Fall is not a good time of year for me and it appears the annual melancholy has begun to set in earlier this time around. My brain doesn’t work, I can’t think properly, I’m frustrated, upset and agitated most of the time, feeling useless and depressed.

It doesn’t help that, yet again, we were turned down for debt reduction from those who hold my student loans, despite the fact that I have a well documented mental illness and on paper, after bills, we are left with around $400 per month to feed 4 people and 2 pets, as well as pay for gas for Blake to get to and from work and that’s with only paying the minimum on our $3000 credit card debt, debt that’s been incurred due to the pressures of these student loans that theoretically, I should be exempt from paying but they have been dicking us around for YEARS instead. (Losing our documents, claiming documents haven’t been received, forgetting to send out forms, claiming certain forms have been lost in the mail, telling us to fax certain things and then saying we weren’t supposed to fax them at all, but mail them, etc etc etc…then turning us down for debt reduction despite numerous letters from my healthcare providers and hard math that says flat out, we cannot afford this on one income.)

Anyway…I’m agitated for a million reasons, and this being my site, I reserve the right to list them here.

Our lawn hasn’t been mown since roughly the end of July because our lawn mower bit the dust. Our 3-year old-lawn mower that would probably still be running just fine if it hadn’t been doing double duty all this time, as our neighbour has borrowed it pretty much every weekend since moving in here 3 years ago. So, it’s a 3-year-old lawn mower with 6 years worth of wear & tear on it and it died. No good deed goes unpunished, right? It’s like that time we gave someone’s car a boost and the wind caught our hood and bent it backwards. We can’t afford to eat, let alone a new one and I worry constantly about how our house looks from the curb with all of these weeds and this overgrown lawn badly in need of a mow and I also worry about getting a citation from the town. Our original plan was to try and find a lawn company to mow it and fix it all up before the end of the month, but that would cost between $60-100 (we’re assuming, no one’s called to get an actual quote that I know of) and we just don’t have it, so I guess my only option is to sit here and fret and make myself sick about it until the snow covers it up and we’ll deal with it in the spring. If someone from the town comes to the door to cite us, I’ll probably snap and lose it on them.

Also, speaking of my neighbours and our house looking like shit…Blake’s mom brought us up Blake’s old futon, which was better than our current couch. The week that happened, we had Blake’s mom’s SUV at our disposal, as well as my mother’s van and could have taken our old couch to the dump, but no, my neighbour’s daughter, who was moving into a new place, wanted our old couch for people to sit on when they were smoking in her garage. I told Blake this was a bad idea, that we should say that she had until the end of the week to pick it up or else we’d be using one of our mothers’ vehicles to take it to the dump, because I had a feeling that this goddamn couch was going to sit under my carport making it look like trash indefinitely. And lo & behold, it’s been like, 3 weeks and it’s still sitting out there looking like shit and making me go out of my fucking mind because between the state of the lawn and this godawful stained, floral abomination sitting amongst the unkempt recycling, fall leaves and garbage cans all at the front of our house, we look like we belong in a run-down trailer park somewhere. It’s probably going to snow before this shit is taken care of and that’s completely unacceptable to me. The goddamn thing is pretty much right in front of our “front door”, you have to squeeze between it and the BBQ to get inside.

It’s easy to say “well go out there and do something about it yourself”, but I can’t even leave my own house to tend to my own garden because I’m afraid of people looking at and/or talking to me. I do not want the whole world watching me attempt to rearrange furniture under my carport and quite fucking frankly, I shouldn’t have to because this situation shouldn’t have fucking happened to begin with.

…

The brakes on the car went 2 weeks ago. That took $320 out of October’s $400 food, gas & Halloween costume budget. School trip permission slips came home for both kids, which totaled around $45 and it wasn’t easy to say “no” when our town’s annual Fall Fair happened.  We couldn’t afford Thanksgiving dinner, so we didn’t have one. Our friend Alex brought us some of her family’s leftovers though, so at least I did get a little taste of turkey but I still felt like shit that I couldn’t cook a turkey of our own and share it with them, which was the original plan.

Our house has been filled with visitors during the past several weeks and this has not been a good thing. My step-mom is already asking Blake & I what we’re doing for Xmas and Xmas is the last thing I even want to even think about right now because if I let my mind go there, I’ll probably end up in the hospital for a suicide attempt. I fucking hate Xmas on a good year and this has not been a good year and I’ve been at the end of my rope for quite some time. (For those who are inevitably going to ask, my wishlist is here, the kids’ incomplete wishlist is here.)

