I’m listening to Adele’s album 21 which I’ve had for a long time but never really listened to in its entirety until today. I’ve gotta say, it’s leaving me less than inspired. This is old fogey music. American Idol crap. I like “Rolling in the Deep” of course and I like whatever the second song on the album is, but the rest is like…Whitney Houston-esque garbage. This is adult contemporary, middle age “safe” music, the likes of which you find on easy listening stations and is TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY 100% NOT MY THING AT ALL. I love her voice and I really really wanted to like her but this is just…blah. Rainy day wallpaper. Blah.

So anyway yesterday I finished another self-portrait:

Self Portrait #2
12 x 16 inch mixed media on watercolour paper

The jewel-as-trache-scar was Charlie’s idea. It was a good idea so I used it.

Right now I’m working on my second 30 x 30 inch panel and a 12 x 12 inch wood panel. The 30 x 30 is the one with crackle paste on it and if I’d have known via Golden’s site how crackle paste really worked instead of relying on the instructions on the jar, I would have done a much thicker layer so I would have achieved bigger cracks. As it is, I can’t really afford any more crackle paste and the cracks are very small. I guess I’m going to try working with the cracks that I have now by applying a wash of colour with the idea of the watery colour gathering in the cracks but if that doesn’t look right I guess I have no other choice but to buy more crackle paste because it’s really important for the piece to be super duper cracky. Deep, fissure-like cracks is what I need, like a dry desert floor. I’m going to need to get one of those things that I don’t know the name of…one of those things that artists use that looks like a little flat trowel. Maybe it is called a trowel, I don’t know, but I need one whatever they’re called, if I’m to apply a second, thicker coat of crackle paste.

The really shitty part of this situation is that I’m probably going to have to either sand or scrape off the layer of crackle paste that’s there already, which also means that I can kiss my flawless basecoat goodbye. Not good when I’m using a discontinued colour and I only have one bottle left. WOE IS ME. #firstworldartistproblems

The 12 x 12 inch wood panel I’m working on is actually something called “gessoboard” which is *like* a wood panel but it uses that compressed, cardboardy fake wood that they make office furniture and cheap shelves out of and it’s primed professionally with gesso for a super smooth surface. Paint just glides on these fuckers. This is my first time using one and I’ve gotta say I’m a fan. The problem is that they’re pretty pricey, $18 + tax for a 12 x 12 when I can get 3 canvases of the same size for about the same price. But they are soooo nice and I can use my triple thick gloss glaze varnish on them without the fear of it cracking if mishandled. It probably wouldn’t work as well to glue heavy stuff on like the watercolour paper I use for my girls, but it’s PERFECT for flaming, glittering uteri. ;o)

So the absolute worst thing for me is a lack of ideas. It is not my natural state AT ALL and these days, while productive, I feel like I’m in a big of a creative rut. I realize that probably doesn’t make any sense since I’ve been posting lots of artwork but for the most part, these are all old ideas that I’m pulling out of my sketchbook and making real, I’m not really coming up with anything new.

So, I’ve been reading this book that I’ve actually had for years, since I was in college, called “How To Get Ideas” by Jack Foster and it’s a really simple book with a lot of good ideas like, how to look at things and really see them, doing morning pages (essentially), giving yourself deadlines and the space to come up with terrible ideas because sometimes terrible ideas are actually really good ones and this part really struck me:

“”And idea is delicate,” said Charles Brower, the head of an advertising agency. “It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.” 

I think this is why many people seem bereft of ideas. 

They’ve run into too many sneers and yawns, they’re heard to many quips. And so they’ve said the heck with it and don’t even try to come up with ideas any more.

The fear of rejection shuts down their idea factories.”

When I was in night school for copywriting, my first copywriting class, my teacher said the same thing, that you can’t be negative in any way during a brainstorming session because if you are, people will clam up and not want to stick their necks out with terrible yet potentially genius ideas.

I can’t really say that this has ever been my experience though. This part of the book is 100% me:

“I used to teach a three-day seminar on advertising in Chicago. One of the assignments I gave each student was to create, overnight, an outdoor board for a Swiss Army knife. Most of the students would come in the next morning with the required billboard, but several of them would say that they worked for hours and couldn’t come up with anything. This happened three years in a row. 

The fourth year I tried something different. Instead of asking for just one billboard, I asked each student to create at least ten billboards for a Swiss Army knife. And instead of giving them all night, I told them they had to do it during their lunch hour. 

After lunch everybody had at least ten ideas. Many had more. One student had 25. 

I came to realize that when faced with a problem most people look for the one right solution because that’s the way they were brought up. All through school they had to answer multiple-choice and true-or-false questions, questions that only had one right answer. And so they assume that all questions and problems are like that. And when they can’t find a solution that looks perfect they give up. 

But most problems aren’t like exam questions in school. Most problems have many solutions. And as soon as I forced my students to realize that, they found those solutions.”

That is me to a tee. (T?) I am afraid of bad ideas. I think that everything that tumbles out of my brain should be genius and I tend to think things are “precious”, even ideas. I’ve written before about how I’ve been trying to overcome my art supplies and projects as being “precious” but I think I need to do the same thing with ideas too or else I’m going to make myself insane. I have to allow myself to come up with 100 terrible ideas because within those 100 terrible ideas, there could be 1 or 2 really good ones.

Or maybe even none.

But I won’t know unless I try and it’s actually a HELL of a lot more difficult for me than I thought it would be. I’m known for being really creative, creativity is what I’ve got, but for someone who supposedly has a creative mind, ideas sure are hard to come by when I get in ruts like this. They’re rare, but they happen.

And the book addresses ruts. The reason they happen is because of repetition and I think that’s definitely true in my case. I don’t leave the house. I watch the same movies over and over again. I listen to the same music over and over again. I go to the same stores over and over again (Michael’s and Curry’s). There is little to no surprises in my life unless you want to count catastrophe and you would think that I’d have some residual “stuff” to work out because of everything that happened this summer but I honestly don’t think I do. Besides, I’m not sure what a pancreas even looks like or necessarily where it’s located. And I’m not good at drawing bodies so my wound is kind of out of the question. Maybe I’ll go there some day but right now, I don’t think, is the time. Plus, since I don’t really remember anything that happened, I don’t have a whole lot to work with.

Anyway, that’s where my head is today. I only have 2 & a half more hours left of work and then I plan on coming up with terrible ideas for the next 2 days that I have off.

Tomorrow I’m going to be making a honey spiral ham with potatoes, corn on the cob and asparagus but it’s just going to be us so there will be lots and lots of leftovers.

