Yesterday afternoon, I posted this on Facebook:

I *love* glitter. I seriously think it’s my favourite thing in the whole world, I’m just completely mesmerized by it. Sometimes? And you’ll think this is really lame, but sometimes when I stay up later than everyone else or I get up earlier than everyone else, I’ll line up all my vials of glitter on my desk and just stare at them, or pick them up and twirl them around in my fingers so they sparkle. A close second are Martha Stewart’s iridescent glitter stars. The pink ones (called “sugar plum”) and white ones (called “sugar cube”) are my favourites.

 

And that’s all I have to say about that.

And Chris, my ex, posted this because he thinks he’s just SOOOOOO hilarious:

do you ever wonder about the Chinaman in the rice fields?

Then he posted THIS on Blake’s wall because he thinks he’s SOOOOOO hilarious:

(Click to enlarge)

Basically all afternoon he was teasing me about this “chinaman” thing that I feel I now have to explain (which I’m fine with, it’s actually funny I guess).

When Chris and I were together, I would live 2 weeks up here and 2 weeks with him and his parents just outside of NYC (Pearl River, if you know the area). It took about 9 or 10 hours to go one way, depending on the traffic and I didn’t drive until the very end of our relationship so 99.9% of the time, I was in the passenger seat.

One day, probably a Sunday, when we were driving through Markham, we passed some apartment buildings and I said, wistfully out the window, “hey, do you ever see apartment buildings and wonder what everyone is doing in each one at that very moment?” and he was like “what?” and I said, “sometimes I just sit very still and I think about what every living being in the world is doing at the exact same time, like the China man in the rice paddies or the polar bears at the North pole or whatever,” AND HE LOST HIS SHIT! He almost drove off the road he was laughing so hard.

I suppose it was a pretty air-headed thing to say…but I did want to make one thing clear, which he doesn’t seem to see the distinction of. When I said “China man”, I was talking about a literal man in China, not “chinaman” as in “ching chong chinaman”, the racial epithet my grama was always so fond of throwing around when I was a kid. He doesn’t think there’s a distinction, but I do.

Anyway, Chris messaged me later to apologize for hijacking my glitter status update with his crap and we got talking and he said this:

(I think of it whenever someone brings up a deeply profound thought about the meaning of life.)

So there ya go…the China man story. Consider yourself forever changed. :oP

Blake and the kids are going to be home around dinner time tonight and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Yesterday was pretty rough, I just got really lonely and really freaked out and spent most of the day crying.

Agoraphobia is so much more than the fear of leaving the house, it’s also the fear of letting people IN and for me, it’s also the fear of talking on the phone. Last night Blake said I could order a pizza and it was starting to get dark out and I didn’t want the pizza guy to come here after it got dark out because I was afraid to answer the door if it was dark (our porchlight burnt out a long time ago and it was never replaced because the wiring is shot). But I absolutely COULD NOT call the pizza place and order a pizza. I tried a few times, I had my credit card right beside me, I knew what I was supposed to say and I just couldn’t do it.

I was afraid I’d stutter (I don’t stutter), I was afraid they wouldn’t be able to hear me and I’d have to repeat myself, I was afraid they’d judge me based on my toppings (don’t even ask) or they’d judge me for ordering a small and making them bring it to me. I was afraid I’d accidentally give them the wrong credit card number, I was afraid of leaving too small of a tip, I was afraid of signing for it and it being awkward, I was afraid of every tiny detail you can think of and then about 10 more.

So I called Blake crying and explained what was happening so he, from ANOTHER COUNTRY, called the pizza place and ordered it for me. He said he told them how much to do for a tip ($3) and everything and all I’d have to do is accept the pizza when the guy came.

Well the guy came and I had to sign for the pizza which just about had me in tears and then there was a place for the tip so I wrote $3 but then when I looked at my bill afterward, the tip was already included so the guy probably just got double the tip because I didn’t know what I was doing. Although maybe they were honest (we know the owners very well, they used to be our neighbours) and saw what I did and just disregarded the tip I wrote down. I dunno. All I know is that it was awkward and scary and I’m not doing it again.

Okay, time for more pizza (I am so sick of pizza and pizza products!), morning pages and finishing my sun mandala…and to figure out if what I’m making actually IS a mandala.

