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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh procrastination, definitely my best skill. Right now I’m supposed to be writing an article on what it was like being raised by a teen mom for Buttercup but instead I’m sitting here listening to music and contemplating a full day of Dragon Age Origins.

The last few days have been phenomenal for me. First, on Sunday my country won gold for hockey and the game was unbelievable, one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I told Blake at the beginning of the Olympics that if Canada’s men took gold, he wouldn’t be able to stop me from ordering myself a Team Canada jersey, which I’ve always wanted. So, minutes after Sidney Crosby scored the final goal in overtime that gave Canada the win, I whipped out my credit card and ordered my Team Canada jersey. I wanted a medium, which is the same size as my Leafs jersey, but Blake wanted to be able to wear it too so I got a large.

Then on Monday, it was my birthday, which was pretty low-key. Blake got me Y the Last Man books 6, 7 and 8, so I spent the day reading those and eating half of a McCain’s chocolate cake. (I also did a show that afternoon, which is available in the archives, although it’s nothing spectacular.) My mom sent me a card in the mail with a $25 gift card to Michael’s (an art supply store) and on his way home, Blake asked me what I wanted for my birthday dinner, but I felt too sick to eat anything (I’m just getting over a stomach flu) so I told him I’d take a raincheque on that for another night. And that was pretty much my whole birthday.

But then YESTERDAY was like, an extension of my birthday where many good things happened. It started off not so good, as I was awoken by my dogs freaking out because someone was knocking at the door. I tried to ignore them but they kept freaking out so I got up and by the time I did, whoever was knocking was gone and there was a DHL post-it on the door saying that they’d try again tomorrow (today) to make their delivery. Since DHL is an international shipping company, I knew the package they were delivering was contraband from Cuba that our friend Drew had sent to us when he was on vacation there since he couldn’t send Cuban stuff to his home in MI. I signed the post-it saying that they could leave the package at the door and stuck it back on the door and put one of the large magnets we have on our door so it wouldn’t blow away.

After that, my neighbours called and asked me to come over, so I did and we sat & chatted for a couple of hours. They gave me a birthday card with a scratch off ticket inside for my birthday and that was cool. Then I came back home and made myself eggs and watched the movie Private Benjamin, which I’d never seen before and now that I’ve seen it, I cannot for the life of me figure out how or why Goldie Hawn won an OSCAR for that role because she was as Goldie as she’s ever been in any other movie I’ve ever seen her in. It must have been a slow year that year.

While I watched the movie, I renewed a couple of domains I own and registered a new one (my youngest sister’s name), and then I put in my order with Vesey’s for the seeds for the veggie garden we’re going to have this year. Our house came with a veggie garden already “built” in the backyard that’s about 14 feet by maybe 6 or 7 feet and bordered by railway ties. I ordered Royal Burgundy Beans, which are a bush bean that is purple, but when you cook them, they turn green and for that reason, they’re a big hit with the kids. I also ordered napoli carrots, thunder cucumbers, simpson elite leaf lettuce, parade green onions, super sugar snap peas, fat & sassy green peppers, purple star peppers (that are sweet peppers that are PURPLE and look lovely in salads), bobcat tomatoes and sugary cherry tomatoes. Truth be told, I’m not sure the garden’s big enough for all of that stuff, but I’ve never had a veggie garden before so I’m kind of going by trial & error. Mostly I’m worried about the cucumbers because I think vines need a lot of room to grow, but I figure if I plant them along the top of the garden they can drape over the 3 feet of lawn between the garden and the house and we just won’t mow there or we’ll move the vines when we mow and then put them back. And as I do every year, the whole gardening experience will be documented on my site.

After I ordered the veggie seeds, the movie was over and I took a nap which I was rudely awakened from by the dogs freaking out again because my kids were talking to other kids in our driveway.

When I finally got out of bed, after the kids had come inside, there was an Amazon package sitting on my desk that Madison told me had been sitting against the front door when they came home. So I opened it and inside was all kinds of birthday presents from a friend, including Dragon Age Origins which I’ve been wanting to play since it was released.

After I opened the Amazon package, I sent a thank you to the person who sent all of it and after it was sent and my browser came back to my inbox, there was an e-mail from Vancouver 2010 telling me that my Team Canada jersey had shipped and that it should be here in a few days. Score!

