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!

…and in a sense it will be…it just won’t stay that way because I have issues. Major fucking issues.

For all intents and purposes, yesterday was a good day. A very good day. I woke up at 6am, did internetting until the rest of the family woke up so I could use the blender to make a protein “shake” which isn’t so much a shake or even a smoothie because it’s just protein powder, milk and ice. I hate bananas and yogurt with a fiery passion, so the odds of me ever making a proper smoothie are probably slim to none and I think adding ice cream to make a shake is probably defeating the purpose.

I did get Blake to buy me some Nestle Quick chocolate squirty stuff though, because the supposedly chocolate flavour protein powder we bought doesn’t actually taste like chocolate. It SMELLS like chocolate, oddly enough, but really, it doesn’t taste like anything (and I don’t like plain milk). There is only 15 calories in 1 tablespoon of Nestle Quick. I figure I’ll probably use 2. Anyway, none of this is neither here nor there.

As I consumed my protein beverage, the family got ready to go to work and school and the sun was shining and I just felt warm inside my heart. It was going to be a good day, I could tell. And while I don’t really participate in the family getting ready for work or school, sometimes I like being awake for it because it really is the time in which all 3 of them are the most themselves, together. That’s probably hard to explain, but it’s like concentrated Madison, concentrated Wes, concentrated Blake all within this frantic chaos of getting out the door on time. It’s one of those things that occur in family like that I just sometimes like to sit back and watch, or more to the point, listen to.

So for about an hour it’s all loud and everyone’s rushing around (except Wes, who leisurely eats his cereal and talks to his favourite imaginary friend of the week, for the most part) and they’re all being extremely unintentionally funny, but the second the car leaves the driveway, bound for school and work, the house becomes absolutely silent in this perfect way that, to me, is absolutely calming. The dogs have each claimed a still-warm bed, the cat is sprawled out on the couch sleeping, and I haven’t turned on TweetDeck yet or iTunes. The only sound is the gentle hum of my computer and the lamp on my desk whose spiral lightbulb is due to blow any day now, if the buzzing coming out of it is any indication.

So after they leave, I just kinda sit here and absorb. I look out the window, I say “hi” to the sun, I check on my plants, I drink my protein beverage and then I just sit in my chair and kind of clear my mind and do a mini-meditation. I never know what I’m going to do on any given day. I never really attack a day with a plan of any sort. I wake up when I wake up. I eat when I eat. I make art when I feel like it. I watch movies while I make art (it’s very difficult for me to just watch a movie). I take pictures of things when something catches my eye. I have dance parties with the dogs. I sing. I make strange noises because no one’s home and I can. I read a lot. Every day is different, unstructured and unplanned. Most days are neutral, some days are good and a few days are very very bad.

Yesterday was good, as I said.

After Blake and the kids left, I did some more internetting, this time with more of a purpose. There are many places I visit online that I’ve been visiting for so long that posting to them daily is almost like a requirement and in some cases, kind of like a job. It’s the beginning of the month, that means all votes on Camwhores have been set to zero, as everyone knows, but it also means that our points have been set to zero as well. “What are points?” you might be asking yourself. Well, they’re participation points where, for participating in the community, you are given points, which translate to money at the end of the month. I’d like to think I’m very very good at working this system, so that’s what I mean about some places I go to on my internet travels are kind of like work. Yesterday I had a personal quota of making X amount of threads and posts in the Camwhores forum and a blog post, but it was loose in that my threads and posts would be things I was genuine about posting. I don’t post for the sake of points, I post because I’m interested in having a conversation with whoever else is responding to threads, either their or mine. The quota isn’t so much a quota for points necessarily, but something that I use to make sure I don’t spend more time on the forums than I should because I have other things to do and get sucked into the forums I go to daily very easily.

I had actually come up with some forum topic ideas over the weekend that I didn’t have time to post, so I posted them, wrote my blog post and then I actually went outside and sat in the chair under my carport that was formerly used for sitting in while smoking. It was still early enough in the morning that the sun was streaming in, under the carport, and hitting my face, so I just sat there for about 10 minutes soaking it in. While I was out there, I saw 2 robins, a bunch of red-winged blackbirds and the teeniest glimpse of a cardinal that’s been hanging around in the pine tree beside our driveway some days.

When I came inside I realized that I was actually still really tired considering I’d gone to bed around 1am the night before and then got up at 6, so I decided to take a nap. I woke up at 1:48pm, let the dogs out, then went around the house opening windows because it had to be about 25 degrees outside. When I went to open the living room windows, I saw that my bleeding hearts were in full bloom, so I went into my office, grabbed my camera and opened the door to go take pictures of them when I noticed that on the doorknob was a delivery notice from Canada Post saying that they were there at 1pm. I believe that they were there, but I sincerely doubt that they actually knocked on the door because when someone knocks on our door, no matter how faint, Hoover and Lucky go mental and will not stop barking until the door’s opened and they see the person’s okay. If Hoover and Lucky go mental because someone knocks on the door, traditionally I wake up. I don’t actually answer the door because 9 times out of 10 it’s either a delivery (they’ll come back) or a Jehova’s Witness (don’t care if they come back) and I don’t like strangers seeing me moments after waking up from a small coma.

