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

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

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

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

Want some examples?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voila:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PS. I am 26 days smoke-free.

It’s 3am and I’m restless & rambly.

I think it’s completely unfair that breakfast sausages have anywhere from 190 calories per 2 sausages to 270. The tastier the breakfast sausage, I’m finding, the worse it is for you. This is unfortunate as I kinda really like breakfast sausages, however earlier this week, not knowing the caloric value of them, I inadvertently ate a breakfast that was roughly 1300-1500 calories. I didn’t notice that there was nutritional information on the package until I went to throw it away, then I got out my calculator and just about cried. That night, this was my dinner (not that I’m complaining, I just would have liked something more substantial…):

On Tuesday I went to see my latest healthcare professional, Dr. D, who is an Irish-Canadian nutritionist with the world’s cutest accent to basically see if I was fat enough to get into her 10 week, comprehensive metabolic workshop. The bittersweet news is that I am, indeed, fat enough for this program, but the good news is that I’m on the lower end of the spectrum, only needing to lose about 20 lbs (but I’d be happy with 15).

The program is going to start in either June (I hope) or August and the discrepancy is a result of some of the speakers who well, speak, in the sessions, want to go on summer vacations. I can understand this, I really can, I just really hope it’s in June because I have S.A.D. and if it starts in August, I’ll be in full-depression mode by the end of it and not motivated to do a damn thing. Also, we’re planting our garden this weekend so we’re going to have fresh, organic vegetables all summer which is going to aid in achieving a healthier weight. I won’t have the same advantage in September and October.

Apparently the first thing they do in the workshop is give you a pedometer which is going to be a barrel of laughs in my case. I wake up. I go to the bathroom. I pee. I brush my teeth. I walk to the kitchen and grab a Coke Zero. I come into my office and sit at my desk. For a couple of hours. Then I go back into the kitchen and make breakfast which could be a protein shake or eggs, either way, my feet are firmly planted in the kitchen. Then I come back into my office and eat  at my desk while I watch crappy daytime TV for the time it takes to finish my meal. I go back into the kitchen and deposit my dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, depending on the state of the room. Then I come back to my chair and either do internet stuff or paint for a few more hours. I might get up to walk to the bathroom and pee. Or I might get up to go to the kitchen and get a drink (I drink a LOT). This continues literally until I go to bed at night – oh wait, sometimes I eat lunch, so those steps count – and then it repeats the next morning. This is my crazy, whacked out, OCD routine and I get very upset when it’s altered in any way. Also? My house is very very small. It’s only about 10 steps from my office to the kitchen, 15 to the bathroom, 20 to the bedroom. Yep, this pedometer is gonna be entertaining.

I wonder if it counts dancing? I actually do that a lot on my way to the kitchen or bathroom.

The other components of the metabolic workshop were kind of explained to me in a blur, but I know Blake can’t come with me (:o/) except for the two classes that are about cooking. They want the primary cook to sit in on those ones and that would be Blake. I know there is going to be a one-on-one session with a dietician at some point, but to be honest I don’t even really know what a dietician is or does. She also mentioned a session with a…fuck, I forget the title, it was like “actionarian” or something like that, but basically what she does is tells you how to move more. They don’t like to use the word “exercise” I noticed, she always said “have more movement” and things like that.

Anyway, the actionarian or whatever her title is, is going to tell me how to use my Wii Fit and I’m guessing she’ll be like, “do this game X amount of times and then switch to this game X amount of times, then do a yoga pose, blah blah blah”. I’m totally fine with doing Wii Fit, I mean, that’s why we bought it I suppose, but the obstacle I’m going to run into is that when this workshop starts, the kids are going to be home for the summer and I don’t want to do Wii Fit in front of them because the little shitheads are going to laugh at me and/or simply make me feel self-conscious. I’m going to assume this actionarian woman is going to want me to do Wii Fit every day, which I’m fine with, I mean, god knows I have nothing better to do, and I’m going to assume she’s going to want me to do at least 20 minutes up to maybe even an hour. How the hell do I get the kids to leave the house every day for an hour? And it’ll be at random times too, because I don’t really have a schedule. I go to sleep when I’m tired, I wake up when I’m not tired anymore. This is especially true in the summer for some reason.

And while I’m on the subject of movement (not exercise!), Blake and I have been talking about going to a yoga class together. Madison’s 12 now and can legally stay home and watch Wes, which gives Blake and I a little more freedom, especially in this regard because he found a yoga studio that’s just up the road, 5 minutes away, and Madison would be fine watching Wes for (I’m guessing) an hour or so while we do this. Part of me really REALLY wants to do it. In fact, it was MY idea, I was the one who brought it up, but when Blake found the studio and showed me their website and started talking like it was possible, I pretty much totally freaked out. There was crying. So what’s my deal with this? Oh my friends, I hope you’ve figured out “Sunny Logic” by now because you’re going to need it.

