Imagine how THRILLED I was to wake up Friday afternoon to “tune in” and see that not only have they proclaimed that overalls are BACK, but they had TWO WHOLE ARTICLES on them! Exhibit A/Exhibit B

Overalls are probably my favourite type of clothing. I would much rather rock a baggy pair of men’s overalls than a skirt ANY day of the week and dammit, I would look smokin’ hot doing it too. My mom and I are kind of obsessed with them, to be perfectly honest, although she says my love affair with them did not begin as young as I assumed it had. She tells me that she bought me an insanely cute pair of pink Osh Kosh overalls when I was 3 and I wouldn’t wear them “because they weren’t a dress”. Oh how times have changed.

Anyway, practically as soon as I read those two articles, I was digging through my drawers, trying to find my overalls and I found them yesterday and immediately put them on. Because of my herniated belly, they were pretty snug, but they still fit well enough to not only wear, but wear in PUBLIC, which I totally did and as I said, I looked smokin’ hot doin’ it.

So here are some pics. I even did my makeup. Yay me. :o)

(Weird angle, I know, but I was trying to get my eyeshadow angled right so it would show up.)

THE END.

It’s so funny to think about how little has really changed for me. Out of all 80 of us, or at least the ones who have been participating, I’m the only one who’s really still blogging the same way I did back in 2000. Every single day. I’m still on Camwhores (formerly portal 9), where I’ve been since mid-2001. I still post in the E/N style, I think. On both sites.

I dunno, I just never really thought about it before today, that things never really changed for me. Everyone else is off doing grown up things and talking about “the good ol’ days” and I feel like I’m still pretty much living them. It’s never really occurred to me until today that most of the people reading this post have no idea what the E/N scene was, let alone were they a part of it. People rarely believe me when I tell that that I started blogging, like for real, before the word “blog” even existed.

Back then, camgirls were smart as well as beautiful (not saying they aren’t now, necessarily, some are, but in a totally different way) and most of them were super geeks who coded their own websites by hand. I didn’t though, I used Dreamweaver which was notorious for writing sloppy code so even though I used it, I would have to often go into html mode and fix the code by hand, so I consider it a half & half thing for me.  This is an image of the main page of the last layout (I think) I coded and created by hand. I was so damn proud of it:

If you’ve never read my “About the Site” page and are curious about my site’s history, you should check it out. There’s a link in there to my first Angelfire site even. Remember kids, everything you do on the internet is PERMANENT! What’s so funny to me about my Angelfire site is that my version of a blog sometimes back then was to write on paper, then scan it in and post that. I should do that more often NOW haha We have a new scanner but I don’t know how to use it or I would totally do that. Also I was talking to Blake about this design just last week:

When I lived in Rob’s basement when I was in high school, on one wall I made this design, except in a circle, as a huge mural. I don’t think there are any pics of it but it was pretty cool and I was pretty proud of it. I was telling Blake about it last week but I can’t remember why, except I did say that I should draw it again in my sketchbook so it wouldn’t be lost forever and lo & behold, here it is!

I don’t like poetry. I don’t like reading it and I don’t like writing it, but after Rob and I broke up, I went through a brief poetry phase. Here’s one of them:

Piss Off

Go back to where you were.

Go back into her arms.

No one needs you here,

all you do is harm.

I hoped you were in a ditch somewhere.

I hoped for blood and gore.

I hoped that you had killed yourself and

your little whore.

I wished that you were starving,

And didn’t have a home.

I wanted you to know great pain,

I wanted you to roam.

I prayed that you had been beaten,

I prayed that you were dead.

I thought that you were staying there,

and you’d stop messing with my head.

But now you’re here and I hate you more,

Than I ever thought I would.

I thought that you had finally left,

finally gone for good.

I wished that you would disapear,

Or shrivel up and die.

But you’re still here living happily,

and I still wonder why.

Why couldn’t you have been a good boy,

And slit your fucking throat?

Nothing I would love better than to

watch your dead body bloat.

Can’t win them all I guess,

But I can always hope.

If you ever want to kill yourself,

I have lots of rope.

Hahahahaha!!! Isn’t that hilarious? I also think it’s funny that on my Angelfire site, I had a “PMS page“, which was basically the original version of my “Shit I Hate” page. I’m also still really proud of this troll story I wrote. If you knew the guy it was based on, you would find it hysterically funny too! :oD

More poetry; I wrote this one for Madison when she was first born:

Too funny!

But yeah, it amazes me how much and how little has really changed since then. Especially the latter for me since I feel like I’m still in the same place, doing the same thing as I was 11 or 12 years ago or however long it’s been (I started my first site in 1997, so how long ago was that?).  On the FB group, we were talking about “what if…” and wondering why none of us ever really made it “big” in the blog world and I still don’t have an answer. It kills me that people like Dooce get all this recognition for the same thing myself and several others have been doing better and longer. What makes her so special? What makes her more marketable than us? Why did she get a book deal? I don’t get it. She’s not the only one, I’ve written about the Mormon mommy bloggers before and that whole thing STILL baffles me.

Anyway, the trip down memory lane was a welcome change from the usual. Do you remember the E/N scene? What/who do you miss the most? Spill! I miss being pretty and having nice hair. Oh yeah, I still maintain a small webcam archive, which can be found here.

~*PLEASE DONATE SO I CAN GO TO ART CAMP!*~

PS. Another thing I just remembered is that a few years ago on Facebook, someone referred to me as an “internet celebrity*” and Madison saw it and was like “wtf does that mean?” so I had to show her my site and some of my Camwhores archive and explain the whole shebang to her. She actually thought it was really cool but now that she’s aware of the fact that there’s a relatively big audience, she won’t let me post everything about her anymore, which sucks, but I respect that. Wes knows about everything but my activity on Camwhores and he thinks it’s the coolest thing ever and constantly tell me what I should tell you guys about. “Tell them I did this!” he says all the time, like when I’m filing him or taking his picture. A total ham.

Okay, nurse Cheryl (ugh) is going to be here in 2 hours. I’d better get a bit more sleep.

(* It’s easy to be an “internet celebrity” when there are only 50 people on the whole entire internet haha)

Edit: Apparently Steph formerly of Delightz.net made the FB group, not Artfag and Steph wrote a really nice post about it which you can find here.

Edit #2: Here’s Artfag’s post about the whole thing.

Around 9am, Cheryl, one of my nurses, was scheduled to come do my dressing, which the night before I was really pissy about because I didn’t want to get up early but I was glad for it when I saw the sunrise. God I love sunrise.