OH! GET THIS! So on Facebook I’m friends with one of my father’s sisters and Lisa tagged a picture of her daughter on her photography business’ fan page. So I went to the picture because I didn’t even know this kid existed (I barely know this aunt) and in the album is pics of Phil’s brother’s daughter too. This leads me to believe that there was some sort of family get together recently which is interesting because Phil never gets together with his family because they don’t really talk. But this is the exact type of thing, like my own grandfather’s FUNERAL, that I wouldn’t have been invited to. Lisa’s pissed off that I didn’t want to invite them to our anniversary party, for legitimate reasons, yet it’s PERFECTLY FINE to not include me in my own grandfather’s FUNERAL or ANY family reunions. How the fuck does that work?

Just something that occurred to me yesterday while I was clicking around on Facebook.

Oh and for those who were concerned, Ana Voog is home from the hospital and is okay. She’d been withdrawing from an antidepressant which caused suicidal tendencies and she ground up Xanax in a coffee grinder and tried to OD. Then she ran away from the house at some point and the cops had dogs out looking for her. She also had a gun and she shot a gazebo. That’s all she’s really said about it other than the fact that her shrink was going to be retiring but changed her mind so Ana can still see her and I guess she had to go in front of the courts and prove that she wasn’t a drug addict and didn’t need rehab or something. I dunno, the series of events wasn’t crystal clear. All I know is that I’m extremely happy that she’s okay and that she now has a new lease on life.

Happy Zombie Jesus Celebration!

Blake is on the phone right now; a meeting for work. I have to be super quiet but all I want to do is blare A Tribe Called Red and glitter my uterus. You heard me. GLITTER MY UTERUS. Then I have to glitter some BLOOD for my EXTRA SPECIAL, ONE-OF-A-KIND PAINTING. WHY AM I TYPING IN CAPS?

But seriously, I really want you guys to listen to Electric Pow Wow by A Tribe Called Red. Here’s the link again. Listen. They combine pow wow music with fucking dubstep or whatever and the result is nothing short of brilliant. Plus they’re Canadian so they’re extra super awesome.

So this painting I’m working on is coming along fucking fabulously. All I have left to do is glitter the blood (I’m using fine glitter for the blood and flaky glitter for the clots haha), sign my name, paint the sides, slap on some varnish and she’s done. BUUUUUUUUUUUT – and this is going to take an awful lot of effort on my part – since it’s part of a pair, I don’t want to show you guys until both of the paintings are finished and all I have done on the other one is a basecoat so far. If I had more room to work, I could do them both at the same time, but I don’t have the space for two 30 x 30 inch wood panels. Right now my work surface is my coffee table and as it is, when I’m done glittering the blood, I’m going to be moving the one painting onto the treadmill (which is messed up, more on that in a bit) and then using the coffee table for the other. ALTHOUGH, now that I think about it, I may be able to use my easel for the one I haven’t started yet. I’m not sure how this crackle paste stuff works, if it’s really good and pasty I could use it with the painting being upright but if it’s liquidy in any way, it’ll run and I can’t have a runny, cracky uterus. Realistically though, I’m not sure I can draw a uterus upright. I work with stuff vertically and I don’t know if I’ll be able to change perspective. I kinda don’t think so. (I have no idea how people paint upright. It feels so unnatural to me.)

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before or not but when I was reading about Jackson Pollock, Wikipedia said that he was unique in that he used his whole body to paint because his canvas was on the floor and he could get at from multiple angles. I do that too. My leg muscles ache when I’m finished painting for the day because I’m squatting and my back hurts because I’m bent over the canvas/panel. I’ve dislocated two toes from squatting to do the tops of these big pieces. It’s hard to explain. Maybe when I start the other painting, I’ll do a process video. I’m not sure how to edit a video, though, which is why I’ve never tried doing a process video before. That’s at least a day away though, the lighting in here sucks during the evening, which is when I would be starting the second one. I’ll at least think about doing it, I guess. Like I said, my main worry is editing. I have no idea how to do it. I would need to add multiple segments together and cut the ends off them, speed the video up, mute it and I guess add music.

Another thing I was thinking of maybe doing was doing streaming video of me painting but I’m nervous about that for a couple of reasons: 1) trolls, 2) I don’t know where to do it. Also I don’t think I’d be a very good hostess. My friend Belinda used to do streaming while she painted and I liked to watch her but she’s a chatty person and would talk to us while she painted. I don’t think I could do that, plus my computer’s on the other side of the room so I wouldn’t be able to see the chat.  SO I’m thinking maybe streaming would be a bad idea. What do you guys think? And if I did it, where should I do it? (Don’t stay Stickam. I hate Stickam. MFC?)

~*GROCERY STORE & DINNER BREAK*~

We just got finished with having dinner. I hate about 1/4 of my steak and about  cups of green beans with butter. Now I’m eating 2o0 calories worth of sour cream & onion Crispers, which are only 10% of your daily intake of sodium. I’m 500mg below what a person’s daily average should be (2500). YAY ME. I’ve noticed that sour cream & onion flavoured things are lower in sodium than other flavours of things. Like mini rice cakes. Cheddar cheese ones are like 8% of your sodium per day and sour cream & onion is only like, 4% or something like that. I wonder why that is? Also, who knew I liked rice cakes?

While we were putting away the groceries, I took pictures of the dogs who knew there was food around:

Hoover Dog.

Lucky Dog.

Blake also bought me pink daisies, behold!

And now I’ve completely forgotten what else I was going to say in this post…oh yeah, the treadmill. Or as I like to call it, the dreadmill. The track is fucked up, like when Blake uses it, the track goes off to one side like as if one side’s stretched longer than then other or something. We got the extended warranty so they can come and fix it, it’s just a matter of actually getting it done.

Blake and Wes have started geocaching. There are a surprising amount of caches in our town and so far they’ve found two of them. I have no interest in finsing caches, but Blake said I could be involved in the making of them which I’m a little bit excited about.

I think this Sunday, which is one of my two days off, we’re going to go to Stouffville to get some fucking amazing homemade Ukrainian pierogies from the Sales Barns and then possibly Stouffville Pizza too because I just want them dammit and if I’m gonna blow my diet one day, I might as well DO IT. I just wanna go. Get food. Come home. Eat. And eat some more. And then do some more eating. And while I’m at it, I might as well eat.

And then guess what else is on Sunday? GUESS GUESS GUESS!!! I bet you guessed it!!! GAME OF FUCKING THRONES, PEOPLE!!! I’m only like, 1/4 of the way through A Clash of Kings though and there’s not a chance in hell I’ll be done before the season premiere. That said, however, Larissa on Facebook posted this and I thought it was awesome so I’m sharing it with you now.

And I think that’s all I have to say for now. I think I’m going to go read my book for a bit while my glitter dries, eat my Crispers, glitter my blood and go to bed. I wish you a happy tomorrow and sweet dreams whenever you get there. Truly.

