Remember in my last post when I said I’d been having pains in my stomach for the past few days? Well it persisted all throughout yesterday evening and since the doctor told me I should go to the hospital if it did and Blake would be in Toronto all day today, we decided it would be a good idea to have me checked out. It would be a very bad thing if I had pancreatitis again and I was at home all alone.

So at about 8:30pm or so, I packed up the iPad, my chargers, my toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, my journal and a couple of pens just in case they admitted me and off we went to Midland, which is about 20 minutes North of us and is the same hospital I went to in June and again when I had pneumonia this fall.

We got there and did intake and everything was okay. We waited about half an hour in the waiting room and then they called us into the back of the ER where I saw a doctor who asked me how I was feeling, why I was there; we told him the whole pancreatitis story and that we were there to make sure it was NOT that again because the pain was in the same place and was the same kind of pain that started the whole thing last time. He asked me if I wanted anything for the pain and I said no because I’d already taken hydromorph before I came and I didn’t want a needle (I’ve seen this doctor before and he likes to give out the morphine like it was candy). He asked if I was nauseous and I was, so they gave me Zofran which knocked me on my ass and I fought off falling asleep (they had me laying on a table on my back and the room was dim).

They wanted to check my pancreatic levels (because I guess if you have pancreatitis your pancreas juice levels go up, so you don’t have to do an ultrasound right away)  so this really bitchy nurse used the biggest needle at her disposal to take my blood as roughly as possible. Then they said it would take about an hour to get the results so I fell asleep and Blake e-mailed my mom.

I woke up at about 1am because a new doctor came in and he told us that my pancreatic levels were fine and so was everything else. He said he didn’t know what the pain could be, that it was possible it was gall stones, but there’s not a whole lot they can do about those so take some drugs and bear it the best you can and if it’s too much, come back for stronger drugs. And truthfully, the pain is manageable with the hydromorph contin, Tylenol 1 and ibuprofen, but we were concerned it was pancreatitis again, so that’s why we went. I’m not fucking around with that shit ever again, if I’m in pain, I’m seeing a doctor.

So we were out of there by about 1:30am, we went to Tim Hortons so Blake could get a coffee and a muffin because he was tired and neither of us had had dinner. I got a ginger molasses cookie and a Pepsi. I hadn’t had a Pepsi in YEARS and the first sip transported me back to riding in the carpet van with my grampa, on our way to Alliston because I was skipping school to spend the day with him at the store. He had a mini fridge in his van that plugged into the cigarette lighter and it was full of Pepsi.

Anyway, that’s what happened at the hospital. As is the way of things, I’m not in any pain today and I feel totally fine. I think the Zofran they gave me settled whatever was going on in my stomach and now I’m totally okay. Or maybe it was a gall stone and it’s passed now. I have no idea, I just know I feel as normal as normal can be. *shrug*

This morning I ate waffles while reading some of Daisy Yellow’s older posts and I found this one on art journaling very helpful so I thought I’d share. Art journaling, as I’ve mentioned before, is something I’m really really bad at. I just can ‘ot do it.

For most of my life, I’ve written hypergraphically. That means that you write compulsively. Ever since I’ve been taking psychiatric medications, I don’t really write hypergraphically any more, not like I did anyway. I still blather on on the internet of course, but I don’t compulsively write in my journal for 6 hours straight like I used to. BUT, I read these art journaling blogs, like Daisy Yellow’s (I don’t know her name) and Jazmin’s, and I get jealous because when they die, they’re going to leave behind all these gorgeously decorated journals for their family members to read and keep for generations and here mine are, all text in my crappy printing. I mean, there are a lot of them, and I think most of them are pretty interesting (and so do other people, I once sold a journal for $200 which I think was a bargain on his part) but they’re not really aesthetically pleasing. The journals themselves are nice, I don’t cheap out on those unless I have to and most of them were gifts (my favourites are by PAPERBLANKS, in case anyone ever wanted to get me one and mail it, they’re simply the best and you can get them at Chapters or any big box book store *cough*), but inside is just text text text, usually in black pen, although the one I’m using right now has pink flowers on it so I only write in it with pink pen. I have a matching blue one that I haven’t used yet and I’ll only use blue pen in that one. In fact I bought coloured pens specifically to write in these journals because that’s how obsessive I am about them.

That said, I’d really like to have beautifully crafted journals like my online art friends’ but I just don’t really know how and when I’ve tried, it’s just looked stupid. Like, it could take me all day to paint/collage/whatever a spread, which is two facing pages, but what I want to write may be TEN pages, so that just doesn’t work for me. Or by the time I’m finished the spread, I don’t feel the way I did when I started it. For example, one day I tried making an art journal spread because I’d sold a painting and in that moment, I felt successful. So I started making this spread about that but I didn’t get finished until a day later and by then, I didn’t feel that way any more and because I didn’t feel that way any more, I didn’t know what to write that would be authentic. I probably should have written what I wanted to and art journaled around it or something, but that’s not the way most people do it so that thought never occurred to me until just this moment.

It frustrates me greatly. :o/

Less Herger of Comfortable Shoes Studio, retweeted today a tweet from Derwent, which is the company who makes the watercolour pencils and the Inktense pencils I use and this is what it said:

@derwentpencils Don’t let your work become precious. Be bold, experiment, make lots of mistakes. It’s the only way to learn, and it’s fun!

(Actually, the way the tweet was worded, I think it was said to Derwent by a woman named Kathe Parker in response to them asking “what would be your best advice to someone starting out in drawing & painting?”.)

This advice is something I have a lot of trouble with and this is part of the reason why I need to go to Squam so desperately.

I’m poor. I’ve been poor my whole life. When I was little, I was NEVER EVER allowed in my mom’s art room and I was NEVER EVER allowed to touch her materials because we were poor and art supplies are expensive. Too expensive for a kid to use and fuck up with. I was given Crayolas and a pad of paper. I wanted paint but it was too messy and too expensive. I wanted to paint on wood, but it was too expensive and selling her creations was how my mom paid for Christmas and anything “extra”. I wanted to sew, but my mom didn’t have the time to teach me how. Etc etc etc. (I am not *blaming* my mother for anything here, just stating facts.)

So when I grew up and had my own house and my own “art room” and my own art supplies,  everything because “precious” because if I fucked up, I couldn’t afford to replace the materials I fucked up with. I couldn’t just throw supplies in the garbage like that. I still can’t. We have no money. When I sell a painting, at LEAST 75% goes back into buying more supplies because that’s the only way I can afford to have these things and art supplies (and Lush) are really the only things I buy myself. (Of course I bought more stuff when I had a job, I’m talking about when I don’t.) My supplies ARE “precious”. I really really wish they weren’t but they are. I don’t know how these people can pay $20+ for a 4oz bottle of Golden Fluid Acrylic paint because it’s “the best” and then just trash what they’ve made if it’s not what they were trying to do. I just cannot wrap my head around that. I buy Americana paint for $2.99 or, if I’m splurging, $4.99 for Martha Stewart, and I *still* can’t wrap my head around just trashing something if I screw up. Imperfect things really really bother me and so does waste. When I put too much paint on my palette, I use a paintbrush and scoop it all back into the bottle when I’m done, even if it’s black or white, which I buy in big bottles because I use them the most and they’re inexpensive. I just can’t waste the paint. If I were using Golden, I’m not sure I could bring myself to even squeeze any onto my palette at all, I think I’d have to like, squirt tiny amounts onto my brush or something.

Another blog I was reading that was linked on the Squam website talked about things not being “precious” too so I think this may be a concept that someone has written about in a book or something (considering most of the teachers at Squam are published authors) because it seems to be a theme within the mixed media community. I see it popping up all over the place now and I think it’s something I really need to learn. I *do* use inexpensive paint. It really *isn’t* a big deal if I mess up and have to throw away a piece of artwork. As much as it would pain me, a canvas is really only about $6 and if I fuck it up too badly, I can always paint over it, all I need to do is invest in some good gesso.

I need to start making art that isn’t so “safe”. I need to also start making art that’s just for me, like in an art journal. Don’t get me wrong, I *LOVE* my girls. I love making them, I love how beautiful they are, I almost always love the finished product and I don’t intend to stop making them, but I think I need to make other art that’s more accessible too. Or something. I’m not really sure what I need to do, honestly, which is why I’m hoping Squam will crack me wide open. I need to not be so obsessive with everything being perfect on the first try so I don’t waste anything. Like time. I need to not be so obsessive about wasting time as well. Oh god, I have so much to learn! Anyone who thinks art isn’t work can shove their opinion straight up their own ass.  Sideways.

I’m probably channeling my inner Madison by saying this, but god dammit, art is agony! I love it, I hate it, I’m frustrated by it, it makes me cry, it makes me happy, it makes me a motherfucking MESS. Maybe it’s because I’m mentally ill that it makes me so emotional but I don’t understand these artists who are just happy and make happy art and nice little YouTube videos to entertain each other and to learn from each other and here I am, sitting in a dark corner clutching my sketchbook for dear life, unable to move. I want to be like them, I just don’t know how. I’m afraid it’s just not even in my DNA.

I have no idea what my mother’s creative process is. I’ve never really actually watched her paint (except when she was teaching classes) and I’m not there on a day-to-day basis to see like, how she is mentally but in general I think she’s a happy creator in that, I’ve seen her come up with an idea and get really excited about it and have to do it immediately. I’m like that too, when I have what I think is a good idea, I have to get it down on paper right away, even if I only have enough time to do a rough sketch. Then the next day I’ll begin working on the actual piece and obsess until it’s finished. And I do it perfectly the first time almost always. I can honestly say that I’ve only wasted a half sheet of watercolour paper twice in my life (I draw/paint my girls on watercolour paper and adhere them to the canvas with gel medium) because I just do everything in my power not to fuck up because watercolour paper is expensive. I mean, in my first grant proposal, I told them that my dream was to be able to afford 5 different watercolour pads so I could work on 5 paintings at a time. That’s pretty pathetic (no wonder I didn’t get the grant), don’t you think? I currently have 2 watercolour pads and since I draw my girls on half sheets now, I can work on 4 of them at a time, theoretically (I’m not that productive).

