So obviously, “She’s Like A Rainbow” is finished and I’m really really proud of her because in person, she just looks amazing but now I’m thinking about future projects and the things coming up and I’m becoming completely overwhelmed by it all. When I become overwhelmed, I’m unfortunately the kind of person to just sit down wherever I am and cry and I’m trying very very hard not o do that.

I really wish they made a suitable paper planner for me to keep everything straight because right now, my TELUS calendar is just not helping me. I miss my Big Fat 5-Star planner. I don’t know why they stopped making those, they were great.

Anyway…

The drop off date for The Square Foot Show, which Blake says I should submit to just to give me the exposure AND the option of going to the gala if I choose to, is 3 weeks away. If I don’t submit, that’s no longer an option. Also, there are prizes because it’s a juried show and it’s not like I think I would actually win something but it’s like the lottery, you’re not gonna win if you don’t play, so I might as well play. But what I’m stressing over is what to submit. What is representative of my work *and* what don’t I mind giving away for only about $100? (They sell the pieces for $200 & change but keep 50 friggin’ percent.) I’m allowed to submit up to 3 pieces and since I paid $20 to be in this show, I feel I should submit the maximum allowed. Right now I’m thinking “Sparkle“, “Shimmer II” and “Five O’Clock Abortion“. What do you guys think of that selection? I was thinking of maybe putting in “Turquoise Love Fairy” instead of “Sparkle” but I dunno. I just think it has to be one or the other because I don’t want two fairies in the same show. Personally, I like “Sparkle” better, but she’s been in my Etsy shop for the last 7 months & hasn’t moved so maybe I could sell her at Sq. Foot, is what I’m thinking.

Then there’s also the fact that there are 3 weeks left until the submission date which means I have enough time to do 1 more painting for consideration, 2 if I really haul ass and get productive. I have ideas and I’m going to start 1 tomorrow, but the 2nd idea is going to have to wait until I learn a specific technique in my art class on Monday and really, if that one goes as planned, I’d rather have it in my Etsy shop than Sq. Foot.

This is the shit that keeps me up at night, seriously.

Also keeping me up at night is the fact that Touched By Fire has already sent out their call for entries and I don’t know if I’m going to submit this year or what I’m going to submit this year. I think I have until October or November to decide, which is nice, but that also crosses into my Xmas season issues. I’m told, and I’ve seen this with my own eyes, that in October/November, Etsy kinda goes crazy with Xmas sales, so I want to have my shop as full as possible. That’s only like, 2 months & change away. It takes me about 2 weeks to do a painting and I can do 2 at a time. That means I have a lot of work ahead of me and I’m not sure if I can do Touched By Fire *and* stock my shop for Xmas.

Honestly though, Touched By Fire kinda pisses me off. The show is put on by The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario, which is why I call it “the remedial art show” and the first year they accepted me, my first year submitting, they chose “Mania in the Key of Psychosis“, which is apt, and they juxtaposed that with “Hope” and “Dream“, which also makes sense. But when I submitted last year, I submitted a ton of paintings, including my “The Devil’s in the Details” which I thought was appropriate for a show called “Touched By Fire” and they didn’t accept me. That’s cool, I can handle rejection, but the thing is that almost all of the paintings I submitted were shiny, happy paintings and I almost feel like I wasn’t accepted because I got better. My meds are working (for the most part) so I make shiny, happy paintings now and that’s not what they want. They want tortured, moody depictions of mental illness and to me, that kinda seems like defeating the purpose of the Association, don’t you think? I mean, isn’t the goal here to help people get better? So why isn’t that represented in the show?

So that’s why I might not bother submitting to that show this year. I don’t want to paint something dark and moody specifically for that show because if it’s not accepted and if it IS accepted and doesn’t sell, then what the fuck am I going to do with it? My online audience of customers don’t want that shit and I kinda don’t know if it’s right to paint outside of your own headspace/mood just to get in a show, does that make sense?

“The Two Sunnies” would have been perfect for the show, but I gave that one to my shrink, partially as a “thank you” because she HAS helped me immensely but also to show her “hey, this is actually what I do for a living so quit telling me I don’t have a job” (and she hasn’t done that since, as a point of fact, every session she asks me if I’m painting because if I’m not painting it’s probably time to adjust my meds).

You can submit work to the show that’s not for ale, but I’d kinda feel like a dick asking her for it back, if only for a few weeks. Especially if something happened to it (the Touched By Fire people were NOT gentle with my work when they sent it back to me…).

And then there’s just trying to get my shop as full as possible for the Xmas season. Of COURSE I want to sell things the second I put them up, that would be great! But at the same time, I need to have a full shop by like, mid-October which means that I need to start painting my ass off (which I’ve been doing, I finished 3 paintings this month!). And that’s fine, I can do that, but things like Camwhores and WoW are going to have to get to the back of the line. And YES WoW is totally a recreational thing and I can see how the outside observer might be like “well not playing a video game is pretty easy” but when you’re an officer in a guild, especially, it’s a little more involved than that. People count on you. Camwhores? Well that’s just another can of worms.

For someone who “doesn’t do anything”, I sure seem to have a lot on my plate right now and I don’t really know how to make time for everything. I think painting has to be my #1 priority, WoW on weekends, Camwhores when I can’t sleep.Oh and there’s yoga too, can’t forget that…the art class I’m taking too….

When the kids go back to school, I’ll have more time to get things done, which will help a lot, so I have that to consider as well, especially when it comes to fitting Camwhores into my schedule.

Anyway, as I said, this is the shit that keeps me up at night. Hopefully now that it’s all out of my brain I can finally drag my ass to bed and sleep like a normal human being. Maybe?

Know what I hate? When you’re half asleep, in a great dreamscape, but conscious enough to be rolling around in bed trying to control the flow of blood flowing from your vagina so it stays on the pad, rather than gushing up over it and soaking through your pajamas onto the sheets. I really really fucking hate that. Oh yeah, and cramps too. If it weren’t for the pain I was in while all of this was happening, I probably would have kept sleeping, but no, I got up and by the time I took all my “morning drugs”, including painkillers, I was up and awake and there was not a goddamn thing I could do about it.

So here I am.

As I’ve mentioned a few times already, I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love and right now I’m in the middle of the book where she’s just arrived in India and she’s talking about yoga. Admittedly, I know absolutely nothing about yoga. When I went last week, the teacher wanted us to fill out some paperwork that was half questionnaire and half  “you can’t sue me if you break your neck” stuff, but she asked the question, “why are you taking yoga?” Blake & I were the only ones filling out this information because the other 3 girls in the class are regular students and since Blake always finishes these things first and leaves me feeling awkward while I finish mine, I just wrote “to maintain weight” as my reason, but that’s not totally it and now I feel like she thinks I’m vapid for saying that because according to Eat, Pray, Love, yoga is much more than a body exercise. It’s supposed to be all transcendental & shit. The fact of the matter is, I don’t really know why I’m taking yoga. It seemed like a good idea at the time? It’s a good immersion therapy exercise? To take away some of my menstrual pain eventually? (I hear there are poses for that.) To show off how flexible I am as a party trick one day? All of those reasons? None of those reasons? I don’t know. What’s the right answer to that question? What is it she would have wanted to read under that question? I know “to maintain weight” wasn’t it.

By the way, I’m doing Hatha yoga, which according to Eat, Pray, Love is just your run of the mill yoga, nothing fancy. I think Kelley, our teacher, said in one of the e-mails to Blake that she was mixing it with another kind of yoga, but I forget what she said now. All I know is that last week was a positive experience and I’m actually kind of looking forward to this week’s class.

