Urologist the morning of June 20th. I guess I’ll be seeing him or her before my surgery so hopefully once I’m cleared or whatever we can schedule it for after the anniversary party and I can heal up between the party and Squam. It’s either that or everything gets put off until after Squam and that’s going to suck. Dr. Hanrahan told us to make plans, so we did, and those 2 are non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned so the surgery gets fit in around those not the other way around unless they tell me like, I’m going to die without it. Which I sincerely doubt will happen. My guts are just in the wrong place right now, my gall bladder doesn’t even have any stones in it any more so as long as I don’t eat too stupidly, my pancreas will be okay for surgery whenever I have it so there’s nothing medically, that I’ve been told of, that I know of, that would make postponing it hazardous to my health in any way. In fact from what I understand of the surgery, doing it too soon could be problematic so there’s that to consider too and I don’t think that’s just me being a chickenshit.

Anyway, speaking of Squam, remember a while back I mentioned that one of my teachers from Squam was putting together these kits *for* Squam, like for the company of Squam Art Workshops, that were a little sketchbook and two glassine envelopes worth of ephemera? That came today, totally out of the blue and so I was playing with the contents a bit, trying to photograph them and failing completely, and I decided to only open the first, little glassine envelope and that I’d save the big glassine envelope for the hospital because with that and my Smash stick and rub on letters, I could theoretically have a little fun if I felt up to it. If not, surely I will when I’m home from the hospital in the middle of the living room again.

I don’t know how long I’ll be out of the range of sitting up on my own. :o/ I mean, they’re cutting apart all my stomach muscles. That’s half my middle. You can’t tell me that’s not going to hurt like fucking crazy.

And now I’m just freaking myself out so I’ll STFU about surgery.

Urologist, end of June. Gotta figure out why my kidneys are being so lame.

Mirrored from [SunnyCrittenden.com].

Bonjour mes amis! Comment ca va? Ca va tres bien!

And there’s about the extent of the French language I have right there. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it but Blake and I are half-assedly learning how to speak French since it IS our 2nd national language and everything. Plus we plan to go to Quebec eventually and then hopefully France as well. We don’t have French-English dictionaries yet though, which would probably be incredibly helpful. We’re working on it.

Right now we’re pouring all of our money into our anniversary party. I finished addressing the invitations yesterday and Blake’s going to mail those out today so at least that’s taken care of. Then Blake needs to make a private page/event on Facebook for the afterparty (or I will, I guess) and we’ll invite those people and then it’ll be a party!

I have no idea who all will be staying over at our house but I know Alex & Ronny will be and maybe Deanna & Lucas and maybe some of the Michigan people. Maybe some of the Toronto people. Massive vacuuming is going to have to happen before this party if we’re going to have people potentially sleeping on our floor. The plan is still to have a big breakfast in the morning so regardless as to whether or not people are actually sleeping here, they’re invited the next morning for breakfast, courtesy of Blake and his wicked culinary skeelz. I still don’t know what’ll be easier though: toaster waffles or pancakes and if we would bother with toast or not since the only egg option is probably going to be scrambled eggs just to keep things simple. Therefore, no one would need toast to dunk into their eggs. (Which is the only reason I can see actually eating toast, personally.) Waffles or pancakes are super important because we got maple syrup from the Maple Syrup Festival just for the occasion.

Planning parties is very hard and very stressful. :o/ Hopefully when we’re celebrating our 20th, our kids will plan it! (Ha! Fat chance.)

It’s gonna be fun though, depending on my level of pain. Since I’m not sure when surgery is going to be, I could be in a lot of pain OR we could schedule the surgery for afterward and it wouldn’t even be an issue. I guess we’ll just have to see what Dr. Hanrahan thinks.

