A few months ago, I read this article by Molly Crabapple about being a nude model for photographers and about the existence of the “GWC”, which stands for “Guy With Camera”. Here’s the article.

There’s this GWC on my Facebook friends list who drives me absolutely insane. He considers himself a professional photographer but has had no formal training and only takes photos of “hot” women. I don’t necessarily think you need to have gone to school for photography to be a professional photographer but if you don’t have any formal training then you have to compensate for that with talent and knowledge, neither of which this guy has shown to have. What he does have though, is access to fucking Lightroom and his overuse of  the adjustment brush and iris enhance features of the program is absolutely criminal. He makes all of his models look plastic, like Barbies; he erases all of their features, making their noses blend into their cheeks and all of his photos are super obviously over-processed. In fact, I would put money on the fact that I’m pretty sure I know the exact book he learned Lightroom from. This one. I know this because I have it too and that’s how I know Lightroom but his technique is so obviously from that book that every time I see one of his pictures I just shake my damn head. A magician should never reveal his tricks, y’know?

But the thing that really chaps my ass is his ARROGANCE. Arrogance is probably my least favourite human trait, especially when there’s no basis for it. If – for example – Sid Crosby wants to be arrogant because he’s really good at hockey, that would be okay-ish because he IS really good at hockey. I still wouldn’t fuck him because I find arrogance a complete turn off, but I wouldn’t be as repulsed by it as I would be if he WASN’T good at hockey. See the distinction?

This GWC on my friends list is so fucking arrogant and his pictures are so goddamn offensive that I’ve had to hide him completely from my newsfeed. Normally I’d defriend someone who bugged me this much but there are reasons at play as to why I can’t in this case.

This GWC even OFFERED to shoot me, like he was doing me a favour and I should be honoured that he thought I’d be a good subject or hot enough to bother with. I politely declined while thinking, “not in this lifetime” because I could only imagine what he would do to my image once he got it in Lightroom and he would totally expect me to post the pictures on my site, link him, and be forever GRATEFUL that he was so generous with his time and talent.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT.

I think that as a photographer, you have to make your subjects trust you with their images, that the outtakes will never see the light of day and that they will look like them, or a better version of them, in the final product and I would never trust this guy with my image in a million years. I don’t want to be made into a plastic robotic woman-like creature. Like, if it were something intentional, like photoshopped Barbie-ish leg and arm joints to really look like a doll, that would be okay, that’s a statement, that’s saying something. But this GWC doesn’t have those kinds of photoshop skills; this GWC just knows how to overuse Lightroom to make people look plastic. And obviously so. And he probably thinks his pictures are on par with fashion magazines or makeup ads. They’re not.

Anyway, the guy frustrates me to no end because he gives the rest of us AMATEUR photographers – which he is whether he likes it or not – a bad name. So please, don’t be a GWC. Be a goddamn photographer.

So you’re tired of hearing about “rape culture”?

Read it. Understand it. Prevent it.

This should also be posted:

The Shortest PSA On How To Handle Drunk Girls Passed Out On Your Couch — EVER

That is all…for now.

This is a grama update. Skip it if you want, I’ll understand.

My mom e-mailed me on Thursday morning but I’ve got like, fucking mono or something and I’ve been sleeping a LOT so I didn’t actually read the e-mails until Friday morning.

I asked her how sick radiation would make my grama and my mom said she wasn’t sure. She said that radiation causes “extreme fatigue” and that it kills the good cells along with the bad and that’s why people feel like crap while they’re undergoing therapy so that was fact #1. I asked when my grama will start losing her hair and my mom said she wasn’t sure about that either. I asked if it would be rude to bring my grama a nice, black, crocheted hat that I got when my hair was falling out but never wore because it never really suited me and my mom said that would be a nice idea but the problem is, Madison wore it and left it on the floor because she’s a jerk so it got dog hair on it and when I washed it, I put it in the dryer and it messed it up, so so much for that. :o/

My grama’s house doesn’t have a main floor bathroom and she’s not completely mobile so she can’t stay there. The solution was to move her into an apartment in town, so I asked my mom for the address for there and she gave it to me.

