I just drove our new car for the first time. I went to the grocery store, put things in my basket (very fast as I was FREAKING THE FUCK OUT INSIDE MY BRAIN), made small talk with the cashier guy who reminds me a lot of my friend Scooter, paid with my DEBIT CARD (which is a great source of anxiety), packed up my own bag and DROVE HOME.

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.

HOLY FUCK! THERE IS FUCKING FOOD GROWING IN MY BACKYARD!

This fact, from time to time, when I really think about it just blows my tiny little mind. I don’t really know why I think it’s such a big deal, but I’ve been examining that tonight and I think it’s the whole “not being dependent on the grocery store” thing. And maybe the fact that I nurtured these CRAZY HUGE PLANTS from teeny tiny seeds since March, not really knowing what was going to happen. It’s not like my frontyard garden where I scatter seeds, let them do their own thing out there with very little help from me except watering them twice in the beginning and then I know more or less what’s going to happen to them. They are going to grow into purple, pink, white, blue and sometimes yellow flowers that grow into this one gigantic bush that people walking past marvel over.

And here’s where I might as well segue into what some of you will see as bad news: this is the last year I’m going to do the Keep Off the Lawn Project (which is just a stupid name for my wildflower frontyard garden for those not in the know). Blake’s going to weed whack the garden in a couple of weeks before everything starts going to seed and next year instead of spreading wildflower seeds we’re going to be spreading grass seed or laying down sod. :o/

Here’s the fact of the matter: I love my frontyard garden, like really really love it, but at the same time it gives me massive anxiety and this week, after I went out and took pictures of it and noticed all the weeds and fretted over the seeds that never grew or the fact that the back half of the garden is all bachelor’s buttons and the front is all cosmos and it should be the opposite because cosmos are taller that bachelor’s buttons. Also, the bachelor’s buttons bloomed in July and started going to seed at the beginning of August while the cosmos just started blooming a couple of weeks ago so the whole thing looks uneven ad unkempt, like in a bad way. And unless I spend hours and hours and hours out there transplanting, there’s no way to fix it (and even that probably wouldn’t even be possible, everything’s way too close together).

And here’s the thing, which I’ve explained before: I can’t spend hours and hours and hours out there. I can barely spend the few minutes out there it takes me to take pictures of the garden. I feel like I’m being watched and judged by people n the cars going by and I’m terrified of someone walking down the street talking to me or worse, my neighbour who I barely know and our relationship is super awkward for a million reasons I won’t go into right now. So I sit here and fret about the weeds and how REAL gardeners walking by are judging me and my garden. I paid the kids twice this summer to weed the garden (and again to deadhead the bachelor’s buttons), but kids aren’t very good weeders, they aren’t very strong and I can’t be out there telling them what to pull or what to leave or how to do it. I mean they do their best and really weeding the garden is just an excuse for me to give them money anyway, but that doesn’t help my anxiety over weeds.

Wayne & Judy’s house, well “old house” I suppose, on the left of us is for sale right now for only $99,999.00 (it was purchased for $150,000!) so it’s getting a craptonne of people looking at it and they make me nervous as all hell. Wayne & Judy’s backyard and back deck, as I’ve explained before, overlooks both our front AND backyards so there’s absolutely no privacy ad lately every time I’ve gotten up the courage to go out and do something in either garden, there’s been some stranger either touring the house with the real estate agent or ever crazier, people have been pulling over, because the price of the house is advertised right on the “for sale” sign, and have gotten out of their cars to look in the windows and come right into the backyard and look around. To even GET into the backyard you have to open a latched gate! I don’t get the nerve of these people!

AND WORSE! GET THIS! Two weeks ago some creepy balding guy knocked on my door and wanted to know if I knew anything about Wayne & Judy’s house! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, RIGHT? I just about had a goddamn heart attack right there, I swear to god! And I was SO STUPID about it too. When people knock on our door, the dogs generally bark like crazy until they sniff whoever it is (no matter who it is) and then they go lay down. This guy knocked gently enough that he didn’t set off the dogs, which I always see as a good thing (I’ve trained just about all delivery people to do that because the barking makes me crazy and I don’t know how to make them stop – anyway, totally different topic…) so when I answered the door, I actually stepped outside and closed the door behind me. So the kids didn’t know I was interacting with this stranger and the dogs didn’t know and what if he was a crazy stalker person who wanted to kill or abduct me? No one would know I was gone or hurt or dead or whatever! In hindsight I was just like, what, are you fucking retarded? That was so stupid! Anyway…

So this guy, who again, was totally twitchy and creepy and I just got a seriously disturbed vibe from him, asked me if I knew about the house and I said that I could probably answer any question he had and he was just like, “well tell me about it” so I told him the downsides: electric baseboard heaters, no place for a normal furnace if you wanted to upgrade, because of the electric heat and the fact that it’s a seriously old house with no weather-proofing, Wayne & Judy had like, $400-$500/month hydro bills in the winter. You can’t get a queen-sized boxspring upstairs because the stairs are at an angle where you can’t get it around the corner, so if you want a queen-sized bed, you’re getting a mattress on the floor. One bedroom doesn’t have a window or a door.  Mice. Lots & lots of mice. No basement. Living room carpet was pissed on so much that it needs replacing and the house stinks of dog pee (unless the owner replaced it, which I doubt).  Blah blah blah. So I told him all this and he starts telling me about how he’s going through a divorce and “the bitch” is getting half of their $400,000 house and she took all of his “fucking” retirement money and he’s like, telling me all these details about his divorce, like the fact that he’ll be paying $1100/month in child support and I’m thinking “dude, what the fuck” but just nodding and hoping like hell that this creepy as fuck guy will not be my new neighbour…then two days ago I was in the backyard checking on the veggies and there that creepy guy was on the back deck of the house with the real estate agent. The house still has a “for sale” sign on it and a lot of people have been through since I saw that guy so I don’t know anything but man…I hope this dude doesn’t move in next door. I mean, he kinda leered at me when he was with the real estate agent. So creepy.

