I had my mom here for about a week! It was fun and when she left I felt sad and lonely for a while. BUT I have friends here and pups and I am ok.

One of the things she did was take me on a shopping trip to Ikea. We had hotdogs and then went through all the showrooms writing down names of various things I wanted and then got them at the end. Now my living room doesn’t look so stark!

Also she bought me a new duvet for my birthday, because my other one was ten years old and thin and cold. It was nice having her here, she watched BBC on her iPad and I took her to this bead store, BeadFX, and she beaded every night before she left. It was like being home when we used to live together.

But now I have to get back to my thesis project, because my advisor wants a second draft by Thursday. I doubt I will make that, but maybe Friday or Saturday I will have something.

I went to an event about MMIW tonight, it was good, especially listening to the families.

I’m kind of sleepy. It’s almost midnight.

I think I am ready to have a girlfriend again. I tried okcupid and tinder but I don’t really like either of those. I really don’t think I’m gonna find someone that way. But who knows!

There are some queer things happening, Inside Out is on, and Pride will be happening soon! I should really get plugged in to the community more. It’s just been school this whole first year of living here.

My lowest grade was a B, and then I got a B+, and an A-, and an A! My cumulative GPA is currently at about 3.52. Which means if I so chose I might be able to do a PhD!
However I am so done with school! I had such anxiety about not passing and having to do another semester and shell out another 3000 dollars AND get a loan for about 7000 and just digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole of debt. Oh man I wanted to cry! And I sent all these worried texts to friends and cousins and had a worried conversation with my mom.
BUT it all worked out!
SO as long as I stay on track with my thesis project I will be graduating this fall. I’m going to be defending my thesis (they prefer to call it an oral presentation) in July. SO by August 1st everything will be done! My advisor is going with some students for their RTA in LA program in August which is why I have to defend earlier. And I am pretty sure I will be ok.
I have no money! I am so poor! And it’s like, a temporary poverty, because at the end of this week money will be posted to my account. I just need to struggle long enough to make it!
I had a grilled cheese sandwich today to celebrate passing all my classes. If I had money I would have gone to the thai restaurant or something. BUT NO!! Oh well.
In July I will find out if I get a grant. I am really hoping I do! It would give me a nice leeway so that I can keep an eye out for a good job.
Posey and Little Mister are doing well. They were wrestling earlier. I should take them out soon! PUPS!
They have been making me feel better this whole past year, especially when things got rough. They are awesome cheerleaders!

So I sent in my first (very short) draft of my script to my advisor and second reader on Saturday or something and today I got notes back from my Advisor. I read them, there were a lot! I only disagree with one or two so I started working on the second draft today. It was hard! I had to replace some dialog and it needed to be flirty and I am just so bad at being flirty in real life. So I really need to stretch myself to write it.

I also added three new pages while I wrote more dialog and fixed stuff. So that made me happy. I am gonna go back over it again before I am satisfied. There are also some general notes I have to take into consideration.

But overall I am excited to be working on it! It’s been fun doing all the writing and now getting feedback.

I also got a little cold the last couple of days. It’s been pretty gross, just a runny nose/dry scratchy throat kind of thing. And now a little cough. I have been laying low hoping for it to go away.

Tomorrow I get paid! 😀 Not a lot of money, but enough to pay off a debt and get some groceries. And maybe see a movie! 😀

I’m so ready to go to sleep, and wake up to money!

HEY! 🙂 I can finally say my big news!

I got the imagineNATIVE/Charles Street Video residency for a mid-career-senior artist living in the GTA. I’m going to be making a two spirit infomercial. It will be wise and witty! I’m so excited! It will premiere at the 2015 imagineNATIVE film festival this October!

So yay! 😀 And I get to rent equipment with a nice budget of $5000 worth of services from CSV. And $1000 to spend on whatever I need to make my project. It’s gonna be funnnnnnnnn!

My Auntie has been visiting, she came yesterday and is leaving tomorrow morning. We ate lots of food and went to the lake. We had some nice conversations, especially about Grandma.

+++++++++++later++++++++++++
Auntie is gone! I wrote 29 pages in two days! Everything is exciting!

