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)

So obviously Alex & Ronny got married yesterday. The event was very small and low-key and Alex looked beautiful. She wore this (in cream) with this underneath, which I’m linking because I took very few pictures and none of her dress. (There were like, 5 other people taking pictures with prosumer cameras, all of which I’m sure will be posted on Facebook and when they are, I’ll snag a few to show you guys, if that’s okay with the bride & groom [ which it probably will be].)

Anyway, it was a lovely event, Madison caught the bouquet, the guy who married them was a steampunk Asian with a fauxhawk and the whole thing couldn’t have been more perfect being exactly what they wanted. And as I said, when better pics are available, I’ll share them with Alex & Ronny’s permission.

Here are the pics I did take, though:

This was their wedding cake. Did I mention that Alex & Ronny met randomly playing WoW?
We were looking for people to sign our guild charter and “Trueblade”, a nelf warrior, was randomly hanging out in Darnassus and said he would and he was in the guild for the rest of the time the guild existed.

Alex was a nelf hunter so that’s what her figurine is, but they wouldn’t find a nelf warrior so they had to get a druid.

Wedding shots, courtesy of the restaurant. I forget what this one was called, but the others were “polar bears”.

I love Alex’s expression in this picture. It’s the kind of expression you can only give toward someone you love immensely, does that make sense?

Anyway, that’s all the pics I took. To be mushy for a minute…I am so absolutely happy for the two of them it feels like my heart might burst out of my chest just thinking about it. They’ve been doing the long distance thing for like, 3 years and now that’s come to an end, Ronny is here, they’re married and he can apply for his permanent resident card now. Everything’s falling into place so they can finally start their lives together and I just think that’s great.

I’m also a little selfish in all of this in that Ronny drives and has a car, which theoretically means that we’ll be seeing more of them and that’s a good thing because I love them.

And that is all.

So Alex & Ronny are married now and that’s pretty cool. They got married in a funeral home because that’s where Alex works and they have like, a banquet hall type of thing there.

It was a very small wedding and Blake, myself and the kids sat up front on “the bride’s side” so we could sign the marriage certificate when it came time to do that. We were honoured to be asked and gladly obliged and it was a lovely little event, followed by picture-taking and beer/Coke at a wings place afterward.

It took everything in my being to not completely come apart. I took 3 Ativans throughout and not to take anything away from their day or anything, but I was miserable. I don’t “mingle”, I don’t make “small talk” and the whole time we were there I just wanted to lose my shit completely. I wanted to go home right after the wedding but Blake said we had to go to the wings place which then meant we had to stick around for the pictures in between and I don’t know how Ronny & Alex felt throughout the whole thing, considering they both have issues similar to mine, but I wanted to crawl out of my skin and slither home through the sewers.

And dinner was….I hate chicken wings. Passionately. And that’s all this place served except for salads (that I’m not paying $8.99 for) and chicken fingers. I hate chicken fingers too, but that’s what I had and now I feel like throwing up despite taking 2 Gravols to quell the nausea.

And again, I’m happy for Ronny & Alex and I was happy to be there for them and stand up for them basically at their wedding and nothing in this post has anything to really do with them, it has to do with me and my issues. And based on how today went and how I felt all day (I came home and just bawled and that’s what I’m still doing now) I came to a decision: I will not be doing The Square Foot Show.

I know, I already paid my admittance fee, I bought my dress for it, jewelry for it, I’ve been working on paintings specifically for it but the fact of the matter is I just can’t do it. I just can’t be in a small space full of strangers. I don’t “mingle”. I can’t make “small talk”. There is no reason for me to be there other than to torture myself.

Touched By Fire was different. It’s put on by The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario so every stranger in that show was either mentally ill or worked with/knew someone who is. If I needed to sit in a corner and just be for a little while, that would have been okay. If I needed to leave, that would have been okay. When I couldn’t speak to the people who wanted me to do a commission, they understood when Blake spoke for me.

This is not so for Square Foot.