Shortly after that, Blake called me on his way home and I asked him if I could have my belated birthday dinner and he said yes, so I asked him to bring me home an assorted sub from Mr. Sub, because I had full intentions of installing Dragon Age as soon as I got off the phone with him and a sub is an easy meal to eat at the computer. See? Always thinkin’ ahead.

Well, I got distracted by Madison, who had sprained her toe and required drugs because she was in pain. Her toe looked horrific, it was so purple it was almost black, but she could move it, so at least it wasn’t broken. She said she sprained it when she fell at recess. Soooooo I drugged her and she went to bed.

Then Blake came home and I began installing Dragon Age, which I played for about 5 hours and then I went to bed.

Annnnnnnnnd now you’re up to date with the past couple of days of my life. :o)

This is my first ATC girl who is much larger than actual size. She has no arms yet and her shoes aren’t painted, but when they are, she’ll be going on one of the black & gold ATCs. I have 3 other girls in this state of being finished but I didn’t take pictures of them because their dresses look stupid the way they are now and won’t look proper until I cut them out. To explain, they’re in the same style as “Sparkle“, so the tissue paper is kind of everywhere until I cut out the shape of their skirts.

Tonight I’m going to work on the other 4 who are on the same piece of watercolour paper and are ready for their dresses. Two of them will be going on purple & gold ATCs and the other two are for the gold & black.

While I’ve definitely been procrastinatey with the ATCs (I’m also working on a canvas for the background tutorial), I am absolutely loving doing them. I like doing very small, detailed work and always have, especially when I’m in pain and I’ve always liked “cut & paste”. When I was little, like in kindergarten and grade 1, we would have art class and I would always get excited when the activity was “cut & paste”, whether it was cutting up magazines or construction paper. That’s why I like doing these girls so much (and the bigger ones, of course), the painting of them is actually very minimal, it’s the cutting & pasting of their dresses that I find fulfilling. It’s the mixing of media and little details. The backgrounds, of course, is all painting, but I see that as a separate thing from doing the girls themselves. All of my paintings are done in 4 stages: the background (which is like, 5 stages in and of itself), the girl(s), the varnishing and the addition of details, like jewels or fibers or thread.  I take pleasure in each step, but I have to admit that it’s the cutting & pasting of each girl’s ensemble that I like the best.

With the little ATC girls, I haven’t decided yet if they’re going to have thread (for the ones with corsets) or jeweled details. I’m kind of thinking “no”, because people will want the cards to be totally flat to put with a collection or whatnot and with the threads for the corsets, half of the thread would be on the back of the card where my information is supposed to be. (I realize I could do the sewing before I put the girls on the cards but I’ve found that when I do that, they don’t adhere properly because the thread is so bumpy and it makes their busts slightly curve.)

Making these little girls is definitely a lot harder than making the full-sized ones. Just to draw the first 8 took me about 3 days and shading them took another 2. Then another day to paint their faces and another to paint their eyes, lips and eyeshadow, which had to dry overnight. Making the backgrounds, the cards, was so easy, but these little girls are gonna be the death of me, I have no idea how I’m going to all 60 of them when 8 is taking me forever. But I figure I have all winter and have nothing better to do, so I might as well just keep plugging away. I’m out of canvases and have no money, so it’s not like I’m going to be painting anything else for a while.  I do have a pile of wood that Blake cut for me at Jesse’s house a while ago, like a dozen or so of them in varying sizes, but I don’t like working with wood because I can’t sew into it and I don’t like adhering watercolour paper to it because it just doesn’t seem right. I guess if I get really desperate, I’ll use it, but for now I’m pretending it doesn’t exist and just keeping my head down getting these girls finished.

Today Blake downloaded and burned the movie Julie & Julia for me and he has another 2 or 3 on the go so my plan is to just watch movies tonight and work on my girls. I got up this morning around 11am, but got tired again around 1pm and ended up sleeping for the rest of the afternoon, so I’m guessing I’m going to be up late.

Blake had half of Thursday off, plus Friday, then this weekend and then he has Monday & Tuesday off too because his boss made him take the rest of this year’s vacation days before the end of the year. That means that on Monday he’s going to help me take some pictures for the background tutorial because I can’t splatter paint and take pictures at the same time and then on Tuesday morning I have to finally go in for the bloodwork my shrink ordered 4 months ago which I’ve been putting off because nothing is worse to me than having your blood drawn. (Okay maybe getting an IV is worse. Veins and blood are just gross.) Hopefully my shrink will get the results before my appointment with her on Friday.

