Howdy, circus freaks!

Right now I’m doing some stuff online that’s inadvertently bringing people to my site for the very first time and I’m feeling the urge to scramble around cleaning things up because my site is a bloody mess. So, the first thing people should know when coming here is that THIS SITE IS UNDER HEAVY HEAVY CONSTRUCTION AND DOESN’T ALWAYS LOOK THIS BAD. It’s never been the most well-designed site, in its almost 7 years of existence, but it’s always been a HELL of a lot more organized than it is at this very moment.

So hello new people, my name is Sunny and I’m a writer, an artist and a semi-retired muse. I’ve been living my life publicly, online, in front of an audience (so to speak) since 1997 for reasons even I’m not completely sure of. Over the years I’ve had a running webcam (which I’m probably the most “well known” for), an IRC channel, forums, I’ve sold my art and writing and things I’ve made through a website that no longer exists called Merch Bitch (this was in the days pre-Etsy). Half the internet’s seen me naked, knows my kids names and knows where my husband works. I’m an open book, there’s very little I hold back (and when I do, it’s usually as a courtesy for others), and that’s why people read and have followed my crap for so long….I think, anyway. I live an extremely examined life and truly ascribe to the old adage pertaining to such.

In 2006 I had a (very public, as it happened online) psychotic break and I’ve pretty much spent the last two years in a living hell that I never thought would end. Between the unparalleled terror of psychosis and its aftermath, the lack of aftercare I was given upon my release from the hospital and then 18 months of hellacious trial & error with psychiatric drugs, I’ve really been through the ringer. Throughout it all, I was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and it’s been a slow crawl back to who I was before. Only recently have I become stable-ish and I feel myself becoming a better, if battle scarred, version of who I was before. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this whole ordeal, it’s that life is just a series of processes. I feel like I’m just beginning another, which will eventually end or change and another will begin again.

So that’s me. Oh and I’m 29, married, with two kids, a dog & a cat. This isn’t a current pic, but is, more or less, what I look like (when I’m not sick, anyway):

Part of my “coming back” from mental illness has a lot to do with art and currently I’m enrolled in Suzi Blu’s online workshop “Les Petite Dolls“, which I gushed about here and here and my dear friend Raya paid for me to do because she was glad to see me eeking back towards my old creative self.

When I was starting to “lose it”, just before (and during) my psychotic break, I began working around the clock on a few creative endeavours that I thought were “genius”, including a painting I entitled “Camp Tampon” which to this day I still feel really captures where my mind was at the time. I mean, there’s a definite contrast between that and the way I usually paint.

Because my creative mind was so affected by the mania and because psychosis felt like I was “stuck” in my own imagination and I couldn’t get out, I’ve been afraid to be creative or use my imagination ever since. I’m afraid that if I let my mind “go there”, I’ll get stuck again and that was the single worst experience of my life. I’ve been beaten, I’ve been raped, I’ve been homeless, but psychosis was scarier than all of those things
put together and naturally I want to do everything in my power for it never to happen again. In my mind, that meant stopping all creative activity because to be creative meant I was risking losing it or going over a line that I had no way of seeing. It’s taken my shrink a dozen visits to convince me that as long as I take my medication, it’s okay to be creative and only now that we’ve found what I think is the right medication, have I been able to trust my creative self again.

In the Suzi Blu workshop, you have a profile where she asks specific questions so she can help teach you better and one of them was “What has kept you blocked with art in the past?” to which I answered, “Fear of my own imagination/mental illness. (It’s a long story.)” And this is that long story. You get a blog there too, but I figured if people from “Les Petite Dolls” were clicking the link to my site in my profile anyway, I might as well just write it all out here and be able to post pictures and links to better explain myself.

So there ya have it. Art has always been a huge part of my life (my mom’s an artist, I just grew up with it) and it feels good to have it back.

Oddly enough, I’d never seen this video until today:

Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys

Today was a really really busy day and I’m sore. Pretty much as soon as I woke up, I started moving furniture around and getting my studio a little neater for a project I’m working on. My shoulders ache from hauling this gigantic chair from one end of the house to another, it easily outweighed me by 80 lbs but I got it moved. Here’s a crappy camera phone picture of my completed corner. I’ll post the official before & afters in Live Journal tomorrow.

