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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PS. I am 26 days smoke-free.

It’s 3am and I’m restless & rambly.

I think it’s completely unfair that breakfast sausages have anywhere from 190 calories per 2 sausages to 270. The tastier the breakfast sausage, I’m finding, the worse it is for you. This is unfortunate as I kinda really like breakfast sausages, however earlier this week, not knowing the caloric value of them, I inadvertently ate a breakfast that was roughly 1300-1500 calories. I didn’t notice that there was nutritional information on the package until I went to throw it away, then I got out my calculator and just about cried. That night, this was my dinner (not that I’m complaining, I just would have liked something more substantial…):

On Tuesday I went to see my latest healthcare professional, Dr. D, who is an Irish-Canadian nutritionist with the world’s cutest accent to basically see if I was fat enough to get into her 10 week, comprehensive metabolic workshop. The bittersweet news is that I am, indeed, fat enough for this program, but the good news is that I’m on the lower end of the spectrum, only needing to lose about 20 lbs (but I’d be happy with 15).

The program is going to start in either June (I hope) or August and the discrepancy is a result of some of the speakers who well, speak, in the sessions, want to go on summer vacations. I can understand this, I really can, I just really hope it’s in June because I have S.A.D. and if it starts in August, I’ll be in full-depression mode by the end of it and not motivated to do a damn thing. Also, we’re planting our garden this weekend so we’re going to have fresh, organic vegetables all summer which is going to aid in achieving a healthier weight. I won’t have the same advantage in September and October.

Apparently the first thing they do in the workshop is give you a pedometer which is going to be a barrel of laughs in my case. I wake up. I go to the bathroom. I pee. I brush my teeth. I walk to the kitchen and grab a Coke Zero. I come into my office and sit at my desk. For a couple of hours. Then I go back into the kitchen and make breakfast which could be a protein shake or eggs, either way, my feet are firmly planted in the kitchen. Then I come back into my office and eat  at my desk while I watch crappy daytime TV for the time it takes to finish my meal. I go back into the kitchen and deposit my dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, depending on the state of the room. Then I come back to my chair and either do internet stuff or paint for a few more hours. I might get up to walk to the bathroom and pee. Or I might get up to go to the kitchen and get a drink (I drink a LOT). This continues literally until I go to bed at night – oh wait, sometimes I eat lunch, so those steps count – and then it repeats the next morning. This is my crazy, whacked out, OCD routine and I get very upset when it’s altered in any way. Also? My house is very very small. It’s only about 10 steps from my office to the kitchen, 15 to the bathroom, 20 to the bedroom. Yep, this pedometer is gonna be entertaining.

I wonder if it counts dancing? I actually do that a lot on my way to the kitchen or bathroom.

The other components of the metabolic workshop were kind of explained to me in a blur, but I know Blake can’t come with me (:o/) except for the two classes that are about cooking. They want the primary cook to sit in on those ones and that would be Blake. I know there is going to be a one-on-one session with a dietician at some point, but to be honest I don’t even really know what a dietician is or does. She also mentioned a session with a…fuck, I forget the title, it was like “actionarian” or something like that, but basically what she does is tells you how to move more. They don’t like to use the word “exercise” I noticed, she always said “have more movement” and things like that.

Anyway, the actionarian or whatever her title is, is going to tell me how to use my Wii Fit and I’m guessing she’ll be like, “do this game X amount of times and then switch to this game X amount of times, then do a yoga pose, blah blah blah”. I’m totally fine with doing Wii Fit, I mean, that’s why we bought it I suppose, but the obstacle I’m going to run into is that when this workshop starts, the kids are going to be home for the summer and I don’t want to do Wii Fit in front of them because the little shitheads are going to laugh at me and/or simply make me feel self-conscious. I’m going to assume this actionarian woman is going to want me to do Wii Fit every day, which I’m fine with, I mean, god knows I have nothing better to do, and I’m going to assume she’s going to want me to do at least 20 minutes up to maybe even an hour. How the hell do I get the kids to leave the house every day for an hour? And it’ll be at random times too, because I don’t really have a schedule. I go to sleep when I’m tired, I wake up when I’m not tired anymore. This is especially true in the summer for some reason.

And while I’m on the subject of movement (not exercise!), Blake and I have been talking about going to a yoga class together. Madison’s 12 now and can legally stay home and watch Wes, which gives Blake and I a little more freedom, especially in this regard because he found a yoga studio that’s just up the road, 5 minutes away, and Madison would be fine watching Wes for (I’m guessing) an hour or so while we do this. Part of me really REALLY wants to do it. In fact, it was MY idea, I was the one who brought it up, but when Blake found the studio and showed me their website and started talking like it was possible, I pretty much totally freaked out. There was crying. So what’s my deal with this? Oh my friends, I hope you’ve figured out “Sunny Logic” by now because you’re going to need it.

First and foremost, I am absolutely paralyzed with fear by the idea of FARTING. Or worse – omg I cannot even believe I’m going to type this – QUEEFING. There is not enough Ativan on the planet that would help me recover from such an event. I think I would literally have a heart attack and die if either of those scenarios happened in a room full of people. I mean, my god, how could they NOT laugh? I’d fucking laugh! (If it were anyone but me.) I’m breaking into a nervous sweat even typing this paragraph, that’s how absolutely terrified I am by the prospect of this happening. And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen because I KNOW it does. And it’s not like we’re in a hospital where “the doctors have seen it all” – I mean, it kind of is, I guess, as far as the instructor is concerned, but not the students.

Anyway, it would fucking kill me and this is problem #1 with doing yoga, like, in front of people.

Problem #2 is that I have this major issue where I’ll only do something if I’m automagically good at it. I don’t like learning. I don’t like the process of learning by sucking at something and being corrected. I want to be a prostar on the first try and I’m scared that I just won’t be any good at yoga. Do I fucking LOOK zen to you?