Last week’s class I found to be very very easy when I expected it to be very very hard. I did all of the poses more or less correctly, according to Blake, but I didn’t get into them the proper way and I didn’t do certain nuances of some poses, like in downward dog your heels are supposed to be flat on the floor but I’m not flexible enough to accomplish that yet because my muscles haven’t stretched enough from repetition of the pose. And I don’t really understand the teacher’s instructions most of the time. Like, she says to flex or release the muscles in your wherever but I have absolutely no fucking clue as to what muscles she’s talking about most of the time because the only muscles of mine I’m ever aware of is the uterine ones. And my thigh ones, but that’s a long story as to why…

So I made it through all the poses and my position in the class is right beside the giant wall clock in the studio and I was amazed at how fast the class went. I was expecting it to be an agonizing hour, like gym class where time just stood still, but it wasn’t like that at all. In fact, I didn’t even think to look at the clock until there were only 10 minutes left.

Since I didn’t know any of the poses to begin with and since she didn’t name all of the poses we were doing, the only two I picked up on was “table pose”, “child pose” and “downward dog” because those seemed to be the transitional poses between other poses.

Blake was apparently sore the next day from doing the class, but I wasn’t and I’ve been wondering why the whole time. Blake says it’s just because he hasn’t used a lot of those muscles in a long time, but I would guess that neither have I, so why wasn’t I sore? I felt barely any strain whatsoever during the class which made me think I was either doing it wrong (likely) or maybe my flexibility is just better than Blake’s (possible).

Right now I am in hell due to menstruation (my 3rd period this month, hooray for me!) and on the questionnaire she asked if we had any health problems that may affect our ability to do yoga and I put down “endometriosis”, SO, on Tuesday I don’t know if I should tell her I’m in hell before the class or if I should just not say anything and do the best I can. “They” say that exercise is good for cramps but that has never been my experience at all. I’ve never tried yoga for it before though, not really. I do a variation of “child pose” all the time for period pain where I sit cross-legged and bend the rest of my body forward the same as “child pose”, but I don’t think that’s an actual yoga pose and we don’t do “child pose” for very long during the class so that one won’t be doing me any favours tomorrow. I’m just hoping that this period hell will be over by then, but I’m not holding my breath.

And the only thing I have left to say about yoga is that Blake & I have brand new, spiffy yoga mats that are apparently in the trunk of the car and will stay in the trunk of the car (so they don’t get dog hair on them) and mine is pink. I don’t know what colour Blake’s is, but I’m guessing blue since that’s the colour of the first one he bought. It was $60 for both of us to rent mats for the class but I didn’t want to do that, especially because I suspect we will be taking yoga from this woman for a really long time because I actually like it but also because I wanted a pink one godammit and the ones for rent are either “gym class” blue or “crusty blood clot” maroon.

So that was yoga. I know I was brief about it last week and you guys wanted to know more than “it was eeeeeeeasy”, so there ya go.

In other news, I haven’t painted a fucking thing in a week because I’m a WoW addict who does little else right now than chew painkillers and pretend I’m a blood elf and that’s mostly what I intend to do until the end of next week, criticism be damned.

The thing with WoW, especially right now in the formation of a brand new guild, is that it’s largely a social game. I spend my days (and nights) killing fictional beings, yes, but I’m also chatting with about 15 other people while I’m doing it. And it’s like…okay say you stay off the internet for a day (the horror!) and you can’t get caught up with your friends list on Live Journal or Facebook the next day. WoW’s similar in that if you don’t log on for a day, you can miss a lot socially but the people who were on, have probably out-leveled you by about 2 levels and right now we’re all trying to stay within the same range of levels to be able to do dungeons and quests together. This guild ‘s entire purpose was to start toons from scratch and level them together. (A concept that’s been lost on some people who have decided to roll death knights who start at level 55, but whatever, good for them. I hope they like playing alone because that’s all they’ll be doing for quite some time.)

Anyway, as an officer of the guild and also the person with the most time on her hands, I kind of act as guild master when our guild master isn’t around, which is often because she apparently actually has a life. She pretty much only logs on to buy us guild bank tabs because she’s the only one who can do it and sometimes she levels her priest for a few hours, but she’s never on for entire days or nights like the rest of us are. (Which is fine, this isn’t a diss on our GM at all, I mean really, the job at this point is to just buy bank tabs and that’s pretty much it since our officers can add people to the guild or promote people.)

Basically the guild is being run by me, our friend from Camwhores, Warcorp and our friend Stephy. And Stephy got a job today so her time in Azeroth is soon to be more limited, I’m assuming. Warcorp’s our money-making machine who has almost single-handedly financed our first 3 guild bank tabs (I helped too, but nowhere near as much as he did) and since we’ve been filling up the tabs pretty quickly, I’ve been telling people what to take, what to sell, what to use and what to disenchant and I’m not even sure I’m doing that correctly because I don’t know for sure what a lot of the stuff we’re banking is for or what it does. I’m a WoW nerd, definitely, but I definitely have to ask the other WoW nerds of our guild for guidance on a lot of things because the game’s changed quite a bit since we stopped playing 2 years ago and the only profession I ever did seriously was alchemy (which I’m doing again) so I only really know what’s useful for that.

I’m hoping that Ditsy can spend some time with us every now & then to organize our guild bank a little better because I’m told she’s an expert WoW organizer.

Last night we did our 2nd guild instance, which was Gnomeregan and it took foreeeeever. Blake didn’t end up in bed until almost 2:30am, so tonight is probably not going to be a WoW night, especially since we still have yesterday’s True Blood to watch – so maybe I’ll get some painting in after all. Really, the two paintings that have been sitting on my coffee table for about a month only need arms, a signature and varnish to be finished, so I could probably get that done in a a couple of nights if I really wanted to. And since I like money, I should really want to.

Anyway, that’s all I really have to report other than the fact that both kids had excellent report cards and once again, both of them got principal achievement awards. The last day of school is on Wednesday and it should be an interesting summer with Alex & Ronny getting married, the kids going up north to Phil’s for a week or 2 giving Blake & I TIME ALONE OMG, my gardens and a few other things we have lined up.

So that’s that. I will now leave you with some lovely WoW screencaps that I’m sure you will all be thrilled by.

This Wailer is no match for Endometria!

My ride.
It sucks that when I get the next level of mount I HAVE to ride a brightly coloured chicken because there are no black high level chickens. I think that’s stupid.
The other day I saw a blood elf riding a zebra and I meant to look up how that was possible.

Blake & I drinking. He’s a troll shaman. And actually that’s a pic from last week, he’s had a change of hairstyle since.

Me riding a wyvern to destinations unknown.
This is how we roll on the Horde side, wyverns, zeppelins and dragonhawks.

And finally, the sun setting in Tirisfal while I wait for a zeppelin to Orgimmar.

So I guess this is basically a State of the Uterus address. Only gonna explain where I feel the need and it’s in no particular order. :o)

- I’m annoyed at my mom and she knows it.

- Blake’s having issues with his mom and I don’t even know what’s going on now.

