I finished Argent’s painting on Saturday afternoon but I’m going to post about it last so it still remains a surprise for him when he gets it in the mail so….

…ARGENT, DON’T LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST!

Blake and the kids left for Militiagan on Monday morning and my time alone has been both interesting and bittersweet.

Monday afternoon I started watching that stupid Red Riding Hood movie with Amanda Seyfried BECAUSE Amanda Seyfried is in it and she’s like, the embodiment of one of my girls but I got bored halfway through, turned it off and decided to have a nap. This was at about 4:30pm. Well when I woke up, from a nightmare about being in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter with a serial killer on the loose, the house was pitch black because it was still light out when I went to bed and it didn’t occur to me to turn on any lights before I laid down. So I laid there in bed, in the pitch dark, listening to the wind and the heat register in my room making ticking, knocking sounds as the metal cooled from the furnace being on and I freaked myself right the fuck out because I was convinced there was a serial killer casing the house. Then the goddamn dogs started freaking out and barking in my office, which they do when someone’s at the door. I was practically crying by this point and it took me 20 minutes after the dogs calmed down to convince myself it was okay to leave my bed and go turn on all the lights and close the living room curtains.

I’ve been carrying my pink, aluminum baseball bat around with me in every room I go to ever since and I’ve only been letting the dogs out one at a time because I figure if there IS a serial killer out there, the logical thing for him to do is to poison the dogs so I have less protection right? So if I only let them out one at a time, theoretically he’d only poison or kill one of them so I’d be left with the other for protection. DO NOT FUCK WITH MY LOGIC, PLEASE! IT IS KEEPING ME SANE!

On Tuesday I woke up in a lot of pain in my pancreatic region, the same pain I had when we went to the ER a few weeks ago. I took all my drugs in the morning, including the morphine, plus a handful of Tylenol 1s and that didn’t help. By 1:30pm it was time to take more morphine, so I did and also took more Tylenol 1s plus a mega strength Ibuprofen. That didn’t help. Then I took my last Gravol and that DID help so I got worried about what I would do if the pain came back and I didn’t have any Gravol to take so I messaged Ronny to see if they would come keep me company that night and if they would bring Gravol with them but he wasn’t replying so finally at about 4:30pm, I called Alex and explained what was going on and she said they’d come over around 6:30pm for dinner because I was in the process of making beef stew in the crock pot. She said picking me up Gravol would be no big deal and so they came over at around 6:30pm as promised, I took more of the Gravol they brought me and I felt totally fine.

We ate beef stew and watched Glee, which I’d never seen before and I’ll probably never see again because it was stupidity on a scale I couldn’t even comprehend and I think the stew turned out pretty okay. It wasn’t phenomenal but I liked it enough and was hungry enough to have one & a half bowls of it. Ronny and Alex only had one bowl each so I’m not sure if they were genuinely full or if they didn’t think it was so great and were just being polite haha (It won’t hurt my feelings if they didn’t like it, I used a mix.)

Then it was 9:00pm and time to watch their shows, New Girl and Raising Hope. Now one thing you need to know about me is that I traditionally can’t stand sitcoms. Especially ones from the past 10 years or so. Roseanne? Wicked show. Loved it. The Cosby Show? Television genius. Golden Girls? As Jax said the other day, “Betty White is a flawless human being.” I loved Blossom. My Name is Earl was pretty good. Love The Office. I can’t think of anything else I really watched that was a sitcom growing up. I watched a lot of one hour shows that were more drama or comedy than a sitcom like My So-Called Life and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Six Feet Under and those are the types of shows I prefer to this day.

Anyway, Raising Hope was just “blah” to me but New Girl was FANTASTIC. I love Zooey Deschanel in movies so I kinda figured I would like this show but I never knew when it was on or what channel and I didn’t really care enough to figure it all out. I didn’t realize it only started this fall and we’re only 11 episodes in. I thought it started last year and I didn’t really feel like catching up, y’know? But now that I’ve seen it and I’m in love, Blake will be d/ling all of the episodes that have aired so far and we’ll be keeping up with it because it’s great.

Another show that Kevin actually recommended to me is Up All Night with Christina Applegate. I’ve still only seen one episode of it, but it’s like New Girl in that it’s shot more like a movie than a TV show and what I saw was really really funny. (I forget what I saw now though. My mind is a like a sieve.) I think that one only started this fall too, but I don’t know when it’s on or what channel and it’s not OnDemand like New Girl is. (But they only have the last two episodes of New Girl OnDemand, which sucks, but we have a PVR so I can just record it.) Anyway, I think that’s a show I’m going to get Blake to d/l so we can catch up on it too.