The delivery notice said that we could pick up the package at the post office after 2pm, so I called Blake and asked if he was planning on leaving work early because it was Monday and generally on Monday’s he has Judo and therefore comes home early. He said he wasn’t going to Judo but that he could come home early to get this package. The odd thing about this package was that it was addressed to me and required a signature and the only thing I was expecting was the new Gogol Bordello CD from Amazing, which would not require a signature. Whatever this package was, was a mystery. Blake reminded me that I’d signed a form at the post office saying that he can sign for my packages, so he said he’d pick this one up on his way home from work, pending the thing I signed hadn’t expired.

After I got off the phone with him, I picked my camera back up and went outside to take pictures of my bleeding hearts and the lone baby tulip I have that just began to bloom over the weekend. (I think I’ve now photographed everything in my garden that’s going to bloom before July, so the first official “Keep Off the Lawn” post should be coming soon, for those who are into those.) While I was out there, I noticed a LOT of growth happening from plants that had seeded themselves in the fall and thought about what a shame it’ll be when we decimate them this weekend with the sod cutter because that sneaky sneaky grass, I swear, grew over the winter somehow and is now taking about about 1/3 of the bottom of my garden. No matter though, the sod cutter makes easy work of removing it and we can move this grass to the backyard where there is no grass, just weeds, and my friend Ruggedo send me PLEEEEEEEEEENTY of seeds this year to make the front look amazing. On my list of things to do is to buy a canvas the same size as my current “Grow Dammit!” sign and paint a new one using the colours of the garden, but financially, doing so hasn’t been high on my priority list, which is why I haven’t done it yet. I also meant to do it last year as well, but again, the same thing.

When I came inside, I put my camera away and did a little more internetting for a few minutes and then I decided that it was time to work on the two canvases I began prepping over the weekend and who were waiting for the splatter stage in my process. These ones were actually going to be a bit of a challenge because one of them is going to be a repainted version of “Shimmer“, which is the one Madison accidentally destroyed by letting it bounce off the corner of the shelf it was sitting on, causing the canvas to rip and the varnish to basically shatter. If you’ll recall, “Shimmer” is actually 1 in a series of 3 and my intention for all 3 was to put them in The Square Foot Show in July. That’s still my intent, so “Shimmer” needs to be reproduced. The challenge with these canvases is that the splatter technique I used for all 3 of those paintings is different than the technique I’ve been using for the past year and I wasn’t sure I remembered how to achieve the same effect so all 3 would continue to match and look like a set.

Over the weekend I went through journals from last year (I write down pretty much everything) and found where my former technique – which in retrospect is actually the superior technique – differed from my current technique and I was fairly confident I could repeat the background accurately for the new “Shimmer”. The second canvas I was prepping is for a turquoise version of “Love Fairy”, the painting I just sold so since the only difference between that one’s background and “Shimmer”‘s background is different types of glitter, it made sense to work on both of them at the same time.

So, I put on the movie It’s Complicated while I splattered the canvases and while they dried on the coffee table I started drawing my girls for both paintings. It’s Complicated was actually an uplifting movie for me, similar to the way Something’s Gotta Give was also uplifting to me. For one, I love Meryl Streep, I mean, how can you not love Meryl? And Alec Baldwin was in it, as well as Steve Martin (who, oddly, was not at all funny). But it was uplifting in that movies like this, where the theme is kind of about aging but still having fun, give me hope that life is just going to keep getting better. I kinda knew that was true, just from watching my mom get older and really come into her own after hitting 40, but it’s nice to see validation of that through movies with actors who are actually playing characters who are around their actual age. So watching that actually put me in a better mood than the good mood I was already in.

When the movie ended, I just kept drawing my girls with the TV off, enjoying the silence that was about to be broken by the fact that the kids would be bursting through the door in about half an hour and right on cue, they did, and Wes was crying because Madison actually elbowed him in the head when she was waving goodbye to one of her friends. Madison also had to report that Wes had taken off on her to go play with another kid and I had to give Wes shit of that because that’s simply not allowed. Madison’s in charge on the way home from school and to be safe, he has to do what she says. So he said okay, apologized to Madison, they both fixed their afternoon snacks and ate them while watching TV, then Madison started her homework while Wes played with toys. During all this, I did – take a wild guess – more internetting. Mostly catching up with everything my friends tweeted about during the day when I had TweetDeck closed and commenting on those things.

