• 14:14 Takin' horse pills. #
• 15:12 It is totally tripping me out that I've been someone's parent for 10 YEARS. o_O #
• 15:46 I hate this shit. I got enough sleep (and then some) but I am still soooo tired. :o( All I wanna do is go back to bed. #
• 16:09 Sometimes I honestly think that Oprah's a little slow in the head. #
• 16:29 Sweeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaating. #
• 16:45 Y'know that really awful downside to antibiotics? Yeah. With a vengeance. :o/ *fidgets* #
• 19:03 This New Kids on the Block reunion shit is just sad and pathetic. #
• 22:16 Hatching a diabolical plot to fart on the dog. #
• 22:26 Eating a fast fry steak and watching 20/20 because there's nothing else on. #
• 00:00 Taking Y: The Last Man with me to bed. Hopefully I stay there. #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

• 14:49 Hydro's out again! WTF? #
• 14:57 Poopin' in the dark. #
• 15:53 WOOOOOO POWER!!!! Hallo internets!! #
• 18:28 Reading Wikipedia articles on Mormon Fundamentalism, adding a few books to my wishlist. #
• 19:47 God I love strawberries. #
• 20:43 Blake is from Planet WRONG. #
• 22:05 LOST #
• 22:10 Rainbow sorbet makes my tummy smile. #
• 01:09 Watching TMZ and getting ready to make Madison's birthday cupcakes in a few mins. #
• 03:03 Watching 90210 because I'm so totally lame like that. #
• 03:12 Mixing iced tea! ON MY DESK! #
• 04:08 Eating a cupcake and going to bed. Goodnight internets, I hope to see you tomorrow! #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

I made her cupcakes. :o)



I think I'm gonna go eat one and get my achy ass to bed.

Wes: Do you think you know all the colours?
Me: Yep!
Wes (slyly): Do you know plaid?

• 15:05 Hydro's out. No internet for me. :( #
• 16:14 Watching Oprah. It's about the FLDS and Warren Jeffs and crazy religious polygamists who knock up teenage girls. Interesting shit. #
• 17:54 The plan: Put spring rolls in the oven, set nukrowave timer for 12 mins, do 5 mins on Helga, 7 mins to die on couch before dinner's ready. #
• 17:54 Oh, I have named the elliptical "Helga". #
• 20:53 *kisses Twitter better* #
• 21:57 Talking to Jesse. I love him. He is my friend. :o) #
• 23:48 Never wish a chinchilla a happy birthday. #
• 00:53 Basking in the afterglow. ;o) #
• 01:24 Eating a Del Monte fruit bar and watching Trading Spouses reruns. #
• 03:26 Warming up some pizza in the oven and reading a graphic novel called "Pride of Baghdad". I hate graphic novels but Blake said it was good. #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

• 06:16 Attempt #2 @ sleep.... #
• 13:40 Eating pills. #
• 13:58 Eating cheese so I don't barf up my pills. #
• 15:28 I wish I had more money so I could surprise Blake with flowers at work and make him feel special. #
• 16:56 Ack! Both feet are asleep! #
• 18:53 Eating tasty tasty liver for dinner. Family is thoroughly disgusted and have demanded I open all the windows. #
• 23:12 Recovering. 5 minutes on the elliptical damn near killed me. Blake did 10, the show off. #
• 23:23 Watching The Daily Colbert Report & going to bed. Hopefully I stay there. #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

• 12:31 Streeeeeetchin'. #
• 12:44 Taking Tylenol because I woke up with a headache. I almost always wake up with a headache. :o/ #
• 12:59 Nukrowaving a genuine Ukrainian potato & cheese perogie (*drool*) and catching up on Live Journal. #
• 13:01 Dentist in an hour & a half. *hatchet-face* #
• 13:11 Gave Hoover Dog the other half of my perogie. The lady who makes them changed the dough with this batch and they just suck. :o( #
• 14:25 Going to the dentist. :o( #
• 15:10 Looking at ellipticals because I'm fat & need one. #
• 16:17 On our way to Fitness Depot. #
• 18:52 Eating pizza and recovering from excursion. #
• 19:19 Wanting to move. #
• 21:05 Folding laundry and attempting to watch the british "The Office". I'm accent-retarded, this may not fly. #
• 03:02 Lithium makes me braindead and unable to get a full night's sleep. >:o( #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