A few days ago, my friend Joey Michaels wrote a post about E/N which brought back a flood of memories for those of us who were involved in it back then and then Artfag made a top secret, invite-only Facebook group where all of us old-timers have been catching up and remembering old times.

It’s so funny to think about how little has really changed for me. Out of all 80 of us, or at least the ones who have been participating, I’m the only one who’s really still blogging the same way I did back in 2000. Every single day. I’m still on Camwhores (formerly portal 9), where I’ve been since mid-2001. I still post in the E/N style, I think. On both sites.

I dunno, I just never really thought about it before today, that things never really changed for me. Everyone else is off doing grown up things and talking about “the good ol’ days” and I feel like I’m still pretty much living them. It’s never really occurred to me until today that most of the people reading this post have no idea what the E/N scene was, let alone were they a part of it. People rarely believe me when I tell that that I started blogging, like for real, before the word “blog” even existed.

Back then, camgirls were smart as well as beautiful (not saying they aren’t now, necessarily, some are, but in a totally different way) and most of them were super geeks who coded their own websites by hand. I didn’t though, I used Dreamweaver which was notorious for writing sloppy code so even though I used it, I would have to often go into html mode and fix the code by hand, so I consider it a half & half thing for me.  This is an image of the main page of the last layout (I think) I coded and created by hand. I was so damn proud of it:

If you’ve never read my “About the Site” page and are curious about my site’s history, you should check it out. There’s a link in there to my first Angelfire site even. Remember kids, everything you do on the internet is PERMANENT! What’s so funny to me about my Angelfire site is that my version of a blog sometimes back then was to write on paper, then scan it in and post that. I should do that more often NOW haha We have a new scanner but I don’t know how to use it or I would totally do that. Also I was talking to Blake about this design just last week:

When I lived in Rob’s basement when I was in high school, on one wall I made this design, except in a circle, as a huge mural. I don’t think there are any pics of it but it was pretty cool and I was pretty proud of it. I was telling Blake about it last week but I can’t remember why, except I did say that I should draw it again in my sketchbook so it wouldn’t be lost forever and lo & behold, here it is!

I don’t like poetry. I don’t like reading it and I don’t like writing it, but after Rob and I broke up, I went through a brief poetry phase. Here’s one of them:

Piss Off

Go back to where you were.

Go back into her arms.

No one needs you here,

all you do is harm.

I hoped you were in a ditch somewhere.

I hoped for blood and gore.

I hoped that you had killed yourself and

your little whore.

I wished that you were starving,

And didn’t have a home.

I wanted you to know great pain,

I wanted you to roam.

I prayed that you had been beaten,

I prayed that you were dead.

I thought that you were staying there,

and you’d stop messing with my head.

But now you’re here and I hate you more,

Than I ever thought I would.

I thought that you had finally left,

finally gone for good.

I wished that you would disapear,

Or shrivel up and die.

But you’re still here living happily,

and I still wonder why.

Why couldn’t you have been a good boy,

And slit your fucking throat?

Nothing I would love better than to

watch your dead body bloat.

Can’t win them all I guess,

But I can always hope.

If you ever want to kill yourself,

I have lots of rope.

Hahahahaha!!! Isn’t that hilarious? I also think it’s funny that on my Angelfire site, I had a “PMS page“, which was basically the original version of my “Shit I Hate” page. I’m also still really proud of this troll story I wrote. If you knew the guy it was based on, you would find it hysterically funny too! :oD

More poetry; I wrote this one for Madison when she was first born:

Too funny!

But yeah, it amazes me how much and how little has really changed since then. Especially the latter for me since I feel like I’m still in the same place, doing the same thing as I was 11 or 12 years ago or however long it’s been (I started my first site in 1997, so how long ago was that?).  On the FB group, we were talking about “what if…” and wondering why none of us ever really made it “big” in the blog world and I still don’t have an answer. It kills me that people like Dooce get all this recognition for the same thing myself and several others have been doing better and longer. What makes her so special? What makes her more marketable than us? Why did she get a book deal? I don’t get it. She’s not the only one, I’ve written about the Mormon mommy bloggers before and that whole thing STILL baffles me.

Anyway, the trip down memory lane was a welcome change from the usual. Do you remember the E/N scene? What/who do you miss the most? Spill! I miss being pretty and having nice hair. Oh yeah, I still maintain a small webcam archive, which can be found here.

