So, I mean, I’ve been around…I just haven’t been updating with anything of too much importance or excitement or anything and this post is really no different, but I figured I’d tell you all what I’ve been up to.

Mostly I’ve just been keeping my nose to the ground and trying to win this contest over at Camwhores where I can win Blake a pretty cherry new laptop, which he could really use because his laptop’s basically held together with duct tape. That’s why I’ve been going so hard with the Camwhores posts, but don’t worry, at the end of the month I’ll stop pushing as hard as I am right now.

There’s also the fact that right now I’m #1 on the site (I could be #2 by now, I haven’t checked – Kaitlyn looked poised to overtake me last I looked) which means I can do shows every 3 days instead of every 7 days and I’m really trying to make the most of that as my Camwhores earning potential decreases in the summer months because the kids are home from school. And the truth of the matter is, the proceeds from this week’s hardcore camming is primarily for the kids, so I have cash money in my wallet to send them to McDonald’s for ice cream or so I can send Madison to the store on her bike to get the ingredients for pizza or so we have the money to get subs for dinner and eat them on the beach after Blake gets home from work or so, if Madison needs $20 worth of fabric to create something with her sewing machine, I can give it to her. So I can buy my kid Lunapads when she has her first period. Blake’s income has no room for things like this, but mine does, so I’m trying to make the most of it right now. Tips are appreciated, by the way.

So that’s the deal with Camwhores. That and I’ve been having a lot of fun over there as I tend to always do. And you probably would too. I’ll shut up now.

In other news, I have a garden. A garden that seems to be filling in nicely. These pictures were taken last week and it started raining on me today or I would have gone out and taken new pictures because the lettuce is starting to come up.

Beans!

Peas!

The whole shebang!

The tomato vines are getting pretty unruly, so the plan for today is to tie them to the cages as opposed to staking them, just to get them up off the ground. The stalks of the pepper plants are turning kinda woody at the bottom and the plants are getting big, which is good. The ones at the back are still a liiiiittle piddly though, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do about it. Peppers need a long, hot growing season and for the past week or so, it’s actually been kinda cold. Last week I even wussed out and turned on the furnace for a day because it was only 12 degrees (C).

We’ve also had a lot of rain, which means the peas and beans are almost twice the size they are in these pics and next paycheque (next weekend), we have to find some way to give the peas something to climb up on that’s CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. My suggestion was to get a piece of wood lattice the length of the garden and just stick that in the ground but I’m not sure how much that costs or how feasible it is. We’ll figure something out. There are wire “pea fences” you can buy, but the ones I saw in the Vesey’s catalogue were like, over $50 and I’d need 2 of them so screw that.

I haven’t even looked at the herbs I have growing in pots on the porch, so I have no idea what they’re doing and truth be told, I kinda forget what I planted (thyme & rosemary?). Oops. The front garden is filling in nicely in the parts that were established last year but the part where we cut the sod earlier in the spring is taking its sweet assed time. The filled-in part already has a metric fuck tonne of blooming bachelor’s buttons and the cosmos are about ankle high. The part we sod cut? So far all I see growing in there is more goddamn GRASS despite planting literally LBS of bb & cosmo seeds there. Hopefully with the rain we got this week and the heat we’re supposed to get next week, those seeds will start growing.

I am pausing this post because an oldschool song just came on my iTunes that I feel I need to share because to me, it’s such a summer song. This band (Chaka Demus & Pliers) has another song I like called “Tease Me”, which I’ll also embed:

Okay I’ll stop being random now. I’m gonna guess that Dirty will be the only person on my LJ friends list to appreciate those two videos haha

ANYWAY…

I’ve been making art. Quite a bit of art actually, I’ve been fairly productive over the past two weeks or so. I have two paintings almost finished, a new one started and I’m painting a very mysterious sign that’s going to hang beside my front dor which I will reveal as soon as it’s ready.

So here’s what I’m working on right now. This is the turquoise version of “Love Fairy” that of course needs arms, but don’t they fucking all…*grumble*….I haaaaate dong arms….anyway, here she is (and she should have been finished two weeks ago but I got sidetracked by too many things – oops):

The turquoise love fairy or “Love Fairy II”, as I’ve been calling her, is exactly the same as the original, using confetti glitter as opposed to rounded glitter, the only difference is her palette and her lips are bigger than the pink one’s. All she needs to be complete is definition of her wings using white metallic paint, arms of course, a wand, my signature and a 2 coats of varnish, all of which I should be able to make happen this week if I stop procrastinating. (Or as Jackie says, “procrasturbating” lulz.)

