- Being without 24/7 access to a computer has made me extremely productive. I’ve completed 9 ACEOs and 2 paintings this week. The ACEOs I obviously posted to Etsy yesterday but the paintings are going to have to wait a few days because it’s rainy & overcast here right now and that’s not the best light to photograph them in. Also, the sides of them need a couple of light coats of varnish still, so I suppose they’re not exactly finished, but pretty damn close. (The varnish I use on the sides is different than the varnish I use on the front and it dries in seconds, so doing the sides will take half an hour, tops, for both paintings.) I’m not sure what I’m going to work on next, but I did get my sketchbook yesterday for The Sketchbook Project, so I think I might get started on that. The pages of the sketchbook are verrrry thin and there are a lot of them, so I think I’m going to have to glue some of the pages together for them to support the watercolour paper I draw/paint my girls on. In the rules they said “no glitter” because it gets everywhere and that’s just a rule I cannot abide by. (When I use glitter, it does NOT get everywhere because I mix it with glazing medium, which is sort of like a very thin glue (well, the way I use it it is) and I varnish over it, so the glitter does. not. budge. Hence why I will not be following the “no glitter” rule.) My sketchbook’s theme is “facing forward” because that seemed the most conducive to what I wanted to do with mine but I see on their website that they’ve added some new themes that look pretty interesting. I almost chose “boys and girls” for mine because I really should practice doing boys, but changed my mind at the last minute. I’m thinking of getting Madison a sketchbook so she can participate too but I have to wait until I make a few more Etsy sales for that to happen because my PayPal doesn’t exactly have a balance at the moment.

- My new computer should ship somewhere between the 13th-15th, or so I’m told. We suspect that it’ll actually be shipped out faster than that but those are the dates Dell is giving us. Yesterday Blake got a call from Bell asking if I wanted 3 months of free internet service, which I apparently get with the computer. He said no. (It’s like, 2GB data xfer/month LOL We exceeded our limit this month 8 days into the month and I think our limit is 50 or 75GB.) In regards to this computer, I am extremely grateful for having the friends I do. <3

- The day before yesterday Madison and I got our new glasses, which I’d love to show you but I have no cam software on Blake’s machine and I can’t find my installer for ConquerCam. I know it’s in my e-mail….somewhere….and keep in mind I’ve only deleted probably every 3 e-mails I’ve gotten since 2001 so there’s a lot to go through and the search function doesn’t appear to be working for some reason. I blame Chrome (which I hate btw, I’m not sure why I’m using it…)

Anyway, we got two pairs of glasses each and mine are a super nerdy clearish pink pair that fit perfectly and a tortoiseshell pair that I have to go in and get adjusted on Saturday. Madison got…actually I forget what her first pair looks like (and she’s currently sleeping) but her second pair are a sort of goldish brown. She wasn’t happy about needing glasses at first but now that she sees them as a fashion accessory she’s all about them.

- Speaking of Madison, somehow this summer the girl turned into an almost teenager. These pictures were taken by Wes (age 7) of Madison (age 12) the day before yesterday:

They spent allllllllll day doing photoshoots, Wes the photographer in his baseball hat and Madison doing a million makeup and wardrobe changes. She posted the pictures on her Facebook page but these are the two I liked the most and she said I could post them here.

I think it’s hilarious that my mom calls Madison “pretty girl” because that’s what we call the cat. LOL

- Speaking of my mom…the birthday card that I ordered for her from Etsy STILL hasn’t arrived at MY house and my mom’s birthday was August 26th. I ordered the card on August 17th and it was being shipped from Colorado. It’s a card, it takes one stamp, it’s not like it’s a package that has to clear customs or anything. I’ve ordered cards from this girl before and they came just fine and in time, so I’m going to send her a convo today on Etsy to see what’s what. Also frustrating is that my mother’s birthday gift which I also ordered from Etsy hasn’t arrived either. That one is a small packet that shouldn’t require any red tape at customs either so I don’t know what’s up with that. Since I ordered it on the same day I ordered the card, like literally minutes apart, I’m assuming something’s up with the USPS right now or maybe Canada Post because both should have been here at least a week ago. My mother’s gift was from a seller I buy from regularly and I had them ship it directly TO my mother and since my mom hasn’t e-mailed me about it, I’m assuming it hasn’t come yet and that’s frustrating me because my mother already thinks I’m a shit at the best of times. Guh.