PS. I got my US postage stamps from Zazzle for The 4 x 6 Exchange and they look awesome! Unfortunately we need $1.50 US postage for each envelope and I only got 45 cent stamps (and not enough for all of us + my mom’s 2 entries) so we’re going to have to get an International Reply Coupon for each one anyway meaning that there was really no point in me wasting my money to get the cool stamps of my work from Zazzle. The good news about that though is that I got to see Zazzle’s quality and I can say without a moment’s hesitation that I’m pretty sure everything I made in my Zazzle shop will print beautifully so GO TO TOWN.

PPS. Silver over at Camwhores who is an artist and gallery owner had some interesting things to say about my art crisis post from the yesterday. You should check it out. Basically she thinks I should stop giving a shit what other people think of my art.

I’m sad today. :o(

But yesterday was a good day. Blake and I went EVERYWHERE and I even got the “overshare” badge on Foursquare because I checked into 10 places within 12 hours. Apologies to anyone who follows me on Twitter because of all the 4sq spam. :o/

First, in the morning I had to get my blood drawn, which I already posted about. Because I’ve been really good about avoiding salt and drinking only water, I had 3 Diet Cokes yesterday. One with my McBreakfast, one at Great Canadian Bagel, where we went for dinner, and one when we got home. It was GLORIOUS. Oh lover, how I have missed you!

Then yesterday afternoon we had to go to H&R Block to get our taxes done and that was really boring. BUT I touched Blake’s penis in the cubicle, which is my new favourite thing. Just poking his penis in public places. I TOUCHED HIS WIENER AT H&R BLOCK! How funny is that?

After that we went to Curry’s where I bought a 30 x 30 inch wood panel that is so bloody beautiful I could cry. I have BIG PLANS for that monster! I already started applying gesso to it and I plan on working on it most of today. I also got something called a “gessoboard” which is a wood panel that has a professionally sprayed coat of gesso on it. It was pretty expensive though, $20 for a 12 x 12 (I usually get three 12 x 12 inch canvases for like, $15 I think), but I thought I’d try it out and see how it flies. Oh and I got a pink Sharpie posterpaint marker! A big fat one! No reason, I just wanted one since they came out. They’re oil-based now so theoretically they shouldn’t run when I varnish over them!

Then we went to Michael’s where I used a 20% off my total purchase coupon to buy paint for my new projects, which I’m going to show you now because they are beautiful.

This cantaloupe colour is so fucking gorgeous I cannot even stand it and it was on CLEARANCE for $1.49! Can you believe it! I got 3 of them because it takes 2 to coat a whole big canvas and this colour is going to be the background for the 12 x 24 inch canvas that I’m going to start painting soon. I think this might be my favourite colour of the year. I thought the orange sorbet glitter paint was amazing, but this may be better.

These are my beautiful browns! The one on the right, acorn, is going to be the background colour for my wood panel and sycamore bark is going to be the colour for the sides. You can’t really tell the difference between the two in the pic but sycamore bark is darker than acorn.

This pink is so light it’s almost white but it’s got a hint of cream in it too. It’s going to be going on my wood panel too, with the browns.

And finally, my pink carnations. These were on sale for $1.49 too, so I got 2 of them. I don’t have a project in mind for these but I figure you can never have enough pink paint – or at least *I* can’t, anyway.

After Michael’s we went to Great Canadian Bagel where I got a BLT, which is only about 400 calories according to my tracking app. It was absolutely delicious and I cannot WAIT to go back! I’ve only really discovered bagels in the last few weeks when we had coupons for free ones and I’ve decided that “everything” bagels are one of my new favourite things ever. I would kill for one right now. (I had watermelon, blueberries and a honeycrisp apple from France for breakfast – ooh la la! But now, 3 hours later, I’m starving…)

After that I sat in the parking lot while Blake went to Future Shop to get more blank DVDs so we can watch more movies that he downloads. I really really really want to see My Week With Marilyn and now I finally can! He also looked for a wireless thingy for our Blu-Ray player so we can stream movies instead of burning them but it was too expensive.

 Then we came back into town (our town) and we stopped off at home because my 30 x 36 incher was out on the back patio after I was varnishing it (it still needs a couple more coats) and it was looking like it was going to rain so Blake thought it would be a good idea to bring it in before we went to the grocery store, pharmacy and bank which turned out to be a good idea because 10 minutes later it started raining.

So we brought it in and then we headed back into town to do more errands. I sat in the car while he went to the bank and the pharmacy because those places are boring and if I went to the pharmacy I just would have spent more money, probably on hair dye (I’m trying REALLY hard not to dye my hair until it all grows back in – right now my new hair is only about 4 or 5 inches long).

After those places we went to the grocery store where I got fruit for breakfasts and I got lots of low-sodium snacks like rice crackers and rice cakes and these cheesy breadsticks that I thought would be a good addition to my veggie & cheese plates that I often have after dinner while I’m reading. As it turns out, I can have like *40* mini rice cakes, depending on the flavour, and still have it be low-sodium and low calories! And they taste pretty good! I’m a fan!

I also got more gherkins because I fucking love them, and I can’t remember what else. But it was a good trip!

And then we came home.

I showed Madison my paint but she wasn’t nearly as excited as I was about it. Today she’s going to the movies to see The Hunger Games with her class. They read the first book in class so I guess that constitutes an educational class trip or something. *eyerolls*

Anyway, that was my day. I’m gonna get started on this wood panel before Cheryl gets here to chance my dressing and speak of the devil, she’s here! Talk to you guys later!! Have a great day!!

PS. We also got the glitter paper for our party invitations! Gonna start making those soon, Deanna, e-mail me your address!

Why hello there, children.

So guess what? I got a call this morning while I was out getting my blood work done that FUCKING NIELSEN wants us to be a GODDAMN NIELSEN FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How cool is that???? That’s something you only really hear about on TV! They’re going to be sending us a scanner, so that means it won’t be TV, it’ll be groceries. You scan your groceries so they can see what you buy and when you do so, you get points and when you get enough points you can buy things from their catalogue. My ex’s family had this and it was pretty cool. We do groceries a million times a week so we’re going to rack up the points! Hooray for free stuff!

So this morning I went and had my blood work done as I mentioned, which was pretty uneventful, but I needed to fast for it because they’re testing my cholesterol too so I broke my fast with an Egg McMuffin and a hashbrown, which is like, 480 friggin’ calories! Is nothing sacred? I even got the McMuffin over the Tim Hortons Breakfast Biscuit, which is 20x better, because I figured the biscuit being buttery & all, would be more calories than the McMuffin. I was right of course, the breakfast biscuit of the gods is 430 calories, but knowing that, I would have preferred one of those to the McMuffin and the hashbrown.