Also on my coffee table is “Shimmer II”. The original “Shimmer” had a kid-related accident and can no longer be sold. I’m still gonna hang her in my house, but she’s got some cracks now and she just can’t be sold, so I’m painting a new one.  Because I can’t really paint the same girl twice, despite it looking like they’re all basically the same, “Shimmer II” and “Shimmer” actually look quite different and since I sold “Shine” last week and the triad (?) is no longer complete, I’m debating as to whether or not I should actually write “Shimmer” across the top like the original or if I should just leave it plain. What do you think?

With “Shimmer II” there are quite a few differences between her and the original, some intentional, some not. First of all, her background is a lot more turquoise than the original and that’s basically because I’ve forgotten how to do backgrounds the way I was doing them a year ago. That’s another strike, I think, in the column for not writing “Shimmer” across the top because she no longer fits with the other 2 paintings in her series because of the different backgrounds. If you were to hang all 3 side by side, you could tel that “Shimmer II” was painted at a different time.

Also, I fucked up her hair, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late. The original “Shimmer”‘s hair was a custom mix of champagne gold and metallic white so it would look more sun-bleached and I forgot to do that with “Shimmer II”. You guys would never be able to tell the difference by pictures, but putting them side by side in person, you can tell.

If you look at the original “Shimmer”, you can see that her boobs are a lot more, hmmm, is “siliconey” a word? With “Shimmer II” I tried to make them a more realistic shape for someone who’s never worn a bra in her life. She will, of course, have jewels for nipples, but I can’t do that until I give the poor girl some arms. After she has arms, all she needs is my signature and 2 coats of varnish and she’s done, but I’m still really torn on the “Shimmer” issue. Seriously, do you think I should write “Shimmer” across the top or should I treat her like a whole new painting? This is why I’ve been procrastinating on getting her done, I just don’t know what to do. I’m leaning towards not putting it and just leaving her plain, but I just don’t know.

And like I needed to start another painting…but inspiration struck…here’s what I’m calling “She’s Like a Rainbow”, inspired by my internet friend Megan who just had her hair dyed this way:

She doesn’t even have a dress yet (and I don’t have one in mind) or a canvas prepped (which I usually do first but with the other 2 on my coffee table, I don’t have room!) so I’m not really sure what I’m doing with her at the moment, but there she is all the same. All I know is that she will probably have a purple bindi jewel on her forehead and her dress is going to be of the petticoat variety, although I don’t have any papers in mind yet.

Annnnnnd last but not least, I’m working on a sign for the front door of my office (which acts as the “front door” of our house, even though it isn’t actually our front door) and this project is priority #1 right now. In fact, as soon as I’m finished with this post, I’m probably going to finish watching The Runaways (is it just me or is this movie really really ungood?) and work on this sign. What the sign is going to say is top secret for now, but it’s something you’ve all heard me say (or write) a thousand times before so it should come as no surprise to most of you. It is also going to be the first of probably 3 signs that will hang next to my front door. So, saying all of that, I’ll show you the girl I made for it, tell you that it’s on wood as opposed to canvas and leave it at that:

Lettering always makes me nervous, so I’ve been practicing on paper first and it will be the absolute last thing I do on the sign. Really all that’s left to do is her dress, which will take like, 10 minutes tops, and then the lettering which I know is going to be metallic red, possibly with a black outline…I haven’t decided yet.  Part of me thinks the outline will look really awesome, part of me is thinking “why make it more complicated than it needs to be when you suck at lettering to begin with?” So we’ll see.

So as you can see, when I haven’t been whoring it up on Camwhores this month, I’ve been pretty busy creating and the rest of this month is dedicated to actually finishing. I signed myself up for The Square Foot Show, which is August 21st-September 5th at AWOL Gallery in Toronto but I have no idea what I’m going to enter yet. The original plan was “Sparkle”, “Shimmer” & “Shine” and they were painted expressly for that purpose last summer, but things happened and I didn’t do it last summer and now “Shine” is sold and the original “Shimmer” is damaged, so all that really remains is “Sparkle” sooooooo I’m just going to work my tail off creating from now until the drop-off date (August 10th) and just see what I come up with, then pick 3 to put in the show and that’ll be that.

The shitty thing about The Square Foot Show, which I know I talked about last year, is that you have to pay a $20 fee to get your work in, first of all, and then they sell your paintings for $224 each – which is fine since that’s only $4 more than I usually charge if you don’t count the exchange rate – but then AWOL Gallery takes 50%. And that sucks. But that’s apparently how galleries work and according to the people who give out Ontario Art Council grants, you’re not a real artist unless you show your work in galleries, so that’s the price I guess I have to pay. *shrug* I’ve decided that if I get turned down for another grant next year, I won’t be applying again and will just focus on building my business myself through Etsy. So far I think I’m doing pretty good, my only hang up is that I don’t get the work done fast enough and because of that, my shop is a little bare right now, as far as variety. All summer my focus is going to be 12×12 inch paintings, which is the size I prefer to work in, but I plan on doing some works on wood in the fall, as well as getting back to ACEOs since people seem to like those. (Although I wish people would buy up the ones I’ve already made! I have red & gold, black & gold, green & gold and purple & gold!)

