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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re supposed to get a crapload of snow in Sunnyland tonight and tomorrow, 10cm each day with whiteout conditions from snowsqualls. To those who don’t live near a giant lake in The Great White North, a snowsquall is kinda like a snowy thunderstorm, minus the thunder & lightning (most of the time…on the odd occasion we get both & it’s pretty cool, lightning in winter is green). Snowsqualls, apparently, are a result of the wind & snow crossing the lake and we’re close enough to Lake Huron (it’s only 10 mins from me) that we get these storms. Often during the winter, our road is closed because of them, although I doubt that’ll be the case tonight (and I also doubt we’re going to get as much snow as they’re saying.)

Anyway, this afternoon the snow looked really cool, it was coming down slowly and softly like a white curtain and I tried to take video of it but I think the framerate on my camera is messed up somehow because when I came back inside and looked the the video, the snow was falling much faster than it had been in person. Regardless, I uploaded it to YouTube anyway and if you care to see it, here it is…it’s only 40 seconds:

This morning I had to get up early to go to the lab and get a blood test done, which had be thrilled beyond belief because needles and veins and blood are just my favouritest things in the whole wide world! Almost as awesome as getting up early in the morning! They chastised me for taking my pills with about 6 mouthfuls of Coke Zero instead of water (some of the pills I take are capsules with powder in them and I find taking them with water really gross because the damn things dissolve REALLY fast and then the capsules feel like they’re stuck in my throat, for some reason this doesn’t happen if I take them with something carbonated) because they claimed it would affect my cholesterol reading. Truthfully, I’m not sure I believe them and they almost wouldn’t do the test but I told them it was my last day to do it, that it was Blake’s last day of vacation and that my doctor’s appointment was on Friday so if I didn’t get it done today I was screwed, so they said they’d do it but to make sure I told my doctor that the cholesterol results might be a little off because I was a VERY BAD GIRL. I’m not really worried about it though.

Remember last year when my GP freaked out about my cholesterol and put me on cholesterol meds? My shrink thought/thinks he was being a bit extreme because apparently my levels weren’t really anything to be worried about, especially since I wasn’t taking the medication that caused the spike anymore and while I’m still taking the cholesterol meds because I figure I might as well, I’m not worried about the 6 mouthfuls of Coke Zero I had this morning skewing my test results one way or the other. I am a little interested to see how my cholesterol looks since I began eating all these eggs though. Oh, did I mention I lost 2 & a half lbs last week? That’s almost 11 lbs total since I started eating eggs for breakfast 10 weeks ago. w00t!

After my blood test, Blake & I went to the post office where there were two packages to pick up. One was an Amazon box for the kids for Xmas from Blake’s mom & Charlie and one was a book called the Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin from Lia! THANK YOU LIA! I flipped through it when I got home, but then I got sidetracked and haven’t had a chance to pick it up again. It looks pretty wicked though, so many different kinds of cards! I plan on spending some time with the book later tonight. Again, thanks Lia, you’re awesome!

And of course, speaking of artist trading cards my first 8 are almost finished. They just need arms and a coat of varnish and then they’ll be done. And I guess when they’re “done” I have to figure out a way to put my name & stuff on the back…honestly, I’ll probably just write it. My printer is slowly but surely dying and there’s no way it would print labels nicely, even if I had any. I could also glue my business card to the backs of them, but I don’t really want 40 “internet people” having my home phone number. I’ll figure it out. Anyway, here’s a group shot I took of the 8 after I took the books off of them that were drying them flat:

Throughout the rest of this post, I’ll show you some of them close up. All images can be clicked to enlarge.

Doing the smaller girls has definitely been a lesson in trial & error. For the 8 that are almost finished, I screwed up just as many because like I said in a previous post, drawing them so small is actually kind of hard. I’m getting the hang of it though, and last night I started a sheet of 15 more, which I’ll work on while these ones’ arms and varnish are drying. Once the 15 I started yesterday are finished, I only have 1 more card with gold sparkles to do and then that stack is finished. The rest either have iridescent or silver sparkles.

While I’ve been doing these, because this is just how my mind works, I’ve been thinking about the ones that I’ll be selling and I’m not sure how I’m going to do that. I know that each card is going to be $30 + $2 shipping, but I don’t know if I’m going to sell them on my site or the site I linked a while back where all they sell is ATCs (or more properly ACEOs) in an Etsy-like setting. That site, from what I’ve been able to tell doesn’t take a cut, so I don’t have the issues with it that I have with Etsy and eBay, but I don’t know how popular it is or if the artists actually sell their cards. Another thing with that site is that you have to scan each individual card and list each one separately, which I guess makes sense, but that’s a lot of extra work and if I can avoid extra work and achieve the same result, I’m more inclined to do that. Selling on my site I have 2 options: scan, post and make a PayPal button for each one or DON’T scan them all, just show examples of each colour and then the card(s) the person gets would be left to my discretion. What do you guys think? I’m thinking that I’ll sell more if I scan each card and post them all with their own PayPal buttons, but I’m torn as to whether I should do that on my own site or on that ACEO site that just sells ACEOs. I suppose I could sell some on my site, like all on one page, and then on that page say that there’s more for sale on the ACEO site and give people the option to buy them there too, if the card they want happens to be there. I really really suck at the business of art, seriously.

Another thing I thought I could do, if I ever sell a freaking painting & actually have some money, is I could matte (mat?) and frame say, 3 cards and sell them as one piece. I have no idea how much framing costs though, so I don’t even know if that would be realistic or if I’d end up ripping myself off in the end because you can only price something like that so high.

Maybe it’s tacky that I think about selling things as I make them, but I’m a really utilitarian person and my grama, aka The Antichrist, is/was an artist’s worst enemy. I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but when I was Wes’ age, I would make things and sell them in my grama’s furniture store and that taught me early that you only get to create things if you’re going to sell them. Even when I was an adult and we were living above her store and I started painting on canvas, I’d show her what I’d created and her response would always be, “Okay so you made it, now what are you going to do with it?” and when I’d tell her I was going to sell it, on the internet, because I knew that was the “right” answer, she’d say “Well who in the hell is going to buy that?” (This was back when I was going through my “fetal phase” and fuck you, grama, I sold every goddamn piece!)

While my mother definitely raised me (at least until I was 15), I spent just about every weekend of my life with my grama and the attitude that you can only create to sell is very deeply ingrained in me. The only thing I’ve painted for myself, in the 8 years I’ve been painting, is the covers of my sketchbooks and even those are extremely hard for me to do because as I’m doing them, I’m thinking that I could be spending that time and those supplies on something that’s going to potentially make money.

And back to the utilitarian thing for a second, I’m not a keeper on “nicknacks”. You will find very very few of these in my home and the ones I do have were given to me as gifts, I would never in a million years buy anything like that for myself because I think they’re a waste of money. They just sit there. Also the only pictures adorning my walls are my failed attempts that I don’t really know what to do with.

It would be lovely to say that I have this fabulous home and studio full of inspirational things, but I really just don’t. It’s the same thing with the way I dress, I mean people expect artists to be these crazy dressers with crazy hair & all that, but I’m pretty plain & boring. Today when I went to the lab, I wore grey trackpants, a brown t-shirt and a grey hoodie. Other times I just would have worn my pajamas because A) I live in sleepwear and B) I just don’t care. If I’m dressing up to go somewhere, whatever I’m wearing is usually pretty simple and usually pretty black. I suppose sometimes my hair, when I dye it crazy colours, is more conducive to the artist stereotype but it’s never really a conscious “oh I’m creative so I must look the part” thing, it’s just “hey I feel like having pink hair this month.”

