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.

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.

I’m exhausted, I don’t even know why I’m writing this.

This morning I had to get up early so we could be in Toronto for my 11:30am post-op appointment with the endometriosis specialist who did my surgery in August. Getting up early kinda sucked because I had trouble sleeping the night before, but it was free hashbrown day at Tim Horton’s if you bought a breakfast sandwich and their bacon & egg breakfast biscuits are soooooooo good and I hadn’t had one in about 6 months. So at least the day started off okay despite the suckage of early rising.

It took us forever to get to the Dr.’s office because of construction but we finally got there and I barely even got to sit down in the waiting room before they called my name.

First, here’s the post-op report (most of which I don’t understand) and then I’ll get into what the resident told me about the surgery:

Page 3 just says that the anesthesia was reversed and I was taken to the recovery room.

So long story short on the post-op report is that things were pretty fucked up in there, in fact the resident said flat out it was the worst he’s ever seen (no idea how long he’s been a resident). There was endo on and in my bowels, colon and bladder…just, as you can read, everywhere. What was interesting though is that they cut some nerves in there somewhere without asking me beforehand if I was okay with that. I am okay with that, but I find it a little strange that this part of the surgery wasn’t explained to me in the beginning. The resident who was explaining how the surgery went mentioned it (I forget what it’s called and I’ve stopped trying to make sense of the above report) and said it like I knew what he was talking about. When I said no, Dr. Leyland didn’t explain that to me beforehand, he looked a little embarrassed and explained that they cut these nerves in there so that when the endo grows back, which it inevitably will, I shouldn’t be in as much pain and in the meantime, my periods should be less painful both with the removal of all the disease they could find and these severed nerves, but that it could take 3-6 months for the effect to kick in. (I don’t know why.)

But of course, they don’t want the disease to grow at the rate it had been over the past 8 years, so to slow the growth I’m on a birth control pill continuously for 3 months, then I’ll have a period, go back on the pill for 3 months and repeat for a year. Then they want me to come back. If the pill doesn’t lessen the pain of my periods, they’re going to try an IUD that secretes the same(ish?) kind of hormones as the birth control pill but in different amounts.

All in all, I’m optimistic. I got emotional in the car when we left because already I’ve been able to do a few things that I haven’t been able to do for a long time because I’ve always been in too much pain, like dance around my house.

On the way home, Blake asked if I minded if we stopped off at his work because he had to change some data tapes and he said it would only take 10 minutes. I asked him what was in it for me and he asked what I wanted and I decided on a cherry slush from Dairy Queen. So he went into the mall and into work (his work is the top floor of a mall) while I baked in the car and tweeted like a crazy person and came up with the most brilliant idea ever which I shared with him when he finally came out with my slush: we had enough time to spend an hour & a half at the beach before the kids got home from school.

So that’s what we did. We got home, got our pool noodles, towels and swimming attire and headed off to Wasaga Beach, which is about 10 minutes from our house and, as I’ve maybe mentioned before, is like, the longest fresh water beach in the world. I took this pic with my phone and sent it to Twitter:

We walked out into the water, which was cold, but felt soooooo good after being in the hot car all day and floated there, just talking about random stuff for about an hour and then we got cold so we decided to get out and go to the grocery store to grab some stuff for dinner. That’s one of the cool things about Wasaga Beach, you can walk into the grocery store with wet hair and a damp towel wrapped around you and no one really cares.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’m addicted right now to these shishkabobs they sell at the meat section of a certain chain of grocery stores and that’s what we intended to get but instead, we got these steaks that were marinated in the same stuff as the shishkabobs (which I think may contain crack). We said hi to Wayne, who works at the grocery store, then we got in the car and went home.

There was still about 15 minutes until the kids were going to be home from school so Blake and I HAD THE MARITAL RELATIONS IN THE DAY TIME and then the kids came home and we bragged about going to the beach. they were not pleased with us.

Then I went over & hung out with my neighbour Judy for a bit while Blake made dinner. The marinated steaks were okay, nowhere near as awesome as the shishkabobs, but still pretty good and Blake also did garlic butter potatoes on the BBQ so dinner was more or less amazing.

Thennnnnnnnn nothing happened, we just screwed around online and bugged the children and I watched Deal or No Deal with Wayne and then it was time to come back home to watch the season premiere of 90210 and now here I sit writing this post.