First and foremost, I am absolutely paralyzed with fear by the idea of FARTING. Or worse – omg I cannot even believe I’m going to type this – QUEEFING. There is not enough Ativan on the planet that would help me recover from such an event. I think I would literally have a heart attack and die if either of those scenarios happened in a room full of people. I mean, my god, how could they NOT laugh? I’d fucking laugh! (If it were anyone but me.) I’m breaking into a nervous sweat even typing this paragraph, that’s how absolutely terrified I am by the prospect of this happening. And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen because I KNOW it does. And it’s not like we’re in a hospital where “the doctors have seen it all” – I mean, it kind of is, I guess, as far as the instructor is concerned, but not the students.

Anyway, it would fucking kill me and this is problem #1 with doing yoga, like, in front of people.

Problem #2 is that I have this major issue where I’ll only do something if I’m automagically good at it. I don’t like learning. I don’t like the process of learning by sucking at something and being corrected. I want to be a prostar on the first try and I’m scared that I just won’t be any good at yoga. Do I fucking LOOK zen to you?

At the same time, I’m ridiculously flexible. When I was in the hospital, out of my mind with mania, I literally sat in a hospital bed for 3 days, cross-legged, with my head on the bed in front of me – if you can picture that. The only time I moved was when they made me take meds. I can squat on the floor with my feet flat on the ground and my bum touching my heels, which Blake finds totally bizarre and we’ve asked just about everyone who’s ever come into my house if they can do that and they can’t. My kids can’t even do it.

So what I’m saying is, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be excellent at yoga and my fear of not being good at it is completely irrational.

Problem #3 is the whole people thing. I mean, I don’t leave my house for a reason and it’s not because I’m afraid of fresh air or pigeons. I am absolutely socially retarded and just can’t deal with them. Blake says I won’t have to deal with them because everyone’s there to do their own thing, but what do I do if someone like, talks to me? Or worse, wants to be friends?

Problem #4 is money. Yoga is expensive. Blake says we can do it if we cut back on some things but right now we’re already in overdraft because of Blake’s CPAP machine and it’s not that I don’t believe him that we can financially do this if it’s important – and part of me thinks it is – it’s that I’m scared we’ll drop all this money on it and I’ll go once, freak out and never go again, wasting money we could have spent on, I dunno, FOOD. I suppose in a way, most of my fears are the fear of failure, which I know has been a problem for most of my life and I don’t know how to adapt and get over it and just do what I want to do.

So that’s the yoga issue.

The other parts of the metabolic workshop, as I said, were kind of a blur. I know that there’s going to be a lot of talk about food and its effects on metabolism and how different foods affect it differently. She said there’s going to be a lot of discussion on the importance of sleep, which I’m actually kind of already aware of because that’s a big component of bipolar disorder. They’re going to explain good fats vs. bad fats and stuff like that. I forget what else she said would be a part of the workshop, but she was so excited about it that it was infectious and I’m actually looking forward to it. See, though? I lied up there ^^^. I actually REALLY like to learn, like with my brain, I’m just not a physical person at all, I mean, I FAILED gym every year of my life. That’s another reason why I’m scared to do Wii Fit in front of the kids.

And then there’s the fact that the workshop is going to be 2 hours, every Tuesday, for most of the summer holidays, so not only is Blake going to have to use 10 vacation days (out of about 16) to take me to this thing, he’s going to have to bring the kids with him. (Although leaving Madison with Wes is an option to explore…but it makes me uneasy being 1/2 an hour away from home.)

I dunno. I’m in a weird place these days. In a lot of respects I feel like my life is sort of getting back on track but in other ways it’s completely off the rails. My creativity pool right now is very very low, which makes me depressed. I have two paintings on the go which should have been done like, 2 weeks ago and here I am barely in the first stages of shading the girls’ faces. I’m exhausted all the time and sleeping at stupid hours because in the “transitional seasons” by body goes all out of whack trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule that I can’t even begin to figure out the basis of. My dad wants us to come up for a visit, probably Father’s Day weekend and I really want to go because they just put a huge addition on their house and I want to see it, but at the same time, I hate the pain in the ass it is to go up there with the dogs and everything.

There’s more negative stuff but I don’t feel like elaborating on it because I feel like I’ve done it before. I probably do it every year.

In the positive, I am 3 weeks smoke-free. My dress from Free People that I plan on wearing to The Square Foot Show (which is an art show, for those not paying attention) came today and Blake’s going to pick it up at the post office tomorrow or Saturday. I sold a painting last week (I think? maybe the week before) and I spent most of the proceeds on awesome stuff from Etsy for Blake for Father’s Day and it should all be arriving soon. I also bought myself a ring to wear to The Square Foot Show because my wedding ring doesn’t fit due to my newfound fatness and I feel awkward being in such a public place without it. Despite the fact that I’m currently 20-ish lbs overweight, I still tend to get hit on often enough that my wedding ring (or in this case, a stand-in) to me is kind of like a shield from creepers.