I was actually reading about this very thing in the book Living the Creative Life a couple of months ago. Most of the artists who were interviewed for that book were like me when it came to dress and a lot of them said that they’d rather put their creative energy into the things they created than into looking the part of the “creative artist”. I couldn’t agree with that more, obviously, and it made me feel a lot better hearing it from other artists. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t I paint in my pajamas? I have nowhere to be, no one to impress and y’know what? I’m gonna get paint on them! And it won’t matter!

So there ya have it, my take on living the creative life.

Something else I’ve been doing this week is taking pictures and video for the background tutorial I keep being asked for. Today was the last step. I’m still not going to post it until after the new year because with Xmas & Buttercup & everything else I have to do these days, the tutorial is fairly low on my priority list. And actually, in writing this down, I’ve realized that I have one more picture to take for it and then all that’s left to do is edit everything together and make it into a post.

What I will tell you about it though, is that the background I made for the tutorial is the same as the black & gold ATCs on this page and the girl that’s going to be going on the painting is going to be a BEE GIRL wearing a tutu. I haven’t drawn her yet and I’m not sure if the tulle I have is tea-stainable, but she’s in my mind and I’m really excited about her. Again though, I’m not going to start working on her until after Xmas when things have died down a bit.

As per usual, all things Xmas have me stressed out beyond belief. I know I’ve explained this before, but every year for the past few years, we’ve gone up north to my dad & step-mom’s Xmas Eve, stay there Xmas Day, have Xmas dinner across the road at my uncle Paul’s house and then have to drive home Xmas night to do it all over again with my mother on Boxing Day. As I also explained in a previous post, last year my dad really disrespected my dogs by not cleaning out the garage and it upset me quite a bit. I didn’t sleep at ALL on Xmas Eve because I was worried about the dogs and felt sorry for them, only having the space of a blanket to lay down or move around on that wasn’t flooded or full of my dad’s van.

This year, to avoid all that, the original plan was to have my neighbours come and let the dogs in & out while we were away but as we get closer to actually having to do it I’m having a hard time dealing with it. Agoraphobia is the fear of the outside world, yes, but part of it, at least for me, is a fear of letting people into my inside world and the idea of people in my house while I’m gone really bothers me. I mean, I trust Wayne & Judy to look after the dogs, but I don’t know if I trust them not to take a tour of my house and inspect how clean my toilet is.

Last week I was really considering staying home with the dogs and not going to my dad’s at all because honestly, that sounds like the perfect Xmas to me – no Xmas at all – but even that stressed me out because like it or not, there are all of these societal pressures put on people during Xmas that you either have to adhere to or people will think you’re a shitty person. If I don’t go up north for Xmas, I’m a shitty daughter and a shitty mother (even though my kids couldn’t care less if I was there or not) and it’s going to look weird when they go over to Paul’s for Xmas dinner and I’m not there. People are going to expect Blake to explain and there really isn’t an explanation that would make anyone happy or us to seem less weird (when they already think of us as pretty fucking weird).

So after a lot of inner debate, the original plan stands, that the entire Crittenden family, those on 2 legs and 4 (well, minus Pixel who gets a nice vacation from all of us for Xmas), are going up north for Xmas and Blake’s going to call my dad personally and tell him (in nicer terms than I’m gonna put it here) that if that goddamn garage isn’t fit for MY dogs, we’re turning around and coming home. Blake also called the vet today to see if you can give dogs Gravol and yes, yes you can (1/4 of a children’s one, apparently), so this year we won’t be pulling over on some back road to clean up Lucky’s vomit with a box of Kleenex because that’s all that’s in the car.

To make matters worse, ALL of our Xmas shopping is being done on Thursday’s paycheque because we haven’t been able to afford it until now. And even then, and I’m sure Blake will love me for posting this publicly, we’re looking at deferring this month’s mortgage payment to even have Xmas this year because we simply don’t have the money to give the kids the kind of Xmas they’ve enjoyed previous years. Also, everyone who isn’t under the age of 12 this year is getting gift certificates because I just don’t know what the hell to buy anyone. When I’ve asked, I’ve been told gift certificates, so that’s what everyone’s getting. Our kids are getting clothes because they need them and we can’t afford to do “fun stuff” and clothes, so that’s just the way it’s going to have to be. My sister Raili  (aged 4) is getting Barbies and my sister Rachael (aged 10 months) is getting Little People because that’s what was asked for.

Also, I don’t even know for sure what the hell is going on with my mother this year and I’ve been too afraid to ask. The “tradition” has been that she comes here Boxing Day and we do presents and have dinner, but with her moving in with John, first of all, I don’t know if he and his son will be coming (which means extra gifts/extra food) and second of all, now that my mother has an actual HOME, she may want to start doing Boxing Day there like we’ve done for most of my life. The thing is though, with going up north and all the bullshit associated with it, we don’t want to have to do more traveling on Boxing Day and if she comes here, I hope she’s fine with pizza or Chinese food because I’m NOT leaving halfway through Xmas dinner at Paul’s house to make it back home in time for me to get enough sleep to cook Xmas dinner the next day for my mother.

Have I mentioned how much I fucking hate Xmas? Seriously, it kills me. I wish it was never invented. I wish I could sleep through the whole thing. I wish I could stay home, with my dogs, watching bad movies and pretending it wasn’t happening.

On a more positive note, did anyone see the Leafs game last night? Was that fucking beautiful or what? My throat is still sore from cringing/yelling at the TV.

And with that, I’m out and you’re probably thinking “thank god” because this post is 3,100 words long.

PS. My review of the new Sims expansion is up on Buttercup for those who were waiting for it.

PPS. I stand corrected about the snow. I just went outside and we got at least 15cm in the time it took me to write this post.

And I don’t give a damn if you don’t like me
Cause’ I don’t like you cause you’re not like me

- Shut Up by the Bloodhound Gang

Sometimes I don’t blog because I don’t really have anything to say. I figure it’s better to just say nothing than to ramble on about the weather or the local sports team, don’t you agree?

Honestly, not a whole hell of a lot has been happening in Sunnyland. As I mentioned in Live Journal (which I update much more frequently than my site, FYI) I’ve lost almost 9 lbs in 5 weeks and the only thing I’m doing differently is eating eggs for breakfast every day. Apparently protein within 2 hours of waking up kickstarts your metabolism and causes your body to “run” faster, burning more calories and fat. It appears to be working for me and at the rate I’m losing weight, if this keeps up anyway and doesn’t plateau on me, I should be back to my normal weight by my birthday (March 1st). This is happy happy news.

In less happy news, Blake did not get the job he applied for 2 weeks ago, which means that our dream house is probably not going to happen. After Xmas is over with, though, we’re going to be working on getting our house ready to sell because the second Blake gets a position in Scarborough, it’s going up and the search for another house will begin. We’re still going to look for a house in Cookstown because we really like the town, but basically most of Southern Ontario is a possibility so among all the little towns, I’m sure we’ll find something just as perfect as the house we were looking at. And hey, who knows? Maybe the house in Cookstown will still be on the market by the time we get our ducks in a row. It’s been on the market for over a year and keeps dropping in price, so who knows how this will all play out? Anyway, I’m not worried about it or bummed out or anything. Everything works out in the end.

