So, Wednesday night we busted out the miracle berry tablets and kicked off our New Year’s festivities by eating a ridiculous amounts of citrus fruits and salad dressing and eventually drinking our faces off.

Behold, the lone video of our initial foray into the mysterious world of miracle berries:

(I apologize for the shitty quality of the video. My video camera is a piece of crap and editing video is apparently not in my repertoire of skills.) I only took a little bit of video during the first few minutes of miracle berry madness because it’s hard to video tape other people while indulging yourself and I was giddy to try everything. So I set the video camera down and we all dug in.

Behold our bounty:

From left to right, front bit: Frozen grapefruit juice and margarita mix, cream cheese (none of which we actually tried), goat cheese, bowl of limes, oranges and apples.

Middle: Sour gummi bears, lemons and grapefruit (pink & red), watermelon, kiwi and pineapple, miracle berry tablets, super sour gumballs.

Back: Guinness Extra Stout, malt vinegar, plain yogurt, salad dressing, all dressed chips, sea salt & malt vinegar chips, dill pickle chips, salt & vinegar chips, ketchup chips, limonade, Keen’s mustard, tangy dill pickles.

Not pictured: Large jar of antacids.

To be totally honest, I didn’t end up being as into the miracle berry experience as I thought I’d be. To me, the lemons and limes still tasted sour, but with an aftertaste of intense sweetness that I didn’t particularly like. To me it was like the difference bewteen aspartame and sugar, it just wasn’t quite right. I’m also an absolute sugar junkie though, drinking my own weight in Coke and candy daily since teenagerhood, so maybe my sweetness receptors are off.

Ronny on the other hand, is diabetic, and things tasted ultra-sweet to him, so maybe because he’s not as seasoned to sweet things as I am. Blake and Alex seemed to like the effects well enough, as evidenced by the following pictures of them eating limes and lemons.

(Alex eating a lime.)

(Alex showing off her mad lime skillz.)

(Blake eating a lemon.)

(He likes it! Blakey likes it!)

Salad dressing did not taste so good, even with the effects of the miracle berries:

In my research online, people said that vinegar tasted like Coke - and they lied. It could be because I bought malt vinegar instead of balsamic, but we all agreed that vinegar still tasted like vinegar.

(Blake after taking a shot of malt vinegar.)

(Pixel Cat wonders WTF we’re doing.)

All in all, it was an interesting experience. Here’s a run-down of everything we tried and how it tasted:

- Lemons tasted like sugary lemonade.
- Limes tasted like lime candy.
- Watermelon tasted like watermelon (which I figured it would, I just got some to help us cut the acid in our stomach from all the citrus fruits).
- Sour pineapple was amazing, probably my favourite.
- Under ripe kiwis were probably my second favourite, they tasted like the most perfect, ripe kiwis I’d ever had. To Blake they were too sweet.
- Salad dressing and vinegar were both *thumbs down*.
- Grapefruit was great!
- To me the chips all tasted like chips, but the others found the sea salt & malt vinegar ones to be sweet and the sour cream & onion ones to have no flavour.
- The goat cheese tasted like nasty old goat cheese to me, but Ronny thought it tasted like creamed sugar.
- The super sour gumballs just tasted like super sweet gumballs.
- The Guinness Extra Stout tasted like absolute ass to me and not “chocolatey” as promised, but Ronny seemed to like it.
- The oranges were super sweet, like the best orange you ever tasted.
- The granny smith apples weren’t tart at all, they tasted like the apples in apple pie.

- The dill pickles apparently tasted like sweet pickles, but I despise dill pickles and even under the influence of miracle berries, I wasn’t trying them.
- If I recall correctly, the Keen’s mustard - a hot mustard - still tasted like mustard. (Blake tried that one.)
- Gin & tonic tasted sweet!

We promised the kids that they could try the miracle berries the next day, after the adults tried them and deemed them 100% safe, so they kicked off 2009 trying all of this stuff too.

Here’s Madison waiting patiently for us to get set up:

Wes and Madison waiting for their tablets to dissolve (no one liked the taste of the tablets):

Alex & Blake decided to give it another go too, so here’s the two of them eating a lime and grapefruit:

Trying V8 juice, I forget what they said it tasted like:

Madison trying a lemon:

Madison gnoshing on a lime:

Madison trying grapefruit, which she normally wouldn’t do because she doesn’t like it:

Ketchup chips are Madison’s favourite:

They tasted sweet!

Blake busting out the onions:

Onions were ungood:

Wes tries a lemon:

It’s still sour! (I don’t think he got the berry *all over* his tongue like you’re supposed to.):

But he kept eating it anyway!