So yes, it’s true, I shaved my head. There are pictures over at my Live Journal and if you’re a Camwhores member, you can see the archived show of us doing the deed live on cam. I did video-tape the show with a second camera as well, but it’s going to take me a while to edit it into anything remotely worth watching, but it’ll be upon YouTube whenever I get around to it.

I got a tablet for my birthday from my in-laws (thank you!!!!), so for the past 24 hours I’ve done pretty much NOTHING except play with it. It’s gonna take a lot of practice, but so far I’m really liking it, it’s a damn nifty little device.

Also for my birthday, Blake got me a cell phone, which will be the first I’ve actually owned in about 5 years. Now I can join the rest of the world in the wonder that is text messaging! YAY! Wanna know my ringtone? When a call comes in, Celebrity Skin by Hole plays and when I get a text message it’s Hypnotize by the Notorious B.I.G. :D AND I even downloaded Hello Kitty wallpaper. Goddamn I love technology!

So that was my birthday, it kinda ruled. :)

I re-read the CammityJane entry I posted yesterday and I’m not entirely happy with it, but I’m not going to go editing it until I DO like it because I don’t believe in 2nd drafts. I’ve never gone back and edited anything I’ve ever written in my whole entire life, so I’m not about to do doing that now. SO THERE.

Once it’s finished (if it’s ever finished) and I’m thinking about turning it into a book, THEN I’ll play with stuff. Right now I just need to get the story out of me and slowly but surely, it’s coming.

Fiction’s weird. I’m not sure I’ve really talked much about the CammityJane journal, but last year when I went nuts, I had this huge explosion of concrentrated ideas and it was as if I got stuck in my own imagination and the problem was that A) I didn’t realize I was “off” and B) I couldn’t bring myself out of it.

It was during that period where the story of Jane (or more to the point, the other people she’s going to encounter) came into my mind and I spent most of my time in the hospital sketching scenes in my head with these characters (none of whom have been introduced yet), but not writing down a single word.

When I got out of the hospital, I got out my pencil crayons and drew every location of every scene, maps, character sketches and right now, I guess the name of the game is moving characters from point A to point B, which is actually a lot harder than I originally thought it would be and I find as I obsess with that, my characters lose a little depth.

For example, the “strange man” Jane encounters in the latest post is seriously glossed over from what’s in my head and I know that my descriptions aren’t sufficient if the reader’s going to come away with the mental image of him I have. At the same time, I also know he’s going to show up later so that gives me a second chance and the opportunity to round him out a little more. (How he moves, for example, is important, but in the restaurant setting I had a hard time trying to figure out a way for him to move because everything takes place at one table and it was important to the over all story that Jane come to him and not the other way around.)

Anyway, this isn’t a serious project or anything, just something I work on when the mood strikes or a character walks into my dreams demanding attention, which was the case with Good Eat Part 1 and “the strange man” himself.

In other news, my 10lbs of plain ol’ grey plastiscene arrived on Monday and I’ve spent a good portion of the week screwing around and seeing what I can do with it. So far I’ve only made a really stupid looking girl with a lot of hair…

I realize the face is dumb, that part took maybe 10 mins but each “strand” of hair was hand-rolled by yours truly and took about 30 hours total.

I’ve been on Wikipedia practically all day researching dragons, I think that’s what I’m going to make next and there’s a reason; when I was in grade 5 or 6 (hard to say since I had the same teachers and the same classroom for both grades, it was a split class) an art lady came to our school to teach us about using clay and I made this really awesome Chinese dragon, that’s now long gone, and I wanted to see if I could do it again, but better since I’m no longer a chubby little kid with chubby little fingers doing things the way someone else tells me to.

All week, when I’ve told people that I bought 10 lbs of grey plasticine, they’ve all asked the same question: “Why grey?” Well, it’s all gonna end up grey anyway, isn’t it?

The reason I got it was mostly to help me visualize certain things in 3-D and to better figure out where shadows would be (when painting) and I don’t need colour for that. In fact, for my purposes, I think colour would be distracting.

Some folks have suggested that I do stop-motion videos since I now have all this plastiscene and believe me, I’ve been thinking about it, but if it’s gonna happen, it’ll be a long time from now. I’ve got too much on the go between now and the spring and once the warm weather hits, using plastiscene is going to suck because it’ll be way too melty. So, if I ever do a stop-motion video, it’ll probably be next fall. (And if I did do one, I’d have to buy coloured plastiscene, so I’ll wait until I have a good idea first. :))

And finally, this brings me to YouTube and video blogging in general.

