DIY content

Tier 1b employee gets vaccinated

Took my turn sitting in a row of chairs to receive the first arm jab and knit for 15 minutes while they made sure I didn’t die. It was fine. The worst side effect was that I had to stop taking my daily doses of ibuprofen/aspirin a few days beforehand, and all the minor bodily pains I have been ignoring came running in to say hello. Turns out I’ve been having a searing chemical headache from the disinfectant we’ve had to spray every 45 minutes at work. Why have I been so grumpy? It is a mystery.

Knitting

My feelings about Rochester are still manifesting as hats.

Gokstad hat

Seeing the knitting, the girl asked for mittens. These checkered mitts have an “afterthought thumb”, which means I have to rip a hole open on the side and pick up all the thumb stitches, and I don’t trust the whole process so right now it’s a hand sock.

Finally finished my knit-along sweater. It is not flattering, except that it makes me look like I have boobs. Well, one, anyway. And very short arms. This is a Look.

Wandavision blew up my tv

Wanda broke the fourth wall a couple episodes early. As her powers went haywire, rainbow wiggly worms began raining down the television screen, and then it went POP and blacked out. 

Leif looked around at me. “Was that part of the show?” 

It was not. The television was dead. 

Put our masks on. Got a new tv. Threw the old remote into the drawer of old remotes*. Loaded Wandavision back up.

Just as Wanda got pissed and her eyes glowed red, Leif made a panicky noise and turned around with his hand to his mouth.

“My hair ith thtuck to my tongue!”

An individual strand of hair had knotted itself tightly around a single taste bud. This has actually happened to me before. It hurts, and you can’t see into your own mouth to see if it’s stuck to something or actually growing out of your tongue. Scary stuff for a kid. In the end, it took a flashlight, reading glasses, and a very sharp pocket knife to carefully carve the hair off his tongue without hurting his strangled taste bud.

WANDAAAA.

Studio 

Painting has not been happening. It is next to impossible to get time alone when your family is working and learning from home, which is why villains have lairs. 

My lair is downstairs. It is not great. Dust sifts down from people trampling the floorboards overhead, and the light from the ceiling bulb/cracked fish tank windows is terrible, but these are problems I can solve. It is time to get the lair in order. Then I can fuck off downstairs whenever I need time to myself and stop feeling sad about not having time to paint. I can make the time. Or I can hide a beer fridge down there.

So this weekend I went downstairs with a shop vac and mop, tossed out the junk people have been trying to sneak into storage, and installed blinds over the windows that are cemented right into the basement walls (wtf, Larry the Mason). Threw out a lot of dusty drawings and gessoed over bad paintings, so now I have a fleet of primed surfaces, ready to go. The electrician is going to install more light sources when he comes to wire an outlet for the kiln. 

ONE BLUE WINDOW, Larry.

Larry’s idiot children painted right over the door knobs and hinges to the basement door, so I took a razor and chipped the screws free, then took the hardware off and painted the door black. I have ordered shiny brass mortise knobs (the same kind as these - old fashioned with a key hole) and a door knocker shaped like an owl.

Yep, that’s a letter slot with a box affixed to the back. Send me notes when you’re hungry, kids.**

Now I’ve got to figure out how to install a drop ceiling with insulation, to catch dust and block the mind-splintering sound of never-ending lego rummaging in the bedroom overhead. But the room is at least usable for painting again. 

A few years from now, I want this studio to be a comfortable and well-lit space to host small groups for figure painting sessions. Mark it on the life goals list. It is a short list.

raise kids

get a dog

get a passport 

revisit old places/friends 

make ceramics

have a studio art group  

never go skydiving

buy a house

hang my work in a gallery show

buy an old truck

buy a slightly less old truck and maintain it properly 

 

There are things like “successfully grow roses”, “learn to braid bread”, and “make friends with a raccoon” that could be tagged on, but I don’t think I’ll haunt anyone if I don’t get around to them.

What’s on the list, folks?

* we have had one tv in 10 years, and it was a freebie. I do not know where all these remotes have come from. Remotes are like tribbles.

** I do actually have a comfy chair and a table with kids’ art supplies down there. Art is for everyone.

Transfiguration and beer

I turned an onion into a kiln. And a guava branch into an owl. 

Thinking about how to turn produce into tuition.

Stopped at Beer Lab Hawaii to buy a growler of Hakea Bohemian Blonde to support our neighborhood brewery and celebrate not dropping a kiln out of a truck.

I am having happy feelings again.

A hat for the boy

I do not have a face for hats. I have a face for dwarf beards. Why it has not become the fashion to rubberband long hair underneath your nose for warmth and cheek-flattery, I do not know.

See? Majestic. Subscribe to my YouTube tutorials.

The January Hat, by Courtney Kelley

Making pom-poms pisses me off, so I ordered a bag of fake fur balls. I'm going to sew tribbles onto everything, they're fantastic. After you beat the cats off them.

The mittens coming out a bit too big, but I don’t care. He will lose them the first time he wears them, anyway.

Persuasive arguments were persuasive

The scholarships apply to each year, the co-op program places him with a respected company that will pay full-time, grandparents/cousins live only a few hours away, and Gavin is going to be attending Rochester Institute of Technology this fall. 

Majoring in computer engineering. With a minor in ‘20-person hot tub’. I don’t know. The campus is ridiculous. They have their own hockey team and a vibration-proof building for nanotechnology and a sealed lab of cyber security computers for waging virus battles. 