Despite the face, Wes really liked the grapefruit:

Wes tries a lime:

Still sour!!!

Wes thought the kiwis were the bomb and ate most of what was left himself:

Ultimately Wes decided to hell with these crappy fruits and settled for the sour cream & onion chips for the rest of the party:

So all in all, it was an interesting experience for all of us and a good time was had by all. The miracle berries, to me, weren’t as miraculous as advertised, but they were still pretty neat and given the chance, I think everyone should try them at least once.

As an aside, I ended up taking over 60 pictures of our experience, but due to wanting to save bandwidth I didn’t post them all here. If you’re interested in seeing the rest, the gallery can be seen by clicking here.

And that was our miracle berry party. Happy New Year!

The paintings I was working on for my daughter Madison and my sister Raili are finally done! I was afraid that with my dire illness over the weekend I wouldn’t be able to finish them in time, but I worked through it and got ‘em done.

Taking decent pictures of them was a whole other thing I didn’t have a lot of time for though, so these will have to do.

Here’s Madison’s:

And here’s Raili’s:

And here’s a blurry pic of both of them to show how they sparkle!

So there ya go. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

Ooooooooh I should be in bed like a good little Sunny, but as per usual I’m up puttering around and waiting for paint to dry. Instead of sitting here twiddling my thumbs, I decided to take some pictures of what I’ve currently got on the go. Normally I don’t like to show works in progress because I’m superstitious and once I’ve let the cat out of the bag, I tend to not want to finish things, but I decided tonight that I would do it anyway.

The first thing I’ve got going on is two paintings of girls for my sister Raili (who’s almost 4) and my daughter Madison (who’s 10) for Xmas. I’m making these paintings partially because I want to - my daughter’s been drooling over my recent work over the past few months - but partially because I’m broke as fuck and Xmas is on a serious budget this year.

The one on the left is for Raili, who’s blonde herself, and the one on the right is for Madison, who’s a brunette. These girls are going to both be holding the word “Imagine” and their dresses will have matching fluffy trim along the bottoms once I cut them out and adhere them to the canvas.

The canvasses, which I forgot to take pictures of, are white and crackle based, with splatters of metallic colours corresponding to their dresses with glitter paint over top. Silver for Raili’s and gold for Madison’s. It’s hard to tell in the pics, but the cardstock their dresses are made out of are metallic as well.

Obviously their slippers are encrusted with glitter as well, which corresponds to the colour of glitter on the background of the canvas. Both canvasses are 8 x 8.

I’ve also been sketching boys in the hopes that I’ll have time before Xmas to do one for my son, in metallic blues, of a boy wearing a crown and holding the word “Inspire” as he’s been drooling over my recent work as well and I don’t want him to feel left out. Since these paintings are taking so long for me to get done, I’m not sure I’ll have time to do it, but his birthday is in February so if I don’t get it done for Xmas, he’ll get one then.

The other piece I’m working on…I was really leery of sharing this one because I’ve been reluctant to work on it for some reason and I was afraid that if I put it “out there” I’d definitely run out of steam. But then I thought maybe if I put it “out there” someone will say the right thing to get me wanting to work on it again.

Behold the mermaid:

Her canvas is 20 x 16 and her background is metallic blue “waves”, done in a wash, and gone over with silver sparkly paint. The sand at the bottom of the painting is actual sand, made into a paste with gesso and sand coloured paint and painstakingly applied (which wrecked one of my favourite brushes :o(). I’m actually unhappy with the colour of the sand, so I think I’m going to repaint it with a lighter colour of brown.

In this picture, you can kind of see the glitter in the top left hand corner of the painting. As you can see, she’s going to have purple jeweled nipples to match her eyes and tail.

Her tail is a paisley pattern with crackled “scales” applied over top and accented with metallic purple paint. Once the piece is finished and varnished with Triple Thick Gloss Glaze, the crackle should “pop” a little more and become more prominent.

And finally, this is what her original sketch looked like, which I’m probably only going to change slightly:

I’m probably not going to bother with the seaweed and if I do, it’s probably going to be made of frilly scrapbooking fibres. I’m unsure as to whether or not I’m going to include the fish, but if I do, they’ll be made of patterned scrapbooking paper. The hooks in the sketch are going to be actual fish hooks, which I’ve already purchased from good ol’ Wal*Mart and the hearts are going to be made out of this glittered red cardstock I found at Micheal’s. She’s also going to be wearing pearls around her neck.

So that’s what I’ve been working on. Exciting, no?