Anyway, my dinner just materialized in front of me, so I guess I’ll stop babbling, hit “post” and go eat. I hope you’re all having a lovely weekend and the snow isn’t keepin’ ya down.

Oooooh what a week it’s been.

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

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

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

Anyway…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hullo internets. I am typing this post instead of having a nap (I tried) or working on my painting (I tried that too) because really, I don’t have a whole lot else to do at the moment and the things I do have to do, I don’t wanna do, so here I am.

I don’t know what it is about this painting that makes me not want to work on it. It’s been sitting on my coffee table since the end of September half-finished and I sit here and I stare at it and as I’m trying to fall asleep, I think about it, but there doesn’t seem to be any goddamn resolution to the sucker that it just sits there some more. I’ve shown pictures, it’s the one I’ve dubbed “The Two Sunnies”. The background is done, the two girls are done, now I need to add the elements to tie the whole thing together, sign it, slap a couple of coats of varnish on it and it’d be done, but I still can’t seem to find those slippery elements to tie the whole thing together. I keep thinking about doing hearts hanging from strings like I’ve done in older paintings, with the happy site being bright magenta hearts and the sad side being black hearts with skulls but for some reason I keep rejecting that idea. In the beginning I wanted to add the sentences “Je suis heureuse”/”Je suis triste” above their heads but that wouldn’t leave very much room for embellishment of any kind and I think that would make the painting too plain. Just now I was thinking that it’d be cool to glue a bunch of pills, like stars, to the left (happy) side and have them taper off on the right (sad) side but my pills aren’t the right colours, Blake would probably kill me for using my pills to do that since he pays for them and I don’t even have enough to do that anyway. Yeah, I could do paper pills but there’s no fun in that so the pill idea is officially dead.

I’m giving this painting one more week to come together and if it doesn’t, then it’s going in the closet to be forgotten about while I work on something else. What is that something else? Why Hester Prynne and Pearl, of course, from The Scarlet Letter, but I have to read the book first, which I’m currently working on. I guess the book no longer holds a copyright so it’s available online for free HERE if anyone, like me, has never read it but wants to. What I’m about to say will no doubt make some of you cringe, but I really really don’t like old books and what I mean by that is that I find books that are written with “older language” really hard to follow. I even tried to read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which isn’t even that old, but the language bored me so I never did finish it (sorry Raya!). The Scarlet Letter hasn’t been too bad so far, it’s really only when the characters are speaking that the language gets “old”, but it’s still probably the oldest book I’ve tried to read, not counting Shakespeare (*snore*) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was written in 1850.

Anyway, the book’s been interesting so far. I only started Friday night though and didn’t have time to read any of it last night, so I’m only on chapter 6.

Last night Blake and I went to see 2012 which was…well, disaster-porn at its finest. The plot was totally cheesy and you had to leave reality and science at the door, but I’m glad we saw it on a big screen rather than renting it and watching it on my 13″ TV. The kids stayed with Wayne & Judy while we went and they also had a good time, especially because Courtney had a friend sleeping over so there were the 4 of them.

Today I went over to spend some time with Judy and get her set up with Gmail and Facebook and she told me that it was verified, that both of their dogs have fleas…which is something I told them 2 months ago when Lily, the golden retriever, started scratching herself bald at the base of her tail. So, since I have two bottles of flea shampoo, I brought one over for Judy and somehow she sweet-talked me into helping her bathe the dogs. She was soaked, I was soaked, the dogs were soaked, the bathroom was soaked, the hallway was soaked, the kitchen was soaked, but at least the dogs don’t have fleas anymore. I also brought over my trimmers and clipped their nails, which were really bad. Both of their dogs have white nails, so I was fine with doing them and I got them really nice and short, but I won’t do our own dogs’ nails because Hoover’s are black and I’m too freaked out about cutting the quick and I figure if Blake’s doing 1, he might as well do the other.

Anyway, after the dogs were groomed, so to speak, I helped Judy vacuum the carpet, wash all of their bedding and then put the beds back together once everything was dry. AND I didn’t have my eggs this morning so I did all of this running on empty. In fact yesterday I had my eggs for breakfast but then all I had for the rest of the day was popcorn at the movies and I keep wondering how this is going to affect my weight loss progress this week. Oh well, I’ll do better the rest of the week and as long as I don’t gain, I’m golden.

