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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oooooh my god I’m so tired. For some reason, which I have to discuss with my shrink, I can’t seem to sleep for more than 4 hours at a time anymore and it’s bugging the crap out of me. I don’t know if it’s because medication A has stopped working or because medication B was increased or what, but as I said, it’s bugging the crap out of me. I’m kinda lucky in that my non-schedule is very flexible and I can pretty much sleep whenever I want/need to but this is getting ridiculous.

All last week this woman named Tracey kept calling the house for me and leaving messages to call her back, but as I tend to do when that happens, I ignored the messages, especially since I was fairly certain this was my new caseworker who I’m loathe to deal with. Especially since she sounded annoying on the messages. Well, I finally called her back yesterday and now I have to go see her on Monday. To be perfectly honest here, and I told her this, I have no idea what her job is or what she’s supposed to be doing for me. I think she’s supposed to do stuff with the immersion therapy and helping me set goals and work on time management, but I’m not sure and I guess I’ll find out on Monday. At 10:30 in the morning. IN THE MORNING, PEOPLE. Ugh.

And as much as I’m bitching, when it was suggested by my shrink that I get a caseworker, I agreed and I do need one…probably…so there’s really nothing to bitch about. Except for the whole getting up before noon thing. (Poor baby, I know, I’ll live. I’ll just be very very cranky.)

Last night I fell asleep within the first few minutes of 90210 (the horror!), so I’ll have to catch it on Ninja Video later this week, but that means I fell asleep at 9pm, Blake marched me to bed at 10pm and lo & behold, I was awake at 2am, laying in bed, wishing I could shut my brain off and sleep through the night. But, that didn’t happen, so by 2:45am I was crawling out of bed and into my studio to find something to do.

Due to the fact that this Hypercube contest has pretty much consumed my life for the past 2 weeks I’ve been seriously neglecting my artwork and I decided last night that I needed to rectify that, so I threw on a movie, lit some lavender incense and got to work on the girls who are going to adorn two of the canvases I posted pictures of about two weeks ago. The 4 canvases are a series that I have yet to name, but the two girls I’m working on now are a ballerina and a flower girl, while the two I have still to work on are going to be a princess and a cheerleader. For the latter two though, I’m still waiting for one element for one of them and still trying to find a quote I need for he other. The ballerina and flower girl ideas are complete though, so all I have to do is actually get them on canvas and they’re done.

It took me all night to draw them, then it took me all morning to shade and paint their faces. Later tonight if I’m still up (I’ve only had a 3 hour nap since 2am), I’ll work on their hair, dresses and finally, their arms (which is the tricky part I hate doing).

Here’s a picture of the ballerina with just the shading done (with watercolour pencil – oh how I wish Inktense pencils had a proper pink/yellow ochre, it would make my life a whole lot easier), the flower girl is on the right, not shaded:

Then I go over the shading with a Caucasian flesh colour mixed with glazing liquid and lightened up, in the case of the flower girl, with white. (So the ballerina has straight up flesh colour + glazing liquid, then I added white to do the flower girl because I wanted her to be more pale, not sure if the picture conveys that well, though.):

I still have to go over the flower girl’s eyes with black, she kinda looks a bit cracked out in person at the moment, but other than that, their faces are finished and I’m ready to go onto the next steps.

After procrastinating on this project for the past two weeks due to being consumed with Hypercube stuff it felt good to actually do something productive. I’m not sure what a lit a fire under my ass today, but progress was definitely on the agenda.

Due to the glittered backgrounds with these 4 paintings I don’t think I’m going to be able to make prints from them and because I think the ideas are so solid, especially…and y’know, I’m not gonna jinx my productive streak with money talk.

Onto other things…like Hypercube stuff…

Currently I’m ranked #8 and Blake is #9, which is okay. That’s not to say to stop voting, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF KITTENS DO NOT STOP VOTING, it just means that A) several of the people in the top 10 with us are french and thus, are sort of in a totally different category than we are and B) we found out yesterday that votes only account for 20% of your overall score. I think by being in the top 10 or maybe even the top 20, you’re gonna earn 100% of that 20% so as far as I’m concerned, unless something really bad happens in the next 2 weeks or people stop voting, we’re probably golden in getting that 20%. That leaves 80%, which is comprised of (as far as the e-mail @thehypercube sent out yesterday) “uniqueness, creativity, personality, enthusiasm and a wide variety of talents or approaches“.

Well, I’m unique, there’s no denying that. Got the creativity part pretty much down. Personality? Admittedly, I may be an acquired taste. Enthusiasm? On a scale of 1 to Telma Costa, I’d give myself an 8. I’ve shown up for every Tweetup, I’ve participated in all things Twitter and Facebook, I’ve answered 95% of the Questions of the Day, I’ve given people pep talks along the way, I’ve helped people out where I can, I’ve spammed the entire friggin’ internet DAILY with all things Cube…yeah, I’m a pretty solid 8, I think.  As far as the “wide variety of talents or approaches” part, that’s tough. Painting’s not that unique of a talent, neither is writing or blogging, social creativity however, is. I think, as my votes reflect, I’m kinda good at that and according to the contest’s own press release “social creativity” is what they’re looking to reward. My approach from the very beginning, as it says on my canvas that hasn’t changed since day 1, is to just be myself  – warts & all – and at the end of this thing it’s going to come down to whether or not I’m what they’re looking for. If I am, awesome, I get a car! If I’m not, then I’m not and there’s nothing I can really do about it. I’m no worse for wear. Truthfully though, I feel pretty good about my chances. Or at least I did until yesterday. Yesterday I may have sunk myself. :o/

Yesterday @thehypercube asked us 5 questions in regards to what to do after the contest ends and my answers were of the “zag” variety to others’ “zigs”. At first I didn’t really think much of it, I mean, I’m an honest person, lip service isn’t in my repertoire so I just answered the questions with whatever came out of my head at the time. Not all of my feelings on the things asked were rainbows and sunshine. Here’s what was asked:

1. Would you like to keep the community going?
2. What would you like to do with the community? Cube spotting, friending each other on the site, monthly give-aways?
3. What would you use the site for? Creative forum? Keep using the canvases? Open canvases up to everyone?
4. Would you want to keep me, or the twitter account, or would you guys like to take turns ‘owning’ the moderation/twitter account?
5. What would make the site more useful to you?