As I write this, I’m waiting for the glitter paint on the slippers of Raili & Madison’s paintings to dry so I can adhere them to their canvasses with gel medium and they’ll be dry by the time I wake up tomorrow when I can add their arms.

I think that’s why I’m stuck on the mermaid painting, it’s time to add her arms and that’s the worst part of doing these paintings for me because they’re a pain in the ass to paint and get the colour to match the rest of their complexion and it’s also a pain in the ass to make them the right length. With practice I’m getting better at it, but I still hate that part of doing these because it always takes a few attempts to get them right.

So that’s my paintings…

In other news, I don’t know how I feel about this new anti-depressant my shrink’s added to the mix. It’s called Gabapentin and I’m on 200mg a day and while I’m not as depressed as I normally would be at this time of year, I feel…boring. I feel like I’m unfeeling, I’m numb. I feel like I want to cry but the drug won’t let me, like it’s masking my emotions and blocking me from even really having them. I don’t have the drive or passion for things I normally do and while yes, like I said, I guess it’s good that I’m not wanting to kill myself and the grey days are easier to handle, but I don’t think I like this numbness either. I don’t like feeling blank, neutral. Truth be told, I think I like being bipolar and feeling the extremes. I miss them when they’re not there. :o/

I have no idea what I’ll tell my shrink when she calls tomorrow and asks me how I’m feeling. I’ve read about other anti-depressants and I don’t think I want to be on any of them so I don’t want her to switch me to something else, but I don’t really like this one either. What to do, what to do?

Anyway, this is getting long and I’m starting to get sleepy so I think I’ll save my other words for another time. Just as a reminder though, you can add the feed for this blog to your Live Journal by clicking here and I just wanted to mention that I’m not following comments on the LJ feed, so if you have something to say and you want me to see it, it’s probably a better idea to post it here.

And with that, I’m off to bed.

Howdy, circus freaks!

Right now I’m doing some stuff online that’s inadvertently bringing people to my site for the very first time and I’m feeling the urge to scramble around cleaning things up because my site is a bloody mess. So, the first thing people should know when coming here is that THIS SITE IS UNDER HEAVY HEAVY CONSTRUCTION AND DOESN’T ALWAYS LOOK THIS BAD. It’s never been the most well-designed site, in its almost 7 years of existence, but it’s always been a HELL of a lot more organized than it is at this very moment.

So hello new people, my name is Sunny and I’m a writer, an artist and a semi-retired muse. I’ve been living my life publicly, online, in front of an audience (so to speak) since 1997 for reasons even I’m not completely sure of. Over the years I’ve had a running webcam (which I’m probably the most “well known” for), an IRC channel, forums, I’ve sold my art and writing and things I’ve made through a website that no longer exists called Merch Bitch (this was in the days pre-Etsy). Half the internet’s seen me naked, knows my kids names and knows where my husband works. I’m an open book, there’s very little I hold back (and when I do, it’s usually as a courtesy for others), and that’s why people read and have followed my crap for so long….I think, anyway. I live an extremely examined life and truly ascribe to the old adage pertaining to such.

In 2006 I had a (very public, as it happened online) psychotic break and I’ve pretty much spent the last two years in a living hell that I never thought would end. Between the unparalleled terror of psychosis and its aftermath, the lack of aftercare I was given upon my release from the hospital and then 18 months of hellacious trial & error with psychiatric drugs, I’ve really been through the ringer. Throughout it all, I was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and it’s been a slow crawl back to who I was before. Only recently have I become stable-ish and I feel myself becoming a better, if battle scarred, version of who I was before. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this whole ordeal, it’s that life is just a series of processes. I feel like I’m just beginning another, which will eventually end or change and another will begin again.

So that’s me. Oh and I’m 29, married, with two kids, a dog & a cat. This isn’t a current pic, but is, more or less, what I look like (when I’m not sick, anyway):

Part of my “coming back” from mental illness has a lot to do with art and currently I’m enrolled in Suzi Blu’s online workshop “Les Petite Dolls“, which I gushed about here and here and my dear friend Raya paid for me to do because she was glad to see me eeking back towards my old creative self.

When I was starting to “lose it”, just before (and during) my psychotic break, I began working around the clock on a few creative endeavours that I thought were “genius”, including a painting I entitled “Camp Tampon” which to this day I still feel really captures where my mind was at the time. I mean, there’s a definite contrast between that and the way I usually paint.