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

PS. Another thing I just remembered is that a few years ago on Facebook, someone referred to me as an “internet celebrity*” and Madison saw it and was like “wtf does that mean?” so I had to show her my site and some of my Camwhores archive and explain the whole shebang to her. She actually thought it was really cool but now that she’s aware of the fact that there’s a relatively big audience, she won’t let me post everything about her anymore, which sucks, but I respect that. Wes knows about everything but my activity on Camwhores and he thinks it’s the coolest thing ever and constantly tell me what I should tell you guys about. “Tell them I did this!” he says all the time, like when I’m filing him or taking his picture. A total ham.

Okay, nurse Cheryl (ugh) is going to be here in 2 hours. I’d better get a bit more sleep.

(* It’s easy to be an “internet celebrity” when there are only 50 people on the whole entire internet haha)

Edit: Apparently Steph formerly of Delightz.net made the FB group, not Artfag and Steph wrote a really nice post about it which you can find here.

Edit #2: Here’s Artfag’s post about the whole thing.

“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Dog.”
“Dog? Dog who?”
“Polka-dot spot on a sock.”

- Claire Peate, age 4

Yesterday was a pretty good day. :o) I woke up to sunshine streaming through the front windows of the house, I was warm, I was alone (for the time being) because Blake was at work and the kids were at school and I just knew it was going to be a good day.

Around 9am, Cheryl, one of my nurses, was scheduled to come do my dressing, which the night before I was really pissy about because I didn’t want to get up early but I was glad for it when I saw the sunrise. God I love sunrise.

As I was looking out the window at bliss, the phone rang and it was my mom. She said that I should check my e-mail very carefully because she got her Squam registration e-mail. I checked and checked and checked but I didn’t get one yet. My mom said hers said that I was her roommate and that we were staying in the Longhouse, which I know is a 13+ person cabin. Let the games begin! I cannot even imagine the fights to use the bathrooms haha I will most definitely be bringing my Lush “No Drought” dry shampoo! Since my mom’s e-mail said I was her roommate, I’m assuming my e-mail will be coming shortly. So excited!

After I got off the phone with my mom, Cheryl came and that was pretty uneventful. Cheryl is a smoker and she tries to cover up the smell of the cigarettes with perfume, which just makes it worse. When she leans over me to change my dressing, it smells and I can’t stand it. Also, she comes early and I hate that, whereas Janice and Siske come in the afternoon (and they don’t smoke). BUT since I had such a great day yesterday, I’m thinking getting up early isn’t a totally horrible thing to do on “office days” (days where I stay in my office the whole day making art, as opposed to the living room/computer).

After Cheryl left, I made waffles with the REAL maple syrup my mom got me for Christmas, which is one of my favourite things in the world (if you’ve never had real maple syrup, I truly feel sorry for you because it is one of the Earth’s most wonderful treasures) and I brought them into my office and started flipping around to see what was on TV. I watched Wife Swap, the UK version, which was nice and trashy but as always, one of the moms had a revelation that her life sucked and they all became friends and it was heartwarming.

After that, I took my plate into the kitchen, filled up my drink and came back to my office to make some ~*SERIOUS ART*~ (not really) while I watched…something. I honestly don’t remember what. Something that was an hour long and was probably a talk show. Whatever it was, I worked on Argent’s painting as I watched (or more to the point, listened). Argent’s painting is turning out to be a royal pain in my ass and I can’t wait until it’s finished and out of my house! EVERYTHING I’ve tried to do with it has failed miserably and I’ve had to make corrections like crazy. It’s making me mental! But it’s almost finished and I think he’ll be happy with it and that’s all that matters.

Once Argent’s painting was in a state of “no touchies”, I started working on my girl who will be on my last page of the Sketchbook Project sketchbook.

I think I watched Ellen while I was doing this and Colin Firth and the little dog from the movie The Artist were on it. Colin was very animated and talking about Gary Oldman being “hung like a water buffalo” and the little dog was very charming. Truthfully though, I can’t see myself seeing either of their movies. Just not interested.

After that, was The View. I like this show a lot, I’ve always been a Whoopi fan, but I don’t normally watch it because when I was working, I didn’t watch TV at the same time, and after I got sick and now that I’m home all day with my thumb up my ass, I spend most of my time in front of the computer which is something I’m hoping to change and yesterday was the first step.