I haven’t been painting. Basically, I have a very small house and until I sell some of the paintings that are already finished, I don’t really have much room to create any more. The one I’ve been working on over the past couple of months (that I’m not happy with) keeps getting moved from the coffee table in my office to the washing machine and back again about 20 times per week because it’s constantly in the way. I think to get that one done, I’m going to have to take a trip to Michael’s and while I do have a little money set aside for that, we just haven’t had the opportunity and I haven’t had the desire to actually go. It’s just discouraging to have 8 finished pieces up for sale and no buyers. Not that I create art just to sell it but I definitely get inspired and I stop feeling like I’m crap from people buying. I know it has more to do with the economy than my worth as an artist, but when people have said negative things about you as far as the latter, it’s easy for those little negative thoughts to take over and the only cure I’ve found for those thoughts is a sale.

Xmas is going to be here soon and I don’t even want to think about it, but the neighbours keep bringing it up because they actually like Xmas (wtf, crazy people) so it’s been on my mind. I’m just not looking forward to driving 2 hours to my dad’s house on Xmas Eve, being bored out of my skull up there for most of Xmas Day and then having to leave before dessert is served after Xmas dinner because we have a 2 hour drive back home and I have to get up early to cook the next day for my mother (and this year, probably my mother’s boyfriend and his son). Also this year we’re not taking the dogs up north with us and while I thought that would cause me less stress (the neighbours are going to feed them and let them out because they’ll be home), I think it might be causing me more stress because I don’t like people in my house. At the same time, last year I was so pissed off at my dad because the dogs have to stay in the garage when they’re up there and he didn’t clean out the garage for them. They only had the space of a large blanket to move or lay down on, the rest of the garage was full of a van or flooded. My dogs are a part of my family and my dad knows this and it really bugged the shit out of me that he couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t take the time to accommodate them. I didn’t sleep most of Xmas Eve last year because I was worried that my dogs were unhappy, and rightly so, they practically had to sleep in a puddle.

But I should probably not even worry about it. Wayne & Judy will take care of my dogs as if they were their own. They know how much my dogs mean to me and everything will be fine. I just worry, especially when Lucky’s separation anxiety is so bad that he’s been known to break through windows trying to find us. He seems to be fine as long as Hoover’s here, but I’ve never left them alone in the house as long as we’ll be gone over Xmas so I can’t help but worry that we’ll come home to a broken window and no Lucky. I’m thinking I might keep the dogs in my office over night just so that won’t happen but I can’t figure out if that’s cruel or not. (It *is* a big office…) I dunno.

The good thing about Xmas is that I’ll finally be meeting my youngest sister, Rachael. I think She’s 9 months or so now and I’ve still never met her! I have to start working on a painting for her for Xmas like the ones I did for Raili and Madison last year.

I got an e-mail from the Ontario Arts Council about applying for a $5000 arts grant but I deleted it. I got turned down last year because I could only come up with $1500 worth of things I’d do with the money and I can’t even fathom what I’d do with $5000. They want a detailed, itemized list of your plans and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I run my art business on a budget of like, $100 every 3 months (if I’m lucky), $5000 would last me YEARS. But they don’t want to hear that, they want to hear that you’re going to do fabulous things and spend that money within a year and I’m just not capable of doing that…yet. I’m doing these girls for right now but really, I haven’t found my niche as an artist yet, I’m still working on that, and until I do, I can’t really plan for that kind of money. I mean, I couldn’t even usethat money to like, outfit my “studio space” because my “studio space” is basically a 2nd living room where my only work space is my desk, which needs clearing off every time I start a project because it gets used for daily stuff, and the coffee table. There’s an elliptical in here and a million laundry baskets because the dryer is in here too and there just isn’t room for something like a canvas rack or anything like that. So whatever, I’m not applying for the grant this year, or any other year, until I have a proper studio space and have justification for $5000.

Wrapping up…a few weeks ago, Blake and Judy taught Wayne and I how to play euchre and now I’ve become a euchre fiend. Tonight we’re going over to Wayne & Judy’s to play and I’m really looking forward to cleaning Blake & Wayne’s clocks.

So that’s life right now. Not good, not bad, just…life.

I’m up and I’m thinking.

Maybe because my mom’s moving, moving’s just on my mind. Or maybe not because moving is almost always on my mind.

Blake’s job in Barrie isn’t the most secure job in the company. Layoffs are happening left, right and center and we worry constantly that he’s going to get the axe. For those who don’t know, he works for a national telecom in the Barrie office as the on-site IT guy. His primary job, and this is my interpretation of it because I don’t totally understand all the things he does, is to fix computers and site. If someone needs a mouse, they come see him. If someone needs 50 computers moved from one end of the call center to the other end, he gets out his trolley and does it. If someone needs Powerpoint on their computer, he takes ahold of their computer remotely and installs it for them. (I’m only using Powerpoint as as example because it’s the only software he installs where I actually know what it does, heh. Also there are “at-home agents” out of the Barrie office and he services and troubleshoots their machines, as well as installs software for them.) But this is probably only about 5% of his job, from what I understand. The other 95% is helping teams across Canada do what they do which is stuff on a nerd level I can’t even explain. Database and Oracle crap. Fixing problems that some teams themselves haven’t been able to solve, problems that he doesn’t even technically have clearance for but he knows the answers so they  come to him anyway.

Technically, his team is in Scarborough, which is an awful, filthy place just north-east of Toronto, so their stuff comes first, but honestly, just from talking to him after work, it seems like he does much more stuff for the teams out west…and gets paid the least for doing so. It’s possible that the powers that be would decide that they don’t need an on-site IT person in Barrie and just send someone up from Scarborough once a week to change tapes (I don’t know what that means but it has to be done once a week, something to do with the servers) and while they’re there, do the on-site grunt-work. The at-home agents can be serviced remotely. This is what I mean by his job not exactly being the most secure.

The other thing is that in his position, I kinda think he’s making all he’s probably ever going to make. And with every minor raise they give him in his current position, that actually makes his job less secure. Or at least this is how I understand things to be by what he’s told me.

As a result of all of this, he’s been keeping his options open and networking with people within the company to hopefully get a better position…somewhere. The thing is, as I said he works with teams all across Canada and the teams that he’d like to be a part of are mostly out west. Working for a large Canadian telecom means that where things stand right now, we can literally choose where we want to live – anywhere in the country – and then he can apply to be on the team located there. Our other option is for him to physically join the Scarborough team and we move to one of the surrounding suburbs, which just so happen to be the towns I grew up in (and all but fled from when we moved here).

