Both Wes and Madison got their report cards today and both of them got almost straight A’s with a couple of B+’s thrown in. (Nothing lower than a B+. Wes got more A’s than Madison.)

This is typical for them, so I wasn’t really surprised, although I was glad to see that Madison’s finally starting to improve on doing homework. Every report card she’s had since grade 2 has always been good, but the teachers always say she needs to work on getting her homework done or handed in on time. This is the 2nd report card in a row where the teacher didn’t say that, so yay Madison!

Also enclosed with both of their report cards was a yellow letter that says:

Dear Parents/Guardians,

This is an invitation to attend the Principal’s Achievement Assembly. Your child is on the Principal’s Achievement list this term and will be receiving a certificate of achievement on March 26, 2010. To get on the list students must score a total of 24 or better on the Learning Skills portion of their Report Card. Due to a large number of students on the list (260) [note: out of about 800 kids] we are having two assemblies.

Gr. 1-3 at 9:00am
Gr. 4-8 at 9:45am

Parents/Guardians are invited to attend. I look forward to seeing you there.

Sincerely,
Principal

I realize that a lot of kids are getting this award, but it’s still cool that both of my kids are among them. In fact, it seems that every time there’s any kind of award at school, one or both of them gets one, so in case it isn’t clear, I’m totally proud of them for always doing their best. I think it’s great that the school has awards like these so kids continue to do their best and to maybe push the ones who aren’t to do better. (Or maybe these awards are totally heinous and only make the kids who don’t get them feel bad…that’s an idea to consider too, I suppose.)

Either way, they did awesome, because they are awesome.

Yesterday while I was in bed wanting to die due to this stomach flu/codeine withdrawal combo I’ve got going, Blake took the kids to my mom’s boyfriend’s cottage for a day of skating on the lake. John (my mom’s boyfriend) was nice enough to send them home with pictures and here they are. :o)

My mom drinkin’ & skatin’.

My mom & Madison.

My mom & Wes.

Chris (John’s son), Wes & my mom.

Blake, Wes & my mom.

Madison & Wes haz a bucket.

Madison & Wes

Chris & Wes

…………..

Blake, Chris, John, my mom, Wes & Madison

THE END.

Super old cam pic from when I made hundreds of wax paper hearts for mobiles that I put up over our windows for Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day has always been one of my favourite holidays, even though these days I don’t do a whole lot for it. In past years, I’ve been known to do special creative projects for the holiday, such as the mobile pictured above, or I’ve sent out Valentines to my online friends, but as I’ve gotten older (and poorer and busier)  these things have fallen by the wayside. That’s okay though, because I know it won’t always be like this and I’ll be able to do more in future years. (Kind of like my attitude toward Halloween. I want to be one of those families that decorates their house and gives out awesome candy but alas, we don’t get any trick-or-treaters where we are and couldn’t afford to do it even if we did.)

Anyway, Blake & I aren’t doing anything special today, especially because he, Wes & I seem to have a particularly nasty stomach bug of some kind and our bathroom has practically had a revolving door all weekend.

Valentine’s Day means two things, however. It means that there’s only two weeks until my birthday and everyone should get me lots & lots of presents and it also means that there’s one month until Steak & Blowjob Day. Since my article on giving head is linked on the Steak & BJ Day website, it means that my site is currently getting twice the traffic it normally gets and by the time the actual holiday rolls around, my traffic will have tripled. That’s a whole lot of new people around here reading my crap! So hello new people! Welcome to Sunnyland! Glad to have ya. :o)

Another thing Valentine’s Day means, to me and some of my friends at least, is that it’s Love Your Vulva day, or V-Day for short, something that we’ve been celebrating all month over at Buttercup. Buttercup’s actually been pretty hoppin’ all month, you should pop over there and check it out. So far this month we’ve had articles on VDay.org, Katie’s sexually repressed upbringing, how chicks dig porn, Blake’s experiences growing up in a penis-centric world, an article on our featured site, Camwhores.com, an article on vulva art, phenomenal woman, Holly Hughes, who you’ve probably never heard of but probably should, and finally an article by Jade about some of the strangest vulva-centric products we’ve ever seen – with much more to come during the rest of the month! We’ve also added two new groups to the mix. S/he is a group about sexism and so far the conversations have been really interesting and enlightening and we also added a group for sports, which needs a better name than “Sports”, so if you have any ideas on that, we’d love to hear them! Along with the new groups, we’ve also redesigned the front page a little bit and we have plans to redesign it further for next month. Lots of changes thanks to the feedback we got from the Buttercup community at the end of January! Thanks readers!