Because my creative mind was so affected by the mania and because psychosis felt like I was “stuck” in my own imagination and I couldn’t get out, I’ve been afraid to be creative or use my imagination ever since. I’m afraid that if I let my mind “go there”, I’ll get stuck again and that was the single worst experience of my life. I’ve been beaten, I’ve been raped, I’ve been homeless, but psychosis was scarier than all of those things
put together and naturally I want to do everything in my power for it never to happen again. In my mind, that meant stopping all creative activity because to be creative meant I was risking losing it or going over a line that I had no way of seeing. It’s taken my shrink a dozen visits to convince me that as long as I take my medication, it’s okay to be creative and only now that we’ve found what I think is the right medication, have I been able to trust my creative self again.

In the Suzi Blu workshop, you have a profile where she asks specific questions so she can help teach you better and one of them was “What has kept you blocked with art in the past?” to which I answered, “Fear of my own imagination/mental illness. (It’s a long story.)” And this is that long story. You get a blog there too, but I figured if people from “Les Petite Dolls” were clicking the link to my site in my profile anyway, I might as well just write it all out here and be able to post pictures and links to better explain myself.

So there ya have it. Art has always been a huge part of my life (my mom’s an artist, I just grew up with it) and it feels good to have it back.

So, apparently my biological father’s in the audience and he’s having a hard time with “what I do” since he thinks “what I do” is porn. Well, it’s not…exactly. It IS adult though and that’s why I do it at Camwhores.com because let’s face it, I don’t want my kids stumbling on it any more than you do and the fact is, they’re not going to get to see anything of mine over there without access to an adult’s credit card. (And if they do, you’re probably a horrible parent.)

Wanna know what I do on cam? I masturbate. The only difference between me broadcasting it on a webcam and you doing it wherever and however you do it is that thousands of people watch me while I do it. I do this maybe four or five times a year (and I masturbate a hell of a lot more than that, as do most of the people reading this, possibly my father included). I make people happy, and that makes me happy.

Making people happy is what I do, mostly.

But I don’t just do it by adult means. I also do it by writing,
fiction and non-fiction, every single day of my life. Writing this site,
in my Live Journal, talking to people in IM and other places, using forums
and e-mail…I’m really really busy. The reason I stay on
Camwhores.com even though it’s become more porn-ish (it was very
different when I started there) is because I can stream live and actually
chat with the audience in real time and not be censored like you are on
YouTube. If you wanna flash your titties, you just go on ahead. Some of us
womenfolk have that weird exhibitionist streak in us, see Girls Gone Wild
or Mardis Gras for further proof.

Masturbation isn’t something I’m ashamed of, and no one will ever make me feel ashamed of it. Not when there’s 200+ women on that site, all so so different, from different cultures and different walks of life, who do the same thing (and more) and that’s just on ONE english-speaking cam portal. There’s a lot of history to this thing I call cam culture, and I love being in the thick of it, sorry. *shrug*

There’s no other place on the whole damn internet where I can do what I do there, even fully clothed. There’s also a community there if you look past the titties to see it. When I update my cam on Camwhores, almost instantly friends I’ve had online for 5 years will pop up and
we’ll have a nice chat. Some are cammers, some are viewers, and some I know more about than members of my own family. It’s fun (and very very weird, which is why I don’t do it very often anymore).

But you have kids!

So? Do your kids know what you’re doing after they go to bed? No? Neither do mine.

Obviously they see some aspects of the things I do online, but I’m not an idiot. They only see what’s age appropriate, and there are safeties in place. I’m on Camwhores.com exclusively, a site which is filtered on every computer they touch at home or at school, and most of their friends have filters in place too. So it’ll be a long while, I think, before they have a chance to stumble on that aspect of my life. Chances are I’ll tell them long before they find it on their own. The internet’s a big place after all.

Why is it called Camwhores?

It’s a tongue-in-cheek term similar to how a fanatic for shoes is called a “Shoe whore”. Camwhores are people who are fanatical about expressing themselves, ideally live, through their webcams.

Any questions? E-mail me. (Sunny Crittenden (at) Sunny Crittenden.com)

Here’s what I’m doing instead:

- Cleaning my kitchen.
- Making meatballs for tomorrow’s dinner.
- Listening to the Beastie Boys (and various other crap I refuse to admit to).
- Making a grocery list.
- Looking at recipes on KraftCanada.com because dudes, I am so not a gourmet.

The cat (Digit) is sitting on the kitchen table and meowing for no apparent reason. Well, I’m sure there’s some reason, but I’m not even sure he’s speaking to me, so I’m basically ignoring him and hoping he’s not brave stupid enough to go for the onions I’ve got on the stove. It’s hard to say, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

I’d take pics because my kitchen’s actually somewhat clean (haha) but I can’t upload them so what’s the point? >:o( Yep, still grrr there.