Ronny and Alex left around 11pm I think? And then Blake called and we talked for a while about what he’d been doing in MI and then I stayed up until about 1am working on a painting (more on that later) but had to get up at the asscrack of dawn yesterday morning because stinky Cheryl left a message saying that she was going to be at my house at 8:30 in the goddamn morning. I really dislike Cheryl, she makes me get up early even though we’ve asked her not to (they’re supposed to work around OUR schedule), she never listens to me when I tell her that I need a strip of drape across the top of my dressing or the Hypafix tape they use will pull down because my belly hangs over and is heavy, and come unstuck and the whole dressing will fall off. (She listened to me yesterday morning though because she knew Blake wasn’t around to patch me up. She just likes rushing through my dressing and doing the bare minimum so she can get off of work early and leave Blake to do the drape. That’s my hunch, anyway.) Plus she reeks of cigarette smoke which she tries to cover up with perfume and it’s just friggin’ gross. I mean, she’s nice & all, but out of all the nurses I have, she’s the one I like the least. Siske’s my favourite because she’s just awesome, I can’t even explain how or why, she just is, Janice is next, she’s just so nice and bubbly and she has a great sense of humour, then there’s Blue, who’s brand new and doesn’t know how to do my dressing AT ALL (I really hope I don’t get her on Friday…) but she’s nice and funny and chatty and I just really like her. And then there’s Cheryl.

After Cheryl left yesterday morning, I was exhausted from staying up the night before, so I fell back asleep on the pull-out couch in the living room until about 10:30am, then I made and ate waffles, then I feel asleep again until noon and then I was up for the day. I watched The View and Ellen and Dr. Phil while I worked on this painting I’m doing. The painting is hard to explain, I guess it’s sort of a mandala of the sun, but my intention for it is to either photograph it or scan it and make prints of it to raise money for Squam. My dilemma is that I don’t know how to go about making prints and because I used glitter (of course), I’m not sure how well that’s going to print. I don’t know if I should take orders and then go to an actual printing place and print that many or if I should use a 3rd party service like Zazzle or CafePress. I’m thinking the latter would be a lot easier considering we’d have to *find* a printing place around here that does giclees (because if I’m going to go to an actual printer, that’s what I’d want) and do a test printing, so that’s one trip, then another trip to set up the printing and pay the money up front for them, then another trip to pick them up, then more trips if I sell any more and time is a really precious thing around here because I don’t drive and Blake has so little of it. So I guess I have to decide between Zazzle and CafePress and I’m going to have to order testers from them to see if the quality’s good enough to sell to the public. Do you think I should do products too? Like mugs and t-shirts and stuff? I suppose that question is best answered once you guys see the finished painting. Hrm.

My plan for today is to nap, since I got up at 5am, and then to watch movies while I finish this painting. Blake said I could order a pizza tonight, so I fully intend to do that even though I’ve been living on pizza products all week. Monday night I made a frozen pizza (which was disastrous, my god can I ever not cook), then yesterday I had Bagel Bites for lunch/dinner and I have Pilsbury Pizza Pops for lunch today and tomorrow. Right now, y’know, just to mix things up, I’m eating a chicken teriyaki TV dinner. Blake really needs to come home so I’m not eating absolute crap. I feel like garbage from eating so much processed junk. I mean, I *love* microwaveable junk, but only sometimes, not as my main diet.

So, Argent’s painting…

ARGENT, STOP READING NOW!

Argent’s painting is a disaster. :o( It gave me trouble from day one, right up until the very bitter end. I think I explained the beginning but I’ll go over it again in case I didn’t.

Argent plays the lottery so I intended to make him a lottery fairy and I succeeded at that, but I had him send me old lottery tickets, which happened to be black, white and pink, so the painting’s colour scheme was pink and blue. (I added the blue so it wouldn’t be as girly, but in the end you could barely tell there was any blue in it.) I went through TWO canvases trying to glue the lottery tickets on as a background because my exacto knife went through them when I tried to trim the excess off the edges, so I switched to wood.