At the same time, I’m ridiculously flexible. When I was in the hospital, out of my mind with mania, I literally sat in a hospital bed for 3 days, cross-legged, with my head on the bed in front of me – if you can picture that. The only time I moved was when they made me take meds. I can squat on the floor with my feet flat on the ground and my bum touching my heels, which Blake finds totally bizarre and we’ve asked just about everyone who’s ever come into my house if they can do that and they can’t. My kids can’t even do it.

So what I’m saying is, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be excellent at yoga and my fear of not being good at it is completely irrational.

Problem #3 is the whole people thing. I mean, I don’t leave my house for a reason and it’s not because I’m afraid of fresh air or pigeons. I am absolutely socially retarded and just can’t deal with them. Blake says I won’t have to deal with them because everyone’s there to do their own thing, but what do I do if someone like, talks to me? Or worse, wants to be friends?

Problem #4 is money. Yoga is expensive. Blake says we can do it if we cut back on some things but right now we’re already in overdraft because of Blake’s CPAP machine and it’s not that I don’t believe him that we can financially do this if it’s important – and part of me thinks it is – it’s that I’m scared we’ll drop all this money on it and I’ll go once, freak out and never go again, wasting money we could have spent on, I dunno, FOOD. I suppose in a way, most of my fears are the fear of failure, which I know has been a problem for most of my life and I don’t know how to adapt and get over it and just do what I want to do.

So that’s the yoga issue.

The other parts of the metabolic workshop, as I said, were kind of a blur. I know that there’s going to be a lot of talk about food and its effects on metabolism and how different foods affect it differently. She said there’s going to be a lot of discussion on the importance of sleep, which I’m actually kind of already aware of because that’s a big component of bipolar disorder. They’re going to explain good fats vs. bad fats and stuff like that. I forget what else she said would be a part of the workshop, but she was so excited about it that it was infectious and I’m actually looking forward to it. See, though? I lied up there ^^^. I actually REALLY like to learn, like with my brain, I’m just not a physical person at all, I mean, I FAILED gym every year of my life. That’s another reason why I’m scared to do Wii Fit in front of the kids.

And then there’s the fact that the workshop is going to be 2 hours, every Tuesday, for most of the summer holidays, so not only is Blake going to have to use 10 vacation days (out of about 16) to take me to this thing, he’s going to have to bring the kids with him. (Although leaving Madison with Wes is an option to explore…but it makes me uneasy being 1/2 an hour away from home.)

I dunno. I’m in a weird place these days. In a lot of respects I feel like my life is sort of getting back on track but in other ways it’s completely off the rails. My creativity pool right now is very very low, which makes me depressed. I have two paintings on the go which should have been done like, 2 weeks ago and here I am barely in the first stages of shading the girls’ faces. I’m exhausted all the time and sleeping at stupid hours because in the “transitional seasons” by body goes all out of whack trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule that I can’t even begin to figure out the basis of. My dad wants us to come up for a visit, probably Father’s Day weekend and I really want to go because they just put a huge addition on their house and I want to see it, but at the same time, I hate the pain in the ass it is to go up there with the dogs and everything.

There’s more negative stuff but I don’t feel like elaborating on it because I feel like I’ve done it before. I probably do it every year.

In the positive, I am 3 weeks smoke-free. My dress from Free People that I plan on wearing to The Square Foot Show (which is an art show, for those not paying attention) came today and Blake’s going to pick it up at the post office tomorrow or Saturday. I sold a painting last week (I think? maybe the week before) and I spent most of the proceeds on awesome stuff from Etsy for Blake for Father’s Day and it should all be arriving soon. I also bought myself a ring to wear to The Square Foot Show because my wedding ring doesn’t fit due to my newfound fatness and I feel awkward being in such a public place without it. Despite the fact that I’m currently 20-ish lbs overweight, I still tend to get hit on often enough that my wedding ring (or in this case, a stand-in) to me is kind of like a shield from creepers.

I got new business cards from MOO that are pretty cool a couple of weeks ago, although I’m almost out of MOO mini cards and I’m hoping to sell a painting before the Square Foot Show so I can order some more to bring with me to hand out. Also with the proceeds of my sale, I bought 10 cans of Krylon because I want to experiment with different varnishes over the summer when I have the ability to spray outside. But just the fact that I had the ability to walk into Wal*Mart and buy 10 fucking cans of Krylon made me feel good about myself, like I was on the right track. The fact that I had the ability to spoil my husband rotten, who deserves it more than anyone I could possibly think of…shit like that just makes me feel independent and secure, somehow, which is something I don’t feel very often.

I also feel good about the fact that right now, my little Etsy business is making enough money to not only sustain itself as far as materials now, but I can buy promotional items like business cards, pay my Etsy bill at the end of every month and still have enough left over to buy myself a dress, a ring and Blake a whole bunch of crap I can’t even tell you about because he’s reading this. Not only could I buy 10 cans of Krylon, but I could buy 12 blank canvases too! The sale of a couple of paintings, for me, can be stretched and stretched and stretched and it just feels good to have my own money, to be able to buy my husband a gift with MY OWN MONEY. Maybe no one else will understand this, but in the (almost) 8 years Blake and I have been married, I haven’t given him very many gifts and the reason for this is because I think it would be stupid to buy someone a gift with their own money, especially when they can look at the credit card statement and see what it is.