In November my friend Steph is having a wedding. I say she’s “having a wedding” as opposed to “getting married” because she’s already married, but they never had a wedding. Long story short, he’s from the US and she’s from Canada, so this is the “official” wedding in Canada for her family and friends. This shouldn’t be a big deal but it is.

First of all, I’m agoraphobic and have social anxiety. A wedding is really not my thing. However, I love Steph and I want to be at her wedding, so I’m doing everything in my power to go - although admittedly, there’s a very good chance that as the last minute I won’t be able to. That’s neither here nor there, though.

Steph invited our entire family to the wedding, which I was excited about because it’s being held at Casa Loma, which is an honest to god castle that I thought the kids would get a huge kick out of. I also know there are going to be other kids there. Well, we can’t afford to clothe our kids for a wedding, so Alex is going to be staying home with them instead. Furthermore, the sad truth is that over the spring & summer, I gained a lot of weight due to the medication I was on, called Risperidone, for biploar disorder and it got to the point where literally the only thing I had to wear was pajamas I’d worn when I was pregnant with Wes. Luckily I have a good, generous online friend who helped me figure out my current sizes and sent me a couple of pairs of jeans and some t-shirts so I could leave the house if I wanted to, so I’d at least have the option and that was great. Unfortunately, I have nothing appropriate for a wedding because all of my “fancy” clothes are a size 0 and I’m….temporarily not a size 0.

In August my shrink put me on a new drug called Ziprasidone (Geodon/Zeldox), which appears to be the “right” drug and as my body’s gotten used to it I’ve just now begun to lose some of the weight I gained on the heinous Risperidone, but there’s no way I’m going to be back to my old self by the middle of November for Steph’s wedding, so buying an outfit is unavoidable if I’m to attend. Not only does this cause financial distress, but also social distress as this now involves going to a mall, probably with kids, probably on a weekend and the reality is that that scenario makes me want to die. Plus there’s the cost of gas to GET to the wedding, which is a small sum, and of course the gift, which I’m embarrassed to be stressing about but I am.

There’s also the matter of my hair, which is also embarrassing to even be writing about but I’m going to anyway. Last year I dyed my hair flaming red as it was growing out from being shaved and that turned out to be a huge mistake because red, as some of you may know, is a total pain in the ass to maintain (especially when you’re blonde) and very hard to strip out (especially when you’re a porous blonde). Long story short, I ended up having to visit a hair salon twice, at $70 a pop, to have my hair turned into a shade found in nature and I vowed (for the millionth time) to never dye my hair by myself again because I screw it up 90% of the time.  Well, getting my hair done professionally before this wedding is a financial impossibility, so a journey to the drug store’s blonde-in-a-bottle aisle is unavoidable and I guess I’ll wear my hair in a ponytail or something because I can’t afford to even get it cut. (As an aside, if anyone can recommend a GOOD brand of drugstore hair dye, particularly in a cool blonde shade, that would be great. I used to use Feria, but it doesn’t seem to matter which brand I use, I end up with yellow hair.)

Blah blah blah. Flat out, we cannot afford to go to this wedding and I hope Steph understands if we can’t. I know Steph would rather have us there than receive a gift, that’s just the kind of person she is, but it’s not looking like I can go and hold my head up high at the same time, so there’s a very good chance we won’t go at all. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t and YES, if we don’t go, I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life and feel like a total fuckwad. I’m cringing at the thought of Steph even reading this post, so Steph, if you ARE reading, don’t tell me.

I’m so so so frustrated that this site still looks like a piece of shit after deciding to revamp it many many months ago. It’s been “my job” to create a background image and a banner and between my computer dying and losing all my fonts as a result and just a complete lack of inspiration, it hasn’t happened. It drives me insane that this site is like, the first impression all of these new people are getting of me and it is SO not even remotely close to my standards, it’s embarrassing. It distresses me greatly. I wish I knew CSS, I wish I knew how to make WordPress do the things I want it to do, but I don’t and neither does Blake and he doesn’t have a ton of time (or - what’s the word - “motivation”) so progress has been slow and frustrating.

