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.

I don’t really make resolutions, but yesterday I decided something. I haven’t sold a painting since April and I’m at a point financially where, after I finish the painting I’m working on and the ACEOs/ATCs, I have no money for canvases to create new work and since that’s the case, I must be doing something wrong or what I have been doing simply doesn’t work anymore.

The fact of the matter is that I have an audience and my audience has seen my paintings and I think everyone who’s going to buy a painting already has, or at least there has been plenty of opportunity for them to and no one has so that tells me maybe it’s time to show my paintings to a new audience and see if I do any better.

So, despite my misgivings about the site, I’ve decided to actually use the Etsy shop I registered like, almost 3 years ago, and I’ve just listed all of my paintings there. When the ACEOs are finished, I’m going to list them there as well.

I realize that a lot of people simply don’t have the money to buy paintings and I totally understand, but something you could do to help me out that’s free is that if you have an Etsy account, you could heart/favourite my shop and that would help me with my “street cred” on the site.

I figure I have basically nothing to lose by listing things on Etsy, so I might as well give it a try & see what happens. If anyone has any Etsy tips, I’d love to hear them because I have no idea wtf I’m doing.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

We’re supposed to get a crapload of snow in Sunnyland tonight and tomorrow, 10cm each day with whiteout conditions from snowsqualls. To those who don’t live near a giant lake in The Great White North, a snowsquall is kinda like a snowy thunderstorm, minus the thunder & lightning (most of the time…on the odd occasion we get both & it’s pretty cool, lightning in winter is green). Snowsqualls, apparently, are a result of the wind & snow crossing the lake and we’re close enough to Lake Huron (it’s only 10 mins from me) that we get these storms. Often during the winter, our road is closed because of them, although I doubt that’ll be the case tonight (and I also doubt we’re going to get as much snow as they’re saying.)

Anyway, this afternoon the snow looked really cool, it was coming down slowly and softly like a white curtain and I tried to take video of it but I think the framerate on my camera is messed up somehow because when I came back inside and looked the the video, the snow was falling much faster than it had been in person. Regardless, I uploaded it to YouTube anyway and if you care to see it, here it is…it’s only 40 seconds:

This morning I had to get up early to go to the lab and get a blood test done, which had be thrilled beyond belief because needles and veins and blood are just my favouritest things in the whole wide world! Almost as awesome as getting up early in the morning! They chastised me for taking my pills with about 6 mouthfuls of Coke Zero instead of water (some of the pills I take are capsules with powder in them and I find taking them with water really gross because the damn things dissolve REALLY fast and then the capsules feel like they’re stuck in my throat, for some reason this doesn’t happen if I take them with something carbonated) because they claimed it would affect my cholesterol reading. Truthfully, I’m not sure I believe them and they almost wouldn’t do the test but I told them it was my last day to do it, that it was Blake’s last day of vacation and that my doctor’s appointment was on Friday so if I didn’t get it done today I was screwed, so they said they’d do it but to make sure I told my doctor that the cholesterol results might be a little off because I was a VERY BAD GIRL. I’m not really worried about it though.

Remember last year when my GP freaked out about my cholesterol and put me on cholesterol meds? My shrink thought/thinks he was being a bit extreme because apparently my levels weren’t really anything to be worried about, especially since I wasn’t taking the medication that caused the spike anymore and while I’m still taking the cholesterol meds because I figure I might as well, I’m not worried about the 6 mouthfuls of Coke Zero I had this morning skewing my test results one way or the other. I am a little interested to see how my cholesterol looks since I began eating all these eggs though. Oh, did I mention I lost 2 & a half lbs last week? That’s almost 11 lbs total since I started eating eggs for breakfast 10 weeks ago. w00t!

After my blood test, Blake & I went to the post office where there were two packages to pick up. One was an Amazon box for the kids for Xmas from Blake’s mom & Charlie and one was a book called the Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin from Lia! THANK YOU LIA! I flipped through it when I got home, but then I got sidetracked and haven’t had a chance to pick it up again. It looks pretty wicked though, so many different kinds of cards! I plan on spending some time with the book later tonight. Again, thanks Lia, you’re awesome!

And of course, speaking of artist trading cards my first 8 are almost finished. They just need arms and a coat of varnish and then they’ll be done. And I guess when they’re “done” I have to figure out a way to put my name & stuff on the back…honestly, I’ll probably just write it. My printer is slowly but surely dying and there’s no way it would print labels nicely, even if I had any. I could also glue my business card to the backs of them, but I don’t really want 40 “internet people” having my home phone number. I’ll figure it out. Anyway, here’s a group shot I took of the 8 after I took the books off of them that were drying them flat:

Throughout the rest of this post, I’ll show you some of them close up. All images can be clicked to enlarge.

Doing the smaller girls has definitely been a lesson in trial & error. For the 8 that are almost finished, I screwed up just as many because like I said in a previous post, drawing them so small is actually kind of hard. I’m getting the hang of it though, and last night I started a sheet of 15 more, which I’ll work on while these ones’ arms and varnish are drying. Once the 15 I started yesterday are finished, I only have 1 more card with gold sparkles to do and then that stack is finished. The rest either have iridescent or silver sparkles.

While I’ve been doing these, because this is just how my mind works, I’ve been thinking about the ones that I’ll be selling and I’m not sure how I’m going to do that. I know that each card is going to be $30 + $2 shipping, but I don’t know if I’m going to sell them on my site or the site I linked a while back where all they sell is ATCs (or more properly ACEOs) in an Etsy-like setting. That site, from what I’ve been able to tell doesn’t take a cut, so I don’t have the issues with it that I have with Etsy and eBay, but I don’t know how popular it is or if the artists actually sell their cards. Another thing with that site is that you have to scan each individual card and list each one separately, which I guess makes sense, but that’s a lot of extra work and if I can avoid extra work and achieve the same result, I’m more inclined to do that. Selling on my site I have 2 options: scan, post and make a PayPal button for each one or DON’T scan them all, just show examples of each colour and then the card(s) the person gets would be left to my discretion. What do you guys think? I’m thinking that I’ll sell more if I scan each card and post them all with their own PayPal buttons, but I’m torn as to whether I should do that on my own site or on that ACEO site that just sells ACEOs. I suppose I could sell some on my site, like all on one page, and then on that page say that there’s more for sale on the ACEO site and give people the option to buy them there too, if the card they want happens to be there. I really really suck at the business of art, seriously.

Another thing I thought I could do, if I ever sell a freaking painting & actually have some money, is I could matte (mat?) and frame say, 3 cards and sell them as one piece. I have no idea how much framing costs though, so I don’t even know if that would be realistic or if I’d end up ripping myself off in the end because you can only price something like that so high.

Maybe it’s tacky that I think about selling things as I make them, but I’m a really utilitarian person and my grama, aka The Antichrist, is/was an artist’s worst enemy. I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but when I was Wes’ age, I would make things and sell them in my grama’s furniture store and that taught me early that you only get to create things if you’re going to sell them. Even when I was an adult and we were living above her store and I started painting on canvas, I’d show her what I’d created and her response would always be, “Okay so you made it, now what are you going to do with it?” and when I’d tell her I was going to sell it, on the internet, because I knew that was the “right” answer, she’d say “Well who in the hell is going to buy that?” (This was back when I was going through my “fetal phase” and fuck you, grama, I sold every goddamn piece!)

While my mother definitely raised me (at least until I was 15), I spent just about every weekend of my life with my grama and the attitude that you can only create to sell is very deeply ingrained in me. The only thing I’ve painted for myself, in the 8 years I’ve been painting, is the covers of my sketchbooks and even those are extremely hard for me to do because as I’m doing them, I’m thinking that I could be spending that time and those supplies on something that’s going to potentially make money.

And back to the utilitarian thing for a second, I’m not a keeper on “nicknacks”. You will find very very few of these in my home and the ones I do have were given to me as gifts, I would never in a million years buy anything like that for myself because I think they’re a waste of money. They just sit there. Also the only pictures adorning my walls are my failed attempts that I don’t really know what to do with.

It would be lovely to say that I have this fabulous home and studio full of inspirational things, but I really just don’t. It’s the same thing with the way I dress, I mean people expect artists to be these crazy dressers with crazy hair & all that, but I’m pretty plain & boring. Today when I went to the lab, I wore grey trackpants, a brown t-shirt and a grey hoodie. Other times I just would have worn my pajamas because A) I live in sleepwear and B) I just don’t care. If I’m dressing up to go somewhere, whatever I’m wearing is usually pretty simple and usually pretty black. I suppose sometimes my hair, when I dye it crazy colours, is more conducive to the artist stereotype but it’s never really a conscious “oh I’m creative so I must look the part” thing, it’s just “hey I feel like having pink hair this month.”

