This sucks. This sucks so hard.

I’m on Blake’s computer right now because mine…is FUBAR. It was/is a MacBook that was about 6 years old, I’d guess, that I was given when it was about 4. At the time, Blake had built me a new computer so he put Windows on it so the kids could play Sims 3 on it and I just used my big box.

Fast forward about 2 years and he says, “y’know…the Mac is actually a little better than your desktop and it’s a laptop so you should use that” and I reluctantly did, giving my desktop to the kids so they could play Spore and Sims 3. (The reason we were running Windows on the Mac was because I couldn’t get Spore or Sims 3 installed on it using Mac OS but both worked fine with Windows, I don’t know why this is.)

So I used the Mac for about 4 or 5 months and had *just* gotten it broken in and all set up the way I wanted it and then last week I woke up and the Mac wouldn’t wake up. I shook the mouse, pressed every key on the keyboard, closed and opened it and finally had to do a hard reset. When it started up again, it was running slow as molasses. iTunes was unusable, FireFox was also unusable yet somehow TweetDeck was working fine. It wouldn’t restart of its own accord to I had to do about 5 hard resets until I called Blake at work in tears not knowing what else to do. He suggested that I use IE to download Chrome, so I did and Chrome seemed to be working okay, so I made that the default browser and imported my FireFox bookmarks. But iTunes still wouldn’t work, it would load up but you couldn’t make it play or press any buttons. Then I tried to open Photoshop, which I use pretty much every day, and it wouldn’t load due to a program error, even though it was working fine the day before.

So I put up with this wonky machine until yesterday when I backed up all my stuff and Blake wiped it, with the intent of putting Windows 7 on it, which he had had on it at one point when the kids were using it but the key expired or whatever because it was only a trial, so he had to put XP on it, which was on it when I began using it. (Yes, using Bootrcamp, which I’m told isn’t the most stable, but what the hell else is there?)

Well, he couldn’t get Win7 on it because he was using a key from work and I guess the computer had to be on the network to authenticate or something so that was a bust and that’s when he tried to put XP back on it. It kept freezing during the install and then when it was installed, trying to put other programs on it, like Photoshop, it would freezer and stall out and he’d have to start over and finally he got maybe 4 progs on it, one being iTunes and another being FireFox (which I prefer because of all the extensions) and they were doing the same things they were doing on Thursday so basically my computer is totally fucked, meaning that I basically no longer have one.

What sucks is that I have absolutely zero way to get a new computer so my only temporary solution is to hijack Blake’s for now, but for how long? He needs a computer too and this is the one I won at Camwhores expressly FOR him so I can’t just take it back (and if I did, what the hell is he going to use?)

So I don’t know what to do.

Sometimes, because Camwhores buys so much shit from them, Dell gives Kevin a deal on computers but there aren’t any right now and I wouldn’t have the money for one even if there was one.

Long story short: I’m completely fucked and have no way of updating my cam, doing shows or running my business and I’m at a loss as to what to do and freaking out completely.

HOLY FUCK! THERE IS FUCKING FOOD GROWING IN MY BACKYARD!

This fact, from time to time, when I really think about it just blows my tiny little mind. I don’t really know why I think it’s such a big deal, but I’ve been examining that tonight and I think it’s the whole “not being dependent on the grocery store” thing. And maybe the fact that I nurtured these CRAZY HUGE PLANTS from teeny tiny seeds since March, not really knowing what was going to happen. It’s not like my frontyard garden where I scatter seeds, let them do their own thing out there with very little help from me except watering them twice in the beginning and then I know more or less what’s going to happen to them. They are going to grow into purple, pink, white, blue and sometimes yellow flowers that grow into this one gigantic bush that people walking past marvel over.

