I don’t know what I did, but I can’t believe the amount of blessings coming into my life right now. The pessimist in me is waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the optimist in me, who is winning out these days, is just going with it with immense gratitude.

Today a package came from Amazon. An anonymous gift. So a huge THANK YOU to whomever sent it, it was quite the surprise! And much appreciated. If you’ve been reading, I actually broke down and bought Nobody’s Daughter from Wal*Mart last Friday but I kept the receipt in case something went wrong with Wes’ Zhu Zhu pet, so I can return the extra copy. Thank you again though, anonymous person, everything you chose from my wishlist was just perfect and I cannot thank you enough. <3 (The book Neon Angel, which is Cherie Currie’s account of The Runaways and a book about photographing art and collectibles were the other two things, if anyone’s curious. Can’t wait to read both. :o))

Now the next order of business is something that I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, but wanted to wait until the story had reached its conclusion before I did. Do you remember the cat ring that I bought on Etsy in May? I know I linked it but I’m not sure if anyone actually clicked the link.

Well, it was from a seller called Freedom Jewelry USA who went so above and beyond that I couldn’t even believe it.

The listing for the ring was a size 8 and me knowing nothing about ring sizing, used an online ring size converter thing that told me my ring size was 10. So that’s what I asked her to make me and she gladly obliged.

Well when the ring got here, I tried it on and it fell off of each and every one of my fingers because it was HUGE. So I left her feedback saying how great her customer service was and everything and then I convo’d her and said that I must have screwed up the size (which I didn’t, the converter was wrong, we discovered) because it’s too big, but if I took it to a jeweler, would they be able to size it for me? She said that she’d prefer to do it herself and that I should send the ring back, she’d recast it in the proper size and send it back to me. All for the cost of reshipping.

Now, me being a skeptic, I was kinda thinking this could be a scam, but I sent the ring back anyway, along with two ribbons that were the circumference of the finger I wanted to wear the ring on, one tied in a loop, one straight, and waited for her to receive them and tell me what my ring size actually was.

So she got the ring back and told me that my ring size was “about a 9″, so I asked her if there was such a thing as an 8.5 because then I can wear the ring now and still be able to wear it as I lose this extra weight of mine.

So that’s what she did and then she sent it back. I got it late last week, tried it on and while it was a teensy bit too big still, it’ll get the job done (as a faux wedding ring at the Square Foot Show since my wedding ring doesn’t fit right now). I was so in awe of how nice she was and easy to deal with and just the whole situation that instead of the $1.50 postage she wanted, I gave her $15 instead because this was just so awesome of her.

Here’s the ring, my wedding ring that fits INSIDE the ring because I was damn near anorexic when I got married, and some shots of my Hello Kitty wedding ring because I’ve never posted proper pictures of it and I know people are curious about it:

My wedding ring was cast in white gold from an actual Hello Kitty ring sold by Sanrio a really long time ago that Blake jumped through hoops to try to find. The diamond is one of his mother’s. Even if it did fit, I wouldn’t wear it because I actually hate wearing rings, I find them all too heavy on my fingers, like when I’m typing or drawing, but I like to wear them if I’m going out somewhere, like The Square Foot Show. I’m bummed my wedding ring doesn’t fit right now, but I refuse to have it resized because to me, that’s like admitting defeat and accepting the size I am, which I will not do.

Anyway, the girl who is Freedom Jewelry USA was great and totally went above and beyond for a perfect stranger, so definitely take a look around her shop and if you like what you see, add her to your favourites!

Like I said, I’m not sure what I did karmically to deserve so much awesome in my life right now, but I am absolutely grateful for it all and want to shout it from the rooftops. For once in my life, I’m actually loving my life, which is definitely a new thing that I hope continues.

So thanks. To all of you. To the whole world. <3

Huggy is sick and needs your help!

Please click here for details.

:o(

Thanks to Annie for the vid!