Tomorrow night is the Leonid Meteor Shower and NASA has this neat little thing that shows you when the height of it is for your viewing area. Unfortunately the peak time for us is at like, 6am Tuesday morning and while it’s supposedly going to be the best showing of the Leonids in our lifetime, I’m not sure about waking up at 5am and getting the kids up to go outside in the cold to watch. I’m seriously considering it though! I’m gonna take it up with them tomorrow after school and see if they want to. I figure I can make everyone travel mugs of hot chocolate and we can dress warmly and watch from the swings at the park across the street where there are no streetlights. We should get a pretty decent show from there, if the calculator is to be believed and the kids are up for it. Madison will probably be up for it, I’m not so sure about Wes and I’m really doubting Blake’ll be into it at all. I’ve been wrong before though.

I think I’m finally getting the plague that Blake & the kids had last week. My throat is sore, my glands are swollen and I’m pretty sure I had a fever earlier. :o/

Alright, it’s time for me to stop typing now and find something relatively productive to do. Maybe I’ll just sketch out Hester Prynne and continue ignoring this painting. Maybe I’ll just go to fucking bed.

Yesterday (Monday) I got up at around 10:30am and as per usual, I picked the crust out of my eyes and went next door to see what Wayne was up to. He was yelling at people on the phone, creditors, because that’s more or less what Wayne does on his day off besides drinking beer and doing odd jobs around the house.

I had a smoke with him and then I went back home to make a large travel mug of coffee. Wayne & Judy drink instant coffee which I think is pretty gross, especially because I don’t like coffee to begin with, but I started drinking it on the first day of school last week to give me a much-needed energy boost. We have this neat little “coffee toy” as Blake calls it, where you put the plastic thing over the top of a mug, put in a little filter and two scoops of coffee and then you pour boiling water in it until your cup is full. With the travel mug being so big, I used 3 scoops of coffee and by 11:30am, I was back over at Wayne’s bouncing off the wall.

I don’t know how it happened. For some reason I came back over to my house to do something and when I got back to Wayne’s he asked me to come to The Beer Store with him, which is down the street. He had enough empty bottles to take back for their deposits that he could get himself a 6-pack. And as I may have mentioned before, Wayne likes beer, especially on his day off.

For about half an hour he nagged me to come with him to The Beer Store and I kept saying “no” because as we all know, I’m not a fan of going anywhere, especially on foot. Finally I relented and I said “Wayne, DEAL OR NO DEAL [because he loves that show and I watch it with him all the time]. I go to The Beer Store with you and you come with me to the post office,” which is just a few blocks away and I had a small package I needed to mail. So he said “DEAL” and I went back over to my house to get the package ready while he got his empties ready.

I popped an Ativan because I was feeling pretty anxious about this excursion, put my cell phone in my bag, got my package all taped up and addressed (ruby slippers for a very special little girl in Oregon, if you must know) and I went back over to Wayne’s.

He was on the phone when I got there so I waited on the deck and popped another Ativan while he talked to someone in the middle of his backyard. When he was finished, he said “SUNNY. DEAL OR NO DEAL. We go to The Beer Store, okay? Then we go to the post office and then we go to TIM HORTONS [where Judy works] and get smokes out of the car and MY mail key, then we come back to the post office, back to The Beer Store so I can buy my 6 and then we come home.”

People. We live on one end of town and Tim Hortons is on the other end of town. Yes I live in a small town, but Tim Hortons is about 2 & a half miles away and I’m not used to walking anywhere, but what was I going to say? I was all ready to go and I needed to mail this package, so I said “what the hell” and off we went.

First we went to The Beer Store and he got money for his bottles. Then we went to the post office and I mailed my package. Then we walked all the friggin’ way to Tim Hortons where he got his mail key from the car and half a pack of smokes from Judy and then, as planned, we went back to the post office so he could check his mail and then back to The Beer Store to get his 6 before we went home.

By the time we got home I wanted to kill Wayne for making me do what we did and could barely walk and when I took off my shoes, I realized that I had a giant blister on the bottom of my left foot, another one on my little toe, one on my big toe and one on the little toe of my right foot – all because I’m an idiot and was too lazy to put on socks.

When we got home, I was starving so I came back to my house to let the dogs out and heat up some pizza while Wayne did Wayne things and when I was finished, I went over there to help him set up his computer and that was pretty much the end of our adventure.