I’m trying so fucking hard to get my shit together and this site, my “web presence”, is a big part of that because it helps me understand who I am (and that’s been pretty “up on the air” for a while now) and it’s killing me for things to be in the state they’re in. Fortunately, a friend of mine just hooked me up with Photoshop for the PC so at least now there’s a point in trying to rebuild my font collection and get graphics for this site completed. He also hooked me up with an older version of Word, so there’s the possibility of new zines in the future too…(except for that pesky printer problem of mine that I can’t afford to deal with right now either).

And finally: art. This is eating me alive from the inside out and at this point, I’m completely paralyzed by fear and uncertainty and I’ve stopped creating altogether due to an utter lack of self-esteem.

I was doing good, I was taking my Suzi Blu art class and had a million ideas and completed some paintings, a few sketches for future paintings and felt, temporarily, like I was “me” again and back on track. But then business and money and justifying my time and all of this stupid shit got in the way and now I’m stuck again.

I’m extremely uncomfortable with selling my art. Don’t get me wrong, I like and need the money, and really, it’s just going to collect dust in this house anyway so it might as well be on other people’s walls, but it makes me feel sick to my stomach trying to attach monetary value to anything I do. The fact of the matter is, I think I’m shit and thus, everything I do is shit and when someone says “no, that’s not shit”, I believe them for a second but then I worry that if I believe them all the way and price accordingly, no one will agree with them and make me feel shittier than I did before.

That said, I’m putting “Ennui” and “Beloved” up for sale:

(More pics.)

(More pics.)

They are 12 x 12 on canvas and $150 US + $10.00 s/h/PayPal fees = $160 US total each. If anyone’s interested, e-mail me at Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com for instructions on how to send payment. First come, first served. If you think I’m crazy for charging that much, well…so be it, but that’s how much “Hope” & “Dream” went for so that’s what I’m going by.

SOLD!! SOLD!! SOLD!! HOORAY!!!

Originally I wanted to wait and sell these two AFTER I’d gotten pics of them that were good enough to make prints out of, but I have no one to help me and I can’t figure out how to do it myself (plus I don’t have the means to front the money for prints anyway) and if I’m going to continue making art and I dunno, exist, the money needs to start coming in now.

And this brings me to Touched By Fire, the art show I submitted to last month. I’m on their online gallery, but I haven’t heard anything from them either way about the actual gala event. Since I’m on their online gallery and I recall reading something about how accepted works wouldn’t appear on their website, I’m assuming I was rejected and part of me is relieved that I won’t have to go (can’t afford the gas to get there anyway! + y’know, social phobia…) and the other part of me feels like shit that I was (probably) rejected for a remedial art show. BUT, I guess it’s only October 16th and the show isn’t for another month so maybe I’m jumping the gun in my assumptions.

Anyway it’s fall, I feel like shit, I hope I die in my sleep so this shit will end and that’s all I’ve got to say.

/wrist

I re-read the CammityJane entry I posted yesterday and I’m not entirely happy with it, but I’m not going to go editing it until I DO like it because I don’t believe in 2nd drafts. I’ve never gone back and edited anything I’ve ever written in my whole entire life, so I’m not about to do doing that now. SO THERE.

Once it’s finished (if it’s ever finished) and I’m thinking about turning it into a book, THEN I’ll play with stuff. Right now I just need to get the story out of me and slowly but surely, it’s coming.

Fiction’s weird. I’m not sure I’ve really talked much about the CammityJane journal, but last year when I went nuts, I had this huge explosion of concrentrated ideas and it was as if I got stuck in my own imagination and the problem was that A) I didn’t realize I was “off” and B) I couldn’t bring myself out of it.

It was during that period where the story of Jane (or more to the point, the other people she’s going to encounter) came into my mind and I spent most of my time in the hospital sketching scenes in my head with these characters (none of whom have been introduced yet), but not writing down a single word.

When I got out of the hospital, I got out my pencil crayons and drew every location of every scene, maps, character sketches and right now, I guess the name of the game is moving characters from point A to point B, which is actually a lot harder than I originally thought it would be and I find as I obsess with that, my characters lose a little depth.

For example, the “strange man” Jane encounters in the latest post is seriously glossed over from what’s in my head and I know that my descriptions aren’t sufficient if the reader’s going to come away with the mental image of him I have. At the same time, I also know he’s going to show up later so that gives me a second chance and the opportunity to round him out a little more. (How he moves, for example, is important, but in the restaurant setting I had a hard time trying to figure out a way for him to move because everything takes place at one table and it was important to the over all story that Jane come to him and not the other way around.)

