Oooooh what a week it’s been.

First of all, I’m menstruating, which is always fun and because I’m menstruating I’m taking insane amounts of codeine which has made me extremely constipated and I know that’s probably TMI but I don’t fucking care. The stool softeners? They are ineffective and I’m cranky because I literally have something up my ass. Aren’t you glad I shared?

Also making me cranky is the fact that my site has been down for a lot of this week and while that’s not really a huge deal since I x-post everything to Live Journal anyway and haven’t had a whole lot to say, it really sucks because my e-mail is on the same server as my site, so when my site’s down, it probably means I have no e-mail either. So my apologies if you’ve left comments on LJ or have sent me e-mail this week and I haven’t replied, I haven’t been getting my LJ notifications (obviously) and while I’ve been trying my best, it’s hard to remember who I’ve replied to and where so again, I’m sorry. Some people have asked about my host as they’ve seen me bitching about this all week on Twitter and I’m hosted by my friend Kevin, who is the co-owner of Camwhores.com, and he hosts me for free so I try not to complain. It’s not his fault the server took a shit this week and I know he’s been working extra hard trying to fix it, so when I complain, I’m not complaining about my hosting provider, Kevin is great and I love him, I’m just bitching because I’m bitching.

And speaking of my site, in the last 30 days I’ve had almost 3,000 unique visitors , which is actually a record since I began keeping stats just over a year ago. So hello new people! My name is Sunny and I’m not nearly as whiny or insane as I probably sound in this post. If you’d like to know more about me, there’s a page for that and while I update my site usually once a week or so, I update my Live Journal just about every day so if you’re bored, you might want to check that out too. Anonymous comments are turned off on my Live Journal because some people are pricks and while comments are moderated on my site, I’ll approve and reply to just about all of them as long as you’re not being an asshole. I’m done with giving assholes a forum, there are an infinite number of sites on the internet to be an asshole on, take The Forum [NSFW] for example, and I just don’t need to put up with them here.

Anyway…

This week Blake and I watched the movie Precious, but Blake reviewed it for Buttercup and his article will be going up tonight at around 1am so I won’t say anything about it other than I liked it and I agree with Blake’s assessment of the film.

Also this week I worked on my ATCs a bit and just about had a coronary because I spent hours and hours and hours meticulously drawing and shading miniature versions of my girls and then I used a Micron Pigma pen (02) to outline their mouths and noses so I’d be able to see them after I painted their faces with a flesh colour. I do this on my regular sized girls every time and didn’t figure it would be a problem. BUT IT WAS. A HUGE problem. I went to paint their faces with the flesh colour and the ink fucking RAN! That has never happened to me before and these pens are supposed to be waterproof and archival so WTF? So I stopped painting faces with the second girl and decided to let the ink “cure” over night and when I tried painting their faces the next day, everything was totally fine. I ruined 2 of 8, which sucks because I worked really hard on them, but at least I didn’t ruin the whole batch. Currently they’re still sitting on my desk with freshly painted eyes and faces awaiting hair colour and dresses. Truthfully, I haven’t kept working on them because I got distracted by another project…

This other project…well, I don’t really want to talk about it too much because I always do that (I suck at keeping things secret) and because I always do that and give too much away, I self-sabotage and never finish anything. Here’s the gist: I had a dream on Monday that was so vivid and so surreal that as soon as my eyes opened I flew out of bed and just began writing down every detail I could remember. Then that afternoon I fleshed it out a bit more and when Blake got home I showed him my scrawls to see what he thought and he thought it was brilliant, which was reassuring because I never know if my ideas are brilliant or stupid.  I thought about the story over the next couple of days, slightly intimidated by it but Blake threatened that if I didn’t write it, he would, and he wouldn’t do as good of a job as I would because I saw it all unfold in front of my eyes in the dream and for some reason, I think this is a story that needs to be told. I think it’s a story that’s never been told before, but then again, I’m not exactly well read so I could be talking out my ass there. Anyway, yesterday I actually started writing the thing and somehow, in the span of a couple of hours, I had 10 pages typed out, today I added 4 more and this story, that was only supposed to be a “short story” is turning into a novella. Honestly, I don’t know where it’s coming from but it’s a refreshing feeling and I’m enjoying the writing process more than I’ve enjoyed writing in a long time. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it when it’s done, but I’m trying not to worry about that and just fucking write the thing.

So often I sabotage myself by, like I said, explaining a project so much on here that I feel like I’ve completed the project or that just having the idea “out there” is enough for me. And I often get caught up in my fear of success. As much as people accuse me of being an attention whore, the opposite is actually true. I fear the spotlight like nobody’s business and when it comes to creative work, writing in particular, I fear criticism and thus I don’t often put very much out for critics. Even as I write this story, there’s this little negative voice in the back of my head telling me how much it sucks or how implausible the story is or how flimsy my characters are and all kinds of wonderful things like that. And it’s one thing for my own inner critic to say these things, but it’s a whole other thing for other people to say them. Since I’ve never really put anything out there for that kind of scrutiny (and yes, I realize that I put myself “out there” constantly with my site and my cam and all that, this is different) I don’t know how I’d deal with it and a fear of the unknown suddenly surfaces.

But right now all the story is, is 14 pages on my MacBook that no one’s seen but Blake and until it’s finished, that’s all it will be.

This week I also taught Wayne & Judy how to use Facebook, to the best of my ability. Right now they can’t afford internet but they have a wireless card in their computer so Blake built a booster on our wireless router and set them up with the password for the network so they have internet…some of the time. Most of the time they don’t get a signal, but this week they’ve actually had a strong signal for some reason and thus, they’ve been calling me every day to show them how to do things on the Facebook accounts I set up for them last week. Today Judy was asking me how to play FarmVille because a few of her friends sent her FarmVille gifts and since I have that application blocked on my own Facebook, I didn’t really know what to tell her. She also called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that she figured out how to comment on people’s status messages, which I thought was cute because she was so proud of herself for figuring it out.

This weekend I plan on going over there and if they have a strong enough signal, I’m going to set them up with FireFox, add all of the bookmark tabs that they’ll ever need and delete their shortcuts for Internet Explorer altogether. Yes, I realize Chrome is the new big thing but I haven’t used it myself yet and I want them to quit clicking on stupid pop up ads that tell them they have a virus, causing them to freak out and call me. Oh and I changed all of their homepages (they have 3 profiles on Windows, one for Wayne, one for Judy and one for Courtney) to Google so now how they get to Facebook is by typing “www.Facebook.com” INTO Google and going to the first search result. *headdesk* I don’t really blame them though, their Internet Explorer has/had so many toolbars on it for some reason that it had 3 possible inputs for a url and no doubt they chose the wrong one many many times. I got rid of the Ask Jeeves one, but since I don’t use IE and haven’t in many many years, I wasn’t sure how to get rid of the others and it’s difficult to tweak anything when they’re over your shoulder asking what you’re doing every 30 seconds. So, setting them up with FireFox and breaking their IE habit seems like the best thing to do. I also set them up with Gmail accounts and I’m going to try and get them in the habit of checking their e-mail as often as they check their Facebook so they understand how Facebook’s e-mail notifications work. Instead of Google, I’ll probably make Gmail their homepages for that reason.

I’m not a very patient person and my patience in teaching them how to use the internet is surprising even myself.

This week I got a call from the mental health clinic saying that they wanted to set me up with an appointment for another doctor who I think is a nutritionist or something. Are nutritionists doctors? This woman has “Dr.” in front of her last name and she runs a metabolic sumpin-er-other clinic where I see my shrink and I requested to get in on that when a spot opened up because the meds they had me on has slowed down my metabolism and while I’m still eating my eggs every day to help boost my metabolism, progress has been slow and this clinic is all about how to switch your metabolism around and lose weight. Apparently it’s 6 or 8 weeks and it’s in a group setting (oh yay) once a week in the afternoons. I’m assuming the new group starts in the new year and my appointment with this new doctor is on the 29th.

Before I called them back, I checked with Blake to make sure he was okay with using his days off to take me to this thing and he was, so I called and made the appointment with the new doctor. I guess she’ll like, assess me or something, I have no idea. Maybe there’s even a chance I can’t get into the clinic because I’m not fat enough. I don’t know how these things work.

And speaking of mental health…since some folks have been asking…no I have not been driving anywhere. I have not been doing my immersion therapy. I have not been checking the mail. I have also been neglecting my light therapy and had a really bad day earlier this week, so starting Monday the lightbox is going back on my desk and I’m going to start using it again. As for immersion therapy…I’m just done with it. I don’t even care anymore. I can go places, like with Blake or even with Judy, and be okay. I haven’t had a panic attack in public since the spring and I think I’ve made all the progress I’m going to make right now. I have zero desire to drive the car, in fact I hate the car and the mere thought of driving, so fuck it, I’m done. Maybe I’ll pick it up again in the spring, maybe I won’t. I’ve decided that in the end it simply doesn’t matter and that I’m fine where I am. So that’s that.

Anyway, this is a really long fucking post about basically nothing so I’m going to end it here and get back to work on my story.

I worry, a lot, about the fact that I no longer seem to see the world with the same magic glasses I’ve worn my whole entire life. Not too long ago, I could take day to day situations and make them spectacular, because to me they were spectacular, and share them with the world via this blog, but ever since my meds have become stable, that scenario has become a rarity. Or maybe it’s because I turned 30. It’s hard to say because the two events sort of happened around the same time.

But I miss it because it’s always been a part of me. I often sit outside, usually because I’ve taken up smoking again, but often just to sit outside in the sun because I don’t like my lightbox, and I think about how I see the world now versus how I used to see the world before. Now I see hard reality, I see what’s actually there, whereas before I saw the potential in everything, what could be there.

When we moved to this town I was ecstatic because it had so much potential. I loved that it only had 1700 people and that it had a downtown core reminiscent of another once small town outside of a big city called Unionville. (And yes, I know I’ve written about this before.) See, Unionville was this little village built around the same time as this one (mid-1800s, if not earlier) and as the city of Markham expanded, Unionville became this little boutique town full of art galleries, cafes and antique shops – or at least its downtown core did.

