I don’t know if I ever posted this on my site before, but it’s in my gallery so I must have at some point (or maybe I posted it in Live Journal). This is a list my shrink made me write out in regards to my agoraphobia. All images can be clicked to enlarge.

A normal person doesn’t have a list like this. A normal person can do all of the things on this list. And this list is just the tip of a very large iceberg but it was getting long and I didn’t want to overwhelm my shrink with too many details.

Anyway, I found this in my gallery when I was uploading my sunrise picture so I thought I’d share. Again.

It’s 5am and I’m awake. I went to bed at about 12:30am but woke up about half an hour ago because Lucky was whining to be let out and when I tried to go back to sleep, it was a no go because there’s too much on my mind, namely agoraphobia.

Yesterday or the day before, Blake had a troll on his Cubeless blog and the troll said, “Grab yourself a job instead of claiming agoraphobia of convenience which seems to kick in every time you have to go shopping, but lifts when there’s an art show or a concert you absolutely have to attend because you’re ‘creative’.” And that wasn’t the first time in the last couple of weeks where people questioned my agoraphobia. At a forum I frequent, there’s a thread in a secret forum called “Reasons to feel good” and when our Gogol Bordello tickets came, I posted the picture of me holding them up to the cam in that thread and a couple of people said “wait, don’t you have agoraphobia?”

And that’s the thing. Agoraphobia isn’t a cut & dry thing. It’s different for each person. In my case, I can’t go anywhere by myself and there are certain places, like grocery stores, that I avoid because they give me anxiety to the point of panic attacks whether Blake’s with me or not. And in the case of the grocery store, yes, Blake does the groceries and it’s not so much because I can’t (well, since I haven’t done it so long and have next to zero concept of money anymore it would cause a problem anyway) but it’s simply a case of, “why make it a family outing when Blake can just go in, get what we need and come home”? Since I can’t go by myself, and I don’t have a car even if I could, that’s the way things have to be and the way things are. In case I wasn’t clear, when it comes to groceries, why take 4 people to the store, which over-complicates things, when Blake can just go in, get what we need, not go over budget, not impulse buy, and be home in half the time it would take us if all 4 of us went. Plus, if all 4 of us went, there’s a very good chance that I would have a panic attack and would require medication (Ativan) to first get there and some more to actually stay there.

As for art shows, well, that’s actually a laughable thing. I’ve only ever been to one art show in my life and it was Touched By Fire, which is put on by the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario. If anyone’s going to understand my idiosyncrasies at such an event, it’s going to be those people, or at least that was my logic behind going. Being in the city (Toronto) makes me very very nervous and the night of that art show, I must have taken at least 4 Ativans. But the thing was, I was totally fine at the show and I actually questioned this after the fact the next time I saw my shrink. I wanted to know how come I was totally fine at that show, yet I can’t go to Wal*Mart or even the art supply stores by myself and she said that it’s because at an art show, I have a defined role, I’m an artist, and therefore there’s guidelines as to how to act which are comfortable to me because I can easily play that role for that is what I am. I mean, I wasn’t totally fine at the show, when Gayle Cutler wanted me to do a commission, Blake had to navigate the business end of things because that’s not a role I’m comfortable with. While he did that, I hid in the bathroom. Literally.

And as far as concerts, well gee, the last concert I went to was either System of a Down or Metallica, I can’t remember and both of those shows were at least 7 or 8 years ago. With Metallica, I almost didn’t go because I had a meltdown half an hour before we had to leave. I ended up going to the show in my pajamas after Blake spent 45 minutes talking me into going. With Gogol Bordello, they are my favourite band right now and there are certain experiences where I know I’d have regrets if I didn’t go and this show is one of them because Gogol Bordello doesn’t come to Toronto very often. As I said when I posted the picture of the tickets, I have roughly 2 months to psych myself into going. A normal person wouldn’t have to do that. And even when I do go, I’m going to have to be chowing down clonazepam (klonopin) and Ativan like there’s no tomorrow. I won’t be in the pit. I’ll probably be way at the back, away from people. I’ll also be with Blake and our two best friends so I’ll have like, a circle of protection, which helps. Going to this show is not going to be an easy thing for me at all and actually another aspect of this endeavor is that when I posted the pictures of the concert tickets on that forum that I frequent, one of the members there, whom I’ve known for many years and who lives in Toronto, asked me if I wanted to get a drink and meet up before the show, to which I replied “hellz no” because that is completely outside of my comfort zone, especially when going to the show is going to be hard enough as it is. I am already losing sleep over this show because I don’t know what to wear – and it’s 2 months away.

I don’t know what to wear because where I’m at right now as far as weight loss is that I don’t fit into my “normal” clothes just yet and my “fat clothes” are now too big. Chances are, I’m going to have to buy something to wear to the show and since we’re not particularly made of money that stresses me out.

And as far as meeting this person I know from the forum I frequent well, the thing is, I decided a while back that I wasn’t going to meet people from the internet anymore with very few exceptions and the reason for that is because…I’ve met roughly 200 people from the internet in the last 12 years and during the last several encounters, I’ve realized that people sometimes don’t want to meet me to actually meet me, they want to judge me to see whether I’m the same in person as I am online (which I am) but more than that, they want to be able to tell people that they met me because it gives them cool points or something in our respective circles. I’m a notch on a belt and I’m not cool with that.

The fact of the matter is, I have agoraphobia. It’s not a phobia of convenience as Blake’s troll implied, it just presents itself in a certain way where I can go certain places and do certain things, but quite often those things take a lot of planning, a trip to my shrink, psychiatric medications and a lot of preparation.

I left the house the first week of January to see Avatar. I was supposed to go to a baby shower in Toronto at the end of January but I couldn’t deal with going to a place with a bunch of people I didn’t know so I didn’t go. Seeing Avatar in January was the only time I left my house that month. In the first week of February I went to my doctor to get a new prescription and in the second week of February, I went to my shrink appointment. In the middle of February, I went with Blake to the grocery store for about 5 minutes. And that’s it. I left the house 3 times in February. Now it’s March. I went to the doctor’s tonight to get a pap smear and chances are, that’ll be my only outing for the month of March. A normal person wouldn’t be able to tell you the exact places and the amount of times they left the house in any given month, but I can because it’s such a rare occurrence and since they are such rare occurrences, I mark these outings down on my calendar. Again, a normal person wouldn’t do that.

Last spring, when I took a walk down the Trans-Canada Trail by my house to take pictures, that was the first time in about 6 & a half years that I went anywhere by myself. Last spring I tested my agoraphobic limits with mixed success. When I went to one of the local restaurants to have breakfast all by myself, I was so freaked out by the situation that I didn’t leave the house for a month. Last spring & summer, Lucky and I checked the mail and mailed things in the middle of the night and that was a huge deal. All of these things can easily be searched on this blog under “agoraphobia” for those who are interested.

My agoraphobia is compounded during the fall and winter by Seasonal Affective Disorder. I simply do not leave the house unless I absolutely have to during this time. In the spring & summer, that’s when I go back at it with the immersion therapy, although truth be told, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve mostly given up on that because at this point I have zero motivation for trying to get better. I live in a shitty little town with nothing in it and nowhere to go and I have no car. I don’t think I can get better here. I’m not sure where I could get better exactly, but here ain’t it.

And that’s the thing, which I don’t know if it’s part of the phobia or what, but 95% of the time I’m okay with not leaving the house. I stopped fantasizing about a different life a long time ago.

Also, part of agoraphobia is that quite often, as is the case with me, the person has a hard time letting people in to their homes. It’s not just about leaving one’s home. Having people in my house is a very hard thing for me to do. At Xmas time the neighbours offered to watch my dogs for me so we didn’t have to bring them up North with us, but i couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have people in my home when I wasn’t there. And even when I am here, if people are going to come over, we all make a mad dash for the cleaning supplies because I don’t want people judging me by our home, which isn’t exactly the nicest home to begin with. A babysitter being here so Blake and I can go out? Unheard of. My kids have only been babysat in our home by our friends Alex & Ronny and my mother. When the neighbours watch the kids, the kids go over there. Hiring a babysitter, like a teenager or whatever, simply wouldn’t happen.

I think my agoraphobia started in two ways: 1) I’m pretty sure that whenever I left the house when we lived above my grandma’s furniture store, she came into the apartment and snooped. That made me so mental that I stopped leaving the house so she couldn’t do that and that’s why I can’t have people in my house when I’m not there now. 2) When Blake moved in and had to give back his car, he took over mine and it was just easier for him to get groceries on the way home from work than for me to go do it after he came home and I have access to a car. Since we lived in the middle of nowhere, there was nowhere for me to go, especially without a car. And this lasted years until it became habit and then became phobia.

But long long long before that there were signs that this was just part of my natural state. When I was 15 and living with my boyfriend at the time’s parents, I rarely left the house then too. I would go to check the mail which meant walking about 20 feet from the house and I would do so in my pajamas at 2:30am. Sometimes I’d go to my Aunt’s house in town, which was about a 15 minute walk, but again, I’d only do it at night and most of the time in my pajamas.

