It’s only Tuesday and my first day without Blake & kids in 10+ days, but already I feel like my days are less pressured now that I’m doing my job full time . I’m still training but I’m still expected to train 8 hours a day and that’s a lot easier without everyone around. Blake checking on me to make sure I didn’t need anything and could work was making me pretty insane. It’s just better if I do my work when the kids are at school and Blake is at work, then I take a break until the kids go to bed and then work until it’s my bedtime. And of course clear up the inbox a bit when I wake up in the middle of the night like tonight or work extra like I did the other night when I couldn’t get to sleep until 4am. There’s no real schedule and as far as I can tell, we’re on the honour system and I think that’s just peachy.

This Friday is payday AGAIN and I think that’s so fucking crazy that I get money AGAIN. The only real jobs I’ve ever had, like where I was paid by a 3rd party (I don’t count my job at the vet office in high school, everyone has a high school job, right? plus I didn’t work there long), were freelance writing jobs or commissioned painting jobs where you just got paid once. Or maybe half up front and half upon completion. This “regular paycheque” thing and how fast the time flies in between them is so completely foreign to me that…I dunno. After this next paycheque we’ll be out of overdraft and then some, I think, which is good good good.

The way we’re going to do it after we’re out of debt is that 1/4 of my paycheque will go in savings, 1/4 will go in a bank account to save for taxes, 1/4 will go to family finances and 1/4 will be to do whatever I want with. As my mother is probably thinking right now after having read that, that plan was Blake’s doing, not mine, as I am the most horrible person on Earth when it comes to money. I don’t understand what to do with it, how to budget, how to prioritize bills, how not to spend it. The concept of saving money is just…I don’t get it, but Blake says it’s a good thing because after a year or so, we’ll have saved enough to buy a cheap car with cash or, if he also gets a raise (he has an interview tomorrow!), put a decent downpayment on a better house. Or, like, we’re going to be old one day and while Canada has an okay pension deal now, I think, you have to supplement that with savings. So whatever, I’m just happy with my own 1/4 and he can do whatever he wants with the other 3/4. I trust his judgement. I mean, he grew up with money and I didn’t, plus whenever money’s been discussed in my lifetime I’ve just kinda tuned it out because I don’t care, so he knows more about it than I do. I have a hard time dealing with the meager money issues surrounding Sunnyland Studio. :o/

And speaking of which, no, I have not been painting. As I’ve said before, once I get a routine down with this job thing, my plan is to be able to do like, half an hour’s work on a painting and while that’s drying, do my job, then when that’s finished and I’m waiting for more e-mails, I’ll go back to painting. I’ve had these 3 girls on the go for like, 5 weeks I think and I’m getting really antsy to do something with them considering they don’t even have backgrounds yet.

I got my new phone on Thursday or Friday, I think, and I’m already in love with it. I downloaded an app that tracks your periods, which is helpful because I’m not on the pill anymore but my beef with it is that it only lets you track the period of one person, whereas it would be helpful if I could also track Madison’s periods, but that’s probably something that wouldn’t occur to a developer. I’m also playing Foursquare as an unofficial form of immersion therapy. As I’ve explained before, I won’t do anything without a reason. I can’t just “go for a walk”, I can only “walk to a place”. The destination is the reason and just walking to a destination for no reason is something I would never do. Like I wouldn’t just walk to the park and back because that would be stupid, but theoretically I would walk to the store to buy a Coke. But there are baby Cokes in my fridge, so why would I even do that? To get points on Foursquare.

For those not in the know, Foursquare is this (stupid) game where you get points for “checking in” to locations using your smartphone just about everywhere and if the location where you are isn’t in the database in your phone, you add it. If you check into a place 4 times (I think), you become the “mayor” of that place, but you can be ousted by another person if they’ve been there more times. Your locations are then broadcast on Twitter or Facebook (I only put mine on Twitter) with a short message, like tonight we went to yoga, so I inputted the studio and when I checked in, my message was “Namaste, bitches!” and that was broadcast to Twitter.

Honestly the whole thing’s pretty silly, but since I got the phone and started playing it, I’ve left the house 3 times in 5 days and I’ve gone to 7 different locations. I know this because the game keeps stats. Tonight I actually said to Blake that when he went somewhere (I forget where we were talking about now), that I would come too just so I could check in and get points and that is VERY unlike me. If I can stay home, I do, and I never go out unless I absolutely have to – usually, anyway. But I like games and points and winning and as a friend pointed out the other day, it’s very feasible, since our town is sort of technologically challenged, that Blake & I could become the mayors of just about every location in town. And that would be sorta cool. Personally, I’m looking forward to being the mayor of the mental health clinic I go to because that’s sort of like being the mayor of Crazytown and that’s just FUNNY.

I had a moment on Sunday when we were at the bookstore that was sort of interesting and I’m not really sure what to make of it, except to say that it was interesting.

First of all, I love bookstores. Probably more than art stores. Dunno why, I just love magazines and books and the fact that I have enough money to actually buy magazines now is asjdlwgflyfg. So we went to Chapters on Sunday and I made a beeline for the magazine section where I grabbed bitch and BUST magazines, the former of which I’d never read before but had always heard good things about. (I’m enjoying it, I must say.)

Now Chapters is a super high stress place for me, even though I love it, because it’s one of those places where I feel like A) I don’t belong and B) I feel like people are looking at me like I don’t belong. I took Ativan before we went in but that didn’t stop the mini panic attack I had in the “80% off best-selling fiction” section where I had to crouch down and pretend to look at a book on the bottom row or I was going to pass out. So I took another Ativan and pulled Blake to an obscure part of the store where I crouched down some more (because I thought sitting would have us kicked out) and pretended to look at low books until it passed, then we went back to the “80% off selected best-sellers” section where I had been looking at this book called The Help, which I knew was on my Amazon wishlist. But see here’s the thing, a couple of days prior, my friend Charlie said he’d bought me a few books from my wishlist and I knew what all of them were called but one and I was afraid The Help was one of them so I didn’t want to buy that one but I couldn’t find anything else I was interested in because the store was just way too huge and overwhelming.

But then I was likme, hey I have a phone now where I can get my e-mail! So I pulled it out and pressed the little e-mail button and up came my inbox. But then I realized that I’d filed the e-mail where he’d told me which books he’d bought and so that knocked the wind out of my sails and I told Blake we should probably just get the magazines and leave. Except I decided to double check my e-mail again and when I did, I accidentally hit the “menu” button which gave me the option to look at my e-mail folders, so I found the e-mail with the list of books, found that The Help wasn’t one of them, and so that’s that one I bought.

It was kind of a cool moment though, when I realized for the first time that I literally had the internet in my pocket. Not only could I check my primary e-mail on this phone of mine, but I can check my work e-mail and do my job from it, I can log onto IRC and have instant friends if I’m ever stuck for some reason or just bored, I can update Live Journal or probably my site because I’m sure there’s a WordPress app for it that I just haven’t downloaded yet (mental note). I can hang out on Camwhores on it, play Foursquare, use it as a GPS, use Google maps and a thousand other things that I haven’t even though about. Oh, and I can track not only my periods by LEAFS GAMES, which is very important. (Although I haven’t found a decent app yet for real time scores.) I’ve often wondered if a lot of my agoraphobia was tied to the fact that inside my house, on the computer, I have a life, but once I step outside my front door, for the most part, I don’t. I’ve also known that money’s always been a big part of it too, so now that I have some, maybe things are going to start to change. In fact I see them already changing, but I don’t know how far it’ll go. I don’t see myself driving to Barrie any time soon or going to yoga by myself, although a couple of weeks ago I did drive to the grocery store, at like, 8pm, in the rain, to get chocolate mousse pudding and that right there is a small bit of progress.

