Last night we went to Staples to buy Madison a 3-fold science project folder thing and Blake thought it would be a good idea to buy me a new chair because I’ve needed one for quite a while. Years.

My old chair, pictured above, was found in the garbage in 1997 and my ex welded the broken parts back together at work. I remember it was 1997 because that’s when I got my first computer and thus, needed a computer chair.

It was worn out when I got it of course, but I loved it and over the course of a decade and a half it got pretty…gross. Stains everywhere – to match the ones it came with – a hole in the seat, the arms covered in so much paint that they became hard and cracked. Obviously it was time to retire the old thing.

I like my new chair, though. It allows me to sit cross-legged, which I couldn’t do in my old chair, but I feel like I have to be careful with this one. Not get paint on it. I’m not sure that’s even possible, to be perfectly honest, but I guess I’ll try.

Right now Blake and Wes are out at Curry’s spending the rest of my paycheque. Nice, hardcover sketchbooks are on sale, 2/$10 so Blake’s getting a pair for me and Madison’s getting a pair too, for Easter. Then I’m getting another 30 x 30 inch wood panel for another uterus and then some paint for it from Michael’s and then my paycheque is GONE. I can maybe afford a pack of Fizzy Skittles and that’s like, IT. :o(

I was about to write “sucks to be me” at the end of that paragraph, but it doesn’t suck to be me. more than 3/4 of the world would be over the moon to be me. I have shelter, food, a bathroom, clean water etc. I’m extremely fortunate to live where and how I do and I need to remember that more often.  We all probably do.

Last night I was blog-hopping and I started at the Squam blog and kinda went from there and I thought it was kind of funny how most of the blogs I visited were all trying to figure themselves out. I can’t even think of an example off the top of my head and I can’t go back to their blogs because I didn’t bookmark any of them, plus I don’t want to call anyone out specifically, but they were all trying to be deep and like, I dunno, just deep I guess. And here I am, blogging about paint. Or a chair. Or glitter paper. Or any number of absolutely trivial things.

But the thing is, I think I’ve got myself pretty figured out for the most part. I did all that soul searching and trying to figure out why I do the things I do and all that crap YEARS ago and I heard someone once one call that “mental masturbation” which I kind of agree with, but reading these blogs made me wonder if that’s what people want to read in blogs these days. I know they did back when I was doing it a long frickin’ time ago and maybe that’s why so few people read this anymore, because I don’t spill my guts out the way I used to. Honestly though? I just got bored of that. I mean, I still do it to some degree but nowhere near the way I used to.

Not that I care if people read this, not like I ever did, I just find it curious how my readership has changed over the years and how it continues to change. And how it’s changing again, right now. For a while there, I had the Suzi Blu/art journalers reading along but I think I scared them away when I got sick and now I know they’re not coming back when I’m painting miscarriages on canvas. I don’t see myself being in the pages of Somerset Studio any time soon, thank GOD. Not that I expect to be on the cover of Juxtapoz any time soon either…

I’m babbling. That’s okay.

As I said, right now Blake’s out getting me art supplies and I’m a little worried that I keep spending ALL my money on art supplies for art that I know will never end up anywhere but on my own living room walls. The utilitarian side of me is really concerned about this. I’m also worried that the art I’m doing now, not being as safe and as buyer friendly as my girls, is….I’m afraid that my mom won’t approve. I normally don’t give a flying fuck what people think of me, for the most part, but it felt good when I was doing my girls, doing art that my mom approved of and that her friends could appreciate. I think that’s a large part of why I did them for so long, that and mental safety.

I cannot tell you how fulfilling it feels to have gotten “Me, too.” out of my head and into reality. Finally! And to have it look almost exactly as I saw it in my head. It’s like having a toothache and the relief of finally having it pulled. Now, I can’t say I’m completely happy with “Me, too.” and I can’t exactly call it my greatest masterpiece, but I do feel a great deal of relief that I don’t have this pressure anymore, pressure that I put on myself, to get it done and out of my brain. Ideas plague me. They keep me awake at night, laying in bed working out the technical logistics of how to make an image work. Like how to use crackle paste to convey the idea of barrenness, which I’m doing in the painting I’m working on now. I don’t want to tell you the ideas for the two wood panels (not that any of you care anyway)  but I think that they are going to be amazing.

My big worry with them though is that they’re both pretty big, 30 x 30 inches and they’re meant to be a set. Not a diptych but definitely a pair, but the amount I want for each of them, when put as a set, make them pretty goddamn expensive. A little unobtainable. But I think they’re worth that and I wouldn’t sell them for anything less (as long as they come out as well as they look in my head).

Blake says I shouldn’t worry about stuff like that and I should just paint, but I’m spending my entire paycheque on this stuff, I have zero money left over after supplies, I have to worry about this stuff. But then Blake says, “so say you’re not going to sell any of these, don’t you have to get it out anyway?” and I guess the answer to that is a definite “yes”. I hate sounding cliche or like an “artiste” but I really don;t have much of a choice in the matter with these. With my girls, I would sit down and think “what can I create today?” and start pulling out materials and then I’d get inspired by the materials and that’s how I’d create them. With this series of paintings, which really needs a name now that I think about it, I wake up with the ideas or they just pop into my head when I’m trying to fall asleep. Then as I think about them some more and work them out in my head, they grow larger and clearer and then suddenly, like today, they’re totally in focus and it’s like I have to look around them to see anything else.

I would kill to not have to be working right now and painting instead. There is so much work to do on these wood panels and I feel a little overwhelmed. I know I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, I know I’m capable of doing this, it’s just daunting. I wish I had a bigger studio space (although I’m grateful for the space I have now) and I wish I had assistants like Damien Hirst, who could do my basecoating for me while I work. Maybe I can convince Blake to help me with that when he gets back. Wes could help too and they could bond or something (which is what they’re doing now).

I’ve gotta say, now that I’ve worked out the details of these next two paintings, I’m more excited about them than I was for “Me, too.“. I think these ones are going to be better realized, a more concrete idea and even though I have no idea what to do with them once I’m finished, at least they’re on wood panels so there’s not a lot of damage that can be done to them in this house. The worst thing that could happen to them is they get covered in dog hair.

Anyway, I think I’m going to go sketch for a while in between e-mails. Sorry for babbling your ear off. Have a great weekend. :o)

I’m sad today. :o(

But yesterday was a good day. Blake and I went EVERYWHERE and I even got the “overshare” badge on Foursquare because I checked into 10 places within 12 hours. Apologies to anyone who follows me on Twitter because of all the 4sq spam. :o/

First, in the morning I had to get my blood drawn, which I already posted about. Because I’ve been really good about avoiding salt and drinking only water, I had 3 Diet Cokes yesterday. One with my McBreakfast, one at Great Canadian Bagel, where we went for dinner, and one when we got home. It was GLORIOUS. Oh lover, how I have missed you!

Then yesterday afternoon we had to go to H&R Block to get our taxes done and that was really boring. BUT I touched Blake’s penis in the cubicle, which is my new favourite thing. Just poking his penis in public places. I TOUCHED HIS WIENER AT H&R BLOCK! How funny is that?

After that we went to Curry’s where I bought a 30 x 30 inch wood panel that is so bloody beautiful I could cry. I have BIG PLANS for that monster! I already started applying gesso to it and I plan on working on it most of today. I also got something called a “gessoboard” which is a wood panel that has a professionally sprayed coat of gesso on it. It was pretty expensive though, $20 for a 12 x 12 (I usually get three 12 x 12 inch canvases for like, $15 I think), but I thought I’d try it out and see how it flies. Oh and I got a pink Sharpie posterpaint marker! A big fat one! No reason, I just wanted one since they came out. They’re oil-based now so theoretically they shouldn’t run when I varnish over them!

Then we went to Michael’s where I used a 20% off my total purchase coupon to buy paint for my new projects, which I’m going to show you now because they are beautiful.

This cantaloupe colour is so fucking gorgeous I cannot even stand it and it was on CLEARANCE for $1.49! Can you believe it! I got 3 of them because it takes 2 to coat a whole big canvas and this colour is going to be the background for the 12 x 24 inch canvas that I’m going to start painting soon. I think this might be my favourite colour of the year. I thought the orange sorbet glitter paint was amazing, but this may be better.

These are my beautiful browns! The one on the right, acorn, is going to be the background colour for my wood panel and sycamore bark is going to be the colour for the sides. You can’t really tell the difference between the two in the pic but sycamore bark is darker than acorn.

This pink is so light it’s almost white but it’s got a hint of cream in it too. It’s going to be going on my wood panel too, with the browns.

And finally, my pink carnations. These were on sale for $1.49 too, so I got 2 of them. I don’t have a project in mind for these but I figure you can never have enough pink paint – or at least *I* can’t, anyway.