And here’s where I might as well segue into what some of you will see as bad news: this is the last year I’m going to do the Keep Off the Lawn Project (which is just a stupid name for my wildflower frontyard garden for those not in the know). Blake’s going to weed whack the garden in a couple of weeks before everything starts going to seed and next year instead of spreading wildflower seeds we’re going to be spreading grass seed or laying down sod. :o/

Here’s the fact of the matter: I love my frontyard garden, like really really love it, but at the same time it gives me massive anxiety and this week, after I went out and took pictures of it and noticed all the weeds and fretted over the seeds that never grew or the fact that the back half of the garden is all bachelor’s buttons and the front is all cosmos and it should be the opposite because cosmos are taller that bachelor’s buttons. Also, the bachelor’s buttons bloomed in July and started going to seed at the beginning of August while the cosmos just started blooming a couple of weeks ago so the whole thing looks uneven ad unkempt, like in a bad way. And unless I spend hours and hours and hours out there transplanting, there’s no way to fix it (and even that probably wouldn’t even be possible, everything’s way too close together).

And here’s the thing, which I’ve explained before: I can’t spend hours and hours and hours out there. I can barely spend the few minutes out there it takes me to take pictures of the garden. I feel like I’m being watched and judged by people n the cars going by and I’m terrified of someone walking down the street talking to me or worse, my neighbour who I barely know and our relationship is super awkward for a million reasons I won’t go into right now. So I sit here and fret about the weeds and how REAL gardeners walking by are judging me and my garden. I paid the kids twice this summer to weed the garden (and again to deadhead the bachelor’s buttons), but kids aren’t very good weeders, they aren’t very strong and I can’t be out there telling them what to pull or what to leave or how to do it. I mean they do their best and really weeding the garden is just an excuse for me to give them money anyway, but that doesn’t help my anxiety over weeds.

Wayne & Judy’s house, well “old house” I suppose, on the left of us is for sale right now for only $99,999.00 (it was purchased for $150,000!) so it’s getting a craptonne of people looking at it and they make me nervous as all hell. Wayne & Judy’s backyard and back deck, as I’ve explained before, overlooks both our front AND backyards so there’s absolutely no privacy ad lately every time I’ve gotten up the courage to go out and do something in either garden, there’s been some stranger either touring the house with the real estate agent or ever crazier, people have been pulling over, because the price of the house is advertised right on the “for sale” sign, and have gotten out of their cars to look in the windows and come right into the backyard and look around. To even GET into the backyard you have to open a latched gate! I don’t get the nerve of these people!

AND WORSE! GET THIS! Two weeks ago some creepy balding guy knocked on my door and wanted to know if I knew anything about Wayne & Judy’s house! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, RIGHT? I just about had a goddamn heart attack right there, I swear to god! And I was SO STUPID about it too. When people knock on our door, the dogs generally bark like crazy until they sniff whoever it is (no matter who it is) and then they go lay down. This guy knocked gently enough that he didn’t set off the dogs, which I always see as a good thing (I’ve trained just about all delivery people to do that because the barking makes me crazy and I don’t know how to make them stop – anyway, totally different topic…) so when I answered the door, I actually stepped outside and closed the door behind me. So the kids didn’t know I was interacting with this stranger and the dogs didn’t know and what if he was a crazy stalker person who wanted to kill or abduct me? No one would know I was gone or hurt or dead or whatever! In hindsight I was just like, what, are you fucking retarded? That was so stupid! Anyway…

So this guy, who again, was totally twitchy and creepy and I just got a seriously disturbed vibe from him, asked me if I knew about the house and I said that I could probably answer any question he had and he was just like, “well tell me about it” so I told him the downsides: electric baseboard heaters, no place for a normal furnace if you wanted to upgrade, because of the electric heat and the fact that it’s a seriously old house with no weather-proofing, Wayne & Judy had like, $400-$500/month hydro bills in the winter. You can’t get a queen-sized boxspring upstairs because the stairs are at an angle where you can’t get it around the corner, so if you want a queen-sized bed, you’re getting a mattress on the floor. One bedroom doesn’t have a window or a door.  Mice. Lots & lots of mice. No basement. Living room carpet was pissed on so much that it needs replacing and the house stinks of dog pee (unless the owner replaced it, which I doubt).  Blah blah blah. So I told him all this and he starts telling me about how he’s going through a divorce and “the bitch” is getting half of their $400,000 house and she took all of his “fucking” retirement money and he’s like, telling me all these details about his divorce, like the fact that he’ll be paying $1100/month in child support and I’m thinking “dude, what the fuck” but just nodding and hoping like hell that this creepy as fuck guy will not be my new neighbour…then two days ago I was in the backyard checking on the veggies and there that creepy guy was on the back deck of the house with the real estate agent. The house still has a “for sale” sign on it and a lot of people have been through since I saw that guy so I don’t know anything but man…I hope this dude doesn’t move in next door. I mean, he kinda leered at me when he was with the real estate agent. So creepy.