(Paper peony)

On The View, the women did their hot topics but they weren’t all that interesting or I’d be able to tell you what they talked about. I know there was a story where Sheri was on a plane and Courtney Love was there with a short skirt and no underbums and she caused quite a ruckus. Their guest was an old guy from that Tom Hanks/911 movie I have no interest in. I just listened and worked on my girl.

Then it was Dr. Phil and boy, what a show. o_O They had on there a guy who was into infantilism. He liked to act like an 18 month old, sleep in a crib, play with baby toys, act like a baby, eat in a high chair and wear diapers. He had a regular job at a “big box store” working nights, but when he got home in the morning, he’d put on his onesie, hop in the high chair and his poor girlfriend would feed him and change his shitty diaper. I felt so bad for her. She was doing everything for him and he never did anything for her, like nothing, and Dr. Phil was like, “are you having a relationship with an 18 month old or a 24 year old?” and the answer was an 18 month old. And she said she wanted to marry this guy and have kids with him one day, but only if he could “tone things down”, which Dr. Phil said would not happen no matter what the guy said. And it wasn’t even a sexual thing, the guy didn’t get OFF on being a baby, that’s just how he felt naturally. Which I think is weird, but fine, it’s not hurting anyone EXCEPT your significant other who you’re lying to about it and basically using. He needs to find someone whose thing in life is wanting to take care of an adult baby and that girl needs to run away as fast as she can in the opposite direction because he will never change and things will only get worse as he takes it farther and farther.

Normally I don’t watch Dr. Phil because I think it’s pretty trashy and only a few degrees away from being Jerry Springer, but if there’s nothing else on or if the topic is interesting, I’ll watch. Yesterday’s was interesting.

By then it was 4pm and the kids came burting through the door just as a Roseanne rerun came on. They asked me what the show was about and I said it was about a family a lot like ours. They decided to watch it with me and they wanted to know who in the show was like who of us in real life. I said that I was Roseanne, Blake was Dan (obviously), Becky was Madison and Wes was DJ. I also told them that it was probably the best sitcom to ever grace the airwaves. Wes was really into it (it was the episode where it was Dan and Roseanne’s 20th wedding anniversary and he took a part-time job to pay for her present) and Madison not so much. Right after the first episode there was another episode so we watched that one too and in that one, Darlene and David break up because Molly kissed David and Madison got more into it because David is on Big Bang Theory and apparently so is Darlene. This, along with Mayim Bialik, makes me think I should give that show a second chance because when I first watched it, I just wasn’t into it but everyone I know loves it and the various clips I’ve seen online of it, I really liked.

Anyway…after Roseanne, it was Golden Girls, which I knew the kids wouldn’t be so much into (although I was into Golden Girls when I was their age) but they watched it with me anyway. The two episodes we watched weren’t very good ones (one where they were remodeling the garage and Rose is dating Mr. Terrific and the other was where Rose’s boyfriend retires and wants to sail around the world) but I explained to Madison, who’s very interested in gay issues and equality, that the Golden Girls was an extremely progressive show for its time because Blanche’s son was gay and they had some episodes dealing with that, but also the show itself was about women at a time in their lives that you just didn’t – and still don’t, really – see on TV. This made her more interested in the show, but only snippets found on YouTube, not the actual episodes. I’d still really like to get the whole series on DVD or Blu-Ray. It was probably my 2nd favourite sitcom of all time.

By the time the Golden Girls was over, I’d finished my girl and stuck her in the sketchbook and today I’ll give her arms, sew the trim on her dress and give her a quote. Then all I have to do on the sketchbook is a girl for the cover and then I’m finished! YAY!

The only difference between this pic and the one above is that I inked her hair and legs/feet.
She’s just so damn pretty, I wanted to post her twice!

After Golden Girls, Wes went into the living room to watch Pokemon, which he’s obsessed with (by the way, his birthday is in 3 weeks if anyone was planning on getting him anything – e-mail me if you need our address), and I flipped around channels to see what I could find. Blake and Madison were going to the high school for like, a parent/teacher transition night type of thing  so I took that opportunity to watch something Blake would never in a million years watch with me: Toddlers & Tiaras.