Here were my answers, in 140 character format because we had to reply to them on Twitter:

1. Yes, but “the community” for me really only encompasses Twitter and I have no brand loyalty to Nissan to blog on their site…

…without good reason, or waste words on a Nissan forum or even keep a canvas up. I’ll only have a Nissan connection if I have…

…a Cube and unless I win one, that’s simply not going to happen. So “yes” with a lot of reservations.

2. I dunno what “cube spotting” is, I can already “friend” people on LJ where I’ve been for 10 years, might stick around for…

…monthly giveaways but other than a Cube, I can’t see myself being all that interested in anything Nissan could give me.

3. I hate the canvases. I think they’re buggy and awful and I’m only using one to win a Cube. I wouldn’t use one otherwise.

I already belong to 3 other “creative forums” that I’ll go back to once the contest is closed…

…unless I’m a winner and then I’ll be the biggest Nissan creativity cheerleader there ever was. Opening canvases up to…

…everyone means too many canvases. I mean really, if the contest isn’t happening, are people really going to get “exposure”…

…that amounts to anything from a Nissan canvas? I know I won’t and I know that even with the contest I’m not.

4. I think @thehypercube should always be you or an agency/Nissan representative.

As long as the Twitter account didn’t get spammy, I’d still probably follow.

5. I don’t honestly know. I am in love with the idea of blogging for Nissan’s newest brand should I be a winner, but I wouldn’t…

…blog on the site otherwise, so blog wouldn’t be useful to me. A forum wouldn’t be useful to me, nor more canvases.

I just don’t see the site as being possibly useful to me unless I’m there for a purpose and the only purpose I foresee is…

…if I’m a winner and I’m obligated to blog on the site at least twice a month for a year. There’s nothing else to keep me there.

See what I mean? But the thing is, I was being honest and not just from a personal perspective, but from an ad school dropout perspective. Sure a LOT of people were like “yeah! let’s keep the community going and add this & that and do this and that and blah blah blah!” but the fact of the matter is, this is Angie’s (the creative director behind @thehypercube) job so if this is all lip service because people are afraid to hurt their chances in the contest by saying anything negative or anti-community and it DOESN’T work out? She could be in trouble.

And the thing is, MOST of the community aspect happening in this contest is on Twitter alone, it has nothing to do with the site. The community was there before the site even had anything on it, before we even got our profile e-mails, before a single canvas went up. And I’m sorry to say, but of the 500 people we have competing in this thing, how many do you really think are going to stick around when they’re not one of the 50 chosen? How many people, in the grand scheme of 500, are REALLY into the community aspect? We have our little core group of folks on Twitter who help each other, talk every day and fuck around at Tweetups, but that’s a tiny fragment of the overall 500. Also a tiny fragment of this 500 (?) are Cube enthusiasts. The majority of the people – and believe me, I go look at every single canvas every 2 days – just want a free car. They don’t want a Cube specifically, they want a free pair of wheels. Hell, the amount of people who still think they’re trying to win a “hypercube” is STAGGERING. The majority are in it for themselves and that’s a fact. They’re not gonna stick around after the contest is over without incentive…

…and there’s been talk of the possibility of giving away more cars a year from now, which is all fine & good, but I won’t be sticking around for that contest. If what I did this time around wasn’t good enough, what I do a year from now isn’t going to be good enough either, keeping in mind that my entire strategy – which they themselves are pushing – is to be myself. The other give-away stuff that was mentioned was like, car packages, like…if you didn’t get shag carpeting on your car this time around, you can win some. Or a new stereo. Or a spoiler. Well, if I don’t win a Cube, what am I going to do with that stuff? That’s not incentive for me to stick around. I can’t afford a Cube, so the only way I’m going to have one is if I win one and if I win one, I’m contractually obligated to blog on the site twice a month for a year, so as I said, I’ll be the biggest brand cheerleader the world has ever seen.

As I said in my response yesterday, I already belong to 3 different creativity forums, 4 if you want to count I Have an Idea, and all of those forums are going to serve my art business better than the Nissan site ever could. And unless there’s a damn good reason, I don’t really want my stuff under the banner of a corporate brand, especially when the only “benefit” to me doing so is what…extra traffic to my site? Well here’s the thing about that: I’ve sent Nissan 7930+ visits to their site, but they’ve only sent me 189. Who’s benefiting whom? And how is that going to change when there aren’t a billion people being spammed with the url every day because there’s a contest going on and people want votes? The fact of the matter is, a potential client isn’t going to seek out my services (or anyone else’s, in my opinion) on the Hypercube website. There are a million other websites that already serve that purpose that people already use.

I wouldn’t blog on the Nissan site without compensation. Why should I? I’ve been doing this a long time ago and I learned the hard way that you don’t just give your content away, especially not to a multinational company that can afford to pay you. Plus, bloggers outside of the 50 winners would take away from those chosen, in part, for their ability to blog about the product.

