It’s Saturday night! I’m already in bed.  I had a really lazy day.  BUT I did pick which clip I want to do some sound design for, for my final project for Audio Post class.  I’m gonna do the last five minutes of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.  So that’s awesome.  I always almost cry at that scene.

I won fifty bucks today! 😀 I impulse purchased a Bejeweled scratch and win at Loblaws and I got three lightnings which was fifty! 😀 Yay!  I spent 4.50 on a drink and another scratch and win, but I didn’t win anything.  BUT I still have about 45.50 so that’s good!  It will let me have some more cash to play with before life gets desperate again.

I cleaned my bedroom.  That was about it.  I should have worked on my presentation for Monday, but I didn’t.  I’m really not sure what to present.  I know I have to pitch my project.  I was thinking doing ten minutes of talking and leaving ten minutes for questions.  I have a lot to say.  I have a good feeling about it, but at the same time I know there’s lots of competition and they might not think it’s developed enough yet.  So we’ll see

I think I’m gonna go sleepies now.  I had such a lazy last two days.  I know it’s ok because people need to have breaks in life, but as always there is this anxiety about being a bad student.  And the fact that I am gonna be paying for my education for the next ten years makes me feel like I should be on top of everything working my ass off.  But that’s not sustainable honestly.  I need a couple lazy days.

Actually what am I talking about?  Friday I was busy as hell running around the city doing stuff like going to the doctors and getting my happy lamp and iron and getting food and stuff.  I was so busy!

Anyway, tomorrow afternoon I’m gonna work hard, but in the evening I will relax!  Life work balance, blah blah blah!

Today had a surprising sequence of events!

First of all I woke up to an email inviting me to present my feature film project to the Ryerson Telefilm people who are going to decide who to recommend for the microbudget features program.  Which would get me a bunch of money!  Not lots, BUT still more than I have ever had before.

So I was all excited, and I have been pretty much excited ever since.  I had a really hard time concentrating on my afternoon of writing, which was supposed to get me notes for a presentation tomorrow morning.  I did get about 841 words written, so hopefully I can expand on that tomorrow for ten minutes.  I will speak slow!

And then on the way to class today I was walking along the subway platform when I saw this guy kind of stumble towards the platform on the tracks.  He was on the tracks!  And he and I both look and a train is coming.  So he did this weird thing where he kind of ducked out of the way and curled up under the ledge.  And the train stopped, it didn’t come into the station.  And there was this tense moment where we were wondering if he was gonna come out or not.  And then this TTC lady came along and a witness and I both told her there was a guy tucked under the ledge, so she went down to the tracks and found him and convinced him to get off and come with her.  She asked his name and he asked if it mattered and she said of course it does.  Anyway, he seemed pretty down, so I hope he is getting help now.  The service stopped on that whole line both ways for 20-25 minutes.  And it was just after 5 so it was right during rush hour.

But he lived!  yay!  I was kind of horrified when it first started happening, I didn’t want to see someone die in front of me.  But he didn’t get hit!

So it was a funny day, from feeling super euphoric to watching someone have a really bad day.  And then class after that was good.

I’m tired!  I should curl up in bed!

Little Mister did a play bow today to Posey and we watched her run around all happy, so that was nice.  I think his back is getting way way better.  He’s nearly back to normal.  He just needs to get sexually inappropriate with Posey again and I’ll know he’s fine!

My Auntie was driving my mom’s car a week and a bit ago and it was really icy and long story short this truck slid right into Mom’s car and crunched it. Truck was fine. Car, not so much. Today Mom found out it is totalled. She’s worried she won’t have the cash to replace it after SGI cuts the cheque. And she is living in a city that is super car oriented, so it would be such a pain in the ass to not have one.

My nose feels sticky.

Posey has become hyper vigilant between the hours of 11pm and 1am. It’s super annoying. Gotta nip it in the bud.

I was holding her under the covers last night and her bum was in the crook of my arm and then I got a whiff of the most foul smell imaginable.  Oh pew it was gross! Dog farts!

I got a 3 dollar scratch and win and won 15 bucks! Pretty amazing! Especially since I had 30 dollars until next week’s payday!  45! 🙂

I have really bad sleep hygiene right now, I have been sleeping until 2pm. It’s so bad! 🙁 There are things I could be doing in the mornings and early afternoons. My Mom and Cousin suggested a SAD lamp. I thought I couldn’t use one because you have to use them early in the day, but now I am thinking maybe it doesn’t matter because I live in a basement and any time of day it would be good.

