I just drove our new car for the first time. I went to the grocery store, put things in my basket (very fast as I was FREAKING THE FUCK OUT INSIDE MY BRAIN), made small talk with the cashier guy who reminds me a lot of my friend Scooter, paid with my DEBIT CARD (which is a great source of anxiety), packed up my own bag and DROVE HOME.

I’m shaking. It took 2 Ativan and a lot of Twitter encouragement but dammit, I wanted pie and I went to the goddamn store and got me some motherfucking PIE.

And y’know what? I was so proud of myself that I got CAKE too. And crumpets, pretzels, watermelon for the kids and baby cans of gingerale.

I’ve been to the grocery store with Blake 100 times and it’s only about 3 minutes from our house, but I went down the wrong street and got lost-ish which made me sorta panic, but then I got on Yonge St. and knew the grocery store was up the road (I’d missed the grocery store’s street by about 2 or 3 streets – oops) so I didn’t freak out. I mean, the town’s only so big and it’s pretty much impossible to REALLY get lost.

It also took me like, 10 minutes to figure out how to work the car. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to move the seat up or how to turn the lights on but I finally got it. Also our car has like, D3, D2 and DL and I have no idea what that means so I just picked D3, which was the closest one to N and went with it. I probably did it wrong but it worked so, whatever.

Blake’s gonna be pissed that I bought fairly useless stuff with his money, but again, whatever, I FUCKING DID IT and that’s what matters.

Now I’m going to allow myself to freak out and cry and y’know what else? I got pie AND cake and I’m going to fucking eat BOTH of them and then I’m gonna go to bed. Yeah, you heard me, BOTH OF THEM.

The end.

Edit: Okay, so I was too full after the pie to actually eat the cake, but dammit, pretend I did! And for those who may be curious, it was lemon meringue pie & chocolate cake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow, did I ever go on a tangent there.

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

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

So that’s the plan.

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

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

(more…)

Since joining a certain Live Journal community that I’m a little iffy about and slightly afraid of posting in, I’ve learned the word “ableism”. This is what “ableism” is:

“a·ble·ism
–noun
discrimination against disabled people.”

Here’s Wikipedia’s entry on ableism, which I’m not going to put in quotes anymore because now you know that the word exists too and you know it’s a real thing.

As I’m learning about ableism by reading the posts in this Live Journal community, I’m learning that ableism applies to mental health because mental illness is a disability and the thing with mental health ableism is that most of it is inadvertent. Because people can’t see your disability they assume you don’t have one, but a lot of the crap I’ve experienced over the years by people who full out know I have a mental illness is also ableism, but a more insidious kind because it’s meant to degrade, hurt or devalue a person’s very real problem.

Want some examples?

My mother while I was in the hospital due to psychosis lamenting on the fact that she didn’t have the “luxury” of losing her mind.

People telling me to “just get better”. The whole “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” argument that no one would ever give, say, a diabetic, but for the mentally ill, it’s okay because it’s all in their head anyway, right?

People saying I’m lying about my mental health issues so I don’t have to work/don’t have to drive/don’t have to do groceries etc. Because psychosis and a 14 day stay in a psych ward is such an easy, fun thing to fake. And psychiatrists are so stupid, they all fell for it. Damn I must be a GREAT actress!

People saying I’m lying about my mental health issues AND taking all the pills I take for attention. Yes I’m taking approximately $1000/month worth of powerful psychiatric medication for attention. Ya got me.

These are ableist statements and most of them have come from people who are supposed to love me and support me. But now that I know that these statements have a name? Have like, a category? I can compartmentalize them in my brain as such and have them not affect me anymore.

So that’s all I really had to say. I just happened to see another post on this Live Journal community about ableism and then this Post Secret showed up today so I thought I’d make a short post about it.

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

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

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

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

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

Oooooh my god I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head right now that I can’t even begin to process them all unless I start writing shit down, so that’s what I’m going to do. It’s been a busy, happy (mostly) few days so I guess I’ll sort everything by day, starting with Thursday night.

Thursday night I was playing WoW with my friends Stephy & Keenan and eating Crispers when I lost a filling. I have nightmares regularly about this very thing and while I anted to freak out, I stayed mostly calm, especially because our dentist is awesome and I was pretty sure I could get it fixed, if only temporarily, the next day. Plus, it didn’t hurt. Still, when I got into bed I woke Blake up and freaked out a little bit, but not as badly as I would have in the past and then I went to sleep.

Friday morning Blake told me that our dentist could see me in the afternoon, after my shrink appointment, so yay.