My friend Shoshanna Bauer does these really amazing watercolours, you should check her out, I think she’s extremely good at what she does. I would really like to play with watercolours, I like how they look, but I have no idea what I would paint or how you do it. No one’s ever taught me. I’ve looked at a lot of watercolours over the last couple of years trying to dissect them, and I’ve come to the conclusion that watercolours are REALLY fucking hard! Without even trying them, I just know that they’re really fucking hard and to make anything even remotely nice, I’m going to have to waste like, a whole pad of watercolour paper trying to figure them out and that’s expensive! Or at least that’s expensive to ME! And I don’t even HAVE watercolours. I have watercolour pencils, a very small selection of them that someone gave me a long time ago, and I have Inktense pencils, a large case of them, which work very similarly to watercolours (although I don’t think you can do the “salt trick” with Inktense pencils) but I have absolutely no idea how to use them.

I’ve always avoided watercolours because of their impermanence. If you’ve been reading my blog for any great amount of time, you’ll know that I’m obsessed with my art’s longevity. I want my shit to survive WWIII, plain & simple. I varnish the hell out of everything. I use materials that won’t fade, won’t run, won’t smear, are acid-free, archival and will do as they’re told. If you spill a Coke on a watercolour painting, it’s ruined. If you somehow spilled a Coke on one of my paintings, it would roll right off and you could gently wipe it down with a damp cloth. The idea of my hard work being able to basically be erased in a matter of seconds irrationally freaks me out! I’ve varnished watercolour before, but you have to be really really careful with it and you can only use a spray. Anyway, that’s why I plan on taking my watercolours to Squam. Maybe someone there can show me how to use them.

Having said that, I think it’s time for me to talk some more about Squam, as if you haven’t heard enough…I’ve finally sat down and made a list of expenses relating to the trip and if you could spare anything between now and September, it would be GREATLY appreciated. Like maybe for my birthday, which is March 1st? Or if buying a gift is more your style, I would really like this book by one of the teachers I’ll be in class with at Squam, called Painted Pages: Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media (by Sarah Ahearn Bellemare), which is on my wishlist. That would be appreciated also.

Here’s what I’ll need (okay maybe one or two is more of a want…):

• Tuition: $1200
• Gas: $200
• An apron: $12
• Fairy wings: $20…
• A Rubbermaid container for all my crap: $10
• Gesso: $10
• Gel medium: $10
• Umbrella: $12
• Flashlight with extra batteries: $15?
• Bug spray: $10
• Paint: $25
• Kit fees: $12
• Eating out on the Saturday night they make us fend for ourselves: $20
• Two cases of Diet Coke & snacks: $25
• Art fair: $75 (tops)
  = $1656

I spoke to my mother yesterday morning and we filled out our registration forms together to make sure we’d be in the same cabin. We’re not taking the same classes, but I think that’s a good thing because that way we can teach each other the things we’ve learned. Last night I put down my deposit and today Blake’ll mail the registration form. Keep your fingers crossed that I get the classes I want! A lot of the spring ones are already full! (But we’re going in September.)

My first choice classes were (was?) Spirit Session on the Thursday, Pages & Paint on the Friday and Vinyasa yoga on the Saturday morning.

Spirit Session is a photography class where the teacher shows you how to use the settings on your camera. I know most of the settings on my little camera, at least enough to get by, but I have no idea how to use our Digital Rebel SLR (I don’t even understand what SLR *is* – Blake’s tried explaining it to me a few times and I just don’t get it). The Rebel is first gen so it doesn’t do video, which sucks, and technically it’s Blake’s camera. I’d really like to get a newer one of my own one day because I have a hard time using someone else’s something, know what I mean? Like I’m afraid of messing up settings or something. But at least I’ll be learning how to use it for whenever I get my own and hey, maybe I’ll find out that my little camera is enough camera for me. Who knows.

Pages & Paint is a mixed media class where I think we create two pieces. The teacher, Sarah Ahearn Bellemare, wrote a book that came out this spring, called Painted Pages: Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media that I’ve added to my wishlist and that I’d really like to get for my birthday. Blake won’t get it for me, because he already got me a Smash Book (more on that in a future post) and Smash Book accessories, but maybe my mom or someone else might get it for me. Because I’m in Squam-mode, this book is all I can think about and I read every page of the preview on Amazon and it actually looks like a pretty decent book. So many of these types of books are just basically excuses for the artist to show her work and they don’t really teach you anything. This one teaches you something, it teaches you mixed media techniques and gives you uses for mixed media elements. Like, for example washi tape. Pretend I have no idea what to do with washi tape. This book would tell me what to do with washi tape. The book just looks good and I want it, dammit.

Vinyasa yoga is vinyasa yoga. Vinyasa is really just continuous movement. Because both yoga classes take place on Saturday morning with the same teacher, I’m guessing that if the majority chooses Vinyasa, we do Vinyasa, but if the majority of people choose “Gentle yoga” then we’ll be doing “Gentle yoga”. My mom and I don’t really care either way. I put Vinyasa down for my first choice but Gentle down for my second and third.

Belinda and her boyfriend, Brian, are coming too but I’m not sure what they’re picking for classes. I know Bel wants to take Tell It, which is a writing class but I’m not sure if she actually picked it or not. When I talked to her last night, she was still just deciding whether or not to go so I have no idea what classes she ended up choosing.

I’m not totally sure what my mom picked either but I think she said her first choices were Story Scarves and Raw Matters. Story Scarves is exactly what it sounds like, you make a scarf with your story on it, whatever that may be, not like, Little Red Riding Hood. Raw Matters is a writing course.

I’m kinda getting nervous though, because as I was getting the links to make this post and as my registration envelope is sitting on Blake’s desk, ready to go out, one of the fall classes is already closed! It’s not one of the ones I wanted to take, but I’m pretty sure it was one of my mom’s choices (Gypsy Heirloom). Eeeeep! That one though, is actually off-campus at an artist’s jewelry studio, so it probably had a very small number of spaces to fill. Still, I know my mom picked that one either for a first or second choice. :o/

Before I decided Squam was a possibility, I felt out the atmosphere around Sunnyland to see where the financials may come from and a number of you said that you’d be willing to donate to the cause. I’ve decided to do a ChipIn to collect donations/birthday gifts but I haven’t set it up yet because I’m not 100% sure of how much I’ll need. I know I’ll need $1200 for tuition and $200 for gas and I know one night they don’t feed us so we’ll have to go to a restaurant and there are some supplies on the class materials lists that I don’t have (I may be able to make a “grey card”? I’m still not totally sure what that is, it’s a photography thing) and on the last day of Squam they have an art fair and I may want to purchase a book or something if the financials work out that way so I’m still working out the bugs. Another example is that we’re camping in the woods and the only flashlight I own that works is one you’d put on a keychain, so I’ll have to buy a flashlight and a pack of extra batteries (possibly, I’m not sure what we have for rechargables). I also don’t own an umbrella, which I may need if I’m taking a primarily outdoor photography class and it’s raining. I also really, really want an apron for my birthday – which is March 1st, by the way – one like this:

When I paint and I get some on me or there’s excess or whatnot, I wipe/rub the paint into the arms of my chair because it’s canvas and soaks it right up. Not only am I getting a new chair eventually, likely within the next year because mine’s kaput, but when I go to Squam, I won’t have my chair. I need to get in the habit of wiping the paint somewhere else, that’s not my pants (I’m bad for that too) and I also could use an apron for when I’m splatter painting so I’m not ruining perfectly good t-shirts. I wasn’t really sure where you even buy aprons, but I went to the Curry’s website and this one looked pretty good for only $7.99. Canvas is good. White’s not my colour, but it wouldn’t be white for very long, I suspect. Anyway, I want it and that’s just an example of the little things I’m going to have to buy for this trip – oh, bug spray’s another one – that I’m going to have to sit down and think about before I’ll know the financials. Believe me though, you guys will be the first to know once I figure it out. OH! I’m also going to need a passport or an enhanced driver’s license to get across the border. I think a passport’s $80, not sure about the license. I’ll get whatever’s cheapest I guess. I still maintain that I’ll be able to get over the border just fine with a license and a birth certificate, but my mom insists that I have exactly what is needed to go to the US as dictated by the border patrol’s website, which I haven’t had a chance to look at yet.

Thank god this is 9 months away, there’s so much to do! Lists to make! Things to acquire! BUT IT IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN!

My mom asked me yesterday – and I think it was a totally legit, fair question – how my agoraphobia was going to factor in and I told her what my shrink told me a couple of years ago when I asked her the same thing in regards to Touched By Fire, she said that if I’m in a place where my role is defined, I’ll do better than in a place where it is not. For example, at Touched By Fire, my role is “artist” so I know what I’m supposed to do and what’s expected of me but at the Leafs game last year, my role is NOT defined or is defined very loosely, so I can’t function. As far as Squam, my role is “artist” and “student”, two things I’m very good at, so the agoraphobia shouldn’t be a problem. There will definitely be some social anxiety but I have good drugs for that and my mom and Belinda will be there so I should be fine. And I’m like a dog, I like car rides (as long as the person driving isn’t a maniac) and I’ve driven to NYC from here like, 40 times which is the same distance, so I’m not worried about it. I *am* a little worried about being tempted to smoke with my mom smoking in the car and this trip being a little bit stressful, but I figure I’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Plus, Belinda wouldn’t let me smoke anyway and my mom won’t want to share, so I’ll probably be fine. By the time the trip rolls around, I’ll have been a non-smoker for 17 months, if I did the math right (I quit in May 2011, the trip is Sept. 2012).