When I told my shrink about the new job on Friday, she was happy about it but cautious. While the job is great and I love how it’s changing our lives and that I think I’m pretty good at it so far, it does cause me extra anxiety and thus, my anti-anxiety meds have been bumped up to 3x a day rather than 2 at bedtime.  I think this is only a temporary thing, like while I train and I’m unsure a lot of the time if I’m doing the right thing or I’m unsure if the boss is going to think I’m lazy because I didn’t answer 3 e-mails in a row when *I* know I could, but I thought it best to let them handle them in case I was wrong…that kinda stuff. Once I know the job inside out, which they expect will take several months, I don’t think I’ll need the extra pill, but for right now I do. And like I said, my shrink is happy about the job and agrees that it’s the perfect job for me, but is cautiously optimistic about it rather than just plain ol’ optimistic.

So I guess we’ll see how that goes. I mean, as I’ve said, I think the job is going great and I like my bosses, I just have some adjusting to do and they know this is my first job, too, so I think they’re being extra patient with me.

Anyway, these days I couldn’t be happier. Life is amazing. I fully expect to be hit by a bus any day now.

]]> http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/10/13/busy-busy-busy/feed/ 2 http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/09/30/links-other-things/ http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/09/30/links-other-things/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:43:50 +0000 Sunny http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/?p=3203 Blackface is Fashionable Again – I don’t understand this AT ALL.

On the ubiquitous use of “crazy” – Absolutely guilty of this (I also use the word “retard” quite liberally, which is an ableism 101 no no, so I’m trying to use it less, but I have a short story that pertains to this. I was psychotic in March 2006 and in Dec. 2006, for Xmas, my mom got me a t-shirt of that pink bunny I forget the name of (which I hate, for the record), that said “cute but psycho”. And that was the most hurtful gift I have ever received. I probably wouldn’t be as upset about it if it were to happen now and NOW I’d understand the intent a little better, but this was on the heels of her writing about what a “luxury” it was for me to go crazy and it was just too soon. So I freaked. Anyway, I have often thought my own use of “crazy” and “insane” to describe things was pretty hypocritical of me and lazy, so I shall now rethink their use.

Last night I had a 2 hour phone conversation with someone in the middle of the night, which was the first time I’ve spoken to anyone who wasn’t Blake (and maybe one phonecall to Alex) in about 13 months. My options were to either use the phone or do video chat and since I hadn’t washed my hair and since I’d just woken up randomly in the middle of the night and happened to catch this really busy guy online, I went with the phone option. Anyway, it was weird, a little bit awkward and my ear really hurt afterward. Using the phone is just one of those things I’m going to have to relearn how to do I think because of….stuff…..

…okay this is the first and only time I’m going to say this publicly but I have a job now. One with a boss. And it was my boss with whom I was speaking to last night on the phone. And because he’s my boss, I’m probably going to have to do it again. In fact, I think he said, because he was training me, that we were definitely going to do it again. So I have to get used to using the phone – at least for him.

The job…I’m really not allowed to talk about it. Soon I’m going to have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and everything, but I can say that I’m doing customer e-mail support for a large website. I get to set my own hours, which is good because I can sleep when I need to sleep, I can make art when I need to make art and as long as I keep the inbox relatively empty, everyone’s happy. I think I’m going to be extremely good at this job once I learn the ropes and I think the past 9 years of my life makes me uniquely qualified for it. Never having had a paying job before, especially one where my hours are fluid, there have been a lot of adjustments (for example, I’ve done NOTHING but job-related things for the past 2 weeks, with one day for art) but I think I’m getting the hang of things. I like my boss, he’s a straight, to-the-point, no fucking around kinda guy, which is good for keeping me on task, particularly because I’m a textibitionist and can chat a person’s ear off quite easily. Two of my co-worknerds I’ve known for almost a decade and are very good friends and the other three I have yet to meet or talk to, but should soon.

Anyway, the job just sorta fell in my lap and since it’s something I’d probably do for free because I’m a nice person who likes to help out, I jumped at the chance and now here we are: a dual income household.

Next week Blake’s having surgery. Because of his sleep apnea he uses a CPAP machine but it doesn’t work so well because the mask goes over his nose and his nose is really messed up, to the point where he can’t really breathe through his nose or smell things. Sooooo a surgeon is going to basically make his nose canals (totally a term I just made up) bigger by carving them out. Recovery is about 10 days apparently, so he’s taken the week off and I’ve been kind of getting myself prepared for that. Like, he’s going to be on heavy drugs and in pain so I can’t just send him to the store to get milk because we’re out and since he’s not at work, he can’t get it AFTER work, so this week I went to the store by myself in the car and picked up a small lists of things just to make sure that I could do it and that I could stick to the list. The only deviation from the list is that I got Blake peanut butter cookies. The point though, is that even though we’re going to stock up on groceries before the surgery, I’m prepared to go to the store if necessary. (When I went it was about 8pm, so moderate traffic AND it was raining, so if I can do that, I can go pretty much any time if it’s absolutely necessary. At least to the grocery store, I’m not sure about the pharmacy since that would require parallel parking. :o/)

I’m also probably going to have to do most of the cooking while he’s recovering, which sucks because I hate cooking, but I’ll do what I gotta do. Madison can do a lot of the cooking too and she actually likes doing it, so there’s that as well.

Speaking of cooking, yes we make spaghetti sauce out of our tomatoes a few weeks ago. We ended up making enough for one large spaghetti dinner for 4 people with enough sauce left over for another 2 or 3 person meal. I hated the sauce though. Blake liked it, Wes liked it, Madison hates tomatoes so naturally she wasn’t a fan. I think it would be really good in like, lasagna maybe, but for straight up spaghetti it was too….vegetable-y.

Having said that, the vegetable garden is officially over. This weekend Blake’s job is to pull up all the tomato cages and put them away in the shed. Now the questions I have is: should we leave the bean, tomato and pepper remnants and let them compost a bit to be removed in the spring or pull them up now?

Los Campesinos are coming to Toronto on October 8th, to a very small bar (I think?) and I really want to go, especially since I have a job now and can actually afford to, but that’s 4 days after Blake’s surgery so he won’t be able to take me. Ronny & Alex don’t like them (well, they don’t dislike them I don’t think, I just think they just don’t like them). I thought about bribing them to take me by paying for both of their admissions and parking and drinks and all expenses incurred but after buying a major purchase with my first paycheque, which should arrive by then (although being a large sum of money “from the internet”, there’s a good chance the bank will put a hold on it), I’m not totally sure I can afford it. If I can though, I’d really like to figure out a way to go. There’s not a chance in hell I could ever drive myself and like, be THAT independent or even take the bus and stay over at someone’s house (I know many someones in Toronto) so I don’t know how I could get there, but again, I really want to because this is one of those situations where I may not get another chance to see this band because they’re from Wales and while they’ve put out 3 albums I get the sense that their remaining a band is sort of shaky. Anyway, I’m trying to work things out so I can go.

