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.

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.

—–

X-posted to Live Journal.

Oh dear am I ever in rough shape today. Well, I was in rough shape, but I’m slowly starting to feel better.

Here’s a little known fact about me: I don’t really drink and I have strong opinions on drinking, which I won’t get into in this post, but the fact is, I pretty much stopped drinking about 6 years ago. No real reason, I just sort of had my fill of it when I was working for Scratching Post and being on tour and everything. We were wasted just about every single Friday and Saturday and even some Sundays. The Jagermeister flowed freely, because you see, when you’re in a band you have what’s called a rider, which is sort of like a list of demands that have to be met for the band to perform at your venue. In Scratching Post’s rider they put down that the venue had to give them a 26 oz bottle of Jager and a case of beer, and then near the end they added a clause that said “the panty girl gets free drinks”. And back then, I could drink, like REALLY drink. I may only be 5 feet tall and at the time, 100 lbs, but at that point in my life, I’d never met anyone that could outdrink me.

But when I got pregnant with Wes and stopped working for Scratching Post, I just kind of decided that that part of my life was over and ever since I’ve only really drank alcohol maybe twice a year. This year was a stressful one and admittedly I’ve drank more than twice, but my tolerance is nowhere near what it used to be.

This was proven last night.

Last night Blake and Alex (and Ronny) were on assignment for Buttercup and went to a rock show in Toronto. I had to stay home with the kids. (And actually that’s sort of a lie. Wayne & Judy said they’d watch the kids if I wanted to go, but I decided I couldn’t go basically because I’m too fat and grotesque to be seen at a rock show. Yes, my self esteem is that low.) Anyway, I asked Blake to buy me a 26 oz bottle of Canadian Club, which is rye whiskey, and two 2 liter bottles of Coke and my plan for the evening was that once the kids were in bed, I’d go next door to drink and play cards with Wayne & Judy. And before someone jumps my shit for drinking and leaving the kids “alone”, Wayne & Judy’s house is literally 6 feet from mine and Madison’s now a very mature 11 and they were sleeping anyway. I was just a phone call away and would have come home in 2 seconds if anything was wrong or if the kids didn’t feel comfortable being “alone”.

That said, my kids’ bedtime is 9pm but Madison’s allowed to stay up until 10pm on weekends to read in her room, so at 9 I made sure everything was kosher with Madison and then I went over to Wayne & Judy’s to get my drink on. They re-taught me how to play rummy in a way that I’d never played before and also I hadn’t played rummy since I was about 11 years old when I used to go to my great Aunt’s house in the summers for a couple of weeks. Judy plays rummy where there are wild cards, so for the first hand, the wild card would be an ace, the second hand the wild card would be a 2, third hand would be a 3 – all the way up to king. Also, say I laid down 3 aces and a wild card, but Judy had the 4th ace, she could “steal” my wild card and give me her ace and you want to do that because wild cards are worth 20 while face cards are worth 10, aces are 15 and everything below 10 is worth 5.

Because I wasn’t drunk yet, I cleaned their clocks during the first game.

As we played and listened to CDs I made and brought over, I kept drinking. In fact, earlier that afternoon, I’d brought over two frosty mugs – y’know, the kind with liquid within the outside that you put in the freezer instead of using ice cubes – which were rather large and I was making my drinks very strong.

Now, when I get drunk, I get honest, so now Wayne & Judy know that Blake and I had simulated sex on The Discovery Channel and that I was a naked camgirl for almost 8 years. Oddly enough, they were cool with that. (I thought they’d freak.)

Around 12:30am – I think – Blake came home from the rock show and joined us for the second game of rummy. I made him a drink and made myself another drink and by this point I was pretty fucking shitfaced which caused me to lose our game of rummy miserably. I kept dropping my cards and I couldn’t follow the suits and they were all basically laughing at me.