At Square Foot the whole point of the show is to mingle and network and schmooze and have your work seen. And I just can’t do it. Blake would have to take a day off to take my paintings down there, we’d have to get Ronny & Alex to babysit to go to the event and then if I didn’t sell all 3 of my entries, which I probably wouldn’t, Blake would have to take a day off work to go pick them up.

And they’re selling each piece for like, $224, but the gallery keeps half. Even if I sell all 3, I’m totally ripping myself off and after gas and everything, I might as well give the paintings away. And that’s IF I sell them all.

And why am I even doing this show? Because The Ontario Arts Council only seems to consider you a “professional” artist if your work’s seen n galleries and I think that’s bullshit. And why should I care what they think? Because they’re the ones who give out the $5k grant I’ve been turned down for two years in a row. And they consider their ROI to be gallery showings, that’s what they want your goal to be.

Well guess what? I don’t want my shit in galleries. Galleries that take half my money and tie up my inventory? Galleries that may expect me to mingle and make small talk and schmooze? I don’t want that world. And it’s not even so much that I don’t want it it’s that I can’t have it. Unfortunately it doesn’t work within the parameters of my issues and I kinda think the whole system is bullshit.  Or what little I know of it, I do.

So what will I write in my grant application in the fall? Well, more or less what I’ve written here, I think. That my goal is not to be a gallery artist, my goal is to create a self-sustaining art business instead. I pretty much have that now, I sell enough to keep me in supplies, to keep me creating, but that grant would allow me to expand, buy better quality materials, advertise. And if they still don’t want me, then that’ll be the last time I apply. My mom was told for years and years and years that what she did wasn’t art and she was rejected by the traditional art world and she’s doing okay. I’ll be fine. There are other ways to succeed and success is only how you define it anyway. In my goals for this year, I’ve been immensely successful, so there ya go.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about all day. If I can’t hack it at my best friend’s wedding and I fall apart the second I get home, then I can’t do this show where the complications of today are blown up twenty-fold.

It’s just not in the cards.

As I mentioned a few days ago, Willowing/Tam is having an online art class called World of Whimsy 2, where she’ll show you how to make and shade pretty girls, as well as animals, and show you how to make mixed media backgrounds. She’s also going to cover basic things like composition, layout, layering and embellishments. It’s going to be a great class!

It starts on Monday, runs for 6 weeks and is roughly $85 US/$93 CAD.

I signed up last night and I’m really looking forward to Monday. Along with the class, which is comprised of videos and PDF files, you get Tam’s attention and the ability to ask her questions and get critiques of your work.

As I said in my original post on the subject, Tam is a really great teacher and a wonderful artist, so if you think taking an online class is for you, then this is probably the one to take.

You can sign up/learn more here.

Have a great weekend!
(Alex & Ronny get married tomorrow, I’m so excited!!!!! SO that’s what we’re doing this weekend. :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!

Know what I hate? When you’re half asleep, in a great dreamscape, but conscious enough to be rolling around in bed trying to control the flow of blood flowing from your vagina so it stays on the pad, rather than gushing up over it and soaking through your pajamas onto the sheets. I really really fucking hate that. Oh yeah, and cramps too. If it weren’t for the pain I was in while all of this was happening, I probably would have kept sleeping, but no, I got up and by the time I took all my “morning drugs”, including painkillers, I was up and awake and there was not a goddamn thing I could do about it.

So here I am.

As I’ve mentioned a few times already, I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love and right now I’m in the middle of the book where she’s just arrived in India and she’s talking about yoga. Admittedly, I know absolutely nothing about yoga. When I went last week, the teacher wanted us to fill out some paperwork that was half questionnaire and half  “you can’t sue me if you break your neck” stuff, but she asked the question, “why are you taking yoga?” Blake & I were the only ones filling out this information because the other 3 girls in the class are regular students and since Blake always finishes these things first and leaves me feeling awkward while I finish mine, I just wrote “to maintain weight” as my reason, but that’s not totally it and now I feel like she thinks I’m vapid for saying that because according to Eat, Pray, Love, yoga is much more than a body exercise. It’s supposed to be all transcendental & shit. The fact of the matter is, I don’t really know why I’m taking yoga. It seemed like a good idea at the time? It’s a good immersion therapy exercise? To take away some of my menstrual pain eventually? (I hear there are poses for that.) To show off how flexible I am as a party trick one day? All of those reasons? None of those reasons? I don’t know. What’s the right answer to that question? What is it she would have wanted to read under that question? I know “to maintain weight” wasn’t it.