I have to go to bed but I want to finally publish this and I flushed my last draft down the toilet of the internet!

My second draft of my pilot got a five day extension, so I decided to spend some time today cleaning. It’s going really well! I got rid of a lot of old cardboard and recycling and garbage. Swept, mopped, cleaned the bathroom more thoroughly, tackled this massive pile of stuff at the foot of my bed, mostly made up of dirty clothes or summer clothes that were all musty. I moved something and was finally able to open the bottom drawer of my chest of drawers and found some of my favourite shirts.

I also got 37 dollars worth of groceries. Mom was making fun of me because last time I got groceries I like, bought a bag of chips and twizzlers and a chocolate bar. But this time it was main essentials like cheese, milk, butter, eggs, an onion, a pepper, some tinned pasta, crackers, bread. Sausages and sour cream. It should feed me until some more money comes in.

I wrote this yesterday! And today was more of the same, but also I was chatting with my Cuz Deanna and I somehow got on the topic of the Personal Credits which still haven’t come and how I wouldn’t be able to see my grades until my tuition is paid. Then I checked the status of my tuition and what I owe and it was down to 28 bucks. And I did some investigating and found out I got the OutTV Award! 😀 YES! Finally! The only thing that sucks is they used all of it for my outstanding tuition and my tuition for next semester. BUT I will get the rest of my fellowship in cash then. and also when my $3000 in personal credits come hopefully they will just refund me the money I spent on tuition while waiting for those damn people!

About a month ago I called the Personal Credits office and they said I was close to the front of the line for getting my thing dealt with and then the government had 30 days to send the money to my school. SO I am gonna call tomorrow and inquire about it some more. All my tuition except for 28 bucks has been paid now, so I should just get money through the school when it comes. And Spring/Summer is my last semester of this program for good. If I can just get a time frame for when my money will arrive, I won’t have to fret so much!

But yeah! MONEY! Eventually! Right now I have fifty cents in my bank account! That’s not much of anything.

This last week has been busy! I am proud to say I got everything done on time. Yesterday afternoon I handed in an essay before my invigilation shift. Then I worked hard and finished up my second essay today and emailed it to the prof. Now I have the weekend to myself, and the last thing due is my second draft of my pilot. So I think I’m doing ok!

I got my essay done in time to go meet my friend Emmy and her friend Hisayo to go to Missisauga on the go train to Scooters Roller Rink! 😀

I am really terrible at rollerskating! BUT I went up and down on the carpeted area. I kept falling in the actual rink and I was all nervous because I am not as fast healing as I was when I was a kid. So I kept worrying about like, hurting my knee or something. Or hitting my head!

It was still really fun tho! And Emmy gave me rollerskates for my birthday, so now I have to learn. We’re gonna go back on adult night for a lesson.

Tomorrow I’m going to a museum with Louis! I think it will be fun.

I’m almost done! Next week is one more invigilation shift. I hope they pay me soon after that. I’m in a desperate state for money, I’m waiting to see if I get an award from my university because that would really really help. I may look for a job soon. At least for July. August is my last loan payment and then I’m on my own again for money! Scary!

I need to live somewhere cheaper. I am thinking of giving notice and going to look for a one bedroom. I’ve been waiting for a unit to come available at the coop, but meanwhile I am spending hundreds of dollars more than I have every month. It sucks.

It’s the week after classes ended. Unless I do my PhD, I won’t be taking a class for credit again. Kind of wild! I thought I would be able to do so much work over the weekend. We have a first draft of an hour long pilot due tonight at midnight, and I have two papers due Friday, and a second draft of the pilot due on the 23rd. So I was going to work all weekend, but then . . .

I GOT SO SICK!

Oh man it was awful. It was the kind of sick that just knocks you out. I slept pretty much all weekend, and when I did have energy it was being spent trying to get me out of the horrible household mess I was in. Anyway, yesterday I still felt crappy, but it was Monday and I knew I needed to write some of my script, so I wrote 14 pages. Then today I wrote 20 pages. And had a surprise ending I hadn’t anticipated!