But now I don’t know where to go for dinner! We’re doing our taxes at 2pm (yay money!) and then we want to go somewhere to eat but I only have 720 calories left for the day and everything I’ve looked up is really close to that (Quizno’s, who knew?). I think I’m going to go with a BLT from Great Canadian Bagel because it’s only about 400 calories, surprisingly, and that’ll leave me some leeway to have dessert later (I have frozen yogurt, Skor bits, angel foodcake and organic strawberries and I know how to use them to make a 300 calorie dessert, dammit!) or veggies and dip.

Because I’m reading A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin, I’ll probably go with the veggies and dip. I have this *thing* about eating and reading at the same time, which I think I’ve written about before. I just love doing it, it’s one of my favourite things to do. So far I’m liking the book a lot but it is SO nerdy, holy shit and there are so many damn people to keep track of that I keep getting confused, but overall I’m liking it and I’m really looking forward to the Game of Thrones premiere. Hopefully I can get the book done before the show starts but I’m a super slow reader so I’m not very optimistic about that. I procrastinate like crazy; for example I’m writing this post instead of reading.

After taxes, I’m dragging Blake to Curry’s so I can get either a 24 x 30 inch or 24 x 36 inch wood panel, whichever they have in stock and then Michael’s to get some paint for it. All I have left to do on my 30 x 36 inch is to varnish it, which I’m going to do when I’m finished this post, and then it’s finally done! I’m so excited! It’s going to look fantastic on my living room wall! It’ll look fantastic on YOUR living room wall too and like just about all things, it’ll be for sale for a retarded amount of money for your buying pleasure!

The next two pieces are going to be very different from each other and I plan on working on them both at the same time. I’ve decided that I need to step up my productivity and despite not having the space for two big pieces, I’m going to try doing them both at the same time anyway. My big concern of course is dog hair. We vacuum ALL THE DAMN TIME but it’s never enough, there’s dog hair all the fuck over my house and it gets on my artwork and it pisses me right off. BUT I’m going to inform the family that my office being vacuumed is a top priority while I’m working on these, just as an experiment, and I guess we’ll see what happens.

Well, I have to leave to do our taxes in half an hour and I want to get a coat of varnish on my painting before we leave so I guess I’ll wrap this up. I hope you’re all having a terrific day and I’ll probably talk at you all tomorrow!

I woke up to a very sad scene. :o( My dogs had killed a bunny in the backyard. I cried a little bit and then I went outside to take care of it. And of course take pictures. Here it is:

Poor thing. :o(

I’m told by the neighbours that it didn’t suffer but still, my dogs are dickheads. I can’t believe they even caught it though, my dogs are fat, lazy bastards and bunnies are pretty speedy little things. Maybe it was sick. (They say a cat can’t catch a healthy bird, so maybe the same goes for dogs and bunnies?) Oh well. Nothing can be done about it now. I grossed Madison out by picking it up with my bare hands and putting it in the garbage bag. I don’t see the difference between picking up a fresh carcass and picking up a live bunny, personally.

This morning Blake made me “the tomato thing” that I love so much because I’m trying to eat big breakfasts/lunches and have my meals and snacks get smaller as the day goes on because that’s what my doctor recommended. One of my Twitter friends asked about “the tomato thing” so here’s the recipe (it’s a Jamie Oliver recipe from “Jamie’s Food Revolution“, which I highly recommend because it’s awesome & we use it a lot):

Cherry Tomato Sauce With Fresh Pasta

1.5 pints of grape or cherry tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic
a small bunch of fresh basil (we buy the frozen cubes and use 2 of them)
1 lb of fresh lasagne
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
2 pats of butter
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
4 ounces of Parmesan cheese

Cut the tomatoes into halves or quarters. Peel and slice the garlic. Pick the basil leaves off the stalks and put them to the side. Finely chop the stalks. Cut the lasagne sheets into 3 or 4 long strips and put to one side. Grate the Parmesan.

 Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Put a large frying pan over medium heat and add a couple of lugs of olive oil and the garlic. Add the butter and let it melt. When the garlic starts to brown, add the tomatoes. Give everything a good stir, then add the basil stalks and half the leaves. Add the vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Drop your fresh pasta strips into the pan of boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain in a colander over a large bowl, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the frying pan with a splash of the cooking water and half the Parmesan. Give it a good stir. Taste and add a little more salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

Sprinkle the rest of the Parmesan and the basil leaves, tearing any large ones up.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This stuff is sex on a plate, I could – and have – eat it every day if it wasn’t so carb-o-licious. Definitely one of my favourite  meals.

All I’ve been doing this week is working on my 30 x 36 inch painting. I don’t really want to talk about it though. Weird right? Normally I can’t keep a secret to save my life and this isn’t really a secret exactly, it’s just that I don’t want to talk about it quite yet. It’s really no big deal, honestly, it’s just jumping back into where I was in 2006 with both feet.

If you recall, it was in 2006 that I had my psychotic break and created “Camp Tampon“. But what I was doing right before that was, I think, a lot more interesting than cute girls on sparkly backgrounds. And I’ve kinda decided not to do cute girls on sparkly backgrounds anymore. I figure if you want those, the ones I did before are available on Etsy and Zazzle and those are good enough. Maybe every now and then I’ll add a new design for Zazzle but I’m not going to do girls exclusively from now on. They just don’t interest me as much as they used to.

I’m still going to do the colouring book, I’m just going to take my sweet ass time with it and just work on it in my spare time rather than making it a full-time job.

My friends The Perlorian Brothers linked an article about Damien Hirst on Twitter last weekend and I started reading about him. I’d heard his name before but didn’t really know who he was and the more I read, the more obsessed I became and the more links I clicked. I just don’t understand why the art world singled him out and said “yes, we are going to make you, Damien, the richest artist in the history of the world” when there are so many more deserving artists out there. (I don’t know of any because I don’t really follow the whole art world but I’m sure there are better out there because Hirst didn’t really impress me all that much.) I guess suspending a shark in a tank of formaldehyde is sort of interesting but wouldn’t it smell? Why would you want that in your house?

I got clicking around on Hirst’s Wiki page and stumbled upon the piece “An Oak Tree“, which Blake thinks is stupid but I think it’s kinda genius.

I just don’t understand how artists can make a living from their art. The concept completely baffles me. Like, how do you make enough money to pay rent and eat and stuff? Let alone make enough to go on holidays or travel or make appearances at plavces and stuff like that. I know how Hirst did it but I mean like, more normal artists. It takes me like, 2 weeks to make one painting! I could never make a living from them!

I have so many paintings planned right now, it’s ridiculous. They’re just popping out of my brain and I can’t even get them on paper fast enough. For the next one I actually need a 24 x 30 inch or maybe a 24 x 36 inch wood panel, which is going to run me about $30 + shipping which I totally don’t even have. I already spent my entire paycheque last week  on the piece I’m working on now. This art shit is expensive! I mean, with my girls it’s easier because I already have a stockpile of stuff for them but these are different because they’re large pieces so I need large substrates and I just don’t have those “in stock” because I’ve never needed them before. Plus, I don’t have anywhere to store them to keep them “in stock” because my house is so friggin’ tiny.

