Oh man, it’s been a busy day on not very much sleep.

Madison had her friend over last night and we stayed up until 5am dying each other’s hair and teaching them how to play euchre. Then we got up at, oh, 9am? And were at Wal*Mart before noon to pick up 6 bags of topsoil and 2 bags of compost, a grey tank top for under my dress and magnesium citrate, which the food Dr. told me to start taking and I can’t remember exactly why.

While at Wal*Mart, we also found that they sold tomato cages for $1, but I didn’t think to count my plants, so I sent Blake back to get those in a 2nd trip.

I also got thyme, which I just finished planting in a pot, oregano, parsley and lemon basil because the kind I bought at the grocery store was cinnamon basil and it didn’t look like the stuff we usually buy fresh. This lemon kind does.

While Blake was at Wal*Mart for the second time, I got out the wheelbarrow and mixed one bag of compost with the 6 bags of topsoil and filled in the part of the front garden where Blake took out the sod. Then I got out the hose and soaked the whole garden down before mixing up all of my cosmos seeds and spreading them over the whole garden. Then I took my bachelor’s buttons seeds and sprinkled them around 2/3 borders of the garden and then wet the whole thing down with the hose again, worried that people in the cars going by were thinking me an idiot because it was quite obviously going to rain any minute. (Although The Weather Network told me it wouldn’t until later in the afternoon.)

Then I came inside and had a nap. Just as I was laying down, Blake came home, told me he got the tomato cages and he said he’d hoe the weeds out of the veggie garden while I napped. (Good idea, Will!) Oh yeah, we bought a hoe at Wal*Mart too. So he did that, I slept for about an hour & a half.

When I woke up, the garden was more or less hoed, so I went up and supervised the hoeing of a couple of places that still needed it and then Blake spread the last bag of compost over the garden with a rake. Then I called to the children to start bringing out my seedlings, Blake grabbed the tomato cages and we started to plant the peppers and tomatoes.

We have a lot of peppers and tomatoes.

Just as we were finishing up the last row of tomatoes, it started to spit so we all packed up our seeds and cups and shovels etc. and came inside. All it did was spit though, it hasn’t even started to rain yet. I’m contemplating going out there and watering the peppers and tomatoes but I think once I got the hose unraveled it would actually start raining.

I’m a liiiiiittle worried by how much space the peppers and tomatoes took out of the garden vs. what I have left to plant from seed, but I’m not even going to think about it until tomorrow when I’m actually out there and can see the space we have to work with. Tomorrow we’re also going to get stakes and string for the peas because the pea trellises at the garden centre were ridiculously expensive and not an option for this year.

Anyway, that’s what  got done today and weather permitting, we should get the rest of the veggies done tomorrow and then I’ll do sunflowers on Monday.

Tonight I’m gonna have P.L.T.’s for dinner and watch hockey and paint pretty girls. Then I think everyone will be going to bed very very early.

After months and months of waiting, my Free People dress is here! The one I’m going to be wearing to the art show I’m in this summer! I AM SO EXCITED! It fits perfectly and is nicer in person than it was on their website.

I just uploaded pics of me modeling it (with my pajamas on underneath), so ignore the pajamas and picture it being worn with knee-high Doc Martens and a grey tank top underneath:

I AM SO STOKED! I AM NEVER TAKING IT OFF!
Anyway, that is all.

It’s 3am and I’m restless & rambly.

I think it’s completely unfair that breakfast sausages have anywhere from 190 calories per 2 sausages to 270. The tastier the breakfast sausage, I’m finding, the worse it is for you. This is unfortunate as I kinda really like breakfast sausages, however earlier this week, not knowing the caloric value of them, I inadvertently ate a breakfast that was roughly 1300-1500 calories. I didn’t notice that there was nutritional information on the package until I went to throw it away, then I got out my calculator and just about cried. That night, this was my dinner (not that I’m complaining, I just would have liked something more substantial…):

On Tuesday I went to see my latest healthcare professional, Dr. D, who is an Irish-Canadian nutritionist with the world’s cutest accent to basically see if I was fat enough to get into her 10 week, comprehensive metabolic workshop. The bittersweet news is that I am, indeed, fat enough for this program, but the good news is that I’m on the lower end of the spectrum, only needing to lose about 20 lbs (but I’d be happy with 15).

The program is going to start in either June (I hope) or August and the discrepancy is a result of some of the speakers who well, speak, in the sessions, want to go on summer vacations. I can understand this, I really can, I just really hope it’s in June because I have S.A.D. and if it starts in August, I’ll be in full-depression mode by the end of it and not motivated to do a damn thing. Also, we’re planting our garden this weekend so we’re going to have fresh, organic vegetables all summer which is going to aid in achieving a healthier weight. I won’t have the same advantage in September and October.

Apparently the first thing they do in the workshop is give you a pedometer which is going to be a barrel of laughs in my case. I wake up. I go to the bathroom. I pee. I brush my teeth. I walk to the kitchen and grab a Coke Zero. I come into my office and sit at my desk. For a couple of hours. Then I go back into the kitchen and make breakfast which could be a protein shake or eggs, either way, my feet are firmly planted in the kitchen. Then I come back into my office and eat  at my desk while I watch crappy daytime TV for the time it takes to finish my meal. I go back into the kitchen and deposit my dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, depending on the state of the room. Then I come back to my chair and either do internet stuff or paint for a few more hours. I might get up to walk to the bathroom and pee. Or I might get up to go to the kitchen and get a drink (I drink a LOT). This continues literally until I go to bed at night – oh wait, sometimes I eat lunch, so those steps count – and then it repeats the next morning. This is my crazy, whacked out, OCD routine and I get very upset when it’s altered in any way. Also? My house is very very small. It’s only about 10 steps from my office to the kitchen, 15 to the bathroom, 20 to the bedroom. Yep, this pedometer is gonna be entertaining.

I wonder if it counts dancing? I actually do that a lot on my way to the kitchen or bathroom.

The other components of the metabolic workshop were kind of explained to me in a blur, but I know Blake can’t come with me (:o/) except for the two classes that are about cooking. They want the primary cook to sit in on those ones and that would be Blake. I know there is going to be a one-on-one session with a dietician at some point, but to be honest I don’t even really know what a dietician is or does. She also mentioned a session with a…fuck, I forget the title, it was like “actionarian” or something like that, but basically what she does is tells you how to move more. They don’t like to use the word “exercise” I noticed, she always said “have more movement” and things like that.

Anyway, the actionarian or whatever her title is, is going to tell me how to use my Wii Fit and I’m guessing she’ll be like, “do this game X amount of times and then switch to this game X amount of times, then do a yoga pose, blah blah blah”. I’m totally fine with doing Wii Fit, I mean, that’s why we bought it I suppose, but the obstacle I’m going to run into is that when this workshop starts, the kids are going to be home for the summer and I don’t want to do Wii Fit in front of them because the little shitheads are going to laugh at me and/or simply make me feel self-conscious. I’m going to assume this actionarian woman is going to want me to do Wii Fit every day, which I’m fine with, I mean, god knows I have nothing better to do, and I’m going to assume she’s going to want me to do at least 20 minutes up to maybe even an hour. How the hell do I get the kids to leave the house every day for an hour? And it’ll be at random times too, because I don’t really have a schedule. I go to sleep when I’m tired, I wake up when I’m not tired anymore. This is especially true in the summer for some reason.