It’s going to be a really good time, I think. It’ll be September so it won’t be too cold (unless you’re a wuss) but I don’t think we’ll be going swimming. I’m going to bring a bathing suit just in case though. I’m also going to bring a travel mug for tea and I’m going to get my mom to bring her electric kettle for tea in the cabin. I’m going to bring two cases of Diet Coke (the cabins have ice boxes, but I don’t know how big they are – doesn’t matter, I can drink room temperature Diet Coke) and a water bottle for water (duh). I drink a LOT, I dunno why, I’m just *always* thirsty. My mom got me this kickass cup that looks like a take-out cup from Starbucks, but it’s NOT the one from Starbucks, it’s BETTER because it’s MAPLE LEAFS and I love it. It’s for Diet Coke from the bottle though so I won’t be bringing it with me. I need cans so they’ll be more portable in a backpack. The one class, Pages & Paint, they want you to bring your favourite colours of paint so, money permitting, I’d like to get my favourite colours of paint in the Martha Stewart line. Black & white are fine with what I’ve got (Americana) and I have a few colours of Martha’s but I’d like to have some more to bring with me because it really is just excellent stuff. In the pictures on the Squam site, they’re all using Golden acrylics which are very very expensive. They’re the best, but I simply cannot afford that paint. I’ve been using Americana since the beginning but now that I’ve used Martha’s paint, I’ll never buy another bottle of Americana as long as she keeps making paint – it’s that good. I’d like to try her crackle medium to see how it fares against DecoArt’s Weathered Wood, which I’ve also used since the beginning, and she’s got some other mediums I’d like to play with as well, but that I don’t necessarily need for Squam. All I need for Squam is about $25 worth of colours, if they’re on sale. OH! ANd I’m going to have to bring all of my glitter of course – which I will gladly share with anyone who would like any because I have TONS and sparkle is just meant  to be shared!!!

When we were at my mom’s for “second Xmas”, she put out her cheese ball (gross!) with all kinds of crackers and stuff to spread it on and one of the things she put out were Ritz Munchables Pretzel Crackers. That’s the US site and I guess they have “buttery” and “cheesy” flavours but we have “original” and I think Blake said they had “sour cream and onion” or “ranch” or something like that at the store too. Anyway, the ones my mom got were “original” and they were amazing. Between the 7 of us, we easily polished off the entire box and last night Blake went to the store and brought home a box and between yesterday and this morning, I’ve eaten almost the whole box BY MYSELF. They should rename these things to Ritz Pretzel Crack! They’re hard to describe, you really just have to try them. They’re like Ritz crackers, they’re buttery like a Ritz, but they’re made out of pretzel dough so the outside is crunchy like a pretzel and they put coarse salt on top of them. They’re fucking GREAT. 18 thumbs up.

At 2pm today I have to have a root canal that’s apparently going to take an hour and a half to complete. :o( Nothing more to add to that except that it sucks. :o(

I feel like there was something else I wanted to say but I can’t remember what it is so I guess I’ll just end this post here and make a new post if I remember what it was.

OH! Now I remember!

I e-mailed Magic Pony/Narwhal Gallery on Wednesday I think. Here’s what I said:

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Hi.
From: “S. Crittenden” <Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com>
Date: Wed, January 11, 2012 1:55 pm
To: contact@narwhalartprojects.com
contact@magic-pony.com
————————————————————————–

Hello there!

My name is Sunny Crittenden and I’m an artist living just a bit north of
Barrie.

In December I was in the art show Touched By Fire at Cooper’s Fine Art
Gallery and there I sold my painting entitled “Black & White”. This is it:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=7319

It was at Touched By Fire that I met Colette French, the gallery’s
director, and she told my husband to call her once the holidays were over
because she had a space in mind for my work. That space was Magic
Pony/Narwhal Gallery.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been to your space before and I rarely venture
into the city. I’m agoraphobic so I rarely venture into my own town of
2,000 people! However, your websites look interesting and I agree with
Colette that my work may fit in quite well. I was wondering what you might
think?

Here is the gallery of my work:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php

Unfortunately my paintings don’t come across well in photographs because
they’re very very sparkly. I’m no photographer so I have no idea how to
photograph them as they are, so instead, I’ve taken a few short videos of
them, which show their sparkles better. Here they are:

1. http://youtu.be/IVsMx04gmb4
2. http://youtu.be/Ndudc9kjknc
3. http://youtu.be/zjVIUIhn-yU
4. http://youtu.be/_cDL-nPvLaI

Colette said that if the pictures and videos weren’t convincing enough,
that she would be willing to bring some of my pieces to your shop herself
to see what you thought.

I am brand new to the art world. I’ve just been selling my paintings on
Etsy for the past few years and this is my first time trying to sell/show
them outside of my own website and Touched By Fire. I’m not really sure
how this all works.

Thanks for your consideration,
Sunny Crittenden

Magic Pony hasn’t gotten back to me, but I got a nice rejection letter from Narwhal Gallery last night:

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Re: Hi.
From: “Narwhal Art Projects” <contact@narwhalartprojects.com>
Date: Thu, January 12, 2012 7:57 pm
To: sunny@sunnycrittenden.com
————————————————————————–

 

Hi Sunny,

Thanks so much for your email and for sending us some
of your work. At the moment we aren’t taking on any new artists as we’re
fully booked for the next couple of years – however we’ll make sure to
keep an eye on your website for future consideration. Good luck with
your artwork and all the best!

Kristin

Sooooo so much for that! But there may still be the possibility of Magic Pony maybe? I’m not sure if the rejection was JUST from Narwhal or if it was from both and I’m not sure if I should ask or if I should just leave it and wait for a reply and then if I don’t get one, I get Blake to call Colette to see what we should do next? I have no idea how this stuff works. And who knows, maybe Colette doesn’t have any other ideas either. It’s too bad though because I really do think my stuff would fit in well at Magic Pony. :o/

Okay I think that’s all I wanted to say. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Peace oot! <3

Blake heard back from Hanrahan’s office and apparently the specialist I’m to go to for my first surgery is so booked up that I may not get in to have the surgery until JUNE. Their office said that they have two people from the SUMMER who are still waiting for the same procedure as I am. :o(

Before American conservatives bitch at me about wait times and universal healthcare, just don’t even start with me. I’ve racked up a crazy amount of hospital bills that the government is paying for where if they didn’t, we would have had to have gone bankrupt to survive financially. 1) The procedure I’m waiting for is not a life-saving procedure. I won’t die without it. 2) I need a specialist and this is the specialist my other doctor (Hanrahan) knows. I would still be in this position in the US. They’re going to be calling around to look for another specialist who can maybe do it and I’m sure they’ll find one.

The other thing is that my body, this whole time, has been in the process of reabsorbing the fluid from the pseudocysts so they could be shrinking as I type this, making this procedure completely unnecessary, which would mean I could just go ahead and have the big surgery as soon as they’re small enough.

As Blake pointed out, in the last 6 months, my body has absorbed and processed 100 LBS of extra fluid.

I’ll have to go have another CAT scan to see where things stand. No idea when that’ll happen.

When Blake first told me about this, I cried. For obvious reasons (JUNE!) I was pretty upset because my life’s been on hold for this shit long enough and now it was possibly going to affect Squam, which is the only thing in life right now that I have to look forward to.  But Blake put it into perspective: Say I had to wait until June or July to have the procedure done, which I may not have to do because they could find someone else to do it. That means I could have my surgery right away and I’d have 2 months to recover before Squam. If it was later than that, then we schedule the big surgery for AFTER Squam, which I would absolutely be willing to do. Squam is my top priority right now. I need Squam. If I have to wait longer to have my big surgery, so be it.

Blake called Colette, the art lady from Touched By Fire, today because she told him to call her once things had calmed down from the holidays and she gave us some interesting advice. Apparently in Toronto, there’s this store that has an art gallery attached called Magic Pony. The gallery is called Narwhal Gallery. I went to both sites and took a look at what they have and she’s right, my stuff would fit right in.

Apparently they have an online application process, but I couldn’t find it, and Colette suggested that I do that but she was worried that the pictures of my paintings don’t do them justice, through no fault of my own, they’re just difficult to photograph accurately, so she suggested that if the online process didn’t work out, she’d take a portfolio (I’m not sure what that means, exactly) to the actual building and show them my paintings first hand.

So since I couldn’t find the online application, I’ve started drafting an e-mail to them where I’m going to include the YouTube links to the videos I’ve made of some of my paintings because that shows them more accurately and we’ll see where things go from there. It looks promising though!

 Blake’s assuming that if they accept my paintings, it’ll be consignment, which I don’t know anything about. All I know is that I want $250-$300 a piece for what I have “in stock” at the moment, what THEY charge THEIR customers, I don’t care. And I think that’s how consignment works, right?

I hope that works out because it looks like a cool shop/gallery. Expensive though, but for me that’s probably a good thing…right?

I think my mom’s sold on Squam but I’m not sure. She says she wants an “A-OKAY” from Hanrahan but I have no idea when we’ll be seeing her next. Blake had her office on the phone twice today and they didn’t want to see us so I think it’ll be a while before we see her again and we need to have our registrations in SOON. I see absolutely no reason why Squam would be held up by my medical situation so I say we just DO IT. But my mom might have other ideas… :o/

Okay I have to go to the dentist now to get this damn tooth looked at. It stopped hurting around Sunday so I’m wondering if the nerve isn’t dead or something. I guess we’ll find out!