Oh well, as per usual I just have to figure it out.

Right now I’m just focused on the work. Everything else is optional or a bonus or whatever. I just want to plow through all these ideas in my brain and create art that *I* want to see. To hell with everyone else. If you don’t like it, don’t look at it, y’know?

When I went nuts, I was terrified of using my imagination because psychosis was so much like being stuck in my own imagination, which is a scary place to be, believe me. SO that was in 2006 and it wouldn’t be until 2008 when I would use my imagination again and that was when I took Suzi Blu’s class and learned how to make my girls. But my girls were safe and not at all what I would normally do if I weren’t so scared of my own mind.

So when I “went there” last week and started working on this 30 x 36 inch piece, I got really scared that I was manic and about to lose my mind again. I was crying daily, afraid that if I went nuts that I’d lose my job again, but still working on the piece while Blake assured me that I was okay and that I needed to trust the medication.

I think I kissed mania right on the lips though. I’m almost sure of it. I’m okay now and it’s passed, but I wasn’t sleeping, which is a bad sign and I was just having strange thoughts that I can’t really explain. Like, one day I thought it would be a hilarious idea to sit the kids down and tell them we were getting a divorce but then tell them later that I was kidding. I didn’t DO it. I just thought, for a brief minute, that it would be extremely funny to do this. That’s not a good sign.

But like I said, it passed and now I’m 99% sure I’m okay.

Yesterday Blake and I made a decision on the gardens. We’re not going to do the front yard this year (for those new to the fold, my front “lawn” was replaced with a wildflower garden in 2006) and in fact, we’re going to plant grass seed instead. The reason for this is because if I have surgery in the spring, I won’t be able to take care of it and Blake & the kids don’t want to take care of it for me. Plus we don’t plan on living here much longer and the house will be easier to sell with a lawn. BUT we are going to do veggies in the back yard because they’re easier to take care of, they have the added benefit of being food and it’s a much smaller garden.

We don’t have any money right now but I hope to buy seeds sometime very soon so I can start them inside and have healthy plants to plant in the spring.

Last year Ruggedo got me these awesome upside-down hanging things that you plant cucumbers or tomatoes in and they were pretty neat. They didn’t produce very much but we’re going to try them again this year with tomatoes instead of cucumbers to see what happens. I think tomatoes will do better, personally.

And I think that’s all I’ve got in me today. I’m kinda feeling “blah”. I decided not to go to the Game of Thrones exhibition   today in order to stay home and paint on my day off. I just honestly do not even care. I like the show, but I’m not a fanatic and props and stuff don’t really excite me. I know it was my idea to go but really, I was just looking for something cheap/free for Blake and I to do together and he doesn’t care if I go or not so I’m just not going to go.

So that’s that.

Anyway, happy Sunday! I hope you aren’t too hung over this morning! *bashes cymbals together*

PS. Blake and I finalized our guestlist for our anniversary party last night and we’re going to order the invitations soon soon soon. I’m so excited!

PPS. “Indigo Ocean” is now on my site and ready for sale!

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

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me that I am this tired all the time. It’s like I have mono or something. I went to bed last night at like, 9:30pm and I got up at 4am. Then I went back to bed at 7am until about 9am. And I feel like I could go to sleep again right now and sleep for another couple of hours.  It’s a far cry from the mania-like state I was in over the weekend where I didn’t sleep very much and had crazy energy. I’m not sure why there was such a switcheroo.

Either way, I hate it. Give me mania any day.

On Tuesday I got a couple of surprise cheques in the mail, which Blake cashed for me yesterday and I dunno what bit me in the ass, but I decided that it was time to finally try SUSHI.

Actually, let me back up.

Last Thursday, I think, Blake went to work in Toronto and when he works in the city, I sometimes get him to stop off at the Zehrs grocery store in Barrie because they have an actual fish counter and deli (unlike our grocery store here) and there you can get salmon steaks, as opposed to fillets, which is the only way I’ll eat it. (Which is only partially true because I’ll eat salmon out of a can on sandwiches and I’ll eat tuna salad.)

Anyway, I got him to stop off there and he brought home some veggie sushi for himself. And I’ve been a little more experimental since getting sick when it comes to food, like, I’ll eat salad in the winter now (sometimes) for example and I’ll drink water (as long as it’s bottled or Brita filtered).  I asked him if I could try a piece of his sushi and he said yes, so I tried it and thought it was okay and said that I thought I would like to go to a sushi restaurant one day. He said next paycheque we would go to this Japanese restaurant he went to with his friend Charissa once where you pay a set amount and then you order from the menu as much as you want.

The reason I’d never really had sushi before is that:

- I don’t like plain rice.
- I don’t like pickled things.
- I don’t like seafood.
- I don’t like seaweed.

I’d tried sushi rice once before and didn’t like it. I’d tried seaweed before when I was in grade 5 and didn’t like it. And truthfully, I didn’t really *like* Blake’s sushi from the grocery store, I just thought it wasn’t totally disgusting.

That said, I have been obsessed with sushi for a long time. Like easily 10 years. I’m not a sushi expert, I don’t know what it’s all called and I don’t care, but I think it is THE most beautiful food that man has ever devised. Sushi is absolutely my food porn. I even have pictures of it I’ve had printed and put in one of my sketchbooks.

(Wes drew on this page when he was little and got a hold of a pen.)

I have a very specific art idea having to do with sushi that I’ve never put on canvas but I think I probably should sometime soon.

To say that I was stoked to try sushi last night is an understatement. I’d tweeted Ronny and Alex to see if they wanted to come with us because Alex knows lots about sushi and they did, so we met at the restaurant Alex recommended, called Akira, and they have a dinner “buffet” (like how I mentioned it works) for $20.99 per person, which I thought was a pretty good deal for the amount of food we got. (Although I do agree with the reviews on the site I linked that the waitstaff kinda sucked. It wasn’t especially busy but  it took us like, an hour and 15 minutes to have dinner between trying to order and the slow kitchen.) Apparently Akira is the best sushi place in town so I felt confident that I’d have a good first sushi experience.

For our first round, I ordered salmon rolls, tuna rolls, cucumber rolls and beef teriyaki, which is one of my favourite foods. I forget what everyone else ordered, except Blake who got sushi and something called udon that looked pretty nasty to me; those noodles were creepy.

I learned that I suck at chopsticks and since I just don’t give a fuck, I used my fingers and I ate a cucumber roll, which was the same, pretty much, as the rolls Blake got from the grocery store. The difference though, was that the seaweed was on the outside of the rice of all the rolls I ordered and it was on the inside of the rice on the ones from the grocery store, which I really would have preferred. Regardless, I ate the cucumber one and it was alright. Again, just alright. Not really good, not really bad, just. Period.

