Grant Medicine

I went down to the post office today and mailed off my grant application to Canada Council! Here's hoping! I listened to "Billionaire" by Peaches on my way to the post office in Shoppers and I hope that gives me some kind of luck. From now on all I can do about getting that grant is some witchy spells! But I probably won't.

Grant medicine! HOLY SHIT!~ Am I the first NDN to think of this? This is really what I need right now.

There is this rumour among people that all of us Crees use Love Medicine to get our partners. I don't know anyone who has used Cree Love Medicine. But it sounds awfully fantastic, if it is true.

I'm wearing a blue Mr. Limpy. He is blue because he has been in my jeans, getting rubbed on by blue jean dye. Poor grotesquery!

Anyway, now I don't know what is going on. Some people might come over. I should probably put away all the madness of extra papers on the coffee table where I put my grant together. I didn't count how many pages it was, but it was pretty thick! At least by my standards. I stand behind this grant. It's totally reasonable and intelligently put together. I am celebrating getting it in!

I wonder who will be on the jury this year.

I've been single for a really long time! Crap! I am turning into my mother! ZOMG!

I had a physical for the first time in like, four years or something crazy like that. It was bizarre, I think they always are. Being examined. No wonder alien abductees have such PTSD, even getting that treatment just from a human is kinda creepy.

NOT to call Dr. Saffy creepy, which she definitely is not.

Basically the end of the visit I was just told to cut back on Michael Jackson so I would have more energy, and to eat less sugar because of something to do with fat and blood. Or things with sugar, anyway, since it's very rare I eat sugar straight up, unless it is Sugar In The Raw in which case I steal as many packets as possible.

So that is okay. Whew! And I have to make an appointment with my psychiatrist soon, just because I am due. OMG! I should make an appointment with my dentist too!

Too bad my dentist lives all the way in Forest Grove, because now it's an hour long bus ride to get there!

As someone who has bipolar disorder, I have just been around the disease for my whole life in some aspect, what with it being a genetic illness and my extended family being so large. Not to mention all the different friends with that and other mental illnesses. FUCK THIS SHIT! It's a really tragic illness to have! I hate how it can trick people into thinking they aren't sick.

Sometimes there is awareness when I'm not sane that I am not sane, like with depressions and just after the peak of a manic episode. But when I don't believe I need help I can be pretty difficult to get to a hospital or take my medication, even when I'm walking to the edge of town to meet aliens.

Sheesh!

Anyway, this year has involved a lot of close people having psychotic episodes. I don't know what to do. I'm too far away to really do anything. At least that is how I feel. And there are people who know what is going on better than me. ARG! And I know how bad these things can turn out to be.

And it scares me because this April will be four years since I was hospitalized at Hantleman with the brown baby bunnies and the pod people. With a giant Mr. Peanut hot air balloon flying over us. And when I went to sleep I could look at the scorched sprinkler where someone tried to set it off with a lighter. And I totally alienated my whatever friend by sending her reams and reams of emails cause I was CRAZY! And I don't want to alienate more love interests by being psychotic. It's so depressing to be judged for inappropriate behaviour committed while insane. No wonder there are always wildly low depressions after a manic episode. It's all guilt and embarrassment!

So, before that it was just over four years that I had been hospitalized, and so as you can see, I feel like I've hit some kind of four year trigger that will escalate into me throwing away my meds and starting some kind of revolution with bizarre tenants like eating at Twoonie Tuesday to show support for David Suzuki.

The GOOD news, is that I am not crazy in love with the same person I was then, the one who got all my emails. And who I was pining for until recently. I feel like I have accomplished something immensely great! I am finally ready to meet someone new to love. Or I could have met them already. I don't know. But I am also happy being single. So if I do go crazy, there is no one to send emails to, except my friends, who will still be annoyed, but I will be annoying them equally and not singling someone out.

We don't have two psych wards in Saskatoon anymore, they have merged into an uber psych ward called The Dube Centre. The dubious Dube? I haven't stayed there so I can't give a rating.

