Last night I got my Squam registration! I got all three of the classes I wanted as my first choices AND my mom and I are roommates in a 24-person cabin! 24 PEOPLE OMFG! Here are the floorplans for our cabin: First floor/Second floor

It looks like most of the double rooms have their own bathrooms, or at least the ones on the right do, so hopefully we can get there early enough to claim one of those. It also looks like each double room has its own sink, which is good, because as long as I can wash my hair & face in the sink, I can go indefinitely without a shower as I’ve learned from having a giant axe wound across my belly. I’m not very good at floorplans or maps, but it looks as though there are 3 showers/tubs in the cabin? Also, if you look at the map, it looks like Squam will take place in Deephaven and our cabin, being the biggest, will probably be the closest to all of the classes, if they’re any good at planning (and I have every reason to believe that they are), so that’s good.

~*PLEASE DONATE!*~

Squam is going to be the best time of my life, I can feel it. Every time I think about it, yellowy-orange light fills my chest and comes out through my eyes, like this picture; this is me when I think of Squam:

This is a mixed media piece by an artist named Shelley Kommers and I would really really love a print of it for my birthday, which can be purchased here for $18. *cough* It’s my favourite piece of last year (or maybe it was the year before but I only saw it last year) and I desperately want a copy for my future office before it goes out of circulation or something.

All last night and this morning I worked on my Smash Book. I started a page to write down all the things I’m grateful for and another page of women I admire. Currently I’m grateful for Diet Coke and my life and I admire Oprah, Emma Stone and Michelle Williams but only because those are the women whose pictures I could find in the few magazines we had kicking around the house.

Right now Blake is making me “the tomato thing”, which is my favourite food and Madison’s sitting on the chair in front of me internetting. Wes is over at a new friend’s house, named Wes. It’s really just a lazy Sunday in Sunnyland and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I got up at 6am this morning and decided to clean up my Twitter feed a bit and get rid of people who either don’t post anymore (they can still read my posts if they so choose and if they speak to me directly, I can re-add them) or who bug me immensely (*cough*) and because TweetDeck is bugged, I was doing this through the actual Twitter web interface. Something I didn’t realize is that Twitter now shows you your most recent uploads to TwitPic, which I’ve only done once in the last 210 days. What was 210 days ago you might be asking? The day I went to the hospital complaining of stomach pains and they hadn’t yet told me I had pancreatitis or anything.

A day or so after these pictures, which I hadn’t seen until now, my systems would begin failing and I would come closer to death than most people my age ever get.

“I’ve spent the day at the hospital. Waiting for test results.”

“The big one is “fluids”, the small one is morphine.”

“I have to keep a record of my pee…”

“Breakfast, lunch & dinner.”

“FUCK I hate IVs.”

“FUCK I love my shoes!”

(That’s morphine for ya haha!)

THE END.

Remember in my last post when I said I’d been having pains in my stomach for the past few days? Well it persisted all throughout yesterday evening and since the doctor told me I should go to the hospital if it did and Blake would be in Toronto all day today, we decided it would be a good idea to have me checked out. It would be a very bad thing if I had pancreatitis again and I was at home all alone.

So at about 8:30pm or so, I packed up the iPad, my chargers, my toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, my journal and a couple of pens just in case they admitted me and off we went to Midland, which is about 20 minutes North of us and is the same hospital I went to in June and again when I had pneumonia this fall.

We got there and did intake and everything was okay. We waited about half an hour in the waiting room and then they called us into the back of the ER where I saw a doctor who asked me how I was feeling, why I was there; we told him the whole pancreatitis story and that we were there to make sure it was NOT that again because the pain was in the same place and was the same kind of pain that started the whole thing last time. He asked me if I wanted anything for the pain and I said no because I’d already taken hydromorph before I came and I didn’t want a needle (I’ve seen this doctor before and he likes to give out the morphine like it was candy). He asked if I was nauseous and I was, so they gave me Zofran which knocked me on my ass and I fought off falling asleep (they had me laying on a table on my back and the room was dim).

They wanted to check my pancreatic levels (because I guess if you have pancreatitis your pancreas juice levels go up, so you don’t have to do an ultrasound right away)  so this really bitchy nurse used the biggest needle at her disposal to take my blood as roughly as possible. Then they said it would take about an hour to get the results so I fell asleep and Blake e-mailed my mom.

I woke up at about 1am because a new doctor came in and he told us that my pancreatic levels were fine and so was everything else. He said he didn’t know what the pain could be, that it was possible it was gall stones, but there’s not a whole lot they can do about those so take some drugs and bear it the best you can and if it’s too much, come back for stronger drugs. And truthfully, the pain is manageable with the hydromorph contin, Tylenol 1 and ibuprofen, but we were concerned it was pancreatitis again, so that’s why we went. I’m not fucking around with that shit ever again, if I’m in pain, I’m seeing a doctor.

So we were out of there by about 1:30am, we went to Tim Hortons so Blake could get a coffee and a muffin because he was tired and neither of us had had dinner. I got a ginger molasses cookie and a Pepsi. I hadn’t had a Pepsi in YEARS and the first sip transported me back to riding in the carpet van with my grampa, on our way to Alliston because I was skipping school to spend the day with him at the store. He had a mini fridge in his van that plugged into the cigarette lighter and it was full of Pepsi.

Anyway, that’s what happened at the hospital. As is the way of things, I’m not in any pain today and I feel totally fine. I think the Zofran they gave me settled whatever was going on in my stomach and now I’m totally okay. Or maybe it was a gall stone and it’s passed now. I have no idea, I just know I feel as normal as normal can be. *shrug*

This morning I ate waffles while reading some of Daisy Yellow’s older posts and I found this one on art journaling very helpful so I thought I’d share. Art journaling, as I’ve mentioned before, is something I’m really really bad at. I just can ‘ot do it.