After Michael’s we went to Great Canadian Bagel where I got a BLT, which is only about 400 calories according to my tracking app. It was absolutely delicious and I cannot WAIT to go back! I’ve only really discovered bagels in the last few weeks when we had coupons for free ones and I’ve decided that “everything” bagels are one of my new favourite things ever. I would kill for one right now. (I had watermelon, blueberries and a honeycrisp apple from France for breakfast – ooh la la! But now, 3 hours later, I’m starving…)

After that I sat in the parking lot while Blake went to Future Shop to get more blank DVDs so we can watch more movies that he downloads. I really really really want to see My Week With Marilyn and now I finally can! He also looked for a wireless thingy for our Blu-Ray player so we can stream movies instead of burning them but it was too expensive.

 Then we came back into town (our town) and we stopped off at home because my 30 x 36 incher was out on the back patio after I was varnishing it (it still needs a couple more coats) and it was looking like it was going to rain so Blake thought it would be a good idea to bring it in before we went to the grocery store, pharmacy and bank which turned out to be a good idea because 10 minutes later it started raining.

So we brought it in and then we headed back into town to do more errands. I sat in the car while he went to the bank and the pharmacy because those places are boring and if I went to the pharmacy I just would have spent more money, probably on hair dye (I’m trying REALLY hard not to dye my hair until it all grows back in – right now my new hair is only about 4 or 5 inches long).

After those places we went to the grocery store where I got fruit for breakfasts and I got lots of low-sodium snacks like rice crackers and rice cakes and these cheesy breadsticks that I thought would be a good addition to my veggie & cheese plates that I often have after dinner while I’m reading. As it turns out, I can have like *40* mini rice cakes, depending on the flavour, and still have it be low-sodium and low calories! And they taste pretty good! I’m a fan!

I also got more gherkins because I fucking love them, and I can’t remember what else. But it was a good trip!

And then we came home.

I showed Madison my paint but she wasn’t nearly as excited as I was about it. Today she’s going to the movies to see The Hunger Games with her class. They read the first book in class so I guess that constitutes an educational class trip or something. *eyerolls*

Anyway, that was my day. I’m gonna get started on this wood panel before Cheryl gets here to chance my dressing and speak of the devil, she’s here! Talk to you guys later!! Have a great day!!

PS. We also got the glitter paper for our party invitations! Gonna start making those soon, Deanna, e-mail me your address!

I woke up to a very sad scene. :o( My dogs had killed a bunny in the backyard. I cried a little bit and then I went outside to take care of it. And of course take pictures. Here it is:

Poor thing. :o(

I’m told by the neighbours that it didn’t suffer but still, my dogs are dickheads. I can’t believe they even caught it though, my dogs are fat, lazy bastards and bunnies are pretty speedy little things. Maybe it was sick. (They say a cat can’t catch a healthy bird, so maybe the same goes for dogs and bunnies?) Oh well. Nothing can be done about it now. I grossed Madison out by picking it up with my bare hands and putting it in the garbage bag. I don’t see the difference between picking up a fresh carcass and picking up a live bunny, personally.

This morning Blake made me “the tomato thing” that I love so much because I’m trying to eat big breakfasts/lunches and have my meals and snacks get smaller as the day goes on because that’s what my doctor recommended. One of my Twitter friends asked about “the tomato thing” so here’s the recipe (it’s a Jamie Oliver recipe from “Jamie’s Food Revolution“, which I highly recommend because it’s awesome & we use it a lot):

Cherry Tomato Sauce With Fresh Pasta

1.5 pints of grape or cherry tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic
a small bunch of fresh basil (we buy the frozen cubes and use 2 of them)
1 lb of fresh lasagne
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
2 pats of butter
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
4 ounces of Parmesan cheese

Cut the tomatoes into halves or quarters. Peel and slice the garlic. Pick the basil leaves off the stalks and put them to the side. Finely chop the stalks. Cut the lasagne sheets into 3 or 4 long strips and put to one side. Grate the Parmesan.

 Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Put a large frying pan over medium heat and add a couple of lugs of olive oil and the garlic. Add the butter and let it melt. When the garlic starts to brown, add the tomatoes. Give everything a good stir, then add the basil stalks and half the leaves. Add the vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Drop your fresh pasta strips into the pan of boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain in a colander over a large bowl, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the frying pan with a splash of the cooking water and half the Parmesan. Give it a good stir. Taste and add a little more salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

Sprinkle the rest of the Parmesan and the basil leaves, tearing any large ones up.

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This stuff is sex on a plate, I could – and have – eat it every day if it wasn’t so carb-o-licious. Definitely one of my favourite  meals.

All I’ve been doing this week is working on my 30 x 36 inch painting. I don’t really want to talk about it though. Weird right? Normally I can’t keep a secret to save my life and this isn’t really a secret exactly, it’s just that I don’t want to talk about it quite yet. It’s really no big deal, honestly, it’s just jumping back into where I was in 2006 with both feet.

If you recall, it was in 2006 that I had my psychotic break and created “Camp Tampon“. But what I was doing right before that was, I think, a lot more interesting than cute girls on sparkly backgrounds. And I’ve kinda decided not to do cute girls on sparkly backgrounds anymore. I figure if you want those, the ones I did before are available on Etsy and Zazzle and those are good enough. Maybe every now and then I’ll add a new design for Zazzle but I’m not going to do girls exclusively from now on. They just don’t interest me as much as they used to.

I’m still going to do the colouring book, I’m just going to take my sweet ass time with it and just work on it in my spare time rather than making it a full-time job.

My friends The Perlorian Brothers linked an article about Damien Hirst on Twitter last weekend and I started reading about him. I’d heard his name before but didn’t really know who he was and the more I read, the more obsessed I became and the more links I clicked. I just don’t understand why the art world singled him out and said “yes, we are going to make you, Damien, the richest artist in the history of the world” when there are so many more deserving artists out there. (I don’t know of any because I don’t really follow the whole art world but I’m sure there are better out there because Hirst didn’t really impress me all that much.) I guess suspending a shark in a tank of formaldehyde is sort of interesting but wouldn’t it smell? Why would you want that in your house?

I got clicking around on Hirst’s Wiki page and stumbled upon the piece “An Oak Tree“, which Blake thinks is stupid but I think it’s kinda genius.

I just don’t understand how artists can make a living from their art. The concept completely baffles me. Like, how do you make enough money to pay rent and eat and stuff? Let alone make enough to go on holidays or travel or make appearances at plavces and stuff like that. I know how Hirst did it but I mean like, more normal artists. It takes me like, 2 weeks to make one painting! I could never make a living from them!

I have so many paintings planned right now, it’s ridiculous. They’re just popping out of my brain and I can’t even get them on paper fast enough. For the next one I actually need a 24 x 30 inch or maybe a 24 x 36 inch wood panel, which is going to run me about $30 + shipping which I totally don’t even have. I already spent my entire paycheque last week  on the piece I’m working on now. This art shit is expensive! I mean, with my girls it’s easier because I already have a stockpile of stuff for them but these are different because they’re large pieces so I need large substrates and I just don’t have those “in stock” because I’ve never needed them before. Plus, I don’t have anywhere to store them to keep them “in stock” because my house is so friggin’ tiny.

Oh well, as per usual I just have to figure it out.

Right now I’m just focused on the work. Everything else is optional or a bonus or whatever. I just want to plow through all these ideas in my brain and create art that *I* want to see. To hell with everyone else. If you don’t like it, don’t look at it, y’know?

When I went nuts, I was terrified of using my imagination because psychosis was so much like being stuck in my own imagination, which is a scary place to be, believe me. SO that was in 2006 and it wouldn’t be until 2008 when I would use my imagination again and that was when I took Suzi Blu’s class and learned how to make my girls. But my girls were safe and not at all what I would normally do if I weren’t so scared of my own mind.

So when I “went there” last week and started working on this 30 x 36 inch piece, I got really scared that I was manic and about to lose my mind again. I was crying daily, afraid that if I went nuts that I’d lose my job again, but still working on the piece while Blake assured me that I was okay and that I needed to trust the medication.

I think I kissed mania right on the lips though. I’m almost sure of it. I’m okay now and it’s passed, but I wasn’t sleeping, which is a bad sign and I was just having strange thoughts that I can’t really explain. Like, one day I thought it would be a hilarious idea to sit the kids down and tell them we were getting a divorce but then tell them later that I was kidding. I didn’t DO it. I just thought, for a brief minute, that it would be extremely funny to do this. That’s not a good sign.

But like I said, it passed and now I’m 99% sure I’m okay.

Yesterday Blake and I made a decision on the gardens. We’re not going to do the front yard this year (for those new to the fold, my front “lawn” was replaced with a wildflower garden in 2006) and in fact, we’re going to plant grass seed instead. The reason for this is because if I have surgery in the spring, I won’t be able to take care of it and Blake & the kids don’t want to take care of it for me. Plus we don’t plan on living here much longer and the house will be easier to sell with a lawn. BUT we are going to do veggies in the back yard because they’re easier to take care of, they have the added benefit of being food and it’s a much smaller garden.