I’m grateful that we have a house. I’m proud that we worked hard together to sacrificed and save up money for this house and were homeowners before most of our friends. (Actually, now that I think about it, all of them and in my case, I was a homeowner before the age of 30.) But the thing is, I don’t like our house. It’s a functional house, it’s a roof over our heads, it is not the house I want to spend the rest of my life in. All of our bedrooms are so small that they fit a bed and a dresser and that’s pretty much it. We have to keep our towels in Wes’ closet because there’s nowhere else to put them. There’s vinyl siding on the biggest wall of my office because it used to be an exterior wall. Our kitchen disgusts me on a daily basis. All of our baseboards are made out of compressed cardboard and we had to remove the ones in the bathroom because they BLEW UP with moisture because the fan doesn’t do shit for ventilation. There is mold on the bathroom ceiling because they didn’t use mold-resistant paint in there. Our bathroom needs gutting in the worst way. Literally the only two places to put the cat litter in this house is in the bathroom, where it makes a mess (and is currently) or between the furnace and the dryer (where she won’t use it because of noise). The washing machine is in a hallway that serves as the “laundry room”, while the dryer is by the back door in my office. The fenced-in backyard is nice & all, but the chain-link fences – ours and both of our neighbours’ – are literally collapsing under the weight of annual snowdrifts. Our driveway needs repaving and re-tarring (???) because it has dips and grooves that makes it a real whore to get out of in the winter no matter how well you shovel.

I could go on for like, 3 more paragraphs. The fact is, this house was a fixer-upper when we bought it, we’ve fixed things up here & there but since we don’t intend on being here very long and don’t really have the money, we haven’t done a whole lot with it. As I said, it’s a functional house, it’s not a pretty house with any nice architectural features. It’s a white box with a bunch of boxes inside it and badly outdated everything. This is not the house we’re spending the rest of our lives in.

The original plan, before learning that Blake’s position could magically go “poof” at any moment, was to stay in Elmvale. We were hoping that in his current position, he’d be able to make enough money for us to sell this house and move into either one of the nice brick Victorians downtown or one of the nice old farmhouses outside of town. But now we’re thinking that looking elsewhere is the better idea.

If he got a position in Scarborough, we have a lot of choices as far as where we could move. There’s always Stouffville, where I grew up, which would be about a half hour to 40 minute commute, but the property taxes are really high there as the town grows into a city so living in town would be an impossibility. That leaves the smaller towns surrounding it which adds more time onto his commute. There’s Uxbridge, where Madison and I lived for the first 2 years of her life, but my fear with that one is that Madison’s father has family there and none of them are mentally stable and that could cause problems for us. Same with Port Perry. That’s my triumvirate. I would like to live in any 3 of those places but they all come with their own problems.

There’s a tiny town (village?) outside of Newmarket and Aurora called Snowball that we’ve been keeping an eye on because his commute would only be about half an hour and it’s in the middle of nowhere with plenty of pre-1930’s farmhouses. Not to mention the fact that it lays within roads that I know and would potentially drive on and is close enough to Stouffville that I could go into town and do stuff rather than sitting at home. But the thing is, we’d have to decide where we’re moving to before he applied for a position in Scarborough.

The other teams he could potentially get on are in Alberta and British Columbia. I really don’t want to move to Alberta. Alberta is full of redneck Conservatives and by all accounts, I would not enjoy my life there should that be our final destination. Alberta would always make me miss home (I’ve lived within 2 hours of Toronto my entire life) and I see absolutely no benefit whatsoever to living there. They have worse winters than here, less sunshine, less everything.

Now BC, I would move there. I would love to be near the ocean (as much as I think salt water is gross), I would love the fact that it barely snow there, I would love the fact that they get more sunshine than here and there are certain communities that I wouldn’t mind living in. But the thing with BC is that the cost of living is much higher there than here and I’m not sure how that would work out even if Blake got a raise. We were looking at houses there last night on Realtor.ca and as things stand now, we can’t afford any of them. And the main community I would like to live in, called Salt Spring, which is an island, is too far of a commute for where Blake would be working, so that’s out.

And again, I don’t want to move until we find what I’m referring to as our “forever home”. I don’t want to bounce around and never set down roots. I want a fucking house that I care about enough to actually paint and fix up because we’re going to be there for the rest of our goddamn lives. I only want to move one more time – ever.

And then there’s our little issue of not agreeing on where to live. I want to live in the middle of nowhere, Blake wants to live in a neighbourhood. His argument is that a neighbourhood is better for the kids because they’ll be able to walk to their friends’ houses and if we live in the middle of nowhere, we’ll constantly have to drive them to their friends houses. Well, the thing is, we live in a neighbourhood now and while there are 3 girls on the street that Madison plays with on the weekends, none of them are her friends at school. And Wes has no friends on our street. So even though we live in a neighbourhood RIGHT NOW, we still have to drive both kids to see their actual friends from school. This is what happens in Ontario, no matter where you live because kids get bused in from all of the rural communities and your kids make friends with who they make friends with. They don’t usually become best friends with a kid on their street just because they’re there.

The other thing is that I want LAND. You don’t get LAND in a neighbourhood, you get a postage stamp sized backyard and that’s it.

So I’ve pretty much won that battle and we’re looking at houses in more rural areas in every province we’re looking at.

I’m just sick of feeling like I’m waiting for life to begin. It’s hard to be a homemaker when you hate your fucking home, when you hate your fucking town and when you know that none of what you have right now is permanent. The kids function, Blake functions, but I so obviously do not thrive here and I think it’s time to set the wheels in motion for change to happen before Blake loses his job and we’re fucked and before I lose my goddamn mind again.

The fact is, I’ll never have friends here. Yes I hang out with Wayne & Judy and I like them and everything, but they’re much older than us and while yes, they are friends, we wouldn’t invite them over to have any political conversations ever. We wouldn’t invite them over, period, because they like their house better because they can smoke in it. Blake has friends at his work but I have this weird thing where I’m not comfortable mixing work people with our life outside of work. I don’t think that’s right. So they’re his friends and he goes to their parties.

I…have no one. I have Wayne & Judy and the internet. That is my social life. And that’s all I’m ever going to have because we don’t fit in here. Yeah we have Ronny & Alex too, but I see them so rarely, they might as well be internet friends.

So it’s time for change, but I don’t even know where to begin.

Yesterday was…a friggin’ day.

For some ungodly reason, I got up at 6:30am and I’m not really sure what I did between then and when the kids and Blake got up, probably internetting and screwing around on Buttercup, but after they left I decided to go over to the neighbours’ to see what they were up to. They were cleaning out their car and wanted to borrow my vacuum, so I brought it over and chatted for a bit and then I left to let them do their thing.

When I came home I don’t know what got into me but I looked at my stove, was immediately repulsed by the state of it and started taking it apart. I cleared the top of it, where the knobs are, of spices and my recipe box, then I took out the elements and set them on the counter while I pried the metal rings around the elements out (they were so filthy and stuck I needed a screwdriver for one of them – my stove came with the house and has NEVER been thoroughly cleaned) and with them, the metal…I dunno, grease catcher thingies that sit beneath the elements. The rings and the grease catcher things were BLACK, so after an unsuccessful cleaning with dishsoap, I put them all in the kitchen sink and doused them with a can of oven cleaner.

Prior to taking the last element out of the stove, I boiled the kettle and made myself a cup of coffee with this single-cup plastic coffee thing Blake has. I NEVER drink coffee, in fact I don’t really even like it, but I wanted to maintain the energy I woke up with so I figured I’d try that and it made me hyper as hell.

While the metal stove pieces were soaking, I happened to find two packs of the aluminum liners you put under the elements so the greaser catcher thingies don’t get as dirty, so score there and then I Mr. Cleaned the shit out of the wall above the stove, the top of the stove where the spices sit, the panel where the clock & knobs are and then the surface of the stove itself. Then I did the dishes from the kids’ breakfast and while I had a sink of hot, soapy water, I cleaned out my plastic recipe box.

