I finished Argent’s painting on Saturday afternoon but I’m going to post about it last so it still remains a surprise for him when he gets it in the mail so….

…ARGENT, DON’T LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST!

Blake and the kids left for Militiagan on Monday morning and my time alone has been both interesting and bittersweet.

Monday afternoon I started watching that stupid Red Riding Hood movie with Amanda Seyfried BECAUSE Amanda Seyfried is in it and she’s like, the embodiment of one of my girls but I got bored halfway through, turned it off and decided to have a nap. This was at about 4:30pm. Well when I woke up, from a nightmare about being in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter with a serial killer on the loose, the house was pitch black because it was still light out when I went to bed and it didn’t occur to me to turn on any lights before I laid down. So I laid there in bed, in the pitch dark, listening to the wind and the heat register in my room making ticking, knocking sounds as the metal cooled from the furnace being on and I freaked myself right the fuck out because I was convinced there was a serial killer casing the house. Then the goddamn dogs started freaking out and barking in my office, which they do when someone’s at the door. I was practically crying by this point and it took me 20 minutes after the dogs calmed down to convince myself it was okay to leave my bed and go turn on all the lights and close the living room curtains.

I’ve been carrying my pink, aluminum baseball bat around with me in every room I go to ever since and I’ve only been letting the dogs out one at a time because I figure if there IS a serial killer out there, the logical thing for him to do is to poison the dogs so I have less protection right? So if I only let them out one at a time, theoretically he’d only poison or kill one of them so I’d be left with the other for protection. DO NOT FUCK WITH MY LOGIC, PLEASE! IT IS KEEPING ME SANE!

On Tuesday I woke up in a lot of pain in my pancreatic region, the same pain I had when we went to the ER a few weeks ago. I took all my drugs in the morning, including the morphine, plus a handful of Tylenol 1s and that didn’t help. By 1:30pm it was time to take more morphine, so I did and also took more Tylenol 1s plus a mega strength Ibuprofen. That didn’t help. Then I took my last Gravol and that DID help so I got worried about what I would do if the pain came back and I didn’t have any Gravol to take so I messaged Ronny to see if they would come keep me company that night and if they would bring Gravol with them but he wasn’t replying so finally at about 4:30pm, I called Alex and explained what was going on and she said they’d come over around 6:30pm for dinner because I was in the process of making beef stew in the crock pot. She said picking me up Gravol would be no big deal and so they came over at around 6:30pm as promised, I took more of the Gravol they brought me and I felt totally fine.

We ate beef stew and watched Glee, which I’d never seen before and I’ll probably never see again because it was stupidity on a scale I couldn’t even comprehend and I think the stew turned out pretty okay. It wasn’t phenomenal but I liked it enough and was hungry enough to have one & a half bowls of it. Ronny and Alex only had one bowl each so I’m not sure if they were genuinely full or if they didn’t think it was so great and were just being polite haha (It won’t hurt my feelings if they didn’t like it, I used a mix.)

Then it was 9:00pm and time to watch their shows, New Girl and Raising Hope. Now one thing you need to know about me is that I traditionally can’t stand sitcoms. Especially ones from the past 10 years or so. Roseanne? Wicked show. Loved it. The Cosby Show? Television genius. Golden Girls? As Jax said the other day, “Betty White is a flawless human being.” I loved Blossom. My Name is Earl was pretty good. Love The Office. I can’t think of anything else I really watched that was a sitcom growing up. I watched a lot of one hour shows that were more drama or comedy than a sitcom like My So-Called Life and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Six Feet Under and those are the types of shows I prefer to this day.

Anyway, Raising Hope was just “blah” to me but New Girl was FANTASTIC. I love Zooey Deschanel in movies so I kinda figured I would like this show but I never knew when it was on or what channel and I didn’t really care enough to figure it all out. I didn’t realize it only started this fall and we’re only 11 episodes in. I thought it started last year and I didn’t really feel like catching up, y’know? But now that I’ve seen it and I’m in love, Blake will be d/ling all of the episodes that have aired so far and we’ll be keeping up with it because it’s great.

Another show that Kevin actually recommended to me is Up All Night with Christina Applegate. I’ve still only seen one episode of it, but it’s like New Girl in that it’s shot more like a movie than a TV show and what I saw was really really funny. (I forget what I saw now though. My mind is a like a sieve.) I think that one only started this fall too, but I don’t know when it’s on or what channel and it’s not OnDemand like New Girl is. (But they only have the last two episodes of New Girl OnDemand, which sucks, but we have a PVR so I can just record it.) Anyway, I think that’s a show I’m going to get Blake to d/l so we can catch up on it too.