We don’t have any money right now but I hope to buy seeds sometime very soon so I can start them inside and have healthy plants to plant in the spring.

Last year Ruggedo got me these awesome upside-down hanging things that you plant cucumbers or tomatoes in and they were pretty neat. They didn’t produce very much but we’re going to try them again this year with tomatoes instead of cucumbers to see what happens. I think tomatoes will do better, personally.

And I think that’s all I’ve got in me today. I’m kinda feeling “blah”. I decided not to go to the Game of Thrones exhibition   today in order to stay home and paint on my day off. I just honestly do not even care. I like the show, but I’m not a fanatic and props and stuff don’t really excite me. I know it was my idea to go but really, I was just looking for something cheap/free for Blake and I to do together and he doesn’t care if I go or not so I’m just not going to go.

So that’s that.

Anyway, happy Sunday! I hope you aren’t too hung over this morning! *bashes cymbals together*

PS. Blake and I finalized our guestlist for our anniversary party last night and we’re going to order the invitations soon soon soon. I’m so excited!

PPS. “Indigo Ocean” is now on my site and ready for sale!

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

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me that I am this tired all the time. It’s like I have mono or something. I went to bed last night at like, 9:30pm and I got up at 4am. Then I went back to bed at 7am until about 9am. And I feel like I could go to sleep again right now and sleep for another couple of hours.  It’s a far cry from the mania-like state I was in over the weekend where I didn’t sleep very much and had crazy energy. I’m not sure why there was such a switcheroo.

Either way, I hate it. Give me mania any day.

On Tuesday I got a couple of surprise cheques in the mail, which Blake cashed for me yesterday and I dunno what bit me in the ass, but I decided that it was time to finally try SUSHI.

Actually, let me back up.

Last Thursday, I think, Blake went to work in Toronto and when he works in the city, I sometimes get him to stop off at the Zehrs grocery store in Barrie because they have an actual fish counter and deli (unlike our grocery store here) and there you can get salmon steaks, as opposed to fillets, which is the only way I’ll eat it. (Which is only partially true because I’ll eat salmon out of a can on sandwiches and I’ll eat tuna salad.)

Anyway, I got him to stop off there and he brought home some veggie sushi for himself. And I’ve been a little more experimental since getting sick when it comes to food, like, I’ll eat salad in the winter now (sometimes) for example and I’ll drink water (as long as it’s bottled or Brita filtered).  I asked him if I could try a piece of his sushi and he said yes, so I tried it and thought it was okay and said that I thought I would like to go to a sushi restaurant one day. He said next paycheque we would go to this Japanese restaurant he went to with his friend Charissa once where you pay a set amount and then you order from the menu as much as you want.

The reason I’d never really had sushi before is that:

- I don’t like plain rice.
- I don’t like pickled things.
- I don’t like seafood.
- I don’t like seaweed.

I’d tried sushi rice once before and didn’t like it. I’d tried seaweed before when I was in grade 5 and didn’t like it. And truthfully, I didn’t really *like* Blake’s sushi from the grocery store, I just thought it wasn’t totally disgusting.

That said, I have been obsessed with sushi for a long time. Like easily 10 years. I’m not a sushi expert, I don’t know what it’s all called and I don’t care, but I think it is THE most beautiful food that man has ever devised. Sushi is absolutely my food porn. I even have pictures of it I’ve had printed and put in one of my sketchbooks.

(Wes drew on this page when he was little and got a hold of a pen.)

I have a very specific art idea having to do with sushi that I’ve never put on canvas but I think I probably should sometime soon.

To say that I was stoked to try sushi last night is an understatement. I’d tweeted Ronny and Alex to see if they wanted to come with us because Alex knows lots about sushi and they did, so we met at the restaurant Alex recommended, called Akira, and they have a dinner “buffet” (like how I mentioned it works) for $20.99 per person, which I thought was a pretty good deal for the amount of food we got. (Although I do agree with the reviews on the site I linked that the waitstaff kinda sucked. It wasn’t especially busy but  it took us like, an hour and 15 minutes to have dinner between trying to order and the slow kitchen.) Apparently Akira is the best sushi place in town so I felt confident that I’d have a good first sushi experience.

For our first round, I ordered salmon rolls, tuna rolls, cucumber rolls and beef teriyaki, which is one of my favourite foods. I forget what everyone else ordered, except Blake who got sushi and something called udon that looked pretty nasty to me; those noodles were creepy.

I learned that I suck at chopsticks and since I just don’t give a fuck, I used my fingers and I ate a cucumber roll, which was the same, pretty much, as the rolls Blake got from the grocery store. The difference though, was that the seaweed was on the outside of the rice of all the rolls I ordered and it was on the inside of the rice on the ones from the grocery store, which I really would have preferred. Regardless, I ate the cucumber one and it was alright. Again, just alright. Not really good, not really bad, just. Period.

Then I tried a tuna roll and the stench of it before it even hit my mouth was almost too much to deal with, but I put it in my mouth anyway and chewed and it was just slimy and fishy and nasty.

I decided to try the salmon anyway, thinking maybe it would be different, especially because I like salmon a lot, but it wasn’t different at all, it was just slimy and fishy and nasty.

I ate all but one of my cucumber rolls because as it turns out, 6 is too much for me because after a while it starts tasting gross to me (the rice), so Blake ate my last one and I ordered more beef teriyaki, chicken teriyaki and tempura vegetables. I didn’t like the tempura vegetables either. :o/ I ate two pieces of broccoli and I tried a bite of eggplant (gross!) and while I liked the batter, it was hard to eat and not really worth the effort.

Ronny had ordered some kind of eel sushi with flying fish eggs on it so I tried a tiny bit of flying fish eggs but they tasted like bugs to me (or how I’d imagine bugs would taste) so I washed them down with Coke as fast as possible. I’d tried flying fish eggs in Vegas with Ana Voog many years ago but I’d forgotten their texture. (Seriously. Exploding bugs.)

All in all, it was a great experience but I think I’ll be sticking to looking at pictures of sushi as opposed to eating it. The smell of the fish really bothered me so I don’t even think I’ll be going to a sushi restaurant again either. The teriyaki was REALLY good but the portion was ridiculously minimal and I’m used to teriyaki stir fry so when they handed me a little plate with a slab of beef with some sauce on it, I was kinda shocked. Also the chicken wasn’t sliced all the way through so I had to tear it apart with my fingers because I couldn’t figure out how to get it apart with chopsticks. I also forgot to mention that I got chicken fried rice and it was horrible. It was just plain white rice with some soya sauce splashed onto it with peas and carrots and a few chunks of meat. It wasn’t really fried and it wasn’t really mixed together very well. It was the 2nd worst chicken fried rice I’ve ever had.

Having said all that, I think the restaurant was actually really good. Everyone else’s food looked pretty good and while I think the presentation did leave a little to be desired, it wasn’t horrible and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. And I think the price was pretty decent, like I said, for the amount of food we got.

I’m glad I got that out of the way so I can stop wondering if I liked sushi or not. It’s definitely a “not” and nothing anyone says to me will ever change that so don’t even bother telling me that if I tried “X” I would have had a different experience as that seems to be happening wherever I’ve mentioned it online. (Hello, I know what I like, okay?)

Despite not liking the food very much, I had a good time with Ronny and Alex. On Tuesday they met George R. R. Martin at a book signing in Toronto and they took my boxed set of the first four Game of Thrones books to be signed, which was pretty cool.

Maybe now I’ll actually read the books. How necessary is it to read the first one if you’ve already seen season one of the show? I like reading on the treadmill and since I’m supposed to be using it, I figured I might start with these.

Okay, I have to get back to my misterie projekt X giant canvas, I hope you’re having a wonderful week!

PS. I plan on putting certain old pieces of my art up for sale on my site (as opposed to Etsy) that I previously didn’t think I’d part with, starting with “Camp Tampon“. I don’t honestly expect anyone to buy them, but I figure if I don’t put them out there, no one really ever will so I might as well just go for it and see what happens.

PPS. Here’s an interesting article on the whole Pinterest debate: Copyright is Not the Problem, You Are! Here’s another one from the lawyer who deleted her inspiration boards. (Warning: She’s obnoxious and didn’t really tell us anything new. She just gushed like a 12 year old fangirl on how she got a call from the creator of Pinterest.)

PPPS. A big thanks to Alan for making our sushi outing possible! You rock our socks!