By the way, I’m doing Hatha yoga, which according to Eat, Pray, Love is just your run of the mill yoga, nothing fancy. I think Kelley, our teacher, said in one of the e-mails to Blake that she was mixing it with another kind of yoga, but I forget what she said now. All I know is that last week was a positive experience and I’m actually kind of looking forward to this week’s class.

Last week’s class I found to be very very easy when I expected it to be very very hard. I did all of the poses more or less correctly, according to Blake, but I didn’t get into them the proper way and I didn’t do certain nuances of some poses, like in downward dog your heels are supposed to be flat on the floor but I’m not flexible enough to accomplish that yet because my muscles haven’t stretched enough from repetition of the pose. And I don’t really understand the teacher’s instructions most of the time. Like, she says to flex or release the muscles in your wherever but I have absolutely no fucking clue as to what muscles she’s talking about most of the time because the only muscles of mine I’m ever aware of is the uterine ones. And my thigh ones, but that’s a long story as to why…

So I made it through all the poses and my position in the class is right beside the giant wall clock in the studio and I was amazed at how fast the class went. I was expecting it to be an agonizing hour, like gym class where time just stood still, but it wasn’t like that at all. In fact, I didn’t even think to look at the clock until there were only 10 minutes left.

Since I didn’t know any of the poses to begin with and since she didn’t name all of the poses we were doing, the only two I picked up on was “table pose”, “child pose” and “downward dog” because those seemed to be the transitional poses between other poses.

Blake was apparently sore the next day from doing the class, but I wasn’t and I’ve been wondering why the whole time. Blake says it’s just because he hasn’t used a lot of those muscles in a long time, but I would guess that neither have I, so why wasn’t I sore? I felt barely any strain whatsoever during the class which made me think I was either doing it wrong (likely) or maybe my flexibility is just better than Blake’s (possible).

Right now I am in hell due to menstruation (my 3rd period this month, hooray for me!) and on the questionnaire she asked if we had any health problems that may affect our ability to do yoga and I put down “endometriosis”, SO, on Tuesday I don’t know if I should tell her I’m in hell before the class or if I should just not say anything and do the best I can. “They” say that exercise is good for cramps but that has never been my experience at all. I’ve never tried yoga for it before though, not really. I do a variation of “child pose” all the time for period pain where I sit cross-legged and bend the rest of my body forward the same as “child pose”, but I don’t think that’s an actual yoga pose and we don’t do “child pose” for very long during the class so that one won’t be doing me any favours tomorrow. I’m just hoping that this period hell will be over by then, but I’m not holding my breath.

And the only thing I have left to say about yoga is that Blake & I have brand new, spiffy yoga mats that are apparently in the trunk of the car and will stay in the trunk of the car (so they don’t get dog hair on them) and mine is pink. I don’t know what colour Blake’s is, but I’m guessing blue since that’s the colour of the first one he bought. It was $60 for both of us to rent mats for the class but I didn’t want to do that, especially because I suspect we will be taking yoga from this woman for a really long time because I actually like it but also because I wanted a pink one godammit and the ones for rent are either “gym class” blue or “crusty blood clot” maroon.

So that was yoga. I know I was brief about it last week and you guys wanted to know more than “it was eeeeeeeasy”, so there ya go.

In other news, I haven’t painted a fucking thing in a week because I’m a WoW addict who does little else right now than chew painkillers and pretend I’m a blood elf and that’s mostly what I intend to do until the end of next week, criticism be damned.