A few people have subscribed to my YouTube channel, which is fine, but don’t bitch about there being no context, because sometimes I’m uploading this stuff to be used for other things. For example, there’s a few videos that friends asked me to put up there, that have absolutely nothing to do with my site or blogging or anything, they just wanted to be able to share them with their own friends or post on their MySpaces. There’s probably gonna be a lot of that, so basically, if I don’t embed the video in a blog post and write about it, I uploaded it for someone or something else.

Another thing that keeps coming up is the lack of Madison (my daughter) in the videos I’ve uploaded thus far. Well, there’s a reason for that, a few of them actually.

The first is that, unlike Wes, she understands what a video camera does and as such, she tends to not “be herself” or becomes a different version of herself when it’s around (which is a nice way of saying that she tends to get obnoxious). She grew up with me following her around with a digital camera, so she doesn’t do this with stills, just with video. Wes is the opposite. If I get out the digital camera, he turns into an obnoxious little brat, but with the video camera, he acts himself because he’s too little to understand that it’s recording. He’s seen the videos of himself, but he just doesn’t understand the concept of video yet and he’s barely even aware of the internet, let alone YouTube.

The other reason is simply that she doesn’t want to be in videos that are of just “real life”.

She wants to put on plays and dress up and do fashion shows and stuff like that, which we do videotape for her, we just don’t put them online because she’s self-conscious and doesn’t want us to. We respect that. :) Basically any footage of Madison that gets put online is with her final approval and this is the kind of stuff she wants out there:

(That was from her school’s Xmas concert.)

Since that’s the case, most “kid videos” are going to be put up by Blake over at the kids’ site, Bunnies & Bees, for their aunts & uncles & grandparents to watch (and whoever else wants to, obviously, but it’s mostly a family thing).

In other news, it’s Wes’ 4th birthday on Tuesday and last week a few people e-mailed me to see if I’d gotten a wishlist set up yet, so this afternoon I cleaned up the kids’ old wishlist (deleting unavailable items/stuff they’ve kinda grown out of wanting etc), which can be found here.

And with that, I’m out.

And that’s all I have to say about that. *cough*

I’m well aware of the fact that this site still doesn’t have a theme despite having the best help imaginable, but I’m busy, lazy, horny & working on some other stuff at the moment. Planning, scheming, scanning, painting, writing, editing…I’ve been a pretty busy girl lately, one who doesn’t get enough sleep. Winter was late but it’s finally here and it’s like a floodgate let loose in my brain. Not in a crazy “uh oh, are you taking your meds?” kinda way, but in a creative way. Looking out the window at everything covered in snow is a great canvas; in my mind it’s so easy to mentally “paint” the landscape when everything’s white and obviously this leads to creative mental “shit” (otherwise known as ideas haha) that I don’t get to tap into in July or October. I’m trying to make the most of it before the sand and salt turns everything brown and screws with my chi.

Anyway, the other day Steph, the sexiest geek girl on the planet installed some WordPress gadgetry of some sort that will, eventually, help me organize things better, but until I decide how I’m even going to organize anything (layout, what content I’m even going to add in the end) I don’t think I’m gonna screw with it yet. Playing with YouTube all weekend and thinking about what’s possible has made me want to rethink how I was originally going to do some things, and has actually made me contemplate a few new ideas. I know I say this a lot, but we’ll see how things go and when I know what the fuck I’m talking about, I’ll let y’all know. :D

In the meantime…here’s a picture of me drawing on Krissy’s ass. :)

If you wanna know what’s going on, watch the video:

Fun Fact: I have this theory that if one can live a karmically neutral life, at the end of it rather than reincarnating, your energy just dissipates into nothingness. Personally, that’s what I’m going for.

So this afternoon I had a shower, put real clothes on (as opposed to PJs) and even a little bit of makeup and then I sat here for like, 3 hours trying to make a video blog using iMovie and my iSight. Well…I’m just not a vlogger, I don’t think. Moving video of myself, to me, is just the absolute fucking creepiest thing and I can’t stand it. I haven’t given up on the idea of making at least one video blog for shits, giggles & sheer posterity (eventually), but using iMovie with the preview window & all, just isn’t the way to go about it, I’ve decided.