Wow, did I ever go on a tangent there.

My point is that the frontyard garden stresses me out more than it gives me pleasure so after talking to Blake about it, I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m still anti-lawn, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have to deal with grass. Mowing is Blake’s job. There *are* two flower beds in the front where I will plant flowers, I don’t know what kind yet because the beds are in a shady area and I don’t know what to plant,  but I figure I’ll let the kids have one of them each to grow whatever they want from a list of what will grow there and they can start their seeds in March when I start mine for the back garden.

Speaking of the back garden, Blake & I are considering expanding it next year, although we haven’t decided definitively. Our neighbour on the right (named Frances, I haven’t written about him much because there’s nothing to write about), whose house is also for sale, never goes in his backyard EVER so I don’t have to worry about making small talk with him because we have no privacy. I will have to contend with new neighbours once Wayne & Judy’s house sells but I’m going to treat this as immersion therapy and try to just ignore them. God help me if they’re friendly, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

So that’s the plan.

Out of everything we planted in the back garden, which was a lot, the only things that thrived were sugar snap peas, burgundy beans, bobcat tomatoes, sugary cherry tomatoes and green and purple peppers. The tomatoes and peppers were started indoors in march and the bobcat tomatoes out there are fucking ridiculous. There are 3 plants, that are more like BUSHES, that have grown so big it just looks like one giant tomato bush. The tomato cages were useless because there were too small, so the tomatoes grew tall enough it pulled the cages right out of the ground and they’re all supported by leaning on each other in like, a tee-pee formation. Only one of my cherry tomato plants thrived, which sucks because they’re awesome, but the cage was useless with that one too because of it being too small. I had no idea how big tomato plants could get so I got the small 99 cent cages instead of the bigger $4.99 ones. Next year we’ll get the bigger ones.

And I guess that’s enough of my crazy talk, I’ll just get on with the pictures.

(more…)

We have peas! Lots and lots of peas! They started being ready 2 weeks ago (when these pics were taken) and we’ve been picking a large sandwich container full about every 3 days ever since. They’re mostly finished now, but the beans are almost ready!

Anyway, I thought since I took them and haven’t done a garden post in a while, I’d post these pictures. Right now the front garden isn’t doing a whole lot. Last week I paid each kid $3 to go out there with a pair of scissors and “deadhead” all of my bachelor buttons, which they did with gusto, so as things stand, the cosmos at the front that should be in bloom within the next two weeks should coincide with the 2nd round of bachelor’s buttons and I’ll take pics of the whole works then.

On with the pictures!

The kids picking peas.

Madison picking peas.

Peas & beans.

Baby peppers that are now significantly bigger.

Bobcat tomato which is also now significantly bigger.

Cherry tomatoes which we have LOTS & LOTS of.

So that’s the state of the garden right now. The peas taste like nothing I’ve ever had from a store, but then again, I’ve never seen these kind of peas in stores before anyway. I haven’t tried the beans yet because I jumped the gun in picking the few I did two weeks ago thinking there were more that were ready than there actually were so those ones are still in my fridge because there’s not enough of them to really have with a meal. All of the beans should be ready to pick in about another week I’d say and then I *think* they’ll actually make another batch of beans in September but don’t quote me on that because I’m just going by memory of when I grew this type before and honestly, things are a bit foggy,

Alright as I said in my previous post, it’s the long weekend here so it’s time to turn my brain off and get my Warcraft shit in order! Have a great weekend!

So obviously, “She’s Like A Rainbow” is finished and I’m really really proud of her because in person, she just looks amazing but now I’m thinking about future projects and the things coming up and I’m becoming completely overwhelmed by it all. When I become overwhelmed, I’m unfortunately the kind of person to just sit down wherever I am and cry and I’m trying very very hard not o do that.

I really wish they made a suitable paper planner for me to keep everything straight because right now, my TELUS calendar is just not helping me. I miss my Big Fat 5-Star planner. I don’t know why they stopped making those, they were great.

