From the lunch room

Well, the 3rd story on this week’s This American Life podcast, the Perils of Intimacy, just wrecked me. Thanks for the kick in the face during my morning commute, NPR.

Here is a man with an owl instead of underpants.

We have all had this classic dream of showing up to class with only an owl on. Relatable.

The opposite of masonry

The man has been getting weird about demolishing the fish pond in the back yard for the last few months, and the disappointment of not finding any dead bodies in the dirt-filled walls is outweighed by the horror of the growing rock pile we have no way of bringing to the dump. 

Went outside and realized he had bashed away the concrete pillars holding the roof up and replaced them with a couple of 2x4s.

Turned around and went right back into the house. He can yell when it’s time to call an ambulance and a backhoe.

- - -

I’m trying a very old painting method that is the art equivalent of steeking. 

Steeking is when you knit a complicated colorwork sweater in the round like a tube and then cut it in half with scissors to make a cardigan. 

Glazing a grisaille is when you thinly paint the figure in brown, then thickly paint in white where the light is, let that dry for a week, and then paint the entire thing black before carefully wiping it away to reveal the lights and darks underneath. If you can do this without panicking and ruining it, you can paint as you normally would after it’s dry, and your painting will have a lovely translucent quality. This is how to built up layers without having to oil in; you only do the color in the last sitting.

So far the white-smeared paintings look really weird and I’m going through the “I’m a fraud who sucks at this thing I have no business trying to be a part of” phase of learning. 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire was the movie I needed this year

I’ll take a video when I paint them black. Maybe it’ll be amazing, why not.

In the meantime, I’m still painting in the break room over lunch.

 - - -

My editor wants me to illustrate another book in 2021, which feels like magical thinking right now. 

The cat is still dying. He's comfortable right now, but the tumor is growing back and has spread to his neck.

The case numbers are going down. Visitor quarantine ends on October 15th, if anybody wants to do their remote schooling on the beach.

 

September has been long.

Ah ha

Breakthrough: I have figured out how to oil in.

What is oiling in? Gross.

As paint dries it sinks into the surface and becomes dull, making it impossible to match colors the next time you sit down to work on it. You have to wait for it to dry completely and then rub oil back into it to bring out the color. This sounds easy - because it is - but I got weirdly defensive about finding out why it wasn’t working for me. The oil beaded up, my colors were all wrong, the painting dried weird, it was awful.

So here it is:

Slow down, use less oil, rub for longer. 

I’m sorry to pair that information with this image, but that is what you have to do, and I finally did it correctly, and it is just a terrible coincidence that I was painting romance paperbacks in the break room when it happened.

Nothing says “romance” like a headless man hiking up his pants

And now suddenly my “in progress” pile is out of control,  because I am ready to fix everything with my improved skill set.

Most of them aren’t dry yet, though, so I painted a D20 for Gavin, instead. 

1 = fail

 

Sarah and I have embarked on a knit-along. She chose Astragal, a cropped oversized sweater with a ladygarden motif knitted around the neck. I went rogue and knitted leaves and bobbles, instead.

left the camera on "live" and caught an attempted murder

This pattern features German short rows; the short rows you accidentally make when don’t know how to do short rows. Like when you’re learning to tie your shoes and just get mad and do it however the hell, then somehow end up with a tied shoe and feel proud even though you don’t know what you did. If anyone notices it looks a bit funny, you say, “those are German short rows” and they will be very impressed. That is called “heirloom quality”.

I get to pick the next pattern. I’m going to pick Radmere and Sarah is going to strangle me with her circular needles. 

 

 

No art content

Tests are all negative, we win.

Lockdown extended another 2 weeks. Case numbers dropping slightly. 

My friend’s house in Talent, OR burned down in the wildfires this week. Here is some current satellite imagery of the west coast fires to worry over (more at https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/satellite.php).

Ruined some paintings over the long weekend. Thinking about it, working out where I went wrong and how to fix it. Staring hard at everyone’s shadow shapes and facial planes.

Stay still, I’m painting you with my brain

Haven’t done a yearly self portrait yet, and the months are getting on. I don’t see how I can get away from this year without including the mask, but I just don’t want to. I already spend ten hours a day in it, I don’t want to sit in it for the next hundred years. Tried posing in it anyway.

