The kids have been home all week, driving me and the pets absolutely bonkers. I never thought I’d see it, but the kids actually wore the cat down so hard that she slept on my bed for several hours in like, kitty fetal position. She was out cold! Normally she’d wake up when my camera turns on (it makes a tinkling sound) or when I take pictures of her using “burst”, but when I did it, she just opened her eyes at one point, gave me a dirty look and got comfier. Pics:

She’s cute and I love her.
Here’s the song “My Cat” by Jack Off Jill.
(Embedding disabled by request. Boooooo!)

Just thought I’d share! Again.

Today has really really sucked. First of all, I woke up at 4am with diarrhea. Again. And I decided that since I was up, I might as well eat an apple stick. To the uninitiated, an apple stick is this awesome apple pastry, like strudel, that comes in the shape of a tube about an inch & a half in diameter by about 6 or 7 inches in length with chunky sugar sprinkled on top. They are DELICIOUS and only available at one chain of stores here, which happens to be the type of grocery store we have here in town. The ones Blake bought me yesterday were baked yesterday so they are EXTRA DELICIOUS. So yeah, that? Was the highlight of my day. It was pretty much all downhill from there. Sort of. Bittersweet may be the better term, but when you wake up with urgent shits and fail to make the bathroom, and that trend continues throughout the day, it’s a little hard to be Miss Mary Sunshine.

A couple of weeks ago Blake got me salmon steaks from the big, good grocery store in Barrie that I love so much because it’s humongous and it has an actual meat counter, not just a tank of lobsters, not just a deli, but an honest to god meat counter with kickass steaks and kickass salmon steaks.

Blake bought two of them, which the butcher wrapped in butcher’s paper and I told Blake to freeze them without knowing they were wrapped together in butcher’s paper. I am the only person in this house who will eat fish (the kids will eat shrimp, according to my step-mom, but I’ve never seen it) because the kids don’t like it and Blake has a possible allergy to it where he doesn’t like it and it’s been known to give him the shits/make him throw up so he’s more or less avoided it his whole life so I was kinda pissed when I saw that he froze BOTH of them in the butcher paper when I have a hard time eating ONE, you can’t refreeze them after they’re thawed and you should eat them within a day of thawing naturally, immediately if defrosting in the nukrowave. So once I realized they were frozen together and spazzed on Blake, we asked the kids if they’d be interested in trying it and they said they would be, so we decided that in order for them to try it, I would pretty much have to wait until a weekend to have mine, which was fine.

Well today was that day.

As it turned out the steaks were individually wrapped in plastic inside the butcher’s paper so I basically spazzed on Blake for nothing (how was I supposed to know?) and much to my surprise, considering his lifelong aversion to all things that swim, when I asked him to cook them for me, he agreed and since he’s a million times better at cooking EVERYTHING than I am, he cooked them perfectly (just fried in olive oil with salt & pepper) and I absolutely loved mine. The kids weren’t so much fans, but they both tried it. Wes thought it was disgusting while Madison was more thoughtful about it (“good, but the aftertaste ruined it”) and much to my surprise again, Blake said he was going to try it. He said it tasted really good but at the end of his trial his gag reflex got set off, so he only had that one bite. He didn’t feel sick afterward though and he doesn’t have the shits to my knowledge so maybe with some practice we can get him eating salmon steaks with me because they are delicious and very very good for you.

After lunch we internetted for a while when suddenly I got it in my head that I NEEDED fizzy Skittles. I love fizzy Skittles. Hell, I love non-fizzy Skittles too. So Blake went to the store to get me fizzy Skittles and berry Skittles and a slush. A cherry slush.

So Blake got those and came home and then I sent him out to get pumpkins so we can carve them tomorrow and I can bake the seeds. The seeds make me poo fantastically so I’m very much looking forward to eating them. Not too firm, not too runny, just perfect poos. I highly recommend pumpkin seeds if you have any type of poo problem. As Blake (and Madison) were getting pumpkins, Wes and I were eating Skittles and I was washing them down with my slush.

This was a mistake.

Blake and Madison come home. I’m internetting and eating Skittles. Washing them down with slush. Blake started playing Arkham City and I got tired of eating Skittles so I put them away and continued my internetting for about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes. Then I started screaming for Blake to find my bowl (it was in my office) because I was dangerously close, without warning, to puking all over myself, my computer and the bed. He ran and got my bowl, I grabbed it and filled that thing within centimetres of the top.

My vomit tasted like cherry and Skittles and had the texture of salmon steak. It was the sickest thing I’ve thrown up so far. And I don’t know why I barfed it all up, I followed all the rules:

1. Eat things that aren’t very greasy. Check.
2. Eat them slowly. Check.
3. Eat small snacks, spaced out throughout the day. Check.

I’m even wearing that godawful girdle binder Dr. Hanrahan wants me to wear to keep my guts squished in and aligned. Blake picked it up this morning and it’s horrible. My waist isn’t long enough for the stupid thing so it’s either digging into my hips when I sit or digging into my underboobage. And the fucking thing was $50! If anyone would like to help us out with the expense of that because we’re down to one income and ran out of donated money about a month ago, there’s a donation button on the bottom right-hand corner of my site. I hate to sound like I’m begging and I’m not really, this was just an expense we weren’t prepared for at a time when there’s no money for extra expenses. And not that one has anything to do with the other but I’m going to thank everyone who donated before, here, because I’m on a lot of drugs and can’t remember if I already thanked everyone in a previous post while I was still in the hospital. I honestly have no idea how we would have gotten through until now without those donations.

Blah. I’ll shut up about money now. This post isn’t about money.

Tomorrow Blake’s going to look at the binder and see if we can use Madison’s pinking shears to take an inch & a half or so off of it so it’ll fit properly.  My guts really hurt when it was first put on this morning but throughout the afternoon it started feeling…almost normal? I mean, it feels like I’m wearing a girdle but admittedly my guts hurt less with it on then without it. Without it I look about 6 months pregnant with a square baby because my guts have drifted out of place to either side of my abdomen, the binder brings them back to the middle and the goal is to keep wearing the binder until I have my wound/hernia surgery so it’s easier for Dr. Hanrahan to make me normal again.

Well, as normal as I get anyway. Physically normal.

No word from the pseudocyst surgeon yet. Waiting, waiting, waiting…I feel like that’s what my life has become. I am *SO* worried that if surgery and recovery (main surgery not the pseudocyst one) don’t happen soon enough I’ll lose my already slim shot at getting my job back. And I’m really really scared about what that means. I can’t just go out and get another job! And Blake’s been putting a lot of pressure on me to do everything in my power to get it back because we’re pretty much fucked if I don’t. And it would be really nice to not have that stress. I’ve never been able to contribute financially to the household by selling paintings because I don’t sell enough of them and I have no idea HOW to sell more of them. I feel like I’m doing everything I can already. It was nice having a job because that meant there was no pressure on me to paint what was profitable, I could paint what I wanted to, but now that’s gone.

Guh. This post is not about money. This post is not about money. This post is not about money.