So note to self, and you, I suppose, when buying gifts from Etsy, especially if the item is not from your country of origin, buy at least a month in advance if you can. (Although for Father’s Day I ordered a whole bunch of stuff for Blake from one seller and 2 months later I hadn’t received the stuff so I convo them and they said they lost my order, like the piece of paper my order was on, and that A) they were now out of stock of half the things I’d ordered and B) they were going on vacation THAT DAY so I had only a few hours to decide if I wanted whatever they could send me or if I wanted them to issue me a refund. I went for the refund. And I left them neutral feedback just the other day because the woman never cancelled all the sales and while she did send me a small package with lipbalm and a note apologizing for the mix up, I just couldn’t leave her positive feedback and I didn’t feel right leaving negative feedback on like, 6 items.

Etsy is great, I love shopping there not only because it’s all handmade but because I DON’T REALLY GET OUT MUCH and everyone takes PayPal, but some shops just really aren’t very professional and I think that sours the pot for the rest of us, both buying and selling.

Blake is distracting me my being half-naked in my office…rawr.

- The kids start school on Tuesday and I could NOT be more thrilled. I love them, I love summer, but I’m ready to have my days back to myself. Madison’s not allowed to use the internet unless I’m awake and Wes isn’t allowed to play outside if I’m not awake and that caused a bit of issue this summer because I’m on a LOT of meds where the primary side effect is drowsiness so that means I often have 2 naps a day despite the fact that I went to bed at 10pm the night before and didn’t get up until 11am the next morning. The kids, of course, resent this, Madison more than Wes because her whole social life this summer has been on Facebook, but it’s not like I can help it and all summer I’ve been trying as hard as I can to NOT nap so they can do the things they want to do and godammit, I’m tired. I cannot wait until no one’s home during the day and I can nap all I want guilt-free. That may sound selfish, but again, it’s not as if I can help it.

- I see my shrink next Friday, which I’m not looking forward to. I’ve decided not to confront her about the unprofessional “spoiled brat” comment unless she does it again. This might seem cowardly considering that that was the 3rd or 4th time she’d said more or less the same thing AFTER telling me specifically I was allowed to live my life however I wanted to and then suddenly having a problem with it, but yesterday she called and left a message on the phone for me about Touched By Fire and even though that means SHE NEVER ACTUALLY LISTENS TO ME, her heart was in the right place. She’s just so hit or miss. With meds, she’s great, but when it comes to therapy, which ISN’T EVEN HER JOB BECAUSE SHE’S A PSYCHIATRIST NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST, she’s just not very good. I don’t necessarily think that she herself is the problem, I think it’s more the fact that we estimated that she has over 400 patients to keep track of and that since my meds are more or less stable, I’m not exactly a high priority case anymore. Since that IS the case, however, I wish we could just skip the therapy bit because it’s a waste of both of our time and it’s really kinda just going through the motions and just be like, “so, do you think your meds are okay?” I say “yep” she says “okay then, see you in 3 months”. That would be awesome. I mean, we’ve already established that I’m not actively doing immersion therapy or trying to overcome agoraphobia at this time (despite the fact that I *am* getting better, it seems, without really even trying), so I don’t really see the need for pseudo-therapy just to fill up my timeslot on her calendar. Does that make sense? Like please, go help someone else who needs it. I’ve got my drugs, gimme a lightbox for the S.A.D. in October and I’m good. We’re in the maintenance phase of my mental health issues, I don’t need to sit in her office for 45 minutes, especially because I have no idea what to talk to her about because really, aside from the odd “bad day”, I’m good!