Wow, did I ever go on a tangent there.

My point is that the frontyard garden stresses me out more than it gives me pleasure so after talking to Blake about it, I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m still anti-lawn, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have to deal with grass. Mowing is Blake’s job. There *are* two flower beds in the front where I will plant flowers, I don’t know what kind yet because the beds are in a shady area and I don’t know what to plant,  but I figure I’ll let the kids have one of them each to grow whatever they want from a list of what will grow there and they can start their seeds in March when I start mine for the back garden.

Speaking of the back garden, Blake & I are considering expanding it next year, although we haven’t decided definitively. Our neighbour on the right (named Frances, I haven’t written about him much because there’s nothing to write about), whose house is also for sale, never goes in his backyard EVER so I don’t have to worry about making small talk with him because we have no privacy. I will have to contend with new neighbours once Wayne & Judy’s house sells but I’m going to treat this as immersion therapy and try to just ignore them. God help me if they’re friendly, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

So that’s the plan.

Out of everything we planted in the back garden, which was a lot, the only things that thrived were sugar snap peas, burgundy beans, bobcat tomatoes, sugary cherry tomatoes and green and purple peppers. The tomatoes and peppers were started indoors in march and the bobcat tomatoes out there are fucking ridiculous. There are 3 plants, that are more like BUSHES, that have grown so big it just looks like one giant tomato bush. The tomato cages were useless because there were too small, so the tomatoes grew tall enough it pulled the cages right out of the ground and they’re all supported by leaning on each other in like, a tee-pee formation. Only one of my cherry tomato plants thrived, which sucks because they’re awesome, but the cage was useless with that one too because of it being too small. I had no idea how big tomato plants could get so I got the small 99 cent cages instead of the bigger $4.99 ones. Next year we’ll get the bigger ones.

And I guess that’s enough of my crazy talk, I’ll just get on with the pictures.

(more…)

We have peas! Lots and lots of peas! They started being ready 2 weeks ago (when these pics were taken) and we’ve been picking a large sandwich container full about every 3 days ever since. They’re mostly finished now, but the beans are almost ready!

Anyway, I thought since I took them and haven’t done a garden post in a while, I’d post these pictures. Right now the front garden isn’t doing a whole lot. Last week I paid each kid $3 to go out there with a pair of scissors and “deadhead” all of my bachelor buttons, which they did with gusto, so as things stand, the cosmos at the front that should be in bloom within the next two weeks should coincide with the 2nd round of bachelor’s buttons and I’ll take pics of the whole works then.

On with the pictures!

The kids picking peas.

Madison picking peas.

Peas & beans.

Baby peppers that are now significantly bigger.

Bobcat tomato which is also now significantly bigger.

Cherry tomatoes which we have LOTS & LOTS of.

So that’s the state of the garden right now. The peas taste like nothing I’ve ever had from a store, but then again, I’ve never seen these kind of peas in stores before anyway. I haven’t tried the beans yet because I jumped the gun in picking the few I did two weeks ago thinking there were more that were ready than there actually were so those ones are still in my fridge because there’s not enough of them to really have with a meal. All of the beans should be ready to pick in about another week I’d say and then I *think* they’ll actually make another batch of beans in September but don’t quote me on that because I’m just going by memory of when I grew this type before and honestly, things are a bit foggy,

Alright as I said in my previous post, it’s the long weekend here so it’s time to turn my brain off and get my Warcraft shit in order! Have a great weekend!

It truly is the perfect food. Well, “junk” food. I think I read somewhere that dark chocolate like, boosts your endorphins or dopamine something and that’s a good thing. All I know is that I love it, especially late at night when it’s hot and humid and I don’t want to go to bed yet because tomorrow’s going to be even hotter and more humid, so I need to use the night to get work done.

I’m taking an art class right now that is so fucking awesome that I honestly couldn’t be happier. My brain is exploding with ideas and I’m frustrated that my hands don’t work as fast as I’d like them to and paint doesn’t dry as fast as I’d like it to. I just want all of this creative energy out of me and into the world! I want to paint a million paintings and have them in homes all across the world! I’m close to that, which I should be proud of, my paintings are all over the US, a few in the UK and one – ONE! – in my homeland of Canada! If I could get one to Australia and Japan, I would feel immensely successful.

I’m still undecided about The Square Foot Show. Like, whether or not I’m going to do it. Blake says I should at least submit and be part of the show, but not commit to actually being at the artist’s gala bullshit thing that I totally do not want to do. Like, in the slightest. I barely made it through my friend’s wedding last weekend, I don’t know if I can deal with a bunch of Toronto strangers.

I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Oh one more thing about art before I switch topics: my art teacher? Totally awesome. I e-mailed her, asking if she could teach me how to shade people of colour because I learned how to shade my girls in a very specific, Caucasian way and I don’t know how to adapt that method to work for darker complexions. Shading is just something that doesn’t come naturally to me at ALL. So she e-mailed me back, actually really excited about the idea of darker complexions and said that in week 3 of the course, she’ll put up an extra video (it’s an online art class btw), teaching us exactly what I asked for: how to shade people of colour. I AM SO STOKED. I have had a billion ideas for girls of different ethnicities as it’s one of my goals in my artist’s statement to express Canada’s multiculturalism, but until now I haven’t been able to and it’s been making me CRAZY! Learning how to do this thing may be the difference between me getting a $5000 arts grant in the spring and not getting a $5000 arts grant in the spring. The same goes for The Stupid Square Foot Show.

So that’s art right now.