It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to anyone else to go to these places and walk a total of almost 5 miles, but I seriously do not leave my house except at like, 3am to check the mail, and I’m seriously out of shape thanks to all these goddamn meds and I’m actually really proud of myself for being able to do what we did. Not only did I walk that far and back, I interacted with the lady at the post office and paid with my debit card, which is something that gives me crazy anxiety, but I did it and it was totally fine, which means theoretically, I could do it again. Like, say I had to mail a painting to someone. I could probably package it up and take it to the post office either with Wayne or maybe even by myself and mail it. That’s something I couldn’t do a year ago, so I must be making progress. Right?

Speaking of paintings, you should all go check out what I’ve got for sale in The Shop in case you missed my post about it last week. ;o)

Now here’s where I ramble about inane shit. last night I finished the book The Secret Life of Bees and I LOVED IT. Yes, it was a little “Oprah’s Book Club”, as someone put it to me, but I couldn’t help it, I am in love with this book. It’s been a long time since a book affected me enough to make me cry, but that fucking thing had me SOBBING last night and I couldn’t stop reading until I was finished, which was about 5am. After I was done, I put a post-it on it for Madison saying that she should read it too, but before I went to bed I changed my mind because there’s too much in the book she wouldn’t understand. She has no idea about the American civil rights act of 1964 – they don’t teach that in Canadian schools – or segregation or racism or Catholicism or even what grits are. Hell, I’m not even totally sure what grits are. But I want her to read it nonetheless and after talking it over with Blake tonight, he said he’ll read it (it’s not a very long book) and then when she reads it, there should be someone around to explain to her the things she won’t understand.

I added the movie adaptation of the book to my wishlist last night and I really want to see it. I don’t have very high hopes that it’ll be anywhere near as good as the book and Dakota Fanning bugs the shit out of me, but I think I’ll like it and I’m pretty sure Madison will like it too. Plus, I love Queen Latifa.

Anyway, as I said, I’m in love with this book and I think Madison will be too once she reads it, so a HUGE thank you goes out to my friend Belinda for buying it for me for my birthday this year. <3

After I finished the book, I took my clonazepam like I always do before bed, waited about 20 minutes and then tried to go to sleep but no matter how hard I tried to clear my mind I couldn’t. Wanna know why? That fucking song “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks was stuck in my head on a loop and it WOULD NOT STOP. After about 45 minutes of laying there with this goddamn song in my head, I got up and took another clonazepam (3 total) and make another attempt at sleep. That didn’t work either so after another hour or so, I got up and took an over-the-counter sleeping pill and sat at my desk screwing around on Buttercup while I waited for it to take effect. After I thought I gave it enough time, I crawled back into bed, annoyed that by this time the sky was starting to lighten and I laid there and laid there and laid there and watched the room grow lighter every time I opened my eyes to look at the clock.

Finally I got up around 7am and thought maybe eating something would help, as I often feel sleepy after I eat, so I made myself some eggs and toast and a cup of tea and ate them while I watched a bit of Breakfast Television. When I was done, the kids were just starting to wake up, so I hugged them both and got back into bed…and then Blake’s alarm went off. And he snoozed it. So I laid there not even trying to sleep because I knew the damn thing would go off again in like, 5 minutes. Of course it did and he SNOOZED IT AGAIN, so I laid there and waited for it to go off and when it did, he got up, we discussed my sleep issue and when he left the bedroom to get ready for the day I finally fell asleep.

And then I woke up around noon and couldn’t get back to sleep. My eyes felt sandy and I just didn’t feel good. I’d be cold and then hot and then cold again. I made myself some coffee to see if that would help me but it didn’t seem to.

Around 3:30pm I went over to Wayne & Judy’s to see what Judy was up to, we had a smoke and then when the kids got home from school I went back home. I did the homework check and signed Madison’s agenda and by that time it was 4pm and being Tuesday, it meant that it was time for Hug Nation, which I try to attend every week. I love Halcyon, but I was so tired that everything he was saying just kinda blurred together so all I heard was “blah blah Burning Man blah blah” as he and Andicat had just come back from Burning Man and Hal’s always juiced after that, so since I was half falling asleep, I just decided “fuck it” and went to bed. The next thing I remember is Blake coming into the bedroom to check on me and I told him to wake me up when dinner was ready, which would be about 7pm.

So I got up and ate my steak & potatoes while we talked about our day (or my lack thereof) and after that I was pretty much fine. he and I both did Buttercup stuff until the kids went to bed and then I worked on my new painting while we watched recorded episodes of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!