I do think that this visit she’s going to make me go for my 6 month blood draw WHICH I HATE, but they have to check my liver function and my cholesterol (my triglycerides in particular because that’s what the risperidone fucked with) and it’s a condition of being on the medications I’m on. *shrug*

We also have to talk to her about getting my drugs for free through the mental health clinic because even with insurance, we are struggling to afford them. In total, all of my drugs per month are a little over $1,000 and of that, we have to pay about $250 out of pocket, which is almost our entire grocery budget per paycheque so if there’s a way that we don’t have to pay that, that would be great because we’re slooooowly sliding into debt that we can’t get out of, but that $250/month would really help with that. I’m afraid though, that we won’t qualify for it because every time we’ve tried to apply for anything like this (like the mental health disability money I’m eligible for), they turn me down because they say Blake makes too much money. Which is stupid because if they actually looked at our bills instead of just his income, they’d see we’re totally fucked. They also look at gross income, not net, so that doesn’t help either and I’ll never understand why all government bodies do that but they all seem to.

I feel horrible taking $1,000/month away from our local pharmacy that’s been nothing but good to us, like fronting me drugs when my shrink’s on vacation and she didn’t give me enough repeats (which happens a lot, actually) but we don’t really have a choice. I’ll still get my pain meds from them, but that’s peanuts compared to my psych meds. It’s also not going to be very convenient getting my drugs from the mental health clinic because it’s in another town about 25 minutes away and Blake is going to have to leave work early, like really early, to make it there before they close at 4pm. And if I run out of drugs on a Saturday or Sunday, I’m fucked, so we’re (I’m) going to have to be extra diligent about repeats and how many days worth of drugs I have left. I don’t use one of those pill containers that you fill by the day (do you know what I mean?), but I’m thinking I might have to start if I want to stay on top of all that.

Annnnnd I think that’s all I’ve really got to say this morning, especially since my meds are kicking in and I’m getting sleepy, particularly since I’ve been awake since about 5:30am. I want to wash our bedding today so I better nap now and get that out of the way so I can wash it all when I wake up.

Hope you all have a lovely day!

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.

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?

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!

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)

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.

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.

So here I am.

As I’ve mentioned a few times already, I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love and right now I’m in the middle of the book where she’s just arrived in India and she’s talking about yoga. Admittedly, I know absolutely nothing about yoga. When I went last week, the teacher wanted us to fill out some paperwork that was half questionnaire and half  “you can’t sue me if you break your neck” stuff, but she asked the question, “why are you taking yoga?” Blake & I were the only ones filling out this information because the other 3 girls in the class are regular students and since Blake always finishes these things first and leaves me feeling awkward while I finish mine, I just wrote “to maintain weight” as my reason, but that’s not totally it and now I feel like she thinks I’m vapid for saying that because according to Eat, Pray, Love, yoga is much more than a body exercise. It’s supposed to be all transcendental & shit. The fact of the matter is, I don’t really know why I’m taking yoga. It seemed like a good idea at the time? It’s a good immersion therapy exercise? To take away some of my menstrual pain eventually? (I hear there are poses for that.) To show off how flexible I am as a party trick one day? All of those reasons? None of those reasons? I don’t know. What’s the right answer to that question? What is it she would have wanted to read under that question? I know “to maintain weight” wasn’t it.

By the way, I’m doing Hatha yoga, which according to Eat, Pray, Love is just your run of the mill yoga, nothing fancy. I think Kelley, our teacher, said in one of the e-mails to Blake that she was mixing it with another kind of yoga, but I forget what she said now. All I know is that last week was a positive experience and I’m actually kind of looking forward to this week’s class.

Last week’s class I found to be very very easy when I expected it to be very very hard. I did all of the poses more or less correctly, according to Blake, but I didn’t get into them the proper way and I didn’t do certain nuances of some poses, like in downward dog your heels are supposed to be flat on the floor but I’m not flexible enough to accomplish that yet because my muscles haven’t stretched enough from repetition of the pose. And I don’t really understand the teacher’s instructions most of the time. Like, she says to flex or release the muscles in your wherever but I have absolutely no fucking clue as to what muscles she’s talking about most of the time because the only muscles of mine I’m ever aware of is the uterine ones. And my thigh ones, but that’s a long story as to why…

So I made it through all the poses and my position in the class is right beside the giant wall clock in the studio and I was amazed at how fast the class went. I was expecting it to be an agonizing hour, like gym class where time just stood still, but it wasn’t like that at all. In fact, I didn’t even think to look at the clock until there were only 10 minutes left.

