Sunday morning. Only Wes and I are awake at the time I’ve started this post. He’s playing his new video game (Bolt, purchased with a gift certificate from the Playstation Store), I’m listening to a new playlist and talking to Korpsy on Twitter about miserable movies. Yesterday Madison and I watched The Notebook, which is the second most miserable movie in the history of the world, and the little shit didn’t even crack a frown at the end, meanwhile I was a snotty, sobbing, toilet paper clenching piece of shit. I swear that child has no soul. (The first most miserable movie on the face of planet Earth is Life Is Beautiful, in case you were wondering.)

Last night was pretty miserable. I know I don’t really post about Blake very often, but I’m really worried about him. When I woke up from the nightmare of pancreatitis in Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, I woke up to the love of my life being a changed man and I don’t like this change. He can’t help it, I know, but he’s not well and I want more than anything for him to be better. He needs to talk to someone about what happened this summer and soon, I think, before this change in him, this sadness, becomes permanent. There’s just no joy in his life anymore, he doesn’t laugh as easily as he used to, he mopes, all he does is work to avoid everything else…he just goes through the motions of living, he doesn’t actually do more than exist. And that worries me a great deal. Last night we just held each other and cried. For hours. Things are not okay. Not everything is getting better.

………….

For the last couple of days I’ve been playing with an idea that I want to run by you guys to see what you think. I think I want to put a 24/7 spycam in my office, overlooking my desk and part of the couch. I say it would be 24/7, but really we would probably turn it off sometimes, just not often. Really, the only time it would go off is if there was any sexy/naked private time going on, which I know ruins half the fun, but I don’t do sex on cam, never have, and there are legalities in place that say a cam like this couldn’t be sexually explicit if children were to also appear on it from time to time.

What you would see, on any given day, would be me sitting at my desk making art and probably watching a movie, possibly with someone (likely Madison or Blake), watching TV with me on the couch. It would not be riveting entertainment and it would not be streaming cam because that would be extremely cost prohibitive. It would be a simple, old school, 30 second refresh cam that would be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, give or take.  We could possibly chat live on Twitter.

Now, you might be asking yourself why on Earth I would want to do this so here are my reasons:

1. I am creatively blocked in a seriously painful way. I avoid my office like the plague and when I’m in there all I do is watch movies and accomplish nothing. Maybe with an audience, I’d be more productive.

2. Maybe with an audience I’d actually make an effort not to be a scuzzy bitch. Don’t get me wrong, if this happens you will most likely see me in yoga pants and t-shirts 95% of the time, probably with little or no makeup, probably with my hair in a ponytail. I’m not aiming to look beautiful here, I couldn’t care less about that at this point, I mean making an effort to have clean hair. Changing my clothes more than once a week. That kind of stuff.

3. Maybe this will attract more people to my site and more people means more people seeing my art and maybe buying some of it. Also, I think from a marketing perspective that maybe some people might be more likely to buy a piece if they see the process by which it was created. Street artists have been working on this principle for, well, ever.

4. I think it could be fun to chat with people while they were watching me (and whoever else was in the room), live.

Now, do I think anyone will actually watch? I highly doubt it. I think the ship for spycams, unless they’re maybe nature cams, has sailed. However, I know a few friends would watch sometimes and that it would enhance our spontaneous Twitter parties and that could be really really fun. Really, the cam is going to be pretty boring otherwise.

The only drawback I can see is that the whole world will find out my big deep dark secret, the thing only my family and a few really close friends know about, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Really, the secret itself probably isn’t a big deal at all, I doubt people would care that much, but it is sort of strange and it will require an entry on the webcam FAQ I’ll have to write up to nip the whole thing in the bud.

So what do you guys think? Would you watch? Would you interact with me live on Twitter? Do you have any interest in this whatsoever? Do you see any drawbacks to this that I may be missing? (All family members have “signed off” on this, Madison even thinks it’s a good idea, Wes doesn’t care, Blake said he’d turn the cam off sometimes.) Oh and there wouldn’t be archives because archives take up server space and I’d really like to save server space for nicer pictures that I take with my camera. I would like to have something below the cam though, that said something like “3 people are viewing this cam right now”, but worded better. I have no idea how you would make it do that. Do you? I know how to make a 30 second refresh page (in Dreamweaver), so I’m good there, but I have no idea how to make a counter like that.

Anyway, just a little idea I’m thinking about. To make it happen, I would need the USB cable on my wishlist and another cam. Ideally I would use the cam I have now for the spycam and use the one on my wishlist for Camwhores, but if anyone has an extra *decent* cam kicking around that they would want to send me for this, I wouldn’t object. Blake says that as long as this thing doesn’t cost him any money, he’s totally fine with it, so this has to happen for free. (We have a little spare computer to use for this – at least temporarily, it’s technically spoken for.)

Oh but another thing about the spycam? If it bothers me, I’m taking it down. If it’s just eating up bandwidth and no one’s watching, I’m taking it down. If a family member objects to it being there, I’m taking it down. This may just be a temporary thing while I’m in this funk, I dunno. But I think it’s okay to try.

Last week Blake and I went on a date. Keith, my mom’s ex-boyfriend, sent us a $50 gift certificate for Swiss Chalet and my mom gave both Blake and I gift certificates for EB Games and at the beach they’re literally right next to each other, so we went and had perogies, cheesy garlic bread, ribs, a chicken type of thing on flatbread, a strawberry sundae and a piece of apple pie – all for 4 bucks and change! Then we went next door and bought Skyrim.