But let’s talk about yoga. Oh my god people, I LOVE yoga and I am in a continuous state of SHOCK that I love yoga. I literally failed gym class every year of my life. I can scan my report cards and prove it if you don’t believe me, it was pathetic. (How do you fail gym class? By not showing up, my faking injury or illness, by having a doctor who didn’t mind writing notes, getting kicked OUT of gym class for calling your gym teacher things you’re now too ashamed to admit you said…)

Anyway, yoga. It just works with me, it clicks, I can’t explain it. I feel both relaxed AND energized (and SORE!) after every class, it’s like I’m full of this weird energy or something. My teacher knows I’ve never done yoga before so in the beginning she took it easy on me but as we’ve gone along (I’ve only been going for 5 weeks), she’s been going harder on us and I think she’s a little surprised that I’m keeping up and practically begging for more.

I’m not very strong yet, but I am naturally flexible, so I’m better at some things than others. Like today we did pigeon pose and I rocked the shit out of it because my legs are super bendy and I sit like a freak all day in my computer chair anyway, pigeon was a cakewalk. But plank? Oh my holy lord do I fucking hate plank! My arms and upper body just aren’t strong enough to do plank-like things, like these crazy bitch push ups she made us do a few weeks ago? My god I was dripping with sweat and was sore for a full week afterward – BUT IN A TOTALLY GOOD WAY.

Honestly, I wish we could go twice a week, but we don’t have the money to do that and I think her classes are all full because her studio only fits 5 or 6 people right now. She’s planning on expanding, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen.

ANYWAY…*deep breath*, it is 3:34am and I think I have just enough energy left to get the paining I’m working on into the final steps of being finished. So I’m going to go do that and wish you all a happy tomorrow. :o)

A couple of days ago, Madison came running into the house to say “OMG MUM! WE HAVE PEAS AND THEY’RE ALMOST READY TO EAT!”, so I went out with my camera to investigate since I hadn’t been out to see the garden in about a week.

Before I get into the peas, let me tell you about the tomatoes…we’re going to have a LOT of them if all of these yellow blossoms are going to turn into tomatoes. Already with the cherry tomatoes we have baby ones but I didn’t see any yet on the bobcat plants. Both types of plants are monsters though, check it out:

You can tell which ones are the cherry tomatoes and which ones are the bobcats because the cherries have lots & lots of little yellow flowers and the bobcats have bigger versions of the same flowers but there are less of them. The plan for the tomatoes is of course to eat some of them, but we’re going to have more than we need, so we’re going to make salsa with them and jar it so Blake can eat it throughout the year, as opposed to buying it and it would also make nice, economical Xmas gifts for Phil, my uncle Paul and my mom’s boyfriend John. Now we just have to find a really good recipe for it, preferably a really hot/spicy one. I figure it shouldn’t be too hard and if all else fails, we can just use Jamie Oliver’s.

Next up is BEANS. MONSTER BEANS. We planted two rows of these because we really like them and they are growing like crazy. Right now they’re in bloom, but I forgot to take a picture of the weird flowers they have.

I’m not really sure how my peppers are doing because I don’t know how peppers grow and I threw out the seed packet so I can’t check. The plants didn’t grow very tall, but they have white flowers and a couple even have a pathetic looking baby pepper or two. Voila:

But the real monsters in my garden right now are the peas, which, as Madison said, are about a week or two from being able to pick. It’s as if as soon as we staked them, they got happy and made peas all over the place like, overnight! Look!

That last pic’s a little blurry but right now the sun’s right overhead and any pics I took out there right now would look like crap, so I’m not going to retake it. You get the point.

These peas are sugar snap peas, which means that they’re very sweet and the pods are edible. As soon as the peas inside the pods are, y’know, “pea sized”, they’ll be ready to pick, which the children will gleefully do.

Next year, definitely, we’re going to grow tomatoes, beans and peas but probably nothing else since the weeds in that bed are out of control and those 3 things seem to thrive despite it and those 3 things are things we really like. Next year we’re just going to grow more of them. The peas, just because the kids will eat them and like them, the beans so I can freeze them and the tomatoes so we can make sauce and salsa, pending the salsa experiment this year goes well.

So that’s the garden so far. :o)

Oooooh my god I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head right now that I can’t even begin to process them all unless I start writing shit down, so that’s what I’m going to do. It’s been a busy, happy (mostly) few days so I guess I’ll sort everything by day, starting with Thursday night.

Thursday night I was playing WoW with my friends Stephy & Keenan and eating Crispers when I lost a filling. I have nightmares regularly about this very thing and while I anted to freak out, I stayed mostly calm, especially because our dentist is awesome and I was pretty sure I could get it fixed, if only temporarily, the next day. Plus, it didn’t hurt. Still, when I got into bed I woke Blake up and freaked out a little bit, but not as badly as I would have in the past and then I went to sleep.

Friday morning Blake told me that our dentist could see me in the afternoon, after my shrink appointment, so yay.

My shrink appointment didn’t go as planned. See, the thing is, I only see my shrink once a month or sometimes once every 3 months, so she doesn’t always remember things about me or what we talked about last session. Plus, she’s sometimes quite a bitch, but despite that I mostly like her. It’s not her fault she has like, 500+ patients and at the mental health clinic I go to, where she works 2 days a week, she gets paid peanuts compared to her private practice and probably has more clients, all of whom she usually sees once a month. I’ve been in the waiting room with a lot of her patients and believe me, I’m definitely low priority and to me, that’s a good thing.

Anyway, I was excited to tell her about doing yoga because yoga is a huge deal for me in terms of social awkwardness and agoraphobia in general. A year ago I couldn’t do this. Two years ago, this would have been an impossibility. I expected my shrink to be like, “yay you!” but when I told her she wasn’t really that enthused about it and that wasn’t the reaction I was going for. She was more amused, I think, that Blake was doing it – omg a MAN doing yoga, imagine! – than me and that kinda bummed me out.