So as the title says, today was a pretty good day. Tomorrow I can sleep in, maybe get some painting done and watch a few movies and then it’s the weekend! Yay!

THE END.

Hello internets. How are you today? Good I hope.

I realize I haven’t been much of a textibitionist lately and that it seems like I haven’t been online a whole lot and I thought I’d write a bit about why that is and then share with you all some interesting things about this website.

My neighbours are having a tough time of things right now and to help them save money on childcare costs, I’ve been watching their 9-year-old daughter in the afternoons from the time her mom goes to work and her dad comes home from work. That means that from about 2pm until about 6:30pm there are three very loud, very bored, very ready to go back to school children in my house and I’ve found that this makes it next to impossible to stick to my usual routine of making art and internetting.

Along with five other girls, plus Blake, I’ve been busy working on that TOP SEKRIT PROJEKT I’ve not been talking about since the spring and very very soon it’s going to launch and not be so TOP SEKRIT anymore. Because of that, it’s sort of crunch time and I’ve been pretty stressed out about it.

On top of that there’s getting the kids ready for school, which starts in a week, a shrink appointment on September 4th that I need to prepare for (she’s going to ask me about immersion therapy which is totally something I don’t even want to talk about right now) and my post-op appointment with the endo specialist on September 10th in Toronto. Plus I think my in-laws are going to be visiting during the last two weeks of September as well.

Along with all of the above, I’ve been working really hard to get my last series of paintings done (“Sparkle”, “Shimmer” & “Shine) and ready to submit to the Touched By Fire people for entry into the show this year, as well as writing what basically ended up being like, an artist bio/press release to be used in media for the show, which I know I mentioned previously.

In between all of that, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my neighbours, who I’ve now dubbed “my second family” because I’ve been hanging out with them so much and we also spent a day at my mother’s boyfriend’s cottage where we swam, jumped on a water trampoline thing, watched his son do wakeboard tricks and even got to see Blake on a pair of water skis. In the last two weeks I’ve had two REALLY bad sunburns back to back, which wasn’t fun. In fact, I’m still really itchy from the burn I got the day we went to the cottage.

The scratches are where I made Blake scratch the shit out of me because I was so itchy.

Blake water skiing.

So that’s what I/we’ve been up to in a nutshell. Also, I recently discovered this extremely stupid, extremely addictive video game called Plants vs. Zombies that everyone in this house is currently obsessed with. (Thanks a lot KATIE. :oP) I’m hoping that once the kids start school and my days are free again, that I’ll be able to get the paintings that I have on the go finished and ready for sale (including “Devil Girl”) and to be able to pay more attention to expanding my horizons. This is the first year both kids are going to be at school every day (jr. & sr. kindergarten was Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Friday) and I’m not quite sure yet how I’m going to spend most of my time. Making art, definitely, but in between making art I’m not entirely sure.

There’s also the matter of moving, which has been on mine & Blake’s minds a lot over the summer. he doesn’t feel as though his current position within the company is as secure as it was before the economy went to shit and the number of departments closing is kind of scary, so he’s started positioning himself for a better job within the company. Right now he’s a…I dunno, a technology analyst (??) and the new job he’s hoping to get is something to do with databases. The issue though, is that the database stuff is all based out of Toronto, which is about an h our & a half away from us. This makes for a brutal commute, especially in the winter which hits our area pretty hard causing roads to often close and snow days galore. That means it would make more sense to move further south both so we’re not spending crazy amounts of money on gas and car maintenance and also so we aren’t forced to spend less time together as a family. The problem is, we don’t know where to move, what kind of house to move into, whether we want to live in a rural area or into a town or even what kind of life we want for ourselves and the kids when we do move. There are so many pros and cons to all of the above, that we don’t even know where to begin sorting it all out. But I’ll save that for another post because right now, in the immediate present, he doesn’t have the job, hasn’t even applied for the job (because the job doesn’t technically exist yet), so we’re staying put.

Anyway, onto analytics.

Like most people with websites, I run stats on mine using Google Analytics. Truthfully, I rarely log in anymore to check them out because my traffic hasn’t changed in years (2500-3000 unique visitors per month…why like, 0.01% of these people actually make contact or post comments is beyond me) and I don’t really care what people are reading or paying attention to because I’m going to post whatever I want anyway. I do find the referrals interesting, but again, they don’t really change much from month to month and I’ve found myself caring less and less as the years go by.