The thing with WoW, especially right now in the formation of a brand new guild, is that it’s largely a social game. I spend my days (and nights) killing fictional beings, yes, but I’m also chatting with about 15 other people while I’m doing it. And it’s like…okay say you stay off the internet for a day (the horror!) and you can’t get caught up with your friends list on Live Journal or Facebook the next day. WoW’s similar in that if you don’t log on for a day, you can miss a lot socially but the people who were on, have probably out-leveled you by about 2 levels and right now we’re all trying to stay within the same range of levels to be able to do dungeons and quests together. This guild ‘s entire purpose was to start toons from scratch and level them together. (A concept that’s been lost on some people who have decided to roll death knights who start at level 55, but whatever, good for them. I hope they like playing alone because that’s all they’ll be doing for quite some time.)

Anyway, as an officer of the guild and also the person with the most time on her hands, I kind of act as guild master when our guild master isn’t around, which is often because she apparently actually has a life. She pretty much only logs on to buy us guild bank tabs because she’s the only one who can do it and sometimes she levels her priest for a few hours, but she’s never on for entire days or nights like the rest of us are. (Which is fine, this isn’t a diss on our GM at all, I mean really, the job at this point is to just buy bank tabs and that’s pretty much it since our officers can add people to the guild or promote people.)

Basically the guild is being run by me, our friend from Camwhores, Warcorp and our friend Stephy. And Stephy got a job today so her time in Azeroth is soon to be more limited, I’m assuming. Warcorp’s our money-making machine who has almost single-handedly financed our first 3 guild bank tabs (I helped too, but nowhere near as much as he did) and since we’ve been filling up the tabs pretty quickly, I’ve been telling people what to take, what to sell, what to use and what to disenchant and I’m not even sure I’m doing that correctly because I don’t know for sure what a lot of the stuff we’re banking is for or what it does. I’m a WoW nerd, definitely, but I definitely have to ask the other WoW nerds of our guild for guidance on a lot of things because the game’s changed quite a bit since we stopped playing 2 years ago and the only profession I ever did seriously was alchemy (which I’m doing again) so I only really know what’s useful for that.

I’m hoping that Ditsy can spend some time with us every now & then to organize our guild bank a little better because I’m told she’s an expert WoW organizer.

Last night we did our 2nd guild instance, which was Gnomeregan and it took foreeeeever. Blake didn’t end up in bed until almost 2:30am, so tonight is probably not going to be a WoW night, especially since we still have yesterday’s True Blood to watch – so maybe I’ll get some painting in after all. Really, the two paintings that have been sitting on my coffee table for about a month only need arms, a signature and varnish to be finished, so I could probably get that done in a a couple of nights if I really wanted to. And since I like money, I should really want to.

Anyway, that’s all I really have to report other than the fact that both kids had excellent report cards and once again, both of them got principal achievement awards. The last day of school is on Wednesday and it should be an interesting summer with Alex & Ronny getting married, the kids going up north to Phil’s for a week or 2 giving Blake & I TIME ALONE OMG, my gardens and a few other things we have lined up.

So that’s that. I will now leave you with some lovely WoW screencaps that I’m sure you will all be thrilled by.

This Wailer is no match for Endometria!

My ride.
It sucks that when I get the next level of mount I HAVE to ride a brightly coloured chicken because there are no black high level chickens. I think that’s stupid.
The other day I saw a blood elf riding a zebra and I meant to look up how that was possible.

Blake & I drinking. He’s a troll shaman. And actually that’s a pic from last week, he’s had a change of hairstyle since.

Me riding a wyvern to destinations unknown.
This is how we roll on the Horde side, wyverns, zeppelins and dragonhawks.

And finally, the sun setting in Tirisfal while I wait for a zeppelin to Orgimmar.

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)

Yesterday I made a post professing my love for this brand of cherry tomatoes called One Sweet Tomato and for the company that produces them, called Sunset Produce, which is a division of Mastronardi Produce. As I said in my post yesterday, they are a local company (well, about 4 hours away, but to me that’s still local) and my beloved One Sweet Tomatoes, as I first suspected due to their incredible sweetness, are not genetically modified in any way. In fact, Sunset Produce was the first produce company to receive non-GMO certification from The Non-GMO Project. I learned this fact yesterday not just from scouring their website in awe that a company could be so ethical and non-evil, but from following them on Twitter where they posted that fact.