I was so stoked to get Skyrim. I’d built it up in my head as this awesome fantastic thing but the problem was, my computer wasn’t good enough to play it so we had to get it for Playstation. #FirstWorldProblem, I know, but the thing is, I really really hate consoles. I can’t stand those little joystick things you use with your thumb to move, it just seems completely unnatural to me. I tried really hard to play Skyrim on PS3, I really did, but in the end I just got frustrated and gave up. Also the game seems way too big. Like, I played for about 2 hours and barely got past character creation.

The other thing is that these days I’m having a really hard time justifying the playing of games when I should be doing things that’ll make us money instead. Or at least things that are semi-productive. I canceled my WoW subscription because it was just stupid to keep paying for something I only played maybe once every 2 weeks and even then, I was just dicking around, farming for whelps and sprite darters anyway; I wasn’t even leveling. My subscription runs out on February 6th so I only had a month left to play it anyway because I was paying for it with Xmas money, so no big deal. I saved us 15 whole dollars by canceling a month early. *shrug*

I don’t know why I’m so unmotivated. Depression? S.A.D.? Our sketchbooks for The Sketchbook Project have to be in the mail in 16 days, I have one page to finish (I’m not finishing my whole book) and I can’t bring myself to touch it. Dunno why. Argent’s painting has been sitting on my desk, about 65% finished, but I can’t seem to push through and get it done. I have a million ideas for paintings, I’m not at a loss for those, I just have zero desire or motivation to actually make them happen. I have all the materials (although I’m running dangerously low on canvases). I have the pictures in my mind. What the fuck is wrong with me? How can I call myself an artist when I’m not only NOT making art but not selling any either? Like tits on a bull, I tell ya! Squam cannot happen soon enough!

Speaking of Squam, my mom and I damn near had heart failure yesterday when they announced on Facebook and Twitter that the spring session was full/closed already. My mom commented on the post on Facebook and after a few grueling hours, they commented back that there was still plenty of room for the fall, so we could breathe easy. *whew* We don’t think our envelopes have even left the country yet, so hopefully they get there in time!

Okay I can’t think of anything else to write so I think that’s it for now. Blake awake and making coffee so maybe I’ll get him to make me a tea too, which I’ll take into my office where the most productive thing I’ll do is stare a hole into my cutting mat. Oy.

Edit: Blake scanned my colouring contest entry. The scan kinda sucks though. The ornaments on the tree were silver and I guess the scanner’s light really washed out a lot of the colour for some reason. Like, in the original, Santa’s cheeks and nose are rosy and the package at the bottom is actually purple and lavender but it looks white and washed out. Oh well. Here it is.

My mom’s still not sure if she can go and it’s driving me mental because I literally cannot think of anything else. I figured out WHY though. It’s because I’ve never been to camp. Especially art camp. In grade 5 or 6 I my teacher told me I should go to the school district’s summer art camp and she said that if we couldn’t afford it, the school would pay for it. I don’t remember WHY I wasn’t allowed to go, just that I was told I couldn’t and that was the end of that. I have a feeling that the reason I couldn’t go was that my mom was too proud to take the school’s “charity”, but I can’t be sure. Either way, I didn’t go and it’s been a sore spot in my life ever since. And that’s why I’m fixated on Squam. I think.

I’ve *scoured* the Squam website and I’ve learned that the spring session is more for textiles and knitting while the fall session is more for painting and art journaling. Obviously the fall session sounds like I’d get more bang for my buck. I don’t knit or crochet and I’m not all that interested in learning how. Or at least I don’t want to spend $1200 to learn how.

I said to Blake tonight that it’s a shame I didn’t know about Squam when I was filling out my grant application because this is exactly the kind of thing they would want to pay for. If I don’t get the grant this year and I don’t get to go to Squam this year, I’m definitely putting it in next year’s application.

Have I written about my New Year’s resolution yet? I forget but I don’t think I have. At least not here anyway.

I’ve never really made a real resolution in my life but this year I’ve kinda made two of them. One’s more concrete than the other one though.

The first is that when I finish a painting and i go to take pictures of it for Etsy, I’m going to have a shower, wash my hair, get dressed up, do my makeup and then take a picture of myself – in the kitchen probably – holding the painting or standing beside the painting, and that’ll be the picture you guys see when I promote the Etsy listing for the painting on my site and Live Journal.

The reason I’m doing this is because at Touched By Fire, they had these roaming photographers and one of them approached me and wanted me to stand beside my painting so she could take a picture of me. They put the picture up on Facebook and it is HORRIBLE. It is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. And the main reason for that is because (well because my hair fell out) I look extremely uncomfortable and really, I am one of those people who are really uncomfortable at the end of someone else’s lens. My resolution is to (hopefully) remedy that by taking pictures of myself and getting used to the camera again.

Also, I don’t do much pampering these days. This will probably gross some of you out, but I only change my clothes once every 3 days or so. Same with washing my hair. Because of the GIANT WOUND IN MY STOMACH I can’t really have showers or a bath with more than 3 inches of water, so I clean myself up with baby wipes the best I can and wash my hair by hanging my head over the tub. I can have a shower if we dress my wound with drape, but drape’s expensive and they don’t want to order me any more since I don’t have a vac anymore and the Hypafix tape they use works well enough, you just can’t get it wet. So Blake and I have stashed the last of the drape away from nurses’ prying eyes and we use it very very sparingly so I can shower every now and then.