That said, tonight I logged into my analytics just out of boredom and found myself on the “Keywords” page, the page that tells me what people are putting into search engines to land on my site, and some of this stuff cracked me up so as I do every now & then, I thought I’d share and give a little commentary.

The #1 search criteria to find me is of course, my name. That’s a given. But I had 9 visits in the last 30 days from someone (or maybe a few someones) searching for “sunny crittenden + marketing magazine“. Hmmm. Yes, this month I was in Marketing magazine due to the Hypercube debacle, but I’ve also written articles for Marketing magazine in the past and I wonder what exactly this person or persons were looking for – the Hypercube article or the articles I’d written for them in the past. Curious.

Next on the list was “sucking cock“, “blowjobs” and “elf porn“. The former two likely due to my guide on doing just that, and the latter is because I referenced it ONCE in a blog post I made probably two years ago now when I was playing World of Warcraft. Also in the same vein there was “girl guides suck cock“, “what to expect after anal sex“, “are blowjobs good for the tongue muscles“, “cock loving nurses teach cock sucking galleries” (wut?), “does sucking dick actually turns your lips pink?“, “elderly man’s cock in my pussy“, “girls sucking own clit” (very flexible girls?), “how to put lube in asshole“, “suck head penis until blow up sperms“, “sucking cock whilst giving birth” (WTF?) and “why do some ladies don’t enjoy giving a man a blowjob“.

Below that was “sarah sunny crittenden“, which I also found curious. “Sarah”, as most of you know, is the name my mother gave me. So who would be searching for that? Three people, apparently. o_O

Oddly enough, further down the list were “suzi blu“, “suzi blu drama“, “suzi blu is a fake“, “suziblu.ning.com“, “+ suzi blu“, “disenchanted with suzi blu“, “suzi blu and willowing drama“,  “suzi blu doesn’t refund“, “suzi blu ning“, “suziblu insanity bitch” and “encyclopedia dramatica suzi blu“. (Sidenote: If you weren’t aware, Encyclopedia Dramatica lampooned Suzi pretty good a few months back.) It appears as though there are at least 8 people this month who are unhappy with Suzi Blu for whatever reason and their searches are landing on the few posts I made about my experiences with her this spring. To those who are here due to Suzi Blu, I’d like to redirect you to Marylin, the internet’s resident Suzi Blu expert.

Also interesting, yet not all that surprising, were Nissan Cube, Hypercube and Capital C searches, such as these: “cubecommunity.ca” (which launched last week I think and as suspected it’s a fucking joke), “tony chapman fake“, “can a dog fit in the back of a nissan cube“, “length of bed in nissan cube“, “capital c nissan“, “hypercube aftermath“, “hypercube contest fix“, “nissan cube bra“, “sunny nissan key code reader“, “sunny crittenden hypercube“, “tony chapman + cube” and “tony chapman + douchebag“.

Others I found entertaining were the following: “sunny camwhore styleproject“, “stileproject cam portal” (someone oldschool must be looking for me- here I am! *waves*), “thank you universe” (I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s thankful), “i am so over humanity“, “president’s choice decadent cookies” (the only store-bought cookies worth putting in your mouth, imo), “shaved my head” (neat! so did I! *high five*), “born without arms boy” (???), “cam girl documentary” (don’t even ask me when it’s coming out…it’s been in post for like, 4 years), “camwhore chali” (hey Chali, someone oldschool must be looking for you too!), “camwhores password“, “camwhores.com password“, “how do i save videos from camwhores.com” (good luck finding a password, my CW password is actually more secure than my online banking password and as far as saving videos…there are programs that record anything you see on your screen but I don’t remember what any of them are called. I think the Mac one might be Snapz?), “camwhores the documentary” (non-existent), “can risperidone slow down your metabolism” (YES and to add to its evil nature, it also increases your appetite), “memoirs of a web cam girl” (one day, one day…), “prevent hacking taking risperidone” (I have no idea what this means), “sunny crittenden selfish” (hahaha! well whatever, one person out there on the world wide web thinks I’m selfish, I think I can live with that), “well aren’t we just a ray of fucking sunshine canada“, “which pills will kill me” (:o(), and last but not least (and definitely my favourite), “sunny crittenden bitch“.

