It’s practically spring here, even though it snowed today, and I have forgotten how to turn the radiator down. There, I think I might have turned it down.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about not smoking. It’s day 6 I think. Anyway, I’m doing really good. The patch totally helps out. And I’ve taken up gum chewing again. So when I turn 30 I’ll be smoke free. I’m pretty happy about it. It’s amazing how intense nicotine addiction is.

My clothes smell nice again, and that’s good, and I must be infinitely more kissable now that I don’t have smokers saliva. Bleh!

Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day cleaning my apartment and washing my clothes. Boring I know. But believe me, it will be a significant improvement to my life.

Once when I lived in Vancouver I went to this little laundromat and saw a cockroach run out from an arcade game. I freaked out and always used the laundry across the street since, even when it destroyed some good sheets but putting grease stains on them when they went through a bad dryer.

I watched a friend smoke a whole cigarette in front of me twice and I didn’t even ask for a puff. I was so proud of mself. Yay for beating nicotine! But there’s still a ways I have to go. I’m getting online coaching to quit, so that’s good. But for so many reasons I decided to quit. Me and cigarettes had a history, but it’s over.

Which is how I’m finally thinking about my last relationship. It’s just over. There’s nothing more to be said. And the psychic was right about her. It was going to be a messy breakup.

I’m thinking I have to take my new talkcam back to the store because it doesn’t work. I’m trying to get with the century and use Skype,

Last night I went with my mom to Free Flow Dance’s annual Naughty Bingo. Unfortunately we didn’t win anything, but Cindy Baker won pasties.

I’ve been buying the things I had on my shopping list. The next big purchase is a tattoo, which I’m excited about. I’ve been wanting a new tattoo for ages, and this one is on my right forearm. It’s a dragon the color of a cornsnake, and it reminds me of Christopher because he always wanted a corn snake and his birthday is around Chinese New Year. So we’ll see how it turns out.

I bought a new bra, well, two, half price. I’ve gone down from an E cup to a D cup. As it happened, I bought the one bra my mum was slavering over and she’s been grumpy at me ever since. She’s on her new treadmill right now singing along with Janice Joplin. I like buying bras that are actually fitted for me, they’re nice.

I’ve kept up the tradition of buying terribly lacy bras for myself, because I like the contradiction when I take off my butchy clothes.

What else have I been up to? I’m done work now, which is good, because I’m ready to start work on my project. I want to start filming as soon as possible. I’ve got a camera coming in two weeks.

Mister is at my feet. I found out this week that I got into Co-Op Housing, so that is exciting because I’ll be able to live with my little dog and cat finally. I’m excited about that, I will have a one bedroom apartment, which is good. And I’m going to get cable too!

I move in April 15th.

I’m looking forward to all the things I will be able to do now. I’m done work so my days are free when I’m not working on my project. I’ve ordered my swabs for the Genographic project and soon my Gramma and Grampa will be contributing their dna to the project. That’s pretty cool.

I’m trying to think of other interesting things to blog about. Well, manic depression wise, my meds are working pretty well. I’m not moody at all anymore, pretty even tempered and stable, which is good. I’m happy about that. I actually feel like I’m capable of going to university again, which is something I will apply to next year.

I want to finally shoot my vampire video, that would be good to do. I have fake teeth for myself and everything. I might dress up femme for it.

I’m getting my lip pierced next week, which is exciting, and the new tattoo on the 2nd of April, well before my 30th birthday on the 26th. I love body mods. I used to cruise the BME site all the time, but I’ve never uploaded any pictures. At this point I now have two stretched lobes and an industrial, I used to have a hood piercing but I took it out when the doctor suggested it might have something to do with my chronic yeast infections.

Okay, for two years I had a chronic yeast infection. It was horrible, I tried everything to get rid of it. Boric Acid (at a friend’s suggestion), Garlic (at another friend’s suggestion), monistat, many cartons of monistat. Finally I had to take diflucan for six weeks. Diflucan knocked the shit out of that damn yeast infection.

Anyway, I don’t think the piercing had anything to do with that yeast infection, it was a nice piercing.

I’m also going to be dying my hair back to blue and yellow, my favorite hair colour! It looks like a sunrise when I put it in, because the yellow goes at the front.

To acheive my new hair colour I acquired Lagoon Blue and Electric Sunshine. I will post a picture when I have it in, maybe with my new leather coat on.

I’m trying to quit smoking for the umpeenth time. I’ve tried to quit smoking seriously at least four times. Once when I was in the hospital. They have a program to help people quit smoking, but so many people smoke and it’s so stressful to be in there that it didn’t work very well. The nurses themselves admitted that it was ridiculously hard to quit smoking in the hospital.

The downfall of my last quit was Djarum Black cigarettes, which are more like smoking something out of the spice drawer than cigarettes really. I didn’t consider them seriously full of nicotine enough to worry about getting readdicted, but I was, and by the time I got into the hospital I was toting a carton of DuMaurier. Sad really. And intense, since the carton looks like an extra large package of cigarettes.