Anyway, this isn’t a serious project or anything, just something I work on when the mood strikes or a character walks into my dreams demanding attention, which was the case with Good Eat Part 1 and “the strange man” himself.

In other news, my 10lbs of plain ol’ grey plastiscene arrived on Monday and I’ve spent a good portion of the week screwing around and seeing what I can do with it. So far I’ve only made a really stupid looking girl with a lot of hair…

I realize the face is dumb, that part took maybe 10 mins but each “strand” of hair was hand-rolled by yours truly and took about 30 hours total.

I’ve been on Wikipedia practically all day researching dragons, I think that’s what I’m going to make next and there’s a reason; when I was in grade 5 or 6 (hard to say since I had the same teachers and the same classroom for both grades, it was a split class) an art lady came to our school to teach us about using clay and I made this really awesome Chinese dragon, that’s now long gone, and I wanted to see if I could do it again, but better since I’m no longer a chubby little kid with chubby little fingers doing things the way someone else tells me to.

All week, when I’ve told people that I bought 10 lbs of grey plasticine, they’ve all asked the same question: “Why grey?” Well, it’s all gonna end up grey anyway, isn’t it?

The reason I got it was mostly to help me visualize certain things in 3-D and to better figure out where shadows would be (when painting) and I don’t need colour for that. In fact, for my purposes, I think colour would be distracting.

Some folks have suggested that I do stop-motion videos since I now have all this plastiscene and believe me, I’ve been thinking about it, but if it’s gonna happen, it’ll be a long time from now. I’ve got too much on the go between now and the spring and once the warm weather hits, using plastiscene is going to suck because it’ll be way too melty. So, if I ever do a stop-motion video, it’ll probably be next fall. (And if I did do one, I’d have to buy coloured plastiscene, so I’ll wait until I have a good idea first. :))

And finally, this brings me to YouTube and video blogging in general.

A few people have subscribed to my YouTube channel, which is fine, but don’t bitch about there being no context, because sometimes I’m uploading this stuff to be used for other things. For example, there’s a few videos that friends asked me to put up there, that have absolutely nothing to do with my site or blogging or anything, they just wanted to be able to share them with their own friends or post on their MySpaces. There’s probably gonna be a lot of that, so basically, if I don’t embed the video in a blog post and write about it, I uploaded it for someone or something else.

Another thing that keeps coming up is the lack of Madison (my daughter) in the videos I’ve uploaded thus far. Well, there’s a reason for that, a few of them actually.

The first is that, unlike Wes, she understands what a video camera does and as such, she tends to not “be herself” or becomes a different version of herself when it’s around (which is a nice way of saying that she tends to get obnoxious). She grew up with me following her around with a digital camera, so she doesn’t do this with stills, just with video. Wes is the opposite. If I get out the digital camera, he turns into an obnoxious little brat, but with the video camera, he acts himself because he’s too little to understand that it’s recording. He’s seen the videos of himself, but he just doesn’t understand the concept of video yet and he’s barely even aware of the internet, let alone YouTube.

The other reason is simply that she doesn’t want to be in videos that are of just “real life”.

She wants to put on plays and dress up and do fashion shows and stuff like that, which we do videotape for her, we just don’t put them online because she’s self-conscious and doesn’t want us to. We respect that. :) Basically any footage of Madison that gets put online is with her final approval and this is the kind of stuff she wants out there:

(That was from her school’s Xmas concert.)

Since that’s the case, most “kid videos” are going to be put up by Blake over at the kids’ site, Bunnies & Bees, for their aunts & uncles & grandparents to watch (and whoever else wants to, obviously, but it’s mostly a family thing).

In other news, it’s Wes’ 4th birthday on Tuesday and last week a few people e-mailed me to see if I’d gotten a wishlist set up yet, so this afternoon I cleaned up the kids’ old wishlist (deleting unavailable items/stuff they’ve kinda grown out of wanting etc), which can be found here.

And with that, I’m out.

Fun Fact: I have this theory that if one can live a karmically neutral life, at the end of it rather than reincarnating, your energy just dissipates into nothingness. Personally, that’s what I’m going for.

So this afternoon I had a shower, put real clothes on (as opposed to PJs) and even a little bit of makeup and then I sat here for like, 3 hours trying to make a video blog using iMovie and my iSight. Well…I’m just not a vlogger, I don’t think. Moving video of myself, to me, is just the absolute fucking creepiest thing and I can’t stand it. I haven’t given up on the idea of making at least one video blog for shits, giggles & sheer posterity (eventually), but using iMovie with the preview window & all, just isn’t the way to go about it, I’ve decided.

