’m either posting about it or telling the world what I’m listening to or promoting bands I love.

Last week I found a website called PlayList.com that allows you to make playlists, many of them, that you can then embed on just about any site using their player. It is my intention to create playlists every now & then and just keep adding them to the “Playlist” page. For example, “Your Best Friend Turned Out To Be a Useless Twat” playlist or  “Music To Listen To Rather Than Cutting Off Your Boyfriend’s Penis”. Y’know, fun stuff!

Between that and Blip.fm, I think I’ve got the music angle pretty much covered and I hope you enjoy one or the other or even both! (Although I’m sure there will be a lot of cross-over between the two.)

The other thing I’ve done site-wise is that I’ve updated my links, which isn’t all that exciting, I know, but check ‘em out anyway because I’ve added a few that I think some of you will be interested in and deleted a few I’m not. In the same vein, if you go to any sites you think I’d be interested, let me know. I’ve been going to the same sites every single day for the past 10 years or so and some of them are getting pretty lame or flat out dying and I’m looking to broaden my internet horizons. Send links to Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com and for the love of kittens don’t send me a link to your website unless you think it’s genuinely really really good.

And finally, my last bit of news…I’ve re-opened and will be re-examining CammityJane.

No idea what I’m talking about? Read on.

(more…)

I love this! So I am sharing!

Over the weekend, Blake went out and got me a big piece of plywood from the hardware store and then took it to our friend Jesse’s house whose dad happens to have a table saw so he could cut it into paintable sizes. Thus, I began a new piece of work on Sunday.

This is the background so far:

The tissue paper was donated by someone who saw my plight for tissue paper a while back and it reminded me of a party which then inspired…this:

Honestly, I have no idea wtf is wrong with me but these images just come into my head with absolutely no explanation. Don’t ask me what it means, I’m as clueless as you.

The background is going to be sort of an experiment. I’m going to be using the “muddy shabby” technique Suzi Blu taught in her “Rodeo Girl” workshop except I’m going to experiment with colours other than browns. A friend of mine suggested purple and blue and that sounds good to me, purple for the shadows, blue for the highlights.

So that’s what I’m working on.

For those who wanted to know. Yes the incision is small, less than an inch wide, but it’s in an awkward place, as you can see and thus hurts like a MOTHERWHORE. Not so much the incision itself, but the muscle below it because they had to cut those to get to my guts.

(Click to enlarge.)

That pic was taken a couple of nights ago, but I only just now had time to pull shit off my camera and resize. The incision isn’t so bloody right now and on the surface it looks mostly healed, although the stomach muscles beneath it still hurt a bit.

My second incision (just above my pubes) I didn’t bother taking a pic of because it just looks like a pink line about the same size as the bellybutton incision and really doesn’t look like anything, nor does it hurt.

So yeah, certain curious minds inquired and thus, here I am delivering.

A real post about life & art & junk shall be forthcoming.

Well, there’s really not a whole lot to say.

Wednesday I had the laparoscopy, obviously and I’ve pretty much been stoned out of my gourd ever since. Every day the pain’s been less and less and I figure I’m going to be more or less “fine” by Monday.

On Wednesday and Thursday the gas they use to blow up your stomach was settled in my shoulders, back and ribs and it hurt like hell, and not only that, the gas was still in my stomach and I swear I looked at least 6 months pregnant. I spent most of Wednesday afternoon through today, Friday, sleeping on and off and as I slept my body absorbed the gas and it’s no longer an issue.

My bottom incision, right above my pubic hair, is totally fine, it doesn’t even hurt, but the one in my bellybutton is bloody and hurts like hell because when they cut there, they have to cut through your stomach mucles and those are muscles you USE so every time I move, like if I bend down or twist or I’m jostled, the muscles tense up and well…hurt like hell! The incision itself doesn’t hurt at all (unless I pick at it, which is stupid, but I’m a picker and it’s been hard to leave it alone) and today was the first day I had the bandages off.