So yesterday I saw this really upsetting video of these 4 years olds (I’m guessing), singing a song in church about how “there ain’t no homos going to heaven” and then not only did the adult congregation clap, they whooped and cheered and gave the kids a standing ovation. I don’t even know where to begin with that one and I’m not linking it so here’s “Running Faggot” by Kids in the Hall instead:

And then Blake told me about this crazy thing happening here where this teenage girl wanted to start a gay-straight alliance type of group at school and she was told she couldn’t. Why? Because she goes to a Catholic high school and that’s a total “no no” in the Catholic religion, right? So okay I get that but the thing is, our religious schools (or at least the Catholic ones) are partially funded by the province. By the government. And so our government has laws against hate speech and all kinds of laws against discrimination for being gay and gay MARRIAGE is legal here so this is a total conflict AND there’s a petition about a bill that needs to pass because:

“There is currently a Bill in the Ontario Legislature that has the potential to guarantee that students who wish to form gay-straight alliances in publicly-funded schools must be permitted to do so.

1. We need to make sure that this Bill passes, with the protections for LGBTQ student groups in it, so that my friends and I will be able to form gay-straight alliance groups in our schools.

2. We also need to ensure that this Bill is amended to guarantee that students will be able to name their groups – so that schools won’t be able to prevent students from calling groups “gay-straight alliances.”
If Bill 13 passes, with the proper amendment, then no student will have to fight as I have to get a safe space in their school. No student will have to go up against school boards and administration in order to create a group in their school where they can be themselves and be supported by their fellow students. That will be something that schools must allow.”

I have no idea how it’s going to play out. The Catholic school board/church has vowed to “fight back”, whatever that means but I really hope our government is just like “pffffft” and swats these assholes like flies. I’m not really sure how a Bill is passed in our system, to be perfectly honest, so I’m not sure who, exactly, votes on this thing but I signed the petition and those e-mails are apparently going to the people who would presumably be voting on it so I guess we’ll see what happens? I know a well-written paper letter to these people would be more effective but who does that anymore and I think there’s a time issue at hand here, or at least that’s how I read the letter.

I understand why our government funds religious schools – I really do – but if they’re going to do that, they have to make sure those schools are teaching every child the laws of the land of this country, not just what the bible says.

But that’s just me.

It was so surreal when we were registering Madison for school and they asked us if we wanted to have our taxes go to the Separate (Religious) School Board when we were filling out the paperwork, or the public one. She was going to public school so I thought that was a strange question. We said “public” since that’s where she was going and I haven’t given it an ounce of thought until this morning.

Anyway, I think it’s fair the way school taxes (or how I think they work) are collected and used, I get why the province funds religious schools. I think the way it works is that your school taxes go directly in the pockets of the schools and the school systems based on what you check on your kids’ registration papers in the beginning. If you’re Catholic and plan to send your kids to Catholic school then I think it’s totally fair if you want your taxes to go to that school system.

Then again, I could have NO idea what I’m talking about. I’ve never read up on how taxes in this country work or anything like that, this is all based on that one question on Madison’s registration papers in junior kindergarten.

Anyway, however it works, I hope the province stops funding them if they won’t stop bullshit like trying to prevent gay students from bridging the gap between straight students and themselves. These kids are taking it upon themselves to do that because the adults aren’t making the effort. Don’t parents see the awesomeness of that? It’s like happiness friendship club where – oh my god – kids learn tolerance and compassion and understanding and they grow and evolve as people! Isn’t that like, the goal of creating new humans? (Especially at that age?) You would think lovers of Jesus would be ALL over that. But they’re not in this case, so I hope the province throws the book at them and privatizes religious schools.

But who knows what might happen?

In other news, Wes came home the other day really excited about his cereal box. I guess they’re doing a unit on media studies and the task was to make fake cereal boxes for some reason. Well, Wes got really into it and all last week he was bugging me to register DOMAIN NAMES for him based on his fake company and his fake cereal name, saying that he’d like to learn how to build a website.

I think he’s way too young to have unfettered access to the internet but as Blake pointed out, he can make a site in Notepad and save it all as .html and open it from his desktop like a website, to start off with at least. He also pointed out that we have Dreamweaver on the family computer so there’s that option too, although I find DW hard to use without the Visual Quickstart Guide. I’m torn as to whether or not I should buy him the domain name he wants to build a future site maybe, so I’ve either cut out or blurred domain names on his cereal box, as well as our phone number, which he had on there, so if he still loves this idea in a couple of years, the option’s there.