I know when I absolutely have to, I can leave the house, kick ass and take names. When Zulu got hit by the car, I didn’t even think about it, I got in the car with the cop who stopped to help, with Zulu in the back seat and I dealt with the vet by myself and went back home with the cop while Blake was on his way to the vet’s to take care of the rest. When it was just Madison and I in our apartment in Uxbridge, I only had a bar fridge and I’d load Madison up in her stroller and we’d do groceries every day. When I was in college, I dealt with Madison going to daycare and drove myself to Toronto every single day because in all of the above scenarios, what choice did I have?

If Blake died tomorrow, I’m fairly confident that we’d all be okay and that I could get shit done. (Don’t get me wrong, Blake dying would suck, but life does go on, bills still have to be paid, kids still have to be driven to school.)

As things stand though, as I said, there’s little motivation for me to get better. There’s nothing in the outside world for me except these rare situations like an art show, a movie or a concert and I do all of the above extremely seldom.

As I said in the beginning, agoraphobia is not a cut & dry thing. It affects everyone differently. Yes, there are similarities in every agoraphobic patient, but they all have to be treated on a case-by-case basis. I’ve just explained how my case presents itself and it is my hope that I won’t have to do it again.

I don’t know what’s been up my ass lately but I’ve been super productive over the last 4 or 5 days. My bee girl painting is almost finished and so is the one I’m doing for Ashley for her baby shower. All I’ve been doing is drawing/painting and watching Six Feet Under starting from the first season (I’m now on season 3). Today I’ll continue to work on both paintings and watching Six Feet Under and then I’ll watch the Leafs game and repeat.

An artist once told me that in order to produce work in more volume, I should stop watching TV and I thought that was insane advice because I paint while I watch TV. Or more to the point, I paint while I listen to the TV, looking up when i need to, but mostly just listening to it while I concentrate on whatever’s on my desk. The very odd time I’ll paint while listening to music, but that’s pretty rare and usually only happens when there’s nothing on TV or I’ve seen all of the good movies on The Movie Network On Demand that month. And even then, I’m more likely to put in a DVD of a movie I’ve seen a thousand times than to paint while listening to music. Music is for writing. TV is for painting.

Perhaps predictably because I never finish anything, the story I was writing last month has been put on the back burner.  I was going strong on it, got 10 pages down easily and then Xmas happened and I just kinda lost steam. I fully intend to go back to it, but probably not until the spring when painting urges start slowing down.

The ACEOs/ATCs…I haven’t really been working on them. The ones I posted a while back are still sitting on my desk without arms (because I really really fucking hate doing arms, I cannot say this enough!) but as soon as I’m finished the two paintings I’m working on right now, I’ll go back to them. I mean, I have to, I have no money for more canvases so unless I want to paint on wood (which I don’t), ACEOs it is. A lot of people have been asking me about them and when they’ll be ready and the fact of the matter is, I’m going to finish all 60 of them before any of them go up for sale. Because I’m working on them all by colour, I don’t want to release them for sale as I make them because say I release the ones I’ll have finished in a couple of weeks. Those ones are purple and gold. So someone buys a purple one and then 2 months later I put the pink and turquoise ones up for sale and the person who bought the purple one thinks “dammit! I like those better!” and regrets their purchase. I don’t want that, so that’s why I won’t be putting them all up for sale until they’re all finished. Or at least that’s the plan at this very moment. I’m glad to hear that there’s interest in them though, that makes me very happy. Sometimes when I’m painting I get into negative self-talk and think “why the fuck am I even doing this? No one’s going to like it, not enough to buy it blah blah blah” but I don’t with the ACEOs because I know people want them. So that’s a good thing.

Anyway, onto what I’m working on now. My bee girl is almost finished (she needs arms), or at least I thought she was. When I was drawing her, I made her slightly smaller than 8 inches tall to give me headroom for her antennae on a 12 inch tall canvas. Well, I needed less headroom than originally anticipated, so now there’s all this space above her head that I need to fill with something. Warning: Shitty picture…

She needs words. I just don’t know which words. The idea to paint her came from the “No Rain” video by Blind Melon, so “No Rain” is the obvious choice here, but truthfully I don’t think she’s  grungy enough for that. The girl in the “No Rain” video was an outcast, with nerdy glasses and a plump body. This bee girl is obviously a little more glamourous. (After she’s varnished, she’s going to have a fluffy black tulle tutu.) I think if I were to see this painting when I was out somewhere with the words “No Rain” on it, I’d probably laugh at it for trying to hard. So that’s out. Also out is a play on words (unless it’s very clever) on the word “bee”, like “Bee Yourself” and stuff like that, but I’m not opposed to bee references in general like, “It’s good to be Queen” (although I think that’s too long and doesn’t fit with this painting). So if anyone has any suggestions for this one, I’m all ears because I’ve been looking at it since last night trying to think of something and I’m at a loss. Later today I’m going to look up bee facts on Wikipedia to see if anything pops out, but if anyone thinks of something in the meantime, shout it out! Just try to keep it to 3 or 4 words, if possible. (And thank you in advance!)

The painting I’m doing for Ashley’s baby shower is pretty straight forward, just a pretty girl on a REALLY REALLY sparkly background. (And I mean REALLY REALLY sparkly, I kinda went nuts with the glitter on hers.) Her background is crackled white paint over metallic purple paint, with light purple, light yellow, champagne gold and metallic purple splatters and light purple sparkles over top because the baby’s room is being done in all purples and yellows, apparently. I asked Ashley to send me samples of the paint she bought for the baby’s room, which she did, and I matched the samples to my paint pretty much perfectly, she’s going to love it.

The girl for the painting is basically Ashley herself in a fancy dress:

That pic (and the bee girl pic) is kinda crap because I took it outside thinking the white light from the grey day would make for better pictures, but it didn’t and I didn’t really realize it until I’d already uploaded the pics. Her eyes are a metallic light blue which is essentially the same shade as Ashley’s eyes and Ashley’s hair is long, straight and dark brown and she wears it in pretty much that style every time I see her. I’m assuming, since her boyfriend also has dark hair (but I don’t know what colour eyes) that the baby will have dark hair too. They’re both Italian and everyone in their families has dark hair, so I figure that one’s a given.

If I have time before the shower (and money) I’m going to make a trip to Michael’s to see if I can’t find metal words for the girl to be holding. I’m pretty sure Making Memories makes a set that includes the word “family”, which would work, but I’d really much prefer “daughter”. If I can’t do that then the girl will just be clasping her hands in front.

The baby shower is on the 24th and is in downtown Toronto. I told everyone I’m going and Judy’s excited for me to come, but in all honesty, there’s a very good chance I won’t go. Being in a hall with about 50 strangers with weird food 2 hours away from home for a baby shower is not my idea of fun at all. I’m gonna need so many drugs to pull this off that I just don’t even know if I’ll be able to. Judy really wants me there though, so I’m going to try my best to make it. (Ashley probably won’t care either way, as long as I send a gift. That’s just how Ashley is.)

Anyway, I think it’s time for me to make my eggs, start watching more Six Feet Under and get back to work on these paintings. I hope you’re all having a wonderful day!

PS. Buttercup’s got lots of interesting stuff in store for January, you should check it out!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oooooh what a week it’s been.

First of all, I’m menstruating, which is always fun and because I’m menstruating I’m taking insane amounts of codeine which has made me extremely constipated and I know that’s probably TMI but I don’t fucking care. The stool softeners? They are ineffective and I’m cranky because I literally have something up my ass. Aren’t you glad I shared?

Also making me cranky is the fact that my site has been down for a lot of this week and while that’s not really a huge deal since I x-post everything to Live Journal anyway and haven’t had a whole lot to say, it really sucks because my e-mail is on the same server as my site, so when my site’s down, it probably means I have no e-mail either. So my apologies if you’ve left comments on LJ or have sent me e-mail this week and I haven’t replied, I haven’t been getting my LJ notifications (obviously) and while I’ve been trying my best, it’s hard to remember who I’ve replied to and where so again, I’m sorry. Some people have asked about my host as they’ve seen me bitching about this all week on Twitter and I’m hosted by my friend Kevin, who is the co-owner of Camwhores.com, and he hosts me for free so I try not to complain. It’s not his fault the server took a shit this week and I know he’s been working extra hard trying to fix it, so when I complain, I’m not complaining about my hosting provider, Kevin is great and I love him, I’m just bitching because I’m bitching.

And speaking of my site, in the last 30 days I’ve had almost 3,000 unique visitors , which is actually a record since I began keeping stats just over a year ago. So hello new people! My name is Sunny and I’m not nearly as whiny or insane as I probably sound in this post. If you’d like to know more about me, there’s a page for that and while I update my site usually once a week or so, I update my Live Journal just about every day so if you’re bored, you might want to check that out too. Anonymous comments are turned off on my Live Journal because some people are pricks and while comments are moderated on my site, I’ll approve and reply to just about all of them as long as you’re not being an asshole. I’m done with giving assholes a forum, there are an infinite number of sites on the internet to be an asshole on, take The Forum [NSFW] for example, and I just don’t need to put up with them here.

Anyway…

This week Blake and I watched the movie Precious, but Blake reviewed it for Buttercup and his article will be going up tonight at around 1am so I won’t say anything about it other than I liked it and I agree with Blake’s assessment of the film.