Tomorrow (Saturday…) is my last day on good drugs and that’s okay. Like I said, I’m still sore and still will be for several more days, but it’s manageable and I don’t really have anything strenuous to do so I’m not worried about it.

Tonight was the first night I was able to sit at my desk, but I found I couldn’t sit there for long because my stomach muscles hurt too much so now I’m back on the couch with the MacBook. I did manage to sketch out a painting idea I had (while I was drugged out of my mind), which I’ll post on my site as soon as Blake gives me back my scanner. To be perfectly honest though, the painting will probably never come to fruition because I think it needs to be done on wood and I don’t have the proper size, nor do I have the means to buy the proper size. I’m told you can go to a lumber yard and buy wood and have them cut it for you, but me being the agoraphobe with social anxiety I am, that’s never going to happen. Either way, check my site over the weekend if you’re interested in it anyway.

Back to surgery though…Dr. Dickhead barely said two words to me and I was put out quickly so I had next to no interaction with him. What litle I did have, I would call positive as he seemed almost sprightly and in a good mood, making me wonder if I didn’t just catch him on a bad day during my first appointment with him.

In two weeks I’m supposed to go see him to discuss what he saw inside me and where to go from here. Since I’m 99.9% positive he found a whole whack of endometrial lesions covering a good portion of my reproductive system, I’m going to assume that the next step is referring me to the specialist in Toronto to get the ball rolling on laser surgery which would theoretically take place 3-6 months from now.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about surgery. I’m okay, it went okay, the worst part was the IV *shudder* and Blake is taking really good care of me.

Now it’s time to take more drugs and get my ass into bed.

Backstory: I got my first period when I was 9, but it was super irregular until I was about 13.  I was 11 when the pain started, though. I remember my mom taking me to the doctor and me showing him exactly where it hurt because the night before I couldn’t sleep because of the pain and circled, with pen, exactly where it hurt, which I now know to be the general area of my left ovary.

My doctor assumed I was constipated and gave me a suppository.

Well I wasn’t constipated and the suppository obviously did nothing and a month later we were back at the doctor’s as I had missed approximately 2 weeks of the month of school due to this pain I was having. My doctor decided that I was just having painful, irregular periods and put me on a low dose birth control pill called Marvelon, which I would then be on for the next 11 years. Along with prescribing the pill, he subtly suggested that perhaps my pain was psychosomatic or that I was exaggerating it to get out of school.

Well, the pill did nothing as far as pain and since no one was believing me I suffered alone in my room and bought my own Tylenol and Advil at the corner store in my little town with money I stole from my mom’s wallet and kept it in my bag and eventually my locker. I popped that shit like candy. What I didn’t know at the time, because I was still a kid, the internet had barely been invented (and I didn’t have a computer) and the libraries were surprisingly bare of books on painful menstruation, is that using tampons was probably not the best choice of menstrual product as they were, in fact, making my pain worse.

When I was 14, back to the doctor I went. My periods were regular by this point and it was obvious that there was a co-relation between my periods, ovulation and the pain I was having, which was increasing in intensity.

My doctor gave me a prescription for Tylenol 3. Thirty of them every month with 12 repeats, which admittedly I abused like crazy.

When I was 15, back I went again because my Tylenol 3 repeats had run out and somewhere along the line, someone had said the word “endometriosis”, which I looked up at the library and it seemed to me that it was likely that this was what had been causing me pain for the last 5 years.  So I brought up this possibility to my doctor and he said “that might make sense” and told me to take my birth control pills back to back, with no breaks for a period, for a year to see if things got any better.

Well, all that really did was make the pain less predictable and after about 8 or 10 months of that, I went back to my doctor and said this treatment is bullshit, send me to an OB/GYN, which he did.

Her name was Dr. Peters and she worked out of Markham-Stouffville Hospital, which was a fairly new hospital. She agreed that endometriosis was likely and that she wanted to do a laparoscopy to confirm it.