- I’ve been playing a lot of Warcraft. New guilds are exciting. I’m playing a new faction, more or less, so a lot of the game is still new to me. I only played Horde a few times and always with a clone of the same character. Belf/shadow priest/Endometria. At least 3 times. But only to like, level 2 tops 2 times and late 30′s once. I made a million toons that I got to 10 or 15 when I played Warcraft before, but they were Alliance and I think Alliance is a lot easier, at least to get around. I feel completely lost, Horde-side. We’re playing on a PvP server, which, to the people reading this who don’t play WoW, means “player vs player” and most people, including me, find it harder to level a toon to the 70′s or 80′s, especially if you rely on soloing (playing alone) for most of your play time because there are people who are 10 million times more skilled than your average world monster or creature you have to kill, trying to gank your ass and camp it. Camping it means that they wait for you to resurrect yourself so they can do it again…and again….and again.

Word from my high level guildmates who are starting to have to go in the “flagged” areas to do their questing, this server appears to be more Alliance than Horde, meaning we’re outnumbered, which sucks and intimidates me. I don’t know if our server name is an Alliance name or a Horde name, but last time Blake & I  played on a PvE server (except for The Cotton Pwnies days) with an Alliance name and Alliance definitely outnumbered the Horde the whole time. Soooo, I fear that maybe we picked an Alliance named server to play Horde on and that there are enough geeks who know the difference and choose their factions accordingly and our PvP time is going to be a losing battle. I figure though, regardless of that, we’re getting to the point where everyone’s really close to 20 (the level you more or less have to quest in flagged areas)  and if we group quest, we’ll all have a better survival rate and get picked on less frequently.

We use a program called Ventrillo that allows us to speak to our guildmates (who are logged in) using a headset, which will also help (if people start using it, which I’m bad for too because I just really don’t like talking, so I just listen and type instead).

Last night we ran our first guild instance/dungeon, which took longer than it should have, but for the first time any of us had ever played together, I think we did a pretty good job. Some of our guildmates have been doing random PUG (pick up group) instances without us, to get gear I guess, but a few of us (Stephy/hunter, her husband K (holy priest – so heals), Warcorp (tankadin), me (face melter) & Blake (troll shaman, mon) waited to do it together and I think that’s awesome. I can’t wait to do harder stuff with these guys, like instances that take a whole Saturday and bosses that actually need strategy and MORE DOTS to take down. :oD K did a really good job of telling us where to go so we didn’t get lost. (Which I found impressive because I didn’t know where the hell we were half the time because I’d only even done Wailing Caverns like, once, and we didn’t finish it.)

I kinda think it’s funny that we’re playing in a Camwhores guild. Some companies have their softball teams, we have our WoW guild!

- I have the shits and have been up since 6am. This means I’m probably going to sleep most of the day since I don’t think we went to bed until about 12:45am. Oops.

- Tonight is my first yoga class and I’m terrified. Blake doesn’t even know how long the class is and he says that it’s Hatha yoga, whatever that means. Probably the only 3 things I’m going to accomplish today is looking up what that means, having a shower and sleeping. Especially since I believe it’s supposed to rain all day, or at least threatening to. The rest of the time will be spent being neurotic, or more to the point, sitting on WoW just chatting with people while I wait for an herb supplier in Silvermoon City spawn herbs that I can then sell to other people on the Auction House for a ridiculous amount of gold. (The economy on this server is absolutely fucked.)

- My friends in Oregon, Robert and Robin Peate, are like, having a baby as I type this, at home! I just think that’s so exciting and while I know updating LJ or Facebook isn’t or shouldn’t be high on the priority list during this time, I can’t help but refresh anyway.

- I have not touched a paintbrush in at least a week. Nothing is finished. Nothing is close to finished except for my sign, and I don’t care. Can’t say when I’ll pick up a paintbrush again. Maybe when we have good movies to watch while I paint. Maybe not until the novelty of WoW wears off. Really, I should be painting and then while things dry play WoW, but I’m still working on my productivity management system.

- My front garden has bachelor’s buttons galore but no cosmos yet and the “new” part at the bottom of the garden is taking it’s sweet time growing in. Veggie garden is leaving me unimpressed. My tomato plants are finally thriving and next weekend we have to tie the plants to the cages. My peppers are piddly in comparison and I’m worried we’re not going to get a very big yield there. Lettuce is starting to poke its head up and I’m thinking we may have planted the seeds too deep. Maybe I worry too much. None of the herbs are showing life but the garden’s full of weeds and I don’t know what’s good plant from bad so until things start growing and looking like the pictures on the seed packs, I’m not sending the kids out to weed. The beans are growing like crazy, as are the peas, which needed a stake/string trellis to grow up like, last weekend but obviously we had to do other things. The carrots are showing no signs of life. Neither are the onions.

Anyway, when there’s anything interesting to take pictures of, I’ll do so. Right now both gardens are pretty unimpressive, but I’m learning a lot just by watching, like plant lettuce shallowly and maybe skip the peppers next year.

- Our neighbour to the right, who owns the bar in town, has a for sale sign on his front lawn. So does Wayne & Judy’s old house to the left of us. And the empty lot next to that house has a for sale sign too. That only leaves us and the old lady on the corner in our little section of the road who aren’t for sale. I’m hoping a developer or someone wants all that space and offers us crazy money for our house so we can move. Hey, it could happen!

- I’ve been severely neglecting Twitter.

- I’ve been reading Eat, Pray, Love and am ashamed to report that I’m actually liking it so far. I didn’t want to like it, being basically an “Oprah book”, but I can’t help it, I do. I read the Oprah Biography by Kitty Kelley and I’ll probably never be able to see Oprah the same way again. That was a good read too.

- I was supposed to do a show on Camwhores last night but my vagina started bleeding on Sunday night so that kinda put a damper on things and I had to cancel. I’m still bleeding and just not really in the mood to be on cam, so the show’s been put off indefinitely. I was supposed to bleed all month, which is traditionally what happens, but this month I only bled for 3 days and then a bit of light light light spotting sporadically until yesterday. I’m not sure what’s going to happen when I take my 7 day break from the pill, which will be in 3 days. Anyway, I plan on hanging out on Camwhores for a bit after I post this, if anyone else is around. I won’t be updating my cam, but I’ll sit & chat for a bit.

And I guess that’s really all I have to say at the moment. Things are busy and hectic and complicated but we’re having fun being nerds at the same time and things should calm down once the kids are out of school for the summer.

Have you ever actually done The Sims’ Legacy Challenge? Do you even know what it is?

The Legacy Challenge started with The Sims 2 and is “a long, 10-generation challenge where you start out with a single founder and very humble beginnings and try to lead the family to fame, fortune and success over the course of 10 generations.” It was created by a fan of the game who longed to make it a little more challenging by actually having goals.

One of the two main rules of the Legacy Challenge is that you can’t use a money cheat and you can’t do things to prolong your Sims’ lives. In The Sims 2, you could drink an “elixir of life” which was a happiness points reward and that would extend your life by a few days. In The Sims 3, you can eat “life fruit” or “Ambrosia” to extend your life and of course, for the sake of the Legacy Challenge, these things are forbidden.

Here are the quasi-official rules for the Legacy Challenge for Sims 3 that are quasi-endorsed by Electronic Arts by the fact that they linked to them via their Facebook fan page last week. That’s when I realized that in the 10 years I’ve been playing The Sims games, I’ve always started out with the intention of doing the Legacy Challenge, but I’ve never really done it for real. And now that I’ve read the actual rules and have tried to actually do the challenge, I realize that a lot of the people I know online who have claimed to have done the challenge are fucking liars because the screencaps I’ve seen of like, their 3rd generation, are in houses with items that are absolutely impossible to get by that stage.