Alex @replied me on Twitter tonight to tell me that it’s a really small friggin’ world. Siske, my nurse, has told me about her daughter many times before and as it turns out WE KNOW HER DAUGHTER. She’s really good friends with Ronny and Alex and we met her at their wedding! Weird, right? I can’t get over it! She never told me enough to put 2 + 2 together and chances are I wouldn’t have anyway because I’ve only met her daughter once, but it’s crazy to me all the same.

And speaking of Siske, she’s going to have my ass up early tomorrow morning to change my dressing so I should probably finish this post and go to bed. Before I do though, here are some pics from the bed, mostly of Pixel because I thought Phaedie would like them:

I took this pic because Madison claims these toys were sent by someone on the internet but neither of us can remember who or if that’s even true, so if you remember giving these to Madison, please let me know!

I have no idea what she’s doing in the above picture.

And in case you didn’t get enough Pixel today, here are a couple of videos. The first is Madison and Pixel being best friends and the second is Madison and Pixel playing with ribbon.

And last, but certainly not least, I leave you with Blake attempting to sing “Miss World” by Hole while playing guitar. Enjoy and goodnight!

Oh man.

So we’re back from Militiagan, we got back last night. When we got home, Alex & Ronny were here so we watched The Leafs lose pitifully to the Penguins while eating steak & potatoes for dinner and reminiscing about the lovely ol’ US of A, where Ronny also happens to be from.

Oh yeah, since I missed several days of work, this post is going to probably be all over the place because I’m working all day today.

Anyway, blah blah Ronny & Alex, dogs were happy to see us, so was cat. Kids are still up North (Blake’s picking them up right now but I bet they’ll be back by the time I finish this post).

So obviously, if you’ve been following along, Blake’s grandma, who was 98 or 99, finally died. She’d been dying for a really long time, as long as I’ve known Blake, and this was like…”finally”. People were sad of course, but like I said in a previous post, I think there was also a lot of relief.

We left for MI Wednesday night after I was done work and the drive was pretty uneventful, no issues at the border which we were worried about because Blake’s US passport is long expired, I don’t even have one, and Blake’s permanent residence card for Canada is expired as well. But no issues so whatever. We stop at a gas station just outside the border in MI and there I found a TREASURE TROVE of goodness, behold my bounty (oh PS, this post will have a lot of pictures):

You cannot get these everywhere in Canada. I’m told other provinces MAY have them from time to time but you cannot get these in Ontario. I was very excited.

But nowhere near as excited as I was to see THESE:

I loved these. We used to have these. They stopped making them or distributing them in Canada in 2002 and when I learned of this, I went out and spent around $100 buying up every box I could find, hoarding them for like, 2 years. I was SHOCKED when I saw them at this MI gas station. So I bought 9 of them. Not 10 because that would have been the whole box and what if someone else wanted one? So I just got 9.

Did I mention that I love these? Remember that. We’ll come back to it later.

We got to our hotel at around, god I don’t even know, I want to say it was near midnight. Our hotel room was pretty cool, it had a fridge, dishwasher, 2 element stove and a microwave but we got the handicap suite so it didn’t have a bath tub and therefore all the Lush stuff I’d brought with me never got used. Didn’t matter, there was no time on this trip for Lush baths anyway.

As it turned out, Thursday was to be the wake/viewing (they called it a viewing, my family would call it a wake, I dunno if they’re the same thing, they sure seemed the same) and Friday was going to be the funeral, so we planned on staying until Sunday but I had a minor freak out Friday night after way too much stimulation so we decided to leave Saturday instead. But I’m getting way way way ahead of myself.

So Thursday morning, we got up early and Blake went to visit his friend Mandy and her baby while I got an hour of work in and then we had to get ready vite vite vite because the wake was at 2pm. This is what I wore:

Another Free People outfit (with my Docs) because when I leave the house, that’s basically all I wear.
The skirt is sort of a peachy sheer thing and the sweater is a charcoal grey that flows out over your bum.
I was paranoid the whole time that I was showing everyone my ass but Blake assured me I was not.
I wore beige underwear just in case. ;o)

The wake was…overwhelming. Blake’s family is Albanian (this was his dad’s side) and a lot of them are newer immigrants from the last 20 years or so. And there are a lot of them. I can remember who everyone was and more or less how they were related to Blake but it was a lot to take in all at once. It was nice though, that they included our family in the big boards Blake’s Aunt Pat had made with pictures of the whole family and all the grandkids and stuff and Blake’s grandma looked pretty good, probably the best open casket job I’ve seen to date (I hate open casket though, I think it’s gross). “The family” got there at 2 which meant Blake’s Aunt Pat, his dad (who’s a fuckbag) and his dad’s wife Kim (who’s a mega-cunt), his Uncle John and these cousins from New Hampshire that I’d never met before, Marc (nice, old guy), his son Boyce and Marc’s sister (I think?) Diana who is 72 and a total riot. I loved the crap out of her and honestly, without our kindred spirits connecting I’m not sure I would have made it through the whole thing intact.

There were deciding the order of the procession to the cemetery the next day and it was funny because Blake is the last Vulpe male and he took MY last name when we got married, therefore Wes the other “last Vulpe male” has MY last name as well, so we Blake told them what kind of car we drove and his name, Blake Crittenden, his dad like, paused and gave him a look because I think this was news to him and it was SO FUNNY. Anyway, we were 2nd in line for the procession with Blake’s dad, Kim, Uncle John and Aunt Pat in Blake’s dad’s car being first. Then Marc, Boyce and Diana behind us and other people all behind us.

At the wake I met about a hundred and fifty million people, namely the aforementioned Albanians, Blake’s Uncle or cousin (???) Nico and his daughters Tina and Helena who I HAD actually met before but that was 8 years ago now and honestly, they were teenagers them so I barely paid any attention to them. Now they’re all grown up. I’m not sure was Tina’s in college for but Helena is just starting her residency to be a neurosurgeon. SUPER nice girls. I added them on Facebook the night after the funeral and from what I can tell, the whole innocent thing isn’t an act. These girls, well, women I guess, don’t really swear or drink or show their boobs on the internet or anything even remotely controversial from what I can tell. So strange. But nice girls nonetheless, I really enjoyed their company.

Something I noticed almost right away is how close the Albanians are with each other, like, they’re a REAL FAMILY, like the Greeks I knew growing up, who were also mostly recent immigrants. And it makes sense that they’re so close, because all they’ve really had is each other and the church which is just so interesting to me because my family sucks, on both sides. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m GLAD AS HELL that I wasn’t raised in a religious environment, but our family plays so many psychological games and there’s so much bullshit it’s unbelievable and with the Albanians, there’s none of that. They just love each other BECAUSE they’re family and that’s just what you fucking do. Like I remember when Wes was born, Nico and his family sent us baby clothes for him and this was BEFORE I’d even MET THESE PEOPLE. But Blake was their family and that’s just what you do BECAUSE they’re your family.