For most of my life, I’ve written hypergraphically. That means that you write compulsively. Ever since I’ve been taking psychiatric medications, I don’t really write hypergraphically any more, not like I did anyway. I still blather on on the internet of course, but I don’t compulsively write in my journal for 6 hours straight like I used to. BUT, I read these art journaling blogs, like Daisy Yellow’s (I don’t know her name) and Jazmin’s, and I get jealous because when they die, they’re going to leave behind all these gorgeously decorated journals for their family members to read and keep for generations and here mine are, all text in my crappy printing. I mean, there are a lot of them, and I think most of them are pretty interesting (and so do other people, I once sold a journal for $200 which I think was a bargain on his part) but they’re not really aesthetically pleasing. The journals themselves are nice, I don’t cheap out on those unless I have to and most of them were gifts (my favourites are by PAPERBLANKS, in case anyone ever wanted to get me one and mail it, they’re simply the best and you can get them at Chapters or any big box book store *cough*), but inside is just text text text, usually in black pen, although the one I’m using right now has pink flowers on it so I only write in it with pink pen. I have a matching blue one that I haven’t used yet and I’ll only use blue pen in that one. In fact I bought coloured pens specifically to write in these journals because that’s how obsessive I am about them.

That said, I’d really like to have beautifully crafted journals like my online art friends’ but I just don’t really know how and when I’ve tried, it’s just looked stupid. Like, it could take me all day to paint/collage/whatever a spread, which is two facing pages, but what I want to write may be TEN pages, so that just doesn’t work for me. Or by the time I’m finished the spread, I don’t feel the way I did when I started it. For example, one day I tried making an art journal spread because I’d sold a painting and in that moment, I felt successful. So I started making this spread about that but I didn’t get finished until a day later and by then, I didn’t feel that way any more and because I didn’t feel that way any more, I didn’t know what to write that would be authentic. I probably should have written what I wanted to and art journaled around it or something, but that’s not the way most people do it so that thought never occurred to me until just this moment.

It frustrates me greatly. :o/

Less Herger of Comfortable Shoes Studio, retweeted today a tweet from Derwent, which is the company who makes the watercolour pencils and the Inktense pencils I use and this is what it said:

@derwentpencils Don’t let your work become precious. Be bold, experiment, make lots of mistakes. It’s the only way to learn, and it’s fun!

(Actually, the way the tweet was worded, I think it was said to Derwent by a woman named Kathe Parker in response to them asking “what would be your best advice to someone starting out in drawing & painting?”.)

This advice is something I have a lot of trouble with and this is part of the reason why I need to go to Squam so desperately.

I’m poor. I’ve been poor my whole life. When I was little, I was NEVER EVER allowed in my mom’s art room and I was NEVER EVER allowed to touch her materials because we were poor and art supplies are expensive. Too expensive for a kid to use and fuck up with. I was given Crayolas and a pad of paper. I wanted paint but it was too messy and too expensive. I wanted to paint on wood, but it was too expensive and selling her creations was how my mom paid for Christmas and anything “extra”. I wanted to sew, but my mom didn’t have the time to teach me how. Etc etc etc. (I am not *blaming* my mother for anything here, just stating facts.)

So when I grew up and had my own house and my own “art room” and my own art supplies,  everything because “precious” because if I fucked up, I couldn’t afford to replace the materials I fucked up with. I couldn’t just throw supplies in the garbage like that. I still can’t. We have no money. When I sell a painting, at LEAST 75% goes back into buying more supplies because that’s the only way I can afford to have these things and art supplies (and Lush) are really the only things I buy myself. (Of course I bought more stuff when I had a job, I’m talking about when I don’t.) My supplies ARE “precious”. I really really wish they weren’t but they are. I don’t know how these people can pay $20+ for a 4oz bottle of Golden Fluid Acrylic paint because it’s “the best” and then just trash what they’ve made if it’s not what they were trying to do. I just cannot wrap my head around that. I buy Americana paint for $2.99 or, if I’m splurging, $4.99 for Martha Stewart, and I *still* can’t wrap my head around just trashing something if I screw up. Imperfect things really really bother me and so does waste. When I put too much paint on my palette, I use a paintbrush and scoop it all back into the bottle when I’m done, even if it’s black or white, which I buy in big bottles because I use them the most and they’re inexpensive. I just can’t waste the paint. If I were using Golden, I’m not sure I could bring myself to even squeeze any onto my palette at all, I think I’d have to like, squirt tiny amounts onto my brush or something.

Another blog I was reading that was linked on the Squam website talked about things not being “precious” too so I think this may be a concept that someone has written about in a book or something (considering most of the teachers at Squam are published authors) because it seems to be a theme within the mixed media community. I see it popping up all over the place now and I think it’s something I really need to learn. I *do* use inexpensive paint. It really *isn’t* a big deal if I mess up and have to throw away a piece of artwork. As much as it would pain me, a canvas is really only about $6 and if I fuck it up too badly, I can always paint over it, all I need to do is invest in some good gesso.

I need to start making art that isn’t so “safe”. I need to also start making art that’s just for me, like in an art journal. Don’t get me wrong, I *LOVE* my girls. I love making them, I love how beautiful they are, I almost always love the finished product and I don’t intend to stop making them, but I think I need to make other art that’s more accessible too. Or something. I’m not really sure what I need to do, honestly, which is why I’m hoping Squam will crack me wide open. I need to not be so obsessive with everything being perfect on the first try so I don’t waste anything. Like time. I need to not be so obsessive about wasting time as well. Oh god, I have so much to learn! Anyone who thinks art isn’t work can shove their opinion straight up their own ass.  Sideways.

I’m probably channeling my inner Madison by saying this, but god dammit, art is agony! I love it, I hate it, I’m frustrated by it, it makes me cry, it makes me happy, it makes me a motherfucking MESS. Maybe it’s because I’m mentally ill that it makes me so emotional but I don’t understand these artists who are just happy and make happy art and nice little YouTube videos to entertain each other and to learn from each other and here I am, sitting in a dark corner clutching my sketchbook for dear life, unable to move. I want to be like them, I just don’t know how. I’m afraid it’s just not even in my DNA.

I have no idea what my mother’s creative process is. I’ve never really actually watched her paint (except when she was teaching classes) and I’m not there on a day-to-day basis to see like, how she is mentally but in general I think she’s a happy creator in that, I’ve seen her come up with an idea and get really excited about it and have to do it immediately. I’m like that too, when I have what I think is a good idea, I have to get it down on paper right away, even if I only have enough time to do a rough sketch. Then the next day I’ll begin working on the actual piece and obsess until it’s finished. And I do it perfectly the first time almost always. I can honestly say that I’ve only wasted a half sheet of watercolour paper twice in my life (I draw/paint my girls on watercolour paper and adhere them to the canvas with gel medium) because I just do everything in my power not to fuck up because watercolour paper is expensive. I mean, in my first grant proposal, I told them that my dream was to be able to afford 5 different watercolour pads so I could work on 5 paintings at a time. That’s pretty pathetic (no wonder I didn’t get the grant), don’t you think? I currently have 2 watercolour pads and since I draw my girls on half sheets now, I can work on 4 of them at a time, theoretically (I’m not that productive).