When I was done with the background, you couldn’t even tell there were lottery tickets in there but I figured that was okay, I could just use the tickets as the fairy’s skirt. Well, that didn’t quite turn out as intended either. When I used matte gel medium to adhere the sparkly overlay across the skirt, it totally wiped out all the numbers so all that remained was the pink strip across the top. *head desk*

Then I spent a million hours doing the lettering. They were stick-on letters, I didn’t do them by hand, but they didn’t stand out so I had to make a paste of white glitter and acrylic glazing liquid and a bit of water and I had to VERY carefully smoosh it next to and in between the letters, then let it dry over night and then once it was dry, I had to sand it so it looked like an outer glow. I think I was successful at that in the end, but it was a total pain in the ass to do and I was damn lucky that I thought to do that because it wasn’t planned.

But then this bitch of a painting bit my ass pretty hard when it came time to varnish her. I usually use Micron Pigma pens to do my outlining, usually an 02 or an 005. This time I decided to use an 08. The difference between the two is just how big the point is, an 02 is finer than an 08 and a 005 is finer than both of them. I wanted a thicker line, so I used the 08 and I left it for 3 days, doing other things, so it should have been completely dry and “cured” so to speak.

Well, when I went to brush on the varnish, the ink smudged, ruining the entire painting. I can’t sell a painting with a flaw like that, so I sent a letter with it to Argent saying that I couldn’t accept payment for it because of the flaw and that he could just have it.

I was really  upset about this. I worked so damn hard on that painting and it was such a pain in the ass to do and I was really counting on that money to help pay for Squam, but I just couldn’t, in good conscience, sell it like that. Because Argent’s my friend, I was only going to charge him $250 for it which is the same price as almost all of my paintings, even though it was custom and I normally charge a more for that. That would have dented my Squam fund pretty nicely, it would have covered my deposit and then some, but at the same time, it’s not like I’m really out anything but my time and the cost of the letters ($20 because I had to buy two packs to get both colours), everything else was stuff I already had. The stars are pretty expensive because they come in a kit and ONLY in a kit (12 colours I think), so it kinda sucks that I’m now out of white ones but it’s okay because I really do think stars are lucky and that this painting is lucky and that Argent’s going to win the powerball EVENTUALLY because he has this painting. It was such a pain in the ass that I figure it HAS to be lucky! haha

Anyway, I took some pics of it before I sent it off (oh that was another thing; I had it all wrapped up and addressed when I suddenly remembered that not only did I forget to take pics of it beforehand, I also forget to take pics of MYSELF with it, which was my new year’s resolution…so I slapped on some makeup and Blake took some goofy pics of me laughing because he was making fun of the fact that I take pics on burst all the time…you had to be there…):

I’m trying to train myself – and I think I’ve maybe mentioned this, at least I know I have on Twitter – not to let things be “precious”. Meaning that I like to hoard things and I’m afraid of wasting materials or making mistakes. For example, I would normally only use one jewel on a painting because I only have so many in my stash. On Argent’s painting I used five: three stars for her necklace, one for her bindi (that one was a Swarovski crystal, actually) and another for her wand. This painting was definitely an exercise in things not being precious, believe me.

Anyway, here are the goofy pics. I look like shit (keep in mind, I’ve lost a LOT of my hair from being sick), be kind:

THE END.

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

PS. Blake and I got our sketchbooks for The Sketchbook Project out in time! He finished every page of his, I didn’t. My mom didn’t finish hers either, I don’t think, but I know John did. My friends Stephy and Alicia also finished theirs, who else participated this year?

First, lemme get this out of the way: Argent’s painting is finished. I haven’t photographed it in full yet but I will and after he receives it, I’ll post those pictures. Here’s one pic I took before I varnished it though:

I am absolutely in love with those little Martha Stewart glitter stars. I used white ones and pink ones and they’re all iridescent and they have names like “sugar cube” and “sugar plum”. I used up almost all of my white ones on this painting and they only come in $30 kits, so I won’t be using white ones for a very long time.

Next up is…Blake’s Uncle John died yesterday morning. He had early onset dementia and from what I’ve been able to gather is that he either basically starved to death (in a home) because he stopped eating or he had a heart attack because he was anorectic. Blake said that John was around 100 lbs when he died and he was a very tall man. He had apparently been sick all week but no one told us that until yesterday morning. I happened to have gotten up at 7am and when you see a 248 area code on your call display at 8am on a Saturday, you answer it. So I did and it was Blake’s Aunt Pat and she was so upset because that was her brother and it’s all just very sad because he was a wonderful man and the person in the family Blake related to the most. He’s taking it pretty hard.

