Tomorrow is TUESDAY, which means, no nurses, no kids and no Blake – it’s my DAY OFF! I’m so stoked! Here is what tomorrow will ideally entail because I do better with structured days than unstructured ones:

• Morning pages (I’m doing The Artist’s Way again. Last time I did it for a week and gave up, this time I’m doing it for real because I think the crux of my depression is that I’m creatively blocked. Very little makes me unhappier.)
• Waffles with REAL maple syrup (because my mommy loves me) and butter
• Moulin Rouge and sketching (I got brightly coloured feathers on my last trip to Michael’s and I want to use them in a burlesque painting)
• Burlesque (with Xtina Aguilera) and more sketching
• Figure out what to do with BEADS. If anyone has any idea on what I could do with brightly coloured glass seed beads, I’d love to hear it. I mean like, in my paintings, not in general. They were on clearance in tubes for $1 at Michael’s a while back, good quality ones too, so I got a whole bunch of them  and they’re really really pretty. The only thing I’ve been able to think of for them is to make them gravel in mermaid paintings. There’s gotta be a better use for them.
• Read The Artist’s Way for at least an hour.
• Read Painted Pages, which came today, for at least an hour.
• By that time, the kids should be home, so I’m going to see if Madison wants to watch The Sweetest Thing because that was the movie I won in the grocery store’s colouring contest (actually it’s 3 movies on 1 disc but the other two are stupid; Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and My Best Friend’s Wedding)
• While we watch the movie, I’ll finish my last Sketchbook Project sketchbook page.
• Salmon steak and salad for dinner

Then the rest of the evening is a mystery! I know I’ll watch something with Blake, maybe The Tempest if there’s nothing else on TV because I know we have that downloaded and maybe we have The Ides of March too (I hope so, Ryan gosling, rawr) but whatever we watch, I’ll be working on Argent’s painting, which is fast becoming the bane of my existence because I keep FUCKING IT UP but hopefully tomorrow I’ll get a handle on it.

Tonight we’re having steak and grilled garlicy buttery potatoes for dinner (with peas!), and the Leafs are playing the godforsaken Islanders and we’re gonna win GODAMMIT and that’s all I have to say about that.

Today was pretty uneventful. I sat in my office all day and watched Oprah-related television while I wrote in my Artist’s Way workbook about my issues right now involving all things creative, then I started reading The Artist’s Way from the beginning because the last time I picked it up, according to my last morning pages, was the winter of 2005 and that was before I went nuts and considering I remember very little in this house before I went nuts, I figured I should just start all over again instead of where my bookmark had left off. Evidently I only read a chapter of the book the first time around too. No wonder it didn’t help me.

Janice was my nurse today. I like Janice, she’s nice and bubbly and funny and probably my favourite out of all of them. She also listens to me, for the most part, whereas the others don’t really. :o/

Anyway, I spent most of my day away from the internet and it was pretty great, so I think I’ll do the same tomorrow. I need to have better days than the ones I’ve been having, that’s for sure.

Have a lovely evening!

~*PLEASE DONATE SO I CAN GO TO ART CAMP!*~

Remember in my last post when I said I’d been having pains in my stomach for the past few days? Well it persisted all throughout yesterday evening and since the doctor told me I should go to the hospital if it did and Blake would be in Toronto all day today, we decided it would be a good idea to have me checked out. It would be a very bad thing if I had pancreatitis again and I was at home all alone.

So at about 8:30pm or so, I packed up the iPad, my chargers, my toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, my journal and a couple of pens just in case they admitted me and off we went to Midland, which is about 20 minutes North of us and is the same hospital I went to in June and again when I had pneumonia this fall.

We got there and did intake and everything was okay. We waited about half an hour in the waiting room and then they called us into the back of the ER where I saw a doctor who asked me how I was feeling, why I was there; we told him the whole pancreatitis story and that we were there to make sure it was NOT that again because the pain was in the same place and was the same kind of pain that started the whole thing last time. He asked me if I wanted anything for the pain and I said no because I’d already taken hydromorph before I came and I didn’t want a needle (I’ve seen this doctor before and he likes to give out the morphine like it was candy). He asked if I was nauseous and I was, so they gave me Zofran which knocked me on my ass and I fought off falling asleep (they had me laying on a table on my back and the room was dim).

They wanted to check my pancreatic levels (because I guess if you have pancreatitis your pancreas juice levels go up, so you don’t have to do an ultrasound right away)  so this really bitchy nurse used the biggest needle at her disposal to take my blood as roughly as possible. Then they said it would take about an hour to get the results so I fell asleep and Blake e-mailed my mom.

I woke up at about 1am because a new doctor came in and he told us that my pancreatic levels were fine and so was everything else. He said he didn’t know what the pain could be, that it was possible it was gall stones, but there’s not a whole lot they can do about those so take some drugs and bear it the best you can and if it’s too much, come back for stronger drugs. And truthfully, the pain is manageable with the hydromorph contin, Tylenol 1 and ibuprofen, but we were concerned it was pancreatitis again, so that’s why we went. I’m not fucking around with that shit ever again, if I’m in pain, I’m seeing a doctor.

So we were out of there by about 1:30am, we went to Tim Hortons so Blake could get a coffee and a muffin because he was tired and neither of us had had dinner. I got a ginger molasses cookie and a Pepsi. I hadn’t had a Pepsi in YEARS and the first sip transported me back to riding in the carpet van with my grampa, on our way to Alliston because I was skipping school to spend the day with him at the store. He had a mini fridge in his van that plugged into the cigarette lighter and it was full of Pepsi.

Anyway, that’s what happened at the hospital. As is the way of things, I’m not in any pain today and I feel totally fine. I think the Zofran they gave me settled whatever was going on in my stomach and now I’m totally okay. Or maybe it was a gall stone and it’s passed now. I have no idea, I just know I feel as normal as normal can be. *shrug*

This morning I ate waffles while reading some of Daisy Yellow’s older posts and I found this one on art journaling very helpful so I thought I’d share. Art journaling, as I’ve mentioned before, is something I’m really really bad at. I just can ‘ot do it.

