My face is in a Lunapads commercial!

How appropriate since I’ll be spending most of the next 3 weeks bleeding!

The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition.

So obviously, “She’s Like A Rainbow” is finished and I’m really really proud of her because in person, she just looks amazing but now I’m thinking about future projects and the things coming up and I’m becoming completely overwhelmed by it all. When I become overwhelmed, I’m unfortunately the kind of person to just sit down wherever I am and cry and I’m trying very very hard not o do that.

I really wish they made a suitable paper planner for me to keep everything straight because right now, my TELUS calendar is just not helping me. I miss my Big Fat 5-Star planner. I don’t know why they stopped making those, they were great.

Anyway…

The drop off date for The Square Foot Show, which Blake says I should submit to just to give me the exposure AND the option of going to the gala if I choose to, is 3 weeks away. If I don’t submit, that’s no longer an option. Also, there are prizes because it’s a juried show and it’s not like I think I would actually win something but it’s like the lottery, you’re not gonna win if you don’t play, so I might as well play. But what I’m stressing over is what to submit. What is representative of my work *and* what don’t I mind giving away for only about $100? (They sell the pieces for $200 & change but keep 50 friggin’ percent.) I’m allowed to submit up to 3 pieces and since I paid $20 to be in this show, I feel I should submit the maximum allowed. Right now I’m thinking “Sparkle“, “Shimmer II” and “Five O’Clock Abortion“. What do you guys think of that selection? I was thinking of maybe putting in “Turquoise Love Fairy” instead of “Sparkle” but I dunno. I just think it has to be one or the other because I don’t want two fairies in the same show. Personally, I like “Sparkle” better, but she’s been in my Etsy shop for the last 7 months & hasn’t moved so maybe I could sell her at Sq. Foot, is what I’m thinking.

Then there’s also the fact that there are 3 weeks left until the submission date which means I have enough time to do 1 more painting for consideration, 2 if I really haul ass and get productive. I have ideas and I’m going to start 1 tomorrow, but the 2nd idea is going to have to wait until I learn a specific technique in my art class on Monday and really, if that one goes as planned, I’d rather have it in my Etsy shop than Sq. Foot.

This is the shit that keeps me up at night, seriously.

Also keeping me up at night is the fact that Touched By Fire has already sent out their call for entries and I don’t know if I’m going to submit this year or what I’m going to submit this year. I think I have until October or November to decide, which is nice, but that also crosses into my Xmas season issues. I’m told, and I’ve seen this with my own eyes, that in October/November, Etsy kinda goes crazy with Xmas sales, so I want to have my shop as full as possible. That’s only like, 2 months & change away. It takes me about 2 weeks to do a painting and I can do 2 at a time. That means I have a lot of work ahead of me and I’m not sure if I can do Touched By Fire *and* stock my shop for Xmas.

Honestly though, Touched By Fire kinda pisses me off. The show is put on by The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario, which is why I call it “the remedial art show” and the first year they accepted me, my first year submitting, they chose “Mania in the Key of Psychosis“, which is apt, and they juxtaposed that with “Hope” and “Dream“, which also makes sense. But when I submitted last year, I submitted a ton of paintings, including my “The Devil’s in the Details” which I thought was appropriate for a show called “Touched By Fire” and they didn’t accept me. That’s cool, I can handle rejection, but the thing is that almost all of the paintings I submitted were shiny, happy paintings and I almost feel like I wasn’t accepted because I got better. My meds are working (for the most part) so I make shiny, happy paintings now and that’s not what they want. They want tortured, moody depictions of mental illness and to me, that kinda seems like defeating the purpose of the Association, don’t you think? I mean, isn’t the goal here to help people get better? So why isn’t that represented in the show?

So that’s why I might not bother submitting to that show this year. I don’t want to paint something dark and moody specifically for that show because if it’s not accepted and if it IS accepted and doesn’t sell, then what the fuck am I going to do with it? My online audience of customers don’t want that shit and I kinda don’t know if it’s right to paint outside of your own headspace/mood just to get in a show, does that make sense?