As I was looking out the window at bliss, the phone rang and it was my mom. She said that I should check my e-mail very carefully because she got her Squam registration e-mail. I checked and checked and checked but I didn’t get one yet. My mom said hers said that I was her roommate and that we were staying in the Longhouse, which I know is a 13+ person cabin. Let the games begin! I cannot even imagine the fights to use the bathrooms haha I will most definitely be bringing my Lush “No Drought” dry shampoo! Since my mom’s e-mail said I was her roommate, I’m assuming my e-mail will be coming shortly. So excited!

After I got off the phone with my mom, Cheryl came and that was pretty uneventful. Cheryl is a smoker and she tries to cover up the smell of the cigarettes with perfume, which just makes it worse. When she leans over me to change my dressing, it smells and I can’t stand it. Also, she comes early and I hate that, whereas Janice and Siske come in the afternoon (and they don’t smoke). BUT since I had such a great day yesterday, I’m thinking getting up early isn’t a totally horrible thing to do on “office days” (days where I stay in my office the whole day making art, as opposed to the living room/computer).

After Cheryl left, I made waffles with the REAL maple syrup my mom got me for Christmas, which is one of my favourite things in the world (if you’ve never had real maple syrup, I truly feel sorry for you because it is one of the Earth’s most wonderful treasures) and I brought them into my office and started flipping around to see what was on TV. I watched Wife Swap, the UK version, which was nice and trashy but as always, one of the moms had a revelation that her life sucked and they all became friends and it was heartwarming.

After that, I took my plate into the kitchen, filled up my drink and came back to my office to make some ~*SERIOUS ART*~ (not really) while I watched…something. I honestly don’t remember what. Something that was an hour long and was probably a talk show. Whatever it was, I worked on Argent’s painting as I watched (or more to the point, listened). Argent’s painting is turning out to be a royal pain in my ass and I can’t wait until it’s finished and out of my house! EVERYTHING I’ve tried to do with it has failed miserably and I’ve had to make corrections like crazy. It’s making me mental! But it’s almost finished and I think he’ll be happy with it and that’s all that matters.

Once Argent’s painting was in a state of “no touchies”, I started working on my girl who will be on my last page of the Sketchbook Project sketchbook.

I think I watched Ellen while I was doing this and Colin Firth and the little dog from the movie The Artist were on it. Colin was very animated and talking about Gary Oldman being “hung like a water buffalo” and the little dog was very charming. Truthfully though, I can’t see myself seeing either of their movies. Just not interested.

After that, was The View. I like this show a lot, I’ve always been a Whoopi fan, but I don’t normally watch it because when I was working, I didn’t watch TV at the same time, and after I got sick and now that I’m home all day with my thumb up my ass, I spend most of my time in front of the computer which is something I’m hoping to change and yesterday was the first step.

(Paper peony)

On The View, the women did their hot topics but they weren’t all that interesting or I’d be able to tell you what they talked about. I know there was a story where Sheri was on a plane and Courtney Love was there with a short skirt and no underbums and she caused quite a ruckus. Their guest was an old guy from that Tom Hanks/911 movie I have no interest in. I just listened and worked on my girl.

Then it was Dr. Phil and boy, what a show. o_O They had on there a guy who was into infantilism. He liked to act like an 18 month old, sleep in a crib, play with baby toys, act like a baby, eat in a high chair and wear diapers. He had a regular job at a “big box store” working nights, but when he got home in the morning, he’d put on his onesie, hop in the high chair and his poor girlfriend would feed him and change his shitty diaper. I felt so bad for her. She was doing everything for him and he never did anything for her, like nothing, and Dr. Phil was like, “are you having a relationship with an 18 month old or a 24 year old?” and the answer was an 18 month old. And she said she wanted to marry this guy and have kids with him one day, but only if he could “tone things down”, which Dr. Phil said would not happen no matter what the guy said. And it wasn’t even a sexual thing, the guy didn’t get OFF on being a baby, that’s just how he felt naturally. Which I think is weird, but fine, it’s not hurting anyone EXCEPT your significant other who you’re lying to about it and basically using. He needs to find someone whose thing in life is wanting to take care of an adult baby and that girl needs to run away as fast as she can in the opposite direction because he will never change and things will only get worse as he takes it farther and farther.

Normally I don’t watch Dr. Phil because I think it’s pretty trashy and only a few degrees away from being Jerry Springer, but if there’s nothing else on or if the topic is interesting, I’ll watch. Yesterday’s was interesting.

By then it was 4pm and the kids came burting through the door just as a Roseanne rerun came on. They asked me what the show was about and I said it was about a family a lot like ours. They decided to watch it with me and they wanted to know who in the show was like who of us in real life. I said that I was Roseanne, Blake was Dan (obviously), Becky was Madison and Wes was DJ. I also told them that it was probably the best sitcom to ever grace the airwaves. Wes was really into it (it was the episode where it was Dan and Roseanne’s 20th wedding anniversary and he took a part-time job to pay for her present) and Madison not so much. Right after the first episode there was another episode so we watched that one too and in that one, Darlene and David break up because Molly kissed David and Madison got more into it because David is on Big Bang Theory and apparently so is Darlene. This, along with Mayim Bialik, makes me think I should give that show a second chance because when I first watched it, I just wasn’t into it but everyone I know loves it and the various clips I’ve seen online of it, I really liked.

Anyway…after Roseanne, it was Golden Girls, which I knew the kids wouldn’t be so much into (although I was into Golden Girls when I was their age) but they watched it with me anyway. The two episodes we watched weren’t very good ones (one where they were remodeling the garage and Rose is dating Mr. Terrific and the other was where Rose’s boyfriend retires and wants to sail around the world) but I explained to Madison, who’s very interested in gay issues and equality, that the Golden Girls was an extremely progressive show for its time because Blanche’s son was gay and they had some episodes dealing with that, but also the show itself was about women at a time in their lives that you just didn’t – and still don’t, really – see on TV. This made her more interested in the show, but only snippets found on YouTube, not the actual episodes. I’d still really like to get the whole series on DVD or Blu-Ray. It was probably my 2nd favourite sitcom of all time.

By the time the Golden Girls was over, I’d finished my girl and stuck her in the sketchbook and today I’ll give her arms, sew the trim on her dress and give her a quote. Then all I have to do on the sketchbook is a girl for the cover and then I’m finished! YAY!

