Gouache

(Turned my blog off again because the bots were back.)

To distract myself from yet another real estate delay, I have been getting busy making friends at work. It’s going well. Except that, in one case, I’ve done that terrible thing where you forget someone’s name and then wait too long to ask, and now it’s weird. I’ll find the right moment eventually.

Them: and that is how my entire family died tragically.

Me: *nodding sympathetically* so what’s your name again?

Other than that, I’m doing great with the friend-making.

And I have been painting, slowly working on a couple of still life setups and illustrations for a picture book. I’ve started messing with gouache again on my lunch breaks because the almost-not-hypothetical house has a view of the bay, and I thought it would be nice to wake up with little 20-minute color sketches of the view, the way Nathan Fowkes painted the view from his office from day to day. Painting the same scene over and over will force me to work out my problems with landscape painting, probably.

(Not this scene, this is just the view from the parking lot at work.)

I got my first full paycheck, and… well, I knew it was going to be tight, so no surprises. But it’s like my grandfather always said, Happy is the man who earns one dollar more than he spends. I’ll make it work. It’s just as well; I finally tried to put on a pair of jeans I knew would be honest with me, and couldn’t quite get them buttoned up. It was inevitable, the way I’ve been enjoying things. I can’t afford new pants right now, so my “more” philosophy is going to have to include more frugality with the chocolate biscuits. And more snow shoveling. I guess I’ll be getting the soup when I go out for Chinese food with my coworker today. Joke’s on you, poverty, I like soup.

In unrelated news, the high school classmate who’s been in my DMs lives in Minnesota, and he got shaken down by four ICE agents right after the shooting, they scared the shit out of him while he was just trying to get gas. I might not be interested in dating ever again, but this kid and I used to sneakily hold hands while playing Oregon Trail when we were 14, and I am all the way pissed off. I hope every one of those racist cosplay assholes gets frostbite on their balls. They could be whittling spoons and baking bread and living a whimsical little fucking life, not harming anyone, and THIS is what they chose. Drive off an icy overpass, assholes.

Look at these cute little dysentery victims

Now I am going to go eat some soup and empty the rest of my bank account onto the lawyer’s desk so I can get a damn house to live in. Still happier than ever, but in an angry way, too. 

(4 more stickers for the enameled pot.)