So, things over at Buttercup are doing good. You should take a peek if you get the chance. :o)

I realize this month I’ve been fairly quiet as far as blog posts go and there are a million reasons for that, namely preparing for and celebrating Wes’ 7th birthday, but also I’ve been hard at work painting ACEOs for my Etsy shop since art is pretty much all I can do when I’m in the kind of pain I’ve been in for the past couple of weeks due to endometriosis issues. I plan on doing nothing but working on ACEOs until this batch is finished because so far, they’ve proven to be pretty popular items in my Etsy shop, having sold half of the first batch I put up 2 weeks ago with the other half getting plenty of views. This first batch that I put up was of gold & black and purple & gold cards and right now all that’s left is the gold ones. The ones I’m working on are more purple & gold ones, some green & gold ones and a whole bunch of red & gold ones. I’ll, of course, make a post when this batch is ready and up on Etsy. In the meantime, you should take a look at the gold & black ones I have up there currently as I think they turned out rather well and hey, these things are supposed to be collectible, so if you buy a gold & black one this month, there’s no reason you can’t buy a red & gold one next month! *cough*

As I’m reading the Etsy forums, I’m learning that ideally what you’re supposed to do is market to people outside of Etsy and bring them into your shop. For that reason, I spent yesterday afternoon designing Moo cards with my artwork on the front of them and my website addresses on the back to include a couple with Etsy orders. By including more than one, it means the buyer will probably keep one and potentially give the other one(s) to friends. I’m also working on getting the funds for another promotional item, which I’ll write more about after I have the money to order them and actually send them out to people. If all goes as planned though, they’re pretty cool – or at least I think so – plus they have sentimental value, which again, I’ll write more about when I actually have them in my possession. (I’m only 1 ACEO sale away from being able to order them!)

And I guess that’s all I really have to say at the moment. It’s been a busy month and it’s going to continue to be busy. My neighbour’s daughter, Ashley, is due to have her baby any day now, so since my neighbour (Judy) doesn’t have a camera, I’ve lent her mine and that’s why there haven’t been pictures of anything in my recent posts. Ashley was actually due like, 4 or 5 days ago, so she could literally pop any day now and I should get my camera back soon.

Okay, I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day! I’m off to watch the Olympics and work on these ACEOs.

Last night Judy watched the kids and we spent 2 grueling hours in a packed Wal*Mart doing the bulk of our Xmas shopping. This year I/we decided fuck it, if you’re a grown up who can buy your own crap, I’m not even gonna bother hazarding a guess as to what you DON’T already have, so (and hopefully none of them are reading this, but I guess it doesn’t matter much if they are) all grown ups in our lives are getting pictures of the kids and gift certificates. Blake got almost all of the gift certificates yesterday on his lunch and only has one more to get today and then we are DONE.

Today Madison and I are going to clean the bathroom, then tomorrow after work Blake is going to vacuum and then my house will be presentable enough for when my mom, her boyfriend John and his son Chris come over to have Xmas with us on Boxing Day. I didn’t get John or Chris anything for Xmas because my mom basically told me not to, which was a great relief because we’re in the poorhouse as it is and my poor Visa is dangerously close to its limit. We decided not to defer our mortgage payment this month, but instead do all of our Xmas shopping on Visa and pay it off when Blake gets his bonus in March. If anything comes up between now & then, like say the car blows up, then we can defer a mortgage payment if need be and have it taken care of.  Now that we’re done our Xmas shopping, the only “big ticket item” we have to worry about is getting all of the animals their shots in January and then getting their township tags.

After we got home from Wal*Mart, Blake made a great steak dinner that I couldn’t eat because right now I’m pretty fucking sick and the only thing keeping me sane is Advil Cold & Sinus. I thought it was just a cold when it hit me on Friday but I’ve had a fever off & on all weekend and yesterday, my whole body aches etc. so I’m putting it more in the flu category. I am SO SCARED to get any of these friggin’ kids sick (ours + Courtney) that I reek of hand sanitizer and there have been no bedtime hugs. I just do not want to deal with 3 sick kids during the 2 & a half week holiday break, especially not if I’m sick myself.  I feel really bad that I felt too bad to eat the dinner Blake made us last night. :o/

We (well he) ate while we watched the Leafs vs Sabres game I started recording while we were at Wal*Mart and when food was done, I got started on wrapping presents. We got Madison this cute makeup bag that’s turquoise patent leather and her first set of makeup. I went way way way overboard in hooking her up with a good variety of stuff (like 6 bottles of nail polish, 3 compacts of eyeshadow…) and I wrapped each thing individually and put it in the bag, with cotton balls on top, zipped it up, then put the bag in a box and then we wrapped the box up. Annoyingly, Blake left a bag on my chair this morning with my hoodie over it which contained makeup removing facewash and mascara that should have gone in the bag with everything else, but I thought all of the cosmetic type stuff was in the bag I was wrapping from…soooooo I wrapped up the mascara & taped it to the box and the facewash I’ll just put in her stocking or something.

And that’s all I got wrapped last night because rapping all of those teeny tiny things took me the entire hockey game and when it was done I was exhausted so I just went to bed. What kills me about wrapping presents is how bad I suck at it. I make all these cute little girls with cute little paper dresses and I’m a whiz with scissors etc. but when I wrap presents, it looks like it was done by Wes. In fact Wes probably does a better job than I do. That’s why every year I usually get Blake to do all the wrapping but this year there won’t be enough time for that so I have to pitch in. While we were at Wal*Mart I bought gift boxes so at least some stuff I won’t have to wrap.