Anyway, that’s what’s what. Blake is up now and I think we’re going to have breakfast sooooo I’m going to stop writing now and pay attention to my family. Hope you’re all having a great weekend and the rain’s not gettin’ ya down!

PS. True Blood tonight! w00t!

I know I’m layin’ it on a little thick with the Camwhores pimpage this month, but there’s a reason for it which I’m not allowed to get into. Let’s just say that if you sign up for a membership this month using my affiliate link (any CW link on my site), no matter how long that membership is for, it helps me out.

Anyway, I wanted to introduce you to a girl who is quickly becoming my favourite Camwhore because she’s beautiful and smart and just plain awesome and I think you’ll like her too, so I am pleased to introduce to you: JadeRox

She reminds me so much of how camgirls used to be back in the day that I’m just kind of in awe of her. She’s MASSIVELY into video games and is a total nerd and her thinking and wit are so sharp that she just leaves me impressed every time I talk to her or see her chatting on tag or posting in the forums. She’s just the real deal and I <3 her lots & lots. Like, literally, she’s the girl I wish I could be.

Anyway, I just wanted to to introduce her to you in case you were unaware of her and to encourage you to come chat with both of us on Camwhores because that’s where all the fun is!

Tonight @ 10:50pm EST I will be doing a live streaming cam show at Camwhores.com where you have to be a member to watch. To become a member, and help me out in the process, click here! As far as I’m aware, 3 day memberships are available if you just wanted to watch the one show. Can’t make it? No problem, the show will remain in the site’s archives for as long as I’m a member. :o)

The description I put for the show on the site is as follows: “All I know is that there will be a feather bra and red, ruffled booty shorts involved. And probably a whooooole lotta m-m-masturbation.“

Hope to see you there!

I know. I make a lot of posts that stem from watching Oprah. The thing is, I’ve been watching Oprah every day since I was about 5 years old and it’s what’s on at 4 o’clock, which is usually when I do most of my painting. Anyway, this post is no different and has been brewing in my brain since last month when Oprah interviewed 4 different child molesters. The interview is here if you care to watch it yourself. I thought it was pretty eye-opening stuff.

What caught me off guard about the interview was the one guy who was only a few years older than his victim and how he groomed her to finally consent to having sex with him. That’s right, consent.  Because that’s what happens, child molesters groom their victims slowly, over time, taking things a step further each time until ideally, the victim consents to what they ultimately want and what struck me about this particular story is that it mimicked that of my own.

I’ve written about this before in my Live Journal but I can’t remember if it was friends only or not. When I was about 5 years old, my cousin, who was about 6 years older than me, slept over with me at my great grandma’s house and we slept in the same bed. I was in love with this cousin and I see now that a large part of that was because he groomed me to love him and it wasn’t love in a platonic way. I thought I was going to grow up and marry him. Well this one night, after many days and nights of things getting slowly to this point, we were in the same bed and he pulled down his pants and asked me to stroke his penis and I did and I was surprised when it got hard because I was 5 and didn’t really know penises could do that. As I stroked his penis, and he instructed me on how to do it properly, he stroked my vagina through my underwear (I was wearing a nightie). Then he stopped but told me to continue and he kind of held me in an embrace with my arm between myself and his chest. That’s when my grandma peeked in on us and thought it was so cute that we were hugging that she actually said “awwwww” out loud. Little did she know what was going on under the covers. She closed the door and went back to the living room where she was sleeping on the couch.

I felt uncomfortable touching my cousin’s penis. No one had ever told me that things like this were wrong, I barely knew were babies came from at that point, but somehow I instinctively knew it was wrong so I said to him, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and he said okay, let go of me and pulled his pants back up. Then I rolled over and pretended to sleep and he rolled over too and jerked himself off, although I didn’t realize what he was doing until a long time after.

Other things with this cousin happened too, but I’ve repressed those memories. In fact what I just said above was repressed until I was about 22 and it came out in therapy. I’m glad I don’t remember everything that happened except for that night because if I did, I’d probably track him down and kill him because what he did to me set the stage for a lot of other things that have happened in my life.

Shortly after that night, my step-dad started suspecting that something wasn’t right with our relationship and suddenly there was a new rule in place that I was never to be alone with that cousin anymore. He told me years later that he walked in on something at a family gathering, but he would never tell me what it was.

