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.
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!
Meet Anxiety Cat.
Swap Xanax for Ativan and that would be me.
This one is also me.
I pretty much only pick up the phone if Blake’s # shows up. Or the school.
So not much new is really going on in Sunnyland. The kids started school this week. Wes is happy with his teacher and classroom arrangement whereas Madison is not because she’s in the 7/8 split and “none” of her friends, including her boyfriend, are in her class. She’ll get over it and hopefully she’ll have a smarter, more attractive, classier boyfriend soon. (Although I’m not holding my breath, in this town the pickings are pretty damn slim.)
I just wrote a few paragraphs trash talking Madison’s boyfriend and his family, but I deleted it because that wouldn’t be very classy of me. Just know that I’m not at all happy with Madison’s selection in light of the fact that I’m pretty sure she’s dating the boy’s mother more than the boy. And I’ll leave it at that.
Onto other things…
So, most of my time is spent in this bed in the living room and today I got Blake to charge the batteries in my camera, which died while I was unconscious, so I could start a feature in blog posts or maybe just one big blog post where it’s just “scenes from my bed”. I’m sure I’ll get bored with it pretty damn fast but at the same time, I’m pretty damn bored and this is just a way for me to make things more interesting. Chances are, all I’m going to end up with are a million photos of my dogs begging for food. SO BE IT.
So that was my genius idea of the day. Bask in its glory.
I worked on a page in my Sketchbook Project 2012 sketchbook this week using Derwent’s Inktense pencil crayons because I can’t exactly haul a whole ton of paint into my bed and so far it’s turning out pretty good. It’s a 2 page layout, a drawing of a girl with rainbow hair. All she needs to be finished is a dress but I need to get into my office and sitting at my desk to make that happen because that’s where all of my scrapbook paper is, so that’s my plan for the weekend: to get this page finished. Oh and the background of the page is black so I was going to add stars using my silver pen.
My Sketchbook Project theme is the same as last year’s, “Untitled”, so I can really do anything. I learned last year that my metallic paints, which I love so much, don’t do well in these scrapbooks because the pages stick together, so since they’re out of the equation, I have to learn some new tricks and adapt. Varnish also didn’t work so well for me last year and I can’t stand the feel of acrylic paint without it, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that. I don’t think I’m going to be able to complete the whole book without using acrylic paint because that’s just what I use, so I’m going to have to figure something out.
I entered 6 paintings into Touched By Fire, despite knowing full well that I won’t get in because my work’s not moody or emo enough for that show. Sure, they embraced me with open arms the first time I submitted because my work was manic and angsty and representative of bipolar disorder but as soon as I GET BETTER and start creating more cohesive works, they want nothing to do with me. (But they have no problem asking me to donate my artwork for their cause. “No, you’re not good enough to be in the show, but how about you give us your hard work for free? Thanks!” I don’t fucking think so and I hope very few artists agree to that. They just started that crap and I’m hoping it was so unsuccessful that they won’t ask again this year.)
Speaking of being an artist, that’s all I am now. That’s my only job. I don’t have a job to come back to. Somehow my boss got the impression that after I got out of the hospital I wouldn’t want to work because certain people took it upon themselves to speak for me without speaking TO me, and she hired 2 girls full-time to replace me. Now before you all get upset about the fact that not having a job to come home to after being sick is super illegal, it’s not when you’re a sub-contractor and the company you work for is in another country. Also, they HAD to replace me, what were they going to do while I was out indefinitely? The other existing 2 girls couldn’t cover my share of the work, especially for that long, so they had no choice but to hire extra help. I’ve e-mailed my boss and asked her to keep me in mind if anything opens up after I’m recovered from my surgery (still not sure when that’s going to be though) and that’s really all I can do.
I’m pretty upset that I don’t have a job anymore and really pissed off that certain people would have said those things without speaking to me first, especially because every waking moment when I was in the ICU, I was crying and scared that I wouldn’t have a job to come home to and Blake told me to stop worrying about that, that he’d been e-mailing with my boss the whole time and that I had nothing to worry about. Talk about a slap in the face to come home and find out otherwise.
I’m extremely worried about money. We know that we can scrape by on one income, but it really fucking sucks to have to. Moving is going to have to be postponed indefinitely, so Blake’s going to have to commute 4 hours a day indefinitely. All winter. Probably for several winters.
