Unfinished Drawing - [click for closer]

Graphite & Charcoal Powder

A couple of weeks ago I posted that I thought my Cheddar might be pregnant and wanted to know if you guys thought the same. Well, so far we haven't been blessed and I thought it would have happened by now. The thing is, I went back and counted 10 weeks from the day I brought her home to find out my guess was off. Ten weeks from September 16th is November 25th so I have a little wait yet before I can say positively one way or the other.

However, I'm becoming more and more sure that she is pregnant. Plus, I think I've started to feel some movement recently. She is visibly bigger since the last photos were taken. She's starting to make pudgy little Icicle look twiggy. I'm really going to try to find a scale this weekend so I can monitor her weight. I keep trying to remind myself to get one, but every time I come home from a store that sells them I've forgotten to pick on up. I really need to keep an eye on this though. If she isn't pregnant than she's gaining weight way too fast to be healthy.

( New pictures and side-by-side comparison shots )

I dunno. If she isn't pregnant then I'm going to have to think of a way to keep her weight under control. She's really a lot wider than the other girls.

From one of the awesome blanks posted by deutschtard.

( This be one of them. )

I was forwarded this "inspiring" email and I'm trying to figure out whether it's true or not. It seems... really racist with a nice dose of "get off welfare, lazy!" and I'm having a hard time believing it's true. So far all Google's turned up is a ton of "right on!" statements.

( Chief Clarence Louie Osoyoos BC )

I always feel awkward when people send me this stuff. Yeah, I think a lot of people make excuses, but I have a hard time believing that a Native Chief put down other Natives in a public setting considering the prejudice against them here.

Wood Н=24sm



( +ZOOM )

It's Friday the 13th, so a post of this nature is only fitting! Now, I tend to think of Friday the 13th as a very lucky day for me, seeing as how I was actually born at 6am on the 6th of June! Today proved me correct :3

Firstly, I met my new piano teacher! She came from Poland a mere month ago, and she's gorgeous and incredibly talented. She plays the flute and the piano, and has been in a special music schools from elementary through to university. She's going to give me lessons in my own home, and she only wants $35 an hour from me, when the average price is $60 :3
I begin next week!!

Second bit of awesome news is that today I did field work with my workmate, Aaron. I'm expecting to learn a huge amount from this job, including the all important air/water/soil testing and all kind of report writing.

Finally, I was just told that the boss of this HUGE environmental company was looking at my resume and wanted me to work on field for him. Alas, I already have work, but it's good to know that there are other positions open for me ^^V


Now, onto the photos!


I love the way the angels are looking down at _leareth ...The one on the left is especially creepy!








I think we decided to go back to the same place for a sunrise shoot, but with kimono instead of a dress~ I cannot wait for future shoots!


Happy Friday the 13th everyone!



My icon = HOT

I think I may have laryngitis :P It can be caused by coughing too much, so maybe it was caused by my flu/bad cold/whatever. It's funny; I rarely catch bugs or viruses, but because I often feel tired, run down and generally fucked up it takes me awhile to realise I've caught something. Even then I'm never sure what it is. Plus I have allergies (or maybe it's because the inside of my nose is fucked up), so I'm always sniffly anyway. Yes, I am quite a catch :D

Anyway, I could go to the Medicentre, but I think I'll just stop talking. It's hard because I have an opinion on everything (heh) so I'll just have to resort to giving the thumbs up or shaking my fist angrily at the TV. I'm just glad I'm not likely to be infectious.

I should go to bed so I can get up early and attempt to finish the homework I fucked myself over with.

What: A series of paintings on the theme of emotional fragility.
An obsession pertaining to the tragic when it comes to love. Memories set into the sand in hopes that the sea of time will wash them away. Fragments of the turbulent time of letting go of a love that burned so brightly but was cut short. Hopes and dreams mourned. Remembrance and reverie of happy times, the guilt of the path not taken, brutal attacks on self-image/concept. A glimmer of redemption in the knowledge that everything happens for a reason.
Who: Figures from: life, imagined, photographed, magazine ads, and invented.
Poses used to re-enact the memories. Found images that gave shape to ideas slowly congealing in the darkness.
When: Over the past year, life changes have precipitated self-reflection and introspection.
Solitude brings the inner voice to the forefront.
Where: The figures are interwoven into the flat or shallow space of the picture plane.
The scene in which the figures exist are imagined and remembered: they do not really exist, they are ghosts. They do not live and breathe so they are in a shallow space.
Why: I was compelled to create these works for two reasons: a) therapeutic and cathartic to tell the story of the loss of a great love and b) intrigued by the play of positive and negative forms created by overlapping lines.
My intention was to release these memories to ease the pain but found that the theme is timeless and universal.
How: Charcoal contour lines are combined with patches of oil colour applied with a brush and palette knife.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Wow, so what have I been up to in the last nine days or so?

Maybe in a house all hidden by a hill ...
I got to go see Annie at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. While there were some rough spots (a blasted cell phone rang for a good five minutes right in the middle of it, throwing off the actors timing in one scene), overall it was a fantastic performance.

You should have seen me. Or perhaps not. :P I was in full fan-girl mode: jumping up and down, counting down the minutes until curtain, in sobbing hysterical tears the minute the first strains of Maybe reached my ears. (It's true, you can't take me anywhere.) I cried almost every song and I knew all of the words, which I gently mouthed along the whole time while bouncing up and down in my seat in an embarrassingly childish manner. Even though not everyone was able to hit all of the notes, it did not distract me from my full-on love fest that I have for this musical.