Art. I submitted a whole bunch of stuff to Touched By Fire but it’s doubtful that any of it will be accepted for two reasons:

1. None of my stuff is moody enough for that show. My shrink offered to lend me back “The Two Sunnies”, which is about bipolar disorder and that I gave her as a gift, but that show doesn’t really like to take works that aren’t for sale so I declined and just submitted what I had on hand.
2. I submitted probably 8 pieces total, all in the same category, when apparently there was a submission limit of 3 that was on another page and I didn’t see until I’d already finished submitting.

Therefore I doubt I’ll get in and I don’t really care because it’s not exactly on the top of my priority list these days. Going would be fun, since as I’ve mentioned before it’s at the ROM and being able to say that you’ve exhibited at the ROM is kinda cool, but it won’t be the end of the world if they don’t accept me. The Square Foot Show and everything it entailed has kind of soured me on the all bullshit required to do these Toronto shows that I just…meh.

I DO have to set aside some time to get my OAC grant proposal package finished and sent out. I have a printer now, so I can do that and since I don’t really expect to have much in the way of new work that I’d like to submit between now and the deadline (Dec. 1st), I might as well just get it done.

Suddenly with this whole job thing, getting my shop stocked for the Xmas season is less of a priority as well since art is no longer my main form of income. Now I can just create what I want to create when I want to create it, which I think is better for me creatively anyway. The next 2 pieces I’m doing are more to fill up my shop than because I want to do them admittedly (another bee girl, who was supposed to be black but I was tired after not sleeping for 2 days and I accidentally shaded her white, oops and a fairy who’s supposed to be black & sorta goth but I haven’t figured out how I’m going to pull that off yet). The 3rd girl I’m working on right now is a mini girl with a pink dress that’ll be the cover for my The Sketchbook Project Sketchbook, which I’ve decided I’m going to use as an actual sketchbook rather than making it like, an art journal. The cover will be pretty because all of my sketchbook covers are pretty, but the guts are probably just going to be crude sketches and notes because that’s how I use sketchbooks. Why make it more than it is? Or at least this is my plan so I don’t make myself nuts trying to make something fancy before the deadline, which is only 3 & a half months away. I know that seems like a lot of time, but to me it’s not and I traditionally don’t do well with deadlines to begin with sooooo…

We have (or are about to have) two sets of new neighbours, one on either side of us. The people in Wayne & Judy’s house I think I’ve already made a small post about but here’s the gist anyway: dad seems cool, about Blake’s age I think, named Brad, works for Bell Canada, haven’t met the mom yet, this is not their first marriages as there are I *think* kids between them, 2 or 3 from previous marriages/relationships and only one of their kids, the one from THIS marriage, lives with them full-time and that’s 7 yr old Jacob who is Wes’ new best friend. They’ve only been living here a week and already Madison’s walking Jacob to school most days because the parents go to work too early to drive him and our kids are walking anyway. The mom says that in the winter she may be able to drive them to school in the mornings, but this was all arranged between her and Madison so accuracy of statements is in question. Since we don’t know them very well and really just met them a week ago, we’ve told our kids to decline any offers of rides to school. I think they’re fine because I think most people are fine, but we just don’t feel comfortable taking advantage of that when we don’t really know them. Back to the kids, besides Jacob, I know they have another 10-ish yr old boy, possibly a 12 yr old boy and a rumoured teenage daughter. I’ve seen the 10 yr old boy (last weekend) at the park with Jacob and Wes but I haven’t met the other 2 yet and I don’t know whose kids are whose. They have a long-haired wiener dog that Lucky will NOT stop barking at, which got hit by a car in front of their house this weekend because it was following the kids when they went to the park. It’s okay, but it did skid across the pavement so they put up the part of the fence that the owner of the house had taken down so the tractor to cut the lawn could get through while it was for sale. Hmmm, what else? Jacob is not in Wes’ class, which sucks since they became such good buddies 2 seconds upon meeting each other. Jacob’s kind of a shit who swears a lot (ha, look who’s talking) and seems a lot more grown up than Wes is. I guess that’s the difference between growing up in a city and a village.

At some point soon, supposedly, my mom’s giving Wes a set of bunk beds from the cottage where the bottom bunk is a futon/double bed so I foresee many sleep overs with Jacob to come.

On Sunday when Blake & I were pulling out of the driveway to go to Starbuck’s, our other neighbour Francis, who owns the town’s only bar flagged us down and told us that not only did he get married the weekend prior, but she has a house in Barrie and he’s moving there because she has 5 kids and his house isn’t big enough to accommodate them. His house has been for sale all summer and I guess is going to remain for sale, but in the meantime he’s going to be renting it “to a buddy” so I dunno if that means a single guy, a single guy and a wife/girlfriend, a couple with kids or what, and knowing who Francis knows, the age of this person or persons is completely variable so I’m interested to see the outcome of that.

Either way, I have no intentions of being friends with any of these people, on the right or on the left. Especially on the right because I will bet you any money that whoever moves into Francis’ house is going to be a smoker. I don’t think the people in Wayne & Judy’s house smoke, but I’m not sure. And even as I say that, I doubt myself because even though I have extremely antisocial tendencies, I’m kind of a social person. I know that makes no sense whatsoever, but like, Wayne & Judy lived in their house for a year & a half before I said more than “hi isn’t the weather lovely today” to them but then we became really good friends for a while until…well, you know the story. Leeches.

Anyway, I’m good with being antisocial for the time being and so far the W&J neighbours seem good with that too, so bonus. (Although I kiiiiinda get the vibe that Brad & Blake are gonna become friends because I kiiiiinda get the vibe that Brad’s as big a fan of the internet as Blake is, unlike with W&J where we literally had nothing in common with them except smoking occasionally.)

Speaking of smoking, I am 5 months smoke-free.

Yoga. Yoga is yoga. Nothing to really report there except that I really fucking hate plank still and I’m stressed over the fact that she said we’re going to be doing bridge again at some point and I just cannot do that pose if my life depended on it because I’m not strong enough. I can finally do a mean tree pose though. I could always do it at home, I’ve been doing it for years (more or less) without even knowing it was a yoga thing, but I’m too distracted in class to do it normally, but I found that as long as I “set my hips” (which is hard to explain) first and turn to face the wall and away from everyone else, I have do it for the full set of breaths as the teacher can (but I’m relieved when it’s over). There’s another balance pose she makes us do sometimes that uses a block and you stand on one foot, leg bent, and put your other leg straight up in the air and…I forget what you’re even supposed to do with your hands but it sucks and I hate it and I can’t do it both because my balance is shit but also because my legs just aren’t strong enough. I have the muscle-density of a milk-fed pig, I swear to god.

Annnnd that’s all I can think of to write about really. New computer’s awesome (although it has some keys I’m not used to that I just want to rip off because they make me angry), depression has seemed to have lifted, new job is good, money is good, hockey season officially starts next week, everything is just good.