My shrink appointment didn’t go as planned. See, the thing is, I only see my shrink once a month or sometimes once every 3 months, so she doesn’t always remember things about me or what we talked about last session. Plus, she’s sometimes quite a bitch, but despite that I mostly like her. It’s not her fault she has like, 500+ patients and at the mental health clinic I go to, where she works 2 days a week, she gets paid peanuts compared to her private practice and probably has more clients, all of whom she usually sees once a month. I’ve been in the waiting room with a lot of her patients and believe me, I’m definitely low priority and to me, that’s a good thing.

Anyway, I was excited to tell her about doing yoga because yoga is a huge deal for me in terms of social awkwardness and agoraphobia in general. A year ago I couldn’t do this. Two years ago, this would have been an impossibility. I expected my shrink to be like, “yay you!” but when I told her she wasn’t really that enthused about it and that wasn’t the reaction I was going for. She was more amused, I think, that Blake was doing it – omg a MAN doing yoga, imagine! – than me and that kinda bummed me out.

Then I thought she might be happy that I still haven’t smoked since April 23rd, but she didn’t seem to care about that either.

So the next thing I wanted to talk to her about, or at least make her aware of, is that article about picky eating adults I linked in Live Journal the other day and how researchers are thinking it might actually be a disorder and that they were doing a study on it, which I signed up for. So she read the article, which I’d printed out for her, and the whole time she had a kind of smirk on her face like she was trying not to laugh and when she was finished, she said that she didn’t believe it was a disorder. (She spent about a minute 30 seconds skimming the article, I might add.) Then Blake and I started telling her about all of my issues with food, which are actually pretty immense when you lay them all out and I think I’m going to write a page about it on my site sometime soon because maybe it would be interesting to other people, but anyway we told her about ho sometimes it takes literally 2 hours to decide what to have for dinner and then in the end I usually end up eating something separate from the family anyway and after laying it all out on the table, she looks me dead in the eye and says, “is it possible that you’re just a spoiled brat?”

I had no idea how to respond to that. This is my shrink. This is the person who’s supposed to help me with my issues and help me figure out how to live with them or fix them and here she is completely invalidating what Blake and I spent the last 10 minutes trying to explain? I mean basically what we were saying is that we think I have OCD and that it manifests itself with food. Y’know how some people with OCD are germaphobes? Well I’m pretty much a foodaphobe in a very similar way and she asked me that? What kind of bedside manner is that? That’s bullshit. Your shrink isn’t supposed to CALL YOU NAMES.

And what really kills me about this shrink in particular is that when I first started seeing her, almost  years ago now, I told her “hey I sleep ’til 1pm and work at night and smoke and live a really weird life”, she said “that’s okay. It’s your life and you have the right to live it how you want to.” And she stuck with that for like, the first year, but after that she started trying to change me or openly disagreeing with how I live my life. She thinks I should go to bed at 11 or 12 and get up early in the morning all of a sudden. Most of the time I actually DO do that but it’s the principle of it, she told me before that I could sleep however I wanted to as long as I was getting enough of it.

And then there was the one time where I walked into her office and like, almost the first thing she said to me is, “why don’t you get a job?” Like lady, have you not been listening for the past few years? Do you not remember my issues? That was the most asinine suggestion I’ve ever heard in my whole entire life. I’m not offended by people thinking I’m whatever because I don’t have a 9-5, I don’t expect people to understand my life and I don’t care, but SHE SHOULD because I’ve (we’ve) spent hours upon hours explaining to her how we are, how we live, how life is, and she just doesn’t pay attention or listen or write the right things down.

And by the way, I have a job, thank you. I have several. I’m an artist. I’m a camgirl. (A bad one at the moment, but whatever.) Those two things are what I do to bring in money so my kids can have the things they want, which brings me to my other job, being their mom. They LIKE that I’m always home and that I’m always there for them. Our family is extremely close and that’s the way we like it and a lot of that has to do with the fact that 85% of the time, I am completely available for whatever they need. So fuck you and your “get a job” crap. I’m all full up. It pissed me off when people negate being a stay at home mom as a job. That’s fucking bullshit, especially considering the fact that I also work from home at the same time.

Anyway, she pissed me of with the accusation that I as a “spoiled brat” and after she said that, I sort of shut down and stopped participating in the conversation, but I guess Blake explained things to her and she conceded that I probably have OCD tendencies but that I wouldn’t like the main treatment (exposure, which wouldn’t work in this case anyway, if you read the stories on PickyEatingAdults.com) and I couldn’t have the other treatment which is high doses of anti-depressants because they would make me manic. So we all concluded that the best thing to do is to just continue trying to work around it since I’m not exactly starving and Blake can deal with it with me. And really, I’m getting better. Not with food, I’m still a wreck over food, but I’ve been actively trying to make things easier on Blake when it comes to my stupid idiosyncrasies.