The next thing on my blogging agenda is that my cat is fucking retarded. Every single year for Xmas I buy her a treat or a toy and every single year she wants no part of it. Last year it was a laser pointer, she wanted nothing to do with it. The year before that a mouse or something, I can’t remember but she didn’t want anything to do with it. The year before that I bought her like, 5 different kinds of cat treats but she wouldn’t eat any of them. She just likes her cat food and that’s it. A few weeks ago someone on Facebook linked a YouTube video of all these cats getting stoned on catnip in a garden and I thought HEY WE SHOULD TRY THAT because I’ve never seen a cat actually high on catnip before. So last night, I bought some and it came with a little heart-shaped toy to put the dry catnip in. So I filled it up and got the cat and got her to sniff it and…she wanted no part of it. The toy then split apart and I spilled dry catnip all over my office floor so I picked a bit up and got her to sniff it and no dice. I thought maybe, just maybe, after we went to sleep she’d start getting all stoned on the pile which I left on my office floor for her but when I woke up this morning, it was undisturbed. So I give up. The cat no longer gets anything for Xmas and I guess Alex’s cats have a new toy and a big bag of catnip. Someone remind me next year that my cat sucks and not to get her anything because I know I’ll forget (or maybe it’s denial).

Blake & I weren’t going to get each other anything for Xmas this year due to money, but when we were at Wal*Mart I picked myself up some makeup because I’m running low on the essentials and this was an excuse to replenish my stock. We also happened to be going down the aisle with all the sports stuff and Blake pointed out Leafs jerseys….that were PINK & WHITE. Obviously not regulation, being pink & white, but NHL sanctioned and so Blake got me one for Xmas and I got him a Leafs home jersey (not regulation either). One day I will have a regulation Leafs home jersey to go along with my Leafs 3rd jersey but since they’re over $100, we’ll make due with Wal*Mart jerseys for now.

The rest of the stuff we got was mostly odds & ends, like I was out of incense so I picked up a bunch of that and I wanted to get a plastic “boot mat” for under the dogs’ bowls because they make such a mess and there’s constantly dog food all over my kitchen. (Lucky eats laying down and if Hoover’s eating too, Lucky will pick up his bowl and eat in the living room.) I also wanted to get Madison some yarn because I know she’s getting crochet hooks for Xmas and books about how to crochet, so we picked up a bunch of that too. She also needed pajamas and bras so those went in the cart as well.

We didn’t really get anything for Wes at Wal*Mart because Blake had gotten him stuff at Toys ‘R’ Us yesterday afternoon (Lego, some plastic dragons, I forget what else), but we did pick him up Lego Batman for his DS and Blake had already gotten him a few pairs of pajamas and some clothes so he’s good.

We got my 4 year old sister Raili some Barbies and my 10 month old sister Rachael a set of Little People. We got Courtney next door a DS game of Deal or No Deal. What else? I don’t even remember and you probably don’t care anyway. Long story short, after Blake picks up a couple of things on his lunch today, we are done our Xmas shopping completely. I plan on spending all afternoon today and tomorrow wrapping things and getting the house clean and after that we should be good to go.

Blake called my dad on Sunday and asked him to clean up the garage for the dogs, which he said he’d do and that takes a lot off my mind. What do the dogs get for Xmas? Well my dad hunts and I’m not sure what he hunted for this year, but usually it’s deer and moose and occasionally bear but whatever he hunted for in the fall, he gets the butcher to save him some of the bigger bones for his dogs and mine to have at Xmas.

I also have children’s Gravol to give the dogs before we leave so they don’t puke in the car on the way up. (And yes we called the vet and yes you can give dogs half of a children’s Gravol if they’re the size of mine.)

So I guess that’s it, we’re on track for Xmas. I had more to say but I think I’ll just end things here and start wrapping presents.

I worry, a lot, about the fact that I no longer seem to see the world with the same magic glasses I’ve worn my whole entire life. Not too long ago, I could take day to day situations and make them spectacular, because to me they were spectacular, and share them with the world via this blog, but ever since my meds have become stable, that scenario has become a rarity. Or maybe it’s because I turned 30. It’s hard to say because the two events sort of happened around the same time.

But I miss it because it’s always been a part of me. I often sit outside, usually because I’ve taken up smoking again, but often just to sit outside in the sun because I don’t like my lightbox, and I think about how I see the world now versus how I used to see the world before. Now I see hard reality, I see what’s actually there, whereas before I saw the potential in everything, what could be there.

When we moved to this town I was ecstatic because it had so much potential. I loved that it only had 1700 people and that it had a downtown core reminiscent of another once small town outside of a big city called Unionville. (And yes, I know I’ve written about this before.) See, Unionville was this little village built around the same time as this one (mid-1800s, if not earlier) and as the city of Markham expanded, Unionville became this little boutique town full of art galleries, cafes and antique shops – or at least its downtown core did.