Anyway, part of the point of this resolution is so I make more of an effort with myself to actually look semi-attractive and to actually wear some of the gorgeous clothes Charlie has bought me over the years, even if it’s not a special occasion. Big belly be damned.

So that’s resolution #1.

Resolution #2 is just to be more open to having friends and Squam is (hopefully) going to be part of that. I don’t know if you guys know this *cough cough* but I’m actually kind of a snob. Blake says I hold people to an impossible standard and considering I have like, 3 friends, only 2 of which I actually see on a regular basis, I think he’s probably right. But the thing is, I don’t want just any friends, I want ART FRIENDS. So that’s where Squam comes in. That’s where I can make art friends.

Okay it’s 6am and I’m getting tired again. Time to go sleep for a few more hours. I’ll pick this back up when I awaken.

~*SLEEP ZzzzZzzZzzzzZzzz*~

So I slept from about 6am to 9:30am and I am still so damn tired. It’s weird; on a day to day basis, I don’t feel sick, because really I’m not that sick, but I get tired pretty easily and it takes me longer to recover from outings than it used to. We went to my mom’s cottage on Saturday to have Xmas with her and it wiped me out. I think I’m still recovering from that and that’s why I’m so tired right now.

Here are pictures of my mom and Madison crushing up peanut brittle to put on ice cream:

In case I haven’t mentioned it recently, I really really love my mom. I also really really love Madison so naturally, I really really love these pictures.

After they all had ice cream, my mom and I sat at the kitchen table talking about Squam while Blake and John and the kids played Guitar Hero. Chris, John’s 17 year old son, is fucking amazing at Guitar Hero. He’s had minimal practice, he says, and he can play pretty much anything on “expert” pretty perfectly and without really even trying. Maybe that’s not amazing, maybe it’s something other people can do, but I’ve never seen anyone as good at it as him (excepting maybe YouTube vids), especially people who don’t even really play it all that often.  The only people I’ve seen who are really good at the game are people who practice and know the songs, he just picks up the guitar, picks a song he doesn’t even know, like one that was cool before he was even born – like WINGS for fuck sakes – and can just play the hell out of it. If I knew him better, I would have made a video of him playing to show you guys, it really is impressive. And while I’m on the subject of Chris, I have to say – and I’ve thought this since the first time I met him – he is a REALLY good kid. He gets along so well with my mom and John, they’re just this cute little family of 3, and I dunno, it just kinda warms my heart seeing them interact. They have their inside jokes and they all seem to close. I really hope John and my mom get married one day. I’m not sure why I care or anything but I think I would enjoy an event celebrating their love, as retarded as that sounds.

Anyway, I’m trying to convince my mom to go to Squam.

How I found out about Squam was that stupid timeline ticker thing on your Facebook feed, the thing on the right-hand corner that shows you what your friends are up to. My mom’s friend Jamie posted that she wanted to go to Squam and that she was putting it out there in the universe to set her intention or something like that and my mom mused that it would only take 10 hours to drive there (it’s in New Hampshire) but that she’d have to be able to smoke in her truck. So I saw this thread and looked up the Squam site to see what it was all about and the more I read, the more I wanted to go. Not being Jamie’s friend, I couldn’t comment on the Facebook thread, so I didn’t bring it up to my mom until I was there on Saturday.

When I brought it up to my mom, she was like, “I wasn’t serious!” and I was really let down because when I read it, I kinda thought she and Jamie were sort of planning to go. I thought it was a real possibility. Now that I’ve brought it up to her as a possibility (and Jamie probably couldn’t go, she has 3 little kids at home who need her), she’s considering it, but I have a feeling she may only be humouring me and taking pleasure in the fact that the longer she takes to decide, the more mental I’ll go. I dunno, that’s just the vibe I’m getting, like she doesn’t really see going as possible at all whereas, I don’t really see why not.

Blake really wants me to go and he wants me to go with my mom. He thinks it’ll be very good for me and he thinks it’ll be very good for my mom and me. I’m not trying to manipulate my mother, who is likely reading this, by saying this, but I think it would be good for us too. Last year was really fucking shitty and I think I need this. I think she needs this too. Blake is so convinced that I need to do this that he’s willing to come with me, if my mom won’t go, and sleep in the car for 5 days if necessary. (It’s $800 to sleep at the camp without taking classes and we just don’t have that money. We don’t have the money for a hotel either. Technically we don’t have money for Squam at all, but I’m hoping to maybe have some of it paid for for my birthday, some of it through either sales or donations on my site and the rest will go on Visa.) I’d much rather go with my mom and have the full girly experience but if Blake has to take time off work and sleep in the car, then I guess we’re willing to do that too. It’s in September, it’s not like it’ll be really cold or anything.

Today was the first day of registration and I’m afraid that if we don’t sign up right away, there won’t be any spots left for us in the classes we want or maybe even at all. I don’t know how many the camp sleeps but in the one group photo I saw of everyone in one session, I counted 105 people which seems like a lot to me. The camp is pretty big though, if I read the map correctly.

My friend Belinda is also planning on going, possibly, so that’ll be good too. She’s a fantastic artist and she wants to take some of the same classes I want to take, so at least I won’t be alone for some of them. I’m not sure what my mom wants to take.