Our cigarettes all got stored under the sink in the nurses med office.

But enough about smoking in the psych ward. I had been smoke free for about 6 months or so when I went back to ciggy’s, and despite a few halfhearted attempts, have not really tried to quit until today.

I went out and bought the patch. I was on the patch in the hospital, but all those people going down to the Meewasin Valley Trail to smoke drew me back into tobacco’s cruel plegmy clutches.

Bleh. Smoking is smelly. And I’m really getting freaked out by our Canadian warnings. I mean, I have to look at rotting teeth or a bloody heart or a weird brain everytime I have a smoke. That’s no fun! I haven’t wanted to look at such things since I was a morbid teen.

They’re so dire too, because they’re all in black with white writing.

So I’m quitting, as of today. I am also going to bleach and dye my hair. I’m in a good mood.

In weird news, my mother and I, but mostly my mother, worked on fixing her stupid toilet for two days. A leak had rusted a bolt so much that eventually a hacksaw was procured to cut off the offending bolt.

I was just in the middle of complaining about the hacksaw when after 24hours of trying to get that one bolt off, the thing made a happy clink noise to the floor. Toilets are poopy!

This is a great song to feel maudlin to, God Bless Roxette!

When I was a kid I was addicted to reading books about the paranormal. And as an adult, I’ve had my fair share of paranormal events. Possibly enough to write an entire book on, to be honest. I know being a crazy person, certain one’s get written out pretty much immediately if they’re genuine hallucinations. I can tell the difference, believe it or not.

Not half an hour ago I watched my mum’s ivy plant start moving around for no reason, like something brushed against it. It spooked the shit out of me.

Once I had a roommate who had a poltergeist attached to her. One day she and I were talking and a pink lighter materialized out of nowhere and fell on the floor two feet away from us.

And then there was the infamous UFO sighting.

We saw two of them, and they were each a fair size. Green and kind of whispy, with really bright glowing orbs. That was intense. I mean really, Aliens! What else can I say? It’s insanity out here in Saskatchewan.

When I first got out of the hospital there was a poltergeist in my apartment knocking on the floor and the walls.

And then there was Preston’s house. He had a ghost that knocked on walls. One time I was taking a piss and that fucking ghost knocked on the wall behind me. I didn’t know what to do, because I just kept peeing so I couldn’t run. And chills were running up and down my spine at that thing being so close to me.

I’ve been around it so much. I want it to be over. No more freaking paranormal things to happen. But my psychic told me I was more paranormal than spiritual. Dammit! Why do I have to be crazy AND be as suseptible to spooks and extraterrestrials? Why not one or the other? Now nothing I say is credible, except that all the events described above have other eye witnesses.

I think I should try and be more spiritual. I’m not sure how to start though. Something simple.

I checked my bank account this morning to find it reduced to a piddling minus 4.95. Sad state of affairs! But then I checked it this afternoon to find it PACKED with cash! I’m so excited. Tonight I’m going out to buy myself some nice new sheets. And thus begins The Shopping.

I think this is my favorite PJ Harvey song, I was listening to this CD along the time I went manic, and it reminds me of my desperate desire to throw out a lifesaver to my flailingly crashing in flames romance.

I’ve come to an uneasy truce with my psych meds. By now I know for sure I need them, and five years after my diagnosis of bipolar I have finally been prescribed a med cocktail that works so well I can’t even do mushrooms. I can’t do mushrooms because the drugs are so powerful that I don’t feel any effects at all so I don’t trip. Pot DOES still work though, and for that I am grateful. Because I like pot.

But I’m pretty happy with my med regime now. I take morning and bedtime pills, and it has made me ridiculously stable. I find it really hard to cry though, I shouldn’t say that, now something will happen that will make me cry.

I don’t like the drugs, but they do like me, and they work. So I guess in a grumpy kind of way I feel an affection for them. They’ve pulled me out of yet another psychosis and have kept me stable as heck. I’m not even having sleep problems, like I used to have quite badly. I hate sleep problems.

Tomorrow I go back into work. Twice I’ve been asked on the phones if I’m a robot or tape recorder. We have numerical id’s we sign into the program with, and a friend suggested we answer by saying “Yes, I’m A37.” Doing survey work is not too hard, it’s kind of monotonous but I do take pride in trying to be as polite as possible to the people on the phones. Even if they’re nasty to me I generally say “Thanks for your time.” I only had one really nasty guy once, and he told me twice to go fuck myself. I should have said “I did last night, thanks for reminding me, I’ll attend to that when I get home.

I’m tired of fucking myself. No I’m not. Masturbation is the best release for tension. Did you know there’s a condition called Persistent Genital Arousal Syndrome where people masturbate all the time and there’s no release? Oh man that would suck. And I don’t think I could handle having soggy panties all the time.

