First, lemme get this out of the way: Argent’s painting is finished. I haven’t photographed it in full yet but I will and after he receives it, I’ll post those pictures. Here’s one pic I took before I varnished it though:

I am absolutely in love with those little Martha Stewart glitter stars. I used white ones and pink ones and they’re all iridescent and they have names like “sugar cube” and “sugar plum”. I used up almost all of my white ones on this painting and they only come in $30 kits, so I won’t be using white ones for a very long time.

Next up is…Blake’s Uncle John died yesterday morning. He had early onset dementia and from what I’ve been able to gather is that he either basically starved to death (in a home) because he stopped eating or he had a heart attack because he was anorectic. Blake said that John was around 100 lbs when he died and he was a very tall man. He had apparently been sick all week but no one told us that until yesterday morning. I happened to have gotten up at 7am and when you see a 248 area code on your call display at 8am on a Saturday, you answer it. So I did and it was Blake’s Aunt Pat and she was so upset because that was her brother and it’s all just very sad because he was a wonderful man and the person in the family Blake related to the most. He’s taking it pretty hard.

Originally just Blake and I were going to go to Michigan for the funeral because hey, it’s not like I have anywhere I need to be, but then he wanted to bring the kids basically for comic relief and so they could get to know the Albanian side of the family and there was a chance that his sisters would be bringing their kids as well, the youngest two Blake has never even met because they live in Lake Tahoe.

Last night Blake and I decided that it would be best if I stayed here because I’m just not ready to be that far away from home and the hospital and my nurses just yet. I would be completely self-conscious about my belly and my extremely thin hair and I’m really emotional since being sick and if anyone mentioned me being sick, I’d probably lose it like I do, still, when people bring it up here. We’re just not okay and we’re not really ready to talk about it. Also we would have to bring all of my medical supplies and pills because I have a dressing that needs changing every other day and while Blake is perfectly capable of doing it, it’s just one more thing for him to worry about so I’ll just stay home and let the nurses deal with it. Another thing is food and feeling sick and potentially throwing up. I get really worried about it and then Blake worries about it and he doesn’t need to be dealing with that on top of a funeral for someone he was really close to and keeping track of the kids.

He also wants to go visiting Michigan friends while he’s in town and he wants to stay longer than is necessary for the funeral and I just don’t have that in me. I get tired really easily. I’m on really heavy doses of certain medications that makes me forgetful, not good company and I need to be in bed by 10pm. And I usually need a nap in the morning because I get up at like 6am and then I take hydromorph. I can’t just be go go go go go which is what this week in Militiagan is going to be.

So, we agreed it’s just better for him if I stay home where he doesn’t have to worry about me when things will be stressful enough. Ronny and Alex are around if I get scared or if something bad happens and I have the dogs. The nurses will be coming every other day to change my dressing and make sure I have all the necessary medical supplies. People will be around.

And honestly? And before you call me a selfish bitch, Blake and I have discussed this; 4 or 5 days of being alone and being able to watch all the bad TV I can handle and making art in my office and eating what and when I want to and sleeping where and when I want to sounds pretty damn good to me! Blake says I can do that now, but I can’t really. Someone is always wanting my attention or I feel guilty for not giving it to them even when they don’t ask and my “me time” suffers as a result. (That sounded horrible…please don’t take that horribly.) It’s taken me 5 months to feel okay enough to even go in my office and spend the day in there, when that’s where I belong.

So that’s what’s happening.

Onto yesterday! Yesterday we went on my artist’s date and it was GREAT! I had my $10 and I decided before we left for Michael’s that I’d bust open my Buddha bank to get some change for tax in case something was $9.99 and what I found in there was $20 in twoonies, loonies and quarters! So I loaded my wallet with that and put the pennies, dimes and nickels back in the bank and off Blake and I went to Michael’s. My mission was to first of all, buy gesso because I need it both now and for Squam and now that I was $20 richer, I could afford to get it, but my artist’s date mission was to buy something for $10 that I wouldn’t ordinarily buy and then come home and make something with it.

On our way to Michael’s, Blake wanted to stop off at this health food store because right now he’s eating 5/6 meals vegan as per Knives Over Forks. He’s been using the crock pot to make veggie soups and stews for the week’s lunches and he’s been having steel cut oatmeal for breakfast. Then sometimes a salad or tofu or stuff like that for dinner (but sometimes he eats what we eat). We’ve also, as a family, completely switched to wholegrain breads and cereals but I can’t do pasta because whole wheat pasta is just way too disgusting.

Anyway, Blake went to this store while I stayed in the car and he bought tempeh and this weird soy sauce stuff that I forget the name of but he put it on his salad last night and it smelled really gross. While he was in there, I could see in my side mirror that right next door was a flower shop. Wanna know a secret about me? Flower shops are one of my favourite places on Earth. Especially in the dead of winter. When I had my job, all winter I would make sure that I had flowers on my desk because I just absolutely love them. I cannot stop touching them and smelling them and staring at them. The kind doesn’t even really matter but I love flowers where the edges of them are a different colour than the rest of their petals. Carnations and roses often have this and those are my favourites. Next I love daisies, particularly gerbera daisies because they come in all kinds of colours.

When Blake got back to the car, I told him I wanted to go to the flower shop to look around, which we did, and they had a bucket of pink and orange carnations so Blake and I decided to go halvesies on them, using the change from the Buddha and his change from the car.  I was very happy because this kind of carnation is one of my favourite flowers, I just cannot even explain my love of them, I think they’re absolutely gorgeous.

After that we were back on our way to Michael’s and when we got there they had coupons at the front of the store for 40% off any item and Blake explained to me that this was better than the coupon I had for 25% off my total purchase because I was only buying one thing and with a 40% off coupon, I could get something for like, $17 for $10.

Just because part of my mission was to go down aisles that I normally wouldn’t go down, I went down the wood aisle and looked at little wooden plaques that were around $2 and I thought I could paint girls and put them on these but ultimately I decided not to get any of those because really, how would those little wooden plaques differ from the big pieces of wood I have sitting in my office? Or even a canvas? It’s just another substrate for the same old thing!