Then I thought she might be happy that I still haven’t smoked since April 23rd, but she didn’t seem to care about that either.

So the next thing I wanted to talk to her about, or at least make her aware of, is that article about picky eating adults I linked in Live Journal the other day and how researchers are thinking it might actually be a disorder and that they were doing a study on it, which I signed up for. So she read the article, which I’d printed out for her, and the whole time she had a kind of smirk on her face like she was trying not to laugh and when she was finished, she said that she didn’t believe it was a disorder. (She spent about a minute 30 seconds skimming the article, I might add.) Then Blake and I started telling her about all of my issues with food, which are actually pretty immense when you lay them all out and I think I’m going to write a page about it on my site sometime soon because maybe it would be interesting to other people, but anyway we told her about ho sometimes it takes literally 2 hours to decide what to have for dinner and then in the end I usually end up eating something separate from the family anyway and after laying it all out on the table, she looks me dead in the eye and says, “is it possible that you’re just a spoiled brat?”

I had no idea how to respond to that. This is my shrink. This is the person who’s supposed to help me with my issues and help me figure out how to live with them or fix them and here she is completely invalidating what Blake and I spent the last 10 minutes trying to explain? I mean basically what we were saying is that we think I have OCD and that it manifests itself with food. Y’know how some people with OCD are germaphobes? Well I’m pretty much a foodaphobe in a very similar way and she asked me that? What kind of bedside manner is that? That’s bullshit. Your shrink isn’t supposed to CALL YOU NAMES.

And what really kills me about this shrink in particular is that when I first started seeing her, almost  years ago now, I told her “hey I sleep ’til 1pm and work at night and smoke and live a really weird life”, she said “that’s okay. It’s your life and you have the right to live it how you want to.” And she stuck with that for like, the first year, but after that she started trying to change me or openly disagreeing with how I live my life. She thinks I should go to bed at 11 or 12 and get up early in the morning all of a sudden. Most of the time I actually DO do that but it’s the principle of it, she told me before that I could sleep however I wanted to as long as I was getting enough of it.

And then there was the one time where I walked into her office and like, almost the first thing she said to me is, “why don’t you get a job?” Like lady, have you not been listening for the past few years? Do you not remember my issues? That was the most asinine suggestion I’ve ever heard in my whole entire life. I’m not offended by people thinking I’m whatever because I don’t have a 9-5, I don’t expect people to understand my life and I don’t care, but SHE SHOULD because I’ve (we’ve) spent hours upon hours explaining to her how we are, how we live, how life is, and she just doesn’t pay attention or listen or write the right things down.

And by the way, I have a job, thank you. I have several. I’m an artist. I’m a camgirl. (A bad one at the moment, but whatever.) Those two things are what I do to bring in money so my kids can have the things they want, which brings me to my other job, being their mom. They LIKE that I’m always home and that I’m always there for them. Our family is extremely close and that’s the way we like it and a lot of that has to do with the fact that 85% of the time, I am completely available for whatever they need. So fuck you and your “get a job” crap. I’m all full up. It pissed me off when people negate being a stay at home mom as a job. That’s fucking bullshit, especially considering the fact that I also work from home at the same time.

Anyway, she pissed me of with the accusation that I as a “spoiled brat” and after she said that, I sort of shut down and stopped participating in the conversation, but I guess Blake explained things to her and she conceded that I probably have OCD tendencies but that I wouldn’t like the main treatment (exposure, which wouldn’t work in this case anyway, if you read the stories on PickyEatingAdults.com) and I couldn’t have the other treatment which is high doses of anti-depressants because they would make me manic. So we all concluded that the best thing to do is to just continue trying to work around it since I’m not exactly starving and Blake can deal with it with me. And really, I’m getting better. Not with food, I’m still a wreck over food, but I’ve been actively trying to make things easier on Blake when it comes to my stupid idiosyncrasies.

So after my shrink appointment we came home for a while and then it was time to go to the dentist where I got a temporary filling and I have to go back this Thursday for the real thing. I hate when the assistant dentist girl tells the secretary that they’ll need 40 minutes for me. :o/

But that’s a milestone in and of itself. I have had a lifelong fear of dentists but I’ve been really lucky to have two really good ones the last several years, especially the one I see now, and now it’s really no big deal because I know after the needle part, I’m good. The dentist I see now is really gentle and understanding and I’m really going to miss him when/if we move or when/if he retires. (He’s kinda old, but I don’t know how old. He’s spoken of retiring while I’ve been in the chair so I know it’s on his mind. Oh yeah, and he’s the only dentist in town.)

After the dentist I had a much needed nap and when I woke up, we went to Wal*Mart to get Madison a new bathing suit and flip-flops because hers were fuX0red and last year’s bathing suit wasn’t fitting so well. So we did that and while we were there, Wes said that he wished he could have a Zhu Zhu pet, which is a mechanical hamster that makes sounds and runs around on the floor and is about $10.

We went to the toy aisle after getting Madison situated and I looked at these mechanical hamsters and when I saw one that was pink, I was sold. I told Wes I would buy him one but that he couldn’t have it until he earned it by doing basic chores around the house. He was good with this, so we put two of them in the cart, one for him and one for me, so we could play with them together just as I played with Tamagotchis with Madison at around the same age.

I also picked up the new “Hole” album, Nobody’s Daughter, which is really a Courtney Love album that she decided to brand as being Hole for reasons I can’t even comprehend. I wasn’t going to buy the album out of principle but then my completest nature too over and suddenly I had to have it. Also I watched Courtney’s “Behind the Music” the night before and that made me want the album. (Have I ever mentioned how goddamn susceptible I am to advertising?)

