I read my tarot cards today, Death came up, and The Wheel of Fortune, and some other ones indicating a cycle is over and a new one starting. Which I am assuming means the end of my masters program, which is IN SIGHT! I sent in my latest draft to my advisor and second reader, and I’m gonna work on it some more. It is still 25 pages shy of my goal. BUT I feel a lot better about it.

I am thinking about ways I need to change my life, like getting more active with the dogs, and trying to work on strength training exercises, and finding some reliable constant income coming in. I applied for another job. I’m waiting to hear about a grant. I will find out so soon! July 1st I should know! It will help me decide what to do for the future, and if I have to stress about getting another job soon. I hope I get it, because there are three weeks this summer where I need to be out of town to visit my mom and do some mentoring. Eeep!

I haven’t heard anything new about the Personal Credits, but I am hoping by Friday I can call the woman working on it and get an update.

My doctor called on Friday about my ultrasounds, but I didn’t get in touch with her in time.

The first med change has gone alright, nothing terrible has happened. Hopefully in July we can work on changing another medication to a newer one. A better one!

I’m being drawn to working out more. I could go to the school’s gym if I wanted, but I think I might start out with walking the dogs more and exercising at home. I don’t really want to lose weight, but I do want more muscles, especially in my arms.

Ahhhh, what else? I am excited about life and it’s changes, I am ready to begin a new cycle and walk away from old behaviours!

Those are lovely words. LOL.

Today I had to go get a pelvic and a transvaginal ultrasound to check out what it happening with my uterus and ovaries, because one ovary has a mass on it that is 8.5 cm wide or tall or whatever. And truthfully it has been there a while but my last doctor wasn’t concerned. Maybe it’s bigger now.
Anyway, I have had lots of pelvic ultrasounds before, so that wasn’t new. But I hadn’t ever had a transvaginal ultrasound. That’s when they stick this wand in your vagina (I don’t know what else to call it!) and move it around looking for things.
So the pelvic ultrasound was uncomfortable, because I really had to pee (they like you to have a full bladder when you do it). Then the technician (or whatever she’s called) told me to go pee and then come back to lay on this wedge with my bum in the air.
Then the transvaginal ultrasound happened. And I was trying not to think of anything. While this woman has this lubed up thing in my vagina. And I was making patterns in my head of the dots in the ceiling tiles. “That spells Giraffe.” Look over at another set of spots. “That spells vag. Oh.” It’s really hard not to think about it while someone is moving a stick around your vagina.
Finally it was done! And I had another pee and went on a bunch of buses home.

Then I went on a bus and a streetcar to my Member of Parliament’s office. Which has nothing to do with the ultrasounds.
I had to go to sign a consent form so they could look into my personal credits and see how to hurry things up. Because I need it to live!

I’m trying to sell my boots. Someone’s buying them but not until Sunday, which is a while away. I have maybe 50 cents until then! And lots of fresh eggs.
L7 is coming, but I don’t have enough to go yet. 🙁

I’m starting to realize, at 37, that I am most likely demisexual. Which is when you need to have some emotional intimacy with someone before having sexual attraction happen. I mean, I can just feel attracted sometimes, but honestly it doesn’t really ramp up unless I have spent time and chatted with them for a while. Sometimes I don’t even know if I am gonna have a crush on someone until we are friends and then suddenly I realize I like them.
But there are exceptions I guess.
What I really mean is, Tinder sucks, OKCupid is not good enough, and I need to make some more friends.

So I am finally BACK AT IT, IT being my MRP which is a feature film script. I am trying DESPERATELY to get to the second draft, and I want the second draft to be 107 pages, because that is what we are aiming for and my first draft was only 53.
So today I started dipping into it and by the evening I was going at breakneck speed rewriting and revising and writing new stuff.
And then freakin’ BEDTIME is here and I have to stop.
What happens to a writer if they keep writing?
I really do have to stop for the night though because I am seeing my doctor tomorrow morning and she is hopefully going to put me on new medications. Because honestly 8 years of risperidone is enough. Not that it’s not working, but the consulting psychiatrist says there is newer stuff that is better for depression.
I think my writing is going well though. Like, I think I can finish all the rewriting tomorrow, and then get into writing new scenes here and there. AND then hopefully push it up to 107 pages by Thursday. There are some things I have to go back and fix.
The deadline for the final thing is July 3rd. ALSO I have to write a paper to go with it, so i gotta work on that. BLah! I should actually ask my advisor how long my paper has to be. I hope he only wants 20 pages. If it’s 30 I will feel overwhelmed.

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! 😀