But in that aisle, something caught my eye. It was on the very bottom shelf, kind of hidden by other things. There were 3 or 4 of them but I only needed one. It was a wooden shadowbox with a wood-framed glass door that stayed shut by magnets. And it was $17. With my coupon it would only be $10 Blake said and the moment I saw it, ideas practically melted my brain so I had to have it. So I put it in the cart, declared I was done, let’s find the gesso and get the fuck outta here.

Well, we had to go down the paint aisle to find gesso because it would make sense that it would be there. For the record, it is not, but what IS there is that gorgeous Martha Stewart paint that I love so much. I had to stay there and look at all the colours again for a little while because they are just so goddamn beautiful. What really struck me this time though, was this orange glitter paint called Orange Sorbet. Paint was not in my budget so we left the paint aisle and found the gesso which was $11. Just then I had the crafty idea that if Blake got another 40% off coupon and we went through the checkout separately, I could get the gesso for $9. So that’s what we did because we are very very sneaky!

I went through the checkout first and my shadowbox was $11 with tax and I was practically laughing on my way out to the car because I felt like I was getting away with murder! I just couldn’t believe I was getting this magnificent thing for such a low price! And then to get $11 gesso for $9 on top of that, I was laughin’!

So I got out to the car and put the shadowbox in the back seat and checked into Foursquare while I waited for Blake. I knew he’d be a while because Michael’s was having a major sale on custom framing and there were a lot of people in line behind me so I screwed around with my phone and when Blake got into the car he handed me the gesso AND the orange Martha Stewart glitter paint I oh so coveted because he is just so goddamn romantical! I almost cried!

On our way home, Blake said he was feeling kinda bummed out about John and wanted to know if I’d go out for dinner with him to this new burger place he’s been wanting to try called South St. Burger Co. so I said “sure” because they serve New York Fries, which make the best poutine in Ontario as far as I’m concerned (not counting actual poutineries in Toronto and Ottawa). So we went there and Blake got a big burger with pretty much everything on it and fries while I got a small burger with just ketchup and a small poutine and the food was great. This place only uses grass fed, free range, hormone and antibiotic-free beef and I didn’t think there’d really be a difference but there really was. It was just…beefier, if that makes any sense. Anyway, it was good and afterward we just went home.

Once I got home, I was in a pretty good mood and eager to use my new paint so I decided to smash my date into my Smash Book, so here are pictures of that:

So all in all, a good time was had by all and Blake’s mind was taken off the funeral for at least a little while and I got inspiration IN SPADES. I am going to be very very busy for the next week or two, I think! I don’t even think I’ll need an artist’s date next week! Or if I do, I think it’ll probably just be a trip to Starbucks or something (which Blake may need after being in MI for a week) because I was literally flooded with ideas yesterday. There’s no more room right now for any more because I have to get these ones out first!

Okay, now I think I’m going to go start my list of things Blake needs to get from the grocery store so I don’t starve to death while he’s gone and then I’m going to hide out in my office staring at my flowers and wiping orange glitter paint on my apron.

So the two main things in The Artist’s Way are morning pages, which I’ve been doing religiously, and the “artist dates”, which I haven’t done yet.

An artist date is something you do weekly, for an hour or so (keeping in mind that The Artist’s Way is mostly intended for people who have a 9-5 job), to “stock your pond” or “fill your well”.  I like the fish stocking analogy better, so when you’re on your artist date, you’re supposed to do things like go to a museum or a movie or Starbucks or an art gallery or an art supply store – anywhere where you may see things in an artistic perspective.

To me, that’s pretty much everywhere. I have an eagle’s eye for detail and the appreciation of the beautiful people and things around me but the other part of the artist dates is that spouses aren’t invited. She even says so in the book. Artist dates are something you have to do by yourself. Also the closest museum that I would have any interest in is in Toronto and I’m pretty sure most of the galleries around here are watercolour landscapes. I’d put money on it.

So we’re going to do the artist dates a little different. Blake’s going to give me $10 cash every week and I’m going to use that money for my artist date. Gas to get there doesn’t count with my $10. All we can afford is $10 (and barely that) but I think that’s a good number anyway because these artist dates are supposed to be FUN, not a source of grief, so $10 it is. And Blake’s coming with me because I have no other choice, really, and I don’t think he’ll detract from the exercise.

On your artist date, you’re supposed to go places that inspire you, that allow you to take mental pictures of things because as an artist, you need to “restock your pond”, you have to add mental images to your imagination. Creativity is one thing but inspiration is another. All artists paint what they see or what they have seen. Some may argue that some artists, like Jackson Pollock for example, paint from within themselves but even then, they’re painting things they’ve seen or experienced in the past because they *have* to. (Although in my opinion, Jackson Pollock made paintings that “look cool” and he got swept up in other factors that made him famous – BUT THAT’S JUST ME. I still like him though and I watch the biopic about him regularly.)

Anyway, I need to restock my pond. I need brand new little fishies swimming around in my head.

But I don’t know where to go for $10! Starbucks is a given and Blake even said that he’d drop me off there and come back for me in an hour if I actually wanted to sit down and people watch but I don’t think I could do that so he’d have to stay with me and do that. Starbucks is in the same plaza as Michael’s and I could spend many many artist dates at Michael’s. For example, I could take my $10 and use it to buy ONE THING, like blow the whole wad on ONE THING, then come home and make something with it. The reason I’d do that is because I would probably never, in a million years, pay $10 for one thing EVER, unless it’s a basic supply like varnish or gel medium or gesso etc. I’m thinking about buying ONE of the Martha Stewart scrapbooking stickers that’s really elaborate and make a card with it. Or a book mark. Those are like, $8 a piece. Or even buy TWO pieces of Martha Stewart scrapbooking paper, which are very nice but very expensive.

At Michael’s I could also challenge myself every week to go down an aisle I’ve never gone down before. Really, all I do now is go to the paint section, the jewels section, the scrapbooking paper section, the ribbon section, and the Martha Stewart scrapbooking section. It’s a HUGE store with at least 10 other aisles that I’ve never been in!