• 12:58 WORD TO YOUR MOTHERS! #
• 13:16 Off to have a Mother's Day foodie adventure! #
• 14:12 Wes & I are sitting in the car waiting for Blake & Madison to bring us Starbucks. #
• 14:16 Drinking a vanilla bean frappuccino blended cream with whipped cream! #
• 14:58 Looking at thousands and thousands of trilliums! #
• 15:25 At the Stouffville Sales Barns holding a bag of perogies. #
• 18:17 waiting for chicken fried rice from Good Eat. #
• 21:03 Listening to Wes sing "The Hokey Pokey".....he's on the toilet. :oD #
• 21:58 Sooooooooooo tired & burnt out from today's festivities. #
• 23:50 Bed. #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

To all the moms and moms-to-be on my friends list, I hope your day is full of love. <3

• 12:25 Poopin' & lookin' at seed catalogues. #
• 12:42 Pixel is so cute in her chair, all snuggled up in her red kitty cat blanket. Awwwwww. *mentally pets her* #
• 16:40 Reading about nematodes on Wikipedia. tinyurl.com/63vxbl #
• 17:10 Wes is a freak. He had purple goo on top of his head so I asked what it was and he said "It's the yucky stuff at the bottom of the yogurt!" #
• 18:32 Uh oh. The fridge just stopped working. :o/ #
• 18:56 Annnnd the fridge started working again. o_O #
• 20:05 I *hate* that my medications make me forget the details. :o( The details are the best part. #
• 22:10 Watching Juno and doing tarot. #
• 02:50 Watching Say Anything and eating rainbow sorbet. Also thinkin' bed soon. #
• 03:38 Going to bed. Big day tomorrow. Zzzzzzz. #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

All week, Wes has been super excited about a surprise for me that would be taking place on Friday, code name: Mother's Day Cafe. All I knew about the event, was that we were to show up at Wes' classroom at 2:30pm and that cupcakes were involved, which I only knew about because Wes accidentally told me.

I was excited for the event because Wes was so excited about it, but at the same time really apprehensive because I have pretty major anxiety issues with both teachers and other mothers. Not going wasn't an option, Wes was too excited, had worked too hard and loves me too much to let him down, so when Blake went to pick up the kids from school on Wednesday, he explained to Miss Jones that I'm basically a mental patient and asked if he could volunteer to help out at the event so I wouldn't have to be there by myself. She said she would love the extra help and my anxiety instantly plummeted to normal levels.

So yesterday at 2:30, Blake & I go to Wes' classroom and we were one of the last to arrive. The lights were dimmed and on each table was an electric tea-light "candle". Wes was sitting at the back of the class and when he saw me he got so excited, I actually feared him wetting himself. It can never be said that Wes is ambivalent in his love.

I sat down in the big person chair beside Wes' little person chair and he said "I love you! I'm so excited!" and held my hand. Then he gave me a bracelet he made out of plastic lacing and wooden beads (which would fit the wrist of an elephant) and a neat card that kinda folded out a bunch of times to create the illusion of a growing flower, that said: "My love for you grows and grows and grows!"

After that, Miss Jones instructed the kids to get out their writing folders and show the moms and that's when she came over to me and told me how advanced Wes' writing is. She showed me how he'd made 3-5 page stories with linear storylines and like, details, such as the colours or textures of things and she said that these were things you don't normally see for another year or two.

Wes read each story to me and explained the pictures. One of them was about Blake and Star Wars, but I can't remember what it was about now. Then Miss Jones told the kids it was time for them to go up to the front of the class and do their song, which was a lovely little ditty in which they spelled "M-o-m-m-y" to the tune of the song "B-i-n-g-o". Afterwards, about 10 kids recited their poems, including Wes who annunciated PERFECTLY and was loud enough for me to hear him at the back of the class.

On his way back to our table, I told him he did a good job and gave him a high five, because that's just how we roll.

Next Wes served us each a cupcake (made by Miss Jones) and the volunteers served us juice. Wes was so damn cute and I love him so damn much, that I gave him my cupcake. I wish I could convey in text how much he loves me - and not just because it's Mother's Day and he was told to - and how happy he was to be able to do something special for me to make me happy, I mean seriously, the whole time I wanted to cry, he's just magic.

Anyway...

After the cupcakes, Miss Jones said "Kindergartens if you can hear me touch your ears!" and it was kind of amazing to see 20 kids all touch their ears at the same time haha She then instructed them to take their moms' hands and give us HAND MASSAGES, which Wes took very seriously, getting kinda mad at me for grabbing his hand and kissing it all over and messing up his rhythm.