I was actually reading about this very thing in the book Living the Creative Life a couple of months ago. Most of the artists who were interviewed for that book were like me when it came to dress and a lot of them said that they’d rather put their creative energy into the things they created than into looking the part of the “creative artist”. I couldn’t agree with that more, obviously, and it made me feel a lot better hearing it from other artists. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t I paint in my pajamas? I have nowhere to be, no one to impress and y’know what? I’m gonna get paint on them! And it won’t matter!

So there ya have it, my take on living the creative life.

Something else I’ve been doing this week is taking pictures and video for the background tutorial I keep being asked for. Today was the last step. I’m still not going to post it until after the new year because with Xmas & Buttercup & everything else I have to do these days, the tutorial is fairly low on my priority list. And actually, in writing this down, I’ve realized that I have one more picture to take for it and then all that’s left to do is edit everything together and make it into a post.

What I will tell you about it though, is that the background I made for the tutorial is the same as the black & gold ATCs on this page and the girl that’s going to be going on the painting is going to be a BEE GIRL wearing a tutu. I haven’t drawn her yet and I’m not sure if the tulle I have is tea-stainable, but she’s in my mind and I’m really excited about her. Again though, I’m not going to start working on her until after Xmas when things have died down a bit.

As per usual, all things Xmas have me stressed out beyond belief. I know I’ve explained this before, but every year for the past few years, we’ve gone up north to my dad & step-mom’s Xmas Eve, stay there Xmas Day, have Xmas dinner across the road at my uncle Paul’s house and then have to drive home Xmas night to do it all over again with my mother on Boxing Day. As I also explained in a previous post, last year my dad really disrespected my dogs by not cleaning out the garage and it upset me quite a bit. I didn’t sleep at ALL on Xmas Eve because I was worried about the dogs and felt sorry for them, only having the space of a blanket to lay down or move around on that wasn’t flooded or full of my dad’s van.

This year, to avoid all that, the original plan was to have my neighbours come and let the dogs in & out while we were away but as we get closer to actually having to do it I’m having a hard time dealing with it. Agoraphobia is the fear of the outside world, yes, but part of it, at least for me, is a fear of letting people into my inside world and the idea of people in my house while I’m gone really bothers me. I mean, I trust Wayne & Judy to look after the dogs, but I don’t know if I trust them not to take a tour of my house and inspect how clean my toilet is.

Last week I was really considering staying home with the dogs and not going to my dad’s at all because honestly, that sounds like the perfect Xmas to me – no Xmas at all – but even that stressed me out because like it or not, there are all of these societal pressures put on people during Xmas that you either have to adhere to or people will think you’re a shitty person. If I don’t go up north for Xmas, I’m a shitty daughter and a shitty mother (even though my kids couldn’t care less if I was there or not) and it’s going to look weird when they go over to Paul’s for Xmas dinner and I’m not there. People are going to expect Blake to explain and there really isn’t an explanation that would make anyone happy or us to seem less weird (when they already think of us as pretty fucking weird).

So after a lot of inner debate, the original plan stands, that the entire Crittenden family, those on 2 legs and 4 (well, minus Pixel who gets a nice vacation from all of us for Xmas), are going up north for Xmas and Blake’s going to call my dad personally and tell him (in nicer terms than I’m gonna put it here) that if that goddamn garage isn’t fit for MY dogs, we’re turning around and coming home. Blake also called the vet today to see if you can give dogs Gravol and yes, yes you can (1/4 of a children’s one, apparently), so this year we won’t be pulling over on some back road to clean up Lucky’s vomit with a box of Kleenex because that’s all that’s in the car.

To make matters worse, ALL of our Xmas shopping is being done on Thursday’s paycheque because we haven’t been able to afford it until now. And even then, and I’m sure Blake will love me for posting this publicly, we’re looking at deferring this month’s mortgage payment to even have Xmas this year because we simply don’t have the money to give the kids the kind of Xmas they’ve enjoyed previous years. Also, everyone who isn’t under the age of 12 this year is getting gift certificates because I just don’t know what the hell to buy anyone. When I’ve asked, I’ve been told gift certificates, so that’s what everyone’s getting. Our kids are getting clothes because they need them and we can’t afford to do “fun stuff” and clothes, so that’s just the way it’s going to have to be. My sister Raili  (aged 4) is getting Barbies and my sister Rachael (aged 10 months) is getting Little People because that’s what was asked for.

Also, I don’t even know for sure what the hell is going on with my mother this year and I’ve been too afraid to ask. The “tradition” has been that she comes here Boxing Day and we do presents and have dinner, but with her moving in with John, first of all, I don’t know if he and his son will be coming (which means extra gifts/extra food) and second of all, now that my mother has an actual HOME, she may want to start doing Boxing Day there like we’ve done for most of my life. The thing is though, with going up north and all the bullshit associated with it, we don’t want to have to do more traveling on Boxing Day and if she comes here, I hope she’s fine with pizza or Chinese food because I’m NOT leaving halfway through Xmas dinner at Paul’s house to make it back home in time for me to get enough sleep to cook Xmas dinner the next day for my mother.

Have I mentioned how much I fucking hate Xmas? Seriously, it kills me. I wish it was never invented. I wish I could sleep through the whole thing. I wish I could stay home, with my dogs, watching bad movies and pretending it wasn’t happening.

On a more positive note, did anyone see the Leafs game last night? Was that fucking beautiful or what? My throat is still sore from cringing/yelling at the TV.

And with that, I’m out and you’re probably thinking “thank god” because this post is 3,100 words long.

PS. My review of the new Sims expansion is up on Buttercup for those who were waiting for it.

PPS. I stand corrected about the snow. I just went outside and we got at least 15cm in the time it took me to write this post.

I just woke up from yet another “end of the world” dream. In this one I was camping with my mom and her boyfriend when earthquakes started happening and the hydro went out all over the world. I’ve already been up for about 45 minutes so the details of the dream are fading, but there was a store on the campgrounds and I went in and had to save the girls hiding behind the counter from a brown bear that had wandered in after the first quake. It jumped up on me, like a dog that’s happy to see you, so like a dog, I grabbed its paws and kinda tossed him down off my shoulders, opened the front door of the store and it wandered back out. While the door was open, a deer skittered out behind it. The girls gave me a flashlight, which I brought back to our tent and that was the end of that segment of the dream.

The next one, I was in the town I used to live in and all the streets were black. It was winter and there were strange noises everywhere from people looting and vandalizing the town in the dark. I was thirsty, so fucking thirsty. I met up with my friend Heather from when I was a kid and she brought me to this ice cream stand inside a bowling alley where she knew the owners and they gave me a can of Sprite, which I chugged down like it was the last liquid on Earth. We all hid in the bowling alley in the dark with boards and baseball bats, waiting for the looters to break in.

And then I woke up thirstier than I swear I’ve ever been in my life and with an unexplained ache in my left jaw. I got up and chugged the half can of Coke Zero I’d left in the fridge when I went to bed, then I opened another one and drank the whole thing. Now I’m on my third and as I said, I’ve only been awake about 45 minutes.

This has been a common occurrence during the past week, waking up around 6am so thirsty I think I’m gonna die. Usually I go for Coke Zero when this happens because if I drink water I’ll just be up in another hour to go pee and orange juice is bad for your teeth if you’re just going to go back to bed.

Just now I tried going back to bed, but I’m having racing thoughts again and the attempt was futile. I’m tired though, really really tired. Again, I figure if I get these thoughts out of my head and “onto paper” maybe then I’ll be able to go back to sleep.

I watched Oprah on Friday, where she announced that the season after this one would be her last. I cried. I cried hard. Her show began in 1986, when I was 7 years old, and really, I don’t remember TV without Oprah. When her show started, I was being babysat by my Aunt Heather and every day after school we would watch and Oprah’s been a big part of my life ever since. No, Oprah and I haven’t always gotten along, there were times when she and I disagreed, but she’s always been there and it’s hard to imagine TV without her. I know her final show is going to absolutely destroy me. After I tweeted something to that effect on Friday, someone said something like “don’t worry, she’s getting her own channel”, which is true, The Oprah Winfrey Channel, which everyone now knows as The Discovery Health Channel, has been in the works since I think 2008 and is set to launch in 2011, but like her XM Satellite radio station, Oprah and Friends, it’s hard to say how much she’s actually going to be on it. The fact of the matter is, channel or not, there will be no more Oprah Winfrey Show and that makes me sad.

I mean, I knew it would have to come to an end sooner or later, I just wasn’t prepared for the announcement.