I could do similar things in Curry’s but Curry’s is more of a fine arts store and it’s pretty boring because I wouldn’t know the first thing about 75% of what’s in there BUT they do sell Golden Acrylic paint which is very expensive but I could maybe buy ONE 1oz. bottle of a colour and challenge myself to only use that colour and black & white to make something. They also sell Gelly Rolls gel pens. I have a few but could use a few more colours (all I have is a silver that doesn’t work and metallic pink). I’m not sure what the challenge could be with those but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Do you guys have any ideas as to what I can do on my artist dates for $10 or less? I’d love to hear it! (But keep in mind that I’m in Canada and things are a little bit more expensive up here, unfortunately.)

Now I’m off to watch the Toddlers & Tiaras season finale that I missed last night and do those damn morning pages. But first I think I need waffles.

Happy Thursday!

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Tomorrow is TUESDAY, which means, no nurses, no kids and no Blake – it’s my DAY OFF! I’m so stoked! Here is what tomorrow will ideally entail because I do better with structured days than unstructured ones:

• Morning pages (I’m doing The Artist’s Way again. Last time I did it for a week and gave up, this time I’m doing it for real because I think the crux of my depression is that I’m creatively blocked. Very little makes me unhappier.)
• Waffles with REAL maple syrup (because my mommy loves me) and butter
• Moulin Rouge and sketching (I got brightly coloured feathers on my last trip to Michael’s and I want to use them in a burlesque painting)
• Burlesque (with Xtina Aguilera) and more sketching
• Figure out what to do with BEADS. If anyone has any idea on what I could do with brightly coloured glass seed beads, I’d love to hear it. I mean like, in my paintings, not in general. They were on clearance in tubes for $1 at Michael’s a while back, good quality ones too, so I got a whole bunch of them  and they’re really really pretty. The only thing I’ve been able to think of for them is to make them gravel in mermaid paintings. There’s gotta be a better use for them.
• Read The Artist’s Way for at least an hour.
• Read Painted Pages, which came today, for at least an hour.
• By that time, the kids should be home, so I’m going to see if Madison wants to watch The Sweetest Thing because that was the movie I won in the grocery store’s colouring contest (actually it’s 3 movies on 1 disc but the other two are stupid; Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and My Best Friend’s Wedding)
• While we watch the movie, I’ll finish my last Sketchbook Project sketchbook page.
• Salmon steak and salad for dinner

Then the rest of the evening is a mystery! I know I’ll watch something with Blake, maybe The Tempest if there’s nothing else on TV because I know we have that downloaded and maybe we have The Ides of March too (I hope so, Ryan gosling, rawr) but whatever we watch, I’ll be working on Argent’s painting, which is fast becoming the bane of my existence because I keep FUCKING IT UP but hopefully tomorrow I’ll get a handle on it.

Tonight we’re having steak and grilled garlicy buttery potatoes for dinner (with peas!), and the Leafs are playing the godforsaken Islanders and we’re gonna win GODAMMIT and that’s all I have to say about that.

Today was pretty uneventful. I sat in my office all day and watched Oprah-related television while I wrote in my Artist’s Way workbook about my issues right now involving all things creative, then I started reading The Artist’s Way from the beginning because the last time I picked it up, according to my last morning pages, was the winter of 2005 and that was before I went nuts and considering I remember very little in this house before I went nuts, I figured I should just start all over again instead of where my bookmark had left off. Evidently I only read a chapter of the book the first time around too. No wonder it didn’t help me.

Janice was my nurse today. I like Janice, she’s nice and bubbly and funny and probably my favourite out of all of them. She also listens to me, for the most part, whereas the others don’t really. :o/

Anyway, I spent most of my day away from the internet and it was pretty great, so I think I’ll do the same tomorrow. I need to have better days than the ones I’ve been having, that’s for sure.

Have a lovely evening!

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It’s finally here!!! The Smash Book I ordered (with my birthday money) last month finally got here today and I figured I’d write about it because when I Googled it originally, there wasn’t a lot of information about them that wasn’t “official”. First I’ll show you the official videos from YouTube so you can get an idea of what a Smash Book is:

If you go on YouTube and search for “Smash Book”, you’ll find the official videos like above, but you’ll also find “flip through” videos from people who have started using their Smash Books, as well as flips through homemade Smash Books. (Some are good and some are lame. And some are made by 12-year-olds so before you judge one as “lame”, consider the source!)

So by now you’re probably wondering what in the holy hell IS a Smash Book, because I certainly wondered myself after watching the videos and getting a two-tweet explanation from my friend Jazmin. Like I said, I Googled and there was very little out there that really explained the concept. A Smash Book is basically a scrapbook or more to the point, a journal with ephemera. The idea is that you use the accessories – which I’ll get to in a minute, just you wait – to “smash” into the book your memorable receipts, ticket stubs, notes, ideas, lists, doodles and stuff like that. Ideally what you would do is keep the book and a few of the accessories in your purse or bag and when inspiration strikes or whatever, you pull the book out and smash in your thoughts.

Like say you were at Starbucks waiting for your date to arrive. You’ve never met him before, it’s a blind date, and you’re feeling nervous because he’s not there yet. You take out your Smash Pad, which is a pad of lined paper that looks pretty (basically) and you jot down your feelings. Then you use the Smash Stick, which is a pen on one end and a glue stick on the other, to glue that little piece of paper onto a pre-printed page that has a picture of a cup of coffee on it. You close the book just as your date walks in and as you’re putting the book back in your bag, he sits down and he has the loveliest smile you’ve ever seen. Instantly you feel butterflies in your tummy and you can’t help but blush and smile back as you push your warm hand into his and shake gently, never taking your eyes off of his.

The date goes wonderfully and you can’t help but think that this could be the start of something big. He leaves before you and when you stand up to go yourself, you see both of your cups sitting on the table and inspiration strikes. You quickly take the lid off of his and cup it into yours and you walk back to the office. Once there, you pull the cups apart and cut out your names from each of them, flattening them against your desk. You take your Black Dots Smash Tape and carefully tape each cup piece onto the page in which you jotted your thoughts previously, leaving space to write out the details of the date when you get home.