And that whole vibe or attitude or whatever was SO strong and so prevalent at the wake and the funeral and the “thing after the funeral with food” (reception?) that I was actually feeling really weird about it. Like on one hand I was totally jealous over it because I’ve never had that and I didn’t even really know I wanted that until that moment but also I got kissed and hugged by so many Albanians who I didn’t know and they just automatically embraced me wholeheartedly. I married Blake and I am their family, no matter what. I’m probably not even doing the experience justice but it was POWERFUL and I find myself like, craving these people. It really makes me sad that Pat deleted her Facebook but I promised to keep in touch via e-mail, which I will do. I added Tina and Helena, like I said, and I’m looking forward to dancing at their weddings one day. As much as I hate going places and as much as I hate the border and as much as I hate blah blah blah come hell or high water I will stay in contact with these people, to the best of my ability, with the…well I won’t promise, but with the possibility of visiting as often as we can. As I can, I guess. They are my family, no matter what.

More about them later though, the funeral was Thursday and we had to get up at ass o’clock because Blake was a pallbearer, they decided, which meant we had to be at the church super early. I think like, 8:45am.

The night before we tried to watch The Kids Are Alright but were too tired to finish it so we watch the other half Friday night. It was alright, I hope it doesn’t win any Oscars tonight. I love Annette Benning and thought she was genius as always, but there are so many other deserving films…anyway….

So we were at the church right on time. Here’s what I wore, which you’ve already seen me wear with jeans but this time I wore it with a black tulle skirt that matched the tulle of the slip so I was super gauzy and I loved it:

The church thing was weird. This was only the 3rd or 4th time I’d ever really been in a church and I’d never ever been in a church like that with all these icons and the stained glass windows and a chanting/singing priest and bible stuff in Albanian and incense and doing the sign of the cross (which I don’t even KNOW) and kissing icons and crosses and shit. It was crazy! And I was SO tired and the incense was making me SO sleepy that here I was, sitting in the front row with the family (more on that in a sec) half falling asleep. Pretending I had my eyes closed to listen, so I’d nod and look contemplative from time to time but really I was just about falling asleep. lulz. Blake and I both felt really awkward sitting in the front pew with the family and being 2nd in line in the procession. See, at first, at the wake, Nico was kind of a little bit short with us and Blake thinks it was because Blake sort of moved to Canada and never visited and the family felt abandoned and rightly so. All was forgiven by half an hour later, if in fact that’s what that was about, but still, Nico and his family stayed by Blake’s grandma’s side until the very end and we felt that they should have been sitting where we were because who the hell are we? I mean, to hell with what’s proper and let’s go with what’s right! But Pat & John wanted us so we just did as we were told. I felt horrible though, I mean, I’m not even family.

And then there’s the fact that I barely even KNEW Blake’s grandma, she was pretty well far gone by the time I met her  but I found myself getting a little “misty”, we’ll say, at the funeral just because, I think, of all the love and warmth that was just pouring out of all these people. It was incredible, I’ve literally never experienced anything like it.

Blake’s Uncle John was sitting beside me and he was pretty upset so I just hugged him and wiped his tears and told him I loved him. He’s suffering (pretty severely, I’d say) from early onset dementia and it is SO sad. He’s probably the person on Blake’s dad’s side I know the best and he is (was?) such a great person and to see him so unlike himself and out of it broke my tiny, black little heart. More about that later.

I gotta hand it to myself though, for being smart. Before we got to the church, I made Blake stop at a CVS and pick up a bunch of those mini travel Kleenexes for people, which I think was appreciated. Blake’s dad asked me for Chapstick too, which I gave him because I always have at least 3 in my bag, but Blake’s dad has herpes so we threw it in the garbage when we got back to the hotel so I wouldn’t use it by accident. *shudder* Herpes aside, I was glad to provide, even if he is a shitbag.

Next was the procession to the cemetery.
Meet Blake’s dad:

Yes, that is his real license plate. It’s on his fucking Escalade.
I hear his penis is minuscule.

You would think a funeral procession would be uneventful, and it was, except that I think we drove halfway across the state to get to the cemetery and then GUESS WHAT? I WAS IN ROSA FUCKING PARKS’ MAUSOLEUM! (Which is also a memorial.) That’s where the cemetery part of the funeral was! Inside it! I asked Blake if his grandmother was being uh, I don’t know the word for it, like put in a drawer there or however they do it, and he said he didn’t think so but his dad’s like, a bajillionaire so it’s totally possible. I was in absolute shock, I didn’t even know the whole Rosa Parks thing happened in Michigan or that she was from there. You’re goddamned right I Foursquared that! lulz again.

Speaking of Foursquare, I am totally bummed out that I didn’t get a badge for being in another country. I feel cheated. Especially considering the fact that I spent over $50 on data usage while we were there because I don’t have a roaming plan. Oops. And Charlie even warned me about that too, but it snuck up in me. :o/

After the funeral was FINALLY finished all of its components, Blake and I went back to the hotel because I’d forgotten my phone and was hating the crap out of his Blackberry, then we went to this fancy restaurant with valet parking for the reception. We were basically the last people to get there, which was fine, and we sat with who I’d call the “core” Albanians and they all spoke Albanian with each other and pretty much ignored Blake and I for the most part, which was fine. Normally I’d be paranoid in a situation like that that they were talking about me, but I didn’t feel like they were and truthfully, I don’t really feel like they are that kind of people. The mom, Tonzi, married to Nico, was really nice to me and asked about the kids and stuff so I showed everyone last year’s school pictures, which I had in my wallet. Then they went back to speaking Albanian and ignoring me, which again, was fine. I didn’t mind, especially because George (pronounced gee-u-rgie in Albanian) doesn’t speak English.  The food was excellent and I because I’m a big fat sucker, I asked Blake to please give his dad, who he hadn’t spoken to in 7 years, the pictures of the kids I had in my wallet.  So now I don’t have pictures of my own kids in my wallet anymore but I think I made an old man happy so that’s okay. I have the genuine articles. Maybe he wouldn’t be such a shitbag knowing what he’s been missing out on these past 7 years, right?

Nope.

Well, let’s give credit where credit is due: Rudy has never been anything but nice to me to my face and the same with Kim but neither one of them is warm toward me in any way and they’ve both been awful to Blake for most of his life and that’s why I hate them.

On Saturday we went to Pat’s to have breakfast and Blake’s dad (Rudy if that wasn’t obvs) was there, much to Blake’s dismay, as was John, Diana and Pat’s friend whose name is completely escaping my brain at this present moment but it’ll come to me. She was very nice and it bothers me that I can’t recall her name right now. :o/

Anyway, Blake’s dad was basically bragging about Blake’s niece being invited to the Junior Olympics for skiing and how she goes to a “magnet school”, which I think is a private school, which no doubt he pays for, and that Blake’s other 2 nieces, who are babies right now, will go to the same school because the public schools aren’t good enough. I have issues with this line of thinking, but whatever. Then he got on Blake about being healthier and stuff and telling both of us to get into winter sports and basically lecturing Blake to be more active, which he;s been lecturing Blake about since Blake was a toddler. Just falling back into fuckbag territory after Blake hasn’t spoken to him in 7 years, like nothing ever happened.