Also this week I worked on my ATCs a bit and just about had a coronary because I spent hours and hours and hours meticulously drawing and shading miniature versions of my girls and then I used a Micron Pigma pen (02) to outline their mouths and noses so I’d be able to see them after I painted their faces with a flesh colour. I do this on my regular sized girls every time and didn’t figure it would be a problem. BUT IT WAS. A HUGE problem. I went to paint their faces with the flesh colour and the ink fucking RAN! That has never happened to me before and these pens are supposed to be waterproof and archival so WTF? So I stopped painting faces with the second girl and decided to let the ink “cure” over night and when I tried painting their faces the next day, everything was totally fine. I ruined 2 of 8, which sucks because I worked really hard on them, but at least I didn’t ruin the whole batch. Currently they’re still sitting on my desk with freshly painted eyes and faces awaiting hair colour and dresses. Truthfully, I haven’t kept working on them because I got distracted by another project…

This other project…well, I don’t really want to talk about it too much because I always do that (I suck at keeping things secret) and because I always do that and give too much away, I self-sabotage and never finish anything. Here’s the gist: I had a dream on Monday that was so vivid and so surreal that as soon as my eyes opened I flew out of bed and just began writing down every detail I could remember. Then that afternoon I fleshed it out a bit more and when Blake got home I showed him my scrawls to see what he thought and he thought it was brilliant, which was reassuring because I never know if my ideas are brilliant or stupid.  I thought about the story over the next couple of days, slightly intimidated by it but Blake threatened that if I didn’t write it, he would, and he wouldn’t do as good of a job as I would because I saw it all unfold in front of my eyes in the dream and for some reason, I think this is a story that needs to be told. I think it’s a story that’s never been told before, but then again, I’m not exactly well read so I could be talking out my ass there. Anyway, yesterday I actually started writing the thing and somehow, in the span of a couple of hours, I had 10 pages typed out, today I added 4 more and this story, that was only supposed to be a “short story” is turning into a novella. Honestly, I don’t know where it’s coming from but it’s a refreshing feeling and I’m enjoying the writing process more than I’ve enjoyed writing in a long time. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it when it’s done, but I’m trying not to worry about that and just fucking write the thing.

So often I sabotage myself by, like I said, explaining a project so much on here that I feel like I’ve completed the project or that just having the idea “out there” is enough for me. And I often get caught up in my fear of success. As much as people accuse me of being an attention whore, the opposite is actually true. I fear the spotlight like nobody’s business and when it comes to creative work, writing in particular, I fear criticism and thus I don’t often put very much out for critics. Even as I write this story, there’s this little negative voice in the back of my head telling me how much it sucks or how implausible the story is or how flimsy my characters are and all kinds of wonderful things like that. And it’s one thing for my own inner critic to say these things, but it’s a whole other thing for other people to say them. Since I’ve never really put anything out there for that kind of scrutiny (and yes, I realize that I put myself “out there” constantly with my site and my cam and all that, this is different) I don’t know how I’d deal with it and a fear of the unknown suddenly surfaces.

But right now all the story is, is 14 pages on my MacBook that no one’s seen but Blake and until it’s finished, that’s all it will be.

This week I also taught Wayne & Judy how to use Facebook, to the best of my ability. Right now they can’t afford internet but they have a wireless card in their computer so Blake built a booster on our wireless router and set them up with the password for the network so they have internet…some of the time. Most of the time they don’t get a signal, but this week they’ve actually had a strong signal for some reason and thus, they’ve been calling me every day to show them how to do things on the Facebook accounts I set up for them last week. Today Judy was asking me how to play FarmVille because a few of her friends sent her FarmVille gifts and since I have that application blocked on my own Facebook, I didn’t really know what to tell her. She also called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that she figured out how to comment on people’s status messages, which I thought was cute because she was so proud of herself for figuring it out.

This weekend I plan on going over there and if they have a strong enough signal, I’m going to set them up with FireFox, add all of the bookmark tabs that they’ll ever need and delete their shortcuts for Internet Explorer altogether. Yes, I realize Chrome is the new big thing but I haven’t used it myself yet and I want them to quit clicking on stupid pop up ads that tell them they have a virus, causing them to freak out and call me. Oh and I changed all of their homepages (they have 3 profiles on Windows, one for Wayne, one for Judy and one for Courtney) to Google so now how they get to Facebook is by typing “www.Facebook.com” INTO Google and going to the first search result. *headdesk* I don’t really blame them though, their Internet Explorer has/had so many toolbars on it for some reason that it had 3 possible inputs for a url and no doubt they chose the wrong one many many times. I got rid of the Ask Jeeves one, but since I don’t use IE and haven’t in many many years, I wasn’t sure how to get rid of the others and it’s difficult to tweak anything when they’re over your shoulder asking what you’re doing every 30 seconds. So, setting them up with FireFox and breaking their IE habit seems like the best thing to do. I also set them up with Gmail accounts and I’m going to try and get them in the habit of checking their e-mail as often as they check their Facebook so they understand how Facebook’s e-mail notifications work. Instead of Google, I’ll probably make Gmail their homepages for that reason.

I’m not a very patient person and my patience in teaching them how to use the internet is surprising even myself.

This week I got a call from the mental health clinic saying that they wanted to set me up with an appointment for another doctor who I think is a nutritionist or something. Are nutritionists doctors? This woman has “Dr.” in front of her last name and she runs a metabolic sumpin-er-other clinic where I see my shrink and I requested to get in on that when a spot opened up because the meds they had me on has slowed down my metabolism and while I’m still eating my eggs every day to help boost my metabolism, progress has been slow and this clinic is all about how to switch your metabolism around and lose weight. Apparently it’s 6 or 8 weeks and it’s in a group setting (oh yay) once a week in the afternoons. I’m assuming the new group starts in the new year and my appointment with this new doctor is on the 29th.

Before I called them back, I checked with Blake to make sure he was okay with using his days off to take me to this thing and he was, so I called and made the appointment with the new doctor. I guess she’ll like, assess me or something, I have no idea. Maybe there’s even a chance I can’t get into the clinic because I’m not fat enough. I don’t know how these things work.

And speaking of mental health…since some folks have been asking…no I have not been driving anywhere. I have not been doing my immersion therapy. I have not been checking the mail. I have also been neglecting my light therapy and had a really bad day earlier this week, so starting Monday the lightbox is going back on my desk and I’m going to start using it again. As for immersion therapy…I’m just done with it. I don’t even care anymore. I can go places, like with Blake or even with Judy, and be okay. I haven’t had a panic attack in public since the spring and I think I’ve made all the progress I’m going to make right now. I have zero desire to drive the car, in fact I hate the car and the mere thought of driving, so fuck it, I’m done. Maybe I’ll pick it up again in the spring, maybe I won’t. I’ve decided that in the end it simply doesn’t matter and that I’m fine where I am. So that’s that.

Anyway, this is a really long fucking post about basically nothing so I’m going to end it here and get back to work on my story.

Moments ago, around midnight, Blake’s mother defriended me on Facebook. But that’s okay, I mean as it turned out this “friendship” we had was pretty one-sided and as I tried to imply in last night’s post that’s not really a friendship at all, is it? Oh well, I’m not going to write another gigantic post trying to figure out what this action means as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Blake will receive an e-mail or phone call about it eventually, unless she’s decided not to be friends with him too which is entirely possible. He was just going to bed when the defriending happened and he told me to check his Facebook account but I’m not entering his password correctly or something and can’t get in so oh well, I guess he’ll just check for himself  tomorrow.

I could go on any number of tangents from here but it’s hard to pick just one. I guess I’ll go with Blake and I’ll warn you  right now, this could get messy.

I always go to bed long after Blake does but sometimes when I’m sitting here by myself and everyone’s sleeping, I think about how lucky I am to be able to crawl into bed and sleep beside him every night. I mean, he’s my man, he’s my partner in crime, I get to be with him for the rest of our lives and constantly I think about it and think how awesome that is. It’s so lame, I know, but sometimes I sit here and fantasize about having a party for our 10th wedding anniversary so we can share our love with everyone we love and who love us back. We never really did the wedding thing and while I don’t regret that, when I think about how much we love each other and when people tell us that our marriage is one that they look up to, I just want to have a party to celebrate love. Our 10th anniversary is probably not very realistic financially for what I fantasize about but I can wait until our 20th.

People talk about marriage like it’s this huge sacrifice where ultimately you’re both going to end up miserable until you finally divorce and I just don’t get that. The way people at Blake’s work talk about their significant others just baffles both of us, how people we know talk about their marriages sometimes, I mean, we just don’t understand. I think these people maybe got married for the wrong reasons or something, I dunno. We know people who had a wedding just to have a wedding. We know people who married for financial security. We know people who married because of an accidental pregnancy and we know people who were in love when they got married but with the way things played out afterward, I’m not sure some of these people really understood what a marriage was. Blake and I? We definitely entered into this whole marriage deal with our eyes wide open and 7 years later we’re more in love than we were the day we said “I do”. It’s us against the world and guess what? We’re making it. Slowly but surely we are. And one day we’re going to have everything we want together, everything we’ve talked about, of that I’m certain because – and this is probably really cliche but fuck you I’m saying it anyway – together we can do anything and we can survive anything.