Originally just Blake and I were going to go to Michigan for the funeral because hey, it’s not like I have anywhere I need to be, but then he wanted to bring the kids basically for comic relief and so they could get to know the Albanian side of the family and there was a chance that his sisters would be bringing their kids as well, the youngest two Blake has never even met because they live in Lake Tahoe.

Last night Blake and I decided that it would be best if I stayed here because I’m just not ready to be that far away from home and the hospital and my nurses just yet. I would be completely self-conscious about my belly and my extremely thin hair and I’m really emotional since being sick and if anyone mentioned me being sick, I’d probably lose it like I do, still, when people bring it up here. We’re just not okay and we’re not really ready to talk about it. Also we would have to bring all of my medical supplies and pills because I have a dressing that needs changing every other day and while Blake is perfectly capable of doing it, it’s just one more thing for him to worry about so I’ll just stay home and let the nurses deal with it. Another thing is food and feeling sick and potentially throwing up. I get really worried about it and then Blake worries about it and he doesn’t need to be dealing with that on top of a funeral for someone he was really close to and keeping track of the kids.

He also wants to go visiting Michigan friends while he’s in town and he wants to stay longer than is necessary for the funeral and I just don’t have that in me. I get tired really easily. I’m on really heavy doses of certain medications that makes me forgetful, not good company and I need to be in bed by 10pm. And I usually need a nap in the morning because I get up at like 6am and then I take hydromorph. I can’t just be go go go go go which is what this week in Militiagan is going to be.

So, we agreed it’s just better for him if I stay home where he doesn’t have to worry about me when things will be stressful enough. Ronny and Alex are around if I get scared or if something bad happens and I have the dogs. The nurses will be coming every other day to change my dressing and make sure I have all the necessary medical supplies. People will be around.

And honestly? And before you call me a selfish bitch, Blake and I have discussed this; 4 or 5 days of being alone and being able to watch all the bad TV I can handle and making art in my office and eating what and when I want to and sleeping where and when I want to sounds pretty damn good to me! Blake says I can do that now, but I can’t really. Someone is always wanting my attention or I feel guilty for not giving it to them even when they don’t ask and my “me time” suffers as a result. (That sounded horrible…please don’t take that horribly.) It’s taken me 5 months to feel okay enough to even go in my office and spend the day in there, when that’s where I belong.

So that’s what’s happening.

Onto yesterday! Yesterday we went on my artist’s date and it was GREAT! I had my $10 and I decided before we left for Michael’s that I’d bust open my Buddha bank to get some change for tax in case something was $9.99 and what I found in there was $20 in twoonies, loonies and quarters! So I loaded my wallet with that and put the pennies, dimes and nickels back in the bank and off Blake and I went to Michael’s. My mission was to first of all, buy gesso because I need it both now and for Squam and now that I was $20 richer, I could afford to get it, but my artist’s date mission was to buy something for $10 that I wouldn’t ordinarily buy and then come home and make something with it.

On our way to Michael’s, Blake wanted to stop off at this health food store because right now he’s eating 5/6 meals vegan as per Knives Over Forks. He’s been using the crock pot to make veggie soups and stews for the week’s lunches and he’s been having steel cut oatmeal for breakfast. Then sometimes a salad or tofu or stuff like that for dinner (but sometimes he eats what we eat). We’ve also, as a family, completely switched to wholegrain breads and cereals but I can’t do pasta because whole wheat pasta is just way too disgusting.

Anyway, Blake went to this store while I stayed in the car and he bought tempeh and this weird soy sauce stuff that I forget the name of but he put it on his salad last night and it smelled really gross. While he was in there, I could see in my side mirror that right next door was a flower shop. Wanna know a secret about me? Flower shops are one of my favourite places on Earth. Especially in the dead of winter. When I had my job, all winter I would make sure that I had flowers on my desk because I just absolutely love them. I cannot stop touching them and smelling them and staring at them. The kind doesn’t even really matter but I love flowers where the edges of them are a different colour than the rest of their petals. Carnations and roses often have this and those are my favourites. Next I love daisies, particularly gerbera daisies because they come in all kinds of colours.

When Blake got back to the car, I told him I wanted to go to the flower shop to look around, which we did, and they had a bucket of pink and orange carnations so Blake and I decided to go halvesies on them, using the change from the Buddha and his change from the car.  I was very happy because this kind of carnation is one of my favourite flowers, I just cannot even explain my love of them, I think they’re absolutely gorgeous.