With Elmvale being so close to Barrie and Barrie being the ever-expanding metropolis it is, I envisioned a similar scenario here, especially after we’d already moved here and our neighbour on the right told us that they were going to be building a subdivision of 300 brand new, $250k+ houses right across the road from us. As Barrie expands and creates more jobs, more people are wanting to move to Elmvale and that’s the same thing that happened with Unionville.

But here we are 4 years later and now when I look at Elmvale’s downtown core, all I see is a dead village because that’s what’s there. No longer do I see the potential, I see the reality. As I’ve mentioned before, half the downtown shops are empty or uncared about, the restaurants leave something to be desired, we’re only a town of 1700 but we have 4 big name fast food chains and a Wal*Mart up the road…pretty much the only thing about this town reminiscent of Unionville is the organic food store which I’ve never been in and I constantly wonder how the guy stays in business. The dollar store here is abysmal with the lowest stock of any dollar store I’ve ever seen, we have one clothing store by a woman who makes all her own designs but they’re designs for heavier set 40+ year old women, not exactly high fashion and I too, wonder how this woman stays in business. We have one gift boutique-y type shop but I’ve never been inside and from what the kids tell me, it’s mostly stuff made in China. There’s an art studio downtown that, from looking in the windows, appears to be occupied by a potter but it’s never open and I don’t think it’s ever going to be open to the public. Another artist works out of that same studio, Blake actually found her on Etsy, but I can’t remember her name. She makes really expensive beaded broaches, or at least that’s what she had in her Etsy shop.

I guess the potential’s still there, it’s just not as easy for me to see it because I’m either medicated up to the tits (which I am) or I’m old and jaded (which I am).

Blake was interviewed on the phone this week for a new position within his company and from what I understand, they’re fine with remote work so he’d theoretically be making more money and would have a more secure job, but we’d still be stuck here. He’s applied for another job within the company which is basically the same scenario but more money than the first. He’ll find out Dec. 8th if he’s made the short list for that one.

So, it looks like we’ll be staying here for a while longer and I have to kiss my dream house with its studio and our dream town goodbye. Really, it’s bittersweet. The hassle of getting our house ready to sell and then selling within a timeline feasible for buying another house made me really nervous because I don’t know how to do that, so I’m glad we probably won’t have to do that now. I really hate my house, though. It’s small, dumpy and needs a whole hell of a lot of work that neither of us know how to do. All of our bedrooms are impossibly small, we only have one tiny bathroom, I have hardly any room for my art, even though I have a whole room to myself to do it in, because the furnace, elliptical and a futon are in here and this is where the grown ups hang out. I’m glad we won’t have to leave Wayne & Judy because I really do love them, but with the way things are going with them financially…I’m not sure we’re going to be neighbours for very long anyway.

But I’m trying so hard to access my power of seeing potential to see the positive in this. More money and the same commute means that we’ll have money to fix this house up. It means I can get my dad to build my built-in bookshelves in this room and get him to lay the new carpet and re-trim the whole room. It means I can paint my studio how I want to. It means we have time to go slow and do a project at a time so when it comes time to sell this place, everything’s ready. It means I won’t have to sod over my garden right away.

It means that I won’t have to find a new doctor after I’ve finally gotten this one to work with me as far as pain management. It means I won’t have to find a new dentist after getting this one to understand that I’m seriously terrified of dental work so he drugs me up a little extra so it won’t be so scary. It means that the pharmacy is still going to know who I am and will continue to spot me a weekend’s worth of drugs when I forget to call my shrink to renew my prescriptions. It means that the ladies at the blood clinic will continue to remember who I am, that I’m terrified of blood tests and they’ll continue using the needles they use on babies to take my blood. It means that if one of the kids is sick at school, Judy’s still just a phone call away at work and can come get them and bring them home.

It means that things will remain the same but with a few minor improvements and I guess I can’t really complain about that. I just really really really wanted to move. :o/ There’s nothing in this town for me, I’ll never drive here and will be forever dependent on Blake to get anywhere, and Cookstown had so much more to offer. But the thing is, and I told Blake this a long time ago, I’m only moving one more time. It’s either the house we’re going to be in for the rest of our lives or nothing. With Blake continuing to work in Barrie there’s no point in trying to upgrade to a nicer house in this town because it won’t be our forever home because his “forever job” will probably be in Scarborough after he moves up from either of the positions he’s applied for.

I guess I should be thankful that in this economy he has a job at all and maybe it sounds like I’m whining here, I’m just tired of feeling like we’re in limbo. I hate not having a plan. In the beginning, when we moved here, we had intentions of staying in this house for 5 years tops and this July, it’ll be 5 years. My feet are getting itchy and I’m way less in love with this town than I was in the beginning because it’s become quite apparent that it’ll never be what I envisioned it would become.