So after my shrink appointment we came home for a while and then it was time to go to the dentist where I got a temporary filling and I have to go back this Thursday for the real thing. I hate when the assistant dentist girl tells the secretary that they’ll need 40 minutes for me. :o/

But that’s a milestone in and of itself. I have had a lifelong fear of dentists but I’ve been really lucky to have two really good ones the last several years, especially the one I see now, and now it’s really no big deal because I know after the needle part, I’m good. The dentist I see now is really gentle and understanding and I’m really going to miss him when/if we move or when/if he retires. (He’s kinda old, but I don’t know how old. He’s spoken of retiring while I’ve been in the chair so I know it’s on his mind. Oh yeah, and he’s the only dentist in town.)

After the dentist I had a much needed nap and when I woke up, we went to Wal*Mart to get Madison a new bathing suit and flip-flops because hers were fuX0red and last year’s bathing suit wasn’t fitting so well. So we did that and while we were there, Wes said that he wished he could have a Zhu Zhu pet, which is a mechanical hamster that makes sounds and runs around on the floor and is about $10.

We went to the toy aisle after getting Madison situated and I looked at these mechanical hamsters and when I saw one that was pink, I was sold. I told Wes I would buy him one but that he couldn’t have it until he earned it by doing basic chores around the house. He was good with this, so we put two of them in the cart, one for him and one for me, so we could play with them together just as I played with Tamagotchis with Madison at around the same age.

I also picked up the new “Hole” album, Nobody’s Daughter, which is really a Courtney Love album that she decided to brand as being Hole for reasons I can’t even comprehend. I wasn’t going to buy the album out of principle but then my completest nature too over and suddenly I had to have it. Also I watched Courtney’s “Behind the Music” the night before and that made me want the album. (Have I ever mentioned how goddamn susceptible I am to advertising?)

I also bought two spiral notebooks because my current one is almost full and they were on sale for $3 a piece for the big fat ones, so score! And I also bought new underwear because my bum is no longer a large (it hasn’t been for quite some time, but I haven’t had any money) and is now a medium to small – w00t! I just grabbed a 3-pack of Hanes Her Way bikini underbums because ideally I’m going to be needing to buy smalls eventually.

I know, you totally care. We also bought shampoo, how exciting!

When we got home, I opened my Zhu Zhu pet to see what it did and then I started listening to Nobody’s Daughter, which I expected to hate but I’ve gotta say it’s actually growing on me, or at least some tracks. I think it’s better than the abysmal America’s Sweetheart, but only by a fraction. This may sound kind of weird, but America’ Sweetheart was kinda contrived while Nobody’s Daughter feels more honest. What I mean is that Live Through This was about Courtney’s Life, more or less, as was Celebrity Skin because that’s when she was going through her Hollywood phase. During America’ Sweetheart she was completely fucked up on drugs from crack to coke and getting hauled off to Bellevue because she was out of her mind and hardly any of that is present on America’s Sweetheart. Nobody’s Daughter is very much a comeback album and what she went through to get here, I think, what she learned along the way. (I think certain songs might be about people she met in rehab and some of it is definitely what she discovered about herself through therapy.)

Anyway, I won’t lie, I kinda like it – so shoot me. (But I still refuse to call it a Hole album because it’s not. Certain songs are VERY Hole-esque, but it’s just not Hole.)

So as I’m listening to the album for about the 3rd time, I’m reading my Facebook feed and one of my friends posted that he was going to the Courtney Love show the next day and I was like “WHAT????? HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS????” and immediately I was upset that I couldn’t go because I was sure it was either sold out or we couldn’t afford the INSANE $50 ticket price, which was a shame because on Saturday, the night of the show, we were celebrating our anniversary by going to get ribs and strawberry pie like we do every year and thus, we had a babysitter (two of them in fact!) and could conceivably go.

I sulked hardcore and tweeted about it several times, trying to figure out a way we could go. I have two paycheques coming any day now (well one is) and Blake said he could lend me the money for us to go and I could pay him back with that but the cheque is only for $200 and change and I need that money for the kids for the summer so I didn’t want to blow half of it on this show.

But just as I was considering it, Saturday morning, my friend Heatha messaged me and was like, “hey I can give you a deposit on the painting I want to buy so you can go to the show” and I was like “fuck YES” and that’s what happened. The deposit was exactly enough to pay for the tickets, parking and if we added $10, which I did, get a tour t-shirt.