Tonight I read Oprah’s Wikipedia entry and smiled when it said that she planned on retiring in South Africa, at her school for girls. Truthfully, that’s probably where Oprah should be and it’s probably where she’ll be happiest. Did you know that in her will she’s left all of her money (she’s worth $2.3 billion, in case you didn’t know) “to the children of Africa”? That’s absolutely amazing to me. I can’t even fathom what that’s going to mean for the continent. If you’ve been reading me for any great length of time, then you’ll know that I worry and fret about Africa every single day, but at the same time, I believe that within my lifetime a lot of Africa’s troubles will come to an end and that the continent will rise up and become a booming voice in the international community. I know that’s an extremely optimistic view, but think about it: Oprah will probably die in my lifetime and what can her $2.3 billion inheritance do for Africa? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question because I don’t really have a clear concept of what you can buy with that kind of money or how to “fix” Africa, but I feel in my gut that it’ll really help things turn around. And I’m going to be very glad to see it, even if it’s from my nursing home.

In other news, Friday night Blake and I were just going outside to go have half a smoke and he was ahead of me so he opened the front door and all I heard was “no kittens in the house!” and he was blocking something with his feet. I assumed it was the neighbour’s cat, Misty, who occasionally spends the night with us when she gets locked out of her own home on cold nights, but no, through Blake’s legs I saw that it was a little orange tabby kitten, no older than 10 weeks old. Immediately I reached through Blake’s legs and scooped the kitten up and brought it into the living room to show the kids. The poor guy was dirty and definitely had a smell, so I figured he was a stray, but Madison, who somehow knows every animal in this whole goddamn town, said that it looked like her friend Alyssa’s kitten, Cheesy. Alyssa lives about a 5 minute walk away on the other side of the road.

So Blake and Madison went to see if it was their kitten and when they got to the house, Alyssa’s brother was there with his friend from next door, ALONE. These kids are in grade 3, who leaves two 8 year olds home alone? Anyway, Madison asked them if the kitten was Cheesy, the kid said yes and the cat was returned. How the little bugger got so far away from home and ended up at my front door, I’ll never know, and why do these stray animals always make it to my house in the first place? Between June and August, Madison and I found the homes of 4 different stray dogs! Not to mention the other 2 we found the owners of throughout the school year! And now this kitten? Blake says they find their way here because animals just know that I’m a sucker and somehow that must be true because they do seem to always end up at our house.

It kinda sucks that we found Cheesy’s home though, he was the exact kind of kitten I want when it’s time to get another cat, and I was kind of giddy at the prospect of keeping him. At the same time I’m glad we did find his home because Pixel would absolutely freak the fuck out if we added another cat to the mix and for sure she’d stop using her litterbox because there’s no way she’d share. (And we just got her using her litterbox religiously after almost 4 years. Our house is very small and there are only 3 places to put a litterbox. First I had it beside the washing machine, underneath the wash tub, but with the way the washtub is set up, there’s blocks under its legs so the litterbox was kind of suspended and she wouldn’t use it. Then I had it between the dryer and the furnace, which was all fine & dandy in the spring & summer, especially since she usually did her business outside anyway, but in the fall & winter when the furnace or dryer was on, she’d pee in it when she got the chance (when both appliances were off), but she preferred to shit under Blake’s desk. I didn’t make the connection that she was afraid of the furnace until just this fall and that’s when I moved her litterbox to behind the bathroom door and ever since she’s been a completely different cat. Much more relaxed and loving, not so skittish. gets along better with the dogs. And as an added bonus, because it’s behind the door, the dogs can get into it which they’ve been known to do. Anyway, since she’s so finicky about the litterbox, I know if we introduced another cat, we’d be back at square one. When we get a bigger house, maybe one with a basement where two litterboxes can be set up, we’ll get another cat, just not right now.)

This week was unseasonably warm and the giant spider that lived on a web strewn across my office window all summer made its reappearance and that got me wondering about what happened to spiders in the winter. I figured, because of Charlotte’s Web, that they laid an egg sac and then died and it turns out that I’m only partially right and it really depends on the spider. The spider in my case, is a garden orb weaver, and they most definitely lay eggs and die, while others in warmer climates, but that still have winter (just not Canada’s kind of winters) hibernate and others who lay eggs and die, their babies hatch before winter and keep each other warm in clusters around their egg sac. I’m wondering when my spider is going to die. She’s definitely got a male on her web, I’ve seen him (the males are smaller, so I know she’s a girl), so I’m assuming she’s laid her eggs already somewhere, but she’s creepy and too big to kill (she’s about the size of a twoonie) and I’ve been waiting for her to go away for a long time now because while I kinda think spiders are cool and I like watching they catch prey, I also think they’re really gross and when I go outside for a smoke she’s pretty much above my head and I have awake nightmares about her jumping into my hair. It’s irrational and I know she won’t, but the whole idea of it gives me the willies and as soon as I think she’s dead, I’m vacuuming up her web and when her babies hatch, I’ll be relocating them to my garden. Or maybe my neighbour’s garden…

On Twitter, my friend Poetic Dreams pointed me to a blog post made by Katielynn where she asked:

Who are you?
Really,
Truthfully.
Deep down.
Under the weight the world has put upon you.
Do you have an answer?

And it got me thinking. Who am I? DO I have an answer? The fact of the matter is, I’m 30 years old and still trying to figure out who I am because I’ve had so many setbacks in my life that finding out who I am has always sort of been put on the back burner. Does it matter if I know who I really am? I mean, I know who I am right now, is that the same thing? I know who I want to be, does that count for anything at all?

I think knowing who you are right now DOES count because everyone changes. But at the same time, I guess there’s who you are at your core and I guess if that’s the case I know exactly who I am. I’m the girl who, despite intense social anxiety, can put on a pretty good front and charm an entire room full of people. I’m the girl who gives away a lot of money to certain charities even though she can’t afford it because it’s important and there are people out there who need it more than I do. I’m the girl who’s insecure about most things and has low self-esteem in general, but who’s also brave and confident when it comes to other things. I’m the girl who’s not afraid of a challenge…most of the time. I’m the girl who can make boys cry. I’m the girl who sometimes doesn’t realize how much her words can hurt, even though she’s lived a lifetime of hurting people with her words. I’m the girl who, despite being 5 foot fuckall and 100 lbs at the time, can put a 6′5, 300 lb man in the hospital for fucking with her kid. I’m the girl who hates Guitar Hero with a burning passion. I’m the girl who likes to bake at 3am so her family wakes up to surprises in the kitchen. I’m the girl who’s helping the kids plan a surprise birthday party for my neighbour on Friday. (With the help of another mom who took the kids to the dollar store yesterday to buy supplies and who made Judy a lasagna for her birthday dinner that I’ll help the kids cook on Friday (it’s a PA Day). Also on Friday I’ll be helping the kids bake a cake and decorate Judy’s living room.) I’m the girl who’s already freaking out about turning 40, even though it’s almost a decade away, because I still haven’t grown up and I feel stunted. If I’m still stunted at 40…what does that make me? I’m the girl who sometimes wants to give up and go work at McDonald’s but doesn’t because that would give the haters exactly what they want and dammit, I’m stubborn. I’m the girl who thinks sex is vastly overrated. I’m the girl who takes 28 pills every single day and drinks way too much Coke Zero. I’m the girl who thinks the world would rather hug you than harm you. I’m the girl who’s helping to raise 2 pretty awesome kids. I’m the girl who always knew she wanted to be a mother and who made HUGE sacrifices to make that happen. I’m the girl who will take in any animal that comes her way, much to the dismay of her husband. I’m the girl who loves her husband fiercely and couldn’t live without him. I’m the girl who loves and hates with equal intensity. I’m a girl who’s easily distracted. I’m the girl who can spend an entire day reading about random things on the internet, who gets a hold of a subject and obsesses about it until the curiousity is satiated and there isn’t anything left to know. I’m the girl who sucks at sodoku and crossword puzzles but does both anyway. I’m the girl people claim to be intimidated by. I’m the girl who hates not having a book on the go. I’m the girl who doesn’t have a lot of friends and prefers it that way. I’m the girl who dislikes other people’s kids and their mothers. I’m the girl who seethes when people let their animals go astray and who don’t spay & neuter. (The aforementioned “other mom” who made Judy the lasagna? Her husky was in heat and “driving her nuts” so she just let her out to run through the bush and “if she comes back pregnant, so be it”. UGH.)

I don’t know if any of that answered Katielynn’s question, but I think it’s a good start. These things are at the core of me and will probably never change.

Blake has all this week off and that’s awesome. On Monday I have a doctor’s appointment to get some Tylenol 3 & Naproxen for my upcoming period and to make sure a copy of my post-op report is in my file. I want him to explain to me exactly what they did but I’m not going to sit there while he reads it and then have him explain it to me, unless that’s what he wants to do. I figured I’d just leave a copy with him, which he can read when he gets a moment and then he can call me in for another appointment to go over it with me. I just don’t understand why I’m still in pain and I don’t understand what all they did, especially the whole “cutting of the nerves” thing, which I never willingly consented to and which doesn’t seem to be working at all.