So what I’m saying is that I feel good about being somewhat financially independent at the moment. Well, sort of…I have a tiny bit of padding in my PayPal account right now, enough to pay my Etsy bill for a couple of months, which actually makes me completely broke but whatever. My theory on money is that you can always make more and I *do* have two paintings on the go, one I’m fairly certain I can sell quickly and one that I’ll probably sell at The Square Foot Show. (I have to replicate “Shimmer” because it got ruined by a kid…)

I’m looking forward to the summer holidays with the kids. Madison has this friend, who I’ll call “E”, that I actually quite like and I’m hoping that she’ll be spending a significant part of her summer at our house because between her and Madison, they could do some really creative things with Madison’s sewing machine. E knows how to make her own clothes, and does, whereas Madison wishes she had those kinds of skills and the only way she’s going to learn them is from E. Also, E comes from a very…crappy background. She’s a foster kid and I think hanging out with our family and sort of being a casual part of our family may be good for her.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is the beach. I’ve lost enough weight that I fit into one of the bathing suits my friend Raya bought me a few years ago without looking gross, so it’s safe to go to the beach again and that makes me happy. When we first moved here, the first summer we were here, it was SO hot for a while there that I would have all of our beach gear packed up so that the second Blake got home from work, we could all get in the car and go to the beach for a couple of hours when it was less crowded. Often we’d get a couple of subs on the way and I’d bring a knife to cut them up and we’d have dinner on the beach. I miss that and I’m hoping for a very hot summer so we can do that again.

I’m also looking forward to reading books all night. Lots of them. I wish I had more, though. Right now I only have 1 & a 1/2 and our little library sucks. :o/

I’m hoping to sell a painting or two over the summer holidays so I can have cash on hand to do things with and for the kids. Like, I want to be able to say to them, “ya wanna make $2? go out to the garden and pull all the weeds,” which they would do because they like money and will have nothing better to do. Or, “hey do you want to have pizza for lunch? Here’s $15 and a list, ride your bike to the grocery store and pick these things up,”. Or, “here’s $5, go get an ice cream cone at McDonald’s”. Stuff like that. With my own money. I want to be able to do these extra things for my kids without being a financial burden to Blake, because they deserve it. They’re really really great kids.

Alright, it’s now almost 4:30am which means I’ve been rambling about basically nothing for the past hour & a half and I think my sleep meds are kicking in because my thoughts are getting fuzzy. SO! Goodnight!

I woke up at 6am after having a dream about having Beiber Fever. o_O I barely know who the kid is!

Today is Day 6 of no smoking and I’m starting to crawl down from the ceiling. They say it takes 3 days for the nicotine to leave your system, but 7 days for your body to stop craving it, so I’m almost there. And from there, it takes about 3 weeks to change the actual habit of smoking, for example, not thinking “oh I should have a smoke” after you finish a meal or “it’s time for a smoke” when you wake up or whatever your smoking times and triggers are.

My lungs feel infinitely better. A huge part of the reason I wanted to quit was that I was developing asthma, which I haven’t had an issue with since I was a kid and it seemed illogical to go to the doctor and ask for an rx of Ventolin instead of just quitting. Another reason was because I had some wicked nicotine stains on my index and middle fingers that would stare back at me if I were writing or painting and I was really embarrassed by that. The only cure for nicotine staining is to quit, so with much reluctance, that’s what I did.

I backslid on Thursday night and made Blake go buy me a pack. I ended up smoking one cigarette and even though I’d only been smoke-free for a day & a half, the taste and practice already seemed foreign to me and I didn’t enjoy it. About an hour later, I had another cigarette but I could only smoke half of it before I felt guilty and sick, so I put it out and as I explained to Blake, I had a decision to make right then and there.

Y’see, people aren’t born knowing how to smoke. It’s something you have to learn, you have to teach yourself. So my decision at that point on Thursday night was that I could re-teach myself to smoke and make another attempt at quitting later on, or I could continue with my progress and get rid of the rest of the pack, which is what I opted for.

Then on Saturday night I backslid again and made Blake buy me a pack, but I only had 3 or 4 drags of the first cigarette in the pack before I realized how retarded I was being. I no longer found smoking something enjoyable, so what was the point of re-teaching myself to smoke just to make myself miserable with withdrawal once that pack was gone, all over again? So I took that pack, broke all of the cigarettes and flushed them down the toilet. I haven’t really felt like smoking since, except for what I call “habit times”, such as when you first wake up or after meals (or in my case, while painting or writing – I had myself convinced that smoking made my thoughts clearer, which is of course bullshit).

If it takes 3 days for the nicotine to leave your system, then I would make it 2 days, then my body would freak out and panic and that’s when I would break down and buy cigarettes. Once I got over that 3 day hump, it seems I’ve been more or less okay.

I haven’t done anything creative since I began the quitting process because I’m trying to avoid triggers and painting is definitely one of them, but I feel confident enough in being over the physical addiction that I’ll be strong enough to overcome the psychological addiction and I plan on starting two new girls today.

So that’s where I’m at right now.

It doesn’t say it’s still processing, but the video quality leads me to believe that it is. So if the quality sucks, wait & watch it later.

So I just finished watching Food Inc., which for some reason aired on CBC Newsworld last night so I recorded it (I just find this sort of weird since I think the documentary only came out on DVD like, last week? also, if you’re in Canada, you can watch it on the CBC website here but I don’t know for how long) and while most of the contents of the movie I already knew, it really helped to give the whole thing a bigger picture and at the end of the movie it’s not “welp, we’re fucked!”, they actually give you tips on what you can do to help change things.

Two of the tips were to eat locally grown foods and to buy produce when it’s in season. So the first thing I wondered was, how in the hell am I supposed to know what’s locally grown and what’s in season? I mean, I live in Ontario, Canada, what could possibly be “in season” in the dead of February when there’s 4 feet of snow on the ground? And another thing is that, just as an example, the only grocery store in our town, the entire time I’ve lived here, has never once had locally grown strawberries in July, when they’re in season, despite the fact that we live within 3 km of several strawberry farms. Every strawberry I’ve ever seen in that store has come from California, same with blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.