And while I’m on the subject of movement (not exercise!), Blake and I have been talking about going to a yoga class together. Madison’s 12 now and can legally stay home and watch Wes, which gives Blake and I a little more freedom, especially in this regard because he found a yoga studio that’s just up the road, 5 minutes away, and Madison would be fine watching Wes for (I’m guessing) an hour or so while we do this. Part of me really REALLY wants to do it. In fact, it was MY idea, I was the one who brought it up, but when Blake found the studio and showed me their website and started talking like it was possible, I pretty much totally freaked out. There was crying. So what’s my deal with this? Oh my friends, I hope you’ve figured out “Sunny Logic” by now because you’re going to need it.

First and foremost, I am absolutely paralyzed with fear by the idea of FARTING. Or worse – omg I cannot even believe I’m going to type this – QUEEFING. There is not enough Ativan on the planet that would help me recover from such an event. I think I would literally have a heart attack and die if either of those scenarios happened in a room full of people. I mean, my god, how could they NOT laugh? I’d fucking laugh! (If it were anyone but me.) I’m breaking into a nervous sweat even typing this paragraph, that’s how absolutely terrified I am by the prospect of this happening. And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen because I KNOW it does. And it’s not like we’re in a hospital where “the doctors have seen it all” – I mean, it kind of is, I guess, as far as the instructor is concerned, but not the students.

Anyway, it would fucking kill me and this is problem #1 with doing yoga, like, in front of people.

Problem #2 is that I have this major issue where I’ll only do something if I’m automagically good at it. I don’t like learning. I don’t like the process of learning by sucking at something and being corrected. I want to be a prostar on the first try and I’m scared that I just won’t be any good at yoga. Do I fucking LOOK zen to you?

At the same time, I’m ridiculously flexible. When I was in the hospital, out of my mind with mania, I literally sat in a hospital bed for 3 days, cross-legged, with my head on the bed in front of me – if you can picture that. The only time I moved was when they made me take meds. I can squat on the floor with my feet flat on the ground and my bum touching my heels, which Blake finds totally bizarre and we’ve asked just about everyone who’s ever come into my house if they can do that and they can’t. My kids can’t even do it.

So what I’m saying is, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be excellent at yoga and my fear of not being good at it is completely irrational.

Problem #3 is the whole people thing. I mean, I don’t leave my house for a reason and it’s not because I’m afraid of fresh air or pigeons. I am absolutely socially retarded and just can’t deal with them. Blake says I won’t have to deal with them because everyone’s there to do their own thing, but what do I do if someone like, talks to me? Or worse, wants to be friends?

Problem #4 is money. Yoga is expensive. Blake says we can do it if we cut back on some things but right now we’re already in overdraft because of Blake’s CPAP machine and it’s not that I don’t believe him that we can financially do this if it’s important – and part of me thinks it is – it’s that I’m scared we’ll drop all this money on it and I’ll go once, freak out and never go again, wasting money we could have spent on, I dunno, FOOD. I suppose in a way, most of my fears are the fear of failure, which I know has been a problem for most of my life and I don’t know how to adapt and get over it and just do what I want to do.

So that’s the yoga issue.

The other parts of the metabolic workshop, as I said, were kind of a blur. I know that there’s going to be a lot of talk about food and its effects on metabolism and how different foods affect it differently. She said there’s going to be a lot of discussion on the importance of sleep, which I’m actually kind of already aware of because that’s a big component of bipolar disorder. They’re going to explain good fats vs. bad fats and stuff like that. I forget what else she said would be a part of the workshop, but she was so excited about it that it was infectious and I’m actually looking forward to it. See, though? I lied up there ^^^. I actually REALLY like to learn, like with my brain, I’m just not a physical person at all, I mean, I FAILED gym every year of my life. That’s another reason why I’m scared to do Wii Fit in front of the kids.

And then there’s the fact that the workshop is going to be 2 hours, every Tuesday, for most of the summer holidays, so not only is Blake going to have to use 10 vacation days (out of about 16) to take me to this thing, he’s going to have to bring the kids with him. (Although leaving Madison with Wes is an option to explore…but it makes me uneasy being 1/2 an hour away from home.)

I dunno. I’m in a weird place these days. In a lot of respects I feel like my life is sort of getting back on track but in other ways it’s completely off the rails. My creativity pool right now is very very low, which makes me depressed. I have two paintings on the go which should have been done like, 2 weeks ago and here I am barely in the first stages of shading the girls’ faces. I’m exhausted all the time and sleeping at stupid hours because in the “transitional seasons” by body goes all out of whack trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule that I can’t even begin to figure out the basis of. My dad wants us to come up for a visit, probably Father’s Day weekend and I really want to go because they just put a huge addition on their house and I want to see it, but at the same time, I hate the pain in the ass it is to go up there with the dogs and everything.

There’s more negative stuff but I don’t feel like elaborating on it because I feel like I’ve done it before. I probably do it every year.

In the positive, I am 3 weeks smoke-free. My dress from Free People that I plan on wearing to The Square Foot Show (which is an art show, for those not paying attention) came today and Blake’s going to pick it up at the post office tomorrow or Saturday. I sold a painting last week (I think? maybe the week before) and I spent most of the proceeds on awesome stuff from Etsy for Blake for Father’s Day and it should all be arriving soon. I also bought myself a ring to wear to The Square Foot Show because my wedding ring doesn’t fit due to my newfound fatness and I feel awkward being in such a public place without it. Despite the fact that I’m currently 20-ish lbs overweight, I still tend to get hit on often enough that my wedding ring (or in this case, a stand-in) to me is kind of like a shield from creepers.

I got new business cards from MOO that are pretty cool a couple of weeks ago, although I’m almost out of MOO mini cards and I’m hoping to sell a painting before the Square Foot Show so I can order some more to bring with me to hand out. Also with the proceeds of my sale, I bought 10 cans of Krylon because I want to experiment with different varnishes over the summer when I have the ability to spray outside. But just the fact that I had the ability to walk into Wal*Mart and buy 10 fucking cans of Krylon made me feel good about myself, like I was on the right track. The fact that I had the ability to spoil my husband rotten, who deserves it more than anyone I could possibly think of…shit like that just makes me feel independent and secure, somehow, which is something I don’t feel very often.

