It feels so good to have my laptop back and not have to deal with that crappy iPad. Don’t get me wrong, I was entirely grateful for the iPad in the hospital, it was the only thing that kept me sane, it was my only link to the outside world, however, I don’t think I ever learned to use it properly and therefore I found it very very limited. For example, when I went to write a blog post like I’m doing now, I couldn’t scroll down if I wrote enough to necessitate scrolling down so if I fucked up or wanted to add something to the beginning I couldn’t and that was true for e-mail as well, I couldn’t scroll down when replying to e-mails to my mother, to see if I answered all of her questions or whatnot.

Also I was constantly highlighting things all over the place and I couldn’t really use WordPress’ “kitchen sink” with the iPad or scroll down my list of categories so I could keep posts organized. I also couldn’t watch a lot of videos I wanted to watch because the iPad doesn’t support Flash, which really bugged me.

I don’t mean to be so down on it and like I said in the beginning, it literally saved my sanity in there, but typing blog posts with one finger sucks and that’s why there were so few of them and they were so brief. All I could really do with the iPad was use Facebook and update there, which was what I did. I couldn’t update my webcam with it (with random pictures, I didn’t/don’t want to take pictures of myself right now), I couldn’t save pictures because I could never figure out how to right click with it and I couldn’t upload pictures to my gallery because I kept forgetting to ask Blake to send me the link to my gallery (so that one’s not the iPad’s fault, but since I couldn’t save the random pics I find around the internet, I didn’t have anything to upload to my gallery anyway).

Long story short: god bless the laptop.

And AGAIN, do NOT get me wrong, I totally think it’s because I didn’t know how to use the thing that made it so limiting. I totally think it was user failure for the most part with the troubles I was having.

Anyway, I’m home.

And so is Blake! He’s working from home this week and next week he’s taking a vacation week! Just to look after me! I love him so fucking much, he really is the love of my life. I truly don’t know what I’d do without him. He just always gets the job done.

Our setup has me on the pull-out couch in the living room so I’m closer to the bathroom and the bed is lower so it’s easier than our bed to get in and out of. I’m about 10 feet from the bathroom and about 20 feet from the kitchen. I don’t go in the kitchen often because my legs start to hurt if I’m doing a lot of bathroom things or standing a lot (like when brushing teeth/washing face), but I can and sometimes do to get my own drinks if Blake’s still sleeping.

I have to use a walker, the kind on wheels with the little seat, and I have to take my vac machine with me and hold up my tubing so I don’t trip on it. The walker doesn’t fit in the bathroom so I have to free style it by holding onto the counter but I’m getting much better at walking without the walker that I don’t even really need the counter when I’m in the bathroom anymore. I wouldn’t trust myself to walk without the walker TO the bathroom or TO the kitchen, but I am getting better.

OH AND GUESS WHAT! The other day? I picked something up off the ground. This is a milestone because when I was in the hospital, I actually fell in the bathroom trying to pick up a plastic bag from the floor and my leg muscles weren’t strong enough to get me back up. I had to pull the red emergency string by the toilet, which thankfully I could reach, another foot and I couldn’t have, and I waited about 10-15 minutes until my nurse came and she summoned another nurse and the 3 of us got me up. I still don’t think I could get up if I fell, but at least I know I can bend my knees enough now to pick things off the floor, like my tubing so I don’t trip over it. I was/am very proud of this accomplishment.

I have 2 other accomplishments to report, which I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to know.

Last night, after not crapping for something like 5 days, I finally had a bowel movement. See, they have me on 1200mg of iron a day, which is actually LESS than they were giving me at the hospital, and as we all know, iron massively constipates you. To combat the constipation, I’m taking colace (sp) twice a day, and praying it doesn’t give me diarrhea like it’s prone to do. (I sometimes take it when I’m on Tylenol 3.)

So that’s gross accomplishment #1. YAY FOR CRAPPING!

Accomplishment #2 is that for 2 nights/days in a row: I haven’t wet the bed. See, when you have a catheter in you for like, 8 weeks almost, your urethra gets lazy and out of shape (it also doesn’t help that while I was in the hospital they had me on muscle relaxers for some reason) and that means you’re gonna leak pee. Well, I would pee the bed in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. I just wouldn’t wake up when I had the sensation that, hey, I have to pee! And it would get to the point where it just couldn’t wait and out it would come. Don’t laugh, but I’ve been wearing Depends up until today. Today, since I haven’t wet the bed in 2 days, I’m wearing regular underwear and it feels So. Damn. Good. The difference is that I’m limiting drinks after 9pm at Blake’s suggestion and I’m just waking up when I feel the sensation that I have to pee. Not halfway through the peeing process.

So that’s gross accomplishment #2 that I just felt I had to share with the world.

I’m eating a LOT better at home than I was at the hospital. I’m still not eating a ton because when you’ve had a feeding tube down your throat for almost 7 weeks, your stomach shrinks and you get full, fast. I know for lunch I’m having a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, which I’m really excited about. And it’s weird, my tastebuds like, don’t work properly anymore. Skittles are cloyingly sweet and I can’t eat more than 2 at a time – and I need a drink to wash them down with. But strawberry Fruit at the Bottom yogurt has NO flavour in it whatsoever!

Oh yeah, and I’m lactose intolerant now. Apparently with pancreatitis that can just happen. I was drinking milk like crazy, like with every meal at the hospital, because I hated the food and I knew the milk was good for me, but after I ate, I would be violently ill and I’d require IV anti-nauseants. That’s when I put 2 + 2 together and asked the dietitian if I might be lactose intolerant and she said, yeah, that’s probably the case. After that they sent me lactose free “milk” but it didn’t look right so I never drank it.

Another thing that made me violently ill was Ensure (milk product) and Boost Juice. Boost Juice is this orange flavoured liquid that reminds me a little bit of McDonald’s orange drink that they had a million years ago or even Tang, but it has a ton of calories and protein and vitamins etc in it. It tastes pretty gross so I cut it with ginger ale at the dietitian’s advice and even that didn’t fix the flavour. After I’d drink it, I’d be sooooo sick. I’d be sweating buckets and wanting to throw up and the whole 9 yards. Nasty nasty stuff.

But anyway, I’m home and that’s the important thing. I’m all caught up on Jersey Shore, which was very important and I’m slowly but surely watching True Blood but A) I can’t really get into this season and B) I’m on hydromorph contin (aka morphine), which makes me very sleepy, and mostly I nod off while we watch True Blood so I’m missing stuff and I have no idea what’s going on.

Speaking of hydromorph contin, I just had my morning dose and I’m dozing off, so I think it’s time for a nap in my OWN house, with my OWN sheets, washed in our OWN detergent, with my OWN pillow.