Oh did I mention that I never clean? Okay that’s not totally true, I clean the toilet and the shower if I’m feeling industrious, but Madison does the dishes and Blake does the vacuuming and then Blake & I both take care of laundry and that’s pretty much the extent of our housework aside from lawn mowing (Blake) and taking out the garbage, compost (we have community composting, it rules) and recycling (Blake & Madison).

As my recipe box was drying, I came into my office to sit down for a minute when I realized the wooden landing, which is painted white, was looking more dark grey than anything else, so I got out the Mr. Clean again and washed that. Then I went outside and took pictures of my newest painting, which is finally finished.

After that, I went back over to the neighbours’ to see what was up and we shot the shit while they drank a few beer before Judy had to go to work. After she went to work, Wayne & I continued to sit on the deck and talk about how awesome it was that the kids weren’t there. I brought Lucky over with me to play with their dog Mandy and we just had a good afternoon. Periodically I’d come back over to my house to get another Coke Zero, take pills and check the progress of my stove parts, but other than that I just hung out with Wayne until it was time for the kids to come home.

Before I go any further into the tale of my day, which I know is oh so riveting, I have to tell you about what a shit Wayne is. We kind of have a feud.

Three days ago he opened the gate of his deck to find a dead “mouse” and apparently it was huge, he says, and he got the rake and flung it onto the empty lot next door. He kept telling me how huge this mouse was and how disgusted he was and I said “Wayne, that wasn’t a mouse, that was either a mole or a vole,” because mice, at least the ones around here, are NOT the size he indicated and our cat brings home dead voles all the time. (For those who don’t know, a vole is a small rodent related to muskrats that look like big mice except they have shorter tails.) Wayne is born & bred in Toronto and has no clue about the flora & fauna of “up north” so this isn’t the first time I’ve had to educate him seeing as I’ve lived “up north” my whole life.

Anyway, he said I was making up this whole vole thing because if such a creature existed he’d have heard about it. He claimed that was he flung with his rake was a grown up mouse and the little ones in his house are just babies.

WELL…I had my laptop over at their house yesterday to show them something on the internet (because our wifi miraculously reaches their back deck) and I got on Wikipedia and showed him what a vole was and read to him the part about how they’re 3-7 inches long and live in Ontario. Then I Wiki’d mice and lo & behold, the average mouse is about 9 centimeters long and THEN I showed him this picture of an adult mouse that I rescued from the cat last year and told him to note the size of the kernel of corn beside it.

And THEN I showed him pictures of pink baby mice feeding from their mothers and read him the part about how, as soon as they have hair and open their eyes, they stay with their mother about another week and then they’re considered full grown and even after I showed him ALL OF THIS GODDAMN EVIDENCE THAT WHAT HE SAW WAS A VOLE, he still says I’m full of crap and don’t know what I’m talking about. He is so frustrating!

Anyway, around 3:40pm Blake called me (I take our home phone over to the neighbour’s when I go because miraculously, the signal goes that far too) and asked me if the kids were home. I said that they weren’t and he said “the school called, there’s a missing kid named Tyler and they think he might have walked home with Wes,”. I guess this Tyler kid, who is the same age as Wes (6) and, as it turned out is also in Wes’ new class (and they’re BEE-EFF-EFFS), was supposed to get picked up by his parents and when they got to the schoo, he wasn’t there.

So I explained this to Wayne when I got off the phone with Blake and we set our lawn chairs in the driveway to wait for the kids. When they started coming up the street, with Emily & Alyssa, our other neighbours, in tow, we looked and there was no Tyler. So I explained the situation to the kids and asked if they’d seen Tyler and Emily said she saw a little kid named Tyler at the crosswalk near the school walking home alone. Madison volunteered to take her bike and go look for him, so I gave her my cell phone and off she went with Emily.

About half an hour later, Madison comes home and tells me that Tyler had realized that he was lost and backtracked his steps to get back to the school where they called his parents and he was now home safe. So disaster averted.

By this point it was almost 5pm, my stove was in pieces and I had a roast to get in the oven, so I told Wayne I’d see him tomorrow (today) and I headed back home to finish my stove & do what needed to be done. before I left, Wayne gave me 2 S.O.S pads to help with my task, which, as it turned out, I desperately needed and currently my arms are spaghetti from scrubbing the burnt on foodstuffs from my stove parts. But I got it done, got the roast in the oven and then I started filling out the bajillion forms each kid came home with.

People, it took me an hour and 15 minutes to fill out all these goddamn forms.

Then I signed Madison’s school agenda to confirm that she got her homework done and by that time dinner was ready (and Blake was home), so I ate and ate and ate because I hadn’t eaten all day and Madison did the dishes after dinner.

When I was done eating, I had to pee, so I went into the bathroom and stopped dead when I saw myself in the mirror. I don’t know how the HELL I did it because we were sitting in the shade all afternoon until about the last hour of being on the deck but I’m burnt again, making this the third time in a month & a half. My eyelids are burnt. I can honestly say that I’ve never gotten so much sun in my entire life, I mean, I’m kinda known for my death pallor, but right now I look like I’d been vacationing in Florida. It’s so strange, I barely even recognize myself.

After that, I said goodnight to the kids and hung out with Blake on Buttercup for a while and then it was 11pm, which is when I go next door again to fill Judy in on how the day went because that’s when she gets off of work. (I see her daughter after school and get the scoop and I tell her of Wayne’s antics and stuff like that because with the shift she’s on, she usually doesn’t see Wayne until late the next day and that’s just in the car for 15 minutes.)

I left Judy’s at around midnight and while I was absolutely exhausted, I didn’t want to go to bed yet, so I decided to go to the park across the street and swing on the swings for about 20 minutes. While I was over there, I looked out at our street and realized it was garbage night because everyone had their stuff on the curb, so when I came back over, I put our garbage and recycling out so Blake wouldn’t have to rush to do it in the morning (I forgot the compost though, oops!) and then finally, I took my burnt ass to bed.

I slept like the dead until about noon today and when I woke up, Lucky had his head on Blake’s pillow and as soon as I opened my eyes, he slurped his tongue up my face.

While today’s been a much slower pace, I did have another coffee (which I drank as fast as I could because I really DON’T like it), I made Jell-O for the kids’ lunches in little Tupperware containers and cut up celery which GODAMMIT THEY WILL EAT, as well as bringing in the garbage can & recycling bins. I was going to get industrious and clean out under the carport because it’s a huge mess that makes me crazy and my in-laws are apparently coming to visit the last two weeks of the month, but man, it’s like, 40 degrees outside with the humidex and I’m not in the mood to sweat.

Today Judy gets off work at 3:30pm, so she’s going to pick up the kids and when they get home, I’ll go over there to hang out with her and help her fill out the bajillion pieces of paperwork the school sent home yesterday (like explain to her a few of them, which were confusing, and give her our contact info for the emergency contact stuff) and then I’m going to come home and edit the pictures of my new painting until it’s time for my Buttercup staff meeting at 9pm.

*WHEW*

When I saw my shrink last week, I told her I thought I was sort of on a high, but like, a mild, good high and she told me that this was the level where she wants me all the time so she upped my meds. I’m not happy about having to take 11 pills after dinner (which make me feel barfy), but from my behaviour since she upped them, I’d say they’re doing their job. She also gave me a light box to use starting at the beginning of next month so S.A.D. doesn’t set in and bring me down.