Anyway, we have these really annoying commercials on TV in the summer about Ontario farming with this really horrible jingle that goes, “Good things gro-o-ow, in Ontariooo!” and as soon as the thoughts above entered my head, I thought “durrrr” and Googled “Foodland Ontario”, which is like, the government “brand” for produce in this province and lo & behold, on their website is a chart as to which produce is in season during which months. So I bookmarked that, right next to my bookmark for the grocery store flyer and this family is going to make a concerted effort to only buy produce when it’s in season. If I want a BLT in February? Well that’s just too damn bad, I have to wait until March. Since it’s all grown in-province, that’s killing two birds with one stone.

Another tip from the movie is to grow your own vegetables, which as I’ve mentioned, we’ll be doing for the first time this summer. I bought enough beans, for example, that my intention is to have 4 rows total, 1 for us to eat during the summer and 3 for freezing. That won’t do us for the whole winter, but that’s just how much land I have to work with and considering that we’re doing the garden this year for financial reasons every little bit helps.

As for meat…well, we’re still going to have to rely on the grocery store for that because the organic food store in town is just too cost prohibitive. I already don’t eat chicken, though the rest of the family does and the only time I eat ground beef is in spaghetti sauce, which I’m going to stop doing, even though the rest of the family uses it to make hamburgers out of. Our dinners are still mostly meat-based, but gradually our meat portions have been decreasing and our veggie portions have been increasing, so that’s good, and we also have at least one meatless dinner per week.

We’re not gonna save the world and we’re not exactly models of nutrition, but I know we’re doing better than most of the people we know in that we’re actually doing something. Compared to say, 5 years ago, we’ve gotten a lot better as we’ve learned to do better and we’ll continue to do better.

And that’s really all I have to say about food today.

Sometime this week I’ll start taking pics of my grow-op and make my first official Keep Off The Lawn post. Right now on the living room windowsill I have cherry tomatoes, bobcat tomatoes, green peppers and purple peppers starting in beer cups. Some of them are getting too big for their Saran Wrap hats already while others haven’t even sprouted, so tonight when I replace their hats with clear plastic cups, I’m going to reseed the ones that haven’t sprouted yet because I have a feeling they’re not going to. Also, I noticed today that my daffodils are up and there are tons of little crocuses and tulips out front that I have to take pictures of before they get decimated in 2 weeks by the sod cutter. Somehow grass has overtaken about half of the front garden so next paycheque we’ll be renting the sod cutter to get rid of it so I can plant my wildflower seeds in May.

Next week is Gogol Bordello which means that also next week I’m going to be quitting smoking…again. It’s like my dad says, you just gotta keep quitting. When you start up again, if you start up again, you just have to quit again because every time you quit, that’s at least a few months worth of smokes that you won’t be smoking. I’m hoping that this time it’ll be permanent and Blake & I have decided on some things to make it permanent, namely, we’re not going to become friends with anyone who smokes until we’re both several years in the clear as far as being nonsmokers. Since we’re not friends with Wayne & Judy anymore and since they’re moving May 1st (*happydance*) and since none of our current friends smoke, there will be no temptation for me to smoke and no opportunity. As I know I mentioned when I quit last time, Wayne & Judy would practically put cigarettes in my mouth and light them for me (Blake too) and it was impossible to say no because they just won’t take “no” for an answer and they don’t respect the fact that you’ve either quit or are trying to quit. Instead, they would sit there and every 5 minutes say, “are you suuuuuure you don’t want a smoke? The pack’s right there, just help yourself,” or Wayne would toss you a smoke and say, “here just smoke it, I know you want to” and things like that. Then if you still found the willpower to say no, Wayne would sit there and basically tell you why you’re an idiot for quitting, how it won’t make a difference and how if you die of cancer, that’s just what God has in store for you, there’s nothing you can do to prevent it so you might as well enjoy your smokes while you wait.

So with Wayne & Judy out of the picture (our other neighbour doesn’t smoke), there will be no pressure and no opportunity to smoke unless I suddenly develop the courage to walk to the store myself and go get a pack, which would never happen. The fact is, unlike other attempts to quit, I actually want to quit, it’s my decision, not a decision being made for me. And I’d love to say that it’s for health reasons and while that’s partly it (I’ve developed asthma and it would be idiotic to ask the doctor for Ventolin rather than just quitting), it’s mostly financial. As a condition of me starting to smoke again last summer, I had to start paying for them myself and in the beginning that was fine because I was only smoking 2 packs a week. Since then it’s escalated to almost a pack a day and I just don’t make that much money and more to the point, the bit of money that I do make, I don’t want to waste all of it on basically nothing, not when I’m desperately in need of canvases and I’m quickly depleting my supply of the more expensive art supplies like gel medium, Weathered Wood and acrylic glazing liquid which are each about $12-15 a bottle and therefore (to me) expensive to replace. A pack of 3 canvases is about $25, also, again to me, expensive to replenish and I just started working on my last one yesterday.

So, it’s time to quit. Hopefully for good. I’ve decided to do it the day after Gogol Bordello because Gogol Bordello has me stressed out of my mind and I’m going to be around smokers that night, plus my mom that afternoon. Before I go to bed Tuesday night, I’ll be breaking and flushing all of the cigarettes I have left and that’ll be it. I’m not worried about it being hard, it’s not like I haven’t done this before, I know the first 3 days are going to be monstrous, but after that it just gets easier and I’m going to stock up on Skittles and Starbursts beforehand so I have something to occupy my mouth throughout the first week. (Insert lame and obvious oral sex joke here.)

So that’s that.