The next e-mail was a lot harder to digest because it was just really fucking sad.

My mom and my Aunt Sandra’s husband, John, got my grama moved into the apartment while my Aunt Betty, my grama’s sister, took my grama to Newmarket to see a new oncologist. That’s when they were informed that the cancer had metastasized further into her liver and I know that that’s bad news and my mom hasn’t told me an exact timeframe yet but this new bit of information will likely mean that her life expectancy is a lot shorter than it had been previously based on the information they had at the time.

That’s not what bothered me about the e-mail though. What bothered me about the e-mail was that my grama was scared to go into the apartment, her new home. She and my Aunt Betty sat in the car and waited for the movers to leave and then they waited a little while longer before my grama got her bravery up and made it into her new home. My mom and John had gotten most of the chaos organized, sheets on the bed, towels in the bathroom, the good china out.

My grama’s cousin Sharron showed up with a crock pot full of chili, buns and dessert so they all ate and it was really good that she came. I was relieved when my mom wrote that she had come and sort of helped to diffuse the situation. But still, once everyone left, my grama would be alone in a new place for the first time since Feb. 12th, but more than that, she’d lived in her old house for like, 45+ years and now she’s in this apartment…I just can’t even imagine what that feels like, to be so displaced and facing imminent death.

I’ve had a card sitting on my desk of my “Brown Bee Girl”, which I think is my best painting, and I’d been waiting to find the perfect thing to write in it but I’ve been at a loss. So instead of sending that (well, I probably still will), I sent her a bouquet of flowers with the message “BE BRAVE.” Because I think that’s all you can really say in this situation, or at least that’s all I could think of to say in this situation…this is the bouquet I sent:

I told the flower shop that it would be okay to substitute things if they couldn’t get it exactly right but if there AREN’T sunflowers in it I’m going to be really pissed off, so mom, if you’re reading this and you see it, let me know if there weren’t any. Stouffville Florist is usually pretty good in my experience, but I just have visions of them using black-eyed Susans or something like that instead of sunflowers and that would just piss me off. Sunflowers are kinda my thing…

Anyway, it was just really hard to read that e-mail; reading that my furniture delivering, warrior woman grama was scared of something, scared to go into her new home, it just tears me right the fuck up. I can barely even write this post because I’m completely heartbroken.

And I don’t really know what else to say.

My mom just e-mailed me a few minutes ago to tell me that my grama’s property finally sold and the price was pretty sad. I know what it was appraised at and what they got was a fraction of what it should have been but as I’ve explained before, a really really long time ago, my grama’s property backs onto an old dump site, like a garbage dump, and it was never sealed properly so this stuff called “leachate” is leaking onto my grama’s property and that really devalued it. But I guess everyone’s relieved that it’s sold so I guess that’s good. So this is where I grew up. Look at it while you can. The fact that it’s not “ours” anymore hurts my heart because my grama’s property has always been a really special place for me but I guess change is inevitable, right?

So that’s what’s happening right now and no, I am not okay.

I had planned to see this opening week.  Looks like I’ll be downloading this instead of paying 3D prices for a family of 4.

“And the second reason was — during the years that I spent running Walt Disney Studios — I learned about how hard it was to find a fairy tale with a good strong male protagonist. You’ve got your Sleeping Beauties, your Cinderellas and your Alices. But a fairy tale with a male protagonist is very hard to come by. But with the origin story of the Wizard of Oz, here was a fairy tale story with a natural male protagonist. Which is why I knew that this was an idea for a movie that was genuinely worth pursuing.”