My mom’s still not sure if she can go and it’s driving me mental because I literally cannot think of anything else. I figured out WHY though. It’s because I’ve never been to camp. Especially art camp. In grade 5 or 6 I my teacher told me I should go to the school district’s summer art camp and she said that if we couldn’t afford it, the school would pay for it. I don’t remember WHY I wasn’t allowed to go, just that I was told I couldn’t and that was the end of that. I have a feeling that the reason I couldn’t go was that my mom was too proud to take the school’s “charity”, but I can’t be sure. Either way, I didn’t go and it’s been a sore spot in my life ever since. And that’s why I’m fixated on Squam. I think.

I’ve *scoured* the Squam website and I’ve learned that the spring session is more for textiles and knitting while the fall session is more for painting and art journaling. Obviously the fall session sounds like I’d get more bang for my buck. I don’t knit or crochet and I’m not all that interested in learning how. Or at least I don’t want to spend $1200 to learn how.

I said to Blake tonight that it’s a shame I didn’t know about Squam when I was filling out my grant application because this is exactly the kind of thing they would want to pay for. If I don’t get the grant this year and I don’t get to go to Squam this year, I’m definitely putting it in next year’s application.

Have I written about my New Year’s resolution yet? I forget but I don’t think I have. At least not here anyway.

I’ve never really made a real resolution in my life but this year I’ve kinda made two of them. One’s more concrete than the other one though.

The first is that when I finish a painting and i go to take pictures of it for Etsy, I’m going to have a shower, wash my hair, get dressed up, do my makeup and then take a picture of myself – in the kitchen probably – holding the painting or standing beside the painting, and that’ll be the picture you guys see when I promote the Etsy listing for the painting on my site and Live Journal.

The reason I’m doing this is because at Touched By Fire, they had these roaming photographers and one of them approached me and wanted me to stand beside my painting so she could take a picture of me. They put the picture up on Facebook and it is HORRIBLE. It is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. And the main reason for that is because (well because my hair fell out) I look extremely uncomfortable and really, I am one of those people who are really uncomfortable at the end of someone else’s lens. My resolution is to (hopefully) remedy that by taking pictures of myself and getting used to the camera again.

Also, I don’t do much pampering these days. This will probably gross some of you out, but I only change my clothes once every 3 days or so. Same with washing my hair. Because of the GIANT WOUND IN MY STOMACH I can’t really have showers or a bath with more than 3 inches of water, so I clean myself up with baby wipes the best I can and wash my hair by hanging my head over the tub. I can have a shower if we dress my wound with drape, but drape’s expensive and they don’t want to order me any more since I don’t have a vac anymore and the Hypafix tape they use works well enough, you just can’t get it wet. So Blake and I have stashed the last of the drape away from nurses’ prying eyes and we use it very very sparingly so I can shower every now and then.

Anyway, part of the point of this resolution is so I make more of an effort with myself to actually look semi-attractive and to actually wear some of the gorgeous clothes Charlie has bought me over the years, even if it’s not a special occasion. Big belly be damned.

So that’s resolution #1.

Resolution #2 is just to be more open to having friends and Squam is (hopefully) going to be part of that. I don’t know if you guys know this *cough cough* but I’m actually kind of a snob. Blake says I hold people to an impossible standard and considering I have like, 3 friends, only 2 of which I actually see on a regular basis, I think he’s probably right. But the thing is, I don’t want just any friends, I want ART FRIENDS. So that’s where Squam comes in. That’s where I can make art friends.

Okay it’s 6am and I’m getting tired again. Time to go sleep for a few more hours. I’ll pick this back up when I awaken.

~*SLEEP ZzzzZzzZzzzzZzzz*~

So I slept from about 6am to 9:30am and I am still so damn tired. It’s weird; on a day to day basis, I don’t feel sick, because really I’m not that sick, but I get tired pretty easily and it takes me longer to recover from outings than it used to. We went to my mom’s cottage on Saturday to have Xmas with her and it wiped me out. I think I’m still recovering from that and that’s why I’m so tired right now.

Here are pictures of my mom and Madison crushing up peanut brittle to put on ice cream:

In case I haven’t mentioned it recently, I really really love my mom. I also really really love Madison so naturally, I really really love these pictures.

After they all had ice cream, my mom and I sat at the kitchen table talking about Squam while Blake and John and the kids played Guitar Hero. Chris, John’s 17 year old son, is fucking amazing at Guitar Hero. He’s had minimal practice, he says, and he can play pretty much anything on “expert” pretty perfectly and without really even trying. Maybe that’s not amazing, maybe it’s something other people can do, but I’ve never seen anyone as good at it as him (excepting maybe YouTube vids), especially people who don’t even really play it all that often.  The only people I’ve seen who are really good at the game are people who practice and know the songs, he just picks up the guitar, picks a song he doesn’t even know, like one that was cool before he was even born – like WINGS for fuck sakes – and can just play the hell out of it. If I knew him better, I would have made a video of him playing to show you guys, it really is impressive. And while I’m on the subject of Chris, I have to say – and I’ve thought this since the first time I met him – he is a REALLY good kid. He gets along so well with my mom and John, they’re just this cute little family of 3, and I dunno, it just kinda warms my heart seeing them interact. They have their inside jokes and they all seem to close. I really hope John and my mom get married one day. I’m not sure why I care or anything but I think I would enjoy an event celebrating their love, as retarded as that sounds.

Anyway, I’m trying to convince my mom to go to Squam.

How I found out about Squam was that stupid timeline ticker thing on your Facebook feed, the thing on the right-hand corner that shows you what your friends are up to. My mom’s friend Jamie posted that she wanted to go to Squam and that she was putting it out there in the universe to set her intention or something like that and my mom mused that it would only take 10 hours to drive there (it’s in New Hampshire) but that she’d have to be able to smoke in her truck. So I saw this thread and looked up the Squam site to see what it was all about and the more I read, the more I wanted to go. Not being Jamie’s friend, I couldn’t comment on the Facebook thread, so I didn’t bring it up to my mom until I was there on Saturday.

When I brought it up to my mom, she was like, “I wasn’t serious!” and I was really let down because when I read it, I kinda thought she and Jamie were sort of planning to go. I thought it was a real possibility. Now that I’ve brought it up to her as a possibility (and Jamie probably couldn’t go, she has 3 little kids at home who need her), she’s considering it, but I have a feeling she may only be humouring me and taking pleasure in the fact that the longer she takes to decide, the more mental I’ll go. I dunno, that’s just the vibe I’m getting, like she doesn’t really see going as possible at all whereas, I don’t really see why not.

Blake really wants me to go and he wants me to go with my mom. He thinks it’ll be very good for me and he thinks it’ll be very good for my mom and me. I’m not trying to manipulate my mother, who is likely reading this, by saying this, but I think it would be good for us too. Last year was really fucking shitty and I think I need this. I think she needs this too. Blake is so convinced that I need to do this that he’s willing to come with me, if my mom won’t go, and sleep in the car for 5 days if necessary. (It’s $800 to sleep at the camp without taking classes and we just don’t have that money. We don’t have the money for a hotel either. Technically we don’t have money for Squam at all, but I’m hoping to maybe have some of it paid for for my birthday, some of it through either sales or donations on my site and the rest will go on Visa.) I’d much rather go with my mom and have the full girly experience but if Blake has to take time off work and sleep in the car, then I guess we’re willing to do that too. It’s in September, it’s not like it’ll be really cold or anything.

Today was the first day of registration and I’m afraid that if we don’t sign up right away, there won’t be any spots left for us in the classes we want or maybe even at all. I don’t know how many the camp sleeps but in the one group photo I saw of everyone in one session, I counted 105 people which seems like a lot to me. The camp is pretty big though, if I read the map correctly.

My friend Belinda is also planning on going, possibly, so that’ll be good too. She’s a fantastic artist and she wants to take some of the same classes I want to take, so at least I won’t be alone for some of them. I’m not sure what my mom wants to take.

Speaking of my mom, she’s determined to start selling on Etsy this year and I’ll be pimping her like crazy because she’s just so goddamn talented and you guys are going to love her stuff (OR ELSE!). She mostly paints decorative items of the primitive country variety. Lots of antiques. Lots of snowmen and crows and flowers. Painted furniture, painted brooms, glassware etc. She does it all, really. Anyway, stay tuned for that!

Well, I think I’m going to read the rest of the stories from people who have been to Squam and call this post done. I started reading them last night but I got tired and never ended up finishing. I’m interested to know how the food is and I want details dammit, so I think I’m going to Google and try to find some unbiased accounts of people’s time there. Obviously the ones on the Squam site are all glowing reviews. I’m also going to Google the teachers of the classes I want to take to learn more about them. To say I have “Squam Fever” would be an understatement.

So, Blake’s going to make me a fast fry steak and some peas for some much-needed protein and I’m going to read and then I’m going to have a well-deserved nap.

Have a lovely Monday afternoon, boys and girls! <3

I was going to post a picture of my boobs but it occurred to me that some of you may be reading from work so I decided not to. I’ll post them on my site some other time. If that sentence confused you, it’s because I’m x-posting this to Live Journal where the action really takes place as far as comments and discussion. I’m also x-posting this to Camwhores, where there are all kinds of boobies, including the pic I decided not to post.

Now that that’s been said…

It was a pretty ho hum weekend.