Speaking of my mom, she’s determined to start selling on Etsy this year and I’ll be pimping her like crazy because she’s just so goddamn talented and you guys are going to love her stuff (OR ELSE!). She mostly paints decorative items of the primitive country variety. Lots of antiques. Lots of snowmen and crows and flowers. Painted furniture, painted brooms, glassware etc. She does it all, really. Anyway, stay tuned for that!

Well, I think I’m going to read the rest of the stories from people who have been to Squam and call this post done. I started reading them last night but I got tired and never ended up finishing. I’m interested to know how the food is and I want details dammit, so I think I’m going to Google and try to find some unbiased accounts of people’s time there. Obviously the ones on the Squam site are all glowing reviews. I’m also going to Google the teachers of the classes I want to take to learn more about them. To say I have “Squam Fever” would be an understatement.

So, Blake’s going to make me a fast fry steak and some peas for some much-needed protein and I’m going to read and then I’m going to have a well-deserved nap.

Have a lovely Monday afternoon, boys and girls! <3

FOLLOW ME!

What IS Pinterest?

Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board but not like a message board or a forum, it’s for visually “pinning” bookmarks to any URL for use at another time. You create “boards”, for example I made one for “Sunnyland Studio”, and you “pin” things that strike your fancy so you can find them later. I “pinned” all of my paintings on my site and Etsy (well, not ALL of them) on my “Sunnyland Studio” board because people can “repin” things that strike their fancy to show up on their own boards, so it’s kind of like free advertising if your own stuff goes viral, which a couple of my paintings have.

You can also go to Pinterest’s main page to see what other people are pinning, which I find really really addictive, especially in the food category because there are so many recipes that look good. Blake’s on Pinterest too and that’s how we’re sharing recipes since he does 95% of the cooking. My other big board is called “Creative Inspiration” and it’s just stuff I’ve come across on Pinterest and on the internet that helps my brain to tick along. One thing I pinned so far has resulted in artwork for the Build a Rainbow project but I have no idea when it’ll be done so it probably won’t be finished in time. Oh well.

Speaking of Build a Rainbow, Madison did a lot of the colours for the challenge but I’ll make a new post about that.

The reason I decided to take the plunge into Pinterest after rejecting it a few months ago is because my friend Jax tweeted that she was going to a Pinterest party, which sounds very very interesting to me. Apparently you go to someone’s house and you make crafts and food based on the things everyone’s pinned. I don’t have the details of the party yet, I think it was last night, but I’m very interested in it because it seems like something my mom might want to do and if she did, I’d definitely want to come and so would Madison probably.

Anyway, Pinterest is cool and totally addictive. I’m loving it.

IF YOU NEED AN INVITE, SEND ME YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS!
Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com

Someone asked me recently what my favourite paintings are that I’ve done but I didn’t give them an answer because I just didn’t know. I’ve been thinking about it though and I’m pretty sure my favourite painting that I’ve ever done is “Camp Tampon“. It was made while I was in manic psychosis and I think it conveys that fairly well, especially if you contrast it with the paintings I do now, while medicated.

“Camp Tampon” is not displayed in my home (most of my paintings aren’t) but that’s not because I don’t like it, it’s because I don’t want kids messing with it or dog hair floating onto it and it’s also incredibly heavy so it would need to be hung a specific way and I’m not sure we could do that in my living room, which is the only place to really hang it. One day, when the kids are older and we’re in a bigger house, “Camp Tampon” will hold a place of prominence.

This may be a bit of a surprise, but I think my next favourite painting is the one that I made for Wes on his 6th birthday. It’s just very simple and straight forward and I know he really loves it because he tells me all the time. That makes me happy.

I’m kinda going in chronological order here as I go through my gallery. Aside from “Camp Tampon”, my favourite, these others are in no particular order and it doesn’t mean I *dislike* paintings not on this list, these are just the ones that I like best. Any painting I’ve ever made that I *didn’t* like, you’ve never seen because I don’t post my mistakes online (unless they’re funny). Usually when I make mistakes, it’s when I’m painting the girl on watercolour paper. I fuck them up all the time. These ones obviously never go on a canvas, but I don’t like wasting perfectly good watercolour paper and I like to learn from my mistakes, so I often cut these girls out and put them in my sketchbook.

Recently I was doing a girl of colour and omg did I ever fuck her shading up. I shade along the bottom of their faces, around their eyes and on one side of their forehead (the left side, always, not sure why) and with this girl that I was working on, I was using Inktense pencils which I’d never used to try and shade before. Well, the girl looked like she had two black eyes and a beard so she’ll never see the light of day.

Back to favourites. I really loved “Sparkle”. She was just so dainty and her wings were the perfect fairy shape. I’ve made fairies since, obviously, but none have turned out like her. She truly was a happy accident.

I also really love her background. I’ve been using chunky glitter more often than fine glitter in recent paintings and while I like both looks, fine glitter works better for splotchy paintings because it allows the paint and crackle to show through. I often get carried away with the glitter though and lay it on too thick so the paint underneath kinda gets lost. I’ve made a mental note to try not to do this so much in the new year.