I also bought two spiral notebooks because my current one is almost full and they were on sale for $3 a piece for the big fat ones, so score! And I also bought new underwear because my bum is no longer a large (it hasn’t been for quite some time, but I haven’t had any money) and is now a medium to small – w00t! I just grabbed a 3-pack of Hanes Her Way bikini underbums because ideally I’m going to be needing to buy smalls eventually.

I know, you totally care. We also bought shampoo, how exciting!

When we got home, I opened my Zhu Zhu pet to see what it did and then I started listening to Nobody’s Daughter, which I expected to hate but I’ve gotta say it’s actually growing on me, or at least some tracks. I think it’s better than the abysmal America’s Sweetheart, but only by a fraction. This may sound kind of weird, but America’ Sweetheart was kinda contrived while Nobody’s Daughter feels more honest. What I mean is that Live Through This was about Courtney’s Life, more or less, as was Celebrity Skin because that’s when she was going through her Hollywood phase. During America’ Sweetheart she was completely fucked up on drugs from crack to coke and getting hauled off to Bellevue because she was out of her mind and hardly any of that is present on America’s Sweetheart. Nobody’s Daughter is very much a comeback album and what she went through to get here, I think, what she learned along the way. (I think certain songs might be about people she met in rehab and some of it is definitely what she discovered about herself through therapy.)

Anyway, I won’t lie, I kinda like it – so shoot me. (But I still refuse to call it a Hole album because it’s not. Certain songs are VERY Hole-esque, but it’s just not Hole.)

So as I’m listening to the album for about the 3rd time, I’m reading my Facebook feed and one of my friends posted that he was going to the Courtney Love show the next day and I was like “WHAT????? HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS????” and immediately I was upset that I couldn’t go because I was sure it was either sold out or we couldn’t afford the INSANE $50 ticket price, which was a shame because on Saturday, the night of the show, we were celebrating our anniversary by going to get ribs and strawberry pie like we do every year and thus, we had a babysitter (two of them in fact!) and could conceivably go.

I sulked hardcore and tweeted about it several times, trying to figure out a way we could go. I have two paycheques coming any day now (well one is) and Blake said he could lend me the money for us to go and I could pay him back with that but the cheque is only for $200 and change and I need that money for the kids for the summer so I didn’t want to blow half of it on this show.

But just as I was considering it, Saturday morning, my friend Heatha messaged me and was like, “hey I can give you a deposit on the painting I want to buy so you can go to the show” and I was like “fuck YES” and that’s what happened. The deposit was exactly enough to pay for the tickets, parking and if we added $10, which I did, get a tour t-shirt.

Before I get into the show though, first and foremost Blake and I were celebrating our 8 year wedding anniversary by going to Haugen’s for the best ribs and fresh strawberry pie in the world, stopping in Greenbank where I grew up, to the bakery there where we bought the best garlic cheese bread in the world, as well as some pretty kickass ginger cookies.

Voila:

Normally we get a whole strawberry pie to bring home with us and share with the kids, but we didn’t this time because we were going to the Courtney Love show afterward and we didn’t think it would keep well in the trunk of the car that long. Plus, we were trying to be as frugal as possible because really, we can’t afford to celebrate our anniversary, but it’s important to us so we do it anyway.

I slept all the way from Haugen’s to the venue and since we were early, I continued to sleep in the car until the lineup to get in was considerably smaller and after fixing my makeup we got in line. Security confiscated my PENS! I had 3 BRAND NEW Pilot Precise V5s in my bag, which are kind of expensive as far as disposable pens go, and they confiscated them because of graffiti. I didn’t protest because I know there’s no point in doing that in situations like this, but man, that sucked. Plus you’d have to have a lot of time and be really dedicated to tag the bathroom with one of those.

The security chick was like, “after the show just come out and I’ll give them back to you” and I thought “yeah right”. And of course after the show, those security guards were nowhere to be found.

Anyway, the show. The show was pretty awesome and I can’t help but love Courtney Love. I’m sorry, I know some of you hate her guts and don’t get why I like her so much, but whatever, she was great. Here’s a review of the show, which I agree with. Her voice was different than usual (I’ve seen her as the REAL Hole twice before), even different than on the album, and I noticed that her annunciation was different too and actually very Jagger-esque. She belted out tunes old and new and the audience sang along to a lot of it and all in all it was just a really great show. (Well, except that she sang Doll Parts, which is the worst Hole song, imo.)

We started off in the “pit”, which was full of little girls like me when we started, and we were about 3 people back from the barriers but when it got closer to Courtney coming on, all these goddamn Amazons pushed and shoved their way in front of all of us and when Courtney came out, the “pit” went fucking mental (as to be expected). We stayed in there for the first 3 songs but when the girl to my left threw her totally full beer into the air all over the crowd and the woman to my right started literally punching people, I decided it was time to get the fuck out, so I grabbed Blake’s hand and we watched the rest of the show from the back where it was cooler and I could actually have a drink.

Luckily, being a primarily female audience and not a very tall one, I could actually see Courtney from the back from the waist up and the sound at the venue is actually really good so I was happy with our position, except when 6 foot tall dickheads decided to stand right in front of me. Repeatedly. I was a 6 foot tall dickhead magnet, I don’t know why. Luckily they never stayed in front of me very long and the back was sparse enough for me to move around so I could see better.

When we first arrived at the show I went to the bathroom and it was totally clean. When Courtney finished her encore I went to the bathroom again and it was absolutely trashed. The men reading this may or may not know this, but in most womens’ public bathrooms, to the right of the toilet, is a receptacle for used menstrual products. When I went to the bathroom at the end of the show I checked every available stall and I swear to god that every girl in the whole venue was on the rag but me. These receptacles were so full that all around them on the floor were used pads and tampons. It was beyond disgusting and made worse by the fact that the floor was all wet for some reason in the whole bathroom, which made the tampons bulk up. SO GROSS.