For most of my life, I’ve written hypergraphically. That means that you write compulsively. Ever since I’ve been taking psychiatric medications, I don’t really write hypergraphically any more, not like I did anyway. I still blather on on the internet of course, but I don’t compulsively write in my journal for 6 hours straight like I used to. BUT, I read these art journaling blogs, like Daisy Yellow’s (I don’t know her name) and Jazmin’s, and I get jealous because when they die, they’re going to leave behind all these gorgeously decorated journals for their family members to read and keep for generations and here mine are, all text in my crappy printing. I mean, there are a lot of them, and I think most of them are pretty interesting (and so do other people, I once sold a journal for $200 which I think was a bargain on his part) but they’re not really aesthetically pleasing. The journals themselves are nice, I don’t cheap out on those unless I have to and most of them were gifts (my favourites are by PAPERBLANKS, in case anyone ever wanted to get me one and mail it, they’re simply the best and you can get them at Chapters or any big box book store *cough*), but inside is just text text text, usually in black pen, although the one I’m using right now has pink flowers on it so I only write in it with pink pen. I have a matching blue one that I haven’t used yet and I’ll only use blue pen in that one. In fact I bought coloured pens specifically to write in these journals because that’s how obsessive I am about them.

That said, I’d really like to have beautifully crafted journals like my online art friends’ but I just don’t really know how and when I’ve tried, it’s just looked stupid. Like, it could take me all day to paint/collage/whatever a spread, which is two facing pages, but what I want to write may be TEN pages, so that just doesn’t work for me. Or by the time I’m finished the spread, I don’t feel the way I did when I started it. For example, one day I tried making an art journal spread because I’d sold a painting and in that moment, I felt successful. So I started making this spread about that but I didn’t get finished until a day later and by then, I didn’t feel that way any more and because I didn’t feel that way any more, I didn’t know what to write that would be authentic. I probably should have written what I wanted to and art journaled around it or something, but that’s not the way most people do it so that thought never occurred to me until just this moment.

It frustrates me greatly. :o/

Less Herger of Comfortable Shoes Studio, retweeted today a tweet from Derwent, which is the company who makes the watercolour pencils and the Inktense pencils I use and this is what it said:

@derwentpencils Don’t let your work become precious. Be bold, experiment, make lots of mistakes. It’s the only way to learn, and it’s fun!

(Actually, the way the tweet was worded, I think it was said to Derwent by a woman named Kathe Parker in response to them asking “what would be your best advice to someone starting out in drawing & painting?”.)

This advice is something I have a lot of trouble with and this is part of the reason why I need to go to Squam so desperately.

I’m poor. I’ve been poor my whole life. When I was little, I was NEVER EVER allowed in my mom’s art room and I was NEVER EVER allowed to touch her materials because we were poor and art supplies are expensive. Too expensive for a kid to use and fuck up with. I was given Crayolas and a pad of paper. I wanted paint but it was too messy and too expensive. I wanted to paint on wood, but it was too expensive and selling her creations was how my mom paid for Christmas and anything “extra”. I wanted to sew, but my mom didn’t have the time to teach me how. Etc etc etc. (I am not *blaming* my mother for anything here, just stating facts.)

So when I grew up and had my own house and my own “art room” and my own art supplies,  everything because “precious” because if I fucked up, I couldn’t afford to replace the materials I fucked up with. I couldn’t just throw supplies in the garbage like that. I still can’t. We have no money. When I sell a painting, at LEAST 75% goes back into buying more supplies because that’s the only way I can afford to have these things and art supplies (and Lush) are really the only things I buy myself. (Of course I bought more stuff when I had a job, I’m talking about when I don’t.) My supplies ARE “precious”. I really really wish they weren’t but they are. I don’t know how these people can pay $20+ for a 4oz bottle of Golden Fluid Acrylic paint because it’s “the best” and then just trash what they’ve made if it’s not what they were trying to do. I just cannot wrap my head around that. I buy Americana paint for $2.99 or, if I’m splurging, $4.99 for Martha Stewart, and I *still* can’t wrap my head around just trashing something if I screw up. Imperfect things really really bother me and so does waste. When I put too much paint on my palette, I use a paintbrush and scoop it all back into the bottle when I’m done, even if it’s black or white, which I buy in big bottles because I use them the most and they’re inexpensive. I just can’t waste the paint. If I were using Golden, I’m not sure I could bring myself to even squeeze any onto my palette at all, I think I’d have to like, squirt tiny amounts onto my brush or something.

Another blog I was reading that was linked on the Squam website talked about things not being “precious” too so I think this may be a concept that someone has written about in a book or something (considering most of the teachers at Squam are published authors) because it seems to be a theme within the mixed media community. I see it popping up all over the place now and I think it’s something I really need to learn. I *do* use inexpensive paint. It really *isn’t* a big deal if I mess up and have to throw away a piece of artwork. As much as it would pain me, a canvas is really only about $6 and if I fuck it up too badly, I can always paint over it, all I need to do is invest in some good gesso.

I need to start making art that isn’t so “safe”. I need to also start making art that’s just for me, like in an art journal. Don’t get me wrong, I *LOVE* my girls. I love making them, I love how beautiful they are, I almost always love the finished product and I don’t intend to stop making them, but I think I need to make other art that’s more accessible too. Or something. I’m not really sure what I need to do, honestly, which is why I’m hoping Squam will crack me wide open. I need to not be so obsessive with everything being perfect on the first try so I don’t waste anything. Like time. I need to not be so obsessive about wasting time as well. Oh god, I have so much to learn! Anyone who thinks art isn’t work can shove their opinion straight up their own ass.  Sideways.

I’m probably channeling my inner Madison by saying this, but god dammit, art is agony! I love it, I hate it, I’m frustrated by it, it makes me cry, it makes me happy, it makes me a motherfucking MESS. Maybe it’s because I’m mentally ill that it makes me so emotional but I don’t understand these artists who are just happy and make happy art and nice little YouTube videos to entertain each other and to learn from each other and here I am, sitting in a dark corner clutching my sketchbook for dear life, unable to move. I want to be like them, I just don’t know how. I’m afraid it’s just not even in my DNA.

