honey honey

This morning I was (unintentionally) standing on Oscar's blanket and he yanked on it (intentionally - but really just to play) and ZOWIE! I kicked a wooden chair and totally messed up my toe (not the pinky one but the one before it), and that part of your foot where your toe connects. I yelled so loud that Oscar immediately hit the ground, practically melting into the floor, giving me the "I'm so saaaaaahhhrreeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" look. Poor guy, I wasn't mad at him, but man, did that hurt (still does...muaaaaaahhhh!) The bruising is just starting, and will prolly be uglier tomorrow, so I'll be sure to get some photos of the carnage.

In the meantime, please enjoy more shamelssley borrowed images. This time it's the work of Alberto Cerriteno:

ideal subject position my ass

Isn't it obvious tell that I am PUMPED for my upcoming critical theory exam?


I spent the whole day yesterday, studying for that exam with Cheryl and felt so braindead that I didn't do a lick of homework last night. Instead, Kirk and I watched Bon Cop, Bad Cop, which was really good. Being half French Canadian, and bilingual, I got a real kick out of the dialogue. I wanted to watch it without subtitles, but Kirk gave me stinkeye about it, so we watched it with English subtitles. Basically it's about the tensions between Ontario and Quebec explored through the buddy cop genre as Colm Feore and Patrick Huard investigate a series of murders that take place within the "hockey community". I don't even really like hockey but I LOVED this movie.

Here is a shot of Oscar sulking with his mini-teddy because we were watching a movie and not playing with him.


Oh and thanks for all your advice on the stink problem I was having with my sweater on Friday. Please note that I have HEARD of deoderant, and understand how it works, it's just that damned sweater that needs to be burned like all future news items about Anna Nicole Smith.

our dog of perpetual motion

Oscar, originally uploaded by 35mmMonkey.

i start school in 8 hours and i can't sleep...figures...

I'm not sure how often I'll be posting while school's on, but I will try to stay on top of the blog and share more of my projects and stuff.

In the meantime, here are some super cute photos of my nephew, Kirk, who we visited in Kingston this past weekend.









Oh and here's two of the cat and dog together after spending the night apart. Usually they are fighting:





And here's a creepy croissant Kirk bought for me:



Oh! And some Christmas presents. My new mini mouse for the iBook and a GINORMOUS pepper grinder (IT WORKS!) from my brother.

This is what it is like talking to my father.

pip squeak says: (11:18:21 AM)
haha!

pip squeak says: (11:18:22 AM)
hi

Dominic :) says: (11:19:28 AM)
poop says hi

pip squeak says: (11:19:33 AM)
poop?

pip squeak says: (11:19:41 AM)
who is poop?




pip squeak says: (11:19:44 AM)
i am pip

pip squeak says: (11:19:56 AM)
pip squeak

Dominic :) says: (11:19:59 AM)
yes popo

pip squeak says: (11:20:04 AM)
??



Dominic :) says: (11:20:33 AM)
poop pop papa

pip squeak says: (11:20:44 AM)
aaaaaaah poopoo aka papa?

Dominic :) says: (11:20:58 AM)
yes

pip squeak says: (11:21:01 AM)
you are weird



Dominic :) says: (11:21:49 AM)
ok so what?

pip squeak says: (11:21:50 AM)
i think i may blog this conversation

pip squeak says: (11:22:01 AM)
it is the weirdest one i've ever had on chat

Dominic :) says: (11:22:24 AM)
what is blog?

pip squeak says: (11:22:28 AM)
oh god




pip squeak says: (11:22:45 AM)
i'm just going to have to go ahead and tell you that you're

pip squeak says: (11:22:53 AM)
too old to understand ;)

pip squeak says: (11:22:56 AM)
haha

pip squeak says: (11:23:02 AM)
it's an online journal.

Dominic :) says: (11:23:41 AM)
please stop harrasing me

pip squeak says: (11:23:54 AM)
ok. i love you. i'm going for a massage now

pip squeak says: (11:23:57 AM)
bye!

Dominic :) says: (11:24:21 AM)
bye

santa is my bitch

Venture brothers is the best cartoon ever. not everyone gets it, but the more absurd, the better, I say.