This weekend I was ridiculously productive. On Friday I finished “Ooh La La“, as I posted about, and Saturday & Sunday I worked on what I’m calling my “silly painting” for right now…because it’s a silly idea and I don’t even know why I’m doing it…and started a 3rd which is going to use the pink tinsel glitter I posted about the other day and which is going to have a fairy on it, although that’s as far as I’ve worked it through.

Something I have to say though, is that I am absolutely in love with these little storage cups I bought from Stockade when I bought paint last month. They’re the same kind of plastic cups you get coleslaw in when you get takeout, look:

I custom mix a lot of my paint colours and all of my glitter mixes and when I do so, I often have excess paint leftover that I’ve never really found anywhere to put. I tried plastic pill bottles because god knows I have a million of them, but they’re not air tight so the paint would just eventually dry out. Prior to that, I was just letting the paint go to waste, but with these little containers, I can store the it and use it for other things. In the picture, the top container is full of black glitter mixed with water and acrylic glazing liquid, the pink ones are metallic pink that I mixed this weekend, the blue is pearlized turquoise that I used for “Ooh La La”‘s eyeshadow and the purple is purple glitter mixed with acrylic glazing liquid to make sort of a paste that I used as eyeshadow on the “silly painting” I’m working on now. It doesn’t look like it in the picture, but the two pinks are actually two different colours, one’s a lot lighter than the other. One will be used for splatters while the other one will be used for hair. I should have put a coin in the picture so you could see how big the containers are. Each one holds about 3/4 of an ounce of liquid.

Anyway, they’re awesome, although a bit expensive for what they are, and you can get them here. If anyone knows where to get these cheaper and in bigger quantities, please let me know. I’m assuming you can find them on restaurant wholesale sites but they probably have minimum orders and really all I want is these cups.

Well, Blake’s going to be home soon, my paint is now dry, so I’m going to get back to working on these paintings before dinner. I hope everyone has had a good Monday and I’m sure I’ll blabber at you some more tomorrow.

“Each day, 1,000 young people under the age of 18 become new regular, daily smokers, and almost 90 percent of all smokers began at or before their 18th birthday…”

“I know; I was one of these teenagers. And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time.”

- President Barack Obama

Read the article here.

See, a blogger is a kind of writer and lately I’ve been relying on pictures rather than my words to convey the goings on in my life and to be perfectly honest, even I find that bad form, especially when my blog here is so freaking b0rked that I can’t even format pictures properly. (I wish I knew why…I can format pictures within and around text, like a magazine, on my end, but when I go to publish, it loses all formatting. It’s been this way since the beginning, it’s extremely frustrating and I don’t know how to fix it.)

Anyway, I was going to do yet another post full of pictures from the Elmvale Maple Syrup Festival that happened on Saturday and which I attended, but fuck it, go look at the pictures yourself, I put them in a gallery for that express purpose. That’s not to say this post won’t contain some of those pictures, it’s just that it won’t contain all of them.

For some ungodly reason, I woke up at around 6am on Saturday and sat at the computer “doing stuff” (aka Twittering about being up at such an ungodly hour) until around 7 when I decided that I would go down to the Maple Syrup festival by myself and help my mom set up her booth. My family was still sleeping so going by myself was really my only option and by the look of the sky at the time, it appeared as though Mother Nature was going to unleash her hellacious fury all over our fine town so I figured my mom would appreciate the help in getting set up before that happened.

Now, let me be clear on some things here before we go any further. I have been working on my immersion therapy and re-learning how to do things that I forgot how to do in my agoraphobic state since the end of February. It may not seem like a big deal to anyone else that I was A) up at 6am, B) got showered and dressed by myself, C) made the decision to walk downtown by myself and D) actually follow through. This is progress that even my shrink would probably be surprised by. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it feels as though I’m finally waking up from a nightmare.

Well, my shower started waking people in the house up, primarily my 10-year-old daughter who was eager to get on the midway and suddenly, even though I was dressed and ready to go, I had to wait for her to get her shit together because she wanted to come with me. And she took FOREVER.

As she got ready, Mother Nature began to unleash her fury, completely negating my entire reason for wanting to go to the Maple Syrup Festival early, let alone at all. Usually this is an event I skip, but this was the first year my mom, who’s an artist by the way, had a booth in it and I knew her “new” boyfriend (of 3 years) who I haven’t met before was going to be there and it really was high time that I met this man.

So I waited and waited and waited for Madison to get her shit together and finally we both set out towards town under an umbrella as the world crashed down all around us. Now again, this is a major milestone. I went outside the house, more or less by myself, twice in the same week. I have no idea what’s gotten into me, maybe it’s just the weather, but it appears as though, once again, that I’m making progress.

But at the same time it all seems so meaningless. I’m the kind of person where if it’s not productive, it’s not worth doing, so while I see that walking down to the Maple Syrup Festival is a major milestone, I kind of don’t give a shit because so what? Did I enjoy the walk? No. Did I do anything productive on the walk like take pictures? No. Did I do anything productive once I got there? No. Did this benefit me in any way? No. Did it inconvenience me? Absolutely. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to go. I made myself go and I did so for the sake of other people. It’s difficult for me to see that as a success. (As an aside, holy fuck do I hate this keyboard.)

So anyway, we get to the Maple Syrup Festival, I find my mom’s booth and then…I stood around feeling like I was in the way while she and her boyfriend, John, wiped things off (the storm had passed by this point) and set things up. Then I sat around some more and made idle chit-chat with the two of them, took a few pictures, and absent-mindedly talked to my mom a bit about her website, which I created and should theoretically be maintaining because she can’t do it herself, except I don’t so it remains unmaintained. As this was all going on, people started to fill the streets and come by my mom’s booth and more than that, my mom’s booth was situated right in front of the community centre where the pancake breakfast was happening all day and there was a LONG LONG LONG line forming and everyone in that LONG LONG LONG line was looking into my mother’s booth and inadvertently at me.