So I guess it’s time to try and put my magic glasses back on and seek out the magic that was once here. Easier said than done.

So Judy’s surprise party was a roaring success despite a few glitches.

As I mentioned, Judy has an infected tooth (more like an abscess) so she came home from work at around 10:30am and went to the doctor who prescribed her antibiotics because she couldn’t get in to see the dentist today. She was supposed to work until 3pm and then go to Wal*Mart shopping, where she’d meet Wayne and they’d do some more shopping until about 5/5:30pm.

So she was home all day and we couldn’t get started on decorating until 3:15pm when she left to go to Wal*Mart! But, that ended up being plenty of time to get everything done and by the time they got home from Wal*Mart, we had all the lights off and we did the “SUPRISE!” thing and she was definitely surprised.

This is the cake that Madison and Courtney (Judy’s 9 year old daughter) made for her this afternoon:

Ashley, Judy’s 23-ish year old daughter who’s currently pregnant with her first child and her baby daddy came up from Toronto too, then there were the three kids from up the street, Madison, Wes, me, Blake and of course Wayne & Judy, so it was a full house. Wayne had bought chicken wings to go with the lasagna Mikayla’s mom made and he also brought home this “3rd degree” hot sauce for them, which is like, industrial strength hot sauce that the deli at his work (he works at a grocery store) uses on their take-out wings.

I didn’t have any because I don’t like chicken wings or spicy stuff, but the stuff was so hot that Ashley couldn’t even finish three wings and Blake & Wayne were practically crying as they ate theirs, which was followed up by a great deal of beer.

Blake had mentioned earlier that he rarely walks away from a dare and somehow Ashley dared him to drink two shot glasses full of this hot sauce…which he did because he’s an idiot. Here’s the proof:

After the hot sauce was down the hatch, Blake pretty much downed an entire can of Coke Zero and about an hour later, he went outside and barfed three times between Judy’s house and ours…because he’s an idiot. After that he felt much better though and when we went back to Wayne & Judy’s, he consumed more wings with hot sauce. During that time, I actually came home and had a nap for about an hour & a half because I’m currently taking an assload of pain medication and it was making me sleepy.

Between Blake barfing and me having a nap, the cake was served:

After that, we just sat around and shot the shit and long story short, a good time was had by all, especially Judy who sampled some of my pain meds because of her tooth and washed them down with a hell of a lot of beer. And that was pretty much our day.

THE END.

I love Blake being on vacation this week. Honest to god my favourite thing in the whole world is sitting around talking to him about anything and everything and that’s what we’ve been doing this week, mostly. It’s a long story, but right now he’s in Madison’s room having a talk with her about her little boyfriend Ashton, who’s been beating up grade 3 & 4 kids, including girls (he’s in grade 6) and how that’s not cool and that Madison either has to influence him to stop doing this or she has to break up with him. DRAMA! I have no idea how the talk’s going, but they’ve been in there for over an hour so far.

Report cards came home today. Wes got straight A’s, Madison had A’s, B’s and a C in math and somehow both kids are getting awards from the principal next week at a ceremony we’re supposed to attend. In fact because 250 kids are getting these awards, there are TWO ceremonies and each of our kids is in a different one so we’re literally going to be at the school all day. It’s nice that they’re getting awards and we want to be there to support them, but that’s a lot of sitting around watching a lot of other kids get awards too. Urg.

Blake & I were busy today. First, I was supposed to get a blood test this morning but Blake forgot about it and didn’t wake me up so it didn’t happen and we’re going to have to do it Thursday morning instead. (The lab’s only open Tuesday & Thursday mornings.) Then I got up and Blake was gone and the fucker didn’t leave me a note so I didn’t know where he was until he tweeted a TwitPic of a cutting board and a rolling pin, which was a clue that he was at Wal*Mart.

When he got home, we had breakfast and I took my pills and after a bit of digestion it was time to go to Barrie for art supplies and other errands. Since Marylin was curious about what I got and some other folks might be too, here’s the list:

Curry’s
- Two cheapo angled brushes, one smaller than the other
- One script liner because mine’s starting to lose its shape
- Two Micron Pigma archival markers, size 02
- 9 x 12 block of watercolour paper
- These neat little pre-cut blank ATC cards that were only $1.25 (I got the acrylic linen canvas one)

Michael’s
- Glorious Gold metallic paint
- Emperor’s Gold metallic paint
- Champagne Gold metallic paint
- Festive Red metallic paint x 2
- Gold glitter paint x 2
- Silver glitter paint x 2
- Red glitter paint x 2
- Weathered Wood crackle medium, 8 oz
- Triple Thick Gloss Glaze varnish, 8 oz
- Interior Gloss varnish
- Interior Satin varnish
- A metric fuck tonne of scrapbook paper & cardstock
- Green balloons and purple ribbon for Judy’s surprise party
- An archival Martha Stewart fine point pen

Exciting, no? Yeah, not really. Mostly I was replacing boring stuff I’ve either run out of or I’m about to run out of. I was on a pretty tight budget so there wasn’t any wiggle room for fibres or embellishments or fun stuff like that. Just the basics.