Ronny and Alex left around 11pm I think? And then Blake called and we talked for a while about what he’d been doing in MI and then I stayed up until about 1am working on a painting (more on that later) but had to get up at the asscrack of dawn yesterday morning because stinky Cheryl left a message saying that she was going to be at my house at 8:30 in the goddamn morning. I really dislike Cheryl, she makes me get up early even though we’ve asked her not to (they’re supposed to work around OUR schedule), she never listens to me when I tell her that I need a strip of drape across the top of my dressing or the Hypafix tape they use will pull down because my belly hangs over and is heavy, and come unstuck and the whole dressing will fall off. (She listened to me yesterday morning though because she knew Blake wasn’t around to patch me up. She just likes rushing through my dressing and doing the bare minimum so she can get off of work early and leave Blake to do the drape. That’s my hunch, anyway.) Plus she reeks of cigarette smoke which she tries to cover up with perfume and it’s just friggin’ gross. I mean, she’s nice & all, but out of all the nurses I have, she’s the one I like the least. Siske’s my favourite because she’s just awesome, I can’t even explain how or why, she just is, Janice is next, she’s just so nice and bubbly and she has a great sense of humour, then there’s Blue, who’s brand new and doesn’t know how to do my dressing AT ALL (I really hope I don’t get her on Friday…) but she’s nice and funny and chatty and I just really like her. And then there’s Cheryl.

After Cheryl left yesterday morning, I was exhausted from staying up the night before, so I fell back asleep on the pull-out couch in the living room until about 10:30am, then I made and ate waffles, then I feel asleep again until noon and then I was up for the day. I watched The View and Ellen and Dr. Phil while I worked on this painting I’m doing. The painting is hard to explain, I guess it’s sort of a mandala of the sun, but my intention for it is to either photograph it or scan it and make prints of it to raise money for Squam. My dilemma is that I don’t know how to go about making prints and because I used glitter (of course), I’m not sure how well that’s going to print. I don’t know if I should take orders and then go to an actual printing place and print that many or if I should use a 3rd party service like Zazzle or CafePress. I’m thinking the latter would be a lot easier considering we’d have to *find* a printing place around here that does giclees (because if I’m going to go to an actual printer, that’s what I’d want) and do a test printing, so that’s one trip, then another trip to set up the printing and pay the money up front for them, then another trip to pick them up, then more trips if I sell any more and time is a really precious thing around here because I don’t drive and Blake has so little of it. So I guess I have to decide between Zazzle and CafePress and I’m going to have to order testers from them to see if the quality’s good enough to sell to the public. Do you think I should do products too? Like mugs and t-shirts and stuff? I suppose that question is best answered once you guys see the finished painting. Hrm.

My plan for today is to nap, since I got up at 5am, and then to watch movies while I finish this painting. Blake said I could order a pizza tonight, so I fully intend to do that even though I’ve been living on pizza products all week. Monday night I made a frozen pizza (which was disastrous, my god can I ever not cook), then yesterday I had Bagel Bites for lunch/dinner and I have Pilsbury Pizza Pops for lunch today and tomorrow. Right now, y’know, just to mix things up, I’m eating a chicken teriyaki TV dinner. Blake really needs to come home so I’m not eating absolute crap. I feel like garbage from eating so much processed junk. I mean, I *love* microwaveable junk, but only sometimes, not as my main diet.

So, Argent’s painting…

ARGENT, STOP READING NOW!

Argent’s painting is a disaster. :o( It gave me trouble from day one, right up until the very bitter end. I think I explained the beginning but I’ll go over it again in case I didn’t.

Argent plays the lottery so I intended to make him a lottery fairy and I succeeded at that, but I had him send me old lottery tickets, which happened to be black, white and pink, so the painting’s colour scheme was pink and blue. (I added the blue so it wouldn’t be as girly, but in the end you could barely tell there was any blue in it.) I went through TWO canvases trying to glue the lottery tickets on as a background because my exacto knife went through them when I tried to trim the excess off the edges, so I switched to wood.