I am so in love with my husband it’s entirely ridiculous. I really only think about two things these days: Blake and painting. I’d like to be able to say that I’ve been in love with him since the day we met but that wouldn’t be a true statement. I was in lust with him since the day we met, but when we met I had a boyfriend so I didn’t/couldn’t act on it, however, the day my boyfriend dumped me (long story, we’re still friends today yadda yadda) I said to my friend Nicole, who was also friends with Blake, “what do you think Blake is up to?” and she FORBID me to go out with him. We, of course, ignored her, and we’ve been joined at the hip ever since.

Blake says that the very first time he saw a picture of me online (Naked Fan Fame on the Scratching Post website), he said to Nicole (the lead singer of Scratching Post) that he was going to marry me one day and obviously he made good on that. :o)

Anyway, ever since I got sick, or more to the point, ever since I started recovering from being sick, Blake’s been on my mind pretty much constantly because I’ve been so worried about him. It’s like…I remember going to the hospital in Midland because I had the worst pain in my stomach I’ve ever experienced in my life (child birth x 1000 kinda pain) and then basically all I remember is waking up in a different hospital and being told what had happened to me. More to the point though, I woke up and my husband was an entirely different person. He wasn’t the happy, positive person I’ve always known him to be, he’s been irritable, emotional, downright miserable at times and just unhappy in general as he finally has the chance to process the events of the summer when breaking down was simply not an option.

Slowly but surely he’s coming back to me but the problem is that he doesn’t know how to have fun anymore and we don’t really know how to have fun together. And to heal, we need to have more fun in our lives, more fun together, outside of the kids. I’m not talking about “putting the spice back into your marriage” kind of stuff (although we’re trying that too, not out of necessity but out of a sense of “why not?”), I’m talking about like, board games, going out for dinner dates and stuff we haven’t even discovered yet. The artist dates were not a part of that, that was for me and Blake doesn’t really have the greatest time on them because he finds buying art supplies really boring (because he’s crazy, obviously…).

On March 18th, for example, we’re going to see the TIFF Game or Thrones exhibition in Toronto. I saw an ad for it in this free movie magazine we get from our cable company and told Ronny about it so he could call the number and get us tickets because I knew Alex would want to go too. I thought that that would be something that didn’t cost us money (okay there’s gonna be lunch and parking) and something that would be adult fun with our adult friends. That’s the kind of stuff that I’m trying to incorporate into our lives to help Blake recover from my almost dying this summer. Fun things for us to do together, both large and small (and if anyone has any suggestions on things we could do, I’m more than happy to hear them; the cheaper the better because we are b-r-o-k-e).

Last night we went to The Stag Shop in Barrie, which is an adult store full of rubber dicks and various other sex paraphernalia. The reason we went was two-fold (and I’ve okayed talking about this with Madison): Madison has expressed an interest in a vibrator and I wanted to get flavoured condoms so we could engage in an act that was purely focused on Blake.

Now, obviously getting an almost 14-year-old a vibrator could be seen as controversial, I understand that, but she asked for one and I’d rather her do things the right way than to do what one of her friends did (stole her mom’s “back massager”, which by all descriptions appears to be a Hitachi Magic Wand LOL), or what another one of her friends has been doing (masturbating with Sharpies…) or doing what I did and start using mine when I wasn’t around because that’s gross. (She can’t use our showerhead like I did when I was her age because the hose isn’t long enough.) She’s 13, she’s masturbating. In fact, she started masturbating when she was like, 7 or 8, in full view on the couch in front of us and we had to have a talk about privacy – kids masturbate. Some parents don’t want to hear that but it’s true! So why wouldn’t you want them to do it in the safest, healthiest way possible?

So I chose for her this little pink vibrating bunny. I threw out the box already so I can’t link you to the exact one we bought but it’s literally a bunny figurine made out of that jelly stuff they make vibrators out of. It’s meant for clitoral stimulation and I did this on purpose because I don’t think, for reasons that I won’t get into, that she’s ready for penetration yet. She won’t even use a tampon. This bunny is pretty unassuming and when I gave it to her she genuinely seemed to like it. I made sure to confirm that she knew where and what her clitoris is and told her how I would use it if it were mine, but that she would need to experiment with it to find the best possible way for her to use it. We also told her about keeping it in a place where Wes wouldn’t find it, washing it after each use and in general, just how to take care of it. Oh and batteries for it, from this point forward, are to be purchased with allowance money.

All in all, I think we did a pretty good job with talking to her about it maturely and not embarrassingly, and that she came away with it with healthy curiosity. This is what I wish my mom would have done with me. If sex hadn’t been this totally mysterious, dirty thing I probably wouldn’t have made a lot of the choices in life that I did regarding it and I would have had a much healthier sex life than I’ve had most of my life. I think masturbation is the foundation for a good, healthy sex life and I feel that it’s important that my kids know how to do it and how to do it “right” in that, you do it in private, you do it with the appropriate things (ie. not Sharpies or electric toothbrushes) and that you don’t let it flow into other people’s lives (ie. you don’t leave your jizz socks in the family laundry hamper for someone to stick their hand on when doing laundry!).

Anyway, it’s something that you don’t really think about when they’re really little (well, I did…but most people don’t) but it’s something that I think parents need to be totally prepared for. And I’m not saying every girl needs a vibrator – although I do believe that, in theory! – you can have the same type of discussion with them and only talk about hands and fingers. It’s just that I told her a long time ago that if we could afford it, when she decided she was curious enough about sex to want to experiment with a vibrator, I would buy her one and yesterday I made good on that promise.

And before someone freaks on me for talking about this publicly, again I have Madison’s permission to do so. She thinks this is a totally healthy thing and that every girl should have a mom like me. She sees the girls in her class and how curious they are but how stifled that curiosity is by their parents (most of them, anyway) and she’s glad she’s not one of them.

Onto adult things…

Like I said, we also got flavoured condoms because I will not give a blowjob to completion. I think semen is fucking disgusting and I do not want it anywhere near me. Traditionally, I use my oral skills for foreplay and then we finish off by having sex. That’s how it’s always been my entire life with every guy I’ve ever been with, but right now with my stomach muscles all over the place and this big ugly binder I have to wear and the fact that I have this giant wound on my abdomen so I can’t shower (I use washcloths and baby wipes, I’m not a dirty pig haha), actual intercourse is few and far between. And intercourse is about the two of us as well, which is all fine and dandy but sometimes, a lot of the time actually, I’d rather just focus on Blake because I’d just like to make him feel good. He does so much for me in all facets of our lives and while I’m an agoraphobic freak and have limited resources, a blowjob I can do! But not without flavoured condoms. Soooo that’s what we picked up yesterday and we tested out this morning with GREAT SUCCESS!

Once Blake explained to me recently that sometimes he just wants to have an orgasm without having to do anything, something clicked in my brain and I was like, “I can make that happen!” and now I’m all gung-ho to do things that’ll make him happy. Because he deserves to be happy and I want him to be happy and he’s been so UNhappy that it just breaks my heart so if I can take 20 minutes out of my day and blow his mind, I’m going to do that. Sex is how adults play, so let’s play! Y’know?

I also got this Doc Johnson vibe, which I’m really really excited about but haven’t used yet.

Also yesterday, my Curry’s order came in and my big, beautiful 30 x 36 inch behemoth of a canvas is now sitting on the coffee table in my office, base-coated in “Surf” by Martha Stewart which is this gorgeous light aqua blue colour. Originally I’d painted the canvas with Americana’s “Spa Blue”, which is almost identical to “Surf” but a little lighter and a little more blue (but like, so close it’s almost imperceptible to anyone but me) but when I went to Michael’s last night to get more “Spa Blue” to do a second coat and to have another bottle on hand to paint over mistakes, I found that Americana doesn’t even make that colour anymore! In fact, which was really really fucking obnoxious Americana doesn’t make ANY of the colours I needed anymore so I had to improvise mostly using Martha Stewart paint instead of Americana!

I’d made a really detailed mock up of the painting I want to do with colour swatches and the whole works that I brought with me to Michael’s and I’m extremely glad I did because without it I would have been lost. Since it was so detailed, I could hold paint bottles up to the colours I’d chosen for things and could re-choose colours based on that.

In the end, I got all of the colours I needed and in fact some of the colours I got from the Martha Stewart line were being discontinued (I think) so they were on clearance for $1.49! Score! Plus honestly? I think I like the Martha Stewart paint a lot better than Americana. Americana has more colours but that’s to be expected since they’ve been around forever and Martha’s line is pretty new. Martha’s paint just seems to be thicker and more pigmented than Americana, which it should be because the price difference between the two is pretty outrageous. For non-metallic Americana, it’s $1.99 a bottle and for non-pearlized Martha Stewart colours, they’re $3.99. For the same size bottles. BUT I’ve been to Michael’s like, every week for the past 2 months and the Martha Stewart paints have been on sale for 30-40% off the entire time and they’re just better so that’s what I’ve been buying. Don’t get me wrong though, both companies are essential for what I do. For example, Martha’s only metallic (sorry, “pearlized“) red is called “Holly Berry” and DecoArt’s (the company that makes Americana paint) metallic red is called “Festive Red” and while the difference between the two is very very subtle, there is one and “Holly Berry” is slightly more blue than “Festive Red”, which is a true red. So that’s why I would need both lines for what I do.