Since I didn’t know any of the poses to begin with and since she didn’t name all of the poses we were doing, the only two I picked up on was “table pose”, “child pose” and “downward dog” because those seemed to be the transitional poses between other poses.

Blake was apparently sore the next day from doing the class, but I wasn’t and I’ve been wondering why the whole time. Blake says it’s just because he hasn’t used a lot of those muscles in a long time, but I would guess that neither have I, so why wasn’t I sore? I felt barely any strain whatsoever during the class which made me think I was either doing it wrong (likely) or maybe my flexibility is just better than Blake’s (possible).

Right now I am in hell due to menstruation (my 3rd period this month, hooray for me!) and on the questionnaire she asked if we had any health problems that may affect our ability to do yoga and I put down “endometriosis”, SO, on Tuesday I don’t know if I should tell her I’m in hell before the class or if I should just not say anything and do the best I can. “They” say that exercise is good for cramps but that has never been my experience at all. I’ve never tried yoga for it before though, not really. I do a variation of “child pose” all the time for period pain where I sit cross-legged and bend the rest of my body forward the same as “child pose”, but I don’t think that’s an actual yoga pose and we don’t do “child pose” for very long during the class so that one won’t be doing me any favours tomorrow. I’m just hoping that this period hell will be over by then, but I’m not holding my breath.

And the only thing I have left to say about yoga is that Blake & I have brand new, spiffy yoga mats that are apparently in the trunk of the car and will stay in the trunk of the car (so they don’t get dog hair on them) and mine is pink. I don’t know what colour Blake’s is, but I’m guessing blue since that’s the colour of the first one he bought. It was $60 for both of us to rent mats for the class but I didn’t want to do that, especially because I suspect we will be taking yoga from this woman for a really long time because I actually like it but also because I wanted a pink one godammit and the ones for rent are either “gym class” blue or “crusty blood clot” maroon.

So that was yoga. I know I was brief about it last week and you guys wanted to know more than “it was eeeeeeeasy”, so there ya go.

In other news, I haven’t painted a fucking thing in a week because I’m a WoW addict who does little else right now than chew painkillers and pretend I’m a blood elf and that’s mostly what I intend to do until the end of next week, criticism be damned.

The thing with WoW, especially right now in the formation of a brand new guild, is that it’s largely a social game. I spend my days (and nights) killing fictional beings, yes, but I’m also chatting with about 15 other people while I’m doing it. And it’s like…okay say you stay off the internet for a day (the horror!) and you can’t get caught up with your friends list on Live Journal or Facebook the next day. WoW’s similar in that if you don’t log on for a day, you can miss a lot socially but the people who were on, have probably out-leveled you by about 2 levels and right now we’re all trying to stay within the same range of levels to be able to do dungeons and quests together. This guild ‘s entire purpose was to start toons from scratch and level them together. (A concept that’s been lost on some people who have decided to roll death knights who start at level 55, but whatever, good for them. I hope they like playing alone because that’s all they’ll be doing for quite some time.)

Anyway, as an officer of the guild and also the person with the most time on her hands, I kind of act as guild master when our guild master isn’t around, which is often because she apparently actually has a life. She pretty much only logs on to buy us guild bank tabs because she’s the only one who can do it and sometimes she levels her priest for a few hours, but she’s never on for entire days or nights like the rest of us are. (Which is fine, this isn’t a diss on our GM at all, I mean really, the job at this point is to just buy bank tabs and that’s pretty much it since our officers can add people to the guild or promote people.)

Basically the guild is being run by me, our friend from Camwhores, Warcorp and our friend Stephy. And Stephy got a job today so her time in Azeroth is soon to be more limited, I’m assuming. Warcorp’s our money-making machine who has almost single-handedly financed our first 3 guild bank tabs (I helped too, but nowhere near as much as he did) and since we’ve been filling up the tabs pretty quickly, I’ve been telling people what to take, what to sell, what to use and what to disenchant and I’m not even sure I’m doing that correctly because I don’t know for sure what a lot of the stuff we’re banking is for or what it does. I’m a WoW nerd, definitely, but I definitely have to ask the other WoW nerds of our guild for guidance on a lot of things because the game’s changed quite a bit since we stopped playing 2 years ago and the only profession I ever did seriously was alchemy (which I’m doing again) so I only really know what’s useful for that.