Am I laying it on thick enough yet? Nope, I don’t think so. In fact it’s about to get a lot thicker and a little more personal and convoluted by the end of this post.

Yesterday I woke up just before 6am and I saw, via the comments on the One Sweet Tomato post, which was x-posted to Live Journal, that my friend Stephy had visited their site and my new favourite tomatoes were in fact not GMO at all. And from that comment, I decided to check out their site myself, because when I get obsessed with something, I really get obsessed, as many of you can attest, and what I found on their site was a company that cares about the environment (they use energy saving bulbs in their warehouses during the winter but skylights the rest of the year to cut down on energy consumption, for example), a company that cares about feeding families healthy, quality foods and inadvertently, a company staffed by extremely nice people.

By the time I was finished looking at the site, I was clicking on the “Careers” section because I was ready to start working in the greenhouse! I, Sunny Crittenden, whose life goal it has been for her 31 years of existence, was willing to throw slackerdom to the wind and get a  j o b . I mean, nevermind that they’re 4 hours away, I was going to make Blake get a new job too. In fact, they happened to be looking for a sys admin, so that was actually kind of doable.

But then I realized I was probably being delusional from a lack of sleep and decided to use their contact form to profess my love for their products and their company, tell them that despite the fact that their One Sweet Peppers were on sale this week at Foodland, our tiny local Foodland didn’t carry them (boooo) and to ask if they were going to include their non-GMO certification on their packaging anytime soon. I also told them that I’d made a post about their One Sweet Tomatoes on my site and threw them a link.

About half an hour later, I get an e-mail back from Chris Veillon, the Director of Marketing for the company. Fancy that, an e-mail from a real live person. At 7am no less! He gave me a run down of the chain of command in a grocery store and how to request their products in our local Foodland, said that they were working on packaging redesign to include their non-GMO status and “Please send me your mailing address and I would be glad to send you a small care package of the best SUNSET® produce there is for you and your family to enjoy.“

So impressed with this person and the offer of awesome free produce to a random stranger who just likes their tomatoes, I e-mailed him back with a few thoughts on the importance of non-GMO packaging (likely not telling him anything he didn’t already know, heh), that I would most definitely speak to the produce manager of our local grocery store to see if we could get more of their products in our produce section and of course, my address for this mysterious, yet I could tell it on my bones, awesome care package.

Well, I never heard back after that, but that’s probably because Chris is a busy guy.

Now here’s where things get personal and convoluted. The more I milled the whole morning’s experience, being steeped in Sunset Produce mania, around in my head, the more excited I became and by the time Blake woke up I had practically pounced on him to share all of this new information I had just discovered because hey, that’s what I do. So then I got him checking out their website and agreeing that they are, as I had told him, full of awesomesauce.

Well Blake had the day off because yesterday I had a date with a nutritionist (synchronicity!) and an unfortunate date with a dentist and because I don’t drive or really leave the house alone, Blake takes vacation days when I have appointments. The appointments? Neither here nor there really. I got accepted into the metabolic workshop I was hoping for and it’ll start in either June or August. It will be 10 weeks long, every Tuesday for 2 hours, and from what was described it’ll be really comprehensive. Cool. Looking forward to it. I want to know more about food and what it does inside our bodies, especially having to due with the metabolism as mine was adversely affected by medication a couple of years ago resulting in crazy, unfair weight gain and high cholesterol, as you all know. Dentist? NOt all that exciting either. I have a small cavity on the left side in one of my molars. This is actually a small victory because it’s my first cavity in over 2 years, whereas prior to that, when I was drinking 2.5L of Coke every day, I spent about a million agonizing hours in the dentist’s chair while I racked up a good $8,000 in (insured) dental bills.

But as I said, the appointments themselves, not all that important, which is why they don’t get their own posts. What IS important is that Blake and I had a lot of time to talk yesterday and our talking mostly had to do with that sys admin position at Sunset Produce. He was just as stoked about the company as I was and this is part of the reason he and I get along so well, when we believe in something, we go full tilt and by halfway through the day, we decided that we’d like a shot at becoming a Sunset Produce family. We looked up the town where they were located and much to our surprise, we found that they were actively recruiting people just like us to help come populate it. We also found out that it’s the southern-most town in Ontario, meaning much milder winters than we have here, and it’s really close to the Detroit/Windsor border crossing so when Blake’s mother decides to stop being an impossible shrew, visiting would happen much more frequently (she lives just outside of Detroit – for those new to Sunnyland, Blake is American and from MI) and it would make things easier as far as getting together when Blake’s sisters come into town from CA.

