My Last Letter...

It’s impossible to know how you will handle the loss of a loved one until you are faced with it. My Grandma’s birthday would have been on Tuesday April 3rd. I think it is possible for people to lose a grandparent and not be particularly affected. Life carries on as it always has and you feel sad for a while because the idea of anyone’s life ending is a sadness, but the impact is minimal. I don’t feel like I have lost the little old lady that I would see on holidays, I feel like I lost my friend and confidante.


Growing up, my sister and I spent weeks at a time living with my Grandma and I attribute a lot of my raising to her. She lavished affection on me (including gifts) but if she thought I was getting too spoiled, she would give away all my toys to a needy family.

She inspired my love of art by fawning over my drawings and taught me to paint pottery. She helped teach me how to swim and dance and fostered my love of big band music. When I got older and didn’t see her as often, she was my faithful pen pal. We sent hundreds of letters back and forth over the years. She was the BEST kind of pen pal because she would put funny little presents in my letters. Stickers, confetti, earrings, needlework, gum, loonies…you name it. When I was at University and having rough time, she sent me a hand sewn handkerchief in the mail. She kept every letter & drawing I ever sent her. Even when the arthritis in her hands got so bad that she couldn’t send many letters, she still tried. The words would be barely legible and slanted down the page, but I loved them nonetheless. And eventually she wasn’t able to fill them with goodies because she couldn’t get out to the store, but she would doodle flowers and happy faces on the pages to keep them exciting.

In second year University I noticed that her mind was starting to falter and so for a school project, I borrowed a voice recorder from my sister and spent several hours interviewing my Grandma about her life and memories and opinions. It was the best idea I have ever had. I have her voice forever etched in stone. I have a true record of her professing her love for me and my family and most importantly, I have her optimistic view on life. She says “You can’t take life too seriously. You can’t spend all your time worrying about being sick or in pain. Life is too short. You just have to be happy.” I played the recording for my family after she died and we sat together laughing and crying at her (sometimes) outrageous comments. We sorted through hundreds of pictures that delineated her life. She was always so happy.

Even when her mind started to fade and the letters stopped, I still faithfully wrote her. I started to put little presents in HER letters. Earrings, loonies, Tim cards…you name it. She would show my letters to everyone at the nursing home tearfully and proud. My last letter to my Grandma sat unsent on my desktop the day I got the news and that is one of my biggest regrets.

My Grandma got to be at my sister’s wedding and it will always be a great sadness to me that she didn’t get to see mine. I still feel moments of overwhelming sadness, like when I look at my dresser and see the funny little gifts I gave her for Christmas only a few months ago. But that’s the funny thing about life. It DOES actually go on. And sometimes you have to grab hold of something to slow it down for a couple of seconds so you can reflect on your losses and remember. I thought my world would crumble when she actually died, but it didn’t. And as Grandma would always say, God doesn’t ever give you more than you can handle. And I think you can’t know true love, until you’ve known loss.

I didn’t get to give her the last letter, but I can give it to you loyal blog readers…

I'm a knife Wielding, Road Rage Conquering, Country Rambo-Chick!

It's amazing how the most unusual things can happen to a person doing the most mediocre of tasks. It's equally enlightening to find out how you would REALLY act in a situation that you have never been in. I didn't surprise myself. I knew I would be kick-ass in the face of a threat. What DID surprise me was the reaction of my partner in crime (or innocence in this case) in all his 6 foot tall, 200 pounds of glory.

We were on our way to pick up some groceries from Bayview Village Lowblaws and we were cut off by a blue minivan leaving the parking lot. Stuart (of course) laid on the horn a little over-zealously and we went on our merry way.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the Blue van had pulled an erratic u-turn and was zooming through the parking lot at break-neck speed in an attempt to cut us off before we entered the underground parking lot. We parked the car and waited to see if the blue hell-van  followed. Sure enough, it slowed and parked a couple rows over. We waited to see what the driver would do, but he didn't get out; he just sat angrily staring out the front windshield until we got out of the car.

We slowly walked to the front of the grocery store and paused at the entrance to see if he would follow. He didn't. At that moment it occurred to me that my car was in danger of having the tires slashed, windshield smashed or of getting keyed. I encouraged Stuart, being the great mediator that he is, to go over to the blue van and try to diffuse the situation and find out what what the guy wanted. He vehemently

 refused to approach the van and tried to convince me to ignore him and go get our groceries.

I decided that I wouldn't do that without getting the license plate of the minivan (just in case). I walked as close to the van as I dared (being nearsighted that was about 100 meters away) and turned to give the plate to Stuart so he could record it in his phone and realized he hadn't followed me. So I shouted the plate numbers out to him (and in doing so) attracted the attention of the psychopath.