I’m unsure of a lot of things in this world, I have a lot of fears, but one thing I absolutely know for sure is that my kids are going to grow up to be amazing people and that Blake and I are never going to stop loving each other, fiercely, for as long as we live. We are the foundation, the seed, of a new family tree. We’re just waiting to put our roots in the ground which will come one day, we’re sure as hell trying.

Okay that’s enough lameness out of me. I’m not really a romantical type person and everything I just wrote kinda makes me want to throw up a little bit but I can’t help it though, I just love the shit out of him. I hope you understand.

And with that, I guess I’m out.

Ooooooh my god I’m all over the place right now. See, Blake and I have these marathon conversations about life and creativity and expression that are both brain numbing and inspiring at the same time. I love when we talk like this, but unfortunately it’s almost always late at night and by the time we’re done, we’re both exhausted. He’s gone to bed but my brain’s going a mile a minute.

Here’s the thing: I feel like I’ve kind of been in a rut for maybe the past year. Being on proper meds and getting my bipolar disorder under control (more or less) has caused me to change some of my habits. For example, I’m not longer hypergraphic. Prior to getting my meds in order, I would go through a paper notebook usually once a month and I would literally spend like, 4 hours a day just writing writing writing. But now I don’t do that anymore. I still keep a paper journal but I only write in it maybe twice a month and each entry only ends up being a 2 page, bare bones account of what’s happening in my life at the moment rather than a sweeping saga like they were before. Likewise, my blog entries have become a lot more sanitized than they’ve ever been before and Blake & I agreed tonight that that’s somewhat of a problem because I write to process things and if I’m not writing, I’m not processing things, I’m keeping it all inside and that’s A) Not good for me, and B) Not me. At all.

The problem is that for some reason I began self-censoring myself, and rather harshly, and I don’t really know why I started doing that and now it’s gotten to the point where I’m completely frustrated by it. Blogging is like, the fucking wild wild West and there aren’t really any established rules on what you can and cannot write about or more importantly WHO you can and cannot write about. All of that is really left up to the writer and over the past year or so I’ve had trouble reconciling what’s right and what’s wrong as far as what I can write about that’s happening in my life.

Certain people – well, really only one – have asked me specifically not to write about them, not to even mention them, and I’ve honoured that…but there’s a “but” coming. The person who specifically asked me not to write about them no longer deserves that kind of respect and as it turns out, never really did in the first place. With the exception of that one person, my policy has always been that if you are a part of my life, I’m going to write about you at some point, plain & simple, because to do otherwise is self-censorship and that makes me a sad panda, it really does. The other policy I’ve always had with this whole blogging thing is that if you don’t want to be portrayed as a douche, don’t do douchey things. I mean, I think that too is also a pretty simple concept, don’t you agree?

So self-censorship…obviously there has to be some but I think I drew my line in such a way that it left me very little wiggle room and I just don’t write the way I used to and I hate that. I like being an open book, I like being a ridiculously honest person, I like that part of me and this week I realized that I’ve lost a lot of that and dammit, I want it back. My moods are stable, my meds are working, my light therapy is working, I’m making progress in so many areas as far as immersion therapy, it’s time to reclaim certain aspects of myself I put on hold for so long.

For example, a large part of the reason I left Camwhores 2 years ago was because I wasn’t stable and I didn’t really trust myself to have an outlet to instantly broadcast anything I wanted to. Near the end there, I was sad one day and I posted a picture of myself crying – for the first time in my (at the time) 7 year camming history. That was when I realized that I needed to reign myself in and get better before I could go on. I hope that makes sense.

During that time, as most of you know if you’ve been reading along, I stopped writing about certain things. For a few months there my entire Live Journal was just Loud Twitter updates because that’s all I could handle at the time. I stopped seeing the world in the unique way I normally would.

But I’m okay now, or close to it. I’m stronger. I trust myself and my own judgment and it’s time to jump on the floor and bang on the ceiling  with a broom (as my shrink puts it) and maybe shake some things up. Wake up my little readership and get them writing again themselves as so many seem to have abandoned their blogs and Live Journal for Facebook and Twitter. Have opinions. Talk to me.

I want to write about the things that are actually happening in my life again. Y’know the expression “dance like no one’s watching”? Well I’m going to write like no one’s reading. Until tonight I had so much fear and I don’t even know where it came from. I had fear about writing about Wayne & Judy in case Judy’s daughter Ashley was reading and her interpretation in telling them about it would be negative. I had fear about writing about my mother for fear of her getting pissed off at me. I had fear about writing about Blake’s mother because I know she reads and she’s the one who asked me (through Blake) specifically never to even mention her online. But in talking to Blake tonight, we sort of found the problem. When I first started writing publicly about my life, the internet was still relatively small and no one I really knew, except for Blake and some of the Scratching Post kids, was reading the things I wrote. And then my mom got online. And then Blake’s mom started reading. And now Blake’s co-workers are reading. And with all of these people reading, I kind of froze, almost like stage fright, and now I’m in this stupid rut of mine.

But Blake and I talked about it and he said to me that who is he to tell me what I can and can’t write about? And who is anyone else to tell me the same? People have to trust my judgment and if they don’t like what’s being written about them they either have to, as I said, stop doing douchey things, or start doing things to portray themselves in a better light. All I do is write what I see and feel, I simply write the truth. If I want to tell you that last night Wayne & Judy drank 28 beer and Wayne was so drunk he pissed all over the floor and toilet seat, well dammit, I’m going to because that’s what happened. If Wayne doesn’t want me writing about something like that, then don’t fucking do it. (Although honestly, I doubt Wayne would care and the incident was actually really funny. Plus they don’t even have internet and wouldn’t read a post even this long so I don’t think they’d see it or care if they did.)

So, starting today, right now, I’m going to once again be more open and honest about the happenings of my life and that includes everyone in it. People who are truly my friends and really know me will totally understand and be totally on board with this, others…well they may not be but that’s just too damn bad. I’m done censoring myself out of respect for people who don’t deserve that respect. What am I talking about? Well, keep reading, here’s where things start getting  juicy.

But where to even start? I guess the biggest thing happening in our lives right now, or at least the biggest conflict is Blake’s mother, Brooke. Right now Blake and Brooke are battling via e-mail over comments she made about me when Blake was in Michigan last month. See, when I first met Brooke – 8 years ago now – I thought she was pretty cool but that facade quickly dissipated and I found myself in a monster-in-law type of situation. I don’t even know where it all began, really, this has been an issue that long, but maybe I should start with after Blake & I got married because I don’t feel like telling the tale of our actual wedding which neither of our mothers were invited to.

After Blake and I got married and I was pregnant with Wes, Brooke would call the house constantly and if I picked up the phone it would either be something inane like what size of clothes Madison wore because she was out shopping at the time and saw something Madison might look cute in – despite the fact that we’d told her Madison’s size at least 5 times prior to that and strangely these cute things for Madison never seemed to appear. In other words, these calls were just calls to call. To this day I don’t even know what their purpose was. Other times when I’d pick up the phone, she’d give me all kinds of bad and unwanted advice and would basically tell me that I wasn’t doing enough as a wife and mother, so I stopped answering the phone.

But here’s the thing: I’ve never really been a phone person, that’s just not how I communicate, so it was a special effort to answer the phone for her in the first place so to be put down just about every time I did, didn’t really encourage me to keep taking the calls. See what I’m saying?

So once I stopped taking the calls – and again, keep in mind that I don’t take calls from pretty much anyone – that’s when she’d start calling Blake on his cell and complain that I never answered the phone. Well gee lady, I wonder why. Blake explained to her that I’m not just a phone person – for YEARS – but the complaints didn’t stop until about two years ago. Without going into huge detail (maybe I will one day, just not tonight), about two years ago Blake and Brooke had basically an e-mail war that lasted almost a year. I can’t even remember how it got resolved off the top of my head, but it did and ever since, I’ve done my best to continue being nothing but nice to this woman. I answer her e-mails, we send each other Growing Gifts and things like that on Facebook with little notes attached and while it all seems like minor communication on the surface, it’s actually huge for me and here I thought after 6 years of her flat out disliking me and flat out saying that I wasn’t good enough for her son and that Blake wasn’t living up to his full potential because of me etc. that she was finally starting to get to know me and maybe even liking me. In fact, I think it was her last visit last fall where she gave me a gift of these neat tin ladies with great quotes on them that I have hanging in my office. I thought that after all these years, we were finally starting to make progress and maybe even bond a little bit.

But then Blake’s cousin’s wife died and he had to go to Michigan for the funeral last month and on one of the nights he was there, his mom got two drinks into her and just let loose saying all kinds of negative things about me. Want a list? Here it is:

• *Everyone* has mental illness, the people she knows who are mentally ill are worse off than me and they can do things I can’t, like work. (“my whole family was mentally ill and half were institutionalized and we could all work. . .”)

• She’s scared I’m taking advantage of Blake. That I “make” him do everything. (When in reality I don’t “make” him do anything and while he does do more than I do, I don’t exactly sit at home and eat bon bons either. I mean, who did she think was looking after the kids, the house and the dogs while Blake was in Michigan?)