People looking at me is something I’m not entirely comfortable with and is one of the reasons I stopped leaving the house in the first place. Now let me be clear about something here before I start sounding like a delicate flower here, I am currently undergoing immersion therapy, which means I’m supposed to be immersing myself in situations that make me uncomfortable like the situation above. At the same time, it’s not all crowds that make me uncomfortable or anxious and it’s not all people looking at me that makes my skin crawl, it’s only in places or situations where I don’t have a defined role. Sitting in my mom’s booth, I was just sitting there taking up space, whereas, at my art show in October I was “an artist”, I had a defined role, and thus the crowd and attention was more bearable.

So after sitting around for what seemed like forever, Blake and our son, Wes, showed up and we decided to go to Steelers, which was just down the street, for breakfast. This is yet another milestone: eating in public. Especially in an extremely crowded restaurant. It wasn’t so bad though, they seated us in the back which was mostly away from the rest of the patrons. So we ate, which was pretty uneventful and then we went back to my mom’s booth where I hung out again while Blake took the kids to the midway. (While I was feeling particularly brave on Saturday, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was dealing with screaming kids and the midway.)

My mom needed a pee break so we walked around some of the booths near the porta-potties while she smoked a cigarette which was such a strange experience. I turned 30 on March 1st and had made a pact with myself when I started smoking at 16 that I couldn’t smoke again after I was 30 and thus, I’ve successfully quit and unless something extremely disasterous happens, I shall remain smoke-free for the rest of my life. Part of quitting smoking though, was secluding myself from it completely and my mom having a cigarette on Saturday was the first smoke I’d come into contact with in almost 2 months. It’s funny how your senses work, I mean I didn’t expect it to bother me at all, but it was the worst smelling thing ever and the smoke kept blowing towards me and I could feel myself breathing it and it REALLY bothered me. In that moment I couldn’t believe that I’d done this idiotic thing myself for almost half my life. How did I not notice how vile it really was? How is that possible? And this was outside! I think if I was in a confined space with a smoker at this point, I probably wouldn’t be able to handle the stench or the tightening in my lungs I felt as I was inhaling the smoke second-hand. And to think, people PAY CRAZY AMOUNTS OF MONEY for this priviledge that’s disgusting, makes their teeth look gross AND is killing them. Wtf, are we all retarded?

Anyway, during our little walk, my mom bought me cotton candy and I waited for her to pee and then we went back to her booth where I sat around some more and made awkward small talk with John until Blake and Wes came back and informed me that the midway did, indeed, have Tiny Tom donuts which I absolutely live for.

For the uninitiated, Tiny Tom donuts are these itty bitty donuts that they make fresh right in the booth, which they then put in a paper bag and cover in flavoured sugar. I always go for the cinnamon, personally.

Soooooooooooo Blake and I went to the midway, leaving the kids at my mom’s booth, on a mission for Tiny Tom’s donuts for both myself, the kids and my mom and surprisingly I did okay even though the midway was a zoo. Then we brought the donuts back, cutting through several people’s yards as to avoid the crowd down the street to the arena where the midway was located, we ate, then I bought some maple syrup ($23 for a litre!) and then I decided to go home while Blake & the kids went to the midway again.

Yes, I walked home. All by myself. And when I got home, I slept.

When I woke up it was about 4pm and Blake & the kids were back. I screwed around on the internet for a bit and then asked Blake what he thought about a trip to Barrie for Starbucks since, y’know, we hadn’t spent enough money that day. So we all hopped in the car and off to Barrie we went.

Along the way I saw all kinds of things I’d love to photograph and show the world and I thought about winning the Cube and all the things I could do if I actually did win. Everything I saw reminded me of the Cube and the freedom that funny looking little car embodies to me.

Finally we got to Starbucks, I got my “vanilla milkshake thing with whipped cream” and Blake got…some kind of coffee concoction and off we went in search of the Nissan dealership just to see where it was, and if they were open, get a couple of Cube booklets. If you’re on Blake’s Twitter, you will have seen the picture of him humping the door, while I – uncharacteristically – took the classier route and took the picture I posted last night.

On our way out of Barrie, we (well…I) decided to stop by Shopper’s Drug Mart (which is a lot like the CVS chain y’all have in the US) where I bought myself some new makeup, new sunglasses (blue! w00t!) and a bunch of other crap. I figured if I was going to do this whole “leaving the house” thing more often, then I should probably make an effort in the makeup department every now and then and most of what I had  at home is really old and the newer stuff I bought a couple of years ago was STOLEN by an ex-friend.

After Shopper’s it was getting pretty late, so we got Blake & the kids pizza and headed home. Then the kids went to bed and I don’t really remember what we did for the rest of the night. We probably dicked around on the internet and begged for votes for the Hypercube contest.

When it was time to go to bed though, I got pretty sad. Overall I had a good day, even though it was a busy, chaotic day completely outside of my routine, but the thing is, along with all of the other things I’m having to re-learn after being secluded and on a non-schedule for so long, I have to learn how to be happy. I’ve said it a million times before but when I was the happiest I’d ever been in my whole entire life, it turned out I was manic, psychotic and had to be hospitalized. So I get suspicious of happy feelings, happy feelings scare me.

But Blake reassured me that it was just a good day, that I wasn’t manic or even close to it and that it was okay to just be happy. So that’s what I did. And then I fell asleep.

So I’m dicking around on the internet.