Maybe I’ll write more later…

I was going to post a picture of my boobs but it occurred to me that some of you may be reading from work so I decided not to. I’ll post them on my site some other time. If that sentence confused you, it’s because I’m x-posting this to Live Journal where the action really takes place as far as comments and discussion. I’m also x-posting this to Camwhores, where there are all kinds of boobies, including the pic I decided not to post.

Now that that’s been said…

It was a pretty ho hum weekend.

On Saturday, Blake and I planted and hung our cucumbers. The system is really weird, you don’t water the dirt directly, there’s a reservoir at the top with these moisture-sucking strips that go down and rest on the dirt and over time the moisture-sucking strips water the dirt. And then on the side of each bag, there’s a slot for a moisture stick which tells you if the dirt is wet enough. Despite the fact that the dirt is wet enough on all the bags, two of the three aren’t doing so well, as you can see:

I think it has less to do with the moisture of the dirt and more to do with the fact that when I was pulling the vines through the hole at the bottom, blindly, I snapped them. I don’t know if the plant will compensate for that or not but next year we’re planting these things a LOT earlier than we did this year so the plants are still small and easier to stick through the hole. I wanted so long this time partially because I’m lazy and kept forgetting but also because I wanted the roots to be nice and thick so they wouldn’t fall apart when I tried to put the plants through the hole. I don’t think that’s a good strategy though so next year we’ll do it differently.

Also this weekend, I did my fingernails TWICE. On Friday I actually got up like, 3 hours before my alarm so I started work 2 hours early which meant I got done at 4pm instead of 6pm.  As soon as work was finished, I put in Burlesque (shut up) and started working on my nails. I spent HOURS on them. Then I decided to get drunk and play cards with Blake and when I was trying to pick cards up, my nail polish kinda shifted. It didn’t chip because it was still a little mushy, it just kinda slid. That made me very upset because I’d spent so much time on them so Blake helped me remove all the polish and I tried again on Saturday, however by Sunday evening, the polish had chipped already so I decided “fuck this” and I’m just not messing around with fingernail polish anymore or ever again. We just don’t get along, never have, never will. I’ll still do my toes, I don’t seem to have a problem there, but never my fingers again unless there’s MAYBE some special occasion or something.

Sunday was D&D day. Ronny, Alex & Raymond came over and we played while dining on veggies & dip as our snack and pizza for our dinner. It took us like, 4 hours or something to finish one encounter because we’re all n00bs and we still have no idea what we’re doing. Blake’s doing well being our DM, it’s the rest of us who suck because we don’t know our spells and abilities or when to do what etc. We’re still having a good time with it though and believe it or not we ARE getting faster and better the more we play so continue we shall. I also healed for the first time last night, which was interesting. Sucked that I could only do it twice because I’m only level 1, but still, it was something I never had to do before. Right now we all have 435 XP so I figure within maybe 3 more sessions we should be level 2.

After D&D, Raymond went home because he hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, Ronny and Alex played video games with Wes, I removed nail polish and I don’t know what Blake and Madison did (Blake helped me get the polish off my right hand at one point), then we watched the season finale of Game of Thrones. I’ll avoid talking about that in case people haven’t seen it yet but I’d avoid the comments on Live Journal if you haven’t seen it yet because I have a feeling it’ll be discussed. I really want to read the books now, which I think about a million people are also thinking.

My Lush order should be here any day now. They ship UPS so the mail strike we currently have shouldn’t affect the delivery but it WILL affect the delivery of the nail stamps I bought and that Eryn wants me to use on her next weekend for graduation the week after. This is what I ordered from Lush. 10 of them because they’re limited edition. I think I’m doing better with money considering that’s all I bought and I also put almost my whole paycheque on my Visa a few days ago. If I do that one more time, the Visa should be almost paid off just in time for my vacation. Ha!

I’m still having a really hard time with this holiday business. I mean, the fact that it’s costing us a LOT of money, half my paycheque, for me to have this holiday time really bothers me. I don’t have ill will toward my bosses or anything, it’s just that in my family you don’t take holidays. If you can make money, you do it. You don’t do things to lose money. I don’t think my mother, my grandmother or my grandfather have ever had a vacation in their lives because it would have been unpaid time off, which is what I’m doing the first week of July. I’m trying not to think about it but yesterday Alex asked me if I was looking forward to my holidays and I just started crying because no, no I’m not. I’m afraid that while I’m on holiday all I’ll be able to think about is money. But, it’s either take this vacation time or burn out and I can’t afford to burn out so holidays it is.

I plan on doing a lot of painting on my holidays. Painting and the beach. (Send vibes of a heat wave up here, please!) And I have to see my shrink to discuss the fact that I’m basically not okay right now, not at all. Possibly adjust my meds. Ask about “weight loss agents”, which were briefly discussed at metabolic clinic. I also plan to use the treadmill a lot when I’m on holidays and read. I give up on my shoes, they just keep giving me a really painful blister on my heel, so I’m going to use it in bare feet. Some studies say that’s better for you and some studies say it’s bad for you, so I’ve decided I don’t care and that’s just how I’m going to do it. I would lose weight if I could eat eggs for breakfast every day but I just don’t have the time to cook them with this job, let alone eat them, and even when I make diet kwish (diet cheese, broccoli and or onions, ham – you need the cheese or the egg dries out) and don’t have lunch I still don’t lose weight. They have to be 3 eggs over easy with 2 pieces of toast for it to work its magic and I just don’t have time for that. And you may think that’s ridiculous that it has to be that precise, but that’s what worked and variations do not work for whatever reason so it is what it is.

Admittedly my diet has been a little stupid for the last few weeks because I’m on the “Fuck It Diet”, which was invented by Margaret Cho. I see it. I eat it. Fuck it. But even when I was doing metabolic clinic and my diet was perfect and I was keeping a food journal and everything, I only lost 2-5 lbs that I gained the next week, that I’d lose the week after etc etc etc. In other words, I didn’t lose anything. I did the treadmill daily, 30-40 minutes, for 3 weeks and didn’t lose one single pound.  Didn’t gain any either. I was rollerskating, albeit not as long, but still, nothing. I do yoga once a week. I’m not inactive. Something just isn’t right with my body so I’m going to ask my shrink for “weight loss agents”, which I don’t even know what they are but I’m assuming maybe thyroid medication or something. I think my thyroid’s fine though, so I dunno. All I know is that my metabolism is still fucked from the risperidone and I want answers.