So here’s his cereal box, that he was really really proud of and wanted me to show you all:

So I took a break from posting these photos to go make breakfast (turkey on a kaiser woop woop!) and during that time, Wes was in the kitchen having his breakfast (Honey Nut Cheerios) and he asked me if I’d ever “heard” of there being prizes in cereal boxes. So I explained to him that most of the cereal when I was his age came with prizes and so he asked me what kinds. I told him stickers and rings and small toys. And his mind was completely blown. Why are there no prizes in cereal anymore?

And that’s all I’ve got for today. Happy Thursday!

PS. So Wes is all excited about his cereal box, right? And he comes home yesterday and says he’s going to start making the game pack that’s on the left flap of the box. I gave him a sketchbook a looong time ago that he has barely even used at this point so we’ve told him to wriiiiite it down. If it’s a good idea and you want to remember it, write it down. If it were up to Wes, there would be cardboard prototypes of EVERYTHING cluttering our living room. I’m really curious to see his sketchbook in about a year if he starts actually using it the way we’ve just taught him to.

PPS. There’s video of Wes explaining his cereal but I used the Rebel and I’m not even sure it’s in focus or how to bleep all of the websites he lists since it’s a .MOV file.

Mirrored from [SunnyCrittenden.com].

Oh man, it’s rainy as hell here today, which is awesome for our lawn but so crappy for morale because I feel sort of imprisoned by the rain, not to go all emo on you.  I can’t play with the camera…okay that’s a lie, there’s no reason I *couldn’t* play with the camera, but to play with the camera inside on M is a LOT harder than doing it outside where the light is better. But unfortunately they don’t make those things waterproof. (Or at least mine’s not.) And right now it’s raining like crazy.

Days like today I feel bad that my kids have to walk home from school. I used to have to walk home from school when it was raining, I was never allowed to accept rides from neighbours or people we know when the weather sucked and I’m okay, so I don’t really figure it’s a problem. It is encouragement to take driving and public transportation if you’re not going to drive, seriously…she says as thunder drones in the background.

I’m probably a terrible parent for a million different reasons because I think everyone fucks up or lets down their kids in some way and so far I’m doing good in that department so I’m not worried about that, but I don’t think not being able to pick them up from school is a serious parental failing. Like that we’re not a 2-car family yet when most people are immediately after they get married and here were are, 10 years in, with still only one car. Sometimes it sucks, but the truth is, I don’t think I’d be able to drive a 2nd card if we had one so it’s not really an issue in our house. And despite the fact that this car is our car and not just Blake’s car, I can’t ever see myself driving to Barrie and going to Michael’s like on the HWY. I just don’t see that happening, like, ever.

Anyway, the kids are going to be adorable without even trying when they get home, so maybe I’ll go play with the settings of the camera so I can maybe take their pictures. Madison probably won’t let me. Wes probably won’t care. We’ll see.

I got my passport in the mail yesterday and no, if you haven’t seen the pictures, which I DID post somewhere so I know people have seen them I just don’t remember where (FB, Instagram, Lightbox, TwitPic/Twitter?), you won’t see them because they’re terrible. Like, serial killer Michael Myers terrible. But whatever, I can go across the border for Squam now. Nothing is standing in my way!

I have absolutely no idea how we’re going to get there. I’m not even totally sure where New Hampshire is. I just know it’s going to take us about 8 or 10 hours to get there and my mom’s doing all the driving. I think maybe we’re going to go through Quebec for a bit but I’m not sure.  I’ve never been to Quebec. Blake wants to take a weekend trip to Quebec maybe this summer but I don’t think that’s going to happen now that surgery looms in the ever present future.