On Saturday, Blake and I planted and hung our cucumbers. The system is really weird, you don’t water the dirt directly, there’s a reservoir at the top with these moisture-sucking strips that go down and rest on the dirt and over time the moisture-sucking strips water the dirt. And then on the side of each bag, there’s a slot for a moisture stick which tells you if the dirt is wet enough. Despite the fact that the dirt is wet enough on all the bags, two of the three aren’t doing so well, as you can see:

I think it has less to do with the moisture of the dirt and more to do with the fact that when I was pulling the vines through the hole at the bottom, blindly, I snapped them. I don’t know if the plant will compensate for that or not but next year we’re planting these things a LOT earlier than we did this year so the plants are still small and easier to stick through the hole. I wanted so long this time partially because I’m lazy and kept forgetting but also because I wanted the roots to be nice and thick so they wouldn’t fall apart when I tried to put the plants through the hole. I don’t think that’s a good strategy though so next year we’ll do it differently.

Also this weekend, I did my fingernails TWICE. On Friday I actually got up like, 3 hours before my alarm so I started work 2 hours early which meant I got done at 4pm instead of 6pm.  As soon as work was finished, I put in Burlesque (shut up) and started working on my nails. I spent HOURS on them. Then I decided to get drunk and play cards with Blake and when I was trying to pick cards up, my nail polish kinda shifted. It didn’t chip because it was still a little mushy, it just kinda slid. That made me very upset because I’d spent so much time on them so Blake helped me remove all the polish and I tried again on Saturday, however by Sunday evening, the polish had chipped already so I decided “fuck this” and I’m just not messing around with fingernail polish anymore or ever again. We just don’t get along, never have, never will. I’ll still do my toes, I don’t seem to have a problem there, but never my fingers again unless there’s MAYBE some special occasion or something.

Sunday was D&D day. Ronny, Alex & Raymond came over and we played while dining on veggies & dip as our snack and pizza for our dinner. It took us like, 4 hours or something to finish one encounter because we’re all n00bs and we still have no idea what we’re doing. Blake’s doing well being our DM, it’s the rest of us who suck because we don’t know our spells and abilities or when to do what etc. We’re still having a good time with it though and believe it or not we ARE getting faster and better the more we play so continue we shall. I also healed for the first time last night, which was interesting. Sucked that I could only do it twice because I’m only level 1, but still, it was something I never had to do before. Right now we all have 435 XP so I figure within maybe 3 more sessions we should be level 2.

After D&D, Raymond went home because he hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, Ronny and Alex played video games with Wes, I removed nail polish and I don’t know what Blake and Madison did (Blake helped me get the polish off my right hand at one point), then we watched the season finale of Game of Thrones. I’ll avoid talking about that in case people haven’t seen it yet but I’d avoid the comments on Live Journal if you haven’t seen it yet because I have a feeling it’ll be discussed. I really want to read the books now, which I think about a million people are also thinking.

My Lush order should be here any day now. They ship UPS so the mail strike we currently have shouldn’t affect the delivery but it WILL affect the delivery of the nail stamps I bought and that Eryn wants me to use on her next weekend for graduation the week after. This is what I ordered from Lush. 10 of them because they’re limited edition. I think I’m doing better with money considering that’s all I bought and I also put almost my whole paycheque on my Visa a few days ago. If I do that one more time, the Visa should be almost paid off just in time for my vacation. Ha!

I’m still having a really hard time with this holiday business. I mean, the fact that it’s costing us a LOT of money, half my paycheque, for me to have this holiday time really bothers me. I don’t have ill will toward my bosses or anything, it’s just that in my family you don’t take holidays. If you can make money, you do it. You don’t do things to lose money. I don’t think my mother, my grandmother or my grandfather have ever had a vacation in their lives because it would have been unpaid time off, which is what I’m doing the first week of July. I’m trying not to think about it but yesterday Alex asked me if I was looking forward to my holidays and I just started crying because no, no I’m not. I’m afraid that while I’m on holiday all I’ll be able to think about is money. But, it’s either take this vacation time or burn out and I can’t afford to burn out so holidays it is.

I plan on doing a lot of painting on my holidays. Painting and the beach. (Send vibes of a heat wave up here, please!) And I have to see my shrink to discuss the fact that I’m basically not okay right now, not at all. Possibly adjust my meds. Ask about “weight loss agents”, which were briefly discussed at metabolic clinic. I also plan to use the treadmill a lot when I’m on holidays and read. I give up on my shoes, they just keep giving me a really painful blister on my heel, so I’m going to use it in bare feet. Some studies say that’s better for you and some studies say it’s bad for you, so I’ve decided I don’t care and that’s just how I’m going to do it. I would lose weight if I could eat eggs for breakfast every day but I just don’t have the time to cook them with this job, let alone eat them, and even when I make diet kwish (diet cheese, broccoli and or onions, ham – you need the cheese or the egg dries out) and don’t have lunch I still don’t lose weight. They have to be 3 eggs over easy with 2 pieces of toast for it to work its magic and I just don’t have time for that. And you may think that’s ridiculous that it has to be that precise, but that’s what worked and variations do not work for whatever reason so it is what it is.

Admittedly my diet has been a little stupid for the last few weeks because I’m on the “Fuck It Diet”, which was invented by Margaret Cho. I see it. I eat it. Fuck it. But even when I was doing metabolic clinic and my diet was perfect and I was keeping a food journal and everything, I only lost 2-5 lbs that I gained the next week, that I’d lose the week after etc etc etc. In other words, I didn’t lose anything. I did the treadmill daily, 30-40 minutes, for 3 weeks and didn’t lose one single pound.  Didn’t gain any either. I was rollerskating, albeit not as long, but still, nothing. I do yoga once a week. I’m not inactive. Something just isn’t right with my body so I’m going to ask my shrink for “weight loss agents”, which I don’t even know what they are but I’m assuming maybe thyroid medication or something. I think my thyroid’s fine though, so I dunno. All I know is that my metabolism is still fucked from the risperidone and I want answers.

This week Charlie suggested I buy a bikini for my holidays and I just cried. 3 years ago I was wearing bikinis. Now I’m Shamu. I’m 45 lbs heavier than I should be and that’s a problem.

Anyway, enough of that, it upsets me.

My yellow begonia is basically dead and I don’t know why. The plant itself is alive and seemingly healthy but it doesn’t have any flowers. The orange one had about half the flowers it did when I bought it and again, I don’t know why. The yellow one was in partial shade, which the little stick they came with said is fine, while the orange one was in full sun so now I’ve hung the yellow one in full sun and put the orange one in the railing beneath it rather than hanging either of them on the hook on the other side of the house. You can’t really see what’s hung there anyway so whatever, I just wish I knew what was wrong with them. I’ve been dead-heading the dead flowers like you’re supposed to so I dunno.

My ears have taken to the earrings fully and completely and the holes aren’t weeping at all anymore. So yay! I’m even contemplating getting them pierced again. And then maybe again. And again. Do you think it would be better to do that one at a time or should I get all the holes I want pierced at once. I figure one at a time is probably better because if it gets infected I can treat it and it’ll probably be fine but if I do them all at once, if one gets infected, the rest probably will too and that would be a hard infection to get rid of. So one at a time is probably best, right? I don’t even know where you get ears pierced anymore. When I had mine done originally when I was like, 6, it was done at a jewelry store. In fact, the first one hurt so bad that I wouldn’t let them do the second one until some time later when the kids at school made fun of me for only having one earring. And then they both got infected too often so I took them out and left them out. That’s why I was so surprised the holes hadn’t grown over and I could get these new earrings in smooth as silk, I didn’t have to push through grown over skin or anything, they just slid right in .

I’m babbling, this is probably a really boring post. To be perfectly honest, I just have a lot in my head right now and it needs to come OUT.

We didn’t go up North for Father’s Day this year because we weren’t invited, which I found…interesting. I was glad because I didn’t want to go up there but at the same time, I can’t help but wonder why we weren’t invited in the first place. I don’t think I’ve done anything to offend anyone or anything like that so I dunno. Last year my mom got pissed at me for going up there so I’m kinda glad I didn’t have to deal with her in regards to this this year. Why did she get  pissed off? I dunno, she gets pissed off at me for no reason all the time, especially when it comes to Mother’s and Father’s Days. No matter what I do, she’s gonna get pissed off at me both of those days so I’ve stopped wondering why. My absentee prick of a brother can get away with sending an e-mail and be the next coming of Christ but I’m expected (I think) to jump through hoops for love and approval. I don’t get it and I no longer care. Both of my parents from now on are just gonna have to be happy with me writing on their Facebook walls because Mother’s and Father’s Days are now about Blake and I and no one else. I’m not going to sit there feeling like shit on a day that’s supposed to be about ME because I’m the mother. Phil doesn’t even call his father on Father’s Day so it’s unfair and hypocritical to expect me to call him, especially when I’m mentally ill and only use the phone to talk to Blake or for emergencies. And I’m still annoyed with his little lecture about me not calling him “dad” but calling him Phil instead because that’s his name. He’s never been my dad so let’s not go down that road. Let’s not forget that half of his friends and acquaintances don’t even know I exist. And my mother…well if she wants to spend her Mother’s Day being pissed off and catering to her own mother’s whims and dealing with sister aggro, so be it, but leave me out of it. Nothing I do is good enough so I’m just not going to do anything anymore.

And that’s all I have to say about that except that they’re both probably reading this so it should be considered “notice”. If they’re not then I guess we’ll deal with it next year.

Strangely, my mother-in-law was the most gracious of our parents this year and for that I am thankful.