This week Charlie suggested I buy a bikini for my holidays and I just cried. 3 years ago I was wearing bikinis. Now I’m Shamu. I’m 45 lbs heavier than I should be and that’s a problem.

Anyway, enough of that, it upsets me.

My yellow begonia is basically dead and I don’t know why. The plant itself is alive and seemingly healthy but it doesn’t have any flowers. The orange one had about half the flowers it did when I bought it and again, I don’t know why. The yellow one was in partial shade, which the little stick they came with said is fine, while the orange one was in full sun so now I’ve hung the yellow one in full sun and put the orange one in the railing beneath it rather than hanging either of them on the hook on the other side of the house. You can’t really see what’s hung there anyway so whatever, I just wish I knew what was wrong with them. I’ve been dead-heading the dead flowers like you’re supposed to so I dunno.

My ears have taken to the earrings fully and completely and the holes aren’t weeping at all anymore. So yay! I’m even contemplating getting them pierced again. And then maybe again. And again. Do you think it would be better to do that one at a time or should I get all the holes I want pierced at once. I figure one at a time is probably better because if it gets infected I can treat it and it’ll probably be fine but if I do them all at once, if one gets infected, the rest probably will too and that would be a hard infection to get rid of. So one at a time is probably best, right? I don’t even know where you get ears pierced anymore. When I had mine done originally when I was like, 6, it was done at a jewelry store. In fact, the first one hurt so bad that I wouldn’t let them do the second one until some time later when the kids at school made fun of me for only having one earring. And then they both got infected too often so I took them out and left them out. That’s why I was so surprised the holes hadn’t grown over and I could get these new earrings in smooth as silk, I didn’t have to push through grown over skin or anything, they just slid right in .

I’m babbling, this is probably a really boring post. To be perfectly honest, I just have a lot in my head right now and it needs to come OUT.

We didn’t go up North for Father’s Day this year because we weren’t invited, which I found…interesting. I was glad because I didn’t want to go up there but at the same time, I can’t help but wonder why we weren’t invited in the first place. I don’t think I’ve done anything to offend anyone or anything like that so I dunno. Last year my mom got pissed at me for going up there so I’m kinda glad I didn’t have to deal with her in regards to this this year. Why did she get  pissed off? I dunno, she gets pissed off at me for no reason all the time, especially when it comes to Mother’s and Father’s Days. No matter what I do, she’s gonna get pissed off at me both of those days so I’ve stopped wondering why. My absentee prick of a brother can get away with sending an e-mail and be the next coming of Christ but I’m expected (I think) to jump through hoops for love and approval. I don’t get it and I no longer care. Both of my parents from now on are just gonna have to be happy with me writing on their Facebook walls because Mother’s and Father’s Days are now about Blake and I and no one else. I’m not going to sit there feeling like shit on a day that’s supposed to be about ME because I’m the mother. Phil doesn’t even call his father on Father’s Day so it’s unfair and hypocritical to expect me to call him, especially when I’m mentally ill and only use the phone to talk to Blake or for emergencies. And I’m still annoyed with his little lecture about me not calling him “dad” but calling him Phil instead because that’s his name. He’s never been my dad so let’s not go down that road. Let’s not forget that half of his friends and acquaintances don’t even know I exist. And my mother…well if she wants to spend her Mother’s Day being pissed off and catering to her own mother’s whims and dealing with sister aggro, so be it, but leave me out of it. Nothing I do is good enough so I’m just not going to do anything anymore.

And that’s all I have to say about that except that they’re both probably reading this so it should be considered “notice”. If they’re not then I guess we’ll deal with it next year.

Strangely, my mother-in-law was the most gracious of our parents this year and for that I am thankful.

Madison is such a weird kid. Do you know what she’s reading right now? BELOVED by Toni Morrison. Or maybe she’s done now. Either way, I thought it was an odd choice for a 13-year-old and she totally chose it for herself and put it on her birthday wishlist, it’s not like it was suggested reading or anything.  She’s also been reading Stephen King, but I don’t find that weird at all. I started reading Stephen King (It) in grade 1 so I actually think she’s a little late on that one.

She’s kind of flush with books at the moment, but as soon as she’s not, I want her to read The Handmaid’s Tale (which I’m re-reading right now), Middlesex, Water For Elephants, The Virgin Suicides and so many other books that I have sitting on my shelf just waiting to be read. I want to blow her mind with literature. Maybe then she’ll realize that what I’m working on, Cammity Jane, is absolute crap. It bothers me how good she thinks that is because I know it’s not and that’s not me putting myself down, that’s just a fact. It’s fluff, it’s not literature by any stretch of the imagination. I think the primary audience for it is young adults, so it’s good that she likes it as much as she does because she’s my target I think, but I feel like it should be beneath her. She should be smarter than that.

Bleh.

Okay I think I’ve ranted and raved and wasted enough of your time. I think I’m out of things to discuss. Please go to my site and take a look at the two images I posted. Here’s the first one, here’s the second one. Thanks.

PS. I am 15 days smoke-free.

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Help RAPS win $25,000!

My friend Phaedie loses one of her friends at least once a week. That’s because she works for a high-capacity cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, run by the Richmond Animal Protection Society, and unfortunately feline leukemia and feline AIDS is a part of the job, especially when dealing with such close quarters.

To keep cats out of shelters, people need to spay and neuter their pets and that’s what RAPS is aiming to do with Pepsi Canada’s Refresh Project contest. Their aim, with the $25,000 to be won, is to help low-income families spay, neuter and vaccinate their pets in order to help curb the already problematic business of sick, unwanted pets.

So how can you help? It’s easy. Click here and vote. You can sign in using Facebook connect so it really does only take 2 clicks and you’d be making a world of difference for animals and their people. Plus you’d be making Phaedie and I incredibly happy.

We need to try and get them to #1 or #2 as only the top 2 spots receive funding. Currently they’re in 3rd place, so we need to make a solid push to get then into 2nd! I know people don’t have money to give to every charity that comes their way, but if you’d normally be clicking on Farmville crops anyway, please use your mouse-fingers for this as well and help make a difference in the world. Thanks.

The contest voting is until June 30th, it’s a daily vote and I’ll be posting every few days to remind you to vote in case you forget.

Snow be damned, summer is right around the corner!

The Crittendens are now on wheels. Let the games begin!
AND ALEX & RONNY SHOULD TOTALLY COME PLAY WITH US.
*HINT HINT*

PS. None of us actually know how to skate.