I just woke up from having the best dream about going to Burning Man with Blake for the first time and meeting Halcyon (who was actually kind of a dick in my dream, although I doubt he’s like that in person).

I’ve been wanting to go to Burning Man for, oh, the past 4 or 5 years, but there are so many logistics involved in making it happen that I doubt it ever will. I mean, first of all, I live almost as far away from the playa as you can get, sooooooooo how do we get there? You need to bring LOTS & LOTS & LOTS of stuff and I think it’d be a nightmare to try & bring that much stuff on a plane and then if we did, what would we do when we landed, rent a truck? And how would you bring rebar (I probably spelled that wrong) on a plane? You need that to anchor your tent so it doesn’t blow away if there’s a dust storm!

Another option is that Phil & Lisa have Freddie’s old RV sitting in their driveway that they use for the Judo tournament for us to sleep in but I A) Don’t know if they’d let us borrow in to drive to NEVADA or B) If it’s in good enough shape to actually make it.

And another option we’ve considered, because Blake & I really really want to go, preferably before we’re 40, so that gives us like, 4 years (for him) and 9 years for me, is flying to Lake Tahoe where his sister lives and who has all kinds of camping equipment because she & her husband are really really into that. But again, we don’t know if it’s an option and with that, there’s even more logistics to consider, such as extra time off and money to visit with them.

If we chose that option, we could maybe bring the kids with us and they could stay at Shannan’s (his sister) while we’re at Burning Man. If she & her husband Erik (or is it with a “c”? I always forget) aren’t down with that, then I’m sure Phil & Lisa or my mom would look after them while we go.

And then when I think about going, I wonder what we’d bring for gifting. There’s a promotional item for my Etsy shop that I’m saving up for that I really want to give to people, but is gifting a promotional item, even if it’s cool, bad gifting etiquette? With enough planning I could make things to gift, but I don’t have any ideas about that at the moment and really, I really am busy with painting so I can actually make some money so I don’t know if I’d even have the time to make hundreds of handmade items, no matter how much time I was given.

Another obstacle is that we’d have to buy a lot of stuff to survive the playa and we don’t have a whole lot of extra money for stuff like that, so how would we get all that stuff? Plus I think tickets, unless you get the early bird ones, which sell out fast, is about $1000 each, which I think is totally fair, but $2000 for both of us is a LOT of money, especially considering that we’d probably have to buy – and I’m just guesstimating here – about $500-$800 worth of stuff, if not more, to be able to survive the playa. And of course, no matter how we get there or what the plan is, it’s going to cost major bucks to even get there, whether by plan or by vehicle.

I would also love to create a giant art piece like other people do who bring them to the playa but I have no fucking idea how I could even do that when it’s hard enough to get myself there.

Every year about this time I get like, Burning Man fever because Halcyon starts talking about it and I think “okay maybe next year” but it never happens. I wanted to go really bad last year because the kids would still be young enough to get in for free and I’d really like to bring them, but now for Madison, I think it’s 5 or 6 hundred bucks. Wes is still free.

I think we’ll get there at some point, but for now, I’m okay with just dreams.

Blake just got back from checking the mail. Did one of you get me a gift subscription for BUST magazine? For reals? I FUCKING LOVE YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! <3 <3 <3

Last night Judy watched the kids and we spent 2 grueling hours in a packed Wal*Mart doing the bulk of our Xmas shopping. This year I/we decided fuck it, if you’re a grown up who can buy your own crap, I’m not even gonna bother hazarding a guess as to what you DON’T already have, so (and hopefully none of them are reading this, but I guess it doesn’t matter much if they are) all grown ups in our lives are getting pictures of the kids and gift certificates. Blake got almost all of the gift certificates yesterday on his lunch and only has one more to get today and then we are DONE.

