Oh, thoughts. Thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts. So many of them.

First things first, I’ve been absolutely anxiety-ridden for the past two weeks and have popped more than 3 times the Ativan I normally do. What’s stressing me out? Here’s the list (because I like making lists):

- DRAMA. Mind you it’s drama I’m barely involved in but drama in general puts my stomach in knots.

- Getting these paintings done and done perfectly. The fact is, I need money almost as badly as I need to get these ideas onto canvas because without money a lot of my immersion therapy/”Plan: Sunny needs a Life” goals and ideas are impossible. I’m not saying that art isn’t a venue for stress relief, it is, I’m just extra worried about this series of paintings because I’m SO proud of the ideas behind them that I’m totally stressed out about them being perfect, especially because in a couple of cases I’m using techniques I’ve never used before. Right now I’m working on two paintings, which are about 2/3 finished but have been slow going. They’re almost ready to be varnished though, or at least they should be by Monday if I keep up this pace. Most of the time I do “in progress” shots when I’m working on stuff, but these ones are just too special.

- This Hypercube contest will be the death of me. Over the weekend the French winners were selected (but we don’t know who they are yet) and apparently next week the English contestants are going to be judged and I’m paranoid about my site/blog being interesting enough. I don’t know if they’re just going to click on the links I had in my canvas or if they’re going to be going a little more in-depth and actually read my site, but in case they do, I want some decent content up…but at the same time, I’ve never edited my content to be anything other than what it is. This is just my life, I write about it as it unfolds and if it’s an interesting week, it’s an interesting week, if it’s not, it’s just not. And often what I think is interesting is completely boring to other people and vice-versa so I don’t even know what to do next week with the idea of these people who could radically change my life and the life of my family potentially perusing my blog.

- Madison turned 11.

- I’ve been a busy girl during the past couple of weeks and I’ve been going far beyond my comfort zone with this immersion therapy thing. Take a look:

See the 29th there? I have to have lunch in a public place with my caseworker. yes Blake’s going to be there with me and it’s a familiar restaurant, but still, it’s not something I’m comfortable with and I’m not exactly looking forward to.

- June 4th I have my appointment with the endometriosis specialist in Toronto and I’m terrified of what he’s going to say. As I’ve written before, I’m cool with laser surgery, I’m cool with being on the birth control pill for a year straight WITH THE UNDERSTANDING that if it turns me into a psychotic, suicidal bitch as birth control pills have been known to make me, I can switch pills under the care of my family doctor. I’m also cool with the whole full hysterectomy deal, but again, as I’ve said before, only if I can take that shit home with me in a jar. People laugh when I say or type this, but I am absolutely serious and I’m worried this doctor will suggest hysterectomy but say no to letting me keep my bits externally. I’m just tired of fighting doctors over my wishes and this goddamn disease. This guy’s apparently good though, so I guess we’ll see what happens.

- Mystery project that I’m half working on and I’m far from ready to talk about because I’m not even sure it’s going to happen. As of this blog post, I’m leaning towards no, but I could wake up inspired tomorrow so who knows? Trying to MAKE it happen, though, is stressing me out.

- Cammity Jane. For those just tuning in, Cammity Jane is a fictional blog project I started in 2006 and never finished, that a few months ago I had planned to bring back (which I did) and work on. Well, then the Hypercube contest happened and Cammity Jane got pushed back until after that was over and now that Hypercube is almost over, it’s time to start thinking about Cammity Jane again but the thing is, my enthusiasm for the project has waned since I first thought of bringing it back. I don’t want to bring it back only to abandon it again and I fear that I may end up doing that. So I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the last few days and I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Chances are I’m going to re-blog everything I had up the first time around, but without the promise of finishing it at this point in time. Cammity Jane is so hard for me because it’s like an iceberg. What you guys see or have seen is only the very smallest percentage of what Cammity Jane is to me. It’s not just a story of this girl with HIV to me – I mean yes, that’s what Cammity Jane is right now – but she’s only one in a series of stories, she’s the first, she sets the stage for everything else I’ve got scribbled in notebooks. Did you know that the town she goes to called Utopia is a real town in Ontario? And that I’ve mapped out and drawn my fictionalized version of it meticulously several times in notebooks similar to Tolkein’s maps of Middle Earth? (Although not quite as map-like.) Cammity Jane is a big deal to me and I worry constantly about fucking it up, or rather, fucking up the experience for the reader.