While she was doing the laparoscopy, she said that if endometriosis was found, she’d use a tool to cauterize it.

I had just turned 16 when I had the first laparoscopy wher yes, endometriosis was found, a lot of it in fact, and Dr. Peters cauterized about 40% of it because that’s all she had time for. She said that my uterus was stuck to the back wall of my pelvic cavity by adhesions (caused by the endometriosis) and that one of my ovaries was stuck to the side of my uterus.

The plan was to continue on the birth control pills without any breaks for a period and another laparoscopy a year later to remove the rest of the lesions.

Now, one of the treatments for endometriosis are drugs to put your body into a state of temporary menopause (for 6 months) and the main drugs used are called Danazol, which has wicked side effects like major weight gain, facial hair, acne and a deepening of one’s voice, not to mention hot flashes and depression and Lupron which has many of the same side effects, although not as bad, except with Lupron you have the added side effect of bone mineral density loss and with my family’s history of osteoporosis Imy dad & I didn’t think it was a good idea to put my body through all of that, hence the second surgery instead.

So when I was 17, almost exactly one year after the first surgery, I had my second and to my doctor’s surprise the 40% of the endometriosis she had removed the year before had grown back completely “and then some” so she did her best to remove what she could in the alotted operating room time and during my follow up appointment she and I had a serious talk about infertility as I had two strikes against me.

First of all, I had the endometriosis, but secondly the cauterization causes scar tissue and since I had endometriosis in delicate places such as my ovaries (and the outside of my bladder and bowels, which were inoperable as it would potentially cause more damage than the endo) I was looking at being completely infertile before my 20′s. Long story short, at 17 I had a hard decision to make, either have a child early (way early) or risk not being able to have them at all. I chose to conceive and had my daughter when I was 19 because it took that long to conceive.

The endometriosis, as far as I could tell, stayed dormant while I was pregnant with her and theoretically that bought me some fertility time. I was pain free and could even use tampons for about a year or two after having her but then things started to get painful again and when I was 22, I found myself back in Dr. Peters’ office discussing my 3rd laparoscopy.

The 3rd one went well and I attribute it to being able to conceive my son. Unfortunately when I was pregnant with him, the endometriosis didn’t stay dormant as it had with my daughter and the pregnancy was much more difficult as a result. After he was born and my periods resumed they just got more and more painful every month.

Present: Now I’m 30, it’s been 8 years since my last surgery and I’m in absolute agony during my period, mild agony during ovulation and in general pain for the majority of the rest of the month. I can only have sex about once a month because I’m only pain-free for a few days out of the month, otherwise sex causes me immense pain not only during but for up  to 3 days after.

I haven’t used a tampon in over 6 years because it hurts so much and things are so tight getting one in would be quite the chore and keeping one in would be next to impossible due to pain.

Tomorrow I’m going into the hospital for laparoscopy #4 where the doctor will just be looking around to see the extent of the disease and writing a report of his findings to refer me to another doctor in Toronto who, in 3-6 months from now, will do laparoscopy #5 and will vaporise as much of the endometriosis as he can see with a laser.

Obviously tomorrow’s surgery won’t hurt as much as the next one, but I’m still pretty nervous about it for several reasons. I’m terrified and completely grossed out by IV’s and will probably cry when it comes time for them to give me mine. I hate the doctor who’s doing the surgery because, as you may recall, he treated me like a piece of shit during our consultation. The idea of being “put out” scares me because I’m afraid I won’t wake up or worse, I’ll wake up during the surgery. The pelvic pain afterward doesn’t really bother me, I’ve had worse periods than that and I’ve got a lovely prescription for Tylenol 3, but they fill your abdomen up with gas during the procedure and afterward that gas settles in your back and shoulders and hurts like a motherfucker, especially when you laugh and you’re so loopy from the drugs you tend to laugh a lot directly after surgery.

I’m also scared of kids or dogs jumping on me and hurting me. I’m afraid of my incisions getting infected, which happened after surgery #3 and was NOT pleasant.