I also feel good about the fact that right now, my little Etsy business is making enough money to not only sustain itself as far as materials now, but I can buy promotional items like business cards, pay my Etsy bill at the end of every month and still have enough left over to buy myself a dress, a ring and Blake a whole bunch of crap I can’t even tell you about because he’s reading this. Not only could I buy 10 cans of Krylon, but I could buy 12 blank canvases too! The sale of a couple of paintings, for me, can be stretched and stretched and stretched and it just feels good to have my own money, to be able to buy my husband a gift with MY OWN MONEY. Maybe no one else will understand this, but in the (almost) 8 years Blake and I have been married, I haven’t given him very many gifts and the reason for this is because I think it would be stupid to buy someone a gift with their own money, especially when they can look at the credit card statement and see what it is.

So what I’m saying is that I feel good about being somewhat financially independent at the moment. Well, sort of…I have a tiny bit of padding in my PayPal account right now, enough to pay my Etsy bill for a couple of months, which actually makes me completely broke but whatever. My theory on money is that you can always make more and I *do* have two paintings on the go, one I’m fairly certain I can sell quickly and one that I’ll probably sell at The Square Foot Show. (I have to replicate “Shimmer” because it got ruined by a kid…)

I’m looking forward to the summer holidays with the kids. Madison has this friend, who I’ll call “E”, that I actually quite like and I’m hoping that she’ll be spending a significant part of her summer at our house because between her and Madison, they could do some really creative things with Madison’s sewing machine. E knows how to make her own clothes, and does, whereas Madison wishes she had those kinds of skills and the only way she’s going to learn them is from E. Also, E comes from a very…crappy background. She’s a foster kid and I think hanging out with our family and sort of being a casual part of our family may be good for her.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is the beach. I’ve lost enough weight that I fit into one of the bathing suits my friend Raya bought me a few years ago without looking gross, so it’s safe to go to the beach again and that makes me happy. When we first moved here, the first summer we were here, it was SO hot for a while there that I would have all of our beach gear packed up so that the second Blake got home from work, we could all get in the car and go to the beach for a couple of hours when it was less crowded. Often we’d get a couple of subs on the way and I’d bring a knife to cut them up and we’d have dinner on the beach. I miss that and I’m hoping for a very hot summer so we can do that again.

I’m also looking forward to reading books all night. Lots of them. I wish I had more, though. Right now I only have 1 & a 1/2 and our little library sucks. :o/

I’m hoping to sell a painting or two over the summer holidays so I can have cash on hand to do things with and for the kids. Like, I want to be able to say to them, “ya wanna make $2? go out to the garden and pull all the weeds,” which they would do because they like money and will have nothing better to do. Or, “hey do you want to have pizza for lunch? Here’s $15 and a list, ride your bike to the grocery store and pick these things up,”. Or, “here’s $5, go get an ice cream cone at McDonald’s”. Stuff like that. With my own money. I want to be able to do these extra things for my kids without being a financial burden to Blake, because they deserve it. They’re really really great kids.

Alright, it’s now almost 4:30am which means I’ve been rambling about basically nothing for the past hour & a half and I think my sleep meds are kicking in because my thoughts are getting fuzzy. SO! Goodnight!

Yesterday I made a post professing my love for this brand of cherry tomatoes called One Sweet Tomato and for the company that produces them, called Sunset Produce, which is a division of Mastronardi Produce. As I said in my post yesterday, they are a local company (well, about 4 hours away, but to me that’s still local) and my beloved One Sweet Tomatoes, as I first suspected due to their incredible sweetness, are not genetically modified in any way. In fact, Sunset Produce was the first produce company to receive non-GMO certification from The Non-GMO Project. I learned this fact yesterday not just from scouring their website in awe that a company could be so ethical and non-evil, but from following them on Twitter where they posted that fact.

Am I laying it on thick enough yet? Nope, I don’t think so. In fact it’s about to get a lot thicker and a little more personal and convoluted by the end of this post.

Yesterday I woke up just before 6am and I saw, via the comments on the One Sweet Tomato post, which was x-posted to Live Journal, that my friend Stephy had visited their site and my new favourite tomatoes were in fact not GMO at all. And from that comment, I decided to check out their site myself, because when I get obsessed with something, I really get obsessed, as many of you can attest, and what I found on their site was a company that cares about the environment (they use energy saving bulbs in their warehouses during the winter but skylights the rest of the year to cut down on energy consumption, for example), a company that cares about feeding families healthy, quality foods and inadvertently, a company staffed by extremely nice people.

By the time I was finished looking at the site, I was clicking on the “Careers” section because I was ready to start working in the greenhouse! I, Sunny Crittenden, whose life goal it has been for her 31 years of existence, was willing to throw slackerdom to the wind and get a  j o b . I mean, nevermind that they’re 4 hours away, I was going to make Blake get a new job too. In fact, they happened to be looking for a sys admin, so that was actually kind of doable.

But then I realized I was probably being delusional from a lack of sleep and decided to use their contact form to profess my love for their products and their company, tell them that despite the fact that their One Sweet Peppers were on sale this week at Foodland, our tiny local Foodland didn’t carry them (boooo) and to ask if they were going to include their non-GMO certification on their packaging anytime soon. I also told them that I’d made a post about their One Sweet Tomatoes on my site and threw them a link.

About half an hour later, I get an e-mail back from Chris Veillon, the Director of Marketing for the company. Fancy that, an e-mail from a real live person. At 7am no less! He gave me a run down of the chain of command in a grocery store and how to request their products in our local Foodland, said that they were working on packaging redesign to include their non-GMO status and “Please send me your mailing address and I would be glad to send you a small care package of the best SUNSET® produce there is for you and your family to enjoy.“

So impressed with this person and the offer of awesome free produce to a random stranger who just likes their tomatoes, I e-mailed him back with a few thoughts on the importance of non-GMO packaging (likely not telling him anything he didn’t already know, heh), that I would most definitely speak to the produce manager of our local grocery store to see if we could get more of their products in our produce section and of course, my address for this mysterious, yet I could tell it on my bones, awesome care package.

Well, I never heard back after that, but that’s probably because Chris is a busy guy.

Now here’s where things get personal and convoluted. The more I milled the whole morning’s experience, being steeped in Sunset Produce mania, around in my head, the more excited I became and by the time Blake woke up I had practically pounced on him to share all of this new information I had just discovered because hey, that’s what I do. So then I got him checking out their website and agreeing that they are, as I had told him, full of awesomesauce.

Well Blake had the day off because yesterday I had a date with a nutritionist (synchronicity!) and an unfortunate date with a dentist and because I don’t drive or really leave the house alone, Blake takes vacation days when I have appointments. The appointments? Neither here nor there really. I got accepted into the metabolic workshop I was hoping for and it’ll start in either June or August. It will be 10 weeks long, every Tuesday for 2 hours, and from what was described it’ll be really comprehensive. Cool. Looking forward to it. I want to know more about food and what it does inside our bodies, especially having to due with the metabolism as mine was adversely affected by medication a couple of years ago resulting in crazy, unfair weight gain and high cholesterol, as you all know. Dentist? NOt all that exciting either. I have a small cavity on the left side in one of my molars. This is actually a small victory because it’s my first cavity in over 2 years, whereas prior to that, when I was drinking 2.5L of Coke every day, I spent about a million agonizing hours in the dentist’s chair while I racked up a good $8,000 in (insured) dental bills.