So yeah, things are pretty good in Sunnyland right now. I mean, we’re fucking broke and that sucks, but other than that, everything’s good!

Could I make any more posts today? This is the last one, I swear.

This morning at about 5am, I realized I hadn’t checked the mail since Thursday so I decided since I was up, I’d drive to the post office, which – if you’ve been reading along – has been the bulk of my immersion therapy this month, both to get me going somewhere by myself and to get me more comfortable behind the wheel.

Well last night I decided to step it up a level and bring someone with me, so Lucky came with me. I wasn’t sure how he’d be in the car, especially without Hoover there and especially because during his last ride in the car with me (to Hunstville, so a 2 hour drive) he threw up everywhere, but Blake and I had discussed it a few days ago and he said that if Lucky puked in the car I could wake him up in the middle of the night to go clean it up. So with that in mind, we were good to go.

It wasn’t until Lucky and I were coming back from the post office, after deeming our trip a success and this dog for the first time fulfilling his purpose as an “emotional support animal” which is why I got him, I picked him out for this purpose, I finally allowed myself to get excited about the possibility of actually winning one of the 50 Nissan Cubes up for grabs in the Hypercube contest. Suddenly my new life with Lucky and the Cube and the adventures we would have were all laid out in front of me and it felt good.

Obviously it’s more than possible that I’m not going to win, but there’s a decent chance that I will win too and that’s what Lucky and I are going to think about as we drive to the post office and back next week.

There are three things right across the road from our house: a small park with swings, a small slide and teeter-totters, the Trans Canada Trail (which is mostly used as a snowmobile trail that conveniently ends at the titty bar in Phelpston) and fields and fields of nothing that are going to soon be a subdivision full of homes worth $250,000+. 300 of them.

Last week we took the dogs down the trail and into the fields just to see what was there and to get out of the house. I of course, took pictures and these are the ones I like best.

THE END.

This post is probably going to be long, random and all of the damn place. There’s just so much on my mind these days and I don’t even really know where to begin. I guess I’ll just start with today…

Today I met my new caseworker for the first time and…well, she knows about this site, my Live Journal and my online activities and she told me to tell you all how nice and lovely she is. So there. I told you. It was actually kind of funny telling her that I’ve been doing the website/blogging thing for over a decade and she said, “blogging…is that like Facebook?” Do you know how often I hear that? It’s so weird to me. I mean I may never leave my house, but I probably interact with over 100 people a day, all of whom are computer savvy and like me, are basically immersed in the internet, but then when I go meatside and talk to people in my little town of 1700 or the town where the mental health clinic is, they’re just completely clueless as to the goings on of the internet and it kills me every time because I never expect it. Blake has to remind me constantly that most of the world doesn’t spend 18 hours a day, 7 days a week on the internet. I am not normal.

Anyway, it was funny.

So after I gave her the basic rundown on who I am, what I do and where I am as far as agoraphobia and immersion therapy, she threw out 50 million suggestions for “the next step”, which I shot down for every reason under the sun, but mostly because if there’s no REASON to do something, I’m simply not going to do it. For example, the next logical step in my immersion therapy is to keep going down the trail by my house from one park to the next like I did a couple of weeks ago and keep doing it until it’s no big deal, but the thing is, I already exhausted that option. My purpose in going down the trail from one park to the next was to prove I could do it obviously, but more importantly, it was an opportunity to take pictures, it was an adventure I could write about and share with the world. Without that purpose, I wouldn’t have done it and now, since I’ve already done it and I took pictures of everything there is to take pictures of down the trail, there’s no point in doing it again. I’m not the kind of person who just “goes for a walk”. I don’t “exercise” or “get fresh air”. It took me a while to make this new caseworker (who needs a codename, but I’m too tired to think of one) understand that about me, that if there isn’t a purpose, a reason, a reward, it wouldn’t happen. The fact that I don’t want to be agoraphobic anymore isn’t enough motivation. I have no desire to have “Eye of the Tiger” on autoplay in my brain and accomplish shit for the sake of accomplishing it. After I went on the trail to Bishop Park and came home, I thought to myself “so what?” So fucking what? I did something my 10-year-old can do. OOOOOH I’m so impressed with myself. Like come on, I’m just not that way. I’m not one to celebrate what I see as non-victories. These stupid little steps that I resent having to take.

I’ll be honest here: I am SO fucking mad at myself for letting things get this bad. Years and years ago I knew I was falling down a well and there was a point – when we moved here, I think – that I could go either way. I could continue down this path where I cocooned inside this house and stopped driving, stopped living in the real world, or I could be normal. Well, it’s obvious which one I chose and I chose it out of fear, fear of this new area where I didn’t know anyone, didn’t know the roads, didn’t know the store hours of anything. Fear of exploration, fear of adventure. Fear fear fear.

But the strangest thing is happening and it’s probably something that could only happen in a town as small as this one: I feel like the whole town is on my side. All of my neighbours know I never leave the house. The people who work at the pharmacy know I never come in and know what meds I’m on, so it’s quite clear what my problem is. Everyone at the grocery store and the post office never see me, but they see Blake all the time. They all wonder, I know they do. Except the thing is, and I have to remind myself to keep this in mind as I go through this process, is that when I eventually do show up at the library or the grocery store or the pharmacy, they’re going to be surprised, in a good way, and they’re probably going to be extra nice to me because they know. They just know. If I I’m walking down the street and pass my neighbour, he’s going to be surprised to see me and say something supportive. In fact, one of my neighbours has already told me that he’s proud of me for walking to the park. He saw me walking past his house through his kitchen window and thought “holy shit, she’s doing it” – but in a good way.

My fears with leaving the house are that people are going to be mean to me, or rude or there’s going to be a conflict or something bad is going to happen. But as my friend John Halcyon Styn says, “More people want to hug you than hurt you” and “Love more fear less, float more steer less” and I’m trying like hell to remember his wise words on this little journey of mine. No one’s out to get me, no one’s out to be mean to me, if people got to know me, they’d probably really like me and people are only going to get to know me if I put myself out there. And I have to embrace and be okay with the fact that I’m a strange little girl with strange ideas. I couldn’t be normal if I tried.

Like for example? I’ll get to that in a sec, lemme continue my story here first.

I’ve been going to the end of my driveway and back to get the newspaper since the beginning of March and now it’s SO not a big deal that I find myself doing strange things to make it more exciting. For example, this weekend at about 4am I went out to get the paper not wearing any pants simply because I could. And I yelled out to the world “HELLO WORLD! I AM OUT HERE GETTING THE PAPER! WOOOOOOO!” and then I came back in. Or I’ll go out to get the paper and do a little dance at the end of the driveway or twirl as I’m walking back towards the house. Little stupid, weird things that I do just to keep myself interested in doing it.

And let me tell you, I HATE the newspaper. It’s so boring! The comics SUCK (except for Get Fuzzy, which I can read on the internet for free). Half of the columns in there say at the end to visit the paper’s website and “have your say” so really, what’s the point of even reading this stuff on paper to begin with? So, I stopped reading them a long time ago and now they just pile up until Blake puts them in the recycling bin.