I intended to either watch another movie or see if Oprah was going to be of interest while I worked on my girls some more, but by the time I was finished internetting, Blake came through the door with a giant Amazon box. Blake’s mom asked for the kids’ wishlist last week, which I found obnoxious because the url’s been the same for oh, 6 friggin’ years now and you would think that at some point she would have, I dunno, BOOKMARKED IT, or maybe checked the TWO PLACES it’s available online, in plain sight, on my site and Live Journal, which we know she reads. Anyway, when I saw the box, I assumed it would be birthday presents for Madison from her and Charlie because the other Amazon package was clearly my CD and as I said, that was the only thing I was expecting so I shoo’d Madison out of the room and opened the box.

The first thing I see is the Battlestar Galactica boxed set. Um, what? I grabbed the packing slip and closed the box’s lid, telling Blake to hang on, that this was definitely not from his mom and definitely not all for Madison. It was from my friend Charlie who, on the odd occasion, likes to surprise our family with gifts because he’s awesome that way. So I called everyone in and played Santa Claus. I told Madison that her gifts were for her birthday and I told Wes that his gifts were for his birthday too.

After the kids left with their haul and Blake went to put his Battlestar Galactica on the shelf on his desk, I cried. I had just had the best day I’d had in a long time and the gifts from Charlie tipped something in my brain, like overloaded it with positivity that I just bawled. I mean, the things he picked out for me were great things, but what really had me excited was Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution book, which is half cookbook and half cooking lesson about how to feed your family real food as opposed to processed shit. His “revolution” is teaching people how to cook again because so many families don’t anymore and while Blake and I do cook, we really only know how to make about a dozen things between the two of us and our whole family is getting mighty sick of those dozen things. I mean, Charlie didn’t just pick out a gift with this one, he enabled us to nourish our family better and I don’t even think he understands the gravity of that. And maybe I’m being melodramatic, but to me that is a very very big deal and I cried and cried and cried.

As the kids began to watch Avatar (one of Charlie’s gifts) Blake and I went in the kitchen and worked on dinner together, which is something that also rarely happens and it felt good being in the kitchen together. It always feels good when we’re partners in crime. I started cutting up craploads of basil to make this basil/garlic/olive oil pasta that I make (with lots of vegetables) and Blake got out the biiig pot and set it on the stove to boil while he searched the cupboards for the tri-colour pasta I asked him to get during our last big grocery shopping. He couldn’t find it and decided he must not have gotten any, so he turned the stove off and went to the grocery store to get some as I continued chopping basil. For this pasta, 1 package of fresh basil will DO, but really, I think you should use 3, which is how much I was cutting up. Then I put it in a bowl and added about half a bottle of olive oil and about half a jar of minced garlic with maybe two teaspoons of salt, some ground pepper (I hate pre-ground pepper, it’s always too powdery and I just don’t like it) and a bit of parmesan. With those quantities, obviously we make a lot of this when we make it because it’s good for lunches and afterschool snacks the next day. It’s also healthy and CHEAP.

Anyway, while Blake was at the store, I used our biggest Tupperware container (which is also the container we store the finished product in), loaded it with fresh snow peas, a whole bag of frozen broccoli, half a bag of frozen green beans and carrots and a few handfuls of regular frozen peas with a bit of water at the bottom, put the lid on and started the microwave for about 13 minutes. By the time I was done doing that, Blake was home with the pasta, the water was back on to boil and my part in the kitchen was finished. The rest was up to him to drain, assemble and mix, which is just how we roll.

While the pasta was cooking, Wes decided to watch Avatar with Madison (he’d previously deemed it too scary and drew flowers in the kitchen instead) and we said that they could eat in the living room while they watched it. I had already started diving into the Jamie Oliver book and was busy putting Post-Its on the pages with stuff I think I’d eat, or at least try, if Blake made it, with notes on variations I’d use, such as “no goddamn peppers in anything”, when dinner became ready. Blake decided to eat in the living room with the kids and watch Avatar while I ate while I read.

We didn’t realize how long Avatar was and it was fast becoming time for the kids to go to bed, so we told them to remember which part they were on and that they could watch it today after school. So Blake did most of the dishes, with Madison doing the tail end while Wes got ready for bed and then when the dishes were done, Madison got ready for bed and then we were kid-free.

It had started really cooling off outside so I went around the house and started closing windows, then I came back into my office and read some more of the Jamie Oliver book until Blake came in to join me. Even though I had had a nap, I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep, but I wanted to make sure I was for sure going to fall asleep (because sometimes when I’m in a good mood, I can’t sleep, which kinda sucks) so Blake & I decided to watch Gossip Girl, Nurse Jackie and The United States of Tara, which are 3 of my favourite shows, before going to bed.