So that’s why I’ve been a little “on edge” the past couple of weeks. It’s so easy for people to think that I just sit in my house all day and screw around on the internet and live this boring life, but there’s an awful lot going on in my world at any given time. Just because I don’t have a 9-5 or do the groceries or have art shows or whatever the hell it is people with “lives” do, it doesn’t mean I don’t have stress and pressures. In fact because most of my stress and pressures are self-imposed, I’d say they’re probably worse because they’re inescapable.

Anyway, for the last two weeks, I’ve pretty much been in a constant state of wanting to throw up.

At the same time, I’m terribly excited. I may have my very own car soon, a COOL car and a FREE one! One I would have won and let’s face it, winning feels good! (Or so I’ve heard.) I’m going to have these paintings finished soon and they’re going to look amazing and I think someone out there is going to want to buy them. Despite the fact that I have to go out to get it, I get to have restaurant lunch on Friday! And as much as I’m stressed out about all things immersion therapy and I’m having too many experiences at once…I’m making progress. I’m ahead of schedule.

Tomorrow Blake’s going to help me weed the garden and then we’re going to plant several POUNDS of beautiful cosmos and bachelor’s button and sunflower seeds that are going to be the envy of everyone on the street come August. Did you know that some people take walks up this far just to see my garden when it’s at its best? I don’t have the means this year and probably not even next year either, but one day I hope to give them more to see. I want a buddha’s head out there. I want my mom’s boyfriend’s teapot birdhouses and suncatchers hanging from the tree. I want hummingbird feeders and hanging baskets. I want our new window to be fixed up properly (we need to paint and buy new shutters.) So many things.

And also? The series of paintings I’m working on right now is of 4 paintings and if I sell all 4 I should have enough money to fix up my studio/office the way I want to with money left over to mail people things, buy my kids some new clothes and do “immersion therapy stuff” like go to the fabric store or go out for lunch with or without the kids and in our town or in the next town, depending on the status of our vehicular situation.

Good stuff is happening all over the place and there’s more good stuff to come, I just have to ride this period of anxiety out. I think once the Hypercube contest is officially over, whether I win or not, a lot of it will dissipate and I should be put out of my misery in that regard by the end of the month.

Soon the kids will be out of school, which is a bittersweet thing for me. Them being out of school limits my immersion therapy options because going places WITH them is on the very high end of the spectrum of things I’m not currently able to do. That’s something I have to work up to and realistically I only have a month to work up to that and I kinda don’t foresee me getting there. So, once the kids are out of school, immersion therapy grinds to a slow crawl as I’ll only be able to do things in the middle of the night and all there is to do in the middle of the night is go to the corner store (where I don’t need anything) or check the mail. There’s a 24-hour Wal*Mart about half an hour away but I don’t think I’ll be at that level of “okayness” until the fall.

So while the kids being home kind of messes up my therapy, summer is also the time when I do most of my reading and since my birthday, books and magazines have been piling up on my dresser, most of which I’m extremely eager to get to. One of my most joyful activities in the summer is making a  large salad of local veggies, crisp romaine lettuce, crunchy cucumbers, sweet cherry tomatoes, spicy radishes, stringy celery and tiny cubes of marble cheese, maybe with a few slivers of apple thrown in the way my mom used to do it and eat while I either catch up online with shows I missed during the fall & winter (I want to watch The Tudors, re-watch V and possibly How I Met Your Mother, which I’ve never seen) or read until the wee hours of the morning.

Spring and summer are my seasons, this is the best part of the year! So maybe I should just suck it up, paint, read, play with my kids and be happy. Right?