A forum for Cube enthusiasts open to everyone? Sure, I can see that working, although I’m only going to be a Cube enthusiast, as I said, if I win one and I think the majority of the people in this contest are with me on that, so is it worth it? I dunno.

I hate that I’m so negative on the site changing and staying open to everyone/the general public once the contest is done, but I think it should run its course with this contest, have the contest end on a high note, have the 50 winners blog on it for a year and serve as advertising for the brand and then maybe in a year, repeat the contest again. I think anything beyond that and you run the risk of the naysayers (and  there are many) being right about this whole “never been done” “social media experiment”. You wanna pop, not fizzle. Go out on a high note. Or even AFTER the contest is over, a few months later. THEN play with adding things to the site, but distance it from the Hypercube contest. I like the idea someone threw out of giving new Cube owners a code or something to access the site and maybe post on a forum or something like that. But that’s an idea completely separate, in my mind, from the Hypercube contest.

I’d just really hate to see a really interesting, never been done before “social media experiment” be ruined by pushing it further than it can feasibly go.

ANNNNNND there would have been pictures of Cubes all throughout this verbose recap of yesterday’s thoughts, but I asked twice on Twitter more than 3 & a half hours ago for the link to the gallery of pictures Nissan provided us to use because I couldn’t find it myself on the Cube Club Canada forum and our “amazing, groundbreaking Hypercube community”, including @thehypercube, failed to help me out. So, uh…there are no pictures. [Pretend there's snark here. Originally there was but I thought better of it.]

Anyway, Blake told me that perhaps being honest with my answers yesterday was a bad move and if that’s the case then I guess elaborating on those thoughts in THIS post was a REALLY bad move, but whatever, I’m just trying to be realistic and avert disaster. Whether anyone believes it or not, I care a great deal as to the outcome of this “experiment” and win or lose, as a student of advertising I don’t want to see it fail. I hope I’ve done a good enough job of conveying that and it is my hope that I won’t be penalized for having an opinion that may differ from others.

So since my dinner’s here and Lost is on, I guess that’s all I really have to say. Please please please keep voting, there are only 17 days left, and before I finish this entry, lemme throw up a couple of fansigns:

Sara from Vancouver thinks I need a Cube!

Lexi from Barrie, Ontario not only thinks that I’d look good in a Cube, but she also thinks that you should vote every single day and send me more fansigns!

Here’s the info:

Register to vote at Hypercube.ca, log in and then click on each of these links to vote for our audition canvases:

Sunny’s Audition Canvas | Blake’s Audition Canvas

See? Easy! That took a whopping what, 30 seconds at most from start to finish? And guess what? You can do this EVERY DAY to greatly improve our rank which greatly improves our chances of winning the cars!

On Facebook? Join our event and invite friends! We need all the help we can get!

Another way to help is by sending me fansigns to put in blog posts on my site. If you need inspiration on what to do for your fansign, please visit the gallery of those before you and take a look. :o)

Thanks in advance and a huge thanks to those who have been voting every day and supporting us all along. <3

This is probably my favourite song of the moment, I listen to it every day when I wake up and then leave iTunes on shuffle for the rest of the day:

Most of this post is going to be old news for my regular readers, so I apologize in advance for that and it is also for that reason that I won’t be x-posting this to Live Journal; I’ve bombarded that place enough with Cube spam this week and they’re probably ready to string me up by my ass hairs.

So, @thehypercube said yesterday: “Show me how you’re creative… blog about your art, your music, poetry, shoe collection, record collection… surprise me!” and because I was busy at the time and didn’t think I’d get a chance to actually make this post, I sent him links to the paintings in my gallery, which admittedly was a prosaic move on my part, so here I am rectifying the situation so the guy doesn’t think I’m a hack.

Although, before I begin trying to prove how amazingly creative I am and posting, like, a billion pictures, I do want to say this: The next step of the contest is to fill out a Facebook-like profile on the Hypercube.ca website, then they pick 500 people from those and the step after that is to use this mysterious “blank canvas” on the site to blog, add pictures, add videos and do whatever you want to prove that you’re who their looking for. Therefore, I’m a little leery of making this post. I kinda feel like I’m blowing my wad by doing it because everything I’m about to post (well, most of it), I intended to blog about should I be of the 500 chosen to elaborate on myself.

So, it is with trepidation that I make this post.

I guess the first thing to know about me, if it isn’t already obvious, is that I’m hypergraphic. Put simply, hypergraphia is an overwhelming urge to write and it is commonly linked with mania in bipolar disorder, which I have, so it kind of makes sense. Every single week, I estimate that I write the equivalent to a novel between this site, my Live Journal(s), Twitter and my paper journals. It’s compulsive, I just can’t help myself, so it’s probably a good thing that I’m not a bad writer.

I go through about a notebook per month. This is a picture I took of my journals from January 2006 to October 2007. There are 21 of them.

(Click to get a better look.)

It’s hard to tell in that picture, but most of my journals (as well as my sketchbooks and notebooks) tend to have hand-painted covers:

(This is a journal I painted, most of them have my business card on the front in case of loss.)

(This is my current sketchbook. Click here to get a better look, I think it’s pretty cool.)

My current journal actually isn’t all that exciting, though. An old friend used to intern at this ad agency in Toronto called Zig and stole me two of their notebooks that say “ideas” on the front in a rounded orange font so that’s what I’m using right now. I’ve of course graffiti’d them with words of self-loathing, but that’s neither here nor there.