Is all the surgery talk boring? I’m just really worried about it. I can’t help it. It’s pretty major surgery and I’m going to have a pretty significant scar I think and no bellybutton and it’s going to be really really painful. And I’m scared about staying in the hospital. Especially like, starving because the food at RVH* is *terrible*. I wish I could convey that better but I can’t, it is absolutely beyond disgusting. They’re trying, I guess, to do a good job nutritiously but man if Georgian, the hospital up North, can feed people real food, why can’t RVH?

And the hospital just sucks. It is the most goddamn boring place on Earth. I have no idea what to bring because I don’t know how long I’ll be there or what kind of shape I’ll be in while I *am* in there. Do I bring my laptop or the iPad? With the iPad I can post short updates but no pictures because I can’t figure out how to open things in new tabs, how to upload or how to cut & paste and I would want to do all of that or my laptop, which gives me more options but is more bulky. I won’t be able to work with my laptop because I need 2 screens to work with and I’m not going to have enough room on my tray for that and to still be able to eat.

So I dunno. These are all things I need to bring up with Dr. Hanrahan, aside from knowing about the actual surgery itself, of which I know nothing. I don’t even know what it’s called. I should probably get that information.

I don’t know if I should bring my camera to the hospital. My Rebel just uses the built-in SD reader so that’s easiest to use, but my point & shoot is obviously smaller. But that is another cable to get the pictures off the camera and an extra cable to keep up with and have people needing to bring me and that sucks, so the Rebel makes more sense. I just worry at its bulk. I also worry about someone walking off with it while I was sleeping. How would I ever begin to know who it was if that happened? It would just be gone. So maybe point & shoot would be best. I’ll be all James Bond about it.

We’ll see, I guess.

Know what happened on Saturday? POPGUN txted me out of the blue, as he’s prone to do. He lives in Wales and we’ve been good friends for a long long time, although not the best at keeping in touch recently, admittedly. The last time he messaged me was a BEAUTIFUL txt when I first got out of the hospital and it was just a good surprise to wake up to Saturday morning. I don’t really use my cell phone for ~communication~ as I do for output on a small device when I’m out but I did check it Saturday morning and pop, there he was! :o) He reminds me that life is good.

Have I mentioned that Blake’s applied for his CDN citizenship? I think that is so awesome. He’s been eligible to do it for a long time, he just never got around to it. I think he’s going to have to take a “Canadian test” to make sure he’d be a good one or something, that I’ll be absolutely useless at helping him study for because who am I to tell anyone what a “Canadian” is. Especially since I’m pretty sure he has his own idea about that and who knows, maybe it won’t even be on the test? Maybe there isn’t even a test at all? I haven’t actually asked him about the process, I just know that he applied and that it cost him money to do so. The good thing about being a citizen though is that he’ll be able to vote in both the CDN and US elections. I think that’s pretty cool. Also he’ll be able, I think, to get a CDN passport, which supposedly makes traveling a whole lot easier and we’ve got plans, baby!  My passport expires in (I think) 5 years and IN that 5 years, we are definitely going somewhere that requires a passport! Maybe more than one somewhere! Maybe two somewheres! Who knows? But that’s in 5 years…

And now Madison’s home and has just announced that she’s “dating” a “guy named Devon”…Good lord….back to my day!

(*Royal Victoria Hospital)

Mirrored from [SunnyCrittenden.com].

So on Saturday, before work, Blake showed me how to use my camera on Manual. Because it makes no sense to buy such an expensive piece of equipment and leave it on Auto or Program. I could have done that with my old point & shoot.

I’ve been reading these tutorials by Ashley McLaughlin, slowly but surely, and between that and what Blake has shown me so far, you would think that I’d be doing better or at least “as good” as I had been doing with my own camera or when I was shooting on P, but I just don’t think I’m making any progress yet.

I’ve uploaded all of today’s pictures in my gallery here, because my gallery shows on each picture the photo properties, which is really what’s going to show me where I’ve gone wrong in hindsight. It’s just a better system than trying to write it all down and trying to remember what you did in each shot when you’re shooting 400 photos at a time. Or at least it will be for me when I look through them later. I’m not going to post all of the pictures I took today because I think I should save Kevin’s bandwidth and only have them load up for people who are truly interested in amateur photography. Beyond amateur photography haha Terrible photography.