With Elmvale being so close to Barrie and Barrie being the ever-expanding metropolis it is, I envisioned a similar scenario here, especially after we’d already moved here and our neighbour on the right told us that they were going to be building a subdivision of 300 brand new, $250k+ houses right across the road from us. As Barrie expands and creates more jobs, more people are wanting to move to Elmvale and that’s the same thing that happened with Unionville.

But here we are 4 years later and now when I look at Elmvale’s downtown core, all I see is a dead village because that’s what’s there. No longer do I see the potential, I see the reality. As I’ve mentioned before, half the downtown shops are empty or uncared about, the restaurants leave something to be desired, we’re only a town of 1700 but we have 4 big name fast food chains and a Wal*Mart up the road…pretty much the only thing about this town reminiscent of Unionville is the organic food store which I’ve never been in and I constantly wonder how the guy stays in business. The dollar store here is abysmal with the lowest stock of any dollar store I’ve ever seen, we have one clothing store by a woman who makes all her own designs but they’re designs for heavier set 40+ year old women, not exactly high fashion and I too, wonder how this woman stays in business. We have one gift boutique-y type shop but I’ve never been inside and from what the kids tell me, it’s mostly stuff made in China. There’s an art studio downtown that, from looking in the windows, appears to be occupied by a potter but it’s never open and I don’t think it’s ever going to be open to the public. Another artist works out of that same studio, Blake actually found her on Etsy, but I can’t remember her name. She makes really expensive beaded broaches, or at least that’s what she had in her Etsy shop.

I guess the potential’s still there, it’s just not as easy for me to see it because I’m either medicated up to the tits (which I am) or I’m old and jaded (which I am).

Blake was interviewed on the phone this week for a new position within his company and from what I understand, they’re fine with remote work so he’d theoretically be making more money and would have a more secure job, but we’d still be stuck here. He’s applied for another job within the company which is basically the same scenario but more money than the first. He’ll find out Dec. 8th if he’s made the short list for that one.

So, it looks like we’ll be staying here for a while longer and I have to kiss my dream house with its studio and our dream town goodbye. Really, it’s bittersweet. The hassle of getting our house ready to sell and then selling within a timeline feasible for buying another house made me really nervous because I don’t know how to do that, so I’m glad we probably won’t have to do that now. I really hate my house, though. It’s small, dumpy and needs a whole hell of a lot of work that neither of us know how to do. All of our bedrooms are impossibly small, we only have one tiny bathroom, I have hardly any room for my art, even though I have a whole room to myself to do it in, because the furnace, elliptical and a futon are in here and this is where the grown ups hang out. I’m glad we won’t have to leave Wayne & Judy because I really do love them, but with the way things are going with them financially…I’m not sure we’re going to be neighbours for very long anyway.

But I’m trying so hard to access my power of seeing potential to see the positive in this. More money and the same commute means that we’ll have money to fix this house up. It means I can get my dad to build my built-in bookshelves in this room and get him to lay the new carpet and re-trim the whole room. It means I can paint my studio how I want to. It means we have time to go slow and do a project at a time so when it comes time to sell this place, everything’s ready. It means I won’t have to sod over my garden right away.

It means that I won’t have to find a new doctor after I’ve finally gotten this one to work with me as far as pain management. It means I won’t have to find a new dentist after getting this one to understand that I’m seriously terrified of dental work so he drugs me up a little extra so it won’t be so scary. It means that the pharmacy is still going to know who I am and will continue to spot me a weekend’s worth of drugs when I forget to call my shrink to renew my prescriptions. It means that the ladies at the blood clinic will continue to remember who I am, that I’m terrified of blood tests and they’ll continue using the needles they use on babies to take my blood. It means that if one of the kids is sick at school, Judy’s still just a phone call away at work and can come get them and bring them home.

It means that things will remain the same but with a few minor improvements and I guess I can’t really complain about that. I just really really really wanted to move. :o/ There’s nothing in this town for me, I’ll never drive here and will be forever dependent on Blake to get anywhere, and Cookstown had so much more to offer. But the thing is, and I told Blake this a long time ago, I’m only moving one more time. It’s either the house we’re going to be in for the rest of our lives or nothing. With Blake continuing to work in Barrie there’s no point in trying to upgrade to a nicer house in this town because it won’t be our forever home because his “forever job” will probably be in Scarborough after he moves up from either of the positions he’s applied for.

I guess I should be thankful that in this economy he has a job at all and maybe it sounds like I’m whining here, I’m just tired of feeling like we’re in limbo. I hate not having a plan. In the beginning, when we moved here, we had intentions of staying in this house for 5 years tops and this July, it’ll be 5 years. My feet are getting itchy and I’m way less in love with this town than I was in the beginning because it’s become quite apparent that it’ll never be what I envisioned it would become.

So I guess it’s time to try and put my magic glasses back on and seek out the magic that was once here. Easier said than done.

Today my best frenemy, Krissy, had her baby. Emma Grace, 6 lbs, 3 oz. That’s really all I have to say about that because to say what’s really on my mind would be bad karma and I’m just not gonna go there. One thing I will say though, is that newborns skeeve me out. They’re all wrinkly and red and gross and almost always ugly – and I mean even my own here, not just Krissy’s – and I don’t know what to say to people when I’m shown pictures of a newborn. (And the pictures have begun…the kid’s only 8 hours old and there’s already a 40 picture album of her on Facebook.) I haven’t even met my own sister yet, who’s 10 months old, largely because little babies freak me out and I didn’t want to be put in a situation where I’d be forced to hold her and I’d look like a dick if I refused. I just don’t like them. Now that Rachael’s 10 months old, we’re good and I’m looking forward to seeing her for the first time at Xmas. Now she’s solid and can sit up by herself and stuff, I don’t have to support her neck and all that shit with newborns, so we’re gonna get along just fine.

Anyway, babies are gross. I’m glad I’m done having them and that none of my friends want any.

Right now I feel all kinds of barfy because of the Naproxen I’m taking. Even taking it with food and taking the Nexium in  the morning, that evening dose just fucking kills me. I find cold water helps with the nausea, usually, but it doesn’t seem to be helping tonight.

All day today I worked on the girls that will be going on my ATCs which has practically given me carpal tunnel and one hell of a back ache. Drawing girls in miniature is a whole lot harder than drawing them full-sized but even harder than that is shading the damn things. The brushes I have are all too big to do the best job possible and I already know Curry’s doesn’t sell smaller angled brushes, so I just had to make do with what I had. Tomorrow I’ll paint their legs and faces and hair and probably the next day I’ll start working on their dresses.

And that was pretty much my day. Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m writing a blog post today because nothing at all even remotely exciting happened. Wayne stayed home from work today because he was hung over and Judy stayed home from work today because of her tooth, but that’s not very exciting either and I didn’t even go over there today. I only know that they both didn’t go to work because Blake was supposed to pick Wayne up from work today and Wayne called to tell him it wasn’t necessary.

Yesterday Judy’s abscess was so bad that all underneath her eye was swollen and it looked like she either got stung by a bee or someone punched her in the face. She works at Tim Hortons and said that people were staring at her and doing double takes because of her face on Friday, so that’s why she missed work the last two days. She has tomorrow and Monday off, so hopefully on Monday she can get her tooth taken care of. Wayne has tomorrow and Monday off too.

Anyway, I’m gonna stop babbling,  just post this stupid entry and go to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be more exciting.

Obsessed I tell ya!
This is what I spent my evening doing, while talking to Ronny & Alex.

Once these are dry I’ll mix glitter paint with glazing liquid and water and do a heavy coat of that on each card, then it’ll be time to start working on the girls which I have a feeling is going to take foreveeeeeeeer but I think it’ll be fun.

I won’t have time to work on the cards tomorrow as we’ll be busy setting everything up for Judy’s surprise party. In the morning, when Courtney (her 8 year old daughter) comes over because it’s a PA day and I look after her when there’s no school, Blake’s going to help her and Madison make Judy’s cake and then he’s going to start blowing up the balloons while Madison cuts metallic purple ribbons for each one. When the cake’s done we’re going to go over to Judy’s house to start decorating. Madison bought green and purple streamers (Judy’s favourite colours) and she already has two garbage bags full of blown up balloons, so those, along with the ones I bought, are going to be taped to the ceiling in the kitchen and living room so they look like helium balloons with their ribbons hanging down. We did this for Madison’s 4th birthday (except we filled the balloons with heart-shaped glitter and gave my cousin Haylie a pin ;o)). Madison’s also been busy all week making frog-themed decorations, which she’s going to tape up all over the living room.

As far as presents…I got Judy a box of hair dye and a pack of three lip balms and a birthday card that’s sort of cheesy but has a recipe on the inside which I think she’ll like because cooking and baking are her favourite things to do. Madison sewed her a stuffed frog. Courtney got her a plant and Alyssa, one of the kids down the street, got her two frog birthday cards to be from all the kids and she also got her a set of three ceramic frogs that are really cute. (Did I mention Judy collects frogs?)

I think I mentioned this already, but last Saturday Courtney’s best friend Mikayla (which I’m probably spelling wrong) and her mom took Madison to the dollar store in Barrie to buy the streamers and decorations for the cake, as well as the cake mix and icing. Then they went back to Mikayla’s house and they all made Judy a lasagna which is thawing in my fridge right now. Unfortunately Mikayla and her mom (whose name I believe is Sharon, I’ve only met her once and wasn’t introduced) can’t come to the party because the husband has the car that day and they’re homebound. I was going to talk to Blake about maybe calling and offering to come get them and drive them home afterward, but with everything going on and the fact that we need his help because he’s the only one tall enough to do the streamers and balloons, I’m not sure that’s going to be possible. It was really really nice of her to do all that though, making the lasagna and everything. I’ve tried calling her to thank her (and get directions for heating up the lasagna) but I keep getting their answering machine.

What sucks is that tonight at about 10:30 Judy called our house saying that she had a really bad tooth ache and she wanted the number for our dentist to see if she could have the tooth pulled tomorrow. That means that there’s a very good chance she’ll walk in as we’re getting the house ready, which I’m worried about. :o/ All of the kids have worked so hard on this party and they’re so excited that it’s a surprise and she has no idea that it would really suck if the surprise was ruined. There’s not much we can do about it though, so we’re just going to go ahead as planned.