My friend Shoshanna Bauer does these really amazing watercolours, you should check her out, I think she’s extremely good at what she does. I would really like to play with watercolours, I like how they look, but I have no idea what I would paint or how you do it. No one’s ever taught me. I’ve looked at a lot of watercolours over the last couple of years trying to dissect them, and I’ve come to the conclusion that watercolours are REALLY fucking hard! Without even trying them, I just know that they’re really fucking hard and to make anything even remotely nice, I’m going to have to waste like, a whole pad of watercolour paper trying to figure them out and that’s expensive! Or at least that’s expensive to ME! And I don’t even HAVE watercolours. I have watercolour pencils, a very small selection of them that someone gave me a long time ago, and I have Inktense pencils, a large case of them, which work very similarly to watercolours (although I don’t think you can do the “salt trick” with Inktense pencils) but I have absolutely no idea how to use them.

I’ve always avoided watercolours because of their impermanence. If you’ve been reading my blog for any great amount of time, you’ll know that I’m obsessed with my art’s longevity. I want my shit to survive WWIII, plain & simple. I varnish the hell out of everything. I use materials that won’t fade, won’t run, won’t smear, are acid-free, archival and will do as they’re told. If you spill a Coke on a watercolour painting, it’s ruined. If you somehow spilled a Coke on one of my paintings, it would roll right off and you could gently wipe it down with a damp cloth. The idea of my hard work being able to basically be erased in a matter of seconds irrationally freaks me out! I’ve varnished watercolour before, but you have to be really really careful with it and you can only use a spray. Anyway, that’s why I plan on taking my watercolours to Squam. Maybe someone there can show me how to use them.

Having said that, I think it’s time for me to talk some more about Squam, as if you haven’t heard enough…I’ve finally sat down and made a list of expenses relating to the trip and if you could spare anything between now and September, it would be GREATLY appreciated. Like maybe for my birthday, which is March 1st? Or if buying a gift is more your style, I would really like this book by one of the teachers I’ll be in class with at Squam, called Painted Pages: Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media (by Sarah Ahearn Bellemare), which is on my wishlist. That would be appreciated also.

Here’s what I’ll need (okay maybe one or two is more of a want…):

• Tuition: $1200
• Gas: $200
• An apron: $12
• Fairy wings: $20…
• A Rubbermaid container for all my crap: $10
• Gesso: $10
• Gel medium: $10
• Umbrella: $12
• Flashlight with extra batteries: $15?
• Bug spray: $10
• Paint: $25
• Kit fees: $12
• Eating out on the Saturday night they make us fend for ourselves: $20
• Two cases of Diet Coke & snacks: $25
• Art fair: $75 (tops)
  = $1656

On Sunday we cleaned my office. And I took pictures. Cleaning my office is significant because it basically never happens. I have a really large, square, u-shaped desk that is my pride and joy and it is usually piled a foot high with…VERY IMPORTANT STUFF. Also my office and my studio are the same thing, I just prefer the word “office” because it makes me sound important whereas “studio” makes me sound pretentious. Basically it’s my “stuff room” where I keep my stuff and do my stuff and I love it. I spend a LOT of time in there.

There’s a TV, a Blu-Ray player, a cable box with HBO and The Movie Network OnDemand. There’s my beloved Canada flag that I gaze at with pride every. single. day. There’s the banner Blake made me for my 28th or 29th birthday that says “It Is Your Birthday” that I loved so much because it was so funny that I never took it down (until Sunday). There are 3 paintings: one of sad flowers that was just an experiment in using acrylic on canvas long before I knew I could paint happy girls and two paintings that are a set, one called “Damaged” and one called “Dirty”. “Damaged” is done in reds and “Dirty” is done in browns. Here they are (super old pics, sorry for the crapola quality):

“Damaged” is about my body and I supposed “Dirty” is too because they were both made during a depressive episode where I didn’t shower for a few weeks. This was in 2005, according to the dates on the paintings. My friend Sini bought these two but said that I had to promise to always hang them on my studio wall, so that’s what I’ve done. They’re probably my 2nd and 3rd favourite paintings that I’ve done.

Anyway, let’s take a tour of my office with the “before” pics…

Look at that mess! Look at all that VERY IMPORTANT STUFF!
I am BADLY in need of a new desk chair, I have been for years, it’s just never happened.

This is the most common sight in all of Sunnyland: laundry baskets and receipts.
The dryer is in my office, hence the laundry baskets.
I never throw away a receipt if it has anything to do with Sunnyland Studio.
I don’t even file taxes as a business but I’m scared one day I’ll get audited and I’ll need these receipts so I keep them.
The playing cards on the left-hand corner are pink for breast cancer, underneath them is Skip-Bo and Uno’s in that mess somewhere too.
The bottom corner of the coffee table was chewed off my our old puppy, Zulu.
The black binder is from metabolic clinic and the green one is Cammity Jane.
The round thing above the binders is this awesome blue and silver star garland that I’m going to put around my office door after Xmas when I steal the lights off the Xmas tree to put around my door with it.

I think this one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Blake took the banner down on Sunday so I would be able to put up the lights and garland when it will be time to do so.

Blake got me the TV for Xmas last year and beside it is the furnace.
And of course, my flag.

I love my bookshelf. It’s getting a little full, but I think that’s a very good thing.
Right now I’m reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen who is amazing to me.
Blake once described Joyce Carol Oates’ prose as being “chewy” and if that’s the case then Jonathan Franzen’s is “smooth” like vanilla pudding.
More laundry baskets of course.
And a dog who wants to go out.
And a treadmill with Blake’s gross sweaty towel hanging off of it.
And that turquoise-y thing on it is a heat pack that you put in the nukrowave.
Lots of boxes in the corner because you never know when you might need one.
There’s an easel back there too, that I never use. I save it because Blake got it for me and maybe one day I’ll need to display my art on it or use it to take pictures of my art.