Also on Monday or Tuesday, I’m expecting a little bit of money by way of a cheque in the mail, so Blake and I are going to go to Curry’s and Michael’s to buy some much needed art supplies and probably get Starbucks because it’s in the same plaza.

For something I’m doing, I have to write an “artist’s resume” but I have no idea what that is or how to make one, so Blake’s going to help me with that also. I also had to write an artist’s statement which ended up being easier than I thought and once I iron out the kinks, I’ll be adding it to my site. It could only be about 250 words for what I’m doing, so the version that’ll be on my site will be a bit longer and more fleshed out.

On Tuesday I have to go to the lab for blood work. Oh joy of joys. They’re checking my cholesterol and doing a metabolic work up to see what the hell is going on as far as me being unable to lose the weight I gained while on that heinous medication. Long story short, we’re pretty sure, my shrink & I, that the medication messed up my metabolism semi-permanently and I may have to go on drugs to fix it.

Wednesday Blake has a phone interview for another position within the company and he applied for another one on Saturday so hopefully next week he’ll have a phone interview for that one too. Both positions are in Scarborough, meaning we’d have to sell our house and move. I haven’t checked to see if the house we want in Cookstown has been sold yet and I’m gonna hold off on that until things are more concrete so I don’t get my hopes up again.

Friday is the kids’ PA Day and Judy’s surprise birthday party, kid-style. Being a PA Day means that I’ll have Courtney too, so she & Madison will be baking and decorating the cake and I’ll help them put up streamers in Judy’s living room. Plus they both made a whole bunch of decorations that I haven’t seen yet, so they’ll be putting those up as well.

Then at some point on the weekend, we’ll be playing Euchre with Ronny & Alex and then probably playing again with Wayne & Judy.

It’s going to be a busy week, but a good one I think. I like it when Blake has vacation days and we can just hang out and do stuff while the kids are in school. We don’t get to do that very often.

Anyway, this is long and I don’t really have a whole lot more to say. I think I’m gonna go take some drugs and go back to sleep for a while…or maybe stay up and read some more of The Scarlet Letter. I haven’t decided yet.

Tomorrow The Sims 3: World Adventures comes out tomorrow and I’m lucky enough to be reviewing it for Buttercup next month so this is probably the only mention you’ll see of it on this blog! Needless to say though, I’m stoked. STOKED, I SAY.

In other news, I slept 11 hours last night and woke up feeling like shit. I had my eggs, then had a shower thinking it would make me feel better, but it didn’t and I was sleepy so I laid down for a 2 hour nap. My body’s definitely trying to fight something off and I hope it’s successful because like most people, I really hate being sick. Unfortunately sleeping so much today means that there’s the chance I’ll be up retardo late tonight and there’s no way in hell I’ll be getting up at 5am to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower. I brought it up to Madison just now and she didn’t want to get up for it either, so I guess we’ll be missing it, but that’s okay, we’ll catch the Perseids in the summer.

I think I’m finally done fucking with the kids’ wishlist. Madison is really into the Get Fuzzy comic strip (or at least the two books I have of it, which she’s scooped for her own) so I just added all of those books to the list for her and I think that’s all I’m going to be adding for either kid. I also just e-mailed my mom to see if she still has all of her For Better or For Worse books because Madison really likes the few we have here (the later ones), that I know my mom doesn’t have, and I figured if my mom still had hers and didn’t want them anymore, then that’s an easy gift for Madison, especially considering that most of the earlier ones are now out of print.

When I was Madison’s age, I was obsessed with my mom’s For Better or For Worse books too, it’s always been my favourite comic (and Canadian!) and it makes me happy that Madison enjoys them too. I think those books/that strip really taught me what marriage was supposed to be all about and what a healthy family looks like and knowing that the strip was based on Lynn Johnston’s real family and friends made it less like fantasy like other childhood influences are.

My (step) dad used to buy them for my mom every year for Xmas and when they separated, I think my mom stopped collecting them.

What do I want for Xmas? Well, my wishlist is here and while presents are good and I definitely love “stuff”, honestly what I want is for people to either buy paintings or donate money to my site. (The button is on the bottom right, or if you’re a Camwhores member, my tip jar is always an option as well.) The fact is, I need money for art supplies if I’m to continue to work. I have a little bit of money set aside for art supplies that my friends Belinda and Mark sent me a while back, but that isn’t going to cover all of the stuff I need, (I’ve been keeping a list for the past 3 months as I run out of stuff) especially since I need to replace some of my brushes and brushes are the most expensive thing.

Speaking of Camwhores, I have been making a little bit of money over there that I could be using for art supplies, but sometimes other things, like taking Blake to the movies or buying Blake & I Chinese food because it’s “good TV night” and we never get ourselves anything are more important, so I’ve been trying to keep “Camwhores money” open for a bit of play. I’ve also been buying a lot of my own stuff rather than getting Blake to pay for it, like when we went to the movies we went to Shopper’s Drug Mart beforehand because I needed painkillers and while he paid for the drugs, I paid for the hair elastics (x 2 packs) and the Chapstick (x3 because I go through it like crazy) I needed.

I haven’t really ever had my own money and it feels good to be able to contribute, if only for treating Blake when I can and for buying my own “extras” that I’d normally go without. Painting money should go for art supplies, donated money should go for art supplies, but the meager amounts I’m making on Camwhores is for everything else. I’m also hoping to buy the kids at least one Xmas present each out of my own money, just because I’ve never really been able to. Like Madison this year needs a real bra (as opposed to a training bra) and I think that’s something that should come from her mother, y’know?

I also want to be able to buy Xmas presents for my neighbours even though we only usually buy for each other’s kids. For Wayne I’ll probably just get him a 6-pack because beer is really the only thing he’s into (I’m also going to be making him a bunch of mixed CDs, I’ve been working on them since last month) but for Judy I want to get her this $15.00 pack of Lipsmacker lip balm because she never gets anything for herself and she’s constantly running out. She’s like me and has to have some form of Chapstick on her person at all times so when I saw that $15.00 pack of Lipsmackers, which I know is her favourite brand, at Shopper’s the other night, I knew that’s what I’d be getting her. (I’m hoping it goes on sale though first, or that we save up enough Optimum points to make it cheaper.)

I have no idea what to get my mom or Phil or Lisa. My sisters are easy, they like toys, and I sent Lisa a Facebook message asking what they’re into and what they have. I was going to make Rachael a painting like I made for Raili and Madison last year, but Blake brought up the point that she wouldn’t even really know what it is (she’s 9 months old) so I should probably wait until she’s Raili’s age to bother.

Ashley’s baby shower is going to be in January, so after Xmas I’m going to be making her an 8 x 8 inch painting like the ones I made for the kids for the baby’s room, but I have to wait until she has her final ultrasound so we know the sex for sure and I know whether to make a boy or a girl and when she knows the sex, she’ll know what colours her nursery is going to be so I can make the painting to match. (Btw, it’s going to be a massive deal that I’ll be going to her baby shower. The only person I’ll know there besides Ashley is Judy and the shower is going to be in Toronto and big enough that the last I heard, they’re renting a hall. Big Italian family.)

Speaking of big deals, y’know how I mentioned a while back that Blake & I have been playing euchre with the neighbours some Saturday nights? Well I’ve become such a euchre fiend that when I found out Blake’s friend from work, Charissa, knows how to play euchre and so does her husband, I’ve been seriously considering inviting them over on a Friday night so we can play. I don’t know how much I’ve emphasized this over the years, but I don’t let people into my inner world easily and I have this stupid attitude that work friends can’t be real life friends, so if I get over my issues and make this happen, my shrink will be very proud of me.

Blake has next week off and I’m going to be getting both bloodwork done and going to see my doctor to finally get a professional’s take on my surgery in August. I forget if I mentioned this or not, I probably did, but being on the pill non-stop and despite the fact that the surgeon cut some nerves in my uterine area so I shouldn’t be in pain, I still am. It’s not as bad as it was before, but it’s still there. During the times I’m supposed to be having a period but I’m not because I’m on the pill (like now), I’m still in enough pain to need crazy amounts of painkillers. I’m worried about the beginning of next month because it’ll be my first period in 3 months and I’m going to ask the doctor for Tylenol 3’s and Naproxen to have on hand in case it’s hellacious.

My day to day pain has been manageable and I can do things I normally haven’t been able to do, like dance around my house like a crazy person, but despite the extra hormones pumping through me, I still seem to be on some sort of painful cycle. What sucks is that if I go back to the specialist next year and tell him that, he’ll start pushing for the Lupron so I probably won’t say anything.