THAT, my friends, is a Smash Book. Here’s mine, I got the Retro Blue Smash Folio:

Attached to the book are Smash Bands, the black and white thing and the blue thing. They’re just over-sized elastic bands.

Inside the book are pre-printed pages. Some are nice and some I’m not really sure what to do with because they’re cohesive on their own and it would be weird to write and “smash” over them. Like some of them have a lot of words on them that all fit together or one big photograph across the whole page and it seems (to me anyway) that you “shouldn’t” smash over them. On the page above, it would seem “wrong” to start smashing over the left page, don’t you think? But you’re totally supposed to! I think, anyway! That’s what people are doing in their YouTube videos, so I guess you just do whatever? That’s going to be hard for me.

These are Smash Sticks. The top one is black pen on one side and the bottom is pink pen on one side and they both have the glue stick on the other end. I think these are genius. The black one came with the book and I ordered the pink one. Actually, I thought the book CAME with a coloured one, I assumed blue, which is why I ordered the pink one. I don’t mind the black one at all, I was just surprised when I opened the package.

This is a Date Smash Stamp and I have mixed feelings about it. First of all, it was $5.49, which was the most expensive thing, besides the book, in my order but I got it precisely because I’ve wanted a date stamp for a long time and they’re normally like, $10-$15 at Michael’s so when I saw this one for significantly less, I jumped on it. And as an added bonus, it has interesting phrases too. Now realistically I’m not going to keep a stamp pad and a messy stamp in my bag, this is something you use at home after the fact, but I think it’s cute and I also think it’ll get a lot of use beyond the Smash Book.

These are brads (Smash Captions – although I have no idea why they’re called that because they’re not captions o_O) with the added bonus of the little date pad at the bottom. Brads are good for adding little pinwheels to your pages maybe, or securing thicker stacks of paper. If you’re unfamiliar with brads, they are metal with little winged backs that you spread to secure them to the back of the paper you’re pinning, like this:

These ones are very pointy and sharp, so you could have some of these in your Smash Kit in your purse or bag and be able to use them “on the run” without needing a hole puncher, depending on what you’re trying to do with them. For most things, I think they’d be pointy enough to go through the paper.

This is Black Dots Smash Tape, which was a whopping $3.29 and if I was paying ANY attention, I probably wouldn’t have bought this. It is washi tape, which you can get at any craft or art supply shop for about the same price, but you can get nicer ones. And I happen to have 3 rolls of it in my office that I never use for anything, including black, so I really didn’t need this. That said, you do get a lot more tape in the Smash roll than you do in the DeSerres one.

This is a Smash Clip and it came in a set of 6 for $3.29. They’re metal and various colours and they say things like “Yes!”, “LIKE”, “WANT”, “CANDY”  and then there’s a green one with a mustache. They’re really just fancy metal bookmarks but I like them and think they were worth every penny.

These are Paper Smash Tabs and what you do with them is you use your Smash Stick and you fold these in half, gluing each inside and you fold and attach them to the side of a page so you can find it later. Then you write whatever you want on the blank part (or do it beforehand, that would make more sense).

These are Secret Smash Pockets and they’re about two inches tall with their flaps down. 6 for $2.19! What a deal! I actually got 3 different types of pockets/envelopes (the Secret Smash Pockets are actually more like envelopes) and my beef with all of them is that they SHOULD have come with a double-sided adhesive strip or two on their backsides rather than making us rely on our Smash Sticks. Glue stick glue is okay for light things but the pockets could get pretty weighty depending on what we’d put in it and I’d feel better if they were stuck in using double-sided tape. I fully intend to add double-sided tape to my pockets before I put them in my Smash Kit.

More pockets, these ones are pretty big and would take the whole bottom of a page.

These ones are also big but they hold a whole month’s worth of calendar so I think I’ll be buying more of these. In the background you can see the Smash Clips on the left and on the right are Red & Blue Smash Stickies and Write In Smash Stickies which are just little stickers that have pictures and sayings on them. I forgot to take individual pictures of those. Oops!

These are the aforementioned Smash Pads. They’re just these little pads of pre-printed paper and each pad has themes. Here are a few examples:

These will definitely be a part of my Smash Kit, which I’ll carry around with me in my bag for moments of inspiration. I already have a little book that I carry around in my bag that’s similar to a Smash Book, I suppose, but I don’t carry around things to put in it and it’s not as big as the Smash Book. Instead of writing in that little book, I’ll probably write things on my Smash Pad and smash them into the Smash Book. Smash smash smash!

What I really like about the whole concept of the Smash Book is that it’s made to be portable and it’s really for people like me who have a hard time with a traditional scrapbook or art journal. I don’t really print photographs (expensive, my printer sucks) so I don’t scrapbook and I am HORRIBLE at art journaling for reasons I’ve previously explained, so the Smash book is really perfect for me.

I get really really antsy in public places, that’s part of my agoraphobia obviously, but with this to play with, I could probably sit in Starbucks (or wherever) for an hour and have a conversation with Blake if I wanted to and not worry about people staring at me. In fact, I plan on testing out that theory once I find a good container to use for my Smash Kit. I mean, I could even whip out my Smash Book while I’m waiting for a movie to start and Blake’s left me to get popcorn and drinks so I don’t lose our ticket stubs. I’d just open the book, select a page, whip out my Smash Stick and glue them in. Normally I tape my ticket stubs into my paper journal (where I write pages and pages and pages of text) and don’t really do anything with them other than that, but I do save them all and this is just another way of doing things.

The Smash Book has kind of been controversial in the art journaling community but I don’t think the criticisms are fair. Comparing the Smash Book to art journaling is really an apples and oranges thing, I think.

Anyway, do you have a Smash Book? Can I see it? If you don’t have one, would you be interested in one? I’m just curious to see if I’m alone in my excitement over it. Let me know!

X-posted to Live Journal!

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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

I spoke to my mother yesterday morning and we filled out our registration forms together to make sure we’d be in the same cabin. We’re not taking the same classes, but I think that’s a good thing because that way we can teach each other the things we’ve learned. Last night I put down my deposit and today Blake’ll mail the registration form. Keep your fingers crossed that I get the classes I want! A lot of the spring ones are already full! (But we’re going in September.)