But how much does that suck, having to get a tooth pulled on your birthday? And the worst part is that they don’t have dental insurance so they’re going to have to pay out of pocket when they’re already struggling financially. :o/ As Blake said though, at least we’re doing something positive that she can enjoy even though that aspect of her birthday is going to suck.(And hey, I have like, a metric fuck tonne of painkillers, so I can get her all high and she won’t even think about her tooth if need be.)

After we have the lasagna and do the cake and presents, we figure the kids are going to wander off to play and that’s when we’re going to bust out the cards to play Judy’s favourite game: euchre. I was talking to Wayne today and even though he has to work the next day, he says he’s up for staying up late to play with us (Judy has Saturday off so she can sleep in or have a nap).

All in all, I think it’s going to be a good day for her and godammit, she deserves it too. She sacrifices so much for her family and goes without constantly, which is why the kids all wanted to do this for her. On the weekends, when she’s off from work, she invites all the kids over and bakes with them or plays cards with them and like, her door is ever revolving with neighbourhood kids. I think it’s awesome that the kids planned this and were that thoughtful. In fact, they started planning this 3 weeks ago (it was Madison’s idea) and Blake & I only even heard about it last week!

Anyway, tomorrow’s going to be a busy but good day and I hope Judy’s surprised. It really sucks about her tooth though, I’m worried about that. :o/

Well, I should probably stop writing now and get some sleep because there’s a lot of work  to be done tomorrow so I better not sleep ’til noon. Goodnight internets, I love you. <3

I just woke up from yet another “end of the world” dream. In this one I was camping with my mom and her boyfriend when earthquakes started happening and the hydro went out all over the world. I’ve already been up for about 45 minutes so the details of the dream are fading, but there was a store on the campgrounds and I went in and had to save the girls hiding behind the counter from a brown bear that had wandered in after the first quake. It jumped up on me, like a dog that’s happy to see you, so like a dog, I grabbed its paws and kinda tossed him down off my shoulders, opened the front door of the store and it wandered back out. While the door was open, a deer skittered out behind it. The girls gave me a flashlight, which I brought back to our tent and that was the end of that segment of the dream.

The next one, I was in the town I used to live in and all the streets were black. It was winter and there were strange noises everywhere from people looting and vandalizing the town in the dark. I was thirsty, so fucking thirsty. I met up with my friend Heather from when I was a kid and she brought me to this ice cream stand inside a bowling alley where she knew the owners and they gave me a can of Sprite, which I chugged down like it was the last liquid on Earth. We all hid in the bowling alley in the dark with boards and baseball bats, waiting for the looters to break in.

And then I woke up thirstier than I swear I’ve ever been in my life and with an unexplained ache in my left jaw. I got up and chugged the half can of Coke Zero I’d left in the fridge when I went to bed, then I opened another one and drank the whole thing. Now I’m on my third and as I said, I’ve only been awake about 45 minutes.

This has been a common occurrence during the past week, waking up around 6am so thirsty I think I’m gonna die. Usually I go for Coke Zero when this happens because if I drink water I’ll just be up in another hour to go pee and orange juice is bad for your teeth if you’re just going to go back to bed.

Just now I tried going back to bed, but I’m having racing thoughts again and the attempt was futile. I’m tired though, really really tired. Again, I figure if I get these thoughts out of my head and “onto paper” maybe then I’ll be able to go back to sleep.

I watched Oprah on Friday, where she announced that the season after this one would be her last. I cried. I cried hard. Her show began in 1986, when I was 7 years old, and really, I don’t remember TV without Oprah. When her show started, I was being babysat by my Aunt Heather and every day after school we would watch and Oprah’s been a big part of my life ever since. No, Oprah and I haven’t always gotten along, there were times when she and I disagreed, but she’s always been there and it’s hard to imagine TV without her. I know her final show is going to absolutely destroy me. After I tweeted something to that effect on Friday, someone said something like “don’t worry, she’s getting her own channel”, which is true, The Oprah Winfrey Channel, which everyone now knows as The Discovery Health Channel, has been in the works since I think 2008 and is set to launch in 2011, but like her XM Satellite radio station, Oprah and Friends, it’s hard to say how much she’s actually going to be on it. The fact of the matter is, channel or not, there will be no more Oprah Winfrey Show and that makes me sad.

I mean, I knew it would have to come to an end sooner or later, I just wasn’t prepared for the announcement.

Tonight I read Oprah’s Wikipedia entry and smiled when it said that she planned on retiring in South Africa, at her school for girls. Truthfully, that’s probably where Oprah should be and it’s probably where she’ll be happiest. Did you know that in her will she’s left all of her money (she’s worth $2.3 billion, in case you didn’t know) “to the children of Africa”? That’s absolutely amazing to me. I can’t even fathom what that’s going to mean for the continent. If you’ve been reading me for any great length of time, then you’ll know that I worry and fret about Africa every single day, but at the same time, I believe that within my lifetime a lot of Africa’s troubles will come to an end and that the continent will rise up and become a booming voice in the international community. I know that’s an extremely optimistic view, but think about it: Oprah will probably die in my lifetime and what can her $2.3 billion inheritance do for Africa? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question because I don’t really have a clear concept of what you can buy with that kind of money or how to “fix” Africa, but I feel in my gut that it’ll really help things turn around. And I’m going to be very glad to see it, even if it’s from my nursing home.

In other news, Friday night Blake and I were just going outside to go have half a smoke and he was ahead of me so he opened the front door and all I heard was “no kittens in the house!” and he was blocking something with his feet. I assumed it was the neighbour’s cat, Misty, who occasionally spends the night with us when she gets locked out of her own home on cold nights, but no, through Blake’s legs I saw that it was a little orange tabby kitten, no older than 10 weeks old. Immediately I reached through Blake’s legs and scooped the kitten up and brought it into the living room to show the kids. The poor guy was dirty and definitely had a smell, so I figured he was a stray, but Madison, who somehow knows every animal in this whole goddamn town, said that it looked like her friend Alyssa’s kitten, Cheesy. Alyssa lives about a 5 minute walk away on the other side of the road.

So Blake and Madison went to see if it was their kitten and when they got to the house, Alyssa’s brother was there with his friend from next door, ALONE. These kids are in grade 3, who leaves two 8 year olds home alone? Anyway, Madison asked them if the kitten was Cheesy, the kid said yes and the cat was returned. How the little bugger got so far away from home and ended up at my front door, I’ll never know, and why do these stray animals always make it to my house in the first place? Between June and August, Madison and I found the homes of 4 different stray dogs! Not to mention the other 2 we found the owners of throughout the school year! And now this kitten? Blake says they find their way here because animals just know that I’m a sucker and somehow that must be true because they do seem to always end up at our house.

It kinda sucks that we found Cheesy’s home though, he was the exact kind of kitten I want when it’s time to get another cat, and I was kind of giddy at the prospect of keeping him. At the same time I’m glad we did find his home because Pixel would absolutely freak the fuck out if we added another cat to the mix and for sure she’d stop using her litterbox because there’s no way she’d share. (And we just got her using her litterbox religiously after almost 4 years. Our house is very small and there are only 3 places to put a litterbox. First I had it beside the washing machine, underneath the wash tub, but with the way the washtub is set up, there’s blocks under its legs so the litterbox was kind of suspended and she wouldn’t use it. Then I had it between the dryer and the furnace, which was all fine & dandy in the spring & summer, especially since she usually did her business outside anyway, but in the fall & winter when the furnace or dryer was on, she’d pee in it when she got the chance (when both appliances were off), but she preferred to shit under Blake’s desk. I didn’t make the connection that she was afraid of the furnace until just this fall and that’s when I moved her litterbox to behind the bathroom door and ever since she’s been a completely different cat. Much more relaxed and loving, not so skittish. gets along better with the dogs. And as an added bonus, because it’s behind the door, the dogs can get into it which they’ve been known to do. Anyway, since she’s so finicky about the litterbox, I know if we introduced another cat, we’d be back at square one. When we get a bigger house, maybe one with a basement where two litterboxes can be set up, we’ll get another cat, just not right now.)

This week was unseasonably warm and the giant spider that lived on a web strewn across my office window all summer made its reappearance and that got me wondering about what happened to spiders in the winter. I figured, because of Charlotte’s Web, that they laid an egg sac and then died and it turns out that I’m only partially right and it really depends on the spider. The spider in my case, is a garden orb weaver, and they most definitely lay eggs and die, while others in warmer climates, but that still have winter (just not Canada’s kind of winters) hibernate and others who lay eggs and die, their babies hatch before winter and keep each other warm in clusters around their egg sac. I’m wondering when my spider is going to die. She’s definitely got a male on her web, I’ve seen him (the males are smaller, so I know she’s a girl), so I’m assuming she’s laid her eggs already somewhere, but she’s creepy and too big to kill (she’s about the size of a twoonie) and I’ve been waiting for her to go away for a long time now because while I kinda think spiders are cool and I like watching they catch prey, I also think they’re really gross and when I go outside for a smoke she’s pretty much above my head and I have awake nightmares about her jumping into my hair. It’s irrational and I know she won’t, but the whole idea of it gives me the willies and as soon as I think she’s dead, I’m vacuuming up her web and when her babies hatch, I’ll be relocating them to my garden. Or maybe my neighbour’s garden…

On Twitter, my friend Poetic Dreams pointed me to a blog post made by Katielynn where she asked:

Who are you?
Really,
Truthfully.
Deep down.
Under the weight the world has put upon you.
Do you have an answer?

And it got me thinking. Who am I? DO I have an answer? The fact of the matter is, I’m 30 years old and still trying to figure out who I am because I’ve had so many setbacks in my life that finding out who I am has always sort of been put on the back burner. Does it matter if I know who I really am? I mean, I know who I am right now, is that the same thing? I know who I want to be, does that count for anything at all?