I’m so hesitant to do ANYTHING that will affect my mental health though.  Which is funny because I am in school and doing full time grad coursework.  Which adds a lot of stress to life.  But I am talking not wanting to up my antidepressants, worrying about adding a SAD lamp in case it makes me manic (which is not unheard of!). Basically I have this weird idea I can deal with a mild depression better than an out of control mania. But right now I do not have a psychiatrist. I am getting one April 1st. But I so hesitate doing anything about my mental health until then.  I can get counseling at school, but I don’t really have the time.

And it’s not THAT bad, is it? I can’t tell anymore. But fuck, I hate it when outside people try to have opinions on my mental health because I feel like they are pathologizing me and that sucks. Like fuck you!

(Insert pic of middle finger here)

I just wanna figure it out myself. And there is no magical thinking going on, which is when things get really dicey. And I don’t want to die. And I am not madly in love with anyone although I have a few crushes. I am not sending out lots of emails either. So there.

Ha ha, my last psychiatrist always asked me every session “Have you been sending lots of emails?” because the last time I ended up in the hospital I had hypergraphia like you would not believe and sent out hundreds of emails to annoyed friends. I barely use my email in a social way now.  I just send business emails. SO BORING! BUT also not crazy, so that is good.

I like using the word crazy to describe actually being mentally ill. I know some people hate it and think it is always pejorative, but crazy is such a perfect word for me.

Anyway. It is almost springtime. Hypomanias tend to happen in spring. That’s something to look forward to.

Sometimes people think I am crazy and honestly I am fine I am just being a little dozey or daydreamy or something. People who do not know about mental illness should not be diagnosing people.  I knew a cousin who got mad at her sister and was telling everyone she should be sent to the psychward and I had spent a lot of time around the cousin in question and honestly nothing was wrong with her at that time.  She was so lucid and even! Another time a friend told me I was manic and nothing was wrong with me then either! I was fine.

Blah blah blah. Anyway, I’ve been taking my meds and I did see my psychiatrist in December, which isn’t too long ago. I just need to wake up earlier. And get a cheap SAD lamp.

I wrote my outline today, got to 3 pages!  That’s way better!  Gonna work on it a bit more tonight and then upload to my shared folder for class tomorrow.  I also have to fill out a form about the work I did this past week.  It’s going to be about 10 or 12 pages and I am trying to get the first draft done for next week’s class.  Two weeks then it’s reading week!  YAY! Catch up time! My Grad Advisor wants my first draft of the outline done the week before reading week so he can send me home with some notes.  This has so far been a way better process than when I first wrote a feature.  Last time I wrote a feature I just wrote blindly into the unknown!  Now I can see how everything is structured before writing scenes.

What else can I tell you? Hmmmmm.

It’s very very snowy here today.  I mean, there was a lot on the ground when I went to leave the house.  ALSO there have been four cases of measles in Toronto, and they don’t know who infected these people. So that’s all terrible.

Little Mister keeps yelping today.  I think I need to be gentler with him. He IS an old man dog now. BUT also maybe something is wrong.  I’ll just have to keep an eye out.

I am going to be applying to have my feature film project recommended by Ryerson to the Telefilm micro-budget program.  I don’t know if I will get chosen, but who knows! It’s worth a shot!  Also during reading week I have to do a little work on my grant for Scriptwriting from Canada Council.  It would give me a project to work on for a year, and it’s a story I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

I’m hoping to get an award, but I have no idea when they decide who gets it and the webpage about it is all 404’ed.  It would super help me out a lot!

1. Wearing my nightguard more frequently (less tension!  Less pain!)

2. Telling women when I want to kiss them.

3. Kissing.

4. Socializing Posey, because she has terrible social skills.

5. Crying more. (which sounds counterproductive but might be more cathartic!)

6. Keeping a journal for private thoughts. (because I always want to write everything here but then people get mad or find out things I am not yet ready to reveal)

7. Make more local friends.

8.  Eat more fruits and vegetables.  (I dunno I just thought this might be healthy and some people say healthy is good)

9. Keeping better boundaries with people. (enough said!)

10. Revive the Long Telephone call with more friends! (So far it’s just Robin, Mom, and sometimes Lynn who I have long conversations with!)

I have some work stuff I need to do, school stuff.  Blah!  Right now I am just chilling because it’s bedtime.  I went to see a movie alone tonight, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.  I really liked it.  It lived up to the hype!

I did some apartment cleaning today.  Dishes, laundry, bedroom cleaning.  Picked up garbage all over.  It felt good.  I’ve been a lot better about keeping my place clean since I got sober.  And my Mom can’t help me out here, so it’s just me on my own.