Besides all of that, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself for the 3 or 4 days it takes to feel normal again. I’m not one to just lay on the couch and watch TV. I’m afraid that some of the projects I’m working on will fall by the wayside, especially when one of them is extremely time sensitive with strict deadlines (well, deadlines that are largely in my own head, admittedly).

I’m also not looking forward to getting up at 5:30am tomorrow morning when I’m used to going to bed half an hour prior. I’m not looking forward to the Naproxen suppository they’re insisting I stick up my ass an hour before leaving for the hospital (so when I wake up, basically). I’m not really down with the whole not eating or drinking anything after midnight when usually I do most of my eating and drinking after midnight.

I’m not looking forward to having this done in a hospital I don’t know very well at all by a doctor who’s a total cockface and if it weren’t for those two things, I’d probably be more chill about the whole thing because hello, I’ve done this 3 times before and I know it’ll be fine.

Anyway, I dunno what else to say about it so I’ll just leave you with these lovely pictures of endometriosis as seen through a laparoscope that I found on Google image search.

The black and red spots are mild endometriosis. To me it looks like mold.

The red spots are endometriosis. I’m not a doctor nor an expert, but I theorize that the woman whose pelvic cavity this is was very close to her period as the lesions look to be inflaming and filling up with blood, about to shed themselves and spread to other parts of the pelvic cavity.

A chocolate cyst (also called an endometrioma) on an ovary. When these burst, they really fucking hurt.

A cluster of chocolate cysts. Again, I think it looks like mold.

There are tons more pictures on Google image search but a lot of them are pretty gross so I decided not to post them here. If interested, do a search for “laparoscopy endometriosis” or just “endometriosis” and you’ll see what I mean. Also, for more information on endometriosis and its treatments, here’s a fairly well-rounded overview of it all and Wikipedia of course has an entry about it.

Anyway, tomorrow’s going to be an adventure, so wish me luck.

On Saturday, March 14th it’s unofficially Steak and Blowjob Day, a holiday made up by some dude I’ve never heard of to sort of counter balance Valentine’s Day. For years and years and years, my guide to sucking cock has been linked on their site and up until the past few years, I’ve enjoyed a nice spike in traffic as a result.

However…for the past two or three years, around the time of Steak & Blowjob Day, I get approximately 100+ e-mails from people saying “oh you have a dead link” because you see, the link the Steak & Blowjob people have up on their site to my guide to sucking cock has been WRONG for about that length of time.

People. THEY have a dead link. I don’t have a dead link. My links work just fine. In fact the article you’re looking for? It’s right here and has been for quite some time.

To head off the inevitable “dead link” e-mails this year, THREE MONTHS AGO I went to the Steak & Blowjob Day site and looked for an e-mail address for whoever was in charge so I could tell them the proper url for the article and to thank them for the traffic every year, but alas, there was none to be found, so I went to their forums, signed up and messaged who I’m assuming is their admin with what I just said. To date I have had no acknowledgement that this message was received and I’m assuming not as the link is still the old link, which, as I said, has been dead for a good two to three years, if not longer.

So, if any Steak & Blowjob Day supporters are smart enough to actually get to my site by using the domain from the dead link, congratulations and welcome! The article you’re looking for, once again, is right here. For everyone else that would otherwise e-mail me to say “dead link” fuck you, you’re e-mailing the wrong person! Get ahold of the powers that be over at Steak & Blowjob Day and tell THEM. Maybe you’ll be more successful than I was.

So I’ve said my piece on that, Happy Steak & Blowjob Day in advance and if you dug that article, here are two more you may be interested in:

Sunny’s Guide to Anal Sex
Pussy, It’s What’s For Dinner

(Please note: Just because these articles are here and I wrote them, it doesn’t mean I give TWO SHITS about your sex life and all e-mails asking for sex advice will be ignored and/or publicly ridiculed, depending on the level of retardation involved. Thank you.)

It’s finally done!
Mixed media on 12 x 12 inch wood