During Tara, Blake gave me a massage and when it was over, we went to bed. Except we didn’t go to sleep and here’s where things take a downturn. I said, “I think I’m manic,” and he said, “you’re not manic, you just had a good day, you started your day off with protein, which gives you energy and you just had a good day from there” and then I started crying because I was afraid I was going crazy. Here’s the problem with me, which is something I think I’m probably going to have to bring up to my shrink when I see her on Friday: the happiest I have ever been in my whole entire life, I was completely out of my fucking gourd and it ended with psychosis and hospitalization. So, I am very suspicious of “happy”. Too much “happy”, especially if I’m alone when it happens, and I’m convinced I’m manic and I’m going to go crazy and that scares me more than anything. The more I talked to Blake about how scared I was that I was manic, the more panicked I became until I was pretty much inconsolable and snotting all over my sheets. It took Blake until about 2:30am to convince me that everything was fine and that I should just go to sleep.

And today hasn’t been a good day. It should have been, I’ve got new books to read and paintings to paint and movies to watch and the sun’s shining, but when I have exceptionally good days like I did yesterday, they are almost always followed by an exceptionally bad day, which I think is just the nature of my disease. My meds are stable though, as far as I know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if, after telling my shrink all about this, she doesn’t raise my mood stabilizers as I’m only taking 3/4 of the full dose. But if it’s not the drugs, if the drugs are already doing what they’re supposed to be doing and this is more of a psychological thing then I think I fucking need therapy because it happens way too often. I mean, who the fuck is afraid to be happy? Besides me, I mean? That’s not normal. I mean, obviously I have a completely rational explanation for why I distrust happiness NOW, but really, my whole life, I’ve never even really believed in happiness. I always thought people who claimed to be happy were either lying or delusional. And then the time in my life where I was unbelievably happy and in a good mood every day for months, I was nuts.

My shrink’s told me a million times to trust my drugs, but I guess the bottom line is that I don’t. Or I’m afraid to. I don’t know which one it is but I think it has to change.

So that’s my story.

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 woke up today at 1:30pm and I was amazed when my eyes adjusted enough for me to look at the clock. I got up at 8am on Sunday, for some ungodly reason, and last night I ended up staying awake until around 3:30am because someone on a forum I go to started a thread about this A&E show called Hoarders, which I’d never heard of and it sounded interesting so I (stupidly) decided to start watching episodes on Ninja Video.

Also last night, I wrote one of my articles for Buttercup, called “So This Is Xmas“, all about why I hate this particular holiday and it left me emotionally ravaged. I know I’ve told the story as to why I hate Xmas on my site before and last night I promised myself that this would be the last time I open that wound ever again because afterward, I was a complete mess. (Mom, if you’re reading this, you probably wanna skip that article. You know what it’s about and I really mean it when I say it’s the last time it’s going to be brought up.) It’s strange how something that happened so long ago can leave me a a crumpled mess on the floor wanting to throw up more than half a lifetime later.

Anyway, that’s what I did last night.

There are a couple of arty things that have been topics of discussion lately and I figure now’s as good a time as any to talk about them. The first is that some friends of mine have asked me if I’ll ever start making videos on YouTube, specifically art tutorial videos and vlogs and the answer to that is quite simply “no”. There are millions of art tutorials already on YouTube, I suck at video editing software and have no intentions of improvement in that area and I just don’t want to. Vlogs? Why? I already have a blog and write quite well, thank you, so I don’t see the point of sitting in front of a camera essentially talking to myself and saying everything I’m saying here only a hell of a lot less eloquently. No thank you. One person said that there’s no difference between recording a vlog and doing a streaming show at Camwhores and I guess that person has never been to Camwhores before or seen any of my shows. Yes, there is similarity in the fact that you’re in front of a camera, but that’s where the similarity ends. At Camwhores, there are people watching you and talking to you, it’s live and to me, that’s a lot less awkward than sitting in my office talking to myself about the weather.  Plus, there’s no editing to be done and only a select audience is going to be viewing it after it’s been recorded and put in the archives. So it’s completely different and no, I won’t be making art tutorials or vlogs for YouTube in the new year. I may do little videos of my finished paintings so people can see how they sparkle (which we’ve found impossible to photograph), but that’s about the extent of it.

The other thing I’ve been asked recently is if I’ll do a tutorial on how I do backgrounds and the answer to that one is “sure”. If people want to know how, as it appears they do, then the next time I make a painting (which should be in the new year, unless I become inspired before then) I’ll take photos of the process and whip up a tutorial on all that goes into the background. It’s actually extremely easy, as long as you’ve got the right products and I think the end result is pretty cool. So that’s something I plan on working on in the new year.

Since I have nothing to read right now, I dug out these back issues I ordered last year of a magazine called Artful Blogging. Yes, even I was amazed that such a publication existed. Basically, last year someone suggested that I write a piece about my blog for the magazine so I ordered the back issues to see what it was all about and then someone else told me to “let them come to you”, so I kind of put the idea out of my mind. Then last week when I was looking for something on one of my bookshelves that I haven’t read yet, I found them and started reading. Long story short, I don’t think I want to be in this magazine and the suggestion of me being in it is actually kind of laughable because I so wouldn’t fit in. This magazine is not for people who say “fuck” a lot, it’s for people who inspire and make friends through their blogs and network and all kinds of other flowery “uplifting” bullshit. And while yes, I’ve done all of the above with my blog (or more to the point, my Live Journal) and I’ve had mine longer than any of the people in at least the first two issues of the magazine, I’ve done so with a hell of a lot more edge than the women profiled (and they’re all women) and this magazine doesn’t appear to be the place for that. I’m going to read all of the issues I have, even though every article is practically the same, and then I’m going to forget it exists again because it’s, well, boring. Hopefully I get some new books for Xmas.