Since Starbucks is in the same plaza as Michael’s, we went there were I got a chocolate coffee (I dunno what they call their crap, I’ve never actually been IN a Starbucks) and Blake got some sort of caramel coffee with whipped cream and crunchy caramel things on top. While we drank our Starbucks, we went to Jiffy Lube to get the oil changed in the car, something I’ve never experienced before and it was BORING AS SHIT and after that we had to stop off at Blake’s work so he could check on something that ended up not being there but will be there tomorrow so despite being on vacation, he’s probably going to have to go in tomorrow to do whatever it is he has to do.

Then tomorrow night Blake has to go to the hospital for a sleep study because he has sleep apnea and our doctor wanted to send him in for another sleep study before recommending/prescribing a CPAC (??) machine or a mouth appliance.

And now we’re home with nothing planned for this evening other than watching V and perhaps me playing with ATCs. I also heard a rumour that I might be getting a massage later. Hmmm.

Anyway, that was my busy day. I know, it was riveting. Aren’t you glad I write this shit down for you?

Hullo internets. I am typing this post instead of having a nap (I tried) or working on my painting (I tried that too) because really, I don’t have a whole lot else to do at the moment and the things I do have to do, I don’t wanna do, so here I am.

I don’t know what it is about this painting that makes me not want to work on it. It’s been sitting on my coffee table since the end of September half-finished and I sit here and I stare at it and as I’m trying to fall asleep, I think about it, but there doesn’t seem to be any goddamn resolution to the sucker that it just sits there some more. I’ve shown pictures, it’s the one I’ve dubbed “The Two Sunnies”. The background is done, the two girls are done, now I need to add the elements to tie the whole thing together, sign it, slap a couple of coats of varnish on it and it’d be done, but I still can’t seem to find those slippery elements to tie the whole thing together. I keep thinking about doing hearts hanging from strings like I’ve done in older paintings, with the happy site being bright magenta hearts and the sad side being black hearts with skulls but for some reason I keep rejecting that idea. In the beginning I wanted to add the sentences “Je suis heureuse”/”Je suis triste” above their heads but that wouldn’t leave very much room for embellishment of any kind and I think that would make the painting too plain. Just now I was thinking that it’d be cool to glue a bunch of pills, like stars, to the left (happy) side and have them taper off on the right (sad) side but my pills aren’t the right colours, Blake would probably kill me for using my pills to do that since he pays for them and I don’t even have enough to do that anyway. Yeah, I could do paper pills but there’s no fun in that so the pill idea is officially dead.

I’m giving this painting one more week to come together and if it doesn’t, then it’s going in the closet to be forgotten about while I work on something else. What is that something else? Why Hester Prynne and Pearl, of course, from The Scarlet Letter, but I have to read the book first, which I’m currently working on. I guess the book no longer holds a copyright so it’s available online for free HERE if anyone, like me, has never read it but wants to. What I’m about to say will no doubt make some of you cringe, but I really really don’t like old books and what I mean by that is that I find books that are written with “older language” really hard to follow. I even tried to read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which isn’t even that old, but the language bored me so I never did finish it (sorry Raya!). The Scarlet Letter hasn’t been too bad so far, it’s really only when the characters are speaking that the language gets “old”, but it’s still probably the oldest book I’ve tried to read, not counting Shakespeare (*snore*) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was written in 1850.

Anyway, the book’s been interesting so far. I only started Friday night though and didn’t have time to read any of it last night, so I’m only on chapter 6.

Last night Blake and I went to see 2012 which was…well, disaster-porn at its finest. The plot was totally cheesy and you had to leave reality and science at the door, but I’m glad we saw it on a big screen rather than renting it and watching it on my 13″ TV. The kids stayed with Wayne & Judy while we went and they also had a good time, especially because Courtney had a friend sleeping over so there were the 4 of them.

Today I went over to spend some time with Judy and get her set up with Gmail and Facebook and she told me that it was verified, that both of their dogs have fleas…which is something I told them 2 months ago when Lily, the golden retriever, started scratching herself bald at the base of her tail. So, since I have two bottles of flea shampoo, I brought one over for Judy and somehow she sweet-talked me into helping her bathe the dogs. She was soaked, I was soaked, the dogs were soaked, the bathroom was soaked, the hallway was soaked, the kitchen was soaked, but at least the dogs don’t have fleas anymore. I also brought over my trimmers and clipped their nails, which were really bad. Both of their dogs have white nails, so I was fine with doing them and I got them really nice and short, but I won’t do our own dogs’ nails because Hoover’s are black and I’m too freaked out about cutting the quick and I figure if Blake’s doing 1, he might as well do the other.