There’s also a ferry that’ll take us to Ohio, if we ever wanted to go, although my friend Kevin, when told this, said “I’m not sure that’s a benefit,” but WHATEVER KEVIN, Blake & I met in Ohio 9 years ago this fall so it holds a special place in our hearts.

So Blake & I keep getting each other more and more excited about the prospect of making this actually happen and what finally undid us was going to Realtor.ca and looking to see what the housing market is like down there. To make a long story short, there is a hell of a lot more bang for our buck down there than there is anywhere even close to up here. In fact, after spending several hours looking at houses, I finally found the one I want, which is within our budget, pending the sys admin position pays at least what Blake’s making now, and it is literally my dream house – at least from the pics. I’ve always wanted a pool, this house has one. I’ve always wanted a Victorian house, this house is one. This house is in town, where I can walk to things. There is an elementary school within a closer walking distance than the kids have now.

Now, it’s actually not in the same town as the Sunset Produce headquarters, but Blake’s commute would only be about 10 or 15 minutes and Blake & I actually have a little bit of history with this town too. It’s called Leamington, which probably means nothing to any of you, but it was the one of, if not THE first stop on the XL Indie Tour which Scratching Post was a part of, which I worked the entirety of for them and this particular location was the first time Blake and I ever really hung out. We would be engaged a few months later and married the following summer.

Leamington is probably best known for being where Heinz ketchup is made, which is no surprise since the next town over, Kingsville, where Sunset Produce is located, is where all the greenhouses are in this province (more or less). As a result of this type of industry, Leamington and I’m gonna assume Kingsville too, has a high latino population and Blake was so stoked when we went on Google Street View and found all kinds of “authentic” Mexican restaurants and grocery stores. Another positive aspect to this is that, say all of this does magically happen for us and Blake gets the job and we get the house and the universe aligns etc etc? It would mean that our kids would go to a school with mixed ethnicities. (And why is spellcheck saying that’s not a word?) Where we are now is…as whitewashed as it comes, as were all the little towns I grew up in and it only gets whiter the further North you go. Now don’t get me wrong, I like white people, but when all you see growing up are people who look like you, it can lead to being less open-minded, less accepting and less tolerant and we’re trying to raise open-minded, accepting and tolerant kids. Spanish is spoken in this house just as much as French is, we eat Thai and Chinese and Mexican food, but obviously that’s not the same as being raised in an area where every single person in the whole town is the same skintone as you. Blake, growing up right outside Detroit, grew up with ethnic diversity and finds living here really strange because there just isn’t that up here outside of the major metropolitan areas. But even then, Barrie’s pretty big, but still probably 80% white. When we’ve talked about moving before, ethnic diversity and different cultures have both been important to Blake, but living in a small town has always been important to me and in Ontario you don’t really get to have both – except in Leamington, which is something I noticed about it the first and only time I’ve ever been there.

So this is what Blake and I have decided to start working toward. The first step is to get a foot in the door with Sunset Produce and get Blake an interview for the sys admin position. Blake is very very smart and I’m convinced that if he can get an interview, he can make this happen. If all goes well there, he’s going to tell them he can start immediately, which will be extremely expensive and inconvenient considering he’ll have to live at a hotel or something down there during the week and come up here on weekends to help me do groceries and get the mail & stuff, until we sell this house. And unfortunately, this house needs a little “lipstick & rouge” to be able to sell too, which I guess I’ll do myself while he’s down there working, if this all comes to fruition. Then there’s the matter of selling this house while buying another house, which we realize people do all the time, we just have absolutely no idea how that works. And people, I really really REALLY want the house I linked. The location is perfect, it has everything I want (at least by the description and pictures) – it is the “forever home”.