Until I have the surgery to close my cheese pizza wound, remove my gall bladder and fix the hernia that’s making my guts fall out all over the place – and then recover from that – I won’t be re-opening my Etsy shop. Blake doesn’t know how to print invoices and shipping labels or how to pack paintings and I’m in no position to do that stuff myself at the moment or the very near future, so the shop is going to remain closed.
I wasn’t going to apply for the Emerging Artist grant this year because I’m sick of them rejecting me but if the deadline hasn’t passed then I think I’m going to because putting food on the table is part of being an artist and we really need the money.
The good news is that I got loan forgiveness on my student loans, so we don’t have those to worry about and right now the only debt we have right now is the house and car, but still, things are gonna be pretty tight.
Anyway, enough about that crap, it’s bumming me out.
My cheese pizza wound is getting noticeably smaller with the help of the vac dressing. I *believe* that when I was in the ICU at RVH, it was 26cm across and that would have been about 6 weeks ago that they told me the measurements. I forget how long it was. Now it’s 17.5cm across with no scarring whatsoever and 12.5cm long. The skin where the wound used to be just looks like normal skin. The only thing that’s weird about it is that my bellybutton is still a few centimeters to the left of the wound.
I go to see the surgeon who will be slicing and dicing me on October 4th so I’ll have more information after that. The surgeon in Toronto doesn’t feel a follow up is needed. Originally the surgeon up here wanted me to follow up with him because I have pancreatic pseudocysts but Blake figures if they were a big deal, I’d still be in the hospital, which is a very good point.
Today I was on Wikipedia reading about pancreatitis and these 2 complications are basically what happened to me:
…so feel free to skip this portion of the post:
This morning I woke up a little but before 7am and I had awoken from a dream where I was at an art show at someone’s house and someone had stolen a print of my work and walked out with it. Then I was at another art show at the same person’s house and someone stole my coat. My long, gorgeous coat that Charlie got me from Free People. And I was very upset both times, but more about the coat because I couldn’t replace that and it was winter and I had to get home.
But then there was an afterparty at my friend Lordie’s house so somehow I ended up there and I cried about my coat while drinking beer with him at his kitchen table (I’ve never been to his house IRL, I should add) and I said I was never going to do another art show again. Then I woke up.
So I wonder about this dream. Is this fear over The Square Foot Show, maybe? It shouldn’t be. I’m not painting anything new for it and I’ve decided that I’m putting this, this and this in the show so that part’s done. And I’m not going to the artist’s reception because it was a fucking zoo when we went last year and I just can’t deal with the crowds so I’m just not going to go and I don’t feel anything regarding that decision. It would be great to go to the reception and leave some business cards behind, which I forgot to do last year, but whatever. I don’t really care.
I do feel a little bit of pressure to have some new things in my Etsy shop for around show time but since I’m not going to be handing out business cards, people won’t be going to the shop from there anyway unless they buy a painting, so whatever. No pressure needed, really, other than the fact that I haven’t painted anything in a while (“Three Fairies” doesn’t count since it’s not being sold).
I dunno, it was just a weird dream to have. I don’t know anything about dream analysis and even then I’m not sure I believe in it, but it’s stuck with me and got me thinking about The Square Foot Show and painting in general.
I have two 12×12 inch canvases left in my stash and I had them earmarked for Asian girls of some sort so maybe I should work on those. I guess I could do an Asian mermaid and an Asian angel since I haven’t done either of those before. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, back to work with me. Have a happy Friday!
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My friend Phaedie loses one of her friends at least once a week. That’s because she works for a high-capacity cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, run by the Richmond Animal Protection Society, and unfortunately feline leukemia and feline AIDS is a part of the job, especially when dealing with such close quarters.
To keep cats out of shelters, people need to spay and neuter their pets and that’s what RAPS is aiming to do with Pepsi Canada’s Refresh Project contest. Their aim, with the $25,000 to be won, is to help low-income families spay, neuter and vaccinate their pets in order to help curb the already problematic business of sick, unwanted pets.
So how can you help? It’s easy. Click here and vote. You can sign in using Facebook connect so it really does only take 2 clicks and you’d be making a world of difference for animals and their people. Plus you’d be making Phaedie and I incredibly happy.