I can’t help it. I love this show. I never know when it’s on, so I don’t watch it all the time or anything but every episode I’ve seen I’ve really liked. I think that show falls into 3 categories: ones where the kids are total brats to their parents on camera and therefore the episode is funny because it makes their parents look like losers, ones where the kids are really into the whole pageant and they’re just cute as hell and ones where their parents look like monsters and you feel sorry for the kids. Yesterday I saw 2 of the above.

The first one I watched was where the theme for the pageant was Groovy Girls. Or maybe that was the pageant’s name, I’m not sure. Either way, there were 3 categories in the pageant: beauty, costume of choice and one other one I forget the name of and the pageant was “full glitz”, which means that the girls had acrylic nails, spray tans and “flippers” which are like fake teeth. In this episode, all of the girls were actually really into the pageants and they were old enough to choose that this is what they wanted to do. The mothers weren’t overbearing at all, they were just supportive and this was just what they chose to do with their daughter, like any other family would do hockey or soccer. I *DO NOT* like the spray tanning and acrylic nails and fake teeth, I think that’s dumb, but it’s part of the competition, just like shin guards and helmets and sticks and shoes, so as long as the kid’s okay with it, and all these ones were, I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t have a problem with the makeup either, a lot of little girls like to play with and wear makeup. And as long as the kids are GOOD winners and losers, I don’t have a problem with it. In this show, two of the girls who apparently compete a lot and win and lose to each other all the time, are actually friends. I liked that.

Anyway, seeing the girls in their little bell bottoms and vests and sunglasses and go go boots and stuff like that was sooooooo cute. I especially liked seeing like, the 18 month – 2 year olds all dressed up in their little costumes, they were just adorable. And really,  thinking these kids were cute in their costumes is no different than Halloween. The whole show was just cute little girls being cute little girls and I enjoyed the show immensely, enough to watch a new episode that aired at 10pm.

The one I watched at 10pm was vastly different than the one I watched earlier. The one at 10 had horrible parents pushong their kids to do this when they really didn’t want to do it. The one little girl was SICK and feeling like crap but her mom made her compete anyway because the grand prize was $10,000. This mom made the poor little girl not wear her glasses when she was on stage and then belittled her when the little girl didn’t do her routine – which she’d only learned 2 DAYS prior – because the girl couldn’t see the judges or her mother in the audience telling her what to do. Then another mother, who was a hardcore Russian immigrant, was just a monster. He would withhold her daughter’s favourite stuffed bear, “Micha”, and only give it to her when she had to do pageants because apparently when the little girl held and played with Micha, her thumb would go in her mouth and this is how they stopped it. The little girl, Mia, would only get to play with Micha at pageants and seeing the reaction of the girl, who was only 4, when she got to see Micha, it was just heartbreaking. I almost cried. She was just so happy to see her friend again. Then in one of the cutaways, Mia said to the camera, “I want to do good at the pageant because that’s how I know my mommy loves me” or something like that and I *DID* cry, it was just so horrible. And worse? When Mia was on stage doing her beauty routine, she wasn’t listening to the emcee who was kinda like telling her to get off the stage but nicely and Mia’s mom flipped out and started screaming in their hotel room that the emcee hated Mia and that they had to “forget about it” (winning) and that they should just go home. In the end, Mia won a high title and $500 and the FIRST THING she wanted to do when she won was to show her mother and her mother PUSHED HER AWAY. OMG my poor heart. :o( That woman was just a horrible person and she was so blessed to have such an adorable, loving little girl and she didn’t even appreciate her in the slightest. If I can find a clip, I will show you this awful woman so you can wretch with me.

In between episodes of Toddlers & Tiaras, I actually watched a show called “I Cloned My Pet” which was the most pathetic hour of television I have ever watched in my whole entire life. These people were all fucked in the head. There was literally nothing else on except a rerun of the same Wife Swap I’d watched in the morning and that’s the only reason I watched this extremely stupid show.  EXTREMELY stupid.

After that my choices were a show about hoarding or American Idol and because hoarding shows just piss me off because the world just does not need that much excess, I chose American Idol because as much as that show bugs me, I have to admit, the auditions at the beginning of each season are always entertaining.