And with that, I think I’m off to my Sims Bunker since I have to write a review for the expansion next week and I still haven’t been to Egypt.

Buttercup is an independent e-zine for persons seeking a female-focused atmosphere that celebrates diversity, individuality and creativity.
We launched September 1st!
Come join the party!

I went to bed at around 3:30am and had dreams all night – until now (7-ish) – about TV. I dreamt about Growing Pains and Kirk Cameron and in my dream I Twittered via my great grandma’s piano “Kirk Cameron was such an awesome kid, too bad he grew up into an evangelical fuck.”

I woke up in a blind panic that I could remember the name of the 4th Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael, ______________? Upon getting out of bed I Twittered my dilemma and my friend Alex, almost immediately, tweeted back that the 4th was Donatello. *whew* I almost had to Google.

Also in my dream were bits and pieces of Mr. Belvedere which was such a bad show, but I was totally into it when I was a kid. WUTV Fox, which was one of the only channels I got on the little TV in my room because cable hadn’t (and still hasn’t) reached our town yet, used to have reruns of Mr. Belvedere on at like, 3am, two episodes back-to-back and I’d watch them with the volume turned really low while I drew pictures long past my bedtime.

Throughout the entire dream, the theme song of Family Ties was playing low and I woke up thinking  – after my Ninja Turtles dilemma – that I’d really like to rent all of the seasons of that because that was a show my parents watched more than I did and I wonder how it stands up now. I bet it’s awesome. I think I remember one episode in particular where Alex obtains a computer to do something and maybe talks about how it’s the future and I just think that episode would be hilarious now.

So that was my dream, but I think about old TV shows all the time. For example, few people know this but my daughter, Madison Gabrielle Crittenden, was named after a character in Xena: Warrior Princess which I would love to not only see again on DVD but own. (Her first name was an homage to Madison Avenue in NYC, which at the time I thought I was destined to work on in either the advertising or magazine industry.)

I’m also interested in renting ALF on DVD because when I was a kid that was my favourite show and of course I’d like to watch all of the mini-series and the TV show of V on DVD before the remake comes out, but I don’t even know if those are on DVD. I’ll check later.

And speaking of old shit from my childhood, I am absolutely obsessed with watching the movie What About Bob. I saw that movie in the theatre with my grandma when it came out and was too young to really get the jokes I think because I never liked it. My boyfriend in high school used to tell me that that was his favourite movie of all time and I remember thinking “what an idiot!” because when I saw it, I thought it was stupid. However, since I’m going through immersion therapy and doing the “baby steps” thing, I bet I’d probably find it hysterical now. Unfortunately it’s not available OnDemand from my cable company and we haven’t been able to find any torrents, so I think I’m probably going to have to buy it on Amazon. (It’s like, less than $10. Renting it would be almost $7. Might as well just own a copy, I figure.)

Oh hell so I went from TV to movies so I might as well make this a multimedia post.

For Mother’s Day “the kids” got me the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album It’s Blitz! and I’m completely in love with it. It starts off with the first single “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll” which both make me feel like I’m standing on the dance floor of Studio 54 after doing 10 lines of coke (which I’ve never done btw, nor am I endorsing) and Karen O reminds me so much of like…hmmm, Deborah Harry? So the album starts off all dancey and strong and then it flows into a soundtrack for the perfect party night out all the way until the end where there are accoustic versions of some of the songs that give the feeling of walking out of a club at dawn, rubbing your eyes and going to the nearest greasy spoon for breakfast with your mascara smeared and your stockings torn. The whole album is a work of art and I highly recommend it.

I tried to make a playlist of the entire album but some songs were missing from Playlist.com so I decided to scrap the idea because not hearing the album in its entirety would probably ruin it for ya. Unfortunately the video for “Zero” isn’t embeddable and doesn’t appear to be on YouTube, so click here if you’re interested.

Anyway it’s a solid album, definitely my favourite of the year so far. Not that I’ve actually heard anything else haha The last CDs we bought before this were Nirvana’s Bleach, Radiohead’s Pablo Honey and the complete works of The Pixies (except for Bossanova, which the store didn’t have – curses!).

And now my household is waking up so I guess I’m just gonna hit “post” and get on with my day.

In some ways I had a very good childhood. In most it was bad, very bad, but as time passes I find myself able to appreciate certain aspects of it more than I used to or see things in ways I’d never considered before.

This post is very hard for me to write, there’s an Ativan under my tongue as I type these words, I kind of feel like barfing and I already cried a little, but I think it’s got to come out anyway.