Next up is “Just Like Honey”. I love using 3-D elements, like this girl’s tutu, and she just came together kind of overnight. She was inspired by the Blind Melon “No Rain” video and I think she kind of epitomizes what I want my paintings to do. I want little girls to see MY girls and to see their own beauty reflected. The bee girl in the “No Rain” video is kinda chubby, has “dorky” glasses and is teased by the kids at school. I made my bee girl for her. I want the “No Rain” bee girl to see my bee girl and see herself reflected as being the beautiful girl she is. Does that make sense? I’ve always found this hard to describe, but I really just want little girls to see my paintings before they fall asleep and dream nice things. Glittery things. Pretty things. Fun things. Inspiring things. And then when they wake up in the morning, they’re happy and they’ll have a better day at school than the day before. I imagine that my paintings are magic that way, which I know is kind of stupid, but I think it anyway.

As an aside, I don’t think this for all of my paintings. I’ve definitely made some darker ones meant for adults and I hope to do more of those in the future, but this is how I think of my happy ones.

My next favourite is “Pink Love Fairy” and I cannot, for the life of me, remember where she lives now. I really keep meaning to create a list of where all my paintings live once they leave Sunnyland but I keep forgetting. :o/ I fear that if I don’t do it soon, I’ll forget where the earlier ones live and that would be a shame. Anyway, “Pink Love Fairy” I love for similar reasons to “Sparkle”. She’s dainty, her eyes are gorgeous (my pics do NOT do any of my paintings justice), her shading, which doesn’t really show up in the pics, is pretty much perfect and she has a good wing shape. The only thing I *don’t* like about her is the background. I used tinsel glitter for her background and I don’t like the stuff, at least not when it’s used as thickly as I did for her background. Used sparingly, I think it would be okay, but sometimes I don’t know the meaning of the word “sparingly” and that’s when you get messy backgrounds like hers.

As an aside, I really hate her turquoise counterpart.
I think it’s the worst painting I’ve ever done.

One painting that’s really high on the list of favourites is “She’s Like a Rainbow”. I just absolutely love her colour scheme and I think I just did a really good job on her. If I were to do her again, I think the only thing I’d change is that I’d give her lacing on her corset.

I love both paintings I did in the fall of last year, “Brown Bee Girl“, which is just a version of “Just Like Honey” except in browns instead of black and yellow. I made this one for me. I think I’m probably going to make yet another version of this painting as a girl of colour, done in the browns as opposed to the black. I realize bees are black and yellow but I like the colour scheme with the browns so much more, especially since she’ll be a girl of colour. I’m currently making a small version of “Snow Princess” for my Sketchbook Project sketchbook because I really loved the original To be honest I kinda wanted to keep the original for myself but I knew she would sell and I needed the money so I put her on Etsy. That means that eventually, when I’m not so busy, I’m probably going to make myself a version of her, possibly as a girl of colour because I really love Storm from the X-Men and I think the darker skin contrasting with the white hair is really pretty. We’ll see how it goes.

If I had to do “Snow Princess” over again, I’d give her longer legs so her slippers aren’t covered by her dress’ trim. At a glance, she reminds me of Marilyn Monroe.

This winter was a good time for me. My light therapy was working, I had a good job that I loved, we were almost out of debt and I suddenly had the luxury of painting what I wanted to because it didn’t matter monetarily if I sold any paintings or not. This winter I created two pieces that I really really love: “Valentine” and “Mermaid“.

“Valentine” I love because I love Valentine’s Day and also because I think her face is the best face I’ve ever done. Her eyes are soulful. It was also my first time using Martha Stewart’s hearts glitter and I wasn’t sure how that was going to turn out, but when it was all finished, I really liked the effect. Truthfully, I kinda don’t want to sell this one because I like her that much but at the same time, I want to see her find a good home. Since she’s sort of seasonal, though, I don’t really see that happening. Oh well. “Valentine” is available in my shop here.

“Mermaid” I love because of how I did her skin. I used a metallic bronze and the effect doesn’t show up in pictures at all, but her skin SHIMMERS. It’s the coolest thing. You have to get up close to really see it but once you do, it’s like you can’t UN-see it. Whoever buys this piece should really hang it at eye level. Currently she’s hung pretty high up in my living room so kids don’t touch her. When I do my dark-skinned version of “Snow Princess”,  I think I’m going to use the same technique for her skin because it’s awesome. “Mermaid” is available in my shop here.

And those are my favourites!

On my never ending list of things to do, I have to make up a new batch of ACEOs with girls of colour on them. I started doing the ACEOs by colour, so currently in the shop I have purple, green, red and gold. I have tons of cards made up still, it’s just a matter of drawing and painting the girls to go on them, which seems like an easy thing to do but it totally isn’t. I actually work harder on the small girls than the full-sized ones, it seems. At least as far as the drawing process goes. My hand just isn’t trained to do the little girls, whereas I could draw a full-sized one in the dark, blind-folded. I have a big canvas in my bedroom that I think is like 24″ x 48″ or something like that and I have big watercolour paper to draw big girls for it but I discovered last spring that drawing big girls is as hard as drawing teeny weeny girls because my hand’s like, trained to do them 12″ tall or whatever. (Some are shorter.)

Anyway, I’ve been up since 5:30am. I think I’m going to post this, finish my drink and head back to bed for a while. Happy Sunday!

I made macaroni salad for lunch. There are a million different ways to make macaroni salad of course, but the way I make mine is pretty simple and you have to love Miracle Whip or you just won’t like it because all it is is Miracle Whip, lots of it, tuna and whatever vegetables, frozen or fresh, that you can find in the fridge. In my case, all we had was onions, celery and french cut green beans (which is kinda like shredded, I hate them and they wouldn’t work for this anyway) so I used onions and celery, which, as it turns out, have next to no nutritional content. :o/ I also used penne noodles instead of macaroni because I like them better. They’re easier to skewer with a fork when you’re busy writing a blog post.