Long story short, since it’s damn near 6am, people search for weird crap and end up finding me. I’m honoured and I hope all of you new people stick around to see that there’s much more to me than blowjobs, webcams and that goddamn Nissan Cube.

Goodnight!

- 5 incisions (there’s usually only 2, although one time I had 4)

- They damaged my bladder during the procedure and had to fix it.

- What was supposed to be a 2 hour surgery ended up being 4 because the endo was much worse than anticipated.

- It was raining when they wheeled me out to the car, so I didn’t think anything of the wetness on my right side until we got home and realized it was watery blood literally gushing out of one of the incisions. Got it under control, rebandaged, slept for a few hours on the couch on my left side.

- Woke up to more gushing. Much more.

- Called the Toronto hospital, they transferred us to 2 different departments and then hung up on us.

- Called Telehealth Ontario instead, they said to go to the closest ER.

- Drove 25 mins to the hospital as I’m holding a giant wad of toilet paper over my incision, which was soaked through and dripping with watery blood by the time we got there. They took blood, watched me gush for a while, gave me an ultrasound and determined I wasn’t bleeding internally and rebandaged most of my incisions (which had gotten wet and were falling off) and “pressure bandaged” the gushy one. Wanted to keep me overnight but I said no, on the condition that I’d come back tomorrow to be reassessed.

- Just woke up now to take more drugs (they gave me oxycodone x 30 tabs & mega-Naproxen x 14) and my bandage is soaked through with gushy fluid, but because of the dressing I can just see it’s soaked, it’s not actually wet to the touch.

- I’m wearing 3 different hospital bands from 2 different hospitals and IN A WORLD OF FUCKING PAIN that has me waking up every 2 hours.

- Soooooooooooooo thirsty either from losing fluid, the anesthetic, the drugs or I don’t even know what but being ultra-thirsty with a damaged bladder and swollen abdomen when you can barely walk is NOT FUN.

And I think that’s pretty much it.

THANK GOD the kids are up north at my dad & step-mom’s. I’ve never been so grateful in my life.

So tomorrow’s surgery day. Since people keep asking, I’ll go over it again…briefly:

• I have “extensive” endometriosis, which has been a problem since I was about 11.
• I had my first surgery for it, called a laparoscopy, when I was 16.
• I had my last surgery for it in March of this year (they just went in to see how bad it had gotten since my last surgery in 2001).
• Tomorrow’s surgery is different than the previous 4 in that they’ll be using a laser (as opposed to cauterization) to zap the endometrial adhesions and this should enable them to obliterate more of the disease and give me a longer period of being pain-free-ish.
• Tomorrow’s surgery should give me 3-4 years of being more or less pain-free.
• There is no cure for endometriosis. After this surgery I will likely be put on the birth control pill non-stop for a year without any periods to (theoretically) starve the disease of the hormones that feed it and cause it to grow. This, however, is a pipe dream as the pill puts your body into a temporary state of pseudo-pregnancy and neither time I actually was pregnant did the disease remain dormant like it’s supposed to. Plus, I’ve done the whole pill-non-stop-thing before and it didn’t do me any good, aside from not having any periods for a year that would normally cause me pain. The truth of the matter is, the disease will likely begin growing back within one month from now but won’t cause me any pain (or little pain) for a few years.
• The most commonly asked question of me is “why don’t you just have a hysterectomy?” and the short answer is that a hysterectomy isn’t a cure. There is an 85% chance that even after full hysterectomy the disease will begin to grow again and just affect other areas in the pelvic cavity. The long answer includes that, of course, but throw in the fact that menopause is gradual for a reason and happens at the age it does for a reason and the risks outweigh the 15% chance of benefit. There are drugs, most notably Lupron, that cause pseudo-menopause and act similarly to the birth control pill, but in the opposite direction, but it is my opinion that these drugs are evil, don’t work and I do not want them in my body.

So that’s pretty much the gist. I hope I don’t have to explain it again. In fact, I don’t think I will, I’ll just let people search the damn category.

Anyway, tomorrow we have to leave the house at 5am to be in Toronto for 7am, my surgery is for 9am and will be over at 11am. Not sure how long recovery takes, but after that I get to go home. The kids are up north at my dad & step-mom’s and I’m going to be in a world of uterine pain for at least 4 or 5 days, bellybutton area pain for about 2 weeks. (Which isn’t too bad, honestly, I just won’t be doing jumping jacks during that period of time.)