And that’s why the interview Oprah did with these pedophiles kind of shocked me because the one who was only a few years older than his victim was telling my story, only from the other side and if my step-dad hadn’t instituted the rule that I was never to be alone with this cousin, it’s hard to say how far things may have gone.

Later in my life, when I was older, after my parents split up, I was left alone with this cousin again and while he never touched me again, nor me him, he would tell me about explicit sex he either fantasized about or had had himself. I remember one of these conversations quite clearly when I was 11 and again when I was 15. Both times I was extremely uncomfortable with the things he was saying because both times the way he said them were open and suggestive, where if I showed any interest whatsoever in these stories, I’m almost positive he would have molested me again.

People wonder why I abandoned that side of my family and that’s the reason why. If my Aunt, who I love dearly and who I think is the sweetest woman in the world, ever knew what really happened, I don’t know what she’d do. Going to family events after that one repressed memory came to light became impossible because he was there and looking at him, being in the same room as him, made me feel sick to my stomach. So I stopped going to family functions and I took a lot of shit for that from all sides of the family. Finally one day, after being berated for not going to an Xmas event my grandma was hosting, I told her the gist of what he had done to me and she told me I was a liar. Later on she decided to believe me, but it was her opinion that I confront him and she thought I should do so AT THE FUCKING XMAS TABLE IN FRONT OF EVERYONE. The shrink I was seeing at the time (okay, he was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist) thought that was a horrible idea and that my original thoughts of avoidance were probably best. I told my grandma this and she finally shut up, but about 6 months later she had a yard sale where my Aunt (my cousin’s mother, obviously) and my other cousin had things in it and were working it and when I came out to say hi, my Aunt didn’t really talk to me and my cousin was flat out mean to me. This tells me that my grandma probably told my cousin (the cousin who molested me’s older brother) some or all of what I remembered and he didn’t believe me either and that there was a very good chance that he told his mother and that’s why she could barely look at me.

We moved away that summer and I haven’t spoken to anyone on that side of the family since. That was almost 5 years ago and I don’t plan on ever going back, I will not be attending funerals for that side of the family as they happen.

My mom knows about the bits I remember and she has said on the few occasions where we’ve talked about it, “are you sure it wasn’t just ‘kissing cousins’, are you positive?” and for a while I wasn’t sure. I mean, he was definitely old enough to know better but it was hard to say because at the time, he was a kid himself. But he wasn’t a kid when he was being suggestive with me years and years later, the last sexual interaction I had with him, which was just a lot of very suggestive talk, was when I was 15 and fresh out of the psych ward after my second suicide attempt. He would have been 21. You can’t tell me that isn’t old enough to know better and we were alone in a park. If I had said one word that might have suggested to him that I was game for any kind of sexual play, there is no doubt in my mind he would have gone for it. He was testing the waters, just as he was testing the waters a few years prior with the same kind of talk.

And after watching the Oprah interview and really, finally understanding how the grooming process works and hearing this man’s story of his relationship with his victim, there is no doubt in my mind that what my cousin was doing to me, practically my whole life, was trying to groom me the way the man behind bars groomed his victim. The things he said about how it happened bit by bit were almost identical to my cousin and I.

But then, my cousin wasn’t my only molester and for the longest time I thought that maybe I was just a slutty kid or something to have it happen twice (plus a rape when I was 14) but the Oprah interview made me realize that that wasn’t the case. What was the case, is that I was the kind of kid who molesters targeted. They don’t target kids who won’t scream or say “no”. They don’t target kids who have good relationships with their parents. They target kids who are left alone a lot, which I was, and kids who comes from broken homes, which I did. They target kids with low self-esteem, which I had, and they target kids whose parents wouldn’t believe them if they told and mine wouldn’t. In fact with my second molester, my mother has flat out told me that I was a liar.

My second molester was our next door neighbour, Vince, when we lived in the house in Greenbank and he didn’t just molest me, he molested my friend Heather too and the other neighbourhood girls talked about him and told each other to stay away from him.

But he was nice to me, at a time when my parents weren’t, when they were even around. After school I came home to an empty house and I was lonely and bored, so sometimes I’d go over to the workshop in Vince’s backyard to see what he was working on. He made those wooden whirligigs that people put on their lawns, you know the type, they’re of Snoopy or a flamingo and they have legs that spin when it’s windy.

He would give me pop bottles to take back to the store, which was only one house away from mine and that’s how it all started out. Eventually he would only give me the pop bottles if I sat on his lap. And then it escalated to no pop bottles, but spare change to take to the store, but only if he could put it in my pocket himself, either my pants pocket where he’d grope, or my breast pocket where he’d also grope. And finally I would only get the change or pop bottles if I looked at pornographic magazines with him for a few minutes and that’s when I stopped going over there because in my 10 year old head, for some reason that triggered warning bells.