Well, shortly after the second game ended, we were all sitting around Wayne & Judy’s table just shooting the shit and the room started spinning. And then I proceeded to barf in Judy’s kitchen sink for about half an hour. Then I sat back down at their kitchen table while they fed me water and I thought I was okay, but nope, back to the kitchen sink I went where I barfed for maybe another 15 minutes. While barfing sucks, I think it was really sweet of Wayne to rub my back as I did so, that’s a friend right there, y’know?

Post-barfing, I went back to the kitchen table and drank more water and Blake decided to take me home. The walk home is about 20 feet and they were very wobbly feet, but we got home, I was sober enough to plug in my cellphone and Blake and i just sat in my office where he told me all about his night with Ronny and Alex and the top secret stuff we’re doing in October on Buttercup. And then I had to barf again. Projectile vomiting mostly water into my toilet with such force that I actually peed my pants. Honest to god, I hadn’t been this drunk since I went to Vegas for the Camgirls documentary and this is only the 4th time I’ve ever puked from drinking. It suuuuuucked.

Once I was empty, I went back to my office and Blake helped me find new clothes as I’d gotten barf on mine and there was also the whole pissing myself thing. So I got pajamas on and was sober and empty enough to be hungry, so I made myself a roast beef sandwich, which I ate and kept down, while Blake told me more about his night.

By this time it was 4am so Blake and I decided to go to bed. For some ungodly reason, I woke up at 8am – still drunk – and could NOT get back to sleep. I was so hot that I stripped down to my underwear and just laid in bed until about 10am when I finally decided that sleep was futile, I was sober again and it was time to just get up.

I immediately started drinking water, then I took my pills, which included Tylenol 1 for my giant headache and I fucked around on the internets while feeling completely wrecked.

Wayne & Judy weren’t home when I got up and Blake was still sleeping so I just did nothing until Blake got up and Wayne & Judy came home. When they came home, I went over there and we all laughed at our evening and Wayne pointed out that I drank about 24 oz of liquor all by myself in a span of 5 hours. No wonder I puked my guts up!

So today was one of those days where you think “I am never drinking again”, but slowly I’m recovering and I’m sure I’ll be fine by tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, which I guess is actually today since it’s almost 2am, I’m going to get majorly Wayned. Y’see, Wayne has Mondays off and he gets lonely, so when I wake up, I pretty much brush my teeth and head over there to shoot the shit and keep him company. Last Monday we spent the day listening to the radio because they have this contest thing right now that’s based on the show Deal or No Deal, where you open pretend cases and can win up to $10,000 or something. Wayne’s obsessed with Deal or No Deal and tries every Monday to be the 7th caller so he can play the radio station’s version (which is called Cool or Not Cool – lame). They do it multiple times a day and every time they do it, he calls in and never gets through.

Last week when I got to his house, around 11am, he’d been waiting 4 hours for them to start the game and while we waited, I tried to get his wireless to pick up our wifi so they could have internet. I get 3 or 4 bars (out of 5) when I take my MacBook over there in their kitchen which is actually pretty strong for being in a whole other house, but I could only get one bar on their computer. But when I got their wireless working and it detected our signal (called “Sunnyland” if you must know, ha) it asked me for our WEP code/pass thing, which I didn’t know, so I called Blake at work and he gave it to me. About 10 minutes later, the radio station announced that people should call in for Cool or Not Cool and Wayne hit redial because he’d had the station on redial so he could just keep trying to get through but since I’d called Blake, Wayne called Blake and missed his chance to play the game. It’s hard to really convey how funny that was here, but I felt bad and at the same time I could not stop laughing. And the funniest thing is that after that happened and they played the game, Wayne called the station to request a song for Judy at work and they said they’d do it, so then he called Judy at work to make sure she’d be listening and then maybe 3 hours later they announced that people should call in for Cool or Not Cool and he hit redial and called Judy’s work, missing his chance AGAIN. OMG I was dying.

So I figure tomorrow is probably going to be a repeat of last Monday, with him trying to be caller 7 while I patiently rip CDs onto his computer and manually type in their track listings because without them having internet the track listings on CDs don’t show up in friggin’ iTunes.