Okay that’s every thought in my head right now – well, every sharable thought – so I think I’m gonna go find something else to do.

And I don’t give a damn if you don’t like me
Cause’ I don’t like you cause you’re not like me

- Shut Up by the Bloodhound Gang

Sometimes I don’t blog because I don’t really have anything to say. I figure it’s better to just say nothing than to ramble on about the weather or the local sports team, don’t you agree?

Honestly, not a whole hell of a lot has been happening in Sunnyland. As I mentioned in Live Journal (which I update much more frequently than my site, FYI) I’ve lost almost 9 lbs in 5 weeks and the only thing I’m doing differently is eating eggs for breakfast every day. Apparently protein within 2 hours of waking up kickstarts your metabolism and causes your body to “run” faster, burning more calories and fat. It appears to be working for me and at the rate I’m losing weight, if this keeps up anyway and doesn’t plateau on me, I should be back to my normal weight by my birthday (March 1st). This is happy happy news.

In less happy news, Blake did not get the job he applied for 2 weeks ago, which means that our dream house is probably not going to happen. After Xmas is over with, though, we’re going to be working on getting our house ready to sell because the second Blake gets a position in Scarborough, it’s going up and the search for another house will begin. We’re still going to look for a house in Cookstown because we really like the town, but basically most of Southern Ontario is a possibility so among all the little towns, I’m sure we’ll find something just as perfect as the house we were looking at. And hey, who knows? Maybe the house in Cookstown will still be on the market by the time we get our ducks in a row. It’s been on the market for over a year and keeps dropping in price, so who knows how this will all play out? Anyway, I’m not worried about it or bummed out or anything. Everything works out in the end.

I haven’t been painting. Basically, I have a very small house and until I sell some of the paintings that are already finished, I don’t really have much room to create any more. The one I’ve been working on over the past couple of months (that I’m not happy with) keeps getting moved from the coffee table in my office to the washing machine and back again about 20 times per week because it’s constantly in the way. I think to get that one done, I’m going to have to take a trip to Michael’s and while I do have a little money set aside for that, we just haven’t had the opportunity and I haven’t had the desire to actually go. It’s just discouraging to have 8 finished pieces up for sale and no buyers. Not that I create art just to sell it but I definitely get inspired and I stop feeling like I’m crap from people buying. I know it has more to do with the economy than my worth as an artist, but when people have said negative things about you as far as the latter, it’s easy for those little negative thoughts to take over and the only cure I’ve found for those thoughts is a sale.

Xmas is going to be here soon and I don’t even want to think about it, but the neighbours keep bringing it up because they actually like Xmas (wtf, crazy people) so it’s been on my mind. I’m just not looking forward to driving 2 hours to my dad’s house on Xmas Eve, being bored out of my skull up there for most of Xmas Day and then having to leave before dessert is served after Xmas dinner because we have a 2 hour drive back home and I have to get up early to cook the next day for my mother (and this year, probably my mother’s boyfriend and his son). Also this year we’re not taking the dogs up north with us and while I thought that would cause me less stress (the neighbours are going to feed them and let them out because they’ll be home), I think it might be causing me more stress because I don’t like people in my house. At the same time, last year I was so pissed off at my dad because the dogs have to stay in the garage when they’re up there and he didn’t clean out the garage for them. They only had the space of a large blanket to move or lay down on, the rest of the garage was full of a van or flooded. My dogs are a part of my family and my dad knows this and it really bugged the shit out of me that he couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t take the time to accommodate them. I didn’t sleep most of Xmas Eve last year because I was worried that my dogs were unhappy, and rightly so, they practically had to sleep in a puddle.

But I should probably not even worry about it. Wayne & Judy will take care of my dogs as if they were their own. They know how much my dogs mean to me and everything will be fine. I just worry, especially when Lucky’s separation anxiety is so bad that he’s been known to break through windows trying to find us. He seems to be fine as long as Hoover’s here, but I’ve never left them alone in the house as long as we’ll be gone over Xmas so I can’t help but worry that we’ll come home to a broken window and no Lucky. I’m thinking I might keep the dogs in my office over night just so that won’t happen but I can’t figure out if that’s cruel or not. (It *is* a big office…) I dunno.

The good thing about Xmas is that I’ll finally be meeting my youngest sister, Rachael. I think She’s 9 months or so now and I’ve still never met her! I have to start working on a painting for her for Xmas like the ones I did for Raili and Madison last year.

I got an e-mail from the Ontario Arts Council about applying for a $5000 arts grant but I deleted it. I got turned down last year because I could only come up with $1500 worth of things I’d do with the money and I can’t even fathom what I’d do with $5000. They want a detailed, itemized list of your plans and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I run my art business on a budget of like, $100 every 3 months (if I’m lucky), $5000 would last me YEARS. But they don’t want to hear that, they want to hear that you’re going to do fabulous things and spend that money within a year and I’m just not capable of doing that…yet. I’m doing these girls for right now but really, I haven’t found my niche as an artist yet, I’m still working on that, and until I do, I can’t really plan for that kind of money. I mean, I couldn’t even usethat money to like, outfit my “studio space” because my “studio space” is basically a 2nd living room where my only work space is my desk, which needs clearing off every time I start a project because it gets used for daily stuff, and the coffee table. There’s an elliptical in here and a million laundry baskets because the dryer is in here too and there just isn’t room for something like a canvas rack or anything like that. So whatever, I’m not applying for the grant this year, or any other year, until I have a proper studio space and have justification for $5000.

Wrapping up…a few weeks ago, Blake and Judy taught Wayne and I how to play euchre and now I’ve become a euchre fiend. Tonight we’re going over to Wayne & Judy’s to play and I’m really looking forward to cleaning Blake & Wayne’s clocks.

So that’s life right now. Not good, not bad, just…life.

I’m up and I’m thinking.

Maybe because my mom’s moving, moving’s just on my mind. Or maybe not because moving is almost always on my mind.

Blake’s job in Barrie isn’t the most secure job in the company. Layoffs are happening left, right and center and we worry constantly that he’s going to get the axe. For those who don’t know, he works for a national telecom in the Barrie office as the on-site IT guy. His primary job, and this is my interpretation of it because I don’t totally understand all the things he does, is to fix computers and site. If someone needs a mouse, they come see him. If someone needs 50 computers moved from one end of the call center to the other end, he gets out his trolley and does it. If someone needs Powerpoint on their computer, he takes ahold of their computer remotely and installs it for them. (I’m only using Powerpoint as as example because it’s the only software he installs where I actually know what it does, heh. Also there are “at-home agents” out of the Barrie office and he services and troubleshoots their machines, as well as installs software for them.) But this is probably only about 5% of his job, from what I understand. The other 95% is helping teams across Canada do what they do which is stuff on a nerd level I can’t even explain. Database and Oracle crap. Fixing problems that some teams themselves haven’t been able to solve, problems that he doesn’t even technically have clearance for but he knows the answers so they  come to him anyway.

Technically, his team is in Scarborough, which is an awful, filthy place just north-east of Toronto, so their stuff comes first, but honestly, just from talking to him after work, it seems like he does much more stuff for the teams out west…and gets paid the least for doing so. It’s possible that the powers that be would decide that they don’t need an on-site IT person in Barrie and just send someone up from Scarborough once a week to change tapes (I don’t know what that means but it has to be done once a week, something to do with the servers) and while they’re there, do the on-site grunt-work. The at-home agents can be serviced remotely. This is what I mean by his job not exactly being the most secure.

The other thing is that in his position, I kinda think he’s making all he’s probably ever going to make. And with every minor raise they give him in his current position, that actually makes his job less secure. Or at least this is how I understand things to be by what he’s told me.

As a result of all of this, he’s been keeping his options open and networking with people within the company to hopefully get a better position…somewhere. The thing is, as I said he works with teams all across Canada and the teams that he’d like to be a part of are mostly out west. Working for a large Canadian telecom means that where things stand right now, we can literally choose where we want to live – anywhere in the country – and then he can apply to be on the team located there. Our other option is for him to physically join the Scarborough team and we move to one of the surrounding suburbs, which just so happen to be the towns I grew up in (and all but fled from when we moved here).