Because so many of the colours I needed were on clearance for $1.49, my total for paint was only about $23 when I’d originally estimated that I’d need about $50 worth of it to complete the project, so that’s good. However, I kinda blew my savings when we went to Curry’s to exchange some of the brushes I’d ordered online because the bristles were this awful scratchy stuff instead of the white, soft bristles I’m used to. I just ordered the wrong ones by accident. I’d ordered three large flat brushes starting at an inch wide and going down slightly by size and I exchanged them for two large flat brushes and a 3/4 inch angled brush that I’ve been coveting for a while now and decided I needed for this project. However, the brushes I’d ordered online were cheaper than the ones I wanted in the store (the kind I normally use, it’s not like I was going crazy buying brushes or anything) so I ended up going $15 over my brushes budget. But it’s a big canvas so I needed big brushes, what can I say?

Also from Curry’s, I ordered my gel medium for Squam and I got a good pencil sharpener for Squam too since I don’t want to bring my electric sharpener. I got spray fixative as well, which I’ve never used before. Spray fixative is this stuff, kinda like varnish, that you spray over something like watercolours so you can do a layer over top of them. Or at least that’s what I’ll be using it for. I’ll explain that better: Okay so I use watercolour pencils in my work a lot (although you’d probably never know it). So if I used watercolour pencils as layer 1 and I allow them to dry but I want to do something over TOP of that layer, I would spray fixative on it, which would enable me to do a second layer of watercolour over top of the original layer, without it affecting the original layer. Does that make sense? Because if you let your original layer dry and then tried to do a second layer over top, it would disturb the original layer and you’d probably end up with a brown mess. The fixative I bought is made by Krylon, who makes the spray varnish I often use, but fixative *isn’t* varnish. You can still work on top of fixative whereas you cannot with varnish. Varnish is the final layer, a protective finish.

At least that is my understanding of fixative. I could be wrong but that’s what the directions indicate and that’s how I plan to use it. You can also apparently use it on top of charcoal, chalk and pastels.

Okay, I’ve been up since 5:45am and the only productive thing I’ve done so far today is give Blake a blowjob so I think it’s time to watch Doctor Who and tackle this canvas. Today is my 9 hour workday so it’s gonna be a long one.

Have a great weekend!

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

The spambots have been working overtime on my site. I have Askimet or whatever it’s called so it catches them and puts them in the spam folder but still, there’s been like, over 30 a day lately. This is another reason why I screen comments.

On Monday Blake and I went to Michael’s so I could spend the gift certificate my mom gave me for my birthday. After Michael’s we went to Quizno’s for dinner, then to Zehr’s (grocery store) looking for big bags of Fizzy Skittles, which we never found and then we checked Wal*Mart for Ritz Chips, which we never found either. After that we went to Staples where I drooled over the new Martha Stewart home office products and I bought rub-on letters.

The gift certificate for Michael’s was technically for gel medium for Squam, but at Michael’s gel medium is $21.99 but at Curry’s it’s $10.99 for the exact same thing so that’s why I didn’t get it at Michael’s. Rule of thumb in Canada is that if it’s a “serious” or “professional grade” art supply, you don’t buy it at Michael’s because you’re going to pay like, double for it at least, so you buy that stuff at Curry’s. Always. Even brushes, unless they’re on sale, which, they were at Michael’s when we went. I had a 40% off coupon so I got 3 acrylic-handled brushes. Just a tiny round brush and 2 angled ones, which I use when I’m shading my faces and the round brush I use when doing their makeup.

I of course got hung up on the Martha Stewart paint, which I do every time because it’s just so goddamn beautiful I cannot even stand it. It was 30% off so I got a few bottles of it:

Something interesting to note is that I bought 4 bottles of purple paint and one bottle of yellow. Two of the bottles of purple paint are glitter, one is metallic (pearl) and one is satin. The bottle of yellow paint is glitter paint. Right now my toenails are yellow, purple and turquoise. And then one of the other things I got at Michael’s were these:

These are itty bitty rolls of ribbon and rick rack (I think it’s called?) that are like, 1/4-1/2 an inch wide and the rolls are 3 feet long. They were $1.50 and PERFECT for what I do, the top and bottom ones are velvet and so so soft. But notice the colours. There’s yellow and purple again! I totally did not even do that on purpose, I just happened to buy those colours and then I noticed I did it when I was putting everything away when I got home. Soooo I guess a painting in the very near future is going to be purple and yellow! But aren’t those little rolls of ribbon genius? I think they are.

My Sketchbook Limited Edition theme is “The last word ever spoken” so I got these stickers at Michael’s too:

The sticker pack is actually 3 times as long as in the picture but I couldn’t get all of it in the picture and still have the words be legible. I think they’re pretty neat and they were only $5 for something like 90 different words.

These are the rub-on letters I got at Staples:

Pretty straight forward, you peel back the backing paper and place the letter down on whatever you’re putting it on, then you rub the back of it with a stylus or something until it transfers. These were recommended by one of the teachers I’ll be having at Squam so I figured I’d try them out in my sketchbook.  Blake and I remember *something* like these from our childhoods but we can’t remember what, anyone have any ideas?

I’m still trying to work out the bugs in my whole contract/commissions/payment plans idea. What I can’t figure out is how to protect myself from people who don’t pay me within the agreed upon timeframe. I think that if the contract says “you must pay $X within 4 months, $X every 2 weeks” and 5 months rolls around and they still owe me like, $50, that I should be allowed to keep their money and sell the painting. If that’s what the contract says and that’s what’s been agreed upon, then that’s what I think should happen. However, Canadian law says that if the consumer has paid 2/3s of the price of the item, I still have to give it to them and I think that’s fucking bullshit. But it’s worded to say that I can’t repossess the item, I can’t take it back, but what if I haven’t given it to them yet? The only thing I can think of to save my own ass is to get 50% up front as a non-refundable deposit and then if they reneg on the agreement, all I would have to reimburse them for would be whatever they paid above that…right?

I hate that this is more complicated than it needs to be.  A contract should be a contract and the person should have to do whatever it is that was agreed upon.

“Sunny Rays” is finally finished and for sale in my Etsy shop! It’s pretty different from what I usually paint and I was wondering what you guys thought of it? If you hate it, let me know! If you love it, let me know that too! I have mixed feelings on it. I definitely like my girls better but I’d been drawing that painting since grade 4 or 5 and had to finally get it out like, not doodling! Anyway, here it is:

I know I say this about all my paintings, but this one looks a LOT better in person. The “whitespace” (that’s actually orange) isn’t nearly as prominent in real life. I don’t know why it is in pictures.

Okay, I think I’m going to go check e-mail and paint until Cheryl gets here and once she leaves, I’ll be able to take my nap. I am so tired.

Oh, btw…the new Sims 3 expansion, Showtime, came out yesterday. Did anyone get it and what do you think of it so far? I didn’t get it because we don’t have any money, but I did add it to my wishlist and hopefully I’ll get it eventually but I’m still dying to hear about it so if you could crawl out of your Sims bunker long enough to tell me how it is, I’d greatly appreciate it! Thanks in advance! Happy Wednesday!

PS. I suppose I should say a few words on the Lisa defriending fiasco…Madison summed it up nicely for me last night: We don’t blame Lisa for defriending us, I told the truth, she read it, she didn’t like it, she defriended us. There’s nothing to really “understand” there. But the key thing here is that I told the truth, just as I always do and it goes back to what I’ve been saying for years now: if you don’t want shitty things written about you, don’t do shitty things. It’s not my fault they were shitheads this summer while I was literally dying.  It’s not my fault that their kids are spoiled brats. It’s not my fault that my dad treats Lisa badly. Etc etc etc. They know I have this site, they know that I blog every little goddamn thought that pops into my head and I don’t make special rules for special people unless I’m specifically asked not to blog about something and there’s a good reason for it. I’m sorry she thought they were somehow immune to this but them’s the breaks, cupcake.

So that’s how I feel about it. I’m honestly more annoyed by it than anything else because it’s just a stupid action to take. There are reasons to defriend people, which is essentially disowning them, and a few dumb blog posts, to me, isn’t a good reason to just write off a whole family, especially a 13 year old kid who never did anything to her. But whatever, they only want anything to do with us on Xmas and Father’s Day (LOL) so it’s not like it’s any great loss and I guess it saves me the agony over whether or not to invite them to our anniversary party this summer.