The only difference between this pic and the one above is that I inked her hair and legs/feet.
She’s just so damn pretty, I wanted to post her twice!

After Golden Girls, Wes went into the living room to watch Pokemon, which he’s obsessed with (by the way, his birthday is in 3 weeks if anyone was planning on getting him anything – e-mail me if you need our address), and I flipped around channels to see what I could find. Blake and Madison were going to the high school for like, a parent/teacher transition night type of thing  so I took that opportunity to watch something Blake would never in a million years watch with me: Toddlers & Tiaras.

I can’t help it. I love this show. I never know when it’s on, so I don’t watch it all the time or anything but every episode I’ve seen I’ve really liked. I think that show falls into 3 categories: ones where the kids are total brats to their parents on camera and therefore the episode is funny because it makes their parents look like losers, ones where the kids are really into the whole pageant and they’re just cute as hell and ones where their parents look like monsters and you feel sorry for the kids. Yesterday I saw 2 of the above.

The first one I watched was where the theme for the pageant was Groovy Girls. Or maybe that was the pageant’s name, I’m not sure. Either way, there were 3 categories in the pageant: beauty, costume of choice and one other one I forget the name of and the pageant was “full glitz”, which means that the girls had acrylic nails, spray tans and “flippers” which are like fake teeth. In this episode, all of the girls were actually really into the pageants and they were old enough to choose that this is what they wanted to do. The mothers weren’t overbearing at all, they were just supportive and this was just what they chose to do with their daughter, like any other family would do hockey or soccer. I *DO NOT* like the spray tanning and acrylic nails and fake teeth, I think that’s dumb, but it’s part of the competition, just like shin guards and helmets and sticks and shoes, so as long as the kid’s okay with it, and all these ones were, I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t have a problem with the makeup either, a lot of little girls like to play with and wear makeup. And as long as the kids are GOOD winners and losers, I don’t have a problem with it. In this show, two of the girls who apparently compete a lot and win and lose to each other all the time, are actually friends. I liked that.

Anyway, seeing the girls in their little bell bottoms and vests and sunglasses and go go boots and stuff like that was sooooooo cute. I especially liked seeing like, the 18 month – 2 year olds all dressed up in their little costumes, they were just adorable. And really,  thinking these kids were cute in their costumes is no different than Halloween. The whole show was just cute little girls being cute little girls and I enjoyed the show immensely, enough to watch a new episode that aired at 10pm.

The one I watched at 10pm was vastly different than the one I watched earlier. The one at 10 had horrible parents pushong their kids to do this when they really didn’t want to do it. The one little girl was SICK and feeling like crap but her mom made her compete anyway because the grand prize was $10,000. This mom made the poor little girl not wear her glasses when she was on stage and then belittled her when the little girl didn’t do her routine – which she’d only learned 2 DAYS prior – because the girl couldn’t see the judges or her mother in the audience telling her what to do. Then another mother, who was a hardcore Russian immigrant, was just a monster. He would withhold her daughter’s favourite stuffed bear, “Micha”, and only give it to her when she had to do pageants because apparently when the little girl held and played with Micha, her thumb would go in her mouth and this is how they stopped it. The little girl, Mia, would only get to play with Micha at pageants and seeing the reaction of the girl, who was only 4, when she got to see Micha, it was just heartbreaking. I almost cried. She was just so happy to see her friend again. Then in one of the cutaways, Mia said to the camera, “I want to do good at the pageant because that’s how I know my mommy loves me” or something like that and I *DID* cry, it was just so horrible. And worse? When Mia was on stage doing her beauty routine, she wasn’t listening to the emcee who was kinda like telling her to get off the stage but nicely and Mia’s mom flipped out and started screaming in their hotel room that the emcee hated Mia and that they had to “forget about it” (winning) and that they should just go home. In the end, Mia won a high title and $500 and the FIRST THING she wanted to do when she won was to show her mother and her mother PUSHED HER AWAY. OMG my poor heart. :o( That woman was just a horrible person and she was so blessed to have such an adorable, loving little girl and she didn’t even appreciate her in the slightest. If I can find a clip, I will show you this awful woman so you can wretch with me.

In between episodes of Toddlers & Tiaras, I actually watched a show called “I Cloned My Pet” which was the most pathetic hour of television I have ever watched in my whole entire life. These people were all fucked in the head. There was literally nothing else on except a rerun of the same Wife Swap I’d watched in the morning and that’s the only reason I watched this extremely stupid show.  EXTREMELY stupid.

After that my choices were a show about hoarding or American Idol and because hoarding shows just piss me off because the world just does not need that much excess, I chose American Idol because as much as that show bugs me, I have to admit, the auditions at the beginning of each season are always entertaining.

As I watched American Idol, I started working on an art journal page that uses vellum as bubbles which is a technique I’ve used before and I’ve always really liked, but the only vellum I had on hand was green, yellow, orange and red so my bubbles actually look a lot more like polkadots (hmmm, polkadots are also apparently two words OR one word and they have their own Wikipedia entry). It’s not finished yet and it was night by the time I started working on it which meant that the light in my office was garbage so I figured I’d work on it again today and take pictures of it tomorrow when it was finished. I have absolutely no idea what to write on the page, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd that was my (mostly) internet-free day yesterday in support of the SOPA protest! I will say one thing though: I didn’t tweet yesterday because Twitter was supposed to be part of the black out but I had TweetDeck up just out of habit and I was really disappointed by some people who I *know* knew about the blackout and who tweeted inane bullshit anyway. Some people retweeted SOPA-related things instead of posting which was better than what other people were posting, I guess, but posting at all is the opposite of the concept of a “blackout”. I really, truly thought my Twitter feed would have been completely dark yesterday but it wasn’t and it’s making me evaluate who’s on my feed and why. There are some folks I have on there who I’ve kept just to be nice, but they’re not nice to me back or they don’t interact with me so I wonder why I bother. Soooooooo, I think over the next few days, there are definitely going to be some cuts. Hopefully people won’t make a big issue about it.

Okay, going to go to my office now…WAIT, one more thing! Apparently my posts aren’t always showing up on peoples’ LJ friends lists for some reason and I don’t know if it’s my x-poster or if it’s Live Journal but I’ll x-post an entry and it’ll go through fine, but when I go to edit a post via WordPress and click “update” it’ll tell me that my password for LJ is wrong (it’s not!) and it’ll only update the version on my site. So I dunno what’s up with that. Also when I go to a Live Journal entry and manually edit a post’s userpic and mood, which I do with everything I post, I’ll come back a few hours later and the post will be back to my default userpic. The mood will still be set to what I changed it to, but the userpic will be default. So I dunno WHAT the hell is going on but if you guys on LJ don’t hear from me for a few  days, either check my actual LJ or my site. I *think* the error is with LJ because they were having a lot of problems over the weekend so I’m just waiting for them to fix their shit before I investigate further.