“The Two Sunnies” would have been perfect for the show, but I gave that one to my shrink, partially as a “thank you” because she HAS helped me immensely but also to show her “hey, this is actually what I do for a living so quit telling me I don’t have a job” (and she hasn’t done that since, as a point of fact, every session she asks me if I’m painting because if I’m not painting it’s probably time to adjust my meds).

You can submit work to the show that’s not for ale, but I’d kinda feel like a dick asking her for it back, if only for a few weeks. Especially if something happened to it (the Touched By Fire people were NOT gentle with my work when they sent it back to me…).

And then there’s just trying to get my shop as full as possible for the Xmas season. Of COURSE I want to sell things the second I put them up, that would be great! But at the same time, I need to have a full shop by like, mid-October which means that I need to start painting my ass off (which I’ve been doing, I finished 3 paintings this month!). And that’s fine, I can do that, but things like Camwhores and WoW are going to have to get to the back of the line. And YES WoW is totally a recreational thing and I can see how the outside observer might be like “well not playing a video game is pretty easy” but when you’re an officer in a guild, especially, it’s a little more involved than that. People count on you. Camwhores? Well that’s just another can of worms.

For someone who “doesn’t do anything”, I sure seem to have a lot on my plate right now and I don’t really know how to make time for everything. I think painting has to be my #1 priority, WoW on weekends, Camwhores when I can’t sleep.Oh and there’s yoga too, can’t forget that…the art class I’m taking too….

When the kids go back to school, I’ll have more time to get things done, which will help a lot, so I have that to consider as well, especially when it comes to fitting Camwhores into my schedule.

Anyway, as I said, this is the shit that keeps me up at night. Hopefully now that it’s all out of my brain I can finally drag my ass to bed and sleep like a normal human being. Maybe?

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

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

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

I guess we’ll see how it goes.

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

So that’s art right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voila:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m hot and pissy. Don’t get me wrong, this is how I like my summers, crazy hot & humid – to me, not much is worse than a cold summer – but that doesn’t mean I don’t also reserve the right to be sleepy, tired and semi-miserable.

We just got back from yoga about a half hour ago and I’m kind of having some thoughts about it. If Blake stops being irritating long enough for me to get those thoughts out, it’ll be a miracle, but I figure I’m going to try anyway.

I am absolutely fascinated by our yoga teacher. I think it’s because I’ve never met a yoga teacher before or really anyone who’s all that athletic in any way. The ease with which she does the poses she teaches us has me in absolute awe and as a person, even though I’ve only met her 3 times now, I can’t seem to peg her down. I only remembered her full name this time. All the other times I forgot it. I bet she doesn’t remember my name either and probably for the same reason I never remembered hers: we don’t use them.

Her studio is in the basement of her home and is only big enough to accommodate 6 people, at the most, and so far we’ve only ever had 5.  I know she’s married, but I don’t know for how long. I know she has a baby who’s just sitting up (because he was present for our first class) but I don’t know if she has any other kids. I know she has a dog, but that’s only because I saw it tied up outside her house today after class.  I have absolutely no idea how old she is. I would guess she’s around Blake’s age, but she could just as easily be older or younger. I have no idea how long she took yoga before becoming a teacher or what kind of yoga (well she said her background is Iyengar) she practiced before becoming a teacher or what kind of a student she was, as in, top or bottom of the class, if ya know what I mean.

I have no idea how long she’s been teaching.

I have no idea if she eats meat or what religion she is or if she’d be upset that I killed a tiny spider crawling on my mat today in class. I think Blake said her day job IS a nutritionist but that doesn’t really tell me anything other than it’s probably a good guess that she’s into healthy, organic eating and that she probably takes a multivitamin and maybe some other supplements too.

I have no idea if she grew up around here or if she moved here (why? especially since the town she lives in only has like, a church and a convenience store and is even further into the middle of nowhere than us) or how long she’s lived here. Her house is in a new subdivision, but I can’t tell how new. No one in the subdivision has a fenced-in yard though, so I ‘m thinking it’s gotta be pretty new. Is this her first home? Or did she & her husband own a home before this one? Or several?

