I got two emails from Ryerson this week, the first one said my application had been reviewed and was sent to the Program Admissions Committee.  The next one was from the department and said they would be making admission decisions and sending them out in two to three weeks!  So I don’t have too much longer to wait.  Although I admit I just wish I could put myself in a coma until the decision so I’d like, not be sitting around waiting and waiting.  Or a time machine, that would work too.  Anyway, it’s gonna be pretty soon, and then I can make more definite plans about my life, like figuring out the logistics of moving my stuff, two dogs, and me to Toronto.  And finding a place to live, that could be tricky!  And getting money to move everything and every dog and me.

There is also a job I am gonna apply for in Toronto, in case I don’t get into school.  I have the qualifications except I need to learn one thing.  So there’s that.

Not much else is happening.  My ablation is still doing well, or rather, my endometrial lining-less uterus is doing well.  No period so far!

I went to Concurrent Disorders group because I have been having dreams about using.  And I don’t want to use.  I am two months and four days away from having two years clean.  And it was really hard to get to that point, so I don’t want to undo it all.  Anyway, it was helpful for me to see the folks at group.  They are pretty nice.

I went to the openings tonight at AKA and PAVED.  We have Josh Schwebel staying with us in the basement suite, and his show was opening.  It was really good.  I’m crappy at talking about art, so I don’t want to describe it.

I’m really excited for my decision to come in.  I guess two weeks isn’t that long.  Or early April.  Whatever.  I will finally know!  And I’ve been poking around on the site for the program more and it looks like I would get a chance to learn some things I am really interested in.  Which is good since I did apply to that program.  The electives look promising.

I’ve got this sense that something good is gonna happen soon.  I feel pretty happy about the possibilities in my future.

Posey is fitting in well with our house.  She’s a super sweetie.  She is a little too barky of people who have just come into the house though.  Hoping to get her out of that bad habit.  She likes to bite my thumbs when we are getting ready to sleep.  She’s got tiny puppy teeth and it really hurts when she gets you with her molars.  She likes to run with food in her mouth.  And she likes to race around the house with Little Mister, which is good because that’s what I was hoping for when I got her.  She is super bonded to Hermione, which makes me a little sad because I know they are gonna be separated.  But she will probably come home with me for visits sometimes.

The government cut elder care funding for our band, and now our band has rejected the agreement they are supposed to sign, and anyway we are 2000 short on rent for Grandma and Grandpa every month now.  We were hoping to win the lottery tonight to pay for it, because it was some remote faint hope, but it’s totally not happening.  I hope something works out.  The Harper Government can go to hell!!

I did the Winter Challenge today.  I jumped in the snow and made a snow angel, but it was really sticky snow so the wings were very shallow, and my bum made a big dent.

I’m getting the rest of my tattoo tomorrow.  I’m pretty excited, it should be good.  I’m going in at 11am and then it’s gonna be until it gets done.  But realistically I can only do two and a half hours of tattooing before I hit the wall.  It’s been rescheduled two times already because of illness or schedule problems.

My ablation is still fine.  No weirdness.  My period should have come already, but it didn’t come so I’m pretty pleased.  I know there’s no guarantee it’s really gone though, I have to wait until more time has passed.  It’s been 18 days or so since I got it done.  The gynecologist wants to see me in three months to see how it’s going.

Posey puppy is doing good.  She is getting bigger and sweet and is so cuddly.  I think she just went to bed with Mom!  She’s more of a lap dog than Little Mister, Little Mister likes to be in his crate or on his bed in the kitchen.  Sometimes he will sit on my lap, but not for long.

Ah, there’s not much to report.  I might not go on any arty trips this year.  OH! Wait, that is a lie, because I think I am going to Winnipeg for a thing in the future.