My first choice classes were (was?) Spirit Session on the Thursday, Pages & Paint on the Friday and Vinyasa yoga on the Saturday morning.

Spirit Session is a photography class where the teacher shows you how to use the settings on your camera. I know most of the settings on my little camera, at least enough to get by, but I have no idea how to use our Digital Rebel SLR (I don’t even understand what SLR *is* – Blake’s tried explaining it to me a few times and I just don’t get it). The Rebel is first gen so it doesn’t do video, which sucks, and technically it’s Blake’s camera. I’d really like to get a newer one of my own one day because I have a hard time using someone else’s something, know what I mean? Like I’m afraid of messing up settings or something. But at least I’ll be learning how to use it for whenever I get my own and hey, maybe I’ll find out that my little camera is enough camera for me. Who knows.

Pages & Paint is a mixed media class where I think we create two pieces. The teacher, Sarah Ahearn Bellemare, wrote a book that came out this spring, called Painted Pages: Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media that I’ve added to my wishlist and that I’d really like to get for my birthday. Blake won’t get it for me, because he already got me a Smash Book (more on that in a future post) and Smash Book accessories, but maybe my mom or someone else might get it for me. Because I’m in Squam-mode, this book is all I can think about and I read every page of the preview on Amazon and it actually looks like a pretty decent book. So many of these types of books are just basically excuses for the artist to show her work and they don’t really teach you anything. This one teaches you something, it teaches you mixed media techniques and gives you uses for mixed media elements. Like, for example washi tape. Pretend I have no idea what to do with washi tape. This book would tell me what to do with washi tape. The book just looks good and I want it, dammit.

Vinyasa yoga is vinyasa yoga. Vinyasa is really just continuous movement. Because both yoga classes take place on Saturday morning with the same teacher, I’m guessing that if the majority chooses Vinyasa, we do Vinyasa, but if the majority of people choose “Gentle yoga” then we’ll be doing “Gentle yoga”. My mom and I don’t really care either way. I put Vinyasa down for my first choice but Gentle down for my second and third.

Belinda and her boyfriend, Brian, are coming too but I’m not sure what they’re picking for classes. I know Bel wants to take Tell It, which is a writing class but I’m not sure if she actually picked it or not. When I talked to her last night, she was still just deciding whether or not to go so I have no idea what classes she ended up choosing.

I’m not totally sure what my mom picked either but I think she said her first choices were Story Scarves and Raw Matters. Story Scarves is exactly what it sounds like, you make a scarf with your story on it, whatever that may be, not like, Little Red Riding Hood. Raw Matters is a writing course.

I’m kinda getting nervous though, because as I was getting the links to make this post and as my registration envelope is sitting on Blake’s desk, ready to go out, one of the fall classes is already closed! It’s not one of the ones I wanted to take, but I’m pretty sure it was one of my mom’s choices (Gypsy Heirloom). Eeeeep! That one though, is actually off-campus at an artist’s jewelry studio, so it probably had a very small number of spaces to fill. Still, I know my mom picked that one either for a first or second choice. :o/

Before I decided Squam was a possibility, I felt out the atmosphere around Sunnyland to see where the financials may come from and a number of you said that you’d be willing to donate to the cause. I’ve decided to do a ChipIn to collect donations/birthday gifts but I haven’t set it up yet because I’m not 100% sure of how much I’ll need. I know I’ll need $1200 for tuition and $200 for gas and I know one night they don’t feed us so we’ll have to go to a restaurant and there are some supplies on the class materials lists that I don’t have (I may be able to make a “grey card”? I’m still not totally sure what that is, it’s a photography thing) and on the last day of Squam they have an art fair and I may want to purchase a book or something if the financials work out that way so I’m still working out the bugs. Another example is that we’re camping in the woods and the only flashlight I own that works is one you’d put on a keychain, so I’ll have to buy a flashlight and a pack of extra batteries (possibly, I’m not sure what we have for rechargables). I also don’t own an umbrella, which I may need if I’m taking a primarily outdoor photography class and it’s raining. I also really, really want an apron for my birthday – which is March 1st, by the way – one like this:

When I paint and I get some on me or there’s excess or whatnot, I wipe/rub the paint into the arms of my chair because it’s canvas and soaks it right up. Not only am I getting a new chair eventually, likely within the next year because mine’s kaput, but when I go to Squam, I won’t have my chair. I need to get in the habit of wiping the paint somewhere else, that’s not my pants (I’m bad for that too) and I also could use an apron for when I’m splatter painting so I’m not ruining perfectly good t-shirts. I wasn’t really sure where you even buy aprons, but I went to the Curry’s website and this one looked pretty good for only $7.99. Canvas is good. White’s not my colour, but it wouldn’t be white for very long, I suspect. Anyway, I want it and that’s just an example of the little things I’m going to have to buy for this trip – oh, bug spray’s another one – that I’m going to have to sit down and think about before I’ll know the financials. Believe me though, you guys will be the first to know once I figure it out. OH! I’m also going to need a passport or an enhanced driver’s license to get across the border. I think a passport’s $80, not sure about the license. I’ll get whatever’s cheapest I guess. I still maintain that I’ll be able to get over the border just fine with a license and a birth certificate, but my mom insists that I have exactly what is needed to go to the US as dictated by the border patrol’s website, which I haven’t had a chance to look at yet.

Thank god this is 9 months away, there’s so much to do! Lists to make! Things to acquire! BUT IT IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN!

My mom asked me yesterday – and I think it was a totally legit, fair question – how my agoraphobia was going to factor in and I told her what my shrink told me a couple of years ago when I asked her the same thing in regards to Touched By Fire, she said that if I’m in a place where my role is defined, I’ll do better than in a place where it is not. For example, at Touched By Fire, my role is “artist” so I know what I’m supposed to do and what’s expected of me but at the Leafs game last year, my role is NOT defined or is defined very loosely, so I can’t function. As far as Squam, my role is “artist” and “student”, two things I’m very good at, so the agoraphobia shouldn’t be a problem. There will definitely be some social anxiety but I have good drugs for that and my mom and Belinda will be there so I should be fine. And I’m like a dog, I like car rides (as long as the person driving isn’t a maniac) and I’ve driven to NYC from here like, 40 times which is the same distance, so I’m not worried about it. I *am* a little worried about being tempted to smoke with my mom smoking in the car and this trip being a little bit stressful, but I figure I’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Plus, Belinda wouldn’t let me smoke anyway and my mom won’t want to share, so I’ll probably be fine. By the time the trip rolls around, I’ll have been a non-smoker for 17 months, if I did the math right (I quit in May 2011, the trip is Sept. 2012).