I’m not sure if anyone’s been paying attention, but I’m kinda in the process of seriously re-evaluating and reorganizing my life and this site and the internet in general is a really big part of that. I didn’t do a big New Year’s post because I don’t do the resolution thing as a rule, and new years don’t mean a whole lot to me because, like a lot of people, I’m still just a big kid and the “new year” starts in Sept., ends in June and summer is just this period of awesomeness that’s outside of the calendar year. I’ll know I’m a grown-up when suddenly January means something to me.

I can’t even really say that I’m working on any particular goals, outside of NOT going nuts and ending up in the hospital again this winter, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how life is going to change around me pretty hardcore in the next year and what opportunities & pitfalls that’s going to create.

Wes, my youngest, is turning 4 in a couple of weeks, which means that he’s going to be starting junior kindergarten in the fall. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have immense issues surrounding this fact, not because of the whole “my baby’s leaving me” thing but because of how it’s going to change the structure of my day and routine in general, as well as the pressure I’m feeling because when your youngest starts kindergarten, usually women go back to work or school or find a job or something and that’s basically what society expects people to do.

But that’s not what I want to do and half my problem is that I don’t really even KNOW what I want to do yet, beyond the shit I already do. :| All I know is that (among other things) I’ve got $32,000 worth of student loans that aren’t going to go away and I can’t stay on interest relief forever, so come September, some decisions are going to have to be made.

I guess I’m a grown-up afterall. When the fuck did that happen? :(

Despite all this personal upheaval and mental junk I’ve been sifting through, there are a lot of things I’m looking forward to once days become mine again and a lot of things I’m attempting to work towards in the meantime, but at this point are mostly tentative. Right now I’m trying to get Sunnyland set up as a legitimate business. What kind of business, I’m not entirely sure yet, but hopefully one that makes more than the $15/month the bank’s charging me for a business account. I know I definitely want to make ‘zines again, I know I want to do something with Lulu.com eventually (have a few projects in mind), I want to set up my studio more as an actual studio where I can paint and cam and write and create and actually be somewhat productive, as opposed to it just being “the smoking lounge” with the leaky roof where we watch TV when people come over.

With the roof being fixed in the spring, this is all possible. When the teacup wall is complete, I can move the smoking lounge outside where it belongs. When Wes starts school, I can explore and do a lot of things I just can’t do now.

One of the things I’m really interested in is the town I live in because in some ways, it is so ass-backwards I can’t even believe it exists, let alone the fact that I live here. For months I’ve been trying to figure out a safe way to explore and add that dimension to things online, but I keep getting caught on both logistics, ethics and overal safety. I mean…is it really a good idea to blog about the town I live in? Especially when it’s teeny tiny, gossipy as all hell and the internet’s full of creepy stalker types? I’m not sure, but it’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently. The world I live in, the one in my head, the one inside my computer (which are mostly one in the same), it’s all very contrast to the environment in which I live and there’s a part of me that gets a really big kick out of that…but it could be ruined pretty easily if I exploit it creatively, so I’m trying to think and plan carefully.

I dunno, my mind’s just a jumble of plans and ideas these days, which is both worrisome and reassuring, but at least I feel as though I’m on a path to somewhere.

Basically? Just bear with me while I get my shit together, I’m workin’ on it.

Today I opened my blinds to enjoy it. See, I love snow and up until now we didn’t really have any and it was starting to bum me out. Mid-January? There should have been at least 2 snow days by now and there was a part of me that was kind of looking forward to chasing the dog all over town because he climbed the 8 foot snowdrift in the backyard. Right now we have just about enough to cover the grass with more to come tonight.

It’s cold as a witch’s tit and it’s already 4pm so I’m not going out there today, but if the light’s as pretty tomorrow, I could be presuaded to take the camera out because the field across the road looks like it might be full of interesting things.

It’s not high on my priority list but I really need to upgrade my snow gear. I mean, there’s the coat you have because it’s pretty (and I have that, although it needs some repairs) and there’s the coat you have because it’s warm. The thing is, I don’t wanna be stuck in some puffy, neon wonder. If there’s any animals around, I’d scare them away! Although, if it’s hunting season it could be a good thing haha

Oh yeah! My blinds! I can’t remember if I wrote about my blinds yet anywhere, but after a year of “getting to know the neighbourhood” by not having any, Sunnyland finally has some, which I hung wrong and don’t care enough to try again. :D (They’re off by like, 1/8th of an inch, just enough to drive everyone but me nuts.) The rest of the house doesn’t have blinds yet of course, but we’ll start workin’ on that once we can afford paint.

