pdx take 2

Well. Things went off the rails. I am stuck in a trap of my own making, one of my coworkers died, the summer reading finale was a flop, one of my favorite patrons is in the ICU, and I had to throw out two homeless guys because one was stealing shit and the other tried to sexually harass our 14 year-old employee. I kind of snapped at that point and shouted the second guy out of the library instead of handling it like a professional. Yesterday was the frosting on a crap sandwich - and sandwiches don't even need frosting, so that is saying something. I need to take a break and clear my head.

So I did what I always do when I need to get away and be by myself; I signed up for a painting workshop. Me and my old enemy, the color green, are going to have a final showdown before I accept that I just can't paint goddamn trees. This time I'll have an expert around to show me what I'm doing wrong, so maybe I'll come out on top. 

me and landscape painting 

(Hark! A Vagrant)

The workshop is in Washington, but I'll be flying into Portland because it's a shorter drive than Seattle. My last visit to Portland was not great - I did just about everything a dumb tourist can do to get robbed or murdered. This time I am smarter (?) and I will be renting a car instead of dragging a suitcase around the metro system, booking a cabin in the country instead of a cheap hotel with drunk college kids crashing stolen e-scooters in the hallway, and latching onto the other artists for company instead of wandering around a city alone at night and getting chased by weird screaming men. 

I'll have to sell a couple more paintings to pay for the car and lodgings, but at least I have enough to cover most of the trip. I got stonewalled by realtors and then some stuff happened that took the cabin off the table, so FINE. I will just use that money from selling paintings to PAINT MORE PAINTINGS. At least I have a little hobby-sustaining ecosystem going here.

edited to update: Got my plane tickets! It's locked in now, because they are non-refundable. I will be riding in steerage with the peasants, but at least when I get there I'll be driving up to a countryside bnb next to a winery for 4 nights of peace (breaking: THEY HAVE COWS). Then I have to spend one night at an airport hotel to catch my flight the next morning, but at least it's across from a beer & grill joint and outlet mall. I can have a pint and then get reckless at Banana Republic Factory.

Tsunami

Tsunami incoming, sirens are going off and I’m alone in the house while everyone is stuck in evacuation traffic. Trying to prep a birthday dinner, thinking about some heavy stuff that happened in the last 2 days, phone blowing up, sirens blaring. It all feels weird.

We live on high ground, but the schools and my library are in flood zones, so I guess we’ll see how that goes.  Hope everyone gets home soon.

I’ll update later. Wave should arrive in 2 hours.

Update 6:40pm: sirens going again, phones warning that we have 30 minutes to evacuate coastal areas. Kids and dad made it home after 2 hours of gridlock. Leif’s girlfriend lives on the beach, she’s sheltering at the high school with her family, the roads are blocked. He’s really worried. My mother and Gavin are still stuck in traffic on H3, but they’re elevated. Watching the news coming out of Japan, upsetting footage of the whales. Waiting, hoping Gavin and mom get here before it’s dark.

update 7am next day: well, tsunami coverage has not improved at all since 2012. Once it's dark, nobody knows what's happening. My mother's school is on the beach, and they get in trouble if there's even regular high surf, so she's going to see if the road got swamped and if the water got into the library this morning. After being stuck in traffic for 4 hours, she took a nap when she got here and left for home pretty late, full of ribeye and cheesecake. Leif's girlfriend finally got to go home at 10pm. It's always slightly embarrassing for everyone to respond to an emergency and then have nothing happen, but it's better than not responding and getting dead, so that's okay. 

Winner of the chicken dinner

This fight was different. This time I am not buying a computer to write a book or fixing up the studio to comfort myself - I need to move ahead with my goals.

Life goals:

a cabin in the woods

publish a novel

paint what I want, when I want, and not worry about marketing/sales

be an involved member of the local art community 

be a kind and loving grandma who bakes way too much 

get a dog

revisit old places/catch up with old friends

never pay someone to push me out of an airplane 

I might only be able to afford a piece of shit off-grid shack in the middle of nowhere, but it would be my piece of shit shack  - just me, my dog, my trained raccoons, and all the bears I can eat. 

- - -

So that was how things were going when we went to the art show reception to collect my honorable mention, and we saw red dots next to both my paintings. Nobody else's had them, so I had to double-check that red dots still meant "sold" and not "disqualified, gtfo" or something, but yes! They sold! That felt like a grand prize to me, and I let myself enjoy a little quiet gloating for a couple of minutes. Ha, take that, baby judge. People still like classical realism.