There should be a website called Rate Your Psych Ward, where all kinds of ex or current patients can write reviews.

The Thirza Review:

St Luc, Montreal=BAD!!!!
Hantleman, RUH, Saskatoon=Awright.

Okay, I could be more specific but I don't feel like it.

I like having a psychiatrist. She's amazing. I don't think I've ever been so stable as I have while I've been her patient. That's a good review. I should think of a good fake name for her. She looks kind of like Cate Blanchett. She had a skiing accident one year and was gone for six months! I was so miserable. I'm doctor dependent!

This summer I will be getting my gall bladder out. Maybe I will ask for early september. Aw crap, I really want it out, but I won't be able to swim. If I do get it out maybe I will get a tattoo as well just because then I can overlap non-swimmable time! My cherry blossoms are crying out to be inked into my skin!

What a rambly blog. Just ramblin' on.

I hope you clicked on the Peaches link, pretty hot stuff!

This is not about relational aesthetics. Thank god!

I was really productive last night! I wrote five pages of my grant! :O So amazing! I am hoping this productivity continues because I have a lot to do! I'm not going to give you my list, because you'd be annoyed with me. It's positive work though, I mean, I won't feel shitty doing any of it. I just have to plan so my mood works with whatever I have to work on. Like watching all these videos, I have to be in some kind of absorbing mood, instead of an outputting mood, which is better for stuff like grant writing.

I thought of a funny two minute video I want to make about having an addiction and how it can fuck up your love life. The thought of it made me laugh anyway. And I do kind of mine my own life for stories. And I wanted to make one video about my addiction.

SPEAKING OF ADDICTIONS!!!! Yesterday I had my last cigarette at 6:40pm! It's been over twelve hours with no smoking! I'm not going to boast yet though, because there's always the chance I could relapse. But who knows? Maybe maybe maybe this is it. A lot of my friends are all quitting right now, I should just quit with them for good. Fewer and fewer people smoke.

I can't believe I even became a smoker. It was because I was mixing hash with tobacco. And then I tried tobacco on it's own. Damn! Marijuana is a gateway drug!

Mental Health wise I have been doing really well lately. I've been diligently taking my medication and I am finding my life much improved after getting off the Celexa. I can even sort of cry now!

I used to cry so damn much. I could cry at the drop of a hat. And then I went on Celexa and it totally stopped! I lost a job, I lost my apartment, and I didn't cry either time! :O Weird.

I did cry when people died though, but not as much as I have in the past.

The paranormal stuff has gone down in the house, I think. I think we have a ghost cat in our house. But that doesn't bother me. He was a good kitty.

Writing this grant application has really made me think about my work. I feel like I need to explain why my work is important. It's kind of funny, I just assume because it's important to me it must be important to at least some other people. People seem to like watching my stuff anyway. And I try to be entertaining.

Time to get back to work! And have a snack!

Don't Wear Tight Shoes!!!

It's finally spring here, and it was all nicely melting and slushy and gross looking and then it freakin' FROZE and snowed and now there is all this ice under the pretty clean new snow. Typical of spring really. I wish it would thaw again today but I don't think it will.

I am going to Calgary this weekend with my mom and Cindy Baker and Megan Morman! I should take some of my blank notebooks I found in my packed stuff so I can do some writing, and take my grant applications and final report forms too. I gotta get that stuff done. Final report forms always sound more difficult than they really are. And my reports are just for travel grants. Man there is a LOT of paperwork involved in being an artist!

I wish I had a laptop, that would make traveling so much easier. And a credit card. I've resisted for so long! But I might have to get a credit card.

My Mum is having a show in Calgary at TRUCK, and the opening is tomorrow night! I am going to try not drinking hardly anything. Like maybe two drinks and some pop. I don't really have money to drink and it is weird getting drunk in front of mom.

I'm smoking again. :P Rheanne is right, I have no willpower! :O I feel so blah about it.