Luckily he left before we had breakfast so after that, we just had a good time with everyone else. Diana, as I mentioned, is GREAT and both her and Pat cleaned me out of business cards (lulz once more! They’re probably reading this right now, aloha, ladies!) which I thought was cute and supportive. I haven’t decided which one yet, but I think I’m going to send Pat one of my paintings. I’;m thinking “Shimmer II” off the top of my head, but we’ll see. Anyway, a great time was had by all, I think, we just sat around and shot the shit and it felt so relaxed and NORMAL and I loved it. John made me sad because he’s just not John anymore, he literally acts like a clown, like if you dressed him up and painted his face and taught him how to make balloon animals, there ya go. Like he’d tweak your nose and make faces at you and strange sounds and stuff, never making a lick of sense. So sad. And scary because with Blake and I, that could literally be either or both of our futures. I’m wondering now if there’s a genetic test you can get done to see if that would happen to you and if you test positive, if there’s anything you can do to prevent it. I know I’m susceptible being bipolar but I also know that being medicated early in life (relatively speaking) protects me somewhat, or that’s what I understand from talking to our family doctor about this whole thing.

So that was pretty much the whole funeral/trip EXCEPT, Blake took me to a Meijer for the first time and this is everything we hauled home because we just don’t have this shit in Canada!

Generic brand American mixed nuts are a must because Americans are less healthy than Canadians, or at least they have less food guidelines, and therefore they have a LOT more salt on their nuts than we do. These were actually kind of a let down in this regard, CVS actually has the best ones, but they were still pretty great.

There are no Keebler elves in Canada, just Santa’s elves.
I’ve never had these before but they looked pretty good.

“Better Made” is a Michigan brand and Ronny wanted us to bring him home some “hot” Better Made chips, which we did, but these looked good too so I grabbed a bag. After trying them last night, I wished I’d brought home a zillion more bags because they’re delicious.

In case it’s not obvious, I like pretzels and these looked pretty rad. Rold Gold is my favoured pretzel brand, but we don’t have the variety the US has.

I actually got this at a gas station.
It was pretty weird and despite the fact that I generally like all things cinnamon, especially Hot Tamales, I didn’t care for this very much so I gave the rest to Alex.

Canada doesn’t have Pepperidge Farm.
When I was living in New York, my boyfriend’s work, which was a sound studio, bought P. Farm stuff in bulk for clients and we used to steal it constantly. I was bummed I couldn’t find the soft Sausalitos but ya take what ya can get.

We have Goldfish crackers in Canada, so it’s weird we don’t have everything else P. Farm, but again, we don;t have the variety of Goldfish the US has. There must have been 10 different types at Meijer. I got the neon ones for my little sisters, I hope Blake remembers to give them to them.

OF COURSE we have Jones Soda here, Jones Soda was invented in BC!
I’ve just never seen it in 1L bottles. Especially with “litre” spelled wrong.

Tra la la la la!

More Better Made chips and my sexy-assed husband:

This was a total let down. Not like theatre popcorn on all.

Then we went down the cereal aisle…

(I always get Cookie Crisp but this is a NEW ONE!)

I’m kinda surprised we don’t have this here.

Blake’s favourite.

GOOD SOURCE OF VITAMIN D!

And last but not least, the only thing I really cared about because we don’t have it here and I don’t understand why: Cherry and Vanilla Coke Zero

We’ve never really had Cherry Coke here so it’s not surprising that we don’t have Cherry Coke Zero here but we used to have Vanilla Coke, which you can still sometimes get, yet we have no Vanilla Coke Zero? I think it’s a travesty that we don’t have either of these in our fair country and that it costs a million dollars to ship because it’s so heavy and that you can’t ship it in the winter or they’ll explode.

And that concludes my post on the US of A.
Glad to be home.

Edit: Blake tells me Rosa Parks did the bus thing in Alabama but moved to MI later in life.

(crappy Blackberry pic, but you get the idea)

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.

I just woke up from yet another “end of the world” dream. In this one I was camping with my mom and her boyfriend when earthquakes started happening and the hydro went out all over the world. I’ve already been up for about 45 minutes so the details of the dream are fading, but there was a store on the campgrounds and I went in and had to save the girls hiding behind the counter from a brown bear that had wandered in after the first quake. It jumped up on me, like a dog that’s happy to see you, so like a dog, I grabbed its paws and kinda tossed him down off my shoulders, opened the front door of the store and it wandered back out. While the door was open, a deer skittered out behind it. The girls gave me a flashlight, which I brought back to our tent and that was the end of that segment of the dream.

The next one, I was in the town I used to live in and all the streets were black. It was winter and there were strange noises everywhere from people looting and vandalizing the town in the dark. I was thirsty, so fucking thirsty. I met up with my friend Heather from when I was a kid and she brought me to this ice cream stand inside a bowling alley where she knew the owners and they gave me a can of Sprite, which I chugged down like it was the last liquid on Earth. We all hid in the bowling alley in the dark with boards and baseball bats, waiting for the looters to break in.

And then I woke up thirstier than I swear I’ve ever been in my life and with an unexplained ache in my left jaw. I got up and chugged the half can of Coke Zero I’d left in the fridge when I went to bed, then I opened another one and drank the whole thing. Now I’m on my third and as I said, I’ve only been awake about 45 minutes.

This has been a common occurrence during the past week, waking up around 6am so thirsty I think I’m gonna die. Usually I go for Coke Zero when this happens because if I drink water I’ll just be up in another hour to go pee and orange juice is bad for your teeth if you’re just going to go back to bed.

Just now I tried going back to bed, but I’m having racing thoughts again and the attempt was futile. I’m tired though, really really tired. Again, I figure if I get these thoughts out of my head and “onto paper” maybe then I’ll be able to go back to sleep.

I watched Oprah on Friday, where she announced that the season after this one would be her last. I cried. I cried hard. Her show began in 1986, when I was 7 years old, and really, I don’t remember TV without Oprah. When her show started, I was being babysat by my Aunt Heather and every day after school we would watch and Oprah’s been a big part of my life ever since. No, Oprah and I haven’t always gotten along, there were times when she and I disagreed, but she’s always been there and it’s hard to imagine TV without her. I know her final show is going to absolutely destroy me. After I tweeted something to that effect on Friday, someone said something like “don’t worry, she’s getting her own channel”, which is true, The Oprah Winfrey Channel, which everyone now knows as The Discovery Health Channel, has been in the works since I think 2008 and is set to launch in 2011, but like her XM Satellite radio station, Oprah and Friends, it’s hard to say how much she’s actually going to be on it. The fact of the matter is, channel or not, there will be no more Oprah Winfrey Show and that makes me sad.

I mean, I knew it would have to come to an end sooner or later, I just wasn’t prepared for the announcement.

Tonight I read Oprah’s Wikipedia entry and smiled when it said that she planned on retiring in South Africa, at her school for girls. Truthfully, that’s probably where Oprah should be and it’s probably where she’ll be happiest. Did you know that in her will she’s left all of her money (she’s worth $2.3 billion, in case you didn’t know) “to the children of Africa”? That’s absolutely amazing to me. I can’t even fathom what that’s going to mean for the continent. If you’ve been reading me for any great length of time, then you’ll know that I worry and fret about Africa every single day, but at the same time, I believe that within my lifetime a lot of Africa’s troubles will come to an end and that the continent will rise up and become a booming voice in the international community. I know that’s an extremely optimistic view, but think about it: Oprah will probably die in my lifetime and what can her $2.3 billion inheritance do for Africa? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question because I don’t really have a clear concept of what you can buy with that kind of money or how to “fix” Africa, but I feel in my gut that it’ll really help things turn around. And I’m going to be very glad to see it, even if it’s from my nursing home.