I’m very curious to see what kind of drugs they’ll give me. In my experience, painkiller distribution in Canada is a lot different than in the US. A American friend of mine had her wisdom teeth out a couple of days ago and her oral surgeon gave her oxycodone (I believe). That would never happen here. They give us Tylenol 3 (30mg codeine + 300 mg acetaminophen) for pretty much everything and that’s all I’ve ever gotten for any of my surgeries. The only Canadian person I’ve ever personally known who has gotten anything stronger was my grampa Freddie when he was dying of cancer. They gave him percocet. However! Tomorrow’s doctor is a Toronto doctor and does these surgeries boom boom boom all day, every day and may be the type to prescribe something more…fun. We’ll see. (But I’ll still wager I’ll get Tylenol 3 x 30 measly tablets.)

Since I’ll be couch-ridden for the next week, I won’t be able to work on my paintings, so I wanted to give a little update on that. “Sparkle” and “Shine” are finished but I haven’t had a chance to photograph them properly yet so I can’t show you the finished product, but “Shimmer” is mid-process so I thought I’d show her off:

For whatever reason, paisley is like, my default mermaid tail pattern. Her hair is actually really awesome, I mixed champagne gold with a metallic white for the perfect colour of sun-kisses tresses, her boobies will be jeweled and once I’m able to sit at my desk again, I’ll start the process of crackling her tail to make it look scaly.

On a whim, I created this girl who doesn’t even have a background yet and who I’m just calling “Devil Girl” for now.

The pic doesn’t even come close to doing her dress and horns justice. What I did was used the glitter paint almost like a paste and then put her somewhere safe overnight to dry, out of reach of dogs, kids and dust and that was the result. She’s going to look amazing once she’s ready for a coat or 3 of ultra glossy varnish.

So that’s life right now. I hope I don’t die tomorrow. Now I’m gonna go bug my neighbours.

I should be making art instead of writing about it, but I haven’t made a post in a while and my work surface is going to be covered by dinner by the time I’m done writing this, so that’s my excuse.

I’ve decided not to do The Square Foot Show in Toronto as planned and I’ll tell you why.

1. I can’t make the deadline with what I had planned (series of 3 paintings).
2. I’m having surgery August 4th which makes making the deadline even more difficult, as well as attending the event. (They say you’re good after 4 or 5 days post-op, but I’ve had this surgery 4 other times and that has not been my experience.)
3. All of the works at the show are being sold for $200 and the gallery takes a 50% commission. The simple fact of the matter is, I don’t make $100 paintings. I’ve talked to a lot of people about the show and a lot of them were all “you’ll get so much exposure! everyone does this show!” and that’s cool & all, but I put way too much work into each painting to part with them for that much, plus the materials I use are no longer even produced and are thus extremely precious to me and from what I’ve seen as far as pictures from past events, your name isn’t even displayed with each painting, let alone your URL, so this “exposure” people keep talking about…where does it come from? From attending the artist event and networking? From winning one of the cash prizes? Blah, I’ll pass.

The show seemed like a good idea when I first heard about it and I even sent in my RSVP along with the $15 admittance fee, but the more I thought about it and started actually working on my pieces, the less appealing it became. I do plan on doing Touched By Fire again this fall, if they accept me. I have no idea what I’m going to submit though. Deadline’s September 18th, I think.

I’m still working on the paintings that were intended for The Square Foot Show though, and they’re coming along nicely. I should be able to get them finished before my surgery. They are “Sparkle”, “Shimmer” and “Shine”. “Sparkle” is a green fairy, “Shimmer” is a turquoise mermaid and “Shine” is a champagne gold angel.

These are the backgrounds for Shimmer and Sparkle:

This is the background for Shine:

This is Sparkle, so far:

This is Shine, so far (she’s actually got a dress now and textured wings and is drying under books on my coffee table):

So that’s why I haven’t really been making a whole lotta posts lately. That and the fact that I’ve kinda been trying to regroup after the whole Hypercube fiasco. To most people it just seemed like a regular contest but actually it was 4 months of hardcore social networking and strategizing and all sorts of other bullshit and as it turns out, there really is a need to decompress after something like that. I’ve spent the last month planning these paintings, working on my immersion therapy (sort of…just going to the post office, but I’ve been lazy lately), hanging out with my friends and neighbours, preparing for surgery and finishing the 2nd Orphan’s Tales book that I think I started reading in March. I’ve also been watching a lot of movies on The Movie Network and keeping really stupid hours, as I tend to do in the summer.