When I was done with the background, you couldn’t even tell there were lottery tickets in there but I figured that was okay, I could just use the tickets as the fairy’s skirt. Well, that didn’t quite turn out as intended either. When I used matte gel medium to adhere the sparkly overlay across the skirt, it totally wiped out all the numbers so all that remained was the pink strip across the top. *head desk*

Then I spent a million hours doing the lettering. They were stick-on letters, I didn’t do them by hand, but they didn’t stand out so I had to make a paste of white glitter and acrylic glazing liquid and a bit of water and I had to VERY carefully smoosh it next to and in between the letters, then let it dry over night and then once it was dry, I had to sand it so it looked like an outer glow. I think I was successful at that in the end, but it was a total pain in the ass to do and I was damn lucky that I thought to do that because it wasn’t planned.

But then this bitch of a painting bit my ass pretty hard when it came time to varnish her. I usually use Micron Pigma pens to do my outlining, usually an 02 or an 005. This time I decided to use an 08. The difference between the two is just how big the point is, an 02 is finer than an 08 and a 005 is finer than both of them. I wanted a thicker line, so I used the 08 and I left it for 3 days, doing other things, so it should have been completely dry and “cured” so to speak.

Well, when I went to brush on the varnish, the ink smudged, ruining the entire painting. I can’t sell a painting with a flaw like that, so I sent a letter with it to Argent saying that I couldn’t accept payment for it because of the flaw and that he could just have it.

I was really  upset about this. I worked so damn hard on that painting and it was such a pain in the ass to do and I was really counting on that money to help pay for Squam, but I just couldn’t, in good conscience, sell it like that. Because Argent’s my friend, I was only going to charge him $250 for it which is the same price as almost all of my paintings, even though it was custom and I normally charge a more for that. That would have dented my Squam fund pretty nicely, it would have covered my deposit and then some, but at the same time, it’s not like I’m really out anything but my time and the cost of the letters ($20 because I had to buy two packs to get both colours), everything else was stuff I already had. The stars are pretty expensive because they come in a kit and ONLY in a kit (12 colours I think), so it kinda sucks that I’m now out of white ones but it’s okay because I really do think stars are lucky and that this painting is lucky and that Argent’s going to win the powerball EVENTUALLY because he has this painting. It was such a pain in the ass that I figure it HAS to be lucky! haha

Anyway, I took some pics of it before I sent it off (oh that was another thing; I had it all wrapped up and addressed when I suddenly remembered that not only did I forget to take pics of it beforehand, I also forget to take pics of MYSELF with it, which was my new year’s resolution…so I slapped on some makeup and Blake took some goofy pics of me laughing because he was making fun of the fact that I take pics on burst all the time…you had to be there…):

I’m trying to train myself – and I think I’ve maybe mentioned this, at least I know I have on Twitter – not to let things be “precious”. Meaning that I like to hoard things and I’m afraid of wasting materials or making mistakes. For example, I would normally only use one jewel on a painting because I only have so many in my stash. On Argent’s painting I used five: three stars for her necklace, one for her bindi (that one was a Swarovski crystal, actually) and another for her wand. This painting was definitely an exercise in things not being precious, believe me.

Anyway, here are the goofy pics. I look like shit (keep in mind, I’ve lost a LOT of my hair from being sick), be kind:

THE END.

~*PLEASE DONATE SO I CAN GO TO ART CAMP!*~

PS. Blake and I got our sketchbooks for The Sketchbook Project out in time! He finished every page of his, I didn’t. My mom didn’t finish hers either, I don’t think, but I know John did. My friends Stephy and Alicia also finished theirs, who else participated this year?

So I survived Blake’s work party. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I enjoyed myself, but I will say that everyone was very nice to me and I was fed well. Honestly, it was actually pretty mellow, almost to the point of boring. All we did – which was totally fine by me – was sit in a corner and eat food. Madison developed a crush on Blake’s boss’ son so she went back & forth between upstairs where we were and downstairs where the kids were being a total creeper (she gets that from me). That was the most entertaining part of the evening.

There were some babies, which I ignored, and they ignored me. And of course there were kids, which I ignored too. We had brief interactions with Blake’s coworkers but they sorta stuck together and ignored us for the most part. I met everyone of course, but with a couple of exceptions, I couldn’t tell you any of their names or what they were wearing. I know that Anthony, the fake Korean, brought the fucking AMAZING Korean BBQ that us Crittendens devoured like it was going out of style. I know Mandy, the hostess, made the butter chicken that was pretty good too, as well as the turkey which was also delicious. We brought mashed potatoes with cheese on top and these potatoes too which weren’t very good because Blake left the peels on. Lesson learned. (Also Pinterest is awesome because that’s where I got the recipe.) With lots of butter they would have been pretty good but we didn’t think to bring any and I didn’t want to ask for some.