———————

I started typing this post at around 2am and was interrupted by my friend Kevin of Camwhores (uh, NSFW) and we had a very interesting conversation. I know people are skeptical when I talk about this, but the site really is changing for the better. New things and being added, there are some new policies, some new ways for girls to make money have been implemented with more on the way and with everything that’s going on, I really feel the site’s going to recover from its downturn over the past few years. I mean, it already IS picking up and many oldschool girls have come back now that Stile is gone and things are changing, but I think that momentum is only going to increase over the next few months as these things I can’t discuss are implemented.

Oh yeah, and I’m coming back. That’s right, you heard me. Apparently by Wednesday there’ll be a webcam at my door, which means I’ll probably actually pick it up Thursday or Friday and Kevin’s going to help me figure out what cam software I need and I should be up and running and back on Camwhores’ front page by October 6th-ish.

I’m gonna be upfront about the fact that I have no intentions of doing much in regards to nudity because I think I’m kind of beyond that at this point and I’m also 50 lbs heavier than I was when I was on there before, which I’m really insecure about. BUT I’m the same old Sunny on the inside and I plan to bring back my own brand of fun and humour to the site and just have a damn good time while I do it. Hopefully everyone else will have a damn good time as well. :o)

In other news, last week I decided to take Live Journal up on their offer to monetize my journal using Google’s AdSense, meaning that there are now ads on my Live Journal. So far I think I’ve made a decent amount from this in just one week, so I’m going to continue with it and I’ll be totally honest, I love that I’m making a little bit of money for doing something I’d be doing normally anyway and that played a big part in my decision to return to Camwhores.

As I said, there are going to be more opportunities to make a little bit of money from camming and that’s money I could really use. And again, it’s just like adding ads to my Live Journal, it’s making money from doing something that I’d be doing anyway.

And the fact of the matter is, I miss camming. I was talking to Blake about it just tonight in fact. I don’t really go anywhere, as we all know I’m agoraphobic so I go to Wayne & Judy’s, which is next door, and sometimes I go to the post office or to The Beer Store with Wayne. And that’s pretty much it. Maybe once every two months I’ll go to the grocery store with Blake or when I sell a painting, which I really need to do soon (:o/), I go to Michael’s and Curry’s to stock up on art supplies. NONE of these places require me to get dressed properly, most of the time I’m either in pajamas or sweats, and I don’t even bother with makeup anymore because I just kind of don’t care. Camming made me care. Camming gave me an excuse to wear a nice top and put on some lipstick even though I wasn’t going anywhere and really, my self esteem needs that right now. Looking your best just makes you feel good, y’know?

Anyway, it’s just an avenue I’m going to re-examine and if it’s a positive thing, I’ll stick with it and if it’s not, I won’t. It’s as I said when I first started camming, “I’ll do it until it’s not fun anymore”. When I quit camming last year, it was because it stopped being fun, but now there’s all this opportunity for it to be fun again, so hey, I’m gonna give it another shot.

So that’s – I guess – my big news for the week.

Now I’m going to finish watching the movie I’ve got saved on my OnDemand thingy (Last Chance Harvey I think it’s called…it’s kind of crappy), have something to eat and then get to bed. If I sleep past noon, Wayne’ll start calling the house and bugging me to come over.

Have a happy Monday!

Yesterday I had a Pepsi for the first time in probably 15 years and it immediately made me remember my grampa.

When I was a kid, my mom would let me play hooky from school so I could go up to Alliston with my grampa, which was about an hour and a half away and also happened to be where I was born. This was where his carpet store was and a few times a week he’d drive up there in his big blue van to make sure things were running smoothly and to do “measure ups”, which meant that he was going to someone’s house to measure their rooms for new carpet.

On the way up to Alliston, my grampa would give me a Pepsi from a mini-fridge that plugged into the van’s cigarette lighter and being a Coke fanatic, this was the only time ever that I’d drink Pepsi.