Despite having a large room all to myself, I share it with a furnace and a dryer and one wall is aluminum siding and therefore mostly unusable so my paint sits in this box beside my desk while the colours I use the most sit ON my desk.
These clear boxes are full of scrapbook paper, one is just glitter paper alone and these boxes aren’t even the whole paper stash…I just compulsively buy the stuff because NOTHING inspires me more than paper.
On top of the paper is a Michael’s bag full of Hello Kitty puzzles for my sisters for Xmas.
On top of the box are my treadmill shoes and a 3-hole punch.
Behind the box is a big frame that my step-mom gave me a million years ago for Xmas that is pre-matted and says something stupid on it about family. I save it because one day I’m going to use the frame for something, I just don’t know what yet.

LOOK AT THIS MESS!
To be fair to myself, this was AFTER going to Michael’s for supplies to make my office more “me” and to make some Xmas presents, it’s not normally this messy, but pretty close. I usually have a workspace in the middle on this side of the desk.
My phone’s not normally on the desk (the rectangle thing beside the remote, the other phone is usually on the desk).
All that paint is always on the desk.
All that tissue paper (on the left by the Barbies) is for making paper peonies that I’m going to be hanging from the ceiling.
Currently hanging from the ceiling are these gross rubber spider moneys Kevin gave me a long time ago and birdhouses I never got around to painting. The spider monkeys are going in a box and are being put away and the bird houses are gonna probably be thrown out. Oh and there are crystals hanging from the ceiling too, but I’m probably going to leave those there.
The wicks (center) are because I’m going to be consolidating all my candles. I have a million candles where they burnt down to the bottom but there’s like, 2 or 3 inches of scented wax left over. I’m going to melt that wax and make new candles with these wicks I got for $4 a pack. It’s cheaper than buying new candles and it isn’t such a waste.

Did you know Martha Stewart makes acrylic craft paint now?
She does and it’s GREAT.
It’s $2 more expensive than the paint I use now so I’m not going to use it for everything but her metallics (she calls them pearls) are fantastic. The pink metallic paint that DecoArt discontinued on me? Martha makes the exact same shade. She also makes a lighter pink metallic that is the same colour as the stuff I was hand mixing for “Pink & Green I” and “II” AND she makes a light turquoise metallic called “Aquarium” that is just gorgeous. I wish I had money to burn because they’re 60% off right now and if I had the cash, I’d buy one or two of every metallic colour she makes.

I do my makeup at my desk because it has the best light, hence the mirror and lipstick.
Behind that is all my pens and markers in old mugs.
This is the back corner of my desk, it faces a window but I always keep the blinds down.

More of the back of my desk.
Sketchbooks straight ahead in a pile.
Embroidery floss in the box.
Vitamins.
Odourless mineral spirits in the tall skinny bottle.
Watercolour paper leaning against the window.
Sparkly gel pens to the right and also this fantastic circle-draw-er I got at Michael’s for a shocking amount of money, considering what it is. It’s for drawing BIG girls, which I’m going to start doing in the new year.

This is the OTHER back of my desk. If I were to sit here, I’d face a wall. Usually my computer is hooked up here (hence the monitor), but right now it’s in the living room and there it’s going to stay until after I have my big surgery.
To the left is paper and a box of glitter. Also my Sketchbook Project sketchbook which I haven’t worked on in weeks. :o/
Behind that is a bunch of drawers that I never use. All I knew before going through them when we cleaned up was that one of the drawers contained a mummified mouse carcass that we found behind the stove and that I wanted to do something with, but I decided I never would so we threw it out.
Beside that is my clipboard.
Beside the pile of paper and glitter is a turquoise bra and my pencil case, which is High School Musical. (Blake has a strange sense of humour…)
Beside that are turquoise glitter letters that I’m going to use on Argent’s painting.
Beside that are tickets that I got at the dollar store for $2.50 a roll! NO idea what I’m going to do with them yet but they’re cool as hell so I bought 4 rolls in various colours. I would really like to do a Mardi Gras girl so maybe I can hang the “beer” and “liquor” ones from strings as a background or something. They say “beer”, “liquor”, “admission” and I think “refreshments”.  I love them.
Beside those are the Touched By Fire catalogue and my printer that is perpetually out of ink.

This is my ribbon shelf. It also houses tape.
In the bag is a LOT of pink and neon green tissue paper from Xmas last year.

AND NOW THE “AFTER” PICTURES!
It only took about 4 or 5 hours, but we got it organized (more or less)!

Look at that! You can actually see the DESK!

All my paper neat and tidy!

The little bag to the left is my Powerpuff Girls makeup bag. I love it.
The little white jar that says “Golden” on it is their crackle medium, which I’ve had for years but I’ve never used. I hope it’s still good because it was expensive. I’ve never used it though because it’s weird, you put it on a had surface and the stuff, which is white and like a paste, crackles and then you paint over it. Not really useful for what I do.

So there ya have it. My office. Now clean.

What’s funny is that now that it’s clean, I’m afraid to spend any time in there in case  I mess it all up again. Stupid, I know. I was in there yesterday with Blake where we watched Ren & Stimpy while he walked on the treadmill and I tried my hand at making paper peonies. I got really frustrated with it though, because the paper kept ripping, so I got pissed off and crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. Then I put away all the materials for them and announced that I would not be making any more of them. Blake said, “okay”, because sometimes he sucks and doesn’t say the right thing.  The right thing would have been to be encouraging.

Anyway, I ended up getting the half-finished peony out of the garbage and finishing it, which wasn’t so hard once you knew to go slow, and when Madison saw it on my desk after school, she asked if I would make some for her room too, which I will. My plan, after this post, is to wash my hair and watch movies while I make more paper peonies. Random fact of the day: my computer is named Peony.

So there’s been a bit of drama…I think…in Sunnyland recently, having to do with Xmas. I say “I think” because it’s hard to infer tone in an e-mail sometimes, but I think my step-mom, Lisa, is pissed off at us because we’re not going up there for Xmas like we have for the past few years.