In other news, Friday night Blake and I were just going outside to go have half a smoke and he was ahead of me so he opened the front door and all I heard was “no kittens in the house!” and he was blocking something with his feet. I assumed it was the neighbour’s cat, Misty, who occasionally spends the night with us when she gets locked out of her own home on cold nights, but no, through Blake’s legs I saw that it was a little orange tabby kitten, no older than 10 weeks old. Immediately I reached through Blake’s legs and scooped the kitten up and brought it into the living room to show the kids. The poor guy was dirty and definitely had a smell, so I figured he was a stray, but Madison, who somehow knows every animal in this whole goddamn town, said that it looked like her friend Alyssa’s kitten, Cheesy. Alyssa lives about a 5 minute walk away on the other side of the road.

So Blake and Madison went to see if it was their kitten and when they got to the house, Alyssa’s brother was there with his friend from next door, ALONE. These kids are in grade 3, who leaves two 8 year olds home alone? Anyway, Madison asked them if the kitten was Cheesy, the kid said yes and the cat was returned. How the little bugger got so far away from home and ended up at my front door, I’ll never know, and why do these stray animals always make it to my house in the first place? Between June and August, Madison and I found the homes of 4 different stray dogs! Not to mention the other 2 we found the owners of throughout the school year! And now this kitten? Blake says they find their way here because animals just know that I’m a sucker and somehow that must be true because they do seem to always end up at our house.

It kinda sucks that we found Cheesy’s home though, he was the exact kind of kitten I want when it’s time to get another cat, and I was kind of giddy at the prospect of keeping him. At the same time I’m glad we did find his home because Pixel would absolutely freak the fuck out if we added another cat to the mix and for sure she’d stop using her litterbox because there’s no way she’d share. (And we just got her using her litterbox religiously after almost 4 years. Our house is very small and there are only 3 places to put a litterbox. First I had it beside the washing machine, underneath the wash tub, but with the way the washtub is set up, there’s blocks under its legs so the litterbox was kind of suspended and she wouldn’t use it. Then I had it between the dryer and the furnace, which was all fine & dandy in the spring & summer, especially since she usually did her business outside anyway, but in the fall & winter when the furnace or dryer was on, she’d pee in it when she got the chance (when both appliances were off), but she preferred to shit under Blake’s desk. I didn’t make the connection that she was afraid of the furnace until just this fall and that’s when I moved her litterbox to behind the bathroom door and ever since she’s been a completely different cat. Much more relaxed and loving, not so skittish. gets along better with the dogs. And as an added bonus, because it’s behind the door, the dogs can get into it which they’ve been known to do. Anyway, since she’s so finicky about the litterbox, I know if we introduced another cat, we’d be back at square one. When we get a bigger house, maybe one with a basement where two litterboxes can be set up, we’ll get another cat, just not right now.)

This week was unseasonably warm and the giant spider that lived on a web strewn across my office window all summer made its reappearance and that got me wondering about what happened to spiders in the winter. I figured, because of Charlotte’s Web, that they laid an egg sac and then died and it turns out that I’m only partially right and it really depends on the spider. The spider in my case, is a garden orb weaver, and they most definitely lay eggs and die, while others in warmer climates, but that still have winter (just not Canada’s kind of winters) hibernate and others who lay eggs and die, their babies hatch before winter and keep each other warm in clusters around their egg sac. I’m wondering when my spider is going to die. She’s definitely got a male on her web, I’ve seen him (the males are smaller, so I know she’s a girl), so I’m assuming she’s laid her eggs already somewhere, but she’s creepy and too big to kill (she’s about the size of a twoonie) and I’ve been waiting for her to go away for a long time now because while I kinda think spiders are cool and I like watching they catch prey, I also think they’re really gross and when I go outside for a smoke she’s pretty much above my head and I have awake nightmares about her jumping into my hair. It’s irrational and I know she won’t, but the whole idea of it gives me the willies and as soon as I think she’s dead, I’m vacuuming up her web and when her babies hatch, I’ll be relocating them to my garden. Or maybe my neighbour’s garden…

On Twitter, my friend Poetic Dreams pointed me to a blog post made by Katielynn where she asked:

Who are you?
Really,
Truthfully.
Deep down.
Under the weight the world has put upon you.
Do you have an answer?

And it got me thinking. Who am I? DO I have an answer? The fact of the matter is, I’m 30 years old and still trying to figure out who I am because I’ve had so many setbacks in my life that finding out who I am has always sort of been put on the back burner. Does it matter if I know who I really am? I mean, I know who I am right now, is that the same thing? I know who I want to be, does that count for anything at all?

I think knowing who you are right now DOES count because everyone changes. But at the same time, I guess there’s who you are at your core and I guess if that’s the case I know exactly who I am. I’m the girl who, despite intense social anxiety, can put on a pretty good front and charm an entire room full of people. I’m the girl who gives away a lot of money to certain charities even though she can’t afford it because it’s important and there are people out there who need it more than I do. I’m the girl who’s insecure about most things and has low self-esteem in general, but who’s also brave and confident when it comes to other things. I’m the girl who’s not afraid of a challenge…most of the time. I’m the girl who can make boys cry. I’m the girl who sometimes doesn’t realize how much her words can hurt, even though she’s lived a lifetime of hurting people with her words. I’m the girl who, despite being 5 foot fuckall and 100 lbs at the time, can put a 6’5, 300 lb man in the hospital for fucking with her kid. I’m the girl who hates Guitar Hero with a burning passion. I’m the girl who likes to bake at 3am so her family wakes up to surprises in the kitchen. I’m the girl who’s helping the kids plan a surprise birthday party for my neighbour on Friday. (With the help of another mom who took the kids to the dollar store yesterday to buy supplies and who made Judy a lasagna for her birthday dinner that I’ll help the kids cook on Friday (it’s a PA Day). Also on Friday I’ll be helping the kids bake a cake and decorate Judy’s living room.) I’m the girl who’s already freaking out about turning 40, even though it’s almost a decade away, because I still haven’t grown up and I feel stunted. If I’m still stunted at 40…what does that make me? I’m the girl who sometimes wants to give up and go work at McDonald’s but doesn’t because that would give the haters exactly what they want and dammit, I’m stubborn. I’m the girl who thinks sex is vastly overrated. I’m the girl who takes 28 pills every single day and drinks way too much Coke Zero. I’m the girl who thinks the world would rather hug you than harm you. I’m the girl who’s helping to raise 2 pretty awesome kids. I’m the girl who always knew she wanted to be a mother and who made HUGE sacrifices to make that happen. I’m the girl who will take in any animal that comes her way, much to the dismay of her husband. I’m the girl who loves her husband fiercely and couldn’t live without him. I’m the girl who loves and hates with equal intensity. I’m a girl who’s easily distracted. I’m the girl who can spend an entire day reading about random things on the internet, who gets a hold of a subject and obsesses about it until the curiousity is satiated and there isn’t anything left to know. I’m the girl who sucks at sodoku and crossword puzzles but does both anyway. I’m the girl people claim to be intimidated by. I’m the girl who hates not having a book on the go. I’m the girl who doesn’t have a lot of friends and prefers it that way. I’m the girl who dislikes other people’s kids and their mothers. I’m the girl who seethes when people let their animals go astray and who don’t spay & neuter. (The aforementioned “other mom” who made Judy the lasagna? Her husky was in heat and “driving her nuts” so she just let her out to run through the bush and “if she comes back pregnant, so be it”. UGH.)