I feel bad because the subscription was a gift from my friend Raya and I had these GRAND plans for the newspaper and the bench at the park as far as my immersion therapy went, but I think it’s time to cancel the newspaper because at this point it’s just a ridiculous exercise and a waste of trees. I’m way beyond the driveway, I have to take bigger steps. And as I said, the newspaper sucks. The plans I had for it – reading the sections I like on the bench in the park, thus immersing myself in an uncomfortable situation for X amount of time – could easily, and probably more effectively, be achieved with books, which I have a ton of. Also? The library that’s just down the street about 6 blocks away is on my list of places to immerse myself in…eventually.

Anyway, this caseworker worker woman kept throwing out all of these ideas of places to go and I shot them all down and finally she said, “well where DO you want to go?” and I thought about it for a minute and said “the post office”, but then I got overwhelmed by the idea and told her that my fear is that if I CAN go to the post office, it’ll become my JOB to go to the post office and I’m not looking for any kind of responsibility in any of this. Not at this point anyway. I don’t want a “job”. I don’t want something that I HAVE to do on a consistent basis. I don’t even know what post office box is ours and going in the day time is way too big a step for me right now. There are people on the street, there are people in the post office, I don’t know which box is ours and I couldn’t deal with buying stamps.

The caseworker proposed that I go with Blake and buy stamps, but go to the post office to MAIL SOMETHING in the middle of the night or in the early morning when I can’t sleep. That way there’s no people around, I can take Lucky with me and bring him into the post office where the PO boxes are and no one’s gonna give me shit for that and I get to send mail, which is something I like to do, so it’s sort of like a reward.

So that’s the next step in my immersion therapy. On the way home from the mental health clinic we stopped off at the post office and Blake bought me a roll of Canada stamps and a roll of US stamps and I’m just going to make it my project to use them and mail my own stuff. I’m going to start off going at night or in the early morning and eventually work my way up to doing it in the day time. The end goal in all of this  – and there are quite a few steps in between – is to be able to mail my own paintings and to get Lucky used to being tied up and left alone for a few minutes while I do so. (He has severe separation anxiety, as I’ve mentioned before.)

But in the course of coming up with this plan, she suggested that I go for walks in the middle of the night and I said, “well what’s the point of that? I can’t take pictures at night!” and she said “well why can’t you?” to which I replied (duh) “it’s too dark!” But being the strange little girl that I am, with strange ideas…in the middle of the night when very few people are around, there’s no reason in the world why I couldn’t take the camera mounted on the tripod with me to the post office and take pictures in the dark. The tripod’s light and collapsible and even if I ran into someone, they probably wouldn’t even know what it was. And it’s one thing to show the world my little town during the day when it kinda resembles Mayberry, but it’s a completely different animal at night. I dunno, I can’t even really picture the shots in my head yet but it’s something for me to think about once I’m more comfortable with walking to the post office in the dark.

So that’s the plan. I can’t say when my first voyage out is going to be, it’s certainly not going to be tonight and I can pretty much guarantee it’s not going to be tomorrow night either, but I think sometime before Monday, I’m going to go to the post office. Monday is when I see the caseworker next, as well as my shrink, and the caseworker wants me to write down places I want to go so she can help me think of steps to get there. Honestly, I can’t think of anywhere I want to go in this town, but I’ll work on thinking of places anyway.

Some places are out of my reach though because there are blocks in the way. For example, I’d really like to go get my hair cut now that it’s long enough TO cut (for those not in the know, I shaved my head 2 years ago on my 28th birthday live on webcam in front of about 10,000 people) and there’s a salon in town, but that requires money that I don’t have so that one’s a ways off.

This evening we went to Wal*Mart to do groceries and while Blake did groceries, I went to the office/school supplies section and spent the last of my painting money on some stuff to aid in my whole “mailing stuff” deal. I bought a 24-pack of fine Sharpies in just about every colour they make, 2 black Sharpie pens, sparkly gel pens and Uni-Ball Fusion pens in blue and pink that have flowers on them, which I looooove. The ink is clear in the ink chamber, but comes out coloured. It’s cool and I was giddy when I saw them because I hadn’t seen them in years. I thought they’d stopped making them.

Anyway, this post is REALLY long and REALLY rambly and my back is killing me, so I think it’s time to either go write a letter to someone or paint, I haven’t decided yet. But before I go…

There are 11 days left in the Hypercube contest and right now I’m sitting at #9 while Blake’s at #14 – out of 500. Please please please help keep up there (or better!) by signing up and voting for our audition pages EVERY DAY. And don’t forget, the votes reset at midnight EST so make sure you get your votes in before then! A huge huge huge thanks to everyone who’s supported us through this the past couple of months, we love you immensely and can’t even begin to express our gratitude. <3

And of course, a HUGE thank you to those who have plugged us or sent in fansigns, you’re all too awesome.

On that note, here’s some folks who think I’m what Nissan’s looking for:

Annie Spandex thinks my life won’t be complete without a Cube.

Mikerson from Georgia seems to think I need a Cube also!

If you too think I need a Cube and would like to send me a fansign saying so, please send them to Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com and I thank you in advance! Fansigns of yourself, your kids, your cats – whatever! Be creative! As long as the sign is hand-drawn, we’re good to go!

And with that, I’m outta here. <3 <3 <3

OMG I don’t even know where to start or even what this post is going to be about there is so much in my head right now and it’s all just one big blob of thoughts and ideas that I can’t quite seem to grasp. Something’s definitely up with me, I’m just not sure what. My sleeping habits are totally fucked and thus so are my eating habits and my anxiety is through the roof.

At the same time, it’s supposed to be 8 degrees and sunny tomorrow and for some reason, right now, at almost 2am, I’m thinking it might be a fine idea to walk Lucky up to the post office and purchase stamps so I can send cards and letters and Sunnyland post-tards to people, like my friend Marylin who I think needs some mailbox love. Now, the post office goes way beyond my immersion therapy limits, right now I’m just supposed to be walking to the end of the block but that’s what I tend to do, I tend to get brave and take these giant leaps and scare myself and then I don’t go out again for a month. So while it seems like a perfectly fine idea to walk the dog to the post office and purchase stamps (which totals 4 things that cause me great anxiety) it’s probably not a good idea at all.

But I have $113 in my bank account, it’s supposed to be a nice day and I really want to purchase stamps by myself with my own money. :o/ I’m so frustrated and upset that there are all these barriers preventing me from doing so and in the end I won’t even get any stamps because I refuse to ask Blake to get them for me. It’s fine for him to actually put stuff IN the mail for me, but I want to be able to put the stamps on myself.

Back when I actually had a life and was independent I always always always had stamps, both Canadian and US and it bothers me immensely that there are none on my desk, that I don’t have the freedom to send a letter by myself.

And realistically I can’t even take Lucky with me because if I tie him up outside and leave him to go into the post office, he’ll freak out due to severe separation anxiety, slip his leash and start running home – except “home” means crossing the road and I’m paranoid he’d get hit. Because of his staples I can’t put his harness on to prevent that from happening so I guess I’m not going to the post office tomorrow because there’s not a chance in hell I’m going by myself.

And come to think of it, I’m alone with both kids tomorrow so it’s not even feasible. And don’t say to take the kids, they cause me MORE anxiety.

Anyway…

People keep asking me about the Hypercube contest and if I’ve been selected to be one of the 500 contestants. Well, I haven’t found out yet. The Hypercube website says everyone will find out by April 15th, so I guess I just have to sit tight and wait. I really thought we’d find out over the weekend so people had the weekend to work on their blank canvases but that never happened so it was an anxious weekend.