I’m so weird when it comes to food and this is what Jesse and I have in common, except he probably has an eating disorder (worrisome) and I don’t (reassuring!), we decided today. We also decided that Jesse is so special, that we should have Jesse Day with a parade and everything. I don’t think I’d be a very good cameraperson for that event, all the footage would be blurry from laughing so fucking hard if it’s half as funny as it is in my head. :D Sumpin to ponder though. *strokes chin*

We like to make up our own holidays around here. :)

Does anyone see why I couldn’t make these in advance and freeze them? And if I did that, how much longer would I have to bake them from frozen? Hrm.

FYI? Meatballs are much more labour intensive than I thought they’d be. (But then again I’m probably making twice as many as we’ll actually eat for dinner.)

Cooking in the middle of the night isn’t a weird thing for me. I don’t do it all the time, but it’s something I’ve always done and when I do cook, my brain seems to think that 10 people live in this house, it’s ridiculous. Sometimes it’s meals in advance or parts of meals, sometimes it’s stuff for lunches, sometimes it’s muffins or brownies. Usually it revolves around whatever happens to be in the house at the time.

When I was little I indisputably had the best great grama in the whole wide world. I mean, she was textbook fairytale old lady, white hair, short, GIGANTIC boobs, wore floral mumus (I shit thee not, but it worked for her with the boobs & all), walked with a cane, was old as the dirt in her garden, she crocheted, she cooked, she was awesome & probably the best friend I’d ever had in my whole entire life until I met Blake.

She’s also probably the reason my sleep schedule is, and has always been, as fucked up as it is because I was with her a lot and we’d cook in the middle of the night or draw pictures or she’d tell me stories or I’d sit in the bath and she’d read me stories. I dunno if she was the nightowl or if I was or we both were, but this is what we did so certain sleep/wake habits make a lotta sense to me.

It’s 4:44am as I type this, my meatballs are finished, they’re with the sauce in the fridge and the rest of the dishes can wait until tomorrow. I should go to bed. My body knows it, my mind knows it - it’s just a fact. I should have been in bed a long time ago…but as I turned out the kitchen lights, I noticed that one of the windows has frosted in a sort-of fleur de lis pattern that may just be worth the wait for this morning’s sunrise because the sun will come directly through that window at one point, I just have to wait for it.

It’s stuff like that that I live for, as lame as it sounds; cool looking shit that nature just gives us, I mean those moments are gifts from the universe as far as I’m concerned. I like to memorize them.

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately. My biological dad, Phil. I really only have one, he’s it, he porked my mom and out came me, it’s crazy but I accept it. He’s a kooky guy and I kinda like him, but I think he’ll just be Phil for the rest of my life because I don’t think he’ll ever really be my dad. He’s just this guy I know that I’m really interested in, probably because it’s ingrained in my DNA to be as such. (I’m a little obsessed with nature vs. nurture.) Phil’s just Phil, Lisa (his wife) is just Lisa and Raili (my almost 2 year old sister) is just Raili. There’s no textbook or Wikipedia entry that can tell me how we’re all supposed to fit together.

Ever since I met Phil & Lisa, when I was 13, I’ve been trying to figure out what Phil and I had in common, because that’s what you do when you meet one of your parents for the first time and it’s taken me years to even make a list of 10 because some of the things he does (and they do) are pretty bizarre. They just live in a whole different world than I do. But now that Raili’s in the picture, it just all kinda makes sense. It’s like, she was the missing piece to put the whole picture into perspective for me (and maybe for him too, although I doubt he’d say so).

I know I’ve posted this picture of her before, but dammit, it’s a good picture. :)

I’m probably thinking about Phil & Raili because Phil’s birthday is Feb. 11th and Raili’s is at the end of Feb. (I suck, I’d have to look it up) and mine’s the 1st of March, so there’s part of me that thinks we should all get together at some point in the next couple of months while our energies are compatible, but I’m not big on birthdays so we need a different reason.

Something I grew up doing was making maple syrup with my Aunt Betty & Uncle Bill, I wonder if they’d be interested in doing that in March? They live in the bush, I’m sure we could find some maple trees and collect enough sap in the span of a few days to have at least one good pancake breakfast/lunch/dinner with enough syrup to maybe even take home. Something else to ponder.

Hmmmm sugar bush dreams sound pretty good, I think I’ll ponder that in my sleep & wait for the next frosty window.