I got new business cards from MOO that are pretty cool a couple of weeks ago, although I’m almost out of MOO mini cards and I’m hoping to sell a painting before the Square Foot Show so I can order some more to bring with me to hand out. Also with the proceeds of my sale, I bought 10 cans of Krylon because I want to experiment with different varnishes over the summer when I have the ability to spray outside. But just the fact that I had the ability to walk into Wal*Mart and buy 10 fucking cans of Krylon made me feel good about myself, like I was on the right track. The fact that I had the ability to spoil my husband rotten, who deserves it more than anyone I could possibly think of…shit like that just makes me feel independent and secure, somehow, which is something I don’t feel very often.

I also feel good about the fact that right now, my little Etsy business is making enough money to not only sustain itself as far as materials now, but I can buy promotional items like business cards, pay my Etsy bill at the end of every month and still have enough left over to buy myself a dress, a ring and Blake a whole bunch of crap I can’t even tell you about because he’s reading this. Not only could I buy 10 cans of Krylon, but I could buy 12 blank canvases too! The sale of a couple of paintings, for me, can be stretched and stretched and stretched and it just feels good to have my own money, to be able to buy my husband a gift with MY OWN MONEY. Maybe no one else will understand this, but in the (almost) 8 years Blake and I have been married, I haven’t given him very many gifts and the reason for this is because I think it would be stupid to buy someone a gift with their own money, especially when they can look at the credit card statement and see what it is.

So what I’m saying is that I feel good about being somewhat financially independent at the moment. Well, sort of…I have a tiny bit of padding in my PayPal account right now, enough to pay my Etsy bill for a couple of months, which actually makes me completely broke but whatever. My theory on money is that you can always make more and I *do* have two paintings on the go, one I’m fairly certain I can sell quickly and one that I’ll probably sell at The Square Foot Show. (I have to replicate “Shimmer” because it got ruined by a kid…)

I’m looking forward to the summer holidays with the kids. Madison has this friend, who I’ll call “E”, that I actually quite like and I’m hoping that she’ll be spending a significant part of her summer at our house because between her and Madison, they could do some really creative things with Madison’s sewing machine. E knows how to make her own clothes, and does, whereas Madison wishes she had those kinds of skills and the only way she’s going to learn them is from E. Also, E comes from a very…crappy background. She’s a foster kid and I think hanging out with our family and sort of being a casual part of our family may be good for her.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is the beach. I’ve lost enough weight that I fit into one of the bathing suits my friend Raya bought me a few years ago without looking gross, so it’s safe to go to the beach again and that makes me happy. When we first moved here, the first summer we were here, it was SO hot for a while there that I would have all of our beach gear packed up so that the second Blake got home from work, we could all get in the car and go to the beach for a couple of hours when it was less crowded. Often we’d get a couple of subs on the way and I’d bring a knife to cut them up and we’d have dinner on the beach. I miss that and I’m hoping for a very hot summer so we can do that again.

I’m also looking forward to reading books all night. Lots of them. I wish I had more, though. Right now I only have 1 & a 1/2 and our little library sucks. :o/

I’m hoping to sell a painting or two over the summer holidays so I can have cash on hand to do things with and for the kids. Like, I want to be able to say to them, “ya wanna make $2? go out to the garden and pull all the weeds,” which they would do because they like money and will have nothing better to do. Or, “hey do you want to have pizza for lunch? Here’s $15 and a list, ride your bike to the grocery store and pick these things up,”. Or, “here’s $5, go get an ice cream cone at McDonald’s”. Stuff like that. With my own money. I want to be able to do these extra things for my kids without being a financial burden to Blake, because they deserve it. They’re really really great kids.

Alright, it’s now almost 4:30am which means I’ve been rambling about basically nothing for the past hour & a half and I think my sleep meds are kicking in because my thoughts are getting fuzzy. SO! Goodnight!

…and in a sense it will be…it just won’t stay that way because I have issues. Major fucking issues.

For all intents and purposes, yesterday was a good day. A very good day. I woke up at 6am, did internetting until the rest of the family woke up so I could use the blender to make a protein “shake” which isn’t so much a shake or even a smoothie because it’s just protein powder, milk and ice. I hate bananas and yogurt with a fiery passion, so the odds of me ever making a proper smoothie are probably slim to none and I think adding ice cream to make a shake is probably defeating the purpose.