I think knowing who you are right now DOES count because everyone changes. But at the same time, I guess there’s who you are at your core and I guess if that’s the case I know exactly who I am. I’m the girl who, despite intense social anxiety, can put on a pretty good front and charm an entire room full of people. I’m the girl who gives away a lot of money to certain charities even though she can’t afford it because it’s important and there are people out there who need it more than I do. I’m the girl who’s insecure about most things and has low self-esteem in general, but who’s also brave and confident when it comes to other things. I’m the girl who’s not afraid of a challenge…most of the time. I’m the girl who can make boys cry. I’m the girl who sometimes doesn’t realize how much her words can hurt, even though she’s lived a lifetime of hurting people with her words. I’m the girl who, despite being 5 foot fuckall and 100 lbs at the time, can put a 6’5, 300 lb man in the hospital for fucking with her kid. I’m the girl who hates Guitar Hero with a burning passion. I’m the girl who likes to bake at 3am so her family wakes up to surprises in the kitchen. I’m the girl who’s helping the kids plan a surprise birthday party for my neighbour on Friday. (With the help of another mom who took the kids to the dollar store yesterday to buy supplies and who made Judy a lasagna for her birthday dinner that I’ll help the kids cook on Friday (it’s a PA Day). Also on Friday I’ll be helping the kids bake a cake and decorate Judy’s living room.) I’m the girl who’s already freaking out about turning 40, even though it’s almost a decade away, because I still haven’t grown up and I feel stunted. If I’m still stunted at 40…what does that make me? I’m the girl who sometimes wants to give up and go work at McDonald’s but doesn’t because that would give the haters exactly what they want and dammit, I’m stubborn. I’m the girl who thinks sex is vastly overrated. I’m the girl who takes 28 pills every single day and drinks way too much Coke Zero. I’m the girl who thinks the world would rather hug you than harm you. I’m the girl who’s helping to raise 2 pretty awesome kids. I’m the girl who always knew she wanted to be a mother and who made HUGE sacrifices to make that happen. I’m the girl who will take in any animal that comes her way, much to the dismay of her husband. I’m the girl who loves her husband fiercely and couldn’t live without him. I’m the girl who loves and hates with equal intensity. I’m a girl who’s easily distracted. I’m the girl who can spend an entire day reading about random things on the internet, who gets a hold of a subject and obsesses about it until the curiousity is satiated and there isn’t anything left to know. I’m the girl who sucks at sodoku and crossword puzzles but does both anyway. I’m the girl people claim to be intimidated by. I’m the girl who hates not having a book on the go. I’m the girl who doesn’t have a lot of friends and prefers it that way. I’m the girl who dislikes other people’s kids and their mothers. I’m the girl who seethes when people let their animals go astray and who don’t spay & neuter. (The aforementioned “other mom” who made Judy the lasagna? Her husky was in heat and “driving her nuts” so she just let her out to run through the bush and “if she comes back pregnant, so be it”. UGH.)

I don’t know if any of that answered Katielynn’s question, but I think it’s a good start. These things are at the core of me and will probably never change.

Blake has all this week off and that’s awesome. On Monday I have a doctor’s appointment to get some Tylenol 3 & Naproxen for my upcoming period and to make sure a copy of my post-op report is in my file. I want him to explain to me exactly what they did but I’m not going to sit there while he reads it and then have him explain it to me, unless that’s what he wants to do. I figured I’d just leave a copy with him, which he can read when he gets a moment and then he can call me in for another appointment to go over it with me. I just don’t understand why I’m still in pain and I don’t understand what all they did, especially the whole “cutting of the nerves” thing, which I never willingly consented to and which doesn’t seem to be working at all.

Also on Monday or Tuesday, I’m expecting a little bit of money by way of a cheque in the mail, so Blake and I are going to go to Curry’s and Michael’s to buy some much needed art supplies and probably get Starbucks because it’s in the same plaza.

For something I’m doing, I have to write an “artist’s resume” but I have no idea what that is or how to make one, so Blake’s going to help me with that also. I also had to write an artist’s statement which ended up being easier than I thought and once I iron out the kinks, I’ll be adding it to my site. It could only be about 250 words for what I’m doing, so the version that’ll be on my site will be a bit longer and more fleshed out.

On Tuesday I have to go to the lab for blood work. Oh joy of joys. They’re checking my cholesterol and doing a metabolic work up to see what the hell is going on as far as me being unable to lose the weight I gained while on that heinous medication. Long story short, we’re pretty sure, my shrink & I, that the medication messed up my metabolism semi-permanently and I may have to go on drugs to fix it.

Wednesday Blake has a phone interview for another position within the company and he applied for another one on Saturday so hopefully next week he’ll have a phone interview for that one too. Both positions are in Scarborough, meaning we’d have to sell our house and move. I haven’t checked to see if the house we want in Cookstown has been sold yet and I’m gonna hold off on that until things are more concrete so I don’t get my hopes up again.

Friday is the kids’ PA Day and Judy’s surprise birthday party, kid-style. Being a PA Day means that I’ll have Courtney too, so she & Madison will be baking and decorating the cake and I’ll help them put up streamers in Judy’s living room. Plus they both made a whole bunch of decorations that I haven’t seen yet, so they’ll be putting those up as well.

Then at some point on the weekend, we’ll be playing Euchre with Ronny & Alex and then probably playing again with Wayne & Judy.

It’s going to be a busy week, but a good one I think. I like it when Blake has vacation days and we can just hang out and do stuff while the kids are in school. We don’t get to do that very often.

Anyway, this is long and I don’t really have a whole lot more to say. I think I’m gonna go take some drugs and go back to sleep for a while…or maybe stay up and read some more of The Scarlet Letter. I haven’t decided yet.

Tomorrow The Sims 3: World Adventures comes out tomorrow and I’m lucky enough to be reviewing it for Buttercup next month so this is probably the only mention you’ll see of it on this blog! Needless to say though, I’m stoked. STOKED, I SAY.

In other news, I slept 11 hours last night and woke up feeling like shit. I had my eggs, then had a shower thinking it would make me feel better, but it didn’t and I was sleepy so I laid down for a 2 hour nap. My body’s definitely trying to fight something off and I hope it’s successful because like most people, I really hate being sick. Unfortunately sleeping so much today means that there’s the chance I’ll be up retardo late tonight and there’s no way in hell I’ll be getting up at 5am to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower. I brought it up to Madison just now and she didn’t want to get up for it either, so I guess we’ll be missing it, but that’s okay, we’ll catch the Perseids in the summer.

I think I’m finally done fucking with the kids’ wishlist. Madison is really into the Get Fuzzy comic strip (or at least the two books I have of it, which she’s scooped for her own) so I just added all of those books to the list for her and I think that’s all I’m going to be adding for either kid. I also just e-mailed my mom to see if she still has all of her For Better or For Worse books because Madison really likes the few we have here (the later ones), that I know my mom doesn’t have, and I figured if my mom still had hers and didn’t want them anymore, then that’s an easy gift for Madison, especially considering that most of the earlier ones are now out of print.

When I was Madison’s age, I was obsessed with my mom’s For Better or For Worse books too, it’s always been my favourite comic (and Canadian!) and it makes me happy that Madison enjoys them too. I think those books/that strip really taught me what marriage was supposed to be all about and what a healthy family looks like and knowing that the strip was based on Lynn Johnston’s real family and friends made it less like fantasy like other childhood influences are.

My (step) dad used to buy them for my mom every year for Xmas and when they separated, I think my mom stopped collecting them.

What do I want for Xmas? Well, my wishlist is here and while presents are good and I definitely love “stuff”, honestly what I want is for people to either buy paintings or donate money to my site. (The button is on the bottom right, or if you’re a Camwhores member, my tip jar is always an option as well.) The fact is, I need money for art supplies if I’m to continue to work. I have a little bit of money set aside for art supplies that my friends Belinda and Mark sent me a while back, but that isn’t going to cover all of the stuff I need, (I’ve been keeping a list for the past 3 months as I run out of stuff) especially since I need to replace some of my brushes and brushes are the most expensive thing.

Speaking of Camwhores, I have been making a little bit of money over there that I could be using for art supplies, but sometimes other things, like taking Blake to the movies or buying Blake & I Chinese food because it’s “good TV night” and we never get ourselves anything are more important, so I’ve been trying to keep “Camwhores money” open for a bit of play. I’ve also been buying a lot of my own stuff rather than getting Blake to pay for it, like when we went to the movies we went to Shopper’s Drug Mart beforehand because I needed painkillers and while he paid for the drugs, I paid for the hair elastics (x 2 packs) and the Chapstick (x3 because I go through it like crazy) I needed.

I haven’t really ever had my own money and it feels good to be able to contribute, if only for treating Blake when I can and for buying my own “extras” that I’d normally go without. Painting money should go for art supplies, donated money should go for art supplies, but the meager amounts I’m making on Camwhores is for everything else. I’m also hoping to buy the kids at least one Xmas present each out of my own money, just because I’ve never really been able to. Like Madison this year needs a real bra (as opposed to a training bra) and I think that’s something that should come from her mother, y’know?

I also want to be able to buy Xmas presents for my neighbours even though we only usually buy for each other’s kids. For Wayne I’ll probably just get him a 6-pack because beer is really the only thing he’s into (I’m also going to be making him a bunch of mixed CDs, I’ve been working on them since last month) but for Judy I want to get her this $15.00 pack of Lipsmacker lip balm because she never gets anything for herself and she’s constantly running out. She’s like me and has to have some form of Chapstick on her person at all times so when I saw that $15.00 pack of Lipsmackers, which I know is her favourite brand, at Shopper’s the other night, I knew that’s what I’d be getting her. (I’m hoping it goes on sale though first, or that we save up enough Optimum points to make it cheaper.)

I have no idea what to get my mom or Phil or Lisa. My sisters are easy, they like toys, and I sent Lisa a Facebook message asking what they’re into and what they have. I was going to make Rachael a painting like I made for Raili and Madison last year, but Blake brought up the point that she wouldn’t even really know what it is (she’s 9 months old) so I should probably wait until she’s Raili’s age to bother.

Ashley’s baby shower is going to be in January, so after Xmas I’m going to be making her an 8 x 8 inch painting like the ones I made for the kids for the baby’s room, but I have to wait until she has her final ultrasound so we know the sex for sure and I know whether to make a boy or a girl and when she knows the sex, she’ll know what colours her nursery is going to be so I can make the painting to match. (Btw, it’s going to be a massive deal that I’ll be going to her baby shower. The only person I’ll know there besides Ashley is Judy and the shower is going to be in Toronto and big enough that the last I heard, they’re renting a hall. Big Italian family.)