When we got there, Blake made me a very weak Crown Royal & Coke Zero which I sipped on for about 45 minutes before my guts started hurting so I made him get rid of it and I just drank Coke Zero for the rest of the evening.

We left around 10pm, I think, and I was craving beef like crazy so we stopped off at Burger King on the way home where I get some kind of crazy super beef burger with just ketchup, none of that crap they pile on, and I ATE THE HELL OUT OF IT. But, as is often the case when we get food on the way home, I started falling asleep while I was eating it but I did finish it when we got inside and then we went to bed. Or at least I did, I can’t remember if Blake went to bed when I did or not.

Anyway, I survived. The party was tolerable. Now that I’ve gotten it over with, I don’t have to go to any work functions ever again unless I really really want to (which would probably never happen). So yeah…

But one thing I did want to share is my eye makeup for the evening. Usually I’m really shy when it comes to makeup because honestly? I don’t know what to do with half of it. I buy a lot of it though, because it’s pretty, and I think I’ll wear it one day, but then I never do. I decided, after watching Hedwig and the Angry Inch and hanging out with Jen last weekend, that life’s too damn short to just let it sit in my makeup bag untouched. I’m going to LEARN how to use it, godammit! So Jen showed me how to use eyeliner last weekend and I applied my knew knowledge to last night’s look. I’m warning you in advance that I apparently suck at taking pictures of my own eyes, but it looked good, trust me.

Left: HiP by L’Oreal eyeshadow
Right: Super old Revlon eyeshadow

This Revlon stuff I have is literally from grade 10, so it’s like…17 years old.
It used to be shimmery but now it’s just plain white BUT I like it because it STAYS PUT.
It doesn’t gather in the crease of the eye during the course of a night and you only need a little bit to get full coverage.

This stuff is so cool.
It’s black liquid liner with flecks of silver in it.
I think it’s a CDN brand.

Silver solid eyeliner.
Also a CDN brand I’m pretty sure.

I got this 2 Halloweens ago but never knew what to do with it until now.

Step 1: White eyeshadow over the whole lid
Step 2: Silver shadow on top of that, thickly, because the silver on its own doesn’t show up very strongly.
Step 3: Black liquid liner along the top lash line
Step 4: Curl lashes.
Step 5: Use Maybelline’s “The Falsies” mascara, 2 coats (I really wish I had an eyelash brush!)
Step 6: Put the silver liner under the lower lash line.
Step 7: Put lots & lots of glitter eyeliner on top of the silver liner.

And that’s pretty much it.

What I did do was stick a Q-Tip in my mouth to wet it and then I used it to remove any eyeliner from the very inner corners of my eyes because I tend to wipe gunk from there constantly and I didn’t want to smear anything.

So that’s what I did.
Jen would be so proud.

Speaking of Jen, when she was here last weekend she put purple and turquoise streaks in Madison’s hair and then she used her razor thingy to cut it. I think it looks really good (Jen’s in hair school right now, she finishes in March).

Here you can see some of her streaks:

And the cut:

God she looks like me in these pics. o_O

Poor kid.

I have a whole whack of posts to make today, so bear with me. This one just covers the party, I’ve got at least two more posts to go. (And and just so I’m not making a separate entry just for this, no I haven’t heard back from my brother yet. I’m betting I won’t.) I think I’m gonna pee, grab another drink, make another post, then go sit on Blake’s chest until he agrees to go to the store to get me croissants and Diet Coke.

So I re-read my last post about Blake’s Christmas party tomorrow and now I feel like shit because – while I didn’t mean to – I slammed the Barrie office and that wasn’t really fair, especially since they did SO much for us when I was in the hospital this summer. I meant my comment on the subject to be about how I’m glad I (probably) wouldn’t have to hear about mommy & me type subjects at his Christmas party because no one he works with now has kids, but now that I’ve re-read what I posted, I can see how what I said could be misconstrued to think I was bashing people in Barrie. That was not my intent and I apologize for not being clear. Not that it’s an excuse, but today has been “one of those days” and up until about 20 minutes ago I was one giant crust of a person and that’s where my hostility stemmed from.

I think the lesson in tomorrow’s Christmas party is that I need to be less judgmental. I’m not typically a judgmental person, which I think most of you can tell if you’ve been reading long enough, but I have some funny ideas about work mixing with family. I just don’t like it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to put your career in the hands of the behaviour of your wife or children and I think it’s unfair to ask them to behave a certain way because it might affect your job. I think the two things should be completely separate.