"Do you have a problem?!" he asked me, as he slowly got out of the drivers side of his van.

"Ya, actually I do- Why did you follow us here, do you make a habit of following everyone that honks at you?" I asked.

"I can go wherever the fuck I want!" and he started moving towards me.

At that moment I decided it was time I turned into country-girl-rambo and I pulled out my knife (which is completely legal at just under 3 inches of length and is a button trigger- NOT a switch blade).

"You crazy bastard!" I yelled, " I have your license plate number now so if you plan on doing anything to my car..."

"Why don't you go inside and find out!" he threatened.

After exchanging a few more pleasantries, Stuart finally convinced me to abandon the confrontation and go into the grocery store. As I was walking away, the kind man reminded me gently to buy lots of salad while I was in there to combat a potential weight problem (however he may have worded it differently).

Where was big Stuart during this confrontation? Behind me somewhere? Sitting quietly weaving intricate needlework? It's possible. Turtle! That is all I have to say about that.

I didn't report him to the cops because (as Stuart pointed out later) I didn't know the number for the police station and he didn't think the incident warranted calling '911' because it didn't quite fall into the 'emergency' category. I somewhat beg to differ...and when I retold the story at work (at LEAST 10 times) it just kept getting better and better and I am FULLY convinced now that my life was in danger and I am practically a gladiator for standing up to a 10 foot tall giant!

Until next time, loyal blog readers...

A little Perspective and a LOT of Naked

I am an expert at painting naked people.


It’s taken lots of practice and I must admit, I have had my pitfalls. In second year university I took several fine arts courses, one of which was oil painting. We spent the majority of the year painting still life (posed displays of junk- mostly flowers) and once we perfected our brush skills, we moved on to nudes. Nudes every day. We duplicated master-nudes, painted details (small snapshots) of nudes and even had live models come in for days and days to be painted in the buff. Our final project was a large painting of our own subject matter (with the instruction that it must be a nude). Most people chose to paint themselves as a nude (from a photograph that I hope was destroyed after the project). Other people hired models and used rented studio time to complete their paintings. I decided to be original and do something no one else had done. I asked Stuart to let me paint him naked.


(On a side note- if you have ever painted anyone naked, you understand what I mean when I say that nudity becomes meaningless after 3 hours of staring at butts and boobs. People become a sum of parts and you won’t remember why you were giggling at the beginning of class.)


He agreed to be my model and so I set him up in my dorm room. For five days (in 3 hour increments) he reclined in the same position (with some urging and repositioning) on my tiny little dorm room bed.

On the turn-in-day of the project was a ‘class critique’, where fellow students look at your final piece and critique your technique, colour choice, composition, subject matter and inspiration.


It was during this critique that I realized why people don’t paint in their dorm rooms and use the studio instead. My painting had appeared perfectly proportioned mid-process. ‘Surely this was the greatest thing I have ever created’, I thought. Now that I could step back and take a look at it, I recoiled in horror. The perspective was COMPLETELY OFF. I hadn’t had enough space in my closet-of-a-room to step back and check my proportions and perspective. The painting appeared to recede away from the canvas, with Stuarts body far in the background and the point of focus (and the object closest to the viewer) being *gasp* his JUNK!

Unsurprisingly, my critique centred on the visual 'focus' of my painting and my choice of....*gulp* colour variation. I admitted I had mistakenly used an inadequate space with a more than adequate model, (being my boyfriend), whom I named in front of all 25 students without thinking. Granted, he got quite the reception when he met me after class to escort me back to residence. The women seemed particularly pleased to meet him.


Though I have kept much of my art that I created during University, I decidedly threw that painting into the fire during a particularly cold May 24 camping weekend (we were in need of firewood). It popped and sizzled and was consumed by flames torturously slow. By morning, only a single piece of canvas remained in the ashes, perfectly preserved. I don't need to tell you what image remained, except that I felt cursed by the nude-painting-fairy and as a result I was the butt of all jokes for the rest of the weekend.

I'm Back...

I have been a bad blogger. It has been several months since my last post, which is sad because I had been steadily creating 2+ blog entries per month for almost 3 years now. My excuses are limited to a move, a vacation, a new position at work, some holidays and a slightly more active social life. I also got a new tablet for my birthday (called a Bamboo) and I have been experimenting with my art. I will admit, it took me a while to get used to drawing on a tablet, but I think it will be worth it because my pictures are more detailed with a more 'hand drawn' quality. Now I just have to get out of Microsoft Paint and I will be well on my way to being a pro!


So I missed creating a Halloween post- but I did make a little snapshot in honour of the occasion.