I’m hoping that Ditsy can spend some time with us every now & then to organize our guild bank a little better because I’m told she’s an expert WoW organizer.

Last night we did our 2nd guild instance, which was Gnomeregan and it took foreeeeever. Blake didn’t end up in bed until almost 2:30am, so tonight is probably not going to be a WoW night, especially since we still have yesterday’s True Blood to watch – so maybe I’ll get some painting in after all. Really, the two paintings that have been sitting on my coffee table for about a month only need arms, a signature and varnish to be finished, so I could probably get that done in a a couple of nights if I really wanted to. And since I like money, I should really want to.

Anyway, that’s all I really have to report other than the fact that both kids had excellent report cards and once again, both of them got principal achievement awards. The last day of school is on Wednesday and it should be an interesting summer with Alex & Ronny getting married, the kids going up north to Phil’s for a week or 2 giving Blake & I TIME ALONE OMG, my gardens and a few other things we have lined up.

So that’s that. I will now leave you with some lovely WoW screencaps that I’m sure you will all be thrilled by.

This Wailer is no match for Endometria!

My ride.
It sucks that when I get the next level of mount I HAVE to ride a brightly coloured chicken because there are no black high level chickens. I think that’s stupid.
The other day I saw a blood elf riding a zebra and I meant to look up how that was possible.

Blake & I drinking. He’s a troll shaman. And actually that’s a pic from last week, he’s had a change of hairstyle since.

Me riding a wyvern to destinations unknown.
This is how we roll on the Horde side, wyverns, zeppelins and dragonhawks.

And finally, the sun setting in Tirisfal while I wait for a zeppelin to Orgimmar.

]]> http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/06/28/oh-this-that/feed/ 0 http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/06/13/pussycat-pussycat-where-have-you-been-2/ http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/2010/06/13/pussycat-pussycat-where-have-you-been-2/#comments Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:35:32 +0000 Sunny http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/wp/?p=2841 So, I mean, I’ve been around…I just haven’t been updating with anything of too much importance or excitement or anything and this post is really no different, but I figured I’d tell you all what I’ve been up to.

Mostly I’ve just been keeping my nose to the ground and trying to win this contest over at Camwhores where I can win Blake a pretty cherry new laptop, which he could really use because his laptop’s basically held together with duct tape. That’s why I’ve been going so hard with the Camwhores posts, but don’t worry, at the end of the month I’ll stop pushing as hard as I am right now.

There’s also the fact that right now I’m #1 on the site (I could be #2 by now, I haven’t checked – Kaitlyn looked poised to overtake me last I looked) which means I can do shows every 3 days instead of every 7 days and I’m really trying to make the most of that as my Camwhores earning potential decreases in the summer months because the kids are home from school. And the truth of the matter is, the proceeds from this week’s hardcore camming is primarily for the kids, so I have cash money in my wallet to send them to McDonald’s for ice cream or so I can send Madison to the store on her bike to get the ingredients for pizza or so we have the money to get subs for dinner and eat them on the beach after Blake gets home from work or so, if Madison needs $20 worth of fabric to create something with her sewing machine, I can give it to her. So I can buy my kid Lunapads when she has her first period. Blake’s income has no room for things like this, but mine does, so I’m trying to make the most of it right now. Tips are appreciated, by the way.

So that’s the deal with Camwhores. That and I’ve been having a lot of fun over there as I tend to always do. And you probably would too. I’ll shut up now.

In other news, I have a garden. A garden that seems to be filling in nicely. These pictures were taken last week and it started raining on me today or I would have gone out and taken new pictures because the lettuce is starting to come up.

Beans!

Peas!

The whole shebang!