I had to go to the doctor’s this morning to get repeats on my codeine contin (which he raised by 100mg/day) and Tylenol 3 (30mg codeine/300mg acetaminophen) and Naproxen. He lectured me about taking so much Tylenol because it’ll kill my liver, which I’m oh so aware of but I don’t see any alternatives here, which is why he raised my codeine contin. That’ll keep me from having to take so much Tylenol 1 (8mg codeine/300mg acetaminophen, 15mg caffeine) during the month and then I have the Tylenol 3 for when I’m actually on the rag and wanting to kick puppies. So was that clear? He lectured me about taking so much Tylenol and then rx’d me…more Tylenol. I’m not complaining because he did what I wanted him to do, I just thought it was funny.

I have today off because I had to go to the doctor’s this morning at 10:30am (we just got back now and it’s almost noon) when I start work at 10am usually, and then this afternoon is metabolic clinic. But this actually worked out well because I woke up to an e-mail from Belinda asking our boss for Saturday night off because it’s her boyfriend’s birthday. I have to make up my metabolic clinic hours on Saturday anyway (Belinda works nights) and Blake’s gone to Militiagan for another funeral this weekend anyway too, so I said I’d take today off and work Belinda’s shift Saturday night for her. Then I’ll still have Sunday off, which, if I’m working the night before, I’ll probably use to sleep in and then play Sims Medieval all day. So it all works out! I had intended to work from whenever metabolic clinic was over (we usually get home around 3:30 or 4pm) until 6pm, which is when my shift usually ends, but I decided I’m not going to bother and I’ll just make up the hours on Saturday since I’m needed then anyway. That means that I may actually make it to yoga tonight, which is good considering I haven’t actually been in about 4 or 5 weeks because work + metabolic clinic all in one day is too many things for me, so yoga has had to go by the wayside until metabolic clinic is finished on April 5th.

Speaking of yoga, our teacher is pregnated! She already has a toddler, she goes to school for holistic medicine and she has a full-time job on top of teaching yoga, so she’s going to be one busy lady. We’ve signed up for the next session because I’d like to continue once metabolic clinic is over and done with. As I may have mentioned a time or two, I absolutely love yoga and I’m really looking forward to going tonight since it’s been so long. I bet she’s going to make me sweat…

Today at metabolic clinic we’re discussion our addictions. I am 6 days smoke-free and talking about smoking makes me want to have one so I hope they gloss over that and just talk about the addiction part. This is our last real class I think, as next week is our “graduation” and evaluation session. I’m not really sure what that means but I do know that I’m going to need to fill out my module evaluation sheets which I’ve been neglecting to do unless they’ve specifically asked me to do them at the end of class, as they have in some instances.

I’ve been doing the treadmill daily. The first day I did a total of 55 minutes but then the next day I was sore because my shoes are those Sketcher’s Shape Ups so I only did 20 minutes and I’ve only been doing 20 minutes since. In fact, instead of writing this post, I should probably get on the treadmill, especially since I’m at the very tail end of The Virgin Suicides and I’d really like to finish it so I can star Freedom by Jonathan Franzen since that’s Oprah’s current book club pick and I think she’s going to be doing the show about it sometime soon. I’ve never read one of Oprah’s book club picks while the book club was happening before and I’ve always skipped those episodes as a result, but this being her last season I figured I’d give it a shot, especially since I read in Adbusters that my generation doesn’t read enough Jonathan Franzen, so there’s that too. Have any of you read this book? What did you think of it? I don’t even know what it’s about, I haven’t read the back or anything and I know absolutely nothing about the author or his previous works. But whatever, I’m looking forward to cracking the spine on that thick sucker and I love that I got a treadmill with a book stand. Reading while walking is turning out to be something that I really enjoy. The treadmill even has a place for an MP# player to be plugged in and two cup holders that fot a can of Coke Zero perfectly. I’m totally set up!

Yesterday Blake brought me home dirt so when I’m NOT wearing my $200 hockey jersey or going to yoga, I have to start my veggies on the window sill. I have Super Sugar Snap peas, Napoli carrots, Thunder cucumbers, Parade green onions, Golden cherry tomatoes, Sugary cherry tomatoes and Big Beefsteak tomatoes. All I’m going to start inside this week is the cucumbers and all the tomatoes. The peas did fine last year with just being stuck in the garden and hopefully the carrots and onions will do the say. Last year the garden got overrun with weeds and I didn’t know what were weeds and what were vegetables so I couldn’t weed and the carrots and onions never grew. Neither did any of the herbs (that I know of, like I said, I couldn’t tell the difference between them and the weeds). This year I’m going to do herbs in pots on the porch, although part of me is thinking “why bother?” because fresh herbs at the grocery store really aren’t that expensive and we use frozen basil chunks for Blake’s awesome cherry tomato pasta anyway and I think they’re only $2.99 for 20 cubes. (I think he uses 4 in the tomato thing, maybe a bit more.) It just seems like, for the pain in the ass of it, it would just be easier to buy fresh herbs at the grocery store than tend my own.

Blah, I’m babbling. I’m gonna go finish The Virgin Suicides and get on the treadmill. I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

PS. Yes I know I need to get my roots done. I was going to go to the new salon here in town to have highlights put in, but I’m broke right now so I bought a box of hair dye today at the pharmacy instead. I’ll go to the salon another time and just get Blake to trim my ends with my awesome art scissors. No big deal.

Okay, to tread I go!

PPS. I can’t go to yoga tonight! We’re playing the Sabres and I have to tweet 100 times about how much I hate Ryan Miller! Curses!

It’s been…a week.

Yesterday, all I did was read A Thousand Splendid Suns (which is very good so far) at my desk and…that’s really pretty much it. I don’t expect today will be any different, aside from making this post.

Whoever recommended I download Mother Mother a LONG time ago, thank you. They’ve been keeping me sane-ish this week. Blake didn’t want to install iTunes on his computer, which I’m using until mine gets here, so I’ve been using Media Player and it didn’t import my playlists so I’ve been listening to albums instead and saw O My Heart by Mother Mother in my list and decided to listen to it, with their first album Touch Up directly after and I fell in love. This is the video for O My Heart, which isn’t my favourite song (I like Dirty Town, Polynesia and Oh Ana from their first album the best) but that’s the only video I could find.

They’re Canadian, you should all check them out.

Today the rain and wind let up long enough for me to go out and survey the damage to my garden. The vegetable garden (or should I say tomato garden) is okay but most of my sunflowers got knocked down even though I tied them up weeks ago. The wind was strong enough that it broke the string that I’d used. :o/

All the ones that were on the ground, I cut and brought inside to put in a vase and they’re not sitting on my kitchen table, along with the craptonne of tomatoes I picked while I was out there. There are still a lot of green ones out there that I don’t think will turn orange before the frost comes so I picked the ones that were more or less ripe or that would ripen inside in a few days and brought them in.