As I watched American Idol, I started working on an art journal page that uses vellum as bubbles which is a technique I’ve used before and I’ve always really liked, but the only vellum I had on hand was green, yellow, orange and red so my bubbles actually look a lot more like polkadots (hmmm, polkadots are also apparently two words OR one word and they have their own Wikipedia entry). It’s not finished yet and it was night by the time I started working on it which meant that the light in my office was garbage so I figured I’d work on it again today and take pictures of it tomorrow when it was finished. I have absolutely no idea what to write on the page, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd that was my (mostly) internet-free day yesterday in support of the SOPA protest! I will say one thing though: I didn’t tweet yesterday because Twitter was supposed to be part of the black out but I had TweetDeck up just out of habit and I was really disappointed by some people who I *know* knew about the blackout and who tweeted inane bullshit anyway. Some people retweeted SOPA-related things instead of posting which was better than what other people were posting, I guess, but posting at all is the opposite of the concept of a “blackout”. I really, truly thought my Twitter feed would have been completely dark yesterday but it wasn’t and it’s making me evaluate who’s on my feed and why. There are some folks I have on there who I’ve kept just to be nice, but they’re not nice to me back or they don’t interact with me so I wonder why I bother. Soooooooo, I think over the next few days, there are definitely going to be some cuts. Hopefully people won’t make a big issue about it.

Okay, going to go to my office now…WAIT, one more thing! Apparently my posts aren’t always showing up on peoples’ LJ friends lists for some reason and I don’t know if it’s my x-poster or if it’s Live Journal but I’ll x-post an entry and it’ll go through fine, but when I go to edit a post via WordPress and click “update” it’ll tell me that my password for LJ is wrong (it’s not!) and it’ll only update the version on my site. So I dunno what’s up with that. Also when I go to a Live Journal entry and manually edit a post’s userpic and mood, which I do with everything I post, I’ll come back a few hours later and the post will be back to my default userpic. The mood will still be set to what I changed it to, but the userpic will be default. So I dunno WHAT the hell is going on but if you guys on LJ don’t hear from me for a few  days, either check my actual LJ or my site. I *think* the error is with LJ because they were having a lot of problems over the weekend so I’m just waiting for them to fix their shit before I investigate further.

NOW I’m going to my office! Happy Thursday!

~*Please donate!*~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that’s resolution #1.

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

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

~*SLEEP ZzzzZzzZzzzzZzzz*~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success

So, I’m awake. I woke up around 3am and decided it was a great time to start making turkey soup in my brand new crock pot! The crock pot cookbook I got with it had a recipe for turkey soup and I more or less followed it, except I think I filled the crock pot a little too high. The instructions for the crock pot said to fill it 3/4 of the way full and I think I’m more like ALL the way full.

Sooooo I guess we’ll see what happens!

I started making the soup at 3:38am, see?

I started with a sweet potato first because the cookbook said to put your root vegetables at the bottom so they cook better. Honestly, I think sweet potatoes are actually pretty gross, but they’re good for you so that’s why I decided to throw it in.

Cutting sweet potatoes is a fucking pain in the ass which is why I only used one. We have really crappy knives and they just don’t mesh well with sweet potatoes. I actually had to use TWO knives to get the sweet potato peeled and chopped!

Next I cut up potatoes. Pretty uneventful. I used red potatoes because I think they look nicer, but really it doesn’t matter what kind of potatoes you use I don’t think, I just like to have really colourful food when I can help it. I don’t peel potatoes because I’m convinced that most of their nutritional content is found in the skins, so I just chopped them up. I didn’t end up using all 4 though, just 3, but really, I probably should have only used 2.

I almost forgot to add onions! I was getting the carrots out of the fridge and saw the onions at the bottom of the crisper drawer, so I got them out and started chopping. Truth be told, I’d rather have had red onions, but we always just get normal, everyday, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill cooking onions because they’re only like, $1 a bag when they go on sale.

I looooooove carrots. Blake and Madison have a thing against cooked carrots, which I totally do not understand, but Wes and I like them a lot and they’re cheap so I always put them in soups and stews. Again, when they go on sale, they’re only about $1.50 a bag and I’ll also use them grated up for Hospital Salad.  Carrots weren’t on sale this week, I don’t think, but I didn’t check the flyer so who knows…aren’t they beautiful though? Look at those rings! Nature wasn’t fucking around when it made the carrot.