OMG! THAT reminds me! My treaty card came back to me! :D I forgot to talk about this, well my treaty card disappeared and I was sure it was in my house but it wasn't and so my mom had to buy my cigarettes for me for the LONGEST time. And then yesterday I was sitting in the car waiting for my mom to come outside with my cigarettes and this employee came up and knocked on the window and said she thought my treaty card was inside!

After months of being missing!!!!

I went inside and they brought out this box filled with treaty cards and sure enough there I was! And it was just the same as I had left it, the laminated edge all frayed and shitty looking and my sad picture because I got that treaty card the day we buried my cousin Christopher.

WOW, and it's expiring in June! Sadly all I use it for is buying smokes, and I really am going to quit soon. BUT I could also use it for going to a new pharmacy. Only, I really like going to the Safeway for my meds because then I can get airmiles for free! I used to get 84 airmiles each time I picked up my meds, but I think it might have gone down to 76 now that I am not on Celexa.

I don't even know how many airmiles you need to get anywhere. Like, are they REALLY representative of a mile? ??? I should really look up my account. My friend Stef does all kinds of things with their airmiles.

I need to use my dayplanner more better! I have stuff coming up that I haven't even written in yet.

I KNOW WHY I NEED MY TREATY CARD! I am going for minor toe surgery, and have needed it for a while and just never did anything about it. And I have to find out if it is covered by Indian Affairs, because otherwise it is $400 and that's a lot of money for someone like me! I have to get something called a Partial Nail Avulsion. Gross hey? DON'T WEAR TIGHT SHOES!!!

I am still waiting to hear about my tests and stuff. BLAHHHHHHHHHHH! Isn't 2 weeks up already???

I still love the words Indian Affairs, because it sounds kind of sexy, rawr!

Let's Break Out the Blouse and Have a Ball!

I have a shitload of writing to do in the next few days! I have to get a big chunk of my company's website content written because I need to do more on that front, and I have to write a script, and I have to write a grant! :O Eeeeeeeeeeee! I don't know how much money I should ask for. I am applying to the Aboriginal Media Arts Section for my Mars video. I can ask for up to 60,000 buckaroos, but I don't know that I will need THAT much. I really have to get working on it, the deadline is April 1st, AND I have to get my final report in for my travel grant. AND I might also apply for a grant at the Sask Arts Board.

It makes me want to get some weed and get ripped and go on a writing binge. I sometimes feel like getting high makes me write better. I don't know if that is true. I should do some experiments on myself and discover if it is a fact or not. In fact, I really should try the six week abstaining experiment and see if my life improves without the green. But it's a little hard for me to do that. I think the longest I have gone recently is three weeks. Can I add three more weeks to that? Probably.

But what I really have to do is get organized for writing all this stuff. I also have to write some final report forms. It's all a lot of work! BUT hopefully by the end of all this work I will have content to send to my web designer and a 47,000 grant to make a video with most of a script written. Actually by reading the guidelines of the grant I am applying for, I can write a script and do a production and do post production all on the same grant. And I think my budget doesn't have to be as specific (33 clothespins at 10 cents a pin etc etc.). So I have 12 pages of a 30 minute script written and I should be able to get my grant based on that. And all my supporting material.

I am at a loss of what to do for support material, I think I might email Ian Reid at the Canada Council and inquire. Last time they didn't like me including a documentary because "it had nothing to do with the project" of doing a narrative dramedy. I didn't know support material had to be DIRECTLY related to the project one is applying for funds for. It kind of locks artists into genres, which I find problematic. Where is the room for growth?

I had kind of a sad dream last night, for two reasons. One is that I was trying to get Rheanne to love me back as in by being with me, and she wouldn't have anything to do with me. And the other part I was in a store trying to select a Godzilla toy, and my late friend Matthew Oscienny loved Godzilla and sort of collected them, and I thought of him in my dream. I woke up missing both of them and feeling out of sorts.

The funny thing about this is the night before I dreamed about snuggling with one of my mega crushes and it made me so happy and feeling all those warm fuzzies. I was trying to have a similar dream by thinking about her before falling asleep, but it didn't work!