Nope. I can just print these and my progeny will know what grandma looked like during the Lost Year. DONE. 

And today I got a new phone. 

Going well so far.

Check in, smoky people.

 

Lockdown #2

The second lockdown is going as well as the fireworks ban; not at all. The public is mutinous and there are even more people out spite-jogging than before, we’ve had twice as many pickups at the library (I’m an essential worker this time). But the surge testing is happening, after a bumpy start, and we signed up for sticks up the nose like good citizens. The kids sneezed onto theirs, so they should get extra accurate results.

I am happy to stay home on the weekend. The kids and I experimented with alcohol inks, baked cookies, picked lychees, and hung out in the yard trying to peel off the dirt glued with fruit juice to Plucky’s face. She’s a mess in lychee season, owing to her lack of hands. Bad planning there, Plucky.

I have developed a new harebrained scheme.

Here it is:

While the library has hours of intense activity and checkouts, it also has hours of quiet waiting, when I’m stuck in a chair by the door, feeling my life ebb away and staring at the rotating racks of trashy paperbacks. They used to hire artists to paint the covers for romance novels, but now they’re all photographs of models in cheap costumes. It aggravates me, both as an art person and as a librarian.

Problem: romance novels covers should be painted
Problem: I am stuck on a chair with idle hands for hours a day
Solution: PAINT ALL THE BOOK COVERS

So I’ve got a new sketchbook, and I can sketch the covers while sitting at the door, then paint them on my lunch breaks. At the very least, it gives me figure painting practice. At the very best, I develop a fun collection of work, bag an agent, become a book cover artist, quit my job, and move to a cabin in Alaska.

guns + babies = SEDUCTION

 First try:

 Reference: A Bandit’s Kiss, by Maria Green, c2000

Mr Handsome looks weird and her legs got away from me under that dress, but I am happy with it as a first go 

Bewbs

It's fun. Yes, I think I'd be perfectly happy to someday retire and be a scary lady in the woods painting incongruously sexy book covers.

Saturday night at the emergency room

Luckily, there is lots of distraught hipster music to describe how it feels to be locked out of the ER while your child is inside with her dad - who was carrying her while you parked the car - and you can hear her screaming through two sets of doors because there is an inch-long roofing nail stuck in her foot, which they can’t just pull out because it might be lodged in the bone and they need an X-ray before getting the pliers; the woman next to you is crying because her small baby has just been taken away to isolation with severe Covid symptoms, the doctors are taking the woman’s nasal swab right there in the outdoors waiting area so she doesn’t infect the ER, and the security guard is trying to distract you, “It’ll be okay, I stepped on so many nails as a kid, this isn’t even the most dramatic thing to happen this evening - right over there where you’re standing,” you notice a wet spot hosed in the ER driveway by your feet, “a baby was born before they could get inside! By the time I ran in to get the doctors and came back out there was a baby crying, and the dad was freaking out and laughing because he just bought the car.”

It was a short visit, as ER trips go, and after an hour Mike came out with the girl in his arms, still barefoot from hanging out in the yard eating lychees when the foot race accident happened. Zenny was laughing with shock, holding two stuffed toys the nurses gave her, along with a biohazard bag containing a bloody roofing nail. She’s doing fine now, medicated and sitting on the couch watching cartoons with her foot wrapped up like a football. We’ve learned that she reacts to injury like a character in a 19th century novel, covering her face and sobbing, “I can’t bear it! I’m going to die!” before fainting. This poor kid, my heart hurts.

5 minutes before the incident. Somewhere in the leaves on the left side,

 a stray roofing nail waited for two years to find her foot.

Now Mike and I are both side-eyeing each other because we’ve almost definitely been exposed to the virus, but there isn’t anything we can do about it unless the contact tracers call to confirm it and refer us for testing. Will consult our regular doctor today when we call for her follow-up.

Stuffed poi pounder that squeaks when you bop it, courtesy of Wahiawa General

This year.