I’m not sure if anyone’s been paying attention, but I’m kinda in the process of seriously re-evaluating and reorganizing my life and this site and the internet in general is a really big part of that. I didn’t do a big New Year’s post because I don’t do the resolution thing as a rule, and new years don’t mean a whole lot to me because, like a lot of people, I’m still just a big kid and the “new year” starts in Sept., ends in June and summer is just this period of awesomeness that’s outside of the calendar year. I’ll know I’m a grown-up when suddenly January means something to me.

I can’t even really say that I’m working on any particular goals, outside of NOT going nuts and ending up in the hospital again this winter, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how life is going to change around me pretty hardcore in the next year and what opportunities & pitfalls that’s going to create.

Wes, my youngest, is turning 4 in a couple of weeks, which means that he’s going to be starting junior kindergarten in the fall. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have immense issues surrounding this fact, not because of the whole “my baby’s leaving me” thing but because of how it’s going to change the structure of my day and routine in general, as well as the pressure I’m feeling because when your youngest starts kindergarten, usually women go back to work or school or find a job or something and that’s basically what society expects people to do.

But that’s not what I want to do and half my problem is that I don’t really even KNOW what I want to do yet, beyond the shit I already do. :| All I know is that (among other things) I’ve got $32,000 worth of student loans that aren’t going to go away and I can’t stay on interest relief forever, so come September, some decisions are going to have to be made.

I guess I’m a grown-up afterall. When the fuck did that happen? :(

Despite all this personal upheaval and mental junk I’ve been sifting through, there are a lot of things I’m looking forward to once days become mine again and a lot of things I’m attempting to work towards in the meantime, but at this point are mostly tentative. Right now I’m trying to get Sunnyland set up as a legitimate business. What kind of business, I’m not entirely sure yet, but hopefully one that makes more than the $15/month the bank’s charging me for a business account. I know I definitely want to make ‘zines again, I know I want to do something with Lulu.com eventually (have a few projects in mind), I want to set up my studio more as an actual studio where I can paint and cam and write and create and actually be somewhat productive, as opposed to it just being “the smoking lounge” with the leaky roof where we watch TV when people come over.

With the roof being fixed in the spring, this is all possible. When the teacup wall is complete, I can move the smoking lounge outside where it belongs. When Wes starts school, I can explore and do a lot of things I just can’t do now.

One of the things I’m really interested in is the town I live in because in some ways, it is so ass-backwards I can’t even believe it exists, let alone the fact that I live here. For months I’ve been trying to figure out a safe way to explore and add that dimension to things online, but I keep getting caught on both logistics, ethics and overal safety. I mean…is it really a good idea to blog about the town I live in? Especially when it’s teeny tiny, gossipy as all hell and the internet’s full of creepy stalker types? I’m not sure, but it’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently. The world I live in, the one in my head, the one inside my computer (which are mostly one in the same), it’s all very contrast to the environment in which I live and there’s a part of me that gets a really big kick out of that…but it could be ruined pretty easily if I exploit it creatively, so I’m trying to think and plan carefully.

I dunno, my mind’s just a jumble of plans and ideas these days, which is both worrisome and reassuring, but at least I feel as though I’m on a path to somewhere.

Basically? Just bear with me while I get my shit together, I’m workin’ on it.

Here’s what I’m doing instead:

- Cleaning my kitchen.
- Making meatballs for tomorrow’s dinner.
- Listening to the Beastie Boys (and various other crap I refuse to admit to).
- Making a grocery list.
- Looking at recipes on KraftCanada.com because dudes, I am so not a gourmet.

The cat (Digit) is sitting on the kitchen table and meowing for no apparent reason. Well, I’m sure there’s some reason, but I’m not even sure he’s speaking to me, so I’m basically ignoring him and hoping he’s not brave stupid enough to go for the onions I’ve got on the stove. It’s hard to say, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

I’d take pics because my kitchen’s actually somewhat clean (haha) but I can’t upload them so what’s the point? >:o( Yep, still grrr there.