But as I said, the appointments themselves, not all that important, which is why they don’t get their own posts. What IS important is that Blake and I had a lot of time to talk yesterday and our talking mostly had to do with that sys admin position at Sunset Produce. He was just as stoked about the company as I was and this is part of the reason he and I get along so well, when we believe in something, we go full tilt and by halfway through the day, we decided that we’d like a shot at becoming a Sunset Produce family. We looked up the town where they were located and much to our surprise, we found that they were actively recruiting people just like us to help come populate it. We also found out that it’s the southern-most town in Ontario, meaning much milder winters than we have here, and it’s really close to the Detroit/Windsor border crossing so when Blake’s mother decides to stop being an impossible shrew, visiting would happen much more frequently (she lives just outside of Detroit – for those new to Sunnyland, Blake is American and from MI) and it would make things easier as far as getting together when Blake’s sisters come into town from CA.

There’s also a ferry that’ll take us to Ohio, if we ever wanted to go, although my friend Kevin, when told this, said “I’m not sure that’s a benefit,” but WHATEVER KEVIN, Blake & I met in Ohio 9 years ago this fall so it holds a special place in our hearts.

So Blake & I keep getting each other more and more excited about the prospect of making this actually happen and what finally undid us was going to Realtor.ca and looking to see what the housing market is like down there. To make a long story short, there is a hell of a lot more bang for our buck down there than there is anywhere even close to up here. In fact, after spending several hours looking at houses, I finally found the one I want, which is within our budget, pending the sys admin position pays at least what Blake’s making now, and it is literally my dream house – at least from the pics. I’ve always wanted a pool, this house has one. I’ve always wanted a Victorian house, this house is one. This house is in town, where I can walk to things. There is an elementary school within a closer walking distance than the kids have now.

Now, it’s actually not in the same town as the Sunset Produce headquarters, but Blake’s commute would only be about 10 or 15 minutes and Blake & I actually have a little bit of history with this town too. It’s called Leamington, which probably means nothing to any of you, but it was the one of, if not THE first stop on the XL Indie Tour which Scratching Post was a part of, which I worked the entirety of for them and this particular location was the first time Blake and I ever really hung out. We would be engaged a few months later and married the following summer.

Leamington is probably best known for being where Heinz ketchup is made, which is no surprise since the next town over, Kingsville, where Sunset Produce is located, is where all the greenhouses are in this province (more or less). As a result of this type of industry, Leamington and I’m gonna assume Kingsville too, has a high latino population and Blake was so stoked when we went on Google Street View and found all kinds of “authentic” Mexican restaurants and grocery stores. Another positive aspect to this is that, say all of this does magically happen for us and Blake gets the job and we get the house and the universe aligns etc etc? It would mean that our kids would go to a school with mixed ethnicities. (And why is spellcheck saying that’s not a word?) Where we are now is…as whitewashed as it comes, as were all the little towns I grew up in and it only gets whiter the further North you go. Now don’t get me wrong, I like white people, but when all you see growing up are people who look like you, it can lead to being less open-minded, less accepting and less tolerant and we’re trying to raise open-minded, accepting and tolerant kids. Spanish is spoken in this house just as much as French is, we eat Thai and Chinese and Mexican food, but obviously that’s not the same as being raised in an area where every single person in the whole town is the same skintone as you. Blake, growing up right outside Detroit, grew up with ethnic diversity and finds living here really strange because there just isn’t that up here outside of the major metropolitan areas. But even then, Barrie’s pretty big, but still probably 80% white. When we’ve talked about moving before, ethnic diversity and different cultures have both been important to Blake, but living in a small town has always been important to me and in Ontario you don’t really get to have both – except in Leamington, which is something I noticed about it the first and only time I’ve ever been there.

So this is what Blake and I have decided to start working toward. The first step is to get a foot in the door with Sunset Produce and get Blake an interview for the sys admin position. Blake is very very smart and I’m convinced that if he can get an interview, he can make this happen. If all goes well there, he’s going to tell them he can start immediately, which will be extremely expensive and inconvenient considering he’ll have to live at a hotel or something down there during the week and come up here on weekends to help me do groceries and get the mail & stuff, until we sell this house. And unfortunately, this house needs a little “lipstick & rouge” to be able to sell too, which I guess I’ll do myself while he’s down there working, if this all comes to fruition. Then there’s the matter of selling this house while buying another house, which we realize people do all the time, we just have absolutely no idea how that works. And people, I really really REALLY want the house I linked. The location is perfect, it has everything I want (at least by the description and pictures) – it is the “forever home”.

Yes, we will be over 5 hours away from my dad, Lisa and my little sisters, but honestly, we only really see them once or twice a year (one of those times being Xmas) and they’re both on Facebook so I’m not too worried about that. We will be about 3 hours away from Alex & Ronny who are pretty much our only “real life” friends and that’ll suck, but I think their goal is to end up in Toronto anyway, so that’s only about 2 hours away and they’ll be passing right through our town pretty much to visit Ronny’s family in MI, so there’s always that. And again, I talk to both of them online more than we see them offline, so I’m not all that worried about them either. I’m not sure how far away we’ll be from my mom, I’m gonna guess 3 hours, which is about double how far way we are now, which will suck and will make Xmas a little more complicated, but I’m sure it can be worked around easily enough. Again, I talk to her on Facebook or e-mail more than in person anyway, so I’m sure we’ll survive.

Blake and I really really want this. Madison really really wants this too (we showed her the house, the town, everything) and says the house I want is “one dishwasher away from being perfect”. Wes…has no clue we’re even thinking about this, but when we moved up here when Madison was more or less the same age, she survived, so I’m sure he will too.

And about me working in the Sunset greenhouses if this happens and there’s an opening? I don’t think I’m kidding about that. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I really like to grow things. When it came to college, it was literally a toss up between going to school for herbalism and working in a local greenhouse that only grew herbs or advertising. There was more money in advertising and a lot less schooling. Anyway, as far as a job, I’m not making any promises, I’m just saying it’s a consideration. We want to be a Sunset Produce family.

So that’s my big news of yesterday that I wasn’t sure I’d write about for fear of jinxing ourselves.

My big news of today is not as life-altering but is still exciting nonetheless. My care package from Sunset Produce came! That Chris Veillon doesn’t fool around!

Last night I woke up at 3am, after going to bed at 11pm and couldn’t get back to sleep, which seems to be my current pattern of (not) sleeping. Not a huge deal, this happens every spring and every fall, but that means I’m assuming I was having a nap when the delivery came because I never heard the door.

When Madison came home from school, she came in carrying this styrofoam cooler about as long as my coffee table and almost as wide. Immediately I knew what it was because what else would need to be kept cool? And oh man, was I excited. I got out my trusty exacto knife and sliced apart the tape holding the lid onto the bottom and then I carefully opened it up to see what was inside.