And with Vince, usually I would go over there and be thinking “okay maybe this time he won’t do it,” because sometimes he didn’t. Usually when he did it, I think he’d been drinking.

After he started showing me the magazines, I would only go over to see him only if my mom or my mom’s boyfriend were going over there. When I told my mom years later that he was a kiddie diddler (and he did much worse things to my friend Heather and possibly to other girls too), my mom told me I was full of shit. I don’t know what she believes now, but I would tell this story with my hand on a stack of bibles if I thought it would make a difference.

My cousin set me up. He set me up to be molested by Vince and he set me up for what’s been a lifetime of sexual dysfunction. And again, watching the Oprah interview with these child molesters, the story of Vince and I was in there too and for the first time in my life, I realized that in both cases I was the victim and that I wasn’t to blame. I’ve always said my whole life that I didn’t feel like I was getting the blame, but that was a lie. My family shunned me when it came out about my cousin and my mom called me a liar when it came out about Vince. That’s victim blaming and when other people are blaming you, it’s hard not to start blaming yourself as well, so I did. Until the Oprah interview. Until I understood the mechanics of both of these relationships, if that’s what they are to be called.

Anyway, my point in writing this is not to have a pity party for my loss of innocence, but to say to all the parents out there, watch the interview, see how it all works and then make sure that you have the kind of relationship with your kids that makes them undesirable victims in the first place because that seems to be the key in keeping them safe.

And I guess that’s all I have to say.

Super old cam pic from when I made hundreds of wax paper hearts for mobiles that I put up over our windows for Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day has always been one of my favourite holidays, even though these days I don’t do a whole lot for it. In past years, I’ve been known to do special creative projects for the holiday, such as the mobile pictured above, or I’ve sent out Valentines to my online friends, but as I’ve gotten older (and poorer and busier)  these things have fallen by the wayside. That’s okay though, because I know it won’t always be like this and I’ll be able to do more in future years. (Kind of like my attitude toward Halloween. I want to be one of those families that decorates their house and gives out awesome candy but alas, we don’t get any trick-or-treaters where we are and couldn’t afford to do it even if we did.)

Anyway, Blake & I aren’t doing anything special today, especially because he, Wes & I seem to have a particularly nasty stomach bug of some kind and our bathroom has practically had a revolving door all weekend.

Valentine’s Day means two things, however. It means that there’s only two weeks until my birthday and everyone should get me lots & lots of presents and it also means that there’s one month until Steak & Blowjob Day. Since my article on giving head is linked on the Steak & BJ Day website, it means that my site is currently getting twice the traffic it normally gets and by the time the actual holiday rolls around, my traffic will have tripled. That’s a whole lot of new people around here reading my crap! So hello new people! Welcome to Sunnyland! Glad to have ya. :o)

Another thing Valentine’s Day means, to me and some of my friends at least, is that it’s Love Your Vulva day, or V-Day for short, something that we’ve been celebrating all month over at Buttercup. Buttercup’s actually been pretty hoppin’ all month, you should pop over there and check it out. So far this month we’ve had articles on VDay.org, Katie’s sexually repressed upbringing, how chicks dig porn, Blake’s experiences growing up in a penis-centric world, an article on our featured site, Camwhores.com, an article on vulva art, phenomenal woman, Holly Hughes, who you’ve probably never heard of but probably should, and finally an article by Jade about some of the strangest vulva-centric products we’ve ever seen – with much more to come during the rest of the month! We’ve also added two new groups to the mix. S/he is a group about sexism and so far the conversations have been really interesting and enlightening and we also added a group for sports, which needs a better name than “Sports”, so if you have any ideas on that, we’d love to hear them! Along with the new groups, we’ve also redesigned the front page a little bit and we have plans to redesign it further for next month. Lots of changes thanks to the feedback we got from the Buttercup community at the end of January! Thanks readers!

So, things over at Buttercup are doing good. You should take a peek if you get the chance. :o)

I realize this month I’ve been fairly quiet as far as blog posts go and there are a million reasons for that, namely preparing for and celebrating Wes’ 7th birthday, but also I’ve been hard at work painting ACEOs for my Etsy shop since art is pretty much all I can do when I’m in the kind of pain I’ve been in for the past couple of weeks due to endometriosis issues. I plan on doing nothing but working on ACEOs until this batch is finished because so far, they’ve proven to be pretty popular items in my Etsy shop, having sold half of the first batch I put up 2 weeks ago with the other half getting plenty of views. This first batch that I put up was of gold & black and purple & gold cards and right now all that’s left is the gold ones. The ones I’m working on are more purple & gold ones, some green & gold ones and a whole bunch of red & gold ones. I’ll, of course, make a post when this batch is ready and up on Etsy. In the meantime, you should take a look at the gold & black ones I have up there currently as I think they turned out rather well and hey, these things are supposed to be collectible, so if you buy a gold & black one this month, there’s no reason you can’t buy a red & gold one next month! *cough*