I also believe that there are your friends and then there are your “work friends”. Work friends stay at work, friends come over for dinner. This way there are no rumours about you at work because of something that happened outside of work. In the same vein, all throughout school I had friends and I had “school friends”. Yeah, there was some cross-over because you can’t really help it when you’re 12, but let’s just say that the “friend” friends are on my Facebook at 20 years later and my “school friends” aren’t (for the most part).

OH. MY. GOD.
I JUST HAD TO PLAY MADISON NIRVANA BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHO THEY WERE.
She said, when I compared the song ” Exquisite Corpse” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch to early Nirvana, “is that the band with the naked floating baby on the cover?” so she gets points for that, but man, that hurt.

I played her the beginning of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and she remembered who they were, but still…

 Blake is bringing me home two McDonald’s grungeburgers, fries and a root beer, which I’ve been craving for weeks now. (The root beer, not the new “slow food” haha But it was Katie linking that in Twitter that made me call Blake to get some on his way home. Horrible, I know. But today was a terrible food day. I made an English muffin for breakfast, with butter, and the butter dripped all down my Gogol Bordello shirt and onto my pajama pants, then I made spring rolls but they changed the recipe into some type of MAJOR FAIL when they became “Sensations” as opposed to “Compliments” [store brand] so I only ate two of the six I made, then I made a peanut butter and jam sandwich but gave half to the dogs because the bread was kinda stale, then I just gave up on food and slept for the rest of the day.)  Over the past few weeks I’ve been treating my guts like a garbage disposal and it’s making me feel like crap. A person just shouldn’t eat as many chips as I’ve eaten in the past month, my blood is probably like glue and I’m definitely gaining weight since my guts decided to stop regurgitating everything I swallowed. I was at just above 100 lbs at my lowest point after coming out of the hospital and last I checked on the Wii Fat, I was 115. I’m okay with 115. I’m okay with 120. But anything above that and I’m not going to be very happy with myself. I keep saying “tomorrow I’ll eat better”, but I never do. I think this is like, in the same vein as when people cut themselves. I don’t really know how to explain that statement except that I’m not exactly practicing self love these days and that needs to change.

Right before I started writing this post, I had the first shower I’ve had since JUNE, not counting the hand-held ones (3 or 4) Blake’s given me with the shower chair and in the hospital over the last 5 & a half months. This one was standing up, got in by myself (despite the act I put on, my legs still aren’t very strong and the reason I haven’t had a shower this whole time is because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get out of the shower by myself without falling), got out by myself. It was actually kind of gross the amount of dead skin I scraped off myself, I hate to admit. I used Happy Hippy shower gel, which I love, and Ocean Salt face wash, both from Lush. I also used Nioxin on my hairs, which is weird because it makes your scalp really really cold. But I did it and got out by myself and found clothes and got dressed and changed my underwear and everything.

And now I got distracted by Blake and food, so I think I’m going to go finish my headphones project in my office and watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch for the 4th time this week.

—————————- Original Message —————————-

Subject: Hair! NIOXIN

From: “Lori-Anne” <sunnysmom@gmail.com>

Date: Thu, December 8, 2011 9:57 am

To: “Sarah” <Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com>

————————————————————————–

I’m on my way to get this NOW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nioxin

Friend Anne told me about it…got the name this morning, and called

Terri…She knows & recommends it.

3 part system. Shampoo/conditioner AND most important, Folical Booster.

Meeting Dean (her partner) in the parking lot of the salon suppliers….in

20 minutes. Gotta GO!

Love YOU!

mom

–

A Simpler Time ~ Join me on Facebook!

www.facebook.com/pages/A-Simpler-Time/107844892584854

www.Lori-AnneCrittenden.com

—————————————————————————

Terri is my cousin who’s a hairdresser and I’m guessing this means that she’s the one who bought the stuff and that my mom’s going to pick it up right now so she can give it to me when we pick her up for Touched By Fire.

I’m skeptical of course, but willing to try anything. *shrug*

Thanks, Mom (and Terri)!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here it is:

Front cover.

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

Back cover.

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

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

When Madison gets home from school, I’m going to be shaving my head again. I don’t want to but I don’t really feel that I have a choice. My hair has been steadily falling out since August and it’s gotten to the point where it is so sparse, it just looks terrible and I don’t want to look terrible at Touched By Fire next Thursday.