Before I get into the show though, first and foremost Blake and I were celebrating our 8 year wedding anniversary by going to Haugen’s for the best ribs and fresh strawberry pie in the world, stopping in Greenbank where I grew up, to the bakery there where we bought the best garlic cheese bread in the world, as well as some pretty kickass ginger cookies.

Voila:

Normally we get a whole strawberry pie to bring home with us and share with the kids, but we didn’t this time because we were going to the Courtney Love show afterward and we didn’t think it would keep well in the trunk of the car that long. Plus, we were trying to be as frugal as possible because really, we can’t afford to celebrate our anniversary, but it’s important to us so we do it anyway.

I slept all the way from Haugen’s to the venue and since we were early, I continued to sleep in the car until the lineup to get in was considerably smaller and after fixing my makeup we got in line. Security confiscated my PENS! I had 3 BRAND NEW Pilot Precise V5s in my bag, which are kind of expensive as far as disposable pens go, and they confiscated them because of graffiti. I didn’t protest because I know there’s no point in doing that in situations like this, but man, that sucked. Plus you’d have to have a lot of time and be really dedicated to tag the bathroom with one of those.

The security chick was like, “after the show just come out and I’ll give them back to you” and I thought “yeah right”. And of course after the show, those security guards were nowhere to be found.

Anyway, the show. The show was pretty awesome and I can’t help but love Courtney Love. I’m sorry, I know some of you hate her guts and don’t get why I like her so much, but whatever, she was great. Here’s a review of the show, which I agree with. Her voice was different than usual (I’ve seen her as the REAL Hole twice before), even different than on the album, and I noticed that her annunciation was different too and actually very Jagger-esque. She belted out tunes old and new and the audience sang along to a lot of it and all in all it was just a really great show. (Well, except that she sang Doll Parts, which is the worst Hole song, imo.)

We started off in the “pit”, which was full of little girls like me when we started, and we were about 3 people back from the barriers but when it got closer to Courtney coming on, all these goddamn Amazons pushed and shoved their way in front of all of us and when Courtney came out, the “pit” went fucking mental (as to be expected). We stayed in there for the first 3 songs but when the girl to my left threw her totally full beer into the air all over the crowd and the woman to my right started literally punching people, I decided it was time to get the fuck out, so I grabbed Blake’s hand and we watched the rest of the show from the back where it was cooler and I could actually have a drink.

Luckily, being a primarily female audience and not a very tall one, I could actually see Courtney from the back from the waist up and the sound at the venue is actually really good so I was happy with our position, except when 6 foot tall dickheads decided to stand right in front of me. Repeatedly. I was a 6 foot tall dickhead magnet, I don’t know why. Luckily they never stayed in front of me very long and the back was sparse enough for me to move around so I could see better.

When we first arrived at the show I went to the bathroom and it was totally clean. When Courtney finished her encore I went to the bathroom again and it was absolutely trashed. The men reading this may or may not know this, but in most womens’ public bathrooms, to the right of the toilet, is a receptacle for used menstrual products. When I went to the bathroom at the end of the show I checked every available stall and I swear to god that every girl in the whole venue was on the rag but me. These receptacles were so full that all around them on the floor were used pads and tampons. It was beyond disgusting and made worse by the fact that the floor was all wet for some reason in the whole bathroom, which made the tampons bulk up. SO GROSS.

After the show, we went home and hung out with Ronny & Alex for about half an hour, then they went home and we went to bed and now it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m writing this post.

The only thing I have left to say is that Ronny now lives in Canada (he’s from MI) because he and Alex are getting married on Saturday and he brought me Vanilla Coke Zero, Cherry Coke Zero, Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and Cherry Dr. Pepper, none of which we have in Canada because….I dunno, we fucking suck. I just had a can of Vanilla Coke Zero and just about had an orgasm on the spot. When they discontinued regular Vanilla Coke up here I was so upset because I LOVED it and when Ronny told me that they had Vanilla Coke Zero in the US I was like “that’s it, we’re moving” so that’s why he brought these all up.

Right now I’m drinking a can of Cherry Coke Zero and I actually think it might be better than the vanilla.

Oh and one more thing: I got the most BEAUTIFUL wedding invitation from our friends Alicia and Tim in Georgia that blew me away on Friday and I wish so badly that we could afford for all of us to go because those two actually kinda met through me and I’d really like to see them become husband and wife. Alas, financially it would be an impossibility, but I hope they know I’m there in spirit. (And I think they should totally webcast it…*cough*)

Anyway, that is all. Have a great week everyone!

Know what I hate? When you’re half asleep, in a great dreamscape, but conscious enough to be rolling around in bed trying to control the flow of blood flowing from your vagina so it stays on the pad, rather than gushing up over it and soaking through your pajamas onto the sheets. I really really fucking hate that. Oh yeah, and cramps too. If it weren’t for the pain I was in while all of this was happening, I probably would have kept sleeping, but no, I got up and by the time I took all my “morning drugs”, including painkillers, I was up and awake and there was not a goddamn thing I could do about it.

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.

Yoga was a great success, I was worried over NOTHING. (What else is new?)

So I guess this is basically a State of the Uterus address. Only gonna explain where I feel the need and it’s in no particular order. :o)

- I’m annoyed at my mom and she knows it.

- Blake’s having issues with his mom and I don’t even know what’s going on now.

- I’ve been playing a lot of Warcraft. New guilds are exciting. I’m playing a new faction, more or less, so a lot of the game is still new to me. I only played Horde a few times and always with a clone of the same character. Belf/shadow priest/Endometria. At least 3 times. But only to like, level 2 tops 2 times and late 30′s once. I made a million toons that I got to 10 or 15 when I played Warcraft before, but they were Alliance and I think Alliance is a lot easier, at least to get around. I feel completely lost, Horde-side. We’re playing on a PvP server, which, to the people reading this who don’t play WoW, means “player vs player” and most people, including me, find it harder to level a toon to the 70′s or 80′s, especially if you rely on soloing (playing alone) for most of your play time because there are people who are 10 million times more skilled than your average world monster or creature you have to kill, trying to gank your ass and camp it. Camping it means that they wait for you to resurrect yourself so they can do it again…and again….and again.

Word from my high level guildmates who are starting to have to go in the “flagged” areas to do their questing, this server appears to be more Alliance than Horde, meaning we’re outnumbered, which sucks and intimidates me. I don’t know if our server name is an Alliance name or a Horde name, but last time Blake & I  played on a PvE server (except for The Cotton Pwnies days) with an Alliance name and Alliance definitely outnumbered the Horde the whole time. Soooo, I fear that maybe we picked an Alliance named server to play Horde on and that there are enough geeks who know the difference and choose their factions accordingly and our PvP time is going to be a losing battle. I figure though, regardless of that, we’re getting to the point where everyone’s really close to 20 (the level you more or less have to quest in flagged areas)  and if we group quest, we’ll all have a better survival rate and get picked on less frequently.

We use a program called Ventrillo that allows us to speak to our guildmates (who are logged in) using a headset, which will also help (if people start using it, which I’m bad for too because I just really don’t like talking, so I just listen and type instead).

Last night we ran our first guild instance/dungeon, which took longer than it should have, but for the first time any of us had ever played together, I think we did a pretty good job. Some of our guildmates have been doing random PUG (pick up group) instances without us, to get gear I guess, but a few of us (Stephy/hunter, her husband K (holy priest – so heals), Warcorp (tankadin), me (face melter) & Blake (troll shaman, mon) waited to do it together and I think that’s awesome. I can’t wait to do harder stuff with these guys, like instances that take a whole Saturday and bosses that actually need strategy and MORE DOTS to take down. :oD K did a really good job of telling us where to go so we didn’t get lost. (Which I found impressive because I didn’t know where the hell we were half the time because I’d only even done Wailing Caverns like, once, and we didn’t finish it.)

I kinda think it’s funny that we’re playing in a Camwhores guild. Some companies have their softball teams, we have our WoW guild!

- I have the shits and have been up since 6am. This means I’m probably going to sleep most of the day since I don’t think we went to bed until about 12:45am. Oops.

- Tonight is my first yoga class and I’m terrified. Blake doesn’t even know how long the class is and he says that it’s Hatha yoga, whatever that means. Probably the only 3 things I’m going to accomplish today is looking up what that means, having a shower and sleeping. Especially since I believe it’s supposed to rain all day, or at least threatening to. The rest of the time will be spent being neurotic, or more to the point, sitting on WoW just chatting with people while I wait for an herb supplier in Silvermoon City spawn herbs that I can then sell to other people on the Auction House for a ridiculous amount of gold. (The economy on this server is absolutely fucked.)

- My friends in Oregon, Robert and Robin Peate, are like, having a baby as I type this, at home! I just think that’s so exciting and while I know updating LJ or Facebook isn’t or shouldn’t be high on the priority list during this time, I can’t help but refresh anyway.

- I have not touched a paintbrush in at least a week. Nothing is finished. Nothing is close to finished except for my sign, and I don’t care. Can’t say when I’ll pick up a paintbrush again. Maybe when we have good movies to watch while I paint. Maybe not until the novelty of WoW wears off. Really, I should be painting and then while things dry play WoW, but I’m still working on my productivity management system.

- My front garden has bachelor’s buttons galore but no cosmos yet and the “new” part at the bottom of the garden is taking it’s sweet time growing in. Veggie garden is leaving me unimpressed. My tomato plants are finally thriving and next weekend we have to tie the plants to the cages. My peppers are piddly in comparison and I’m worried we’re not going to get a very big yield there. Lettuce is starting to poke its head up and I’m thinking we may have planted the seeds too deep. Maybe I worry too much. None of the herbs are showing life but the garden’s full of weeds and I don’t know what’s good plant from bad so until things start growing and looking like the pictures on the seed packs, I’m not sending the kids out to weed. The beans are growing like crazy, as are the peas, which needed a stake/string trellis to grow up like, last weekend but obviously we had to do other things. The carrots are showing no signs of life. Neither are the onions.

Anyway, when there’s anything interesting to take pictures of, I’ll do so. Right now both gardens are pretty unimpressive, but I’m learning a lot just by watching, like plant lettuce shallowly and maybe skip the peppers next year.

- Our neighbour to the right, who owns the bar in town, has a for sale sign on his front lawn. So does Wayne & Judy’s old house to the left of us. And the empty lot next to that house has a for sale sign too. That only leaves us and the old lady on the corner in our little section of the road who aren’t for sale. I’m hoping a developer or someone wants all that space and offers us crazy money for our house so we can move. Hey, it could happen!

- I’ve been severely neglecting Twitter.

- I’ve been reading Eat, Pray, Love and am ashamed to report that I’m actually liking it so far. I didn’t want to like it, being basically an “Oprah book”, but I can’t help it, I do. I read the Oprah Biography by Kitty Kelley and I’ll probably never be able to see Oprah the same way again. That was a good read too.

- I was supposed to do a show on Camwhores last night but my vagina started bleeding on Sunday night so that kinda put a damper on things and I had to cancel. I’m still bleeding and just not really in the mood to be on cam, so the show’s been put off indefinitely. I was supposed to bleed all month, which is traditionally what happens, but this month I only bled for 3 days and then a bit of light light light spotting sporadically until yesterday. I’m not sure what’s going to happen when I take my 7 day break from the pill, which will be in 3 days. Anyway, I plan on hanging out on Camwhores for a bit after I post this, if anyone else is around. I won’t be updating my cam, but I’ll sit & chat for a bit.

And I guess that’s really all I have to say at the moment. Things are busy and hectic and complicated but we’re having fun being nerds at the same time and things should calm down once the kids are out of school for the summer.

I normally do my best not to write about my dad (Phil) and Lisa (his wife) because they are extremely private, somewhat technophobic and maybe a little paranoid in the case of Phil about what information is and isn’t out there about them. (It’s a long story.) They’re getting used to the idea of my site ad my online extracurricular activities and have been for quite some time, but I think Lisa starts reading my site a while back and I think she, at least, is getting more comfortable about the idea. Phil? Well, there’s a large part of me that doesn’t especially care what he thinks or how he feels because when it comes to writing and blogging and internetting, he just kinda has to learn to trust me an to trust that I know my audience better than he does.

That said, yesterday was Father’s Day and for the first time since I met him (when I was 13, so 18 years ago, – over half my life) we were in the same place at the same time during this holiday.  And that’s literally about what it boiled down to.

First of all, Phil, Lisa and my two sisters Raili (4) and Rachael (18 mos) live up north, which is about 2 hours away from where we live and it takes a lot to get me up there. I mean there’s my whole “leaving the house” deal thrown in there, but also I worry a great deal about my dogs (whether we take them or leave them at home) and they eat weird things so a lot of the time when I’m up there, I’m absolutely starving and feeling like a bad guest because I won’t eat anything they’ve prepared for us.

Like, about a month or two ago, Phil happened to be in Barrie doing something, called Blake, who works in Barrie and I think they hung out or had lunch or something. During that meeting, Phil said we should come up and that they were free 3 weekends out of the next couple of months, one of those being Father’s Day weekend.

So, when Blake ran the idea of me, I picked the most logical time to go up: Father’s Day weekend.

After that, Blake and Lisa started coordinating plans and the last I’d heard about it, weeks ago, was that we were going on the Saturday and staying over until the Sunday. But then I remembered a prior commitment that would make sleeping over impossible, so we apologized and made it a Father’s Day day trip instead, which meant getting up at the crack of dawn so we’d be there early enough to spend some quality time with them before having to come 2 hours home.

Saturday night, Blake and I were idiots and played Warcraft until about 2am-ish which was totally stupid because we had to leave the house BY 9am Sunday, which meant getting up at the asscrack of dawn.

Not being very good at coping with not enough sleep, when we got to Phil & Lisa’s, I chit-chatted for about 20 minutes while we had sandwiches and then I took about a 2 hour nap in one of the new bedrooms they not have since they put on the addition, which I was seeing for the first time.  As I napped, Blake and Phil made feed troughs for the pigs Phil & his neighbour are fattening up to eat.  Then they started making shelves for Phil’s tool truck.

When I woke up, everyone was outside. Lisa and the kids were on the back deck with Wes playing with Raili (they were catching worms) and Madison talking to Lisa while Lisa held Rachael and Blake & Phil were in the front yard/driveway, building those shelves for Phil’s truck, like, using saws and power tools and all kinds of “manly” shit.

Everyone was doing their own thing and I was smart enough to bring my laptop and book with me, so I sat on the front steps of their house, first chatting to people in Warcraft until my battery died and then reading Eat, Pray, Love for pretty much the rest of the day. Every now & then, I would talk to Blake but mostly, like everyone else, I just did my own thing.

But, the whole time I was sitting on the step, I kept joking in my head, “what’s the best Father’s Day gift I could have given Phil?” and the answer was, while watching them build shit together, “a son” because keep in mind that Blake’s more or less as fatherless and Phil is sonless and the two of them go together like peanut butter and jelly. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t at my dad’s for Father’s Day at all, Blake was.

Eventually they finished the shelves and went into the garage for Phil to drink a couple of beer and for Blake to have a Coke Zero and it took me a while to realize they were finished with the shelves so it was a while before I joined them.

They mostly talked about computers and internet crap and I didn’t really get into the conversation until grocery stores and factory farming came up, which I’ve had a lot to say about recently. For the record, Phil seems to think I’m nuts by talking about all of this stuff.

But that was when Blake told Phil that we were hoping to get back on the road by 7pm so we could get the kids in bed at 9pm which is Wes’ usual bedtime. (Madison’s is 10.) Phil said something like, “well in that case, we should probably start getting dinner ready,” since it was about 5:30pm.

We agreed that that was probably a good idea.

So on their back deck, they have one of those little metal fire pits with a wire grate on top? And Phil informed me that this was where he was going to be making dinner, which was to be steak, potatoes, salad and some other weird stuff I won’t eat. While Phil cooked, we sat there and shot the shit about his cooking methods, food and painting while inside the house, Lisa was cooking things on the stove while Blake was on kid patrol.

Time Blake spent with Phil pretty much alone: probably about 6 hours
Time I spent with Phil pretty much alone: about an hour, an hour & a half tops

This is what I mean by Blake being there for Father’s Day, not me being there for Father’s Day. I mean, if I had my way, we would have stayed home and played WoW or gotten the vacuuming done or something because I’m anti-social like that and while I say that and it’s the truth, I always feel that way about going up north and I’m always pissy when I get up north because I resent not being at home but by the middle of the day, I’m usually glad we came. And usually because Blake & Phil are buddies and Madison and Lisa are buddies and because Wes and Raili are buddies.

As I said originally, I didn’t meet Phil and Lisa until I was about 13 and it’s taken the last 14 years to really have any real relationship with them mostly thanks to the birth of my sisters but also because of Blake who, when I found out through the grapevine that I was actually going to have a sister because I wasn’t speaking to Phil or Lisa at the time, called them and said “maybe you should call her” (meaning me). And things have been awkward but fine ever since.

It was actually my mother-in-law who really brought to my attention that even though Phil & I have known each other for a long time now, we don’t really know each other.  It was at a birthday party for Madison where she said something like, “wow this is really new” (meaning the relationship) and I agreed, because it was true.

I see Phil twice a year. Once during Xmas and then usually in the spring,l not always for Father’s Day and before that, like as I was growing up and stuff like that, it was even less than that and it was so awkward I can’t even totally describe it.

Now when we go up there, I know Blake & Phil are going to go do something outside of everyone else, Lisa & the kids will stick together and I’ll have the choice to hang out with either party or do my own thing, both of which are completely acceptable.  We’ll all reconvene for food at some point, I can wander amongst the “camps”, so to speak.

Anyway, I think Blake had a good day on his Father’s Day – which was my top priority – and I think Phil had a good time on his Father’s Day, so I think Father’s Day was successful even though most of Blake’s Father’s Day gifts, which I got on Etsy over 6 weeks ago, weren’t here in time.

On Saturday Madison made Blake “gourmet” cheeseburgers from the Jamie Oliver cookbook for dinner and tried to follow it up with peanut butter fudge that was made herself, but she didn’t know the difference between regular sugar and icing sugar and didn’t think to ask, so the fudge was actually pretty inedible, but she did her best and that’s all that matters.  I got the kids a card to give to Blake that I knew he’d appreciate and I gave him the gourmet coffee I got him from Etsy which were the only two things that arrived in time.

Still to come is geek soap, geek lotion, geek balm and this crazy Alaskan mustard, and this coffee mug that I feel in love with. I got him one that says “Prozac” in the light green colour.  (I already showed him the stuff so I’m not ruining any surprises here.)

Anyway, Father’s Day was pretty successful, as I said. Two fathers were made happy by each other,  my kids had fun, I got to read without feeling guilty about it (long story) and I think that’s pretty cool.

(And we didn’t get home until around 11pm because as per usual we were late leaving and by the time we got home, we were pretty much all dead to the world.)

I really hate that saying. The one in the title. It bugs the hell out of me. EVERYONE gets bored and EVERYONE is interesting, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never met an uninteresting person in my whole entire life and I can guarantee that the most interesting of all the people I’ve ever met, happen to get bored too, whether they admit it or not.

And I think people don’t admit boredom because of that saying in the title. Because they’re afraid to appear boring. And I think that’s dumb.

So obviously, I’m bored. It’s is roughly 6.2 billion degrees in my little house, so hot that I can’t even have the lights on because the heat from the lightbulbs pushes the heat over the edge of tolerable and I can’t deal with that. It’s also very very humid and the humidity plus low light means that I can’t paint. And that’s really unfortunate because that’s what I want to do.

The low light also makes it very difficult to read, which is my other option. I could watch TV, but it’s 4pm and my best option would be Oprah, which I think is a stupid topic today.

So that leaves writing and napping, and I’ve already done the napping. Twice, in fact. So here I am in my darkened office blabbering on about boredom without a real plan in my head as to what I should say next.

And the weird thing is, I actually really like the heat, I love it when the weather’s like this, what I don’t like is the expectation (from whom? I mean really,  f r o m   w h o m   ?) that I should get up in the morning, have my breakfast, start working and doing my thing, have lunch, work some more, have dinner, watch TV with my husband as that’s my wifely duty, to spend time with him after a long, hard day, maybe have sex, and be asleep before midnight. I HATE THAT. But do I hate that expectation? Or do I hate that I can’t adhere to that expectation because it’s so damn hot that I’m more productive between 9pm and 5am and there’s really no reason in the world, since both of my kids are in school all day, that I can’t sleep the day away?

I ponder this like crazy every single spring and make myself mental over it until about mid-June when I’m finally like, “fuck it” and keep the hours I want to keep. Nay, need to keep. Because like I said, who has the expectation of me that I be diurnal? No one important. No one whose opinion I should really care about. My shrink doesn’t like the idea but she’s not opposed to it either. As long as I get enough sleep, she pretty much leaves me alone on the issue. (Sleep is very important to maintaining good mental health when you’re bipolar or have other mental illnesses.)

Every spring, like clockwork, I hit this phase where my natural body clock resets itself or something  and for about 2 weeks I get really bad insomnia. That’s what’s been happening for the last week & a half or so and like I do every year, I try to fight it because of this pressure I feel to conform to the “9-5″ workday model of sleeping and every year it’s useless because by the end of that 2 week period, I end up right where I am now and much happier for it.

The opposite thing happens in the fall. In the fall I start wanting to be awake during the daylight hours because I have S.A.D. and there’s a 2 week period where my sleep’s all screwed up while my body adjusts to a completely opposite schedule.

….and I feel like I’ve made this post before. Do I make this post every year? I may have to go back and check that.

Anyway, the kids are home now and I’m going to bribe Madison with freezies to get her to water my gardens. She’d probably do it just because I asked her, but I know what it feels like to be “paid” for services rendered, so I went with the freezies thing.

I think what I’m going to do right now is get a piece of cardboard and matte medium little swatches of every pink patterned scrapbook paper I have to it and then spray the whole thing, after it dries, with Krylon to see if the Krylon also turns pink dyes into orange like my normal Triple Thick varnish does.

Yes, I think that’s what I’m going to do.

PS. I am 26 days smoke-free.