• She claims she doesn’t read my site or anything but she’s pissed because I apparently made a blog post where I said that because I stay home and I’m an artist I’m better than people who work. (“she said that you were basically saying how much better you are than people who get up with their kids every day and how much better you are than people who have jobs. She basically said you were saying you’re an artist and anyone who works or takes care of kids all day is a sell out and not as good as you”. This one baffles me BECAUSE THAT SOUNDS SOOOO MUCH LIKE SOMETHING I’D SAY, so I asked Blake to get more info but there was none to be had.)

• Blake said she said, “I may have neglected to tell Joyce the part about you not wanting the present because you wanted the kids treated as equals” or something like that. This is a long dead issue but Joyce is Blake’s mom’s best friend and she wanted to buy a savings bond for Blake’s “first born child” and we freaked because we want our kids treated as equals and Wes was NOT Blake’s first child. Blake’s mom hounded us forEVER about getting Wes an American SSN so they could buy bonds for him, but Joyce supposedly had no intentions of getting any for Madison, so we cut her out of our lives and said thanks but no thanks. According to Blake: “Joyce never knew we had an issue with anything, so we were just ungrateful fucks.”

• She wants to get our kids AMERICAN FUCKING PASSPORTS for Xmas. When I asked why, Blake said “she thinks that being Canadian will hold them back in life, but if they have official US docs they will magically be better off”.

For the last two years I have been nothing but nice to this woman. I’ve met her half way as much as I’m capable of. I reply to every non-fwd e-mail she sends me. I write on her Facebook wall. I send her Growing Gifts. I used to play Scrabble with her on Facebook until Blake told me she uses a program to cheat. I do way more for her than she does for me as far as meeting someone halfway and this is the shit we get? It’s obvious that she still has a deep dislike for me, the same dislike she’s had since day one, meaning that all of the stuff we’ve been doing together that I thought was progress was all meaningless and phony on her end. Here I was being genuine and trying my best to be what I thought she wanted me to be but the whole time she was reading my site and feeling negative about all the things I do. She was a troll, by my definition, she just doesn’t leave comments (to my knowledge).

Worse, she seems to think she has to “enlighten” Blake on what a horrible person I am because he’s apparently too stupid or naive to see it and that’s completely insulting to him.

Again – and I cannot stress this enough – until this very moment I have been nothing but kind and humble towards Blake’s mother. When she cornered me in her kitchen a few years ago (the last time we went to Michigan) to literally tell me that Blake is such & such a way and that I’m holding him back from his true potential, I took it in stride and never fought back or stood up for myself or anything. I just took it. (I’m not good with confrontation.) She pulled a similar move in my own kitchen a few years ago as well and it was the same thing, I just said something neutral and walked out of the room. I have never been hostile or negative or anything like that towards this woman EVER and as I said, within the past two years here I was being honest and thoughtful and trying to build a relationship and the second she gets Blake alone, she tears me down.

I think Blake was more upset about the things she said than I was. I was hurt by them, yes, because I honestly thought we were building a relationship here and her actions were genuine and when I found out they were just an act, it stung because I was making an honest effort…and it apparently got me nowhere. When Blake got home, he said that he’d let the dust settle from the funeral and when things had calmed down, he’d e-mail his mom and settle this shit once and for all. I don’t know how many e-mails have flown back and forth at this point, but the first e-mail went out last weekend and they’re still battling it out so who knows when this is going to be over or if it’s ever going to be over. I mean godammit, Blake and I have been together for 8 fucking years, we have a solid relationship and a happy marriage that works, I’m here to stay. At some point she’s going to have to accept that and accept me or we’re going to have no choice but to live our life without her – and that’s pretty much what Blake’s been saying in the e-mails from what I understand.

What he’s leaving out though, is that she also needs to accept Blake for who he is. Blake has a job he loves in a field he loves and he even acknowledges the fact that he wouldn’t be where he is right now – and be happy – without me. Blake’s mom, according to Blake, expects him to have made his first million by now and have a trophy wife who will host Superbowl parties, attend dinner meetings and have a power career of her own. While we’re happy and accept each other for who we are, we have Blake’s mom who sees both of us as nothing but a disappointment.

And did you know that when I was in the hospital in 2006 because I was having a psychotic episode Brooke’s advice to Blake was to pack up the kids, drive down to her house in Michigan and fucking LEAVE ME? I mean what reality does this woman even live in?

She says she doesn’t even know me because she’s only met me about a dozen times, but at the same time, she’s been reading my site since Blake and I got together and I’ve most definitely met her more than a dozen times and while she claims she hasn’t gotten to know me well enough to love me, she’s certainly displayed that she’s gotten to know me well enough to dislike me and feel negatively towards me.

Blake’s been saying this the whole time we’ve been married: that there is nothing I can do to please his mother because I’m simply not the woman he was supposed to marry. Right now he’s told me to stop even trying to make an effort with her because the two years I  did try obviously got me nowhere so what’s the point? He says his mother needs to examine her feelings toward me and resolve them on her own before we can move forward and until she does that, I’ll never get anywhere with her.

I don’t know how long this is going to take. I don’t know how long this e-mail war is going to last. All I know is that I’m staying the fuck out of it and leaving it between them because there’s no place for me in this discussion even though it’s pretty much about me. I don’t know what the right thing to do is anymore – I thought I was doing it! I’d rather do nothing than misstep and at this point in time I simply give up.

The other aspect of this is that Brooke and her husband Charlie want to come up and visit but until this situation is resolved somehow that simply can’t happen. How can I have someone in my home who feels so hostile toward me? Why should I have to put up with being put down in my own comfort zone? The fact is, I don’t have to and I’m not going to and Blake completely agrees.

To expand upon that topic, according to Blake, Brooke and Charlie don’t like coming up here because they get bored. Well if you’re so bored and your grandchildren aren’t entertaining enough, then don’t fucking come up! In a recent phone conversation with his mom, which sort of turned into a fight – while he was at WORK – she said that Charlie would like to do home improvement projects with us and got all offended when Blake said that if we needed to work on the house at all, we’d probably enlist the help of Phil (my dad) because he’s only an hour & a half away and he does this shit for a living, every single day and has a truck if we need lumber or drywall and a million other reasons. Well Brooke took great offense to this for some reason and started a fight about it, saying how Charlie (her husband, if that wasn’t clear) put in someone’s window in something like, an hour or whatever and Blake was just like “where the fuck is this even coming from?” I mean the fact of the matter is, we don’t really DO home improvement projects and we’re certainly not going to call on Charlie to drive 5 hours up here to like, paint our living room ceiling or tile our shower. We’re not going to start a home improvement project when we have company coming (them) and we don’t have the money to just start a home improvement project when they want to come up just so Charlie will be entertained. It just doesn’t make any sense.

But where did this all come from? Well I talked to Blake shortly after his mom had called and he told me about it and I told him exactly where it was coming from: that day or the day before I’d made a post about us moving on Live Journal and how we’d need to fix up our house a bit to sell it and that Wayne had offered to help. THAT is where it all came from, I’m fairly certain. But the thing Blake and I both wonder is: does Charlie even know she’s saying all of this stuff on his behalf? We kind of doubt it. Charlie, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell and Blake agrees, is a pretty laid back, go with the flow, sit & chat kinda guy. It was certainly news to both of us that he suddenly wanted to help us drywall our bathroom because he’s bored out of his skull when he comes up otherwise.

The other issue with them coming up, according to these phone calls Blake gets from his mother while he’s at work, is that it’s too expensive. See, they can’t stay at our house because 1) Our house is very small and our futon isn’t very comfortable, 2) Charlie’s apparently allergic to our dogs and 3) I don’t really want to be alone in the house with them when Blake & the kids go to school and work because his mom corners me, talks down to me and puts me down, so that means they have to stay at a hotel or do what they did last time they came up (for a week) and get a time share somewhere. And this is apparently where the boredom sets in. While the kids are at school and Blake’s at work, they’re left to their own devices and they get bored. I don’t really know what I can do about that. If it were me, I’d do some Googling to see what was around and find something to do, but by the sounds of it, that thought’s never crossed Brooke’s mind. She’d rather complain that they’re bored.

So if it’s boring and too expensive, then I say don’t fucking come up! Plain & simple. If it’s such a chore, such a bother for you to come up to spend money only to not have a good time, then why bother? I mean I don’t have a solution to either problem and neither does Blake. I’m sorry my house isn’t bigger? I’m sorry Charlie’s allergic to my dogs? I’m sorry our kids aren’t entertaining enough for you? I mean what are we supposed to say to that?

What comes to mind is what my mother used to say to me when I was a kid and complained of boredom. She said, rather nastily I might add, “I’m not your entertainer!” and dammit I’m not. If you can’t keep yourself occupied, that isn’t my problem. Complaining about it to us isn’t going to solve your issue, you have to be proactive and go see what’s out there or I dunno, stay home!

I don’t know how to move forward from here. Everything is so convoluted at this point that I worry there’s no turning back. The harder Blake pushes the subject, I think the more his mother is going to resent me, but at the same time, I think he has no other choice than to bring this all up to the surface and address it rather than smile while staring daggers, know what I mean?