Last night after my shower, Blake was brushing my hair because I have a hard time getting all the knots out so he does it for me most of the time, and when he was finished, there was so much hair all over me that I had to change my shirt. That ball of hair above the clippers is what came out of my brush last night and that’s how much comes out every time I wash my hair. Blake tries to hide it from me, which I appreciate, but there’s no hiding from what I’ve got going on on top of my head these days, it just looks awful.

The hair that I have left looks scraggly and this week I was going to have my friend Jen come cut it (she’s in hair school) but there really isn’t enough to cut and I don’t think there would be any way to make what I have left look good. What I have left looks really dry and frizzy, even though it isn’t. It just looks that way because of how little there is and how fine my hair is to begin with. My roots are about 4 inches long but I’ve been afraid to dye my hair in case more of it fell out (I’m naturally blonde, just not THIS blonde…).

Since so much has fallen out, I’m just giving up and shaving it off. There’s no saving what I have left. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, but today’s the day because I’m feeling brave. I’m going to videotape the process but I’m not sure if I’ll put it online or not. It depends on how much I cry. (I’m an ugly cryer.)

So that’s what’s happening today.

WATCH GODAMMIT.

Don’t make me post it again! Okay that’s not true, I’m not posting it for you guys. I’m posting it for me because this is how my tabs are laid out every day (I don’t close my browser or turn off my computer like, ever): Live Journal, my e-mail, my site, Etsy, Facebook, Anybeat and then whatever I’m working on, like a post or whatever in other tabs. SO, if I post my boyfriend’s video at the top of a post, I have easy access to it in TWO TABS and can replay it at my leisure. Which I do. A whole lot.

It IS Friday though, kids, and that means MAYBE, JUST MAYBE there will be a new Erock video tonight! I’m creaming my panties in antici…pation. (Not really, just curious as to what he’s gonna shoot out next. Hey wait that sounded dirty too, I can’t win….*facepalm*)

So I went to the doctor on Wednesday and now I need a new doctor. My newfie surgeon is a fucking OTTAWA FAN with the JERSEY AND EVERYTHING! THE NERVE! I wore my Leafs jersey on Wednesday because we won TWO games 7-1 recently and like, you wear your jersey while they’re doing well because who knows when they’re gonna shit the bed, so I wore my jersey and first of all, when we were at Chapters, we were getting into the car and some lady yelled “Is that a Leafs jersey I see? Good job!” or something like that but I didn’t hear it so my mom had to tell me second hand. Bummer, but still, compliment, so…WIN! But then when I was at Dr. Hanrahan’s office, she walked in and was like “oh no you are NOT wearing that jersey in my office!” and then we had words, bonded over the loveliness of Sydney Crosby (oh be quiet, he’s lovely) and got down to brass tacks.

She thinks she’ll be closing me up as a Christmas present. Her words. That means late December. I still have to hear from the guy at St. Mike’s to have the pseudocyst drained but Dr. Hanrahan said that since we haven’t heard from him, she’s going to chase him down herself. Whether that’s true or not, I’m not sure, but let’s hope because I would really like to have my surgery before Xmas. I don’t care if I have to spend Xmas in the hospital, I want this over with. Plus I hate Xmas anyway, for the most part. Xmas Xmas Xmas.

So that was pretty much all she said. She had a medical student named Magda with her and she went over my whole history with her so she could follow what was going on and Dr. Hanrahan said something like, “There’s 4 rules in surgery: sleep when you can, eat when you can, spend as much time with your partner as you can and don’t mess with the pancreas!” The pancreas, in case you all weren’t aware yet, is a VERY BIG DEAL.

Anyway, Renee, as my mom likes to call her went down my history and basically said, “This lady should not be sitting here right now, she had every single possible complication, you name it, she had it and she’s here to live to tell about it and that’s a miracle.”

Hearing that is very hard for me. I don’t like to hear about how I almost died. I mean I do like to hear about what happened to me at St. Mike’s because I don’t remember any of it but I don’t like to hear about how I should NOT be here because I am here and that’s kinda like talking about me in past tense or something and I just don’t like it. It makes me cry.

My new friend Jessie, who has chronic pancreatitis and who, unlike me, can’t just have surgery to make it all better, left me this amazing comment that I want to share with everyone because it was just so damn beautiful and exactly what I needed to hear after I got home on Wednesday:

“Wow. You heal super fast! Yeah, I saw your wound. That’s all scar tissue now? Damn, girl! Go you!