After these paintings are done and after I’m back on my feet after surgery, I have two more paintings to finish that were put off because of that stupid contest and one more planned after that. Artistically, I plan on being a busy girl for the next few months and as a result, I expect I’m going to be making less update than I usually do.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disappearing, just trying to focus on tangible things these days than the intangible. I need to recharge and I kinda don’t feel like blogging about the minutiae of my life for the time being. (Twitter doesn’t count!)

At the same time, there has been a regime change over at Camwhores.com – Stile’s out, Kevin’s in -  and that promises to make things interesting. If the rumours of change are true, I may just obtain a webcam again. We’ll see how things go.

But as I said, for right now, all I want to do is make art, read trashy books, watch crappy movies , play with my kids and my dogs, recover from surgery and hang out with my friends.

OH…and work on the top sekrit projekt that I’m not at liberty to discuss but launches in the fall and will probably be really awesome.

And with that, my dinner’s ready. I’ll update again as soon as these paintings are done.

I don’t really want to talk or write about today, I want to forget it.

I am having a 2 hour laser laparoscopy on August 4th where the specialist will zap all visible endometriosis which will ideally relieve me of the bulk of my pain both daily and monthly. I saw the specialist for about 3 whole minutes, then was passed off to another doctor who did a vaginal exam that hurt like fucking hell and then she’s all “I’m going to examine you rectally now”….oh joy of joys and that hurt like hell too because I have endometriosis pretty much everywhere in the pelvic cavity and in order for her to feel the adhesions, she had to be rough with me. I’ve had cramps and bleeding ever since.

The specialist actually knows the doctor who did my first 3 laparoscopies and will be requesting my files from those surgeries to see what happened with them.

After the physical exam, I was sent back into the waiting room to fill out paperwork for the surgery, so I did that, but when I went back up to the counter to give the secretary my forms and she was giving me instructions on the surgery and where the hospital is and what my doctor needs to fill out, I had probably the 2nd worse anxiety attack I’ve ever had. The room spun, my hearing was fucked and everything sounded like I was under water, I felt dizzy and lost vision, my hands went numb, my mouth went dry.

I didn’t know what to do. So I told her I was having massive anxiety and she said something like “oh don’t worry, he (the dotor) has done thousands of these” and I told her that it wasn’t that, it was that I’m agoraphobic and I’m not used to dealing with this many people in an office in downtown Toronto. She was not sympathetic, she just kept on giving me instructions and having me paperwork. I thought about asking her to just hang on while I went to sit down for a minute and take an Ativan, but she didn’t give me an opportunity to politely do that, so I just faked that I was okay and listening and nodded my head and did my best to hold it together until we got the fuck out of there.

The doctor’s office was in a big medical building with elevators, so when we left the office we were in a big hallways with the elevators and as soon as the doctor’s office door closed I pretty much collapsed beside the elevators and couldn’t move. I took an Ativan and waited for it to dissolve while we waited for the elevator to come up and when it did we got on and went straight to the car. We were half way to Barrie before I was okay again and I’m crying even thinking about it.

So that was my day.

We have to be at the hospital in Toronto on August 4th at 7am, which means leaving our house at 5am and my surgery is at 9am.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Oh, thoughts. Thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts. So many of them.

First things first, I’ve been absolutely anxiety-ridden for the past two weeks and have popped more than 3 times the Ativan I normally do. What’s stressing me out? Here’s the list (because I like making lists):

- DRAMA. Mind you it’s drama I’m barely involved in but drama in general puts my stomach in knots.

- Getting these paintings done and done perfectly. The fact is, I need money almost as badly as I need to get these ideas onto canvas because without money a lot of my immersion therapy/”Plan: Sunny needs a Life” goals and ideas are impossible. I’m not saying that art isn’t a venue for stress relief, it is, I’m just extra worried about this series of paintings because I’m SO proud of the ideas behind them that I’m totally stressed out about them being perfect, especially because in a couple of cases I’m using techniques I’ve never used before. Right now I’m working on two paintings, which are about 2/3 finished but have been slow going. They’re almost ready to be varnished though, or at least they should be by Monday if I keep up this pace. Most of the time I do “in progress” shots when I’m working on stuff, but these ones are just too special.