I’m so weird when it comes to food and this is what Jesse and I have in common, except he probably has an eating disorder (worrisome) and I don’t (reassuring!), we decided today. We also decided that Jesse is so special, that we should have Jesse Day with a parade and everything. I don’t think I’d be a very good cameraperson for that event, all the footage would be blurry from laughing so fucking hard if it’s half as funny as it is in my head. :D Sumpin to ponder though. *strokes chin*

We like to make up our own holidays around here. :)

Does anyone see why I couldn’t make these in advance and freeze them? And if I did that, how much longer would I have to bake them from frozen? Hrm.

FYI? Meatballs are much more labour intensive than I thought they’d be. (But then again I’m probably making twice as many as we’ll actually eat for dinner.)

Cooking in the middle of the night isn’t a weird thing for me. I don’t do it all the time, but it’s something I’ve always done and when I do cook, my brain seems to think that 10 people live in this house, it’s ridiculous. Sometimes it’s meals in advance or parts of meals, sometimes it’s stuff for lunches, sometimes it’s muffins or brownies. Usually it revolves around whatever happens to be in the house at the time.

When I was little I indisputably had the best great grama in the whole wide world. I mean, she was textbook fairytale old lady, white hair, short, GIGANTIC boobs, wore floral mumus (I shit thee not, but it worked for her with the boobs & all), walked with a cane, was old as the dirt in her garden, she crocheted, she cooked, she was awesome & probably the best friend I’d ever had in my whole entire life until I met Blake.

She’s also probably the reason my sleep schedule is, and has always been, as fucked up as it is because I was with her a lot and we’d cook in the middle of the night or draw pictures or she’d tell me stories or I’d sit in the bath and she’d read me stories. I dunno if she was the nightowl or if I was or we both were, but this is what we did so certain sleep/wake habits make a lotta sense to me.

It’s 4:44am as I type this, my meatballs are finished, they’re with the sauce in the fridge and the rest of the dishes can wait until tomorrow. I should go to bed. My body knows it, my mind knows it - it’s just a fact. I should have been in bed a long time ago…but as I turned out the kitchen lights, I noticed that one of the windows has frosted in a sort-of fleur de lis pattern that may just be worth the wait for this morning’s sunrise because the sun will come directly through that window at one point, I just have to wait for it.

It’s stuff like that that I live for, as lame as it sounds; cool looking shit that nature just gives us, I mean those moments are gifts from the universe as far as I’m concerned. I like to memorize them.

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately. My biological dad, Phil. I really only have one, he’s it, he porked my mom and out came me, it’s crazy but I accept it. He’s a kooky guy and I kinda like him, but I think he’ll just be Phil for the rest of my life because I don’t think he’ll ever really be my dad. He’s just this guy I know that I’m really interested in, probably because it’s ingrained in my DNA to be as such. (I’m a little obsessed with nature vs. nurture.) Phil’s just Phil, Lisa (his wife) is just Lisa and Raili (my almost 2 year old sister) is just Raili. There’s no textbook or Wikipedia entry that can tell me how we’re all supposed to fit together.

Ever since I met Phil & Lisa, when I was 13, I’ve been trying to figure out what Phil and I had in common, because that’s what you do when you meet one of your parents for the first time and it’s taken me years to even make a list of 10 because some of the things he does (and they do) are pretty bizarre. They just live in a whole different world than I do. But now that Raili’s in the picture, it just all kinda makes sense. It’s like, she was the missing piece to put the whole picture into perspective for me (and maybe for him too, although I doubt he’d say so).

I know I’ve posted this picture of her before, but dammit, it’s a good picture. :)

I’m probably thinking about Phil & Raili because Phil’s birthday is Feb. 11th and Raili’s is at the end of Feb. (I suck, I’d have to look it up) and mine’s the 1st of March, so there’s part of me that thinks we should all get together at some point in the next couple of months while our energies are compatible, but I’m not big on birthdays so we need a different reason.

Something I grew up doing was making maple syrup with my Aunt Betty & Uncle Bill, I wonder if they’d be interested in doing that in March? They live in the bush, I’m sure we could find some maple trees and collect enough sap in the span of a few days to have at least one good pancake breakfast/lunch/dinner with enough syrup to maybe even take home. Something else to ponder.

Hmmmm sugar bush dreams sound pretty good, I think I’ll ponder that in my sleep & wait for the next frosty window.