Madison is such a weird kid. Do you know what she’s reading right now? BELOVED by Toni Morrison. Or maybe she’s done now. Either way, I thought it was an odd choice for a 13-year-old and she totally chose it for herself and put it on her birthday wishlist, it’s not like it was suggested reading or anything.  She’s also been reading Stephen King, but I don’t find that weird at all. I started reading Stephen King (It) in grade 1 so I actually think she’s a little late on that one.

She’s kind of flush with books at the moment, but as soon as she’s not, I want her to read The Handmaid’s Tale (which I’m re-reading right now), Middlesex, Water For Elephants, The Virgin Suicides and so many other books that I have sitting on my shelf just waiting to be read. I want to blow her mind with literature. Maybe then she’ll realize that what I’m working on, Cammity Jane, is absolute crap. It bothers me how good she thinks that is because I know it’s not and that’s not me putting myself down, that’s just a fact. It’s fluff, it’s not literature by any stretch of the imagination. I think the primary audience for it is young adults, so it’s good that she likes it as much as she does because she’s my target I think, but I feel like it should be beneath her. She should be smarter than that.

Bleh.

Okay I think I’ve ranted and raved and wasted enough of your time. I think I’m out of things to discuss. Please go to my site and take a look at the two images I posted. Here’s the first one, here’s the second one. Thanks.

PS. I am 15 days smoke-free.

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Help RAPS win $25,000!

My friend Phaedie loses one of her friends at least once a week. That’s because she works for a high-capacity cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, run by the Richmond Animal Protection Society, and unfortunately feline leukemia and feline AIDS is a part of the job, especially when dealing with such close quarters.

To keep cats out of shelters, people need to spay and neuter their pets and that’s what RAPS is aiming to do with Pepsi Canada’s Refresh Project contest. Their aim, with the $25,000 to be won, is to help low-income families spay, neuter and vaccinate their pets in order to help curb the already problematic business of sick, unwanted pets.

So how can you help? It’s easy. Click here and vote. You can sign in using Facebook connect so it really does only take 2 clicks and you’d be making a world of difference for animals and their people. Plus you’d be making Phaedie and I incredibly happy.

We need to try and get them to #1 or #2 as only the top 2 spots receive funding. Currently they’re in 3rd place, so we need to make a solid push to get then into 2nd! I know people don’t have money to give to every charity that comes their way, but if you’d normally be clicking on Farmville crops anyway, please use your mouse-fingers for this as well and help make a difference in the world. Thanks.

The contest voting is until June 30th, it’s a daily vote and I’ll be posting every few days to remind you to vote in case you forget.

This morning I had a rude awakening.

I woke up, peed, brushed my teeth, washed my hair and then I went into my office and sat down at my computer and within seconds, Blake messaged me saying that some of the kids at school had told Madison that they’d seen our dogs on the street and then he told me that Madison was out looking for them.

So I checked the house and Hoover was here but Lucky wasn’t.

For those who don’t know, my dogs are VERY important to me. They are my other two children, especially Lucky because he’s more my dog while Hoover’s more Blake’s dog. So with Lucky missing, I was very distressed because when the dogs get out, which happens sometimes because our gate blows open, they always come back because they know where they live so for him not to have come back meant that potentially something bad had happened to him.

Madison comes into the house without Lucky so she grabbed his leash and went looking for him again but came home empty-handed. We sat outside and cried for a little bit because we were scared he was hurt in a ditch somewhere, then we heard the phone ring and it was a local ring so Madison ran into the house to answer it.

It was the vet’s office and they asked if we had a dog named Lucky, so I said “yes” and asked if he was alright because if he was hurt, someone would probably take him to the vet. She said he was fine and that he was at a person’s house right around the corner from us.

So, Madison went to get him and thanked the girls who had him profusely and brought him home. Now he’s exhausted and sleeping under the couch in my office while Hoover sleeps ON the couch in my office.

To be honest, if the girls hadn’t have brought him to their house he would have come home eventually, but I’m grateful they kept him safe because I was FREAKING.

So happy ending. Yay! Blake’s going to bring home a $20 bill and I have note cards here with dogs on them and he’s going to drop it off for them after he gets home.

Last night we got 5 pictures out of 19 done for The Fiction Project. I started at around 3:30pm and it took until 10:30pm to get them done, but if I do a few each night and then on the weekend, I should be ready. The only problem is that the book should have a cover but I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to make one. It wouldn’t be the end of the world to not have one, but still…

In yoga on Monday, I found a new thing to hate. It’s called “chaturanga” and it fucking SUCKS becaude I have no core or upper arms strength to speak of and I’m also afraid of breaking my toes. Watch this girl’s toes when she does it:

Yeah I’m not doing that one any time soon. She had us try to do it like 5 times and I cheated every single time by lowering myself down all the way because there’s no way I could hold myself in low plank that long or even AT ALL. Plus, I hate plank with a burning passion because I just can’t hold myself as long as she tells us to so fuck THAT.

Speaking of FUCK THAT, I found a button on Etsy that says “FUCK YOGA” that I’m seriously considering buying because that’s my general yoga attitude until I’m there and doing it and then I feel fantastic afterward. But getting to class is always a big “if” because I never want to do it, it sucks, and I hate it – that is, until I’m actually doing it, then I’m glad I went.

So as I’ve mentioned, my friend Amy works for a non-profit teen drop-in centre called The Neutral Zone, which is a safe haven for kids who need one and they’re in a contest with the Bank of Ann Arbor to win some much needed funding. That’s where you come in.

On Facebook, go to the Bank of Ann Arbor’s fan page and vote for Teen Centre Inc. (The Neutral Zone) by selecting them and answering the question, which this week is ““Give a shout out to your favourite Sweet 15 Charity”. Vote every day for them by adding the app until May 12th so they can get a higher ranking and therefore get more money. If you do this, you would be doing a HUGE favour to me and my friend Amy and the kids that are helped by having this safe haven to go to.

It only takes a few clicks every day and it’s 100% for charity. Please help us! Don’t think of it as helping a friend of a friend who you don’t know from Adam, you’re helping out a children’s charity. Thanks in advance. GO TEAM GO!

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Help RAPS win $25,000!

Yep another one. Now I know what you’re thinking, that I’ve already got you clicking for The Neutral Zone but this is equally as important to me and so is the person behind it.

My friend Phaedie loses one of her friends at least once a week. That’s because she works for a high-capacity cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, run by the Richmond Animal Protection Society, and unfortunately feline leukemia and feline AIDS is a part of the job, especially when dealing with such close quarters.

To keep cats out of shelters, people need to spay and neuter their pets and that’s what RAPS is aiming to do with Pepsi Canada’s Refresh Project contest. Their aim, with the $25,000 to be won, is to help low-income families spay, neuter and vaccinate their pets in order to help curb the already problematic business of sick, unwanted pets.

So how can you help? It’s easy. Click here and vote. You can sign in using Facebook connect so it really does only take 2 clicks and you’d be making a world of difference for animals and their people. Plus you’d be making Phaedie and I incredibly happy.

We need to try and get them to #1 or #2 as only the top 2 spots receive funding. I know people don’t have money to give to every charity that comes their way, but if you’d normally be clicking on Farmville crops anyway, please use your mouse-fingers for this as well and help make a difference in the world. Thanks.

The contest voting is until June 30th, it’s a daily vote and I’ll be posting every few days to remind you to vote in case you forget.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, to tread I go!

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

So I’ve mentioned before how I’m fat, right? And I know I’ve mentioned before about HOW I got fat, right? Well for those who missed it, I was on this heinous drug called risperidone that made me VERY VERY hungry but also made my metabolism VERY VERY slow for a double fatty whammy that had me weighing an extra 60 lbs in a matter of 3 months.

That was, oh, 2 years ago now, maybe 2 & a half, and while I’ve had some success with eating protein in the morning to boost my metabolism and make my body burn more calories during the day, I’m still not the 105 lbs I was BEFORE I was subjected to that heinous drug and that’s a problem.

I was just watching Portia de Rossi on Oprah talk about her eating disorder and of course that made me think about my own weight and something I realized is that during my stint with the risperidone, I discovered that for the first time ever, I enjoyed eating. It was pleasurable. Never before in my life have I ever found eating pleasurable, it was always just something I had to do. Because you have to eat, that’s just how things are, right? So not enjoying food particularly + a super fast metabolism + smoking a pack a day + being 20 = 100-105 lb me.

While my metabolism is recovering because I’ve been off that drug for about a year & a half, it’s still not to where it was before and probably never will be. That sucks and there’s not a whole lot of things I can do about that, but another long term effect of this situation is the discovery that food is good, which, combined with the fact that I quit smoking 8 months ago, is probably a large part of my current problem. Oh yeah, and I sit at a desk all day, so there’s that too.

Anyway, it just occurred to me today that I’m now one of those people who likes food and I’m not sure what that realization means necessarily, but it’s something to think about that I’d never thought about before. It’s just kinda weird because now I look forward to meal times, they’re something TO look forward to, whereas before the only meal I ate was dinner and that was just because I had to eat something that day. Of course, I’ve always been a junk food connoisseur, but I had that whole speedy metabolism deal going on so it was never a problem and it really pisses me off that it’s a semi-problem now in that, I can’t live off of it anymore. It pisses me off that I have to give my food choices thought. I despise the fact that all of a sudden my mind is preoccupied with food when I never gave it a second thought before.

I HATE THAT THIS WAS DONE TO ME.
I’M PRETTY SURE I’VE MENTIONED THAT BEFORE.