I’m shaking. It took 2 Ativan and a lot of Twitter encouragement but dammit, I wanted pie and I went to the goddamn store and got me some motherfucking PIE.

And y’know what? I was so proud of myself that I got CAKE too. And crumpets, pretzels, watermelon for the kids and baby cans of gingerale.

I’ve been to the grocery store with Blake 100 times and it’s only about 3 minutes from our house, but I went down the wrong street and got lost-ish which made me sorta panic, but then I got on Yonge St. and knew the grocery store was up the road (I’d missed the grocery store’s street by about 2 or 3 streets – oops) so I didn’t freak out. I mean, the town’s only so big and it’s pretty much impossible to REALLY get lost.

It also took me like, 10 minutes to figure out how to work the car. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to move the seat up or how to turn the lights on but I finally got it. Also our car has like, D3, D2 and DL and I have no idea what that means so I just picked D3, which was the closest one to N and went with it. I probably did it wrong but it worked so, whatever.

Blake’s gonna be pissed that I bought fairly useless stuff with his money, but again, whatever, I FUCKING DID IT and that’s what matters.

Now I’m going to allow myself to freak out and cry and y’know what else? I got pie AND cake and I’m going to fucking eat BOTH of them and then I’m gonna go to bed. Yeah, you heard me, BOTH OF THEM.

The end.

Edit: Okay, so I was too full after the pie to actually eat the cake, but dammit, pretend I did! And for those who may be curious, it was lemon meringue pie & chocolate cake.

I’ve been wanting to go to Burning Man for, oh, the past 4 or 5 years, but there are so many logistics involved in making it happen that I doubt it ever will. I mean, first of all, I live almost as far away from the playa as you can get, sooooooooo how do we get there? You need to bring LOTS & LOTS & LOTS of stuff and I think it’d be a nightmare to try & bring that much stuff on a plane and then if we did, what would we do when we landed, rent a truck? And how would you bring rebar (I probably spelled that wrong) on a plane? You need that to anchor your tent so it doesn’t blow away if there’s a dust storm!

Another option is that Phil & Lisa have Freddie’s old RV sitting in their driveway that they use for the Judo tournament for us to sleep in but I A) Don’t know if they’d let us borrow in to drive to NEVADA or B) If it’s in good enough shape to actually make it.

And another option we’ve considered, because Blake & I really really want to go, preferably before we’re 40, so that gives us like, 4 years (for him) and 9 years for me, is flying to Lake Tahoe where his sister lives and who has all kinds of camping equipment because she & her husband are really really into that. But again, we don’t know if it’s an option and with that, there’s even more logistics to consider, such as extra time off and money to visit with them.

If we chose that option, we could maybe bring the kids with us and they could stay at Shannan’s (his sister) while we’re at Burning Man. If she & her husband Erik (or is it with a “c”? I always forget) aren’t down with that, then I’m sure Phil & Lisa or my mom would look after them while we go.

And then when I think about going, I wonder what we’d bring for gifting. There’s a promotional item for my Etsy shop that I’m saving up for that I really want to give to people, but is gifting a promotional item, even if it’s cool, bad gifting etiquette? With enough planning I could make things to gift, but I don’t have any ideas about that at the moment and really, I really am busy with painting so I can actually make some money so I don’t know if I’d even have the time to make hundreds of handmade items, no matter how much time I was given.

Another obstacle is that we’d have to buy a lot of stuff to survive the playa and we don’t have a whole lot of extra money for stuff like that, so how would we get all that stuff? Plus I think tickets, unless you get the early bird ones, which sell out fast, is about $1000 each, which I think is totally fair, but $2000 for both of us is a LOT of money, especially considering that we’d probably have to buy – and I’m just guesstimating here – about $500-$800 worth of stuff, if not more, to be able to survive the playa. And of course, no matter how we get there or what the plan is, it’s going to cost major bucks to even get there, whether by plan or by vehicle.

I would also love to create a giant art piece like other people do who bring them to the playa but I have no fucking idea how I could even do that when it’s hard enough to get myself there.

Every year about this time I get like, Burning Man fever because Halcyon starts talking about it and I think “okay maybe next year” but it never happens. I wanted to go really bad last year because the kids would still be young enough to get in for free and I’d really like to bring them, but now for Madison, I think it’s 5 or 6 hundred bucks. Wes is still free.

I think we’ll get there at some point, but for now, I’m okay with just dreams.

Goodbye old, rusty Cavalier that needed more work done than the car was worth, hello 2010 Hyundai Elantra!

The show also told the story of another woman from New York who drove drunk with seven 11-year-old girls in the car. She lost control of the car, rolling it several times, critically injuring two of the girls and killing another (the other girls came out of it with minor injuries).

Oprah’s point was that apparently in the US, women driving drunk has risen 30% since 1998, although she offered no real reason as to why.

One of the guests was a woman who was celebrating her two year sobriety after hiding her alcoholism from her husband for well over a year.

The whole episode had my mind spinning as alcoholism is something I’m very sensitive to having grown up with alcoholics and then somehow befriending a few in my adult life. I’ve known and do know the kind that hides it, the kind that tries to hide it and fails and the kind that just doesn’t give a fuck.

My grampa Wes was an alcoholic. He wasn’t technically my grampa, but in my life, he took the place of one. He lived on a farm next door to my grama, where I lived when I was a little kid and where I visited almost every weekend , every PA day, the Xmas holidays and every March Break for the bulk of my childhood. Since she was busy running her store most of the time I either spent my days with my great grama who lived upstairs or at Wes’ house playing with the animals.

The only person it was a secret to that Wes was an alcoholic was me. For the most part I grew up thinking he was just really really fun. I mean, he let me take new kittens and puppies by the box full to my grama’s with me to play with for the day, or let me spend the day in the barn playing with the bunnies or the baby chicks. Or sometimes we’d go to town or go to the corner store, buy junk food and watch “wrasslin’” for the afternoon. It wouldn’t be until I was about 10 or 11 that I understood what an alcoholic was or that he was one.

Oh I knew he drank, but I never thought drinking was a problem. I just thought it was something that adults did, although to be perfectly honest I wasn’t really sure why.

I can’t remember for sure if I was 11 or 12, but Saturday in the summer, Wes and I went to the Stouffville Sales Barns where he purchased a few flats of chicks. (On Saturdays you could go there and farmers would buy and sell animals. You still can.) He put them in the back of his pick-up truck and on our way out of town, he stopped in at what my grama called “the In & Out Store”, which was her name for the liquor store and bought…y’know, to this day I’m not even sure what he drank. Probably whiskey or rye, because I recall it being amber-coloured. Anyway, in Ontario there’s the LCBO, which is the liquor store and The Beer Store, both government run and the only place you can buy alcohol. Wes was a regular at the liquor store and I’d even been with him when he was refused service, so that means I was definitely with him on more than one occasion where he was already drunk when he walked through their doors because that’s why they refuse service (although I didn’t know that at the time). And yes, we had to drive to get there.

Anyway, on this Saturday he bought 3 or 4 flats of chicks and as I said, he put them in the back of his pickup truck, he stopped off at the liquor store and then we went back to his house. When we got there, Wes’ friend George, who was an enabler to the highest degree and who often got Wes drunk and would take advantage of him monetarily, was waiting for us. I went to the barn to play with the bunnies, the chicks were left in the back of the truck, which was parked in the shade of the house, and the men went inside to start drinking.