There were times I didn’t think I would be able to do it. It seemed impossible. To write all those pages! Within less than 48 hours! Oh my god!

Anyway, I did it! Submitted it three minutes before the deadline. The world is saved. It’s not quite 45 pages, it’s only 40. BUT it’s just a first draft so it’s got a ways to go anyway.

So I feel more confident about writing my thesis project.

I have two papers left to do this week, both of them due on Friday. I’m going to try working really hard the next few days to get them done. I just don’t want to ask for an extension, because there isn’t a lot of time for the profs to finish marking before they need to turn in their marks and I don’t want to rush them. One of my papers is half written already. I feel good about where it’s gonna go. Actually both my papers are on things which interest me. One is about film tax credits and what happened in Saskatchewan, and another is about Race and Gender in Revenge Thrillers with a focus on my thesis project, Carrie, and Coffy. So it should be fun writing times.

BUT also with all this I have a psychiatrist appointment in the morning on Thursday and an Invigilation shift on Thursday afternoon. AND I have to sign a contract tomorrow hopefully. But, well life happens. I can’t be perfectly working on my assignments at ALL times that I am conscious and not either eating or defecating. I mean really! Come on!

After the second draft of my pilot is done next Thursday, I will have finished all of my work for the semester! Then I can take a short break and then get back to working on my thesis project! Which I am pretty excited about. That’s due July 3rd, and I just found out from my advisor that he is gone in August so we need to do the defense in July before he leaves.

I CAN DO IT! I AM DOING IT! I’m gonna come out of this with a debt of $23,000, but I will also have a Masters of Arts and a script to try and produce! 😀

But really all my school work won’t be done in two weeks, because we are getting extensions for a few things (I didn’t have to ask!) so I’m gonna be stressing out working on papers. AND I also have six hours of invigilation work to do, which is really nice. I will get paid 41 dollars an hour! How sweet is that???

Extra cash is always nice!
Speaking of extra cash, this past Monday I got a message from Apple saying since my macbook pro was one of the affected models that had video problems, they would give me a refund for the service I had to pay to fix it. I paid $904.06, and I paid it back when I was trying to move and had saved up money and then had to use it on my computer because my career depends on it. Anyway, I finally get it back! It was actually pretty easy to do, I called apple, got a senior advisor, he gave me his email and I sent him a pdf of my reciept and then they got my address and it’s hopefully in the mail right now!

I also got an email from Canada Council that they received my application, then today they said my support material usb drive wouldn’t open, so I formatted another one properly and put my stuff on it and sent it today. So that’s good!

I told my crush that I had a crush on them and she said she couldn’t reciprocate it but she thanked me for telling her and I think it went ok. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, cause you never really know. And I don’t want to be like, creepy creeper. BUT now that I know I can just appreciate her as a friend and continue looking for new crushes. And it’s spring! It’s freakin’ cold here right now, but spring time is kind of a sexy time of year, people start stripping down and flirting more.

I’m working on Audio homework today and tomorrow. I was in a protools suite at school, and now I have a recorder and a mic, so I am gonna try and get all my sounds before I have to take it back tomorrow.

Also I got a three dollar scratch and win and won 15 dollars! 😀 So that’s nice.

I’m pretty pissed about the injustice for Cindy Gladue, the Indigenous sex worker who was murdered four years ago by Bradley Barton. I wrote a couple emails and then ALSO wrote a couple of physical snail mail letters and mailed them off, asking the Crown to appeal. I’m going to a rally for her on the second. I remember reading about that case before the verdict came down and he was acquitted, and honestly I thought it was a very clear case. She had an eleven centimetre wound in her vagina she bled out from in his hotel bathtub. He so clearly did it! It seemed like a no brainer. But then the jury was made up of white men, and he was a white man, and so they sided with his defense and acquitted him. FUCKED UP! It made me so mad. Then I found out that the jury didn’t know he had a web history of looking at porn where women were tortured. So sick! He is such a sick fuck!

So there’s some good and bad of the past week.