Anyway, after the dogs were groomed, so to speak, I helped Judy vacuum the carpet, wash all of their bedding and then put the beds back together once everything was dry. AND I didn’t have my eggs this morning so I did all of this running on empty. In fact yesterday I had my eggs for breakfast but then all I had for the rest of the day was popcorn at the movies and I keep wondering how this is going to affect my weight loss progress this week. Oh well, I’ll do better the rest of the week and as long as I don’t gain, I’m golden.

Tomorrow night is the Leonid Meteor Shower and NASA has this neat little thing that shows you when the height of it is for your viewing area. Unfortunately the peak time for us is at like, 6am Tuesday morning and while it’s supposedly going to be the best showing of the Leonids in our lifetime, I’m not sure about waking up at 5am and getting the kids up to go outside in the cold to watch. I’m seriously considering it though! I’m gonna take it up with them tomorrow after school and see if they want to. I figure I can make everyone travel mugs of hot chocolate and we can dress warmly and watch from the swings at the park across the street where there are no streetlights. We should get a pretty decent show from there, if the calculator is to be believed and the kids are up for it. Madison will probably be up for it, I’m not so sure about Wes and I’m really doubting Blake’ll be into it at all. I’ve been wrong before though.

I think I’m finally getting the plague that Blake & the kids had last week. My throat is sore, my glands are swollen and I’m pretty sure I had a fever earlier. :o/

Alright, it’s time for me to stop typing now and find something relatively productive to do. Maybe I’ll just sketch out Hester Prynne and continue ignoring this painting. Maybe I’ll just go to fucking bed.

These are the current source of my misery (besides my mother-in-law): Bull Rushes.

Across the road from my house is a park and a field and in the ditches in front of both (where I took this picture), there are deep ditches full of bull rushes. Right now, as you can see, the bull rushes are fluffing up to spread their seeds and currently the world outside my front door is so full of bull rush fluff that it looks like it’s snowing and while it’s kinda pretty and sort of surreal, it’s making my allergies go insane.

They reminded me of something though. When I was in grade 9, some kids, about this time of year, brought in fluffy bull rushes, a lot of them, and went up and down the downstairs halls whacking them on lockers so the bull rushes would explode and the fluff would go everywhere. The downstairs halls were so full of fluff that some kids were having trouble breathing and everyone’s allergies were going mental and no one could go to class, so they gave everyone the day off, which was probably the goal of the kids who did it. I learned later that this “prank” happened almost every year at that school.

I don’t remember now what I did with my day off, I do remember that they just let us loose in Port Perry, they didn’t call the buses in early, we caught them at 3:30 at the school like we did every day, but I have no idea what I did for a whole day in downtown Port Perry. For some reason I recall getting fried chicken at a place I think was called Dixie Lee’s or something like that, but other than that I have no idea. Chances are though, I was up to no good.

This week I only lost 1lb on my newfangled egg diet, but a loss is a loss, so I’ll take it. I’m thinking that the reason I didn’t lose more is because in the last week I did a lot of late-night eating, like right before bed, and while I was eating protein which should boost my metabolism more, doing it before bed was probably not a wise choice. Oh well, I know better for this week.

I’ve also been trying to cut down on drinking Coke Zero. For about a month & a half, I was getting sick every single day at around 6:30pm or so and at first I blamed it on my birth control pills (because sometimes they can give you pregnancy symptoms like morning sickness) but after I really thought about it, I realized the culprit was Coke Zero. I guess I would just reach my aspertame/acesulfame-potassium saturation point and would start to feel really sick, like dry-heaving kinda sick. So I started switching to water at about 4:00pm and magically my sickness stopped happening, so it must have been the Coke Zero. Now I limit myself to 2 or 3 a day, usually 2 in the morning (hey I need the caffeine and coffee is not my friend) and then another one in the evening with ice water in between. A little known fact about me is that I drink a LOT and I’ve never been able to pinpoint why, like if it’s just a habit or if there’s something wrong with me, I’m just constantly thirsty and always have been. My whole life I’ve always had a drink of some sort sitting beside me and I carry it around with me constantly. Weird, right? Or is it? Anyway, I’m convinced Coke Zero is actually toxic (or more to the point, the artificial sweeteners in it) so I’m aiming to cut down to 1 a day and eventually none, with the odd “baby Coke” here & there. (“Baby Coke” are these itty bitty squatty cans of Coke you buy in 6-packs that are 100 calories each. We buy one once a month and I have one every now & then because dammit, I really do love Coke.)

Later today I have to take my laptop over to Wayne & Judy’s because Judy wants me to set her up a Facebook profile. They don’t have internet at their house due to finances, but Blake built boosters on our wireless router and while it cuts in & out and the signal is weak, they use our wireless (when it works). Judy wants me to get her set up on Facebook so she can talk to Ashley more often and see pictures of Ashley’s ultrasounds and stuff like that. (Did I mention Ashley’s pregnant? She’s due in February.) The first order of business will be setting Judy up with a Gmail address because she doesn’t have an e-mail address of her own. And I know once I start doing this over there for Judy (oddly my laptop gets full signal strength from our wireless next door, but their PC only gets 1 or 2 bars), Wayne’s going to want me to do the same, so I guess I’m spending some time over there tonight, which is fine because I really haven’t hung out with them much this week.