Title replaced by low growling sound

The chick died, wildfire burned up the mountain along my way to work, in-library computer service has been shut down, and the kids are trying to turn the living room into a classroom with a new desk we assembled over the weekend. These things are life, it’s ok. But I was already feeling a bit down when a patron banged on the library doors to get me to open them, then started yelling about masks and blaming all the deaths on the flu (as if that made my family members any less dead), and I slammed the doors in his face. Not sorry. Keep your shit together for 30 seconds while you return your books on oil pulling, Ed.

I just don’t listen to aggressive enough music. I am a podcast and folk rock kind of driver; some of that stuff is good music for jumping off a bridge to, but not so good for when you're pissed off about people screaming in your face about flaps of fabric.

Please leave your go-to angry song in the comments.

weird

A couple evenings ago, a thin young person with messy red hair came walking toward the library like one of the fast zombies in 28 Days Later. They stopped short in front of the closed glass doors. I don’t pull open the doors for people without masks, but I stood on the other side of them. People can see me gesturing, and they can hear me through the crack if I yell.

“DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION?”

They looked at their reflection, then opened their mouth, pulled their lips back, breathed out with a hehh sound, and tapped their front teeth on the window in front of my face. It made a little clicking sound.

I didn't think this was a question I needed to answer, so I just stood there.

The young person did it again - head tilted back, teeth bared, mouth against the window, click. No tongue, no kissy lips or puffed cheeks, just teeth and ragged throat breathing. After a second the youth jerked back and ran around the side of the building, screaming at the sky.

I locked the door.

And now we know which character I am at the beginning of the zombie outbreak; the one standing behind a glass door watching them slobber on the window and run on. I am not sure I survive this story.

- - - -

Yesterday, a chicken was peeping its head off in the alley behind the library. I was ignoring it, because there is a flock of large teenage pullets that still peep if they get separated from one another, and I figured they would sort it out themselves, but my coworker finally said I should check it out - me being the designated bird witch. I really didn’t want to. Once you find a lost baby they are your responsibility, whether to rehab, rehome, or see through to their death. But I went outside (because I do care), pushed through the bushes, and found a tiny black chick peeping around the dead body of its mother.

So now I have a tiny black chick I’m trying to keep alive. It's interested in screaming at the top of its lungs and being cuddled under my boobs, but not so interested in eating or drinking or staying alive.

It made it through the night, but it's not doing well this morning. Gasping, bubbling when it tries to drink. At least it can die warm, cuddled up, instead of getting snarfed by a dog. That is the least we should be able to ask for.

OKAY

I did the thing. And now I never have to paint a landscape again. The clouds were okay, but grass can go eat a dick.

I am having a drink.

A birthday and a shaved cat

My baby boy turned 12 this week. We had a tiny party with a tiny piñata and an enormous 4-layer cake.

Leif had a scary birth. His cord was wrapped tightly three times around his neck, he was blue and limp when they plopped him on my chest before grabbing him away for resuscitation. The seconds of silence between when they took him and when I saw his little fist raise up above the bassinet were some of the longest of my life. When he finally made a small noise they brought him back to me, and with his first big cry the oxygen blushed through his entire body, turning him from floppy and blue to firm and pink in a second. It was amazing. Leif is funny, he bakes, he draws comics about farts, his conversation is full of sound effects and hand gestures. He’s an easy guy to hang out with. I love him so much.

While we were having cake, Mjolnir made it through surgery. He is comfortably back at home enjoying his painkillers. Billy has decided that his shaved flesh feels good on the teeth, and keeps trying to chew him like a corncob when we're not looking.

At work, nobody has tried to fight or cough on me, but I’ve gotten comfortable yelling across the library for computer users to pull their masks up over their noses. So far nobody has needed to be yelled at by a librarian more than once. We registered the kids for the online curriculum just in time for in-person school to be cancelled entirely as our island’s cases shot up from 20/day to 200/day in two weeks. Infected bus drivers, McDonalds workers, Costco employees, firefighters, government offices. The parks and beaches have been shut down again, inter-island travel has been restricted, the hospitals warned they were running short of ICU beds until 6 people died in them this week. It’s not a great scene out there.

But we’re fine in our house, with cake and cats. The kids are a bit stir crazy, I accidentally blew up the stove and started a little bit of an electrical fire, and the man has gotten weird about lifting weights and demolishing the fish pond, but things are going okay.

I'm going to paint a landscape this week. I AM.