Then I tried a tuna roll and the stench of it before it even hit my mouth was almost too much to deal with, but I put it in my mouth anyway and chewed and it was just slimy and fishy and nasty.

I decided to try the salmon anyway, thinking maybe it would be different, especially because I like salmon a lot, but it wasn’t different at all, it was just slimy and fishy and nasty.

I ate all but one of my cucumber rolls because as it turns out, 6 is too much for me because after a while it starts tasting gross to me (the rice), so Blake ate my last one and I ordered more beef teriyaki, chicken teriyaki and tempura vegetables. I didn’t like the tempura vegetables either. :o/ I ate two pieces of broccoli and I tried a bite of eggplant (gross!) and while I liked the batter, it was hard to eat and not really worth the effort.

Ronny had ordered some kind of eel sushi with flying fish eggs on it so I tried a tiny bit of flying fish eggs but they tasted like bugs to me (or how I’d imagine bugs would taste) so I washed them down with Coke as fast as possible. I’d tried flying fish eggs in Vegas with Ana Voog many years ago but I’d forgotten their texture. (Seriously. Exploding bugs.)

All in all, it was a great experience but I think I’ll be sticking to looking at pictures of sushi as opposed to eating it. The smell of the fish really bothered me so I don’t even think I’ll be going to a sushi restaurant again either. The teriyaki was REALLY good but the portion was ridiculously minimal and I’m used to teriyaki stir fry so when they handed me a little plate with a slab of beef with some sauce on it, I was kinda shocked. Also the chicken wasn’t sliced all the way through so I had to tear it apart with my fingers because I couldn’t figure out how to get it apart with chopsticks. I also forgot to mention that I got chicken fried rice and it was horrible. It was just plain white rice with some soya sauce splashed onto it with peas and carrots and a few chunks of meat. It wasn’t really fried and it wasn’t really mixed together very well. It was the 2nd worst chicken fried rice I’ve ever had.

Having said all that, I think the restaurant was actually really good. Everyone else’s food looked pretty good and while I think the presentation did leave a little to be desired, it wasn’t horrible and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. And I think the price was pretty decent, like I said, for the amount of food we got.

I’m glad I got that out of the way so I can stop wondering if I liked sushi or not. It’s definitely a “not” and nothing anyone says to me will ever change that so don’t even bother telling me that if I tried “X” I would have had a different experience as that seems to be happening wherever I’ve mentioned it online. (Hello, I know what I like, okay?)

Despite not liking the food very much, I had a good time with Ronny and Alex. On Tuesday they met George R. R. Martin at a book signing in Toronto and they took my boxed set of the first four Game of Thrones books to be signed, which was pretty cool.

Maybe now I’ll actually read the books. How necessary is it to read the first one if you’ve already seen season one of the show? I like reading on the treadmill and since I’m supposed to be using it, I figured I might start with these.

Okay, I have to get back to my misterie projekt X giant canvas, I hope you’re having a wonderful week!

PS. I plan on putting certain old pieces of my art up for sale on my site (as opposed to Etsy) that I previously didn’t think I’d part with, starting with “Camp Tampon“. I don’t honestly expect anyone to buy them, but I figure if I don’t put them out there, no one really ever will so I might as well just go for it and see what happens.

PPS. Here’s an interesting article on the whole Pinterest debate: Copyright is Not the Problem, You Are! Here’s another one from the lawyer who deleted her inspiration boards. (Warning: She’s obnoxious and didn’t really tell us anything new. She just gushed like a 12 year old fangirl on how she got a call from the creator of Pinterest.)

PPPS. A big thanks to Alan for making our sushi outing possible! You rock our socks!

It’s March 14th, which I do believe is Steak and Blowjob Day! There are a bunch of sites out there about it now and I’m no longer sure which is the “official” one, so just Google it I guess. If you’re unsure as to how to give a blowjob, please refer to my handy guide, Blowjobs 101.

So I went to the doctor’s yesterday. I’m still on the list for surgery but like, this guy is one of something like 5 specialists who can do this procedure in all of Canada so he’s in pretty high demand and they expect that I’m going to be waiting for a little while longer as a result. No biggie.

She needs to run some more tests because basically my kidneys are failing and she’s not sure why. If normal kidneys are a 90 and kidney failure is 300, I’m at around 129. I’m not sure what those numbers mean but that’s how she explained it to us. She’s not going to do anything to treat it right now but I’m not really allowed to have salt anymore, I can’t drink like, more than maybe one Diet Coke a day tops and I have to drink a lot of water.

My iron is super high so I don’t have to take that anymore, so that’s a plus.

She doesn’t want me to gain anymore weight. It’s not that I’m fat, it’s just that I’m at a good weight where I am right now so she wants me to maintain. This means that I have to start eating breakfast again (blah), I have to eat “small, frequent meals throughout the day, like every couple of hours”, smaller dinners and she wants my ass on the treadmill for an undisclosed period of time for an undisclosed amount of days per week (double blah). I’m going to start with 20 minutes 3 times a week and go from there and this is today’s breakfast:

(Blackberries, mango, an apple, watermelon)

Like I said, I have to have more blood work to see where things stand and I see her again in 4 weeks. Big fun. :o/

Honestly, I’m pretty worried about this kidney thing. Dialysis scares the ever-loving shit out of me and it squicks me out to no end that I had to have it when I was in the hospital this summer. I’m VERY grateful that I don’t remember it.

Oh and she wants us to try and find a tighter binder, which is going to be tough considering it was hard to find a binder THIS small to begin with.

My Free People dress for our anniversary party came yesterday and it’s gorgeous. My “Shine” print also came and it’s gorgeous too. I can’t currently find the link for that, though. You’ve probably seen it. I’ll make it my avatar on Live Journal for this post.

Yesterday, after Dr. Hanrahan’s, we went to Starbucks to use the gift certificates that Phaedie sent me for my birthday (thank you!!! <3) and I decided to have a “last meal” of a mini apple pie, a chocolate chunk brownie, a dream square and a vanilla bean frappuccino WITH whipped cream but i didn’t finish my drink because I felt like I was killing myself with every sip and the brownie and dream square are still in my purse because my mom made me feel like a heifer for ordering them. Maybe I’ll eat them today or just throw them in the garbage. :o(

EB Games is right beside Starbucks and I couldn’t resist buying the new Sims 3 expansion, Showtime. In this one you get to be a rockstar, a DJ, a performance artist (think Cirque du Soleil) or a magician. I didn’t really get a chance to play with it that much last night because it took FOREVER AND A DAY to install, but I made my girl, Pixie Moody, and she’s going to be a rockstar and I’m NOT GOING TO USE THE MONEY CHEAT THIS TIME. She’s poor and starting from scratch to work her way up to the highest level of the music career path GODAMMIT. (Yeah, this’ll last…)

Anyway, I got it and it looks pretty cool and 10 times better than the stupid goddamn pets expansion which sucked hairy unicorn balls.