NOW I’m going to my office! Happy Thursday!

~*Please donate!*~

Not that it makes a lick of difference, but my site will “go dark” tomorrow in solidarity with the other sites that are protesting this bill. That means I won’t be updating. I also won’t be tweeting or doing anything considered as providing content because that’s exactly what’ll happen if this passes, sites you care about will go dark. The bottom line is that this will affect the internet as we all know it. Like I said, read the above link for a breakdown on it and see for yourself and do me a favour? Really click the link and read it. Because if this breakdown is all true, and I have every reason to believe it is, then we could all be in very deep shit if SOPA passes. I can’t do a damn thing from my little bunker in Canada but you? You reading this? I bet YOU can. So do it.

Edit: Dammit, the Reddit post is now gone but the comments aren’t. Someone posted this.

Edit #2: PA updated with this.

Edit #3: MOAR.

Edit #4: Oh snap.

Edit #5: Parody video.

I can’t shave my head. It’s not that I’m chickening out or anything like that because it’s not like I haven’t shaved my head before, it’s because when I was in the ICU, I developed a bedsore on the back of my head because of where it rubbed on the pillow. I mean, I was laying on my back for 2 months more or less and I scar really easily so when the wound healed, I was left with two scars and hair doesn’t grow on scar tissue, at least, not fresh scar tissue. Behold:

If I shaved my head, with that bald spot, I’ll look like I was a victim of a lice infestation or something and people will want to stay away from me. As you can see, there’s the two little scars, but all around them hair isn’t really growing for some reason. I don’t know why, maybe it’s for the same reason that my hair is falling out.

Blake also said something like, would I rather be frustrated with regrowth with hair or without it? And he also said, would I just be moping around the house wearing hats with a shaved head? And if so, what’s the difference between wearing a hat all the time with hair and without it? That’s a very valid point, so I’ve decided not to shave my head and to just wear hats instead. So I bought this one and this one and this one, courtesy of my very special friend Charlie who is amazeballs. I also bought Madison this one and Wes this one (he’s obsessed with wolves at the moment) for Xmas.

I’ve been really depressed lately, moreso than I was before, because we’ve had a pretty big setback as far as my wound is concerned. The nurses wanted to switch my dressing changes to every other day, which proved to be a bad idea because the wound had too much discharge and because it was moist all the time, some of the new tissue around the edges began to break down.

In the pic you can see where it’s broken down around the edges, the parts that look like zombie flesh are the parts that broke down. On the right (well, my left) you can see my poor bellybutton.

I’m just disappointed because Dr. Hanrahan said maybe she’d be closing me up by Xmas but I don’t think she will be with the wound looking like this and we still haven’t heard from the stupid surgeon in Toronto about draining my pseudocysts. I am just so sick of being sick. :o( At least I’ve stopped throwing up though. I just decided that I wasn’t going to throw up anymore and I’m really very stubborn so thus far it’s been working. That’s not to say that I haven’t been feeling extremely nauseous and I always have my puke bowl within arm’s reach because I’ve had some pretty close calls, but I haven’t thrown up in about a week and a half. Maybe even longer.

Oh but back to my wound: we’re back to doing daily dressing changes, with Blake doing them on every other day and weekends and Siske doing them M/W/F. I guess the big deal is that they’re supposed to teach the families how to do them but in my case, I was having a nurse come every single day, which costs the company and the province money and I guess at the last meeting, the nurses kinda got bitched out about that.

Speaking of nurses, I’m fairly confident that I’ve scared Ben off completely. I know he’s gotten my Facebook message because he changed his profile pic recently so he would have gotten it when he logged in, but he hasn’t replied. He’s been doing orientation at the mental health hospital in Penetanguishene this week, according to Janice, so the rumour is that he’s going to leave Bayshore (the company that overseas the nurses) completely. He says he’s still going to work for them though, and I think the rumour is just a rumour. He mostly works weekends and since Blake is doing my dressings on weekends now, we probably won’t see him very often, if at all, so at least things won’t be awkward as a result of my Facebook message. I hope, anyway. I did send him a short message after the initial one saying that if he had like, a policy against fraternizing with patients on Facebook that was totally cool and understandable so again, I don’t think things will be awkward if he replies. If he doesn’t reply, then things will probably be awkward if he comes here because I’ll know he’s read it and like…do I say “hey did you get my FB message?” or just pretend I never sent it? I dunno! The protocol for this kind of thing doesn’t exactly exist or anything.

Whatever, I’ll cross that bridge when I need to.

A while back, you may recall that Madison’s teacher made Madison bring home the book White Oleander by Janet Fitch because Madison was reading it in class and the teacher deemed it “inappropriate” because she’s a fucking moron who has no idea what she’s talking about.

We’ve been recommending books for Madison to read over the past little while and she’s been enjoying (for the most part) the things we’ve been telling her to read. The only book that really gave her trouble was The Life of Pi, which was just over her head and probably a bad choice on Blake’s part. I recommended she read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides because he’s my favourite author, that book is fucking phenomenal and I think, being a teenage girl herself, Madison will be able to relate to it.

Since her teacher is a bloody idiot who will, no doubt, object to the book based on the title alone and Madison does a lot of her reading at school, she asked me to make a book jacket for it so her teacher won’t realize what she’s reading. So that’s what I did this morning. I told my friend Ashley that I’d take pics of the process but I forgot. I did take pics after the fact though and the process was pretty simple because all I did was glue the paper to the book using gel medium. I meant to leave the back part of the book cover loose so the synopsis was accessible should Madison’s teacher *gasp* wanted to educate herself on the book before deeming it inappropriate, but I fucked up and the first thing I did was smear gel medium all over the back cover and since I couldn’t exactly wash it off of a paperback, I just went with it and glued the paper to the whole thing. The back cover only had like, a 3 sentence synopsis anyway and the rest was praise so I don’t think it would make a difference anyway.

Here it is:

Front cover.

Inside front cover.
I folded the paper over a bit so it would adhere better.

Back cover.

Gel medium, so you know what to get if you wanted to do this for some reason as well.