As I’m reading the Etsy forums, I’m learning that ideally what you’re supposed to do is market to people outside of Etsy and bring them into your shop. For that reason, I spent yesterday afternoon designing Moo cards with my artwork on the front of them and my website addresses on the back to include a couple with Etsy orders. By including more than one, it means the buyer will probably keep one and potentially give the other one(s) to friends. I’m also working on getting the funds for another promotional item, which I’ll write more about after I have the money to order them and actually send them out to people. If all goes as planned though, they’re pretty cool – or at least I think so – plus they have sentimental value, which again, I’ll write more about when I actually have them in my possession. (I’m only 1 ACEO sale away from being able to order them!)

And I guess that’s all I really have to say at the moment. It’s been a busy month and it’s going to continue to be busy. My neighbour’s daughter, Ashley, is due to have her baby any day now, so since my neighbour (Judy) doesn’t have a camera, I’ve lent her mine and that’s why there haven’t been pictures of anything in my recent posts. Ashley was actually due like, 4 or 5 days ago, so she could literally pop any day now and I should get my camera back soon.

Okay, I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day! I’m off to watch the Olympics and work on these ACEOs.

I’m exhausted, I don’t even know why I’m writing this.

This morning I had to get up early so we could be in Toronto for my 11:30am post-op appointment with the endometriosis specialist who did my surgery in August. Getting up early kinda sucked because I had trouble sleeping the night before, but it was free hashbrown day at Tim Horton’s if you bought a breakfast sandwich and their bacon & egg breakfast biscuits are soooooooo good and I hadn’t had one in about 6 months. So at least the day started off okay despite the suckage of early rising.

It took us forever to get to the Dr.’s office because of construction but we finally got there and I barely even got to sit down in the waiting room before they called my name.

First, here’s the post-op report (most of which I don’t understand) and then I’ll get into what the resident told me about the surgery:

Page 3 just says that the anesthesia was reversed and I was taken to the recovery room.

So long story short on the post-op report is that things were pretty fucked up in there, in fact the resident said flat out it was the worst he’s ever seen (no idea how long he’s been a resident). There was endo on and in my bowels, colon and bladder…just, as you can read, everywhere. What was interesting though is that they cut some nerves in there somewhere without asking me beforehand if I was okay with that. I am okay with that, but I find it a little strange that this part of the surgery wasn’t explained to me in the beginning. The resident who was explaining how the surgery went mentioned it (I forget what it’s called and I’ve stopped trying to make sense of the above report) and said it like I knew what he was talking about. When I said no, Dr. Leyland didn’t explain that to me beforehand, he looked a little embarrassed and explained that they cut these nerves in there so that when the endo grows back, which it inevitably will, I shouldn’t be in as much pain and in the meantime, my periods should be less painful both with the removal of all the disease they could find and these severed nerves, but that it could take 3-6 months for the effect to kick in. (I don’t know why.)

But of course, they don’t want the disease to grow at the rate it had been over the past 8 years, so to slow the growth I’m on a birth control pill continuously for 3 months, then I’ll have a period, go back on the pill for 3 months and repeat for a year. Then they want me to come back. If the pill doesn’t lessen the pain of my periods, they’re going to try an IUD that secretes the same(ish?) kind of hormones as the birth control pill but in different amounts.

All in all, I’m optimistic. I got emotional in the car when we left because already I’ve been able to do a few things that I haven’t been able to do for a long time because I’ve always been in too much pain, like dance around my house.

On the way home, Blake asked if I minded if we stopped off at his work because he had to change some data tapes and he said it would only take 10 minutes. I asked him what was in it for me and he asked what I wanted and I decided on a cherry slush from Dairy Queen. So he went into the mall and into work (his work is the top floor of a mall) while I baked in the car and tweeted like a crazy person and came up with the most brilliant idea ever which I shared with him when he finally came out with my slush: we had enough time to spend an hour & a half at the beach before the kids got home from school.

So that’s what we did. We got home, got our pool noodles, towels and swimming attire and headed off to Wasaga Beach, which is about 10 minutes from our house and, as I’ve maybe mentioned before, is like, the longest fresh water beach in the world. I took this pic with my phone and sent it to Twitter:

We walked out into the water, which was cold, but felt soooooo good after being in the hot car all day and floated there, just talking about random stuff for about an hour and then we got cold so we decided to get out and go to the grocery store to grab some stuff for dinner. That’s one of the cool things about Wasaga Beach, you can walk into the grocery store with wet hair and a damp towel wrapped around you and no one really cares.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’m addicted right now to these shishkabobs they sell at the meat section of a certain chain of grocery stores and that’s what we intended to get but instead, we got these steaks that were marinated in the same stuff as the shishkabobs (which I think may contain crack). We said hi to Wayne, who works at the grocery store, then we got in the car and went home.