I’m listening to “Boys Wanna Be Her” by Peaches. Such a good song. Here it is if you don’t know it:

It was recently used in a car commercial starring sumo wrestlers, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever and it was a terrible ad since I don’t remember what kind of car it was. OH! Speaking of ads though, I want you all to see the Sasquatch ads my friends The Perlorian Brothers did for Hyundai! They are SO funny! They aired during the Superbowl here and I didn’t see them live but The Perlorian Brothers tweeted the URL during the game so I saw it then and laughed my ass off. Good stuff.

Oh and one more thing about advertising…The other day I got this e-mail from a marketing company saying that their client was interested in purchasing a text link from me  so out of curiosity, I replied with “who’s your client?” I didn’t even sign my name because I didn’t expect to really get a reply since I figured it was a form e-mail they sent to a lot of people. But I *did* get a reply and it was a Canadian pharmaceutical website that would pay me $70 to write a health-based post and insert one link to their website into it. I politely declined because I wouldn’t ever support a site like that, but I found it interesting that twice in the last little while, I’ve been approached by marketing companies for product placement in my blog. Does that mean my little piece of internet real estate is starting to get noticed? Why the interest all of a sudden? Fluke? Definitely strange. (And believe me, if I ever got paid to promote something in my blog, you would know I got paid to promote it because I would tell you.)

Speaking of product placement, they’re making Bottle Caps again and I couldn’t be more thrilled. These are Bottle Caps:

Bottle Caps are soft drink flavoured candies and they are pure awesomesauce. One of my favourites as a kid, they either stopped making them or selling them in Ontario for the longest time but in November-ish we went to this specialty candy store where I found a big box of them, the same as the one pictured. Then on Wednesday when we went to Clover to get my weekly Skittles stash (Skittles get me through my 9 hour shift on Saturdays – I liked Crazy Cores and Fizzy Skittles the best) and I saw Bottle Caps there too so I bought the box of them pictured, which I’m enjoying right now. The cherry ones are the best because they’re softer and they dissolve in your mouth, followed by cola, then orange, grape and root beer’s last because they’re actually kinda gross. The cola and root beer ones are really close in colour though and I always get them mixed up so half the time I’m expecting to taste cola, I’m surprised with the nast that is root beer Bottle Caps. Having said that, I love them and I’m glad they’re back. Thanks Wonka! Big fan over here!

The weekend was pretty mellow. Saturday I worked, which I do until 11pm and then we watch SNL together (Blake and I and sometimes Madison). Wasn’t Jack White fucking phenomenal on SNL this week? Holy shit is that man ever talented. We paused SNL halfway through to talk about life and the world for a couple of hours because lately I’ve been feeling really stupid. My world just seems so small. I can’t even comprehend big numbers like $36 million, like what a movie may gross and how much of that is spent on advertising. They pay so little in advertising compared to how much they profit and I used to think ad dollars were huge. But I can’t even comprehend how much money the Toronto Maple Leafs makes in ad revenue or how much one hockey player may make in endorsements. Those numbers just don’t mean anything to me. I never used to think a million dollars was very much money until Blake showed me that I would never earn a million dollars on my lifetime. And there are people making $25 million (*cough*JuliaRoberts*cough*) for ONE movie that took like, 2 or 3 months to film. $25 million fucking dollars for 3 months of work. How is that…? What…? I can’t even…! And like, we know someone personally who has that kind of money. I can’t say who but there is someone in our sphere of people who has like, $50 million and who is a total prick about it which is another thing I can’t even comprehend. If *I* had $50 million I would probably be extremely generous with it. Or at least with the interest of it. I would gladly buy my kids houses and educations and pay for big weddings and funerals. It’s like in the movie The Descendants (which I loved btw), I would give my kids enough to do something but not enough to do nothing. This person we know who’s like, super rich? Gives his kids next to nothing. Wouldn’t even pay for their educations in full. I just don’t understand that mentality at all. It is beyond my realm of comprehension. As Blake put it, this man buying his kid a house would be about as much effort as their kid buying him a Christmas present.

But even more than money, which I don’t think I’ll ever understand because I’ve never really had any and I probably never will, I just don’t understand how big the world really is. Like Blake’s dad lives in Vail, CO and there’s a mountain there and you can stand at the bottom and not be able to see the top. I’ve never seen anything like that before, not that I remember anyway (I went to Banff with my mom when I was 2 but that doesn’t count because I don’t remember). Something that big is literally beyond my imagination. I can understand the concept, I guess, but not the actuality. And that bothers me immensely. It makes me feel close-minded and small.

I’m probably not even making any sense. I just feel like everything is so much bigger than me and it’s not that I’m feeling insignificant or anything like that, it’s that my mind isn’t open enough to comprehend large concepts. Like I’m too stupid to understand. Like it could be explained to me until a person was blue in the face and until I saw or experienced it for myself, I wouldn’t be able to understand but because I’m nothing I’ll never experience things myself and therefore I’ll always be small and stupid and unimportant.

So that’s how I’ve been feeling lately.

On Sunday afternoon, we all watched the movie Hugo, which Blake and I really liked, and they all worked on their submissions for The 4 x 6 Exchange (still 116 slots left!). Madison and Wes finished theirs but Blake’s still working on his. He has today off so maybe he’ll work on it this afternoon. For the exchange we need to send self addressed, stamped envelopes but they have to be US stamps since the exchanged pieces are going to be mailed from NYC.  Well, the store I talked about in my post last week that I’ve been working on pretty hard is a Zazzle shop and they let you make US stamps out of your work there. SO, I made stamps out of all my girls – or at least the ones I had here to photograph – and I’m going to order one sheet of them to be used for the exchange. I’m pretty sure I’m going to go with “Strawberry Ice Cream” because she’s my 4 x 6 submission and I like that she’s pink.

(Just a note about the Zazzle shop, I’m not officially launching it until I can afford to order some of the products myself and see how the quality is, so if you order anything from there NOW, yourself, it’s at your own risk. I’m 99% sure I have my resolutions alright and everything on MY end should make quality products, but I have no idea how their stuff is so I can’t say for sure. If anyone does order anything, let me know how it turns out!)

Here’s Wes’ submission for the exchange:

And here’s Madison’s:

I think they both did a really good job but obviously Madison’s is better because she’s been practicing her drawing pretty consistently over the past several months and I think it really paid off in this piece. So way to go Madison! I gave Wes watercolour pencils to do his and I don’t think he really understood the concept. But it is what it is and I think he did a good job too.

All weekend I’ve been reading Gwenn Seemel’s blog because she is an art marketing whiz kid and has a ton of good advice for artists trying to make a living from their work. (She also has endometriosis like I do, which I found very interesting.) She’s a really different artist than I am, she’s really serious about her art whereas I’m more casual. This is probably because she needs to sell her work to eat and I don’t. (Well, I do, but not to the same extent she does because I have a part-time job that I love and my husband is also employed full-time etc.)  She does a lot of her work in series and she has gallery shows and stuff. I don’t do that, obviously. I’d like to do that, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t know how. She says you need to send proposals and applications to galleries and stuff if you want to exhibit your work there but I still don’t know for sure if I even want to do that. I like the idea of it, but I’m not so sure I like the reality of giving a gallery so much of my money when I’m not charging that much to begin with. The easy solution to that is to raise my prices, but I’m not selling pieces at the prices I’m charging now and once you go UP, you can never come down, which I absolutely agree with, so I’m not sure I want to go up unless someone really recommends it.

BUT!

One thing Gwenn does that I never thought about doing myself is payment plans. I don’t know what kind of payment plans she does because she doesn’t specify on her site, but she does them and I was thinking that that might be a possibility for me. I would do something like, 50% up front and then take payments say, once or twice a month for 4 months or something like that and in doing that, I would take that piece off of Etsy because I would consider it “spoken for” and when they were done paying for it (+ shipping), I would send it out to them. If they didn’t pay for it in full by the agreed upon time, it would go back on Etsy and I would keep the money they paid toward it. What do you guys think of that? Does that seem like a good, fair system? Because I do. But then again I suck at money so…the other thing is that I would need to make a contract for a payment plan like this but how do I get someone to send me a contract with a signature on it? I don’t have a fax machine. I have a printer that has wifi though could I make it a fax machine somehow?

The other thing Gwenn does that I’m considering is commissions. I used to be really afraid of commissions because I didn’t know my boundaries but as I’ve practiced over the years and I’ve gotten to know myself and my style better, I have a better idea of what my boundaries are and what would and wouldn’t be negotiable.  I’m also a more confident artist than I used to be and Gwenn says that is crucial to the commission process because I’m supposed to be the expert guiding the client through the art-0buying-making experience. She also has a really good article for buyers on how to commission an artist that’s worth checking out.