We need to try and get them to #1 or #2 as only the top 2 spots receive funding. Currently they’re in 3rd place, so we need to make a solid push to get then into 2nd! I know people don’t have money to give to every charity that comes their way, but if you’d normally be clicking on Farmville crops anyway, please use your mouse-fingers for this as well and help make a difference in the world. Thanks.
The contest voting is until June 30th, it’s a daily vote and I’ll be posting every few days to remind you to vote in case you forget.
Hi there.
It is I, Sunny Crittenden, textibitionist extraordinaire and I’m here to…probably bore you to tears.
Honestly, nothing’s really been happening. Life’s just kinda gone by without any real events or anything.
Raymond has decided to join us for D&D and since we’ve only had 2 encounters so far, we’re just going to pull a Buffy and pretend he’s Dawn and just have him appear and give him the XP that we all have. And and and…
So we did that on Sunday, then we watched Game of Thrones. I haven’t read those books but I cannot conceive of how they’re going to resolve everything in one hour next Sunday. Is it a 2 hour finale?
I have cramps like fucking crazy and they will not go away no matter how many drugs I throw at them. I just ran out of Tylenol 3 a few days ago and can’t get any more for another 30 days because that’s how my doctor prescribes it.
This morning I had a shower. Shocking, I know. But when I got out of the shower, the nail polish on my fingers was peeling off! And now, since the nail polish was green, my fingernails are yellow! I look like I’ve been smoking 6 packs a day with all of my fingers or something and no amount of nail polish remover is getting it off. I’m told, via Twitter, that I should have used a basecoat but since I already spent *murmers* on nail polish this month, I don’t want to go out and buy any of that but I’m told topcoat will probably do the trick.
HOWEVER, I think tonight we should really go to Wal*Mart to buy dirt and hooks so I can get my cucumbers planted and I bet they sell basecoat there, just not OPI basecoat, unfortunately. Blake won’t like that I want to go to Wal*Mart but it’s something that needs to be done or my cucumber plants are going to die. They look as though they’re getting ready to flower as it is and right now they’re just in beer cups. We need the hooks to hang the planters because we’re growing them upside down. And we need to do it like, 2 weeks ago.
So I’ve been using Lush’s Big shampoo and Veganese conditioner and I’ve noticed that in using these two products, one of which is 50% sea salt, it makes my hair kinda curly. My VERY straight, won’t hold a curl to save its life, hair. Wavy. Little loose ringlets. Here, let me show you (please ignore my fat, ugly face):
Isn’t that weird? When I brush it out, it goes straight again, but with the slightest bit of humidity it curls right back up. I’m thinking it’s gotta be the sea salt in the Big shampoo doing this and I realize it’s a small thing on the surface but I’ve had stick straight hair my whole life, the idea of volume and BODY has been absolutely unheard of. Many times in my childhood I had perms, only to have them fall out a few weeks later, if that.
Anyway, it’s a bloody miracle.
Y’know what I love? Cakepops. Just throwin’ that out there.
Know what I don’t love? The fact that I haven’t sold a painting in like, over 8 months. That sucks. What sucks even more, which pertains to this, is that I have absolutely no desire to paint right now. I’m all out of inspiration. I am sick to death of fairies. And mermaids. And angels. And I’m tired of making pretty girls in pretty dresses JUST to make pretty girls in pretty dresses. I *should* be painting Asian girls as mermaids and fairies and angels and pretty girls in dresses now that I know how to draw them but I just don’t want to. I’m burnt out. I should also be making more ACEOs with girls of colour on them since all the ACEOs I have up in my Etsy shop are all white girls, but I just don’t have it in me right now.
All I seem to want to do any more is sleep and read books and work and that’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
But I feel like I should be squeezing every drop of productivity out of myself and it makes me very upset that I’m not doing that, that I’m not over-achieving. That I don’t have something “on the go”. I *ALWAYS* have something “on the go”, just not right now and that bothers me immensely. I feel like I’m in a rut and I don’t know how to get out of it.
I see my shrink during my vacation and I’m afraid her only advice is going to be to quit my job, which simply isn’t an option, but what else can she tell me? This is not a chemical thing, she can’t adjust my meds and make this better.