—Joe Roth, producer of Oz the Great and Powerful

So I’m on Blip.fm, as are a lot of my friends such as Ronny and Alex, whose taste in music I respect. I also have something like 150 followers, which is pretty cool, but what pisses me off is that when I search for songs on Blip, I get all these FUCKING videos of live performances and covers by lame people and never the official video even though I know for a fact it’s on YouTube which is where Blip pulls from. And forget actual MP3s, you can never find those. So wtf? I think Blip is a good platform but its search algorithms are fucked up or something and it pisses me right off because I can never find what I’m looking for. And it’s extra obnoxious when I know for a fucking FACT that the official video is on YouTube and when I search for the exact title of the video on YouTube on Blip, it doesn’t come up. GRRRRRRRR.

I DO NOT WANT SHITTY LIVE FOOTAGE OR YOUR CRAPPY ACOUSTIC COVERS OF GOOD SONGS. YOU SUCK AND ARE THE BANE OF MY BLIPPING EXISTENCE.

So today is Wednesday (duh), which means there is only 2 days left for me to get my shit together in preparation for Friday. Friday is going to be busy and I hate busy days. I am a firm believer in the fact that you cannot do more than 2 stressful things in one day and on Friday I have 3 stressful things.

1. Dentist appointment. I broke a tooth Monday night eating ketchup chips, which SUCKS, because I’m pretty sure they’re going to have to do a root canal and that takes an hour and a half. They’re just looking at it on Friday to come up with a plan of attack so that means probably next week will be the root canal. JOY. (Our insurance doesn’t cover laughing gas, how fucking dumb is that? $100 out of pocket for that. Send PayPal to Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com! Just kidding. Sort of.)

2. Shrink appointment. Need to talk to her about a change in meds. I think I need to take 2 loxapine at night to get to sleep at a decent time because 1 doesn’t seem to cut it. I’ve been getting phantom anxiety for the last 3 weeks and I think it has to do with all the construction happening on front of our house. I know that sounds ridiculous but I’m a fragile flower man, and that shit is grating on my nerves something fierce. I’ve been taking 2 clonazepam (klonopin) in the afternoons, especially on days I have work meetings, when I’m only supposed to be maybe taking 1 during the day if needed and one at night before bed. I have to tell her I’m terrified of my caseworker. Speaking of him, Blake called him yesterday but as far as I know he hasn’t called back. Yikes. I also think I need to borrow a lightbox because S.A.D. is kicking my ass. I have all these things written down so I won’t forget when I get there. I also think maybe I need to be either put on a higher dose of gabapentin/welbutrin or a new anti-depressant altogether. I refuse to take anything where weight gain could be a remote possibility. Been there, done that, took almost dying and being on a fucking feeding tube to lose the weight. I also think maybe I should talk to her about getting a therapist. I almost died and I have this total disconnect to it. Everyone keeps telling me how I’m some kind of miracle, how I shouldn’t be here etc etc etc and I’m like, “yeah man, wanna see my scar?” I’m so detached from it and people keep telling me that’s not normal. I just want to move on, it happened, it’s in the past, I barely experienced it because I was in a medically induced coma so I don’t know how people expect me to be in regards to it. My mom and Blake and my kids? They experienced it. I just see it as, I was really sick and now I’m not. I’m off all the drugs related to my illness (aside from pancreatic enzymes and the cholesterol meds) and my period has come back so I’m a-okay right? What’s there to process? But people keep telling me that I’m repressing  or something, that I shouldn’t be this detached from it. That maybe I’m still in shock. But I don’t think so.