Speaking of big deals, y’know how I mentioned a while back that Blake & I have been playing euchre with the neighbours some Saturday nights? Well I’ve become such a euchre fiend that when I found out Blake’s friend from work, Charissa, knows how to play euchre and so does her husband, I’ve been seriously considering inviting them over on a Friday night so we can play. I don’t know how much I’ve emphasized this over the years, but I don’t let people into my inner world easily and I have this stupid attitude that work friends can’t be real life friends, so if I get over my issues and make this happen, my shrink will be very proud of me.

Blake has next week off and I’m going to be getting both bloodwork done and going to see my doctor to finally get a professional’s take on my surgery in August. I forget if I mentioned this or not, I probably did, but being on the pill non-stop and despite the fact that the surgeon cut some nerves in my uterine area so I shouldn’t be in pain, I still am. It’s not as bad as it was before, but it’s still there. During the times I’m supposed to be having a period but I’m not because I’m on the pill (like now), I’m still in enough pain to need crazy amounts of painkillers. I’m worried about the beginning of next month because it’ll be my first period in 3 months and I’m going to ask the doctor for Tylenol 3′s and Naproxen to have on hand in case it’s hellacious.

My day to day pain has been manageable and I can do things I normally haven’t been able to do, like dance around my house like a crazy person, but despite the extra hormones pumping through me, I still seem to be on some sort of painful cycle. What sucks is that if I go back to the specialist next year and tell him that, he’ll start pushing for the Lupron so I probably won’t say anything.

Okay that’s every thought in my head right now – well, every sharable thought – so I think I’m gonna go find something else to do.

Hullo internets. I am typing this post instead of having a nap (I tried) or working on my painting (I tried that too) because really, I don’t have a whole lot else to do at the moment and the things I do have to do, I don’t wanna do, so here I am.

I don’t know what it is about this painting that makes me not want to work on it. It’s been sitting on my coffee table since the end of September half-finished and I sit here and I stare at it and as I’m trying to fall asleep, I think about it, but there doesn’t seem to be any goddamn resolution to the sucker that it just sits there some more. I’ve shown pictures, it’s the one I’ve dubbed “The Two Sunnies”. The background is done, the two girls are done, now I need to add the elements to tie the whole thing together, sign it, slap a couple of coats of varnish on it and it’d be done, but I still can’t seem to find those slippery elements to tie the whole thing together. I keep thinking about doing hearts hanging from strings like I’ve done in older paintings, with the happy site being bright magenta hearts and the sad side being black hearts with skulls but for some reason I keep rejecting that idea. In the beginning I wanted to add the sentences “Je suis heureuse”/”Je suis triste” above their heads but that wouldn’t leave very much room for embellishment of any kind and I think that would make the painting too plain. Just now I was thinking that it’d be cool to glue a bunch of pills, like stars, to the left (happy) side and have them taper off on the right (sad) side but my pills aren’t the right colours, Blake would probably kill me for using my pills to do that since he pays for them and I don’t even have enough to do that anyway. Yeah, I could do paper pills but there’s no fun in that so the pill idea is officially dead.

I’m giving this painting one more week to come together and if it doesn’t, then it’s going in the closet to be forgotten about while I work on something else. What is that something else? Why Hester Prynne and Pearl, of course, from The Scarlet Letter, but I have to read the book first, which I’m currently working on. I guess the book no longer holds a copyright so it’s available online for free HERE if anyone, like me, has never read it but wants to. What I’m about to say will no doubt make some of you cringe, but I really really don’t like old books and what I mean by that is that I find books that are written with “older language” really hard to follow. I even tried to read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which isn’t even that old, but the language bored me so I never did finish it (sorry Raya!). The Scarlet Letter hasn’t been too bad so far, it’s really only when the characters are speaking that the language gets “old”, but it’s still probably the oldest book I’ve tried to read, not counting Shakespeare (*snore*) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was written in 1850.

Anyway, the book’s been interesting so far. I only started Friday night though and didn’t have time to read any of it last night, so I’m only on chapter 6.

Last night Blake and I went to see 2012 which was…well, disaster-porn at its finest. The plot was totally cheesy and you had to leave reality and science at the door, but I’m glad we saw it on a big screen rather than renting it and watching it on my 13″ TV. The kids stayed with Wayne & Judy while we went and they also had a good time, especially because Courtney had a friend sleeping over so there were the 4 of them.

Today I went over to spend some time with Judy and get her set up with Gmail and Facebook and she told me that it was verified, that both of their dogs have fleas…which is something I told them 2 months ago when Lily, the golden retriever, started scratching herself bald at the base of her tail. So, since I have two bottles of flea shampoo, I brought one over for Judy and somehow she sweet-talked me into helping her bathe the dogs. She was soaked, I was soaked, the dogs were soaked, the bathroom was soaked, the hallway was soaked, the kitchen was soaked, but at least the dogs don’t have fleas anymore. I also brought over my trimmers and clipped their nails, which were really bad. Both of their dogs have white nails, so I was fine with doing them and I got them really nice and short, but I won’t do our own dogs’ nails because Hoover’s are black and I’m too freaked out about cutting the quick and I figure if Blake’s doing 1, he might as well do the other.

Anyway, after the dogs were groomed, so to speak, I helped Judy vacuum the carpet, wash all of their bedding and then put the beds back together once everything was dry. AND I didn’t have my eggs this morning so I did all of this running on empty. In fact yesterday I had my eggs for breakfast but then all I had for the rest of the day was popcorn at the movies and I keep wondering how this is going to affect my weight loss progress this week. Oh well, I’ll do better the rest of the week and as long as I don’t gain, I’m golden.

Tomorrow night is the Leonid Meteor Shower and NASA has this neat little thing that shows you when the height of it is for your viewing area. Unfortunately the peak time for us is at like, 6am Tuesday morning and while it’s supposedly going to be the best showing of the Leonids in our lifetime, I’m not sure about waking up at 5am and getting the kids up to go outside in the cold to watch. I’m seriously considering it though! I’m gonna take it up with them tomorrow after school and see if they want to. I figure I can make everyone travel mugs of hot chocolate and we can dress warmly and watch from the swings at the park across the street where there are no streetlights. We should get a pretty decent show from there, if the calculator is to be believed and the kids are up for it. Madison will probably be up for it, I’m not so sure about Wes and I’m really doubting Blake’ll be into it at all. I’ve been wrong before though.

I think I’m finally getting the plague that Blake & the kids had last week. My throat is sore, my glands are swollen and I’m pretty sure I had a fever earlier. :o/

Alright, it’s time for me to stop typing now and find something relatively productive to do. Maybe I’ll just sketch out Hester Prynne and continue ignoring this painting. Maybe I’ll just go to fucking bed.

These are the current source of my misery (besides my mother-in-law): Bull Rushes.

Across the road from my house is a park and a field and in the ditches in front of both (where I took this picture), there are deep ditches full of bull rushes. Right now, as you can see, the bull rushes are fluffing up to spread their seeds and currently the world outside my front door is so full of bull rush fluff that it looks like it’s snowing and while it’s kinda pretty and sort of surreal, it’s making my allergies go insane.

They reminded me of something though. When I was in grade 9, some kids, about this time of year, brought in fluffy bull rushes, a lot of them, and went up and down the downstairs halls whacking them on lockers so the bull rushes would explode and the fluff would go everywhere. The downstairs halls were so full of fluff that some kids were having trouble breathing and everyone’s allergies were going mental and no one could go to class, so they gave everyone the day off, which was probably the goal of the kids who did it. I learned later that this “prank” happened almost every year at that school.

I don’t remember now what I did with my day off, I do remember that they just let us loose in Port Perry, they didn’t call the buses in early, we caught them at 3:30 at the school like we did every day, but I have no idea what I did for a whole day in downtown Port Perry. For some reason I recall getting fried chicken at a place I think was called Dixie Lee’s or something like that, but other than that I have no idea. Chances are though, I was up to no good.

This week I only lost 1lb on my newfangled egg diet, but a loss is a loss, so I’ll take it. I’m thinking that the reason I didn’t lose more is because in the last week I did a lot of late-night eating, like right before bed, and while I was eating protein which should boost my metabolism more, doing it before bed was probably not a wise choice. Oh well, I know better for this week.

I’ve also been trying to cut down on drinking Coke Zero. For about a month & a half, I was getting sick every single day at around 6:30pm or so and at first I blamed it on my birth control pills (because sometimes they can give you pregnancy symptoms like morning sickness) but after I really thought about it, I realized the culprit was Coke Zero. I guess I would just reach my aspertame/acesulfame-potassium saturation point and would start to feel really sick, like dry-heaving kinda sick. So I started switching to water at about 4:00pm and magically my sickness stopped happening, so it must have been the Coke Zero. Now I limit myself to 2 or 3 a day, usually 2 in the morning (hey I need the caffeine and coffee is not my friend) and then another one in the evening with ice water in between. A little known fact about me is that I drink a LOT and I’ve never been able to pinpoint why, like if it’s just a habit or if there’s something wrong with me, I’m just constantly thirsty and always have been. My whole life I’ve always had a drink of some sort sitting beside me and I carry it around with me constantly. Weird, right? Or is it? Anyway, I’m convinced Coke Zero is actually toxic (or more to the point, the artificial sweeteners in it) so I’m aiming to cut down to 1 a day and eventually none, with the odd “baby Coke” here & there. (“Baby Coke” are these itty bitty squatty cans of Coke you buy in 6-packs that are 100 calories each. We buy one once a month and I have one every now & then because dammit, I really do love Coke.)

Later today I have to take my laptop over to Wayne & Judy’s because Judy wants me to set her up a Facebook profile. They don’t have internet at their house due to finances, but Blake built boosters on our wireless router and while it cuts in & out and the signal is weak, they use our wireless (when it works). Judy wants me to get her set up on Facebook so she can talk to Ashley more often and see pictures of Ashley’s ultrasounds and stuff like that. (Did I mention Ashley’s pregnant? She’s due in February.) The first order of business will be setting Judy up with a Gmail address because she doesn’t have an e-mail address of her own. And I know once I start doing this over there for Judy (oddly my laptop gets full signal strength from our wireless next door, but their PC only gets 1 or 2 bars), Wayne’s going to want me to do the same, so I guess I’m spending some time over there tonight, which is fine because I really haven’t hung out with them much this week.