And now I’m going to play Warcraft for a little while and eat ketchup chips.
Then I have to go work on my sketchbook because time’s a tickin’!

I also didn’t have dinner last night because I knew if I did, I’d throw up. My “mind over matter” dealie isn’t working so well these days. I *am* almost 6 days barf-free but over the past 2 days I came pretty close and I don’t know if I can keep this up. I guess my mental powers just ain’t what they used to be. Then again, if I don’t believe in those powers, they won’t work, so I should probably be a little more positive about it.

So none of you probably noticed because you all saw the post earlier in the day, but I’ve removed yesterday’s post entitled “Sweet Child o’ Mine” because Madison got mad at me for posting her note. She wasn’t mad that I showed the whole world, she was mad that it was an image that people could save and potentially print out and bring to school to tease her with. Her friends don’t really come here but she was afraid of that scenario. She said that if I could figure out a way to leave the post up but make it so people couldn’t save the pics, I could leave it up, but as you all know, that’s not possible, which is a shame because I think that was a good post. I saved it as a PDF so I could print it out once we have black ink again, though, so it’s not exactly lost forever, it’s just not public anymore.

Anyway, total lapse in parenting judgement. I’ve apologized and promised that I wouldn’t post publicly about her sexuality again, especially in a savable format. We’re good.

I wish I could post publicly about how everything went down with her last night because I think it was very interesting but since I’m banned from speaking of her sexuality I can’t really go into details. I understand her reasons for being upset, and again, it had very little to do with you guys and more to do with people from her school, and I respect them. If she were an adult, I probably wouldn’t because don’t tell me shit if you don’t want it on the internet (unless you specifically say “don’t post this”, which I do respect, or unless it’s really obvious that it shouldn’t be public) but she’s a kid and has the right to grow up with a little privacy. Note that I said “a little”. She is unfortunately my daughter and I put everything on the internet that happens in my life from the mundane to extraordinary and sshe’s a part of my life so there’s going to be some cross-over. I’m not just going to write around her.

I explained this to her and she seemed fine with it. It was mostly the sexuality thing and who she likes (which I know I didn’t mention but I do have a video teasing her about someone we thought she was crushing on last spring that she hated but I didn’t know until last night because she didn’t tell me) because those things can come back to her at school if it falls into the wrong hands. And like I said yesterday, she’s already being teased at school, to a much higher degree than she let on before, and it breaks my heart so I won’t do anything to knowingly contribute to it.

So that’s what happened to the post, more or less.

Before I apologized, she was really mean to me and made me cry, which was a bad move on my part. Now that she knows she has that power, she’s going to use it as she gets deeper into the teen years and the shitty part is, I can’t control myself. I can’t not cry when someone’s being mean to me. I’m an extremely sensitive person and I cry a lot. I cry if the store’s out of ketchup chips. I cry if someone shows me a video on how Chicken McNuggets are made. I cry when celebrities die. I cry when Blake yells. I cry when Wes tells me about when he saw me at St. Mike’s and I was “sleeping”. I cry when “Creep” by Radiohead comes on my iTunes.  I cry for really stupid reasons, especially when I think people are mad at me or they’re being mean to me. Blake’s like, “it’s only going to get worse as she gets older” and I just cried some more because Madison’s never been mean to me before. She’s never gotten mad at me before. She fights with Blake all the time and gets made at him and that’s just their dynamic, they butt heads and scream at each other for a while, then Madison goes to her room and Blake goes to his desk and a couple of hours later Madison comes out and pretty much acts like nothing even happened, which Blake doesn’t let her get away with, they discuss whatever it was calmly at that point, but it always turns out okay.

Yesterday Madison made me cry, twice, and didn’t even apologize for it after everything was fine and we were back to joking around and being normal.  She was indignant, she was like “good” while I was crying, even though she didn’t say that. That really bothers me.

It getting worse will absolutely destroy me and I’ve been crying all morning just thinking about it. :o( Okay I’ve only been up for an hour, but I hit the ground weeping. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through her teens if this is how it’s going to be. She’s just literally, in the 13 years she’s been alive, has never gotten made at me before, she’s never lashed out at me, she’s never said anything mean. That’s not how we are. Or that’s not how we were.

Don’t get me wrong, even after she saw I’d posted the note and before I apologized, she was still telling me all about school and the kids in school and who she liked and was acting totally normal. She took the opportunity to be mad at me and ran with it to see what it tasted like and I think it tasted good. She’s been testing the waters with me a little bit the last few weeks, like saying “no” if I ask her to bring me a bottle of water from the kitchen or to recycle my old ones or to grab me an apple while she’s in there or whatever. She plays it off like she’s joking but she’s kinda started taking it too far and I can’t really explain in text how she’s testing the waters, it just feels like she is. Blake thinks the same thing.

Other than that, we’re totally fine. Blake tweeted this weekend, “I think that Madison and @SunnyCrittenden sitting around shooting the shit is just about the cutest thing ever.” and he mentioned somewhere else that it was “heartwarming”. I don’t/didn’t really understand what he meant because Madison and I were just being normal, this is how we are after school every single day, but I guess he doesn’t see that because he’s at work. Madison and I have talked after school about everything under the sun since she started school, pretty much, so it’s totally normal for us, but again, he just doesn’t see it. I don’t know what was different this weekend, but something was and he noticed and he mentioned it. He also said that it “warmed his heart” that we went into my office and watched The Muppet Movie together while I made art because, to him, Madison and I don’t do that together. But the thing is, after school we do, we’ve watched many an Oprah episode after school together and now on Thursdays we watch Extreme Couponing together. (That show is AWESOME.) Since I got sick, I don’t go in my office that often so we don’t watch as much TV as we used to, but obviously we still do it because we did it on Sunday and last Thursday with Extreme Couponing. In fact she stayed home from school that day to help me deal with a new nurse because I just couldn’t deal with her by myself (and rightly so, she was pretty gross and I hated her touching me :o(). Today after school, Madison is going to the pharmacy to pick up the drugs for me that Blake forgot to get on Sunday because he worked all weekend. She’s a GOOD KID, she just has this streak of malice now that I don’t know how to deal with.

And it bugs the hell out of me that she doesn’t believe me that she’s a good kid when I tell her she is. Maybe I should write her a note. I mean, she helps out around the house a LOT and for no allowance because we can’t afford allowance anymore, she runs errands, she’s constantly asking me if I need anything and both kids understand that walking is difficult for me, so they both grab me water from the fridge and stuff like that and they seem happy to do it. Sometimes (not often) I say in the living room where everyone is, as a joke, “the next person who gets me an apple gets a kiss!” and all three of them will literally fight over who’s going to do it, like they all run to the kitchen to get the apple. The ONLY thing I know for certain in this life is that my family REALLY loves me. Like, to an abnormal degree I think.