Their one mistake was givin' up me ...
All I could think about is the time when I saw Annie at the Lyric in Baltimore in 1997 as a freshman in high school with a wealthier family friend who I called Aunt Lil, merely days before my parents decided to end their 20+ year marriage. Afterward, how I related to Little Orphan Annie's struggle to find hope in Depression-Era New York was a central psychological theme throughout my high school years.

I remember when I hit bottom in high school in early 1999, six months after the death of my stepmother and right after her son moved away. I'd often cut school and walk to the public library to write poems in my salt and pepper notebook. My saddest, most depressing poem definitely had a lot of references from Annie and how I felt I'd forgotten how to feel things like hope or approach life in any other way than merely surviving. Wake up, open my eyes, breathe in, breathe out, repeat. Stanzas heavily laden with Maybe references, of course.

It was quite pathetic, but I really felt my life was over and that my family and friends had turned against me for good, that I had finished being useful to the world in any way, shape, or form.

( Cut (ahahah CUT!!!) for really bad pre-emo sixteen year old girl poetry )

Haha. Oh, gloomy sixteen year old me was never Emily Dickinson, that's for sure. But even then I still I thought a lot of Annie. I struggled, sure, but I never gave up. A year after writing this poem, I was happier than I'd ever been. After my mother moved me to Denton and I began my days anew at a new school, I was fully grateful for a second chance to be happy, well-adjusted, and safe. :D

Betcha he reads, betcha she sews, Maybe she's made me a closet of clothes
Watching a live performance of Annie now reminds me not only about that time in my life, but also the passage of time and how far I've come from those days. It also makes me miss my Dad a lot. I remember coming home every day and having him be there. I wish I had seen and known he was unhappy. I wish I could remember our last Christmas together in that house or the last Thanksgiving. I'm thankful that I can remember the first Christmas afterward, when everybody was happy about being separated because they found love and I was happy because I got SO MANY PRESENTS that year!

Maybe they're strict, as straight as a line. Don't really care as long as they're mine ...
However, as an adult I wonder what my Dad and I have to talk about. And really I wish I visited him more just to watch TV and not talk at all. I remember my evenings with him and Susan and she and him would talk for hours in the kitchen and I'd strum my guitar and I'd know peace. Unfortunately, our lives were very different and I didn't feel that near the end he was happy having me in the house. And both of us spend so little time together now I get shy calling him, not knowing what to say or what he expects of me. I am so grateful that we are on good terms, but time flies between visits and before you know it he's been all over the world again and I've missed it.

So maybe now this prayer's the last one of its kind ...
I watched the 1982 film Annie starring Carol Burnett every single day as a child with my parents. I also watched the Wizard of Oz. My dad would get so delighted when I sang songs from those movies. He'd sing along with me and sometimes sit me in his lap in front of his stereo with a microphone among all the model airplanes and his artwork and we'd duet together while mom smiled: two-year old me and thirty-year old him, being incredibly relaxed and silly and the dog wagging her tail in time.

Won't you please come get your baby?
All these memories, and much darker, uglier ones I have chosen not to share, unlocked in the first strains of Maybe.

Maybe.

I've pretty much frittered my whole evening away, despite the fact that I have hours of homework to do. ( Here's what I did instead: )
This was my night from 4:15PM to 9:00PM. It's fucking ridiculous. I don't know why I can't just sit down and work like an adult. Even if I were to leave the internet alone, it would be something else. Like cleaning under my nails or behind my ears. Some other fiddly waste of time. This is even homework that I like. I don't know what the hell is up with me.

I have this cough that's been bothering me since... Sunday? Monday? Sometimes it sounds like a barking cough and today my throat is sore. I've lost my voice too, which is very annoying... if I speak too much, my throat feels tickly and I start coughing again. I asked my roommate to phone the pharmacy for me (as I'm hard enough to hear in person, at the present) to if I can take any sort of cough syrup. In the past I took an antihistamine with Paxil (I think) and I was fast asleep within 15 minutes of consuming it. Apparently decongestants have the exact opposite reaction; I'm not sure if that would make me hyper though, because caffeine (and maybe other stimulants?) tends to have either no affect or a tiring effect on people with ADHD. I can take Benelyn and Fisherman's Friend so I guess that's okay. I hardly ever take medicine unless I really, really need it, so this is unusual for me.

I don't know why I'm coughing... it would be nice to know. I just don't feel like busing to the Medicentre and standing or sitting on the floor for two hours. If it gets worse I'll go, but until then I'll just have to put up with my roommate nagging me to go. I still don't feel 100% (I did just get over the flu or a bad cold, I'm not sure which) but I have too much catching up to do to take any time off. I feel like I have a pulse in my head though, which is slightly dizzying, and it feels like a cloud has landed in my head. The pulse almost feels like minor brain zaps, which are a huge pain in the ass.

I was trying not to think about Christmas, but since that's not something I'm able to do, I'm trying to think of positives. Like, I'll have fewer presents to buy now that I have no extended family. And I'll have the whole apartment to myself for a week, since I assume my roommate is going home, which is 5 or 6 hours away from Edmonton. Then I can really clean and we can rearrange the furniture when he gets back. I might take the Christmas break to go off my antidepressants, seeing as my memory loss is really interfering with my life.