And of course Brooke is going to read this post and probably flip out but at this point I don’t even care. Blake doesn’t either. He told me tonight to write whatever I felt I needed to write and I think that’s what I’ve done here, as far as his mother is concerned. Until this whole thing blows over or runs its course or does whatever it’s going to do, I’m just gonna lay low, observe and, for the most part, keep my damn mouth shut on the subject. I wish I had a crystal ball so I knew how this was going to play out, but I don’t and I hate not knowing what to expect, I hate not knowing what to do. Is this post going to make anything better? Definitely not, but I’m sick and tired of pretending this aspect of my life doesn’t exist when it’s been a problem for the entire 8 years Blake and I have been together. It’s a constant drain on both of us and a huge source of anxiety for me. Every time I even think of Blake getting another e-mail from his mom, I have to pop an Ativan because my stomach knots up.

But enough about THAT drama I’ve said what I need to say right now and that’s just what is going on and yeah, Brooke will be making an appearance in my writings again at some point, but that’s enough for now. In the meantime, wanna know what else is going on in my life? Well my friend Jesse has pretty much abandoned me. I’ve sent him e-mails, I’ve written on his Facebook wall several times, I’ve sent him messages on Yahoo, I’ve tried to add him to Last.fm but he won’t add me back….I haven’t seen him since like, the winter and I don’t even know why this is happening. Blake’s talked to him and Jesse claims he’s not mad at Blake or myself, he’s just been “busy” and “doesn’t get online very often anymore”.

Blake went over to Jesse’s house on Saturday to retrieve the CDs he’d borrowed from us because I’m so convinced he’s distancing himself from us on purpose I wanted to get them back before he moved or something and he was apparently all sunshine and lollipops. He said he’d get online and e-mail me, but so far that hasn’t happened and I don’t expect it will.

I don’t like thinking bad things about my friends, but the only reason I can think of for Jesse blowing us off like this is the fact that I don’t smoke pot anymore, so I can’t be his stoner buddy and there’s no smoking in our house anymore so we can’t sit around smoking and talking like we used to. He used to come over at least twice a week, I’d talk to him usually every day on Yahoo, what happened?

The last time I talked to him was on Yahoo at the end of June because I asked him to come to the Hypercube event with us and he said he’d ask for that day off and we haven’t spoken since despite my attempts. Something’s going on there and I don’t know what and while it used to bother me, I’m at the point where I guess Jesse’s been moved into the “acquaintance” category and out of the “friend” category for the time being and that’s why I wanted all my CDs back. It was a “closure” kinda deal for me. Now Jesse can fuck off and do his own thing and I’m not even going to worry about it anymore. If I see him in the grocery store, I’ll talk to him, but I’m not gonna chase him down anymore or make myself crazy wondering what I did wrong. I’m just going to take him at his word that I didn’t do anything wrong and leave it at that.

In other news, Alex and I had our first fight last week. Here’s what happened: Blip.fm posted on Twitter excessively drives me nuts and Ronny is the worst offender on my list. But I love him so I just put up with it and grumble to myself when he’s on a Blip marathon and scroll past them or ignore Twitter until he’s gone to bed. But one day last week, I checked my Facebook live feed and there, from Ronny were a bunch of Blips. Now here’s the other thing about Ronny and I, for some reason Ronny tends to bring out the snark in me, so I commented on one of the Blips on Facebook and said something like “Are you seriously going to make me put up with these here too?” thinking he was posting tweets to Facebook and not realizing it was a Blip application that I could block. I thought in order to not see them, I would have to block Ronny altogether and I didn’t want to have to do that.

So anyway, I got busy talking to Blake or doing something, I can’t remember, and when I opened up TweetDeck, here were these bitchy, passive-aggressive Blips from Alex that were most definitely directed at me. So me, always one to make matters better because I’m talented like that, I posted a Blip of my own…of the Bloodhound Gang’s “I Hope You Die” and mimicked one of Alex’s passive-aggressive Blips in my message to which Alex replied “……..” and then “You’re a real bitch sometimes,” or something to that effect. I replied with “At least I’m honest,” and then a few second later I said something about how I’d rather be a bitch upfront than a passive-aggressive one and that’s when Alex announced that she was too “tired and cranky for this bull” and that was the last I heard from her on Twitter.

So after that I checked my e-mail and there were Facebook notifications where Ronny and Alex had commented on my original Facebook Blip comment saying that it was an app and I could block it and that no one was “forcing” me to do anything. I commented back, even though both of them had gone to bed, that I hadn’t realized it was an app, that I thought I’d have to block Ronny altogether and I apologized for the misunderstanding. Then, later that night I got thinking about it and while yes, Alex was a bitch too, I started it, so I decided to be the first to apologize so we could forget this ever happened. So, I texted Alex with “I’m sorry. I love you.” at like, 1am so she’d get it in the morning and when I woke up the next day, there was a text on my phone from Alex saying the same thing. Everything’s cool now and I think we just caught each other on bad days, but it was just a weird situation because Alex and I had never fought before and I’m glad we have the kind of relationship where we can just apologize to each other and let bygones be bygones. I was proud of us that day. So many women love to let drama like that play out for as long as possible and make it snowball and I really dig that neither she nor I are that type of woman. Or maybe we are a little bit, but at least we both value our friendship enough to just step back and be cool about things. I love Alex.

Saturday night, which those who follow me on Twitter already know, Blake & I went over to Wayne & Judy’s to play euchre and drink a little bit…or in their case, drink a lot. Apparently they started drinking at around 6pm, we showed up at 9pm. Blake & I don’t really drink that much or that often, so he had a 6-pack of beer and I had two 4-packs of Mike’s Hard lemonade. Wayne’s one of these guys who thinks men are superior to women so he always wants it to be men against women and…Judy & I beat them 5 games-0. Wayne knows the game now and at least 3 times renegged and once he decided to go alone on a hand that had NO trump whatsoever. He said “Blake, ya gotta trust me, this hand is ours,” and Blake was like “Wayne, if you don’t have the best hand ever and win this, I’m gonna punch you,”…and then it turned out he had NO trump while Blake had a hand that was almost entirely trump. Since Blake couldn’t really punch Wayne, I did. Later that night, as Wayne got more and more drunk, he wobbled upstairs and when he came down he started bitching at Judy that they need to change the plate cover on the light switch in the bathroom because when he’s drunk he can never find the switch to turn it on. (Their light switch cover is bumpy and has frogs on it and it makes the switch a bit recessed.) And then he tells us that as he was peeing in the dark, all of a sudden he started peeing on the seat. So we were all like, “why didn’t you have the seat up?” and he slurred “oh I never do that, I don’t have to” and I was like, “well if you’re pissing on the seat then apparently you do!” None of us were sure if he was serious or not about peeing on the seat, so all 4 of us went up there to investigate and lo & behold there was piss all over the seat and a huge puddle all over the floor. I don’t think he actually got ANY in the bowl. From that point on, especially because they have a cracked, squishy toilet seat, I went over to my house to pee. But it didn’t really matter because by that point Wayne was so drunk he was practically passing out at the kitchen table, so shortly after the bathroom incident, Blake and I left to go back to our house and while I tried to drink the rest of my Mike’s Hard and actually get drunk like everyone else, I just wasn’t into it so I dumped mine. We tried to play a game of Monopoly but I was just too tired and not really feeling well so we packed it up and I went to bed instead.

Sunday I was hung over which I think is totally unfair since I didn’t even get drunk the night before. Because I felt like crap, I basically just slept most of the day and rested up for the Mad Men finale (which was excellent).

And then of course, after Mad Men was over, Blake and I started our marathon conversation on blogging, creativity and life in general which brings us back full circle. The fact of the matter is, I’m not painting right now because I’m discouraged but that doesn’t mean I can’t be creative in other ways. I’ve got a short story bordering on a novella sitting here that I could be working on. I don’t know if anything will ever come of it, but it’s here waiting for me to write it. I have a million stories from my past left to tell and a new audience to tell some of the ones I’ve told before to. There’s no reason for me to remain in this rut and to become stagnant, waiting around for something to happen.

Another thing my mom used to say about boredom was that only boring people get bored, and the thing is, I’m not boring, I have this wicked imagination to keep me entertained so I might as well use it.

And I think that’s all I have to say.

PS. This entry is 6300 words long.

PPS. This entry was supposed to be posted at about 3:30am but our ISP had an internet outage so that’s why it’s being posted this morning.

I am the worst surprise spoiler in the world. As some of you know, I’ve been working on a series of three paintings called “Sparkle”, “Shimmer” and “Shine” and when I started them, I promised myself that I wouldn’t post any of them until all three were completed but…here are the two that are done anyway (as per usual, my photography skills are sub-par and they look a whole lot cooler in person):

And here’s a pic of them on an angle so you can see how sparkly they are:

Touched By Fire’s call for entries is right now until September 18th (I believe), so this weekend I plan on getting “Shimmer” finished (she’s a mermaid), as well as “devil girl” and I’m going to submit all four for acceptance into the show. I think I’m also going to enter “Binary Ballerina” and “Flower Girl” as well, because why the hell not? I believe I can submit up to ten entries and this is what I have kicking around, so I might as well.

