Go time

Okay, I’m still ironing out how to link Instagram marketplace, but the site is ready to go if you weirdos want a look. hollybraffet.com

Studio sale

There have been some subtle red-flag behaviors happening, and my internal warning system says it's time to ramp up my efforts to handle the household on one income, just in case. 

Also there is Zenny’s surgery coming up, I broke the dresser, and now the stove is on the fritz. 

There was an episode of Top Chef where they had to cook on stoves like mine, and they all cried. 

So it's time to get my shit together and sell some paintings. I'm putting together a studio sale this week, and if it works out alright, it will become a regular thing. (I redid my website and added a store.)

What I’ve got listed so far

I’m nervous nothing will sell. I’m nervous everything will sell and they’ll all want refunds when they see how much cat hair is in the varnish. Social media marketing is a nightmare. I'm just going to do it and pretend it's great and that cat hair adds artistic value.

More on that later.

Unrelated news: went for a walk with my mother after Sunday dinner at her house, and found another baby bird in the road. 

I made my usual joke about how I can’t take her anywhere without birds falling out of the sky onto her head, and on cue a cardinal shot out of a bush and went straight for her head. She ducked. I don’t know how they know.

 

Easter 2022

Jury duty was a bust. I tried to appear blandly neutral, but I guess accused child rapists just don't like having children's librarians on their jury. The defendant asked his lawyer to give me the boot, along with the elementary school teacher. FINE. Probably the correct move, actually, because while I was sincerely trying to be a good citizen and an unbiased judge, my brain kept whispering Chester the Molester every time I looked at him. Thanks for that, brain.

Easter was three days of bread baking, tie dying, egg dying, roasted meats, chiffon pie, and childhood trauma mitigation. On Easter morning, Zenny mistook the cats triggering the motion-activated light in the kitchen for me making coffee, got out of bed at 3am, wandered around in the dark, saw the couch blanket on the floor and a rabbit-shaped shadow sitting on the ceiling fan, and ran crying into our bed, terrified. I told her the darkness turns thoughts into monsters and we fell back asleep until the cats jumped on our heads at 6am.

I have a difficult relationship with Easter. Bad things have happened on Easters past, and my mother has childhood neglect issues that come up, so I throw a lot of effort into making everyone happy with good candy, good food, new clothes, and fun activities - then crash down after the kids are in bed with relief that all the major holidays are over until next Halloween. 

It’s over, folks. Good job.

Eggies 

Eggie handlers

Leif experiments with alcohol markers 

Sassy the Mynah 

Tie dye 

Chocolate buns, meats, Yorkshire pud, etc 

Droopy tries his best to carry the basket, eats it instead 

Waiting for bread to rise with a drink and a photo app 

My mother trying to teach Sassy how to bird 

Just frisbee this straight into my chest next time, thanks 

Found the film for my Polaroid 

New duds

Happy Easter, everyone.

things happening and not happening

It will surprise nobody that I was not chosen to attend the PLA conference. Evidently admin was looking for someone with work ethic and career goals to represent our library system.

That is the last time I try to win a popularity contest with sing-song animal noises. For a while. 

I was, however, selected for jury duty. That still counts as a field trip away from work, so I'll take it.

---

Grandfather-in-law died this week. While the man is in New York for the funeral, I am solo-parenting - which is mostly the same as regular parenting, but with relaxed nutrition. 

Actually, the real difference is how the tension in my chest loosens, like when the dryer shuts off and you're shocked by the silence. I have learned not to examine that feeling too closely, though.

 

On the way to school, Zenny and I found a baby mynah in an open field. There were no nesting trees close by, and no parents looking for it, so I picked it out of the grass like an angry Easter egg and drove across the island to ditch it with my mother, the wild bird rehabber.

tired mad baby

 

It tried to climbs my arms like a velociraptor while I was driving, and is feeling much better now. These birds are like crows - very smart and talkative and strong. It's unusual for their parents to lose them, so it's neat to have a chance to get to know one.

Working on Saturdays means that grandma keeps the kids for the weekend, and my exciting child-free time alone involves:

* Installing new hardware to the freshly-painted cupboards.

* Varnishing paintings.

 

 

 

* Destroying the garden; I got mad at the rickety plastic trellis for falling over in the wind and trying to kill the chickens again, so I cut down all the lilikoi vines and removed it. Now I need to figure out what to do with it. FREE DANGEROUS TRELLIS, neighbors.

 

 

Thinking about replanting the gardenia bush and lilikoi in the sunny corner of the back yard so I can line the fence with hibiscus, but I'm afraid of digging up a dead pet. Maybe I can add two more feet of dirt back there and go vertical, instead.

 

Feeling pretty good, overall. At work yesterday, after cleaning up some pee in the kids' section, I watched a 4 year old slowly drag his nose back and forth across the edge of my desk and then lick it to get the trail of snot off, and realized that I have gotten used to peoples' gross faces again. I don't know why this is a situation that everyone has been excited to get back to, but okay. It beats standing at the door all day.

 

gross

Tuesday was the first day at work without the mask mandate, and it was a complete shit show. The woman who sneezed on me needs to go to jail for one thousand years. An instagram-influencer type of person honked her nose loudly into a wet used tissue and continued to handle books. Someone coughed open-mouthed up and down the nonfiction aisles. Kids licked the circulation desk. My brain kicked out cortisol and told me to fight every person who walked in. Spent most of my desk time looking for a new job, because I can’t just quit being a librarian without a way to pay for college and braces and mortgage and all the shit that we would not need if we were sensible old-timey people living in the woods, already dead from bear attacks and staph infections.