Something else to know about me is that I’m a domain name junkie. I just wake up some days with phrases or words in my head and think, that’d make a great domain and out comes the credit card to register them. Some I register for future profit, some for future projects, most just so no one else will register them. Here’s a list of current notables:

• Textibitionism.com and .org
• CammityJane.com
• FuckItYouOnlyLiveOnce.com
• SunnyIsAwesome.com
• BunniesAndBees.com (which used to be my kids’ site)
• TheBestGuildEVAR.com (used to be for our Alliance guild when I played World of Warcraft)
• CamgirlUnion.org
• VulvaZine.com (for a project that never really got off the ground, but the domain still cracks me up)

Ones I’ve let go in the past few years:

• CottonPwnies.com (my old menstrual-themed Warcraft guild (Horde) that was headed by Endometria, a shadow priestess)
• Schmuckish.com (just a word some friends and I made up in college that meant a mixture of everything on a restaurant table to be mixed and a person dared to eat it)
• SunnyOfThe.net
• KeepOfftheLawn.org

Annnnnnnnd a bunch of others I’d rather not admit to and ones I’m totally forgetting at the moment. The fact is though, that I register domains a LOT and let them lapse constantly and I’m not even sure why. Luckily the friend who hosts this site for me is also a domain registrar so I get a good deal on them.

So that’s the words portion of this post, I suppose. It may be worth mentioning that I used to have a zine called “The Paper Blog“, which I sold through this site and I made a PDF book called “Textibitionism: The Paper Blog Anthology” in 2006 which was downloaded several thousand times despite only giving the secret url to about 50 people via snail mail. Word of mouth works.

I’ve also had two articles on marketing and the internet published in Marketing magazine and was offered my own column, but shortly after it was offered they laid off a bunch of staff and cut their freelance budget significantly so it never happened. I’d link the articles but I didn’t get to pick the titles and they’re really really embarrassing.

Aside from being a compulsive writer and domain register, I’m also a rogue gardener. In the spring of 2006, some friends and I tore up my entire front lawn and planted a wildflower garden. This was the original idea:

(Click to read the text.)

The entire project was documented in a (now defunct) Live Journal community called “KeepOfftheLawn”, (archived here) hence owning the domain of the same name and the whole thing was funded by seeds donated by people from the internet and the sale of Sunnyland “post-tards”, which were postcards I made of my house and decorated using the seed packets of the plants I’d started indoors in March.

(Don’t you think a new Nissan Cube would look lovely parked in the driveway beside my garden?)

So of course the weekend the actual lawn desecration took place was May 24 weekend and it involved a LOT of alcohol.

(Me & Scooter with Sondra in the background. The weekend’s pics can be found here.)

(My friend Jesse & my mom the day we planted seeds.)

And even though it was FREEZING we got it done and then I unceremoniously dumped about a 1/2 lb of wildflower seed on it all, watered it and waited. We’re now known as “the house with the garden” and get many visitors every summer who just want to look at it.

(This is the sign that I painted to hang on the front of the porch. It’s kinda large.)

(This is the walkway I built by hand. It has coloured glass hearts embedded into it.)

(Part of the garden the first year.)

(The garden summer 2007. Looks a lot like the postcard, huh?)

(Also 2007, that’s what most of it looks like.)

(Garden path lined by bachelor’s buttons.)

For the full set of 2007 pics that were taken at 6am, including a little surprise at the end, click here.

I’ll spare you the 2008 pics because the garden didn’t do too well due to less rain than the year before and relying 100% on American wildflower seed which turned out to be a big mistake as it was full of what I’d consider weeds. This year the garden will have 2 lbs each of pink cosmos and multi-coloured bachelor’s buttons dumped on it and it’s going to look fabulous.

In the winter, when I can’t garden, my thoughts still wander to gardeny things. For example, these concrete planters I designed for use in a park:

Or the infamous “teacup wall” that’ll probably never happen, but I dream of it constantly anyway:

So that’s my rogue gardening. Basically my philosophy on the whole thing is to stick stuff in the ground and then ignore it aside from the occasional watering and maybe pulling a few weeds. If it’s gonna grow, it’s gonna grow. If it doesn’t, then you plant something else next year! Simple.

Being a multi/mixed-media artist, there’s photography. I consider myself a fluke photographer in that I know basically nothing about the science of photography and I don’t use the best cameras, yet I still somehow end up taking nice pictures when I actually try. Here are a few notable ones:

(Madison aged 3. Full series can be found here but since these are scans, the colour’s a bit off.)

(Click to embiggen.)

(Click to embiggen.)

The last two of the kids (my kids) are the only pictures I’ve ever photoshopped, mostly because I don’t know how but also because I’m kind of anti-photoshop when it comes to art. You either get the shot right the first time or you don’t, none of this retouching bullshit. That doesn’t mean you’re good at photography, it means you’re good at Photoshop! Shenanigans. I know a lot of artists who even photoshop their paintings and that bugs the crap out of me.

This would be a good segue into my paintings, but I’m going to save them for last because they’re actually the most recent of my artistic explorations. (Gardening doesn’t count…I mean *I* think my garden is sort of performance art, or at least that was the point of it in the beginning, an attempt to  announce “WE ARE HERE!” and rattle the locals (we’d just moved here), but now it’s just a garden.)