 Yeah, it’s hard to deal with it. I was suicidal for a very long time. It’s been almost 6 years, 5.5 years, I remind myself that all the time. For a long time it was hard for me to cope with my loss… because, really, it IS a loss. You lose your life as you know it. Forever and ever. I am still accepting that, every.single.day. You have to mourn your experience. It takes a loong time. It’s difficult.

I tried to force my self to move forward with life and it was impossible. You know the seven stages of grief, right? Well, be prepared to go through every one of them. And give yourself a lot of time. It’s been 6 years and I’m still not done.

 I don’t know. It’s hard. It takes time.

 It helped me to track my progress. Tiny things… like healed wounds and days without puking. Those things matter. Because there will be times when you feel like you have been sick FOREVER and that you’ll NEVER get any better. But, you will. Slowly but surely. Whether it be getting physically healthier or just getting better at coping with the sickness.

 Human beings were meant to survive. We were built to forget pain; a survival skill. We were built to move forward and live. Just care for yourself and appreciate your life and take it as slow as you need to.

 Oh, jeezus… look at me getting all emotional.

 I have no idea how I get all my nutrients. I drink a lot of those protein drinks, too, take prenatal gummy vitamins (omg im addicted), and vit B, and load up on great-for-me-foods when I’m actually able to keep things down. Soup helps. I love soup. It’s easy on the stomach and you can cram a lot of veggies and protein into soup.

 I’m tired all the time, too, but autoimmune disorders will do that to ya. You will heal. Sleeeeep and try to eat and just take care of yourself. Take vitamins. They’re my best friend.

 While I’m having an emotional moment let me say:

 Don’t ever feel guilty for being sick, okay?

It’s plagued me for years. It caused me to push myself and hurt myself and not help myself at all. You deserve to get better. You deserve LIFE! I know you have a family and obviously it has/will be hard on everybody… But, LOVE yourself. Just as much as they do. More. Take care of yourself. Don’t get down on yourself. You’re a survivor and you are alive for a reason.

 You will go on with your life again. You will. It will be changed. For the better, though, if you let it. <3

 /Emotional Rant (SHUT UP JESSIE!)

 :) <3″

I barely know this girl, but we’re basically kin at this point because we’re going/have gone through pretty much the exact same things.

So something I asked the doctor about was my thinning hair. It is simply falling out. A lot. In fact if I lose much more, I’m literally just going to shave it all off again because it’s really starting to look like crap. The short and sweet of it is that I need protein in mass quantities and I need to supplement my diet with a protein drink. The only protein drink I can stomach, which I didn’t even know about until this week, is called Isopure PLUS and it’s a clear juicy drink that’s actually not that bad. The problem though, is that it’s $17 for 6 drinks (after tax) and that’s an extra expense we really can’t afford. But I need it, so on Visa it shall go, we guess. It has 15g of protein per bottle and according to my mother I need around 45g per day based on some weight chart she found online. I’m trying really hard to eat that much protein but it’s not easy when A) you can’t keep everything down and B) you’re as picky an eater as I am. I simply cannot eat beans, they’re just too disgusting.

So that’s the gist of what’s happened this week. My mom bought me a Sharpie Liquid Pencil (which I keep forgetting to test out but they’re really neat!) and a clear t-square at Curry’s. At Curry’s I bought 3 sketchbooks for $15 (score!), a PINK mechanical pencil with PINK erasable lead and a pink pen to use in my pink journal.

As I mentioned we also went to Chapters before my appointment and there we got the new issue of Juztapoz because Mark Ryden did the cover and poor Sunnies can only afford to frame covers of magazines and put them on the wall.

Yesterday I also started playing Warcraft again…god help me…I will never get this sketchbook finished…(I also postponed getting Skyrim so Blake can get his Star Wars game when it comes out)…

So if you know me at all, you know I get crushes on various boys pretty easily, especially if they happen to be in the arts in any way. ESPECIALLY if they’re super good or super passionate about something. Then I go mental.

So right now I have this pretty massive crush on Eric Calderone who’s this metal genius on YouTube who does covers of popular songs. And he’s absolutely, drop dead motherfucking gorgeous. Not to be crude (too late) but whenever he posts a new video, I sit there watching and my clitoris literally twitches, it’s the most bizarre thing that’s never happened before.