OMG their cat though…they have this 13 year old, grey cat named Misty who’s extremely friendly and really likes me. Whenever I’m over there, Misty jump into my lap and just lays there waiting to be petted. Well, 4 times now, I’ve been sitting outside at night and Misty comes out of the shadows and jumps into my lap and scares the ever-loving shit out of me. Well, something else she’s been doing is when I’m not outside, she’ll meow at my front door.

The other night it was really cold and she started meowing at my door at about 3:30am, so I opened the door and said  to her “If you’re coming in, get in here,” and she cautiously sniffed around and decided to come in. So I figured no big deal, she can spend the night at our house if she’s cold, so I went about my business and at about 4:30am I went to bed, leaving a note on the bathroom mirror for Blake & the kids saying that Misty was in the house and to let me know if they let her out.

No one let her out in the morning so all day on Wednesday I searched the house looking for this cat and worrying that I lost my neighbour’s cat because I couldn’t find her. Since she’s old, I got scared that maybe she found a hiding place and died and I was getting really worried. So I’d search the house again, under beds, under couches and chairs, in closets, but there was no sign of her.

Judy got off of work at 3:00pm that day, so at 3:30 I went over there and said “Judy, I think I did a stupid thing…” and explained to her that her cat was somewhere in my house and that I couldn’t find her. And that’s when Judy said, “You’re nuts! She’s right there!” and pointed to a sleeping Misty laying right on the kitchen chair in front of me.

How she got out, I have no idea. My only theory, since Judy said she was waiting at their back door to come in at 6:45am, is that she must have gotten out when I let the dogs out before I went to bed and I just didn’t see her. I couldn’t believe that I had gone all day worrying about this damn cat and searching my house multiple times, even enlisting the help of Wes, and she was at her own home the whole time!

Needless to say, Misty’s not invited back.

Anyway, my hand’s cramping up and it’s time to eat my eggs, so I guess I’ll end this post here and wish you all a good day!

Blake’s got the plague, as do the children, so everyone’s home sick today (but me). Blake had to go to work to “change the tapes”, whatever that means, so he came home around 11:30am and one of the first things he said to me when he walked in the door was, “So it appears as though she defriended me too.” And then we laughed.

So, I guess this means that there probably won’t be a call or an e-mail to Blake about the situation as obviously we’re both cut off from her life for god only knows how long this time. Because do keep in mind, this isn’t the first time she’s done this. Oh no, she’s a seasoned pro at having too much truth thrown at her and then holding her breath ’til she turns blue in response. So I guess now we just have to wait it out and in the meantime, enjoy the silence.

Interestingly enough, Charlie hasn’t defriended us, which leads Blake and I to believe that he probably doesn’t know anything about what’s going on.

What I’m very curious about though, is whether or not Brooke is petty enough to not send the children Xmas gifts over this. Blake says that’s beyond his scope of imagination and I flat out don’t know, so I guess we’re both just going to wait and see.

Speaking of Xmas, since people have asked me already, Wes & Madison’s Amazon wishlist is here. Something that’s funny to me about Brooke and Xmas is that she complains that Canadian Amazon is only books (which it’s not, it’s video games and CDs too) and every time she says it, it floors me because PARDON ME FOR RAISING TWO CHILDREN WHO LOVE READING. My kids aren’t really into toys except Webkins, they’re just clutter really and they’d much prefer a video game, CD or books.

As you’ll see from the wishlist, the majority of Madison’s wants are books on sewing, knitting and crocheting. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but Judy taught Madison to sew at the end of the summer and Madison soon began making stuffed animals for her brother (Googles, to be precise, which is kind of like a platypus – Wes’ totem animal). Then my mom gave Madison some sewing stuff and then finally Blake scored her an old sewing machine at a charity auction at work and she’s been making stuffed animals and purses for her friends and just a few days ago she made herself a shirt.

Her workmanship is a little rough around the edges, things aren’t hemmed at all let alone correctly so everything frays, but she loves it and spends all her money at the fabric store in town and when she runs out of new fabric, she just pulls stuff out of our Goodwill garbage bag and upcycles it into something new.

Depending on which books get bought for her for Xmas, I’m going to get her some yarn, knitting needles (um someone’s gonna have to tell me what size/kind to get because I have no fucking clue) and crochet hooks, which I also know nothing about. If we can afford it, I was thinking we might also get her a gift certificate to Fabricland in Barrie or something.

Wes on the other hand, since learning how to read (he’s already way past what they’ll be learning in grade 1 this year, according to his teacher) he’s been all about books just like his sister was. Other than that, his big thing is video games, he’s like a video game savant, so that’s why there are many of both on the wishlist.

Anyway, it’s time to go make my eggs because Blake’s done cooking garbage in my frying pan, so I’m going to go do that. Chances are I’ll be making another post today because I’ve been very posty lately. ;o)