Almost all of the above is absolutely none of my business but after each class, this is what I find myself thinking about. At this point in the game, I keep also thinking that yoga is probably something I’m going to stick with and I expect that she’s going to be my yoga teacher for a rather long time considering that I’m not very optimistic about us being able to move before Madison starts high school.

So how is yoga working out for me? I know some of you do yoga or have done yoga or whatever and are probably wondering how the most out of shape girl in the world is doing with it. Well I’m here to tell you that despite it not being the easiest thing I’ve ever tried to pick up and I have a lot of gripes about it because I’m so out of shape, I’ve gotta tell ya, I think I like it. Which is totally weird because I never expected to.

First and foremost though, I fucking HATE plank pose. Every time she’s all “and find your plank” I’m thinking “oh dear god, no” because my arms are nothing but little chicken wings that have a hard time supporting any kind of body weight. Now, if you’d have caught me 4 or 5 years ago, I would have done better because my arms and shoulders were actually pretty muscular from carrying Wes around, but that was the last thing I really did with them. Worse is that during last week’s class, maybe because I said before class that I didn’t sweat and wasn’t sore the next day after the first class but Blake was/did both, she made us do a thousand reps of these crazy yoga push ups that were absolutely brutal for someone who has never done a push up in her whole entire life. And that class, I DID sweat and I WAS sore the next day (and the next day and the next day and the next day – pretty much until yesterday). As I said…somewhere on the internet last week: The first week I went to yoga, the second week I survived it.

Today wasn’t so bad though, but I’m finding with each class there’s at least one or two poses or activities that I just don’t like. Today it was…I don’t even know what it’s called but she made us lay on our backs, bring our knees up to our chests, put our hands behind our knees to hold our legs tighter to our chests and then she wanted us to rock frontward and backward and then she wanted us to do the same thing without holding our knees. She was practically standing on her head, she was rocking so violently and fast and while the pose/activity itself was okay and I could do it, I could feel every single one of my vertebrae rocking against the hard floor and it fucking hurt. Want me to do that in a squishy bed for an hour? No problem. But on that floor (and really, what good is a yoga mat anyway, aside from designating your space?) I just found it absolutely painful and couldn’t understand how she could do it so hard and so fast.

And then there’s that goddamn plank pose, but  already mentioned that. I’ll probably mention it again before this post is done.

Last week she had us do bow pose for the first time, which I was absolutely useless at. I can get my hands back there to grab my feet just fine, it’s actually making my legs “bow” that’s the problem. Last week they simply would not budge from the mat. On the weekend Blake and I were laying in bed talking in the dark for lack of anything better to do and I demonstrated for him how my legs just won’t do that. He can do it no problem, the big jerk, but mine absolutely refused. Today though, I was pleasantly surprised to find that holy shit, I was doing it! I don’t know what changed and my feet weren’t exactly touching the back of my head or anything, but somehow, practically over night, my legs decided that they could do this and so they did.

The other thing I can’t do that I hope to be able to eventually do? “Step in and find your stride for warrior”. From downward dog (on tippy toes with your palms flat out in front of you with your bum in the air so your body makes an “A” shape, for those who don’t know), taking my right foot and bringing it beside my right hand in ONE STEP is damn near impossible for me. She can do it perfectly every time. Blake doesn’t seem to have trouble with it and neither do the other girls in the class, but me? I have to take 2 or 3 little steps to get my right foot anywhere near my right hand and this annoys me to no end. I’ve ever tried practicing at home and I just can’t do it. I’m sure I’ll be able to do it one day, just like I was able to do bow pose today, but I am so jealous that everyone else can do this seemingly easy thing while I absolutely cannot.

I’ll get there though…

Anyway, I’m absolutely exhausted and I’m losing my train of thought pretty fast on this one, so I’ll stop here and write about yoga again next week. (Probably.)

Oh, but one more thing about it: Right now I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love and I’m about half way through the book when she’s in her guru’s Ashram in India and she keeps referring to “this type of yoga” but she never writes about actually doing any yoga – just meditation and chanting -  so for anyone who’s read the book, what the fuck is she talking about?