So then how could she be so mean to me? I don’t understand. Blake tried explaining it to me as there being reactions that come from the (logical) brain and reactions that comes from the (illogical) heart but I still don’t get it. I could never be that mean to her. I’m the one always sticking up for her, I’m the one always in her corner.

I guess all there is to do is to try and grow a thicker skin. Blake says I need to try as hard as I can next time not to react when she tries to hurt me and he guarantees that there will be a “next time”. I’m not so sure about that, but he’s probably right about the thicker skin thing, just in case. I just don’t think I’m capable of it.

Enough about that.

Last night I watched a movie called “The Switch”, which starred Jennifer Anniston, who I think is SO pretty and Jason Bateman who I think is a dork. Juliette Lewis and Jeff Goldblum were also in it and Juliette was really great. Jeff, not so much. Anyway, it’s about an artificial insemination gone awry and it’s a romantic comedy, which I’m a sucker for, and I expected it to be really awful as most rom-coms are but it was actually pretty decent and do you wanna know why? It’s because it was based on the short story “Baster” by JEFFREY EUGENIDES (!!!!!!) who is probably my favourite author in the whole wide world. He wrote Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides and a new book that I forget the name of but Blake’s getting it for me for Xmas. Something about a marriage or a divorce or something, I honestly didn’t read the jacket, I just saw the name and basically screamed in the middle of Chapters because I love him so much.

Right now I’m half-assedly reading Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs which is kinda cool because of its gimmick (the story is written around strange photos that were supposedly “found”, but I’m not so sure – the photos are interspersed throughout the book) but the writing is kinda “meh”. The story is kinda “meh” too. And actually now that I think about it, the writing sounds like I’m reading a blog, which I don’t really mind but I read a lot of blogs and I want more from a book. Apparently they’re making this book into a movie and I have no idea how that’s going to work.

Speaking of movies, The Help comes out next week on DVD and I have to have it. If anyone was going to get me anything for Xmas, that’s the thing. It’s on my wishlist. Just sayin’…(I hate that term and I can’t believe I just used it, but it fit…)

Here are scenes from my bed from yesterday:

Wes gave me a bat ring for Halloween. It’s one of my prized possessions. :o)

My empty Tylenol #3 bottle.
I always keep them so I know when I can refill the prescription because I only get 100 pills every 30 days so I don’t become an addict (probably too late).

Wes’ picture from the dentist last year.
His hair IS tinged pink in this pic, it’s not  a trick of the light.
I just realized that it’s weird that its for the DENTIST and he’s not showing his teeth.
They probably wanted him to, but he probably politely declined.
That’s just how he is.

This is my extra special snowflake mug.
Blake got me a set of 4 from Caribou Coffee when he was working there like, 10- years ago.
This is the only survivor. :o/
It’s getting old and I need a new one but I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement.
It’s stained on the inside and the inside also has a whole bunch of fine cracks.

I’ll be very upset if anyone breaks it.

Yesterday Blake called me from Shopper’s Drug Mart and told me that Isopure Plus (my protein drink that I need so I don’t die of malnutrition) was on sale for $3.50 off, which is a very big deal because the stuff’s $15 + tax for 6 bottles which is very expensive for us and he wanted to know if I thought he should get 2. I said yes. I wish we had more money so we could get more than 2 because that’s a really good deal and we should probably stock up. :o/ It’s NOT a good deal if we have to put it on Visa and pay interest on it, so that’s why we only got 2.

Today is a grey, rainy, depressing day. I really really hate fall, especially right now when we’re in the tail end of it; when the leaves are all off the trees and soggy brown muck on the ground and it’s cold enough to see your breath but there’s no snow. I love rain when everything’s green, but when everything’s brown, it just depresses me. Also, I just don’t get outside enough. I want to be outside, I just don’t know what to do out there.

Did you know that a serving of cashews (1/4 cup, which isn’t a lot) has 9g of protein? Learn something new every day. The chicken bowl steamery microwave thing I’m going to have for lunch is like, 18g of protein. My mom found an online protein calculator and she says I need 44g of protein per day. I’ve been doing some research of my own and I read that if a person is recovering from a surgery or an accident, they should actually DOUBLE their protein intake because their bodies are working extra hard to heal themselves.

My wound is almost healed and while my guts are swollen and unhappy, I can’t exactly heal them, so I say I should split the difference and that I should aim for 66g. There’s no way I can eat that much in a day without gaining a ton of weight and there’s also the puking thing to consider, but I can come close with the Isopure Plus (18g of protein) every day. I got Blake and Madison to try a little bit of the Alpine Punch flavour last week and Madison said it tasted like medicine and Blake just said he thought it was pretty good. I agree. The texture is a little weird and takes some getting used to (it’s more dense than water or juice) but after that it’s actually pretty good. Blake got me grape this time and everything I’ve read says that that one’s the best flavour so I guess I’ll see later tonight.

Even though Isopure Plus is designed to be easy on tummies, I find that if I drink it too quickly, I feel really really sick, so I have to drink it in little sips across a span of an hour or more. If it gets warm, I have to put it in the freezer to cool it back down, because it’s pretty gross when it’s room temperature.

Anyway, I’m very pleased with the stuff.  I just wish it wasn’t so goddamn expensive.

Okay I think it’s time to go into my office where I can’t see the grey day, watch some bad movies OnDemand, eat my chicken bowl steamer thing and then work on this sketchbook. I got the sketchbook for the Limited Edition Sketchbook Project last week so the pressure’s on! My theme is “the last word ever spoken”. Hmmmm.

I don’t feel impressive. I mean, I can’t control my rate of healing. I’m only positive about this shit when I’m in her office. Realistically I sleep my days away and I cry a lot because I am so goddamn sick of this bullshit that I can barely stand it. But I have no choice but to “stand it”, so I sleep away my days and just try to keep on keepin’ on. What alternative do I have?