I don’t know if any of that answered Katielynn’s question, but I think it’s a good start. These things are at the core of me and will probably never change.

Blake has all this week off and that’s awesome. On Monday I have a doctor’s appointment to get some Tylenol 3 & Naproxen for my upcoming period and to make sure a copy of my post-op report is in my file. I want him to explain to me exactly what they did but I’m not going to sit there while he reads it and then have him explain it to me, unless that’s what he wants to do. I figured I’d just leave a copy with him, which he can read when he gets a moment and then he can call me in for another appointment to go over it with me. I just don’t understand why I’m still in pain and I don’t understand what all they did, especially the whole “cutting of the nerves” thing, which I never willingly consented to and which doesn’t seem to be working at all.

Also on Monday or Tuesday, I’m expecting a little bit of money by way of a cheque in the mail, so Blake and I are going to go to Curry’s and Michael’s to buy some much needed art supplies and probably get Starbucks because it’s in the same plaza.

For something I’m doing, I have to write an “artist’s resume” but I have no idea what that is or how to make one, so Blake’s going to help me with that also. I also had to write an artist’s statement which ended up being easier than I thought and once I iron out the kinks, I’ll be adding it to my site. It could only be about 250 words for what I’m doing, so the version that’ll be on my site will be a bit longer and more fleshed out.

On Tuesday I have to go to the lab for blood work. Oh joy of joys. They’re checking my cholesterol and doing a metabolic work up to see what the hell is going on as far as me being unable to lose the weight I gained while on that heinous medication. Long story short, we’re pretty sure, my shrink & I, that the medication messed up my metabolism semi-permanently and I may have to go on drugs to fix it.

Wednesday Blake has a phone interview for another position within the company and he applied for another one on Saturday so hopefully next week he’ll have a phone interview for that one too. Both positions are in Scarborough, meaning we’d have to sell our house and move. I haven’t checked to see if the house we want in Cookstown has been sold yet and I’m gonna hold off on that until things are more concrete so I don’t get my hopes up again.

Friday is the kids’ PA Day and Judy’s surprise birthday party, kid-style. Being a PA Day means that I’ll have Courtney too, so she & Madison will be baking and decorating the cake and I’ll help them put up streamers in Judy’s living room. Plus they both made a whole bunch of decorations that I haven’t seen yet, so they’ll be putting those up as well.

Then at some point on the weekend, we’ll be playing Euchre with Ronny & Alex and then probably playing again with Wayne & Judy.

It’s going to be a busy week, but a good one I think. I like it when Blake has vacation days and we can just hang out and do stuff while the kids are in school. We don’t get to do that very often.

Anyway, this is long and I don’t really have a whole lot more to say. I think I’m gonna go take some drugs and go back to sleep for a while…or maybe stay up and read some more of The Scarlet Letter. I haven’t decided yet.

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.

Do you ever have those days where you just don’t feel like you fit in anywhere? I’m having one of those. You see, I’m an artist, or at least I try to be but a year ago I wasn’t much of one because I was afraid to use my imagination. Literally.

You see (and I’ve told this story a million times before, so those who have heard it bear with me) what lead to my bipolar disorder diagnosis was psychosis where I lost complete touch with reality, had to be hospitalized and given heavy doses of anti-psychotics for 10 days. Even after those 10 days, I just wasn’t “right in the head”, as they say. It took the anti-psychotics about a month to set me right.

It was the scariest fucking thing in the world and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

At the same time, I was hyper-creative during psychosis and super happy, psychosis for me was much like being stuck in my imagination which was fine for the first couple of weeks and then it got scary. Really really fucking scary.

It wouldn’t be until I my shrink and I found the right medications and the right doses where I felt okay to create again and to use my imagination. It was almost 3 years after I was hospitalized.

Where I found my inspiration to create was YouTube. On YouTube there was Suzi Blu and Willowing and the two of them made videos on how to art journal or draw faces and feeling good about yourself in general. So, when Suzi Blu started her Ning.com community and offered a class called “Les Petite Dolls”, I was right there to sign up and that’s when I started creating again. I made friends in this community, including Suzi Blu, and as far as I’ve been able to tell, that’s the whole point of having a Ning community. That’s why you have a friends list kind of like Live Journal.

Through the course though, I discovered other artist communities on Ning, namely Willowing’s, then Milliande’s and finally Gary Reef’s.

Well, I’m not interested in taking any more online art classes right now, namely because I don’t have the time for them, nor can I afford them, but I joined these communities anyway as a lot of my friends from Suzi’s Ning seemed to overlap within these other sites.

But I didn’t last very long in Milliande’s community because…well, I don’t know how to say this in a nice way even though I mean it in a nice way but Milliande’s community was a little too wishy washy for me. I respect what they’re doing over there, but I like a little edge, I’m not always prone to making “safe” art and that community is clearly meant for women who smile and menstruate quietly. Honestly, it reminded me of a nunnery.

And that’s cool. Obviously some people enjoy that and they enjoy their community and like I said, that’s totally cool, but it’s not really my scene. So I left Milliande’s community. I never even got to the point of filling out my profile and uploading a userpic. (Although I do follow Milliande on YouTube, she’s very creative and an incredibly nice person. I just don’t fit in with the community that surrounds her.)

So then I joined Willowing’s community because someone over there had made a post about how to convert files from the classes we were all taking between all of these artists into a format that could be put on your iPod and after that I stuck around and watched people chat and read some of the threads and Willowing’s built a nice little community there. But still…it’s a community that focuses on “whimsical art”, which again, is totally cool and I do whimsical art sometimes too, but I can only take seeing so much of it before I want to rebel and paint a coat hanger abortion.

Also, I was totally on board with Willowing and I watched her videos on YouTube but then recently in one video she did something in a painting that I consider cheap and sinful and it just kind of soured me on learning from her. And again, I’m not trying to bash anyone here, I think Willowing is a lovely woman and I like her a lot – she’s genuine, real and caring and I love that about her – I just didn’t like one thing she did and I’m picky so it bothered me. I don’t even want to say what it was because I don’t want to argue about it with anyone. It was just something I would never do in a million years because I think it’s tacky and more importantly not acid-free, not archival and not fade resistant. And it was something that could have just as easily been done with paint, but she cut corners and I hate that.

With that bit of sourness said, Willowing must be an excellent teacher because I saw the student gallery from her first class and just about everyone created beautiful pieces that they should be proud of. If you’re looking to do art journaling, you should consider signing up for her next class which begins June 8th.