Reading her blog has really opened me up to the idea of commissions, I mean, as far as painting I’m not really doing anything right now. I have ideas but none that are critical as far as getting them out of my head and onto canvas and there’s no reason, really, why I can’t make my own ideas and a collaboration with someone else at the same time. It’s true that I only have so much space, but Blake’s said we can find a solution to that if necessary, and it’s true that I’m a slow painter, but that’s why you have a contract in the beginning so the client understands that it’s not going to be an overnight thing. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to take payment plans on commission work though, what do you guys think? I’m just thinking it would be a bad idea because say the person didn’t end up paying the full price by the agreed upon timeframe, then I’m stuck with custom work that I may not be able to sell because it’s custom. I got screwed on two commissions a few years ago and I’ve only begun speaking to the person who screwed me over because I’ve decided to just let it go. However, I don’t want a repeat of that, which is why there would be a contract and why I would need 50% up front.

But yes. I think once I get the pricing and the contract thing figured out (input seriously needed and considered here, guys, because I dunno wtf I’m doing) there will be a commissions page put up on my site and I will be open to other people’s ideas. I have no idea if I’ll actually have any clients take me up on it but I never will if I’m not open to it and I’ve had at least 20 people over the years ask me if I’d do a commission and I’ve always said no because the prospect scared me. NO MAS!

So that’s what’s been in my little Sunny brain all weekend. It feels good to get it out. Now I’m going to go work on my sketchbook for the Limited Edition Sketchbook Project since that’s due in 2 months and I haven’t even started yet. My theme is “The last word ever spoken” so I’m going to go back to my roots and make girls holding words. Right now I’m working on another “ennui” and then it’ll be “beloved” because to date those are two of my favourite paintings I’ve ever done and it’s super important that I include them.

Okay, I’m off! Happy Monday!

Edit: DAMMIT! I was having trouble checking out and this was the problem:

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So I survived yesterday, barely, which was my birthday. The truth of the matter is, I’m just not good at birthdays. Not mine, not other people’s. The only good birthdays I can ever remember is my 4th birthday when we had a Strawberry Shortcake birthday party and again when I was like, 20 maybe, and Nicole brought me a bunch of flowers and an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen because I hadn’t had a birthday cake SINCE my 4th birthday – that I could remember anyway.  Nicole believes you should have a birthday cake every year.

Last night we went to Swiss Chalet for dinner where we had ribs (they were alright, not great but alright – Wes got pizza and mashed potatoes) and then we went to Cold Stone Creamery where I got strawberry ice cream mixed with real strawberries and chopped up Skor bars.

Cold Stone Creamery is a neat place. There are only a few locations so far because they just started up but what it is, is this place where you pick your ice cream flavour and as many “mix ins” as you want and then they mix it by hand on a frozen slab with these sharp metal spoons.

Blake got one called “sweet cream” with cookie dough and sprinkles in it, Madison got straight up cookie dough, and Wes got mint ice cream with sprinkles and gummi bears.

I got mine to go because I HATE HATE HAAAAAAAAATE eating in the car *and* I hate eating in Tim Hortons (where Cold Stone Creamery is located inside of) but we only live 10 minutes away so it was fine. I just came in and put mine in the freezer for later. I actually had it for breakfast this morning.

For my birthday, Wes got me a bear Beanie Baby, which I collect and Madison got me Skittles (my favourite) and a bouquet of spring flowers. Blake got me HUGE fairy wings for Squam but realistically they’re too big so I still have to find a decent pair before September. The ones Blake got are really nice though, I’ll use them for something, just not for Squam.

In the mail this week, there was a card from my mom with a gift certificate for Michael’s and yesterday I got a card from Phaedie that was chock full of TOTALLY AWESOME DINOSAUR STICKERS!!!!!!!! (And super wicked Starbucks cards that we’re probably going to put to good use later today.) And then there was an Amazon package from Charlie that had stuff in it for me and Blake and the kids! We now own Midnight in Paris, which Blake and I loved and Wes now owns Puss & Boots! That was a surprise!

I spent the day pretty mopey, but looking back on it, it wasn’t all that bad. I don’t know why I’m so ungood at birthdays, I wish I wasn’t, but I am. :o/ Maybe that’ll be next year’s New Year’s resolution: to be better at birthdays.

And that was more or less my entire birthday…except for one thing: SQUAM FUNDS!!! I got a bunch of Squam donations yesterday which means we are now 63% OF THE WAY THERE!!!  How exciting!!!!

I’ve been thinking about Squam a lot the past few days because a friend got me two books: Painted Pages, which is by the two teachers I’m going to have at Squam, and Creative Pilgrimage by Jenny Doh, formerly of Somerset Studio, which features both Squam AND one of the teachers I’m going to have while I’m there.

So I’ve been reading both books and thinking about Squam these last several days and how great it’s going to be.

First of all, I’m going to get to spend a lot of time with my super awesome mom, which I never get to do and second of all, I’m going to get to finally meet my friend Belinda in person, who has been so supportive of Squam I absolutely cannot thank her enough. She’s rallied the troops and donated a lot of her own personal money to make this happen for me and more than a few times it’s brought a tear to my eyes. She is such a good friend and I only wish I could be half the friend to her as she is to me.

And of course the creativity! The creative energy is already buzzing through my body like you would not even believe! I’m nervous as all hell to create in a classroom environment because I’ve never done it before, like, sharing supplies and stuff is a totally foreign concept to me, but at the same time, I’m really looking forward to trying new things. The first class I’m taking is a photography class so that’s not going to be as hands on to me as painting the next day will be but both classes will be full of new things! I have absolutely no idea how to use Blake’s Rebel and I’ll bet you $50 that I’ll end up using my point-and-shoot in the end anyway because I think it’s better than the old Rebel, which is long out-dated. (I wish I could afford to get a new camera for Squam, but it’s just not in the cards.)

Painting the next day is going to be different for me because it’s a different type of mixed media than I’m used to. The teacher uses a lot of techniques I’ve never thought to use before and I’m not sure I would normally use so we’ll see how that goes.

I dunno, the more  I think about it, the more nervous and excited I get. I’ve decided to take the next few days off just to soak up the Squam vibe from the books I have here and the Squam blog. Oh and by the way, I’ve given up on The Artist’s Way. Again. After I got to the artist dates part and those went so well, I just kinda gave up on the rest. Right now I have way too much on my plate for any more inspiration!

The day before yesterday I did my toenails. It was time. I hadn’t done them since just after I got out of the hospital and they were about 1/3 of the way grown out so it was time, like I said. You’re probably thinking “I don’t care, why is she telling me this?” and the reason is because I did them all fancy-like, using my Konad stamps.

This is a plate with the designs on it. I chose the diamond pattern:

So what you do is you put nail polish on the pattern you want to put on your toes, then you scrape over it with this thing so the excess is scraped off and only the pattern remains:

Then you quickly press the fat part of the stamper onto the pattern so the nail polish transfers onto it:

Then again, very quickly, you press the stamper onto your nail and press hard, making sure to get the stamp over the whole nail:

Then you take a Q-Tip with some nail polish remover on it and you very carefully scrub off the excess pattern. Then you let it dry completely (I waited about 5 minutes after doing all of my toes except my baby ones) and very softly and carefully you apply a clear topcoat. If you’re not careful in doing the topcoat, your pattern will streak. Voila!

This is only the 2nd time I’d used the stamps and I think I did okay. (The first time was on Madison.) My right foot turned out better than my left foot because my left foot was the practice foot. It’s definitely tricky though so to do it nicely, it’s going to take a lot of practicing so I think after school I’m going to offer to do Madison’s nails with them.  I’m sure she’ll be thrilled, she loves getting her nails done. Then maybe I can convince Blake to let me do his nails because sometimes he lets me.

And that’s literally all I’ve done the past couple of days. I need to get my act back in gear soon and start working on the colouring book again but I just haven’t been feeling it the last couple of days so I just took those days off and tried to make it as stress-free as I could. Not that the colouring book is stressful, taking time off is stressful to me. Not being productive is stressful to me.  Not accomplishing things and “wasting” days really bothers me.

Tonight Madison and I are having our eyes checked and theoretically we’re getting new glasses. My diabolical plan is to take in all 3 pairs if my current and past glasses and have them put new lenses in them and then maybe insurance will cover a 4th pair. That’d be cool. There’s a blue pair I have my eye on, which is the same as my pink pair. I’m getting deja vu so I kinda think I’ve already told you all this.

After that we’re going to go to Michael’s and maybe Curry’s and maybe South St. Burger and definitely Starbucks.

So that’s the plan.

Have a wonderful weekend! I hope it’s filled with sunshine and rainbows!

Last night Blake and I went to Curry’s so I could get two more black Micron Pigma pens (08) for the colouring book because I only had one that was that size and I’m paranoid that it’ll run out in the middle of the day when he’s not around or something and that would piss me off greatly.  So we got some. I also got two more of these really neat Staedtler  (goddamn right I spelled that correctly on the first try!) pens that are like..triangular with a nice, fine brush-like tip that are really nice to write with.  They’re called Staedtler Triplus Fineliners and they’re only $1.45. I got a magenta one and a light aqua one. One for my pink journal, which I’m working in now and one for my blue journal, which is what I’ll be working in next.