Yes, we will be over 5 hours away from my dad, Lisa and my little sisters, but honestly, we only really see them once or twice a year (one of those times being Xmas) and they’re both on Facebook so I’m not too worried about that. We will be about 3 hours away from Alex & Ronny who are pretty much our only “real life” friends and that’ll suck, but I think their goal is to end up in Toronto anyway, so that’s only about 2 hours away and they’ll be passing right through our town pretty much to visit Ronny’s family in MI, so there’s always that. And again, I talk to both of them online more than we see them offline, so I’m not all that worried about them either. I’m not sure how far away we’ll be from my mom, I’m gonna guess 3 hours, which is about double how far way we are now, which will suck and will make Xmas a little more complicated, but I’m sure it can be worked around easily enough. Again, I talk to her on Facebook or e-mail more than in person anyway, so I’m sure we’ll survive.

Blake and I really really want this. Madison really really wants this too (we showed her the house, the town, everything) and says the house I want is “one dishwasher away from being perfect”. Wes…has no clue we’re even thinking about this, but when we moved up here when Madison was more or less the same age, she survived, so I’m sure he will too.

And about me working in the Sunset greenhouses if this happens and there’s an opening? I don’t think I’m kidding about that. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I really like to grow things. When it came to college, it was literally a toss up between going to school for herbalism and working in a local greenhouse that only grew herbs or advertising. There was more money in advertising and a lot less schooling. Anyway, as far as a job, I’m not making any promises, I’m just saying it’s a consideration. We want to be a Sunset Produce family.

So that’s my big news of yesterday that I wasn’t sure I’d write about for fear of jinxing ourselves.

My big news of today is not as life-altering but is still exciting nonetheless. My care package from Sunset Produce came! That Chris Veillon doesn’t fool around!

Last night I woke up at 3am, after going to bed at 11pm and couldn’t get back to sleep, which seems to be my current pattern of (not) sleeping. Not a huge deal, this happens every spring and every fall, but that means I’m assuming I was having a nap when the delivery came because I never heard the door.

When Madison came home from school, she came in carrying this styrofoam cooler about as long as my coffee table and almost as wide. Immediately I knew what it was because what else would need to be kept cool? And oh man, was I excited. I got out my trusty exacto knife and sliced apart the tape holding the lid onto the bottom and then I carefully opened it up to see what was inside.

What was inside was a whole lot of bubble wrap (which I’ll keep and use to wrap paintings with) with Chris’ card on top, which I’ve cropped here so a million people don’t call his office asking for care packages too:

I unwrapped everything inside the cooler and tried to make a nifty display to show you all, but the light in my office sucks and I didn’t really do a good job, so this is going to be a slightly pic-intensive post.

Madison & I each took an armload into the kitchen and I took pictures of one thing, then I’d hand it off to her to put away in the fridge. First up is two more containers of One Sweet Tomatoes, which I cannot stress enough, are absolutely amazing. In fact, that’s what I had for dinner last night while we watched LOST, a caesar salad with a side of One Sweet Tomatoes.

And the timing of these two containers couldn’t be better because the one container I have left in the fridge is getting a little soft and there aren’t any more at the grocery store because we literally bought all they had over the last two weeks.

Next up is MINZANO tomatoes which even have their own website because for whatever reason they are just that special. I’m very curious about these.

Then comes Campari tomatoes, which, from what I understand is what Sunset’s best known for. They aren’t as big as the random Ontario hot house tomatoes I have in my fridge (I unfortunately just bought like, 6 of them – oops) but their colour is a LOT nicer and I’m thinking that I’m going to try them tomorrow night when I plan on having P.L.T.’s for dinner. (“P” is for “peameal bacon”….which I’m really sick of explaining so just Wiki it.)

Then we have a pack of 3 sweet bell peppers, which Blake is turning into fajitas as I type this. He just walked in here a few minutes ago freaking out at how flavourful they are, so already they’re a big hit and I happen to know that our local grocery store has these because that’s what “Compliments” brand is.