Here’s a little secret about me: I’ve never had a sim die naturally of old age. In fact, I’ve never had a sim age into an elder because I’ve always used the life-extending items in both The Sims 2 and 3. In The Sims 3, they allow you to toggle the aging option and I’ve always played the game with the longest of these options. I’ve also always given up on being poor in the beginning and have therefore always succumbed to the siren call of the money cheat.

The Sims 3 Facebook fan page is actually really annoying in that they ask you the most asinine questions several times a day, such as “Click “like” if your sim went on an adventure today!” or “Click “like” if your sim bought a car today!” but I remain a fan because the fan page is also where they post announcements on upcoming expansions and things like that. So, last week they asked if anyone had done the Legacy Challenge and linked to the challenge’s rules. And I thought, “y’know? I haven’t”, so I clicked on the rules link and educated myself, knowing full well that this month is going to be a shitty month full of bleeding and pain and not doing much else.

So I read the rules, which are actually kind of brutal when you’re used to playing without any real goals or challenges and you typically cheat your ass off, and created Endometria Moody, my legacy’s founder for the Legacy Challenge.

Now in the rules, they tell you specifically which property you have to move your founder into and they do this so you have a huge lot to expand your house and property as your legacy matures and also so everyone starts out with only $1500 disposable income. (Okay they’re called Simoleans, but there’s no sign for that on my keyboard, so I’m just gonna call it money.) And believe me, $1500 doesn’t get you very far. In the beginning, all I had was an undecorated wall, a bed, a toilet, a sink and a fridge and even though I’ve been playing for about 3 days now, I don’t really have much more than that at the moment.

Two optional rules of the challenge are that you can choose to have either a patriarchy or a matriarchy where only sims of a specific gender can become the next generation’s heir and the family trait option where you choose one of your founder’s personality traits that gets passed down to each generation. In the beginning I thought these rules were great, so I wrote down in my sims journal (yes I keep a sims journal) that I would be making a matriarchy and that my family trait would be “natural cook”, which means that you learn the cooking skill faster and you make better quality meals which in turn, give your mood a bigger boost.

Well…my first attempt at doing the Legacy Challenge FAILED COMPLETELY. Endometria Moody started out as a young adult whose lifetime wish was to be a “5-star celebrated chef” and you get 1 point for fulfilling each of your sims’ lifetime wishes. So naturally, I spent most of Endometria’s young adult life getting raises and promotions in the culinary career track. By the time she aged to an adult, she was already on level 8 of her career and the goal as per her lifetime wish was level 10. So here I thought I was doing pretty good, even though to keep her happy and hygienic I had to take her to the community gym every day before work so she could have a shower because I couldn’t afford to by one.

Since she worked so much, the only people she really had contact with were her co-workers, one of whom was Odin Crosby, one of the more handsome townies in the game. Since it’s another rule that you can only procreate with townies, I chose him as Endometria’s object of affection and started the love affair because at this point, I only had 18 days to produce an heir to my legacy – a female, according to my chosen optional rule – or it was game over.

So the love affair began, although there were some glitches I hadn’t accounted for and that’s what had me failing miserably. Odin Crosby had a wife or a girlfriend whom he lived with, named Heather. I convinced him to leave her and go steady with me and while we had crazy amounts of woo hoo, I couldn’t get him to try for a baby, which may have had something to do with the fact that one of his character traits was that be disliked children. After we started going steady and with about 10 days to go before Endometria became an elder where she wouldn’t be physically able to produce an heir of any sex, Odin Crosby stopped coming over. I’d call him up and invite him over and he’d say “Sure, I’ll be there soon!” but before the phone call ended, he gave me some lame excuse about how something suddenly came up and that he wouldn’t be coming over. And this kept happening every single day, no matter what time I called, until finally there were only 2 days left until Endometria would become an elder and since I think it takes 3 or 4 days to incubate a pregnancy, I had no choice but to evict her, wasting 2 days worth of game time, and deleting that saved game so I could start over with a cloned copy of Endometria.

I failed at The Sims. *headdesk*

It became time for round 2. Just as I had the first time around, I started Endometria off as a young adult, giving her extra time to get her career in order and to produce an heir. I threw out the idea of a matriarchy, because at this point I’d take what I could get, and I also threw out the idea of having a family trait at all, although I’m secretly attempting to give everyone in the Moody legacy a green thumb. These two optional rules don’t have any effect on the challenge’s scoring, so I kind of see them as bonuses more than goals.

Something I realized early on that I really took for granted with all my cheating, are maids, repairmen and nannies. Your hygiene level really goes down when you have to clean your own toilet, sink, tub, counters and stoves, not to mention the time it takes. Also, when all you can afford is the cheapest bathroom amenities, they tend to break a lot, which means that my current incarnation of Endometria has a high handiness skill. And nannies…well, I’ll get to that in a bit.

And when you can’t afford seating, your sims eat their meals on the only seat available…

This time around, I decided to focus on producing an heir as a young adult as opposed to getting Endometria’s career in order. The first thing that needed to be done was to procure a mate and to hell with Odin Crosby this time, I wasn’t gonna touch the same trash twice. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and go to the community garden to harvest plants, which I could plant in my garden at home, and also scope out a new mate with which to procreate. Enter Sherman Bagley. That’s him on the right.

This began Endometria and Sherman’s whirlwind courtship, with the goal to not only produce an heir, but to have a two income household so we could afford to actually build a house with STUFF in it. Sherman was in the military when he and Endometria met, but after she got knocked up (twice), proposed to him, got married and moved him in I discovered that his lifetime wish was to be a forensic detective.

As soon as Sherman, Endometria and their children became a family, my first order of business was switching his career track to better meet his lifetime goals. In the meantime, Endometria was on perpetual maternity leave as she gave birth to a baby boy named Zephyr, twin girls named Penny and Poppy and she’s currently pregnant again with possibly her 4 AND 5th children, seeing as I spent the extra happiness points and spring for fertility treatment.

And this is where the appreciation for The Sims 3 nannies comes into play. Neither Sherman nor Endometria has gotten the good night’s sleep mood boost for about a week as all 3 of their children seem to be on different schedules. The good news, though, is that being a two income household now, when Endometria finally goes back to work, the happy couple should be able to afford to hire a nanny while they’re both at work. I was worried in the beginning that that wouldn’t be the case and that Endometria (or Sherman) would have to put her career on hold indefinitely in order to look after her children and keep the social worker at bay.

What’s killing me about the legacy challenge is things just like that, how with these rules in place, the game really mimics real life, with things like possibly having to choose between being a good mother and having a career or having a job you don’t really want to have because the money’s good, meanwhile your passions lie elsewhere.

This is Endometria eating salad while sitting on a slightly nicer toilet in an actual bathroom with a door & everything because with being a two income household, she and Sherman could actually afford a bit of privacy:

The other thing with the Legacy Challenge is that you get 1 point for every 100,000 lifetime happiness points gained per bloodline sim in the household. Thus, I’ve been juggling money woes with keeping everyone’s wants and needs in mind which are often at odds with each other. That, too, makes the game a little bit like real life. I mean, when you only have $400 to your family’s name and your mother wants to buy a crib for the baby that could sleep on the floor technically, what do you do? Or what if your sim is exhausted but because he’s a neat freak, he wants to clean the bathroom and kitchen, what do you do? You do whatever they want because a happy sim means a productive sim more likely to get promotions at work and those happiness points you can accrue can be spent on rewards like “fast learner”, which enables your sim to learn recipes and skills faster, or “speedy cleaner”, in the case of Sherman, whose OCD tendencies with cleanliness border on pure lunacy and take up a lot of perfectly good sleeping time.