When I was really crazy, the only musician who made any sense was Nina Hagen, who I almost met once when my online friend’s mother was hanging out with her in Vancouver. My friend Maureen Bradley met her and interviewed her, lucky duck.

I’ve been dreaming a lot lately that I’m back at Emily Carr in the film department, which no longer exists, now it’s the Integrated Media Department. I miss the film department. I have good memories of spending my hours in the editing suites. Editing was my favorite part of being in film school, and I had hoped to make a career out of it, but so far that hasn’t happened. It’s okay though, what I really want to be is a full time director, and this year I really get to be one.

Being crazy at Emily Carr was barely noticiable, except for the day I came in drugged up on sleeping pills and my ex, Velveeta, said I looked all loggy. Velveeta’s hilarious. I promised I would buy her some fake balls for her bicycle, and I did but I haven’t gotten it together to put them in the mail. At first she thought I meant real balls, and I was going to send her a jar of pickled testicles. I don’t know where she got that idea from.

She was the one who would sign up for twice the allotted time by going in as Maya Deren, sneaky fucker!

I’m looking forward to travelling this year, it’s very exciting.

Sometimes I really think enlightenment happens during psychosis. There’s about a week when suddenly synchronicities start happening, and you notice a pattern to chaos. But then when you try to voice the pattern, all hell breaks loose because I think Chaos doesn’t like people to notice it has a pattern. And then sometimes I think there is real power going on during insanity. One time when I was in the ward a woman who was very psychotic told me I pissed off a tree. This would sound like nonesense unless you knew I nailed something to a tree while I was crazy. And I hadn’t told anybody that. So maybe she wasn’t so crazy. But then she started saying “There’s cracks in God!” Which could be true.

I’m doing okay, and that’s a good thing. Life is working out for me right now.

I’m really coming out of my depression now, and it’s nice. I’ve got one week left of work then I get to be a full time artist for the rest of 2008! I’m so stoked. I’m going to be getting a new Camera, and that’s exciting too. Right now I’m planning on getting the 24p HDV from Sony, with XLR inputs and everything! My first real camera. I hope to make tons of videos with it.

On the lady front not much is happening. I did make a tremendous discovery that lesbians tend to hang out at Lydia’s on Wednesdays and sometimes Tuesdays, and I was cruising a cute blonde there last week. I think I’m finally ready to be in a relationship, so I’m enjoying cruising the cuties. I really want something serious to happen finally.

In a month I’m turning 30. This is a huge step for me, because when I was a teenager I was sure I would commit suicide before turning 30. My 20’s were okay, but learning to live with a disability like manic depression kicked the shit out of some of my fun.

I’m seriously considering Burning Man this year, but I’m not sure I’ll have the cash to go. I really really want to though, because I’ve never been.

I’m getting some new piercings soon. I’m going to pierce my lip and get my hood repierced. I’m excited about that. I always liked my hood piercing, it was a very pleasureable part of my life, except for when it would twist itself in my pants and leave me screaming to the bathroom.

I’ve realized I have to renew my committment to blogging. I haven’t been a very good blogger this year, mostly because I was in recovery for much of 2007. God, except for one sexy thing that happened, 2007 was a bad year for me. Manic episodes pretty much write off a year of your life. Bleh!

My cousin had a manic episode this past month and ended up in the hospital. She’s doing loads better though, and I’m proud of her for accepting her diagnosis and working on it. It’s hard to accept being bipolar because it automatically means your life is kinda up in the air all the time.

As for me, the meds are working even better than before my episode. My psychiatrist is great, my psych nurse is great, and I feel like my old self again. I feel like I can have ambition again, and that is sexy.

I’ve always been very ambitious, even as a child. Now I have a fully written screenplay under my belt and am working on a half hour documentary. I’ve been talking to people about my new project and it’s given me some great ideas. I’m thinking of applying to the NFB for funds to travel to Asia and see where the Crees come from. Grampa thinks we did migrate over the Bering Strait because there is a myth about a man following two women over the ice. So I’m going to get him to tell me that story on camera.

I still miss my last girlfriend, she was pretty special. I don’t know what else to say. A manic episode stepped into the way of what was a very sexy special relationship. When I went manic I bought her an engagement ring, we took it back (they were very nice) and got all my money back, then because I was still manic I took that money and bought a keyboard, which is currently laying beside me unplayed, I am selling it off. I should have bought a guitar. Actually I should have paid my rent, but tell that to a manic person.

It was a nice ring too, it had three diamonds and was white gold. It was awesome. I wish I had a diamond ring, but I’d only want one if I was married. And I want to be married. I’m a marrying kind of girl. I can’t even imagine being with someone if there wasn’t marriage in the cards. Apparently bipolar people tend to marry other bipolar people, but that sounds like double the trouble!