OMG their cat though…they have this 13 year old, grey cat named Misty who’s extremely friendly and really likes me. Whenever I’m over there, Misty jump into my lap and just lays there waiting to be petted. Well, 4 times now, I’ve been sitting outside at night and Misty comes out of the shadows and jumps into my lap and scares the ever-loving shit out of me. Well, something else she’s been doing is when I’m not outside, she’ll meow at my front door.

The other night it was really cold and she started meowing at my door at about 3:30am, so I opened the door and said  to her “If you’re coming in, get in here,” and she cautiously sniffed around and decided to come in. So I figured no big deal, she can spend the night at our house if she’s cold, so I went about my business and at about 4:30am I went to bed, leaving a note on the bathroom mirror for Blake & the kids saying that Misty was in the house and to let me know if they let her out.

No one let her out in the morning so all day on Wednesday I searched the house looking for this cat and worrying that I lost my neighbour’s cat because I couldn’t find her. Since she’s old, I got scared that maybe she found a hiding place and died and I was getting really worried. So I’d search the house again, under beds, under couches and chairs, in closets, but there was no sign of her.

Judy got off of work at 3:00pm that day, so at 3:30 I went over there and said “Judy, I think I did a stupid thing…” and explained to her that her cat was somewhere in my house and that I couldn’t find her. And that’s when Judy said, “You’re nuts! She’s right there!” and pointed to a sleeping Misty laying right on the kitchen chair in front of me.

How she got out, I have no idea. My only theory, since Judy said she was waiting at their back door to come in at 6:45am, is that she must have gotten out when I let the dogs out before I went to bed and I just didn’t see her. I couldn’t believe that I had gone all day worrying about this damn cat and searching my house multiple times, even enlisting the help of Wes, and she was at her own home the whole time!

Needless to say, Misty’s not invited back.

Anyway, my hand’s cramping up and it’s time to eat my eggs, so I guess I’ll end this post here and wish you all a good day!

Ooooooh my god I’m all over the place right now. See, Blake and I have these marathon conversations about life and creativity and expression that are both brain numbing and inspiring at the same time. I love when we talk like this, but unfortunately it’s almost always late at night and by the time we’re done, we’re both exhausted. He’s gone to bed but my brain’s going a mile a minute.

Here’s the thing: I feel like I’ve kind of been in a rut for maybe the past year. Being on proper meds and getting my bipolar disorder under control (more or less) has caused me to change some of my habits. For example, I’m not longer hypergraphic. Prior to getting my meds in order, I would go through a paper notebook usually once a month and I would literally spend like, 4 hours a day just writing writing writing. But now I don’t do that anymore. I still keep a paper journal but I only write in it maybe twice a month and each entry only ends up being a 2 page, bare bones account of what’s happening in my life at the moment rather than a sweeping saga like they were before. Likewise, my blog entries have become a lot more sanitized than they’ve ever been before and Blake & I agreed tonight that that’s somewhat of a problem because I write to process things and if I’m not writing, I’m not processing things, I’m keeping it all inside and that’s A) Not good for me, and B) Not me. At all.

The problem is that for some reason I began self-censoring myself, and rather harshly, and I don’t really know why I started doing that and now it’s gotten to the point where I’m completely frustrated by it. Blogging is like, the fucking wild wild West and there aren’t really any established rules on what you can and cannot write about or more importantly WHO you can and cannot write about. All of that is really left up to the writer and over the past year or so I’ve had trouble reconciling what’s right and what’s wrong as far as what I can write about that’s happening in my life.

Certain people – well, really only one – have asked me specifically not to write about them, not to even mention them, and I’ve honoured that…but there’s a “but” coming. The person who specifically asked me not to write about them no longer deserves that kind of respect and as it turns out, never really did in the first place. With the exception of that one person, my policy has always been that if you are a part of my life, I’m going to write about you at some point, plain & simple, because to do otherwise is self-censorship and that makes me a sad panda, it really does. The other policy I’ve always had with this whole blogging thing is that if you don’t want to be portrayed as a douche, don’t do douchey things. I mean, I think that too is also a pretty simple concept, don’t you agree?

So self-censorship…obviously there has to be some but I think I drew my line in such a way that it left me very little wiggle room and I just don’t write the way I used to and I hate that. I like being an open book, I like being a ridiculously honest person, I like that part of me and this week I realized that I’ve lost a lot of that and dammit, I want it back. My moods are stable, my meds are working, my light therapy is working, I’m making progress in so many areas as far as immersion therapy, it’s time to reclaim certain aspects of myself I put on hold for so long.

For example, a large part of the reason I left Camwhores 2 years ago was because I wasn’t stable and I didn’t really trust myself to have an outlet to instantly broadcast anything I wanted to. Near the end there, I was sad one day and I posted a picture of myself crying – for the first time in my (at the time) 7 year camming history. That was when I realized that I needed to reign myself in and get better before I could go on. I hope that makes sense.

During that time, as most of you know if you’ve been reading along, I stopped writing about certain things. For a few months there my entire Live Journal was just Loud Twitter updates because that’s all I could handle at the time. I stopped seeing the world in the unique way I normally would.

But I’m okay now, or close to it. I’m stronger. I trust myself and my own judgment and it’s time to jump on the floor and bang on the ceiling  with a broom (as my shrink puts it) and maybe shake some things up. Wake up my little readership and get them writing again themselves as so many seem to have abandoned their blogs and Live Journal for Facebook and Twitter. Have opinions. Talk to me.

I want to write about the things that are actually happening in my life again. Y’know the expression “dance like no one’s watching”? Well I’m going to write like no one’s reading. Until tonight I had so much fear and I don’t even know where it came from. I had fear about writing about Wayne & Judy in case Judy’s daughter Ashley was reading and her interpretation in telling them about it would be negative. I had fear about writing about my mother for fear of her getting pissed off at me. I had fear about writing about Blake’s mother because I know she reads and she’s the one who asked me (through Blake) specifically never to even mention her online. But in talking to Blake tonight, we sort of found the problem. When I first started writing publicly about my life, the internet was still relatively small and no one I really knew, except for Blake and some of the Scratching Post kids, was reading the things I wrote. And then my mom got online. And then Blake’s mom started reading. And now Blake’s co-workers are reading. And with all of these people reading, I kind of froze, almost like stage fright, and now I’m in this stupid rut of mine.

But Blake and I talked about it and he said to me that who is he to tell me what I can and can’t write about? And who is anyone else to tell me the same? People have to trust my judgment and if they don’t like what’s being written about them they either have to, as I said, stop doing douchey things, or start doing things to portray themselves in a better light. All I do is write what I see and feel, I simply write the truth. If I want to tell you that last night Wayne & Judy drank 28 beer and Wayne was so drunk he pissed all over the floor and toilet seat, well dammit, I’m going to because that’s what happened. If Wayne doesn’t want me writing about something like that, then don’t fucking do it. (Although honestly, I doubt Wayne would care and the incident was actually really funny. Plus they don’t even have internet and wouldn’t read a post even this long so I don’t think they’d see it or care if they did.)

So, starting today, right now, I’m going to once again be more open and honest about the happenings of my life and that includes everyone in it. People who are truly my friends and really know me will totally understand and be totally on board with this, others…well they may not be but that’s just too damn bad. I’m done censoring myself out of respect for people who don’t deserve that respect. What am I talking about? Well, keep reading, here’s where things start getting  juicy.

But where to even start? I guess the biggest thing happening in our lives right now, or at least the biggest conflict is Blake’s mother, Brooke. Right now Blake and Brooke are battling via e-mail over comments she made about me when Blake was in Michigan last month. See, when I first met Brooke – 8 years ago now – I thought she was pretty cool but that facade quickly dissipated and I found myself in a monster-in-law type of situation. I don’t even know where it all began, really, this has been an issue that long, but maybe I should start with after Blake & I got married because I don’t feel like telling the tale of our actual wedding which neither of our mothers were invited to.

After Blake and I got married and I was pregnant with Wes, Brooke would call the house constantly and if I picked up the phone it would either be something inane like what size of clothes Madison wore because she was out shopping at the time and saw something Madison might look cute in – despite the fact that we’d told her Madison’s size at least 5 times prior to that and strangely these cute things for Madison never seemed to appear. In other words, these calls were just calls to call. To this day I don’t even know what their purpose was. Other times when I’d pick up the phone, she’d give me all kinds of bad and unwanted advice and would basically tell me that I wasn’t doing enough as a wife and mother, so I stopped answering the phone.

But here’s the thing: I’ve never really been a phone person, that’s just not how I communicate, so it was a special effort to answer the phone for her in the first place so to be put down just about every time I did, didn’t really encourage me to keep taking the calls. See what I’m saying?

So once I stopped taking the calls – and again, keep in mind that I don’t take calls from pretty much anyone – that’s when she’d start calling Blake on his cell and complain that I never answered the phone. Well gee lady, I wonder why. Blake explained to her that I’m not just a phone person – for YEARS – but the complaints didn’t stop until about two years ago. Without going into huge detail (maybe I will one day, just not tonight), about two years ago Blake and Brooke had basically an e-mail war that lasted almost a year. I can’t even remember how it got resolved off the top of my head, but it did and ever since, I’ve done my best to continue being nothing but nice to this woman. I answer her e-mails, we send each other Growing Gifts and things like that on Facebook with little notes attached and while it all seems like minor communication on the surface, it’s actually huge for me and here I thought after 6 years of her flat out disliking me and flat out saying that I wasn’t good enough for her son and that Blake wasn’t living up to his full potential because of me etc. that she was finally starting to get to know me and maybe even liking me. In fact, I think it was her last visit last fall where she gave me a gift of these neat tin ladies with great quotes on them that I have hanging in my office. I thought that after all these years, we were finally starting to make progress and maybe even bond a little bit.

But then Blake’s cousin’s wife died and he had to go to Michigan for the funeral last month and on one of the nights he was there, his mom got two drinks into her and just let loose saying all kinds of negative things about me. Want a list? Here it is:

• *Everyone* has mental illness, the people she knows who are mentally ill are worse off than me and they can do things I can’t, like work. (“my whole family was mentally ill and half were institutionalized and we could all work. . .”)