When we got to Alliston, my grampa would leave me with Flo and Bonnie, his two employees, and he’d give me some money to go to the Stedman’s store down the street and buy clothes or toys. I would do that of course, but I’d never spend all of the money. Instead, I would go to the pet store behind my grampa’s store and more often than not I would buy a small animal that my mother would kill me for bringing home. My grampa would always come back from his measure ups and pretend to get mad at me for buying the animal and he’d tell me to take it back and I’d cry and get my own way and then we’d go two stores down to have Chinese food for lunch where I’d get an extra fortune cookie because Bing, the owner, liked my smile.

When we went to Alliston, I’d bring books and toys with me and I’d hide behind the rolls of carpet , which were stacked vertically against wood scaffolding and read or play my Game Boy, drinking my grampa’s Pepsi from a styrofoam cup the whole time.

After work, we’d go to a restaurant, the name of which is completely escaping me but it was the same one every time, with Flo (who was actually my grampa’s girlfriend, although I probably wasn’t supposed to know that considering he was still married to my grama) and I would order LIVER. Yes, a child who likes liver, who grew into an adult who likes liver.

When we were done with dinner, we’d drive Flo home and then head home ourselves, drinking Pepsi along the way. One time my grampa pulled over because one flukey night we could see the Northern Lights just outside of Alliston, something I’d never seen before nor since.

Since the store didn’t close until 9pm and it was an hour and a half home AFTER dinner, I would get home late enough that my mom was too tired to give me or my grampa shit about the new pet I’d acquired so I’d just get my pajamas on and go to bed.

And that’s all I have to say about my adventures in Alliston. For now, anyway. It’s just so weird how a taste or a smell can trigger such strong memories, especially when you haven’t experienced them in a long time.

In other news…on Monday I spent the whole day with my neighbour, Wayne, because it was his day off and he wanted me to rip CDs onto his computer.

A few weeks ago, Wayne was drunk and somehow we got started on the topic of religion, which in my experience is usually a bad idea. Wayne is technically a Catholic, although I guess you’d call him non-practicing as I’ve known the guy for 4 years and I’ve never seen him go to church, he definitely doesn’t eat fish on Fridays and while he believes in God, I seem to know more about Catholicism than he does.

Wayne’s known for quite some time that I don’t believe in God, so that day he asked me what I did believe in, what did I think happened after we died and stuff like that and that’s how we got on the topic of karma, a word he’d heard before but a concept of which he’d never really considered. So I explained to him the various thoughts on karma and my own personal ones and ever since, we’ve both been obsessed with it. Me with getting him to understand the concept and him with saying that I’m “funny” because I now constantly remind him to think about karma.

I lent him season one of My Name Is Earl, which he liked (I would have lent him the rest but I don’t have them) and ever since he’s kinda been turned on to the whole idea of karma, while still not totally grasping it. he says things like “Judy and I sacrifice so much and karma doesn’t reward us,” and I’ll say “but what have you done for someone other than yourselves?” and he’ll say “well we sacrifice so Courtney can have the things she has” (Courtney’s their daughter) and I say something like, “well you don’t get a reward for parenting, for doing something you’re supposed to be doing anyway,” and he’ll sit and think about it for a bit and then change the subject.

Well, the other day I thought of a good way to explain it to him so I think he’d understand. So on Monday I said to him that I was going to explain karma and I asked him what he does when he sees a stray dog in his driveway. He replied with “I try and chase it off,” to which I replied with “and what would Blake or I do? Or even Madison?” and he said, “well, you’d probably try and trap it” and I finished his sentence with “and we’d all go through great lengths to find its owner and, failing that, we’d call animal control, do you see the difference?” And he DID. He explained back to me that doing a good deed would give you good karma and I said yes, that’s exactly it, but remember, it has to be something completely unselfish and outside yourself. And he said to me “but if you call animal control, you’re kind of doing a bad deed because then the owners will have to pay money to get their dog back”, to which I replied, “that’s not my problem, the bottom line is that I saved that dog’s life, it didn’t get hit on the road, it didn’t die of dehydration or starvation and it didn’t get attacked by coyotes. The owners having to pay to get their dog back, that’s their own karma”.