I mean, just as an example…when I was 14 and pretty brutally raped by a stranger behind the bleachers at a park in the town I grew up in I was obviously distressed afterward. I didn’t go to the police and I only told my Aunt Heather, who I had been staying with at the time, about it. Afterward I made a doctor’s appointment myself and had the necessary tests done to make sure I wasn’t pregnant or full of STDs (neither, thank god, I was tested for HIV for a year & a half after the fact). My doctor was the only person in the world who knew what happened. And why I’m telling you this is because I was completely detached from the event. I still am. I talk about it in a clinical way and I did even then. After the man left me laying in the dirt – but not before kicking me and telling me to get up and spitting on me when I wouldn’t move – I waited for him to leave and then I got up, dusted myself off, wiped his fluids from between my legs with my ripped panties which I then threw in a nearby garbage can after I pulled my shorts back up and walked back to my Aunt’s apartment. I cried of course, but only for about the 10 minutes it took me to walk from the park back to her apartment. When I got back to her apartment, there was a note saying that she was at the coffee shop, so I took a bath and cleaned myself up (the man had almost broken my nose and I had blood beneath it, this was also the loss of my virginity and there was blood all down my upper thighs), then I went BACK to the park to look for my Aunt’s fucking dog which I was walking in the park at 3am to begin with. I was more distressed that my Aunt would be mad at me for losing her dog (a rottweiler, what a good protector eh? didn’t come running while I was screaming) than at what had happened to me.

I just figured, even at 14, that the cops would never do anything since I didn’t know who the man was and it was dark so I could barely tell you what he looked like aside from the size of him. He was obviously drunk (this was during Strawberry Festival when the town sets up a “beer garden” in the parking lot beside the park – last call is 2am, you do the math) and because it was Strawberry Festival, it could have been anyone. Calling the cops would just get me in trouble for being at the park at 3am to begin with and my parents would blame my Aunt for it and I wouldn’t be able to go to her house anymore. And at that time, she was pretty much my lifeline, the closest thing to a mother I had. And what would calling the cops accomplish anyway? Nothing but trouble. So I clinically decided that I had to put on my big girl panties and accept that this bad thing had happened, that it was over now, that I had to make sure I was still healthy and – and this may sound so so so stupid but keep in mind I was 14 – I figured, regarding my virginity, “well, I guess that’s out of the way”. Sex was no longer a mystery.

Maybe it’s because I was molested when I was a little kid. Repeatedly. Or maybe it’s because I was basically homeless at the time and a lot of bad things had already happened and that this was just “one more thing” I should have seen coming, I dunno. I mean, keep in ind that a year later I would be legally emancipated from my parents and living on my own, I was, at that age, an adult for all intents and purposes.

Anyway, my point is that I never suffered the usual things victims of brutal rape suffer after the fact. There was no PTSD. No residual after effects. (I did think it was my fault though for being out at 3am and vulnerable, I asked for it, and I would think that until about 2 years ago when I saw this spoken word piece by Staceyann Chin. Here’s the pertinent part, but you should watch the whole piece because it’s awesome. She’s awesome. Anyway, it being my fault was just a fact I accepted. Not something I felt bad about.) When I later told my two best friends what had happened to me, because they were both bragging about their boyfriends and how they would lose their virginities before me because I didn’t have a boyfriend and I got fed up at the novelty of virginity since I had lost mine so willy nilly and against my will, mine didn’t have “value”, why should theirs? They both called me a liar. They based this on the fact that I didn’t cry when I told them the story. They said I made it up. I didn’t act like a rape victim, therefore I couldn’t have been one. I bet they think I’m lying about it to this day for that very reason and they wouldn’t be the only people to think this of me because I don’t “act like a rape victim”.

But I just think this is how I deal with traumatic events. My life has been so fucked up and disjointed that I just expect bad things to happen because they always do. Getting sick and almost dying is just “one more thing”, just as being raped (that time) was. If I got bent out of shape over every bad thing that ever happened to me, I probably wouldn’t have survived as long as I have. My life is downhill and full of moguls. Always has been, probably always will be. I accepted this fact – and it is a fact – at a very young age. Probably about the time I learned that my older cousin, whom I was in love with, wasn’t touching me in my secret places because he loved me back and we couldn’t be alone together anymore.