After that we were back on our way to Michael’s and when we got there they had coupons at the front of the store for 40% off any item and Blake explained to me that this was better than the coupon I had for 25% off my total purchase because I was only buying one thing and with a 40% off coupon, I could get something for like, $17 for $10.

Just because part of my mission was to go down aisles that I normally wouldn’t go down, I went down the wood aisle and looked at little wooden plaques that were around $2 and I thought I could paint girls and put them on these but ultimately I decided not to get any of those because really, how would those little wooden plaques differ from the big pieces of wood I have sitting in my office? Or even a canvas? It’s just another substrate for the same old thing!

But in that aisle, something caught my eye. It was on the very bottom shelf, kind of hidden by other things. There were 3 or 4 of them but I only needed one. It was a wooden shadowbox with a wood-framed glass door that stayed shut by magnets. And it was $17. With my coupon it would only be $10 Blake said and the moment I saw it, ideas practically melted my brain so I had to have it. So I put it in the cart, declared I was done, let’s find the gesso and get the fuck outta here.

Well, we had to go down the paint aisle to find gesso because it would make sense that it would be there. For the record, it is not, but what IS there is that gorgeous Martha Stewart paint that I love so much. I had to stay there and look at all the colours again for a little while because they are just so goddamn beautiful. What really struck me this time though, was this orange glitter paint called Orange Sorbet. Paint was not in my budget so we left the paint aisle and found the gesso which was $11. Just then I had the crafty idea that if Blake got another 40% off coupon and we went through the checkout separately, I could get the gesso for $9. So that’s what we did because we are very very sneaky!

I went through the checkout first and my shadowbox was $11 with tax and I was practically laughing on my way out to the car because I felt like I was getting away with murder! I just couldn’t believe I was getting this magnificent thing for such a low price! And then to get $11 gesso for $9 on top of that, I was laughin’!

So I got out to the car and put the shadowbox in the back seat and checked into Foursquare while I waited for Blake. I knew he’d be a while because Michael’s was having a major sale on custom framing and there were a lot of people in line behind me so I screwed around with my phone and when Blake got into the car he handed me the gesso AND the orange Martha Stewart glitter paint I oh so coveted because he is just so goddamn romantical! I almost cried!

On our way home, Blake said he was feeling kinda bummed out about John and wanted to know if I’d go out for dinner with him to this new burger place he’s been wanting to try called South St. Burger Co. so I said “sure” because they serve New York Fries, which make the best poutine in Ontario as far as I’m concerned (not counting actual poutineries in Toronto and Ottawa). So we went there and Blake got a big burger with pretty much everything on it and fries while I got a small burger with just ketchup and a small poutine and the food was great. This place only uses grass fed, free range, hormone and antibiotic-free beef and I didn’t think there’d really be a difference but there really was. It was just…beefier, if that makes any sense. Anyway, it was good and afterward we just went home.

Once I got home, I was in a pretty good mood and eager to use my new paint so I decided to smash my date into my Smash Book, so here are pictures of that:

So all in all, a good time was had by all and Blake’s mind was taken off the funeral for at least a little while and I got inspiration IN SPADES. I am going to be very very busy for the next week or two, I think! I don’t even think I’ll need an artist’s date next week! Or if I do, I think it’ll probably just be a trip to Starbucks or something (which Blake may need after being in MI for a week) because I was literally flooded with ideas yesterday. There’s no more room right now for any more because I have to get these ones out first!

Okay, now I think I’m going to go start my list of things Blake needs to get from the grocery store so I don’t starve to death while he’s gone and then I’m going to hide out in my office staring at my flowers and wiping orange glitter paint on my apron.

A few days ago, my friend Joey Michaels wrote a post about E/N which brought back a flood of memories for those of us who were involved in it back then and then Artfag made a top secret, invite-only Facebook group where all of us old-timers have been catching up and remembering old times.

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.