Anyway…

The drop off date for The Square Foot Show, which Blake says I should submit to just to give me the exposure AND the option of going to the gala if I choose to, is 3 weeks away. If I don’t submit, that’s no longer an option. Also, there are prizes because it’s a juried show and it’s not like I think I would actually win something but it’s like the lottery, you’re not gonna win if you don’t play, so I might as well play. But what I’m stressing over is what to submit. What is representative of my work *and* what don’t I mind giving away for only about $100? (They sell the pieces for $200 & change but keep 50 friggin’ percent.) I’m allowed to submit up to 3 pieces and since I paid $20 to be in this show, I feel I should submit the maximum allowed. Right now I’m thinking “Sparkle“, “Shimmer II” and “Five O’Clock Abortion“. What do you guys think of that selection? I was thinking of maybe putting in “Turquoise Love Fairy” instead of “Sparkle” but I dunno. I just think it has to be one or the other because I don’t want two fairies in the same show. Personally, I like “Sparkle” better, but she’s been in my Etsy shop for the last 7 months & hasn’t moved so maybe I could sell her at Sq. Foot, is what I’m thinking.

Then there’s also the fact that there are 3 weeks left until the submission date which means I have enough time to do 1 more painting for consideration, 2 if I really haul ass and get productive. I have ideas and I’m going to start 1 tomorrow, but the 2nd idea is going to have to wait until I learn a specific technique in my art class on Monday and really, if that one goes as planned, I’d rather have it in my Etsy shop than Sq. Foot.

This is the shit that keeps me up at night, seriously.

Also keeping me up at night is the fact that Touched By Fire has already sent out their call for entries and I don’t know if I’m going to submit this year or what I’m going to submit this year. I think I have until October or November to decide, which is nice, but that also crosses into my Xmas season issues. I’m told, and I’ve seen this with my own eyes, that in October/November, Etsy kinda goes crazy with Xmas sales, so I want to have my shop as full as possible. That’s only like, 2 months & change away. It takes me about 2 weeks to do a painting and I can do 2 at a time. That means I have a lot of work ahead of me and I’m not sure if I can do Touched By Fire *and* stock my shop for Xmas.

Honestly though, Touched By Fire kinda pisses me off. The show is put on by The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario, which is why I call it “the remedial art show” and the first year they accepted me, my first year submitting, they chose “Mania in the Key of Psychosis“, which is apt, and they juxtaposed that with “Hope” and “Dream“, which also makes sense. But when I submitted last year, I submitted a ton of paintings, including my “The Devil’s in the Details” which I thought was appropriate for a show called “Touched By Fire” and they didn’t accept me. That’s cool, I can handle rejection, but the thing is that almost all of the paintings I submitted were shiny, happy paintings and I almost feel like I wasn’t accepted because I got better. My meds are working (for the most part) so I make shiny, happy paintings now and that’s not what they want. They want tortured, moody depictions of mental illness and to me, that kinda seems like defeating the purpose of the Association, don’t you think? I mean, isn’t the goal here to help people get better? So why isn’t that represented in the show?

So that’s why I might not bother submitting to that show this year. I don’t want to paint something dark and moody specifically for that show because if it’s not accepted and if it IS accepted and doesn’t sell, then what the fuck am I going to do with it? My online audience of customers don’t want that shit and I kinda don’t know if it’s right to paint outside of your own headspace/mood just to get in a show, does that make sense?

“The Two Sunnies” would have been perfect for the show, but I gave that one to my shrink, partially as a “thank you” because she HAS helped me immensely but also to show her “hey, this is actually what I do for a living so quit telling me I don’t have a job” (and she hasn’t done that since, as a point of fact, every session she asks me if I’m painting because if I’m not painting it’s probably time to adjust my meds).

You can submit work to the show that’s not for ale, but I’d kinda feel like a dick asking her for it back, if only for a few weeks. Especially if something happened to it (the Touched By Fire people were NOT gentle with my work when they sent it back to me…).