What was inside was a whole lot of bubble wrap (which I’ll keep and use to wrap paintings with) with Chris’ card on top, which I’ve cropped here so a million people don’t call his office asking for care packages too:

I unwrapped everything inside the cooler and tried to make a nifty display to show you all, but the light in my office sucks and I didn’t really do a good job, so this is going to be a slightly pic-intensive post.

Madison & I each took an armload into the kitchen and I took pictures of one thing, then I’d hand it off to her to put away in the fridge. First up is two more containers of One Sweet Tomatoes, which I cannot stress enough, are absolutely amazing. In fact, that’s what I had for dinner last night while we watched LOST, a caesar salad with a side of One Sweet Tomatoes.

And the timing of these two containers couldn’t be better because the one container I have left in the fridge is getting a little soft and there aren’t any more at the grocery store because we literally bought all they had over the last two weeks.

Next up is MINZANO tomatoes which even have their own website because for whatever reason they are just that special. I’m very curious about these.

Then comes Campari tomatoes, which, from what I understand is what Sunset’s best known for. They aren’t as big as the random Ontario hot house tomatoes I have in my fridge (I unfortunately just bought like, 6 of them – oops) but their colour is a LOT nicer and I’m thinking that I’m going to try them tomorrow night when I plan on having P.L.T.’s for dinner. (“P” is for “peameal bacon”….which I’m really sick of explaining so just Wiki it.)

Then we have a pack of 3 sweet bell peppers, which Blake is turning into fajitas as I type this. He just walked in here a few minutes ago freaking out at how flavourful they are, so already they’re a big hit and I happen to know that our local grocery store has these because that’s what “Compliments” brand is.

Now comes the mini cucumbers, which are like English cucumbers in that the skin is edible. I plan to send these with the kids in their lunch because I think it’d be a waste to cut them up into slices or into a salad. These look like they’re meant to just eat plain.

Now here’s the thing about the next items. I hate peppers. Like a lot. When I was little I would eat them raw with dip and be totally fine, but as an adult they just never worked out for me. I pick them out of stir-fries and am sometimes offended that they’re even IN my stir-fry, I can’t stand spaghetti sauce if there’s even the tracest amount of peppers in it and often other things with peppers in it gives me a headache, so I avoid them like the plague.

That said, after trying the One Sweet Tomatoes and loving them, when I saw that the same company made One Sweet Peppers and they happened to be on sale this week, I’d fully intended to try them. However as I mentioned, our grocery store didn’t have them, so I couldn’t, but I was pleased to find that Chris had included two containers of them in our care package because if I’m ever going to like peppers, these are going to be the ones.

Since I inadvertently had a 1300 calorie breakfast this morning (don’t even ask), my dinner plans are to have a veggie/cheese platter of One Sweet Tomatoes, Minzano tomatoes, some English cucumber I already have cut up in the fridge, some havarti cheese,  Wheat Thins and these One Sweet Peppers.

And finally this brings us to our last item which excites me even though I probably won’t be the one eating them due to my aforementioned dislike of peppers (everyone else in the house likes them though, so they will get eaten, likely with gusto):

They are MYSTERIOUSLY sweet long peppers.
And they look really cool too, that’s what excited me about them – I just think they’re absolutely beautiful.

Obviously they’re long and shiny and very very red. I’m probably going to try these, but I won’t be too surprised at all if I don’t like them because they look very….peppery.

Anyway, this gigantic post was brought to you by Sunset Produce and I will try to keep everyone abreast of the job situation and what everyone thinks of our little bounty here once we’ve tried everything. And if you’ll excuse me, I have a thank you e-mail to write.

I’m practically living on them right now. In the last 2 weeks, we’ve easily bought 10 containers of them.
They’re probably genetically modified, for all I know, but hey, they’re grown in Ontario so ya win some, ya lose some.
They’re also similar to what we’ll be growing in our garden this summer, so, bonus.
Anyway I love them and thought I’d share.

Edit: Stephy actually went to their site, which is on the package and I totally didn’t even realize it and they are a part of The Non-GMO Project and are thus, non-GMO. YAY!!!!!! And actually reading about the company, they’re actually pretty impressive from an environmental point of view. They use friendly bugs to control unfriendly bugs, as opposed to pesticides, just as one example and their packaging is made from recycled water bottles and in our area at least, their packaging is completely recyclable itself.  If you’re bored, definitely check out their site. That’s how food companies should be.

WARNING: THIS IS GOING TO BE AN INSANELY PIC-INTENSIVE POST THAT IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY DIAL UP FRIENDLY (UNLESS YOU ARE REALLY REALLY PATIENT AND HAVE A LOT OF TIME ON YOUR HANDS). YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED!

Yes, friends, it’s that time of year again. Next weekend is May Two-Four weekend, which in this part of Canada means it’s time to plant your seeds because (theoretically) there shouldn’t be frost after this time and the ground is warm enough that it doesn’t necessarily matter if there is. And let me tell you, I AM SO EXCITED. Out of all the long weekends of the spring/summer, this one’s definitely my favourite because I *LOVE* planting seeds, especially the way I do it.

If you’re new to Sunnyland, here’s a bit of the backstory: In the winter of 2006, in a stoned/drunken/manic haze, my friend Sondra and I decided that it would be a good idea to tear up my front lawn in the name of art and somehow that idea kinda snowballed and the next thing I knew, I was planning a “Keep Off the Lawn” party with several friends volunteering to help with the manual labour (including Sondra) and of course, it was all documented on my Live Journal. In the end, I had no front lawn and that summer, I had my first wildflower garden. For the full story and the back entries, just click here and read from the bottom up.

The first year I just planted mass amounts of generic “wildflower mix” seeds mixed with random seeds people sent me, which worked out okay, but a lot of them wouldn’t grow in the shade, which made about 1/4 of the garden bare. The next year I planted a mix of different kinds of wildflower mixes, some that were supposedly good for shade, some that were supposedly low growing and some that were supposedly drought tolerant. Long story short on that? What I consider flowers and what the people who make these wildflower mixes consider flowers are two very different things. I felt that my garden was basically full of weeds, or at least that’s what it looked like. Sure the butterflies and birds loved the garden but aesthetically it was less than pleasing.

So for the past two years, I’ve planted cosmos and bachelor’s buttons almost exclusively in the front, with “Sunflower Alley” in the back (you’ll see a pic in a bit) and they’ve both looked great. Cosmos are the official flower of the town I used to live in and remind me of the time I was happiest in my life. They’re a wildflower and grow all over that town and the surrounding area, but not so much up here. The bachelor’s buttons I plant because I used to plant them with my great grandma, so when I see them, they remind me of her. I also plant forget-me-nots because my mother sends me a packet of seeds every year for my birthday. And the sunflowers? They’re just because I love them.

The seeds for my front garden and “Sunflower Alley” are a gift from my good friend Ruggedo and we have fun around March (my birthday) figuring out what to get for the spring. This year we got some pretty cool stuff, I gotta say.