One of my first artistic loves is copper tooling. It was taught to me in grade 5 or 6 by Judith Tinkl, who’s now a quasi-famous textile artist and who lives with her husband Viktor who makes some of the most amazing outdoor sculptures I’ve ever seen. (If you ever get a chance to go on the Uxbridge, Ontario Studio Tour and they’re on it, I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend it.) Anyway, Judith used to be a traveling art teacher for the Durham Region board of education and is the person who really made me love art. Most of my copper pieces have been ruined or given away or sold and I made most of them before it ever ocurred to me to take pictures of things, so I’ll just post “The Anger Fish” and tell you that there are two other (mediocre) pieces here:

My first experiments with paint came in the form of wooden boxes. For a while I was doing something I called “painting with fire” where I’d mix acrylic paint with hairspray, paint with it on the boxes and then set it on fire while it was still wet, which caused a burnt, almost metallic bubbled effect. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of these anymore due to a hard drive crash a long long time ago. What I do have pictures of, however, are some of the boxes that followed:

(Pretty Pink Pills, more images here.)

(Pills For Ills, more images here.)

(Performance 187, more images here.)

During my boxes phase, because I have severe endometriosis, I created this small shadow box out of plaster, copper curls and burnt matches:

(Click here for full gallery.)

And finally, this brings us to paintings on canvas, which I discovered shortly after the boxes phase. My mother’s a painter so I’ve never really been a stranger to the media, but I’d never used canvas before and now that’s pretty much all I use, although I am experimenting on wood these days but nothing’s finished yet.

My early days of painting were…experimental and a lot of them, in my opinion, not very good. So instead of wasting space by showing you all of my disasters, I’ll just link you to the gallery of older stuff and post the ones I think are okay.

(Indigo Ocean, mixed media on canvas. This was the first painting I ever made.)

(Fetal Mermaid, mixed media on canvas.)

(It’s Okay If It Hurts, mixed media on canvas.)

(It’s Okay If It Hurts detail.)

(Autumn, acrylic on canvas.)

All of the above were pre-2005.

In 2006, as you may or may not be aware, I had a psychotic break that I was ultimately hospitalized for, but during that period I created the piece I call “Camp Tampon” but renamed “Mania in the Key of Psychosis” for the art show Touched By Fire in October.

(For the full explanation of this painting and detailed pictures, please see this post.)

After my little break from reality (which led to my bipolar diagnosis and 2 years of psychiatric medication hell) it took me a long time to trust my imagination again. If you’ve never experienced psychosis, I pray you never do because it’s like being stuck in your own imagination indefinitely, like a really really bad acid trip. but worse because you know you didn’t take anything and at the same time,  you don’t even really know that you’ve broken from reality, you just think the world’s gotten inexplicably fucked up. Because of this, I became afraid to use my imagination for a solid 2 years or so. It wasn’t until my shrink and I finally agreed on the right medication and I felt I could trust it that I signed up for an online art class and suddenly it was okay to paint again.

I won’t post everything as this post is already gargantuan, but here are a few of the pieces I’ve completed during the fall and over the winter:

(Hope, for more pics click here. This was one of 3 pieces I showed at Touched By Fire in the fall.)

(Dream, for more pics click here. This was also one of the 3 pieces I showed at Touched By Fire.)

(Ennui, for more pics click here.)

(Beloved, for detailed pics, click here.)

For the full fall gallery, click here.

(Imagine, mixed media on canvas. I actually made two of these, the other in purple, for my little sister and my daughter for Christmas. For more pics, click here.)

(Mermaid Bait, mixed media on canvas. For more detailed pics, click here.)

(Inspire Boy, mixed media on canvas. made for my son’s 6th birthday.)

(Five O’Clock Abortion, mixed media on wood. Most recent piece. For more pics, click here.)

For the full winter gallery, click here.
Recent commissions can be found by clicking here.

*WHEW!* Okay, I think I’m done! Well, not really…I could do a whole other post on hair alone (I shaved my head 2 years ago and had a big green mohawk for long enough to take pics – and I did it all on a live webcam stream with about 30,000 people watching – and I’ve had hair of every colour imaginable.) I could do a whole other post on advertising schemes that have never seen the light of day (I made have mentioned that I went to college for creative advertising). I could also do an entire post just based on my sketchbooks and some of the photography and art ideas I have that I haven’t gotten around to actually executing yet because I’m a big chicken and currently have a hard time leaving my house.

The point though? I’m an extremely unique and creative person. I just don’t know any other way to be, that’s just me!

Anyway, I hope this post got me one step closer to being a Cube owner, I could really use one, but not only that, I really really want one because I think the car just fits me.

The 2009 Nissan Cube.
Canadians! Try to win one at Hypercube.ca!

It’s currently 2:18am and I have Gogol Bordello playing pretty loudly and I seem to be in a much better mood that I was yesterday. This is in part to getting a crapload of sleep today, talking to Blake until 5am yesterday morning, internet friends coming through with birthday presents so I don’t feel like a total loser, my friend Raya subsidizing my subscription to the Toronto Star because she’s amazing like that and having a good, productive meeting on a project I’m working on with Suzi Blu and some lovely ladies I’ve met through her Ning community.

Another thing that has helped is that I have my friend Jesse back and last night he and Alex came over and we just hung out, watched trashy TV and Battlestar Galactica and all in all had a grand ol’ time.

Now what I mean by having my friend Jesse “back” is that, of you’ll recall, in September me, him and his now ex-girlfriend Jen had a falling out due to them pissing me off by getting a dog when they weren’t ready to care for one and also got it at what I would consider a backyard breeder instead of a shelter. It’s a long story, but if you’re interested, feel free to dig through my Live Journal archives for August or September and catch up.