Now for the gross part, or at least I think so. I hate the smell of left over turkey so when I opened the container we had it in and it hit me like a wall, I literally almost threw up and had to leave the room. Something strange about the whole pancreatitis/being in the hospital for a few months thing is that ever since I got sick, my sense of smell has been like, a super power. I can be in the living room and smell Blake cutting CUCUMBERS, which of course have  barely any scent, in the kitchen.

Anyway, the smell of the turkey was gross so I had to wait until the air cleared a bit before dealing with it.

Once the air was clear, I just grabbed pieces and cut them up and threw them in the crock pot. One thing I love about turkey soup/stew is how stringy the meat gets when it’s really tender and that’s how the meat was this time. It’s going to be phenomenal when the soup is finished cooking!

We had a LOT of leftover meat.

And finally, spices…the recipe was like, thyme and fresh parsley. Well, I don’t have fresh parsley but I did have thyme so I put in about a teaspoon of that, along with a teaspoon of sage and a teaspoon of garlic powder. Then I threw in some cayenne pepper for good measure. Oh yeah and I threw in a can of diced tomatoes (with the liquid), as well as the gravy that Blake made because why the hell not?

I stirred it around a little bit just to make sure I could with it being that full and I could so we’re all good. I set the cook time for 10 hours and I got finished around 4:30am so it’ll be ready at 2:30pm tomorrow afternoon, just in time for my afternoon meds. I’m verrrrrry excited! It’s like, this is my magic cauldron and I’m brewing up some super nutritional food for my hungry family. Look ma, I’m cooking!

When I was in grade 4, I had this really amazing teacher named Mrs. Lewis. One day she came in and had us all sit at the front of the portable on a rug she’d brought in from home, with throw pillows all around and she told us the story of Stone Soup. She told us the story very slowly and in the beginning, when she got to the part about the stone, she produced a medium-sized stone and she placed it in the crock pot. Then she filled the crock pot with water and as she told us the rest of the story, she would add ingredients to it, like potatoes and carrots and onions and a can of corn and eventually, when she got to the part about the meat, she started browning ground beef in an electric frying pan and she added that too. Then some salt and pepper and maybe some other stuff too. Near the end of the day, we were all given a bowl of soup with some crusty bread and butter and it was probably the most delicious soup I’ve ever tasted and it’s one of my favourite childhood memories. I’d really like to make Stone Soup with Wes.

This same teacher taught us about Medieval times and we had a Medieval feast at the end of the unit. We put all of our desks around the edges of the room in a circle and we put garbage bags down on the floor. We drank mulled cider (from her magic crock pot!) and ate Kentucky Fried Chicken, throwing the bones on the floor in the middle of the room. Some people were serfs and we had a king and queen and prince and the whole royalty deal (we drew names from a hat) and a couple of people were dogs and we all dressed up to the best of our ability. It was awesome. (Oh and I was a serf, for the record.)

This same teacher also sent me to Literary Guild, which is this neat workshop thing where every teacher in the area chooses one student to go to it and you go there (a school hosts it) and you share your story and discuss it with others and you eat food and then there’s a guest speaker. The first time I went (I went in grade 4 and again in grade 6), the guest speaker was ROBERT MUNSCH! The world’s greatest children’s author!

Anyway, Mrs. Lewis was fantastic and I hope she’s doing well.

Now I think, since it’s 5:30am, that I’m going to go back to bed. I’m a little uneasy about going to bed with an appliance plugged in and turned on, but that’s what they’re meant for so I guess I should just “trust and allow”.

Goodnight!

Wes is obsessed with Angry Birds (and Pokemon, but this is about Angry Birds and let’s face it, Angry Birds are ten thousand times cooler than stupid Pokemon). I was on Pinterest last weekend because that’s all I do anymore and I came across this:

Since there’s almost always Babybel in our fridge, Madison got creative with sushi wrappers, a cheese slice and tortillas.
Behold!

It probably would have looked better if she’d have used scissors, but it’s the thought that counts.
Wes was very surprised.

There are tons of Angry Birds crafts and party food ideas on Pinterest.
Some examples:

Angry Birds lunch!
Angry Birds cake balls!
Angry Birds handmade plushies!
(I wish I could sew…)
Angry Birds knit/crocheted hat!
(I wish I could do that too…)
Angry Birds birthday card that could be easily turned into party invitations! 
More homemade Angry Birds plushies!