After Curry’s, we decided to go out for dinner and we wanted steak so we decided to go to The Keg, which neither of us had ever been to before.

Well.

The Keg is a lot fancier than I ever remember it being. I mean, I’d never been there before, but it’s a chain, so it never even occurred to me that it might be fancy so there I am, in my overalls with my hair in a very messy ponytail (thank god I’d thrown on some makeup before leaving the house) and Blake was in jeans and a yellow, plaid button down shirt and we stuck out like sore thumbs. But whatever. I mean, I’m at a point in my life where I honestly do not give a fuck about what random strangers think of me. I almost DIED this summer. There are WAY more important things to worry about than some asshole who’s going to judge me for not putting on a skirt on to eat charred cow flesh en masse.

I ordered a “Keg sized” strawberry margarita, which was awesome but ultimately too much for me because I apparently now have the alcohol tolerance of a 5 year old. To start we ordered garlic bread and when it came, it was phenomenal. Like, they used garlic oil on it or something, it was super super garlicky and the cheese was almost fluffy. The bread was crusty but soft and chewy in the middle. It was fantastic. Then for our main meals, Blake got the prime rib, which I think looked disgusting (but then again, I hate prime rib) and I had a filet mignon and we both chose twice-baked potatoes as our potato. And we ordered a plate of asparagus for the table.

My steak was really really really good but I got the 10oz one instead of the 7oz one and that was way too much meat for me so I ended up giving about 1/3 to Blake. He liked his prime rib but liked my filet better. Oh and my filet was wrapped in bacon. He loved his baked potato but I didn’t like mine because it didn’t come with butter and I didn’t want to bug the waitress to get me some.

For dessert, we both had strawberry shortcake, which was fucking great and just the perfect amount of dessert after such a huge meal.

This dinner was the anniversary dinner we didn’t get to have because I was in a medically induced coma. It only made sense to celebrate it by putting ourselves in a food coma, y’know? Plus we were celebrating Blake’s bonus at his job, which, combined with our tax refund, will get us completely out of debt. On top of that, it’s rumoured that Blake will probably get a raise too, so yay! We’ll still be poor, just not as poor as we have been. And that’s a very good thing.

After The Keg, I was feeling kinda sick from so much food so we just decided to go home (we were going to stop at Shopper’s Drug Mart to get some stuff but decided not to) but when we got into Elmvale, we stopped off at Clover to rent the movie 50/50 because Blake hasn’t been able to find it online in a format compatible with my Blu-Ray/DVD thing. As he was at the back of the store, I was going through the movies they had for sale because I always do (they often have new releases for like, $2-5) and I asked Blake if I could borrow some money so I could get a few. He said “yes” so I picked a few but ultimately decided to only get one: Blue Valentine for $4.99.

I have tried to watch that movie on The Movie Network On Demand at least 3 times now but I always get distracted about 1/3 of the way through and I’ve never made it through despite KNOWING it’s a good movie. (Don’t you dare tell me how it ends.) Ryan Gosling is so handsome. Michelle Williams is a phenom. How could it not be amazing?

I got that and a breast cancer bracelet that says “I [heart] boobies.”

So this morning I’m laying on the couch, as I often do on the days I can sleep in because the bed hurts my back (long, irrelevant story), and the case for Blue Valentine is sitting on the coffee table so I start looking at it and thinking about the concept of a blue Valentine which lead me to thinking about blue roses.

Have I told you about my theory on blue roses? I don’t think I have. So I will.

When Madison was a baby and I lived in Uxbridge, I had a roommate named Amanda (who I’m quasi-friends with to this day, she’s awesome and I love her). Amanda was guy crazy. She always wanted guys to buy her blue roses and she had like, this collection of blue rose items like, chocolate blue roses, fake blue roses, cards with blue roses on them etc…and so I asked her what the deal was with blue roses and she told me that blue roses don’t exist (which may or may not be true, they may just not exist in small town floral shops), that they’re impossible to find as a result and that if a guy really loved her, he would do the impossible for her and find her a blue rose.

Now this was the biggest load of horseshit I had EVER heard in my whole entire life and me being me, I told her so, and then she goes ahead and gets a tattoo of a blue rose. Like, wtf.

Anyway, I have since learned that this blue rose thing? Wasn’t just an “Amanda thing”. Girls all over the place, from different walks of life, all want blue roses from their men and they want them for more or less the same reason.

My theory on the blue rose phenomenon is that these girls are…well, they’re probably never going to be happy with the guy who “finds” her that blue rose because like the blue rose, the perfect guy, the one in their heads, does not exist. It’s not until they abandon the idea of the blue rose that they’ll be happy with the human man in front of them.

And what kills me about the blue rose phenomenon is that every girl I know who ascribes to it thinks they’re totally unique in being obsessed with it when really, they’re more of a cliche.

Not surprisingly, the girls who are obsessed with the blue rose are often the same girls who get married because you’re “supposed to” and they are more obsessed with having a wedding than a marriage. (Luckily Amanda’s grown up now and has – I think – grown out of the blue rose phase of life.)

So yeah, that’s the blue rose thing and I wonder if the movie Blue Valentine has anything to do with that because the main character, Cindy, in the movie, seems like she’d probably be a blue rose kinda gal. Not having seen the whole movie, I can’t really make that call, I just wondered.

Speaking of loooooove, my wedding ring no longer fits and we haven’t had the money to resize it so I’ve been wearing the bracelet Blake gave me when we were dating instead. Behold!

He got it out of some kind of machine and on the back he put “Mu”, which means “nothing” in Japanese, if I recall correctly.  I just thought it was cool and claimed it for my own so he gave it to me. You can see it in my really early cam pics over at Camwhores.

Speaking of Camwhores, I totally missed my 10 year anniversary there while I was in the hospital! I started on portal 9 in July 2001, if memory serves but I’ll write up the story of it all some other time. Right now I think I’m going to eat Caesar salad, watch Blue Valentine and start drawing another girl for the colouring book. By the time the movie’s over, it’ll pretty much be time for me to start work so that’ll be my day.

Hope you guys have a lovely Saturday! <3

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

I finished another girl for the colouring book yesterday morning. I know I said I wasn’t going to post every single girl I do for it but I like them so much I can’t help myself.

So you may notice that there’s a watermark on that thar picture. I am normally pretty anti-watermarking, I think they’re ugly and usually unnecessary but all of this Pinterest talk lately has made me paranoid and it would kill me if these colouring book pictures ended up on there unattributed. Sooooo I’m going to watermark them from now on. Just these ones though, not paintings etc.

Speaking of paintings, I’ve been having so much fun drawing girls for the colouring book that I haven’t even worked on any. It’s just not where my headspace is these days. I know exactly what I want to do for the shadowbox and I have everything in my office here to do it, it’s just a matter of doing it…I’ll get there eventually, just not right now.

Life is going pretty well these days, like things are finally back on track. I got my job back and while it’s only part-time, that’s exactly what I can handle right now and maybe even forever because it lets me have a paycheque and the ability to pursue creative endeavors and still have time to spend with my family, so it’s pretty perfect.

I am SO excited about the colouring book. It’s almost all I can think about. Why I didn’t have this idea a million years ago is beyond me but it just fits. For the longest time I’ve been looking for a way to make my girls both affordable and to be able to be put in the hands of children and this accomplishes both goals. When I work on it, I’m happy. When I’m not working on it, I’m thinking about it. Dreaming about it. This is literally a dream come true. (Now if only I knew what to call it…)

Yeah, I still have a pretty huge scar and wound on my stomach and my belly’s measuring in at 38 inches these days, but it’s all just temporary and fixable and I know that everything’s going to be okay. I’m really starting to worry about recovery from the big surgery because now that my setup is in my office again and I roll my chair from one end of my desk to the other, my stomach muscles have started to hurt because I didn’t realize before how much I use my stomach muscles to roll my chair. That’s going to be a problem. Blake says that after my surgery, he’ll figure out a way for me to use dual screens from the bed so I can still work and I have all the faith in the world in him, so it’ll probably be fine.

Obviously we still haven’t heard from the specialist in Toronto but they’re estimating JUNE so I’m not really expecting to hear from them until then. Hopefully it’ll be sooner but who knows…

The sun is rising and it looks like it’s going to be a sunshiney day today! That makes me very happy. :o) I only have half an hour left of working and I’m really enjoying this time of day because everyone’s home, so I’m not by myself (which I hate) but at the same time, no one’s bugging me either so it’s good.

Anyway, I think it’s time or toaster strudel and by the time that’s finished, work will be over and I can work on the colouring book again.

Sorry my updates lately haven’t been very meaty. I can’t deal with meaty these days.