The tomato vines are getting pretty unruly, so the plan for today is to tie them to the cages as opposed to staking them, just to get them up off the ground. The stalks of the pepper plants are turning kinda woody at the bottom and the plants are getting big, which is good. The ones at the back are still a liiiiittle piddly though, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do about it. Peppers need a long, hot growing season and for the past week or so, it’s actually been kinda cold. Last week I even wussed out and turned on the furnace for a day because it was only 12 degrees (C).

We’ve also had a lot of rain, which means the peas and beans are almost twice the size they are in these pics and next paycheque (next weekend), we have to find some way to give the peas something to climb up on that’s CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. My suggestion was to get a piece of wood lattice the length of the garden and just stick that in the ground but I’m not sure how much that costs or how feasible it is. We’ll figure something out. There are wire “pea fences” you can buy, but the ones I saw in the Vesey’s catalogue were like, over $50 and I’d need 2 of them so screw that.

I haven’t even looked at the herbs I have growing in pots on the porch, so I have no idea what they’re doing and truth be told, I kinda forget what I planted (thyme & rosemary?). Oops. The front garden is filling in nicely in the parts that were established last year but the part where we cut the sod earlier in the spring is taking its sweet assed time. The filled-in part already has a metric fuck tonne of blooming bachelor’s buttons and the cosmos are about ankle high. The part we sod cut? So far all I see growing in there is more goddamn GRASS despite planting literally LBS of bb & cosmo seeds there. Hopefully with the rain we got this week and the heat we’re supposed to get next week, those seeds will start growing.

I am pausing this post because an oldschool song just came on my iTunes that I feel I need to share because to me, it’s such a summer song. This band (Chaka Demus & Pliers) has another song I like called “Tease Me”, which I’ll also embed:

Okay I’ll stop being random now. I’m gonna guess that Dirty will be the only person on my LJ friends list to appreciate those two videos haha

ANYWAY…

I’ve been making art. Quite a bit of art actually, I’ve been fairly productive over the past two weeks or so. I have two paintings almost finished, a new one started and I’m painting a very mysterious sign that’s going to hang beside my front dor which I will reveal as soon as it’s ready.

So here’s what I’m working on right now. This is the turquoise version of “Love Fairy” that of course needs arms, but don’t they fucking all…*grumble*….I haaaaate dong arms….anyway, here she is (and she should have been finished two weeks ago but I got sidetracked by too many things – oops):

The turquoise love fairy or “Love Fairy II”, as I’ve been calling her, is exactly the same as the original, using confetti glitter as opposed to rounded glitter, the only difference is her palette and her lips are bigger than the pink one’s. All she needs to be complete is definition of her wings using white metallic paint, arms of course, a wand, my signature and a 2 coats of varnish, all of which I should be able to make happen this week if I stop procrastinating. (Or as Jackie says, “procrasturbating” lulz.)

Also on my coffee table is “Shimmer II”. The original “Shimmer” had a kid-related accident and can no longer be sold. I’m still gonna hang her in my house, but she’s got some cracks now and she just can’t be sold, so I’m painting a new one.  Because I can’t really paint the same girl twice, despite it looking like they’re all basically the same, “Shimmer II” and “Shimmer” actually look quite different and since I sold “Shine” last week and the triad (?) is no longer complete, I’m debating as to whether or not I should actually write “Shimmer” across the top like the original or if I should just leave it plain. What do you think?

With “Shimmer II” there are quite a few differences between her and the original, some intentional, some not. First of all, her background is a lot more turquoise than the original and that’s basically because I’ve forgotten how to do backgrounds the way I was doing them a year ago. That’s another strike, I think, in the column for not writing “Shimmer” across the top because she no longer fits with the other 2 paintings in her series because of the different backgrounds. If you were to hang all 3 side by side, you could tel that “Shimmer II” was painted at a different time.

Also, I fucked up her hair, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late. The original “Shimmer”‘s hair was a custom mix of champagne gold and metallic white so it would look more sun-bleached and I forgot to do that with “Shimmer II”. You guys would never be able to tell the difference by pictures, but putting them side by side in person, you can tell.