- This Hypercube contest will be the death of me. Over the weekend the French winners were selected (but we don’t know who they are yet) and apparently next week the English contestants are going to be judged and I’m paranoid about my site/blog being interesting enough. I don’t know if they’re just going to click on the links I had in my canvas or if they’re going to be going a little more in-depth and actually read my site, but in case they do, I want some decent content up…but at the same time, I’ve never edited my content to be anything other than what it is. This is just my life, I write about it as it unfolds and if it’s an interesting week, it’s an interesting week, if it’s not, it’s just not. And often what I think is interesting is completely boring to other people and vice-versa so I don’t even know what to do next week with the idea of these people who could radically change my life and the life of my family potentially perusing my blog.

- Madison turned 11.

- I’ve been a busy girl during the past couple of weeks and I’ve been going far beyond my comfort zone with this immersion therapy thing. Take a look:

See the 29th there? I have to have lunch in a public place with my caseworker. yes Blake’s going to be there with me and it’s a familiar restaurant, but still, it’s not something I’m comfortable with and I’m not exactly looking forward to.

- June 4th I have my appointment with the endometriosis specialist in Toronto and I’m terrified of what he’s going to say. As I’ve written before, I’m cool with laser surgery, I’m cool with being on the birth control pill for a year straight WITH THE UNDERSTANDING that if it turns me into a psychotic, suicidal bitch as birth control pills have been known to make me, I can switch pills under the care of my family doctor. I’m also cool with the whole full hysterectomy deal, but again, as I’ve said before, only if I can take that shit home with me in a jar. People laugh when I say or type this, but I am absolutely serious and I’m worried this doctor will suggest hysterectomy but say no to letting me keep my bits externally. I’m just tired of fighting doctors over my wishes and this goddamn disease. This guy’s apparently good though, so I guess we’ll see what happens.

- Mystery project that I’m half working on and I’m far from ready to talk about because I’m not even sure it’s going to happen. As of this blog post, I’m leaning towards no, but I could wake up inspired tomorrow so who knows? Trying to MAKE it happen, though, is stressing me out.

- Cammity Jane. For those just tuning in, Cammity Jane is a fictional blog project I started in 2006 and never finished, that a few months ago I had planned to bring back (which I did) and work on. Well, then the Hypercube contest happened and Cammity Jane got pushed back until after that was over and now that Hypercube is almost over, it’s time to start thinking about Cammity Jane again but the thing is, my enthusiasm for the project has waned since I first thought of bringing it back. I don’t want to bring it back only to abandon it again and I fear that I may end up doing that. So I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the last few days and I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Chances are I’m going to re-blog everything I had up the first time around, but without the promise of finishing it at this point in time. Cammity Jane is so hard for me because it’s like an iceberg. What you guys see or have seen is only the very smallest percentage of what Cammity Jane is to me. It’s not just a story of this girl with HIV to me – I mean yes, that’s what Cammity Jane is right now – but she’s only one in a series of stories, she’s the first, she sets the stage for everything else I’ve got scribbled in notebooks. Did you know that the town she goes to called Utopia is a real town in Ontario? And that I’ve mapped out and drawn my fictionalized version of it meticulously several times in notebooks similar to Tolkein’s maps of Middle Earth? (Although not quite as map-like.) Cammity Jane is a big deal to me and I worry constantly about fucking it up, or rather, fucking up the experience for the reader.

So that’s why I’ve been a little “on edge” the past couple of weeks. It’s so easy for people to think that I just sit in my house all day and screw around on the internet and live this boring life, but there’s an awful lot going on in my world at any given time. Just because I don’t have a 9-5 or do the groceries or have art shows or whatever the hell it is people with “lives” do, it doesn’t mean I don’t have stress and pressures. In fact because most of my stress and pressures are self-imposed, I’d say they’re probably worse because they’re inescapable.

Anyway, for the last two weeks, I’ve pretty much been in a constant state of wanting to throw up.

At the same time, I’m terribly excited. I may have my very own car soon, a COOL car and a FREE one! One I would have won and let’s face it, winning feels good! (Or so I’ve heard.) I’m going to have these paintings finished soon and they’re going to look amazing and I think someone out there is going to want to buy them. Despite the fact that I have to go out to get it, I get to have restaurant lunch on Friday! And as much as I’m stressed out about all things immersion therapy and I’m having too many experiences at once…I’m making progress. I’m ahead of schedule.