The reason we’re not going up there is because it’s almost 2 hours away, in the opposite direction of the hospital, which very well could, since no one wants to be in the hospital during the holidays but me, call and say “be here in a few hours to claim your bed and have your procedure”. Being 2 hours in the wrong direction would not be a good thing if that happened. Not being at our home phone number, the only number this doctor has for us, would be a very bad thing. Having to wrangle kids and dogs and pack up presents, which is a process in and of itself that usually takes sometimes over an hour, is not something I want to deal with. Dressing changes while we’re up there and bringing supplies (and hopefully remembering everything – what happens if we don’t?) is not something I want to deal with.  Dealing with days worth of pills is not something I want to deal with when I take well over 20 of them 3 times a day.

I am high maintenance. I don’t want to add the chaos of kids and dogs and dealing with my father to the mix, thankyouverymuch.

When Blake e-mailed Lisa to tell her we wouldn’t be coming, we got an e-mail back 3 days later that was pretty frosty, saying that our presents were on a bus to Barrie already so we’d have them in time for Xmas (which we wouldn’t care about in the slightest but I guess it was important to her?). Also in this e-mail she mentioned that Phil had taken some time off work because his father had died.

Excuse me? My grandfather dies and no one fucking tells me? No, we were not close, yes, I barely knew the guy, but I was planning, if I could, to go to his funeral to learn about the guy. And no one fucking tells me? Why the fuck would no one tell me? I don’t understand! And I’m fucking HURT. Yeah, I feel like SUCH a part of this family now, we should all scramble to act like one for Xmas and hey, if I have to wait 2 more months for my procedure, that’s okay, at least we gave Lisa the happy family Xmas she wanted.

God I hate Xmas. There’s just no such thing as a bullshit-free Xmas and at this point I actually WANT us to have Xmas at home every year just to avoid all the bullshit of going up North. Ronny and Alex may be sleeping over on Xmas Eve so they’re here for Xmas morning, where we’ll do presents with the kids (Blake and I aren’t getting each other anything, except the new Jeffrey Eugenides book, which we’ll both read) and eat breakfast and everything will be mellow until we eat the Xmas dinner that Blake will have lovingly prepared because he’s totally awesome.

One note about our turkey this year: IT’S FREE! Our grocery store has this thing called “turkey bucks” where if you spend $50 on groceries, you get one “turkey buck”. We’ve spent enough on groceries that we may have enough money for one and a half free turkeys or just one large one (which is probably what we’ll do because our freezer won’t fit a turkey). Also at our grocery store, there’s a colouring contest for all ages and last time Blake looked, not only was mine the best, but it was also the only one in my age group so I’m totally gonna win. NO IDEA what the prize is (hopefully it’s not a turkey) but yay winning!

And that’s all I have to say.

So I’m finally home and as I write this, I’m soliciting dietary advice from my vegan friend Katie to help me get more protein in my diet, ideally from plant sources for a couple of reasons.

1. It’s kinder.
2. We don’t have enough money to buy the quantities of meat necessary for me to keep up my hemoglobin.
3. I literally cannot eat the quantities of meat necessary for me to keep up my hemoglobin because meat is harder on my stomach than veggies.

I mean, the big revelation which wasn’t news to anyone but maybe my doctors is that I’m severely anemic. I had to have a blood transfusion because my hemoglobin was less than half of what it should be. My body is not making enough new blood and it’s making/keeping me sick. I need new blood to heal, especially after my big surgery, and if my body’s not making any or very little on its own, I’m looking at weekly transfusions and not only is that gross I think it’s wrong when I’m a mostly able-bodied otherwise healthy person. Save that blood for a hemorrhaging mother or someone who was hit by a drunk driver, I can eat my way out of this. I think I can, anyway.

So the official diagnoses were pneumonia, a bladder infection and anemia (but they called it a big long word I don’t recall where I’m not getting enough vitamin K and I’m not making enough albumin, specifically). I’m on oral antibiotics for the next 6 days (I think, we haven’t picked up the prescriptions yet but there are two of them) and I feel pretty okay. They thought that the anemia was the bigger problem and they spent a lot of government money to determine what I already knew and what most people would know just by looking at me, but whatever. One morning they took 7 vials of blood out of me and some of them had to be put in vials with tin foil over them because the testing had to be done without light. Weird. I had 3 blood draws in one day at one point and today was the only day they didn’t take blood from me. Last night they took out my IV, which was good because the site had been placed on Friday and it was getting old and had started to bleed a little. The damn thing was in the crook of my arm and really friggin’ hurt every time I moved. I was so scared sleeping with it in, afraid I was going to rip it out, that I didn’t sleep soundly a single night I was there.

Morale was very very low. The days were mostly dreary and I don’t like being away from Blake and my house at all, let alone “too long”, and I was just really bummed out the whole time I was there. The iPad helped of course. It kept me connected to all of you and all of my friends on Facebook and that really helped to keep my spirits up. One thing being sick had taught me is just how much I am loved. <3

I started reading a book that Charlie sent me called The Night Circus, which is really really good. It’s a slow read though, my attention span isn’t what it used to be, but I got about halfway through and I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read so far.

The food at the hospital was oddly delicious. On Sunday night they had roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes and carrots and I swear to god I almost came while I was eating it, it was so amazing. I have NEVER had roast beef like that before in my life and I’ll probably never have it like that again, it was phenomenal. It was tender, juicy, you could literally cut it with a fork and the gravy….holy shit I’m getting hot just thinking about it. Seriously, the way to this girl’s heart is totally through the stomach. If you can cook, I love you, because I can’t.

Anyway, the best meal BY FAR that I had in the hospital was this one:

See up there where it says “cream of chicken”?
That should say “cream of screaming orgasm”.

It was homemade.
And it tasted like it was.
And combined with the egg salad sandwich, I was dying.

Another surprise from the hospital is that apparently I like tea. Who knew? That’s not true, I’ve loved tea before, when I was a teenager I liked getting loose leaf tea from the bulk food store and using my tea ball to make tea. I’d get like strawberry and blueberry etc. but now apparently I just like every day ordinary tea. I started having it with my meals at the hospital and then I began to crave it so I’d get Blake to hit up Tim Hortons* before visiting hours were over and get me the second biggest tea they have and I’d have them put in like, 8 sugars because THAT’S JUST HOW I ROLL. BAG *IN*, MOTHERFUCKERS! So I got in the habit of drinking tea at night and reading my book and I think I’m going to keep that going at home too because the tea really seemed to calm my stomach as well. Except that time I got the biggest tea Tim Hortons has and mixed it with a jelly donut and puked pink all over the place. That sucked. But other than that time, the tea really helped my stomach so, yeah, I already said that. Did I mention I’m on drugs?