I did get Blake to buy me some Nestle Quick chocolate squirty stuff though, because the supposedly chocolate flavour protein powder we bought doesn’t actually taste like chocolate. It SMELLS like chocolate, oddly enough, but really, it doesn’t taste like anything (and I don’t like plain milk). There is only 15 calories in 1 tablespoon of Nestle Quick. I figure I’ll probably use 2. Anyway, none of this is neither here nor there.

As I consumed my protein beverage, the family got ready to go to work and school and the sun was shining and I just felt warm inside my heart. It was going to be a good day, I could tell. And while I don’t really participate in the family getting ready for work or school, sometimes I like being awake for it because it really is the time in which all 3 of them are the most themselves, together. That’s probably hard to explain, but it’s like concentrated Madison, concentrated Wes, concentrated Blake all within this frantic chaos of getting out the door on time. It’s one of those things that occur in family like that I just sometimes like to sit back and watch, or more to the point, listen to.

So for about an hour it’s all loud and everyone’s rushing around (except Wes, who leisurely eats his cereal and talks to his favourite imaginary friend of the week, for the most part) and they’re all being extremely unintentionally funny, but the second the car leaves the driveway, bound for school and work, the house becomes absolutely silent in this perfect way that, to me, is absolutely calming. The dogs have each claimed a still-warm bed, the cat is sprawled out on the couch sleeping, and I haven’t turned on TweetDeck yet or iTunes. The only sound is the gentle hum of my computer and the lamp on my desk whose spiral lightbulb is due to blow any day now, if the buzzing coming out of it is any indication.

So after they leave, I just kinda sit here and absorb. I look out the window, I say “hi” to the sun, I check on my plants, I drink my protein beverage and then I just sit in my chair and kind of clear my mind and do a mini-meditation. I never know what I’m going to do on any given day. I never really attack a day with a plan of any sort. I wake up when I wake up. I eat when I eat. I make art when I feel like it. I watch movies while I make art (it’s very difficult for me to just watch a movie). I take pictures of things when something catches my eye. I have dance parties with the dogs. I sing. I make strange noises because no one’s home and I can. I read a lot. Every day is different, unstructured and unplanned. Most days are neutral, some days are good and a few days are very very bad.

Yesterday was good, as I said.

After Blake and the kids left, I did some more internetting, this time with more of a purpose. There are many places I visit online that I’ve been visiting for so long that posting to them daily is almost like a requirement and in some cases, kind of like a job. It’s the beginning of the month, that means all votes on Camwhores have been set to zero, as everyone knows, but it also means that our points have been set to zero as well. “What are points?” you might be asking yourself. Well, they’re participation points where, for participating in the community, you are given points, which translate to money at the end of the month. I’d like to think I’m very very good at working this system, so that’s what I mean about some places I go to on my internet travels are kind of like work. Yesterday I had a personal quota of making X amount of threads and posts in the Camwhores forum and a blog post, but it was loose in that my threads and posts would be things I was genuine about posting. I don’t post for the sake of points, I post because I’m interested in having a conversation with whoever else is responding to threads, either their or mine. The quota isn’t so much a quota for points necessarily, but something that I use to make sure I don’t spend more time on the forums than I should because I have other things to do and get sucked into the forums I go to daily very easily.

I had actually come up with some forum topic ideas over the weekend that I didn’t have time to post, so I posted them, wrote my blog post and then I actually went outside and sat in the chair under my carport that was formerly used for sitting in while smoking. It was still early enough in the morning that the sun was streaming in, under the carport, and hitting my face, so I just sat there for about 10 minutes soaking it in. While I was out there, I saw 2 robins, a bunch of red-winged blackbirds and the teeniest glimpse of a cardinal that’s been hanging around in the pine tree beside our driveway some days.

When I came inside I realized that I was actually still really tired considering I’d gone to bed around 1am the night before and then got up at 6, so I decided to take a nap. I woke up at 1:48pm, let the dogs out, then went around the house opening windows because it had to be about 25 degrees outside. When I went to open the living room windows, I saw that my bleeding hearts were in full bloom, so I went into my office, grabbed my camera and opened the door to go take pictures of them when I noticed that on the doorknob was a delivery notice from Canada Post saying that they were there at 1pm. I believe that they were there, but I sincerely doubt that they actually knocked on the door because when someone knocks on our door, no matter how faint, Hoover and Lucky go mental and will not stop barking until the door’s opened and they see the person’s okay. If Hoover and Lucky go mental because someone knocks on the door, traditionally I wake up. I don’t actually answer the door because 9 times out of 10 it’s either a delivery (they’ll come back) or a Jehova’s Witness (don’t care if they come back) and I don’t like strangers seeing me moments after waking up from a small coma.

The delivery notice said that we could pick up the package at the post office after 2pm, so I called Blake and asked if he was planning on leaving work early because it was Monday and generally on Monday’s he has Judo and therefore comes home early. He said he wasn’t going to Judo but that he could come home early to get this package. The odd thing about this package was that it was addressed to me and required a signature and the only thing I was expecting was the new Gogol Bordello CD from Amazing, which would not require a signature. Whatever this package was, was a mystery. Blake reminded me that I’d signed a form at the post office saying that he can sign for my packages, so he said he’d pick this one up on his way home from work, pending the thing I signed hadn’t expired.

After I got off the phone with him, I picked my camera back up and went outside to take pictures of my bleeding hearts and the lone baby tulip I have that just began to bloom over the weekend. (I think I’ve now photographed everything in my garden that’s going to bloom before July, so the first official “Keep Off the Lawn” post should be coming soon, for those who are into those.) While I was out there, I noticed a LOT of growth happening from plants that had seeded themselves in the fall and thought about what a shame it’ll be when we decimate them this weekend with the sod cutter because that sneaky sneaky grass, I swear, grew over the winter somehow and is now taking about about 1/3 of the bottom of my garden. No matter though, the sod cutter makes easy work of removing it and we can move this grass to the backyard where there is no grass, just weeds, and my friend Ruggedo send me PLEEEEEEEEEENTY of seeds this year to make the front look amazing. On my list of things to do is to buy a canvas the same size as my current “Grow Dammit!” sign and paint a new one using the colours of the garden, but financially, doing so hasn’t been high on my priority list, which is why I haven’t done it yet. I also meant to do it last year as well, but again, the same thing.

When I came inside, I put my camera away and did a little more internetting for a few minutes and then I decided that it was time to work on the two canvases I began prepping over the weekend and who were waiting for the splatter stage in my process. These ones were actually going to be a bit of a challenge because one of them is going to be a repainted version of “Shimmer“, which is the one Madison accidentally destroyed by letting it bounce off the corner of the shelf it was sitting on, causing the canvas to rip and the varnish to basically shatter. If you’ll recall, “Shimmer” is actually 1 in a series of 3 and my intention for all 3 was to put them in The Square Foot Show in July. That’s still my intent, so “Shimmer” needs to be reproduced. The challenge with these canvases is that the splatter technique I used for all 3 of those paintings is different than the technique I’ve been using for the past year and I wasn’t sure I remembered how to achieve the same effect so all 3 would continue to match and look like a set.

Over the weekend I went through journals from last year (I write down pretty much everything) and found where my former technique – which in retrospect is actually the superior technique – differed from my current technique and I was fairly confident I could repeat the background accurately for the new “Shimmer”. The second canvas I was prepping is for a turquoise version of “Love Fairy”, the painting I just sold so since the only difference between that one’s background and “Shimmer”‘s background is different types of glitter, it made sense to work on both of them at the same time.

So, I put on the movie It’s Complicated while I splattered the canvases and while they dried on the coffee table I started drawing my girls for both paintings. It’s Complicated was actually an uplifting movie for me, similar to the way Something’s Gotta Give was also uplifting to me. For one, I love Meryl Streep, I mean, how can you not love Meryl? And Alec Baldwin was in it, as well as Steve Martin (who, oddly, was not at all funny). But it was uplifting in that movies like this, where the theme is kind of about aging but still having fun, give me hope that life is just going to keep getting better. I kinda knew that was true, just from watching my mom get older and really come into her own after hitting 40, but it’s nice to see validation of that through movies with actors who are actually playing characters who are around their actual age. So watching that actually put me in a better mood than the good mood I was already in.

When the movie ended, I just kept drawing my girls with the TV off, enjoying the silence that was about to be broken by the fact that the kids would be bursting through the door in about half an hour and right on cue, they did, and Wes was crying because Madison actually elbowed him in the head when she was waving goodbye to one of her friends. Madison also had to report that Wes had taken off on her to go play with another kid and I had to give Wes shit of that because that’s simply not allowed. Madison’s in charge on the way home from school and to be safe, he has to do what she says. So he said okay, apologized to Madison, they both fixed their afternoon snacks and ate them while watching TV, then Madison started her homework while Wes played with toys. During all this, I did – take a wild guess – more internetting. Mostly catching up with everything my friends tweeted about during the day when I had TweetDeck closed and commenting on those things.

I intended to either watch another movie or see if Oprah was going to be of interest while I worked on my girls some more, but by the time I was finished internetting, Blake came through the door with a giant Amazon box. Blake’s mom asked for the kids’ wishlist last week, which I found obnoxious because the url’s been the same for oh, 6 friggin’ years now and you would think that at some point she would have, I dunno, BOOKMARKED IT, or maybe checked the TWO PLACES it’s available online, in plain sight, on my site and Live Journal, which we know she reads. Anyway, when I saw the box, I assumed it would be birthday presents for Madison from her and Charlie because the other Amazon package was clearly my CD and as I said, that was the only thing I was expecting so I shoo’d Madison out of the room and opened the box.

The first thing I see is the Battlestar Galactica boxed set. Um, what? I grabbed the packing slip and closed the box’s lid, telling Blake to hang on, that this was definitely not from his mom and definitely not all for Madison. It was from my friend Charlie who, on the odd occasion, likes to surprise our family with gifts because he’s awesome that way. So I called everyone in and played Santa Claus. I told Madison that her gifts were for her birthday and I told Wes that his gifts were for his birthday too.

After the kids left with their haul and Blake went to put his Battlestar Galactica on the shelf on his desk, I cried. I had just had the best day I’d had in a long time and the gifts from Charlie tipped something in my brain, like overloaded it with positivity that I just bawled. I mean, the things he picked out for me were great things, but what really had me excited was Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution book, which is half cookbook and half cooking lesson about how to feed your family real food as opposed to processed shit. His “revolution” is teaching people how to cook again because so many families don’t anymore and while Blake and I do cook, we really only know how to make about a dozen things between the two of us and our whole family is getting mighty sick of those dozen things. I mean, Charlie didn’t just pick out a gift with this one, he enabled us to nourish our family better and I don’t even think he understands the gravity of that. And maybe I’m being melodramatic, but to me that is a very very big deal and I cried and cried and cried.

As the kids began to watch Avatar (one of Charlie’s gifts) Blake and I went in the kitchen and worked on dinner together, which is something that also rarely happens and it felt good being in the kitchen together. It always feels good when we’re partners in crime. I started cutting up craploads of basil to make this basil/garlic/olive oil pasta that I make (with lots of vegetables) and Blake got out the biiig pot and set it on the stove to boil while he searched the cupboards for the tri-colour pasta I asked him to get during our last big grocery shopping. He couldn’t find it and decided he must not have gotten any, so he turned the stove off and went to the grocery store to get some as I continued chopping basil. For this pasta, 1 package of fresh basil will DO, but really, I think you should use 3, which is how much I was cutting up. Then I put it in a bowl and added about half a bottle of olive oil and about half a jar of minced garlic with maybe two teaspoons of salt, some ground pepper (I hate pre-ground pepper, it’s always too powdery and I just don’t like it) and a bit of parmesan. With those quantities, obviously we make a lot of this when we make it because it’s good for lunches and afterschool snacks the next day. It’s also healthy and CHEAP.

Anyway, while Blake was at the store, I used our biggest Tupperware container (which is also the container we store the finished product in), loaded it with fresh snow peas, a whole bag of frozen broccoli, half a bag of frozen green beans and carrots and a few handfuls of regular frozen peas with a bit of water at the bottom, put the lid on and started the microwave for about 13 minutes. By the time I was done doing that, Blake was home with the pasta, the water was back on to boil and my part in the kitchen was finished. The rest was up to him to drain, assemble and mix, which is just how we roll.

While the pasta was cooking, Wes decided to watch Avatar with Madison (he’d previously deemed it too scary and drew flowers in the kitchen instead) and we said that they could eat in the living room while they watched it. I had already started diving into the Jamie Oliver book and was busy putting Post-Its on the pages with stuff I think I’d eat, or at least try, if Blake made it, with notes on variations I’d use, such as “no goddamn peppers in anything”, when dinner became ready. Blake decided to eat in the living room with the kids and watch Avatar while I ate while I read.

We didn’t realize how long Avatar was and it was fast becoming time for the kids to go to bed, so we told them to remember which part they were on and that they could watch it today after school. So Blake did most of the dishes, with Madison doing the tail end while Wes got ready for bed and then when the dishes were done, Madison got ready for bed and then we were kid-free.

It had started really cooling off outside so I went around the house and started closing windows, then I came back into my office and read some more of the Jamie Oliver book until Blake came in to join me. Even though I had had a nap, I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep, but I wanted to make sure I was for sure going to fall asleep (because sometimes when I’m in a good mood, I can’t sleep, which kinda sucks) so Blake & I decided to watch Gossip Girl, Nurse Jackie and The United States of Tara, which are 3 of my favourite shows, before going to bed.

During Tara, Blake gave me a massage and when it was over, we went to bed. Except we didn’t go to sleep and here’s where things take a downturn. I said, “I think I’m manic,” and he said, “you’re not manic, you just had a good day, you started your day off with protein, which gives you energy and you just had a good day from there” and then I started crying because I was afraid I was going crazy. Here’s the problem with me, which is something I think I’m probably going to have to bring up to my shrink when I see her on Friday: the happiest I have ever been in my whole entire life, I was completely out of my fucking gourd and it ended with psychosis and hospitalization. So, I am very suspicious of “happy”. Too much “happy”, especially if I’m alone when it happens, and I’m convinced I’m manic and I’m going to go crazy and that scares me more than anything. The more I talked to Blake about how scared I was that I was manic, the more panicked I became until I was pretty much inconsolable and snotting all over my sheets. It took Blake until about 2:30am to convince me that everything was fine and that I should just go to sleep.

And today hasn’t been a good day. It should have been, I’ve got new books to read and paintings to paint and movies to watch and the sun’s shining, but when I have exceptionally good days like I did yesterday, they are almost always followed by an exceptionally bad day, which I think is just the nature of my disease. My meds are stable though, as far as I know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if, after telling my shrink all about this, she doesn’t raise my mood stabilizers as I’m only taking 3/4 of the full dose. But if it’s not the drugs, if the drugs are already doing what they’re supposed to be doing and this is more of a psychological thing then I think I fucking need therapy because it happens way too often. I mean, who the fuck is afraid to be happy? Besides me, I mean? That’s not normal. I mean, obviously I have a completely rational explanation for why I distrust happiness NOW, but really, my whole life, I’ve never even really believed in happiness. I always thought people who claimed to be happy were either lying or delusional. And then the time in my life where I was unbelievably happy and in a good mood every day for months, I was nuts.

My shrink’s told me a million times to trust my drugs, but I guess the bottom line is that I don’t. Or I’m afraid to. I don’t know which one it is but I think it has to change.

So that’s my story.

Some people have noticed that both my site and my Live Journal are not their usual, colourful selves and these people are wondering why. I hadn’t intended to make this post today, but enough people have asked that I figured it should go up as soon as possible.

Let me start out by reassuring anyone thinking it: this has nothing to do with depression. I am not depressed. (Today, anyway.)

When I was diagnosed with bipolar I, the only two people who were surprised by it was me and my step-mother who doesn’t know me very well and who still doesn’t think I’m bipolar. The truth of the matter is, I am probably one of the most bipolar people ever to be born on this Earth and looking back, it’s very obvious that I’ve been bipolar my whole life, not just in mood, but in mannerism.

My ex, Chris, used to say that the thing he loved the most about me was my passion and the thing he hated the most about me…was my passion. About a year ago on Facebook, I did some quiz meme and the last question said something like, “Say something random about yourself” and I wrote, “When I love something, I really really love it. When I hate something, I really really hate it”. Chris replied to that saying it was probably the most true statement he’s ever read on a quiz.

And that’s the thing. There is very little grey area to my life. Things are either black or white, negative or positive. I either love something or I hate something, there is no “like”. A day is either good or bad, there is no in-between. A place is either awesome or awful. Ideas are either genius or stupid. And sometimes, people are too.

When I find a food I like, I eat that food every day until I never want to see that food again and chances are, I’ll never eat it again. When I find a new band, they’re the greatest thing I’ve ever heard and I have to find/buy everything they’ve ever put out. If I hear a song I like, it’s the greatest song I’ve ever heard. (And if I hear one that I don’t like, it’s the worst piece of crap I’ve ever heard.) When I get interested in a subject, I have to learn everything I can about it. I become both obsessed and dismissive easily. I’m afraid of both success and failure because I can’t see that there’s anything in between. Prior to medication, I was either happy or sad, there was no middle ground.

While I actually like some of these traits, I’m not sure it’s healthy to be as polarized as I am on pretty much everything. Blake and I got talking about things the other night and we decided that I need to start letting in a little more grey. Even he & I aren’t totally sure what that means (especially me), except that it’s time to change my way of thinking and being, because how I operate now isn’t serving me as well as it once did.

What Blake and I were talking about specifically is how I never finish anything and why. I finish paintings, so I consider myself more successful as an artist than I do a writer because even though I write every day, nothing of substance has ever been published (I don’t count the Marketing Magazine articles as real publishing even though others might). And the reason nothing of substance has ever been published is because I never finish those projects and I never finish those projects because I fear both success and failure.

The piece of writing I’m working on now – or at least what I was working on – is a really solid idea and could very easily (we think) be published in any number of ways. Where the grey comes in is that I need to stop worrying about what comes after I finish. I need to learn how to worry about that later and just finish. And I realize I’m going completely against my own new philosophy by writing this next part, but after it’s finished, I need to not worry about success or failure because my ideas of both are actually kind of warped. I worry about success because of expectation. If I finish this and it gets published and people like it (and I consider publishing it at all successful)  and talk about it, then people will expect me to write and publish something else and I don’t want that pressure. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s failure. Failure is that it gets published (or it doesn’t and I’m rejected repeatedly), people don’t like it, people criticize it and I want to crawl under a rock. Where’s the grey area there? Because I totally don’t see it. I see the grey area prior to finishing, that I shouldn’t worry about everything I just wrote and should just finish it, but I don’t see the grey in what comes next. Do you?

Plus there’s the fact that I don’t see the point in finishing a piece of writing if no one’s ever going to see it.

Another example of me not seeing the grey is yesterday. Yesterday I did a bunch of things that were positive and I was having a great day and then the dogs got loose and I had to chase them all the way to hell and back. In case you’ve forgotten, I don’t leave my house very often and in telling Blake about the dog incident, I said, “I’m so scarred I may not leave the house for like, two months,” and that’s where he pointed out that I wasn’t seeing the grey. I left the house because  a shitty incident happened, the shitty incident didn’t happen because I left the house.

Now I’m not promising overnight changes here or anything. Like I said, I’m not even totally sure what “seeing the grey” even means because as it stands now, I don’t really see it, so it’s going to take me a while to adopt this new life philosophy but I plan on working on it just to see what happens. No doubt there will be remnants of my bipolar-ness that I won’t want to remove because I like those aspects of myself and hey, a leopard can’t change its spots, but I’m going to try, with Blake’s help and maybe yours too, to figure this shit out and try living a different life to see where that leads me. Who knows? This could be the key to everything or it could be another dead end, but I feel that it’s worth trying.

So that’s what “Shades of Grey” is in reference to. I’m glad you’re all along for the ride.

So here I sit, on my birthday, and instead of reading the comic books Blake got me, I’ve been up since about 4am thinking about Jenny McCarthy. Last week I read the Time magazine article, “The Autism Debate: Who’s Afraid of Jenny McCarthy?“, which spawned a lot of other articles, namely one at Bad Astrology called “Jenny McCarthy still thinks vaccines cause autism“. From that article, I started following links to other articles on Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaccine crusade and near the end of my link hopping, I found an old article that said Jenny McCarthy believed her son to be a “Crystal Child” and herself to be an “Indigo Mom”. I even found an article she herself wrote about this prior to her son being diagnosed as having autism (which he may or may not have had all along).

Anyway, this blog post is not about Jenny McCarthy or autism or whether or not vaccines are harmful. This blog post is about how I am medicated versus non-medicated and the crystal/indigo thing was the catalyst. Longtime readers will remember that about 6 or 7 years ago, I was convinced that I was an “indigo child” and had a deep belief in a lot of metaphysical things, such as psychics and reiki. And I wrote about these things. A lot. And now, looking back at all of that, it’s embarrassing because I was clearly manic during this period of my life, although I wouldn’t know what the word “manic” even meant until many many years later.

This weekend Blake and I talked at great length about me medicated versus non-medicated because really, I don’t see much of a difference. I no longer have “million dollar ideas” though, so there’s one difference, and I don’t get as obsessed about random things as I used to, but other than that, I couldn’t really tell you any other differences. But then Blake reminded me that there was a time for about 3 months where all I did was sit on the couch and cry and I don’t do that any more. I don’t have suicidal thoughts as often or as persistently as I did before. I’m more rational, logical. My thinking is clearer, I’m more focused.

Apparently what I’m going through right now is really common in psychiatric patients, where they’ve been medicated for a long time and they feel normal so they forget how bad things were before and that’s when they tend to go off their meds, thinking they don’t need them anymore. I’m not going to do that, but I can understand how this all works because while I can identify that I’ve had bipolar disorder my whole life and could chart my peaks and valleys on a piece of paper from about age 5 to present, I do forget what it feels like to be suicidally depressed and psychotically happy. I understand that I experienced these things, but I think it’s similar to how women forget the pain of childbirth or something. The memories are distant and dull and only make sense when someone else tells you how it used to be. It’s a very strange thing.

Sometimes I miss the old days, I have to admit. I think I was more fun when I was manic, definitely more interesting than I am now. The depression I’m glad to be rid of, though.

I dunno, as I said, it’s a strange thing. I don’t really know where I’m going with this post, nowhere I suppose, it’s just been what’s on my mind over the weekend and I wanted to throw it out there so I could stop thinking about it.

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.

Rapid Weight Gain Associated With Antipsychotic Drugs

Zyprexa I was on for acute mania when I was in the hospital and then for about 3 months afterward. The weight gain wasn’t as bad for me as the other drugs, but it happened so rapidly my skin actually hurt. I still have a small prescription of it, which I don’t take, for “agitation”.

Seroquel didn’t make me gain any weight but it did make me sleep through an entire summer.

Risperdal (Risperidone) was the one that made me gain 60lbs in 3 months and gave me high triglycerides and cholesterol which I’m still taking drugs and dieting for two years after being off the drug. It also pushed me dangerously close to diabetes but I’m not on drugs for that, just diet.

I’ve never heard of the 4th drug.

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

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

While they did all that, I dyed my hairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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