By the time I came back from the barn, George had left (I didn’t like him, he was smarmy) and Wes was at the kitchen table drinking. When I came inside, I sat on one of the kitchen chairs and we talked about stuff while he got progressively drunker. After he was well plastered, he decided that he’d better get the chicks into the barn, so he stood up and promptly fell damn near flat on his face. I laughed, I was a kid and thought it was funny. I helped him up and helped him get outside where he fell AGAIN, this time right into the lilac bush. And that’s where he stayed because after I tried to help him back up several times and we laughed at his behaviour, he passed out cold and I couldn’t wake him up. I even kicked him as hard as I could right in the ass and he just gave me shit for it, rolled over and stayed passed out.

By now it was the afternoon and the truck was no longer in the shade. I was scared. I was scared that Wes was sick or something and I was scared that the chicks were going to die in the back of the truck and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t lift a flat of chicks by myself and get them in the barn. It would take me forever to take a few at a time and carry them to the coop. (We’re talking like, easily 1000 chicks here.)

In a panic, I called my grama at her store and explained the situation. It was almost closing time for her anyway, so she locked up early and headed over to Wes’ house, which was maybe a 4 minute walk. Together we each took an end of one of the flats of chicks and one by one we took them into the barn where I released them where they were supposed to go and got them water. I remember not knowing what kind of food they should eat so I didn’t feed them, but so many of them were so overheated that I would have to pick them up, splash water on them and put their beaks into the water dish where they’d finally drink. I remember having to go find more water dishes because there were so many chicks and they were all so dehydrated that they were trampling all over each other and making everyone’s water dirty.

Once the chicks were looked after, my grama told me to show her where Wes was, so I brought her over to the lilac bush and she kicked him. I told her I’d tried that. Wes kinda stirred a bit and looked up and my grama said something to him about the chicks being put away, called him a “stupid ass” and then said she was leaving him there. Then we went home where alcoholism was finally explained to me. I’d known what drunk adults were like, but I never knew it could be a problem.

Looking back at my childhood with Wes, I can’t help but think of how truly fucked up it was. My grama would routinely let me get in the truck with him to go up to the store even though he had clearly been drinking. He used to drive up to the store (about a 3 minute drive) not on the road, but on the shoulder and I learned later that the reason he did this was because it was only illegal to drive on the road if you were drunk. I don’t know if that was true at the time or not, but it’s certainly not true now, as my alcoholic neighbour has explained to me several times (more on that in a bit). Everyone knew Wes was drunk a good portion of the time, but they let me hang out with him anyway. I don’t know why that is. (And really, I guess that part doesn’t matter, it never did me any harm except that one scary day with the chicks. The driving part I really question though.)

Wes’ wife, Maggie, was an alcoholic too, but I don’t ever recall her driving and she died when I was about 10 or 11. I don’t know if it was related to her drinking or not, but I’m fairly certain Wes’ death was. Wes died when I was in grade 8, right before my birthday, of a stroke. From what I recall being told, they don’t know if he had a stroke and fell down the stairs or if he fell down the stairs and had a stroke, but his son Mikey found him there, assumed he was drunk and started giving him shit while trying to get him up. Wes being Wes, I’m pretty certain that whatever the case may be, he probably wasn’t sober when the stroke occurred. He was alive when the ambulance came and they took him to a hospital in Toronto. I wasn’t allowed to go see him because my mom didn’t want me remembering him “like that” (I guess he was pretty messed up) but he died a few days later.

My great grama on my grampa’s side was an alcoholic as well, which probably sounds remote to most of you reading this, but keep in mind that my mother had me when she was 15 and as such, I grew up with two of my great gramas. I didn’t learn that my Grama Crittenden was an alcoholic until I was a teenager though because we didn’t really go see her very often but usually when we did, she was drunk. I never really thought anything of it though, because we only really ever saw her at family reunions and at a Crittenden family reunion usually the only people who are actually sober are the kids and sometimes even that’s not the case. I don’t know if my great grama’s partner, Frank, was an alcoholic too, but it seems pretty likely and for sure her late husband was. They don’t know if he drank because he was depressed or if he was depressed because he drank, but either way, he committed suicide by taking a shotgun to his head. My Grama Crittenden lived to be 86, I believe, and died of old age. (Although I think that’s relative; who’s to say how long she might have lived if she wasn’t an alcoholic?)

My step-dad IS an alcoholic. He wasn’t one when I was growing up, it was a gradual thing that happened over time because he was depressed, hated his life and couldn’t find any other way to cope. It started out innocently enough, just a beer here or there, then it became one small drink after work to “unwind”, until finally it became, “no, I can’t drive you to your friends house, I’ve been drinking” (by 7pm) or “no, I can’t pick you up from the party, I’ve had too much to drink”. My step-dad started by only buying a mickey once a week, then a 26er and now from what I understand, he buys the big bottle. I guess the plus side to this is that at least he doesn’t drive? Or at least he didn’t drive after a few drinks as of 6 years ago when I stopped speaking to him, I can’t say for certain if that’s still the case now.

My ex’s father who I used to live with was also an alcoholic and the last I heard, he still was, although he did remain sober for a few years a few years ago when he was driving truck for a living. He was, like my step-dad, a high-functioning alcoholic in that he held down a job, the same job he’d had for 20 years, and didn’t drive drunk, but their family was overburdened by financial trouble, the root of which seemed to be a lot of get rich quick schemes and a lot of beer. Darrell also tended to be a very violent, mean drunk whose behaviour heavily contributed to his wife’s mental breakdown and subsequent diagnosis of schizophrenia (not that he CAUSED the schizophrenia, that’s not possible, but his actions served as the catalyst for it surfacing). When she moved out and was in and out of the hospital because of her illness, Darrell took on boarders to help pay the bills who he would get drunk and harass, both physically and mentally. Then his wife moved back in and he started harassing her more and more until she ended up in the hospital again and her family wouldn’t allow her to go back to him. Then his mentally unstable (yet brilliant) sister, Donna, moved in with her boyfriend and he physically and emotionally harassed both of them too, all while drunk.

It is because of these people (and a few more I won’t tell you about because this is already getting really long) that I rarely drink. I went through a phase in my teens where I drank all the time, mostly because I could (I was unsupervised and had all these adults willing to buy it for me, plus there was one restaurant in town that would serve me if I was with my Aunt) and right after Madison was born, because I’d just turned 19 (legal drinking age here) I went to the bar a whole lot (but didn’t often get drunk, mostly because I couldn’t afford to). And of course when I was working for Scratching Post there was a lot of drinking as well, but I’ve never kept alcohol in my home. At least not on purpose. Sometimes people come over and bring alcohol with them and then leave whatever’s left here, so that’s sometimes in the very highest cupboard above the stove, but more often than not, I’ve dumped it out after people have left unless there’s a lot left in the bottle. There’s one Mike’s Hard Lemonade in my fridge right now that’s been there since at least September, if not before that and it’ll probably stay there until the summer. I get drunk maybe twice a year and I only drink to get drunk because I see no other reason to.