If you’ve followed my blog for any great length of time then you will know that I was the result of a teenage pregnancy which set the stage for one of the most fucked up lives imaginable. I think this was just fate. I used to blame people and get angry and sad but now I just accept and do my best to “live in the now” on the advice of my brother who’s a total prick, who I haven’t seen in 3 years and who I often wonder if I’ll ever see again. And I’m not sad when I think that the answer to that question is most likely “no”.

My life, up until this point, has been both tragic and charmed and now, at the age of 30, I appreciate the richness of both ends of the spectrum and everything in between. When I try to visualize my life, when I think about painting my life, I think of a pencil drawing of a girl in the corner of a cell with a barred window, sitting in a sunbeam, hugging her tucked up legs. Her hair covers her face, which is mostly buried in her knees. Perched on the window sill is a black and yellow wild canary. That’s been my life.

But enough with the dramatics. This post is about my dad, of which I have, or rather had, two. And one of them is going to be here in about 3 hours to replace my broken bay window so I’ve got to hurry this along.

When I was a baby something happened – I don’t really know what and at this point I don’t care – and my biological father, then 17ish and known as “Phip” disappeared. He reappeared once when I was about 2 or 3, the only childhood memory I have of him, but that was it until I found him on my own when I was 12 – but that’s a whole other story.

When I was 5, my mother met a man named Ken Cox whose father was a friend of the family (I think?) and who worked with our neighbour Mike in his father’s industrial waste management business, I guess you’d call it. From what I understand, they picked up scrap from de Havilland in Toronto, which is where they made airplanes, most notably the Dash 8. I wasn’t really all that involved with their courtship. I remember Ken coming over to my grandma’s, where my mom and I lived, for dinner once but that’s pretty much the extent of my memories until the wedding.

In the beginning things were pretty okay. I had a dad and I thought that was great. Then my brother was born and I was pushed away a bit, but no more than any other first-born when the second one comes along. At the time we were living in a small one bedroom apartment above my grandpa’s carpet store, across the street from the town clock that gonged every hour, on the hour.

But then my mom opened her paint & wallpaper store and not too long after that we moved into our first house, which is when the trouble began and my parents started to not get along (which is putting it mildly). The truth is, we could barely afford the house and because we didn’t have a washer and dryer, every Saturday my dad, my brother and I  would have to go to the laundromat. For whatever reason we stopped going to the laundromat closest to our house, we went to the one in the town we used to live in and in the town we used to live in was an infamous flea market and while our laundry was either washing or drying, my dad would take us to the flea market and he would buy all kinds of toys for my brother but none for me. And when I asked why, he would say it was because I got spoiled enough by my grandparents and my brother didn’t. This is why I have a massive complex about everything my kids get being equal.

Anyway…despite the fact that my dad would be a walking, talking, sandy vagina most of the time because my parents were on the verge of divorce, he was who I was closest to and the one thing we had in common was our love for TV and movies which started in the very beginning when we lived in the apartment and he would watch Saturday morning cartoons with me and then in the afternoon while folding laundry, we would watch old Conan and kung-fu movies, which I guess at the time weren’t really that old. He was the one who lobbied for me to stay up past my bedtime to watch Alf, which I loved.

Well, over the years a lot of shit happened. After the separation (my parents weren’t legally divorce until my daughter was 3 months old) my dad and I stayed close but he was so bitter about my mom that it was hard to be his daughter as he was pretty much the president of the He Man Woman Haters Club and while it was becoming quite evident that he favoured my brother, being his biological child who lived with him, he still invited me over every Friday night to eat subs from Mr. Sub, which back then had THE BEST finely shredded lettuce, and to watch The X-Files. (By this time I was 15 and living on my own, I’m totally glossing over timelines here.)

As I grew older though, so did he, but where I grew wiser he grew more and more bitter about my mother. He was like a rabid dog who, even 10 years after the fact, simply could not let it go. It didn’t matter that they’d been separated longer than they’d been married, my mother was the biggest whorebag slut who ever walked the face of the Earth and he wished her every plague and gory death you could ever think of, which he thought of a lot and explained in glorious detail. That one life event consumed his entire being and the older I got, the more I reminded him of her and the crueler to me he became.

The final straw was when my son was born and I was in the hospital. It was about 3 minutes after I’d given birth when the phone in my room rang and my mother answered it. It was my dad. She informed him that it was a healthy baby boy, gave him the length & weight and told him his name and was completely civil about it. My dad apparently asked to speak to me but at the time I was birthing the placenta so I was kind of busy and my mom said I’d call him back.

Well, that was the beginning of the end. For whatever reason, he held it against me that my mother answered the phone and made me pay for it at every opportunity. It was tradition, due to the separation, that every year at Christmas we had Christmas morning and afternoon with my dad where we had dinner, then Christmas evening at my grandma’s for dessert and presents (mom’s mom) and then we’d sleep over at my mom’s to have Boxing Day brunch and presents with her the next day.