And then there’s just trying to get my shop as full as possible for the Xmas season. Of COURSE I want to sell things the second I put them up, that would be great! But at the same time, I need to have a full shop by like, mid-October which means that I need to start painting my ass off (which I’ve been doing, I finished 3 paintings this month!). And that’s fine, I can do that, but things like Camwhores and WoW are going to have to get to the back of the line. And YES WoW is totally a recreational thing and I can see how the outside observer might be like “well not playing a video game is pretty easy” but when you’re an officer in a guild, especially, it’s a little more involved than that. People count on you. Camwhores? Well that’s just another can of worms.

For someone who “doesn’t do anything”, I sure seem to have a lot on my plate right now and I don’t really know how to make time for everything. I think painting has to be my #1 priority, WoW on weekends, Camwhores when I can’t sleep.Oh and there’s yoga too, can’t forget that…the art class I’m taking too….

When the kids go back to school, I’ll have more time to get things done, which will help a lot, so I have that to consider as well, especially when it comes to fitting Camwhores into my schedule.

Anyway, as I said, this is the shit that keeps me up at night. Hopefully now that it’s all out of my brain I can finally drag my ass to bed and sleep like a normal human being. Maybe?

So the itty bitty town I live in (population 1700) is in this contest by TSN and Kraft where they could win $25,000 to upgrade our rec centre’s facilities which we are in DESPERATE need of.

How it works is that for the next 24-hours (voting started at noon, my time and ends at noon tomorrow) you can vote for either us (Elmvale) or another town called Brighton (population a lot more than 1700) which I’M TOLD ALREADY HAS A TOWN POOL SO TO HELL WITH THEM and whoever gets the most votes win.

And that’s where you come in. We need your votes! And the beauty of it, my lovely internet-addicted friends? Is that you can vote AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT between now and noon tomorrow. As long as you’re not voting by mechanical means (prevented by a captcha), you can vote as many times as you possibly can and WE NEED YOUR VOTES!

So please, vote once, vote twice, vote a million times! Our community deserves it.

Thanks in advance! I’ll update everyone on if we won or not after the contest is over. :o) GO VOTE! VOTE VOTE VOTE!

It truly is the perfect food. Well, “junk” food. I think I read somewhere that dark chocolate like, boosts your endorphins or dopamine something and that’s a good thing. All I know is that I love it, especially late at night when it’s hot and humid and I don’t want to go to bed yet because tomorrow’s going to be even hotter and more humid, so I need to use the night to get work done.

I’m taking an art class right now that is so fucking awesome that I honestly couldn’t be happier. My brain is exploding with ideas and I’m frustrated that my hands don’t work as fast as I’d like them to and paint doesn’t dry as fast as I’d like it to. I just want all of this creative energy out of me and into the world! I want to paint a million paintings and have them in homes all across the world! I’m close to that, which I should be proud of, my paintings are all over the US, a few in the UK and one – ONE! – in my homeland of Canada! If I could get one to Australia and Japan, I would feel immensely successful.

I’m still undecided about The Square Foot Show. Like, whether or not I’m going to do it. Blake says I should at least submit and be part of the show, but not commit to actually being at the artist’s gala bullshit thing that I totally do not want to do. Like, in the slightest. I barely made it through my friend’s wedding last weekend, I don’t know if I can deal with a bunch of Toronto strangers.

I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Oh one more thing about art before I switch topics: my art teacher? Totally awesome. I e-mailed her, asking if she could teach me how to shade people of colour because I learned how to shade my girls in a very specific, Caucasian way and I don’t know how to adapt that method to work for darker complexions. Shading is just something that doesn’t come naturally to me at ALL. So she e-mailed me back, actually really excited about the idea of darker complexions and said that in week 3 of the course, she’ll put up an extra video (it’s an online art class btw), teaching us exactly what I asked for: how to shade people of colour. I AM SO STOKED. I have had a billion ideas for girls of different ethnicities as it’s one of my goals in my artist’s statement to express Canada’s multiculturalism, but until now I haven’t been able to and it’s been making me CRAZY! Learning how to do this thing may be the difference between me getting a $5000 arts grant in the spring and not getting a $5000 arts grant in the spring. The same goes for The Stupid Square Foot Show.

So that’s art right now.