After the hand massages (with cupcake fingers, I should add), Miss Jones instructed the kids to give shoulder massages, which kinda didn't work out too well because the chairs were too high, and then there was a slideshow using the overhead projector with pictures of our kids throughout the year. (What kind of amazed me about the slideshow was how much they use the overhead projector in class. Seriously, from the pics it looks as though half of junior kindergarten is taught using PowerPoint!)

And finally, during the last 10 minutes of the Mother's Day Cafe, the lights were turned on and the kids were instructed to take their moms by the hand and show us things around the room. Wes showed me the calendar and the book shelf and the sand table and finally, he showed me the "Mom wall", where the kids had written sentences about their moms and drew a picture. Wes' actually hadn't been put on the wall yet and was one in a pile on the ledge below and I came *this close* to stealing it just so I could scan it and add it to the post I knew I'd make about the event. He drew a picture of him and I holding hands, stick people basically, and then he wrote: "I love my mom because she always surprises me."

So that was my afternoon at the Mother's Day Cafe. :o) :o) :o) :o) :o)

• 05:23 :-< internet stopped working. I guess I'll try going back to sleep. #
• 06:06 Yay! I have intarwebs again! Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep, which sucks because I feel like shit and have to do something with Wes today. #
• 06:27 Poooooooooopin'. #
• 13:01 Logging onto WoW to work on my leatherworking. OH JOY OF JOYS. #
• 16:27 OMFG Mother's Day Cafe was so awesome. It was like having a date with your 5 yr old. There was even a slideshow. #
• 20:15 Watching The Goonies and eating ham, potatoes & corn on the cob. #
• 21:06 Eating blackberries, strawberries, blueberries and pineapple with the kids and still watching The Goonies. #
• 21:35 Watching Mask and hoping I don't fall asleep. #
• 22:12 Going to bed. Zzzzzzzzz. #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

Mystery infection, 10 days of antibiotics.

I feel like asssssssssssss. :o(

I woke up at around 4am, either because I've been doing that lately or because of the immense pain that's being caused by the inflammation of these lymph nodes of mine. At first it was just these ones in the back of my head - that started on Monday - but now it's the ones under my chin, behind my ears and the ones down my neck. The ones down my neck make my neck look all fat & swollen and I can't turn or touch my neck without wanting to scream.

I can't take any Advil because ibuprofen (or any NSAIDS for that matter) and lithium don't mix, so I've been taking Tylenol 1's, which admittedly I'm damn near immune to at this point so they're not doing anything. Or at least not enough.

I have no fever, no sore throat, no runny nose, no headache, no stomach ache, I don't have the shits, I'm not constipated - hell, I don't even have cramps, and I always have cramps! - I just have these crazy swollen lymph nodes.

What worries me though? Is that I looked up the lymphatic system on Wikipedia and it said that the head/neck glands are connected to the thyroid and the most common complication with lithium, from what I've read and been told, is that is can totally fuck up your thyroid. HOWEVER, swollen lymph nodes are not symptoms of lithium toxicity, so who fuckin' knows.

I see the doctor at 10:30am today and I'm going to ask him if we can run my lithium levels again on Tuesday (small town, clinic's only open 2 days a week) to see if they're where they're supposed to be on this new dose, since my shrink's on vacation for the next 3 weeks.

I'd really like to know why my lymph nodes are freaking out though. I really hope he at least gets me to pee in a cup or something before prescribing antibiotics for a mystery infection. I also want painkillers. Lots and lots of painkillers.

Last night I was eating gum and lost a filling. It's just really not been my week. :o(

I hate that I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep. This has been happening a lot for some reason and it's really starting to piss me off. I went to bed early last night (well, early for me) because today I have to go to Wes' kindergarten class because they're putting on a "Mother's Day Cafe". I'm not entirely sure what that is, but Wes has been so excited about it all week that I have to be there, despite the fact that I feel like shit, I've had no sleep, I'm in pain and oh yeah, have massive social anxiety, especially around other parents.

Whatever painkillers the doctor gives me, I hope they're compatible with Ativan because it's gonna take at least 2 to get me through the front doors of the school. :o/ Blake's coming with me and volunteered to help out with the event, so it probably won't be so bad. And like I said, Wes is STOKED, and I love it when he's excited, so I'll just suck it up.

Okay, I'm gonna try laying down for an hour and seeing what happens.