Tomorrow is TUESDAY, which means, no nurses, no kids and no Blake – it’s my DAY OFF! I’m so stoked! Here is what tomorrow will ideally entail because I do better with structured days than unstructured ones:

• Morning pages (I’m doing The Artist’s Way again. Last time I did it for a week and gave up, this time I’m doing it for real because I think the crux of my depression is that I’m creatively blocked. Very little makes me unhappier.)
• Waffles with REAL maple syrup (because my mommy loves me) and butter
• Moulin Rouge and sketching (I got brightly coloured feathers on my last trip to Michael’s and I want to use them in a burlesque painting)
• Burlesque (with Xtina Aguilera) and more sketching
• Figure out what to do with BEADS. If anyone has any idea on what I could do with brightly coloured glass seed beads, I’d love to hear it. I mean like, in my paintings, not in general. They were on clearance in tubes for $1 at Michael’s a while back, good quality ones too, so I got a whole bunch of them  and they’re really really pretty. The only thing I’ve been able to think of for them is to make them gravel in mermaid paintings. There’s gotta be a better use for them.
• Read The Artist’s Way for at least an hour.
• Read Painted Pages, which came today, for at least an hour.
• By that time, the kids should be home, so I’m going to see if Madison wants to watch The Sweetest Thing because that was the movie I won in the grocery store’s colouring contest (actually it’s 3 movies on 1 disc but the other two are stupid; Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and My Best Friend’s Wedding)
• While we watch the movie, I’ll finish my last Sketchbook Project sketchbook page.
• Salmon steak and salad for dinner

Then the rest of the evening is a mystery! I know I’ll watch something with Blake, maybe The Tempest if there’s nothing else on TV because I know we have that downloaded and maybe we have The Ides of March too (I hope so, Ryan gosling, rawr) but whatever we watch, I’ll be working on Argent’s painting, which is fast becoming the bane of my existence because I keep FUCKING IT UP but hopefully tomorrow I’ll get a handle on it.

Tonight we’re having steak and grilled garlicy buttery potatoes for dinner (with peas!), and the Leafs are playing the godforsaken Islanders and we’re gonna win GODAMMIT and that’s all I have to say about that.

Today was pretty uneventful. I sat in my office all day and watched Oprah-related television while I wrote in my Artist’s Way workbook about my issues right now involving all things creative, then I started reading The Artist’s Way from the beginning because the last time I picked it up, according to my last morning pages, was the winter of 2005 and that was before I went nuts and considering I remember very little in this house before I went nuts, I figured I should just start all over again instead of where my bookmark had left off. Evidently I only read a chapter of the book the first time around too. No wonder it didn’t help me.

Janice was my nurse today. I like Janice, she’s nice and bubbly and funny and probably my favourite out of all of them. She also listens to me, for the most part, whereas the others don’t really. :o/

Anyway, I spent most of my day away from the internet and it was pretty great, so I think I’ll do the same tomorrow. I need to have better days than the ones I’ve been having, that’s for sure.

Have a lovely evening!

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

Last night I got my Squam registration! I got all three of the classes I wanted as my first choices AND my mom and I are roommates in a 24-person cabin! 24 PEOPLE OMFG! Here are the floorplans for our cabin: First floor/Second floor

It looks like most of the double rooms have their own bathrooms, or at least the ones on the right do, so hopefully we can get there early enough to claim one of those. It also looks like each double room has its own sink, which is good, because as long as I can wash my hair & face in the sink, I can go indefinitely without a shower as I’ve learned from having a giant axe wound across my belly. I’m not very good at floorplans or maps, but it looks as though there are 3 showers/tubs in the cabin? Also, if you look at the map, it looks like Squam will take place in Deephaven and our cabin, being the biggest, will probably be the closest to all of the classes, if they’re any good at planning (and I have every reason to believe that they are), so that’s good.

~*PLEASE DONATE!*~

Squam is going to be the best time of my life, I can feel it. Every time I think about it, yellowy-orange light fills my chest and comes out through my eyes, like this picture; this is me when I think of Squam:

This is a mixed media piece by an artist named Shelley Kommers and I would really really love a print of it for my birthday, which can be purchased here for $18. *cough* It’s my favourite piece of last year (or maybe it was the year before but I only saw it last year) and I desperately want a copy for my future office before it goes out of circulation or something.

All last night and this morning I worked on my Smash Book. I started a page to write down all the things I’m grateful for and another page of women I admire. Currently I’m grateful for Diet Coke and my life and I admire Oprah, Emma Stone and Michelle Williams but only because those are the women whose pictures I could find in the few magazines we had kicking around the house.