I am really wondering about the strength of my sobriety these days.  I keep having dreams about planning then deliberately falling off the wagon.  It’s pretty weird.  I am gonna go to concurrent disorders again this Friday and just listen.  Maybe it will help.  I am wondering if I have hit some kind of sober plateau.  I wonder if I should be working a program like NA.  I mean, it might help.  But the people there.  Ahhhh, maybe I am being judgmental.  Everyone is at different stages of recovery.  I just feel like after racking up a year and a half of sobriety I should be in a different headspace.  Not feeling so fragile.

Anyway, I think maybe meetings would help.  There are NA meetings in my neighborhood on Sundays.  There are NA meetings every night though.  I dunno.

I am getting Tegan and Sara tickets!  I need a date to come with me.  I don’t know who!  I have 106 days to find somebody!

Well, I had written a blog post with this title, but time has passed and my browser crashed a few times, and anyway, this is all that is left.  Oops.  I don’t even know what I was referring to.

I am doing well with my ablation.  I didn’t have any discharge for a long time, but then today something was coming out so I put on a pad, only to discover it was really not even needing a pad.  It was like these specks of brown, I guess it’s whatever was left of my lining shedding. They looked kind of funny, like if coarse sand was coming out.  But now it’s back to nothing.  About now is when I would normally get my period.  So far, nothing really! 😀  When I think about it my uterus gets a little crampy, but for the most part its fine.  It’s fine! 😀  I hope I don’t have a period again.  I’m so done with it!

My cousin Deanna has moved in with us for the month.  She’s going to decide where she will go when the month is up.  Next week my friend Josh is coming to stay with us too!

Posey Puppy is doing well.  She’s really smart, she knows what I mean if I say “Go pee.”  This may not sound like much, but it’s a major step.  I used to have a dog who I would say “Do you need to pee?” and he would jump up and go to the backdoor to go pee outside.  Wesley was such a good dog.  But anyway, I am hoping to use this to convince Posey to use the pads or go outside.  Little Mister is terrible about peeing.  I need to whip him into shape.

Little Mister and Posey had an altercation today.  The mail lady came and Mister and Hermione were barking around like usual and Posey got excited, and then suddenly Mister attacked her!  He was all sound and fury, she didn’t actually get bitten, her neck was a little wet.  But she cried and cried and cried.  She was so upset.  I yelled at Mister and picked her up and held her and told her she was okay, and then she mostly was.  Hermione told off Little Mister with some bitchy snarls.  It was over pretty fast.  I’m not sure where everyone is gonna fit in the dog hierarchy when this is over, but Little Mister is not going to be second to a puppy!

Hermione growls at the baby sometimes too, but Posey seems to think she is cute enough to get away with things, and for the most part she does.

I’m missing Mom.  She is out of town doing arty things.  I got artist fees today, so that was awesome.  I can use some of them to pay for my night guard that Aboriginal Affairs and Social Services won’t pay for.  I’m kind of tired, this puppy has been getting me up early.  She has to pee and then I can’t just leave her in my bed or she will pee on it.  So yeah.

Well, blah!  I have nothing else of note to mention!  I’m just hanging around close to home until Mom gets back, keeping the place cleanish.  I almost miss her television habits.  Maybe I should watch Mystery Diners and pretend she is in the next chair.

Posey got spayed!  She did ok, she’s in a cone and stoned.  I was hand feeding her because she was so pitiful.  Poor baby!  Right now she is curled up in her little bed.  She’s such a cutie pie.  I got her name tag for her finally.  The machine wasn’t calibrated properly so the engraving was off by a couple millimeters.  So the 3 in 306 was cut off a little bit.  BUT I think it should be ok.  Maybe I will get another one someday, they get worn pretty fast anyway.

Poor Posey!  I have another vet appointment with her in a while, I should find out when that is!

I’m working on a grant and I have a really LIMITED amount of time to do it in.  I didn’t check the grant deadlines until yesterday, only to discover the deadline for scriptwriting isn’t March 31, it’s March 1st!  FUCK!  Uuuuuh.  So I have that to do this weekend.  I am lucky it falls on a Saturday because now I have until Monday to get it postmarked and in the mail.  I wrote the Project Description this morning.  I am letting it marinate in my mind for a while then coming back to it. For most of tonight I will be getting other things ready, like my resume and support material and budget.  The budget will be easy peasy because I am just asking for living costs.