I don’t know how much I weigh right now because I’m too scared to power up the Wii Fat. Last I checked, I was 130, which was 5lbs heavier than I was a couple of months before. 5 lbs, no big deal right? Well, I’m a small girl and these are 5 visible lbs. The reason my weight loss ended and I gained 5 lbs is for the following reasons:

• I stopped eating eggs for breakfast, which was what was responsible for my weight loss over the last year.
• I started eating junk food again. Not a lot, but more than none.
• I stopped eating steak 3 times a week and started eating pasta and foot long subs instead. Carbs carbs carbs instead of protein protein protein.

And that’s it. That’s the whole reason why. I don’t make New Year’s (please note the apostrophe, there is only ONE “new year” – just a little pet peeve of mine) resolutions but I decided that starting today I would eat eggs for breakfast again, not because it was the new year, but because Blake would be back to work after a whole bunch of holidays and the kids would be back in school, so I could start getting my routine back together (although altered because I have a job now and that sort of interferes with eating). So what did I have for breakfast today? A Stouffer’s crustini thing. It’s like a hot pocket type of thing which ham, turkey and cheese in it, which is a miracle I’ll even eat it because there are 2 type of meat in it mixed together and that’s a huge OCD thing with me. Why did I have that and not eggs? Because we got a toaster oven for Xmas with a timer and in the morning I woke up to almost 200 e-mails that took me until noon to clear so at 11:30am, I ran in the kitchen, grabbed a drink, threw that Stouffer’s thing in the toaster oven and when it was done, I ran back in the kitchen and got it, not disrupting work for more than 30 seconds per trip.

So now I have to figure out how to do that with eggs. The thing that I’m stuck on is what to put the eggs IN that could also go in the toaster oven. Like something metal, I would think. And how long would you put them in for, at what temperature? Could I add bacon? Or would it not cook properly? What about cheese? OH YEAH, PS, I CAN’T COOK FOR SHIT.

Yoga. Our goal for 2011 was to go to yoga twice a week. Ideally Hatha on Tuesdays and Vinyasa on Wednesdays. If we could only do one, I wanted to do the Vinyasa because I really really don’t like Hatha. I think it’s boring and unhelpful. But the Vinyasa class was full and there was only one spot open for Monday’s Hatha class, so we’re stuck still doing Hatha, and only Hatha, on Tuesdays. Which sucks. I wish it was possible to go somewhere else, but it’s not with Blake’s commute. In fact Tuesday nights are even questionable because he often doesn’t get home until after the class starts.  So that’s yoga. And don’t tell me to do it at home, I’m not doing it at home. If I had a clean, pet-free home that was at least twice the size of the one I’m in now, maybe then I’d do it at home, but as it stands now we can’t even bring our mats into our house because they’ll be covered in fur in 2 seconds. And Wii Fat yoga is a joke.

Today I got a call from the mental health clinic I go to about the metabolic clinic that I’m starting on the 18th that runs for 11 weeks and that supposedly most patients are having success with. Cuz y’see, weight gain is a huge part of all these drugs we need to function so they’re brought in a whole team of people to help us with this, all courtesy of our fine Canadian government.

In June I saw a nutritionist (is that the doctor kind? she was a doctor) and she asked me a million questions about my eating habits and activity levels and I was supposed to be signed up for the metabolic clinic starting in August or September but either the clinic was canceled or they forgot about me (haven’t gotten a straight answer about that…) and it never happened so after several requests, they finally put me into this group.

On the 19th I see a dietician and I have to keep a food journal for 5 days and the day before, after the clinic, I have to see a “recreationist”, which is about the most fucking ridiculous thing I’ve practically ever heard of. Check this shit out. “Recreation therapy” even has its own Wikipedia page. This person is going to…what? Tell me I should….skydive??? I have no bloody idea, it just sounds really really stupid and it kills me that this is an actual job that like, requires a degree. And I don’t mean to be a Negative Nancy here, but I know recreation. I paint. I write. I blog. I have slacked professionally for most of my life. The only physical thing I do is yoga and that is the only physical thing they will GET me to do so I’m really just going to this appointment to humour them.

The other thing I had to do as part of the metabolic clinic is blood work, which I had done on Dec. 21st. It’s a really thorough program by the sounds of it and as I said, it’s apparently really successful so hopefully they can get me on a manageable path. Maybe they can tell me how to make eggs in my awesome toaster oven with a timer.

I know I’m eating the right amount of stuff, for the most part, every day. I only eat 3 meals a day and try to keep each meal at around 300 calories with the option of 2 snacks per day and I know that’s right as far as calories consumed, I’m just not eating the right kind of calories, I guess. And a calorie is not just a calorie. I’m not buying that line anymore. A sugar calories is different from a fat calorie or a protein calorie. There’s a whole video on YouTube about it that I totally can’t find right now but it was a black guy talking about it and it was very very convincing, like with science and everything. If I can find it again, I’ll link it HERE.

Anyway, now that I’ve written over 1600 words about fat and food and my lard-ass woes, dinner’s going to be read in 10 minutes and Blake will be home at the same time, so…it’s time to EAT!

Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul
This is very interesting.

Our yoga class mentions nothing about Hinduism, unless you count the “Namaste” at the end, which I don’t say. I don’t know why I don’t say it, I just don’t.  I guess I kinda think it’s cheesy. On one of the walls, our teacher put up a giant poster of all the various asanas and it has a faint, giant “om” symbol in the background but that’s really the extent of Hinduism in our class so I guess we’re totally appropriating.

HOWEVER, when you sign up for the class she makes you fill out a sheet with your info and sign a thing that says she’s not liable etc. but on it she asks why you want to learn yoga or why you want to take this class. On mine I put “to maintain weight” (which is so not working because we’re doing Hatha now instead of Vinyasa haha, but whatever, we’ll be doing both in the new year hopefully). But I think if enough people put on that sheet that they wanted to pursue yoga  for religious reasons or even just spiritual reasons or whatnot, she would alter the class. She actually went to college to learn how to be a yoga teacher and she’s been doing yoga herself since she was a teenager so I know she knows all about it. But I think everyone says they want to do it for exercise purposes so that’s why the class is the way it is.

Sometimes she interjects during poses that “this one’s good for digestions” or “this one’s good for headaches” etc so she tries to make it more than athletics but not by much. I think I’m going to e-mail her that article and see what she thinks of it. She’s probably already seen it.

This week I got a new shirt. Let me show you it:

I like it a whole lot. In fact part of the reason I like it is because I can do yoga in it. All of my yoga-appropriate shirts are short sleeved and I wear a hoodie over them TO class, but I can’t do yoga with my hoodie on because the hood gets in the way and it’s too baggy etc., so this shirt is perfect for that. I mean, I like it and can wear it other places, but specifically I like it because I can do yoga in it, be warm and not look like a total schlep. The ooooonly problem with it is that it’s a thermal, so it’s that waffle material and holy hell does it ever pick up every fluff, fuzz, dog hair, MY hair and the like. But that’s okay, I’m a compulsive lint brush user so it’s all good.

So I’m sorta…avoiding and rambling because I couldn’t decide whether or not I should write about this because it’s not really supposed to be about me and I feel kind of selfish making it about me but it did and does affect me and I think for my own sanity I should write about it so here goes:

I’ve met Alex’s brother twice. Well, three times now, but prior to Thursday night, I’d only met him twice and had only spoken one sentence to him ever. But I’d heard stories about him through Alex & Ronny many many times and a lot of those stories had to do with the fact that he’s extremely paranoid and once was so violent to Alex as a result of his paranoia, she had to call the cops and ended up moving out more or less because of his behaviour. That was a couple of years ago now, but he’s still extremely paranoid. For example, he used to think that Alex was putting “stuff” in his shampoo to make his acne worse. (This is why he reacted violent toward her.) Hearing the stories, I have always suspected that he was probably mentally ill and I realize I’m not a shrink but from what I’ve read, I’d peg him as bipolar II or maybe even schizo-affective.

It should also be noted that he smokes a lot of pot, just as I used to prior to my stint in the psych ward in 2006. Marijuana doesn’t cause psychosis, but it has been written and I believe that it definitely exacerbates the problem and shouldn’t be used, or at least used with extreme moderation, if mental illness is in the picture at all.

Everything that has happened over the past week or so is a blur and most of it I only heard second-hand so apologies to Alex if I get the sequence of events mixed up.

At some point last week, Alex’s brother (I don’t want to use his name) told Alex that he’d had a dream and as a result of this dream he knew that he was a shaman and that she was too and along with saying this and trying to convince her it was true, he displayed other strange behaviours, although I’m not clear on what those behaviours were. I do know he wasn’t sleeping though and he had mostly stopped smoking pot all of a sudden.

Throughout the week, his strangeness and paranoia increased and after being told about it, Blake & I agreed that he was likely psychotic. Grandiose ideas, paranoia, hallucinations, etc. It all sounded very very familiar. We told Ronny & Alex to keep a close eye on him and at the first sign of total loss of reality to get him to the ER.

So they watched him for a few days. They watched him not sleep and become increasingly, well, nuts.

On Wednesday night, around midnight, something happened or he said something that alarmed them enough to take him to the hospital in Barrie which is called RVH and which is the same hospital where I was taken when I was psychotic. They were there until 4am because while Canadian hospitals, especially ERs, are great, it’s been my experience and now theirs, that they just don’t know how to deal with mental illness. They told Ronny & Alex to take her brother home and to bring him back Thursday when a shrink would be around to take a look at him.

So stuff happened. I don’t know what. But on Thursday he was acting so mental that Ronny & Alex called 911 twice and the mental health crisis line twice. The second 911 call resulted in Alex & her brother being taken back to the ER in an ambulance while Ronny followed behind in his car.