Movin’ on up…Sherman and Endometria can now afford CHAIRS! Sure they’re the cheapest chairs in the game, but it sure beats eating cereal on the toilet!

So this is what I’m going to be doing for the next month or so. As I stated in the beginning, due to my endometriosis I won’t be able to do much other than sitting in this chair, so I figured hey, why shouldn’t I do this and write all about my misadventures on Buttercup?

Have you done the Legacy Challenge for Sims 3 by the book? I know many people have and they post about their legacy families on the official Sims Exchange, but even with some of those that I checked out over the last few days, I think there’s maybe been a wee bit of cheating happening because in the beginning, there’s no way some people have had the homes or items they have only starting out with a $1500 budget. I mean, Endometria and Sherman are about 8 days away from becoming adults and so far all I have is one undecorated wall and a bathroom, everything else is outdoors.

Anyway, if you’ve done the Legacy Challenge, I’d love to hear all about it and if you’ve never done it, why not do it now and then tell me all about it? My plan is to write about my challenge all throughout the month or until I hit the 10th generation milestone, I figured I’d give everyone fair warning!

And now, I’m off to go hide in my Sims Bunker for a little while longer…I can’t wait to see how many children Endometria births this time!

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.

Today something clicked in my head and I made a realization that was so funny to me I can’t stop mentally laughing at it. And I totally can’t even share what it is because I don’t want to bring any more attention to it than I already have. Long story short: jealousy can be a VERY funny thing that makes people behave like complete idiots and all you can really do is laugh about it.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

This afternoon I watched the movie Sunshine Cleaning, which was alright…kinda “meh”, and worked on the painting that’s been causing me so much grief. I’ve decided that it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect and that I should just get it done because it’s blocking me from doing anything else and I’d really like to do something else. I’m determined to have it finished by the end of the weekend come Hell or high water.

While I was waiting for paint to dry I tried having a nap but when I laid my head down, all of these thoughts came rushing to me and I was unable to fall asleep. I have drugs for when that happens, which I took, but when I laid down again it was the same scenario so I just gave up and now here I am. The stupid part is that I don’t even really remember what most of the thoughts were or I’d be writing about them now. They were mostly working the logistics of this painting out in my head and the thing I mentioned in my first paragraph which has me SO FUCKING AMUSED, but it was like every 10 seconds a new, interesting thought would pop into my head and I was just completely unable to fall asleep. So I gave up even though I slept for crap last night and I’m really dragging my feet today.

Annnnnnd hopefully I’ll be up late tonight playing the new Sims 3 expansion I mentioned yesterday even though Blake’s attempts at finding a copy on his lunch break proved to be less than fruitful. I guess this thing’s selling out like crazy, it’s even sold out on Amazon.ca. There are still 3 other stores to check though, so hopefully I’ll have a copy tonight. If I don’t, no big deal, I just wanted to get a jump start on it so I can do everything in the game before I have to review it for Buttercup. I’ve been getting my family ready for the expansion for the last 2 weeks so everything’s in place, now all I need is the damn game.

My mother e-mailed me today and unfortunately she no longer has her For Better or For Worse books, so I guess Madison won’t be getting those for Xmas this year. I’m sure I can find them in a used book store easily enough, but there are other things I’d rather spend money on for her for Xmas so they’ll have to wait for another year or maybe for her birthday. AND GROSS, THE CHILDREN JUST MADE HOT DOGS AND NOW ALL I CAN SMELL IS WIENERS. *shudder*

Speaking of my mother though, she’s going to be on TV tomorrow on a show called “Daytime – York Region” on Rogers TV @ 11am (with repeats at 3pm and 5pm, I believe). I don’t get the channel she’ll be on so I won’t be able to see it tomorrow but my mom thinks they show clips on their website so if that’s the case, I’ll link it when it’s up and we can all see it. :o) And since I haven’t pimped my mom in a while, here’s her site, which doesn’t get updated as often as her Facebook group. Keep an eye out for her boyfriend, John’s, wicked windchimes and antique teapot birdhouses. In the new year, pending I get a copy of The Visual Quickstart Guide for Dreamweaver CS3 for Xmas, I’m hoping to get her site in better order to reflect what she’s been doing lately and to add John’s work as well. We haven’t really talked a whole lot about it, but I’ve procured a copy of Dreamweaver for this specific reason and I know she wants some things changed around, so that’s my project for the new year.

Annnnnnnd speaking of websites…I have sort of a dilemma and I’d like it if people felt free to weigh in. Recently I registered the domain “SunnylandStudio.com” and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Should I just make it point to my current site and let that be that or should I make a new site that’s JUST dedicated to my art? The reason I ask is because say I send out a media kit to a gallery I’d like to sell my work and they come to my site on a day where I’m at war with my mother-in-law…that could end up being a good thing or a bad thing, but if they went to a site that’s just my art, it takes the possibility of it being a bad thing out of the equation. (Although I’d link to my “personal site” on the art site.) My only real issue in doing this is that for years I maintained separate sites for art, camming and business (copywriting) before and it really fucking sucked, so I’m not really all that gung ho to jump back into that unless there’s definitely a benefit in doing so. I’m also afraid that if I separate the two things, personal and professional, that the art site won’t get as much traffic and my art won’t be seen by as many people as I get now. So I don’t know what to do.

All I know is that in the spring I’m thinking that one of my goals is going to be trying to get my work into a couple of the local galleries here to see what happens. I’ve been reluctant to go the gallery route all these years because the bastards take 50% and I can’t afford to sell my painting for half of what I currently charge and in my opinion, they’re not worth double what I charge right now. However, the Ontario Arts Council grant that I’m not applying for this year may be a possibility next year or the year after and they’d like you to have some gallery exposure. People this summer warned me of the pitfalls of selling myself short just to “get my name out there” but it’s seeming more and more like that’s just part of the game. With the economy the way it is, I haven’t been doing so well with selling online, which traditionally I’ve never had a problem with, so I think it’s time to pursue other avenues in order to move forward with what little “career” I have. When I was looking at Barrie galleries last year, I found two that I thought would likely display my work no problem so let’s hope that they’re still around. (In this economy, there’s a very good chance that they aren’t. :o/)

So these are the thoughts rattling around in my head today. Maybe now that they’re “on paper” and I’m sending them out into the universe I can finally have a nap.

Tomorrow The Sims 3: World Adventures comes out tomorrow and I’m lucky enough to be reviewing it for Buttercup next month so this is probably the only mention you’ll see of it on this blog! Needless to say though, I’m stoked. STOKED, I SAY.

In other news, I slept 11 hours last night and woke up feeling like shit. I had my eggs, then had a shower thinking it would make me feel better, but it didn’t and I was sleepy so I laid down for a 2 hour nap. My body’s definitely trying to fight something off and I hope it’s successful because like most people, I really hate being sick. Unfortunately sleeping so much today means that there’s the chance I’ll be up retardo late tonight and there’s no way in hell I’ll be getting up at 5am to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower. I brought it up to Madison just now and she didn’t want to get up for it either, so I guess we’ll be missing it, but that’s okay, we’ll catch the Perseids in the summer.

I think I’m finally done fucking with the kids’ wishlist. Madison is really into the Get Fuzzy comic strip (or at least the two books I have of it, which she’s scooped for her own) so I just added all of those books to the list for her and I think that’s all I’m going to be adding for either kid. I also just e-mailed my mom to see if she still has all of her For Better or For Worse books because Madison really likes the few we have here (the later ones), that I know my mom doesn’t have, and I figured if my mom still had hers and didn’t want them anymore, then that’s an easy gift for Madison, especially considering that most of the earlier ones are now out of print.