I’m grateful that we have a house. I’m proud that we worked hard together to sacrificed and save up money for this house and were homeowners before most of our friends. (Actually, now that I think about it, all of them and in my case, I was a homeowner before the age of 30.) But the thing is, I don’t like our house. It’s a functional house, it’s a roof over our heads, it is not the house I want to spend the rest of my life in. All of our bedrooms are so small that they fit a bed and a dresser and that’s pretty much it. We have to keep our towels in Wes’ closet because there’s nowhere else to put them. There’s vinyl siding on the biggest wall of my office because it used to be an exterior wall. Our kitchen disgusts me on a daily basis. All of our baseboards are made out of compressed cardboard and we had to remove the ones in the bathroom because they BLEW UP with moisture because the fan doesn’t do shit for ventilation. There is mold on the bathroom ceiling because they didn’t use mold-resistant paint in there. Our bathroom needs gutting in the worst way. Literally the only two places to put the cat litter in this house is in the bathroom, where it makes a mess (and is currently) or between the furnace and the dryer (where she won’t use it because of noise). The washing machine is in a hallway that serves as the “laundry room”, while the dryer is by the back door in my office. The fenced-in backyard is nice & all, but the chain-link fences – ours and both of our neighbours’ – are literally collapsing under the weight of annual snowdrifts. Our driveway needs repaving and re-tarring (???) because it has dips and grooves that makes it a real whore to get out of in the winter no matter how well you shovel.

I could go on for like, 3 more paragraphs. The fact is, this house was a fixer-upper when we bought it, we’ve fixed things up here & there but since we don’t intend on being here very long and don’t really have the money, we haven’t done a whole lot with it. As I said, it’s a functional house, it’s not a pretty house with any nice architectural features. It’s a white box with a bunch of boxes inside it and badly outdated everything. This is not the house we’re spending the rest of our lives in.

The original plan, before learning that Blake’s position could magically go “poof” at any moment, was to stay in Elmvale. We were hoping that in his current position, he’d be able to make enough money for us to sell this house and move into either one of the nice brick Victorians downtown or one of the nice old farmhouses outside of town. But now we’re thinking that looking elsewhere is the better idea.

If he got a position in Scarborough, we have a lot of choices as far as where we could move. There’s always Stouffville, where I grew up, which would be about a half hour to 40 minute commute, but the property taxes are really high there as the town grows into a city so living in town would be an impossibility. That leaves the smaller towns surrounding it which adds more time onto his commute. There’s Uxbridge, where Madison and I lived for the first 2 years of her life, but my fear with that one is that Madison’s father has family there and none of them are mentally stable and that could cause problems for us. Same with Port Perry. That’s my triumvirate. I would like to live in any 3 of those places but they all come with their own problems.

There’s a tiny town (village?) outside of Newmarket and Aurora called Snowball that we’ve been keeping an eye on because his commute would only be about half an hour and it’s in the middle of nowhere with plenty of pre-1930’s farmhouses. Not to mention the fact that it lays within roads that I know and would potentially drive on and is close enough to Stouffville that I could go into town and do stuff rather than sitting at home. But the thing is, we’d have to decide where we’re moving to before he applied for a position in Scarborough.

The other teams he could potentially get on are in Alberta and British Columbia. I really don’t want to move to Alberta. Alberta is full of redneck Conservatives and by all accounts, I would not enjoy my life there should that be our final destination. Alberta would always make me miss home (I’ve lived within 2 hours of Toronto my entire life) and I see absolutely no benefit whatsoever to living there. They have worse winters than here, less sunshine, less everything.

Now BC, I would move there. I would love to be near the ocean (as much as I think salt water is gross), I would love the fact that it barely snow there, I would love the fact that they get more sunshine than here and there are certain communities that I wouldn’t mind living in. But the thing with BC is that the cost of living is much higher there than here and I’m not sure how that would work out even if Blake got a raise. We were looking at houses there last night on Realtor.ca and as things stand now, we can’t afford any of them. And the main community I would like to live in, called Salt Spring, which is an island, is too far of a commute for where Blake would be working, so that’s out.

And again, I don’t want to move until we find what I’m referring to as our “forever home”. I don’t want to bounce around and never set down roots. I want a fucking house that I care about enough to actually paint and fix up because we’re going to be there for the rest of our goddamn lives. I only want to move one more time – ever.

And then there’s our little issue of not agreeing on where to live. I want to live in the middle of nowhere, Blake wants to live in a neighbourhood. His argument is that a neighbourhood is better for the kids because they’ll be able to walk to their friends’ houses and if we live in the middle of nowhere, we’ll constantly have to drive them to their friends houses. Well, the thing is, we live in a neighbourhood now and while there are 3 girls on the street that Madison plays with on the weekends, none of them are her friends at school. And Wes has no friends on our street. So even though we live in a neighbourhood RIGHT NOW, we still have to drive both kids to see their actual friends from school. This is what happens in Ontario, no matter where you live because kids get bused in from all of the rural communities and your kids make friends with who they make friends with. They don’t usually become best friends with a kid on their street just because they’re there.

The other thing is that I want LAND. You don’t get LAND in a neighbourhood, you get a postage stamp sized backyard and that’s it.

So I’ve pretty much won that battle and we’re looking at houses in more rural areas in every province we’re looking at.

I’m just sick of feeling like I’m waiting for life to begin. It’s hard to be a homemaker when you hate your fucking home, when you hate your fucking town and when you know that none of what you have right now is permanent. The kids function, Blake functions, but I so obviously do not thrive here and I think it’s time to set the wheels in motion for change to happen before Blake loses his job and we’re fucked and before I lose my goddamn mind again.

The fact is, I’ll never have friends here. Yes I hang out with Wayne & Judy and I like them and everything, but they’re much older than us and while yes, they are friends, we wouldn’t invite them over to have any political conversations ever. We wouldn’t invite them over, period, because they like their house better because they can smoke in it. Blake has friends at his work but I have this weird thing where I’m not comfortable mixing work people with our life outside of work. I don’t think that’s right. So they’re his friends and he goes to their parties.

I…have no one. I have Wayne & Judy and the internet. That is my social life. And that’s all I’m ever going to have because we don’t fit in here. Yeah we have Ronny & Alex too, but I see them so rarely, they might as well be internet friends.

So it’s time for change, but I don’t even know where to begin.

On Monday, Blake’s cousin’s wife succumbed to cancer (very young, it’s a very sad story that’s not mine to tell) so he left for Michigan on Tuesday and won’t be back until Thursday night. This means I’m home alone with both children without a car.

He left me $40 in cash in case I needed it and yesterday I needed it. We were out of milk and potatoes, among other things and Wes is sick and needed cough medicine, so even though he said “we have like, no money so if you don’t have to spend it all, don’t”, I did, because cough syrup is expensive stuff, especially in this very small town where you pay for convenience and limited shelf space in every store.

So yesterday when Judy got home from work, I asked her if she would drive me to the store and the pharmacy, which she did and she came in with me both places so I didn’t freak out. I bought her Chapstick instead of giving her gas money because she’s out, with no money and she’s a Chapstick fiend like me. First we went to the pharmacy, which went fine, then we went to the grocery store where I zipped around grabbing all the things we needed as if it were a gameshow so we could get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. She grabbed the 2 cases of Coke Zero, I grabbed the groceries and bag of potatoes and we walked out to the parking lot towards the car. Well, all of a sudden the end on one of the cases of Coke split open and Coke cans flew everywhere! A man helped us “catch” the ones that were salvageable while we left the ones that were punctured and spraying everywhere. We were damn near pissing ourselves laughing at these stupid Coke cans spraying all over the parking lot with such force some of them were actually spinning. Normally this would be a situation where, if I was alone, I’d probably freak out and cry, but because Judy was there and she was the one carrying the Coke cases, it was okay and laughable and after we rescued the rescuable, Judy drove us back to her house and then she helped me carry everything back to my house. JUDY IS A GOOD FRIEND.

So that was my adventure last night. Because he needs cough syrup every 6 hours, I’ve kept Wes home for the last 2 days, but I think I’m going to send him to school tomorrow because he doesn’t seem to be coughing as much (he was coughing so much he was throwing up yesterday) and if I give him syrup before school, he should be okay until I can give him more after school. Really, I kept him home today and yesterday because what the hell would I do if I get a call from the school saying he’s sick and has to come home? I have no car to come pick him up and Judy’s at work! But I think he’s fine to go in tomorrow.

Madison took out the garbage last night so we didn’t miss garbage day, which is a miracle because I don’t do garbage so I don’t even know when garbage day is to begin with let alone when it is after a long weekend.

Last night I made turkey pot pie with our Thanksgiving leftovers and Pilsbury crescent roll dough and I gotta say, it turned out to be really amazing. Judy suggested it and wanted to make some herself but she didn’t have any Pilsbury dough. They were on sale last week, 3/$4 so I happened to have 3. She only needed 1 and I only needed 2 (I made mine in a bigger dish than hers), so I gave her one and it worked out perfectly. I’m going to feed it to the kids again tonight unless they’d rather have grilled cheese or Kraft Dinner because I don’t feel like cooking. I’ve done a LOT of cooking this week already and dammit, I can have heat-in-the-over spring rolls for dinner.