OH NO! There was another bad thing that happened. My friend Lynn lives in Strathcona and was only a few houses down from where a violent rape happened. Some passerby intervened and held the perpetrator until the police came. But it was such a random crime, she (the victim) didn’t know him at all, he just showed up with a weapon and attacked her. It made me think how we really don’t have any safe places, as women. Not even in our own homes!

Well, I can’t leave this blog post on a downer note. So now I will tell you about my dogs. They are super cute. Little Mister always cries like a baby when I come home, so I went to the store and then came back and he cried and cried but he refused to give me kisses because he was also carrying around his little chewy and didn’t want Posey to get it. He’s such a silly boy. Also he was trying to bury his chewy in a teeshirt and I caught him and he gave me a funny look and took it somewhere else. Like I’m gonna take his chewy!

There are three weeks left of class! OMFG! It’s crunchy time!

My new toaster is very nice. But I have run out of bread for it. I made bannock instead! That’s helping me out.
Yesterday was the day for the veggie food bank here in Toronto so I went and got a whole bunch of produce and staples and tofu and soy milk. I’m gonna make a stir fry tomorrow. I went later in the day and said yes to everything (except the plantains!) and dragged three bags home that wore on my fingers and almost gave me a blister! Yikes! But it’s super nice to have a lot of food for the last ten days of the month when I have no money!

I made vegetarian chili with some of my last dollars, it turned out excellent except I didn’t have room to add the corn. Oh well.

Little Mister was coughing and coughing, I think he got a cheerio down the wrong tube. Poor lil’ guy! He’s fine now, snoozing by my pillow.

Oh I just took my pants off and got into bed and I am wondering why I waited so long!!??

My cousin Deanna has been poor for a long time (worse than me!) but she is really good at finding resources. She just moved to Victoria and every time I talk to her she has just gone to the food bank or she is going somewhere for soup and sandwiches. I’ve forgotten how to do a lot of that stuff. I used to go get sandwiches in Vancouver. But in Saskatoon mom and I split groceries and we managed to live ok, most of the time we had food.

Poverty is a funny thing.

I’m not sure if my grant application was recieved. I lost my receipt and when I sent an email to the officer he never replied. So I don’t know if I should wait for a result or what. I never got a thing in the mail saying they recieved my grant either, and the deadline was on the 1st of March. It’s pretty irritating, because that really makes an impact on my life and the last time I submitted the grant they refused it because my final report wasn’t in on time, but they didn’t tell me that until official results came out for everyone which really pissed me off. Canada Council what the fuck?

What.
The.
Fuck?

Oh! Actually I just checked and I sent them the email on the 20th and it’s the 22nd so maybe he needs a couple more days to see what happened to my grant. Sigh.

I recently put all my deadlines in my calendar! It doesn’t look too bad! 🙂

I was a bit behind on my school work.  I asked for an extension, I don’t know if I got it, but I did manage to finish and submit a midterm paper tonight that was due on Thursday.  So it’s only two days late.  Which isn’t horrible.

I’m now also late on submitting my new outline to my writing peeps, so that is happening tomorrow.

And in all this my toaster blew yesterday.  It was a ten dollar toaster from Loblaws, but really it should have lasted longer than four months.  BUT then my friend Alex came to town and took me to dinner and offered to pay for a new, better, toaster for me!  Whew! Because I make a lot of toast.  It’s the best for poor people living!

Sometimes finishing grad school makes me feel overwhelmed.  Like, that is a lot of work!  And it is a very short program!  But somehow I have managed.  And I’m pretty sure I will finish on time.

Posey pup is cute today.  So was Little Mister!  Little Mister was actually being super cuddly lately.  I’m not sure what that’s about, I think he just likes all the attention.  And he is happier now that his back is normal again.  Lucky Mister!

Did I mention that a while back my medical stuff came back and I am totally fine and even my blood sugar is normal??  Because that happened.  It was pretty awesome.

OH!  I saw Sleater-Kinney, and that was fun.

I have a crush on someone.  But I am also feeling super shy about it.  It’s kind of funny.  It’s nice liking someone again tho.  But kissing would be pretty awesome.

I hope I get that grant I applied for.

I’m really into Lizzo lately since seeing her open for Sleater-Kinney.  Here’s a song she does that I downloaded!