I also have about 6 more in my fridge…Katie, how the hell do I make sauce since I don’t know what else to do with all these tomatoes?

While I was out there, I also picked what I think will be close to the last of the cherry tomatoes. There are a lot of almost ripe or green tomatoes on the plants but there appears to be an abundance of slugs right now with all the rain and they’ve gotten a lot of them. Plus, with the way the weather’s been, I think frost is going to happen soon and then that’ll be the end of them. If things stay the way they are right now, then I should be able to get another 2 containers full of them but I think that’s it.

This morning Madison gave me the finger as she was leaving for school because I was making fun of her for looking like Justin Beiber (it’s her bangs haha). So she gave me the finger right as she was going out the door and then she came back in 2 seconds later to say “I was only joking plz don’t ground me!” haha Anyway, it was a proud moment. Her biological father used to tell me, when he was a teenager, that he’d read somewhere that if a child swears at their parents, it means they’re comfortable with them and feel secure enough in their relationship with them to know that things will be okay in the end. Does that make sense? I always thought there might be some truth to that, although I think there are exceptions to the rule, like when I swore at my mother, there was no security there. I didn’t think my mother even loved me until I was in my 20′s. Our kids KNOW we do and while Wes doesn’t swear, Madison feels comfortable with us to swear occasionally just in conversation.

Anyway, yeah. She gave me the finger. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. (Maybe you had to be there…)

Speaking of laughing…last night I was eating dinner and Blake & I were talking, as we usually do while we eat and as I was taking a drink, he said something really funny – we have no idea what – and I BLEW SNOT all into my drink, like it was floating on the surface. It was so gross but so fucking funny, I was just about on the floor peeing my pants as he went to get me a new drink in a new glass. Again, maybe you had to be there…

Okay, that’s the only excitement there’s been this week, aside from the whole wanting to kill myself thing. I’m gonna go make breakfast now and continue reading my book.

Oh, btw, I did submit to Touched By Fire. I’ll be very surprised if I get in, but I figured I had nothing to lose by submitting.

I see my shrink on Friday and the weather’s supposed to get sunnier as the week goes by, so I’ll come out of it (and I’ll probably have my meds adjusted) but right now I’m living in a world of suck and self-loathing. I’ve never really kept a calendar of these things ( I  probably should) but I think the end of summer does this to me every year. The first day of school comes and I start to feel like I’m dying. And this weekend has been extra brutal because it’s like, as soon as Friday at 5pm hit, everything got cold and rainy and windy and miserable and it was like *bam*, here we are in fall. (I realize fall doesn’t officially start until Sept. 22nd, but it is very much fall up here already. The leaves are starting to change colour and it’s only about 12 degrees during the day.)

I mean, here’s how the year goes for me:

Spring: I start to thaw and come alive and suddenly the world is wonderful. I get excited looking for the first robin of spring, the first crocuses, the first ladybugs. In March I start plants inside and get excited watching them grow. My sleep schedule goes straight to shit though, as it does in fall because these transitional months wreak havoc with like, my biological clock or something, but it’s okay, it corrects itself by about June-ish.

Summer: I’m in loooooove. The hotter, the more humid, the better. Yeah, I bitch about the heat like everyone else, but the heat just means that the kids and I have all day to scrounge up change to go to the beach when Blake gets home. I nap a lot more in the summer because when we have a heat wave, it gets so hot you can’t move and you just get sleepy (especially because of the meds I’m on that make me sleepy to begin with) and so, I do a lot of my painting at night when it’s cooler, but also at night is when I go to the park across the road and swing on the swings and watch the stars and dig my toes in the cold sand. We eat fresh food, whether it’s from our own garden or stuff grown locally at the grocery store and my whole body just feels better, it feels more alive.  Admittedly, by the end of August the kids and I are all getting on each other’s nerves and they’re ready to go back to school and I’m ready for them to go back to school too, but Labour Day weekend, I think, is usually still hot and this year it’s fall weather and that has me bummin’ hardcore.

Fall: I hate fall. I hate that everything is dying. (Well I guess everything’s not dying, some things are just going dormant and if the trees didn’t go dormant we wouldn’t have maple syrup in the spring…) I hate the Fall Fair. I’m really starting to hate Halloween because I have GREAT anxiety about people potentially coming to my door wanting candy when I have none and I don’t want to buy any because no one ever comes to the door, I just think they might, and the kids bring home almost a garbage bag of the stuff so we don’t need an extra bag of it when I’m throwing out half of their haul behind their backs anyway because it’s junk and none of us needs it…yes, I’m a horrible mother.  I hate the wind and the rain and the leaves blowing all over the place. I hate the grass turning yellow and dying. I begin to worry about Xmas. I used to love the first day of school but now I hate it. The kids are going to come home that day with a million problems that I’m expected to solve by the next day and they’re going to lay 30 trees worth of paper on my desk that I don’t know what to do with for field trips and things we can’t afford but must shell out money for anyway.

On Tuesday there will probably be a fight on the way home from school, which I’m worried about. This 9 year old little shit up the street is jealous of Madison having a friend her own age and jealous of her boobs and just jealous of Madison growing up in general, as evidenced by the fact that this 9 year old tries to dress grown up in boob shirts (where there are no boobs) and high heels and wobbles down the street in front of our house, swinging non-existent hips with her nose stuck up in the air, lipstick on her teeth and a purse around her arm. When Madison uploaded pics to her Facebook last week (two of which I posted here on my site), this 9 year old’s jealousy really bubbled over and she told Madison she was “ugly and horrable”. Then when Madison blocked her on Facebook and MSN, the girl started telling all the neighbourhood kids that Madison was a lesbian because I guess when you’re 9 and live in a very small town, that’s the worst insult you can come up with. Madison laughed it off and set the record straight with the few girls who messaged her to find out if it was true or not, but the 9 year old’s been talking trash about her ever since. Because they walk home the same route, I know there are going to be problems on the first day of school possibly even violence because this 9 year old acts pretty big for her breeches.  But the thing is, this 9 year old, in the past, has known that she can’t do anything to Madison, verbally OR physically because Madison would just ignore her. Madison towers over her and could push her over with one finger, but she’s wise enough just to not engage. So instead, the 9 year old goes after Wes to antagonize Madison into a fight. Blake said he has no problem, if this all plays out the way I’m afraid it might, going  to the kid’s grandparents (who look after her and her sister) and putting an end to all of this shit but I’m the one who has to deal with it “on the front lines” so to speak and the whole situation gives me anxiety like nothing else has in quite some time because I’m afraid of Wes getting his nose punched in as a casualty of war.