And that’s all I have to say about that. Now I will leave you with a picture from my day.

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

So here I am.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Wailer is no match for Endometria!

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

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

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

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

So, did any of you read my article on LunaPads? Probably not, since it was posted on Buttercup, but I backposted it on my site and it can now be found here.

Anyway, I got them roughly 3 months ago, when I only had a week left of bleeding (I usually bleed for a full month) and I felt a little cheated. BUT I’ve got 7 birth control pills left in this pack (the 2nd pack of 3), which means in 7 days I’m going to start bleeding for a full month and I get to BLEED ALL OVER MY NICE CLEAN LUNAPADS.

For some reason, there is something extremely satisfying about that. I can’t even explain it.

And that’s all I really had to say.

I really hate that saying. The one in the title. It bugs the hell out of me. EVERYONE gets bored and EVERYONE is interesting, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never met an uninteresting person in my whole entire life and I can guarantee that the most interesting of all the people I’ve ever met, happen to get bored too, whether they admit it or not.

And I think people don’t admit boredom because of that saying in the title. Because they’re afraid to appear boring. And I think that’s dumb.

So obviously, I’m bored. It’s is roughly 6.2 billion degrees in my little house, so hot that I can’t even have the lights on because the heat from the lightbulbs pushes the heat over the edge of tolerable and I can’t deal with that. It’s also very very humid and the humidity plus low light means that I can’t paint. And that’s really unfortunate because that’s what I want to do.

The low light also makes it very difficult to read, which is my other option. I could watch TV, but it’s 4pm and my best option would be Oprah, which I think is a stupid topic today.

So that leaves writing and napping, and I’ve already done the napping. Twice, in fact. So here I am in my darkened office blabbering on about boredom without a real plan in my head as to what I should say next.

And the weird thing is, I actually really like the heat, I love it when the weather’s like this, what I don’t like is the expectation (from whom? I mean really,  f r o m   w h o m   ?) that I should get up in the morning, have my breakfast, start working and doing my thing, have lunch, work some more, have dinner, watch TV with my husband as that’s my wifely duty, to spend time with him after a long, hard day, maybe have sex, and be asleep before midnight. I HATE THAT. But do I hate that expectation? Or do I hate that I can’t adhere to that expectation because it’s so damn hot that I’m more productive between 9pm and 5am and there’s really no reason in the world, since both of my kids are in school all day, that I can’t sleep the day away?

I ponder this like crazy every single spring and make myself mental over it until about mid-June when I’m finally like, “fuck it” and keep the hours I want to keep. Nay, need to keep. Because like I said, who has the expectation of me that I be diurnal? No one important. No one whose opinion I should really care about. My shrink doesn’t like the idea but she’s not opposed to it either. As long as I get enough sleep, she pretty much leaves me alone on the issue. (Sleep is very important to maintaining good mental health when you’re bipolar or have other mental illnesses.)

Every spring, like clockwork, I hit this phase where my natural body clock resets itself or something  and for about 2 weeks I get really bad insomnia. That’s what’s been happening for the last week & a half or so and like I do every year, I try to fight it because of this pressure I feel to conform to the “9-5″ workday model of sleeping and every year it’s useless because by the end of that 2 week period, I end up right where I am now and much happier for it.

The opposite thing happens in the fall. In the fall I start wanting to be awake during the daylight hours because I have S.A.D. and there’s a 2 week period where my sleep’s all screwed up while my body adjusts to a completely opposite schedule.

….and I feel like I’ve made this post before. Do I make this post every year? I may have to go back and check that.

Anyway, the kids are home now and I’m going to bribe Madison with freezies to get her to water my gardens. She’d probably do it just because I asked her, but I know what it feels like to be “paid” for services rendered, so I went with the freezies thing.

I think what I’m going to do right now is get a piece of cardboard and matte medium little swatches of every pink patterned scrapbook paper I have to it and then spray the whole thing, after it dries, with Krylon to see if the Krylon also turns pink dyes into orange like my normal Triple Thick varnish does.

Yes, I think that’s what I’m going to do.

PS. I am 26 days smoke-free.