• 11:55 Just woke up from a dream where www.camwhores.com was based in Germany. #
• 11:57 Taking 0.5mg Risperidone & 2 Tylenol 1s. #
• 12:35 Drooling over the Bunnies and Bees microportfolio I can't afford: tinyurl.com/5mq9se #
• 12:49 If there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it, check out the hook while DJ revolves it. #
• 14:21 Eating a fast fry steak and editing my tags on Live Journal because I have too many. #
• 18:44 Eating dinner and still editing LJ tags... #
• 22:38 Eating gum & watching LOST. Then going to bed because I have a long day tomorrow. :o/ So this is goodnight. &lt;3 #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

So, I started lithium on April 22nd. 900mg, which I understand is the standard starting dose, then you have a blood test to check your lithium levels and they adjust from there.

Well, I had my blood test exactly one week after starting the stuff and my lithium levels were too high, so she put me down to 750mg/day and said I could start weaning off the Risperidone - an antipsychotic - that I take every day.

Throughout all of this, my mood was actually pretty good, although I think that had more to do with the weather than the drug, but whatever, I felt pretty good. More than that, I felt okay taking the lithium because to me, it was like taking a vitamin more than a "drug", it's natural, it's a salt. It makes more sense to me to take that and have it work than some synthetic chemical they just made up in some lab. (At the same time, it can permanently fuck up your thyroid and/or kidneys, which kinda freaks me out. The difference between therapeutic levels and a toxic levels are very slim.)

Anyway, at the end of last week, depression set in, combined with the inability to sleep more than 4 or 5 hours at a time. Then on Monday I woke up with these weird lumps at the back of my head that are sore, which I'm guessing are swollen glands? Do you even have glands like, at the base of your skull? This morning I woke up with swollen neck glands too, so I'm assuming so. The sleep thing could be a result of weaning off the Risperidone, the depression is probably "just me" (keeping in mind that the Risperidone does nothing for my depression, which was why I was going off of it), but these lumps? Man, I dunno.

My shrink is on vacation, naturally, but she CC'd my regular doctor on the lithium blood test and his office called me to discuss the results, so I see him tomorrow, even thouggh I already know the results of that test. I'm assuming that this is all due to the lithium and he's going to pull me off it, which I'm fine with, the shit kinda scares me anyway, but it's what to do in the meantime with my shrink on vacation that I worry about. I guess I'll just ask him to give me a 'scrip for more Risperidone until she's back.

So that's what's happening.

• 05:22 Had a nightmare about my mom and now can't get back to sleep. :o( #
• 08:59 Waiting for Blake to drop off les brats & come home with breakfast bagels and hashbrowns from McDonald's. #
• 09:02 Taking 0.5mg of Risperidone. Slowly weaning off of it. #
• 09:38 Listening to the thunder getting closer. #
• 11:29 I wish I had a colour printer. :o( #
• 12:58 Eating caesar salad and dinkin' around on Facebook. #
• 13:46 Being up during the day is fucking boring. #
• 14:19 Sad, bipolar panda. :o( #
• 17:19 Eating fish & chips and watching Juno. Taking a break from sketching. #
• 20:01 Playing with watercolour pencils. #
• 23:07 Getting a massage with sleepy time lotion, watching The Daily Colbert Report and then going to bed. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)

Yesterday Pixel & I took some pictures of this year's grow op, so I thought I'd share.



In my office I've got dwarf "Teddy Bear" sunflowers starting to sprout in a giant terra cotta pot. Not pictured is the pot of impatiens that probably aren't going to grow because the seeds were really old:



This is what they'll look like when they're fully grown, except not as big. When the sprouts are bigger, I'm going to leave half of them in the pot and plant the other half of them in the front garden, along the driveway edge.

This is the rest of this year's grow op. Most of the stuff I'm planting this year isn't the kinda stuff you start indoors or put in pots, so the window sill's not as full as prrevious years:

From left to right: The pots with the jars on top are cherry tomato plants, which I started from seed last month (that also take FOR-FUCKING-EVER to grow and are delicate bastards!). The next 4 containers are all sunflowers; mammoth, which is your regular every day sunflower, "autumn beauty", which is more of an orangey/brown colour, and wild sunflowers, which are small and only grow to be about 3 feet tall. None of the sunflowers in the containers seem to want to sprout for me though, because they're being jerks. And finally, the mini greenhouse container on the very right is full of green pepper seeds that haven't germinated yet.

This is one of my baby tomato plants:


I bought this cherry tomato kit last year, that came with seeds in a sheet of biodegradable paper, growing medium and that mini greenhouse that I currently have green peppers in, but since we didn't end up doing the veggie garden last year, I never used it. Possibly because the seeds were a year old, I only got 5 of them to sprout and I'm dead set on growing these damn tomatoes that I'm babying these little buggers more than I've ever babied another plant. They even got Miracle Grow spikes on Sunday.