I have been texting lately, although my phone is not the best for texting. Maybe I will even do some sexting! Ha ha, actually no, my phone doesn't even have a camera.

I did send some naked pictures of myself to someone once but then her equipment got stolen and I suspect a non-lesbian is looking at my tits. GRODY! These tits should have a tattoo on them that say "For Wimmin's Eyes Only!" Ha ha ha, whatever. I showed them in my videos all the time. When you have nice breasts, it kind of behooves one to show them off. At least it behooves me.

I tried to write Let's Break out the booze and have a ball on my facebook status but my iPad changed it to let's break out the blouse and have a ball. Ha ha ha!

On the road again . . .

Hello from my mom's iPad on The Grand hotel's wireless here in Kelowna! This is my first time blogging on the iPad, so there are bound to be hilarious spelling mistakes. I have a pretty swank room here, with a king sized bed that dwarfs me and a tv and it's a corner suite so I have TWO big windows. I am killing time before I present my work at an International Women's Day event where I am told there will be mega amounts of bannock.

I am glad I get this over with before six when I take to drinking. Lol. But seriously, it is better to present earlier when you are someone who gets public speaking nerves. I can do public speaking, I am pretty used to it, but I still get nervous before hand. When I am actually talking I usually forget about my nerves and just start thinking about my work and why and what and how and all that good blah blah. I have some good facts about myself I pull out, like that I made my first video when I was sixteen and that I made most of my early work with just me and a camcorder. I wish I had Untouchable to show, but I don't.

For some reason I packed my articles of incorporation with all the rest of my stuff. I also paked my vaporizer and toiletries and a pair of flavors so I wouldn't walk around in incriminating snow boots. By flavors I mean Fluvogs of course. Silly iPad.

A warning to Canadians who smoke: if you don't have time to stop at the Rez for 8 dollar smokes, be prepared to shell out seventeen dollars at the airport! I have a pretty pricey pack of DuMauriers which I have been smoking so sparingly. Airports shouldn't be allowed to gouge so much money out of people, I have noticed everywhere I go that airports Jack up prices on everything, not just smokes. Why do people think travelers are full of money?

I also learned you can't buy a beer on Westjet unless you have a major credit card, because they have gone to a cashless cabin. And you can't check into a hotel anymore without having a credit card, even if someone else is paying for it. Clearly this little homo needs a credit card. but I have been resisting because I can tell based on my manic spending habits that I would get into trouble. It is one thing to spend all my rent money on Buddha statues, it is another to rack up 6000 dollars worth of debt by buying something ridiculous or a series of ridiculous things.

I didn't make any spectacular airport friends. In fact I think I was completely silent for my entire trip. Oh, except for saying "coffee with cream and sugar" and "thank you.". It is not entirely out of the ordinary for me to go ages without saying something. That being said, I also blab to myself all the time while I am alone, about all kinds of things.

My mom is supposed to call me back, but somehow I don't think she is going to. I have been doing typing work for her and she says she is going to pay me, but AT THE END OF THE MONTH. And I am supposed to be paid for this gig but it will get mailed to me whenever. Sooooo, well I hope I get some money for dirty bingo because I really need a new vibrator.

The Sexual Heath Centre in Saskatoon sells vibrators AT COST starting at five bucks! But I have been hearing good things about the Lelo vibrators. Which run at about 150 bucks. I wonder how much those crazy steam powered vibes cost doctors in the good old days of finding efficient ways to masturbate hysterical patients. I saw those old timey ones at Good Vibrations in San Francisco.

You know, after doing this for a while I can say that typing on the iPad isn't nearly as annoying as I thought it would be. Maybe because I am sitting at a desk.

TWO HOURS before I depart for Alternator and get myself all set up. I am kind of craving a peanut buster parfait. I should go get a sandwich or something.

All Day with Baby!