But let’s talk about yoga. Oh my god people, I LOVE yoga and I am in a continuous state of SHOCK that I love yoga. I literally failed gym class every year of my life. I can scan my report cards and prove it if you don’t believe me, it was pathetic. (How do you fail gym class? By not showing up, my faking injury or illness, by having a doctor who didn’t mind writing notes, getting kicked OUT of gym class for calling your gym teacher things you’re now too ashamed to admit you said…)

Anyway, yoga. It just works with me, it clicks, I can’t explain it. I feel both relaxed AND energized (and SORE!) after every class, it’s like I’m full of this weird energy or something. My teacher knows I’ve never done yoga before so in the beginning she took it easy on me but as we’ve gone along (I’ve only been going for 5 weeks), she’s been going harder on us and I think she’s a little surprised that I’m keeping up and practically begging for more.

I’m not very strong yet, but I am naturally flexible, so I’m better at some things than others. Like today we did pigeon pose and I rocked the shit out of it because my legs are super bendy and I sit like a freak all day in my computer chair anyway, pigeon was a cakewalk. But plank? Oh my holy lord do I fucking hate plank! My arms and upper body just aren’t strong enough to do plank-like things, like these crazy bitch push ups she made us do a few weeks ago? My god I was dripping with sweat and was sore for a full week afterward – BUT IN A TOTALLY GOOD WAY.

Honestly, I wish we could go twice a week, but we don’t have the money to do that and I think her classes are all full because her studio only fits 5 or 6 people right now. She’s planning on expanding, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen.

ANYWAY…*deep breath*, it is 3:34am and I think I have just enough energy left to get the paining I’m working on into the final steps of being finished. So I’m going to go do that and wish you all a happy tomorrow. :o)

So Alex & Ronny are married now and that’s pretty cool. They got married in a funeral home because that’s where Alex works and they have like, a banquet hall type of thing there.

It was a very small wedding and Blake, myself and the kids sat up front on “the bride’s side” so we could sign the marriage certificate when it came time to do that. We were honoured to be asked and gladly obliged and it was a lovely little event, followed by picture-taking and beer/Coke at a wings place afterward.

It took everything in my being to not completely come apart. I took 3 Ativans throughout and not to take anything away from their day or anything, but I was miserable. I don’t “mingle”, I don’t make “small talk” and the whole time we were there I just wanted to lose my shit completely. I wanted to go home right after the wedding but Blake said we had to go to the wings place which then meant we had to stick around for the pictures in between and I don’t know how Ronny & Alex felt throughout the whole thing, considering they both have issues similar to mine, but I wanted to crawl out of my skin and slither home through the sewers.

And dinner was….I hate chicken wings. Passionately. And that’s all this place served except for salads (that I’m not paying $8.99 for) and chicken fingers. I hate chicken fingers too, but that’s what I had and now I feel like throwing up despite taking 2 Gravols to quell the nausea.

And again, I’m happy for Ronny & Alex and I was happy to be there for them and stand up for them basically at their wedding and nothing in this post has anything to really do with them, it has to do with me and my issues. And based on how today went and how I felt all day (I came home and just bawled and that’s what I’m still doing now) I came to a decision: I will not be doing The Square Foot Show.

I know, I already paid my admittance fee, I bought my dress for it, jewelry for it, I’ve been working on paintings specifically for it but the fact of the matter is I just can’t do it. I just can’t be in a small space full of strangers. I don’t “mingle”. I can’t make “small talk”. There is no reason for me to be there other than to torture myself.

Touched By Fire was different. It’s put on by The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario so every stranger in that show was either mentally ill or worked with/knew someone who is. If I needed to sit in a corner and just be for a little while, that would have been okay. If I needed to leave, that would have been okay. When I couldn’t speak to the people who wanted me to do a commission, they understood when Blake spoke for me.

This is not so for Square Foot.

At Square Foot the whole point of the show is to mingle and network and schmooze and have your work seen. And I just can’t do it. Blake would have to take a day off to take my paintings down there, we’d have to get Ronny & Alex to babysit to go to the event and then if I didn’t sell all 3 of my entries, which I probably wouldn’t, Blake would have to take a day off work to go pick them up.

And they’re selling each piece for like, $224, but the gallery keeps half. Even if I sell all 3, I’m totally ripping myself off and after gas and everything, I might as well give the paintings away. And that’s IF I sell them all.