Speaking of drugs, they mixed up mine yesterday which prohibited me from going home a day early. I’ll explain: I take hydromorph contin which is slow release morphine. Yesterday we had a student nurse and she gave me the fast acting hydromorph by accident and that accident was repeated all 3 times a day I take it and I wondered all day why the hell I was so tired. When my doctor came by my room, I’d been sleeping and she thought I was lethargic so she kept me in an extra day when in fact the hydromorph just had me knocked on my ass. So that sucked too.

Also speaking of drugs, I just want to state this for my own records: I am allergic to tegretol, ketamine and lamotrigine. If it’s ever called into question and someone’s gotta search my journal to see what I’m allergic to (like Blake had to do with the help of friends in June) those are the anti-convulsants I’m allergic to.

We just found out that my nurse this evening will be Ben. Ben is a handsome young man, fresh out of nursing school from what I understand from Siske. We didn’t think anyone would be coming out today so hey, bonus, we don’t have to change my dressing ourselves! They SUCKED at dressing my wound at the hospital. First of all, they didn’t have the right supplies to even do it correctly and second of all, what they ended up using instead I think I ended up being allergic to because I’m itchy as fuck! Also the white tape they used to tape the bandage down with kept curling up and sticking to the inside of my gown, making me absolutely insane, especially while sleeping because I was afraid I was going to bust the dressing wide open and bleed all over the place. Not that that would have been the end of the world, the wound’s getting pretty small and is pretty dry, but still, not something I wanted to have to deal with. I’m glad I’m home and Ben will be coming over to dress it properly.

Anyway, I’m getting pretty tired and I’m wishing this post would finish itself, so I’ll leave you with pictures from the hospital:

I was in isolation for the first few days because pneumonia is contagious, so Blake had to wear all that crap.

This was the scrambled “eggs” they tried to feed me one morning.
Not ALL the food was fantastic, just most of it.

THE END.

(*Tim Hortons is a national chain of coffee shops that are Canadiana at its finest and they do NOT for some reason, use a goddamn apostrophe to denote ownership in their name, a fact which drove me crazy in college when I was doing ad campaigns for them.)

Hi.

So it’s been a while since I’ve written. I’m sorry. Well…I guess it’s only Tuesday so it hasn’t been that long, but still, enough’s happened since the last time I wrote that I really should have tried to find the time to write before now, but I didn’t/couldn’t so now here I am.

Hello.

So Saturday night was an experiment gone…okay. Kinda horrible, but kinda awesome at the same time. Every year since (I believe) 2009, Toronto has put on this thing called Nuit Blanche where the entire city is full of art of all types from performance to giant Lite Brite boards in the middle of the street where 2L pop bottles are the pegs, from dusk ’til dawn. At this year’s Nuit Blanche, Art House Co-Op, the people responsible for A Million Little Pictures, The Sketchbook Project and The Fiction Project were in town at 401 Richmond with their Photomobile where Blake, our friend Charlie and myself each had work and we wanted to see the whole thing in person so we decided that Charlie would fly into town for the weekend and we’d go.

First, let it be known that I don’t meet “internet people”. I used to, hell I used to post on my Live Journal where I was going to be beforehand SO internet people would show up in the interest of promoting Scratching Post, but then I had one or two bad experiences too many and got turned off the practice fairly quickly. Meeting Charlie would be the first time in probably about 8 years that I’d be meeting someone from the internet and I was a bit nervous about it. Blake had met Charlie before when they went out for dinner last year because Blake was working in the city and that’s where Charlie happened to be and since Blake thought he was a pretty decent person, I wasn’t *too* nervous or at least no more nervous than I would be meeting anyone for the first time. So that was a plus.

There was some last minute “where do we eat?” drama that needed to be taken care of because it had to be close to the venue or I wouldn’t be able to get there on foot with my walker and wherever we ate had to have *something* on the menu that I could actually eat. We settled on a vegan restaurant called Fresh on Spadina which was about a block from the venue and which also had sweet potato fries AND a make-your-own-juice option. I love drinking. I don’t know if I’ve ever really mentioned this about myself but I absolutely love drinks. Liquids are my friends. Liquids have never betrayed me (except for that one unfortunate event in the hospital involving chocolate milk). So I got the aforementioned sweet potato fries (which were just alright) and a strawberry, orange, cherry and pomegranate juice which sounds lovely in theory but in practice was sour as hell because I didn’t ask them to add agave nectar and immediately heartburn inducing, which is a very bad thing when you’re prone to puking your guts up, so I’d take a sip of juice, then a sip of water. Blake & Charlie got tofu burgers. Blake’s had thai peanut sauce on it that looked like diarrhea and Charlie got one with sauteed mushrooms, which I was envious of because I love mushrooms and I would have got a side order of those if I knew it was an option (it wasn’t on the menu as such, so I suppose it probably wasn’t an option).

When dinner was finished, I was feeling pretty good, no real nausea to speak of, so we went to the art gallery that was hosting the Photomobile, which was multi-leveled and we started watching the flamenco dancers as we’d agreed upon beforehand. I used the little seat on my walker to sit while Blake and Charlie stood behind me and Charlie told us a bit about the history of that type of dancing and how he’d seen it before when he’d spent time in Spain. As he was telling us this, the first wave of nausea hit where I thought I might be okay, that it was *just* nausea and that I wouldn’t puke, but then the second wave hit and I asked Blake to scope out a bathroom sooner rather than later. He found one and came back and we left Charlie to watch the rest of the performance while I left my walker outside the bathroom with Blake and in I went, into the handicap stall so I’d have room to kneel down and pretty much as soon as I did, I started hurling. Violently. Now, the problem with puking in a public bathroom when you’re me, as opposed to a bowl on my bed, is that my legs still aren’t that strong and I had a HELL of a time getting back up. I thought I was going to have to call Blake on my cell phone to come in and help get me up off the floor because I just couldn’t do it and after barfing like that, I was left feeling pretty weak. Luckily though, I made it up, I blew the vomit out of my nose, rinsed my mouth with water, got a piece of gum and was ready to go.