I didn’t think to take a picture of the canvas, which is more or less finished, until now and right now the light sucks so maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. This painting is either going to be called “The Two Sunnies” or :Sunny Light and Dark”, I haven’t decided, and it’s going to be about being bipolar. It’s, um, a very obvious painting and was inspired by Frida Kahlo’s “The Two Fridas”. (Although hers was about divorce.)

After Blake went to bed, I took a break from drawing and started writing this post. As I was writing, I was waiting for the kettle to boil because tonight was Jell-O night where I make Jell-O for Blake & the kids to take in their lunches in little singe-serve containers. One pack of Jell-O is 33 cents and makes 4 containers. You can’t buy pre-made lunch snacks for that kinda money and they all really like Jell-O so it all works out. I just use the Glad or Ziplock containers you buy at the grocery store, the little ones:

And now, here I sit. It’s 2:30am and I think I’m going to retreat to my Sims Bunker for the rest of the night. Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to sleep and have a better tomorrow.

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Hello internets. How are you today? Good I hope.

I realize I haven’t been much of a textibitionist lately and that it seems like I haven’t been online a whole lot and I thought I’d write a bit about why that is and then share with you all some interesting things about this website.

My neighbours are having a tough time of things right now and to help them save money on childcare costs, I’ve been watching their 9-year-old daughter in the afternoons from the time her mom goes to work and her dad comes home from work. That means that from about 2pm until about 6:30pm there are three very loud, very bored, very ready to go back to school children in my house and I’ve found that this makes it next to impossible to stick to my usual routine of making art and internetting.

Along with five other girls, plus Blake, I’ve been busy working on that TOP SEKRIT PROJEKT I’ve not been talking about since the spring and very very soon it’s going to launch and not be so TOP SEKRIT anymore. Because of that, it’s sort of crunch time and I’ve been pretty stressed out about it.

On top of that there’s getting the kids ready for school, which starts in a week, a shrink appointment on September 4th that I need to prepare for (she’s going to ask me about immersion therapy which is totally something I don’t even want to talk about right now) and my post-op appointment with the endo specialist on September 10th in Toronto. Plus I think my in-laws are going to be visiting during the last two weeks of September as well.

Along with all of the above, I’ve been working really hard to get my last series of paintings done (“Sparkle”, “Shimmer” & “Shine) and ready to submit to the Touched By Fire people for entry into the show this year, as well as writing what basically ended up being like, an artist bio/press release to be used in media for the show, which I know I mentioned previously.

In between all of that, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my neighbours, who I’ve now dubbed “my second family” because I’ve been hanging out with them so much and we also spent a day at my mother’s boyfriend’s cottage where we swam, jumped on a water trampoline thing, watched his son do wakeboard tricks and even got to see Blake on a pair of water skis. In the last two weeks I’ve had two REALLY bad sunburns back to back, which wasn’t fun. In fact, I’m still really itchy from the burn I got the day we went to the cottage.

The scratches are where I made Blake scratch the shit out of me because I was so itchy.

Blake water skiing.

So that’s what I/we’ve been up to in a nutshell. Also, I recently discovered this extremely stupid, extremely addictive video game called Plants vs. Zombies that everyone in this house is currently obsessed with. (Thanks a lot KATIE. :oP) I’m hoping that once the kids start school and my days are free again, that I’ll be able to get the paintings that I have on the go finished and ready for sale (including “Devil Girl”) and to be able to pay more attention to expanding my horizons. This is the first year both kids are going to be at school every day (jr. & sr. kindergarten was Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Friday) and I’m not quite sure yet how I’m going to spend most of my time. Making art, definitely, but in between making art I’m not entirely sure.

There’s also the matter of moving, which has been on mine & Blake’s minds a lot over the summer. he doesn’t feel as though his current position within the company is as secure as it was before the economy went to shit and the number of departments closing is kind of scary, so he’s started positioning himself for a better job within the company. Right now he’s a…I dunno, a technology analyst (??) and the new job he’s hoping to get is something to do with databases. The issue though, is that the database stuff is all based out of Toronto, which is about an h our & a half away from us. This makes for a brutal commute, especially in the winter which hits our area pretty hard causing roads to often close and snow days galore. That means it would make more sense to move further south both so we’re not spending crazy amounts of money on gas and car maintenance and also so we aren’t forced to spend less time together as a family. The problem is, we don’t know where to move, what kind of house to move into, whether we want to live in a rural area or into a town or even what kind of life we want for ourselves and the kids when we do move. There are so many pros and cons to all of the above, that we don’t even know where to begin sorting it all out. But I’ll save that for another post because right now, in the immediate present, he doesn’t have the job, hasn’t even applied for the job (because the job doesn’t technically exist yet), so we’re staying put.