Last night we went out for dinner with my parents and my in laws. The food was fantastic. so was the booze. We walked Kirk's parents to their hotel, and then walked home from there.


We were all giddy from actually having a decent time with our parents, and totally started making out as soon as we walked through the door. At some point I felt a little gassy and thought I'd let a little go. Well. It ended up being the most hilariously foul silent but deadly fart ever beefed. A real clinger.


I was horribly embarrassed, but couldn't stop laughing about it. Definitely a mood killer.


Lucky for me, he eventually got over it.


Tonight, Angela joined us for lesbian Christmas Eve potluck with the Melissas (yes, my best friend Melissa dates someone with the same name). They are the raddest bitches. I planned on taking pictures but got ripped pretty much right away and totally forgot.


I drank red wine, limoncello and eggnog spiked with Cuban white rum. I ate a lot too. Eggplant parmigiana, venison meatballs and red cabbage salad with honey mustard dressing. Then I ate a shitload of chocolate and pot butter cookies and we walked Angela to the subway.


Tomorrow will be another whole day of eating with my family. It's a non-stop Italian gorgefest from about 2pm until 6pm. We're going over to my parents a little early, so I can have a run on their treadmill before I get started. I've been slacking off in that department since school ended and I am starting to feel it. Sore neck and lower back, oh and I've started grinding my teeth at night again. Time to wrap that shit up, yo.

Dudley the Fearless

Dudley the Fearless, originally uploaded by micgormit.

micgormit is one of my favourite toronto-based flickr photographers, and dudley is the cutest puppy ever!


oh, i mean, besides oscar of course...

my festering nipple is festering no more!

No, I don't have a fresh photo of the scar, but it is fully healed. Trust me. Not that you should trust anything a blogger-who-never-blogs says.

I had this whole plan to post about my whole going back to school experience. But it appears that the black hole of first-year homework has totally shot that plan to shreads.

So, basically, I'm a total basket case. This semester I'm taking 4 courses:

Introduction to Visual Culture: History and Ideas (art history)
Drawing
Time-Based Media (video, performance art, electronics and web stuff)
Form and Structure (sculpture)

My instructors are all accomplished, knowledgable artists and scholars in their own right and aren't uptight or stuffy. They just seem excited to see how we interpret the assignments. I've received some marks back already, so I'm feeling good about the work I'm doing. Mostly. It's definitely weird working among recent high school graduates. Most of them think I'm only about 3 or 4 years older than they are and freak out when I tell them I'm married.

I've also started working in the school's Writing and Learning Centre as their Friday reception. The pay is not the greatest, but it's on campus, and its enough to cover all my incidental school expenses, so its worth it.

Anyway, here's a photo of my most recently completed painting. Yes, I'm still painting whenever I can steal a few free hours from homework time. This is from a photo of Oscar when he was about 10 weeks old.



Also, yesterday was my first wedding anniversary! Since we're a little short in the moolah department, we just stayed home, ate veggie chili, drank some shiraz and watched Slither. Which was fantastically gross! And can I just say that DAMN, that Nathan Filion is one dreamy smartass. Ahem. We decided instead of buying each other a gift, we'd save up for a few weeks and get a 250 gig hard drive installed into the portable hard drive case we've got kicking around. That way we can store our media in one central location WOOHOO! Anniversary-tastic!

it's been raining cats and dogs out here

Oscar is exhausted from all the hiding and whining he suffered during the thunder and lightning storm that's been hammering the city all day. It was so bad he refused to poop at all this morning and dragged me back home as soon as he got about half a block away.

"Where is that coming from? It's like it's coming from...EVERYWHERE.

HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?

Quick, wench, hide!"

For the next few hours he just glared at me occasionally as if dissapointed that I hadn't obeyed his command.

"The noise monster is sure as hell never going to catch me.

You get caught, you're on your own."

9 good things

1. Found USB cables for digital cameras. It makes it easier to get the pictures off of them and stuff.


2. My husband. For many reasons, but namely for finding said cable.


3. My cottage. Everyone living in urban middle-class on up comfort should have to poop in an outhouse for at least a whole week once a year. I swear. It's character building.


4. Good friends. I had the best week ever with Melissa, drinking, canoeing, eating, smoking, sleeping. Oh, and lots and lots of stick throwing.