Usually I approach a painting thinking “this is going to be the best thing I’ve ever painted!” and generally I do tend to top myself most of the time, I think. But now I just don’t have the fire in my belly, I don’t have the ideas I usually have. I wonder if this *isn’t* because of my last increase in my meds and maybe she needs to up the Wellbutrin. I dunno. I’m just not happy with myself ion any way, shape or form lately and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t feel myself.
Blah. Whining. I’ll stop.
In other news, it’s been 11 days since my last cigarette and I have (almost) no desire to smoke ever again. A few days ago I kinda wanted to, but now I think I’m okay. I’m still going to be avoiding any and all smokers like the plague for the next few months but I think I’m okay doing my own thing right now. I’m lucky that none of my friends smoke. Really the only person I know who smokes anymore is my mom. They’re a dying breed, fortunately. (Well, depending on how you want to look at it…I don’t really want my mom to die but she’s killing herself of her own free will and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Emphysema, here she comes. At the VERY least. I told you I was in the preachy phase of quitting smoking!)
Right now I’m re-reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and I totally forgot how freaky her version of the future is in this book. I haven’t seen the movie, but I want to.
Anyway, I think I’m going to go find something else to do. I can’t think of anything else to write or bitch about and nothing much is really happening in my life these days (that I can write about anyway). Have your pets spayed and neutered and have a lovely day.
Speaking of spaying and neutering…
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My friend Phaedie loses one of her friends at least once a week. That’s because she works for a high-capacity cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, run by the Richmond Animal Protection Society, and unfortunately feline leukemia and feline AIDS is a part of the job, especially when dealing with such close quarters.
To keep cats out of shelters, people need to spay and neuter their pets and that’s what RAPS is aiming to do with Pepsi Canada’s Refresh Project contest. Their aim, with the $25,000 to be won, is to help low-income families spay, neuter and vaccinate their pets in order to help curb the already problematic business of sick, unwanted pets.
So how can you help? It’s easy. Click here and vote. You can sign in using Facebook connect so it really does only take 2 clicks and you’d be making a world of difference for animals and their people. Plus you’d be making Phaedie and I incredibly happy.
We need to try and get them to #1 or #2 as only the top 2 spots receive funding. Currently they’re in 3rd place, so we need to make a solid push to get then into 2nd! I know people don’t have money to give to every charity that comes their way, but if you’d normally be clicking on Farmville crops anyway, please use your mouse-fingers for this as well and help make a difference in the world. Thanks.
The contest voting is until June 30th, it’s a daily vote and I’ll be posting every few days to remind you to vote in case you forget.
Hi There.
So yesterday there was a surprise in my mail! My step-mom Lisa saw that this was on my Etsy favourites somehow and bought it for me! This is another piece that’s for my future office!
I didn’t realize it was a block print (a print on a block of wood) or I wouldn’t have favourited it, honestly, I thought it was a paper print that I could frame and I thought it was a lot bigger because I didn’t read the description very well, but it’s still beautiful and I still love it and I am SO proud of Lisa for navigating Etsy well enough to purchase something! Now if only we can get her to put her tutus up on there, we’d be laughing!
Speaking of Etsy, I got a convo this morning saying that I’m featured in a new Etsy treasury so you should check it out!
So work….work….work…work….I’m getting really really burnt out. On Sunday nights I cry because I have to work the next day and I don’t want to. I cry before work because I dread doing it. I’m just burnt out, like I said. I’ve had to take days off first because I now have carpal tunnel syndrome/repetitive stress injury, but also because of dentist and doctor’s appointments and I have to make those days up on weekends because there’s really no such thing as a day off with this company unless it falls outside of your 40 hours. And then sometimes I get asked to work a weekend day because someone else is sick or needs a day off or whatever, which is fine, I don’t mind doing it, but I’m burning out.
My boss #1 warned me in the beginning that this job was very very boring and I didn’t really believe him because in the beginning it was really interesting, I mean, I’ve been involved with the online porn industry for 10 years and to finally see the business side of it was really interesting to me, but now, almost 10 months later, I’m bored out of my skull because really it’s the same 30 e-mails we get over and over and over and the responses are always the same. And that’s the job, it’s not like I can do anything to make it more fun, it’s just what I have to do.