After the show, we went home and hung out with Ronny & Alex for about half an hour, then they went home and we went to bed and now it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m writing this post.

The only thing I have left to say is that Ronny now lives in Canada (he’s from MI) because he and Alex are getting married on Saturday and he brought me Vanilla Coke Zero, Cherry Coke Zero, Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and Cherry Dr. Pepper, none of which we have in Canada because….I dunno, we fucking suck. I just had a can of Vanilla Coke Zero and just about had an orgasm on the spot. When they discontinued regular Vanilla Coke up here I was so upset because I LOVED it and when Ronny told me that they had Vanilla Coke Zero in the US I was like “that’s it, we’re moving” so that’s why he brought these all up.

Right now I’m drinking a can of Cherry Coke Zero and I actually think it might be better than the vanilla.

Oh and one more thing: I got the most BEAUTIFUL wedding invitation from our friends Alicia and Tim in Georgia that blew me away on Friday and I wish so badly that we could afford for all of us to go because those two actually kinda met through me and I’d really like to see them become husband and wife. Alas, financially it would be an impossibility, but I hope they know I’m there in spirit. (And I think they should totally webcast it…*cough*)

Anyway, that is all. Have a great week everyone!

I got up this morning a little after 7am because I had a nightmare that I was in fostercare on a pig farm and my foster father was abusive to my foster mother and us kids weren’t looked after at all. The whole dream was me and child versions of Meredith Grey, Christina Yang and Liz Lemon trying to escape. When I woke up from that, I couldn’t get back to sleep.

I checked e-mail, Twitter etc. and when I got to Facebook, my friend Missy said that she was watching the Intervention marathon on A&E today and asked if anyone was going to be watching with her. Never having seen the show, I said I would and turned it on. Now I’m an episode & a half deep and I maintain that this show is absolutely terrible but I’m still watching it anyway because it sure beats morning television.

Anyway, this is the first of what I think is going to end up being many posts today so here we go…

Our vegetable garden is largely one giant fail. Allow me to show you what’s going on:

See all that vegetation? That’s about 3/4 weeds. But the problem is, I don’t know a weed from oregano. Or a weed from a carrot or parsley or anything else we planted that I’m not sure is coming up. In fact, I’m fairly sure the carrots never came up at all and the same with the oregano and basil and onions but with all those weeds, it’s hard to tell and I don’t want to pull any of them in case I’m pulling out the good stuff.

Out of TWO packets of seeds, we have like, 3 or 4 tufts of lettuce growing and our pepper plants are absolutely pitiful:

Our tomato plants are thriving though, as are our peas and beans…everything else, thus far, appears to be a write off.

Tomato plants

One of our pathetic tufts of lettuce.

Purple beans

This weekend’s big project was to finally stake our peas, which really should have been staked last week or the week before but shit happened and the peas didn’t. However, at work Blake got a gift certificate for Home Depot for being awesome, so on Sunday he went there and bought wooden stakes and “garden jute” and he made a sort of trellis for the peas to climb up. My job today, probably right after I finish this post, before it gets hot, is to rearrange the peas so they’ll actually grow up the jute. Here are our thriving peas:

Between the peas (left) and the beans (far right) are where the onions are supposed to be, but I don’t think any are growing. Why so many things didn’t grow is beyond me, my only guess being that we planted some things too deeply maybe? I planted in pots on my porch thyme and rosemary and only one of them is growing (but I forget which I planted in each pot so I’m not sure which one is growing – thyme, I think, though).

In the hopes of encouraging the pepper plants to grow bigger, which I actually think is a futile attempt considering they appear to be flowering already, I paid Madison $3 to weed between them and the tomato plants yesterday while Wes supervised. Then the money-grubbing little bugger came inside and said she’d weed my FRONT garden for $20. $20! I asked her if she was on drugs.

Oh yeah, Madison dyed her hair auburn and she also dyed Wes’ hair orange using this temporary mousse dye I got in my stocking a few years ago for Xmas. They are both very much impressed with each other’s hair at the moment.

So that’s our pathetic attempt at a veggie garden. We’re still undecided as to whether or not we’re going to attempt to do this again next year but right now all signs are pointing to “no”. It really depends on the yields we get from the things that are actually growing as to whether or not it’s even worth it. Right now hot house tomatoes, grown in Ontario, on the vine, are like $0.99/lb and they’re only going to get cheaper as the summer goes on. To me, growing my own doesn’t seem worth it, looking at those prices. Yes, mine are organic and non-GMO for SURE and I can’t say the same for the ones in the store, but Sunny Logic dictates that vegetables grown in Ontario greenhouses are probably not GMO because there are no bugs in greenhouses and no weeds, so there’s no need for herbicides or pesticides and therefore no need to grow vegetables that are unnaturally resistant to either. They also don’t need to have an unnatural shelf life  or bruise resistant skins because they’re not on a truck for a week or two before getting to the store.

I realize that I’m totally guesstimating here and that this is very much Sunny Logic, but don’t tell me otherwise or I may never eat again.

Also, a couple of weeks ago we got Ontario strawberries (which are THE BEST strawberries in THE WHOLE WORLD) and on the lid of the container, it said:

“Did you know?

- Every $1 spent on Ontario food generates more than $2 in other Ontario business.
- Choosing Ontario fruits & vegetables over imported food saves fossil fuel and reduces CO2 emissions.

Thank you for supporting Ontario agriculture!”

To which I say, “you’re welcome!”