If you look at the original “Shimmer”, you can see that her boobs are a lot more, hmmm, is “siliconey” a word? With “Shimmer II” I tried to make them a more realistic shape for someone who’s never worn a bra in her life. She will, of course, have jewels for nipples, but I can’t do that until I give the poor girl some arms. After she has arms, all she needs is my signature and 2 coats of varnish and she’s done, but I’m still really torn on the “Shimmer” issue. Seriously, do you think I should write “Shimmer” across the top or should I treat her like a whole new painting? This is why I’ve been procrastinating on getting her done, I just don’t know what to do. I’m leaning towards not putting it and just leaving her plain, but I just don’t know.

And like I needed to start another painting…but inspiration struck…here’s what I’m calling “She’s Like a Rainbow”, inspired by my internet friend Megan who just had her hair dyed this way:

She doesn’t even have a dress yet (and I don’t have one in mind) or a canvas prepped (which I usually do first but with the other 2 on my coffee table, I don’t have room!) so I’m not really sure what I’m doing with her at the moment, but there she is all the same. All I know is that she will probably have a purple bindi jewel on her forehead and her dress is going to be of the petticoat variety, although I don’t have any papers in mind yet.

Annnnnnd last but not least, I’m working on a sign for the front door of my office (which acts as the “front door” of our house, even though it isn’t actually our front door) and this project is priority #1 right now. In fact, as soon as I’m finished with this post, I’m probably going to finish watching The Runaways (is it just me or is this movie really really ungood?) and work on this sign. What the sign is going to say is top secret for now, but it’s something you’ve all heard me say (or write) a thousand times before so it should come as no surprise to most of you. It is also going to be the first of probably 3 signs that will hang next to my front door. So, saying all of that, I’ll show you the girl I made for it, tell you that it’s on wood as opposed to canvas and leave it at that:

Lettering always makes me nervous, so I’ve been practicing on paper first and it will be the absolute last thing I do on the sign. Really all that’s left to do is her dress, which will take like, 10 minutes tops, and then the lettering which I know is going to be metallic red, possibly with a black outline…I haven’t decided yet.  Part of me thinks the outline will look really awesome, part of me is thinking “why make it more complicated than it needs to be when you suck at lettering to begin with?” So we’ll see.

So as you can see, when I haven’t been whoring it up on Camwhores this month, I’ve been pretty busy creating and the rest of this month is dedicated to actually finishing. I signed myself up for The Square Foot Show, which is August 21st-September 5th at AWOL Gallery in Toronto but I have no idea what I’m going to enter yet. The original plan was “Sparkle”, “Shimmer” & “Shine” and they were painted expressly for that purpose last summer, but things happened and I didn’t do it last summer and now “Shine” is sold and the original “Shimmer” is damaged, so all that really remains is “Sparkle” sooooooo I’m just going to work my tail off creating from now until the drop-off date (August 10th) and just see what I come up with, then pick 3 to put in the show and that’ll be that.

The shitty thing about The Square Foot Show, which I know I talked about last year, is that you have to pay a $20 fee to get your work in, first of all, and then they sell your paintings for $224 each – which is fine since that’s only $4 more than I usually charge if you don’t count the exchange rate – but then AWOL Gallery takes 50%. And that sucks. But that’s apparently how galleries work and according to the people who give out Ontario Art Council grants, you’re not a real artist unless you show your work in galleries, so that’s the price I guess I have to pay. *shrug* I’ve decided that if I get turned down for another grant next year, I won’t be applying again and will just focus on building my business myself through Etsy. So far I think I’m doing pretty good, my only hang up is that I don’t get the work done fast enough and because of that, my shop is a little bare right now, as far as variety. All summer my focus is going to be 12×12 inch paintings, which is the size I prefer to work in, but I plan on doing some works on wood in the fall, as well as getting back to ACEOs since people seem to like those. (Although I wish people would buy up the ones I’ve already made! I have red & gold, black & gold, green & gold and purple & gold!)

Anyway, that’s what’s what. Blake is up now and I think we’re going to have breakfast sooooo I’m going to stop writing now and pay attention to my family. Hope you’re all having a great weekend and the rain’s not gettin’ ya down!

PS. True Blood tonight! w00t!

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:o(