IF I didn’t need this grant so much for the fall I wouldn’t really care about missing this deadline, but it would REALLY HELP with my plans to get out of Saskatoon and work on a project I have been talking about for years.  My admission into Grad School is still up in the air.  I’ve been rejected three times at three other programs so I feel really dubious.  Even if I did get into Grad School, I still need money to move my stuff and my dogs to Toronto.  So yeah.  I am hoping I win the lottery tonight, if I do I won’t even bother with this application.

Later:

I didn’t win the lottery.  BOOOOOOO!

I just took my mom to the airport, I have to go get some groceries and a usb stick and some puffy envelopes for my grant.  I’m nearly done, I just need to edit the project description.  Add some, take some out.  Snip snip.  Make it look like a really delicious project.

The dogs are well.  I am well.  Baby is getting her next painkiller.  I should get back to work.  I will write again later!

Well, yesterday morning at 11am I checked into City Hospital’s Women’s Health Centre and had my ablation.  It was a positive experience, painful yes, but the staff were very helpful and respectful.  A nurse sat down with me first to go over my medical record and my current medications, as well as the other pre-op forms that were filled out by a GP at my doctor’s clinic (my family doctor was on vacation and I needed the forms filled out before she got back).  Then the nurse described what the procedure would be like and how it would feel, she said it would feel like period cramps, which was true.  She told me what drugs they would give me (gravol and fentanyl and some local freezing).  And then she sent me off to get my IV and blood pressure tested.  Apparently I have lower oxygen than non-smokers, possibly because I smoked for 12 years even though it has been a year off them.  Anyway, then I sat in a recliner and waited.  I was supposed to go at 2:15, the third in line.  But something happened with the first patient and I was suddenly scooted ahead to number 1.  They had me walk to the room, then I had to lay on a short table with stirrups.  It’s a little bit of an awkward position.  My OB/GYN came in and did the check in to make sure we all knew what procedure was happening.

Then he left and the nurse gave me the gravol and then the fentanyl in my IV.  The gravol didn’t feel like much but the fentanyl was bizarre.  It made me feel kind of woozy/dizzy and dreamy.  “This is weird” I said.  Then the doctor came back in and they got to work.

I had a blanket over my lower half, so I didn’t see anything going in or out of me.  A speculum went in first, I was used to those so it didn’t bother me that much.  They gave me some freezing and then they dilated me.  That felt a little worse, even with the tablets they prescribed me to put up my vagina that morning.  Then he had to measure the inside of my uterus, and that really felt like yucky period cramps.  The cramps kept moving around to the different parts he was measuring.  And then he inserted the Novasure thing.  I don’t know what it looks like, so I can’t describe it, it is supposed to be a mesh that expands to fit your uterus and then they use some kind of radio frequency or something that basically heats up and burns the endometrial lining of your uterus.  Getting it in place felt crampy.  And then like the nurse had said, there was a hum.

The hum lasted for 90 seconds.  That doesn’t sound bad, but the FEELING of having it heated and burning your internal organs is NOT NICE!  I pretty much made moany whimpery noises the whole time it was happening. It hurt.  A lot.  BUT not so much that I wanted to die.  90 seconds can be a long time though.  And then finally, it was over.

A funny thing that happened is they left a radio station on during the procedure and Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up was playing during my ablation.  I was all drugged on fentanyl and trying to explain Rickrolling to them.  The nurse who had described the procedure earlier was with me in the room and she was super comforting.  She would distract me during painful parts by asking me questions and making light conversation.  I think her name was Brenda.

After it was over they helped me into a wheelchair and took me back to my bed (a recliner) and brought me some ginger ale and two cookies.  They also called my mom to come and get me.  I got dressed and then they took my blood pressure over and over until I seemed ok.  I went home with Mom.  I basically went to bed.