The dogs were happy today.  They were playing all over the place.  Cried with happiness when I came home from the laundromat and then later when I came home from the movie.  Actually Little Mister is the crybaby and then Posey growls at him because she thinks he is being dramatic.  It’s kind of funny.  The first thing I always say when I come home is “Be nice to him!”  He’s an old man dog, he can cry when I come home.  He always has anyway.  Posey dances.  She’s pretty sweet.

I didn’t wash my sheets last weekend, and I regretted it.  Posey chewed up some things in my bed and two weeks of orts accumulating is terrible.  It’s like sleeping on sandpaper.  But I just put on the new sheets and it feels really nice and the dogs are sleeping on the bed all happy.

Sometimes when I get stressed out, and feeling alone, I am really glad I have my dogs.  It’s a lot of responsibility being a dog owner.  Like I can’t leave them alone all day, the longest day I am away from them is Thursdays when I have class at 9am and then class again until 6pm.  And it takes 40 minutes to get home.  So I come back and spend Thursday nights at home with them.  And I can’t be out very late either, because they need someone home so they can go to bed.  I don’t think it’s the same now, but when I did night shifts and Little Mister was alone (before Posey!) he used to whine and howl at night.  He does not do well alone all night.  So I come home and spend all my nights with them.

Someday I am gonna have a girlfriend.  And if sleep overs happen, they are going to have to happen at my place, so that the dogs aren’t alone.  And Posey is gonna have to get used to this whoever person sleeping in our bed.  And just being around.  Posey has issues with strangers, she is very suspicious of them.  But if people keep coming around she gets used to them.  There were some cousins and my Auntie Beth who would come to the house that she loved.  She really loves Auntie Beth for some reason.  Like she will climb her and wriggle around her head crying with happiness when she sees her.  It’s kind of funny!  Auntie Beth! 😀

I’m sleepy now.  I’ve chatted about dogs and cleaning enough.  There are other things I wish I could chat about but I can’t.  Nothing particularly exciting tho.

The first week has wrapped up!  12 weeks to go!  Oi!

For the most part I like my classes.  I think the Narrative Writing class is gonna be awesome, same with the Gender and Race in Media class.  I did an introductory workshop for Protools with the TA for the audio-post class.  So I am gonna go again this weekend and do some tutorials to get up to speed.

I’m not yet intimidated by all the work I have to do, but it is coming!  I think one of these days I am going to the disability office to get some advice.  Even just seeing a counselor for an hour every week would be mega helpful.

Posey and Little Mister are being super cute.  The vet has said Little Mister is a little bit dehydrated, so now he gets a bit of wet food with his breakfast and supper.  Same with Pose.  They’ve been over the moon about eating ever since then, it is their favorite thing ever.

I need to bring back snacktime for them, but I haven’t found the ultimate dog cookie store yet.

This is my last semester of classes for this program!  It is such a short Masters degree!  BUT It is a lot of work!  I am writing a pilot for a tv show for my writing class, which has nothing to do with my script for my thesis project.  It’s gonna be called Bad Manors.  And it’s about a real apartment I lived in when I lived in the DTES.

Mom is enroute to Saskatoon from Winnipeg. She had a good talk out there and really liked it.  I’m glad. She’s being a full time artist right now so I am hoping things turn out well for her.  She’s been so poor for so long.

My writing prof said writers usually make only 11,000 to 12,000 a year from writing.  BUT he said there was still a chance to make a living off of it.  Also Netflix in Canada is going to be making content in the future here, so that’s promising.  In my Pro-Seminar a producer came in who depressed us all by saying that news was dead and that film was crap and tv was where it was at but also there wasn’t much money for it in Canada and we had to move to another country.

So it’s all a lot of conflicting information.  Really I just want to win the lottery and have an unending supply of money to fund my work with.  But the chances of that happening are rare.

I went to my first class today, Audio Post-Production and Sound Design.  The professor thinks I should do some Protools tutorials because it has been well over a decade since I used the program and things are different.  So one of these days I will go in and do some.  We were partnered up and made a soundtrack for a 30 second commercial in an hour and 15 minutes.  It was pretty intense!

Then I met Louis for dinner, and we went to see Woman In Black 2!  Wooo!  It had lots of startle scares, and at the end all these dead children kept appearing.  When we left we were saying “Dead children are the worst!” They really are!

I noticed this pool on campus gets turned into a skating rink in the winter, which was really cute.  Might look for cheap secondhand skates!