Plus there’s also the fact that fall is another transitional season and my sleep schedule gets completely fucked up. Like, here I am at 5 in the morning on a holiday writing a fucking blog post when I should be sleeping.

So that’s fall, or at least this one.

Winter: Well if you’ve been reading this blog for over a year, you know how I get in the winter. I’m better now that we’ve identified that I have S.A.D. and I do my light therapy, but for the most part, all winter I just do my best to cope. It’s fucked up though, as much as winter destroys me, I wouldn’t live anywhere, I don’t think, that doesn’t have it. I think snow is beautiful and many times I’ve tried (and failed) to record what snow looks like through my eyes. I think that without the cold and snow, I wouldn’t have the appreciation for spring and summer that I do. I think my body is so attuned to the 4 seasons that missing one would be worse than enduring it. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t pass up a vacation to somewhere warm in February, but I couldn’t live there. And of course winter means dealing with Xmas, which, as I pointed out, I start worrying about in the fall.

Admittedly though, last winter, with the lightbox wasn’t as bad as previous ones, but I’m still definitely not at my best in any way, shape or form (although I do feel I do my best creative work in the winter because I’m inside all the time and have to use my imagination to entertain myself).

Life is so grey area, y’know? Nothing’s every black & white, as much as I want it to be.

Lately part of my depression has involved privilege, self-esteem and awareness of the issues around me that I never saw before.

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So add to the list that I’m feeling entirely inferior as a blogger, despite the fact that Blake pointed out that I get e-mails from people who say that I’ve helped them in some way by writing about my life and saying some of the thing I do “out loud”. I guess that’s something…not something I’ve ever striven for or done on purpose, but I guess it’s a positive side effect of being so self absorbed….

Onto other things…

Yesterday Blake & I went to Toronto to pick up my paintings from The Square Foot Show. The trip was pretty uneventful, we just drove there, went to the gallery, stood in a line and picked up my paintings. Nothing too exciting. When we were walking down the street toward the gallery, there was this guy dressed in shabby, dirty clothes and a shirt that didn’t fit (I don’t think he was homeless but definitely mentally ill) and as we walked by, he said to Blake, “do you have some spare change for a Coke?” We were walking pretty fast and Blake just shook his head “no” and as we were walking, I asked Blake if he really did ask for change for a Coke and Blake said yes, and so I said if the guy was still there on our way back, I’d give him the Coke that just so happened to be in my bag. (I’m on meds that cause dry mouth, I travel with liquids.) So we went to the gallery and got my paintings (I didn’t sell any, which is a good thing*) and on our way back, the guy was still there so I got the Coke out of my bag and said, “Sir? Here you go.” and he said, “I don’t want that.” Confused I said, “Isn’t that what you asked us for when we passed by here earlier?” and he said, kind of belligerently, “NO, I asked for a COFFEE.” So I said “sorry” and we just kept walking to the car. We know for a fact that he said he wanted a Coke when we walked past him the first time, especially since we heard him, as we were approaching him WITH the Coke, ask another person for change for a Coke, so Blake figures he really wanted money for beer or something, which just made me sad.

On the way home, as we were on the outskirts of our town, the clouds were pretty spectacular so Blake pulled over and I ran into a field to take pictures of them. Behold:

My pictures, admittedly, suck, and they looked much cooler in person.

*So like I said, I didn’t sell any of my paintings at The Square Foot Show, which is a good thing and I found it funny that there was a guy in line talking to a VERY outspoken American woman who was happy that he didn’t sell anything either (which surprised her). I’m happy to have not sold anything because AWOL Gallery takes 50 goddamn percent of the $225 they charge for your paintings plus you’re out the $20 it cost to get in the show (plus gas to get the paintings there, then going to the show, then picking them up), so really you don’t make any money at all. The show, for me, as I think I’ve said before, was just to have another show on my resume for when I apply for the Ontario Arts Council emerging artist grant which I’m told by one of the program’s directors isn’t even necessary so next year I doubt I’ll take part in the show.

I would like to somehow find out about other shows that are actually happening in my area but I don’t know how you go about doing that. There IS some sort of arts council in Barrie that I know of but I’ve been on their website and they only seem to advertise events after they’re already happening, so that does me no good. There is also a local like, arts club type of thing but you have to pay quite a bit of money to be part of it, if I recall correctly, and I don’t think I’d benefit from it enough to make the financial investment because I don’t live in Barrie and I don’t think you should have to pay money just to find out about art shows before they happen. There has to be a better way, I just don’t know what it is.

Since I didn’t sell anything at Square Foot, I am going to submit all 3 of those paintings to Touched By Fire. I’m 99.9% sure they’ll be rejected because they aren’t depressing enough, but that’s okay, I’m going to submit them anyway and see what happens. No harm, right? And if I get in, that’s kind of a cool thing because the show’s at the ROM in Toronto and I happen to know the food is excellent and that there’s a free bar. Or at least that was the case when I was in the show before.

Anyway, I’m just rambling now…which I suppose I’ve been doing this entire post. I think I’m going to check e-mail, go back to bed and when I wake up, I’ll post my new paintings to Etsy.

So I guess I’ll just make this a sort of state of the union post since I’ve been kinda vague the last few days.

- Being without 24/7 access to a computer has made me extremely productive. I’ve completed 9 ACEOs and 2 paintings this week. The ACEOs I obviously posted to Etsy yesterday but the paintings are going to have to wait a few days because it’s rainy & overcast here right now and that’s not the best light to photograph them in. Also, the sides of them need a couple of light coats of varnish still, so I suppose they’re not exactly finished, but pretty damn close. (The varnish I use on the sides is different than the varnish I use on the front and it dries in seconds, so doing the sides will take half an hour, tops, for both paintings.) I’m not sure what I’m going to work on next, but I did get my sketchbook yesterday for The Sketchbook Project, so I think I might get started on that. The pages of the sketchbook are verrrry thin and there are a lot of them, so I think I’m going to have to glue some of the pages together for them to support the watercolour paper I draw/paint my girls on. In the rules they said “no glitter” because it gets everywhere and that’s just a rule I cannot abide by. (When I use glitter, it does NOT get everywhere because I mix it with glazing medium, which is sort of like a very thin glue (well, the way I use it it is) and I varnish over it, so the glitter does. not. budge. Hence why I will not be following the “no glitter” rule.) My sketchbook’s theme is “facing forward” because that seemed the most conducive to what I wanted to do with mine but I see on their website that they’ve added some new themes that look pretty interesting. I almost chose “boys and girls” for mine because I really should practice doing boys, but changed my mind at the last minute. I’m thinking of getting Madison a sketchbook so she can participate too but I have to wait until I make a few more Etsy sales for that to happen because my PayPal doesn’t exactly have a balance at the moment.