I have no idea what my mother’s creative process is. I’ve never really actually watched her paint (except when she was teaching classes) and I’m not there on a day-to-day basis to see like, how she is mentally but in general I think she’s a happy creator in that, I’ve seen her come up with an idea and get really excited about it and have to do it immediately. I’m like that too, when I have what I think is a good idea, I have to get it down on paper right away, even if I only have enough time to do a rough sketch. Then the next day I’ll begin working on the actual piece and obsess until it’s finished. And I do it perfectly the first time almost always. I can honestly say that I’ve only wasted a half sheet of watercolour paper twice in my life (I draw/paint my girls on watercolour paper and adhere them to the canvas with gel medium) because I just do everything in my power not to fuck up because watercolour paper is expensive. I mean, in my first grant proposal, I told them that my dream was to be able to afford 5 different watercolour pads so I could work on 5 paintings at a time. That’s pretty pathetic (no wonder I didn’t get the grant), don’t you think? I currently have 2 watercolour pads and since I draw my girls on half sheets now, I can work on 4 of them at a time, theoretically (I’m not that productive).

My friend Shoshanna Bauer does these really amazing watercolours, you should check her out, I think she’s extremely good at what she does. I would really like to play with watercolours, I like how they look, but I have no idea what I would paint or how you do it. No one’s ever taught me. I’ve looked at a lot of watercolours over the last couple of years trying to dissect them, and I’ve come to the conclusion that watercolours are REALLY fucking hard! Without even trying them, I just know that they’re really fucking hard and to make anything even remotely nice, I’m going to have to waste like, a whole pad of watercolour paper trying to figure them out and that’s expensive! Or at least that’s expensive to ME! And I don’t even HAVE watercolours. I have watercolour pencils, a very small selection of them that someone gave me a long time ago, and I have Inktense pencils, a large case of them, which work very similarly to watercolours (although I don’t think you can do the “salt trick” with Inktense pencils) but I have absolutely no idea how to use them.

I’ve always avoided watercolours because of their impermanence. If you’ve been reading my blog for any great amount of time, you’ll know that I’m obsessed with my art’s longevity. I want my shit to survive WWIII, plain & simple. I varnish the hell out of everything. I use materials that won’t fade, won’t run, won’t smear, are acid-free, archival and will do as they’re told. If you spill a Coke on a watercolour painting, it’s ruined. If you somehow spilled a Coke on one of my paintings, it would roll right off and you could gently wipe it down with a damp cloth. The idea of my hard work being able to basically be erased in a matter of seconds irrationally freaks me out! I’ve varnished watercolour before, but you have to be really really careful with it and you can only use a spray. Anyway, that’s why I plan on taking my watercolours to Squam. Maybe someone there can show me how to use them.

Having said that, I think it’s time for me to talk some more about Squam, as if you haven’t heard enough…I’ve finally sat down and made a list of expenses relating to the trip and if you could spare anything between now and September, it would be GREATLY appreciated. Like maybe for my birthday, which is March 1st? Or if buying a gift is more your style, I would really like this book by one of the teachers I’ll be in class with at Squam, called Painted Pages: Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media (by Sarah Ahearn Bellemare), which is on my wishlist. That would be appreciated also.

Here’s what I’ll need (okay maybe one or two is more of a want…):

• Tuition: $1200
• Gas: $200
• An apron: $12
• Fairy wings: $20…
• A Rubbermaid container for all my crap: $10
• Gesso: $10
• Gel medium: $10
• Umbrella: $12
• Flashlight with extra batteries: $15?
• Bug spray: $10
• Paint: $25
• Kit fees: $12
• Eating out on the Saturday night they make us fend for ourselves: $20
• Two cases of Diet Coke & snacks: $25
• Art fair: $75 (tops)
  = $1656

I’m not having such an easy time of things these days. You’d think that I’d be excited about my new website, but I’m not really, in fact I’m downright conflicted about it. I just have to remind myself that we’re laughing at product, not people. Everyone, including and maybe even especially me, has made crap instead of craft before. It’s just something that happens and if you don’t laugh at it, you’ll never get past it and make something better.

I keep thinking about how I’d feel if my stuff wound up on Regretsy and the answer is, I sort of already have. Many times my abortion painting was submitted or posted in the comments (I know this due to Analytics) and honestly? I felt kind of honoured. I know Regretsy is a joke. I know enough to laugh at it and myself. I hope the same thing for Chagrinterest and the crafts we feature.

In other news, I have the toothache from hell. It’s a tooth on the left side of my mouth, 3rd one back. There is so much pressure in the tooth I swear it could explode into a million pieces at any given moment. The roof my my mouth and the gums on that side are all swollen and it’s not just that took that hurts, it’s all of them on the top left, almost all the way to my front left tooth. I’ve been taking Tylenol 3, Extra Strength Ibuprofen and I’ve been using Extra Strength Anbesol and that’s all been helping (as has, I’m sure, the hydromorph) but I’m still in massive amounts of pain and can’t get in to see the dentist until the 10th. I’m actually praying that the nerve dies in the meantime, although I think the nerve dying is actually a bad thing, for some reason, but I can’t remember why.

This morning I finally finished reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and I have to say that I actually enjoyed it more than Freedom, which I also liked a lot because I found the characters more relateable, which spellcheck is telling me is not a word.  Relate-able? Whatevs. It was good and funny and I think it’s going to be hysterical when and if it actually gets made into a movie. Apparently Franzen has written a screenplay of it for HBO and since HBO is usually pretty good about these things, I have high hopes for it.

The next book I should be reading is The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides because I got that for Xmas, but I decided to start reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo instead because we saw the movie on Boxing Day and I loved it. I am absolutely in love with Lisbeth Salander, both the character and the girl who played her in the movie. I realize that the movie is really a remake of a foreign film (Swedish I think?) but I don’t do subtitles, as a rule, so I’ll probably never see that version. Blake said that both movies were pretty much the same though, so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not watching the subtitled one. Blake also said that the book is more in-depth (I found the movie a little hard to follow because I think it assumes you’ve read the book), which is usually the case, and that’s why I’m reading it next. I have all three books and I’m going to read them all in a row.