And maybe I sound like I’m whining, I don;t mean to, I should be lucky that I even have this job and I feel that I am lucky, but I also need some time off so I asked boss #2 if I could have a week off, unpaid, to just do nothing. Not even go online. ANd she said she’d ask boss #1 and have an answer for me by the end of the day.
We really really can’t afford for me to do this, but it’s either that or I have a nervous breakdown so I don’t see any alternative. Depending on what my boss says, I’m aiming for the first week of July because that’s when Blake wants to take off too and if I don’t have the same time off as he has then I’m just stuck at home with kids without any kind of transportation and I’d like to hit up the beach for at least a little while during my vacation, if I get one. We live 10 minutes away from the world’s longest freshwater beach and I’d like to make use of that since it’s basically free.
Blake mentioned the fact that he’d like to go to Militiagan during the week he has off and I was just like, no. That is MORE stress and I don’t need any more of that, thank you. Even if he went alone or took the kids, it stresses me out when I’m home by myself with no car so just, no.
He said that was fine, so good.
Blake’s having lunch with some woman today who he wants to carpool with to save money. I have nothing further to add to that, I just felt like saying it.
I have a mosquito bite in the edge of the meaty part of my right hand and it’s driving me absolutely mental because I can’t scratch there. I am VERY allergic to mosquitoes so when I get a bite, it can stay itchy for up to several months, even after I’ve scratched it into a bloody welt. Often I have mosquito bites from the summer that are still itchy in the fall despite being almost healed sores. I don’t know how that’s possible but I hate it and it’s been that way my whole life.
I’ve started working on Cammity Jane again at the insistence of Madison, who has read the whole thing several times and believes it to be her favourite book ever. She left me a note in the binder I use for it that says this:
“Dear Mother Darling,
Holy fuck! You’re an amazing author and I love you so much!!! (For it and in general.) Despite who wrote the book, I’m POSITIVE it would turn out to be my favourite!!! That sounds AMAZING what you have figured out so far, and I’m SUPER excited for the outcome. HURRY UP!!! :o) <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3″
I also have her on video explaining what it would be like if I didn’t finish it, but I’m tired and lazy and don’t feel like putting it up on YouTube at the moment. I’m also working. I’ll put it up later.
But there you have it, my first fan. I let her read the notebook that has EVERYTHING in it, complete plot lines, the ending, everything, and when we got home from yoga last night she was freaking out and wouldn’t let me go to bed because she wanted to talk about it.
So maybe, if I get a vacation, that’s what I’ll spend it doing. I dunno. The thing also needs an actual title because Cammity Jane doesn’t fit since I didn’t end up making her a camgirl.
Anyway, that’s all I have to write about for now. I was going to post a bunch of Pixies covers I found this morning but I’ll save that for another day. Happy Tuesday!
EDIT: My bosses have okayed my vacation week. Yay! Maybe I’ll be able to breathe again after that!
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My friend Phaedie loses one of her friends at least once a week. That’s because she works for a high-capacity cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, run by the Richmond Animal Protection Society, and unfortunately feline leukemia and feline AIDS is a part of the job, especially when dealing with such close quarters.
To keep cats out of shelters, people need to spay and neuter their pets and that’s what RAPS is aiming to do with Pepsi Canada’s Refresh Project contest. Their aim, with the $25,000 to be won, is to help low-income families spay, neuter and vaccinate their pets in order to help curb the already problematic business of sick, unwanted pets.
So how can you help? It’s easy. Click here and vote. You can sign in using Facebook connect so it really does only take 2 clicks and you’d be making a world of difference for animals and their people. Plus you’d be making Phaedie and I incredibly happy.
We need to try and get them to #1 or #2 as only the top 2 spots receive funding. Currently they’re in 3rd place, so we need to make a solid push to get then into 2nd! I know people don’t have money to give to every charity that comes their way, but if you’d normally be clicking on Farmville crops anyway, please use your mouse-fingers for this as well and help make a difference in the world. Thanks.
The contest voting is until June 30th, it’s a daily vote and I’ll be posting every few days to remind you to vote in case you forget.
What a weekend! Mine actually started on Friday because I had Friday off due to my wrist. We bought me a brace which I wore Friday, Saturday and all day Sunday and my wrist appears to be 1000x better. Then yesterday I put it back on as soon as I was finished work so that helps too.