On my son’s first Christmas he was crawling age and we (me, my kids, my husband) went to my dad’s on Christmas morning like tradition dictated and we opened presents. But something was amiss. There was not a single present under the tree for my son. And when presents were finished and we were all hanging out i the kitchen while my dad worked on Christmas dinner, when my son crawled over to him, my dad stepped over him like he was an old dog, while at the same time lavishing praises and having conversations with my daughter. Basically, he refused to even acknowledge my son’s presence and purposely left a BABY, his GRANDSON out of his holiday gift giving.

To make a long story short it wasn’t too long after that that my dad and I parted ways and we haven’t spoken since. It’s been 6 years and with the way he is, I doubt I’ll ever see or speak to him again, although I do live in fear of a death bed reunion and I wonder all the time if, when that happens, I’ll go to him or not. Most days I think not.

But here I go writing about my bummer of a childhood again, which I promised myself a few years ago I was going to stop doing and that’s not what I intended this most to really be about. The fact of the matter is, this man was the only dad I knew for most of my childhood and despite the fact that he’s a rotten cervix and I have no intentions of ever speaking to him again, it’s still sort of automatic to think of him in certain situations. There are triggers.

For example, today I found out that they’re remaking “V”, which for you young’uns was a few mini-series and a TV series about an reptilian alien race that ate rats who were secretly trying to take over the planet to use humans for food and to steal our water. Well, even though I was probably WAY too young to watch it, I watched it with my dad and when I learned of the remake – which I’m hoping will be Battlestar Galactica good, but I’m not holding my breath – I instantly wanted to tell my dad and found myself sort of sad that I couldn’t. I want to know what he thinks of this remake. When the remake comes out I want to know his thoughts on it.

When Blake and Wes and I went to the drive-in last weekend and saw Star Trek, I was an emotional mess both because the movie was a masterpiece but also because I watched the reruns of the original series with my dad and I remember so well him telling me that the most amazing part of that show was the fact that everything in it would one day be a reality. And he was right, sort of. I mean, cell phones were invented because of Star Trek and I wonder all the time what he thinks about that.

And I wonder, since we were both really into the X-Files, what he thinks of the show Fringe, which is basically an X-Files/Sliders rip-off/hybrid, the latter of which we were also into. And does he watch LOST? What does he think of that and if he does watch it, did he enjoy Cloverfield as much as I did? (I saw Cloverfield TWICE in the theatre! The only movie I’ve ever watched twice in a theatre! I’m agoraphobic, I don’t go to theatres!)

Probably an embarrassing fact, but my dad was REALLY into Beverly Hills 90210 when it aired. I remember one day coming home from choir practice (you heard me, shut up! it was CHURCH choir too, so fuck off!) and 90210 just coming on and I went to say something and he was like, “Shut up! 90210‘s on and I’ve been following it since the beginning, tell me later!” and me thinking that was SO funny. So naturally I wonder if he watches the new 90210 and of course, what he thinks about it. I bet he hates it, but at the same time, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that he never misses an episode of Gossip Girl.

But there’s a dark side to all of this as well. My fear is that he doesn’t enjoy anything anymore. The last time I spoke to my brother he told me my dad was working nights at the warehouse and I assumed that as a result of that he was missing the best TV had to offer. I fear that all he does is work, then sleep, then eat, then smoke, then go to work, repeat. I fear that he has no joy in his life. He was already on his way to that fate by the time I left him, he was a bitter shell of a person.

I usually attribute my artistic tendencies to my mother, who’s an artist, but truthfully, it probably had more to do with my dad who was, to put it mildly, naturally gifted. When I was really little, he used to airbrush cars and metal. I remember this old hood of a car that used to be behind my grandparents’ garage that had an airbrushed green scary looking octopus on it that he did. He also painted my grandma’s delivery van for her furniture store.

Most of my early childhood after my parents got married, involved going for drives after work or on weekends, on unpaved backroads in the country to photograph old barns that my dad would then draw in pointillism absolutely perfectly. When my mom opened her wallpaper store, they framed a few of his drawing and they sold right away. My mom bought him a drawing table and these really expensive pens with superfine nibs and he drew for a while, mostly fantasy creatures and aliens inspired by Heavy Metal magazine and Jim Henson, but after my parents separated he didn’t really draw again no matter how much my brother and I begged him because his skill was truly amazing. My mom will probably hate me for saying this, but out of the two of them, I’d say he had the upper hand when it came to art. It just came naturally to him and he had this massive imagination evident in both his art and his storytelling (usually scary stories).

But he stopped doing it. It was one more thing that used to be joy in his life that he didn’t let slip away but he actively pushed it away just as he pushed me away just as he pushed his family away and every other thing that gave him joy besides Wiser’s Deluxe whiskey and Craven A cigarettes.