So I don’t think it’s abnormal at all for me to have come out of being THAT sick and meeting my mortality up close and personal-like to have just gotten over it and moved on. It’s just “one more thing” that’s happened in a really eventful life. If anything, the way I see things right now is that the Universe – that’s with a capital “U” – owes me a peaceful life from here on out. And that’s what I fully expect. I mean, I almost died, I had 15 months of pure and utter sickness hell, I lost my job, my hair fell out, I got down to 98 lbs, I had to have the world’s most painful surgery, what the fuck else could happen to me? The only thing I can think of is a car accident where I’m disfigured or made handicapped in some way, so I’m somewhat expecting that, but I’ve also been to Hug Nation enough times to start believing in pronoia, the psychological philosophy that the Universe is conspiring in your favour. Positive thinking brings positive results, right?

Boy did I stray off topic. What do you think? Do you think I’m processing being sick/almost dying in a healthy way or do you think my disconnect is abnormal and I need a therapist?

3. On Friday at the MacLaren Art Centre where Alex and I are taking our photography class, they’re having a “Halloween Coffee House” where you pay $2 admission and there is: local youth entertainment (our photography teacher’s son’s band is playing), a costume contest, interactive art activities, food and coffee and our photography teacher said we should come because there will be lots of people there who won’t mind their pictures being taken. Wes will get a chance to test out his ninja costume and maybe Madison can go as a beauty queen with her sparkly grad dress and Fall Fair Ambassador sash. I’m just gonna wear normal clothes and my marabou horns. Dunno what Blake might do. Probably nothing. Alex said if we go then she’ll come too. She’ll probably be Harry Potter again since she has the costume. This counts as a stressful thing because it’s a stressful thing that will require copious amounts of Ativan. In fact I needed two Ativan just to write this paragraph.

So that’s my Friday. And because I’m mentally ill, it will take from now until then (and pharmaceuticals) to prepare for it.

Speaking of pharmaceuticals, I started taking ALPHA  BRAIN on Tuesday, which is a nootropic. A side effect of my psych meds is that I have the memory of a goldfish. Blake and I can have entire conversations that I won’t remember the next day and this leads to constant conflict because I know/think people take advantage of my bad memory by saying they told me things when they really didn’t. Madison definitely takes advantage of it. I have suspicions that other people have/do too. ALPHA BRAIN is supposed to help with that. It’s expensive though. $35 + shipping per bottle for 30 pills and you’re supposed to take 1 or 2 a day. I’m starting with 1 because I just bought the one bottle to try. If it works, I’ll gladly pay for it, but I don’t know if 30 days is enough time for it to work. I’m not sure how the stuff works, like if it needs to build up in your system or what.  Anyway, this memory problem really really bothers me so I hope the stuff works as advertised.  I’m also going to talk to my shrink about an actual, proven pharmaceutical solution, like maybe an amphetamine of some sort like Adderal or something. I’m on several habit forming drugs and I take them responsibly so I don’t think I would abuse speed. My only concern with that is a side effect is possible psychosis even at therapeutic doses, but I just read all about amphetamines on Wikipedia and they would help my concentration, which I need, they could help improve my memory, which I desperately need, they would help my performance at work at 4am, which I could really use and overall my life is so grey right now and blah and boring that maybe amphetamines would help me create again. Anyway, it’s worth exploring.

And that’s what I’ve got in me for today. Now I’m going to go eat ketchup chips for breakfast and read Sookie Stackhouse.

I haven’t actually attended a Hug Nation in a while because I just haven’t been able to, but I always watch the archives and thought this one was particularly good. Everything John says in this video are things Blake understands and values and has since before I even knew him. That’s just one of the many reasons why I married him in the first place and why our marriage continues to be so successful. (Although I kinda think the whole “goddess” label is pretty cheesy. Ignore that part.)

(Mansplaining Ryan.)

Watched the debate this afternoon & saw this man for the first time.
Haven’t stopped laughing ALL DAY.
Where did they find this idiot???

15 mins long, but worth it.