And why am I even doing this show? Because The Ontario Arts Council only seems to consider you a “professional” artist if your work’s seen n galleries and I think that’s bullshit. And why should I care what they think? Because they’re the ones who give out the $5k grant I’ve been turned down for two years in a row. And they consider their ROI to be gallery showings, that’s what they want your goal to be.

Well guess what? I don’t want my shit in galleries. Galleries that take half my money and tie up my inventory? Galleries that may expect me to mingle and make small talk and schmooze? I don’t want that world. And it’s not even so much that I don’t want it it’s that I can’t have it. Unfortunately it doesn’t work within the parameters of my issues and I kinda think the whole system is bullshit.  Or what little I know of it, I do.

So what will I write in my grant application in the fall? Well, more or less what I’ve written here, I think. That my goal is not to be a gallery artist, my goal is to create a self-sustaining art business instead. I pretty much have that now, I sell enough to keep me in supplies, to keep me creating, but that grant would allow me to expand, buy better quality materials, advertise. And if they still don’t want me, then that’ll be the last time I apply. My mom was told for years and years and years that what she did wasn’t art and she was rejected by the traditional art world and she’s doing okay. I’ll be fine. There are other ways to succeed and success is only how you define it anyway. In my goals for this year, I’ve been immensely successful, so there ya go.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about all day. If I can’t hack it at my best friend’s wedding and I fall apart the second I get home, then I can’t do this show where the complications of today are blown up twenty-fold.

It’s just not in the cards.

I don’t know what I did, but I can’t believe the amount of blessings coming into my life right now. The pessimist in me is waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the optimist in me, who is winning out these days, is just going with it with immense gratitude.

Today a package came from Amazon. An anonymous gift. So a huge THANK YOU to whomever sent it, it was quite the surprise! And much appreciated. If you’ve been reading, I actually broke down and bought Nobody’s Daughter from Wal*Mart last Friday but I kept the receipt in case something went wrong with Wes’ Zhu Zhu pet, so I can return the extra copy. Thank you again though, anonymous person, everything you chose from my wishlist was just perfect and I cannot thank you enough. <3 (The book Neon Angel, which is Cherie Currie’s account of The Runaways and a book about photographing art and collectibles were the other two things, if anyone’s curious. Can’t wait to read both. :o))

Now the next order of business is something that I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, but wanted to wait until the story had reached its conclusion before I did. Do you remember the cat ring that I bought on Etsy in May? I know I linked it but I’m not sure if anyone actually clicked the link.

Well, it was from a seller called Freedom Jewelry USA who went so above and beyond that I couldn’t even believe it.

The listing for the ring was a size 8 and me knowing nothing about ring sizing, used an online ring size converter thing that told me my ring size was 10. So that’s what I asked her to make me and she gladly obliged.

Well when the ring got here, I tried it on and it fell off of each and every one of my fingers because it was HUGE. So I left her feedback saying how great her customer service was and everything and then I convo’d her and said that I must have screwed up the size (which I didn’t, the converter was wrong, we discovered) because it’s too big, but if I took it to a jeweler, would they be able to size it for me? She said that she’d prefer to do it herself and that I should send the ring back, she’d recast it in the proper size and send it back to me. All for the cost of reshipping.

Now, me being a skeptic, I was kinda thinking this could be a scam, but I sent the ring back anyway, along with two ribbons that were the circumference of the finger I wanted to wear the ring on, one tied in a loop, one straight, and waited for her to receive them and tell me what my ring size actually was.

So she got the ring back and told me that my ring size was “about a 9″, so I asked her if there was such a thing as an 8.5 because then I can wear the ring now and still be able to wear it as I lose this extra weight of mine.

So that’s what she did and then she sent it back. I got it late last week, tried it on and while it was a teensy bit too big still, it’ll get the job done (as a faux wedding ring at the Square Foot Show since my wedding ring doesn’t fit right now). I was so in awe of how nice she was and easy to deal with and just the whole situation that instead of the $1.50 postage she wanted, I gave her $15 instead because this was just so awesome of her.