Today Madison and I are going to clean the bathroom, then tomorrow after work Blake is going to vacuum and then my house will be presentable enough for when my mom, her boyfriend John and his son Chris come over to have Xmas with us on Boxing Day. I didn’t get John or Chris anything for Xmas because my mom basically told me not to, which was a great relief because we’re in the poorhouse as it is and my poor Visa is dangerously close to its limit. We decided not to defer our mortgage payment this month, but instead do all of our Xmas shopping on Visa and pay it off when Blake gets his bonus in March. If anything comes up between now & then, like say the car blows up, then we can defer a mortgage payment if need be and have it taken care of.  Now that we’re done our Xmas shopping, the only “big ticket item” we have to worry about is getting all of the animals their shots in January and then getting their township tags.

After we got home from Wal*Mart, Blake made a great steak dinner that I couldn’t eat because right now I’m pretty fucking sick and the only thing keeping me sane is Advil Cold & Sinus. I thought it was just a cold when it hit me on Friday but I’ve had a fever off & on all weekend and yesterday, my whole body aches etc. so I’m putting it more in the flu category. I am SO SCARED to get any of these friggin’ kids sick (ours + Courtney) that I reek of hand sanitizer and there have been no bedtime hugs. I just do not want to deal with 3 sick kids during the 2 & a half week holiday break, especially not if I’m sick myself.  I feel really bad that I felt too bad to eat the dinner Blake made us last night. :o/

We (well he) ate while we watched the Leafs vs Sabres game I started recording while we were at Wal*Mart and when food was done, I got started on wrapping presents. We got Madison this cute makeup bag that’s turquoise patent leather and her first set of makeup. I went way way way overboard in hooking her up with a good variety of stuff (like 6 bottles of nail polish, 3 compacts of eyeshadow…) and I wrapped each thing individually and put it in the bag, with cotton balls on top, zipped it up, then put the bag in a box and then we wrapped the box up. Annoyingly, Blake left a bag on my chair this morning with my hoodie over it which contained makeup removing facewash and mascara that should have gone in the bag with everything else, but I thought all of the cosmetic type stuff was in the bag I was wrapping from…soooooo I wrapped up the mascara & taped it to the box and the facewash I’ll just put in her stocking or something.

And that’s all I got wrapped last night because rapping all of those teeny tiny things took me the entire hockey game and when it was done I was exhausted so I just went to bed. What kills me about wrapping presents is how bad I suck at it. I make all these cute little girls with cute little paper dresses and I’m a whiz with scissors etc. but when I wrap presents, it looks like it was done by Wes. In fact Wes probably does a better job than I do. That’s why every year I usually get Blake to do all the wrapping but this year there won’t be enough time for that so I have to pitch in. While we were at Wal*Mart I bought gift boxes so at least some stuff I won’t have to wrap.

The next thing on my blogging agenda is that my cat is fucking retarded. Every single year for Xmas I buy her a treat or a toy and every single year she wants no part of it. Last year it was a laser pointer, she wanted nothing to do with it. The year before that a mouse or something, I can’t remember but she didn’t want anything to do with it. The year before that I bought her like, 5 different kinds of cat treats but she wouldn’t eat any of them. She just likes her cat food and that’s it. A few weeks ago someone on Facebook linked a YouTube video of all these cats getting stoned on catnip in a garden and I thought HEY WE SHOULD TRY THAT because I’ve never seen a cat actually high on catnip before. So last night, I bought some and it came with a little heart-shaped toy to put the dry catnip in. So I filled it up and got the cat and got her to sniff it and…she wanted no part of it. The toy then split apart and I spilled dry catnip all over my office floor so I picked a bit up and got her to sniff it and no dice. I thought maybe, just maybe, after we went to sleep she’d start getting all stoned on the pile which I left on my office floor for her but when I woke up this morning, it was undisturbed. So I give up. The cat no longer gets anything for Xmas and I guess Alex’s cats have a new toy and a big bag of catnip. Someone remind me next year that my cat sucks and not to get her anything because I know I’ll forget (or maybe it’s denial).