OMG BABIES ARE A LOT OF WORK! Especially at my nephew's age, which is big enough to walk around but not big enough to say sentences. He's really not a baby baby anymore, he's a little boy. Very little. He was awake for something like five hours from getting here in the morning until finally crashing at 4pm for an hour and a half. All was peaceful, but you couldn't be too loud or you would wake the baby. And then he woke up and we had dinner and then he went home. I changed a diaper today. It wasn't a poopy diaper though, that would have been worser. I saw him make a poop face. He got all red and stuff. Babies are weird that way. I will be glad when he realizes toilets are for pooping in and not for throwing things in and flushing them away. We had to keep all kinds of doors closed and a baby gate up and he still was trying to play with a spray bottle and found a jar and it's entourage of dust bunnies. And our closets are not baby proof, that is for sure.

I finally saw my doctor, did I mention that in the last post? It is true! I am getting a referral to a gynecologist to discuss my options in regards to these fibroids. I am seriously considering an ablation, which would burn the lining of my uterus and then I would not have periods again. And hopefully it would keep me from having to get a hysterectomy, although I don't know for sure, I will have to come up with a list of questions to ask this gynecologist. It will also get rid of my fertility. I am pretty sure I never want to be pregnant, but it is also a big decision to make. And "pretty sure" sounds dodgy.

I am also waiting to hear back on some tests for this and that. I hope there is nothing to worry about. Because I really don't want to have to add more pills. It's hard enough swallowing all of them at once now, I'd probably choke to death with more.

Actually I think I am at an all time psych med LOW that is psychiatrist approved! Right now I am on Epival, Risperidone, and Wellbutrin. And that is IT! Besides that I am on iron and ranitidine. So it's not such a big deal. But I can still tell if I miss them, I don't feel right. Not like I feel CRAZY, just off, sometimes I get more cry-ey when I miss my morning meds, which is my Wellbutrin. And if I forget my night meds I won't be able to sleep properly, I will keep waking up in the night and thinking. And when you are someone who thinks as much as I do, it's nice to have a break! Anyway, that's the scoop with my meds. It's been a while since my last manic episode. I'm sure I've had some milder hypomanic episodes, but those don't usually cause too much trouble. Or DO THEY????

But yes, I have been out of the hospital for nearly four years!!!! I'm really happy about that, because being in the hospital wipes out a year of my life in terms of feeling productive and creative and functioning. Bleh. And they say it will take me longer to recover each time it happens. So I really don't want to get off my meds. They've made me feel way more stable. And life has still had shitty moments, but I haven't been bleakly suicidal in that time either. Except for when I got out of the hospital. I was pretty suicidal in the group home, it was yucky! I just kind of held on until things got better for me.

Yucky. But post mania depressions are not that uncommon. Especially when you have just flooded your brain with all that dopamine and seratonin and have to build it back up again. It takes a while!

I heard a cautionary tale once from this gay friend who told me he had friends who were doing ecstacy ALL THE TIME for a while and in the end they said they couldn't feel happy anymore, like they just used up all the happiness you're allowed to have in life. Now that is depressing!

I won 2 dollars and a free play in Lotto Max. The next draw is for 50 million and 30 Maxmillions. I have three numbers. HOPE HOPE HOPE I win some cash! I am such a wimp gambler really, I only buy Lotto Max tickets when it's for 50 million and Lotto 649 when it is 17+ million. And that doesn't happen THAT frequently. And I don't play the same numbers over and over. Which I am told is what I should do.

I was too busy with baby to do much of what I was going to do today. I am going to have to try this again tomorrow. I wrote a list of things I have to do but it got submerged beneath a pile of papers~!

And Mum's got some kind of stuff she is working on too and it has made us all very busy. I am in charge of making dinner for a while. Tomorrow we are having Black Bean Soup! :D Today we had a Frittata and the day before yesterday we had tacos!

Little Mister had a haircut and a wash and a manicure on Friday, he looks quite dapper! And he is happier I think, although he doesn't stay outside as long, having so little fur now.

Weird times, my friend, weird times.