There was still about 15 minutes until the kids were going to be home from school so Blake and I HAD THE MARITAL RELATIONS IN THE DAY TIME and then the kids came home and we bragged about going to the beach. they were not pleased with us.

Then I went over & hung out with my neighbour Judy for a bit while Blake made dinner. The marinated steaks were okay, nowhere near as awesome as the shishkabobs, but still pretty good and Blake also did garlic butter potatoes on the BBQ so dinner was more or less amazing.

Thennnnnnnnn nothing happened, we just screwed around online and bugged the children and I watched Deal or No Deal with Wayne and then it was time to come back home to watch the season premiere of 90210 and now here I sit writing this post.

So as the title says, today was a pretty good day. Tomorrow I can sleep in, maybe get some painting done and watch a few movies and then it’s the weekend! Yay!

THE END.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blake water skiing.

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

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

Anyway, onto analytics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goodnight!

1. Suicide Girls Do Fight Club (interesting since they’re named for a Palahniuk book, Survivor, I think)

2. “Rap Chop”

ENJOY!

Backstory: I got my first period when I was 9, but it was super irregular until I was about 13.  I was 11 when the pain started, though. I remember my mom taking me to the doctor and me showing him exactly where it hurt because the night before I couldn’t sleep because of the pain and circled, with pen, exactly where it hurt, which I now know to be the general area of my left ovary.

My doctor assumed I was constipated and gave me a suppository.

Well I wasn’t constipated and the suppository obviously did nothing and a month later we were back at the doctor’s as I had missed approximately 2 weeks of the month of school due to this pain I was having. My doctor decided that I was just having painful, irregular periods and put me on a low dose birth control pill called Marvelon, which I would then be on for the next 11 years. Along with prescribing the pill, he subtly suggested that perhaps my pain was psychosomatic or that I was exaggerating it to get out of school.

Well, the pill did nothing as far as pain and since no one was believing me I suffered alone in my room and bought my own Tylenol and Advil at the corner store in my little town with money I stole from my mom’s wallet and kept it in my bag and eventually my locker. I popped that shit like candy. What I didn’t know at the time, because I was still a kid, the internet had barely been invented (and I didn’t have a computer) and the libraries were surprisingly bare of books on painful menstruation, is that using tampons was probably not the best choice of menstrual product as they were, in fact, making my pain worse.

When I was 14, back to the doctor I went. My periods were regular by this point and it was obvious that there was a co-relation between my periods, ovulation and the pain I was having, which was increasing in intensity.

My doctor gave me a prescription for Tylenol 3. Thirty of them every month with 12 repeats, which admittedly I abused like crazy.

When I was 15, back I went again because my Tylenol 3 repeats had run out and somewhere along the line, someone had said the word “endometriosis”, which I looked up at the library and it seemed to me that it was likely that this was what had been causing me pain for the last 5 years.  So I brought up this possibility to my doctor and he said “that might make sense” and told me to take my birth control pills back to back, with no breaks for a period, for a year to see if things got any better.

Well, all that really did was make the pain less predictable and after about 8 or 10 months of that, I went back to my doctor and said this treatment is bullshit, send me to an OB/GYN, which he did.

Her name was Dr. Peters and she worked out of Markham-Stouffville Hospital, which was a fairly new hospital. She agreed that endometriosis was likely and that she wanted to do a laparoscopy to confirm it.

While she was doing the laparoscopy, she said that if endometriosis was found, she’d use a tool to cauterize it.

I had just turned 16 when I had the first laparoscopy wher yes, endometriosis was found, a lot of it in fact, and Dr. Peters cauterized about 40% of it because that’s all she had time for. She said that my uterus was stuck to the back wall of my pelvic cavity by adhesions (caused by the endometriosis) and that one of my ovaries was stuck to the side of my uterus.

The plan was to continue on the birth control pills without any breaks for a period and another laparoscopy a year later to remove the rest of the lesions.

Now, one of the treatments for endometriosis are drugs to put your body into a state of temporary menopause (for 6 months) and the main drugs used are called Danazol, which has wicked side effects like major weight gain, facial hair, acne and a deepening of one’s voice, not to mention hot flashes and depression and Lupron which has many of the same side effects, although not as bad, except with Lupron you have the added side effect of bone mineral density loss and with my family’s history of osteoporosis Imy dad & I didn’t think it was a good idea to put my body through all of that, hence the second surgery instead.