At the ER, a shrink, a young one, saw Alex’s brother for about 10 minutes, gave him a prescription of 200mg of Seroquel (which is like, NOTHING for a guy who’s 3 times my size and I think I was on 600mg daily) and Welbutrin (you do not rx an anti-depressant in a suspected bipolar patient until their mood is stable with something else because it can make them WORSE) said he was “likely bipolar” but that there were no beds in the psych ward and that he was going on vacation and wouldn’t be back until February so he wouldn’t be able to see him again until then. And then they were sent home.

So Alex & Ronny go to Shopper’s Drug Mart to fill the prescriptions and I guess Alex’s brother flipped out completely and was like, yelling that people should stay away from the vitamins because they were poison or something. They got the pills and took him home but not before he told them that he was the second coming of Christ, that the world’s problems were on his shoulders and that they had to kill him so he could die for everyone’s sins. He said that they had to do it because he couldn’t kill himself. Then he tried to throw up on a tree because he said that he had to expel all of the negative energy into another living thing and he was afraid that if he didn’t throw it all up on this tree, that it would infect Ronny & Alex.

After that I’m not quite sure what happened but they ended up back in the ER because it was pretty clear that Alex’s brother was getting worse instead of better and they didn’t know what else to do.

I was working when all of this was happening and so was Blake, but the second he got home, I told him we were going to the ER to wait with Ronny & Alex and to just lend support. Also, Alex’s brother, as I said, is a pretty big guy and if he decided to be violent or flip out, Ronny wouldn’t be able to contain him but Ronny AND Blake probably could. I also thought we should go because we’ve been through this before, at the very same hospital, so we would know better what to say to make sure they were finally going to be taken seriously and to have Alex’s brother admitted to the ward on a 3-day form.

It should also be noted that as of Thursday night, Alex & Ronny had only had about 2 hours of sleep in 2 days as a result of all this. Also, Alex’s dad was on a business trip in Ottawa so Ronny & Alex were dealing with this all alone.

We got there and were just as supportive as possible. I joked around with Alex’s brother, like when he said that everyone was looking at them (they weren’t), I told him that they were actually looking at me and then he called me an albino haha I screwed around with my phone a lot & showed everyone how I could watch porn on it, I used an app I’d never used before that scans the barcode of any food item and gives you its nutrition info, I tweeted, I e-mailed blah blah blah. I joked around with Alex and engaged her in a fart war while Ronny & Blake sat behind us and just talked about stuff I guess. After I think 7 hours in the ER this time and after the nurse gave Alex’s brother another dose of Seroquel, a doctor was finally ready to see him so Alex & Ronny took him into that area and told us that they could handle it from there.

The nurse, after talking to Ronny & Blake and observing Alex’s brother for herself, told them that she was going to recommend to the doctor that he go to the ward on a 3-day form, which is what happened and we all went home.

To “end” the story…Alex’s brother escaped from the hospital on Friday morning and the cops were out looking for him., He walked all the way from the hospital to their house because he wanted to have a shower. The cops waited for him to have his shower and then drove him back to the hospital. The hospital then decided that he was more than they could handle, so they transferred him to an actual psych hospital about an hour away which happens to be a VERY VERY good thing because I use this hospital’s outpatient services and they are excellent. Also, my own shrink either does work there or used to work there and she’s pretty decent so I know they’ll bring him out of psychosis properly, that he’ll come out of there with an actual diagnosis (whereas I did not when I was in RVH) and that his aftercare will be excellent.

He’s got a really really long road ahead of him but I think he’s in the best place possible right now so hopefully he’ll have an easier time than I did with the whole thing.

So having said all of that, after Blake & I got home from the hospital, I was tired and hungry and so on edge that I completely lost it and started sobbing uncontrollably because it was the same hospital, the same situation and I knew exactly what he was going through. I was so scared for him and so pissed off at the hospital for putting Ronny and Alex through all that bullshit. Then when I found out they were moving him to the actual psych hospital North of us, I was so relieved for him that I just bawled.

And I did a lot of crying over the last couple of days because this whole thing has brought up a lot of stuff that I’d thought I’d dealt with but apparently not. My shrink has even said that part of my problems now is that I never really dealt with what happened to me in 2006 so it’s no wonder I’m completely traumatized by this whole thing now. Supporting Ronny & Alex in this was a no-brainer and I’d gladly do it again and will keep doing it, but I’ve very glad that I’ll be seeing my shrink on Monday to discuss all of this.

It’s hard for me to even put into words all of the things that have surfaced as a result of this but I’m better today than I was yesterday and I suspect I’ll be fine in a few days. When we got home from the hospital I told Blake that there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to visit Alex’s brother with them while he was in the psych ward of RVH but now that he’s been moved to the better hospital, I actually want to go up there with them at some point just to see what the facility is like because I’ve heard so much about it.

In the midst of writing this post, Ronny called me and told me that they’d visited Alex’s brother at the hospital today with their dad and that her brother’s pretty disoriented, thinking he’s been there for days instead of not even 24 hours. You can kinda tell that the meds are starting to do their job because he’s a little pissed off that Ronny and Alex “put” him there, as any sane person would be if they were in that situation. The nurse that they spoke to while there said that she doubted he would be out sooner than a week, which I explained to Ronny as being very good news. As long as he co-operates and actually speaks his mind, he should be able to get an actual diagnosis and start the long process of trying to find the right meds.

And as I explained to Ronny, their outpatient services are excellent and that since Alex’s brother doesn’t drive and lives an hour away, they’ll actually send a cab to pick him up for appointments and another one to bring him home, all on the government’s dime. He’ll also be able to get his medications through the clinic so he won’t have to pay for them, which is good because he doesn’t work and psych meds are super expensive. In a way, this story has a happy ending.

In other news, my kitchen is finished. Blake and Madison and Madison’s friend are putting the cupboard doors back on and after a bit of touch-ups on them because the paint stuck to the plastic they were laid down on, Blake’s going to paint our shelves green (which are now white). Then at some point my mom’s going to wallpaper the backsplash and line the shelves with the same wallpaper, then we’ll put everything back in the cupboards and it’ll be done! It looks GREAT, the light in there is so much nice now that it’s bouncing off of a greyish blue instead of pineapple yellow.

Tomorrow night is the finale of The Walking Dead, which Ronny & Alex are going to come over for and that should be awesome.

The only thing right now in my life that isn’t so awesome is that I’ve been gaining weight again. This is partially due to the fact that I’m not eating my eggs for breakfast anymore, that I’m not eating dinner with the family anymore, I’m eating too many large assorted subs, I’m doing Hatha yoga now instead of Vinyasa and because now that I have my own money, I can afford more junk food. In other words, I am absolutely doing this to myself and it’s making me very angry.

So starting Monday, I will be eating my eggs for breakfast again and I am going to start eating dinner with the family again, while cutting out most of my junk food consumption.

See the thing is, if I’m eating my eggs and having dinner with the family, I can “afford” to have a bit of “vitamin J” every now & then, but with the combination of things happening diet-wise right now, I can’y and especially not in the quantities I’ve been having.

I know it’s a total cliche to say “the diet starts on Monday”  but it’s easy to eat eggs on the weekend because Blake will make them for me, it’s NOT so easy to eat them during the week because I have to work and don’t have time to make them. (I think microwaving eggs is an absolute SIN).

And I absolutely have to give up my subs, or at the very least, limit it to a small one once a week, as opposed to a large one a few times a week. Truthfully, I’ve been eating them so much because I don’t know what else to eat since I haven’t been eating dinner with the family and since they eat gross things so often it’s just easier to get a sub and be done with it.

But the key is the eggs, so that’s priority one.

Anyway, I’m just babbling at this point, so that’s life right now and I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend! Mine is dedicated to watching really bad movies and painting because it’s been a while and I have a lot to catch up on. THE END.

- Life is pretty good right now.

- Slooooowly but surely I am making progress on a couple of paintings while mentally plotting the 24 x 48 inches of gallery stretched canvas I have sitting in my office.

- I am getting really really good at my job.

- My sleep schedule is getting a bit better yet I’m still sitting here an hour past bedtime waiting for Ativan to dissolve, so there is that.

- Ronny is painting the kitchen, it’s almost done and it looks good.

- Pomegranates.

- I farted during yoga tonight and survived. (No one heard, THANK GOD.)

- I’m reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and can barely put it down. I also loved A Thousand Splendid Suns but I think I like The Kite Runner better. I think they’re making it into a movie.

- Tonight I watched the movie The Virgin Suicides, which I’d seen before and liked and knew it was based on a book, but had no idea until I went to add the movie to my wishlist that the author of the book was Jeffrey Eugenides whose book Middlesex is in my top favourite books of all time. The Virgin Suicides is now a must-read.

- I hold 10 different mayorships on Foursquare. Wut wut.

- Xmas shopping is allllllmost finished. This is helping with my yearly holiday stress induced freak out.

- The Walking Dead is so close to my nightmares that I require my night time dose of anti-anxiety medication an hour early or I can’t watch it. One episode I had to watch during the day because it just wasn’t happening before bed.

- I discovered during yoga tonight that part of my left calf is numb and still is 5 hours after discovery so that has me a little worried about a possible blood clot or some other dire affliction.

- Got paid today, so that’s awesome.

- Madison had to go to the hospital to get her ass x-rayed on Friday because her friend thought it would be HILARIOUS if she pulled Madison’s chair out from under her when she went to sit down. Thank god Ronny happened to be here so he could pick up the kids since Blake’s now 2 hours away.

- A very good friend of mine was just hired by the company I work for and she’ll be working with me. This is super extra awesome for about a million reasons.

- I need to be sleeping in the next 7 minutes or I won’t have a good tomorrow, so that is all.