- My new computer should ship somewhere between the 13th-15th, or so I’m told. We suspect that it’ll actually be shipped out faster than that but those are the dates Dell is giving us. Yesterday Blake got a call from Bell asking if I wanted 3 months of free internet service, which I apparently get with the computer. He said no. (It’s like, 2GB data xfer/month LOL We exceeded our limit this month 8 days into the month and I think our limit is 50 or 75GB.) In regards to this computer, I am extremely grateful for having the friends I do. <3

- The day before yesterday Madison and I got our new glasses, which I’d love to show you but I have no cam software on Blake’s machine and I can’t find my installer for ConquerCam. I know it’s in my e-mail….somewhere….and keep in mind I’ve only deleted probably every 3 e-mails I’ve gotten since 2001 so there’s a lot to go through and the search function doesn’t appear to be working for some reason. I blame Chrome (which I hate btw, I’m not sure why I’m using it…)

Anyway, we got two pairs of glasses each and mine are a super nerdy clearish pink pair that fit perfectly and a tortoiseshell pair that I have to go in and get adjusted on Saturday. Madison got…actually I forget what her first pair looks like (and she’s currently sleeping) but her second pair are a sort of goldish brown. She wasn’t happy about needing glasses at first but now that she sees them as a fashion accessory she’s all about them.

- Speaking of Madison, somehow this summer the girl turned into an almost teenager. These pictures were taken by Wes (age 7) of Madison (age 12) the day before yesterday:

They spent allllllllll day doing photoshoots, Wes the photographer in his baseball hat and Madison doing a million makeup and wardrobe changes. She posted the pictures on her Facebook page but these are the two I liked the most and she said I could post them here.

I think it’s hilarious that my mom calls Madison “pretty girl” because that’s what we call the cat. LOL

- Speaking of my mom…the birthday card that I ordered for her from Etsy STILL hasn’t arrived at MY house and my mom’s birthday was August 26th. I ordered the card on August 17th and it was being shipped from Colorado. It’s a card, it takes one stamp, it’s not like it’s a package that has to clear customs or anything. I’ve ordered cards from this girl before and they came just fine and in time, so I’m going to send her a convo today on Etsy to see what’s what. Also frustrating is that my mother’s birthday gift which I also ordered from Etsy hasn’t arrived either. That one is a small packet that shouldn’t require any red tape at customs either so I don’t know what’s up with that. Since I ordered it on the same day I ordered the card, like literally minutes apart, I’m assuming something’s up with the USPS right now or maybe Canada Post because both should have been here at least a week ago. My mother’s gift was from a seller I buy from regularly and I had them ship it directly TO my mother and since my mom hasn’t e-mailed me about it, I’m assuming it hasn’t come yet and that’s frustrating me because my mother already thinks I’m a shit at the best of times. Guh.

So note to self, and you, I suppose, when buying gifts from Etsy, especially if the item is not from your country of origin, buy at least a month in advance if you can. (Although for Father’s Day I ordered a whole bunch of stuff for Blake from one seller and 2 months later I hadn’t received the stuff so I convo them and they said they lost my order, like the piece of paper my order was on, and that A) they were now out of stock of half the things I’d ordered and B) they were going on vacation THAT DAY so I had only a few hours to decide if I wanted whatever they could send me or if I wanted them to issue me a refund. I went for the refund. And I left them neutral feedback just the other day because the woman never cancelled all the sales and while she did send me a small package with lipbalm and a note apologizing for the mix up, I just couldn’t leave her positive feedback and I didn’t feel right leaving negative feedback on like, 6 items.

Etsy is great, I love shopping there not only because it’s all handmade but because I DON’T REALLY GET OUT MUCH and everyone takes PayPal, but some shops just really aren’t very professional and I think that sours the pot for the rest of us, both buying and selling.

Blake is distracting me my being half-naked in my office…rawr.

- The kids start school on Tuesday and I could NOT be more thrilled. I love them, I love summer, but I’m ready to have my days back to myself. Madison’s not allowed to use the internet unless I’m awake and Wes isn’t allowed to play outside if I’m not awake and that caused a bit of issue this summer because I’m on a LOT of meds where the primary side effect is drowsiness so that means I often have 2 naps a day despite the fact that I went to bed at 10pm the night before and didn’t get up until 11am the next morning. The kids, of course, resent this, Madison more than Wes because her whole social life this summer has been on Facebook, but it’s not like I can help it and all summer I’ve been trying as hard as I can to NOT nap so they can do the things they want to do and godammit, I’m tired. I cannot wait until no one’s home during the day and I can nap all I want guilt-free. That may sound selfish, but again, it’s not as if I can help it.

- I see my shrink next Friday, which I’m not looking forward to. I’ve decided not to confront her about the unprofessional “spoiled brat” comment unless she does it again. This might seem cowardly considering that that was the 3rd or 4th time she’d said more or less the same thing AFTER telling me specifically I was allowed to live my life however I wanted to and then suddenly having a problem with it, but yesterday she called and left a message on the phone for me about Touched By Fire and even though that means SHE NEVER ACTUALLY LISTENS TO ME, her heart was in the right place. She’s just so hit or miss. With meds, she’s great, but when it comes to therapy, which ISN’T EVEN HER JOB BECAUSE SHE’S A PSYCHIATRIST NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST, she’s just not very good. I don’t necessarily think that she herself is the problem, I think it’s more the fact that we estimated that she has over 400 patients to keep track of and that since my meds are more or less stable, I’m not exactly a high priority case anymore. Since that IS the case, however, I wish we could just skip the therapy bit because it’s a waste of both of our time and it’s really kinda just going through the motions and just be like, “so, do you think your meds are okay?” I say “yep” she says “okay then, see you in 3 months”. That would be awesome. I mean, we’ve already established that I’m not actively doing immersion therapy or trying to overcome agoraphobia at this time (despite the fact that I *am* getting better, it seems, without really even trying), so I don’t really see the need for pseudo-therapy just to fill up my timeslot on her calendar. Does that make sense? Like please, go help someone else who needs it. I’ve got my drugs, gimme a lightbox for the S.A.D. in October and I’m good. We’re in the maintenance phase of my mental health issues, I don’t need to sit in her office for 45 minutes, especially because I have no idea what to talk to her about because really, aside from the odd “bad day”, I’m good!