I realize this isn’t necessarily the definition of an alcoholic, but I believe that if you drink every single day and you’re unhappy the days you don’t have alcohol, then you are one. My “alcoholic scale” doesn’t count people who have a glass of wine with dinner or even a beer or maybe even two after work and really, my “scale” isn’t so much a scale at all, but the fact that, having grown up around so many different types of alcohol abusers, I know one when I see one and I’ve seen plenty. And y’know what else? In my experience, the people who get the most offended if you use the word “alcoholic” in reference to them almost always are one. If they aren’t one, they want to know why you think so and are concerned that you feel that way. If they get angry, it’s because they know it’s true and now they know you know it’s true too.

I don’t drink or keep alcohol in my home not because I’m holier than thou and don’t think people should drink, I do it because I know I’m predisposed to having a problem with it due to both nature and nurture and man, I have enough problems.

I said up there somewhere that my neighbour told me that driving on the side of the road wouldn’t save you from a DUI now as it may have when Wes was doing it and the reason he knows this is because of how he got his first DUI. Apparently he was walking home from either a bar or a party, I believe in the winter, and because it was cold and he was so drunk he just wanted to sleep, he got in his car and put the key in the ignition and turned the car on to turn on the heat. Then once the car was warm, he turned it off and fell asleep. He woke up to “tap tap tap” on the driver’s side window and it was a cop. The cop told him to get out of the car and made him do a sobriety test which he obviously failed and because he had the key in the ignition, he was charged with…not DUI, but something in the same vein where the car’s not actually moving but you were close enough that it was a chargeable offense. So if he could be charged with that, without the car even being on or being driven, then my grampa Wes couldn’t get away with driving drunk on the shoulder like he did when I was a kid.

Wayne, my neighbour, told Blake and I repeatedly that if we were ever in a situation like that and a cop tapped on your window, to get out of the car and throw your keys as far as you can because then, according to him, you can’t be charged with anything.

I doubt very much that either Blake or I would ever be in that situation, but every time Wayne’s told us the story, I’ve always thought about Wes driving down the shoulder of the road to avoid a DUI. And then while watching Oprah today, I thought about every alcoholic I’ve ever known and just how lucky I really was that Wes didn’t accidentally kill me and that I didn’t grow up to be one too.

Like I said, I’ve got enough problems.

Yesterday or the day before, Blake had a troll on his Cubeless blog and the troll said, “Grab yourself a job instead of claiming agoraphobia of convenience which seems to kick in every time you have to go shopping, but lifts when there’s an art show or a concert you absolutely have to attend because you’re ‘creative’.” And that wasn’t the first time in the last couple of weeks where people questioned my agoraphobia. At a forum I frequent, there’s a thread in a secret forum called “Reasons to feel good” and when our Gogol Bordello tickets came, I posted the picture of me holding them up to the cam in that thread and a couple of people said “wait, don’t you have agoraphobia?”

And that’s the thing. Agoraphobia isn’t a cut & dry thing. It’s different for each person. In my case, I can’t go anywhere by myself and there are certain places, like grocery stores, that I avoid because they give me anxiety to the point of panic attacks whether Blake’s with me or not. And in the case of the grocery store, yes, Blake does the groceries and it’s not so much because I can’t (well, since I haven’t done it so long and have next to zero concept of money anymore it would cause a problem anyway) but it’s simply a case of, “why make it a family outing when Blake can just go in, get what we need and come home”? Since I can’t go by myself, and I don’t have a car even if I could, that’s the way things have to be and the way things are. In case I wasn’t clear, when it comes to groceries, why take 4 people to the store, which over-complicates things, when Blake can just go in, get what we need, not go over budget, not impulse buy, and be home in half the time it would take us if all 4 of us went. Plus, if all 4 of us went, there’s a very good chance that I would have a panic attack and would require medication (Ativan) to first get there and some more to actually stay there.

As for art shows, well, that’s actually a laughable thing. I’ve only ever been to one art show in my life and it was Touched By Fire, which is put on by the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario. If anyone’s going to understand my idiosyncrasies at such an event, it’s going to be those people, or at least that was my logic behind going. Being in the city (Toronto) makes me very very nervous and the night of that art show, I must have taken at least 4 Ativans. But the thing was, I was totally fine at the show and I actually questioned this after the fact the next time I saw my shrink. I wanted to know how come I was totally fine at that show, yet I can’t go to Wal*Mart or even the art supply stores by myself and she said that it’s because at an art show, I have a defined role, I’m an artist, and therefore there’s guidelines as to how to act which are comfortable to me because I can easily play that role for that is what I am. I mean, I wasn’t totally fine at the show, when Gayle Cutler wanted me to do a commission, Blake had to navigate the business end of things because that’s not a role I’m comfortable with. While he did that, I hid in the bathroom. Literally.

And as far as concerts, well gee, the last concert I went to was either System of a Down or Metallica, I can’t remember and both of those shows were at least 7 or 8 years ago. With Metallica, I almost didn’t go because I had a meltdown half an hour before we had to leave. I ended up going to the show in my pajamas after Blake spent 45 minutes talking me into going. With Gogol Bordello, they are my favourite band right now and there are certain experiences where I know I’d have regrets if I didn’t go and this show is one of them because Gogol Bordello doesn’t come to Toronto very often. As I said when I posted the picture of the tickets, I have roughly 2 months to psych myself into going. A normal person wouldn’t have to do that. And even when I do go, I’m going to have to be chowing down clonazepam (klonopin) and Ativan like there’s no tomorrow. I won’t be in the pit. I’ll probably be way at the back, away from people. I’ll also be with Blake and our two best friends so I’ll have like, a circle of protection, which helps. Going to this show is not going to be an easy thing for me at all and actually another aspect of this endeavor is that when I posted the pictures of the concert tickets on that forum that I frequent, one of the members there, whom I’ve known for many years and who lives in Toronto, asked me if I wanted to get a drink and meet up before the show, to which I replied “hellz no” because that is completely outside of my comfort zone, especially when going to the show is going to be hard enough as it is. I am already losing sleep over this show because I don’t know what to wear – and it’s 2 months away.

I don’t know what to wear because where I’m at right now as far as weight loss is that I don’t fit into my “normal” clothes just yet and my “fat clothes” are now too big. Chances are, I’m going to have to buy something to wear to the show and since we’re not particularly made of money that stresses me out.

And as far as meeting this person I know from the forum I frequent well, the thing is, I decided a while back that I wasn’t going to meet people from the internet anymore with very few exceptions and the reason for that is because…I’ve met roughly 200 people from the internet in the last 12 years and during the last several encounters, I’ve realized that people sometimes don’t want to meet me to actually meet me, they want to judge me to see whether I’m the same in person as I am online (which I am) but more than that, they want to be able to tell people that they met me because it gives them cool points or something in our respective circles. I’m a notch on a belt and I’m not cool with that.

The fact of the matter is, I have agoraphobia. It’s not a phobia of convenience as Blake’s troll implied, it just presents itself in a certain way where I can go certain places and do certain things, but quite often those things take a lot of planning, a trip to my shrink, psychiatric medications and a lot of preparation.