Our house came with a badly neglected vegetable garden in the backyard that’s 8 foot 4 x 11 foot 4 and bordered with railway ties. We’ve lived in this house coming up on 5 years and my attitude toward the vegetable garden was that we should take the railway ties out and plant grass seed because why go through the trouble of growing your own vegetables when you can just go to the grocery store and buy onions & shit for 99 cents a bag? Or celery for 99 cents a bunch? (Bunch? Bunch of stalks?) Or a bag of carrots for $1.29, etc. But then I started reading about genetically modified vegetables, the fuel used to transport produce and its environmental effect, produce picked before it’s ripe and ripened on the truck with a gas and all kinds of things in that vein and then I did the math on our summer vegetable consumption and $50 worth of seeds + $20 worth of dirt + $25 worth of tomato cages = muuuuuch cheaper than what we’d spend at the grocery store for the same things and growing our own would mean more variety (our grocery store is very very small), organic produce because I bought all organic seed and I thought that maybe if the kids had a hand in growing their own food, they’d be more likely to eat it. (Luckily I have kids who actually like having just a large salad for dinner to begin with, so I don’t think the veggies we’ll be growing will be a problem.) Plus, I just think it’s cool that you can grow food in your own backyard. Too bad you can’t legally grow your own medicine, but that’s a whole other discussion…

So with that, I ordered seeds and started them in March so they’d be ready to plant next weekend. And here’s where the pictures start, so here’s where I’m going to put the cut and another warning about how this post is going to be ridiculously pic intensive so you can’t say I didn’t warn you!

(more…)

Blake & Madison made Jamie Oliver’s Crunchy Garlic Chicken with Roast Vegetables tonight for dinner.
Good stuff. :o)

I just woke up from having the best dream about going to Burning Man with Blake for the first time and meeting Halcyon (who was actually kind of a dick in my dream, although I doubt he’s like that in person).

I’ve been wanting to go to Burning Man for, oh, the past 4 or 5 years, but there are so many logistics involved in making it happen that I doubt it ever will. I mean, first of all, I live almost as far away from the playa as you can get, sooooooooo how do we get there? You need to bring LOTS & LOTS & LOTS of stuff and I think it’d be a nightmare to try & bring that much stuff on a plane and then if we did, what would we do when we landed, rent a truck? And how would you bring rebar (I probably spelled that wrong) on a plane? You need that to anchor your tent so it doesn’t blow away if there’s a dust storm!

Another option is that Phil & Lisa have Freddie’s old RV sitting in their driveway that they use for the Judo tournament for us to sleep in but I A) Don’t know if they’d let us borrow in to drive to NEVADA or B) If it’s in good enough shape to actually make it.

And another option we’ve considered, because Blake & I really really want to go, preferably before we’re 40, so that gives us like, 4 years (for him) and 9 years for me, is flying to Lake Tahoe where his sister lives and who has all kinds of camping equipment because she & her husband are really really into that. But again, we don’t know if it’s an option and with that, there’s even more logistics to consider, such as extra time off and money to visit with them.

If we chose that option, we could maybe bring the kids with us and they could stay at Shannan’s (his sister) while we’re at Burning Man. If she & her husband Erik (or is it with a “c”? I always forget) aren’t down with that, then I’m sure Phil & Lisa or my mom would look after them while we go.

And then when I think about going, I wonder what we’d bring for gifting. There’s a promotional item for my Etsy shop that I’m saving up for that I really want to give to people, but is gifting a promotional item, even if it’s cool, bad gifting etiquette? With enough planning I could make things to gift, but I don’t have any ideas about that at the moment and really, I really am busy with painting so I can actually make some money so I don’t know if I’d even have the time to make hundreds of handmade items, no matter how much time I was given.

Another obstacle is that we’d have to buy a lot of stuff to survive the playa and we don’t have a whole lot of extra money for stuff like that, so how would we get all that stuff? Plus I think tickets, unless you get the early bird ones, which sell out fast, is about $1000 each, which I think is totally fair, but $2000 for both of us is a LOT of money, especially considering that we’d probably have to buy – and I’m just guesstimating here – about $500-$800 worth of stuff, if not more, to be able to survive the playa. And of course, no matter how we get there or what the plan is, it’s going to cost major bucks to even get there, whether by plan or by vehicle.

I would also love to create a giant art piece like other people do who bring them to the playa but I have no fucking idea how I could even do that when it’s hard enough to get myself there.

Every year about this time I get like, Burning Man fever because Halcyon starts talking about it and I think “okay maybe next year” but it never happens. I wanted to go really bad last year because the kids would still be young enough to get in for free and I’d really like to bring them, but now for Madison, I think it’s 5 or 6 hundred bucks. Wes is still free.

I think we’ll get there at some point, but for now, I’m okay with just dreams.

…and in a sense it will be…it just won’t stay that way because I have issues. Major fucking issues.

For all intents and purposes, yesterday was a good day. A very good day. I woke up at 6am, did internetting until the rest of the family woke up so I could use the blender to make a protein “shake” which isn’t so much a shake or even a smoothie because it’s just protein powder, milk and ice. I hate bananas and yogurt with a fiery passion, so the odds of me ever making a proper smoothie are probably slim to none and I think adding ice cream to make a shake is probably defeating the purpose.

I did get Blake to buy me some Nestle Quick chocolate squirty stuff though, because the supposedly chocolate flavour protein powder we bought doesn’t actually taste like chocolate. It SMELLS like chocolate, oddly enough, but really, it doesn’t taste like anything (and I don’t like plain milk). There is only 15 calories in 1 tablespoon of Nestle Quick. I figure I’ll probably use 2. Anyway, none of this is neither here nor there.

As I consumed my protein beverage, the family got ready to go to work and school and the sun was shining and I just felt warm inside my heart. It was going to be a good day, I could tell. And while I don’t really participate in the family getting ready for work or school, sometimes I like being awake for it because it really is the time in which all 3 of them are the most themselves, together. That’s probably hard to explain, but it’s like concentrated Madison, concentrated Wes, concentrated Blake all within this frantic chaos of getting out the door on time. It’s one of those things that occur in family like that I just sometimes like to sit back and watch, or more to the point, listen to.

So for about an hour it’s all loud and everyone’s rushing around (except Wes, who leisurely eats his cereal and talks to his favourite imaginary friend of the week, for the most part) and they’re all being extremely unintentionally funny, but the second the car leaves the driveway, bound for school and work, the house becomes absolutely silent in this perfect way that, to me, is absolutely calming. The dogs have each claimed a still-warm bed, the cat is sprawled out on the couch sleeping, and I haven’t turned on TweetDeck yet or iTunes. The only sound is the gentle hum of my computer and the lamp on my desk whose spiral lightbulb is due to blow any day now, if the buzzing coming out of it is any indication.