5. The Party Island. Need I say more?


6. Bicycles out of storage. TTC fare is now $2.75 and that is fucking bullshit. Also, I've been away from city driving for a while and think that road rage is NOT good for me.

7. Newly painted bedrooms. Now I just need to move all my shit out of the closet, paint the closet doors and inside trim, lay down some quarter round, moving it all back into the closet. And THEN, I can move my bed back in, and all my other tchatchka. HUZZAH!

8. Cursewords. The words bullshit, cunt, asshole, fucking and pricks got me through the most evil rush hour drive down Dufferin from Lawrence Ave down to King Street today. Drivers in Toronto don't know the first goddamned thing about common courtesy. I don't give a shit if someone needs to get into my lane. Signal assholes! Let me know what you're planning to do, pricks, so I don't rear end your bullshit, you fucking cunts!

ahem.

9. Free food. Thanks Mum! Also, thank you for storing my bike.

bye bye Toronto

Tomorrow I am heading up to the cottage for the weekend. I'll be home for a couple of days and then up there again until July 4. No access to email or internet. It's going to be awesome.

10 things I've learned in the last 2 weeks

1. There are not enough hours in the day to browse flickr.

2. House painting is hard work - all that bending and reaching. I'd rather be painting canvasi than my bedroom.

3. I HATE having my home in total disorder. My bed is in my living room and my clothes are EVERYWHERE.

4. Beds are meant to be in bedrooms, not in living rooms where cats and dogs will sleep on them all day and get hairs on pillows and in between sheets.


5. Even though I don't have to get up by 7:00am anymore I still seem to wake up around 7:30am. Today I fell back asleep until 11:30am but that's neither here nor there.

6. Am a big baby. It's a beautiful day out and I'm inside posting this to my blog because I left my sunglesses at Steve's last night. Also, because the sun is really bright out and it burns my eyes.

7. I don't need TV. Kirk and I cancelled BellExpressVu so that I can concentrate on all those projects I have listed in my to-do journal.

8. I eat less when I'm unemployed. When I'm home, I just seem to graze a little here and there, but when I was working I scarfed.

9. Working out means ab pain. That combined with mentruation really puts a damper on things.

10. I miss TV. I have cramps right now and am so hopped up on Motrin that I want to veg out on the sofa - I mean bed. Since it is still in the living room. Maybe I'll go rent a movie.

Ok, yeah, so, like, I , like, totally quit my job, eh?

As of last week, I am blissfully unemployed. I haven't posted at all about work, not because I'm afraid of being dooced, but because there are some things I just leave out of this blog. OK, considering how often I post, there are a lot of things I leave out of this blog. Mostly because my interest in journaling, or whatever this is supposed to be for, waxes and wanes, as they say.



Anyway, now its over and I don't even have to bother thinking about it. Not that that means I'm sitting around the house all day eating bonbons and watching soaps.

You are SO WRONG.

That was just yesterday, and it wasn't bonbons but coffee and not soaps but obsessively exploring flickr. Gawd, I'm such a geek.



For the most part, though, I've been working my tushie off over here. I've been doing a lot of housework, some copywriting work for a local interior designer, designing business cards for my brother's new business, starting a whole new series of paintings and drawings, repainting my bedroom (which should be done today), working on major landscaping projects up at the cottage, taking lots of digital photos AND (as I mentioned) obsessively exploring flickr. phew! and it's only been 11 days!



Damn, I'm working harder now than I did when I was actually earning a paycheck. I think it's a revisit to the twisted form of guilt I felt a few years ago when I was unemployed for 2 years and spending money I didn't actually earn myself. Kirk has been awesome about it, and is excited for me to start school in September. I'm excited about it too, actually. Not because I need the degree to be an artist, but hopefully to gain more confidence, network like crazy, and mostly to accumulate as many new experiences as I can to expand my art practice beyond what I'm used to.




Anyway, until my next post here's a couple of new works in progress for your enjoyment:










This one is actually a year old, but I realized I never posted it!

Thanks to Raymi and Merkley??? for inspiring me to add more photos to my posts. Except with less boobies.

Thanks also to Squid for reminding me that I actually have a blog of my own!