Right now Blake is making me “the tomato thing”, which is my favourite food and Madison’s sitting on the chair in front of me internetting. Wes is over at a new friend’s house, named Wes. It’s really just a lazy Sunday in Sunnyland and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Wes has never really had a haircut before because Blake would just shave his head since he was small. Wes had requested a haircut for his birthday, because he wanted an actual hairstyle, so we said “yes” and waited for his hair to grow out. I couldn’t stand looking at it and decided yesterday that he needed to get it cut like, right now, it couldn’t wait until his birthday (Feb. 13th) and this is what the stylist did to his melon. He’s happy with it and that’s what matters. :o)

“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Dog.”
“Dog? Dog who?”
“Polka-dot spot on a sock.”

- Claire Peate, age 4

8-Year-Old Juliet’s First Hardcore Song

Yesterday was a pretty good day. :o) I woke up to sunshine streaming through the front windows of the house, I was warm, I was alone (for the time being) because Blake was at work and the kids were at school and I just knew it was going to be a good day.

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!*~

Sunday morning. Only Wes and I are awake at the time I’ve started this post. He’s playing his new video game (Bolt, purchased with a gift certificate from the Playstation Store), I’m listening to a new playlist and talking to Korpsy on Twitter about miserable movies. Yesterday Madison and I watched The Notebook, which is the second most miserable movie in the history of the world, and the little shit didn’t even crack a frown at the end, meanwhile I was a snotty, sobbing, toilet paper clenching piece of shit. I swear that child has no soul. (The first most miserable movie on the face of planet Earth is Life Is Beautiful, in case you were wondering.)

Last night was pretty miserable. I know I don’t really post about Blake very often, but I’m really worried about him. When I woke up from the nightmare of pancreatitis in Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, I woke up to the love of my life being a changed man and I don’t like this change. He can’t help it, I know, but he’s not well and I want more than anything for him to be better. He needs to talk to someone about what happened this summer and soon, I think, before this change in him, this sadness, becomes permanent. There’s just no joy in his life anymore, he doesn’t laugh as easily as he used to, he mopes, all he does is work to avoid everything else…he just goes through the motions of living, he doesn’t actually do more than exist. And that worries me a great deal. Last night we just held each other and cried. For hours. Things are not okay. Not everything is getting better.

………….

For the last couple of days I’ve been playing with an idea that I want to run by you guys to see what you think. I think I want to put a 24/7 spycam in my office, overlooking my desk and part of the couch. I say it would be 24/7, but really we would probably turn it off sometimes, just not often. Really, the only time it would go off is if there was any sexy/naked private time going on, which I know ruins half the fun, but I don’t do sex on cam, never have, and there are legalities in place that say a cam like this couldn’t be sexually explicit if children were to also appear on it from time to time.

What you would see, on any given day, would be me sitting at my desk making art and probably watching a movie, possibly with someone (likely Madison or Blake), watching TV with me on the couch. It would not be riveting entertainment and it would not be streaming cam because that would be extremely cost prohibitive. It would be a simple, old school, 30 second refresh cam that would be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, give or take.  We could possibly chat live on Twitter.

Now, you might be asking yourself why on Earth I would want to do this so here are my reasons:

1. I am creatively blocked in a seriously painful way. I avoid my office like the plague and when I’m in there all I do is watch movies and accomplish nothing. Maybe with an audience, I’d be more productive.

2. Maybe with an audience I’d actually make an effort not to be a scuzzy bitch. Don’t get me wrong, if this happens you will most likely see me in yoga pants and t-shirts 95% of the time, probably with little or no makeup, probably with my hair in a ponytail. I’m not aiming to look beautiful here, I couldn’t care less about that at this point, I mean making an effort to have clean hair. Changing my clothes more than once a week. That kind of stuff.

3. Maybe this will attract more people to my site and more people means more people seeing my art and maybe buying some of it. Also, I think from a marketing perspective that maybe some people might be more likely to buy a piece if they see the process by which it was created. Street artists have been working on this principle for, well, ever.

4. I think it could be fun to chat with people while they were watching me (and whoever else was in the room), live.

Now, do I think anyone will actually watch? I highly doubt it. I think the ship for spycams, unless they’re maybe nature cams, has sailed. However, I know a few friends would watch sometimes and that it would enhance our spontaneous Twitter parties and that could be really really fun. Really, the cam is going to be pretty boring otherwise.

The only drawback I can see is that the whole world will find out my big deep dark secret, the thing only my family and a few really close friends know about, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Really, the secret itself probably isn’t a big deal at all, I doubt people would care that much, but it is sort of strange and it will require an entry on the webcam FAQ I’ll have to write up to nip the whole thing in the bud.