Charlie had spoken to a woman who worked for the gallery prior to his flying out here, to make sure that there would be wheelchair/walker access to the Photomobile and since there wasn’t really, she arranged for us to go down to the loading dock, where the Photomobile was, in their freight elevator and the elevator operator would stay with us to take us back up when we were finished which was VERY nice of her and VERY thoughtful of Charlie.

So apres vomitage, we headed down to the Photomobile where, as it turned out, each of us had 2 photographs in the exhibit. We tried to find our photos on our own, but I could only find one of mine (one of the shots of Wes, but not the best shot), Blake only found one of his and Charlie couldn’t find any of his at all, so we had to ask the organizer for assistance, which we got, and our photos were found. I took my camera with me and took pictures of our pictures but they were kinda dark/blurry and you guys have already seen the scanned ones (if you read my last post) anyway so I didn’t upload those to post here this time. My second photo was one of Blake and Madison, Blake’s second photo was a crappy, blurry one of two mini flower pots on our windowsill  and both of Charlie’s were carnival shots. I think one was a ride of some sort and one was of a concession stand, both night shots and both better than mine or Blake’s (bastard!). In hindsight what I should have taken a picture of was the Photomobile itself so you could see how it was set up but I never even thought of that until about half an hour ago. Oops.

I was feeling pretty sick/wiped out after the Photomobile so we had the elevator operator drop us off at the basement where artists were making art and we milled around there for a while just shooting the shit until it got to the point where I felt like I was going to start passing out, so we took the inner elevator up to the ground floor, Blake pulled the car around, we said good-bye to Charlie and we started driving toward home.

The drive was pretty uneventful.

When we got home, I had Blake help me out of my clothes and into my hospital gown as fast as possible because I was feeling like I was going to hurl again and as soon as we got my gown on, I grabbed the bowl on the bed and barfed up the rest of my dinner. Then I checked e-mail, e-mailed Charlie (or maybe that was Sunday morning, I forget) and went to bed.

So that was basically my weekend.

Today was another hectic day because today was the day I’d be seeing my surgeon. To be fair, it wasn’t supposed to be hectic, things just turned out that way.

First, Blake woke me up early. I hate waking up early. But at least I didn’t have to get up as early as my mother, who lives about an hour and 15 minutes away from us and who would be accompanying us to the doctor’s office. So  I got up early, got washed up, got dressed (with Blake’s help) and we waited for her because we were all going to go in our car.

My mom got here and we shot the shit for a bit while Blake finished up some work because technically he worked from home today, and then it was time to leave so we did. (Riveting! I know!)

I should also mention that until today at 3pm, I was vac-free because the doctor would want to see my cheese pizza wound, so yesterday when Siske came, she put on a “traditional dressing”, as opposed to the vac dressing because the vac dressing is a pain in the ass to put on for one day and it hurts like hell when they take it off. Also, you can’t just take a vac dressing off a bit of the way to “take a peek” and retape it because you break the seal, so it was decided that a traditional dressing was the way to go and that consisted of some gauze laid over the wound, followed by this big bad thing, and then the whole thing taped down with the same drape they use for the vac that looks like Mac-Tak (not sure if I spelled that correctly, think clear vinyl shelf paper). That way the doctor could take it almost all of the way down to look at the wound and then put it back with more drape.

So we get to the doctor’s office and almost immediately we’re put into an exam room (so much for the myth of Canadian waiting times) even though we were early. Not 5 minutes later, the doctor was in there with us and she had me up on the table to look at my wound. The good news is that it’s healing a LOT faster than expected (cuz I’m muthafuckin’ WOLVERINE *snick snick*), the bad news is that it’s a little bit infected. To fight the infection, she’s asked the nurses to dress it with silver somehow, like in a cream (??) underneath the vac dressing but the order wasn’t sent out until after Siske was here so we won’t be doing that until Friday.

The doctor asked me how I was feeling so I told her about all of the barfing and she prescribed me a drug called domperidone which basically pushes food through you faster. Her theory on what has been happening is that my stomach is so messed up by my organs being all over the place that food sits in my stomach longer than the body thinks is permissible and so instead of sending it down, it comes up instead. This drug will remedy that and just based on using it today before lunch, I agree. I haven’t eaten a whole ton today (so far) but I haven’t thrown any of it up either when just last week I barfed up THREE GODDAMN RASPBERRIES. I just took my second dose of it now with intentions of eating in about half an hour and I’m almost positive I won’t feel sick afterward.

The doctor wanted to see another CAT scan of my abdomen, blood work and a urine test before making any surgical decisions today, so she made some calls and the hospital said I could come in “right now” and they’d do the CAT scan. So off we went to the hospital where I was given a gown and a housecoat and asked to wait in the waiting room with my posse. Five minutes later (oh, damn those Canadian wait times!) they called my name and I was brought to the nurse’s room where I had to drink this fucking nasty dye in two cups of orange juice. Then they told me to wait while they called the lab to have someone come down and take blood to check my creatine levels to make sure my kidneys could handle the IV kind of dye (which had been an issue when I was in the hospital before). While we waited, the nurse put an IV in the crook of my right arm “just in case” (I hate that) and by the time she was finished, the lab guy was there to take blood so she got out of the way for him and he poked and prodded and then he gave me the bad news that the only decent vein he could find was on my ring finger’s knuckle which is a VERY painful place to have blood drawn from. Possibly the worst. And even then, when you draw blood from there, you don’t get as much blood as you would from other sites and he only got 1/2-3/4 of a vial.

After he was finished, the nurse said I could go in the waiting room with Blake and my mom because I had to wait another 45 minutes or so for the dye to take effect so that’s what I did. The whole time trying really hard not to puke it all up even though there was a nice, clean, inviting garbage can within spitting distance of where I was sitting. Oh and for anyone who cares, I now weigh 55kg or 121 lbs. Before I got sick, I weighed around 160 lbs and at the height of my fluid retention, I weighed 220 lbs.

Anyway, when it was my turn (I waited no more than 10 minutes over the time it would have taken the dye to take effect), they escorted me to the CT room and a lady helped me lay on my back on the slidey tray thing and they did the first round of images. Then one of the techs came in, while I was still deep in the machine, with my arms over my head, and hooked up my IV to…something, I couldn’t see. He held my hands while the lady in the booth injected the dye, which was a very strange experience. First it makes you feel really warm like you’re having a hot flash, then it makes you feel like you’ve pee’d your pants. Once the dye was in me, the guy left the room and the lady started the machine back up for the next series of images. Then I was finished and the guy slid me out and he asked me what caused all of “this” so I explained to him that a gallstone clogged my pancreatic duct and everything kinda went to hell from there. I should also mention that this tech had seen me earlier when I was in the nurse’s office and he recognized me because he was the tech for the two times they drained my lungs. Who knew I was so memorable?