It’s going to be a really good time, I think. It’ll be September so it won’t be too cold (unless you’re a wuss) but I don’t think we’ll be going swimming. I’m going to bring a bathing suit just in case though. I’m also going to bring a travel mug for tea and I’m going to get my mom to bring her electric kettle for tea in the cabin. I’m going to bring two cases of Diet Coke (the cabins have ice boxes, but I don’t know how big they are – doesn’t matter, I can drink room temperature Diet Coke) and a water bottle for water (duh). I drink a LOT, I dunno why, I’m just *always* thirsty. My mom got me this kickass cup that looks like a take-out cup from Starbucks, but it’s NOT the one from Starbucks, it’s BETTER because it’s MAPLE LEAFS and I love it. It’s for Diet Coke from the bottle though so I won’t be bringing it with me. I need cans so they’ll be more portable in a backpack. The one class, Pages & Paint, they want you to bring your favourite colours of paint so, money permitting, I’d like to get my favourite colours of paint in the Martha Stewart line. Black & white are fine with what I’ve got (Americana) and I have a few colours of Martha’s but I’d like to have some more to bring with me because it really is just excellent stuff. In the pictures on the Squam site, they’re all using Golden acrylics which are very very expensive. They’re the best, but I simply cannot afford that paint. I’ve been using Americana since the beginning but now that I’ve used Martha’s paint, I’ll never buy another bottle of Americana as long as she keeps making paint – it’s that good. I’d like to try her crackle medium to see how it fares against DecoArt’s Weathered Wood, which I’ve also used since the beginning, and she’s got some other mediums I’d like to play with as well, but that I don’t necessarily need for Squam. All I need for Squam is about $25 worth of colours, if they’re on sale. OH! ANd I’m going to have to bring all of my glitter of course – which I will gladly share with anyone who would like any because I have TONS and sparkle is just meant  to be shared!!!

When we were at my mom’s for “second Xmas”, she put out her cheese ball (gross!) with all kinds of crackers and stuff to spread it on and one of the things she put out were Ritz Munchables Pretzel Crackers. That’s the US site and I guess they have “buttery” and “cheesy” flavours but we have “original” and I think Blake said they had “sour cream and onion” or “ranch” or something like that at the store too. Anyway, the ones my mom got were “original” and they were amazing. Between the 7 of us, we easily polished off the entire box and last night Blake went to the store and brought home a box and between yesterday and this morning, I’ve eaten almost the whole box BY MYSELF. They should rename these things to Ritz Pretzel Crack! They’re hard to describe, you really just have to try them. They’re like Ritz crackers, they’re buttery like a Ritz, but they’re made out of pretzel dough so the outside is crunchy like a pretzel and they put coarse salt on top of them. They’re fucking GREAT. 18 thumbs up.

At 2pm today I have to have a root canal that’s apparently going to take an hour and a half to complete. :o( Nothing more to add to that except that it sucks. :o(

I feel like there was something else I wanted to say but I can’t remember what it is so I guess I’ll just end this post here and make a new post if I remember what it was.

OH! Now I remember!

I e-mailed Magic Pony/Narwhal Gallery on Wednesday I think. Here’s what I said:

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Hi.
From: “S. Crittenden” <Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com>
Date: Wed, January 11, 2012 1:55 pm
To: contact@narwhalartprojects.com
contact@magic-pony.com
————————————————————————–

Hello there!

My name is Sunny Crittenden and I’m an artist living just a bit north of
Barrie.

In December I was in the art show Touched By Fire at Cooper’s Fine Art
Gallery and there I sold my painting entitled “Black & White”. This is it:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=7319

It was at Touched By Fire that I met Colette French, the gallery’s
director, and she told my husband to call her once the holidays were over
because she had a space in mind for my work. That space was Magic
Pony/Narwhal Gallery.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been to your space before and I rarely venture
into the city. I’m agoraphobic so I rarely venture into my own town of
2,000 people! However, your websites look interesting and I agree with
Colette that my work may fit in quite well. I was wondering what you might
think?

Here is the gallery of my work:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php

Unfortunately my paintings don’t come across well in photographs because
they’re very very sparkly. I’m no photographer so I have no idea how to
photograph them as they are, so instead, I’ve taken a few short videos of
them, which show their sparkles better. Here they are:

1. http://youtu.be/IVsMx04gmb4
2. http://youtu.be/Ndudc9kjknc
3. http://youtu.be/zjVIUIhn-yU
4. http://youtu.be/_cDL-nPvLaI

Colette said that if the pictures and videos weren’t convincing enough,
that she would be willing to bring some of my pieces to your shop herself
to see what you thought.

I am brand new to the art world. I’ve just been selling my paintings on
Etsy for the past few years and this is my first time trying to sell/show
them outside of my own website and Touched By Fire. I’m not really sure
how this all works.

Thanks for your consideration,
Sunny Crittenden

Magic Pony hasn’t gotten back to me, but I got a nice rejection letter from Narwhal Gallery last night:

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Re: Hi.
From: “Narwhal Art Projects” <contact@narwhalartprojects.com>
Date: Thu, January 12, 2012 7:57 pm
To: sunny@sunnycrittenden.com
————————————————————————–

 

Hi Sunny,

Thanks so much for your email and for sending us some
of your work. At the moment we aren’t taking on any new artists as we’re
fully booked for the next couple of years – however we’ll make sure to
keep an eye on your website for future consideration. Good luck with
your artwork and all the best!