I can’t shave my head. It’s not that I’m chickening out or anything like that because it’s not like I haven’t shaved my head before, it’s because when I was in the ICU, I developed a bedsore on the back of my head because of where it rubbed on the pillow. I mean, I was laying on my back for 2 months more or less and I scar really easily so when the wound healed, I was left with two scars and hair doesn’t grow on scar tissue, at least, not fresh scar tissue. Behold:

If I shaved my head, with that bald spot, I’ll look like I was a victim of a lice infestation or something and people will want to stay away from me. As you can see, there’s the two little scars, but all around them hair isn’t really growing for some reason. I don’t know why, maybe it’s for the same reason that my hair is falling out.

Blake also said something like, would I rather be frustrated with regrowth with hair or without it? And he also said, would I just be moping around the house wearing hats with a shaved head? And if so, what’s the difference between wearing a hat all the time with hair and without it? That’s a very valid point, so I’ve decided not to shave my head and to just wear hats instead. So I bought this one and this one and this one, courtesy of my very special friend Charlie who is amazeballs. I also bought Madison this one and Wes this one (he’s obsessed with wolves at the moment) for Xmas.

I’ve been really depressed lately, moreso than I was before, because we’ve had a pretty big setback as far as my wound is concerned. The nurses wanted to switch my dressing changes to every other day, which proved to be a bad idea because the wound had too much discharge and because it was moist all the time, some of the new tissue around the edges began to break down.

In the pic you can see where it’s broken down around the edges, the parts that look like zombie flesh are the parts that broke down. On the right (well, my left) you can see my poor bellybutton.

I’m just disappointed because Dr. Hanrahan said maybe she’d be closing me up by Xmas but I don’t think she will be with the wound looking like this and we still haven’t heard from the stupid surgeon in Toronto about draining my pseudocysts. I am just so sick of being sick. :o( At least I’ve stopped throwing up though. I just decided that I wasn’t going to throw up anymore and I’m really very stubborn so thus far it’s been working. That’s not to say that I haven’t been feeling extremely nauseous and I always have my puke bowl within arm’s reach because I’ve had some pretty close calls, but I haven’t thrown up in about a week and a half. Maybe even longer.

Oh but back to my wound: we’re back to doing daily dressing changes, with Blake doing them on every other day and weekends and Siske doing them M/W/F. I guess the big deal is that they’re supposed to teach the families how to do them but in my case, I was having a nurse come every single day, which costs the company and the province money and I guess at the last meeting, the nurses kinda got bitched out about that.

Speaking of nurses, I’m fairly confident that I’ve scared Ben off completely. I know he’s gotten my Facebook message because he changed his profile pic recently so he would have gotten it when he logged in, but he hasn’t replied. He’s been doing orientation at the mental health hospital in Penetanguishene this week, according to Janice, so the rumour is that he’s going to leave Bayshore (the company that overseas the nurses) completely. He says he’s still going to work for them though, and I think the rumour is just a rumour. He mostly works weekends and since Blake is doing my dressings on weekends now, we probably won’t see him very often, if at all, so at least things won’t be awkward as a result of my Facebook message. I hope, anyway. I did send him a short message after the initial one saying that if he had like, a policy against fraternizing with patients on Facebook that was totally cool and understandable so again, I don’t think things will be awkward if he replies. If he doesn’t reply, then things will probably be awkward if he comes here because I’ll know he’s read it and like…do I say “hey did you get my FB message?” or just pretend I never sent it? I dunno! The protocol for this kind of thing doesn’t exactly exist or anything.

Whatever, I’ll cross that bridge when I need to.

A while back, you may recall that Madison’s teacher made Madison bring home the book White Oleander by Janet Fitch because Madison was reading it in class and the teacher deemed it “inappropriate” because she’s a fucking moron who has no idea what she’s talking about.

We’ve been recommending books for Madison to read over the past little while and she’s been enjoying (for the most part) the things we’ve been telling her to read. The only book that really gave her trouble was The Life of Pi, which was just over her head and probably a bad choice on Blake’s part. I recommended she read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides because he’s my favourite author, that book is fucking phenomenal and I think, being a teenage girl herself, Madison will be able to relate to it.

Since her teacher is a bloody idiot who will, no doubt, object to the book based on the title alone and Madison does a lot of her reading at school, she asked me to make a book jacket for it so her teacher won’t realize what she’s reading. So that’s what I did this morning. I told my friend Ashley that I’d take pics of the process but I forgot. I did take pics after the fact though and the process was pretty simple because all I did was glue the paper to the book using gel medium. I meant to leave the back part of the book cover loose so the synopsis was accessible should Madison’s teacher *gasp* wanted to educate herself on the book before deeming it inappropriate, but I fucked up and the first thing I did was smear gel medium all over the back cover and since I couldn’t exactly wash it off of a paperback, I just went with it and glued the paper to the whole thing. The back cover only had like, a 3 sentence synopsis anyway and the rest was praise so I don’t think it would make a difference anyway.

Here it is:

Front cover.

Inside front cover.
I folded the paper over a bit so it would adhere better.

Back cover.