And you know what? It's just enough money to book a plane ticket to see a guy about a cabin. 

(*cough* or pay the dentist)

the man took some pictures of me making weird faces as a show of effort, which I do actually appreciate

I don't like talking about things that haven't happened yet, in case they fall through, but I am stating my intentions here so it's harder to back out. It's this or hiking the Appalachian Trail to annoy Brooke, and this is less work.

Edited to add the winners from the show, for those as curious as I was:

update

Scabbers did not get better. She started getting worse again, they rushed her back to the vet, and further testing revealed that she had a large tumor in her abdomen. She passed away gently in their arms. We never knew how old she was, she was a stray cat who followed my mother home every day on her evening walks, and finally came inside and stayed. I called her the "imaginary cat" because I had never seen her, but sometimes I could hear her snoring from wherever she was hiding. Evidently she was pretty old, and had lived a hard life, so I'm glad she had food and comfort for the last couple years. While we were doing DIY, she came out and stood staring at me, looking pretty pissed off. I felt like I was seeing a unicorn. A notch-eared, patchy-furred unicorn with murder in its eyes. I'm glad I got to see her at least once. I'm so sorry, Scabbers. (My mother nicknamed her that years ago because of her recurring skin problems, and tried to change her name to Moani more recently, but it was too late.) At least Gavin knows there were compounding factors, and it wasn't entirely his fault she died. 

Aaaaand it turns out that coming home and immediately having a pet tragedy does not make a person happier about not being able to find any of their stuff. I am in trouble. Bringing a cake from the new Hebridean Baker cookbook as an offering for family dinner this evening. Hold me in your thoughts.  

Edit: my mother didn’t flip out, my son was exaggerating how annoyed she was. She’s really happy about the cleaning and repairs. However, the man and I unexpectedly had a nuclear fight and at this moment I am one foot out the door. Buckle up, therapist.

nice while it lasted

The problem with having a bunch of good days is that they're always followed by a bunch of not-as-good days. 

The baby bulbul took a turn and died, despite our best efforts. This is why I am a reluctant rehabber, and why I don't click on animal rescue videos  ̶  survival rate for rescues is 50/50, and it's a rough thing to go through over and over again. At least he was safe, fed, and warm. I feel really bad about it.

It has been a busy week with class visits, a program by the Humane Society, book shipments, and summer reading, so of course the power has been going out randomly. Not having power does not stop people from asking to print things, and the more stubborn ones will sit in front of the dead computers and stare at them. With the air conditioning down and groups of 40 kids hiking up from the park for storytime, it was getting a little bit stuffy in the library, and a cranky lady sitting at the computers started to loudly complain that it stinks like a dead animal, and she couldn't breathe, she was choking - all while looking at the guy reading in the corner. The guy who reads in the corner has never been a problem, he is mostly silent and minds his own business, but he is also homeless and Black. I am not sure which of those things she had a problem with, but I have been around the guy for months and he does not stink. My boss, however, takes words extremely literally and can't detect hyperbole or body language, so when he heard the lady say it smelled like a "dead animal", he went around asking everyone if they had an actual dead animal with them. As this was happening, another of our homeless guys came in wearing one of those clear hard-shell backpacks for carrying pets. I've never seen an animal in it, but in general we just treat animals like regular patrons (ie. no biting, screaming, or shitting on the floor), so I ain't give a damn. Boss didn't find the imaginary smell, apologized to the lady for the inconvenience, and went back to his office. One of our volunteers, who is nosy and thinks she works at the library, spied on the guy with the pet carrier backpack and was eager to run to boss and report that there was a live bird in there, so boss went out, called over the guy reading in the corner (WRONG PERSON), and told him sternly, "NO LIVE ANIMALS." Which is not the policy, but he was trying to look like he was handling things. The reading guy was confused, nodded, and sat back down with his book. The guy with the bird beat a hasty exit. The complaining lady was mad that the reading guy wasn't thrown out, yelled that she was going to give us a bad review, and stomped out. I watched the whole thing from the circ desk, where I was trying to check out books to a line of people using only pen and paper.

Broken tooth cost $700 to fix. I mean, some day I'd love to buy some Staub bakeware or a SMEG appliance (mostly so I can call it a "smegma"), but having teeth is nice, too.