Kristin

Sooooo so much for that! But there may still be the possibility of Magic Pony maybe? I’m not sure if the rejection was JUST from Narwhal or if it was from both and I’m not sure if I should ask or if I should just leave it and wait for a reply and then if I don’t get one, I get Blake to call Colette to see what we should do next? I have no idea how this stuff works. And who knows, maybe Colette doesn’t have any other ideas either. It’s too bad though because I really do think my stuff would fit in well at Magic Pony. :o/

Okay I think that’s all I wanted to say. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Peace oot! <3

I’m not having such an easy time of things these days. You’d think that I’d be excited about my new website, but I’m not really, in fact I’m downright conflicted about it. I just have to remind myself that we’re laughing at product, not people. Everyone, including and maybe even especially me, has made crap instead of craft before. It’s just something that happens and if you don’t laugh at it, you’ll never get past it and make something better.

I keep thinking about how I’d feel if my stuff wound up on Regretsy and the answer is, I sort of already have. Many times my abortion painting was submitted or posted in the comments (I know this due to Analytics) and honestly? I felt kind of honoured. I know Regretsy is a joke. I know enough to laugh at it and myself. I hope the same thing for Chagrinterest and the crafts we feature.

In other news, I have the toothache from hell. It’s a tooth on the left side of my mouth, 3rd one back. There is so much pressure in the tooth I swear it could explode into a million pieces at any given moment. The roof my my mouth and the gums on that side are all swollen and it’s not just that took that hurts, it’s all of them on the top left, almost all the way to my front left tooth. I’ve been taking Tylenol 3, Extra Strength Ibuprofen and I’ve been using Extra Strength Anbesol and that’s all been helping (as has, I’m sure, the hydromorph) but I’m still in massive amounts of pain and can’t get in to see the dentist until the 10th. I’m actually praying that the nerve dies in the meantime, although I think the nerve dying is actually a bad thing, for some reason, but I can’t remember why.

This morning I finally finished reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and I have to say that I actually enjoyed it more than Freedom, which I also liked a lot because I found the characters more relateable, which spellcheck is telling me is not a word.  Relate-able? Whatevs. It was good and funny and I think it’s going to be hysterical when and if it actually gets made into a movie. Apparently Franzen has written a screenplay of it for HBO and since HBO is usually pretty good about these things, I have high hopes for it.

The next book I should be reading is The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides because I got that for Xmas, but I decided to start reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo instead because we saw the movie on Boxing Day and I loved it. I am absolutely in love with Lisbeth Salander, both the character and the girl who played her in the movie. I realize that the movie is really a remake of a foreign film (Swedish I think?) but I don’t do subtitles, as a rule, so I’ll probably never see that version. Blake said that both movies were pretty much the same though, so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not watching the subtitled one. Blake also said that the book is more in-depth (I found the movie a little hard to follow because I think it assumes you’ve read the book), which is usually the case, and that’s why I’m reading it next. I have all three books and I’m going to read them all in a row.

Speaking of movies, the theatre at the Bayfield Mall, which is where we saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, has their concession stand outside of the theatre now, which is great because you can get movie popcorns without actually going to see a movie. I love movie popcorns. Movie popcorns are half the reason I even see movies in a theatre. I don’t care if movie popcorns are 5 billion calories either because when I eat movie popcorns, I consider it one of my meals for the day and adjust accordingly. Therefore, tonight, I am having movie popcorns for dinner. It’s really the only way you can eat the stuff and not weigh 30 trillion lbs.

Last night I had beef & broccoli stir-fry from the local Chinese food restaurant and it was pretty gross. We usually get Chinese food from a place at the beach, which is about 15 mins away, but I knew Blake wouldn’t feel like driving there last night and I really wanted beef & broccoli for dinner, so I was like, “let’s just get it in town”. We’ve only had Chinese food in town once and it was awful (the rice was YELLOW) so we never got it again but I’d forgotten how awful it was. My beef & broccoli had these little nasty black beans in in that looked so much like blood clots I couldn’t even finish what I’d put on my plate. I was just way too grossed out. Not to mention that the sauce was really thick and tasted mostly like bouillon cubes. Beans have no place in beef & broccoli. It is not called “beef & broccoli & beans”, it is called “beef & broccoli” and I expect only that to be in it, with maybe some onions and okay, some celery I can deal with, and maybe even a few carrot slivers. But beans? NO fucking way. Beans are vile little things that have no business on my plate, period. Ugh.

Anyway, that’s basically life right now. I’m not doing anything even remotely productive and I’m trying to be okay with that because right now I don’t really feel like doing anything productive except working on Argent’s painting. I *should* be working on my sketchbook but honestly? I think I’m just going to finish the page I’m working on, put in my quotes and call it finished. I don’t think I can finish it in its entirety by the deadline anyway and I really need to be working on the Limited Edition sketchbook and finish that one entirely because that one’s going to be in a special edition art book. (Or parts of it.) I think after this year, I’m not going to do the Sketchbook Project again because it’s too much work and too much stress for basically no reason. We’ll see.

Okay I’m going to go start this book and eat apple turnover sticks. They’re both calling my name!

So here’s how my turkey soup turned out:

It was okay. :o/

I liked the meat, it was really really tender but not stringy like I had hoped it would be. The turkey soup/stew of my dreams has almost a “pulled” consistency to the meat but I guess you have to manually do that. I didn’t know that.

Doing it over again, I wouldn’t put in sweet potatoes OR I would have cooked it for a shorter period of time because the sweet potatoes pretty much turned to mush. I don’t like sweet potatoes to begin with so I don’t even know why I insisted on putting one in. I fed my sweet potato lumps to the dogs.

Next time I won’t add a TABLESPOON of cayenne pepper. In hindsight, that was just retarded. (Blake liked it though. Me & the kids, not so much.)

So that’s my soup update. With the first bowl I was all, “I love the crock pot!” but that was because I skimmed off the top. The second bowl was actually stirred and it made my nose run. I couldn’t even finish it.

ARGENT DON’T READ ANY FURTHER BECAUSE I CANNOT KEEP A SECRET!

(more…)

Dinner is finished, the dishes are being done. Blake and I ate so much we feel like barfing, although I’m probably the only one who really might. Xmas 2011 was an unmitigated success.