Okay, maybe I am starting to believe the hype about 2012 again. Not like in an aliens attack way (although maybe?) but more in a massive global shift. There are a HELL of a lot of revolutions going on right now, and it seems to be reaching a peak. Trust me to be a CEO when the revolution comes to eat the rich! Ha ha, kidding. But really, who knows?

I have a LOT of stuff to do today, and I even wrote a whole list of things on a piece of paper last night. There are 8 things I can do TODAY! And only ONE of them involves leaving the house. But I haven't done them yet. Instead I got stuck on facebook reading the news. I mean the real news smart ass, the links to articles. Not who is freezing cold in -35 or -45 or -55 or whatever my friends are living through around Canada.

Although I feel your pain, my weather friends! ;)

There is a lot of snow over here, I should really take some pictures because it is kind of impressive.

But I keep seeing all these negative stories about people with bipolar in the news, today I saw one calling Ghaddafi's behaviour bipolar. And then there are all these criminals. It depresses me as a fine upstanding bipolar disordered Butch. Oh the stigma! I know there are others who aren't the nicest, but can't it be balanced with more discussion of our accomplishments and talents? We need a Bipolar Disorder Pride movement. Our parades would be great, because the manic people would be most flamboyant and colorful and have amazing chants, and the depressed people could watch from home on television because they don't have the energy to go out!

I ate dill pickle dip today and then started craving pickles only to find there are NONE in the house!!!!! No pickles! :'( I love a good pickle. Especially Vlassic Garlic Baby Dills.

I have to add one more thing to my list. Write a Muthafuckin GRANT! AND a 30 minute script! Before April 1st! Oh mans! That means I have to write a DETAILED budget, and this would be the first time I have done such a thing. I have gotten grants so far that had really easy budgets to write, but this is going to need stuff like a real feature film budget, with more specific categories. The last time I sat down to write my script I wrote two pages, lost both of them due to a crash, and then re-wrote a page. It made me sad and discouraged so I haven't written in a while. But it's got to get done. I know how it ends. I just have to think of the details of how they get there. What I should really be doing is going for thinking walks. I think best when I go for a walk. Try it! It really works. I guess there is a treadmill in this room. Bleh. Ha ha ha! I just say bleh because I think part of the thinking process comes from moving about in the world. And in my part of the world it is SUPER cold! :(

x( <--- Dead Cyclops.

Going through this Self Employment program has made me realize how to do my career better. It's been really hard to have a career and a highly active mental health issue at the same time. My productivity went down. I wasn't as creative when I was depressed or recovering from a Manic Episode. But I've been stable for a while now, and I feel like I am getting back to life. And wanting to make amazing art. I feel like I know emotions better, and I think I learned some things about spirituality and the human condition through my illnesses and recovery periods and stuff. Hard weird lessons.

My main question is, how is the revolution going to be for persons with mental health issues like me who are dependent on stability of routine and medications from Big Pharma??? It's a little scary. I don't want to go off the rails during tumultuous global events. Cause people would be really really REALLY annoyed by my insights of the situation if I was manic again. And I would get sores on my feet again.

It will be FOUR MUTHAFUCKIN YEARS since I have been in the hospital starting about end of May! Hurray! I am a little nervous because it was four years before THAT that I was in the hospital. Which means I am worried I am Due For Another Episode.

EPISODE #3 of My Manic Life: Thirza goes manic while a revolution sweeps across Canada and wanders around from KFC to KFC spending her paycheque on Toonie Tuesday in an effort to support David Suzuki who, really, looks like Colonel Sanders! Some birdhouses are found and dutifully brought home even though a cat lives with her who eats birds.

NooooO! Someone STOP IT FROM HAPPENING!

Last night I had to pop a sleeping pill. And then I had this sex dream with this girl who suddenly said "I don't want you touching me like that!" and going away. Ha ha ha, omg! And then David Suzuki's Nephew was there? ? ? And all these people wanted to get their pictures taken with him. Needless to say by then the sex dream part was over.

I'm glad I have take as needed sleeping pills, they have REALLY helped me out.