Gel medium, so you know what to get if you wanted to do this for some reason as well.

And now I’m going to play Warcraft for a little while and eat ketchup chips.
Then I have to go work on my sketchbook because time’s a tickin’!

Most Etsy artisans have listed December 5th as their last day to ship before Xmas!
And, just in case you were wondering, I don’t think I can ship before Xmas this year.
Most of you guys are in the US or abroad and shipping from here takes forever.
Maybe next year. :o)

Don’t wanna talk about it. Just am.

Today Siske said my wound is leaking too much so now I have to have a nurse come in and change it daily because going back to the vac isn’t an option considering they took it back on Monday. Apparently it costs $300/day to have them in the home so they don’t like to have them out if they’re not being used and apparently there’s also a waiting list for them. I’m back on the waiting list for it but I won’t know if we’re going back to the vac until I see Dr. Hanrahan on Wednesday. Siske only works every other day so tomorrow Janice is coming and Blake has to go to work so I have to deal with her all by myself, which has me really really nervous.

This is what my dressing looked like this morning, it was changed on Monday:

Gross, right? You should have smelled it.

This is what my cheese pizza wound looked like today.
To the right is my bellybutton.
The pink stuff at the edges is new skin. It’s very very smooth.

We still haven’t heard from the surgeon who will be doing the pseudocyst procedure. I’m really curious to know if they’re going to snip it and let the fluid just drain into my abdomen or if they’re going to insert a needle and suck the juice out of it. I thought we would have heard from him by now and the fact that we haven’t makes me nervous because that could mean that he maybe can’t do it because my guts are all twisted up. Dr. Hanrahan said that was a possibility.

I have to get a new binder because the one I have is too big/doesn’t hold my guts in tight enough and my dressing leaked all over the one I have, staining it, so I can’t take it back. There’s another $50 down the drain. Thanks to some generous friends I’m a little less stressed out about this expense than I was before but it still seems like such a waste.

Halloween. Madison is going out as Nyan Cat and Wes is going out as his own creation, “W Boy”. Over the summer when they were in Michigan, the kids went to camp and at Wes’ camp they made him this “W Boy” costume that’s just a white t-shirt that says “W Boy” on it that he coloured himself and a cape with a silver “W” on the back. The kid practically lives in it.

Over the weekend we did pumpkins and by “we”, I mean “Madison” because she did them all, I just roasted the seeds which are my favourite part of Halloween but apparently they make me throw up. :o(

She made Blake a Burning Man pumpkin:

She made Wes a Nyan Cat pumpkin (it has ears but you can’t see them in the dark):

She made me a Hello Kitty pumpkin:

And she made herself an Angry Birds pumpkin:

I thought it was weird that Wes is obsessed with Angry Birds but Madison made HER pumpkin Angry Birds and Madison’s being Nyan Cat for Halloween but she made Wes’ pumpkin Nyan Cat. What a weirdo.

And last but not least, I got into Touched By Fire this year.
They chose “Black & White” for the show.

Oh and in case I forgot to mention it, my Etsy shop is open again.

Now I’m going to bed.

Click here to check out the paintings I currently have for sale!

Just thought I’d share! Again.

Today has really really sucked. First of all, I woke up at 4am with diarrhea. Again. And I decided that since I was up, I might as well eat an apple stick. To the uninitiated, an apple stick is this awesome apple pastry, like strudel, that comes in the shape of a tube about an inch & a half in diameter by about 6 or 7 inches in length with chunky sugar sprinkled on top. They are DELICIOUS and only available at one chain of stores here, which happens to be the type of grocery store we have here in town. The ones Blake bought me yesterday were baked yesterday so they are EXTRA DELICIOUS. So yeah, that? Was the highlight of my day. It was pretty much all downhill from there. Sort of. Bittersweet may be the better term, but when you wake up with urgent shits and fail to make the bathroom, and that trend continues throughout the day, it’s a little hard to be Miss Mary Sunshine.

A couple of weeks ago Blake got me salmon steaks from the big, good grocery store in Barrie that I love so much because it’s humongous and it has an actual meat counter, not just a tank of lobsters, not just a deli, but an honest to god meat counter with kickass steaks and kickass salmon steaks.

Blake bought two of them, which the butcher wrapped in butcher’s paper and I told Blake to freeze them without knowing they were wrapped together in butcher’s paper. I am the only person in this house who will eat fish (the kids will eat shrimp, according to my step-mom, but I’ve never seen it) because the kids don’t like it and Blake has a possible allergy to it where he doesn’t like it and it’s been known to give him the shits/make him throw up so he’s more or less avoided it his whole life so I was kinda pissed when I saw that he froze BOTH of them in the butcher paper when I have a hard time eating ONE, you can’t refreeze them after they’re thawed and you should eat them within a day of thawing naturally, immediately if defrosting in the nukrowave. So once I realized they were frozen together and spazzed on Blake, we asked the kids if they’d be interested in trying it and they said they would be, so we decided that in order for them to try it, I would pretty much have to wait until a weekend to have mine, which was fine.

Well today was that day.