After my momk left and Blake was done work, I cried for a while about everything I have to do now so I don’t die and then we went to the grocery store to buy kidney-friendly, low-sodium groceries. My go-to lunches are going to be cauliflower, baby carrots and cucumbers with Havarti cheese and dill dip because I’m really really sick of salad. Dinners are going to be like, a fast fry steak and asparagus with margarine, which is actually less salty than I imagined it would be (3% of your daily value per serving, I think it’s 2 teaspoons). Snacks will be air-popped popcorn with margarine (3% again) and dry chow mein noodles (15%).  No more Swiss Cheese crackers. :o( No more Ritz pretzel crackers. :o( No. More. Pistachios. :o( :o( :o(

And that’s all I really have to report.

OH! One more thing. I got new glasses. Ignore my ugly face, I just woke up:

Okay now I’m done typing. Hope your day is swell.

PS. My thyroid isn’t doing so hot either apparently, I forgot to mention that. She didn’t give me any numbers though, just said it wasn’t doing very well and that she needed to do more tests before putting me on thyroid meds.

Strawberry frozen yogurt with gorgeous organic strawberries.

Are you planning on watching the Oscars? I know a lot of people are sick of hearing about movie awards shows but the Oscars are always super special to me because hello, it’s the Oscars.

What I find interesting is that Oprah is doing an Oscar special at 7pm on OWN where she interviews all of the nominees (well, the ones who she thinks matter) and I find that strange because the red carpet coverage also starts at 7pm and does Oprah seriously think she’s going to win a ratings war with the red carpet coverage? Yeah right. This is why DVRs were invented. I’ll watch it tomorrow. (And maybe she’s banking on that, I dunno.)

I haven’t seen most of the nominated movies, admittedly, but I really really hope Rooney Mara wins her category for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo because she was fucking fantastic. I had no idea she was even American until I read her Wikipedia page.

I also hope The Help doesn’t win anything. The Help was a great book, I loved it immensely, but the movie just fell flat and I don’t even know how it’s nominated for so many things. It was horrible, HORRIBLE I say! And it deserves NOTHING!

So that;s my plan for the day, I’m going to spend the day working on a TOP SEKRIT PROJEKT ON THE COMPYOOTAR and then it’s the Oscars, my pajamas, Twitter and popcorn with real butter. I’m stoked. Best day off ever!

Wanna know a secret? Okay so it’s not so much of a secret. Blake and I will have been married 10 years on July 8th of this year. And we’re going to have a party. And I’m very very excited about it. :o) We just decided on the party a couple of days ago and after working out the few kinks there were to be had, all systems are go and this is going to happen.

It’s going to be held at Haugen’s, which is where Blake and I go every year for our anniversary to get ribs and fresh strawberry pie, which is world famous. We figure the party is kinda like the wedding reception we never had and we’ll be inviting about 20 people. After dinner, we’ll be going back to our house to drink our faces off with anyone who wants to drive that far. I think it’ll be a good time.

I also think I need to buy a dress for the event, but don’t tell Blake that because he complains that I have too many clothes as it is. :oP I want this one so so badly and there’s only one left in stock. :o( Maybe I can convince Blake to go halves on it with me or something. I’ve been coveting that dress since I saw it in the fall and I’m afraid that if I don’t get it soon, it won’t be available anymore. But that’s what I want to wear to our anniversary party. My birthday is in a week. If anyone wanted to get that dress for me, I’m a small. A SMALL, DAMMIT! Blake said I could order it! w00t! <3

This morning while I was cutting an apple, I sliced my thumb open on one of our new knives and it won’t stop bleeding. That was over an hour & a half ago! Enough already! Plus I’m eating pistachios right now (an apple & pistachios for breakfast, I’m awesome) and I keep getting salt in it. Nice.

Y’know, back to the anniversary party for a minute…part of the reason I didn’t want to have a wedding was because I felt like I didn’t have enough people in my life to invite and I felt like a loser. Plus my step-dad and my mom couldn’t be in the same room together and both of them would get mad at me for not choosing the other. But now things are good and I have 20 people in my life that I’m close enough to to have a party like this and who genuinely love me. That’s a pretty good feeling, y’know. Especially because really, there’s 40 people I’d like to invite but we can’t afford to. Maybe for our 20th we’ll do it bigger and invite everyone! That’d be cool. I guess we’ll see where we are in life in 10 years.

We’ve really come a long way though, from living above my grama’s furniture store and living on Blake’s wages as a pizza delivery guy. Now we own our own home, as of yesterday we’re completely out of debt, we both have good paying jobs, we’re both relatively happy, we have good kids (except when they’re not). I like our dogs. The cat’s alright. The only thing I think would be better is if I had my own car. I’d also like a nicer house but I know that’ll come in time so for now, we’ll just make do with what we have and be happy with it.

Speaking of my grama…so when I was in the hospital, so was my cousin Janet with what they now know was cancer, which ultimately killed her. Apparently the whole time Janet was sick – and again, this is at the same time I was in the hospital dying too – my grama would bring her mother, Eunice, casseroles and was on her ass like a dirty shirt. My grama never once offered to bring my mother anything. I don’t know why this is. Is it because it was me? Why would she not do that? It just reaffirms my decision to never have anything to do with that woman as long as I live. She just wasn’t there for my mother at all during the worst time of her life and that’s just not cool with me. She should have been on my mother like glue unless my mother said to back off. That’s just what you do for your kids. I don’t understand that woman.

And since we’re on the subject of family, my brother never replied to the e-mail I sent him months ago. He still has no idea I was ever sick.

Family! God!

And let’s go there, shall we? I really really don’t want to invite my father to our anniversary party. (Lisa can come though. I love Lisa.) I am and I will, but for the record, I don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t want him there it’s that I know he’d rather be elsewhere. All I do know is that my sisters will not be invited and since they so rarely get babysitters, I’m betting they won’t even come since that’s the case. I just don’t want my sisters there, it’s not going to be that kind of party. Plus I just don’t want to pay for their dinners when chances are they’re going to ruin mine by being bratty. I’ve never been in a restaurant with them, but I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that I bet they don’t know how to behave in one. They can be very sweet, don’t get me wrong, but they can also be very terrible and I just don’t want to deal with that. My kids weren’t invited to Phil’s 50th birthday party last year so I’m sure they’ll understand and if they don’t, then they don’t come. Fine by me.

And that’s all the bitching about my family that I’ve got in me right now. Lucky for you guys, huh?