Speaking of movies, the theatre at the Bayfield Mall, which is where we saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, has their concession stand outside of the theatre now, which is great because you can get movie popcorns without actually going to see a movie. I love movie popcorns. Movie popcorns are half the reason I even see movies in a theatre. I don’t care if movie popcorns are 5 billion calories either because when I eat movie popcorns, I consider it one of my meals for the day and adjust accordingly. Therefore, tonight, I am having movie popcorns for dinner. It’s really the only way you can eat the stuff and not weigh 30 trillion lbs.

Last night I had beef & broccoli stir-fry from the local Chinese food restaurant and it was pretty gross. We usually get Chinese food from a place at the beach, which is about 15 mins away, but I knew Blake wouldn’t feel like driving there last night and I really wanted beef & broccoli for dinner, so I was like, “let’s just get it in town”. We’ve only had Chinese food in town once and it was awful (the rice was YELLOW) so we never got it again but I’d forgotten how awful it was. My beef & broccoli had these little nasty black beans in in that looked so much like blood clots I couldn’t even finish what I’d put on my plate. I was just way too grossed out. Not to mention that the sauce was really thick and tasted mostly like bouillon cubes. Beans have no place in beef & broccoli. It is not called “beef & broccoli & beans”, it is called “beef & broccoli” and I expect only that to be in it, with maybe some onions and okay, some celery I can deal with, and maybe even a few carrot slivers. But beans? NO fucking way. Beans are vile little things that have no business on my plate, period. Ugh.

Anyway, that’s basically life right now. I’m not doing anything even remotely productive and I’m trying to be okay with that because right now I don’t really feel like doing anything productive except working on Argent’s painting. I *should* be working on my sketchbook but honestly? I think I’m just going to finish the page I’m working on, put in my quotes and call it finished. I don’t think I can finish it in its entirety by the deadline anyway and I really need to be working on the Limited Edition sketchbook and finish that one entirely because that one’s going to be in a special edition art book. (Or parts of it.) I think after this year, I’m not going to do the Sketchbook Project again because it’s too much work and too much stress for basically no reason. We’ll see.

Okay I’m going to go start this book and eat apple turnover sticks. They’re both calling my name!

Dinner is finished, the dishes are being done. Blake and I ate so much we feel like barfing, although I’m probably the only one who really might. Xmas 2011 was an unmitigated success.

As previously mentioned, Ronny and Alex slept over last night and we all did presents this morning, followed by a big breakfast, Pokemon and eventually, napping. Ronny and Alex didn’t stay the afternoon because Alex’s dad was making turkey dinner at their house so they left about the same time as when I laid down to sleep.

After I woke up, I messed around on Pinterest for a bit and checked my e-mail and then Blake and I went into my office and watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes which I thought was just okay. I wasn’t as blown away by it as some of my friends were. I think I just really hate James Franco and I thought the ending was sloppy. When it was over I was like, “that’s IT?” because it seemed like there should have been more movie at the end. I mean, I guess they tied it up at the end with the epilogue during the credits but I still felt like there should have been more. While we watched the movie, Blake and I made paper snowflakes, which I’m going to use to decorate the living room window. (But we have a lot more to make before I can do that.) During this time, the turkey was cooking.

After the movie, we all kinda went and did our own thing. Wes played his new Phineas and Ferb video game, Blake played his new Star Wars game, Madison coloured with her new Prismacolour pencil crayons (she now has more of them than I do! Brat!) and I ran around taking pictures of things, which I’ll share with you now.

This is No Drought by Lush, which Wes got me. It’s a dry shampoo.

You put it in your hair if you don’t have time to wash it, so it soaks up your hair’s oil.
It smells citrusy and wooooonderful!

This is Northern Lights soap, also by Lush:

Madison says it smells like Windex.
I disagree but I don’t know what to say it does smell like.
I just think it looks cool.

This is my new book, from Blake:

 I have no idea what it’s about but I’m betting it’s awesome.

Little known fact about me (?), I collect quartz crystals.
I don’t think Lisa knows that, but she got me a couple.
These are all of my little ones.
I have a bunch of large crystal wands too, but these are my little ones:

The two on the bottom left are the new ones.
The bottom crystal is actually a rusty amethyst, which I also collect.
(She also gave me the tin.)

This one’s kinda neat because it’s cut for the express purpose of rubbing in your pocket with your thumb:

She gave me two other stones too, that are supposed to be for “healing” but I think that’s bunk so I gave them to Madison. Lisa also gave me a book on “nutritional healing” all about using vitamins and herbs to heal yourself but I think that’s bunk too and a little insulting, I think, considering the nature of my illness, so I don’t really know what to do with it. I’ll just smile and nod and say “thank you”. She got Blake some weird mustard that he’ll probably really enjoy, which is a first (usually he gets chocolate, which he doesn’t like), so he’s happy. I got him the new(est) Bastard Fairies EP.

This is my new crock pot recipe book.
I flagged a few recipes…

This is happening tomorrow:

And this is my favourite gift, from Madison, because it was the most thoughtful.

I *love* Atomic Fireballs and Lemon-Heads.
They’re made by the same company and are pretty much impossible to find up here.
Madison and Blake went to a specialty candy shop to get them.
The Whistle Pops I remembered from when I was little and I’d told Madison about them and she found them at this shop.
There are also “party snaps” in the box, which are those gun powder things you throw at the ground and they make a snapping sound.

This is Wes with the wolf toy that Lisa got him.
In case I haven’t mentioned it, he’s obsessed with wolves.

Here’s the lovely young lady of the house…

Here’s my beloved…

This is what he was drinking while he made mashed potatoes and gravy:

Gobble gobble, motherfuckers!

Mashed potatoes, whipped smooth…

An Xmas feast…

And finally, mooches…

Hoover has had a crusty nose ever since we switched him to diet dog food.
He’s lost weight, which the vet is happy about, and she’s not worried about his nose, so I’m choosing not to worry either.

And that was Xmas 2011.
It was a lot of fun, but I’m glad it’s over.
I think it’s time for tea and then bed.