Here’s the ring, my wedding ring that fits INSIDE the ring because I was damn near anorexic when I got married, and some shots of my Hello Kitty wedding ring because I’ve never posted proper pictures of it and I know people are curious about it:

My wedding ring was cast in white gold from an actual Hello Kitty ring sold by Sanrio a really long time ago that Blake jumped through hoops to try to find. The diamond is one of his mother’s. Even if it did fit, I wouldn’t wear it because I actually hate wearing rings, I find them all too heavy on my fingers, like when I’m typing or drawing, but I like to wear them if I’m going out somewhere, like The Square Foot Show. I’m bummed my wedding ring doesn’t fit right now, but I refuse to have it resized because to me, that’s like admitting defeat and accepting the size I am, which I will not do.

Anyway, the girl who is Freedom Jewelry USA was great and totally went above and beyond for a perfect stranger, so definitely take a look around her shop and if you like what you see, add her to your favourites!

Like I said, I’m not sure what I did karmically to deserve so much awesome in my life right now, but I am absolutely grateful for it all and want to shout it from the rooftops. For once in my life, I’m actually loving my life, which is definitely a new thing that I hope continues.

So thanks. To all of you. To the whole world. <3

I love flowers. Like, really love them. To me, having fresh cut flowers in your home that didn’t come from your own garden (unless you’re like, Oprah who has a million acres of roses that someone else tends to) is the epitome of luxury and for that reason – as well as others – I’ve been buying myself flowers since high school every now & then.

They’re just an indulgence. They’re really absolutely useless, they don’t do anything and then they just die so you have to throw them away and for that reason I’ve banned Blake from ever buying them for me because as much as I love them, I really do think they’re a complete waste of money. (So are greeting cards, for the record, unless they’re homemade.)

Having said that, I’ve bought myself flowers twice this month because I have the money to do so and I love them. Just grocery store flowers, nothing too fancy. The first bunch was roses that were a shocking $17.99 that died within a week. I gave each child a rose to keep in their room, which they loved, and the rest lived on my desk until they died. (I think the heat wave had a lot to do with their quick demise.)

Oddly, I bought these roses right after yoga class. This is odd because last night after yoga class, I bought myself some psychedelic carnations, which are the same colours that the roses were. These ones were also from the grocery store and were a more affordable $7.99. I love them. They’ll also last longer than the roses because carnations just do, but also because the heat’s not as crazy as it was a week or so ago.  Here they are:

I probably won’t buy myself flowers for a long time after this, but it’s still something I recommend if you happen to walk past a particularly beautiful bunch and have the cash to spare. It amazes me every time just how happy they make me. Maybe they’ll make you happy too.

This is my sign. Blake screwed it to the outer wall of our house, right beside the “front” door, so that everyone who enters will know the deal.

Before it was put in place, I asked Blake, “do you agree with it?” and he said “absolutely”.

After it was put in place, Madison read it and said she liked it. I said to her, “but do you agree with it?” and she said, “yes, even though I probably do a lot of shitty things that you write about”, to which I replied, “not really” because there was only one shitty thing she’s done so far that I found was worth writing about and I made it a friends only post on LJ. (She stole a necklace of mine that my grama gave to me which my grampa, now dead, gave to her, that had a HUGE crystal pendant and then some kid stole it out of her desk so now it’s lost forever.) Anyway, she & I agreed that that was probably the shittiest thing she’s ever done.

Anyway, if you’ve been reading my site for any length of time, you’ve probably seen me say what’s on this sign multiple times because it’s true. I write about pretty much everything that happens in my life, or at least the important stuff and often times, “the important stuff” is the shitty things people do. I can’t say that I write about all of these things publicly all the time, but they are usually written about either on my site, my LJ (publicly or friends only) or my paper journal, but usually online in some way, shape or form. That’s just what I do. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years of my life and if you have a problem with it, don’t be in my life. It’s really that simple. And really, is it so hard to be a decent person who doesn’t do shitty things? Because if that’s difficult for you, we probably don’t want you in our lives anyway. And that is a sentiment shared by everyone in the Sunny, Blake, Madison & Wes Crittenden family. I know this because I ASKED.

So that’s my sign. Probably the first of many. As I pointed out to Blake, I am now the crazy neighbour who makes signs. :oD So be it.