I left the house the first week of January to see Avatar. I was supposed to go to a baby shower in Toronto at the end of January but I couldn’t deal with going to a place with a bunch of people I didn’t know so I didn’t go. Seeing Avatar in January was the only time I left my house that month. In the first week of February I went to my doctor to get a new prescription and in the second week of February, I went to my shrink appointment. In the middle of February, I went with Blake to the grocery store for about 5 minutes. And that’s it. I left the house 3 times in February. Now it’s March. I went to the doctor’s tonight to get a pap smear and chances are, that’ll be my only outing for the month of March. A normal person wouldn’t be able to tell you the exact places and the amount of times they left the house in any given month, but I can because it’s such a rare occurrence and since they are such rare occurrences, I mark these outings down on my calendar. Again, a normal person wouldn’t do that.

Last spring, when I took a walk down the Trans-Canada Trail by my house to take pictures, that was the first time in about 6 & a half years that I went anywhere by myself. Last spring I tested my agoraphobic limits with mixed success. When I went to one of the local restaurants to have breakfast all by myself, I was so freaked out by the situation that I didn’t leave the house for a month. Last spring & summer, Lucky and I checked the mail and mailed things in the middle of the night and that was a huge deal. All of these things can easily be searched on this blog under “agoraphobia” for those who are interested.

My agoraphobia is compounded during the fall and winter by Seasonal Affective Disorder. I simply do not leave the house unless I absolutely have to during this time. In the spring & summer, that’s when I go back at it with the immersion therapy, although truth be told, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve mostly given up on that because at this point I have zero motivation for trying to get better. I live in a shitty little town with nothing in it and nowhere to go and I have no car. I don’t think I can get better here. I’m not sure where I could get better exactly, but here ain’t it.

And that’s the thing, which I don’t know if it’s part of the phobia or what, but 95% of the time I’m okay with not leaving the house. I stopped fantasizing about a different life a long time ago.

Also, part of agoraphobia is that quite often, as is the case with me, the person has a hard time letting people in to their homes. It’s not just about leaving one’s home. Having people in my house is a very hard thing for me to do. At Xmas time the neighbours offered to watch my dogs for me so we didn’t have to bring them up North with us, but i couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have people in my home when I wasn’t there. And even when I am here, if people are going to come over, we all make a mad dash for the cleaning supplies because I don’t want people judging me by our home, which isn’t exactly the nicest home to begin with. A babysitter being here so Blake and I can go out? Unheard of. My kids have only been babysat in our home by our friends Alex & Ronny and my mother. When the neighbours watch the kids, the kids go over there. Hiring a babysitter, like a teenager or whatever, simply wouldn’t happen.

I think my agoraphobia started in two ways: 1) I’m pretty sure that whenever I left the house when we lived above my grandma’s furniture store, she came into the apartment and snooped. That made me so mental that I stopped leaving the house so she couldn’t do that and that’s why I can’t have people in my house when I’m not there now. 2) When Blake moved in and had to give back his car, he took over mine and it was just easier for him to get groceries on the way home from work than for me to go do it after he came home and I have access to a car. Since we lived in the middle of nowhere, there was nowhere for me to go, especially without a car. And this lasted years until it became habit and then became phobia.

But long long long before that there were signs that this was just part of my natural state. When I was 15 and living with my boyfriend at the time’s parents, I rarely left the house then too. I would go to check the mail which meant walking about 20 feet from the house and I would do so in my pajamas at 2:30am. Sometimes I’d go to my Aunt’s house in town, which was about a 15 minute walk, but again, I’d only do it at night and most of the time in my pajamas.

I know when I absolutely have to, I can leave the house, kick ass and take names. When Zulu got hit by the car, I didn’t even think about it, I got in the car with the cop who stopped to help, with Zulu in the back seat and I dealt with the vet by myself and went back home with the cop while Blake was on his way to the vet’s to take care of the rest. When it was just Madison and I in our apartment in Uxbridge, I only had a bar fridge and I’d load Madison up in her stroller and we’d do groceries every day. When I was in college, I dealt with Madison going to daycare and drove myself to Toronto every single day because in all of the above scenarios, what choice did I have?

If Blake died tomorrow, I’m fairly confident that we’d all be okay and that I could get shit done. (Don’t get me wrong, Blake dying would suck, but life does go on, bills still have to be paid, kids still have to be driven to school.)

As things stand though, as I said, there’s little motivation for me to get better. There’s nothing in the outside world for me except these rare situations like an art show, a movie or a concert and I do all of the above extremely seldom.

As I said in the beginning, agoraphobia is not a cut & dry thing. It affects everyone differently. Yes, there are similarities in every agoraphobic patient, but they all have to be treated on a case-by-case basis. I’ve just explained how my case presents itself and it is my hope that I won’t have to do it again.

Today Madison and I are going to clean the bathroom, then tomorrow after work Blake is going to vacuum and then my house will be presentable enough for when my mom, her boyfriend John and his son Chris come over to have Xmas with us on Boxing Day. I didn’t get John or Chris anything for Xmas because my mom basically told me not to, which was a great relief because we’re in the poorhouse as it is and my poor Visa is dangerously close to its limit. We decided not to defer our mortgage payment this month, but instead do all of our Xmas shopping on Visa and pay it off when Blake gets his bonus in March. If anything comes up between now & then, like say the car blows up, then we can defer a mortgage payment if need be and have it taken care of.  Now that we’re done our Xmas shopping, the only “big ticket item” we have to worry about is getting all of the animals their shots in January and then getting their township tags.

After we got home from Wal*Mart, Blake made a great steak dinner that I couldn’t eat because right now I’m pretty fucking sick and the only thing keeping me sane is Advil Cold & Sinus. I thought it was just a cold when it hit me on Friday but I’ve had a fever off & on all weekend and yesterday, my whole body aches etc. so I’m putting it more in the flu category. I am SO SCARED to get any of these friggin’ kids sick (ours + Courtney) that I reek of hand sanitizer and there have been no bedtime hugs. I just do not want to deal with 3 sick kids during the 2 & a half week holiday break, especially not if I’m sick myself.  I feel really bad that I felt too bad to eat the dinner Blake made us last night. :o/

We (well he) ate while we watched the Leafs vs Sabres game I started recording while we were at Wal*Mart and when food was done, I got started on wrapping presents. We got Madison this cute makeup bag that’s turquoise patent leather and her first set of makeup. I went way way way overboard in hooking her up with a good variety of stuff (like 6 bottles of nail polish, 3 compacts of eyeshadow…) and I wrapped each thing individually and put it in the bag, with cotton balls on top, zipped it up, then put the bag in a box and then we wrapped the box up. Annoyingly, Blake left a bag on my chair this morning with my hoodie over it which contained makeup removing facewash and mascara that should have gone in the bag with everything else, but I thought all of the cosmetic type stuff was in the bag I was wrapping from…soooooo I wrapped up the mascara & taped it to the box and the facewash I’ll just put in her stocking or something.

And that’s all I got wrapped last night because rapping all of those teeny tiny things took me the entire hockey game and when it was done I was exhausted so I just went to bed. What kills me about wrapping presents is how bad I suck at it. I make all these cute little girls with cute little paper dresses and I’m a whiz with scissors etc. but when I wrap presents, it looks like it was done by Wes. In fact Wes probably does a better job than I do. That’s why every year I usually get Blake to do all the wrapping but this year there won’t be enough time for that so I have to pitch in. While we were at Wal*Mart I bought gift boxes so at least some stuff I won’t have to wrap.