When I was Madison’s age, I was obsessed with my mom’s For Better or For Worse books too, it’s always been my favourite comic (and Canadian!) and it makes me happy that Madison enjoys them too. I think those books/that strip really taught me what marriage was supposed to be all about and what a healthy family looks like and knowing that the strip was based on Lynn Johnston’s real family and friends made it less like fantasy like other childhood influences are.

My (step) dad used to buy them for my mom every year for Xmas and when they separated, I think my mom stopped collecting them.

What do I want for Xmas? Well, my wishlist is here and while presents are good and I definitely love “stuff”, honestly what I want is for people to either buy paintings or donate money to my site. (The button is on the bottom right, or if you’re a Camwhores member, my tip jar is always an option as well.) The fact is, I need money for art supplies if I’m to continue to work. I have a little bit of money set aside for art supplies that my friends Belinda and Mark sent me a while back, but that isn’t going to cover all of the stuff I need, (I’ve been keeping a list for the past 3 months as I run out of stuff) especially since I need to replace some of my brushes and brushes are the most expensive thing.

Speaking of Camwhores, I have been making a little bit of money over there that I could be using for art supplies, but sometimes other things, like taking Blake to the movies or buying Blake & I Chinese food because it’s “good TV night” and we never get ourselves anything are more important, so I’ve been trying to keep “Camwhores money” open for a bit of play. I’ve also been buying a lot of my own stuff rather than getting Blake to pay for it, like when we went to the movies we went to Shopper’s Drug Mart beforehand because I needed painkillers and while he paid for the drugs, I paid for the hair elastics (x 2 packs) and the Chapstick (x3 because I go through it like crazy) I needed.

I haven’t really ever had my own money and it feels good to be able to contribute, if only for treating Blake when I can and for buying my own “extras” that I’d normally go without. Painting money should go for art supplies, donated money should go for art supplies, but the meager amounts I’m making on Camwhores is for everything else. I’m also hoping to buy the kids at least one Xmas present each out of my own money, just because I’ve never really been able to. Like Madison this year needs a real bra (as opposed to a training bra) and I think that’s something that should come from her mother, y’know?

I also want to be able to buy Xmas presents for my neighbours even though we only usually buy for each other’s kids. For Wayne I’ll probably just get him a 6-pack because beer is really the only thing he’s into (I’m also going to be making him a bunch of mixed CDs, I’ve been working on them since last month) but for Judy I want to get her this $15.00 pack of Lipsmacker lip balm because she never gets anything for herself and she’s constantly running out. She’s like me and has to have some form of Chapstick on her person at all times so when I saw that $15.00 pack of Lipsmackers, which I know is her favourite brand, at Shopper’s the other night, I knew that’s what I’d be getting her. (I’m hoping it goes on sale though first, or that we save up enough Optimum points to make it cheaper.)

I have no idea what to get my mom or Phil or Lisa. My sisters are easy, they like toys, and I sent Lisa a Facebook message asking what they’re into and what they have. I was going to make Rachael a painting like I made for Raili and Madison last year, but Blake brought up the point that she wouldn’t even really know what it is (she’s 9 months old) so I should probably wait until she’s Raili’s age to bother.

Ashley’s baby shower is going to be in January, so after Xmas I’m going to be making her an 8 x 8 inch painting like the ones I made for the kids for the baby’s room, but I have to wait until she has her final ultrasound so we know the sex for sure and I know whether to make a boy or a girl and when she knows the sex, she’ll know what colours her nursery is going to be so I can make the painting to match. (Btw, it’s going to be a massive deal that I’ll be going to her baby shower. The only person I’ll know there besides Ashley is Judy and the shower is going to be in Toronto and big enough that the last I heard, they’re renting a hall. Big Italian family.)

Speaking of big deals, y’know how I mentioned a while back that Blake & I have been playing euchre with the neighbours some Saturday nights? Well I’ve become such a euchre fiend that when I found out Blake’s friend from work, Charissa, knows how to play euchre and so does her husband, I’ve been seriously considering inviting them over on a Friday night so we can play. I don’t know how much I’ve emphasized this over the years, but I don’t let people into my inner world easily and I have this stupid attitude that work friends can’t be real life friends, so if I get over my issues and make this happen, my shrink will be very proud of me.

Blake has next week off and I’m going to be getting both bloodwork done and going to see my doctor to finally get a professional’s take on my surgery in August. I forget if I mentioned this or not, I probably did, but being on the pill non-stop and despite the fact that the surgeon cut some nerves in my uterine area so I shouldn’t be in pain, I still am. It’s not as bad as it was before, but it’s still there. During the times I’m supposed to be having a period but I’m not because I’m on the pill (like now), I’m still in enough pain to need crazy amounts of painkillers. I’m worried about the beginning of next month because it’ll be my first period in 3 months and I’m going to ask the doctor for Tylenol 3′s and Naproxen to have on hand in case it’s hellacious.

My day to day pain has been manageable and I can do things I normally haven’t been able to do, like dance around my house like a crazy person, but despite the extra hormones pumping through me, I still seem to be on some sort of painful cycle. What sucks is that if I go back to the specialist next year and tell him that, he’ll start pushing for the Lupron so I probably won’t say anything.

Okay that’s every thought in my head right now – well, every sharable thought – so I think I’m gonna go find something else to do.

Yesterday I had a Pepsi for the first time in probably 15 years and it immediately made me remember my grampa.

When I was a kid, my mom would let me play hooky from school so I could go up to Alliston with my grampa, which was about an hour and a half away and also happened to be where I was born. This was where his carpet store was and a few times a week he’d drive up there in his big blue van to make sure things were running smoothly and to do “measure ups”, which meant that he was going to someone’s house to measure their rooms for new carpet.

On the way up to Alliston, my grampa would give me a Pepsi from a mini-fridge that plugged into the van’s cigarette lighter and being a Coke fanatic, this was the only time ever that I’d drink Pepsi.

When we got to Alliston, my grampa would leave me with Flo and Bonnie, his two employees, and he’d give me some money to go to the Stedman’s store down the street and buy clothes or toys. I would do that of course, but I’d never spend all of the money. Instead, I would go to the pet store behind my grampa’s store and more often than not I would buy a small animal that my mother would kill me for bringing home. My grampa would always come back from his measure ups and pretend to get mad at me for buying the animal and he’d tell me to take it back and I’d cry and get my own way and then we’d go two stores down to have Chinese food for lunch where I’d get an extra fortune cookie because Bing, the owner, liked my smile.

When we went to Alliston, I’d bring books and toys with me and I’d hide behind the rolls of carpet , which were stacked vertically against wood scaffolding and read or play my Game Boy, drinking my grampa’s Pepsi from a styrofoam cup the whole time.

After work, we’d go to a restaurant, the name of which is completely escaping me but it was the same one every time, with Flo (who was actually my grampa’s girlfriend, although I probably wasn’t supposed to know that considering he was still married to my grama) and I would order LIVER. Yes, a child who likes liver, who grew into an adult who likes liver.

When we were done with dinner, we’d drive Flo home and then head home ourselves, drinking Pepsi along the way. One time my grampa pulled over because one flukey night we could see the Northern Lights just outside of Alliston, something I’d never seen before nor since.