As previously mentioned, Ronny and Alex slept over last night and we all did presents this morning, followed by a big breakfast, Pokemon and eventually, napping. Ronny and Alex didn’t stay the afternoon because Alex’s dad was making turkey dinner at their house so they left about the same time as when I laid down to sleep.

After I woke up, I messed around on Pinterest for a bit and checked my e-mail and then Blake and I went into my office and watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes which I thought was just okay. I wasn’t as blown away by it as some of my friends were. I think I just really hate James Franco and I thought the ending was sloppy. When it was over I was like, “that’s IT?” because it seemed like there should have been more movie at the end. I mean, I guess they tied it up at the end with the epilogue during the credits but I still felt like there should have been more. While we watched the movie, Blake and I made paper snowflakes, which I’m going to use to decorate the living room window. (But we have a lot more to make before I can do that.) During this time, the turkey was cooking.

After the movie, we all kinda went and did our own thing. Wes played his new Phineas and Ferb video game, Blake played his new Star Wars game, Madison coloured with her new Prismacolour pencil crayons (she now has more of them than I do! Brat!) and I ran around taking pictures of things, which I’ll share with you now.

This is No Drought by Lush, which Wes got me. It’s a dry shampoo.

You put it in your hair if you don’t have time to wash it, so it soaks up your hair’s oil.
It smells citrusy and wooooonderful!

This is Northern Lights soap, also by Lush:

Madison says it smells like Windex.
I disagree but I don’t know what to say it does smell like.
I just think it looks cool.

This is my new book, from Blake:

 I have no idea what it’s about but I’m betting it’s awesome.

Little known fact about me (?), I collect quartz crystals.
I don’t think Lisa knows that, but she got me a couple.
These are all of my little ones.
I have a bunch of large crystal wands too, but these are my little ones:

The two on the bottom left are the new ones.
The bottom crystal is actually a rusty amethyst, which I also collect.
(She also gave me the tin.)

This one’s kinda neat because it’s cut for the express purpose of rubbing in your pocket with your thumb:

She gave me two other stones too, that are supposed to be for “healing” but I think that’s bunk so I gave them to Madison. Lisa also gave me a book on “nutritional healing” all about using vitamins and herbs to heal yourself but I think that’s bunk too and a little insulting, I think, considering the nature of my illness, so I don’t really know what to do with it. I’ll just smile and nod and say “thank you”. She got Blake some weird mustard that he’ll probably really enjoy, which is a first (usually he gets chocolate, which he doesn’t like), so he’s happy. I got him the new(est) Bastard Fairies EP.

This is my new crock pot recipe book.
I flagged a few recipes…

This is happening tomorrow:

And this is my favourite gift, from Madison, because it was the most thoughtful.

I *love* Atomic Fireballs and Lemon-Heads.
They’re made by the same company and are pretty much impossible to find up here.
Madison and Blake went to a specialty candy shop to get them.
The Whistle Pops I remembered from when I was little and I’d told Madison about them and she found them at this shop.
There are also “party snaps” in the box, which are those gun powder things you throw at the ground and they make a snapping sound.

This is Wes with the wolf toy that Lisa got him.
In case I haven’t mentioned it, he’s obsessed with wolves.

Here’s the lovely young lady of the house…

Here’s my beloved…

This is what he was drinking while he made mashed potatoes and gravy:

Gobble gobble, motherfuckers!

Mashed potatoes, whipped smooth…

An Xmas feast…

And finally, mooches…

Hoover has had a crusty nose ever since we switched him to diet dog food.
He’s lost weight, which the vet is happy about, and she’s not worried about his nose, so I’m choosing not to worry either.

And that was Xmas 2011.
It was a lot of fun, but I’m glad it’s over.
I think it’s time for tea and then bed.

For Xmas, I made Wes and Alex Golden Snitch* ornaments, based on this tutorial and I think they turned out pretty well (although I think I might have made the wings too big):

I used acrylic metallic paint for the Snitch’s markings and instead of tissue paper and glitter for the wings like in the tutorial, I used pre-glittered cardstock from Michael’s and I just sandwiched two wings with Gorilla Glue so there would be glitter on both sides. Then I attached the wings with a combination of Gorilla Super Glue and rubber cement, which I discovered made an instant bond when used together (I got tired of waiting for the Gorilla Glue to dry, so I put rubber cement on the wings and when I stuck them to the ornament, they bonded immediately. I probably lost brain cells from the combined fumes, but yay Snitch!) For the tag, I just used these little blank tags my mom gave me a million years ago (that I need more of *cough*) and then I used rubber stamps (at 3am) to write their names. When the ink was dry, I stuck the ornaments on the tree and went back to bed.

When Wes woke up, he immediately knew what it was and was really impressed by it. Alex seemed to like hers too, when she woke up. The Pikachu ornament was also a hit.

From “Santa”, I got a crock pot and a crock pot cookbook, which I just went through and flagged everything in it that I would eat, which was a lot! I probably used like, 25 Post-It flags!

In the book, there’s a recipe for “Boxing Day Turkey Soup” which is totally going to happen tomorrow, except I’m going to thicken it so it’s stew, and I’m VERY VERY VERY excited about this because it’s pretty much my favourite food! After that’s all gone, I think I’m going to try my hand at chili with ground turkey like Blake’s mom made once and I really liked. (I normally wouldn’t touch chili because of the spice and the beans but when she made it, it was really good and I’ve been wanting to make it for like, 10 years, and the book has a recipe.)

Right now Alex and Wes are playing Pokemon with Wes’ new 3DS and Madison is spending the iTunes card we got her. Blake is in the kitchen getting the turkey started while he and Ronny talk about music because they are nerds. And I’m just fucking around on Pinterest and contemplating a nap because I got up at 3am to finish the Snitches and get them on the tree, then I went to bed until about 6:45am and I’ve been up ever since. I am exhausted. (Thanks, hydromorph…)

Blake made us all a big breakfast of mini croissants, whole grain toast, eggs, bacon, sausage and waffles so I’m full too.

So I think I’m gonna go have that nap…I may write more later when things aren’t so crazy.

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(*The Golden Snitch is from Harry Potter. Thought I’d throw that in there since my mom is probably like, “huh?” :oP)