The jars are over top of them for two reasons. For one, just for the greenhouse effect. They've doubled in size since I moved them to the pots and put the jars over top. But the other reason, which is more important, is to protect them from this ferocious beast who likes to chew on seedlings of all kinds, the newer the better:



In fact, when I was taking the pictures of the seedlings, she was right behind me waiting for her chance to get at them. She's kind of a bitch that way. (Also note our new carpet! The orange shag monstrosity is gone and my house no longer smells like 40 years of cat piss! HOORAY! Also? Pixel hasn't peed anywhere except her litter box ever since the old carpet was removed! I knew she was peeing because the smell of other cats was making her bonkers. Anyway...)

Anyway, I'm going to transplant three of the tomato plants to the garden when they've big enough, and transplant the other two into bigger pots to put on the porch, just to see which do better. Next year, I say fuck this seeds business, I'm buying cherry tomato plants instead.

Actually, this year I'm buying tomato plants too, just not cherry ones. When we get the veggie garden planted, the "tomato row" is going to be my cherry tomato plants and a few regular tomato plants that we'll get from the garden center up the road.

Yesterday I made my last seed purchase for the season. Because the Mammoth sunflowers I started inside aren't doing so well, I went to Veseys.com and ordered "Giganteus" and "Early Russian" sunflowers. These are really tall ones, which are of the utmost importance this year for privacy. Our neighbours decided to build a makeshift patio in the middle of their backyard this week and put their new patio set there. It looks really nice. The problem though, is that this means we can't do ANYTHING in our backyard, can't even stand at the back door, without them saying "HEY! WANNA COME OVER FOR A BEER?" and that's gonna get old, fast, so, I'm planting a fuckload of sunflowers. I plant them every single year, it's just that this year I got taller ones.

I also ordered some more cosmos and bachelor's buttons because I get paranoid mine didn't seed themselves in the front last year.

Something awesome I also ordered are "Sensitive Plant" seeds, which I'm going to grow in pots inside for the kids. When I was younger, I'd go with my great grandma and aunt Betty to the garden centre and I'd go around touching all the sensitive plants to watch them close. They're pretty neat and I think the kids will get a kick out of them, if I can get them to grow.

And finally, here's the seed list for the front garden. I'm gonna do my planting not this weekend, but next weekend, as long as it doesn't rain on me:

- Wild sunflowers
- Shasta Daisy (which won't bloom until next year)
- Nasturtium
- Cosmos
- A ridiculous amount of Hollyhocks that I'm going to be planting EVERYWHERE (these won't bloom the first year either, but the ones from bulbs should; I have seeds and bulbs are apparently on their way)
- Foxglove for the "dead zone" and the fairy garden. Also won't bloom this year.
- California Poppy
- Bird's Eyes
- Forget-Me-Nots for the fairy garden

...and finally, several pounds of wildflower mixes, from drought resistant mixes to low growing to shady.

Not to mention the moonflowers and 3 different varieties of morning glories I'm going to be growing in the window boxes on the back porch.

It's gonna be an awesome summer, I can feel it!

• 05:34 Making another attempt at sleep. Goodnight world. <3 #
• 06:23 *sigh* Fuckit. I'm up for the day. Gonna go have a shower. #
• 07:16 Having an ice cream cone for breakfast. A triple chocolate Drumstick, in fact. #
• 10:18 Wanting to be out in the garden but it's still too fucking cold! :o( #
• 10:19 Looking at shrubbery and ornamental grasses on Veseys.com *sigh* #
• 11:29 Crying over people who probably aren't even worth the tears, but I can't help it. :o( #
• 11:54 Making Wes & I spring rolls for lunch. #
• 17:41 Watching Madison rake leaves out of my garden. Child labour FTW! #
• 17:53 Wishing my hair was long again. #
• 17:56 Getting ready to go to the grocery store to buy garlic bread and more single serve drink crystals that you put in bottled water. (Obsessed.) #
• 18:44 OMG I HAS SO MANY FLAVOURS. #
• 18:49 I got: Raspberry Ice, Strawberry-Kiwi, Lemon Green Tea, Citrus Tea & Pink Lemonade! #
• 20:21 Takin' all my drugs so I can go to bed early. #
• 23:12 Can't keep my eyes open for The Daily Colbert Report. Goin' to bed. See ya tomorrow, world. <3 #

~*Sunny @ Twitter*~
(Posted "nightly", around 5am, using LoudTwitter)