Since the store didn’t close until 9pm and it was an hour and a half home AFTER dinner, I would get home late enough that my mom was too tired to give me or my grampa shit about the new pet I’d acquired so I’d just get my pajamas on and go to bed.

And that’s all I have to say about my adventures in Alliston. For now, anyway. It’s just so weird how a taste or a smell can trigger such strong memories, especially when you haven’t experienced them in a long time.

In other news…on Monday I spent the whole day with my neighbour, Wayne, because it was his day off and he wanted me to rip CDs onto his computer.

A few weeks ago, Wayne was drunk and somehow we got started on the topic of religion, which in my experience is usually a bad idea. Wayne is technically a Catholic, although I guess you’d call him non-practicing as I’ve known the guy for 4 years and I’ve never seen him go to church, he definitely doesn’t eat fish on Fridays and while he believes in God, I seem to know more about Catholicism than he does.

Wayne’s known for quite some time that I don’t believe in God, so that day he asked me what I did believe in, what did I think happened after we died and stuff like that and that’s how we got on the topic of karma, a word he’d heard before but a concept of which he’d never really considered. So I explained to him the various thoughts on karma and my own personal ones and ever since, we’ve both been obsessed with it. Me with getting him to understand the concept and him with saying that I’m “funny” because I now constantly remind him to think about karma.

I lent him season one of My Name Is Earl, which he liked (I would have lent him the rest but I don’t have them) and ever since he’s kinda been turned on to the whole idea of karma, while still not totally grasping it. he says things like “Judy and I sacrifice so much and karma doesn’t reward us,” and I’ll say “but what have you done for someone other than yourselves?” and he’ll say “well we sacrifice so Courtney can have the things she has” (Courtney’s their daughter) and I say something like, “well you don’t get a reward for parenting, for doing something you’re supposed to be doing anyway,” and he’ll sit and think about it for a bit and then change the subject.

Well, the other day I thought of a good way to explain it to him so I think he’d understand. So on Monday I said to him that I was going to explain karma and I asked him what he does when he sees a stray dog in his driveway. He replied with “I try and chase it off,” to which I replied with “and what would Blake or I do? Or even Madison?” and he said, “well, you’d probably try and trap it” and I finished his sentence with “and we’d all go through great lengths to find its owner and, failing that, we’d call animal control, do you see the difference?” And he DID. He explained back to me that doing a good deed would give you good karma and I said yes, that’s exactly it, but remember, it has to be something completely unselfish and outside yourself. And he said to me “but if you call animal control, you’re kind of doing a bad deed because then the owners will have to pay money to get their dog back”, to which I replied, “that’s not my problem, the bottom line is that I saved that dog’s life, it didn’t get hit on the road, it didn’t die of dehydration or starvation and it didn’t get attacked by coyotes. The owners having to pay to get their dog back, that’s their own karma”.

After that Wayne was quiet for a little while, which is weird for Wayne, and I could tell that he was finally starting to “get it”.

And it’s not like I’m trying to preach or convert anyone or anything, he brought the whole thing up weeks ago, it’s just that Wayne & Judy, as much as I love them, they don’t do a whole lot for other people and they don’t really think outside of themselves or their own family (we’re included in that), but now I’ve got them, or at least Wayne, beyond their normal limits and honestly, I’m kind of proud of the fact that I did that.

With my belief system, which is karma-based, all of the bad things that are constantly happening to them – which I won’t go into because it’s not my place but let’s just say some REALLY bad shit – is a result of living a selfish existence. And maybe “selfish” isn’t even the right word, I don’t know what to call it. But like, they’ll utilize the food bank, but they’ve never contributed to it. A woman at Wayne’s work raised funds so Wayne could adopt a dog for Courtney for her birthday and we’re talking $300 here, and they took that, but they’d never in a million years do the same kind of thing for anyone else. I’m not saying they’re bad people at all, quite the opposite actually, they’re nothing but good to us, me in particular, and I really do love them dearly, it’s just that they don’t seem to see beyond the borders of their own existence and I truly believe that if they did, their luck would change and their lives would be better.

God, do I sound like an Evangelical or what? Please let me stress again that Wayne’s constantly been asking me about karma since it came up a few weeks ago, I’m seriously not pushing an agenda here, it’s just that he’s interested and I think opening him up to it would be of great benefit, so I patiently answer all of his questions and explain things the best I can.

Anyway, as time goes by and as I think of more examples, he seems to be getting it and I think that’s a good thing. I even told him, you can believe in God and karma at the same time, just think of it as God giving out karma, think of it as living by the Golden Rule.

So that’s Mondays with Wayne, constant talk of karma while I’m over there doing nice things for him.

Tomorrow night Blake’s going to be updating my badly outdated WordPress install, which I’m very excited about. It’s possible that when he does that, it might fix some of the annoying things I hate about WordPress, like the fact that I can’t wrap text around images. (It works when I’m typing the entry but when I publish it the formatting goes to shit.)

This update has made me think about my site a little more, specifically about its layout and some of the things that bug me. For example, I belong to a number of Ning groups and I’d like to place their badges either in the sidebars or even on my Exits page, but for some reason when I paste in the code, they don’t show up properly and I’m not sure if that’s a WordPress issue or if it’s the theme I’m using. When I designed this site originally, I wanted a fairly bare-bones layout because most of what I do is text anyway, but as I post more and more pictures and do more and more art, I want it to be more reflective of what the site’s all about and who I am. I don’t know if I have the graphics skills required for the kind of site I have in my head, but I think Blake and I should sit down and try to work something new out in the very near future.

And thinking about layout has led me to thinking about the site itself. The thing is, most blog sites, which really I guess mine is, have titles. Yes, people use their names as their site’s title and domain, but most arty blog sites have titles, for example, The Hermitage or Ruling At Life or Broken Toyland. I’ve been SunnyCrittenden.com for a very long time now and suddenly I’m thinking that it’s time for a title. SunnyCrittenden.com will still point to this site, but I’m thinking it’s time for my name to take a backseat to something bigger – I just don’t know what that is yet.

A long time ago I wanted my site to be called “A Pocket Full of Posies”, but the domain was taken. :o/

I dunno, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about tonight.

Okay I think it’s time to retire to my Sims Bunker while I still can. I’ve got a couple of days off from Buttercup, so to speak, before we all head into the craziness of October, so I’d better take advantage of it.

Goodnight!

Yesterday (Monday) I got up at around 10:30am and as per usual, I picked the crust out of my eyes and went next door to see what Wayne was up to. He was yelling at people on the phone, creditors, because that’s more or less what Wayne does on his day off besides drinking beer and doing odd jobs around the house.

I had a smoke with him and then I went back home to make a large travel mug of coffee. Wayne & Judy drink instant coffee which I think is pretty gross, especially because I don’t like coffee to begin with, but I started drinking it on the first day of school last week to give me a much-needed energy boost. We have this neat little “coffee toy” as Blake calls it, where you put the plastic thing over the top of a mug, put in a little filter and two scoops of coffee and then you pour boiling water in it until your cup is full. With the travel mug being so big, I used 3 scoops of coffee and by 11:30am, I was back over at Wayne’s bouncing off the wall.

I don’t know how it happened. For some reason I came back over to my house to do something and when I got back to Wayne’s he asked me to come to The Beer Store with him, which is down the street. He had enough empty bottles to take back for their deposits that he could get himself a 6-pack. And as I may have mentioned before, Wayne likes beer, especially on his day off.