This week Jesse and Jen parted ways and he moved back home and as a result, we’ve picked up our friendship pretty much where it left off, minus our mutual love of marijuana and cigarettes. This makes me really happy because right now, I think Jesse and I kinda need each other and I missed that bald motherfucker, so I’m glad he’s in our lives again. Plus, the kids adore him and were happy about the reunion too.

Here are a couple of shots I took last night of my dog Lucky being a total suckface with Alex and Jesse:

(Alex is the girl, Jesse is the…..girly boy.)

I know this “high” is only temporary, it’ll maybe only even last through to tonight, but I’ll take what I can get. Tonight I took advantage of my good mood and extra energy and put the first coat of varnish on Wes’ painting finally. It’ll be dry by tomorrow and I’ll do the second coat and when that’s dry on Monday, I’ll do the final coat of light varnish on the sides and it’ll be ready to hang on his wall.

Anyway, none of this is what I wanted to write about tonight. Tonight I wanted to write about agoraphobia and my plans to overcome it, as prompted by Blake and I’s tearful 5 hour discussion on the matter yesterday. There are so many new people coming to my site these days that I feel like I need to put down some backstory and explain who I used to be and who I am now.

Here are the facts:

• I’ve only gone somewhere by myself twice in the last almost 7 years.
• I used to be an excellent, confident driver, but I stopped driving altogether about 4 years ago.
• I used to be sort of the mascot for a well-known Canadian indie band called Scratching Post and it was my job to run around venues during shows, dancing on chairs and selling t-shirts and albums while wearing panties with the band’s logo, one of the band’s t-shirts and knee high leather shit kickers.
• I used to be an independent single mom going to college at the same time.
• I went to college for ADVERTISING, where everything took planning, was done in groups and you had to present something in front of the class pretty much every day. And I was good at it.
• I used to be a (fairly popular-ish) camgirl, unafraid to bare it all in front of up to 20,000 viewers at a time.
• I used to drive to Toronto every single day, down the 404 to the Don Valley Parkway and then to downtown, all at 120 km/h. On the rare occasion I drive to the store in our tiny town, I get freaked out going 50 km/h, which is the speed limit, so I go 40.
• I used to pay my own bills and handle my own money.
• I have an evil grandmother who used to be our landlord who beat me the fuck down and is definitely part of the reason why I’m so fucked up.
• As much as I love my mother, she plays a big part in my neurosis as well, which stems from her having me when she was 15.
• My biological father abandoned me for good around age 2 or 3, but we have a relationship now. I call him by his first name, Phil, instead of “dad” because it just doesn;t feel right.  I love his wife, Lisa and my two little sisters, Raili who’s almost 4 and Rachael who’s only a few weeks old.
• My mom married when I was 5 or 6 and gave me a step-dad for a while, but he turned out to be creepy and emotionally abusive in the end. I haven’t spoken to him for almost 7 years and don’t plan to ever again.
• I have a brother named Chad who’s 20-something. I haven’t seen or heard from him in about 3 years and don’t expect to.
• I’ve been on my own since I was 15. This was made possible by student welfare.
• I’m a serial monogamist. I’ve been in one seriously abusive relationship, one seriously long distance relationship, one brief “friends with benefits” relationship and then I met my husband Blake.
• I had my daughter at 19 because the only thing I knew I wanted to do with my life was to be a mom and due to endometriosis the possibility of that was slipping away so I took the chance while I still had it.
• Because of endometriosis I’ve had 3 laparoscopies (cautery) and a colonoscopy because they thought I had endometrial deposits in my bowels. (I don’t, thank god.)
• On March 11th of this year I’ll be having my 4th laparoscopy, just to assess the extent of the disease and 3-6 months later I’ll have my 5th scope where they’ll remove the endometrial lesions with a laser.
• I’ve never had a 9-5 job and don’t ever intend to.
• I consider expressing myself through writing and art my job and some people have been following my life online for about 11 years now.

And I think that covers just about everything, although I’m sure some people would probably add to that list.

I get sad a lot, and frustrated, thinking about the fearless, independent person I used to be and the scared, nervous headcase I am now. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been out of my damn mind since forever and I’m as bipolar as they come, but the agoraphobia is something different. It keeps me not just from living my life, but from having one at all.

Our theory on why it even happened at all is pretty simple. As a child, I took care of myself a lot and survived a lot and then as a teenager, I had to make my own way and take care of myself. And then after that I was a mom and it wasn’t easy and I did it while surviving an extremely abusive, fucked up relationship. After that, it was single mom time and getting through college all by myself. Do you see what might of happened there? The fact was, all throughout my life shit got piled on me and “losing it” was never an option because I was in survival mode. But when I met and married my husband, suddenly there was someone to help me carry these burdens and at the same time, I had a little more headspace to examine the previous 22 years of my life and fully absorb everything that happened. And it fucked me up.

Suddenly Blake could do the groceries, so I didn’t have to. Blake could handle the bills so I didn’t have to. Blake could go out and get take-out food so I didn’t have to. We lived in a very rural area where you had to drive to go anywhere and since Blake either always had the car for work or was willing to acquire the things we need, I never left the house. And after a while it just became easier to stay in the house where I couldn’t get in any trouble, where I couldn’t spend money, where I wouldn’t waste gas, where there didn’t have to be any worry on Blake’s part that I was seeing someone else, where if the car broke down, it wouldn’t be my fault and I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Where I didn’t have to interact with other parents at Sparks or my kid’s teachers, where I didn’t have to go to the birthday parties or school plays.