So when I was 17, almost exactly one year after the first surgery, I had my second and to my doctor’s surprise the 40% of the endometriosis she had removed the year before had grown back completely “and then some” so she did her best to remove what she could in the alotted operating room time and during my follow up appointment she and I had a serious talk about infertility as I had two strikes against me.

First of all, I had the endometriosis, but secondly the cauterization causes scar tissue and since I had endometriosis in delicate places such as my ovaries (and the outside of my bladder and bowels, which were inoperable as it would potentially cause more damage than the endo) I was looking at being completely infertile before my 20′s. Long story short, at 17 I had a hard decision to make, either have a child early (way early) or risk not being able to have them at all. I chose to conceive and had my daughter when I was 19 because it took that long to conceive.

The endometriosis, as far as I could tell, stayed dormant while I was pregnant with her and theoretically that bought me some fertility time. I was pain free and could even use tampons for about a year or two after having her but then things started to get painful again and when I was 22, I found myself back in Dr. Peters’ office discussing my 3rd laparoscopy.

The 3rd one went well and I attribute it to being able to conceive my son. Unfortunately when I was pregnant with him, the endometriosis didn’t stay dormant as it had with my daughter and the pregnancy was much more difficult as a result. After he was born and my periods resumed they just got more and more painful every month.

Present: Now I’m 30, it’s been 8 years since my last surgery and I’m in absolute agony during my period, mild agony during ovulation and in general pain for the majority of the rest of the month. I can only have sex about once a month because I’m only pain-free for a few days out of the month, otherwise sex causes me immense pain not only during but for up  to 3 days after.

I haven’t used a tampon in over 6 years because it hurts so much and things are so tight getting one in would be quite the chore and keeping one in would be next to impossible due to pain.

Tomorrow I’m going into the hospital for laparoscopy #4 where the doctor will just be looking around to see the extent of the disease and writing a report of his findings to refer me to another doctor in Toronto who, in 3-6 months from now, will do laparoscopy #5 and will vaporise as much of the endometriosis as he can see with a laser.

Obviously tomorrow’s surgery won’t hurt as much as the next one, but I’m still pretty nervous about it for several reasons. I’m terrified and completely grossed out by IV’s and will probably cry when it comes time for them to give me mine. I hate the doctor who’s doing the surgery because, as you may recall, he treated me like a piece of shit during our consultation. The idea of being “put out” scares me because I’m afraid I won’t wake up or worse, I’ll wake up during the surgery. The pelvic pain afterward doesn’t really bother me, I’ve had worse periods than that and I’ve got a lovely prescription for Tylenol 3, but they fill your abdomen up with gas during the procedure and afterward that gas settles in your back and shoulders and hurts like a motherfucker, especially when you laugh and you’re so loopy from the drugs you tend to laugh a lot directly after surgery.

I’m also scared of kids or dogs jumping on me and hurting me. I’m afraid of my incisions getting infected, which happened after surgery #3 and was NOT pleasant.

Besides all of that, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself for the 3 or 4 days it takes to feel normal again. I’m not one to just lay on the couch and watch TV. I’m afraid that some of the projects I’m working on will fall by the wayside, especially when one of them is extremely time sensitive with strict deadlines (well, deadlines that are largely in my own head, admittedly).

I’m also not looking forward to getting up at 5:30am tomorrow morning when I’m used to going to bed half an hour prior. I’m not looking forward to the Naproxen suppository they’re insisting I stick up my ass an hour before leaving for the hospital (so when I wake up, basically). I’m not really down with the whole not eating or drinking anything after midnight when usually I do most of my eating and drinking after midnight.

I’m not looking forward to having this done in a hospital I don’t know very well at all by a doctor who’s a total cockface and if it weren’t for those two things, I’d probably be more chill about the whole thing because hello, I’ve done this 3 times before and I know it’ll be fine.

Anyway, I dunno what else to say about it so I’ll just leave you with these lovely pictures of endometriosis as seen through a laparoscope that I found on Google image search.

The black and red spots are mild endometriosis. To me it looks like mold.

The red spots are endometriosis. I’m not a doctor nor an expert, but I theorize that the woman whose pelvic cavity this is was very close to her period as the lesions look to be inflaming and filling up with blood, about to shed themselves and spread to other parts of the pelvic cavity.

A chocolate cyst (also called an endometrioma) on an ovary. When these burst, they really fucking hurt.

A cluster of chocolate cysts. Again, I think it looks like mold.

There are tons more pictures on Google image search but a lot of them are pretty gross so I decided not to post them here. If interested, do a search for “laparoscopy endometriosis” or just “endometriosis” and you’ll see what I mean. Also, for more information on endometriosis and its treatments, here’s a fairly well-rounded overview of it all and Wikipedia of course has an entry about it.

Anyway, tomorrow’s going to be an adventure, so wish me luck.