Touched By Fire is being held at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto this year, which is sort of a big deal, so I’m really hoping I’ll be accepted. Last year they accepted three of my pieces, so I think I’ve got a pretty fair shot at getting in but I won’t know until the end of September.

They also have a call for artist’s stories which they want by Monday and I’m torn as to whether or not I’m going to submit mine. They want:

- Brief history of your mood disorder(s) if you are comfortable sharing
- Brief history of your art, which art form you work in, etc.
- How your art affects your mood disorder and vice versa
- Your history with Touched By Fire
- How Touched By Fire has helped or affected you or your art
- Your hope for Touched By Fire and your hope for your art in the future
- Your relationship if any to MDAO – ex. You’ve attended peer support groups, volunteered, etc.
- Anything else you’d like to share or might be of interest to the media

I don’t mind writing out my story, it’s not like I haven’t been writing about mental illness on my site for the past 3 or 4 years now, but I’m leery of the “media” part. Do I really want to be in the Barrie Examiner saying “hey yeah, I’m fucking NUTS!”? I’m just not sure about that.

Anyway, I figure I have the weekend to think about it and decide whether to do it or not. Doing it probably means automatic acceptance into the show and of course, media means more people will see (and hopefully buy) my work and those are all good things, but I dunno…I’m just leery. No one up here really knows me and I kinda like it that way, but if I’m in the paper, everyone in my little town of 1700 people will know me and know I’m not right in the head and I’m just not sure how I feel about that. :o/ Whether anyone likes it or not, mental illness carries a huge stigma and I realize I should be on the front lines fighting against that stigma but dammit, I’m tired.

I’ll probably end up doing it because it feels like the right thing to do, I’m just loathe to actually go ahead and do it. I loved doing Touched By Fire last year and this year sounds like it’s going to be even better, so I guess I’ll just suck it up and do it. *nods*

And my hamburgers are burning, so I’m just gonna shut up now and get back to my Sookie Stackshouse novel (I’m on #4).

I made a Live Journal post today I’d like everyone to take a look at if it isn’t  too much trouble.

I was interviewed by Marketing magazine this afternoon and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the Hypercube contest, really, it has more to do with the Canadian ad industry as a whole and Marketing magazine in particular.

As most of you are aware, I went to college to be a copywriter and have been flirting with a career in advertising for damn near the past decade, even writing two articles ABOUT advertising and the internet for Marketing magazine. I was even offered my own column, as I’ve relayed before, but that fell apart amongst a regime change and budget cuts. I also subscribed to said publication for about 4 years and as such, I have very mixed feelings about it and how this article on the Hypercube contest is probably going to go.

Marketing magazine, for those who don’t know, is Canada’s largest (only?) trade publication for our ad industry and it’s kind of known for being one big circle jerk when it comes to things ad agencies have actually done. When they talk about hypotheticals and what agencies should do and things like that, they’re actually pretty brazen and often open-minded, but when it comes to agencies, everyone seems to be touching everyone else’s dick.

I don’t know for certain what kind of article is going to be written about the Hypercube contest, but I do know the author contacted Capital C, Nissan and the Competition Bureau before talking to me and a lady I know from the contest named Lori (at my suggestion). Of course, it was also my understanding that the now infamous Encyclopedia Dramatica article about the contest (which is still ongoing, it appears) was the catalyst for writing an article at all, so I guess that’s something, but by the questions that were asked and what was focused on, I’m not very optimistic at reading a truthful, in-depth piece on what really went down and I’m afraid that Lori and I are just going to come across as butthurt sore losers as we’ve both been accused of being for not sitting here like nice little ladies and allowing ourselves to be spoon-fed bullshit.

For me, this whole thing, this whole “Hypercube Aftermath” as ED calls it on their second page on the topic, is muddled and confusing. There are so many issues to address and questions left unanswered and where to go from here – and just so many directions this could go, I literally have a hard time trying to keep up. And I’m usually pretty good at keeping up.

Some people want to focus on the fact that Blake and I didn’t win. Well, Blake and I are long over that, that’s not even an issue anymore. What is an issue, however, is the fact that from the very beginning there was no way Blake or I could have won, yet they made us believe we could and they used us. In order to win,  at least according to the game we were presented with, we had to use every bit of social persuasion we had and we had to maintain a momentum that had me glued to Twitter from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. It had me spamming forums, placing fake car ads, getting people to make fansigns – creatively using social media to spread their message. And Tony Chapman himself said that they were looking to reward social creativity. Yet most of the people who won (I won’t say all) didn’t participate in any meaningful way, if at all, or signed up for Twitter just to be a part of the contest, or signed up for Twitter to just be part of the contest but only tweeted a few times here and there and only to the “voice” of the contest, @thehypercube. And they certainly weren’t being socially creative.

And as I said to Matt Semansky, the guy writing the article, Capital C, namely Tony “Douchebag” Chapman, was talking about the “net generation” a whole lot, yet they didn’t seem to know who or what the “net generation” is and in the process of choosing people who are not the “net generation”, they alienated and even angered the actual “net generation” (which doesn’t actually exist, it’s a stupid marketing term, but those who are in it, know they’re in it). The people I hang with, the power users of the internet who were lulled to sleep at night by the sound of a dial-up modem connecting and who are literally online or connected to the internet in some way every breathing moment and have been since they were children, they are not buying this car. But that’s who Nissan wanted to buy this car, I think anyway. At least that’s what the tech package and branding it a “mobile device” seems to imply. But they threw out the latest marketing buzz term “creative class” too, so I’m not sure if they knew WHO the hell they wanted to buy this car. Obviously there’s going to be some overlap between groups and maybe those who fall into the overlap are what they desired, but that’s not what they got, so to me, this entire contest just ended up being one giant clusterfuck of epic proportions. Some are already calling it “the most botched contest Canada’s ever seen”. On the internet. Where this whole contest took place. Where they were hoping to reach their target and build brand awareness and loyalty through community…except in their choices, they decimated the community that had formed during the contest and created full-on brand hatred that has only grown as the dirty truth about what went on behind the scenes has begun to surface. Um. I don’t think that’s a win, people.

When folks are clogging up (basically) your brand’s hashtag on Twitter by saying things like, they want to key every Cube they see or they’d like to vacation on the inside of a Cube with a blowtorch, or even that your product is ugly (check out the #nissan hashtag some time and watch it for a day) there was a problem along the way. But Nissan and Cap C? They refuse to acknowledge there was or is any problem and that in and of itself is the problem.

Matt Semansky asked me today what I thought Nissan could do to turn this around and while I forget my exact wording, I basically said that the best they could do is trash this whole campaign, kill CubeCommunity.ca, cut their losses and start over with a traditional media campaign aimed at the very people they didn’t want driving this car, because those are the only people who are going to buy it now. The fact of the matter is, their attempt at a social media campaign, their social media “experiment”, well, it failed. There’s no denying it, it failed in every way imaginable.

And in CubeCommunity.ca? With what little is on that domain right now? Even that is a complete fail and all they’re asking for is for you to join their mailing list. If the site is gone by the time you’re reading this, which is a possibility, there’s a photo of a Nissan Cube on the page with a speech bubble that says “oh hai!” They are ever so slightly co-opting the speech and memes of the same “net generation” they managed to alienate during the course of this campaign. That little “oh hai!” may seem like nothing on the surface, but it’s a rub for a lot of us. It reminds me of a Gap ad I saw in the 90’s with a guy wearing Gap jeans and a flannel shirt falling through the air and the tagline was “Plunge into grunge”. It was vile and completely offensive. I mean dammit, people, didn’t you watch Reality Bites? There was a reason why working at the Gap was considered the worst possible job there was and that poster pretty much summed it up.

For the record, I have never been in a Gap store in my life. And it’s all because of that ad.

But I digress…

I know it’s been pretty negative in the virtual world of Sunnyland the last couple of months because of this contest and that you’re all probably sick of hearing about it, but the thing is, I am of a breed, we’ll say,  that doesn’t deal well with injustice and some say that’s a trait of my generation, whatever generation I may be. Whatever it is, it eats at me. Unfortunately, I’m also a person prone to extreme anxiety and it took 4, count ‘em 4, Ativans to even function today because of Hypercube crap being brought up again and for my own sanity I hope that this article in Marketing magazine either ends this insanity or blows it wide open. I’m sick of all this whispering to each other behind the scenes and keeping secrets and flat out gossiping and people blocking people on Twitter and sock puppet accounts and all the rest of it. I’m sick of it, I want it to be done.

But as I said to Matt this afternoon, it probably won’t be the end. CubeCommunity.ca is going to launch (eventually) and it’s going to be a whole new thing. I’m no psychic or anything, but the future I see with this is not a positive one and it’s only going to be the final nails in the Hypercube campaign’s coffin. At one end of the spectrum, you’ll have people tweeting or blogging about what mouth-breathers the “winners” are and at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got the wrath of Anonymous and DDoS attacks. The reaction to CubeCommunity.ca is going to fall somewhere  within that spectrum and for that reason, if I were Nissan, I wouldn’t even launch it. As I said earlier, I’d cut my losses and start over with a different demographic. They failed with this one. But that’s just me. And they’re not prone to listening to me, so I guess I’ll sit back and *facepalm* with the rest of my “generation” as they flounder some more.