So after they leave, I just kinda sit here and absorb. I look out the window, I say “hi” to the sun, I check on my plants, I drink my protein beverage and then I just sit in my chair and kind of clear my mind and do a mini-meditation. I never know what I’m going to do on any given day. I never really attack a day with a plan of any sort. I wake up when I wake up. I eat when I eat. I make art when I feel like it. I watch movies while I make art (it’s very difficult for me to just watch a movie). I take pictures of things when something catches my eye. I have dance parties with the dogs. I sing. I make strange noises because no one’s home and I can. I read a lot. Every day is different, unstructured and unplanned. Most days are neutral, some days are good and a few days are very very bad.

Yesterday was good, as I said.

After Blake and the kids left, I did some more internetting, this time with more of a purpose. There are many places I visit online that I’ve been visiting for so long that posting to them daily is almost like a requirement and in some cases, kind of like a job. It’s the beginning of the month, that means all votes on Camwhores have been set to zero, as everyone knows, but it also means that our points have been set to zero as well. “What are points?” you might be asking yourself. Well, they’re participation points where, for participating in the community, you are given points, which translate to money at the end of the month. I’d like to think I’m very very good at working this system, so that’s what I mean about some places I go to on my internet travels are kind of like work. Yesterday I had a personal quota of making X amount of threads and posts in the Camwhores forum and a blog post, but it was loose in that my threads and posts would be things I was genuine about posting. I don’t post for the sake of points, I post because I’m interested in having a conversation with whoever else is responding to threads, either their or mine. The quota isn’t so much a quota for points necessarily, but something that I use to make sure I don’t spend more time on the forums than I should because I have other things to do and get sucked into the forums I go to daily very easily.

I had actually come up with some forum topic ideas over the weekend that I didn’t have time to post, so I posted them, wrote my blog post and then I actually went outside and sat in the chair under my carport that was formerly used for sitting in while smoking. It was still early enough in the morning that the sun was streaming in, under the carport, and hitting my face, so I just sat there for about 10 minutes soaking it in. While I was out there, I saw 2 robins, a bunch of red-winged blackbirds and the teeniest glimpse of a cardinal that’s been hanging around in the pine tree beside our driveway some days.

When I came inside I realized that I was actually still really tired considering I’d gone to bed around 1am the night before and then got up at 6, so I decided to take a nap. I woke up at 1:48pm, let the dogs out, then went around the house opening windows because it had to be about 25 degrees outside. When I went to open the living room windows, I saw that my bleeding hearts were in full bloom, so I went into my office, grabbed my camera and opened the door to go take pictures of them when I noticed that on the doorknob was a delivery notice from Canada Post saying that they were there at 1pm. I believe that they were there, but I sincerely doubt that they actually knocked on the door because when someone knocks on our door, no matter how faint, Hoover and Lucky go mental and will not stop barking until the door’s opened and they see the person’s okay. If Hoover and Lucky go mental because someone knocks on the door, traditionally I wake up. I don’t actually answer the door because 9 times out of 10 it’s either a delivery (they’ll come back) or a Jehova’s Witness (don’t care if they come back) and I don’t like strangers seeing me moments after waking up from a small coma.

The delivery notice said that we could pick up the package at the post office after 2pm, so I called Blake and asked if he was planning on leaving work early because it was Monday and generally on Monday’s he has Judo and therefore comes home early. He said he wasn’t going to Judo but that he could come home early to get this package. The odd thing about this package was that it was addressed to me and required a signature and the only thing I was expecting was the new Gogol Bordello CD from Amazing, which would not require a signature. Whatever this package was, was a mystery. Blake reminded me that I’d signed a form at the post office saying that he can sign for my packages, so he said he’d pick this one up on his way home from work, pending the thing I signed hadn’t expired.

After I got off the phone with him, I picked my camera back up and went outside to take pictures of my bleeding hearts and the lone baby tulip I have that just began to bloom over the weekend. (I think I’ve now photographed everything in my garden that’s going to bloom before July, so the first official “Keep Off the Lawn” post should be coming soon, for those who are into those.) While I was out there, I noticed a LOT of growth happening from plants that had seeded themselves in the fall and thought about what a shame it’ll be when we decimate them this weekend with the sod cutter because that sneaky sneaky grass, I swear, grew over the winter somehow and is now taking about about 1/3 of the bottom of my garden. No matter though, the sod cutter makes easy work of removing it and we can move this grass to the backyard where there is no grass, just weeds, and my friend Ruggedo send me PLEEEEEEEEEENTY of seeds this year to make the front look amazing. On my list of things to do is to buy a canvas the same size as my current “Grow Dammit!” sign and paint a new one using the colours of the garden, but financially, doing so hasn’t been high on my priority list, which is why I haven’t done it yet. I also meant to do it last year as well, but again, the same thing.

When I came inside, I put my camera away and did a little more internetting for a few minutes and then I decided that it was time to work on the two canvases I began prepping over the weekend and who were waiting for the splatter stage in my process. These ones were actually going to be a bit of a challenge because one of them is going to be a repainted version of “Shimmer“, which is the one Madison accidentally destroyed by letting it bounce off the corner of the shelf it was sitting on, causing the canvas to rip and the varnish to basically shatter. If you’ll recall, “Shimmer” is actually 1 in a series of 3 and my intention for all 3 was to put them in The Square Foot Show in July. That’s still my intent, so “Shimmer” needs to be reproduced. The challenge with these canvases is that the splatter technique I used for all 3 of those paintings is different than the technique I’ve been using for the past year and I wasn’t sure I remembered how to achieve the same effect so all 3 would continue to match and look like a set.

Over the weekend I went through journals from last year (I write down pretty much everything) and found where my former technique – which in retrospect is actually the superior technique – differed from my current technique and I was fairly confident I could repeat the background accurately for the new “Shimmer”. The second canvas I was prepping is for a turquoise version of “Love Fairy”, the painting I just sold so since the only difference between that one’s background and “Shimmer”‘s background is different types of glitter, it made sense to work on both of them at the same time.

So, I put on the movie It’s Complicated while I splattered the canvases and while they dried on the coffee table I started drawing my girls for both paintings. It’s Complicated was actually an uplifting movie for me, similar to the way Something’s Gotta Give was also uplifting to me. For one, I love Meryl Streep, I mean, how can you not love Meryl? And Alec Baldwin was in it, as well as Steve Martin (who, oddly, was not at all funny). But it was uplifting in that movies like this, where the theme is kind of about aging but still having fun, give me hope that life is just going to keep getting better. I kinda knew that was true, just from watching my mom get older and really come into her own after hitting 40, but it’s nice to see validation of that through movies with actors who are actually playing characters who are around their actual age. So watching that actually put me in a better mood than the good mood I was already in.

When the movie ended, I just kept drawing my girls with the TV off, enjoying the silence that was about to be broken by the fact that the kids would be bursting through the door in about half an hour and right on cue, they did, and Wes was crying because Madison actually elbowed him in the head when she was waving goodbye to one of her friends. Madison also had to report that Wes had taken off on her to go play with another kid and I had to give Wes shit of that because that’s simply not allowed. Madison’s in charge on the way home from school and to be safe, he has to do what she says. So he said okay, apologized to Madison, they both fixed their afternoon snacks and ate them while watching TV, then Madison started her homework while Wes played with toys. During all this, I did – take a wild guess – more internetting. Mostly catching up with everything my friends tweeted about during the day when I had TweetDeck closed and commenting on those things.