While I won’t be disappointed if I’m not selected, I’m still chomping at the bit to dig my nails into the “blank canvas” they keep talking about. I have pages and pages of blog post ideas and I intend, if selected, to do some of the best writing of my life thus far.  I have this crazy strategy that may be a little risky, but may just do the trick: I’m going to be myself and if the judges think I’d be a good representative for the car, then they’ll pick me. If not, no big deal.

To be perfectly honest, my bipolar is kicking in bigtime in regards to this contest. Half of me doesn’t want to be selected and doesn’t want to win because winning means I’ll have no choice but to do the driving part of my immersion therapy, which terrifies me. Whereas if I don’t win, the driving portion of my immersion therapy remains optional. The truth is, I can live a creative, artful life either way. Either outcome is an adventure, one just happens to be bigger than I originally anticipated and I wasn’t prepared to dream that big.

BUT, I have a Live Journal user icon that I never get to use that says, “Replace the fear of the unknown with curiosity” and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do with my life these days. I think the contest to win a Cube and then maybe even winning one and driving it fits nicely with that notion.

I really like the idea of keeping a camera and notebook in my glove compartment.

I think that in the end, it’s just really up to the universe. If I’m supposed to take the driving path and have that life, then I’ll win. If I’m supposed to walk before I run, so to speak, I won’t win. It’s that simple. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.

If I *am* selected as one of the lucky 500, I’m going to need all the support I can get from you guys though, as part of winning means votes, so while I’m ultimately leaving it up to the universe, I plan on singing for my supper and hopefully you’ll like what I’m going to do.

In other news, I braved Wal*Mart with the family on Saturday to do groceries and while we were there I grabbed some badly needed clothing, most notably pajama pants which I practically live in. I ended up getting two pairs of Hello Kitty pajamas pants and a pair of Hello Kitty pajama shorts for the summer, except I kind of overestimated on what size to get and I got an XL when a medium or large would probably have sufficed. Unfortunately I’d ripped the tags off before I realized this so now I’m just the proud owner of a couple of big pairs of pajama pants. No big deal, I only wear them around the house anyway and they’ll probably shrink some in the wash, so whatever.

Well, I don’t remember why now, probably laziness, I asked Blake to put away my new clothes for me (I got some tank tops & shorts too) and this is what walked into my office 5 minutes later…

Teh Hotness

…so that was special. Other than that it was a fairly uneventful long weekend besides a ridiculous amount of SPAMMING ASSHOLES following me on Twitter.

None of you may notice that I added a few new things to the “Shit I HATE” page but one of the newly added items is “Social media “experts” and online marketing douchebags following me on Twitter.” These people are fucking parasites and btw, what the FUCK is a “social media expert” anyway? Someone who parks their ass on Facebook and Twitter all day? Well then, I must be a social media expert too! And moreso because I have an 8 year old Live Journal and started watching social media way way way before anyone even use dthe term “social media”! I should go add like, 30 billion people on Twitter to advertise my social media expertise and online marketing company with profile pictures and bios not unlike real estate equivalents!Take a fucking peek! I present to you asshole #1, Brenda Horton and asshole #2, Jimmy Davis as prime examples of the kind of person I’m talking about. Or how about Brian Kelly?

OR OR what about the other assholes who aren’t actually selling anything, but they follow 30 billion people on Twitter and then when a few thousand or more follow them back, they stop following the majority of them so they seem cooler than they really are because they have like, soooooo many followers! It’s the MySpace school of Twitter, seriously, I can’t stand it.These people need to go fuck themselves.

Now of course I have the option of blocking these people and never having anything to do with them, but what fun is that? What I like to do is Direct Message them with links to porn and gore using shrunken  blind is.gd links or just call them leeches or parasites “to their face”. Oddly, this doesn’t discourage them or make them unfollow me, but it gives me a little bit of satisfaction every time I do it.

So that’s my current hate. I also hate chicken, but that’s a whole other post.

I guess I should wrap this up as I’ve written a wall of text here and don’t really have anything else to say at this particular moment in time. So, I shall leave you with Wes’ favourite song, which I hope you’ll all enjoy. Goodnight!

I meant to write this post before midnight on the 8th because that was the last day to sign up and fill out your profile on the hypercube website and sometime within the next 3 days, we’re expected to find out via e-mail whether or not we’re one of the lucky 500 to go on to the next round. However, I didn’t get around to writing this until now because I kind of had a dog emergency which you can read about on Live Journal if you feel like it.

To be perfectly honest, as I tend to be, I’m absolutely terrified that I’m not good enough to make the top 500 and the idea of rejection makes me feel sick to my stomach. Don’t get me wrong, I’m also excited at the prospect of playing around with this mysterious “blank canvas” should I be selected and I have TONS of ideas in mind for that, but mostly I’m worried that I’m not good enough. That I didn’t shine brightly enough, that I didn’t do my best. I think I did though, so maybe there’s nothing to worry about.

And tonight another contestant said something to me privately that made me worry a little bit less and made me feel good inside and also made me realize that whatever happens, I’ve met some really cool people through this portion of the contest and I hope our budding friendships blossom in the next round.

Tomorrow (well, today I guess – Thursday) there’s a Tweetup happening at a bar/restaurant/cafe/I have no idea what it is but it has wifi, in Toronto where the locals are going to hang out together and apparently the @hypercube lady, Angie Kramer, is going to make an appearance with someone else from Capital C, the agency running the hypercube contest. But this isn’t just a Toronto Tweetup, oh no, this is going to be a nation wide Tweetup as someone’s going to bring a laptop and broadcast via webcam on Kyte.tv between 8-9pm EST. While this is happening, the rest of the country is going to be chatting in Kyte.tv’s chatroom. (If any Hypercubists are reading this, the details of the event can be found on Facebook.) Unless there’s another dog emergency or something else comes up, I plan to attend.

So I guess that’s all I really have to say, especially since it’s almost 5am and I’m absolutely exhausted. By the end of the week, I should know if I’m a contestant or not and my strategy in not losing my mind between now & then is to pretend I don’t care, pretend it’s no big deal, pretend it’s not even real. Then if I get the magic e-mail, I’ll be surprised and excited and if I don’t get a magic e-mail, I won’t be disappointed because it wasn’t real anyway.

Plus, how could I be disappointed with the amazing friends I have who love me so much? And with that, I present to you the last batch of fansigns:

Deanna from Port Perry, Ontario thinks I need a Cube!

Patience from Florida needs anti-depressants.

Apparently I have the dog vote as well as the cat vote! Jett from Cannington, Ontario thinks I can haz a Cube.

Violette from NYC is asking nicely. *bats eyelashes*

Tim from Brantford, who recently moved to Atlanta with his fiance who drives a Smart car, is throwin’ Sunny Cubed gang signs!

And finally, my very good friends Raymond & Lauren from Wasaga Beach who <3 me & think I’m awesome to the power of three.

So that’s it for fansigns. If you’d like to see the full gallery of 34 fansigns, click here. A HUGE thank you to everyone who sent one in, you guys are all amazing and I <3 you immensely! I hope I have your support via votes if I make it to the next round! And don’t worry, if I do make it, I’ll point you in the right direction.

Well, as I said, I’m exhausted, so I’m just gonna shut up now and go to bed. Goodnight world!