I hate the days Siske comes because it means I have to get up early. She usually comes between 9am-9:30am, every Mon/Wed/Fri. I like Siske, don’t get me wrong, I just hate having to get up for her and I hate that I’m too chickenshit to deal with her by myself so Blake has to work from home those days. He makes sure the vac’s turned off half an hour before she gets here and makes sure there’s a garbage bag beside my bed for all the medical waste. He also makes sure the stainless steel scissors we stole from the hospital (accidentally, I swear!) are boiled and sterile. Stuff that’s hard for me to do because I suck at waking up early and it’s hard to navigate all the places I have to navigate to do all that with the vac. Also, I’m in a lot of pain and the less I have to move around, the better off I am.

Anyway…

So we went to see the surgeon today, whose name is Renee Hanrahan in case you were wondering, and she’s awesome, and there was some good news and some not so good news. And some more good news and some more not so good news.

The CAT scan showed that I have a 12cm long pseudocyst  on my pancreas that requires surgery (or maybe more to the point, a “procedure”) to be drained before she can close up my cheese pizza wound/hernia. 12cms is pretty damn big, I had no idea the pancreas was even that big, but this pseudocyst is like a blister and we’re waiting to find out from the OTHER surgeon, down in Toronto at the hospital I was in before, if it’s operable. If it’s not then we have to wait until the body naturally absorbs it which can take a really really long time. Like, we’re talking 6 months to a year. If it IS operable then what he’ll do is stick a scope down my throat and into my belly and at the end of the scope will be an instrument that’ll pierce the cyst. I’m not sure if it’ll just pop it and let my body absorb what’s in it or if they’ll suck the stuff out of it, to be honest, I forgot to ask. She said it looks like there’s more than one pseudocyst on the pancreas but they’re not so much worried about the smaller ones, it’s this big one that’s wreaking havoc on my guts and probably the culprit behind all this puking business.

The CAT scan also showed that my spleen is enlarged and unhappy and she said it was likely due to this pseudocyst pushing on it, but Blake asked about the blood clot that I had in the splenic vein (splenic vein thrombosis) and she said she didn’t know, that once the pseudocyst is out of the way they’ll do another CAT scan and will hopefully get a better look at it.

So that’s where things stand right now, we’re waiting for the Toronto surgeon to make his determination as to whether or not the pseudocyst is operable and hopefully it is because I’ll lose my goddamn mind if I have to wait 6 months to a year for this nightmare to be over.

We asked Dr. Hanrahan to ballpark how soon I would have the surgery to close up the hernia and she was very reluctant to give a date so my mom said “January?” and Dr. Hanrahan said that seemed likely. I almost cried right there. I’m crying now just typing that. That is so far away! I was thinking like, November? I thought we’d go to this appointment, she’d say the CAT scan looked good and my blood work looked good and my pee test looked good and then she’d book me for late November to be closed up.

Well, my blood work looks good. My liver is a little unhappy about something apparently but she didn’t seem worried about it and she said that despite all this barfing, there were no signs of malnutrition. My hemoglobin is low, but it always is. My iron is high, but I take 4 iron pills a day, of course it’s high! She made no mention of my pee test so I’m assuming it was fine.

She wants me to lay off on the domperidone because the issue is this pseudocyst and the fact that my stomach’s all twisted up so the domperidone probably isn’t doing much good (although I think it *does* make a difference so I’m going to continue taking it for my bigger meals, like dinner). I asked her if she’d raise my hydromorph dosage because as nerve endings grow into my cheese pizza wound, it hurts more. Also my guts just plain hurt. Ever since my run in with the world’s worse case of diarrhea, my lower guts just ache. It’s actually a lot like period cramps times about 50. And coming from someone with stage IV endometriosis I think that’s saying a lot.

So really the visit was more bitter than sweet, but at least I’m not dying of malnutrition so it can’t all be bad. I was a little worried about that, to be honest. I see her again in two weeks.

OH YEAH!!! AND GUESS WHAT!!! She said I can take a break from the vac for a while to see how my wound does. I told her I was sick of being tethered to the damn thing and she said, “let’s leave it off for a while and see how you do”. SO FUCK YEAH THAT’S AWESOME. I’m just going to have a regular dressing from now on, which will be silver nitrate (it’s like fabric made out of silver!), then an “abdominal tampon” on top (LOL I love saying that) and then the sticky drape stuff that I’ve explained before as being like shelf paper on top to make it water-proof and hold the ABDOMINAL TAMPON in place.

ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. ABDOMINAL TAMPON. <— this will never get old.

So no more forgetting about the vac and walking away from the kitchen as it falls off the table. No more worrying about getting the vac machine wet when I shower. No more waking up 20 times a night to untangle myself from it. No more carrying the fucking things around. It really sucks to have to carry it in one hand and your dinner in another and then you don’t have a hand free to take your drink too! But whatever, I almost died. Worse things have happened…

But still, I’m very excited about being untethered for a while, even if it only does end up being “for a while”.

Oh, another crappy thing though is that she wants me to wear a “binder” which is just a fancy term for a girdle. My guts are drifting to the left and right so my stomach region actually looks kinda oval-ish/square-ish. My guts are on either side of my stomach so by wearing the girdle binder it’ll bring them more toward the middle where they should be and not only should this improve my digestion but it’ll make it easier for Dr. Hanrahan to put my guts back where they should be and close me up. When we went to Shopper’s Drug Mart after my appointment they didn’t have one but they were getting a shipment in tomorrow so when it got there, they’d call Blake to pick it up. Can’t wait. I wonder if I’m supposed to wear it while I sleep? I sure hope not. :o/

After my appointment we went to Curry’s where I picked up some odourless mineral spirits and some paper stomps which are basically pencils made with paper and no lead. Just a sharpened stick made of paper. Odourless mineral spirits are normally used to clean oil paint off of brushes, but my friend Ditsy mentioned using “Gamsol” to do this neat shading effect with pencil crayons, which is just a brand name for what I bought today (I got the store brand). What you do is colour the edges of your picture with a good pencil crayon, like Prismacolour, and then you dip the paper stomp into the mineral spirits and colour from the edge inward. Basically the mineral spirits dissolve the wax of the pencil crayon causing concentrated colour around the edges with it fading into the middle. It actually makes the pencil crayons behave a lot like Copic markers, but without the enormous expense of Copic markers.

This lady’s kind of obnoxious at the end of the tutorial, but here’s how to do the technique: episode 1/episode 2

I’ve got to admit, I’m pretty geeked to try it and I meant to try it tonight but I got distracted by this post and now it’s too late because I’m about to take my PM drugs and since Siske’s coming tomorrow, I can’t sleep in.