But back then, it was a choice. Somehow, and I don’t even know how, it stopped being a choice and suddenly the idea of leaving the house was scary. And much to my surprise, one day I realized that I could no longer do it. I remember the day well. Blake had won tickets for us to go see Metallica and on the day of the concert I found myself unable to get dressed and move my feet towards the door, so I sat on our bed and cried instead. It took Blake about 20 minutes to talk me into going, which made us late for the concert so I missed seeing the Deftones. The whole time we were at the show, all I could think about was getting back home and it got to the point where I don’t even remember the show at all except that I was there and didn’t want to be. I know I wore my purple Paul Frank polar bear pajama bottoms and a black tank top though, which is what I’d slept in the night before.

After that, we moved to the town where we live now, called Elmvale, which is very very small and has a population of only 1700 people. To be fair, this town is exactly what I wanted when we were looking to buy our first home, but once we moved and I realized how unlike the locals I was and the fact that I was now 2 hours away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known, the agoraphobia worsened.

Then I had my psychotic break and was hospitalized for 10 days. It would be a year later that I was diagnosed with biploar 1, generalized anxiety and agoraphobia by the shrink at the mental health centre I go to every month. Then came two years of psychiatric medication hell, which I’ve done my best to chronicle both in this blog and my Live Journal.

I’m so sick of telling that story. I’m so sick of telling people that I was the product of a teen pregnancy. I’m tired of telling people about why I was a young mother myself. I’m tired of writing about pretty much everything I’ve just written about and I’ve decided that after this post, I’m never going to write about them again. If you want to know the nitty gritty details, that’s what Live Journal archives are for.

I’ve always said that my agoraphobia felt like I was in a cocoon, that so many fucked up things have happened that I just needed time to rest, regroup and eventually grow and I feel that it’s finally time to turn into a butterfly.

I’m going to be 30 in exactly one week and thus begins a new chapter of my life. Do you know that tonight I found some new wrinkles under my eyes when I smile? I swear they weren’t there a week ago. Even my body is showing signs that it’s time to move on and become a new and improved version of my former self. And while the prospect scares the absolute fucking SHIT out of me, I’m also excited and I feel somewhat fortunate that I have the opportunity to start building my life from scratch, exactly how I want it.

As I mentioned, Blake and I had a long talk about all of this last night, mostly in regards to my insecurities about being productive, having value and contributing to both our family and the world at large.

My immersion therapy begins once the weather starts getting warmer and it begins by walking to the end of our driveway every day to get the paper. Ideally I’m going to adjust my sleep schedule and make it part of my routine to do this around 11am or noon. Then I’m going to read the newspaper while I have some sort of breakfast – BEFORE I check my e-mail, BEFORE I check my Live Journal’s friends list, BEFORE I  hit up Twitter, before I do any of that.

My next step is similar to the above, except my goal is to have some sort of breakfast inside and read the rest of the newspaper on the couch we have under the carport outside. Where people can see me. Where I’m sort of sheltered, but also exposed if anyone were to walk by.

After that, it’s to do all of the above, then do internet stuff, then take Lucky for a walk to the end of the block and back. I may not do this every day, I do have pain often and some days it does rain, especially in the spring, but it’s going to be something that I’m going to do for as long as it takes for it to be no big deal.

Then comes the big step. I walk to the end of the driveway to get the paper, I come inside, I make myself a sandwich and pack it up and put it in my new bag along with the sections of the paper I like the most, my cell phone, my camera, my Nintendo DS, my sketchbook, my journal, my notebook and whatever book I’m reading at the time. (It’s a big bag!) Then I take a deep breath and Lucky and I walk down to the next block where there’s a park with a stage for outdoor music, but at the back of this park, there’s also a path with a river that leads to a bench in the middle of a garden maintained by the town’s horticultural society. The bench has a plaque and is dedicated to someone, but I’ve ony seen it once so I don’t know who. A couple I think, though. It is this bench that I’m going to make my own. It is here where I’m going to lie Lucky up and share my lunch with him while I read the newspaper or do the crossword or sodoku and every day I’m going to try to stay at the bench longer and longer.

But my plans go even further than that. If you go down the path, past the bench, there’s a clearing where the river opens up and there’s a bridge over it. Black squirrels run around everywhere there and the horticultural society plants all kinds of flowers there. If I were to go further along the path, which I don’t plan on doing, I would eventually come to a park for kids, with playground equipment, in a neighbourhood.

It is my intent to not only be okay with doing all of this, but to document it all through pictures and videos and post it all on this very site, because that’s pretty much what I do.

After I come home from these journeys, I intend to watch Oprah and make art and then after dinner edit pictures and video and make my blogs posts. This is how I want my life to go, at least in the beginning.

Once I become more comfortable in being by myself, in public and Lucky’s training (he has separation anxiety and takes off if you leave him alone), I plan on exploring this town a little more and photographing what I can, like the homeless man we have who’s probably the most amazing homeless man you’ve ever seen. Also? There’s this shed behind the hair salon where about 30 stray cats live that all the kids play with on their way home from school. I’ve never seen it myself by my daughter’s told me about it and I wanna see. There’s also a particular alleyway where high school kids like to sneak smokes that in my head sounds like a fabulous place to take pictures.

I would also like to be confident enough to be able to treat myself to lunch in one of our town’s restaurants and maybe even getting to know some of the locals.

In the summer I’m home with the kids and don’t feel comfortable going anywhere with them, so I’m going to take care of my garden, which, as I wrote about earlier this week, I was afraid to do last summer (seeds are coming!) and move my newspaper/breakfast activities to my front porch which is more exposed and prone to neighbour aggro, which is one of my fears.