So, it was obvious I didn’t really fit in with Willowing’s crowd either, although I’m still a member there, so off I went to Gary Reef’s Ning community to see what was happening there. Well, a LOT is happening there. His is the smallest of the communities I’ve talked about here, but next to Milliande’s, his is probably the most active. In fact, his is so active, I have a hard time keeping up.

First and foremost, I dig Gary. Certain folks had spoken badly of him lto me before I joined his community and none of the things I’d heard have turned out to be true. He’s a nice guy who genuinely loves art – all kinds of art – and his community is run sort of like what I imagine art school to be like. There are monthly challenges, which is where I can’t keep up, like last month for example, was Georgia O’Keefe month and the challenge was to paint like her. Before that it was…crap, I forget. A dude.  Klimt! That’s it!

This month, as I understand it, the challenge is simply to create art every day for 30 days. It should also be noted that Gary teaches classes too, but unlike Suzi and Willowing, he purposely goes for smaller classes because he wants to give his students more one on one time. This is another reason I dig Gary Reef, he doesn’t appear to really be doing this for the money and as I understand it, he’s already a somewhat  recognized artist in the “art world” so he’s not really doing it for the fame either. He’s just doing it, as far as I can tell, because he loves art and he’s a social guy. And that’s awesome!

However…as I said, I can’t keep up with the challenges. I simply do not have the time. They were all doing an artist trading card exchange that I really wanted to be a part of, but again, I couldn’t find the time because of this Hypercube contest. I tried to keep up with the blogs and make friends but aside from the people I already knew from the other communities, I didn’t really feel welcome. I uploaded one painting, the “5 O’Clock Abortion” one (because I thought they’d dig it with Gary & Suzi being basically mortal enemies and that painting was kind of a rip on what Suzi was doing at the time with her “Rodeo Girl” workshop) and where it got rated 4.5 stars by like, 250 people on Suzi’s Ning, it got voted like a 2.5 on Gary’s. Not that I care about ratings necessarily, but it seemed…snobby. And then I got looking around the forums in the community and some of the conversations that were happening were, well, snobby! Like art snobby. And I’m just not into that. I find those conversations amusing, but I don’t want to be a part of them.

While I like Gary and I kinda like his community, I just find it way too intense for me. I want to participate, but I feel like I have to have a PhD in art history to participate in the conversations…and I consider myself very much an outsider artist in that, I know fuckall about art history, I know fuckall about “the masters”, I’ve never been to a museum in my life, I only know like, 5 famous paintings and maybe the same amount of famous painters and to be honest, I kinda want to stay ignorant because I don’t want all of these things that have already been done to influence what I’m doing. (Not that what I do is all that original.) Maybe that’s a bad attitude, I don’t know, but I didn’t go to art school for a reason and Gary’s community feels like art school and I don’t fit in.

So where does that leave me? Well, there’s still Suzi Blu’s Ning right? Well…not so fast. This afternoon my friend Marylin and I sent out a mass e-mail to all of the friends we’d made on Suzi’s Ning over the past (almost) year (50+ for Marylin, 70+ for me) – using Ning’s feature to do so – trying to get support for me with this Hypercube contest, particularly because the contest is about being creative and in my case, that means ART but also because the friends I’ve made there know all about my agoraphobia and my plans to start immersion therapy in the spring and I thought they’d appreciate the update. Also, other women on the site send out mass e-mails to people constantly pimping out their blogs, Etsy shops, giveaways on their websites and hell, in March, my friend KY Kelly sent out a mass e-mail asking her friends to vote for “Shutter Sisters” in a contest where they could win $50,000 for a dream project – and these “Shutter Sisters” weren’t even a part of our community! And no one said ONE WORD about that. I even voted for them and know others did too!

But, several hours after Marylin and I sent out our messages, to OUR FRIENDS about something important that would change my life and the life of my family for the better, Suzi sent out an e-mail to all members of the community saying that we were only allowed to send messages to our friends if it was about one of her classes or about art.

Well, for me that was the last draw. In the winter Suzi dismantled all of the groups people were participating in, essentially destroying the community that was forming on her Ning (honestly, I forget why now) so now there’s not much of a community there anymore aside from the blogs and in the mass e-mail she sent today, which was definitely slanted towards me, she said “I invite u to start your own ning and make videos of yourselves and share your life everyday. Then u can tell your people whatever you want!” The “share your life everyday [sic]” bit, I’m pretty sure, was referring to the blog post I made in the community about how my immersion therapy was going, which Marylin and I linked to in our mass e-mails. So I guess I would interpret that as we’re not supposed to be sharing our lives in our blogs on her site either, only class or art related things.

Suzi’s Ning has been going downhill since early winter and personally, I’ve only been sticking around to get to the end of the “Be Divine” class which seems to be taking forever to conclude. (It started in November and was only supposed to be like a 10 or 12 week course!) I paid good money for that class, I am a student of that class and I’m going to download all of the videos and course materials that I paid for or I’m going to e-mail PayPal for a refund. I have no intentions of taking any more classes from her because I just don’t agree with some of the things she does,  I don’t feel I have anything else to learn from her and there’s little to no community left, so I guess there’s no reason for me to stick around there either. And now I’m not even allowed to send a message to all of my friends there – using Ning’s “send a message to all friends” function to do so – to say goodbye when the “Be Divine” class is over and I leave.

So where does that leave me? Well that leaves me without a Ning community to be a part of. As I said above, I like Gary Reef’s and Willowing’s communities, but at the same time, I feel so burned by my experience with Suzi Blu’s community that I’m reluctant to go in there and make friends and really try to be a part of things. My preference would be to hang with Gary’s crowd, but I just don’t feel like Gary’s crowd wants anything to do with me. Some people were welcoming, but I got the chills from others.

So I guess I’ll just be a lone wolf from now on. I did just fine before without all of these Ning people, I’ll be just fine afterward, I guess. (Although taking a class from Willowing, should she do another that focuses on faces and bodies and animals, isn’t out of the question. I just have no interest in art journaling.)

Some people during the course of this past year have asked me if *I* was planning on starting a Ning community – because quietly, beside Twitter, Ning has become an in thing – and some have even suggested that doing so would be a good idea…but I don’t want to. I don’t have the time to maintain one, for starters, and also, I have nothing to really offer. I’m not qualified to teach a class in anything, I don’t know art history or anything like that. And when people suggested it, they meant a community built around me, like the community of folks I have on Live Journal, but if I already have a community based around my Live Journal and Twitter and Facebook and this site (although the comments don’t really reflect that, bastards!) then what the hell do I need a Ning for?

I dunno. I’m just a little bit sad tonight. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong in Suzi’s community, I just thought I was sending a message to the people who have requested my friendship and with whom I’ve made  connections with. Rather than message them all one at a time, I messaged them all at the same time…which Ning has a function for. I used it as it’s intended and as far as I knew about Suzi’s community guidelines, I wasn’t doing anything wrong because I wasn’t promoting anything that competed with what Suzi does.

But then again, she’s known for changing the rules without warning, so who even knows what’s right or wrong in that community anymore.