After that Wayne was quiet for a little while, which is weird for Wayne, and I could tell that he was finally starting to “get it”.

And it’s not like I’m trying to preach or convert anyone or anything, he brought the whole thing up weeks ago, it’s just that Wayne & Judy, as much as I love them, they don’t do a whole lot for other people and they don’t really think outside of themselves or their own family (we’re included in that), but now I’ve got them, or at least Wayne, beyond their normal limits and honestly, I’m kind of proud of the fact that I did that.

With my belief system, which is karma-based, all of the bad things that are constantly happening to them – which I won’t go into because it’s not my place but let’s just say some REALLY bad shit – is a result of living a selfish existence. And maybe “selfish” isn’t even the right word, I don’t know what to call it. But like, they’ll utilize the food bank, but they’ve never contributed to it. A woman at Wayne’s work raised funds so Wayne could adopt a dog for Courtney for her birthday and we’re talking $300 here, and they took that, but they’d never in a million years do the same kind of thing for anyone else. I’m not saying they’re bad people at all, quite the opposite actually, they’re nothing but good to us, me in particular, and I really do love them dearly, it’s just that they don’t seem to see beyond the borders of their own existence and I truly believe that if they did, their luck would change and their lives would be better.

God, do I sound like an Evangelical or what? Please let me stress again that Wayne’s constantly been asking me about karma since it came up a few weeks ago, I’m seriously not pushing an agenda here, it’s just that he’s interested and I think opening him up to it would be of great benefit, so I patiently answer all of his questions and explain things the best I can.

Anyway, as time goes by and as I think of more examples, he seems to be getting it and I think that’s a good thing. I even told him, you can believe in God and karma at the same time, just think of it as God giving out karma, think of it as living by the Golden Rule.

So that’s Mondays with Wayne, constant talk of karma while I’m over there doing nice things for him.

Tomorrow night Blake’s going to be updating my badly outdated WordPress install, which I’m very excited about. It’s possible that when he does that, it might fix some of the annoying things I hate about WordPress, like the fact that I can’t wrap text around images. (It works when I’m typing the entry but when I publish it the formatting goes to shit.)

This update has made me think about my site a little more, specifically about its layout and some of the things that bug me. For example, I belong to a number of Ning groups and I’d like to place their badges either in the sidebars or even on my Exits page, but for some reason when I paste in the code, they don’t show up properly and I’m not sure if that’s a WordPress issue or if it’s the theme I’m using. When I designed this site originally, I wanted a fairly bare-bones layout because most of what I do is text anyway, but as I post more and more pictures and do more and more art, I want it to be more reflective of what the site’s all about and who I am. I don’t know if I have the graphics skills required for the kind of site I have in my head, but I think Blake and I should sit down and try to work something new out in the very near future.

And thinking about layout has led me to thinking about the site itself. The thing is, most blog sites, which really I guess mine is, have titles. Yes, people use their names as their site’s title and domain, but most arty blog sites have titles, for example, The Hermitage or Ruling At Life or Broken Toyland. I’ve been SunnyCrittenden.com for a very long time now and suddenly I’m thinking that it’s time for a title. SunnyCrittenden.com will still point to this site, but I’m thinking it’s time for my name to take a backseat to something bigger – I just don’t know what that is yet.

A long time ago I wanted my site to be called “A Pocket Full of Posies”, but the domain was taken. :o/

I dunno, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about tonight.

Okay I think it’s time to retire to my Sims Bunker while I still can. I’ve got a couple of days off from Buttercup, so to speak, before we all head into the craziness of October, so I’d better take advantage of it.

Goodnight!