So here are some pics from my day…

First off was my dressing change. Here’s a pic of my wound right now. It’s that colour because of the Betadine they swab it with before dressing it but only like, 3 little spots of open wound are really there any more and Dr. Hanrahan says she’ll be cutting that part out anyway so really there’s not a whole lot of reason to not go ahead with the surgery except for the fact that I’m scared shitless of there being complications and of me dying. Like for real this time. :o/ Blake assures me I’m in good hands and apparently Dr. Hanrahan said last week that this was her favourite surgery to do but I didn’t hear her say that and she could say that to everyone about every surgery for all I know. Maybe it’s her favourite because she’s never done it before. I dunno. Maybe those are insulting thoughts but I can’t help but have them. I’m sorry if they are. I wish I didn’t have them, this whole thing would be so much easier.

Being in the hospital again is not going to be fun at all. I’m so scared of losing my job again. So so scared. I have no idea how long I’m going to be in the hospital or what kind of pain I’m going to be in or for how long so I have no idea what to tell my bosses. I need more information. At first Dr. Hanrahan said 8 weeks of lifting “nothing”, now she says 6. That’s a best case scenario though what if something goes wrong? What if there are complications and I spend the summer in the ICU again?

Blake says these are all valid concerns…Anyway….

Learning about depth of field.
(Actually, I just realized this one was taken on AV.)

Dark Fire Things.

Brightening it up by playing with the shutter speed.

I have no idea what that is but it came in the flat of Fire Things.

This was also taken in AV.
That part is my favourite part.

I spent most of my afternoon with a Venus Flytrap.

It attracted flies, which is just what they do.

I watched this damn thing for over an hour and the fly just didn’t land on the fronds or whatever they are.

Until later…

But I didn’t get it on camera happening. :o(

And that was my day.

Mirrored from [SunnyCrittenden.com].

The anniversary is coming up. Not my wedding anniversary, the anniversary of getting sick and almost dying. On June 23rd, it’ll be a year ago that I went to the hospital in an ambulance with Madison after she called 911 because I was in so much pain I couldn’t even breathe or speak.

I don’t want to re-tell the story right now, but today I’m really feeling it. I’ve been depressed. I think I’ve done fairly well at keeping a mostly sunny disposition throughout the last year (although I guess there were times I didn’t want Blake or my mom at the hospital with me when I was in the BIG hospital but I don’t remember that) but my surgeon yesterday said she feared “we’re losing her mentally” and I can’t get that phrase out of my mind. I thought I was doing okay. The only time I lost it yesterday was when she said she was going to refer me to a kidney specialist because my numbers still aren’t coming up to where she’d like to see them. She said the urologist may want to put a scope up my peehole to look at my kidney because I guess the tube that goes from one of my kidneys to my bladder is inflamed along with the kidney itself a bit and that’s just not a good thing.

My mom and I got in an argument in the doctor’s office  - wait, lemme back up.

I had to go to the ER again on Wednesday night because at around 2pm, I woke up from a nap with screaming pain in my pancreatic region and I literally laid on the couch in the living room with the AC on, without pants because I was SO BOILING HOT (likely with fever), SCREAMING for 2 hours. Then I threw up but all I’d had so far that day because I didn’t feel well was water so the puke was bile and water which, to me, is  the worst kind.

Then I wobbled to my office and the kitchen, got 4 Percocets and 4 extra strength Ibuprofen and 1 Gravol and took them all along with my 2pm hydromorph. I also got another bottle of water because I was so so thirsty and a bowl in case I had to puke again because walking hurt and I didn’t want to have to get up again if I could help it.

So I laid on the couch screaming “OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD” and writhing in pain, just waiting for the drugs to kick in or for me to pass out, whichever would come first.