(Or you could just read the article.)

Australian PM rips the Leader of the Opposition a new asshole for being a misogynist dipshit.

“Now he is looking at his watch [which Abbott was] because apparently a woman’s spoken too long.“

Why don’t we have politicians like this in Canada?

I leave for Squam on Tuesday after Blake gets home from work. Well, technically we don’t leave until early Wednesday morning but I have to stay over night at my mom’s so we can leave early since she lives an hour & a half away from me. I have today and Monday off and then I work Tuesday morning and then that’s it until the next Tuesday. This is sort of awesome, but sucky because I’m going to be so so poor by next paycheque because I’m taking 4 days off, unpaid. Bummer.

On Thursday I packed my “Squam Box” and I can’t think of anything else art-wise to add to it. I put in all my brushes, my pencil crayons, my Inktense pencils (since I don’t know how to use them and maybe someone can teach me), all my glitter (which may be unnecessary but what if they don’t have any there and I need it?), a jar of varnish that I probably won’t use, a bottle of crackle medium that I also probably won’t use, my “Smash Kit” full of stuff from my Smash Book, mostly washi tapes, pencils, pens and stuff like that…I can’t remember what else I put in there. Oh yeah, two sketchbooks; one for Belinda and one for me since we have the same class on day 2. Really considering taking the peacock feathers.

Blake told me to keep my supplies to a minimum because if you look at the materials list for my 2nd class, most of what we’ll be using will be provided. Oh yeah, I *did* pack a whole bunch of Martha Stewart paints because I think the paint provided will probably be Golden and I hate Golden because you have to mix your own colours and honestly, fuck that, I don’t have time for that.  Anyway, Blake said that I should use their materials instead of mine because that’s what I’m paying them for. I think he has a pretty valid point considering how expensive this trip is.

I’m mostly scared about my 1st day’s class. I’m scared to have my picture taken and I even told my teacher that and she said that if I felt uncomfortable about it, I could decline but I don’t want to do that. What I wanted to hear was that if the pictures are horrible she’ll delete them. Plus there’s this:

And then I’m TERRIFIED of being somewhere with 134 (approx.) other (mostly) women. I don’t have a lot of female friends. I don’t really know how to have female friends. I don’t really get into the whole “sisterhood” dealio that so many other women seem to just connect with. I mean, yeah, I like Oprah, but that’s about the extent of it. And yeah I’m a feminist, but that doesn’t mean I get along well with women traditionally. Or other creatives for that matter. Maybe these women will be different?

Squam made a blog post this week about the first fall session and there’s the group picture that they take every year. Right here, look. I don’t see any tattooed, gum-chewing freaks in that picture. I don’t see “my people”. And that scares me. Belinda and I are going to stick out like sore thumbs. (Especially Belinda with her multi-coloured hairdo.)

But I signed up for this to have an experience I couldn’t get otherwise so I’m trying REALLY REALLY FUCKING HARD to keep an open mind and to not be judgmental. I’m just going to be so out of my element and I’m not sure how I’m going to cope without my safe person. And is being in a car with my mother for 10 hours really a good idea? I mean, can we go 10 hours without her getting pissed off and me in tears? I’m not sure. I’m bringing TWO bottles of Ativan though so hopefully that’ll help. Is it even possible to overdose on Ativan?

And in the US, I can’t use my phone because I can’t afford to due to international roaming fees, so that means no “Twitter support”, which I rely on in the outside world quite a bit.