So that’s, more or less, what I conveyed to Matt Semansky of Marketing magazine. Or at least tried to. As I said in my Live Journal post, I’m just not any good on the phone, especially with this muddled topic, so god only knows how I came across.

Anyway, it’s almost 5am, I’m starving and I’ve gotten absolutey no work done tonight so I have to go eat and accomplish something.

So…it’s been a few days since I made a post and I figured it was time that I made another one.

As I’ve been doing since release, I’ve been playing a lot of Sims 3 except I’ve put Zennish Moody and Johnny Awesome on the back burner because their story started to bore me (they’re my pseudo-legacy family so they’re basically just going to max out skills, have great careers, have babies, paint each family member to hang in the legacy house and die), so I decided to make a new family, one with less than desirable traits, in another town, as I was inspired by Alice & Kev. Thus, The Moody Cousins – Luna, Sunshine and Star – were born.

Luna is evil, dislikes children, she’s insane, flirty and a great kisser. Her cousin Sunshine is childish, good, excitable, easily impressed and also flirty. Sunshine’s daughter, Star, is over-emotional, flirty, a genius and a computer whiz and she’s who you’re going to meet today because she’s in looooooove.

Star brought Dallas Shallow home from school one day and they hit it off instantly. All she knows about him is that he’s flirty and a good kisser, but at 17, that’s all she needs to know.

Star and Dallas hitting it off.

In other news, there are only 6 days until the big Hypercube event in Toronto where we’ll find out the people who have won the 50 Nissan Cubes up for grabs. I sincerely doubt I’m going to be among them, as I’m just not that lucky and the more I think about it, the more reasons I can think of for them to not award me one, but I’ve bought a dress and I’m going anyway, if only to put the entire thing to rest by drinking my face off in a club I’ve never been to downtown.

Normally this whole event would be triggering massive anxiety and while I’m not exactly jumping for joy at the prospect of going, particularly since it’s looking like Blake & I will be going alone, I’m pretty level as far as my agoraphobic tendencies. Who knows how I’ll be on the 23rd though, there’s still a very good chance that I’ll completely chicken out and not go at all.

At this point in the process, to be totally honest, I don’t even care if I win or not, I just want it to be over and done with so I can stop thinking about it and move on with my life.

Of course, on the very slim chance that I am a winner, it’ll mean that it’s just the beginning of things and I guess I’ll have no choice but to take that as it comes. There’s a very large part of me that’s absolutely terrified of winning because of all it means and the things I’m going to have to do if that ends up being the case. Not the blogging for Nissan part, that’s cake, it the whole driving thing and the fact that having a Cube of my own is going to change life as I know it in a really drastic kind of way. I don’t even know how to express what having a gassed up car in my driveway at 2pm on a Thursday in August means in my world, let alone the opportunities it’s going to afford me creatively. Going to Curry’s by myself? That just not even something I could have imagined before this contest.

She’s mesmerized.

Speaking of creativity…I haven’t really been painting and the reason for that is because I simply don’t tend to paint as much in the warmer months. As I’ve explained before, the spring and summer is when I catch up on things I couldn’t absorb throughout the rest of the year (because I’m painting!). It’s when I do most of my reading and of course, gardening, partying, going to the park across the road and swinging in my bra & underwear on particularly hot nights…spring and summer is when I live and experience, fall and winter is when I hibernate and produce.

There are also two other reasons why I haven’t been painting:

1. I’m busy. The end of the school year, getting myself together for this Hypercube party and having a house full of drunk people (one of whom I’ve never met!) on the 26th means that there is a lot on my plate right now and a lot going on. I may not be physically busy, but my mind sure is and every brainless moment of Sims 3 is welcome.
2. I’m working on a side-project that’s going to turn into a full-time writing project come September. It’s (of course) internet-based and that’s pretty much all I can tell you about it, except that only about half of you are going to have any interest in it.

I just feel like I’m in this Hypercube contest that’s like, all about creativity and here I am doing nothing creative at all. Except that I am, I promise, it’s just behind the scenes and I can’t talk about it!

Art shows have been on my mind in the last few days though. I’ve decided I’m definitely going to submit to Touched By Fire again this year because unlike last year, I can actually be prepared and have some pieces to sell and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time last year. I’ve been wondering what other art shows I can submit to, I’m not really a part of that world so I don’t know what’s what and I don’t even know how to find out. One of my goals for 2009 was to do two art shows though, so TBF is one of them…but what about the other? If anyone out there can teach me how to navigate the Toronto art world, that’d be lovely because I have no fucking clue.

Because Dallas is a good kisser, Star gets a 3 hour mood boost every time their lips touch.

Immersion therapy…well, I haven’t been doing it. On May 25th I walked downtown to a restaurant all by myself, ordered and ate breakfast and it really did a number on me because it proved to be too big of a step. As a result, I think anyway, I found myself in a low that lasted more or less until yesterday, so 2 & a half weeks. I’m not totally sure how bipolar disorder works and if life events can trigger highs and lows (I know lack of sleep can trigger a high), but the whole restaurant thing definitely put me in a funk that I’m only coming out of now so I have to be a little more careful about what I do from now on and be careful of getting ahead of myself. Immersion therapy is a process and you can’t run before you walk. As much as I’m loathe to admit it, I’m still in the walking phase and can’t afford to rush things when they result in 2 week long setbacks. I’m on a schedule here!

So, I’m back to driving to the post office in the middle of the night with Lucky and little else. (Chali godammit, I need your current mailing address.)

I did think of two other things I’d like to do today, though.

Remember when I went for a walk down the Trans-Canada Trail by my house that one time? Well, when I did that there were barely buds on the trees and the ground was just starting to thaw out, but now the trail is covered by a canopy of leaves and right now the whole thing is covered in these white and purple flowers I don’t know the name of. One day soon, before those flowers stop blooming, I want to take Wes down the trail and take pictures of him. It’s supposed to rain for the rest of the week, so this week’s out, so next week it’ll probably have to be. I don’t think the flowers are going to last much longer than that, they bloom for only a very short period of time.

Going places by myself is difficult for me, but actually going places by myself but with my kids, like being the only responsible adult around, is even more difficult so this one’s going to be a fairly large step, but not too big that it’ll send me into a depression because I get freaked out.

The other thing I wanted to do is this: Two doors down from me, there’s a condemned house that the bank owns and according to my neighbour, Wayne, the bank is going to demolish it soon. Before they do, I want to go in there and take pictures. I’ve never been in there, so I’m not sure what to expect, but Wayne does tell me that there’s a TREE growing through the middle of the house and if it’s as cool in person as it is in my head, it’s going to make for some pretty amazing pictures, pending I get the light right.

I walked over there today to take some pictures of the buttercups growing in the house’s front yard but I was too chickenshit to go in. I don’t think this is something I can do on my own. For one, you never know who’s going to be in that house. Runaways, homeless people and people wanted by the police have been known to hide out in there – or at least the cops have been in and out of there enough times looking for all of those kinds of people that it’s possible someone could be in there. Number two is that the house is condemned and thus unsafe. I wouldn’t want to go in there by myself and have something happen and no one know that I’m there or be stuck in there with a broken leg or whatever until someone finds me. I dunno, I have to talk this one over with Blake and see what he thinks. I think afternoon light would probably be best, so that means it’ll probably have to happen on a weekend.

Anyway, those were my thoughts this morning.

Ahhhhhh, hormones.

As I mentioned above, on Saturday the 26th, we’re having a party at our house in honour of our “internet friend” Marylin coming up and becoming a real life friend. Ronny, who lives in Michigan and is engaged to Alex, will be picking Marylin up from Hamilton on his way up here to Barrie. Then he’ll either drop Marylin off here or we’ll come get her. This will happen either late on the 25th or earlier on the 26th. So, it’s going to me, me, Blake, the kids, Ronny & Alex, Marylin, Jesse and Jesse’s friend Patricia all getting wasted (well, not the kids…) in honour of Marylin and our fine country’s birthday.

Because of this event, I spent all of last night on Wikipedia going through music of the 90’s, trying to find stuff to download in order to replenish my iTunes. None of you probably recall, but about a year ago my iBook’s hard drive died completely and I lost EVERYTHING, including a LOT of writing and all of my music. As such, my music collection is less than 4GB right now and if we’re going to have a party, I’m going to have to rectify that. So last night i went through the 90’s and at some point this week I’ll do the 80’s and 2001-present.

The shitty thing, though? Soulseek doesn’t seem to want to participate with my plan. It seems fine if I want to download an entire album, but song by song? No way. I don’t know why this is. Hopefully whatever the issue is, it’ll fix itself in time for me to download the 3 pages worth of songs I’ve written down already and the other 10 I’ll probably write down before I’m done.

WTF? Get off my computer!
Can Dallas handle a girl who’s more 1337 than he is?

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say. Today I made potato salad for the first time this year and it’s calling my name, so I’m going to go have dinner and get ready for my super secret meeting tonight! I hope you all have a wonderful evening and stay tuned for the next installment of The Moody Cousins!