Onto other things…

Honestly nothing interesting has happened since yesterday so there’s not a whole lot to report. Today’s plan is to have a nap after Cheryl leaves, then work on the colouring book some more. The colouring book was put a bit on the back burner the last couple of days while I worked on my girl for The 4 x 6 Exchange, but I’m back on track as of today.

And that’s all the poop that’s fit to scoop! Have a lovely weekend! YAY!

Veganitis is running rampant through our household and we’re loving every minute of it!

I don’t know how it came about but Madison is going vegan for the week just to see what it’s like or if it’s something she’d like to do long-term. Blake’s been 5/6 meals vegan since just after Xmas after we watched Forks Over Knives.

Because of that, last night we went to what Blake calls “the health food store”, which isn’t really a health food store at all but a vegetarian grocery store. I wish I’d have had my camera with me so I could show you this place but I found it really really impressive. Have I ever mentioned that I love grocery stores? Apparently I love ALL grocery stores.

Ours is called Nature’s Best and it’s in Barrie and when you look at it from the outside, it doesn’t look like much but when you get inside, it’s like an itty bitty grocery store with carts and everything.

The first thing we put in our basket was this, for Charlie, because he said a long time ago that if I ever saw this anywhere that I should get him some, so I did:

I don’t even want to know what’s in there. This is not something I would eat if my life depended on it. Blake would probably eat it though but he said he had enough steel cut oats for right now so we didn’t get him any.

From this point on, this stuff isn’t in the order we got them, they’re in the order we put them away when we got home.

Next up is Tofurkey brand “cheese” pizza which actually looks pretty good on the box. And Wes was too cute in his new little hoodie that I had to include two pictures, I hope you don’t mind:

Rice Dream was on sale, so we got both chocolate and vanilla, which the kids were really excited about. They tried a bit of each and declared the chocolate Rice Dream better than chocolate milk. I haven’t tried any yet but I’m going to just to see if they’re right. And honestly, they could be because they don’t really make chocolate milk anymore, it’s chocolate beverage and it’s fucking gross.

I got a can of Blue Sky cola because it looked pretty neat. It’s made with cane sugar, has no preservatives and no caffeine. I don’t like that it has no caffeine but I tried it anyway and it was really really good. Highly recommend!

Vegan cheese is terrifying…more on that later…

I think the plan for the rice pasta is to make spaghetti with it. Like, we have veggie spaghetti sauce and then we were going to make meatballs out of TVP (textured vegetable protein).

What kind of vegans would they be without tofu? (Blech.)

Now this really interested me. I love butter (margarine…to me, same thing). I put it on everything. So I was curious to see how this stuff stacked up against my Becel olive oil margarine, which I love. After dinner Blake made popcorn on the stove and he put this stuff on top and I thought it was okay but there should have been more of it in there. I just don’t think Blake put enough in there because there was barely any on my pieces. The few pieces that did have it, I liked though, less greasy than margarine, more like an oil. I’m going to have asparagus for lunch, I think, and I’ll be using this stuff on top so I’ll let you know how it goes! (If I have that, plan B is Kraft Dinner using it so we’ll see.)

This grocery store had all organic produce and so much of it was so so beautiful, like these strawberries:

Those strawberries smelled to fucking amazing. I’ve picked strawberries from the field and eaten them and they were not like these. Not at all. And for strawberries in the winter, these were particularly good. Exactly the same taste as if they were grown in July. I ended up eating the first half of the pint sliced up with strawberry frozen yogurt (hey, I’m not vegan…) and then I had the rest for breakfast this morning. I think this is the first time where I’ve bought strawberries and every single one in the pint was edible and just as good as the ones on top. So impressed.

Something else this grocery store had, which I liked, was they had like, single-serve portions of certain veggies, like these turnips:

I wouldn’t know what to do with a whole turnip. I don’t even know if I like turnips! But I got these because I was planning on making beef stew this week (which I started about an hour ago in the crock pot) and that was the perfect amount for that. And apparently turnips are really good for you too, according to Martha Stewart.  I actually had some left over so I thought maybe when Blake makes his black bean soup he might want to add these or something.

Organic red cabbage for my salads! I’ve been eating a lot of salad for lunch since I got sick and I thought this would make them a little more interesting. Again, it’s about 1/3 of a whole cabbage which is the perfect amount for my little salads. Again, I wouldn;t know what to do with a whole cabbage and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it cooked.

And this is what I’m eating right now as I type this entry! An organic Fiji apple which is BY FAR the nicest apple I’ve ever eaten! The apples at the shop looked SO GOOD that we all chose one. Wes got a golden delicious, Madison got a MacIntosh and I forget what Blake got but everyone really enjoyed them.

Now for the boring stuff…kidney beans, black beans and that TVP stuff that I’m kind of terrified of.

The last picture is the TVP. I guess you soak it and it grows or something, like into stuff you can mold into whatever you want. Like meatballs, which is what we plan to use it for. The stuff kinda freaks me out to be perfectly honest, but I said I’d try it and I will. I still have a chicken nugget Hungry Man in the freezer if it’s gross.

And finally, what vegan shopping trip would be complete without getting VEGGIE BURGERS!?

Our grand total for all of that was about $60, which is actually less for the amount of food we got, than we’d spend at our regular grocery store AND everything we got was 50 times healthier than what we would normally buy anyway, right? So win/win!

We decided to have the veggie burgers and sweet potato fries for dinner. This is what the patties looked like:

I like the shape of them. :o)

Here’s what they look like finished:

But next came the vegan “cheese” because Blake wanted a cheeseburger…*shudder*…

When the slice fell, it kinda SLAPPED the cutting board with a wet sound…

Madison tried a little piece of it and almost threw up. Blake had it on his burger and he said it was “alright” but I got the feeling that it wasn’t his favourite. I also doubt this stuff would melt if you tried it because really, it’s just cheese flavoured, orange tofu. Gross. It even smells nasty. :o/

Here’s my dinner:

I ended up eating about half of my burger and then giving the rest to Blake because I didn’t put enough ketchup on it. Apparently those patties suck up all your ketchup. I also didn’t like the whole wheat bun. I think if you’re going to have me eat a fake burger, you gotta give me a white bun because the taste of the bun and the taste of the burger were pretty similar. The patties are apparently wheat-free, but all I could taste was wheat so I dunno what they’re using instead but that’s what it tasted like to me: wheat and spices. And I didn’t like the seasoning. It was okay, I mean, I’d eat it, I’d even eat it again, but I think there’s gotta be a better brand out there.

And apparently I still hate sweet potato fries ever since we went out for dinner with Charlie to a vegan restaurant and that’s what I got and I barfed them up for hoooours. So no more sweet potato fries for me, thanks.

Annnnnd that was our vegan adventure! We’re all trying to eat a more plant-based diet. Blake is doing 5/6 meals vegan, Madison’s going all out vegan and Wes and I are sort of in the middle.  We’ll see how this progresses as time goes by…