Afterwards was uncomfortable.  I felt crampy, AND I was constipated, and I kept feeling like if I could shit the crampy part would go away but I couldn’t poop all day.  At 7pm I took one of my super duper extra strength advil and I finally got a little bit of sleep.  At 8 I woke up and went into the living room.  I had some food, my appetite was back and felt good.  I went back to bed around 10 and slept until 1am when I took another Advil, they had told me to take something every six hours.  So then I took another one this morning at 7:31am and I felt back to normal today.

As for the lasting effects of the ablation, I won’t really know for a few months.  My OB/GYN wants to see me in three months to talk about how it is going.  Ideally, I would like to never have a period again.  For years I have had to take iron every day because I bleed so much I am anemic.  I bleed so much that a pad or tampon or even sometimes my diva cup can’t catch it all in the night so if I sleep over at someone’s house I am DESTINED to bleed on their bed.  It’s been really awkward, and people have been pretty shaming about the bleeding so much thing, which sucks.  Like I have literally gotten talking to’s about bleeding in people’s beds like I do it on purpose or something. I also don’t like the feelings of my periods, I get bad cramps.  On the second day of my period I have to empty my divacup about five times in the day.  It’s just ridiculous.

One thing is I won’t be able to be pregnant, which is fine.  I don’t want kids.  I had to tell my doctors over and over that I don’t want kids and they finally believed me.  Which is good because some doctors try to preserve fertility even when their patient is adamant that they don’t care.  I COULD get pregnant but it would be a horrible idea with complications and I would need to abort for my health.  So no sperm in vagina for me!  Which is fine by me!

I still might need to get a hysterectomy in the future if this doesn’t work, like my Mom and Auntie and my Grandma, BUT this is the new alternative to hysterectomies and a lot of women are really happy with the results.  Especially with the Novasure.  I’ve had a little bit of discharge, watery with a pink tinge to it.  Not really super bloody.  I can’t put anything in my vagina for six weeks, also no baths with salts or oils, no hot tubs, and no swimming pools.  No tampons, pads only.  I haven’t had much pain today.  It’s been good.  And yes, today I finally had a poop.  Poops are good!  It means things are working normally!

I got a new puppy recently, on Valentines Day.  She’s been SUPER cute and only a little bratty.  Her name is Posey, as in Parker Posey.  She’s a red smooth mini dachshund.  She is about 13 weeks old now, super tiny!  Hermione and Little Mister were a little chilly towards her at first, but Hermione warmed up to her and they played on Mom’s bed.  Sometimes they will cuddle up in Posey’s bed and sleep together, which is super cute.

Posey likes me, she bonded to me really fast.  She cries when I am away, unless she has someone to play with.  She likes to sleep in my lap, and Little Mister likes to lay on the right arm of the chair, and I like to use my laptop, so there has been some dog/laptop juggling going on.  I took her to our vet the first day we had her because she was due for her second set of shots and I wanted to make sure she was healthy.  She is.  The vet was happy with her and she is scheduled for her spaying in March.  Baby girl!

Here is what she looks like!

She turns bratty at a specific time of day.  When we are in bed and the lights are on and I am on my laptop she goes all wild trying to bite my fingers.  And she’s got pointy sharp puppy teeth so it is super annoying.  But the weird thing is as soon as I turn the lights off she calms down and goes to sleep.

Anyway, I wanted to update my blog because I got busy and didn’t write in it for a while.  So here is an update!  DOGGY! LOVE!  BABY!

I’ve got the first rough draft of my first webisode written! 😀  Each one is only 3 minutes, so I have to pack a lot into three pages.  YAY!  I feel accomplished!  I was promising to start writing on February 1st. and it’s only the Tuesday after February 1st.  Now I just have 9 more left to go!  Whew!