I do think that this visit she’s going to make me go for my 6 month blood draw WHICH I HATE, but they have to check my liver function and my cholesterol (my triglycerides in particular because that’s what the risperidone fucked with) and it’s a condition of being on the medications I’m on. *shrug*

We also have to talk to her about getting my drugs for free through the mental health clinic because even with insurance, we are struggling to afford them. In total, all of my drugs per month are a little over $1,000 and of that, we have to pay about $250 out of pocket, which is almost our entire grocery budget per paycheque so if there’s a way that we don’t have to pay that, that would be great because we’re slooooowly sliding into debt that we can’t get out of, but that $250/month would really help with that. I’m afraid though, that we won’t qualify for it because every time we’ve tried to apply for anything like this (like the mental health disability money I’m eligible for), they turn me down because they say Blake makes too much money. Which is stupid because if they actually looked at our bills instead of just his income, they’d see we’re totally fucked. They also look at gross income, not net, so that doesn’t help either and I’ll never understand why all government bodies do that but they all seem to.

I feel horrible taking $1,000/month away from our local pharmacy that’s been nothing but good to us, like fronting me drugs when my shrink’s on vacation and she didn’t give me enough repeats (which happens a lot, actually) but we don’t really have a choice. I’ll still get my pain meds from them, but that’s peanuts compared to my psych meds. It’s also not going to be very convenient getting my drugs from the mental health clinic because it’s in another town about 25 minutes away and Blake is going to have to leave work early, like really early, to make it there before they close at 4pm. And if I run out of drugs on a Saturday or Sunday, I’m fucked, so we’re (I’m) going to have to be extra diligent about repeats and how many days worth of drugs I have left. I don’t use one of those pill containers that you fill by the day (do you know what I mean?), but I’m thinking I might have to start if I want to stay on top of all that.

Annnnnd I think that’s all I’ve really got to say this morning, especially since my meds are kicking in and I’m getting sleepy, particularly since I’ve been awake since about 5:30am. I want to wash our bedding today so I better nap now and get that out of the way so I can wash it all when I wake up.

Hope you all have a lovely day!

This sucks. This sucks so hard.

I’m on Blake’s computer right now because mine…is FUBAR. It was/is a MacBook that was about 6 years old, I’d guess, that I was given when it was about 4. At the time, Blake had built me a new computer so he put Windows on it so the kids could play Sims 3 on it and I just used my big box.

Fast forward about 2 years and he says, “y’know…the Mac is actually a little better than your desktop and it’s a laptop so you should use that” and I reluctantly did, giving my desktop to the kids so they could play Spore and Sims 3. (The reason we were running Windows on the Mac was because I couldn’t get Spore or Sims 3 installed on it using Mac OS but both worked fine with Windows, I don’t know why this is.)

So I used the Mac for about 4 or 5 months and had *just* gotten it broken in and all set up the way I wanted it and then last week I woke up and the Mac wouldn’t wake up. I shook the mouse, pressed every key on the keyboard, closed and opened it and finally had to do a hard reset. When it started up again, it was running slow as molasses. iTunes was unusable, FireFox was also unusable yet somehow TweetDeck was working fine. It wouldn’t restart of its own accord to I had to do about 5 hard resets until I called Blake at work in tears not knowing what else to do. He suggested that I use IE to download Chrome, so I did and Chrome seemed to be working okay, so I made that the default browser and imported my FireFox bookmarks. But iTunes still wouldn’t work, it would load up but you couldn’t make it play or press any buttons. Then I tried to open Photoshop, which I use pretty much every day, and it wouldn’t load due to a program error, even though it was working fine the day before.

So I put up with this wonky machine until yesterday when I backed up all my stuff and Blake wiped it, with the intent of putting Windows 7 on it, which he had had on it at one point when the kids were using it but the key expired or whatever because it was only a trial, so he had to put XP on it, which was on it when I began using it. (Yes, using Bootrcamp, which I’m told isn’t the most stable, but what the hell else is there?)

Well, he couldn’t get Win7 on it because he was using a key from work and I guess the computer had to be on the network to authenticate or something so that was a bust and that’s when he tried to put XP back on it. It kept freezing during the install and then when it was installed, trying to put other programs on it, like Photoshop, it would freezer and stall out and he’d have to start over and finally he got maybe 4 progs on it, one being iTunes and another being FireFox (which I prefer because of all the extensions) and they were doing the same things they were doing on Thursday so basically my computer is totally fucked, meaning that I basically no longer have one.

What sucks is that I have absolutely zero way to get a new computer so my only temporary solution is to hijack Blake’s for now, but for how long? He needs a computer too and this is the one I won at Camwhores expressly FOR him so I can’t just take it back (and if I did, what the hell is he going to use?)

So I don’t know what to do.

Sometimes, because Camwhores buys so much shit from them, Dell gives Kevin a deal on computers but there aren’t any right now and I wouldn’t have the money for one even if there was one.

Long story short: I’m completely fucked and have no way of updating my cam, doing shows or running my business and I’m at a loss as to what to do and freaking out completely.

I just drove our new car for the first time. I went to the grocery store, put things in my basket (very fast as I was FREAKING THE FUCK OUT INSIDE MY BRAIN), made small talk with the cashier guy who reminds me a lot of my friend Scooter, paid with my DEBIT CARD (which is a great source of anxiety), packed up my own bag and DROVE HOME.

I’m shaking. It took 2 Ativan and a lot of Twitter encouragement but dammit, I wanted pie and I went to the goddamn store and got me some motherfucking PIE.

And y’know what? I was so proud of myself that I got CAKE too. And crumpets, pretzels, watermelon for the kids and baby cans of gingerale.

I’ve been to the grocery store with Blake 100 times and it’s only about 3 minutes from our house, but I went down the wrong street and got lost-ish which made me sorta panic, but then I got on Yonge St. and knew the grocery store was up the road (I’d missed the grocery store’s street by about 2 or 3 streets – oops) so I didn’t freak out. I mean, the town’s only so big and it’s pretty much impossible to REALLY get lost.

It also took me like, 10 minutes to figure out how to work the car. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to move the seat up or how to turn the lights on but I finally got it. Also our car has like, D3, D2 and DL and I have no idea what that means so I just picked D3, which was the closest one to N and went with it. I probably did it wrong but it worked so, whatever.

Blake’s gonna be pissed that I bought fairly useless stuff with his money, but again, whatever, I FUCKING DID IT and that’s what matters.

Now I’m going to allow myself to freak out and cry and y’know what else? I got pie AND cake and I’m going to fucking eat BOTH of them and then I’m gonna go to bed. Yeah, you heard me, BOTH OF THEM.

The end.

Edit: Okay, so I was too full after the pie to actually eat the cake, but dammit, pretend I did! And for those who may be curious, it was lemon meringue pie & chocolate cake.