Blake & I weren’t going to get each other anything for Xmas this year due to money, but when we were at Wal*Mart I picked myself up some makeup because I’m running low on the essentials and this was an excuse to replenish my stock. We also happened to be going down the aisle with all the sports stuff and Blake pointed out Leafs jerseys….that were PINK & WHITE. Obviously not regulation, being pink & white, but NHL sanctioned and so Blake got me one for Xmas and I got him a Leafs home jersey (not regulation either). One day I will have a regulation Leafs home jersey to go along with my Leafs 3rd jersey but since they’re over $100, we’ll make due with Wal*Mart jerseys for now.

The rest of the stuff we got was mostly odds & ends, like I was out of incense so I picked up a bunch of that and I wanted to get a plastic “boot mat” for under the dogs’ bowls because they make such a mess and there’s constantly dog food all over my kitchen. (Lucky eats laying down and if Hoover’s eating too, Lucky will pick up his bowl and eat in the living room.) I also wanted to get Madison some yarn because I know she’s getting crochet hooks for Xmas and books about how to crochet, so we picked up a bunch of that too. She also needed pajamas and bras so those went in the cart as well.

We didn’t really get anything for Wes at Wal*Mart because Blake had gotten him stuff at Toys ‘R’ Us yesterday afternoon (Lego, some plastic dragons, I forget what else), but we did pick him up Lego Batman for his DS and Blake had already gotten him a few pairs of pajamas and some clothes so he’s good.

We got my 4 year old sister Raili some Barbies and my 10 month old sister Rachael a set of Little People. We got Courtney next door a DS game of Deal or No Deal. What else? I don’t even remember and you probably don’t care anyway. Long story short, after Blake picks up a couple of things on his lunch today, we are done our Xmas shopping completely. I plan on spending all afternoon today and tomorrow wrapping things and getting the house clean and after that we should be good to go.

Blake called my dad on Sunday and asked him to clean up the garage for the dogs, which he said he’d do and that takes a lot off my mind. What do the dogs get for Xmas? Well my dad hunts and I’m not sure what he hunted for this year, but usually it’s deer and moose and occasionally bear but whatever he hunted for in the fall, he gets the butcher to save him some of the bigger bones for his dogs and mine to have at Xmas.

I also have children’s Gravol to give the dogs before we leave so they don’t puke in the car on the way up. (And yes we called the vet and yes you can give dogs half of a children’s Gravol if they’re the size of mine.)

So I guess that’s it, we’re on track for Xmas. I had more to say but I think I’ll just end things here and start wrapping presents.

A warning: you may be a little shocked at some of the language in this book, and that’s another weaknes of mine. I tell people who come to my cooking class that sometimes I can be a little bawdy and I sure hope that don’t upset them. But I’m my father’s daughter, and I’m banking on one things, and I’m not budging on this: my God has a sense of humor even if what I say has a four-letter word in it. I think He’d want me to laugh. What’s in my heart is not irreverence but a full knowledge that God’s laughing too.

- Paula Deen, It Ain’t All About the Cookin’

Adbusters article on hipsters that garnered over 4,000 comments
(all of which I plan to read because they’re funny)

DieHipster.com is a hilarious site dealing mostly with the problem of NYC transplants

Is Hipster a Dirty Word?

and my favourite…

Look At This Fucking Hipster

So with this contest thing, I’m afraid of being disqualified for having a potty mouth and since I plan on linking from my hypercube blank canvas PAGE (where you vote) to this site (because there’s not enough room for long copy on the bank canvas and I need that), please allow me to get this out of my system:

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK EXCLAMATION POINT

K, I should be good now. I realize it’s not exactly being true to myself to curb this one aspect of who I am for “the man” – let’s face it, I say fuck a lot – but I really want to dig into that 1 in 10 chance with  all 10 of my nails and it would kill me to go through this whole thing and be disqualified because I said “fuck” a few times.

So, from here until I no longer have to have my site as a component of the contest, there will be creative euphemisms where you’d normally see my most colourful language. I hope you all understand my reasons for selling out.

Thanks, douchenozzles. :oP <3