I often wonder if he’s online. I wonder if he’s reading this right now. I wonder if he thinks about me and wishes he could relive childhood curiosities with me like V or Star Trek. I guess I’ll never know.

It’s funny though. I spent a good portion of my childhood wondering almost the exact same kinda stuff about my biological father, who, as I said, will be here in a couple of hours to fix my bay window, and now it’s flipped, like an hourglass, sand running down the time until…well, the end of Ken I suppose.

Some days I picture a future where he and I laugh about the things I did as a kid and everything’s okay and the sun’s in the sky. But most of the time I picture a frail, cancer-ridden old man in a hospital bed telling me he’s sorry. Or worse, telling me he’s not.

And that’s all I’ve got in me. Happy Monday.

Edited to add the V trailer, it’s beneath the cut.

(more…)

So, there are only 3 & a half more days left of voting for the Hypercube contest as voting ends Friday at NOON.

Here are our handy dandy Hypercube audition page links for your voting convenience!

Sunny | Blake

Blake uploaded his new canvas last night while I have to find the energy to pretty much re-do my canvas so it looks less sloppy. Or at least that’s the plan. If I get it done, I get it done, if I don’t, I don’t. To me it’s the text that matters and I only plan on adding one sentence to what I have on there already and it’s just a minor perfectionist thing. The application we had to use to make our canvases is so buggy that my text and pictures didn’t format properly once I saved them and submitted them for approval and I think possibly the reason for that was because the more layers you have on your canvas, the more it tends to screw up. Yesterday while having a nap, I had a dream about my canvas and I found a way to minimize the amount of layers used. Again, if it gets done, it gets done, if not, then oh well. I’m not going to kill myself worrying about it.

Since people have asked, here’s how the rest of the contest plays out as far as I’m aware:

• voting ends at noon on Friday, May 15th
• judging takes place May 20th-25th
• winners are notified either May 29th or mid-June (there are conflicting dates on the site) and if you’re a winner you have 10 days to complete, sign and send back the paper work
• if you’re a winner, you get your car mid-July

Truthfully, I can’t wait for this thing to be over or at least for it to be more or less out of my hands as to what happens. I want my life back!

Between immersion therapy stuff, my new caseworker and this contest, everything else in my life has fallen behind. I still have four paintings to complete over the next month or so so I can AFFORD to do immersion therapy stuff and my pile of things to read is turning into more of a mountain. I’m 3 issues behind on Today’s Parent, I’ve got this month’s NYLON and BUST magazines to read, plus I still have to finish Edgar Sawtelle, read The Watchmen, start on Anne Rice’s latest Jesus book, read The Secret Life of Bees so I can finally watch the movie and read the entire Sookie Stackhouse series.  Oh and Alex dropped off The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins a couple of weeks ago so that’s on the pile now too. I did finish Y: The Last Man books 4 & 5 this weekend though, so at least those are now off my desk.

Ronny lent me Ren & Stimpy seasons 1 & 2 (the only good ones imo), which have been sitting on my desk for at least a month & a half and I haven’t even touched them yet. Jesse lent me the last two seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and he keeps getting mad at me because I haven’t watched “the one episode” yet. (I don’t know which one.)

Ahhhhhhhhhh so much media to consume and not enough time! Although really? I have all the time in the world, especially once school’s finished and it’s officially summer, but I hate stuff piling up like this, especially the paintings because I need those for income.

So yeah, way ready for this contest to be over so my life can go back to normal. And of course, I can’t make a post about the contest without posting fansigns so here are two. :o)

I inexplicably woke up at 4:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so my plan is to have lunch and then nap for the rest of the afternoon. Then when I wake up I’ll either make the other post I planned on maing today or work on my canvas. Either way, I’ve got shit to do so I better get on track.

A huge thanks to everyone who’s been helping us with this contest. Blake & I really really appreciate it. We couldn’t do it without you. <3

Jay Holben, director of the upcoming documentary Camgirls is an uncool American who had never heard of Degrassi until I schooled him so hard he logged off!!!

Seriously, I’m in shock that someone in the world doesn’t know what Degrassi is, either the Next Generation or old school Degrassi Jr. High or High OR, if you’re really old like me, you may even remember The Kids of Degrassi Street. It’s just this huge thing! I had no idea there were people in the world who didn’t grow up with it and haven’t experienced it yet.

It’s only the best show in the whole wide world – what is wrong with him????? How could someone be so sheltered???? It was on PBS in the US and it was like, globally critically acclaimed and won awards and stuff!

It’s mind-blowing, it truly is.

This is the beginning of an episode of the gameshow “Just Like Mom”, which I used to watch with my great grama when I was really young. Apparently it’s Canadian, which I didn’t know and what the clip doesn’t show is that (if I recall correctly) the kids had to guess at how to make something, like chocolate chip cookies, and they’d put like, ketchup and flour and totally the wrong ingredients in and the moms would have to eat it!

Anyway, I thought I’d pass it along because it’s awesome. :D