As it turned out the steaks were individually wrapped in plastic inside the butcher’s paper so I basically spazzed on Blake for nothing (how was I supposed to know?) and much to my surprise, considering his lifelong aversion to all things that swim, when I asked him to cook them for me, he agreed and since he’s a million times better at cooking EVERYTHING than I am, he cooked them perfectly (just fried in olive oil with salt & pepper) and I absolutely loved mine. The kids weren’t so much fans, but they both tried it. Wes thought it was disgusting while Madison was more thoughtful about it (“good, but the aftertaste ruined it”) and much to my surprise again, Blake said he was going to try it. He said it tasted really good but at the end of his trial his gag reflex got set off, so he only had that one bite. He didn’t feel sick afterward though and he doesn’t have the shits to my knowledge so maybe with some practice we can get him eating salmon steaks with me because they are delicious and very very good for you.

After lunch we internetted for a while when suddenly I got it in my head that I NEEDED fizzy Skittles. I love fizzy Skittles. Hell, I love non-fizzy Skittles too. So Blake went to the store to get me fizzy Skittles and berry Skittles and a slush. A cherry slush.

So Blake got those and came home and then I sent him out to get pumpkins so we can carve them tomorrow and I can bake the seeds. The seeds make me poo fantastically so I’m very much looking forward to eating them. Not too firm, not too runny, just perfect poos. I highly recommend pumpkin seeds if you have any type of poo problem. As Blake (and Madison) were getting pumpkins, Wes and I were eating Skittles and I was washing them down with my slush.

This was a mistake.

Blake and Madison come home. I’m internetting and eating Skittles. Washing them down with slush. Blake started playing Arkham City and I got tired of eating Skittles so I put them away and continued my internetting for about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes. Then I started screaming for Blake to find my bowl (it was in my office) because I was dangerously close, without warning, to puking all over myself, my computer and the bed. He ran and got my bowl, I grabbed it and filled that thing within centimetres of the top.

My vomit tasted like cherry and Skittles and had the texture of salmon steak. It was the sickest thing I’ve thrown up so far. And I don’t know why I barfed it all up, I followed all the rules:

1. Eat things that aren’t very greasy. Check.
2. Eat them slowly. Check.
3. Eat small snacks, spaced out throughout the day. Check.

I’m even wearing that godawful girdle binder Dr. Hanrahan wants me to wear to keep my guts squished in and aligned. Blake picked it up this morning and it’s horrible. My waist isn’t long enough for the stupid thing so it’s either digging into my hips when I sit or digging into my underboobage. And the fucking thing was $50! If anyone would like to help us out with the expense of that because we’re down to one income and ran out of donated money about a month ago, there’s a donation button on the bottom right-hand corner of my site. I hate to sound like I’m begging and I’m not really, this was just an expense we weren’t prepared for at a time when there’s no money for extra expenses. And not that one has anything to do with the other but I’m going to thank everyone who donated before, here, because I’m on a lot of drugs and can’t remember if I already thanked everyone in a previous post while I was still in the hospital. I honestly have no idea how we would have gotten through until now without those donations.

Blah. I’ll shut up about money now. This post isn’t about money.

Tomorrow Blake’s going to look at the binder and see if we can use Madison’s pinking shears to take an inch & a half or so off of it so it’ll fit properly.  My guts really hurt when it was first put on this morning but throughout the afternoon it started feeling…almost normal? I mean, it feels like I’m wearing a girdle but admittedly my guts hurt less with it on then without it. Without it I look about 6 months pregnant with a square baby because my guts have drifted out of place to either side of my abdomen, the binder brings them back to the middle and the goal is to keep wearing the binder until I have my wound/hernia surgery so it’s easier for Dr. Hanrahan to make me normal again.

Well, as normal as I get anyway. Physically normal.

No word from the pseudocyst surgeon yet. Waiting, waiting, waiting…I feel like that’s what my life has become. I am *SO* worried that if surgery and recovery (main surgery not the pseudocyst one) don’t happen soon enough I’ll lose my already slim shot at getting my job back. And I’m really really scared about what that means. I can’t just go out and get another job! And Blake’s been putting a lot of pressure on me to do everything in my power to get it back because we’re pretty much fucked if I don’t. And it would be really nice to not have that stress. I’ve never been able to contribute financially to the household by selling paintings because I don’t sell enough of them and I have no idea HOW to sell more of them. I feel like I’m doing everything I can already. It was nice having a job because that meant there was no pressure on me to paint what was profitable, I could paint what I wanted to, but now that’s gone.

Guh. This post is not about money. This post is not about money. This post is not about money.

Alex @replied me on Twitter tonight to tell me that it’s a really small friggin’ world. Siske, my nurse, has told me about her daughter many times before and as it turns out WE KNOW HER DAUGHTER. She’s really good friends with Ronny and Alex and we met her at their wedding! Weird, right? I can’t get over it! She never told me enough to put 2 + 2 together and chances are I wouldn’t have anyway because I’ve only met her daughter once, but it’s crazy to me all the same.

And speaking of Siske, she’s going to have my ass up early tomorrow morning to change my dressing so I should probably finish this post and go to bed. Before I do though, here are some pics from the bed, mostly of Pixel because I thought Phaedie would like them:

I took this pic because Madison claims these toys were sent by someone on the internet but neither of us can remember who or if that’s even true, so if you remember giving these to Madison, please let me know!

I have no idea what she’s doing in the above picture.

And in case you didn’t get enough Pixel today, here are a couple of videos. The first is Madison and Pixel being best friends and the second is Madison and Pixel playing with ribbon.

And last, but certainly not least, I leave you with Blake attempting to sing “Miss World” by Hole while playing guitar. Enjoy and goodnight!