Now of course I would never act on any of these crushes and if faced with one of them I’d probably embarrass myself by crying or something lame like that, but I would definitely like to be friends with them. Like, internet friends. The way I am with you guys except like…we e-mail dumb shit to each other and stuff. Like I do with other people. Like like like.

But anyway, I love him and here’s some of my favourite Erock videos (yes, he calls himself Erock and yes I think that’s kinda stupid – no offence Eric, I love your nerdy ways):

“Hey guys,

So I had requests for more 80s songs and had requests for classical songs which ended up as a combo. The Mozart parts I used just in case anyone is wondering were Symphony no. 25, Symphony no. 40, and part of his Requiem. There were so many to choose from but I fell upon the ones I thought could work best. Hopefully Mozart’s not rolling in his grave. Thanks so much for the comments, messages, and subs. Once again, you guys amaze me, BIG UPS.

Best to ya

E”

OH SWOON. BE STILL MY BEATING FUCKING HEART OR HOWEVER THAT GOES. *fans self*

Okay I’ll stop, I just fucking love the shit out of him. I want Blake to fly him to Canada to play our anniversary party, if we ever actually have one. (Looks like 10 years ain’t gonna be it, so maybe 15?) But watch the videos, isn’t he beautiful? Don’t you hate him for his ability to grow hair? Cuz I totally do.

Anyway, enough about Mr. Crittenden the Second.

[Insert photo of the elusive Benton here]

So Ben’s not really a boyfriend, by my usual definition because I don’t really have a crush on him, but he is a boy and he’s going to be my goddamn friend if I have to hunt him down and sit on him.

Ben is one of my nurses. He’s 29, from Vancouver and from what I can tell, all he does is work. That means he has no friends here and I swear to Christ, I will take drastic measures to ensure that he has people here because he’s great and it bothers me thinking about him just being alone all the time. But hey, what do I know? Maybe he does have friends here and he just hasn’t told me about them yet. YET.

Anyway, I get excited about the prospect of new friends (I never used to, I’m growing soft in my old age) and Ben is a potential new friend and I’m looking forward to having a little party at our house with Alex and Ronny and Ben and lots of booze.

Speaking of booze, I’m too scared to ask my doctor but with all the drugs I’m on, do you think I could get drunk and not die? I guess I’ll ask her when I see her tomorrow. Honestly, all I want to do these days is be drunk and listen to music and cry. I am so goddamned depressed it’s not even funny. I have S.A.D. pretty majorly and like, I missed the whole summer. I went from winter, to barely any spring, to fall, to winter. There was snow on the ground this morning! This is not good for my mental health!

Blake’s mom and Charlie just bought a house in Florida with an indoor hot tub and pool and all I want to do is go there. I need sunshine. Badly. I want to get this stupid pseudocyst “procedure” done (still haven’t heard from the specialist), have my big surgery, go to Florida with Blake’s parents and the kids (that I have no idea how we’ll afford but I really need it :o( Maybe a Chip In account thing?) and then get my job back. That’s how I want things to go. That’s what I want for my life for the next few months.

I got an e-mail from my boss last week, which is promising. I explained everything to her and offered to work part-time until my big surgery if there was work available, but I haven’t heard anything back. We are so ridiculously broke. :o( The thought of Xmas makes me really upset because I just don’t know how we’re going to afford anything when we’re going into debt EATING. Madison’s said that all she wants for Xmas this year is a $25 iTunes gift card which very well may be the only thing she gets. I don’t know what to get Wes. Then there’s my mom, Phil, Lisa, Raili and Rachael. I just don’t know what to do.

Blake’s getting me Skyrim for Xmas, but I’m getting it on Thursday. We can only afford to get that because he’s going to trade in some of his old games and one of mine (Final Fantasy whatever # came out for PS3 that I hated and barely played). My one year old computer isn’t good enough to play the game so I have to get it on PS3, which sucks (and I know how whiny and privileged that sounded) because I hate consoles, but I really want to play the game so I guess thems the breaks. And these days it’s not like I have anything better to do. I sit on this bed in the living room and refresh Facebook and e-mail every 2 minutes, all day, every day. I haven’t even been creating anything because I just too depressed. I should be working on my sketchbook but I just don’t have it in me right now. If I send it unfinished, I send it unfinished.

So that’s life at the moment.

PS. My hair’s falling out at an alarming rate and if I lose much more, I’m just going to shave my head again.

PPS. Water For Elephants was a HORRIBLE movie, but an excellent book. Why is that always the way?

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!

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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Help RAPS win $25,000!

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.