I have an ingrown toenail that is so pusy and nasty and painful that I just want to chop my toe off and be done with it. It’s my own fault, when I cut my toenails about a week ago I cut too deep by accident and knew it was going to turn ingrown. It fucking hurts.

I also didn’t have dinner last night because I knew if I did, I’d throw up. My “mind over matter” dealie isn’t working so well these days. I *am* almost 6 days barf-free but over the past 2 days I came pretty close and I don’t know if I can keep this up. I guess my mental powers just ain’t what they used to be. Then again, if I don’t believe in those powers, they won’t work, so I should probably be a little more positive about it.

So none of you probably noticed because you all saw the post earlier in the day, but I’ve removed yesterday’s post entitled “Sweet Child o’ Mine” because Madison got mad at me for posting her note. She wasn’t mad that I showed the whole world, she was mad that it was an image that people could save and potentially print out and bring to school to tease her with. Her friends don’t really come here but she was afraid of that scenario. She said that if I could figure out a way to leave the post up but make it so people couldn’t save the pics, I could leave it up, but as you all know, that’s not possible, which is a shame because I think that was a good post. I saved it as a PDF so I could print it out once we have black ink again, though, so it’s not exactly lost forever, it’s just not public anymore.

Anyway, total lapse in parenting judgement. I’ve apologized and promised that I wouldn’t post publicly about her sexuality again, especially in a savable format. We’re good.

I wish I could post publicly about how everything went down with her last night because I think it was very interesting but since I’m banned from speaking of her sexuality I can’t really go into details. I understand her reasons for being upset, and again, it had very little to do with you guys and more to do with people from her school, and I respect them. If she were an adult, I probably wouldn’t because don’t tell me shit if you don’t want it on the internet (unless you specifically say “don’t post this”, which I do respect, or unless it’s really obvious that it shouldn’t be public) but she’s a kid and has the right to grow up with a little privacy. Note that I said “a little”. She is unfortunately my daughter and I put everything on the internet that happens in my life from the mundane to extraordinary and sshe’s a part of my life so there’s going to be some cross-over. I’m not just going to write around her.

I explained this to her and she seemed fine with it. It was mostly the sexuality thing and who she likes (which I know I didn’t mention but I do have a video teasing her about someone we thought she was crushing on last spring that she hated but I didn’t know until last night because she didn’t tell me) because those things can come back to her at school if it falls into the wrong hands. And like I said yesterday, she’s already being teased at school, to a much higher degree than she let on before, and it breaks my heart so I won’t do anything to knowingly contribute to it.

So that’s what happened to the post, more or less.

Before I apologized, she was really mean to me and made me cry, which was a bad move on my part. Now that she knows she has that power, she’s going to use it as she gets deeper into the teen years and the shitty part is, I can’t control myself. I can’t not cry when someone’s being mean to me. I’m an extremely sensitive person and I cry a lot. I cry if the store’s out of ketchup chips. I cry if someone shows me a video on how Chicken McNuggets are made. I cry when celebrities die. I cry when Blake yells. I cry when Wes tells me about when he saw me at St. Mike’s and I was “sleeping”. I cry when “Creep” by Radiohead comes on my iTunes.  I cry for really stupid reasons, especially when I think people are mad at me or they’re being mean to me. Blake’s like, “it’s only going to get worse as she gets older” and I just cried some more because Madison’s never been mean to me before. She’s never gotten mad at me before. She fights with Blake all the time and gets made at him and that’s just their dynamic, they butt heads and scream at each other for a while, then Madison goes to her room and Blake goes to his desk and a couple of hours later Madison comes out and pretty much acts like nothing even happened, which Blake doesn’t let her get away with, they discuss whatever it was calmly at that point, but it always turns out okay.

Yesterday Madison made me cry, twice, and didn’t even apologize for it after everything was fine and we were back to joking around and being normal.  She was indignant, she was like “good” while I was crying, even though she didn’t say that. That really bothers me.

It getting worse will absolutely destroy me and I’ve been crying all morning just thinking about it. :o( Okay I’ve only been up for an hour, but I hit the ground weeping. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through her teens if this is how it’s going to be. She’s just literally, in the 13 years she’s been alive, has never gotten made at me before, she’s never lashed out at me, she’s never said anything mean. That’s not how we are. Or that’s not how we were.

Don’t get me wrong, even after she saw I’d posted the note and before I apologized, she was still telling me all about school and the kids in school and who she liked and was acting totally normal. She took the opportunity to be mad at me and ran with it to see what it tasted like and I think it tasted good. She’s been testing the waters with me a little bit the last few weeks, like saying “no” if I ask her to bring me a bottle of water from the kitchen or to recycle my old ones or to grab me an apple while she’s in there or whatever. She plays it off like she’s joking but she’s kinda started taking it too far and I can’t really explain in text how she’s testing the waters, it just feels like she is. Blake thinks the same thing.

Other than that, we’re totally fine. Blake tweeted this weekend, “I think that Madison and @SunnyCrittenden sitting around shooting the shit is just about the cutest thing ever.” and he mentioned somewhere else that it was “heartwarming”. I don’t/didn’t really understand what he meant because Madison and I were just being normal, this is how we are after school every single day, but I guess he doesn’t see that because he’s at work. Madison and I have talked after school about everything under the sun since she started school, pretty much, so it’s totally normal for us, but again, he just doesn’t see it. I don’t know what was different this weekend, but something was and he noticed and he mentioned it. He also said that it “warmed his heart” that we went into my office and watched The Muppet Movie together while I made art because, to him, Madison and I don’t do that together. But the thing is, after school we do, we’ve watched many an Oprah episode after school together and now on Thursdays we watch Extreme Couponing together. (That show is AWESOME.) Since I got sick, I don’t go in my office that often so we don’t watch as much TV as we used to, but obviously we still do it because we did it on Sunday and last Thursday with Extreme Couponing. In fact she stayed home from school that day to help me deal with a new nurse because I just couldn’t deal with her by myself (and rightly so, she was pretty gross and I hated her touching me :o(). Today after school, Madison is going to the pharmacy to pick up the drugs for me that Blake forgot to get on Sunday because he worked all weekend. She’s a GOOD KID, she just has this streak of malice now that I don’t know how to deal with.