Tomorrow Blake’s going to help me weed the garden and then we’re going to plant several POUNDS of beautiful cosmos and bachelor’s button and sunflower seeds that are going to be the envy of everyone on the street come August. Did you know that some people take walks up this far just to see my garden when it’s at its best? I don’t have the means this year and probably not even next year either, but one day I hope to give them more to see. I want a buddha’s head out there. I want my mom’s boyfriend’s teapot birdhouses and suncatchers hanging from the tree. I want hummingbird feeders and hanging baskets. I want our new window to be fixed up properly (we need to paint and buy new shutters.) So many things.

And also? The series of paintings I’m working on right now is of 4 paintings and if I sell all 4 I should have enough money to fix up my studio/office the way I want to with money left over to mail people things, buy my kids some new clothes and do “immersion therapy stuff” like go to the fabric store or go out for lunch with or without the kids and in our town or in the next town, depending on the status of our vehicular situation.

Good stuff is happening all over the place and there’s more good stuff to come, I just have to ride this period of anxiety out. I think once the Hypercube contest is officially over, whether I win or not, a lot of it will dissipate and I should be put out of my misery in that regard by the end of the month.

Soon the kids will be out of school, which is a bittersweet thing for me. Them being out of school limits my immersion therapy options because going places WITH them is on the very high end of the spectrum of things I’m not currently able to do. That’s something I have to work up to and realistically I only have a month to work up to that and I kinda don’t foresee me getting there. So, once the kids are out of school, immersion therapy grinds to a slow crawl as I’ll only be able to do things in the middle of the night and all there is to do in the middle of the night is go to the corner store (where I don’t need anything) or check the mail. There’s a 24-hour Wal*Mart about half an hour away but I don’t think I’ll be at that level of “okayness” until the fall.

So while the kids being home kind of messes up my therapy, summer is also the time when I do most of my reading and since my birthday, books and magazines have been piling up on my dresser, most of which I’m extremely eager to get to. One of my most joyful activities in the summer is making a  large salad of local veggies, crisp romaine lettuce, crunchy cucumbers, sweet cherry tomatoes, spicy radishes, stringy celery and tiny cubes of marble cheese, maybe with a few slivers of apple thrown in the way my mom used to do it and eat while I either catch up online with shows I missed during the fall & winter (I want to watch The Tudors, re-watch V and possibly How I Met Your Mother, which I’ve never seen) or read until the wee hours of the morning.

Spring and summer are my seasons, this is the best part of the year! So maybe I should just suck it up, paint, read, play with my kids and be happy. Right?

June 4th I go to see the endometriosis specialist in Toronto who will be doing my surgery #5. His name is Dr. Leyland and he’s like, uber. Check out his RateMDs.com ratings.

With how extensive the endo is this time, I’m really worried that he’s going to say it’ll take him forever to laser all of the adhesions off and that a hysterectomy is best. I’ve thought about this a lot over the last couple of months since I got my post op report and Dr. Dickhead told me hysterectomy may be the best option and I’ve decided that the only way they’re taking my uterus is if they take my uterus, my fallopian tubes and ovaries out intact and give them to me to take home in a fucking jar.

If I have to supply the jar and the preservative stuff myself, I’m totally willing to do it. Just tell me what to get and I’ll have it all ready.

My goddamn reproductive system has been the bane of my existence since I was 11 years old, the source of chronic pain and the source of 15 years worth of art. I’ve learned to live with the pain and at this point I’m not sure I’ll know right away how to live pain-free. The idea of NOT taking painkillers (that let’s face it, I’m addicted to) every single day is a completely foreign concept. I’m afraid that without my uterus and the pain to work from, I won’t be able to create.

Thus, I want that motherfucker in a jar on my desk. To me, it’s a work of art in and of itself and I want it.

If I can’t keep it, then I’m not having a hysterectomy. He can just do as much as he can with the laser, I’ll go on birth control non-stop for a year and hope for the best. I’ve had the exact same treatment albeit with cauterization and look where it’s gotten me, this is just a temporary fix. In another 8 years I’m going to be back in the same place I am now. It’s just how the disease works. But in 8 years I’ll be 38 and if I’m anything like my mom, I’ll only be 5 or 6 years away from menopause so I could spend that time on painkillers or I could have surgery again.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on the matter.