So there’s an argument against growing my own tomatoes, again, depending on the yield. My purple beans you cannot buy in stores, they just don’t have them – or at least I’ve ever seen them. I’m not sure if I’ve explained, but the purple beans I grow are dark burgundy when raw, but they turn green when you cook them. This impresses the kids and makes them eat them and they also taste 50 billion times better than the frozen beans we usually buy. (I don’t have a lot of luck buying fresh green beans at our local grocery store. Wal*Mart sometimes has decent beans but I don’t want to go to Wal*Mart just for beans and god only knows where they’re grown.) The same goes with the peas I’m growing. I forget now, without looking at the empty packet, what they’re actually called but basically they’re a sugar snap pea variety where you can eat the shell & all. Madison and I LOVE these. My Aunt Betty used to grow similar peas when I was a kid and they were my favourite thing in her garden. Again, you cannot buy these in the stores. You can buy similar ones, but they’re not the same and they’re kind of expensive. I think the two packets of seeds I bought were about $5 total and we’re going to have peas coming out our ears pretty soon.

So, despite the fact that most of our veggie garden is fail, next year we’ll probably, at the very least, still grow beans and peas. Just probably MORE of them. The beans are a bush bean so they don’t need staking. The peas do, though, but I still think it’s worth the cost.

Anyway, that’s our veggie gardening experience thus far. Next post will be the front garden…

….and this Intervention show is still terrible, why am I watching this again? Oh yeah, morning television sucks.

I normally do my best not to write about my dad (Phil) and Lisa (his wife) because they are extremely private, somewhat technophobic and maybe a little paranoid in the case of Phil about what information is and isn’t out there about them. (It’s a long story.) They’re getting used to the idea of my site ad my online extracurricular activities and have been for quite some time, but I think Lisa starts reading my site a while back and I think she, at least, is getting more comfortable about the idea. Phil? Well, there’s a large part of me that doesn’t especially care what he thinks or how he feels because when it comes to writing and blogging and internetting, he just kinda has to learn to trust me an to trust that I know my audience better than he does.

That said, yesterday was Father’s Day and for the first time since I met him (when I was 13, so 18 years ago, – over half my life) we were in the same place at the same time during this holiday.  And that’s literally about what it boiled down to.

First of all, Phil, Lisa and my two sisters Raili (4) and Rachael (18 mos) live up north, which is about 2 hours away from where we live and it takes a lot to get me up there. I mean there’s my whole “leaving the house” deal thrown in there, but also I worry a great deal about my dogs (whether we take them or leave them at home) and they eat weird things so a lot of the time when I’m up there, I’m absolutely starving and feeling like a bad guest because I won’t eat anything they’ve prepared for us.

Like, about a month or two ago, Phil happened to be in Barrie doing something, called Blake, who works in Barrie and I think they hung out or had lunch or something. During that meeting, Phil said we should come up and that they were free 3 weekends out of the next couple of months, one of those being Father’s Day weekend.

So, when Blake ran the idea of me, I picked the most logical time to go up: Father’s Day weekend.

After that, Blake and Lisa started coordinating plans and the last I’d heard about it, weeks ago, was that we were going on the Saturday and staying over until the Sunday. But then I remembered a prior commitment that would make sleeping over impossible, so we apologized and made it a Father’s Day day trip instead, which meant getting up at the crack of dawn so we’d be there early enough to spend some quality time with them before having to come 2 hours home.

Saturday night, Blake and I were idiots and played Warcraft until about 2am-ish which was totally stupid because we had to leave the house BY 9am Sunday, which meant getting up at the asscrack of dawn.

Not being very good at coping with not enough sleep, when we got to Phil & Lisa’s, I chit-chatted for about 20 minutes while we had sandwiches and then I took about a 2 hour nap in one of the new bedrooms they not have since they put on the addition, which I was seeing for the first time.  As I napped, Blake and Phil made feed troughs for the pigs Phil & his neighbour are fattening up to eat.  Then they started making shelves for Phil’s tool truck.

When I woke up, everyone was outside. Lisa and the kids were on the back deck with Wes playing with Raili (they were catching worms) and Madison talking to Lisa while Lisa held Rachael and Blake & Phil were in the front yard/driveway, building those shelves for Phil’s truck, like, using saws and power tools and all kinds of “manly” shit.

Everyone was doing their own thing and I was smart enough to bring my laptop and book with me, so I sat on the front steps of their house, first chatting to people in Warcraft until my battery died and then reading Eat, Pray, Love for pretty much the rest of the day. Every now & then, I would talk to Blake but mostly, like everyone else, I just did my own thing.

But, the whole time I was sitting on the step, I kept joking in my head, “what’s the best Father’s Day gift I could have given Phil?” and the answer was, while watching them build shit together, “a son” because keep in mind that Blake’s more or less as fatherless and Phil is sonless and the two of them go together like peanut butter and jelly. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t at my dad’s for Father’s Day at all, Blake was.

Eventually they finished the shelves and went into the garage for Phil to drink a couple of beer and for Blake to have a Coke Zero and it took me a while to realize they were finished with the shelves so it was a while before I joined them.

They mostly talked about computers and internet crap and I didn’t really get into the conversation until grocery stores and factory farming came up, which I’ve had a lot to say about recently. For the record, Phil seems to think I’m nuts by talking about all of this stuff.

But that was when Blake told Phil that we were hoping to get back on the road by 7pm so we could get the kids in bed at 9pm which is Wes’ usual bedtime. (Madison’s is 10.) Phil said something like, “well in that case, we should probably start getting dinner ready,” since it was about 5:30pm.

We agreed that that was probably a good idea.

So on their back deck, they have one of those little metal fire pits with a wire grate on top? And Phil informed me that this was where he was going to be making dinner, which was to be steak, potatoes, salad and some other weird stuff I won’t eat. While Phil cooked, we sat there and shot the shit about his cooking methods, food and painting while inside the house, Lisa was cooking things on the stove while Blake was on kid patrol.