Talk about first world problems. :o/

And then there’s the whole Free People fiasco. Charlie ordered me some clothes specifically to wear at Squam so I wouldn’t look like a homeless person in my crappy, worn out Old Navy stuff and I think it’s sitting at the post office right now but I have no way of getting it. The only things we’re expecting in the mail are Free People and Madison’s Gamecube controller which only shipped on Friday and Blake picked up the “you have a package” slip yesterday so I’m pretty sure it’s Free People. Blake works in the city Monday and Tuesday so he can’t pick it up so my only alternative is the following:

I am going to call the post office on Monday and ask them to tell me who the package is from. If it’s Amazon, fuck it, Madison can wait until Blake’s home on Wednesday. If it’s Free People, I’m to text Madison’s cell phone and she’s going to try and pick it up after school and her friends will help her carry it home (I’m assuming it’s a large box). But the post office ladies are fucking nazis and since Madison’s name isn’t on the package, they may not let her pick it up so if that’s the case, then Madison comes home and we go back to the post office together and pick the package up and me, her and Wes will do our best to carry it home. I mean, what alternative do I have? It’s not like our town of 2000 people has a taxi service or anything and I don’t have a car. And I don’t know anyone in this town at ALL let alone anyone with a car who will help us out.

So I’m basically fucked unless I do this and I hate that.

Also I don’t even own a bag that you would put clothes in for a trip so I’m going to put my nice, clean, possibly brand new clothes in Blake’s stinky nasty yoga bag. And how I’m going to fit 5 days worth of clothes in that bag, I have no idea.

Why did I sign up for this thing again? Why do you guys always support my really really stupid ideas? (That was a joke, I appreciate the support immensely.)

Right now Blake’s doing horrible things to my phone because it’s a massive piece of shit whose only purpose in life is to PISS ME OFF. All day yesterday I tried to update the apps that say they needed updating, like Facebook for example, and the phone kept saying there wasn’t enough hard drive space to do it. I’ve moved every app I can to the SD card but it won’t let me move most of them and honestly, I only even have like, less than 10 downloaded (as opposed to the ones built into the OS that you can’t move or delete) apps on my phone and they’re all official apps too, like I use Twitter’s app for Android as opposed to TweetDeck because I think the official one is smaller.

My SD card is literally almost empty so why it keeps saying I don’t have enough space is beyond me. Also everything I’ve been reading about Android phones, because I was Googling yesterday trying to fix the fucking thing, says that they have soooooooooo much space on them blah blah blah. Well, mine doesn’t and it fucking sucks shit.

My phone is a Motorola Milestone, the one with the pull out qwerty keyboard. It is slow as fuck and there’s the obvious space issue. I hate it.

I even deleted all the music Blake put on it when I first got it to try and solve the problem but all that was on the SD card which is not where I need extra space. SO FRUSTRATING.

And then I don’t even know how to put music back on it except song by fucking song because I use iTunes and can’t find my playlists so I can put them on the phone. Intuitive my Aunt Fanny.

So yeah with all this shit I’m basically on the verge of shutting down completely. I don’t even know what to do with myself right now or for the next 3 days. I’m charging my camera’s battery so it’s fully charged for my first day of class. I have it written down to bring all my chargers, pack extra batteries for my mouse, don’t forget Gravol and enzymes, don’t forget my US money. I cleaned out my purse of all junk this morning so I’m good there if they feel like inspecting me at the border. I have my hideous passport and Blake’s insurance card. Like I said, my Squam Box is packed and I can’t think of anything else to put in it so I guess all that’s left is to pack clothes and toiletries which I can’t do right now. (Oh yeah, I did all my laundry on Thursday.)

I guess all that’s left to do is to actually read the book my teachers created because I haven’t done that yet and I’d feel like an asshole asking them to sign it when I haven’t even read the whole thing yet.

I AM SO STRESSED OUT. HOLY SHIT.

This year is Squam’s 5th anniversary so there are a whole bunch of extra things planned. I’m pretty excited about the open studio space. I’m not doing yoga so I’ll be doing that instead, especially since it’s being set up in our cabin.

Okay, I think I’m going to go make mixed CDs for the ride since I don’t have an iPod. I only have 5 blank CDs so I have to make  my song choices count. And they have to be “mom friendly”. I’m not even sure what that means exactly but they just…have to be…

Off I go!