Speaking of food, Wes hooked up the Wii Fit for me this afternoon so I could weigh myself and I’m down almost 2 whole lbs. The last time I weighed myself with it was about a week ago where I’d lost 1 lb. Maybe my shrink and Blake were right about this whole “eating protein for breakfast” thing, which I’ve been doing pretty religiously even though eating so soon after I wake up often makes me feel nauseous. That’s the only thing that’s changed this month, I haven’t been doing more or eating less, I’ve just been having breakfast pretty much every day at least 2 hours after I wake up and it’s always eggs. Luckily, eggs are one of my favourite foods, so it’s unlikely I’ll get sick of them any time soon.

The other thing that’s changed, now that I think about it, is that I’ve been going to bed and getting up earlier most days. I’ve been going to bed around 12:30am and getting up around 9 or 10am through the week, only staying up retardo late on the weekends. I don’t know if that makes a difference when it comes to weight, but I think it might be making a difference in regards to mood. I’ve been stable, with the exception of one bad day involving a stupid amount of coffee, and in a good mood pretty much non-stop for the past month & a half, which I chalk up to my shrink upping my meds. Unfortunately, in doing that I’m in a creative rut and I don’t like that, but I’m not really sure what I can do about that. I’m going to call her next week and ask. The last time this was an issue, she upped my Welbutrin to counterbalance things (after upping my gabapentin and ziprasidone, which is what she did this time too) so I’m going to remind her of that and see what she thinks.

I’ve also been very good with doing my light therapy. I tend to skip it on sunny days because I don’t see the point in doing it when the sun’s out, but I’ve been doing 30 minutes just about every day for 6 weeks now and I’m fairly certain it has a lot to do with my perpetual good mood, as much as I hate to admit it and as much as I feel stupid watching tv or reading with this glaring light in my face. But really, there’s no other explanation.

I’m feeling more and more like myself every single day, except for the creative drought I’m in. That’s not like me. Usually I have ideas practically leaking out my ears and right now I don’t have a single one. I’m still stuck on that painting that’s been on my coffee table for about 6 weeks and I’m at the point where I think I’m just going to put it in the closet and not even think about it anymore. I know more or less the execution I’m going for and until I sell a painting and have money to blow at Michael’s and Curry’s on stuff that “might” work for it, I think it’s time to stop thinking about it and move onto something else.

I’ve been kind of walking around the pile of wood that’s been sitting on my floor since last winter so I think when Blake comes home and children aren’t demanding my every waking moment, I’m going to get a piece out to play with & see what happens. I’m reading this book called Living the Creative Life, as I’ve mentioned before and some of the artists in that book talk about having to touch their materials before an idea comes to them and I’m curious to see if that’ll work for me too. I’m normally an “idea first” kind of creator and “play” isn’t really in my vocabulary unless we’re talking Sims, so it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens.

This week I’ve been besieged by cramps. My body knows it’s supposed to have a period in about 5 days and is letting me know, but what it doesn’t know is that I’ll be starting a new pack of birth control pills right away tomorrow instead of letting myself bleed and I’m curious to see what my body will have to say to that. When I was 16 I went on the pill for a year straight with no breaks for periods but it was so long ago I can’t remember what it felt like so I have no idea what to expect with this, besides potential breakthrough bleeding.

Anyway, that’s all I really have to report. Blake’ll be home tomorrow and the dogs will have to find a new place to sleep and things will be normal again.

So for some ungodly reason I’m up at the crack of dawn and really wishing I could get back to sleep. It all started with having to pee, then Lucky whining to go out, then Lucky whining some more after he came in, then the children being awake…so I guess now I’m just UP.

According to The Weather Network, we’re supposed to get our first taste of snow on Thursday and I cannot even begin to express how thrilled I am about this. [/sarcasm] All week, with the exception of Thursday, it’s been nothing but cold drizzle and grey skies and while I’m doing light therapy with my super fancy light box, it’s hard for this weather not to affect your mood. (Although I’ve been oddly upbeat in general, which is strange for me for this time of year.) Anyway, last year we didn’t get our first snow until mid-to-late November and I know this because it was Steph the Geek’s wedding and we had a hell of a time driving back home.

On Thursday, in a fluke of nature, the sun actually shone and it went up to a whopping 17 degrees C and I decided that it might be one of the last nice days of the year so Wayne & I should get out and do something. What I really wanted to do was going on the trails by my house and take pictures of the leaves and stuff, but Wayne’s not much of a nature guy so I opted for going to the pharmacy to refill my prescriptions instead, which is something I’ve only done once since living here and I thought it would be something good because that would mean Blake wouldn’t have to do it on the weekend.

So that’s what we did. Really, the trip was uneventful. I got my prescriptions, my Tylenol 1, my mega-ibuprofen, lotion, eyeliner and some Chapstick. Exciting, I know, but the point is, I did it all pretty much by myself. Wayne stood in front of the magazine rack reading a National Enquirer about Patrick Swayze’s last days the whole time.

Anyway, minor milestone for me, I suppose. I wish the pharmacy here was bigger. I actually really like pharmacies, always have. I like looking at the makeup and the hair products and the greeting cards, but our pharmacy is microscopic so while they have all of the above, it’s only in very tiny sections with very little selection and it never changes. The only greeting cards they have are birthdays, anniversaries, get well soon and sympathies, along with a small section of Marjolein Bastin cards, which happen to be mine and my mother’s favourites, but even there the selection is fairly thin. (I did get one for my mom though, which I will mail by myself…eventually.)

Other than that, my weeks have been consumed by Buttercup, my return to Camwhores and this wretched painting that refuses to complete itself.

So first, at Buttercup the conversations are happening so fast and we have so many people posting now that even I’m having a hard time following sometimes! This thing is really starting to take off, which is something we didn’t really anticipate happening until the new year. Perhaps this month’s cover has something to do with it:

Recognize those boobs? Well you might! They belong to the one and only Sybil Hawthorne, who was gracious enough to take a crapload of pictures for us to choose from for issue #2. We thought this one embodied what we think Buttercup stands for and also gives a nod to breast cancer awareness month and thus, that’s why we chose it. I was a bit iffy about sticking boobs on our cover because we have such a wide variety of women reading the zine, but so far the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Speaking of boobs, here are mine:

Same old bra (I’ve had that thing for 7 years! it’s the miraculous “click bra” that Victoria’s Secret no longer makes!), much bigger boobs.

As I was explaining to some folks on Camwhores‘ tagboard this week, my return to the site, while nostalgic, isn’t going to be the same as when I was on the site before, getting naked all the time and being free with my body. The reason for that is simply because A) I’m kinda fat these days and B) I’m 30 years old now. My boobs aren’t going to get any nicer. I mean let’s face facts here, it really is only downhill from here in the boob department and I don’t especially want an archive of my girls’ decline. I reserve the right to absolutely change my mind, but that’s my thoughts on it as of now. For now, these guns are gonna remain holstered. Now, hopefully I make a few tips or something from the site so I can afford some new holsters (bras) because it occurred to me the other night that in the two years I’ve been gone from Camwhores, I’ve only acquired two new bras, one of which is actually a pretty hideous shade of army green and if I’m going to be showing off my boobs in a bra, it might be a good excuse to invest in some more. For example, I don’t even own a white bra, meaning I can’t wear anything white, which is especially unfortunate since I bought some white shirts this summer without remembering that little fact. Oops. :o/

Also with my return to Camwhores, I guess it’s now time to update the Webcam page on this site.

Someone asked me recently if my return to camming meant that I’d be adding a cam feed to my site and the answer is no. For one, I use WordPress and I wouldn’t even begin to know how to make a WordPress page refresh every 30 seconds, two, I always hated updating two feeds – one for Camwhores and one for my site – and three, only like, 10 people even looked at the cam feed on my site over the years because most of my audience were Camwhores members so it just doesn’t make any sense to add a cam feed to my site. Not to mention the fact that I’m not a members-only cam on Camwhores, so when I’m updating there, the whole world can see me whether they’re a paying customer or not, so there would be no point in having a separate feed for my site.

Over the last little while a lot of former Camwhores members have asked me what it’s like over there now and all I really have to say about that is to watch the tagboard for a few minutes during peak times (9pm is a good time, so are the afternoons) and see for yourself. People are chatting up a storm, the community vibe IS back, the forum has been improved (it now has an arcade!) and people are coming out of the woodwork left, right and center! Last night I actually talked to SINISTER HER on tag for crying out loud! Yeah, that bitch is still around! :oD

While it’s true that the scenery has changed quite a bit in the last few years and there are a LOT of girls I don’t know as well as the old school ones I do, we’re all pretty much the same animal and as per usual on the site, everyone’s really nice and out to have a good time. When I first started camming, part of the drive for me was the party atmosphere of it, putting on some good, loud music and hanging out with 50 of my closest friends and I’m finding that that vibe is absolutely, 100% still there and I’ve been having a lot of fun.