In reality, it should have been a Christmas snapshot. So I made some edits-

So instead of writing a mile long entry on all the updates in my life, I will be efficient and keep it in point form:

• The new apartment is working out nicely. All the glitches have been repaired and we have two bedrooms & two beds if anyone needs a place to crash. Photo's coming soon.
• Stuart and I (and my sister and her husband) went to Vegas for vacation at the end of October. It was my first time there and was exactly what I'd hoped it would be. Stuart and I drank Crystal Champagne (at the bar it was $1000+ dollars) offered to us by a woman in a fur vest who pronounced herself a 'porn star'. I don't mean to judge, but if she's a porn star, then I'm Van Gogh with a great tan.

• We did a pub-crawl down the strip and the best part was the partybus that takes you from club to club with the stripper pole in the centre Isle. I'm not going to lie, I tried dancing on it until the bus took a tight corner and I flew off into the lap of a stranger with a terrible beard and disposition.

• I crashed into a parking pillar at work. Yup. I was jet lagged and on autopilot for my first day back to the office and I caused $3000.00 worth of damage to the side of my leased Corolla. I am putting it through insurance because I have accident forgiveness and it shouldn't affect my rates- but I have 4 years left on my lease and I am going to have to baby this car for the rest of it. I swear the damage doesn't even look that bad.
• We put up our Christmas tree the first weekend of November along with all of our decorations. Stuart is always in such a hurry to decorate because he loves Christmas more than anything else. For me, Christmas is ready for a transition. I really want my sister to have a baby to breathe  new life into the holidays.  
• My highschool is getting shut down. PCVS is the beating heart of Peterborough. It brings life into the centre of the city and it certainly was my salvation at a time when I needed nothing more! I had to apply to get into the Arts Program at Peterborough Collegiate and was lucky enough to get accepted for visual, musical and theatric arts. I was stimulated in a way that no other highschool could have competed with. It was like Glee, without being slushied in the hallway. There were no clicks, no judgement and I have no traumatizing highschool memories. It was a group of the most talented, accepting, beautiful people that could have been collected in one spot and I mourn for all the teens that will have to survive without it. Highschool can be a cruel fate and I can't begin to count all the lives that were likely saved inside the walls of PCVS. I will feel its passing like a member of my own family.

• Stuart turned 26 on December 19th. I didn't get him a present because he never got me anything...and he normally gets gyped because his birthday is so close to Christmas. Don't worry, he got a Christmas gift.
• Stuart and I have lost an enormous amount of weight (between the two of us, it is nearly 75 pounds) and we are hoping to get back on track soon, since we obliterated all our healthy eating over Christmas.
• Our tree looked particularly nice this year and we were very spoiled:

Well, loyal blog readers...if you still exist, have a safe and happy holiday/New Years and have a toast (with me) to getting back on track and doing the things that make you happy.

Cheers!~

Birthdays & Boxes & Backwards Apartments!

So the big move has come and gone and I am exhausted. Screw a diet plan- I think I lost 20 pounds of sweat just shuffling boxes and furniture, packing, unpacking and organizing. There is no room for food during a move. I think the busier a person is- it directly correlates to how thin/in shape they are. A sedentary life-style really is the true body-killer.

For the past month I have been on a Doctor-directed (and OHIP covered, thank god) diet plan. So far I have lost about 15-20 pounds and I feel great. I think certain people can hold more weight than others. I am one of the lucky ones that gains weight EVERYWHERE so I can generally get away with carrying an extra 50 pounds that someone who has a smaller frame, can’t. It is a blessing and a curse because I let myself get away with it as well. So now that I have had some weight-aggravated medical conditions, it’s time to get back on the healthy life-style pony and get back to where I am comfortable.

Anyway, enough of my image-woes. The apartment is a two bedroom that has been gutted for our move-in-pleasure. But now that we are on day 3 in the new place, I am noticing some small anomalies that weren’t present in our other apartment (from the same complex).

The light switches are all backwards (up is off and down is on)

One of the light switches turns off the TV (why? I can’t tell you)

The hot water says cold water and the cold water says hot water.
The doors are all hung backwards, so that they don’t close unless you turn the handle.

We have the only apartment without a peep hole.

Essentially, our apartment is completely backwards and upside down. Mind you, these are all livable problems, but are exceedingly annoying.

I am officially 26 years old (as of August 25th). Because my birthday landed right in the middle of a move and a diet, it went uncelebrated, but I don’t mind. I was happy to get the move under my belt. But I won’t say I wasn’t tempted by the idea of cake.

I love cake. I could eat cake all day. Screw this pie business.

Anyway enjoy the long weekend, probably some of the last warm weather of the summer, so get your tanning, swimming and boating in before we pack it in for fall.

Until next time, loyal blog readers!