I’m dying for a smoke. I know it’s just the “nicotine monster” screaming to be fed and that eventually that little bastard is going to die, but right now it really sucks. :o/ It’s going to take all the willpower I have not to go over to the neighbours’ tomorrow to hang out and bum a few smokes, but I’m reserved to not doing it. If I can make it 3 days without doing that, then I think I’m golden. After a few false starts, tomorrow is day 1.

I went to bed tonight at 10pm, after Heroes, because I was literally falling asleep in my chair. Then I woke up around 1:30am and haven’t been able to get back to sleep due to what my shrink calls “racing thoughts”. I’ve taken an extra clonazepam and an Ativan and if those don’t kick in soon, I’m pulling out the big guns and taking Zyprexa because the more I sleep, the less I want to smoke and if I can sleep through the next 3 days of withdrawal, that’d be great.

I also can’t sleep because I’m excited. Today the mail lady came while I was sleeping and left a package slip on the door. If it is what I think it is, it means I have a new toy to play with and that makes me happy. I have it on good authority that a new camera is coming my way and that makes me beyond giddy and all I can’t stop thinking about all of the things I want to do with it. Images flashing through my mind, my brain figuring out logistics.

When Madison was 3 and 4, I took a lot of really great pictures of her using a piece of crap 1.3 mpx Sony Cybershot that ultimately got used to death and it’s always bummed me out that I never got to do the same with Wes because right now all we have is this PIECE OF SHIT FROM HELL Canon Digital Rebel (yeah I know, it’s supposed to be good, whatever, I hate it, it’s 100 x more camera than I know how to use).

(Click here if you haven’t seen the rest.)

But now that a certain friend from the intarwebs who probably wants to remain nameless has gifted me this new version of the Sony Cybershot for Xmas, I’ll be able to and that makes me sooooooooo happy.

There’s this trail with a creek running along it near my house and I’m excited for spring so I can take Wes back there and take good pictures of him like I did with Madison. I was laying in bed like, planning the shots, as well as the logistics. Like, do I need Blake’s help? (Maybe.) Should I do some with the dogs? (Maybe.) But what I’m thinking is that one day in the spring when Madison’s at school, we’ll both douse ourselves with bug spray, pack a picnic and just go on an adventure back there with the camera and see what happens.

I wish I could explain what it looks like back there. There’s a creek, of course, but along the side of the creek there’s a path that’s lined with these purple flowers in the spring. Over the creek is a canopy of trees that make these amazing shadows and reflections on the water and the shots of Wes in my head are all golden.

I CAN’T WAIT!

Here’s another pic I took with my old Cybershot, which I still have and refuse to throw out even though it doesn’t work anymore:

And another:

I don’t know what it is about that brand of camera, but I just love it, it’s like this amazing tool to me, and I’m so excited about my new one maybe being here tomorrow that I just can’t sleep.

I’m also hoping it’ll take better pictures of my paintings than our PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT FROM HELL Rebel. Have I mentioned that I hate that fucking thing? Because I do. Immensely.

Of course, the package that Blake’s going to pick up tomorrow may not even be the camera at all (truthfully, it probably isn’t) and I’m getting excited for no reason, but still, my creative juices are flowing and my head is flooded with images that I wish I could turn into reality right this second. I thought about sketching them, but I figured they were probably best left in my head for now.

Well the drugs are kicking in, I’m going to go make another attempt at sleeping and dream up more shots.

(X-Posted to Live Journal, although the Technorati links are different. Favourite them both!)

It’s the bane of my fucking existence, smoking.

On Sunday night, I promised Blake, my husband, that I was quitting and that the pack I had in my possession was my last pack ever. But then Monday was a snow day, so my kids were playing with the neighbour’s kids and I had to go over there twice to deal with them and they’re heavy, pushy smokers, so I smoked the two they offered. Still, I thought I was doing good, I went from half a pack a day to two on my first day of “quitting”, even if they were those nasty full-bodied smokes from the local reservation that probably have 10 times the carcinogens of regular cigarettes and at least twice the nicotine of my usual brand.

Then on Tuesday, I inexplicably went next door again, with the intent of bumming “just one”, which ended up being “just one” that I smoked with the neighbours and one to take home and smoke later. This one I took home to smoke later ended up sort of being two as I smoked half of it and then smoked the other half an hour later.

Then today, Wednesday, it was a similar scenario, but there’s a bit of a backstory before I get into why I bought a pack tonight.

See, my neighbour, Wayne, ran into some trouble with the law a week ago. Without spilling the details of their personal lives, he got busted for a DUI and lost his licence for 90 days. He works nights, leaving for work around 1:30am, and Judy, his girlfriend (common-law wife, whatever), has to get up with him and drive him to work. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, but they have an 8-year-old daughter who they have to wake up in the middle of the night to take with them. So, being neighbourly as I am, I offered to come over and stay with their daughter so she could keep sleeping since I’m always up at retarded o’clock anyway. I made this offer on Monday.

For some reason, they don’t seem to want to take me up on my offer, even though every day this week they said they would. So every night around 1:30, I put my cell phone in my hand and wait at the window to see when they’ll turn their upstairs hallway light off because that should, theoretically, be the signal that they’re ready to leave and that they’ll call…and that I can bum “just one” smoke from them.

But, for the past 3 nights, they’ve just left. No call.

I don’t really care that they’re not taking me up on my offer (again, even though they said they would), but the thing is, from noon until 1:30am, I’m going through mental torture and nicotine withdrawl. I’m not just seeing this as a neighbourly thing to do, I’m looking at it as an opportunity to smoke, which, the more I think about it, isn’t really “quitting” at all. In fact, it’s pretty goddamn pathetic.

So today when I was over there, they said they’d give me a call tonoight to come over and stay at their house while Judy drove Wayne to work and all day I was literally counting down the hours until it would be time for that to happen. But when I saw them from my living room window back out of the driveway, I had a moment of both weakness and stupidity and the next thing I knew, I was brushing the snow off the car and driving to the store, where I bought a small pack of cigarettes.