After Curry’s we went to Starbucks where I got a chocolate coffee and then to EB Games to get Sims 3 Pets but they were sold out so we went to Wal*Mart instead. I’ve installed the game but haven’t played it yet because after my mom left we had to have dinner and then after dinner I had e-mail to deal with, then I started writing this post and before I knew it, it was 10pm (the time it is now) and I was late for taking my drugs. Oh yeah, and I still have the shits so there was some bathroom time in there too.

I really have no doubt that I won’t be impressed by Sims 3 Pets. The only reason I really got it is because I’m completest. The pets expansions for previous incarnations of the Sims were my least favourite of all the expansions (okay, Open For Business for Sims 2 was probably the worst and Ambitions for Sims 3 was pretty bad too) so I’m really doubting I’ll actually play with the pets, I’m more interested in the extra stuff like, are there new aspirations? Lifetime rewards? Jobs? Stuff to grow in your garden (like catnip maybe? that would be cool and maybe even worth owning a cat)? New furnishings etc etc etc? Stuff like that is why I keep buying all these expansions even though the core games themselves may suck.

Truthfully, I’m more excited to play with odourless mineral spirits than Pets. Which I think I’m gonna go do right now because today was a bummer and I would like a little joy before I go to bed.

Oh yeah, and I barfed up my chocolate coffee seconds after getting home. I was feeling really sick all the way home and Blake stopped off at the pharmacy before we came home and I was praying that I wouldn’t have to barf on the sidewalk, which I didn’t, but I don’t think the car was fully stopped in the driveway before I jumped out and ran as fast as I could to get to my barf bowl. (I can’t barf in a toilet like a normal person because it’s too hard for me to get back up. My legs are still too weak to get up easily from the floor, so I barf in a bowl instead and Blake, my beloved, dutifully takes the bowl (after putting my hair up and putting my computer aside as not to get barf on either), flushes the contents, washes the bowl and hands it back to me. That is LOVE.

Okay, gonna go play with mineral spirits now. Goodnight!

Anyway, it wasn’t entirely a horrible way to spend a weekend. Arguably, Mother Mother would have been a good thing to do Saturday night but my logic was that A) I didn’t want to puke in public, B) I don’t particularly like the new album which I assumed they’d primarily be performing from, C) I didn’t want to take my 9pm meds in a dark club with a $5 glass of Coke (it would take me two, minimum, to get them all down) and D) I just flat out didn’t want to go.

Anyway, enough about that, it’s in the past. Let’s look at the present!

I took some more stupid “Scenes From the Bed” pictures today, some of which are pretty graphic and one of which Blake actually took because I don’t possess an ethereal body with which to take a picture above myself. Was that a tip off? That’s right kids! Today was Siske day and we took lots of new cheese pizza pics!

But first, here’s Blake being retarded with an extra medallion. These are the tubes that connect to my vac dressing and then connects to the vac machine.

Cute Lucky is cute.

This is my set up.
I think it’s all pretty self explanatory.
It’s not usually lit up this much but Siske needs the light to change my vac dressing.

Medical supplies all over the bed.

More medical supplies.
Siske likes to make a mess all over me.

This is my cheese pizza wound stewing in gauze soaked with acetic acid, which is basically vinegar.

I’m going to use a cut tag here for the squeamish.

Siske cleaning the wound with saline.
That granular tissue is a good thing.

See all the new skin? Pretty cool, huh?
I AM WOLVERINE!
Also note my bellybutton to the right (my left) of the wound.

For some reason, the last two times she’s changed the dressing, there’s been an odour coming from the wound.
I think it might be because there’s all this extra blood at the surface just sitting there but Siske says she doesn’t know. She doesn’t seem worried about it though, so I’m not going to worry about it.

Crud in my bellybutton.
Siske won’t let me touch my bellybutton because I’m not sterile or I would have cleaned that out for you guys.

My piercing has definitely grown in so even if they can save my bellybutton – or have to build me a new one –  I’m going to have to get it repierced. :o(

So that was my Monday morning. I never get to see my wound from an over-the-top angle so it’s interesting for me to see all the new skin forming and man, there is a lot of it! I knew the wound was getting smaller because we measure it every time the dressing gets changed, but it’s another thing to just SEE it for yourself. I mean, compare:

That pic was taken around August 8th.

A little over a month later.
You probably couldn’t even see much of it from the side because it’s not all puffed up like it was before.

Obviously my belly’s still pretty big and it’s going to stay that way until I have my next surgery because that’s all my guts swollen and out of place due to the hernia. It’s not actually as bad as it looks in the pic above. In the pic above I look like, 8 months pregnant but in reality I only look about 6 months. Also my stomach is kinda square, it’s not round like you’d expect it to be, that’s just a weird angle.

On Saturday night I was moping around, feeling sorry for myself because I FUCKING DO THAT and Blake sat on the bed beside me and said something stupid as I was blowing my nose. Naturally, I opened the Kleenex and tried to wipe my snot on his face. The look on his face as he dodged the Kleenex is literally one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed in my life and he had me laughing so hard my guts were in a world of pain (karma anyone?). I just could NOT stop laughing! I”m laughing just writing this! Then shortly after that I got to the Hyperbole & a Half cartoon I posted above and it started all over again and despite being in some of the worst pain of my life, I could NOT stop laughing so now there’s a household ban on making me laugh because I just can’t take it anymore.

In unrelated news, I’m going to have to get into my office soon because I have a page in my Sketchbook Project sketchbook to finish and I have a painting I want to start. Also, I’m reneging on my decision to only paint girls of colour this year. The girl I have in my head right now is white and I figure it’s better to paint whatever I’m inspired to paint than to waste ideas due to a silly self-imposed rule. Plus the next painting I’ll be doing after this one is a commission and he’s going to be white too. And besides, that rule was part of my 2011 artist statement that I prepared for the OAC grant and since I didn’t get the OAC grant, then to hell with it. I’m just going to paint what’s in my head and not worry about it.

I still can’t decide whether or not I’m going to apply for the OAC grant this year. At first when I got out of the hospital, I was like “fuck yeah! I deserve this after the shit I’ve been put through!” but now I’m kinda…meh.Preparing all the documents and printing everything is a huge pain in the ass but for $5k – or a shot at $5k – it might be worth it. Honestly though? I”m just sick of rejection. I submitted to Touched By Fire and I already know they’re going to reject me and I’m not sure I can take two rejections in one year.

We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, I can’t think of anything else to write that you all haven’t herd before, so I’m going to shut up now and hit “Publish”.