Anyway, onto analytics.

Like most people with websites, I run stats on mine using Google Analytics. Truthfully, I rarely log in anymore to check them out because my traffic hasn’t changed in years (2500-3000 unique visitors per month…why like, 0.01% of these people actually make contact or post comments is beyond me) and I don’t really care what people are reading or paying attention to because I’m going to post whatever I want anyway. I do find the referrals interesting, but again, they don’t really change much from month to month and I’ve found myself caring less and less as the years go by.

That said, tonight I logged into my analytics just out of boredom and found myself on the “Keywords” page, the page that tells me what people are putting into search engines to land on my site, and some of this stuff cracked me up so as I do every now & then, I thought I’d share and give a little commentary.

The #1 search criteria to find me is of course, my name. That’s a given. But I had 9 visits in the last 30 days from someone (or maybe a few someones) searching for “sunny crittenden + marketing magazine“. Hmmm. Yes, this month I was in Marketing magazine due to the Hypercube debacle, but I’ve also written articles for Marketing magazine in the past and I wonder what exactly this person or persons were looking for – the Hypercube article or the articles I’d written for them in the past. Curious.

Next on the list was “sucking cock“, “blowjobs” and “elf porn“. The former two likely due to my guide on doing just that, and the latter is because I referenced it ONCE in a blog post I made probably two years ago now when I was playing World of Warcraft. Also in the same vein there was “girl guides suck cock“, “what to expect after anal sex“, “are blowjobs good for the tongue muscles“, “cock loving nurses teach cock sucking galleries” (wut?), “does sucking dick actually turns your lips pink?“, “elderly man’s cock in my pussy“, “girls sucking own clit” (very flexible girls?), “how to put lube in asshole“, “suck head penis until blow up sperms“, “sucking cock whilst giving birth” (WTF?) and “why do some ladies don’t enjoy giving a man a blowjob“.

Below that was “sarah sunny crittenden“, which I also found curious. “Sarah”, as most of you know, is the name my mother gave me. So who would be searching for that? Three people, apparently. o_O

Oddly enough, further down the list were “suzi blu“, “suzi blu drama“, “suzi blu is a fake“, “suziblu.ning.com“, “+ suzi blu“, “disenchanted with suzi blu“, “suzi blu and willowing drama“,  “suzi blu doesn’t refund“, “suzi blu ning“, “suziblu insanity bitch” and “encyclopedia dramatica suzi blu“. (Sidenote: If you weren’t aware, Encyclopedia Dramatica lampooned Suzi pretty good a few months back.) It appears as though there are at least 8 people this month who are unhappy with Suzi Blu for whatever reason and their searches are landing on the few posts I made about my experiences with her this spring. To those who are here due to Suzi Blu, I’d like to redirect you to Marylin, the internet’s resident Suzi Blu expert.

Also interesting, yet not all that surprising, were Nissan Cube, Hypercube and Capital C searches, such as these: “cubecommunity.ca” (which launched last week I think and as suspected it’s a fucking joke), “tony chapman fake“, “can a dog fit in the back of a nissan cube“, “length of bed in nissan cube“, “capital c nissan“, “hypercube aftermath“, “hypercube contest fix“, “nissan cube bra“, “sunny nissan key code reader“, “sunny crittenden hypercube“, “tony chapman + cube” and “tony chapman + douchebag“.

Others I found entertaining were the following: “sunny camwhore styleproject“, “stileproject cam portal” (someone oldschool must be looking for me- here I am! *waves*), “thank you universe” (I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s thankful), “i am so over humanity“, “president’s choice decadent cookies” (the only store-bought cookies worth putting in your mouth, imo), “shaved my head” (neat! so did I! *high five*), “born without arms boy” (???), “cam girl documentary” (don’t even ask me when it’s coming out…it’s been in post for like, 4 years), “camwhore chali” (hey Chali, someone oldschool must be looking for you too!), “camwhores password“, “camwhores.com password“, “how do i save videos from camwhores.com” (good luck finding a password, my CW password is actually more secure than my online banking password and as far as saving videos…there are programs that record anything you see on your screen but I don’t remember what any of them are called. I think the Mac one might be Snapz?), “camwhores the documentary” (non-existent), “can risperidone slow down your metabolism” (YES and to add to its evil nature, it also increases your appetite), “memoirs of a web cam girl” (one day, one day…), “prevent hacking taking risperidone” (I have no idea what this means), “sunny crittenden selfish” (hahaha! well whatever, one person out there on the world wide web thinks I’m selfish, I think I can live with that), “well aren’t we just a ray of fucking sunshine canada“, “which pills will kill me” (:o(), and last but not least (and definitely my favourite), “sunny crittenden bitch“.