The whole way home I felt like shit, but it’s not like I could take them back. I felt like shit because at that moment I’d broken a promise to my husband, something I’ve never done before and there was nothing i could do to take it back. Truthfully, when I was in the car on the way home, before the pack of cigarettes were even opened, i was in tears and at that moment, I didn’t even want them anymore. I contemplated throwing them out the window and pretending like it never even happened, but I thought Blake would be even more mad at me if I wasted the $6.66 that way instead of smoking them.

I’ve written him a letter, while outside smoking, promising that this is the last pack, even though he has no reason to believe me because I made a promise three days ago that I ultimately broke tonight by buying this pack in the first place.

I don’t know why I’m having such trouble quitting this time around.

My first attempt at quitting was January 1st of this year and my method was the patch. This went well and I did the 10-week program and was fine until some stressful situation happened in April and I began smoking again for that month. Then I read “The Easy Way To Stop Smoking” by Allen Carr and was blown away by the book. I quit immediately and stayed quit until a month ago when Blake and I had a huge fight, and my mental health became questionable.

I tried reading “Easy Way” again, except it obviously hasn’t been as effective the second time around. Maybe because I already knew all of the information contained in the book, I dunno. I also tried reading his second book for relapsers called “The ONLY Way To Stop Smoking”, but I got to the chapter about how our designer didn’t want us to smoke and the dude totally lost me. I threw the book in the garbage and just continued reading “Easy Way”.

I know that the key to my success is to make it three full days and nights without any nicotine in my system and after that, I’m laughing, but thus far I haven’t been able to achieve that.

Since it’s obvious that, for whatever reason, Wayne & Judy don’t require my babysitting services, I’m mentally withdrawing the offer and will now be avoiding them like the plague, at least until I have this under control. Right now they are my weakness, my obstacle…which is only half true, I guess *I* am my biggest weakness by going over there to bum cigarettes to begin with, but my point is that if I’m going to quit smoking, period, I’m going to have to stay away from them and stop finding excuses to go over there, knowing full well that they’re going to offer me cigarettes and knowing full well I won’t be able to turn them down.

In “Easy Way”, Allen Carr talks about nicotine addiction as having a little monster inside you that you have to feed approximately every 45 minutes and that when you’re quitting, the nicotine cravings are that little monster dying. It takes three days, give or take, for “the monster” to die completely and for all of the nicotine to be out of your system. This is why I think that if I can go three days without any nicotine in my body, I’ll be good to go. The thing is with this week, and why I ultimately failed, is that I had all of these false starts, I didn’t allow the nicotine monster to die, I fed it, albeit very little, and that just created even bigger cravings, it caused the monster to be a big one instead of a little one and it made it scream for more instead of whimper.

I know I can get a hold of myself. I know I can do this. I just had a moment of weakness tonight and it didn’t help that I wasn’t in the right headspace to begin with. I was “quitting” instead of QUITTING. I was making exceptions, like, it’s okay to have “just one” smoke with the neighbours, it’s okay to take one for later, it’s okay if I’m not buying them etc etc etc. The thing is, that just doesn’t work, that leads to a situation like tonight.

So, I’m going to smoke this pack of cigarettes I bought tonight, but I’m going to do it purposefully and carefully at the same time because this is the LAST PACK EVER. This is the last my body will ever know of nicotine no matter how bored or stressed out I get. Like I said, I’m going to avoid my neighbours like the plague, my offer of babysitting, since they’ve kinda fucked me over in that respect for three days in a row and have made it obvious they don’t want my help, is now null and void. It also helps that it’s getting very cold and snowy outside and thus, smoking outside or walking next door is getting harder and becoming more of a pain in the ass.

Now, in all of this, I’m not dissing “Easy Way”, in fact, I still endorse it wholeheartedly, quitting with it the first time was as pleasurable and effective as advertised, but what I’ve had to learn the hard way is that Allen Carr is DEAD SERIOUS when he says at the end that you can never have another cigarette as long as you live. It’s not so easy to quit the second time, although I haven’t quite figured out why as his advice and allegories are spot on. Smoking IS stupid, it’s like banging your head against a wall because stopping feels so good. You only get pleasure from smoking a cigarette because it removes the anxiety of withdrawal you feel from the previous one. I GET ALL THAT. But applying it the second time around is harder, I wish I knew why.

I think my plan for the next three days is to just throw myself into art and try to keep myself busy. Wish me luck.

This week I finished a new piece, trying to use art as therapy for quitting smoking (again).

This one’s called “Death to Smoking” and is going to hang on my studio wall to remind me of how idiotic and dangerous smoking really is so hopefully I’ll think twice about doing it again.

As far as actually quitting smoking (again)…it’s been up and down. I can seem to go 3 days without smoking and be mostly okay, but it’s that third day that kills me. I think if I can get over that hump, I’ll be fine, but so far I haven’t been able to. :o/ I read Allen Carr’s book again and I know how stupid I’m being and yesterday when we were at Wal*Mart I saw two women smoking and realized just how trashy people look when they’re doing it, so I’m aware of all this, it’s just beating the nicotine-craving monster inside me I’m having a hard time dealing with.

I know I’ll get there, I did it before, things just kinda suck right now. I know I just have to keep at it and keep BUSY, and hopefully the next few days will be distracting enough to help me get through 3 days without breaking down.

Thursday is the Touched By Fire art show and Saturday is Steph the Geek’s wedding, so hopefully those will be good distractions rather than stressful events that’ll have me wanting to smoke more. *fingers crossed*

And with that, I’m off to bed so I can start tomorrow nicotne-free.