• She’s scared I’m taking advantage of Blake. That I “make” him do everything. (When in reality I don’t “make” him do anything and while he does do more than I do, I don’t exactly sit at home and eat bon bons either. I mean, who did she think was looking after the kids, the house and the dogs while Blake was in Michigan?)

• She claims she doesn’t read my site or anything but she’s pissed because I apparently made a blog post where I said that because I stay home and I’m an artist I’m better than people who work. (“she said that you were basically saying how much better you are than people who get up with their kids every day and how much better you are than people who have jobs. She basically said you were saying you’re an artist and anyone who works or takes care of kids all day is a sell out and not as good as you”. This one baffles me BECAUSE THAT SOUNDS SOOOO MUCH LIKE SOMETHING I’D SAY, so I asked Blake to get more info but there was none to be had.)

• Blake said she said, “I may have neglected to tell Joyce the part about you not wanting the present because you wanted the kids treated as equals” or something like that. This is a long dead issue but Joyce is Blake’s mom’s best friend and she wanted to buy a savings bond for Blake’s “first born child” and we freaked because we want our kids treated as equals and Wes was NOT Blake’s first child. Blake’s mom hounded us forEVER about getting Wes an American SSN so they could buy bonds for him, but Joyce supposedly had no intentions of getting any for Madison, so we cut her out of our lives and said thanks but no thanks. According to Blake: “Joyce never knew we had an issue with anything, so we were just ungrateful fucks.”

• She wants to get our kids AMERICAN FUCKING PASSPORTS for Xmas. When I asked why, Blake said “she thinks that being Canadian will hold them back in life, but if they have official US docs they will magically be better off”.

For the last two years I have been nothing but nice to this woman. I’ve met her half way as much as I’m capable of. I reply to every non-fwd e-mail she sends me. I write on her Facebook wall. I send her Growing Gifts. I used to play Scrabble with her on Facebook until Blake told me she uses a program to cheat. I do way more for her than she does for me as far as meeting someone halfway and this is the shit we get? It’s obvious that she still has a deep dislike for me, the same dislike she’s had since day one, meaning that all of the stuff we’ve been doing together that I thought was progress was all meaningless and phony on her end. Here I was being genuine and trying my best to be what I thought she wanted me to be but the whole time she was reading my site and feeling negative about all the things I do. She was a troll, by my definition, she just doesn’t leave comments (to my knowledge).

Worse, she seems to think she has to “enlighten” Blake on what a horrible person I am because he’s apparently too stupid or naive to see it and that’s completely insulting to him.

Again – and I cannot stress this enough – until this very moment I have been nothing but kind and humble towards Blake’s mother. When she cornered me in her kitchen a few years ago (the last time we went to Michigan) to literally tell me that Blake is such & such a way and that I’m holding him back from his true potential, I took it in stride and never fought back or stood up for myself or anything. I just took it. (I’m not good with confrontation.) She pulled a similar move in my own kitchen a few years ago as well and it was the same thing, I just said something neutral and walked out of the room. I have never been hostile or negative or anything like that towards this woman EVER and as I said, within the past two years here I was being honest and thoughtful and trying to build a relationship and the second she gets Blake alone, she tears me down.

I think Blake was more upset about the things she said than I was. I was hurt by them, yes, because I honestly thought we were building a relationship here and her actions were genuine and when I found out they were just an act, it stung because I was making an honest effort…and it apparently got me nowhere. When Blake got home, he said that he’d let the dust settle from the funeral and when things had calmed down, he’d e-mail his mom and settle this shit once and for all. I don’t know how many e-mails have flown back and forth at this point, but the first e-mail went out last weekend and they’re still battling it out so who knows when this is going to be over or if it’s ever going to be over. I mean godammit, Blake and I have been together for 8 fucking years, we have a solid relationship and a happy marriage that works, I’m here to stay. At some point she’s going to have to accept that and accept me or we’re going to have no choice but to live our life without her – and that’s pretty much what Blake’s been saying in the e-mails from what I understand.

What he’s leaving out though, is that she also needs to accept Blake for who he is. Blake has a job he loves in a field he loves and he even acknowledges the fact that he wouldn’t be where he is right now – and be happy – without me. Blake’s mom, according to Blake, expects him to have made his first million by now and have a trophy wife who will host Superbowl parties, attend dinner meetings and have a power career of her own. While we’re happy and accept each other for who we are, we have Blake’s mom who sees both of us as nothing but a disappointment.

And did you know that when I was in the hospital in 2006 because I was having a psychotic episode Brooke’s advice to Blake was to pack up the kids, drive down to her house in Michigan and fucking LEAVE ME? I mean what reality does this woman even live in?

She says she doesn’t even know me because she’s only met me about a dozen times, but at the same time, she’s been reading my site since Blake and I got together and I’ve most definitely met her more than a dozen times and while she claims she hasn’t gotten to know me well enough to love me, she’s certainly displayed that she’s gotten to know me well enough to dislike me and feel negatively towards me.

Blake’s been saying this the whole time we’ve been married: that there is nothing I can do to please his mother because I’m simply not the woman he was supposed to marry. Right now he’s told me to stop even trying to make an effort with her because the two years I  did try obviously got me nowhere so what’s the point? He says his mother needs to examine her feelings toward me and resolve them on her own before we can move forward and until she does that, I’ll never get anywhere with her.

I don’t know how long this is going to take. I don’t know how long this e-mail war is going to last. All I know is that I’m staying the fuck out of it and leaving it between them because there’s no place for me in this discussion even though it’s pretty much about me. I don’t know what the right thing to do is anymore – I thought I was doing it! I’d rather do nothing than misstep and at this point in time I simply give up.

The other aspect of this is that Brooke and her husband Charlie want to come up and visit but until this situation is resolved somehow that simply can’t happen. How can I have someone in my home who feels so hostile toward me? Why should I have to put up with being put down in my own comfort zone? The fact is, I don’t have to and I’m not going to and Blake completely agrees.

To expand upon that topic, according to Blake, Brooke and Charlie don’t like coming up here because they get bored. Well if you’re so bored and your grandchildren aren’t entertaining enough, then don’t fucking come up! In a recent phone conversation with his mom, which sort of turned into a fight – while he was at WORK – she said that Charlie would like to do home improvement projects with us and got all offended when Blake said that if we needed to work on the house at all, we’d probably enlist the help of Phil (my dad) because he’s only an hour & a half away and he does this shit for a living, every single day and has a truck if we need lumber or drywall and a million other reasons. Well Brooke took great offense to this for some reason and started a fight about it, saying how Charlie (her husband, if that wasn’t clear) put in someone’s window in something like, an hour or whatever and Blake was just like “where the fuck is this even coming from?” I mean the fact of the matter is, we don’t really DO home improvement projects and we’re certainly not going to call on Charlie to drive 5 hours up here to like, paint our living room ceiling or tile our shower. We’re not going to start a home improvement project when we have company coming (them) and we don’t have the money to just start a home improvement project when they want to come up just so Charlie will be entertained. It just doesn’t make any sense.

But where did this all come from? Well I talked to Blake shortly after his mom had called and he told me about it and I told him exactly where it was coming from: that day or the day before I’d made a post about us moving on Live Journal and how we’d need to fix up our house a bit to sell it and that Wayne had offered to help. THAT is where it all came from, I’m fairly certain. But the thing Blake and I both wonder is: does Charlie even know she’s saying all of this stuff on his behalf? We kind of doubt it. Charlie, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell and Blake agrees, is a pretty laid back, go with the flow, sit & chat kinda guy. It was certainly news to both of us that he suddenly wanted to help us drywall our bathroom because he’s bored out of his skull when he comes up otherwise.

The other issue with them coming up, according to these phone calls Blake gets from his mother while he’s at work, is that it’s too expensive. See, they can’t stay at our house because 1) Our house is very small and our futon isn’t very comfortable, 2) Charlie’s apparently allergic to our dogs and 3) I don’t really want to be alone in the house with them when Blake & the kids go to school and work because his mom corners me, talks down to me and puts me down, so that means they have to stay at a hotel or do what they did last time they came up (for a week) and get a time share somewhere. And this is apparently where the boredom sets in. While the kids are at school and Blake’s at work, they’re left to their own devices and they get bored. I don’t really know what I can do about that. If it were me, I’d do some Googling to see what was around and find something to do, but by the sounds of it, that thought’s never crossed Brooke’s mind. She’d rather complain that they’re bored.

So if it’s boring and too expensive, then I say don’t fucking come up! Plain & simple. If it’s such a chore, such a bother for you to come up to spend money only to not have a good time, then why bother? I mean I don’t have a solution to either problem and neither does Blake. I’m sorry my house isn’t bigger? I’m sorry Charlie’s allergic to my dogs? I’m sorry our kids aren’t entertaining enough for you? I mean what are we supposed to say to that?

What comes to mind is what my mother used to say to me when I was a kid and complained of boredom. She said, rather nastily I might add, “I’m not your entertainer!” and dammit I’m not. If you can’t keep yourself occupied, that isn’t my problem. Complaining about it to us isn’t going to solve your issue, you have to be proactive and go see what’s out there or I dunno, stay home!

I don’t know how to move forward from here. Everything is so convoluted at this point that I worry there’s no turning back. The harder Blake pushes the subject, I think the more his mother is going to resent me, but at the same time, I think he has no other choice than to bring this all up to the surface and address it rather than smile while staring daggers, know what I mean?

And of course Brooke is going to read this post and probably flip out but at this point I don’t even care. Blake doesn’t either. He told me tonight to write whatever I felt I needed to write and I think that’s what I’ve done here, as far as his mother is concerned. Until this whole thing blows over or runs its course or does whatever it’s going to do, I’m just gonna lay low, observe and, for the most part, keep my damn mouth shut on the subject. I wish I had a crystal ball so I knew how this was going to play out, but I don’t and I hate not knowing what to expect, I hate not knowing what to do. Is this post going to make anything better? Definitely not, but I’m sick and tired of pretending this aspect of my life doesn’t exist when it’s been a problem for the entire 8 years Blake and I have been together. It’s a constant drain on both of us and a huge source of anxiety for me. Every time I even think of Blake getting another e-mail from his mom, I have to pop an Ativan because my stomach knots up.