In the middle of all that, my mother came home, Gavin tried to help medicate one of her cats for a skin condition, and he accidentally administered an overdose when the cat turned into a wild thing and squirted out of his hands. She hid and licked off the medicine before he could catch her, then started acting like she was having a stroke, so they rushed her to the animal hospital. She spent 2 days in critical care. The bill has rolled up over 5k so far. Gavin was so upset that he almost killed poor Scabbers, but he paid close attention to the explanations about the blood/brain barrier and recovery process, and he's been very attentive with her since she got home last night. She is temporarily blind, but eating and walking again. It'll take a few weeks of care, but she'll be okay. Gavin is considering the vet tech program at the university now, so that's something. I was worried he'd lose his confidence with animals, but he cares a lot, keeps calm, and uses mistakes to learn from, so he's got the right stuff for the job. 

On the bright side

I dropped off my paintings for the upcoming show and got a call today to say I won an honorable mention cash prize. It's only like $25, but I'll take it. And put it in my tooth. Reception/awards ceremony is next week, and I'm very curious to see who the baby judge selected for Best in Show (the judge is my son's age, which will always be "tiny baby" no matter how much time passes). 

My mother is happy with the renovations and cleaning, and hasn't gotten annoyed about all her [ALLEGEDLY] missing stuff yet, due to the immediate cat emergency. I may have gotten away with it.

Look who’s back

This guy just can’t get the height to fly back up to the nest. Everything went well for a few days, but then he was down on the ground again and too tired to get back up by bedtime. I found him when his parents were cussing at the cat after roosting time, and I went out to investigate. The cat was sitting and watching the screeching birds, not very interested in chasing them, but open to the possibility of them flying into his mouth. I put the cat inside and then stood and scanned for movement. It was getting too dark to see a brown bird on brown dirt with brown leaves, but after about 30 seconds there was a rustling and he flew/flopped over to my feet. He was so excited to be back with the Feeding Hands, he nipped my fingers until he got a banana, then cuddled on his nice dry sock in the bird carrier and went to bed. This time he’s just going to have to be a resident bird for a while, until he's definitely strong enough to get back into the treetop. 

Hope he likes DIY, because we're headed into the last long weekend of renovations. This past weekend, while the new floors went down, I removed everything from my mother's bathrooms and scrubbed them down to the baseboards, then took apart her living room and did the same. The boys made dump runs and brought home Korean bbq, which we ate on the floor, feeling sore and happy. Next up: window screens and fresh paint. The end is in sight.

Meanwhile, the library is at peak summer chaos. I have been doing book-related activities with about 150 kids every week, and today we made one-page mini zines. The youngest kids were scandalized that I was letting them use real scissors, and then very pleased with themselves when they didn't cut their own fingers off or stab themselves in the eyeball. They did, however, chop their zines into pieces and scribble all over them, but that is 1st grade for you. The older kids nailed it, though, and I am pleased to report that in this age of ipad kids and AI apathy, only one of them was refusing to engage his brain. I made him do it anyway, and he was surprised when it worked.

"Miss, tell me what to write."

"Nope. Use your brain, you've got lots of stories in there."

"No, I don't. Tell me the title of a story."

"Uh uh, you are not going to ChatGPT this. We are using Actual Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence. Have you ever been scared?"

"Yes." 

"What scared you?"

"I saw a cane spider."

"How big was it?"

He held up his hands like a dinner plate.

"What did it do?"

"Nothing, it was on my wall."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing, I just closed my eyes and ignored it."

"Did it eat you?"

"No."

"Disappointing. And there's your story! Now write it."

And he did. Here is what he wrote:

THE SPIDER

Once I was in bed and saw a spider on my wall. 

It was HUGE.

I was afraid to close my eyes because it would EAT ME. 

I closed my eyes anyway. 

It did not eat me. 

Lazy spider. 

The end.

"PERFECT. I love it." He left with his little book, looking pretty happy. I really hope that small win sparks something for him. I have been hammering them all summer with two main ideas: EVERYONE can draw, and EVERYONE has stories. You can learn to draw well, but drawing badly is fun. Stories don't have to be complicated, just think of a time you were embarrassed or scared or mad.

Here is the quick zine I made as a demo, based on an embarrassing story of my own: 

It's nice being an actual librarian in the summer, and not just a burned-out Kinkos employee. "Can you print this for me?" NO. I AM VERY BUSY AND IMPORTANT. 

*scribbling about poop*