For about half an hour he nagged me to come with him to The Beer Store and I kept saying “no” because as we all know, I’m not a fan of going anywhere, especially on foot. Finally I relented and I said “Wayne, DEAL OR NO DEAL [because he loves that show and I watch it with him all the time]. I go to The Beer Store with you and you come with me to the post office,” which is just a few blocks away and I had a small package I needed to mail. So he said “DEAL” and I went back over to my house to get the package ready while he got his empties ready.

I popped an Ativan because I was feeling pretty anxious about this excursion, put my cell phone in my bag, got my package all taped up and addressed (ruby slippers for a very special little girl in Oregon, if you must know) and I went back over to Wayne’s.

He was on the phone when I got there so I waited on the deck and popped another Ativan while he talked to someone in the middle of his backyard. When he was finished, he said “SUNNY. DEAL OR NO DEAL. We go to The Beer Store, okay? Then we go to the post office and then we go to TIM HORTONS [where Judy works] and get smokes out of the car and MY mail key, then we come back to the post office, back to The Beer Store so I can buy my 6 and then we come home.”

People. We live on one end of town and Tim Hortons is on the other end of town. Yes I live in a small town, but Tim Hortons is about 2 & a half miles away and I’m not used to walking anywhere, but what was I going to say? I was all ready to go and I needed to mail this package, so I said “what the hell” and off we went.

First we went to The Beer Store and he got money for his bottles. Then we went to the post office and I mailed my package. Then we walked all the friggin’ way to Tim Hortons where he got his mail key from the car and half a pack of smokes from Judy and then, as planned, we went back to the post office so he could check his mail and then back to The Beer Store to get his 6 before we went home.

By the time we got home I wanted to kill Wayne for making me do what we did and could barely walk and when I took off my shoes, I realized that I had a giant blister on the bottom of my left foot, another one on my little toe, one on my big toe and one on the little toe of my right foot – all because I’m an idiot and was too lazy to put on socks.

When we got home, I was starving so I came back to my house to let the dogs out and heat up some pizza while Wayne did Wayne things and when I was finished, I went over there to help him set up his computer and that was pretty much the end of our adventure.

It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to anyone else to go to these places and walk a total of almost 5 miles, but I seriously do not leave my house except at like, 3am to check the mail, and I’m seriously out of shape thanks to all these goddamn meds and I’m actually really proud of myself for being able to do what we did. Not only did I walk that far and back, I interacted with the lady at the post office and paid with my debit card, which is something that gives me crazy anxiety, but I did it and it was totally fine, which means theoretically, I could do it again. Like, say I had to mail a painting to someone. I could probably package it up and take it to the post office either with Wayne or maybe even by myself and mail it. That’s something I couldn’t do a year ago, so I must be making progress. Right?

Speaking of paintings, you should all go check out what I’ve got for sale in The Shop in case you missed my post about it last week. ;o)

Now here’s where I ramble about inane shit. last night I finished the book The Secret Life of Bees and I LOVED IT. Yes, it was a little “Oprah’s Book Club”, as someone put it to me, but I couldn’t help it, I am in love with this book. It’s been a long time since a book affected me enough to make me cry, but that fucking thing had me SOBBING last night and I couldn’t stop reading until I was finished, which was about 5am. After I was done, I put a post-it on it for Madison saying that she should read it too, but before I went to bed I changed my mind because there’s too much in the book she wouldn’t understand. She has no idea about the American civil rights act of 1964 – they don’t teach that in Canadian schools – or segregation or racism or Catholicism or even what grits are. Hell, I’m not even totally sure what grits are. But I want her to read it nonetheless and after talking it over with Blake tonight, he said he’ll read it (it’s not a very long book) and then when she reads it, there should be someone around to explain to her the things she won’t understand.

I added the movie adaptation of the book to my wishlist last night and I really want to see it. I don’t have very high hopes that it’ll be anywhere near as good as the book and Dakota Fanning bugs the shit out of me, but I think I’ll like it and I’m pretty sure Madison will like it too. Plus, I love Queen Latifa.

Anyway, as I said, I’m in love with this book and I think Madison will be too once she reads it, so a HUGE thank you goes out to my friend Belinda for buying it for me for my birthday this year. <3

After I finished the book, I took my clonazepam like I always do before bed, waited about 20 minutes and then tried to go to sleep but no matter how hard I tried to clear my mind I couldn’t. Wanna know why? That fucking song “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks was stuck in my head on a loop and it WOULD NOT STOP. After about 45 minutes of laying there with this goddamn song in my head, I got up and took another clonazepam (3 total) and make another attempt at sleep. That didn’t work either so after another hour or so, I got up and took an over-the-counter sleeping pill and sat at my desk screwing around on Buttercup while I waited for it to take effect. After I thought I gave it enough time, I crawled back into bed, annoyed that by this time the sky was starting to lighten and I laid there and laid there and laid there and watched the room grow lighter every time I opened my eyes to look at the clock.

Finally I got up around 7am and thought maybe eating something would help, as I often feel sleepy after I eat, so I made myself some eggs and toast and a cup of tea and ate them while I watched a bit of Breakfast Television. When I was done, the kids were just starting to wake up, so I hugged them both and got back into bed…and then Blake’s alarm went off. And he snoozed it. So I laid there not even trying to sleep because I knew the damn thing would go off again in like, 5 minutes. Of course it did and he SNOOZED IT AGAIN, so I laid there and waited for it to go off and when it did, he got up, we discussed my sleep issue and when he left the bedroom to get ready for the day I finally fell asleep.

And then I woke up around noon and couldn’t get back to sleep. My eyes felt sandy and I just didn’t feel good. I’d be cold and then hot and then cold again. I made myself some coffee to see if that would help me but it didn’t seem to.

Around 3:30pm I went over to Wayne & Judy’s to see what Judy was up to, we had a smoke and then when the kids got home from school I went back home. I did the homework check and signed Madison’s agenda and by that time it was 4pm and being Tuesday, it meant that it was time for Hug Nation, which I try to attend every week. I love Halcyon, but I was so tired that everything he was saying just kinda blurred together so all I heard was “blah blah Burning Man blah blah” as he and Andicat had just come back from Burning Man and Hal’s always juiced after that, so since I was half falling asleep, I just decided “fuck it” and went to bed. The next thing I remember is Blake coming into the bedroom to check on me and I told him to wake me up when dinner was ready, which would be about 7pm.

So I got up and ate my steak & potatoes while we talked about our day (or my lack thereof) and after that I was pretty much fine. he and I both did Buttercup stuff until the kids went to bed and then I worked on my new painting while we watched recorded episodes of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!

I didn’t think to take a picture of the canvas, which is more or less finished, until now and right now the light sucks so maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. This painting is either going to be called “The Two Sunnies” or :Sunny Light and Dark”, I haven’t decided, and it’s going to be about being bipolar. It’s, um, a very obvious painting and was inspired by Frida Kahlo’s “The Two Fridas”. (Although hers was about divorce.)

After Blake went to bed, I took a break from drawing and started writing this post. As I was writing, I was waiting for the kettle to boil because tonight was Jell-O night where I make Jell-O for Blake & the kids to take in their lunches in little singe-serve containers. One pack of Jell-O is 33 cents and makes 4 containers. You can’t buy pre-made lunch snacks for that kinda money and they all really like Jell-O so it all works out. I just use the Glad or Ziplock containers you buy at the grocery store, the little ones:

And now, here I sit. It’s 2:30am and I think I’m going to retreat to my Sims Bunker for the rest of the night. Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to sleep and have a better tomorrow.

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