Anyway, the only blinds we could find to fit this window were white. White bugs me, a lot and I don’t like staring at a wall of white all day, but obviously some days it’s preferred to whatever’s happening outside. So I was thinking…how do I make these blinds not white. Well, by sitting here smoking like a chimney all day, they’ll be yellow soon enough (gross and true and you should all e-mail me to quit…again even though I’ll probably ignore you as smokers tend to do until they’re ready), but I don’t really like yellow either and I can’t paint them (it won’t stick to the vinyl) so I think I’m just gonna cover them in stickers. I was thinking a rainbow would be the easiest, the top slats reds, the next ones down oranges, then yellows etc etc etc but I’m open to ideas.

But then I got thinking about the back of the blinds and how funny it would be to put a message there in electrical tape or something, but I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t completely and utterly tacky and/or offensive like, “At least there’s no plastic flamingoes!” which is really only funny in the summer and wouldn’t fit anyway, or “Buttsecks” because I’m immature like that. :D Meh, plenty of time to think about it.

The problem of course is that it’s gonna take a LOT of stickers and I’m not sure the project is worth more than a $20 trip to the dollar store to spiff up my $10 Wal*Mart blinds haha

Madison & Blake are in the kitchen right now (today is dedicated to Madison improving her dishes technique) and she’s telling him a story about how “this kid in my class stuck a pencil through his hand on Friday and had had to go to the office, it was so gross”, which is becoming a bigger fish tale the more questions he asks her. :D (The kid came back from the office with a band-aid and it’s more likely he broke the lead off into his finger than what she “remembers”. haha) Blake’s now explaining to her that if what she describes happened, the kid would have had to go to the hospital because he would have gone through tendons and the only reason I’m blogging about this is because it reminded me of this kid named Dave who sat beside me for most of grade 7.

Dave & I shared a love of Guns n’ Roses and art (or what we thought was art…) but Dave was a bit of an asshole. He was also the most popular guy in our grade, because he was a badass and the popular girls, for whatever reason, all had crushes on him even moreso after we all saw him do probably the MOST retarded thing I’ve probably ever seen anyone do in my entire life.

(Actually the more I think about it, the more blurred it becomes, it might have been another kid named Justin, who was pretty much the same kid only blonder & more fucked up than Dave. They were friends and both sat in my group, so it could have been either one of them.)

Anyway, we’re sitting in Mr. Sandam’s class, which for the life of me, I can’t even remember what that class was. History? Computers? I honestly have no fucking idea, but the guy preferred for us to call him Sir Sandam and now that I know what I know, I’m betting he was a closet LARPer.

So we’re sitting there and I hear someone whisper “God that is so gross” and I turn and see Dave digging the pointy end of a goddamn protractor, y’know, one of those circle drawers?, into the side of his middle finger, just below his last knuckle. Blood doesn’t bother me at all, gore doesn’t bother me at all and normally stupid boys doing stupid things doesn’t bother me at all, although I have to admit there were certain parts of Jackass Number Two I had to walk out of the room for, but pain I can’t deal with, especially when it’s right in front of me like that and beyond idiotic, so I just turned around and kept doing whatever it was I was doing.

Near the end of class, there was a bit of a commotion in Dave’s general direction, so I turned around again and there’s Dave crying, holding up his hand with this fucking protractor all the way through his finger, all the way up to the bigger metal part that meets the apex and it was sticking out the other side . The problem, and the reason Dave was crying, was because the protractor’s pointy end had a slight bend in it that he hadn’t noticed before, which was now on the other side of his finger and when he tried to pull it back out, that bend kept getting caught on his knuckle.

During the process of getting the protractor in and subsequently trying to work it back out, his finger had become hard, it was so inflamed, that even if they could turn it to avoid the knuckle, it was gonna hurt like a motherfucker to yank it out and Dave wouldn’t let anyone do it. He just sat there crying and holding up his middle finger while teachers ran around trying to find ice and trying to get his mom on the phone.

To this day there’s part of me who thinks he did it just to flip Sir Sandam the bird and not face the man’s wrath (which was the stuff of legend), but I’ll probably never know for sure.

And with that, I’m off to go be a nerd.