After that we had to go to the lab, which was down the road from the hospital. The hospital lab doesn’t do outpatient blood work anymore, which is why we had to go to the second location. When we got there, they saw me right away (again, with the cursed wait times!) and the lady had a fairly easy time finding a vein in the crook of my arm which pissed me off because the hand one fucking HURT and the guy didn’t even really TRY to find a vein in my arm. Also the nurse who put my IV in had little to no trouble finding a vein to put my IV in either so I conclude that the lab guy was a DOUCHE.

Then I had to pee in a little plastic jar and of course I pee’d all over my hand because for some reason, I find the older I get, the harder it is to pee into one of those little bottles. Maybe it’s because I have bigger vulva than I did when I was a kid? That’s my theory because when I was a kid and I had to do it (I used to get a lot of bladder infections), I could fit my entire genitalia inside the jar and that’s just not possible now. Also now there’s hair which misdirects all over the damn place, making things difficult. But I did it and that was that and we came home and then my mom went home and then Siske came and put the vac dressing on me and then Blake got me a 4″ sub for lunch from Subway but they put too much pepper on it so I gave it to Madison after about 4 bites and that was basically my whole day. I’ve just been internetting ever since Siske left, pretty much.

Two observations of my surgeon though, good signs if you will:

1. She has the top part of the bridge of her nose pierced. She wears glasses at the office to cover it up but I bet she wears contacts during her off hours.

2. She has a tattoo on her foot. Something small and Celtic-y.

These two things obviously impressed me. Another thing is that Siske has nothing but nice things to say about her, going so far as to say that if she ever needed ANY type of surgery, she’d want my surgeon to do it. Siske says she’s the best. Plus I just really like her, she’s down to earth and no bullshit. I kinda wish she were my big sister.

So that was my day.

Now I have two things to show you. First, my trache hole, which the doctor says I don’t have to bandage anymore:

Second…I can’t remember if I mentioned this before but during my time at St. Mike’s where I was unconscious most of the time, I developed a pretty huge bedsore on the back of my head, which has only just healed itself. This bedsore is surrounded by a rather large bald spot where the hair is just starting to grow back. I was really embarrassed about it so I wasn’t going to show you guys, but I’m kind of over that now, it’s not like it was my fault and my hair covers it so you can’t even see it, so what the fuck, here it is:

These pics were taken on Thursday or Friday.

Okay, now I’m going to eat my dinner and put my tired ass to bed.
Hope everyone had a great day!

Who barfs up grapes? That’s all I’ve eaten today is grapes and water and it all came up about 20 minutes ago. I’m upset about it because until this moment, I considered grapes one of my “safety foods” because I hadn’t barfed them up yet and on days when Blake’s not home, I would have them for breakfast. I figured grapes were a pretty light, bland food, which is what I’m supposed to be eating right now but nope, apparently not. I guess I’m sticking to water, Lipton soup, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, diet ginger ale and crackers, although we’re going to try out that cherry tomato pasta thing Blake makes tonight. It’s a pretty basic, simple recipe so I’m hoping I’ll be able to keep that down.

I’ve been barfing so much that my lips are super chapped due to the acid and they’re kinda weeping clear fluid in a few places. Gross, I know, but it’s the truth. I can only imagine what this is doing to my teeth.

Anyway, the reason I started this post was not to discuss barfing but to tell you all that our A Million Little Pictures pictures have been digitized. You can see Blake’s here and you can see mine here. This Saturday the tour is coming to Toronto for Nuit Blanche and Blake, me and Charlie are going to go see it and our pictures! Obviously I’ve seen Blake’s and my own but I haven’t seen Charlie’s yet and I’m really looking forward to it. Nuit Blanche is an event in Toronto where from 7pm-sunrise the city is filled with art. We’re only going to stick close to the block where A Million Little Pictures is because I can’t go great distances with my walker, but that’s okay, we’ll get to see what we planned on. Before we go see the art, we’re going to go to a restaurant to have dinner but I have no idea what to eat that I’ll be able to keep down. I’m kinda thinking just a regular salad is probably my best bet. Hopefully they’ll have Catalina dressing though because that’s the only kind of salad dressing I like. Maybe I should bring some in a container in my purse just in case? Would that be weird? I already know I barf up french fries, I can’t remember if hamburgers are on the barf list or not (we’re going to a hamburger joint), I just know that last weekend I barfed up poutine and that it was really unpleasant due to it being on the side of the fucking road. It also sucked because poutine is one of my favourite foods and now that I’ve barfed it up, I can’t have it anymore. :(

I’ll figure something out. My theory is that no matter where we eat, there has to be *something* on the menu that I can eat without puking my guts up. I just wish that thing could be fries and gravy. :(

In other news, here’s are a couple of articles on occupying Wall Street:

Article 1 (translated into a bunch of different languages)
Article 2

And with that, I’m off to catch up on the usual places!

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:

• Dehydration, and kidney failure (resulting from inadequate blood volume which, in turn, may result from a combination of fluid loss from vomiting, internal bleeding, or oozing of fluid from the circulation into the abdominal cavity in response to the pancreas inflammation, a phenomenon known as third spacing).
• Respiratory complications are frequent and are major contributors to the mortality of pancreatitis. Some degree of pleural effusion is almost ubiquitous in pancreatitis. Some or all of the lungs may collapse (atelectasis) as a result of the shallow breathing which occurs because of the abdominal pain. Pneumonitis may occur as a result of pancreatic enzymes directly damaging the lung or simply as a final common pathway response to any major insult to the body (i.e., ARDS or acute respiratory distress syndrome).

The kids were up north with my dad and step-mom Lisa for about 3 weeks at the tail end of the summer and Lisa took Madison on some photoshoots. Here are some of the pictures:

Lisa makes hair bows and tutus for aspiring ballerinas, which is why they’re so prevalent in these pics.
Anyway, I think they’re awesome so I wanted to share.