Is it worth the $30/month subscription fee? Hey, I dunno, I’m not your accountant and I’ve never had to pay for it myself, I’m just telling you what it’s like in the deep end and I guess all I really have left to say on the matter is, the water’s fine.

Now…this damn painting. It has been sitting on my coffee table for about 2 weeks now about half finished:

It is (thus far) called “The Two Sunnies” and yes, they are currently armless (doing arms is the absolute worst part of any of these paintings) and all I know is that on the left it’ll say “Je suis heureuse” and on the right it’ll say “Je suis triste”, but other than that, I simply don’t know what the hell to do with it. The girls are going to be holding hands, that’s another element, but in person the painting seems so “blah” to me, even when I envision the words on it and I’m not sure how to take it further. I hate having unfinished pieces sitting around for so long because the longer they sit around, the more likely they are to get spilled on, or have the cat sit on them or the dogs knock them over, so I really want to get this one done, but I lack the vision and the motivation to do so. Everything in my life right now (besides not having any money, which is almost always the case) is going pretty good except this one little thing… Plus! I’ve got nothing else coming down the pipe, my mind is completely blank when it comes to creative endeavors. Because of Touched By Fire, I actually have this backlog of paintings that I’d like to get sold, but I can’t put them up until I know what, if anything, has been accepted for the show. I should find out soon, though.

This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving and I’m going to be cooking a turkey on Monday. I forget how to cook a turkey though, so I’ll have to Google that, but it’s in my fridge right now thawing and I’m sure it’ll turn out fine. With it we’ll probably have mashed potatoes and a vegetable of some sort, corn probably, and I’m going to attempt to make gravy from scratch, which I’ve never done before and have no idea how to do. (So if anyone would like to tell me, that’d be good. I know I need cornstarch, which I have, I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to do with it.)

Also this weekend, hopefully today, will be the yearly destruction of my garden. All of the flowers are officially dead and that means it’s time for Blake to get out the weed whacker and cut them all down to help spread their seeds for next year. I hope it’s not too wet though.

Anyway, now I’m pretty much just rambling so I think I’m going to go make some eggs and actually start my day. Before I go though, because eggs reminded me, Blake and my shrink both swear to me that if I start eating protein for breakfast, that I’ll start to lose weight because that’ll kickstart my metabolism. I’m not totally convinced that eating MORE is going to make me lose weight and if I gain so much as a lb I’m kicking some asses, but I figure there’s no harm in trying it, I’m already fat, so every day this week I’ve been having eggs about 2 hours after I wake up, then dinner and t hen usually a snack after dinner while we’re watching TV. I haven’t weighed myself or anything but I feel better, so I must be doing something right. Or at least I guess it isn’t bad for me, exactly.

Okay, now I’m gone. *poof*

Wow, the current version of WordPress is sooooo different than what I’d been using. Slicker.

Last night two of my favourite people, Blake and my friend Kevin, moved my site onto a new server, fixing my FTP and making it possible for Blake to upgrade my WordPress install. From now on, I should be able to update it myself from within WordPress, so that’s a bonus.

While they did all that, I dyed my hairs.

Sexy, huh? Friday night, no makeup, yeah I’m awesome. Really though, I just wanted to play with my new cam a bit. I have obtained a Logitech 9000 for my re-entry into camming and my god is it ever a nice camera compared to old webcams. It’s almost too good. Part of the beauty of webcams, back in the day (I hate that term, I dunno why I just used it) was that webcams were just crappy enough that they didn’t show zits, moles, stretchmarks, cellulite or light freckles and I, as well as others, were more than fine with that. I haven’t played around with this cam a whole ton, but it’s a lot clearer in low light than older cams, meaning it’s going to show flaws better. I’m cool with showing my flaws, I don’t care, and I can hide my occasional zits with makeup, so I don’t care about that either, I’m just noticing this huge difference and find it very interesting.

I was hoping to get my cam up and running by the end of the weekend, but that’s seeming more and more unlikely as I mentally tick down the things I have to get done in the next two days. For one, I have a Buttercup article due tonight that I haven’t even started (although I’ve done all the research already) and all day today, my neighbour Judy is helping me with my FOOD article for Buttercup because here’s a secret: I don’t really cook or bake and when I do, it’s usually from a box. The only thing I make from scratch are roasts and whole chickens and the subsequent stews and soups from the leftovers. I make muffins a lot for the kids’ lunches, but those come in a back and all I have to do is add water. Earlier this week I was going to do my FOOD item all by myself, but I chickened out and asked Judy to help me because she actually has cookie sheets (okay okay, they’re cookies) that aren’t rusting out. (I use my cookie sheets for like, putting TV dinners and frozen pizzas on and they were hand-me-downs 12 years ago. Mine are probably older than I am and they really are black from stuff boiling over onto them and they really are rusting out.)

I decided I’d take the FOOD column for October because my neigbour’s daughter had this really amazingly easy recipe for something very appropriate for Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving is on October 12th) and also, I kinda wanted to get my turn over with. I’ll have to do it again in like, 6 months, but whatever, at least after I have 6 months to find another recipe.

So speaking of October, have you seen Buttercup’s cover yet this month? Because it’s extra awesome thanks to my friend Sybil Hawthorne and we’re all really really proud of both the cover and what we have planned for this month. Last month we weren’t sure if this whole Buttercup thing was going to fly, but this month, after gaining 110 members in September with activity in 40 different groups, we decided to go all out and have more fun with this month. Sooooo check it out!

As far as camming…I’m not sure when I’m going to re-add myself to Camwhores. I have to find, download and crack cam software, for one. I’m told ChillCam is still around, but now you have to pay for it and some girls use Webcam32, which I also think you have to pay for. There’s a free one called Fwink (I think?), but I looked at it last night and it left much to be desired so I don’t think I’m going to be going with that. I have EvoCam for my Mac, thanks to zwilliams, but 95% of my camming will be done with my PC because my MacBook’s built-in iSight is garbage so I need something for that too. Half of my 7 years of camming was done on a PC using ChillCam and the other half was on my iBook using EvoCam, so I’ll probably go with ChillCam if I can find a crack for it or a keygen or something. Any help with that would be greatly appreciated.

Yesterday I sold a painting, although I won’t actually be getting the money for it until Sunday. My neighbour’s daughter and her friend were scouring my Facebook a few weeks ago, looking at my paintings and asking for prices on all of them so I redirected them to my site. Ashley’s (that’s the daughter) friend really liked my “Emo” painting, which has been rotting on my site for almost a year now, but neither of them were about to pay $90 US for it because they’re just not the art buying type, so yesterday I offered it to Ashley for her friend for her birthday at a very discounted price because hey, we’re friends and I’m really really really need money right now. In fact, if anyone wanted to buy a painting or donate money to my site, now would definitely be the time to do it because I’m running dangerously low on art supplies and I literally have about $1.50 to my name right now.

Anyway, this was the painting Ashley’s friend liked so much, which she will now be getting for her birthday, along with a Bitch Barometer, of which I only have 3 left of.

So graduating! On Thursday morning I went to see my shrink and because I’m progressing with my immersion therapy, I’m doing my lightbox therapy, my meds are stable and have been in a good place the last 3 visits, she’s bumped me up from seeing her once a month to seeing her once every 3 months. I can still phone her if anything goes wrong or I need more meds between now and my next appointment, but I’m okay enough now that I don’t need to see her as often.

I have to go in and get a blood test done to check my thyroid, my blood sugar, my salts, my cholesterol and various other things which are all routine when you take the kind of drugs I do. She also put me on the waiting list for their metabolic somethin’ er other clinics which is basically where you talk to a dietitian in a group and s/he tells you how to eat properly in order to lose weight as almost everyone gains weight because of their meds. Now, I’m no longer on the medication that made me gain weight and I stopped drinking Coke and I’ve been more active, theoretically I should have lost at least 10 lbs by now, if not 20, but I haven’t lost a single pound since going off the drug and these blood tests are partially to figure out why. The drug I was on, called Risperidone, can slow down your metabolism, which I’m 99% positive it did with me, and it can take like, 5 years to recover from it. It also probably didn’t help that I was on this drug just as I was turning 30, when your metabolism naturally begins to slow down a bit, so I kinda got the double whammy and I think it is SO damn unfair. Luckily I’m not gaining any more weight, I’m just not losing any which bothers me more than you could even imagine, especially because I’ve taken many many steps with zero reward.

But anyway, I only have to see my shrink now every 3 months and that is a good thing. Also, the light therapy, as much as I’m loathe to admit it, really does seem to be helping, so I’ve been in a good place for a while now.

Alright, I guess that’s all I really had to say, so it’s time to throw on a bra and get over to Judy’s so we can make these damn cookies.