But enough about THAT drama I’ve said what I need to say right now and that’s just what is going on and yeah, Brooke will be making an appearance in my writings again at some point, but that’s enough for now. In the meantime, wanna know what else is going on in my life? Well my friend Jesse has pretty much abandoned me. I’ve sent him e-mails, I’ve written on his Facebook wall several times, I’ve sent him messages on Yahoo, I’ve tried to add him to Last.fm but he won’t add me back….I haven’t seen him since like, the winter and I don’t even know why this is happening. Blake’s talked to him and Jesse claims he’s not mad at Blake or myself, he’s just been “busy” and “doesn’t get online very often anymore”.

Blake went over to Jesse’s house on Saturday to retrieve the CDs he’d borrowed from us because I’m so convinced he’s distancing himself from us on purpose I wanted to get them back before he moved or something and he was apparently all sunshine and lollipops. He said he’d get online and e-mail me, but so far that hasn’t happened and I don’t expect it will.

I don’t like thinking bad things about my friends, but the only reason I can think of for Jesse blowing us off like this is the fact that I don’t smoke pot anymore, so I can’t be his stoner buddy and there’s no smoking in our house anymore so we can’t sit around smoking and talking like we used to. He used to come over at least twice a week, I’d talk to him usually every day on Yahoo, what happened?

The last time I talked to him was on Yahoo at the end of June because I asked him to come to the Hypercube event with us and he said he’d ask for that day off and we haven’t spoken since despite my attempts. Something’s going on there and I don’t know what and while it used to bother me, I’m at the point where I guess Jesse’s been moved into the “acquaintance” category and out of the “friend” category for the time being and that’s why I wanted all my CDs back. It was a “closure” kinda deal for me. Now Jesse can fuck off and do his own thing and I’m not even going to worry about it anymore. If I see him in the grocery store, I’ll talk to him, but I’m not gonna chase him down anymore or make myself crazy wondering what I did wrong. I’m just going to take him at his word that I didn’t do anything wrong and leave it at that.

In other news, Alex and I had our first fight last week. Here’s what happened: Blip.fm posted on Twitter excessively drives me nuts and Ronny is the worst offender on my list. But I love him so I just put up with it and grumble to myself when he’s on a Blip marathon and scroll past them or ignore Twitter until he’s gone to bed. But one day last week, I checked my Facebook live feed and there, from Ronny were a bunch of Blips. Now here’s the other thing about Ronny and I, for some reason Ronny tends to bring out the snark in me, so I commented on one of the Blips on Facebook and said something like “Are you seriously going to make me put up with these here too?” thinking he was posting tweets to Facebook and not realizing it was a Blip application that I could block. I thought in order to not see them, I would have to block Ronny altogether and I didn’t want to have to do that.

So anyway, I got busy talking to Blake or doing something, I can’t remember, and when I opened up TweetDeck, here were these bitchy, passive-aggressive Blips from Alex that were most definitely directed at me. So me, always one to make matters better because I’m talented like that, I posted a Blip of my own…of the Bloodhound Gang’s “I Hope You Die” and mimicked one of Alex’s passive-aggressive Blips in my message to which Alex replied “……..” and then “You’re a real bitch sometimes,” or something to that effect. I replied with “At least I’m honest,” and then a few second later I said something about how I’d rather be a bitch upfront than a passive-aggressive one and that’s when Alex announced that she was too “tired and cranky for this bull” and that was the last I heard from her on Twitter.

So after that I checked my e-mail and there were Facebook notifications where Ronny and Alex had commented on my original Facebook Blip comment saying that it was an app and I could block it and that no one was “forcing” me to do anything. I commented back, even though both of them had gone to bed, that I hadn’t realized it was an app, that I thought I’d have to block Ronny altogether and I apologized for the misunderstanding. Then, later that night I got thinking about it and while yes, Alex was a bitch too, I started it, so I decided to be the first to apologize so we could forget this ever happened. So, I texted Alex with “I’m sorry. I love you.” at like, 1am so she’d get it in the morning and when I woke up the next day, there was a text on my phone from Alex saying the same thing. Everything’s cool now and I think we just caught each other on bad days, but it was just a weird situation because Alex and I had never fought before and I’m glad we have the kind of relationship where we can just apologize to each other and let bygones be bygones. I was proud of us that day. So many women love to let drama like that play out for as long as possible and make it snowball and I really dig that neither she nor I are that type of woman. Or maybe we are a little bit, but at least we both value our friendship enough to just step back and be cool about things. I love Alex.

Saturday night, which those who follow me on Twitter already know, Blake & I went over to Wayne & Judy’s to play euchre and drink a little bit…or in their case, drink a lot. Apparently they started drinking at around 6pm, we showed up at 9pm. Blake & I don’t really drink that much or that often, so he had a 6-pack of beer and I had two 4-packs of Mike’s Hard lemonade. Wayne’s one of these guys who thinks men are superior to women so he always wants it to be men against women and…Judy & I beat them 5 games-0. Wayne knows the game now and at least 3 times renegged and once he decided to go alone on a hand that had NO trump whatsoever. He said “Blake, ya gotta trust me, this hand is ours,” and Blake was like “Wayne, if you don’t have the best hand ever and win this, I’m gonna punch you,”…and then it turned out he had NO trump while Blake had a hand that was almost entirely trump. Since Blake couldn’t really punch Wayne, I did. Later that night, as Wayne got more and more drunk, he wobbled upstairs and when he came down he started bitching at Judy that they need to change the plate cover on the light switch in the bathroom because when he’s drunk he can never find the switch to turn it on. (Their light switch cover is bumpy and has frogs on it and it makes the switch a bit recessed.) And then he tells us that as he was peeing in the dark, all of a sudden he started peeing on the seat. So we were all like, “why didn’t you have the seat up?” and he slurred “oh I never do that, I don’t have to” and I was like, “well if you’re pissing on the seat then apparently you do!” None of us were sure if he was serious or not about peeing on the seat, so all 4 of us went up there to investigate and lo & behold there was piss all over the seat and a huge puddle all over the floor. I don’t think he actually got ANY in the bowl. From that point on, especially because they have a cracked, squishy toilet seat, I went over to my house to pee. But it didn’t really matter because by that point Wayne was so drunk he was practically passing out at the kitchen table, so shortly after the bathroom incident, Blake and I left to go back to our house and while I tried to drink the rest of my Mike’s Hard and actually get drunk like everyone else, I just wasn’t into it so I dumped mine. We tried to play a game of Monopoly but I was just too tired and not really feeling well so we packed it up and I went to bed instead.

Sunday I was hung over which I think is totally unfair since I didn’t even get drunk the night before. Because I felt like crap, I basically just slept most of the day and rested up for the Mad Men finale (which was excellent).

And then of course, after Mad Men was over, Blake and I started our marathon conversation on blogging, creativity and life in general which brings us back full circle. The fact of the matter is, I’m not painting right now because I’m discouraged but that doesn’t mean I can’t be creative in other ways. I’ve got a short story bordering on a novella sitting here that I could be working on. I don’t know if anything will ever come of it, but it’s here waiting for me to write it. I have a million stories from my past left to tell and a new audience to tell some of the ones I’ve told before to. There’s no reason for me to remain in this rut and to become stagnant, waiting around for something to happen.

Another thing my mom used to say about boredom was that only boring people get bored, and the thing is, I’m not boring, I have this wicked imagination to keep me entertained so I might as well use it.

And I think that’s all I have to say.

PS. This entry is 6300 words long.

PPS. This entry was supposed to be posted at about 3:30am but our ISP had an internet outage so that’s why it’s being posted this morning.

I don’t really know what to write, exactly, but I feel like I should write something, so here goes.

The last few days have been pretty rough as mental things have piled up and triggers were pulled and I haven’t been a very happy camper. And it’s not only those things that have happened, it’s also because I’ve been neglecting my light therapy and the current weather in Sunnyland is just depressing. This is the time of year where my mental health typically starts to decline and when I probably need the light therapy the most, so starting today, I’m going to get religious about it.

A few minutes ago I got on the Wii Fit to weigh myself and I was shocked to find that I’ve lost 3lbs this week! That makes 6lbs weight loss total since I started eating eggs for breakfast. It is absolutely crazy to me that you can actually lose weight by eating more.

I’ve finally resolved the painting I’ve been working on since last month so today’s plan is to keep working on that. Yesterday I watched Battle in Seattle and Flash of Genius while I made the girls arms (which believe it or not IS like, a 4 hour process) and today I’ll work on adding the other elements. I’m hoping to have the piece finished by the end of the weekend and hopefully by the time I’m done, this creative drought will be over and I’ll be inspired to start something else.

As far as the movies go, Battle in Seattle basically made me hate humanity and Flash of Genius…well it didn’t really make me feel anything in the end and I can’t really describe why without giving away spoilers so I’ll just stop here.

We’ve been really busy the last couple of weeks planning Buttercup’s November issue, the cover of which is going to be hysterical and is going to be shot sometime next week. In the meantime, we have a contest happening over at Buttercup where if you tell us your best concert experience, you get entered into a draw to win an autographed The Creepshow CD. Click here for details.

The month of November, beyond Buttercup and other duties, is going to be spent overhauling this site a bit as some things are now severely  out of date and there are certain functionalities that this site doesn’t have, such as threaded comments, that I wish it did. This week Blake made it so that I can wrap text around images, so that’s a start, but there are other things that need to be added as well and that’s what we’re going to be working on. I’m also going to be rewriting most of the pages on this site because, as I said, most of them are now out of date and need to be updated. I’ll post as the new pages get finished.

Other than the things above, no much is really happening around here. The kids have no idea what they want to be for Halloween but Blake’s going to take them to this costume warehouse on Saturday so they can decide and get suited up. I’d like to say that we’re doing something special since Halloween’s on a Saturday this year, but we’re not. Alex & Ronny are probably coming over but we’re all broke so we won’t be partying. Maybe we’ll play euchre. Blake & Judy taught Wayne & I how to play euchre and that’s what we did last Saturday night until 2am while the kids all had a sleepover at our house. Pretty soon we’re all going to be going to the local Legion with all the old people for euchre tournaments, ha!

Anyway, this is a boring and ordinary post, so I’m just going to shut up now, make my eggs, do my light therapy and work on this painting.

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X-posted to Live Journal.