And that’s about as far as I can see right now. I’m not sure what fall is going to bring, but I would like to be able to go to the post office and the pharmacy to pick up my own packages and drugs so Blake doesn’t have to do it, but I don’t know if I’ll be that comfortable with things yet. We’ll see.

What Blake and I talked about all last night, as I said, are my fears of being productive, having value and contributing to both our family and the world at large. I feel like it’s selfish and unproductive to sit in the park all afternoon and do something leisurely. I feel like it’s selfish to go to a restaurant and have lunch while there’s perfectly good food at home and my kids and husband are brown bagging it. (Even though I’d be using my own money from paintings, it’s not really about money anyway.)  But then Blake pointed out that it’s just as “selfish” and less productive to sit in this house and basically do nothing but bitch about the fact that I can’t leave the house on the internet. Blogging, he says, does contribute to the world at large, he’s seen some of the e-mails I get that basically say that, and he says that me being in a better mood and being inspired is contributing to the betterment of our family and also the betterment of my art and writing.

I asked him what kind of life he envisioned for me one year from now, five years from now, 15 years from now and he said that all he wants for me is to have the adventures I’m prone to having when I actually decide to step out of Sunnyland and grace the real world with my presence. And he thinks that those adventures will only get bigger as I grow, which I agree with.

So, in a nutshell, it’s time to live life and today, I’m kinda psyched about it. Tomorrow I’ll probably be back to being a moody bitch, worried about my birthday and my upcoming surgery, but for tonight I’m okay and I’m going to take full advantage of it.

And with that, I’m off.

I’m going to be 30 in 9 days and due to that and the fact that I can’t seem to make art right now because of winter depression that apparently no amount of drugs can help, I need STUFF to retain my sanity and feel loved.

There. I said it.

Truly, I’m going out of my fucking mind this week and it’s only going to get worse for like, the next three weeks to a month or so. I feel completely hopeless and worthless and scared. PMS is not helping the situation, nor is the fact that I’ll be on the rag for my birthday.

I am terrified of my upcoming surgery (March 11th) even though I’ve done it three times before. The times before though, I knew and liked my doctor and it was in a state-of-the-art hospital. This time I’m being butchered by Midland’s biggest douche in a very small hospital. I used to be able to lay on the couch for 3 or 4 days and just watch TV but I can’t do that anymore, which is why there are so many books and movies on my wishlist.

I’m also sort of – just a little bit – excited about the prospect of reading books in this secret park that’s down the street from me this spring, even though the prospect scares the crap out of me as much as it excites.

Last night I woke Blake up at 2am in tears because I couldn’t do the steps involved to have a shower and he had to spend almost an hour talking me through it. That’s a hard thing to admit, but there it is all the same.

Jesse and I are friends again, which is good and I’m happy about that, but he just broke up with his girlfriend of (I think) 3 years and needs me to be a good friend and I feel like in my current state I’m totally failing and that makes me feel like shit. Tomorrow he and my friend Alex are coming over, pretty much because we’re all fucked and need each other, but to be perfectly honest, I’d much rather lay in bed in the dark and not deal with anything. I’m afraid I’m not going to be very good company, but I always think that when I’m like this and between the four of us, I’m betting we’ll all have a good time even if I’m apprehensive about it. (Oh btw, Alex, Blake’s picking you up after work.)

Too much is going on right now. I got involved in a project with some women I met on the internet and there’s a meeting with them on Saturday night that’s probably going to be several hours long. Tomorrow there’s social hour with Jesse and Alex. Tonight there was social hour with just Jesse, although I pretty much ignored him and watched Grey’s Anatomy because I’m a bad friend. (He & Blake played Guitar Hero so it’s probably okay.) Last weekend was pretty much ruined by my dad and my neighbour, which is a really long story and probably none of your business.

I have so much to express that I’m getting headaches that border on migraines, yet no motivation to actually express them. I need money, therefore I need to either sell the paintings I currently have for sale or paint new ones that will actually sell, but I have no ideas for those. I only have ideas for paintings that I don’t want to sell, that I want to make prints of instead, but that doesn’t help me with money now and is all dependent on the arts grant I applied for a few months ago.

I haven’t subscribed to the Toronto Star yet because I kind of think we can’t afford it. When I originally did the math, I read the fine print wrong and it turns out that it was only $4 and change per week for the month of February but after that it was more than $6 per week. I don’t think we can do that and it bums me out. Blake says we can, but I dunno. I already feel like I cost our family too much as it is, that I’m this walking, talking money pit and subscribing to the newspaper will probably just make me feel like a bigger financial burden. I don’t sell enough paintings to pay for the subscription myself.

I was really looking forward to doing the crossword and reading the arts section in the secret park by my house. :o/

I still haven’t varnished Wes’ painting and I have no excuse for that except…I can’t even fucking get myself into the shower and dressed afterwards at the moment, varnish is much more difficult.

The cat peed in our bedroom but I can’t find where.

There is so much crap on my desk I don’t even know what to do. It’s making me clausterphobic though, but at the same time, there are too many steps to solve the problem so I just take Ativan for the anxiety instead. It’s just easier that way.

So that’s my life right now. I’m sad. I’m really fucking sad. And I’m probably going to be like this for at least another 3 weeks, which just makes me even more sad, so I might as well wallow in it because there’s no getting out.

I need a break so bad.
I don’t want to turn 30 in 10 days.
I’m afraid I’m unloved.
I wonder how many calories are in pills, since I pretty much live on them.
I’m scared to have surgery.
I’m terrified of getting better.
But I’m tired of being broken.
My brain is fucking exhausted.
And I don’t know what to do anymore.