The next thing on my blogging agenda is that my cat is fucking retarded. Every single year for Xmas I buy her a treat or a toy and every single year she wants no part of it. Last year it was a laser pointer, she wanted nothing to do with it. The year before that a mouse or something, I can’t remember but she didn’t want anything to do with it. The year before that I bought her like, 5 different kinds of cat treats but she wouldn’t eat any of them. She just likes her cat food and that’s it. A few weeks ago someone on Facebook linked a YouTube video of all these cats getting stoned on catnip in a garden and I thought HEY WE SHOULD TRY THAT because I’ve never seen a cat actually high on catnip before. So last night, I bought some and it came with a little heart-shaped toy to put the dry catnip in. So I filled it up and got the cat and got her to sniff it and…she wanted no part of it. The toy then split apart and I spilled dry catnip all over my office floor so I picked a bit up and got her to sniff it and no dice. I thought maybe, just maybe, after we went to sleep she’d start getting all stoned on the pile which I left on my office floor for her but when I woke up this morning, it was undisturbed. So I give up. The cat no longer gets anything for Xmas and I guess Alex’s cats have a new toy and a big bag of catnip. Someone remind me next year that my cat sucks and not to get her anything because I know I’ll forget (or maybe it’s denial).

Blake & I weren’t going to get each other anything for Xmas this year due to money, but when we were at Wal*Mart I picked myself up some makeup because I’m running low on the essentials and this was an excuse to replenish my stock. We also happened to be going down the aisle with all the sports stuff and Blake pointed out Leafs jerseys….that were PINK & WHITE. Obviously not regulation, being pink & white, but NHL sanctioned and so Blake got me one for Xmas and I got him a Leafs home jersey (not regulation either). One day I will have a regulation Leafs home jersey to go along with my Leafs 3rd jersey but since they’re over $100, we’ll make due with Wal*Mart jerseys for now.

The rest of the stuff we got was mostly odds & ends, like I was out of incense so I picked up a bunch of that and I wanted to get a plastic “boot mat” for under the dogs’ bowls because they make such a mess and there’s constantly dog food all over my kitchen. (Lucky eats laying down and if Hoover’s eating too, Lucky will pick up his bowl and eat in the living room.) I also wanted to get Madison some yarn because I know she’s getting crochet hooks for Xmas and books about how to crochet, so we picked up a bunch of that too. She also needed pajamas and bras so those went in the cart as well.

We didn’t really get anything for Wes at Wal*Mart because Blake had gotten him stuff at Toys ‘R’ Us yesterday afternoon (Lego, some plastic dragons, I forget what else), but we did pick him up Lego Batman for his DS and Blake had already gotten him a few pairs of pajamas and some clothes so he’s good.

We got my 4 year old sister Raili some Barbies and my 10 month old sister Rachael a set of Little People. We got Courtney next door a DS game of Deal or No Deal. What else? I don’t even remember and you probably don’t care anyway. Long story short, after Blake picks up a couple of things on his lunch today, we are done our Xmas shopping completely. I plan on spending all afternoon today and tomorrow wrapping things and getting the house clean and after that we should be good to go.

Blake called my dad on Sunday and asked him to clean up the garage for the dogs, which he said he’d do and that takes a lot off my mind. What do the dogs get for Xmas? Well my dad hunts and I’m not sure what he hunted for this year, but usually it’s deer and moose and occasionally bear but whatever he hunted for in the fall, he gets the butcher to save him some of the bigger bones for his dogs and mine to have at Xmas.

I also have children’s Gravol to give the dogs before we leave so they don’t puke in the car on the way up. (And yes we called the vet and yes you can give dogs half of a children’s Gravol if they’re the size of mine.)

So I guess that’s it, we’re on track for Xmas. I had more to say but I think I’ll just end things here and start wrapping presents.

Report cards came home today. Wes got straight A’s, Madison had A’s, B’s and a C in math and somehow both kids are getting awards from the principal next week at a ceremony we’re supposed to attend. In fact because 250 kids are getting these awards, there are TWO ceremonies and each of our kids is in a different one so we’re literally going to be at the school all day. It’s nice that they’re getting awards and we want to be there to support them, but that’s a lot of sitting around watching a lot of other kids get awards too. Urg.

Blake & I were busy today. First, I was supposed to get a blood test this morning but Blake forgot about it and didn’t wake me up so it didn’t happen and we’re going to have to do it Thursday morning instead. (The lab’s only open Tuesday & Thursday mornings.) Then I got up and Blake was gone and the fucker didn’t leave me a note so I didn’t know where he was until he tweeted a TwitPic of a cutting board and a rolling pin, which was a clue that he was at Wal*Mart.

When he got home, we had breakfast and I took my pills and after a bit of digestion it was time to go to Barrie for art supplies and other errands. Since Marylin was curious about what I got and some other folks might be too, here’s the list:

Curry’s
- Two cheapo angled brushes, one smaller than the other
- One script liner because mine’s starting to lose its shape
- Two Micron Pigma archival markers, size 02
- 9 x 12 block of watercolour paper
- These neat little pre-cut blank ATC cards that were only $1.25 (I got the acrylic linen canvas one)

Michael’s
- Glorious Gold metallic paint
- Emperor’s Gold metallic paint
- Champagne Gold metallic paint
- Festive Red metallic paint x 2
- Gold glitter paint x 2
- Silver glitter paint x 2
- Red glitter paint x 2
- Weathered Wood crackle medium, 8 oz
- Triple Thick Gloss Glaze varnish, 8 oz
- Interior Gloss varnish
- Interior Satin varnish
- A metric fuck tonne of scrapbook paper & cardstock
- Green balloons and purple ribbon for Judy’s surprise party
- An archival Martha Stewart fine point pen

Exciting, no? Yeah, not really. Mostly I was replacing boring stuff I’ve either run out of or I’m about to run out of. I was on a pretty tight budget so there wasn’t any wiggle room for fibres or embellishments or fun stuff like that. Just the basics.

Since Starbucks is in the same plaza as Michael’s, we went there were I got a chocolate coffee (I dunno what they call their crap, I’ve never actually been IN a Starbucks) and Blake got some sort of caramel coffee with whipped cream and crunchy caramel things on top. While we drank our Starbucks, we went to Jiffy Lube to get the oil changed in the car, something I’ve never experienced before and it was BORING AS SHIT and after that we had to stop off at Blake’s work so he could check on something that ended up not being there but will be there tomorrow so despite being on vacation, he’s probably going to have to go in tomorrow to do whatever it is he has to do.

Then tomorrow night Blake has to go to the hospital for a sleep study because he has sleep apnea and our doctor wanted to send him in for another sleep study before recommending/prescribing a CPAC (??) machine or a mouth appliance.

And now we’re home with nothing planned for this evening other than watching V and perhaps me playing with ATCs. I also heard a rumour that I might be getting a massage later. Hmmm.

Anyway, that was my busy day. I know, it was riveting. Aren’t you glad I write this shit down for you?