And it bugs the hell out of me that she doesn’t believe me that she’s a good kid when I tell her she is. Maybe I should write her a note. I mean, she helps out around the house a LOT and for no allowance because we can’t afford allowance anymore, she runs errands, she’s constantly asking me if I need anything and both kids understand that walking is difficult for me, so they both grab me water from the fridge and stuff like that and they seem happy to do it. Sometimes (not often) I say in the living room where everyone is, as a joke, “the next person who gets me an apple gets a kiss!” and all three of them will literally fight over who’s going to do it, like they all run to the kitchen to get the apple. The ONLY thing I know for certain in this life is that my family REALLY loves me. Like, to an abnormal degree I think.

So then how could she be so mean to me? I don’t understand. Blake tried explaining it to me as there being reactions that come from the (logical) brain and reactions that comes from the (illogical) heart but I still don’t get it. I could never be that mean to her. I’m the one always sticking up for her, I’m the one always in her corner.

I guess all there is to do is to try and grow a thicker skin. Blake says I need to try as hard as I can next time not to react when she tries to hurt me and he guarantees that there will be a “next time”. I’m not so sure about that, but he’s probably right about the thicker skin thing, just in case. I just don’t think I’m capable of it.

Enough about that.

Last night I watched a movie called “The Switch”, which starred Jennifer Anniston, who I think is SO pretty and Jason Bateman who I think is a dork. Juliette Lewis and Jeff Goldblum were also in it and Juliette was really great. Jeff, not so much. Anyway, it’s about an artificial insemination gone awry and it’s a romantic comedy, which I’m a sucker for, and I expected it to be really awful as most rom-coms are but it was actually pretty decent and do you wanna know why? It’s because it was based on the short story “Baster” by JEFFREY EUGENIDES (!!!!!!) who is probably my favourite author in the whole wide world. He wrote Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides and a new book that I forget the name of but Blake’s getting it for me for Xmas. Something about a marriage or a divorce or something, I honestly didn’t read the jacket, I just saw the name and basically screamed in the middle of Chapters because I love him so much.

Right now I’m half-assedly reading Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs which is kinda cool because of its gimmick (the story is written around strange photos that were supposedly “found”, but I’m not so sure – the photos are interspersed throughout the book) but the writing is kinda “meh”. The story is kinda “meh” too. And actually now that I think about it, the writing sounds like I’m reading a blog, which I don’t really mind but I read a lot of blogs and I want more from a book. Apparently they’re making this book into a movie and I have no idea how that’s going to work.

Speaking of movies, The Help comes out next week on DVD and I have to have it. If anyone was going to get me anything for Xmas, that’s the thing. It’s on my wishlist. Just sayin’…(I hate that term and I can’t believe I just used it, but it fit…)

Here are scenes from my bed from yesterday:

Wes gave me a bat ring for Halloween. It’s one of my prized possessions. :o)

My empty Tylenol #3 bottle.
I always keep them so I know when I can refill the prescription because I only get 100 pills every 30 days so I don’t become an addict (probably too late).

Wes’ picture from the dentist last year.
His hair IS tinged pink in this pic, it’s not  a trick of the light.
I just realized that it’s weird that its for the DENTIST and he’s not showing his teeth.
They probably wanted him to, but he probably politely declined.
That’s just how he is.

This is my extra special snowflake mug.
Blake got me a set of 4 from Caribou Coffee when he was working there like, 10- years ago.
This is the only survivor. :o/
It’s getting old and I need a new one but I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement.
It’s stained on the inside and the inside also has a whole bunch of fine cracks.

I’ll be very upset if anyone breaks it.

Yesterday Blake called me from Shopper’s Drug Mart and told me that Isopure Plus (my protein drink that I need so I don’t die of malnutrition) was on sale for $3.50 off, which is a very big deal because the stuff’s $15 + tax for 6 bottles which is very expensive for us and he wanted to know if I thought he should get 2. I said yes. I wish we had more money so we could get more than 2 because that’s a really good deal and we should probably stock up. :o/ It’s NOT a good deal if we have to put it on Visa and pay interest on it, so that’s why we only got 2.

Today is a grey, rainy, depressing day. I really really hate fall, especially right now when we’re in the tail end of it; when the leaves are all off the trees and soggy brown muck on the ground and it’s cold enough to see your breath but there’s no snow. I love rain when everything’s green, but when everything’s brown, it just depresses me. Also, I just don’t get outside enough. I want to be outside, I just don’t know what to do out there.

Did you know that a serving of cashews (1/4 cup, which isn’t a lot) has 9g of protein? Learn something new every day. The chicken bowl steamery microwave thing I’m going to have for lunch is like, 18g of protein. My mom found an online protein calculator and she says I need 44g of protein per day. I’ve been doing some research of my own and I read that if a person is recovering from a surgery or an accident, they should actually DOUBLE their protein intake because their bodies are working extra hard to heal themselves.

My wound is almost healed and while my guts are swollen and unhappy, I can’t exactly heal them, so I say I should split the difference and that I should aim for 66g. There’s no way I can eat that much in a day without gaining a ton of weight and there’s also the puking thing to consider, but I can come close with the Isopure Plus (18g of protein) every day. I got Blake and Madison to try a little bit of the Alpine Punch flavour last week and Madison said it tasted like medicine and Blake just said he thought it was pretty good. I agree. The texture is a little weird and takes some getting used to (it’s more dense than water or juice) but after that it’s actually pretty good. Blake got me grape this time and everything I’ve read says that that one’s the best flavour so I guess I’ll see later tonight.

Even though Isopure Plus is designed to be easy on tummies, I find that if I drink it too quickly, I feel really really sick, so I have to drink it in little sips across a span of an hour or more. If it gets warm, I have to put it in the freezer to cool it back down, because it’s pretty gross when it’s room temperature.

Anyway, I’m very pleased with the stuff.  I just wish it wasn’t so goddamn expensive.