So it looks like I’ll be in New York the beginning of August to deliver the boy to his dorm and have a midlife crisis in an Airbnb.

Have knitted a hat and I’m halfway through a pair of mittens. My Hawaii-born child will definitely lose all his fingers and ears to the icy winds of Lake Ontario immediately. Late September at the latest.

Blank canvas

 In the way a bomb site is a blank canvas.

8 tons of concrete fish pond removed from the back yard (charged us extra for overfilling the 5 ton bin) and this thing just keeps going down. I still think all of this was done to hide a body in the 1950s, but at this point, I just want to scrape it flat and build a deck over it. Sorry, hypothetical dead person.

My teenager was accepted to his first choice college in New York. They offered him 32k in scholarships for the first year. That brings the tuition for his first two semesters down to just $30,000.

Get your persuasive arguments ready, kid, because for 30k + (60k x 3 more years), I could build a house on the bomb site and send all three kids to state university.

Here’s the painting I’ve been slowly working on (bottom half is unfinished). 

inert

I turned a painting into a chicken coop. And I assembled most of it myself, until the boys figured out I was up to something and took the drill away from me.

 

 

I think I’ve hit some kind of a wall. Building this thing felt like nothing. Painting feels like nothing. I get home from work and slump sideways on the couch and don’t want to watch a show or read a book or draw anything. I'd go for a walk, but I just don't want to.

 

I'm going to let myself sit here for a while and then see if learning to pour a concrete driveway or install cabinetry feels like anything.

Po

Po died in my arms. She stretched and exhaled and was gone, very peacefully. 

She was a brave cat, the first to explore whenever we moved to a new home. The first to get outside and wedge her butt into a banana tree and need rescuing. Once, she disappeared for three days on Maui and I ran around the jungle calling her name, only to turn and find her following me, confused about what I was looking for. She had a scratchy voice, weird nipples, and she went from purring to scratching the shit out of you in half a second. She peed absolutely everywhere and destroyed all our furniture. One time, when I leaned forward on the couch, she got behind me and peed down my butt crack.

I loved her very much.

Pour one out for Po tonight, friends.

Three in three weeks. My best terrible girl. I am so fucking heartbroken.

Circling the drain

Now Po is trying to die. She’s an old lady, she has every right to, but I’ve been sneaking up and poking her when she gets too still, and she jerks around and cusses at me. Not sorry. We’ve already hit our cap on dead cats for the month, Po. Submit your request after the 1st.

16 years of dedicated service, with special awards for peeing on everything she’s not supposed to and skittering through the house like a bowling ball on legs

Other news:

* Sold two paintings. Probably should have taken better pictures of them first.

* Stepped around a pile of human poop on the sidewalk in Chinatown. A truly ridiculous amount of poop, like someone had piled bratwursts on the sidewalk. Almost impressed that someone took the time in broad daylight to do that.

* Watched the taco truck guys try to paint parking lines on loose gravel. It did not work.

* The rock pile behind the house was finally hauled away in a 5 ton bin!

* The 5 ton bin destroyed the driveway.

* The next gallery show is going to be fish-themed. I am trying to figure out how to paint something fishy when I don't actually like the looks of fish very much. Bought a package of head-on shrimp and painted something that looked like a wet cockroach. Gross. 

Need to think about this.

Downtown

And now old lady Po is circling the drain. At least it’s her natural time, after 16 years of peeing on everything she isn’t supposed to and skittering through the house like a bowling ball on legs. She’s decided she wants to die on the patio, and crumples up like a broken thing with her eyes half open, then whips her head up and gives a scratchy meeeeh when I sneak up and poke her. I’m going to keep giving her her thyroid pills and putting her in front of bowls of fancy feast until she decides which way she’s going here. I love her and it's upsetting to see her coming to the end, but I can just try to do the best for her and help her be comfortable.

 

The gallery show has been extended, and two of my paintings sold. I probably should have taken better pictures of them first. 

While I was sitting at the gallery on Sunday, somebody started screaming hoarsely outside. I walked to the window to watch the homeless people across the street. They’re in worse shape downtown, jerking while they walk or collapsed and rocking to themselves with hoods over their faces. Above them, a scrolling marquee on the building flashed “DO NOT ABANDON US”, and then it blinked and said, “SUPPORT LOCAL THEATER!” We live in a dystopia.

Walking back to the parking garage in the evening, I stepped around a huge pile of shit on the sidewalk. Felt like I’d seen a rare bird. The Chinatown Sidewalk Poop. I've heard about them, but never seen them in person.

What a year this week has been

What happened is this: the taco truck lady got mad about where my car was. I went out to move it and she snapped at me, so I snapped back, so she snapped louder, so I walked away without moving my car. She phoned her son, who phoned the owner, who phoned the landlord on the mainland, who phoned my boss. 

I moved my car. 

The septic tank construction guy who was watching all this and laughing said, “how’s that office job going?” and I said “I’m switching with you today.” 

So I threw a blanket over my online accounts while the neighbors were hot. Pretty sure the coup attempt took some of the heat off of our parking dispute. (And if it didn’t, and they find themselves here, I ACCEPT YOUR SURRENDER. And okay, I’m sorry. I had just seen a body pulled out of a head-on collision, which I might have been in if I had left for work on time, and I was not being friendly and professional, which I will endeavor to be from now on. If it makes you feel better, the septic tank guys accidentally broke the water main and we had no toilets for the rest of the day.)

 

 me hiding all my social media accounts after getting in an argument with a taco truck

 Not a fan of 2021 so far.