On Friday we also ran a million errands in Barrie and went out for lunch, which was tiring but fun.
Then on Saturday I read and read and read since I couldn’t paint with the brace on and I finished Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Night by Elie Weisel and I started The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, which I’ve read before, a long time ago, but I’ve forgotten most of it so I plan on reading the whole series. While we were running errands Blake also bought me the new Sookie Stackhouse book so that’s on my list of things to read too.
Saturday night we had a Keep Off the Lawn/End of the World party with Ronny & Alex where a good, drunken time was had by all. I was dead tired though and the alcohol only amplified my sleepiness so I wussed out and went to bed at like, 12:30am while they all stayed up and partied until 5am. Then in the morning when Blake woke up, he made us all a big, greasy breakfast, Ronny & Alex bought us all slushes and Ronny, Alex, Wes and Madison and I planted the seeds for the front garden. I forgot to take pics of that happening but that’s probably for the best because aside from Wes & I, everyone was pretty toe up.
A couple of days prior to the party, Madison helped me plant my sunflowers and morning glories. The morning glories I got are called Grandpa Ott and they’re a deep purple. I’m not totally sure they’re going to grow where I put them, but I remain hopeful. They’re in the flower bed below the front part of the porch and I’m hoping they’ll climb up the porch’s spindles. I also planted some sunflowers there too so hopefully they’ll climb up those as well.
While we were outside I took pictures of my Lady Slippers and Bleeding Hearts because the latter is blooming like crazy. First the Lady Slippers:
Now the Bleeding Hearts:
Not bad for questionable plants I bought at Wal*Mart!
The front yard will be all cosmos and bachelor’s buttons as per usual, but this year I planted way more white cosmos than pink ones and a lot more of the stranger varieties than the normal ones. I should have taken pictures of all the seeds but I forgot. Roughly we planted about 4.5lbs of seed in the front. We had bowls full of them.
On Sunday Blake and I went to see Bridesmaids, which was “shit your pants” funny. I don’t want to give anything away but there’s a scene with Maya Rudolph in the street that had me laughing so hard I was crying, I’m laughing now just thinking about it. When we got home from that movie, we decided to watch Catfish, which is a documentary about meeting someone from the internet and it was very very interesting, I highly recommend it.
Yesterday I worked and then read for the rest of the night because I had my brace on and couldn’t paint. Oprah’s final 3 shows started yesterday so I’m hoping to get caught up on them this evening while I paint. I have to finish my 3 multicultural fairies painting this week or I’m going to lose my mind. Trying to keep that thing safe and dog hair free has been a majorly stressful thing because it’s just so big. I told Blake how I couldn’t sell that painting because of its size and the fact that even shipping it to the US would be like, $80 and where would we even find a box that big? and he said anything is possible and that if I sold it, he’d find a way to ship it. The other problem is that I’d have to ask at least $450-$500 for it and I don’t think anyone would pay that so I probably won’t even list it on Etsy. Whatever. It can just hang in my house I guess.
Anyway, that’s life in Sunnyland right now. Today is cold and rainy so I hope the weather is nicer wherever you are. Happy Tuesday!
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My friend Phaedie loses one of her friends at least once a week. That’s because she works for a high-capacity cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, run by the Richmond Animal Protection Society, and unfortunately feline leukemia and feline AIDS is a part of the job, especially when dealing with such close quarters.
To keep cats out of shelters, people need to spay and neuter their pets and that’s what RAPS is aiming to do with Pepsi Canada’s Refresh Project contest. Their aim, with the $25,000 to be won, is to help low-income families spay, neuter and vaccinate their pets in order to help curb the already problematic business of sick, unwanted pets.
So how can you help? It’s easy. Click here and vote. You can sign in using Facebook connect so it really does only take 2 clicks and you’d be making a world of difference for animals and their people. Plus you’d be making Phaedie and I incredibly happy.
We need to try and get them to #1 or #2 as only the top 2 spots receive funding. Currently they’re in 3rd place, so we need to make a solid push to get then into 2nd! I know people don’t have money to give to every charity that comes their way, but if you’d normally be clicking on Farmville crops anyway, please use your mouse-fingers for this as well and help make a difference in the world. Thanks.
The contest voting is until June 30th, it’s a daily vote and I’ll be posting every few days to remind you to vote in case you forget.