Okay I think it’s time to go into my office where I can’t see the grey day, watch some bad movies OnDemand, eat my chicken bowl steamer thing and then work on this sketchbook. I got the sketchbook for the Limited Edition Sketchbook Project last week so the pressure’s on! My theme is “the last word ever spoken”. Hmmmm.

So if you know me at all, you know I get crushes on various boys pretty easily, especially if they happen to be in the arts in any way. ESPECIALLY if they’re super good or super passionate about something. Then I go mental.

So right now I have this pretty massive crush on Eric Calderone who’s this metal genius on YouTube who does covers of popular songs. And he’s absolutely, drop dead motherfucking gorgeous. Not to be crude (too late) but whenever he posts a new video, I sit there watching and my clitoris literally twitches, it’s the most bizarre thing that’s never happened before.

Now of course I would never act on any of these crushes and if faced with one of them I’d probably embarrass myself by crying or something lame like that, but I would definitely like to be friends with them. Like, internet friends. The way I am with you guys except like…we e-mail dumb shit to each other and stuff. Like I do with other people. Like like like.

But anyway, I love him and here’s some of my favourite Erock videos (yes, he calls himself Erock and yes I think that’s kinda stupid – no offence Eric, I love your nerdy ways):

“Hey guys,

So I had requests for more 80s songs and had requests for classical songs which ended up as a combo. The Mozart parts I used just in case anyone is wondering were Symphony no. 25, Symphony no. 40, and part of his Requiem. There were so many to choose from but I fell upon the ones I thought could work best. Hopefully Mozart’s not rolling in his grave. Thanks so much for the comments, messages, and subs. Once again, you guys amaze me, BIG UPS.

Best to ya

E”

OH SWOON. BE STILL MY BEATING FUCKING HEART OR HOWEVER THAT GOES. *fans self*

Okay I’ll stop, I just fucking love the shit out of him. I want Blake to fly him to Canada to play our anniversary party, if we ever actually have one. (Looks like 10 years ain’t gonna be it, so maybe 15?) But watch the videos, isn’t he beautiful? Don’t you hate him for his ability to grow hair? Cuz I totally do.

Anyway, enough about Mr. Crittenden the Second.

[Insert photo of the elusive Benton here]

So Ben’s not really a boyfriend, by my usual definition because I don’t really have a crush on him, but he is a boy and he’s going to be my goddamn friend if I have to hunt him down and sit on him.

Ben is one of my nurses. He’s 29, from Vancouver and from what I can tell, all he does is work. That means he has no friends here and I swear to Christ, I will take drastic measures to ensure that he has people here because he’s great and it bothers me thinking about him just being alone all the time. But hey, what do I know? Maybe he does have friends here and he just hasn’t told me about them yet. YET.

Anyway, I get excited about the prospect of new friends (I never used to, I’m growing soft in my old age) and Ben is a potential new friend and I’m looking forward to having a little party at our house with Alex and Ronny and Ben and lots of booze.

Speaking of booze, I’m too scared to ask my doctor but with all the drugs I’m on, do you think I could get drunk and not die? I guess I’ll ask her when I see her tomorrow. Honestly, all I want to do these days is be drunk and listen to music and cry. I am so goddamned depressed it’s not even funny. I have S.A.D. pretty majorly and like, I missed the whole summer. I went from winter, to barely any spring, to fall, to winter. There was snow on the ground this morning! This is not good for my mental health!

Blake’s mom and Charlie just bought a house in Florida with an indoor hot tub and pool and all I want to do is go there. I need sunshine. Badly. I want to get this stupid pseudocyst “procedure” done (still haven’t heard from the specialist), have my big surgery, go to Florida with Blake’s parents and the kids (that I have no idea how we’ll afford but I really need it :o( Maybe a Chip In account thing?) and then get my job back. That’s how I want things to go. That’s what I want for my life for the next few months.

I got an e-mail from my boss last week, which is promising. I explained everything to her and offered to work part-time until my big surgery if there was work available, but I haven’t heard anything back. We are so ridiculously broke. :o( The thought of Xmas makes me really upset because I just don’t know how we’re going to afford anything when we’re going into debt EATING. Madison’s said that all she wants for Xmas this year is a $25 iTunes gift card which very well may be the only thing she gets. I don’t know what to get Wes. Then there’s my mom, Phil, Lisa, Raili and Rachael. I just don’t know what to do.

Blake’s getting me Skyrim for Xmas, but I’m getting it on Thursday. We can only afford to get that because he’s going to trade in some of his old games and one of mine (Final Fantasy whatever # came out for PS3 that I hated and barely played). My one year old computer isn’t good enough to play the game so I have to get it on PS3, which sucks (and I know how whiny and privileged that sounded) because I hate consoles, but I really want to play the game so I guess thems the breaks. And these days it’s not like I have anything better to do. I sit on this bed in the living room and refresh Facebook and e-mail every 2 minutes, all day, every day. I haven’t even been creating anything because I just too depressed. I should be working on my sketchbook but I just don’t have it in me right now. If I send it unfinished, I send it unfinished.

So that’s life at the moment.

PS. My hair’s falling out at an alarming rate and if I lose much more, I’m just going to shave my head again.

PPS. Water For Elephants was a HORRIBLE movie, but an excellent book. Why is that always the way?

“And you don’t know how it feels,
You don’t know how it feels,
No you don’t know how it feels,
To be meeeeeeeeeee.”

- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

 So I’ve heard from Jen. Actually, let me back up a bit…On the suggestion of a couple of friends on Live Journal, I sent Jen the link to the post on Live Journal that was a duplicate of the one you’re reading now. I did this on Facebook. You can read the comments on the LJ post here, if interested. I chose to link her to that version of the post because that’s where most of the people were commenting, including my IRL best friend, Alex, whose life would also be affected by any decision I made in regards to this.

In the comments, my friend Charlie (woodoo24) and I exchanged these words with regards to simply sending her the link to the post:

Charlie:  Meh…do you want a bunch of internet people jumping in her shit?