I hope I can keep this up!  Tomorrow morning I have my dietician appointment, and then we are going to the Casino for a little bit.  Then back home I guess, to write a bit more.  I’m leaving the day after that to go to Kingston for ReelOut.  I’m looking forward to getting away for a little bit.  What else?

Oh, I guess I don’t feel so depressed that I am diabetic.  I felt a little more reassured by my doctor. I am gonna work really hard at keeping myself healthy.  There’s so much I want to do with my life, I don’t want it shortened or made worse.

I also had this little moment of hope the other day.  I sort of just came to the conclusion that ONE DAY I will get a girlfriend.  And that it’s okay I’m so picky.  I mean, I’m only picky about reasonable things, like that they shouldn’t be racist and shit like that.  They have to be a decent human being and that isn’t having high standards because I have those standards for everyone.

Well, I guess I should head to bed.  There’s not much else to say, I just wanted to mention I have a good start on this scriptwriting portion of my webseries.

So I had my doctor appointment today and I am now officially Diabetic.  Which sucks, BUT it is still really early days and she said if I ate well and got more exercise I would be alright.  I need more fruit and protein and less carbs and sugar.  Tomorrow I am going to see a dietician.  Mom and I are gonna do weightlifting tomorrow too.  I don’t need to test my blood glucose with a meter yet, I do have to come to the lab and do blood tests every three months though, and every other test is a fasting blood test.  BLOOD!  Bleh.

I don’t know if I am surprised or not.  I think I thought I had more time before this was gonna happen.  Like, five more years or so.  I always suspected it was gonna happen to me though, because of medication I am on and also being Native.

I hope it doesn’t blind me or kill me though.  I really don’t want to get all sickly.

But I was all sleepy this morning and mom said that was a symptom of diabetes.  So that is disappointing.  I’ve been REALLY tired these days.

I’m going to Kingston the day after tomorrow!  Going to be there for a couple of screenings of my films and talk on a panel.  Then visiting Toronto for three days.  It should be alright.  I’m looking forward to seeing my friend Louis!  LOUIS!

I have a lot to learn about diabetes.  I have a diabetic mom and a diabetic auntie though, so I’ve overheard a lot of blab about diabetic things.  It’s not totally new to me anyway.

Well, I was really just writing this post to warm up and blab about my day before I go on to start writing my transmissions webisodes.  I’d better go do that now!

I filled out an application for an Artist In Residence at a secret place that I hope to go to this year.  It’s competitive so I don’t want to jinx myself by blabbing too much about it.  Just that it would be AWESOME!  It would also take me away from my baby, Little Mister, for a while.  That’s the hard part of being an artist and dog owner, sometimes there is the chance to go away for something exciting, but you have to leave the pup behind.  And he’s really adorable and grounding for me, so it’s weird to leave him.  It would be worse if he was my child!  I don’t know how parents do residencies away from home.

I was busy with that all day today.  I gave myself until the end of tomorrow to do it then I was gonna get back to my project, but it didn’t need so much time.  It was fairly easy to do.  I will be okay if I don’t get it, it’s just the sort of thing you have to throw your hat in the ring for, just in case.  It didn’t cost anything to apply either, super sweet!

Little Mister was nosing me today while I was talking to Mom.  He wanted attention.  It was so cute, he’s never done that to me before.  OMG!  He is so cute!  I picked him up and told him how cute he was.

I had a good texty conversation with my friend in Toronto, it was all private stuff that I’m not gonna disclose here, BUT it was really nice to blab to him and hear his thoughts about life.  I’m gonna see him in a few weeks.  Feb 9 – 12 I will be in Toronto, after my gig in Kingston.  I am going to Kingston for ReelOut, which should be fun.  I’m on a panel so I have to think of interesting blab blab.  And they are screening a couple of videos.

Well, I should go to bed I guess.  When I start getting tired at this time of night there’s not much more productive stuff I can do.  I sort of peter off.  And if I push it I end up writing voluminous emails to exlovers about the past and feelings.  Ugh!  That’s not good for anybody!