I’m back to being poor, but it’s temporary.  That’s the thing about money, it’s always a temporary situation, whether you are rich or poor.  Unless you are some trillionaire tycoon.

Nobody needs THAT much money.

It’s chilly in my room!  I am okay in clothes, but right now I am nearly naked in bed, with a sweater on.

Posey and Mister were ridiculously cute when I came home today.  They chased eachother all over the bed and were being adorable.  And then they started humping each other.  I’ve learned to just ignore it.  They seem to be having some kind of sexual awakening, and they are both neutered/spayed so nothing is gonna really have consequences. It’s awkward for me!  But really, whatever!  If they want to be boyfriend and girlfriend then go ahead!

I think the age difference is a little disturbing though!

It was Grandma’s birthday today.  If she was still alive she would be 95.  As it is she is forever 94.  Forever young!  Ha ha, it’s funny because she was really old!

Mom used to make Grandma bouillabase for her birthday, but this year she didn’t do it.  She said she just couldn’t.  Grandma wanted us to do this every year even after she goes, so it is a tradition that will come back.  Mom said next year she will do it. It’s an expensive soup, the way Mom makes it.  I started out being suspicious of it but as the years went by I grew to like it more and more.

Also yesterday was the four year anniversary of my friend Matthew’s death.  So that was odd, I didn’t realize until I checked my Timehop for the day and saw the status I wrote when word got out.  It’s strange, how death is so fixed in time, such a permanent end to someone’s story.  It was harder for me with people like Matthew and Jasmine, because they were suicides.  And Christopher, because he was so young and it was an accident.  And now Grandma is so different, because she had a natural end.

My Mom’s birthday was on the 4th.  I’m gonna take her out for dinner or something when she comes in February.  She’s always had a crap birthday because it’s after holidays when everyone is broke from Christmas.

I got my grades back for last semester!  B- for Media Production I, A- for Media Writing Critical and Narrative Forms, A+ for Research Methods, and a Pass for the Pass/Fail class (Project Development)! My cumulative GPA stands at 3.56!  🙂 Which is within the range to get into a doctoral program at Ryerson. I’m not sure about other universities.  ALSO I don’t really want to do a doctoral program, but I’d appreciate keeping the option open by having a good enough GPA.

On a whim I checked out the History of Consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz.  It’s like, 54,000 a year. For SEVEN YEARS!  That’s a long time and a lot of money to pay to write.  But who knows, maybe some dream program closer to home will catch my eye. Or I could win the lottery finally and voluntarily keep myself busy by becoming a doctor! Stranger things have happened!

I’ve been back since New Years Eve.  Little Mister came through Westjet Cargo on the 7th and Posey came back yesterday, so I have my whole family back together!  Little fuzzy faces!

I have anxiety about my animals travelling.  So I was nervous.  But they were fine, even though it was SUPER cold both the days they travelled.  I’m glad no one left them outside.

Little Mister was due for his Senior Wellness Exam, he was going to get it in Saskatoon, but Mom slept in, so I took him to his new vet here in Toronto today.  It was our first time going on Transit.  He was a very good rider, although very squirmy and he kept trying to hide beside me. Everyone kept smiling at him because he is cute.  His vet thinks he’s so cute and so sweet and she just kind of fell in love with him.  She said he was really good when he got his blood taken.  I’m supposed to get a urine sample, I’m dubious.

He weighs five kilograms.

There is too much salt on the streets here! He’s gotten salt all over my pants while we rode the bus and streetcar.  I wiped his paws when we came home, but I have to do something about this.  I’m gonna get this stuff called Musher’s Secret, it’s a breathable wax you put on their paws that protects them.  I hope it works!

Posey was wary of him when she got home, and she had to inspect the whole apartment.  But she is back to being silly and happy and needy.  She got annoyed with me for sleeping in too much today and basically made me wake up.  Which is actually a good thing. Mom put her little bed/house thing in her crate, and I have it out by the foot of the bed.  She likes going inside it and beating it up!

Next week classes start!  I had a good break.  And I know where to go from here.

I have money still!  I am surprised!  It isn’t a lot, at all really, BUT it is still way more than I thought I would have at this point.  Especially after the cab ride to and from the cargo place AND Mister’s vet visit this week.

Also more money is coming in sooooooon! 🙂 February I get my disability grant of 1000 AND my regular living allowance. MONEY!

Also someone has invited me to start pitching a national radio show to do segments.  So hopefully I can get some gigs out of that!

And there is another possibility for money on the horizon!

I really hope my life works out here!