I don’t know what else we could have, but I’m thinking we could definitely have an Angry Birds party for Wes’ birthday in February.

I feel like absolute garbage, my stomach is just really really upset. I also haven’t washed my hair in a few days and that’s not helping my mood. I fully intend to have a shower after I make this post later though, so that should make things a little better.

This is the crappiest December ever. I was digging through old Live Journal entries this morning (at 4:30am, which is when I tend to get up these days) and 6 years ago, on December 7th, we had a snow day and a good 3-4 feet of snow. I remember this because my brother was here. My brother who resurfaced yesterday in the form of a wall comment on my Facebook fan page.

When I got the e-mail notification, I was like “wtf?” so I went to look and read it like 5 times without understanding what he was saying because he doesn’t believe in punctuation, but I got the gist of it and just started crying.

If you recall, I haven’t spoken to my brother in 6 years, almost to the day of that Facebook comment. Here’s a journal entry to refresh your memory of that little bit of drama. In fact, and I’m only pointing this out because some people may not know, you can use the tags on my Live Journal to read the whole saga as it happened in real time, if you wanted to.

My brother doesn’t know I was/am sick. My mom wanted to tell him face to face, but that never happened. As far as I’ve been told, my mom hasn’t seen my brother in the flesh for over a year, maybe longer, and hasn’t received an e-mail from him in quite some time either.

I e-mailed him and literally just said “Hey what’s up? How are you?” and left it at that. If he replies, which he may not since all he has is his phone, I’m not sure I’m even going to tell him about being sick. I think he won’t understand the gravity of what the situation was, how fucked up I am now physically, and I think that’ll just upset me. Honestly, I kinda feel it’s just none of his business. I realize that’s weird to say when I’ve been chronicling the whole thing on a website read by strangers (so to speak) but the way I see it is that he’s free to read this website too, nothin’ stopping him. I’m not going to type out the whole story again just for him.

But I think mostly I’m just afraid that he won’t care and that he’ll hurt me. :o(

Oh also, I deleted his message from my fan page because I didn’t want trolls and yahoos calling his cell phone or e-mailing him. I wrote down his e-mail address and phone number in case I ever need it, but I don’t think I ever will.

So that’s what’s happening with that. Fun fun drama drama.

Tomorrow night is Blake’s work Xmas party and I really really don’t want to go but Blake really really wants me to. He said that if I don’t go to work functions for like, 5 years and then all of a sudden I go to one, it’ll be weirder and more awkward than if I just go this time and get it over with so I guess that’s what I’m going to do. Blake says if I go this year then I don’t have to go to any other work functions ever again so I guess I’ll just suck it up and go.  He also said that if I want to leave after 5 minutes, that’s okay, so we’ll see how things go. I’ll be bringing the iPad and I fully intend to find myself a corner to hide in so I can screw around on Facebook or something until it’s over. I don’t want Blake to like, drag me around meeting people or anything like that but I’m guessing he will because that’s what you do at parties and Blake’s like, this extroverted social butterfly who really wants me to meet his work people.

So whatever, I guess I have to go.

I guess the good news is that he doesn’t work in Barrie anymore so it won’t be a party full of soccer moms talking about potty training and snack time. Most of Blake’s co-workers don’t even have kids. Why do I care whether or not they have kids? Because nothing is as boring to me as hearing about people’s kids unless they are exceptional in some way and let’s face it, most of them aren’t, yet parents brag like they are. I write about my kids here but you’re welcome to not read it, walk away, you can’t do that so much face to face. Plus I write this for me, not you. The only thing more boring than hearing about people’s kids is their dreams, followed by their jobs unless they do something exceptional, which is hardly ever the case. And all of these people do computer crap for a telecom, I don’t understand, don’t want to understand and couldn’t care less. (Although I get the sense that these guys aren’t the type to bore you with details about their jobs. Plus they have to take a shot if they do.)

Anyway, I’d rather go to the dentist than go to this thing but…such is love.

I’m having a shitty day. I’m in a shitty mood. I think I’m going to step away from the keyboard and go have a nap.

FOLLOW ME!

What IS Pinterest?

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

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

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

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

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

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