Time Blake spent with Phil pretty much alone: probably about 6 hours
Time I spent with Phil pretty much alone: about an hour, an hour & a half tops

This is what I mean by Blake being there for Father’s Day, not me being there for Father’s Day. I mean, if I had my way, we would have stayed home and played WoW or gotten the vacuuming done or something because I’m anti-social like that and while I say that and it’s the truth, I always feel that way about going up north and I’m always pissy when I get up north because I resent not being at home but by the middle of the day, I’m usually glad we came. And usually because Blake & Phil are buddies and Madison and Lisa are buddies and because Wes and Raili are buddies.

As I said originally, I didn’t meet Phil and Lisa until I was about 13 and it’s taken the last 14 years to really have any real relationship with them mostly thanks to the birth of my sisters but also because of Blake who, when I found out through the grapevine that I was actually going to have a sister because I wasn’t speaking to Phil or Lisa at the time, called them and said “maybe you should call her” (meaning me). And things have been awkward but fine ever since.

It was actually my mother-in-law who really brought to my attention that even though Phil & I have known each other for a long time now, we don’t really know each other.  It was at a birthday party for Madison where she said something like, “wow this is really new” (meaning the relationship) and I agreed, because it was true.

I see Phil twice a year. Once during Xmas and then usually in the spring,l not always for Father’s Day and before that, like as I was growing up and stuff like that, it was even less than that and it was so awkward I can’t even totally describe it.

Now when we go up there, I know Blake & Phil are going to go do something outside of everyone else, Lisa & the kids will stick together and I’ll have the choice to hang out with either party or do my own thing, both of which are completely acceptable.  We’ll all reconvene for food at some point, I can wander amongst the “camps”, so to speak.

Anyway, I think Blake had a good day on his Father’s Day – which was my top priority – and I think Phil had a good time on his Father’s Day, so I think Father’s Day was successful even though most of Blake’s Father’s Day gifts, which I got on Etsy over 6 weeks ago, weren’t here in time.

On Saturday Madison made Blake “gourmet” cheeseburgers from the Jamie Oliver cookbook for dinner and tried to follow it up with peanut butter fudge that was made herself, but she didn’t know the difference between regular sugar and icing sugar and didn’t think to ask, so the fudge was actually pretty inedible, but she did her best and that’s all that matters.  I got the kids a card to give to Blake that I knew he’d appreciate and I gave him the gourmet coffee I got him from Etsy which were the only two things that arrived in time.

Still to come is geek soap, geek lotion, geek balm and this crazy Alaskan mustard, and this coffee mug that I feel in love with. I got him one that says “Prozac” in the light green colour.  (I already showed him the stuff so I’m not ruining any surprises here.)

Anyway, Father’s Day was pretty successful, as I said. Two fathers were made happy by each other,  my kids had fun, I got to read without feeling guilty about it (long story) and I think that’s pretty cool.

(And we didn’t get home until around 11pm because as per usual we were late leaving and by the time we got home, we were pretty much all dead to the world.)

Tomato Salsa from Jamie’s Food Revolution cookbook page 273.
Blake says: “I’m a fan although I didn’t get it perfect. The kids, not so much.”

Cherry Tomato Sauce with Pasta from Jamie’s Food Revolution cookbook page 55.
(Recipe here, also.)
Blake says: “Liked by the adults, once again, not so much by the kids. I think I need to do less tomatoes if I want the kids to like things.”

I didn’t try the salsa because A) I was sleeping and B) I don’t like salsa, but the pasta was pretty good. A bit heavy on the balsamic vinegar though, I think next time Blake’s going to use less.

We are putting this Jamie Oliver book to good use. :o)

The veggie garden has been planted and soaked soaked soaked with water.
Since nothing’s really growing yet, I took pictures of the veggies’ headstones.

And Blake took a picture of me planting beans.

There are two rows of beans because they are “royal burgundy” beans, which are purple when raw but turn green when you cook them. They’re HYPERCOLOUR beans!

There’s a joke about Blake and a hoe here but I’m too tired to be that witty at the moment.

I may attempt homemade pesto…it’s just basil, pine nuts & garlic, right?

Two rows of leaf lettuce, the colour of which is one of my favourites. I’ll take pics when it starts growing.
(Obviously.)

Green onions for stir-fry. :o)

Oregano for spaghetti sauce.

Parsley to make me fart.

Lots & lots of sugar snap peas because Madison and I love them. We have to wait until next paycheque to buy some lattice for them to climb on. Theoretically the peas will be the first thing ready (in July).

Carrots were also planted but the picture of their headstone was blurry because I took it upside down as not to step on any of our rows.

Blake & I planted all the seeds while the kids played with toads and the dogs lounged under a tree. The last time all 4 (well, 6?) of us were in our backyard together was the summer before Wayne & Judy moved in. It felt GOOD being out there. In PEACE.

My arms are soooooo sore from mixing all that dirt yesterday and now I’m all sleepy from being out in the sun.
I need to find a non-greasy sunscreen for my face. Leah sent me one once that I really liked but it expired and I threw it out and now I forget what it was. :o/

When we came in, I had a shower so I’m all squeaky clean.

I just finished making a huuuuuge salad with romaine lettuce, Campari tomatoes, English cucumbers, sweet yellow, orange and red peppers, snow peas, baby carrots and little cubes of mozzarella cheese. I’m having shishkabobs as my main dinner and Blake & the kids are having BBQ’d chicken.

So we’re gonna eat until we feel like exploding, while watching the pre-LOST finale show, watch the finale and then get our sleepy asses into bed under nice clean sheets.

Today has been a good day.
:o)