Now comes the mini cucumbers, which are like English cucumbers in that the skin is edible. I plan to send these with the kids in their lunch because I think it’d be a waste to cut them up into slices or into a salad. These look like they’re meant to just eat plain.

Now here’s the thing about the next items. I hate peppers. Like a lot. When I was little I would eat them raw with dip and be totally fine, but as an adult they just never worked out for me. I pick them out of stir-fries and am sometimes offended that they’re even IN my stir-fry, I can’t stand spaghetti sauce if there’s even the tracest amount of peppers in it and often other things with peppers in it gives me a headache, so I avoid them like the plague.

That said, after trying the One Sweet Tomatoes and loving them, when I saw that the same company made One Sweet Peppers and they happened to be on sale this week, I’d fully intended to try them. However as I mentioned, our grocery store didn’t have them, so I couldn’t, but I was pleased to find that Chris had included two containers of them in our care package because if I’m ever going to like peppers, these are going to be the ones.

Since I inadvertently had a 1300 calorie breakfast this morning (don’t even ask), my dinner plans are to have a veggie/cheese platter of One Sweet Tomatoes, Minzano tomatoes, some English cucumber I already have cut up in the fridge, some havarti cheese,  Wheat Thins and these One Sweet Peppers.

And finally this brings us to our last item which excites me even though I probably won’t be the one eating them due to my aforementioned dislike of peppers (everyone else in the house likes them though, so they will get eaten, likely with gusto):

They are MYSTERIOUSLY sweet long peppers.
And they look really cool too, that’s what excited me about them – I just think they’re absolutely beautiful.

Obviously they’re long and shiny and very very red. I’m probably going to try these, but I won’t be too surprised at all if I don’t like them because they look very….peppery.

Anyway, this gigantic post was brought to you by Sunset Produce and I will try to keep everyone abreast of the job situation and what everyone thinks of our little bounty here once we’ve tried everything. And if you’ll excuse me, I have a thank you e-mail to write.

The show was awesome!!! The unfortunate part, however, is that I’m 5 foot fuckall and the pit was huge, so Alex, Deanna and I had to stand on a platform at the back of the venue to be able to see the band and people kept getting in my way so I couldn’t see at all unless I leaned over to the left and tried to see around them. It was still good though, the venue just kinda sucked.

I tried taking pictures and video to show you all, but because of my position and the fact that it was dark, neither r eally turned out very well but I uploaded them anyway because, hey, why not?

Blake bought me a tour t-shirt that I absolutely love and is now one of my prized possessions. There was an afterparty where Eugene was going to be DJing, but it was $10 to get in and it was already about 12:30am and Alex had to get up for work the next day so we didn’t go. I really want to though, because I figured that would be my best chance to get Eugene to sign my ticket, but it’s not a big deal that we didn’t go. It just would have been the icing on a very delicious cake.

I was supposed to meet an internet friend named Katie at the show and I kept an eye out for her but we never connected. Katie where were you? Deanna I also know from the internet and this was the first time we were meeting and she’s a really rad chick who I liked a lot. A+++ would hang out with again.

Anyway, here are my pics and I’m going to link to the video of Through the Roof ‘n’ Underground because if I embed it, it’ll be too small to see anything because I was so far back. I tried really hard to get good video for you guys so you could “experience” the show too, but I couldn’t because of where I was standing. I tried though!

Okay, here’s pics:

My tour t-shirt. It has the tour’s dates on the back.

Deanna constantly texting!

Ronny & Alex. I wish I got a better pic of Alex’s hair because it was super cute.

The love of my life.

Crappy pictures of the band. Like I said, I tried! I can’t help it that I’m practically a midget. :o/

And finally here’s me, completely exhausted and after taking off most of my makeup. I think we got home around 2:30am and Blake & I stayed up to watch LOST and V, finally going to bed around 4:30am. I woke up today at 3pm haha

A HUGE special thank you to my mom & John who looked after the kids so we could go. I love you both and really really appreciate it. <3

It’s 5am and I’m awake. I went to bed at about 12:30am but woke up about half an hour ago because Lucky was whining to be let out and when I tried to go back to sleep, it was a no go because there’s too much on my mind, namely agoraphobia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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