Long story short, since it’s damn near 6am, people search for weird crap and end up finding me. I’m honoured and I hope all of you new people stick around to see that there’s much more to me than blowjobs, webcams and that goddamn Nissan Cube.

Goodnight!

I should be making art instead of writing about it, but I haven’t made a post in a while and my work surface is going to be covered by dinner by the time I’m done writing this, so that’s my excuse.

I’ve decided not to do The Square Foot Show in Toronto as planned and I’ll tell you why.

1. I can’t make the deadline with what I had planned (series of 3 paintings).
2. I’m having surgery August 4th which makes making the deadline even more difficult, as well as attending the event. (They say you’re good after 4 or 5 days post-op, but I’ve had this surgery 4 other times and that has not been my experience.)
3. All of the works at the show are being sold for $200 and the gallery takes a 50% commission. The simple fact of the matter is, I don’t make $100 paintings. I’ve talked to a lot of people about the show and a lot of them were all “you’ll get so much exposure! everyone does this show!” and that’s cool & all, but I put way too much work into each painting to part with them for that much, plus the materials I use are no longer even produced and are thus extremely precious to me and from what I’ve seen as far as pictures from past events, your name isn’t even displayed with each painting, let alone your URL, so this “exposure” people keep talking about…where does it come from? From attending the artist event and networking? From winning one of the cash prizes? Blah, I’ll pass.

The show seemed like a good idea when I first heard about it and I even sent in my RSVP along with the $15 admittance fee, but the more I thought about it and started actually working on my pieces, the less appealing it became. I do plan on doing Touched By Fire again this fall, if they accept me. I have no idea what I’m going to submit though. Deadline’s September 18th, I think.

I’m still working on the paintings that were intended for The Square Foot Show though, and they’re coming along nicely. I should be able to get them finished before my surgery. They are “Sparkle”, “Shimmer” and “Shine”. “Sparkle” is a green fairy, “Shimmer” is a turquoise mermaid and “Shine” is a champagne gold angel.

These are the backgrounds for Shimmer and Sparkle:

This is the background for Shine:

This is Sparkle, so far:

This is Shine, so far (she’s actually got a dress now and textured wings and is drying under books on my coffee table):

So that’s why I haven’t really been making a whole lotta posts lately. That and the fact that I’ve kinda been trying to regroup after the whole Hypercube fiasco. To most people it just seemed like a regular contest but actually it was 4 months of hardcore social networking and strategizing and all sorts of other bullshit and as it turns out, there really is a need to decompress after something like that. I’ve spent the last month planning these paintings, working on my immersion therapy (sort of…just going to the post office, but I’ve been lazy lately), hanging out with my friends and neighbours, preparing for surgery and finishing the 2nd Orphan’s Tales book that I think I started reading in March. I’ve also been watching a lot of movies on The Movie Network and keeping really stupid hours, as I tend to do in the summer.

After these paintings are done and after I’m back on my feet after surgery, I have two more paintings to finish that were put off because of that stupid contest and one more planned after that. Artistically, I plan on being a busy girl for the next few months and as a result, I expect I’m going to be making less update than I usually do.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disappearing, just trying to focus on tangible things these days than the intangible. I need to recharge and I kinda don’t feel like blogging about the minutiae of my life for the time being. (Twitter doesn’t count!)

At the same time, there has been a regime change over at Camwhores.com – Stile’s out, Kevin’s in -  and that promises to make things interesting. If the rumours of change are true, I may just obtain a webcam again. We’ll see how things go.

But as I said, for right now, all I want to do is make art, read trashy books, watch crappy movies , play with my kids and my dogs, recover from surgery and hang out with my friends.

OH…and work on the top sekrit projekt that I’m not at liberty to discuss but launches in the fall and will probably be really awesome.

And with that, my dinner’s ready. I’ll update again as soon as these paintings are done.

Ana just posted this on Facebook. I’d like to see it.

Official website