Sunny: Well, yes and no. Does she deserve that? Yes. Does she also deserve to tell her side of the story? Yes. Are we going to be friends at the end of this? I doubt it. But I think she deserves to know, especially considering that the last communication said something like “I know you hate me for some reason…”, indicating that she doesn’t know why we haven’t spoken in 2 years.

I dunno. I just dunno. People will only jump her shit if she lets them. She can read the post and talk to me privately afterward.

So I gave her the option to message me privately, which she did this evening. Because she took the option to message me privately, I’m going to extend that courtesy by not posting what she said on my site because if she wanted it on here, she would have commented.

Without going into too much detail, she confessed wholeheartedly to the guinea pig and really made no effort to pass the buck onto anyone else. She did say that her life had spiraled down pretty far by that point (which is true), with Carolyn being in the driver’s side and Jen in the back. When Carolyn said she knew what to do, Jen believed her because Jen was very much Carolyn’s follower. Knowing Jen’s personality, I believe this. At the same time, she was in the midst of breaking up with Jesse who may or may not have been already beginning his relationship with Patricia at the time (their roommate at the time, who Jesse is now engaged to), she was in massive debt and amassing more and more every time she turned around and as I said, things were tailspinning out of control.

That is NOT an excuse. That is an explanation. There is no excuse for what she did, which she recognizes, but what’s done is done and as long as she knows that what she and Carolyn did was majorly fucked up, I can accept the heartfelt apology she gave, not punish her for the rest of her life and be friends again.

YOU may not understand this, that’s okay, you don’t have to, but the message I got from Jen tonight was from a changed person and I believe her when she says it was never her intent to hurt the guinea pig. As she pointed out: “I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 12, I am now volunteering for Greenpeace, I climbed the CN tower earlier this year to raise money for The World Wildlife Fund.” This is not the profile of an animal abuser and I never thought she was one, I just thought this one incident was fucked up and until now, something I couldn’t forgive. But enough time has passed and as I said, she’s grown as a person since then (the old Jen would have blamed everything under the sun but herself), so I think slowly but surely we’re going to get back on track to being friends again. Like I said in my original post, I think that’s going to have to happen slowly though, because I have to be sure she’s not just putting on an act or lying to me or whatever. I have a pretty good bullshit detector and in the past I’ve let a lot of things slide with her, so that’s something *I’m* going to have to work on for this friendship to work.

I haven’t messaged her back yet, so she may see this post before I do, but she was “sick to [her] stomach” by all of your comments on both of the other posts so I think we’ve been successful in teaching her a lesson. Maybe it wasn’t our job to teach a lesson though, but maybe more like…we sent a message. And I think we have to be happy with that because I don’t think she’ll be irresponsible with a pet ever again – at least not while she’s friends with me. Oh and I’m happy to report that, “that puppy that Jesse and I got together is my entire world, she never goes without anything, she has a great home, she’s well trained, well groomed and the happiest little creature ever.“

I think everyone is deserving of a 2nd chance, but it’s conditional. They have to have learned something or grown from it and it appears as though Jen’s done both. Granted, what she did was monumentally stupid and yes, unforgivable for some people, but time can heal most wounds eventually and I think that’s where I am right now.

I understand that not everyone is going to “get” this and some people may even look down on me from now on because I’ve forgiven her and if that’s the case, so be it. We just have differing philosophies, I guess, different experiences. Like I said in my original post, who here among us hasn’t done something monumentally stupid whether they got caught or not, whether they admit to it or not? Hell, that’s Post Secret’s bread & butter. You can’t tell me you haven’t done something really dumb or mean or cruel and wished for forgiveness, if you haven’t already gotten it. And if you haven’t, well congratulations, you’re better than the rest of us, continue looking down your nose at us from your pedestal in the clouds.

She’s sorry.
She’s learned and grown from what she did.
That’s enough for me.
By tomorrow we will be friends again.

So now that that’s off my chest, guess what? I must have misread the scale when they weighed me in kg at the hospital. I weigh 113lbs according to the Wii Fit. Guess what else? Tonight I had spaghatta nadle for dinner, with domperidone 15 minutes before eating and not only did I keep it down (this being one of my triggery foods) but I didn’t even feel sick afterward. Also I looked domperidone up on Wikipedia a couple of days ago and read about how it can cause lactation, which made me realize where I’d heard the name before: Ana Voog bought some from the internet when she was having trouble breastfeeding her first child.

The domperidone hasn’t been perfect though. On Saturday afternoon I took some and had mini donuts from the fair, followed by fries and gravy and about 2 hours later, I hurled it all back up. I don’t know if I took the drug too late for it to have an effect (Blake brought home the donuts, I took a pill and ate the donuts – well, SOME of the donuts), then I had fries and gravy like, half an hour later or if it was the greasy food itself, which is technically on the bad list. At the same time, tomatoes are on the bad list too and my dinner tonight stayed down just fine. That was the 2nd time I threw up this week. Earlier in the week I barfed up a can of ginger ale, which made absolutely NO sense considering I was drinking half a case of that a day when I was in the hospital and never had any trouble with carbonation before. In fact carbonation, whether it’s ginger ale or a Coke, seems to settle my stomach so wtf? I guess it’s just a mystery.

Okay I think I’m going to go see if Blake wants to watch Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock? in my office while I work on my sketchbook, which is coming along nicely. I think I may actually have it done by deadline! Imagine that!

Goodnight internets. I hope you still like me tomorrow.

PS. Jen is no longer friends with Carolyn. They haven’t been friends for about a year.

Blake surprised me tonight by getting us fresh face masks from Lush.
I”m wearing Cupcake and Blake’s wearing Love Lettuce.
And we’re watching the movie Despicable Me, where apparently
I am “exactly” like the character “Edith”.
My ex said that, I don’t know if it’s good or bad.

And since my copy of Sims Medieval isn’t here from Amazon yet,
Blake got me a copy of that too & then when the Amazon one comes
we’ll take it back to the store where Blake got THIS copy.

AND! He got me a small assorted sub for dinner from Mr. Sub.

AND! I did 55 minutes on the treadmill today.

So despite this afternoon’s absolute freakout, I’m having a pretty good day
because I have the best husband in the world.

<3