Again, I dunno. As I said, I’m fine with being the lone wolf, but I’ve been the lone wolf for most of my life and I really wanted to find a place where creative people would accept me for me and bring me into the fold. But I don’t think I’m going to find that on Ning. I put my toes in the water of several communities, as I said, and it didn’t work out so I guess there’s nothing left for me to do but paint my heart out and keep to myself over here. And who knows? Maybe I’m the asshole here. Maybe I’m the problem and these communities are just fine & dandy. It’s hard to say.

Anyway, sorry for the bummer post. I’ll leave you with pictures of Princess Pixel sneaking a drink from my brush basin last night. (The side she’s drinking from is clean water, the other side is painty water.)

PS. When I make posts on my site, most of the time, unless the post is really picture intensive, I cross-post it to Live Journal and that’s generally where the comments are posted and the conversations take place. I really only post things to my site to either save my Live Journal friends from having 20 million pictures on their friends page and so people who don’t have Live Journals have a place to post comments as well. (My Live Journal is set so that anonymous folks can’t post comments and people who do have Live Journals but who aren’t on my friends list, their comments are screened and I post them manually. This is due to past trolling behaviour.)

I’ve been in a strange mood over the last few days. I know a lot of it has to do with being turned down for the arts grant, which I know shouldn’t get me down, but it did, although at the same time it’s pissed me off and I’ve done nothing but work on canvases ever since.

ART

On Thursday I started the process of making backgrounds for 4 different paintings that will be a series and as of today, I’m finished, and now it’s time to work on the girls that will make up the 6th layer and this is all I’m going to tell  you about them:

• One will be a ballerina on a metallic pink, white and silver background with silver sparkles.
• One will be a princess on a light metallic blue, white and silver background with silver sparkles.
• One will be a flower girl on a metallic white, regular white and silver background with clear, iridescent sparkles.
• One will be a cheerleader on a metallic red, white and gold background with gold and red sparkles.

They are all of these things, but with a twist that I can’t tell you about. It’s a surprise and one that I think the majority of you, especially some of the ladies who come to this site, will really appreciate. ;o) Here are pictures of the backgrounds I took this morning, although I didn’t bother taking one of the flower girl background because the metallic white and sparkles don’t show up until it’s varnished so I didn’t see the point:

These paintings always take me forever because there are literally 5 layers that go into the backgrounds and as a result, there is a lot of waiting around for things to dry, particularly with the 4th layer, the splatter layer, because you wet the canvas down with a spray bottle of water, then you do your splatters on top of the water so they’ll sort of “melt” onto the canvas and you don’t get any hard edges and then you spray it down again to soften the edges of the splatters even more, so by the time you’re done, there’s about 2mm of water sitting on top of the canvas that has to dry naturally (meaning no hair dryer). That can take anywhere from overnight to dry, if I put them in front of the furnace, to 2 days or more to dry if it’s in the middle of the summer and humid.

So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. I’m not going to do all 4 at the same time from here on out because…well because I only have one pad of watercolour paper and each piece of paper yields 2 girls, so I have to finish the first 2 girls before I start the next 2 and if I’m going to finish the first 2, I might as well gel them onto the canvas and just finish the first two paintings before moving on to the next, especially since I have to flatten the girls with books as they dry on the canvas, so while that’s happening, I can work on the next 2 girls. It’s a process y’see.

CAMMITYJANE

I am aware of the fact that this project has yet to begin publicly. No one’s been bugging me about starting or anything, I just kind of had my own deadline as to when it should begin and I’m behind schedule. I wanted a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at what had been posted in 2006, so Blake photocopied my hard copy and we mailed it to my friend Marylin in Hamilton, who is also a writer. She should get it in a few days, then it’ll take her a few days to read it, I’m guessing and then it’ll take me a day or two to fill her in on the ending Blake helped me hammer out last weekend and then she can better give advice as to what should take place in the middle, which is what I’m stuck on.

Anyway, the way I see it is, this extra time gives you all a chance to sign up for Live Journal and add CammityJane as a friend for when the whole thing begins. If you’re unsure as to what CammityJane is, read the user info. It’s just this silly bit of fiction that I started working on in 2006 and I’ve decided to start working on again. You don’t really need a Live Journal to follow it, but it does make things easier.

PIXEL CAT

Sunday night Pixel Cat came home after being “missing” for 5 or 6 days. By “missing” I mean, we knew exactly where she was, she never leaves the boundaries of our yard and the neighbour’s yard and when she disappears for days at a time, she sleeps in these old sheds 2 doors down in the side yard of a condemned house. Now, she’s only disappeared for days at a time for one reason: Lucky. Specifically, Lucky wearing the cone of shame. I think it scares her.

Every other night or so that she was “missing” she’d run across the roof of my office and perch on the fence that’s off to the side of our patio stones, rubbing her cheek against the corner of the roof and generally doing that squirrely, loving cat thing. But of course when I came near her, she’d either climb back on the roof or jump down and run across the yard. She’s definitely a cat who will come in when she wants to.

So I figured whatever, she’ll come home when she gets hungry enough and Sunday night she pretty much did. She was on the fence doing the squirrely kitty act and I wasn’t buying it. I kept calling her, trying to coax her down, but she, being the princess type she is, decided to ignore me and when I took a step forward she jumped down and returned to doing the squirrely kitty thing next to the fence, well out of my reach.

Hoover Dog was standing behind me (I was half in the house and half outside the door), so I said, “Hoover, go bring her in,” and let him out. He walked out and she immediately scrambled to his side, rubbing up against his legs because the two of them truly are buddies. She even continued this while he took a whizz haha

When he was finished, I called him over to me and Pixel trotted along behind him, so then it was just a matter of picking her up, which I did and I carried her back in the house where she immediately scrambled out of my arms and into the kitchen where her food is.

I think she only came in because she was hungry and she’d used her kitty senses to know that it was going to know 3 inches the next day.

Anyway, she’s been sleeping practically constantly ever since, usually on my desk, well away from Lucky and his scary cone of shame:

HYPERCUBE

So, tomorrow (I think) I find out if I’ve made the top 500 in the contest who get to use a blank canvas on the hypercube website to garner your votes and be judged by…well, a panel of judges. And let me tell you, I AM NERVOUS. At first I felt fairly confident that I could make the top 500, but during the past week or so two things have happened:

1. The @hypercube lady has pretty much started to ignore me. :o( (To be fair, she has about 1800 people to keep track of on Twitter.)
2. People have been making crazy videos and animations and stuff that is completely outside of my skill set. I can’t compete with that.
3. I seem to be on the older end of the contestant pool and I get the feeling they want younger people driving these Cubes.

Thus, I’m nervous. :o/ Then again, I’m a paranoid person who’s not comfortable with surprises and “the unknown” so I’m just going to swallow these feelings and keep on keepin’ on, cross my fingers and see what happens.

In the meantime, here’s the second last batch of fansigns:

Moriah from the US <3s me and wants me to have a Cube.

So does Marylin from Hamilton.

And Rob from Toronto-ish.

And last but certainly not least:

Erica is a giant nerd. :oD

So that’s it for this post I think. Time to find food and veg out for the rest of the day (yeah like that’ll happen). And with that, I leave you with some Pixies: