I’m also having massive hormonal problems right now with little patience for idiots or negative people which is making work especially difficult because we tend to only get e-mails from idiots and complainers. And I don’t think I can blame this all on hormones either, I mean, if you’re just going to come around to be a negative bitch, get the fuck out of my life, y’know? I don’t need you. There seems to be an influx of people like this in my life right now and I’m getting mighty sick of it, especially from people online who only come around to be negative and say negative things. Like, why are you even here? If I’m so flawed and you so disapprove then why are you here? Why are you reading my shit? Does it make you happy to walk around feeling negative all the time, feeling a false sense of superiority? Does being smug keep you warm at night you hypocritical cunts? I suppose if that’s all ya got then I’ll leave you to it, but stay the fuck outta my way or I will mow you down because I’m not taking it anymore.

Yesterday was a really bad, bizarre day. I woke up in an absolute panic due to a nightmare (that I don’t remember now) and the anxiety it caused lasted most of the day. I felt like I had too much electricity in my body and my ears felt like they were pulsing so I took Ativan and Klonopin and gradually as the day wore on my sanity leveled out, but for a while there I was shaking and crying and had to call Blake at work to talk me down. I dunno, it was a really bizarre situation that I’m for sure going to tell my shrink about when I see her next month. It just came out of nowhere. It was also day 1 of my period so it’s possible that it was hormone-related and my shrink told me a long time ago that if a woman is heading toward a psychotic break that it’ll often manifest itself when she’s on her period because the hormones amplify things so maybe it’s the same with anxiety. I’m fine today, despite the fact that I had a nightmare about being carried off to sea in a tsunami this morning, but the memory of that is fading now. I wonder if what I dreamed about yesterday set my anxiety off subconsciously or something? I dunno man, but it was weird and I’m glad it’s over.

I am STILL reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and it feels like it’s taking forever to get through this book. It’s amazingly well-written but it’s taken me about 200 pages to care about the characters and actually get into what’s happening. Not that I have though, I think I would consider it a good book, depending on how things end up. It’s definitely the most dense thing I’ve ever tried to read though, like wading through chocolate pudding. Every single sentence is meaty, I’ve never read anything like it. Then again, I’m not the most well-read person on the planet so what do I know? I mean, I read a lot, I always have something on the go, but it’s never like, “fine literature” I don’t think, which is what I guess this book would be. But whatever, now that I’m in the thick of it, I’m liking it very much, I care about the characters, I want to know what’s going to happen next.

Speaking of books…I’ve stopped writing Cammity Jane. I haven’t stopped for good, I just sort of lost momentum with it, but here and there I have snippets of text running through my brain to add to it, which I’ve been writing down in my CJ notebook for when I resume writing it. In the meantime, The Fiction Project is due on May 16th (Madison’s birthday!) and while I have a rough outline of the story I want to tell and the illustrations to go with it, I haven’t written a single word for it yet and I’m having trouble with the middle. I know how it’s going to begin and how it’s going to end and what it’s going to be called, but I don’t know for sure what’s going to take place in the middle yet, so Ronny and Alex are coming over on Saturday to brainstorm with me and then hopefully Saturday night I’ll write the whole story and then (again, hopefully, I haven’t asked them yet) Sunday I want them to come over and help me physically write out the story in the sketchbook the project provided. Then I have 2 weeks to do the illustrations. I paid extra for the project to digitize the book, so when that happens, I’ll of course post about it here.

The Fiction Project is run by the same art gallery that did The Sketchbook Project and A Million Little Pictures and I’ve signed up for The Sketchbook Project 2012. In fact I’ve signed both Blake and I up for it. My theme is simply “Untitled” and Blake’s is “Ask me how I can help” (I think). My artist page can be found here. I finished my camera for A Million Little Pictures (I can’t link to that because they’re building a new site for it but it’s the same idea as The Sketchbook Project; they sent me a disposable camera and I send them back the pictures) on Wild Rumpus Day so that’s done, but Blake still has to finish his before we can get the pics developed. My theme for that was “The Great Adventures of ?” and his was something like “The End of the World”.  I know he’s taken some pics, but I don’t know how many or what they were of. The deadline for that is June 15th, so he still has some time.

I was on the DeSerres website a couple of weeks ago (that’s a CDN art supply company) and found a new scrapbook paper company called Basic Grey that had these fabulous small-print papers that would be perfect for my paintings and I ordered 3 packs, all different, with the hopes of the pink ones not turning orange when I varnished them. Well this morning I finally got around to doing a patch test with them and while they don’t turn AS orange as most of the other papers I’ve tried, they’re still definitely turning orange and that fucking sucks. Hand-dyed papers from Curry’s don’t turn orange but every single scrapbook paper company I’ve tried has turned orange. And I can’t change the kind of varnish I use because I need the triple thick gloss coat to get the maximum glitter effect I get from what I use now. Plus, I’ve tried another brand of varnish and it does the same thing. The only varnish that doesn’t turn them orange is Krylon, which is not paper-friendly (it turns the papers greasy) and Liquitex, which is way too thin and won’t allow me to achieve the effect I get with the glitter. SO, in case anyone ever wondered, that’s why I have very few girls with pink dresses!

While also on the DeSerres website, I decided to buy some Delta CeramCoat paints and I feel like I total traitor because normally I use DecoArt’s Americana line, but Delta had so many more skintones than Americana and, as it turns out, their paint appears to be more highly pigmented than Americana. I’d always avoided CeramCoat because by mom’s always used Americana, she even sold it in her store, and while they definitely have better packaging and more colours, I think I’m a convert as far as skintones go. I haven’t tested every shade I got yet, but so far the results have been really good and I’m glad I made that purchase.

What else?

I’m still kickin’ ass & takin’ names at my job. Not much new to report there other than the fact that I’m getting really good at catching fraud and the bosses are obviously very happy about that. I’m not sure if I mentioned it or not but they hired a new girl who works from like, 5am-1pm which overlaps my shift and she seems okay. Slow to catch on to things at first but she’s getting better now.

We’re under a severe thunderstorm watch right now and I’m really hoping the hydro doesn’t go out because not only would I lose this post, but if it went out I wouldn’t be able to do my job and I would HATE to have to make up the hours on the weekend. I’m already leaving 2 hours early on Friday so we can get to Toronto as early as possible for the Battles show. The club they’re playing at (in?) has seats all along the right-hand side apparently and since this band attracts a lot of geeky guys, I’m afraid I won’t be able to see anything because I’m only 5 feet tall. If I can get one of those seats, I’ll be able to see everything I would think. Doors open at 7pm, but I’m hoping to be there at least half an hour early to get in the line so I can get one of those seats. I have just enough money left over from my paycheque to buy a t-shirt and I’m making Blake buy me a drink or two.

I got a Canada Post notification in my e-mail today that there’s something waiting for me at the post office and I think it’s my new bag so I’m going to send Madison down to get it when she gets home from school. I’m going to have to call Blake  to find out which PO box is actually ours because I honestly have no idea. I thought I had it written down but apparently not. If it’s not my new bag then it’s mulberry paper, but since I got shipping notification on the bag on like, Thursday maybe, I think it’s safe to assume that’s what it is. Before I move all my junk from my old bag to my new bag, I’m going to do a “what’s in your purse?” picture post because I carrying around a really stupid amount of crap around with me because I get paranoid about needing things when I’m out. Like wetnaps. Hand sanitizer. Two cameras. Etc.

Since I’m leaving 2 hours early on Friday, I’m going to have to make that time up for work on the weekend, which sucks, but it’s only an hour a day so it’s not that big of a deal. I’m so lucky to have a job with such flexible hours and understanding bosses. I’m also fortunate in that the girls I work with are also flexible and we all cover each other’s asses.

So I’m not sure if anyone caught it the other day, but it was Blake’s MOM who e-mailed me about the purple mystery flowers in my garden. Someone asked me recently how things were going with her so I thought I’d give a brief update about that: we’re working on things. Blake had a positive experience with her at the funeral for his Aunt this month and so did Madison and I know she’s making efforts with me that are greatly appreciated. We’re not best friends yet, hell, we’re not even Facebook friends, but efforts are being made and bridges are being built and I think that’s something. So to answer my friend’s question: things are going fine. Slowly but surely.

And this post is just a little over 2k words so I suppose I should wrap things up. Long story short, despite having the most wretched period I’ve had in a long time, things are going pretty great. I have a good family, nice friends and I’m not worried about money so I guess I can’t complain.

Happy Wednesday!

I had to go to the doctor’s this morning to get repeats on my codeine contin (which he raised by 100mg/day) and Tylenol 3 (30mg codeine/300mg acetaminophen) and Naproxen. He lectured me about taking so much Tylenol because it’ll kill my liver, which I’m oh so aware of but I don’t see any alternatives here, which is why he raised my codeine contin. That’ll keep me from having to take so much Tylenol 1 (8mg codeine/300mg acetaminophen, 15mg caffeine) during the month and then I have the Tylenol 3 for when I’m actually on the rag and wanting to kick puppies. So was that clear? He lectured me about taking so much Tylenol and then rx’d me…more Tylenol. I’m not complaining because he did what I wanted him to do, I just thought it was funny.

I have today off because I had to go to the doctor’s this morning at 10:30am (we just got back now and it’s almost noon) when I start work at 10am usually, and then this afternoon is metabolic clinic. But this actually worked out well because I woke up to an e-mail from Belinda asking our boss for Saturday night off because it’s her boyfriend’s birthday. I have to make up my metabolic clinic hours on Saturday anyway (Belinda works nights) and Blake’s gone to Militiagan for another funeral this weekend anyway too, so I said I’d take today off and work Belinda’s shift Saturday night for her. Then I’ll still have Sunday off, which, if I’m working the night before, I’ll probably use to sleep in and then play Sims Medieval all day. So it all works out! I had intended to work from whenever metabolic clinic was over (we usually get home around 3:30 or 4pm) until 6pm, which is when my shift usually ends, but I decided I’m not going to bother and I’ll just make up the hours on Saturday since I’m needed then anyway. That means that I may actually make it to yoga tonight, which is good considering I haven’t actually been in about 4 or 5 weeks because work + metabolic clinic all in one day is too many things for me, so yoga has had to go by the wayside until metabolic clinic is finished on April 5th.

Speaking of yoga, our teacher is pregnated! She already has a toddler, she goes to school for holistic medicine and she has a full-time job on top of teaching yoga, so she’s going to be one busy lady. We’ve signed up for the next session because I’d like to continue once metabolic clinic is over and done with. As I may have mentioned a time or two, I absolutely love yoga and I’m really looking forward to going tonight since it’s been so long. I bet she’s going to make me sweat…

Today at metabolic clinic we’re discussion our addictions. I am 6 days smoke-free and talking about smoking makes me want to have one so I hope they gloss over that and just talk about the addiction part. This is our last real class I think, as next week is our “graduation” and evaluation session. I’m not really sure what that means but I do know that I’m going to need to fill out my module evaluation sheets which I’ve been neglecting to do unless they’ve specifically asked me to do them at the end of class, as they have in some instances.

I’ve been doing the treadmill daily. The first day I did a total of 55 minutes but then the next day I was sore because my shoes are those Sketcher’s Shape Ups so I only did 20 minutes and I’ve only been doing 20 minutes since. In fact, instead of writing this post, I should probably get on the treadmill, especially since I’m at the very tail end of The Virgin Suicides and I’d really like to finish it so I can star Freedom by Jonathan Franzen since that’s Oprah’s current book club pick and I think she’s going to be doing the show about it sometime soon. I’ve never read one of Oprah’s book club picks while the book club was happening before and I’ve always skipped those episodes as a result, but this being her last season I figured I’d give it a shot, especially since I read in Adbusters that my generation doesn’t read enough Jonathan Franzen, so there’s that too. Have any of you read this book? What did you think of it? I don’t even know what it’s about, I haven’t read the back or anything and I know absolutely nothing about the author or his previous works. But whatever, I’m looking forward to cracking the spine on that thick sucker and I love that I got a treadmill with a book stand. Reading while walking is turning out to be something that I really enjoy. The treadmill even has a place for an MP# player to be plugged in and two cup holders that fot a can of Coke Zero perfectly. I’m totally set up!

Yesterday Blake brought me home dirt so when I’m NOT wearing my $200 hockey jersey or going to yoga, I have to start my veggies on the window sill. I have Super Sugar Snap peas, Napoli carrots, Thunder cucumbers, Parade green onions, Golden cherry tomatoes, Sugary cherry tomatoes and Big Beefsteak tomatoes. All I’m going to start inside this week is the cucumbers and all the tomatoes. The peas did fine last year with just being stuck in the garden and hopefully the carrots and onions will do the say. Last year the garden got overrun with weeds and I didn’t know what were weeds and what were vegetables so I couldn’t weed and the carrots and onions never grew. Neither did any of the herbs (that I know of, like I said, I couldn’t tell the difference between them and the weeds). This year I’m going to do herbs in pots on the porch, although part of me is thinking “why bother?” because fresh herbs at the grocery store really aren’t that expensive and we use frozen basil chunks for Blake’s awesome cherry tomato pasta anyway and I think they’re only $2.99 for 20 cubes. (I think he uses 4 in the tomato thing, maybe a bit more.) It just seems like, for the pain in the ass of it, it would just be easier to buy fresh herbs at the grocery store than tend my own.

Blah, I’m babbling. I’m gonna go finish The Virgin Suicides and get on the treadmill. I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

PS. Yes I know I need to get my roots done. I was going to go to the new salon here in town to have highlights put in, but I’m broke right now so I bought a box of hair dye today at the pharmacy instead. I’ll go to the salon another time and just get Blake to trim my ends with my awesome art scissors. No big deal.

Okay, to tread I go!

PPS. I can’t go to yoga tonight! We’re playing the Sabres and I have to tweet 100 times about how much I hate Ryan Miller! Curses!

The kids are off this week for March Break and so far things have been okay. They’re at the library right now getting 2011′s dog tags and won’t be back until around 5pm, they said, so I have the house to myself. Right now I’m working and also working on my angel. I’m currently waiting for her wings to dry. I don’t normally paint my angels’ wings but doing girls of colour is not like doing white girls and when I overpaint the parts I would normally cut off, it shows through the mulberry paper so I have to paint this one’s wings white and then I’ll go over them with a pearlized white so they shimmer. Right now I have so many ideas and so little time and it’s really frustrating the shit out of me.

I’ve been splitting my time between writing the novel I’m working on and this angel and so far things have been going okay with it but I just wish I had more time. Last weekend I finally finished working off the hours I had to take off for Blake’s grama’s funeral so now, theoretically, I get a much needed day off and I absolutely cannot wait. We get the Oprah channel now and all I want to do is watch bad, Oprah-endorsed shows and paint pretty girls. My nights after work have been dedicated to the novel, so I’ve only been working on the angel as I work or on the weekends.

The novel is going well. I don’t really want to write about it all that much for fear I’ll jinx myself and stop working on it but I have a good feeling about it. It’s going to be self-published of course, and I know there’s a stigma attached to that but I don’t want to deal with submitting to publishers and getting rejection letters. Why would I do that when I have my own built-in audience? Plus, I can always submit it to publishers AFTER I’ve self-published it, if I felt so inclined, so that’s the plan.

Right now I’m working on chapter 20, which is about halfway finished.

Metabolic clinic yesterday was the pharmaceuticals module and for the most part it was pretty boring because I look up every drug I take before I take it so there was nothing new for me to learn there. I’ve always been worried about the amount of Tylenol I take because of the endometriosis and the pharmacist told me that liver damage from acetaminophen isn’t cumulative, it doesn’t happen over time, it’s when someone takes 30 or 40 Tylenols at once when liver damage occurs. You’re only supposed to take Tylenol 1′s every 4-6 hours (2), but lately the pain’s been bad enough that I’ve been taking them every 2 hours and sometimes even every hour, so it’s good to know that in doing this, I’m not causing myself permanent liver damage. I mean, it’s not GOOD what I’m doing, of course, but I’m not going to wake up one day and keel over from liver damage. Another thing I was/am worried about is the fact that often after I eat I get bad stomach pains, which could be a stomach bleed from taking so much Naproxen. Blake has to take a day off every time I go to the doctor’s though, which is why I haven’t had it checked out yet. And honestly, without the Naproxen I don’t know how well I’d cope with life so I’m reluctant to tell, the doctor about it at all. I’m probably being stupid. If it gets worse I’ll go to a doctor.

It’s going to be spring soon and I have it on good authority that my seeds should be ordered soon. This year we’re planting carrots, green onions, peas, big tomatoes, regular cherry tomatoes like the ones we grew last year, golden cherry tomatoes and cucumbers (upside down!). For the front garden, which I’ve decided to do this year because Blake thinks a big garden like mine will help sell this house better than a lawn, it’s just going to be several varieties of cosmos and Bachelor’s Buttons, as usual. Nothing fancy. Well, some of the Cosmos are fancy, like these ones, but really I’m only planting the two types of flower. Sunflower Alley is going to be pretty straight forward too with just your standard big sunflowers. Past years I’ve planted all kinds of different varieties of sunflowers but only the big ones seem to come up, so fuck it, that’s all I’m planting this year, especially since, ideally, we won’t be living here to even see them bloom.

Tomorrow is ST. Patrick’s Day (my 6 month anniversary of having this job!) and I’ll be making Jade’s Swiss Potato Soup with fresh biscuits for dinner, pending Blake brings me home a big pot to make it in because I accidentally ruined my old one by trying to put those dried “pulses” (beans, peas etc.) in a stew and they all stuck to the bottom and burned so bad there was no saving it. Here’s Jade’s potato soup recipe, it’s pretty simple and tastes wonderful!

- 2 tbsp butter
- 1/4 cup chopped onion
- 2 cups diced raw potato
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 chicken bouillon cubes
- 3 cups milk
- 2 tbsp flour

Melt butter. Saute onions. Add potatoes. water, salt, bouillon cubes. Cover & simmer 10 minutes. Combine milk and flour. Stir into potato mixture. Cook over medium heat. Stir constantly until thickened and boiling.

And voila! Homemade potato soup! I’m going to add chives to it and possibly I’m going to put in leeks instead of onions if Blake can find any. Also I’m using chicken broth instead of cubes and last year I think I just used a whole tetra box of chicken broth and skipped the boiling water.  Anyway, it’s good stuff and if you make it, let me know! Last year we featured it on Buttercup and I know a lot of you made and liked it, so I’m hoping this year you will as well!

Tomorrow is Day 1 of no more smoking. I just opened a fresh pack right now and when I go to bed tonight, the rest of it will be destroyed. I started smoking again on March 1st (my birthday) and it just time to give it up again, this time for always and forever. My throat is sore, I’ve developed a smoker’s cough and I’m getting headaches so it’s just not worth it anymore. So I’m just warning everyone in advance, if I’m bitch, that’s why, but after the 3 days it takes for the nicotine to leave my system, I should be okay again. Luckily this time I only developed the chemical addiction and not the mental habit, so it shouldn’t be as hard to quit as it was last time. Theoretically.

The dogs had their shots last week and the new vet said that they’re both overweight. Hoover definitely is, but I don’t see how she figures Lucky is. Either way, they’re both on diet dog food now so hopefully that’ll help. She also said that their teeth could use some rawhide, so we got them each a bone on Saturday, which they’ve both been enjoying (although Lucky threw up twice after we gave him his). Now that they’ve had their rabies vaccination for the year, they can get their municipal tags, which, as I mentioned, the kids are doing now. Hopefully Madison won’t lose my credit card this time!

Well, I’d better get back to my angel while work is slow. I hope everyone’s day is going well and I’ll probably post tomorrow.

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.

]]> http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/06/28/oh-this-that/feed/ 0 http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/05/28/random-menstrual-post/ http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/05/28/random-menstrual-post/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 22:23:34 +0000 Sunny http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/?p=2788 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.

This would be fine if my body acted accordingly, but it doesn’t. As soon as I start the 3rd pack, I begin spotting. By the 2nd week of the 3rd pack, I’m full on bleeding like a normal period except this bleeding persists for 2 weeks and then on the 4th week of the 3rd pack I go back to spotting, so by the time I’m supposed to take this 7 day “break” from the birth control pills, my body’s done bleeding. I take the break anyway, because I’m supposed to, but I don’t really see the point since I just had an entire month of hellacious bleeding and cramping.

So for the last week of March until roughly now-ish, I’ve been bleeding and at the beginning of April, bleeding and in pain, I got fed up because adding to my misery is the fact that because of my disease, I can’t use tampons, so I’m stuck with crappy plastic pads that quite often give me yeast infections and this month was no different.

Once I realized that I had another yeast infection that’s $20 a pop to cure and that I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until I stopped bleeding and I was looking at another 2 or 3 weeks of doing so, I lost it. The idea of my already irritated vagina being stuck in a plastic diaper non-stop for another 2 or 3 weeks put me into tears and I sat down with my husband, Blake, and begged him to shell out the $145.99 it cost for Lunapads‘ Deluxe Heavy Flow Kit.

We really didn’t have the money to do this, but I argued that we spend more than that on disposable pads and Monistat per year and we both decided that for my own comfort and our wallets that reusable pads were the way to go and while Lunapads are a little more expensive than the reusable pads you’ll find on say, Etsy, after receiving them in the mail a few days ago, I believe the cost is most definitely worth it because Lunapads‘ construction and material is unlike anything I’ve found anywhere else and they say the average Lunapad has a 3-5 year lifetime, officially, but some of their staff have had them last up to 10 years and by looking at the quality of the ones I received, I’d believe it. This is a well-built product.

When you order, you can choose between regular cotton and organic cotton. The organic cotton costs more and is less absorbent, but is better for the Earth, so it’s your call, but I went with the regular cotton because we already couldn’t afford the kit I was buying.

A Lunapad is composed of two parts, basically. There is the maxipad, which has wings and secures to the underside of the gusset in your underwear with a plastic snap and it’s not just a piece of cotton that’s maxipad-shaped that you secure in your underwear, the part with the wings is two layers of cotton sewn together and then in the crotch of the pad, there’s a liner sewn in that’s composed of (I think) two layers of thick flannel cotton with a nylon layer in between and sewn onto each end of the “pad” portion are two bands of ric-rac which are used to hold a liner. A liner is crotch-shaped and is basically identical to the “pad” portion of the maxipad. This is a basic Lunapad and a liner. There are also liners with wings but the wings don’t wrap around the gusset of your underwear like the pad does, the wings just tuck against your crotch/thighs.

A few of the wings liners came with my kit but I haven’t tried them yet. Personally I kinda wish they would wrap around the gusset and fasten with a snap like the pads do, but that’s a really minor thing and it probably really isn’t even necessary.

Here’s a video of one of the company’s founders showing how Lunapads work. I would tell you more about the founding of the company, but with their new site redesign that information seems to have been left off. Which sucks because the company was founded by two entrepreneurial Canadian women and it is based out of Vancouver, BC. Anyway, onto the video:

See? Easy to use. Great quality. Ingenious design.

What was also shown in the video, that you have to purchase separately and I didn’t, is The Moon Pad Bag, which is a pouch that has two sides, one for your extra clean pads and one for your used ones. Since I’ve been raving about Lunapads all month on forums, my site and Twitter, a few friends have asked me how they would use them at work and that’s how. Another option is that because of Lunapads‘ design, you can put in as many liners as you want, so in the morning before work, you could use a pad for heavy flow, stack it with 2 or 3 or even 4 liners and depending on your flow, you probably wouldn’t have to change your liners until you got home.

Since I work from home and the washing machine is on my way from the bathroom to my office, using Lunapads is pretty easy for me. Our family produces enough laundry that doing small loads every day is no problem, which would keep me in fresh pads throughout my “moon time” without an issue, especially since the kit I bought contained plenty of pads and liners to get me through.

I’ve only been wearing my Lunapads for about 3 days now and I’m only spotting so I can’t attest to how well they perform during heavy flow days, but with how they’re handling moderate spotting I have no doubt that they’ll be fine for my heavier days, especially if I double up the liners, but what I can definitely attest to is how comfortable they are. Honestly, I can barely tell that I’m wearing one and when I do shift in my chair or whatever and feel the pad against my skin, it’s very soft and 10,000 times better than sticky plastic. Since Lunapads are not holding moisture against my skin and their material allows my vag to breathe, they won’t cause the chronic yeast infections I would normally get with using disposables.

So how do you take care of your Lunapads? Well, the recommended method is to keep a container of water with a little bit of soap in it and soak your pads when you change them and then wash them, but I have no intentions of doing that, having a small bathroom and a daughter who hasn’t started menstruating yet and is easily freaked out by the concept. I just plan on dropping them in the washing machine as I use them and doing a load of laundry whenever I need to. This will probably result in staining of my Lunapads, but I mean come on, they’re pads for soaking up vag blood here, I don’t expect them to stay pristine and stains won’t affect their effectiveness. But if that’s an issue for you, then just rinse them out when you change them or when you get home and put them in the mesh bag that comes with them and put them in the washing machine when you’re able to, no biggie.

Yes, the cost upfront for Lunapads IS a bitch, but in my opinion totally worth it for the comfort factor and like I said in the beginning, even the bigger kits like the one I got costs less than I would be spending on disposable pads per year, especially when you factor in the yeast infection treatments that go along with them at $20 a pop. And of course there’s the added bonus that you won’t be contributing to landfills anymore, which is a huge factor in buying reusable menstrual products for a lot of people so I thought I’d mention it. Did you realize that pads are just like diapers in a landfill and take a really really long fucking time to break down? Did you realize that flushing tampons (which you actually shouldn’t do despite the encouragement on the instruction sheet that comes with them) and their applicators, especially plastic ones that take forever to break down, causes problems at your municipality’s water treatment plant? They have to scoop all of that debris out of a big tank with a thing that looks like a big pool skimmer and it all gets hauled off to the landfills anyway.

Another product that you can buy on the Lunapads website is The Diva Cup, which is like a reusable tampon except instead of absorbing the blood, it collects it and you empty it into the toilet once or twice a day, depending on your flow, then you wash it out and reinsert it. I know many people who use reusable internal menstrual products like The Diva Cup and they all swear by it, so if you’re a tampon girl and squicked by the idea of pads but would still like to have eco-friendly periods, The Diva Cup may be the way to go.

In closing, I’m extremely happy with my purchase and I find myself actually looking forward to my next period so I can use all of the neato pads that came with my kit. I’ve also talked it over with Blake and within the next 6 months, we’re going to be buying our daughter Madison, who will be 12 next month, the Deluxe Teen Kit because her menarche is right around the corner and we want to start her off on the right foot, especially since endometriosis is hereditary and I want her to be as comfortable as possible.

And before I go, I should probably mention that in celebration of the Lunapads site redesign, they’re giving 20% off on all orders made before Friday, April 16th, so if you’re thinking of making the switch, today or tomorrow might be the time to do it!

So that’s Lunapads. If you switch, I hope they make your vagina as happy as they’ve made mine.

Valentine’s Day has always been one of my favourite holidays, even though these days I don’t do a whole lot for it. In past years, I’ve been known to do special creative projects for the holiday, such as the mobile pictured above, or I’ve sent out Valentines to my online friends, but as I’ve gotten older (and poorer and busier)  these things have fallen by the wayside. That’s okay though, because I know it won’t always be like this and I’ll be able to do more in future years. (Kind of like my attitude toward Halloween. I want to be one of those families that decorates their house and gives out awesome candy but alas, we don’t get any trick-or-treaters where we are and couldn’t afford to do it even if we did.)

Anyway, Blake & I aren’t doing anything special today, especially because he, Wes & I seem to have a particularly nasty stomach bug of some kind and our bathroom has practically had a revolving door all weekend.

Valentine’s Day means two things, however. It means that there’s only two weeks until my birthday and everyone should get me lots & lots of presents and it also means that there’s one month until Steak & Blowjob Day. Since my article on giving head is linked on the Steak & BJ Day website, it means that my site is currently getting twice the traffic it normally gets and by the time the actual holiday rolls around, my traffic will have tripled. That’s a whole lot of new people around here reading my crap! So hello new people! Welcome to Sunnyland! Glad to have ya. :o)

Another thing Valentine’s Day means, to me and some of my friends at least, is that it’s Love Your Vulva day, or V-Day for short, something that we’ve been celebrating all month over at Buttercup. Buttercup’s actually been pretty hoppin’ all month, you should pop over there and check it out. So far this month we’ve had articles on VDay.org, Katie’s sexually repressed upbringing, how chicks dig porn, Blake’s experiences growing up in a penis-centric world, an article on our featured site, Camwhores.com, an article on vulva art, phenomenal woman, Holly Hughes, who you’ve probably never heard of but probably should, and finally an article by Jade about some of the strangest vulva-centric products we’ve ever seen – with much more to come during the rest of the month! We’ve also added two new groups to the mix. S/he is a group about sexism and so far the conversations have been really interesting and enlightening and we also added a group for sports, which needs a better name than “Sports”, so if you have any ideas on that, we’d love to hear them! Along with the new groups, we’ve also redesigned the front page a little bit and we have plans to redesign it further for next month. Lots of changes thanks to the feedback we got from the Buttercup community at the end of January! Thanks readers!

So, things over at Buttercup are doing good. You should take a peek if you get the chance. :o)

I realize this month I’ve been fairly quiet as far as blog posts go and there are a million reasons for that, namely preparing for and celebrating Wes’ 7th birthday, but also I’ve been hard at work painting ACEOs for my Etsy shop since art is pretty much all I can do when I’m in the kind of pain I’ve been in for the past couple of weeks due to endometriosis issues. I plan on doing nothing but working on ACEOs until this batch is finished because so far, they’ve proven to be pretty popular items in my Etsy shop, having sold half of the first batch I put up 2 weeks ago with the other half getting plenty of views. This first batch that I put up was of gold & black and purple & gold cards and right now all that’s left is the gold ones. The ones I’m working on are more purple & gold ones, some green & gold ones and a whole bunch of red & gold ones. I’ll, of course, make a post when this batch is ready and up on Etsy. In the meantime, you should take a look at the gold & black ones I have up there currently as I think they turned out rather well and hey, these things are supposed to be collectible, so if you buy a gold & black one this month, there’s no reason you can’t buy a red & gold one next month! *cough*

As I’m reading the Etsy forums, I’m learning that ideally what you’re supposed to do is market to people outside of Etsy and bring them into your shop. For that reason, I spent yesterday afternoon designing Moo cards with my artwork on the front of them and my website addresses on the back to include a couple with Etsy orders. By including more than one, it means the buyer will probably keep one and potentially give the other one(s) to friends. I’m also working on getting the funds for another promotional item, which I’ll write more about after I have the money to order them and actually send them out to people. If all goes as planned though, they’re pretty cool – or at least I think so – plus they have sentimental value, which again, I’ll write more about when I actually have them in my possession. (I’m only 1 ACEO sale away from being able to order them!)

And I guess that’s all I really have to say at the moment. It’s been a busy month and it’s going to continue to be busy. My neighbour’s daughter, Ashley, is due to have her baby any day now, so since my neighbour (Judy) doesn’t have a camera, I’ve lent her mine and that’s why there haven’t been pictures of anything in my recent posts. Ashley was actually due like, 4 or 5 days ago, so she could literally pop any day now and I should get my camera back soon.

Okay, I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day! I’m off to watch the Olympics and work on these ACEOs.

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

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

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

Anyway…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

]]> http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2009/12/04/pot-kettle-black/feed/ 0 http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2009/11/16/w00t/ http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2009/11/16/w00t/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:38:41 +0000 Sunny http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/?p=2328 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.

]]> http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2009/11/16/w00t/feed/ 0 http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2009/10/14/home-alone/ http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2009/10/14/home-alone/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:48:43 +0000 Sunny http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/?p=2048 On Monday, Blake’s cousin’s wife succumbed to cancer (very young, it’s a very sad story that’s not mine to tell) so he left for Michigan on Tuesday and won’t be back until Thursday night. This means I’m home alone with both children without a car.

He left me $40 in cash in case I needed it and yesterday I needed it. We were out of milk and potatoes, among other things and Wes is sick and needed cough medicine, so even though he said “we have like, no money so if you don’t have to spend it all, don’t”, I did, because cough syrup is expensive stuff, especially in this very small town where you pay for convenience and limited shelf space in every store.

So yesterday when Judy got home from work, I asked her if she would drive me to the store and the pharmacy, which she did and she came in with me both places so I didn’t freak out. I bought her Chapstick instead of giving her gas money because she’s out, with no money and she’s a Chapstick fiend like me. First we went to the pharmacy, which went fine, then we went to the grocery store where I zipped around grabbing all the things we needed as if it were a gameshow so we could get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. She grabbed the 2 cases of Coke Zero, I grabbed the groceries and bag of potatoes and we walked out to the parking lot towards the car. Well, all of a sudden the end on one of the cases of Coke split open and Coke cans flew everywhere! A man helped us “catch” the ones that were salvageable while we left the ones that were punctured and spraying everywhere. We were damn near pissing ourselves laughing at these stupid Coke cans spraying all over the parking lot with such force some of them were actually spinning. Normally this would be a situation where, if I was alone, I’d probably freak out and cry, but because Judy was there and she was the one carrying the Coke cases, it was okay and laughable and after we rescued the rescuable, Judy drove us back to her house and then she helped me carry everything back to my house. JUDY IS A GOOD FRIEND.

So that was my adventure last night. Because he needs cough syrup every 6 hours, I’ve kept Wes home for the last 2 days, but I think I’m going to send him to school tomorrow because he doesn’t seem to be coughing as much (he was coughing so much he was throwing up yesterday) and if I give him syrup before school, he should be okay until I can give him more after school. Really, I kept him home today and yesterday because what the hell would I do if I get a call from the school saying he’s sick and has to come home? I have no car to come pick him up and Judy’s at work! But I think he’s fine to go in tomorrow.

Madison took out the garbage last night so we didn’t miss garbage day, which is a miracle because I don’t do garbage so I don’t even know when garbage day is to begin with let alone when it is after a long weekend.

Last night I made turkey pot pie with our Thanksgiving leftovers and Pilsbury crescent roll dough and I gotta say, it turned out to be really amazing. Judy suggested it and wanted to make some herself but she didn’t have any Pilsbury dough. They were on sale last week, 3/$4 so I happened to have 3. She only needed 1 and I only needed 2 (I made mine in a bigger dish than hers), so I gave her one and it worked out perfectly. I’m going to feed it to the kids again tonight unless they’d rather have grilled cheese or Kraft Dinner because I don’t feel like cooking. I’ve done a LOT of cooking this week already and dammit, I can have heat-in-the-over spring rolls for dinner.

Speaking of food, Wes hooked up the Wii Fit for me this afternoon so I could weigh myself and I’m down almost 2 whole lbs. The last time I weighed myself with it was about a week ago where I’d lost 1 lb. Maybe my shrink and Blake were right about this whole “eating protein for breakfast” thing, which I’ve been doing pretty religiously even though eating so soon after I wake up often makes me feel nauseous. That’s the only thing that’s changed this month, I haven’t been doing more or eating less, I’ve just been having breakfast pretty much every day at least 2 hours after I wake up and it’s always eggs. Luckily, eggs are one of my favourite foods, so it’s unlikely I’ll get sick of them any time soon.

The other thing that’s changed, now that I think about it, is that I’ve been going to bed and getting up earlier most days. I’ve been going to bed around 12:30am and getting up around 9 or 10am through the week, only staying up retardo late on the weekends. I don’t know if that makes a difference when it comes to weight, but I think it might be making a difference in regards to mood. I’ve been stable, with the exception of one bad day involving a stupid amount of coffee, and in a good mood pretty much non-stop for the past month & a half, which I chalk up to my shrink upping my meds. Unfortunately, in doing that I’m in a creative rut and I don’t like that, but I’m not really sure what I can do about that. I’m going to call her next week and ask. The last time this was an issue, she upped my Welbutrin to counterbalance things (after upping my gabapentin and ziprasidone, which is what she did this time too) so I’m going to remind her of that and see what she thinks.

I’ve also been very good with doing my light therapy. I tend to skip it on sunny days because I don’t see the point in doing it when the sun’s out, but I’ve been doing 30 minutes just about every day for 6 weeks now and I’m fairly certain it has a lot to do with my perpetual good mood, as much as I hate to admit it and as much as I feel stupid watching tv or reading with this glaring light in my face. But really, there’s no other explanation.

I’m feeling more and more like myself every single day, except for the creative drought I’m in. That’s not like me. Usually I have ideas practically leaking out my ears and right now I don’t have a single one. I’m still stuck on that painting that’s been on my coffee table for about 6 weeks and I’m at the point where I think I’m just going to put it in the closet and not even think about it anymore. I know more or less the execution I’m going for and until I sell a painting and have money to blow at Michael’s and Curry’s on stuff that “might” work for it, I think it’s time to stop thinking about it and move onto something else.

I’ve been kind of walking around the pile of wood that’s been sitting on my floor since last winter so I think when Blake comes home and children aren’t demanding my every waking moment, I’m going to get a piece out to play with & see what happens. I’m reading this book called Living the Creative Life, as I’ve mentioned before and some of the artists in that book talk about having to touch their materials before an idea comes to them and I’m curious to see if that’ll work for me too. I’m normally an “idea first” kind of creator and “play” isn’t really in my vocabulary unless we’re talking Sims, so it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens.

This week I’ve been besieged by cramps. My body knows it’s supposed to have a period in about 5 days and is letting me know, but what it doesn’t know is that I’ll be starting a new pack of birth control pills right away tomorrow instead of letting myself bleed and I’m curious to see what my body will have to say to that. When I was 16 I went on the pill for a year straight with no breaks for periods but it was so long ago I can’t remember what it felt like so I have no idea what to expect with this, besides potential breakthrough bleeding.

Anyway, that’s all I really have to report. Blake’ll be home tomorrow and the dogs will have to find a new place to sleep and things will be normal again.