I intended to either watch another movie or see if Oprah was going to be of interest while I worked on my girls some more, but by the time I was finished internetting, Blake came through the door with a giant Amazon box. Blake’s mom asked for the kids’ wishlist last week, which I found obnoxious because the url’s been the same for oh, 6 friggin’ years now and you would think that at some point she would have, I dunno, BOOKMARKED IT, or maybe checked the TWO PLACES it’s available online, in plain sight, on my site and Live Journal, which we know she reads. Anyway, when I saw the box, I assumed it would be birthday presents for Madison from her and Charlie because the other Amazon package was clearly my CD and as I said, that was the only thing I was expecting so I shoo’d Madison out of the room and opened the box.

The first thing I see is the Battlestar Galactica boxed set. Um, what? I grabbed the packing slip and closed the box’s lid, telling Blake to hang on, that this was definitely not from his mom and definitely not all for Madison. It was from my friend Charlie who, on the odd occasion, likes to surprise our family with gifts because he’s awesome that way. So I called everyone in and played Santa Claus. I told Madison that her gifts were for her birthday and I told Wes that his gifts were for his birthday too.

After the kids left with their haul and Blake went to put his Battlestar Galactica on the shelf on his desk, I cried. I had just had the best day I’d had in a long time and the gifts from Charlie tipped something in my brain, like overloaded it with positivity that I just bawled. I mean, the things he picked out for me were great things, but what really had me excited was Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution book, which is half cookbook and half cooking lesson about how to feed your family real food as opposed to processed shit. His “revolution” is teaching people how to cook again because so many families don’t anymore and while Blake and I do cook, we really only know how to make about a dozen things between the two of us and our whole family is getting mighty sick of those dozen things. I mean, Charlie didn’t just pick out a gift with this one, he enabled us to nourish our family better and I don’t even think he understands the gravity of that. And maybe I’m being melodramatic, but to me that is a very very big deal and I cried and cried and cried.

As the kids began to watch Avatar (one of Charlie’s gifts) Blake and I went in the kitchen and worked on dinner together, which is something that also rarely happens and it felt good being in the kitchen together. It always feels good when we’re partners in crime. I started cutting up craploads of basil to make this basil/garlic/olive oil pasta that I make (with lots of vegetables) and Blake got out the biiig pot and set it on the stove to boil while he searched the cupboards for the tri-colour pasta I asked him to get during our last big grocery shopping. He couldn’t find it and decided he must not have gotten any, so he turned the stove off and went to the grocery store to get some as I continued chopping basil. For this pasta, 1 package of fresh basil will DO, but really, I think you should use 3, which is how much I was cutting up. Then I put it in a bowl and added about half a bottle of olive oil and about half a jar of minced garlic with maybe two teaspoons of salt, some ground pepper (I hate pre-ground pepper, it’s always too powdery and I just don’t like it) and a bit of parmesan. With those quantities, obviously we make a lot of this when we make it because it’s good for lunches and afterschool snacks the next day. It’s also healthy and CHEAP.

Anyway, while Blake was at the store, I used our biggest Tupperware container (which is also the container we store the finished product in), loaded it with fresh snow peas, a whole bag of frozen broccoli, half a bag of frozen green beans and carrots and a few handfuls of regular frozen peas with a bit of water at the bottom, put the lid on and started the microwave for about 13 minutes. By the time I was done doing that, Blake was home with the pasta, the water was back on to boil and my part in the kitchen was finished. The rest was up to him to drain, assemble and mix, which is just how we roll.

While the pasta was cooking, Wes decided to watch Avatar with Madison (he’d previously deemed it too scary and drew flowers in the kitchen instead) and we said that they could eat in the living room while they watched it. I had already started diving into the Jamie Oliver book and was busy putting Post-Its on the pages with stuff I think I’d eat, or at least try, if Blake made it, with notes on variations I’d use, such as “no goddamn peppers in anything”, when dinner became ready. Blake decided to eat in the living room with the kids and watch Avatar while I ate while I read.

We didn’t realize how long Avatar was and it was fast becoming time for the kids to go to bed, so we told them to remember which part they were on and that they could watch it today after school. So Blake did most of the dishes, with Madison doing the tail end while Wes got ready for bed and then when the dishes were done, Madison got ready for bed and then we were kid-free.

It had started really cooling off outside so I went around the house and started closing windows, then I came back into my office and read some more of the Jamie Oliver book until Blake came in to join me. Even though I had had a nap, I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep, but I wanted to make sure I was for sure going to fall asleep (because sometimes when I’m in a good mood, I can’t sleep, which kinda sucks) so Blake & I decided to watch Gossip Girl, Nurse Jackie and The United States of Tara, which are 3 of my favourite shows, before going to bed.

During Tara, Blake gave me a massage and when it was over, we went to bed. Except we didn’t go to sleep and here’s where things take a downturn. I said, “I think I’m manic,” and he said, “you’re not manic, you just had a good day, you started your day off with protein, which gives you energy and you just had a good day from there” and then I started crying because I was afraid I was going crazy. Here’s the problem with me, which is something I think I’m probably going to have to bring up to my shrink when I see her on Friday: the happiest I have ever been in my whole entire life, I was completely out of my fucking gourd and it ended with psychosis and hospitalization. So, I am very suspicious of “happy”. Too much “happy”, especially if I’m alone when it happens, and I’m convinced I’m manic and I’m going to go crazy and that scares me more than anything. The more I talked to Blake about how scared I was that I was manic, the more panicked I became until I was pretty much inconsolable and snotting all over my sheets. It took Blake until about 2:30am to convince me that everything was fine and that I should just go to sleep.

And today hasn’t been a good day. It should have been, I’ve got new books to read and paintings to paint and movies to watch and the sun’s shining, but when I have exceptionally good days like I did yesterday, they are almost always followed by an exceptionally bad day, which I think is just the nature of my disease. My meds are stable though, as far as I know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if, after telling my shrink all about this, she doesn’t raise my mood stabilizers as I’m only taking 3/4 of the full dose. But if it’s not the drugs, if the drugs are already doing what they’re supposed to be doing and this is more of a psychological thing then I think I fucking need therapy because it happens way too often. I mean, who the fuck is afraid to be happy? Besides me, I mean? That’s not normal. I mean, obviously I have a completely rational explanation for why I distrust happiness NOW, but really, my whole life, I’ve never even really believed in happiness. I always thought people who claimed to be happy were either lying or delusional. And then the time in my life where I was unbelievably happy and in a good mood every day for months, I was nuts.

My shrink’s told me a million times to trust my drugs, but I guess the bottom line is that I don’t. Or I’m afraid to. I don’t know which one it is but I think it has to change.

So that’s my story.