So what do you guys think? Would you watch? Would you interact with me live on Twitter? Do you have any interest in this whatsoever? Do you see any drawbacks to this that I may be missing? (All family members have “signed off” on this, Madison even thinks it’s a good idea, Wes doesn’t care, Blake said he’d turn the cam off sometimes.) Oh and there wouldn’t be archives because archives take up server space and I’d really like to save server space for nicer pictures that I take with my camera. I would like to have something below the cam though, that said something like “3 people are viewing this cam right now”, but worded better. I have no idea how you would make it do that. Do you? I know how to make a 30 second refresh page (in Dreamweaver), so I’m good there, but I have no idea how to make a counter like that.

Anyway, just a little idea I’m thinking about. To make it happen, I would need the USB cable on my wishlist and another cam. Ideally I would use the cam I have now for the spycam and use the one on my wishlist for Camwhores, but if anyone has an extra *decent* cam kicking around that they would want to send me for this, I wouldn’t object. Blake says that as long as this thing doesn’t cost him any money, he’s totally fine with it, so this has to happen for free. (We have a little spare computer to use for this – at least temporarily, it’s technically spoken for.)

Oh but another thing about the spycam? If it bothers me, I’m taking it down. If it’s just eating up bandwidth and no one’s watching, I’m taking it down. If a family member objects to it being there, I’m taking it down. This may just be a temporary thing while I’m in this funk, I dunno. But I think it’s okay to try.

Last week Blake and I went on a date. Keith, my mom’s ex-boyfriend, sent us a $50 gift certificate for Swiss Chalet and my mom gave both Blake and I gift certificates for EB Games and at the beach they’re literally right next to each other, so we went and had perogies, cheesy garlic bread, ribs, a chicken type of thing on flatbread, a strawberry sundae and a piece of apple pie – all for 4 bucks and change! Then we went next door and bought Skyrim.

I was so stoked to get Skyrim. I’d built it up in my head as this awesome fantastic thing but the problem was, my computer wasn’t good enough to play it so we had to get it for Playstation. #FirstWorldProblem, I know, but the thing is, I really really hate consoles. I can’t stand those little joystick things you use with your thumb to move, it just seems completely unnatural to me. I tried really hard to play Skyrim on PS3, I really did, but in the end I just got frustrated and gave up. Also the game seems way too big. Like, I played for about 2 hours and barely got past character creation.

The other thing is that these days I’m having a really hard time justifying the playing of games when I should be doing things that’ll make us money instead. Or at least things that are semi-productive. I canceled my WoW subscription because it was just stupid to keep paying for something I only played maybe once every 2 weeks and even then, I was just dicking around, farming for whelps and sprite darters anyway; I wasn’t even leveling. My subscription runs out on February 6th so I only had a month left to play it anyway because I was paying for it with Xmas money, so no big deal. I saved us 15 whole dollars by canceling a month early. *shrug*

I don’t know why I’m so unmotivated. Depression? S.A.D.? Our sketchbooks for The Sketchbook Project have to be in the mail in 16 days, I have one page to finish (I’m not finishing my whole book) and I can’t bring myself to touch it. Dunno why. Argent’s painting has been sitting on my desk, about 65% finished, but I can’t seem to push through and get it done. I have a million ideas for paintings, I’m not at a loss for those, I just have zero desire or motivation to actually make them happen. I have all the materials (although I’m running dangerously low on canvases). I have the pictures in my mind. What the fuck is wrong with me? How can I call myself an artist when I’m not only NOT making art but not selling any either? Like tits on a bull, I tell ya! Squam cannot happen soon enough!

Speaking of Squam, my mom and I damn near had heart failure yesterday when they announced on Facebook and Twitter that the spring session was full/closed already. My mom commented on the post on Facebook and after a few grueling hours, they commented back that there was still plenty of room for the fall, so we could breathe easy. *whew* We don’t think our envelopes have even left the country yet, so hopefully they get there in time!

Okay I can’t think of anything else to write so I think that’s it for now. Blake awake and making coffee so maybe I’ll get him to make me a tea too, which I’ll take into my office where the most productive thing I’ll do is stare a hole into my cutting mat. Oy.

Edit: Blake scanned my colouring contest entry. The scan kinda sucks though. The ornaments on the tree were silver and I guess the scanner’s light really washed out a lot of the colour for some reason. Like, in the original, Santa’s cheeks and nose are rosy and the package at the bottom is actually purple and lavender but it looks white and washed out. Oh well. Here it is.