You may be asking yourself why I didn’t call 911. There’s a couple of reasons:

1. I know this pain. I’ve had this a few times before. It’s just a pancreatic attack, for lack of a better term. I knew I wasn’t dying or in danger of dying.

2. Wes was going to be home in 2 hours. Wes who is only 9 and who had never stayed home by himself for more than 10 minutes and who would be expecting me to be there when he got home.

3. When he got home at 4pm, I didn’t want to further scare him by emergency workers storming the house and both of us being shipped to the hospital in an ambulance. The kid worries about me enough as it is.

I did call Blake though at around 3pm or 3:30pm and told him to come home NOW because I had to go to the hospital. He asked me if 911 wouldn’t be a better idea and I think my exact words might have been “BITCH, COME NOW!” I forget. But he came and when he got home at about 4:30pm, we went to the emergency room.

We had a nurse who didn’t take me seriously at all and long story short, during the 4 hours we waited there, the pain lessened or all the drugs I took kicked in and ultimately we ended up going home so I could take my 9pm hydromorph and the 2 Percocet I had left, knowing that we’d be seeing Dr. Hanrahan (my surgeon) the next day.

But I was telling you about the argument my mom and I had in Dr. Hanrahan’s office…Blake and I had decided that we weren’t going to tell Dr. Hanrahan about the fact that I got shitface wasted on the long weekend because I didn’t think it was a contributing factor to Wednesday night since I felt fine in the days following (I got drunk on Sunday) and I get this kind of pain regularly, especially lately, and each time we’ve looked at my diet and it’s been something greasy like KFC was last time and this time, I had had fish & chips the night before. Guess I can’t have that stuff anymore. OH WELL.

My mom greatly disagreed with not telling Dr. Hanrahan and bitched me out for getting drunk in the first place, to which I bitched back and it was a mess.

Anyway, I ended up telling Dr. Hanrahan and she said she was fine with it, that it COULD have contributed to my pain on Wednesday night but it also may not have and she asked me if I was turning to alcohol to cope, which, I don’t think I am but I definitely got drunk because I’m sick of living with this bullshit and decided to not give any fucks for one day.

Dr. Hanrahan basically told my mom to back off (my mom later apologized for yelling at me) and I asked her about pain management when this shit happens and she prescribed me Tramadol which I guess is pretty hardcore stuff. I asked her about medical marijuana because I don’t want to be taking more painkillers that effect my kidneys and she said she was a-okay with it and that she believes it helps, but her concerns were with me smoking it because that’s just not good for you and she said she wasn’t licensed to prescribe it. I thought we were taking up enough of her time so I didn’t ask her if she knew who COULD prescribe it but ultimately I’m not worried about it at the moment because she said that when I see her in 2 weeks SHE MAY HAVE A SURGERY DATE FOR ME. Like for my BIG SURGERY.

Then she hugged me and told me it would all be over soon and I really hope she meant that because I need that to be true or I’m going to lose my goddamned mind. I guess we really are losing me mentally and I just didn’t realize it.

Oh the other thing is that my pseudocysts are definitely smaller or they said there was less fluid around the pancreas at least and that there are NO STONES in my gallbladder meaning that I must have passed them all. She’s still going to remove it when she does my big surgery so I’ll never have to worry about that again, but at least there’s now ZERO CHANCE of repeat pancreatitis by that cause.

So I guess the doctor’s visit was a good one but I’ll believe the whole surgery date thing when I see it.

And now, here are some pics from the long weekend:

Flaming uterus.

We have lilacs on our property!!! We had no idea!!!

I got this for our car.

Blake hung Madison’s Tara McPherson prints.

Blake and I made our party invitations.
Just a plain turquoise background with glittery red heart on the front.

We got flowers for the garden but haven’t planted them yet.

This is a hanging planter.
I am absolutely in love with it.
We got more of those flowers (viney petunias) to put in the back yard planters too.

You can see the rest of the photos I took here.
They’re nothing spectacular.

And that was my weekend/week.
Hope yours was fantastic.

Mirrored from [SunnyCrittenden.com].

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