Maybe this will get more comfortable as the days go by, like wading into cold water - and not like the time I waded into a lake and met a snake that could swim. Or the time I waded into the ocean and got chased by a shark. The nice kind of wading, with a warm sunny patch of water and no slime on the bottom.

Trying to be a good sport. 

Next time a stranger gets body fluid on me, though, I'm going home for the rest of the day.

Getting out

The Downtown Art Center recently re-opened their Monday night figure drawing sessions, offering all the excitement of art, nudity, and parking in an underground Chinatown garage. It has been years since I’ve socialized with people my own age and drawn in front of others, and it felt very good to get back at it. Still self-consciously hid all my papers between poses, and did not chat with anyone but the class organizers, but will try to attend at least once a month and work off the nerves. Maybe… make new friends?

This group serves boxed wine instead of tea, which is nice if you want to walk home and blend in with the rest of the impaired people on the street after dark, but not so good if you arrived by car and want to avoid those same people when they lurch into traffic. I did not visit the wine table. 

It might have helped my drawings, though. 

5 min

2 min

2 min

20 min 

Feeling very rusty, in a nice kind of way. Maybe next time I’ll bolt a Dixie cup of boxed red at the start of the 3-hour session, and see if sulfite poisoning helps loosen up the drawing arm. They could be on to something.

“So I did what any true American would do”

The friendly alcoholic who gets loaded and comes by the library to flex his arms and flirt (badly) showed up the other day. "Hey, so right now I'm a volunteer firefighter. There's a fire out here, but it’s only small, like a cup of water or something would put it out. "

I walked outside with him to a pile of smoking sawdust next to some recently trimmed tree trunks. Went back into the library, filled a bowl with water, and carried it outside to dump on the fire just as little flames were getting going. Stamped out the glowing embers and looked around for a cigarette butt. Couldn't find one, but here was an open 40oz beer on a parking block a few feet away, a good spot for a drink and a smoke and maybe a hasty disposal of evidence after accidentally setting a fire in front of a library.

While I hooked up the hose to spray down the rest of the sawdust, he stood around chatting. "Sooo how's it going? Everyone good? Yeah, my gout is real bad. Too much beer! Haha. Yeah, and I ate some shrimp. Look, the leg is all purple. So anyway, you look good. Your smile always makes me think, yeah, that's a good woman. So I lost the place I was staying, but I missed it and so I went back, but there were some guys there and they made me leave. So I did what any true American would do - I went out and took a, fuckin, huge Vicodin. Whoo. Yeah. Haha, but no, you drink a lot of water and it just breaks that stuff right up in your system, so you can come down. Look at my leg though. Well good job with the fire! Bet you're glad I was here, looks like I have a future as a fire fighter, huh? See ya!"

A future as an arsonist, anyway.

Thanks for making my day more interesting, buddy.

Nine

 Last year in the single digits for this girl. 

This was the year her reading took off, despite the best efforts of the mandatory AR program at her school, which kneecaps budding readers by forcing them to read at an assigned level and take a test for every book instead of enjoying it. She’s tearing through the Warriors series and blowing AR out of the water. Good riddance.

This was also the year we received some scandalized notes from her teacher because, while normally a well-behaved student in class, she was caught poking a boy with a fork and then threatened to kick the lunch monitor who busted her. Fight the power, kid. But also stop that, because that is not okay.

She hates the sight of blood, the idea of blood, the color of blood, and the word blood (unless she's the one using it), going so far as to plan her entire future around the question “what pays a lot but does not involve any blood?” So far she has narrowed it down to “spa/bakery owner with employees to clean up blood” and “lawyer, but not for murderers”. She'd like to work with animals, but they are full of blood, and that is problematic.

She is smart and funny, affectionate and kind, but also she will shut herself into her room and FUME if you tell her to take out the recycling or pick up her damn toys. Tip: just follow her around saying bloooood until she gets mad and throws the things where they're supposed to be. 

We love her so much, even though she’s good at math.

Happy birthday, Zenny! 

Birthday girl stuffed with corned beef and roast lamb 

The outside of the cake looks terrible because she asked for the slightly squashed cake that Hagrid made for Harry Potter. The inside is three layers of white and dark chocolate mousse. I am not a fancy cake decorator (I misspelled “birthday” and blamed it on Hagrid) but I can bake a tasty cake, dang it.

Tea party lunch with macarons, Gruyère puffs, and cucumber sandwiches

suspicious goat content

The statewide mandates end on the 25th, and as soon as the governor made the announcement, every ding-dong in the area decided they needed to stomp up to the library and yell at me specifically because it’s not the 25th yet and they still have to wear masks. Folks, I didn’t invent the Gregorian calendar, take that shit up with Pope Gregory XIII.

Things have been a bit stressful; extra-aggressive patrons, shifting childcare logistics, home repairs we don’t have time for. And with Easter on the horizon, I’ve been thinking more about Zenny’s surgery (middle of May, 6 weeks of recovery) and about the risks that come with it. It scares me.

So here’s some good stuff:

The parking lot of my grocery store. Pretty fancy scenery for a place that sells boneless pig faces, huh?

‘There is no cat in the liquor cabinet’ is a dangerous game, Billy. 

We have a fire pit and marshmallows.

 

There are riding lessons.

And I caught these goats making a drug deal.

So today when angry tourists try to belly-push me out of the way and have tantrums about how public health is the same as totalitarianism (shout out to the cussing drunk lady in a sarong who threw herself onto the ground to cry about it), I'm going to put on my most patient librarian face and think about painting and campfires and goats instead of how much I’d like to poke them in the fucking eyeball to get them to back up out of my face.

Happy Saturday, everyone.

Tldr nothing happened

Edit: I want to add that this post was saved as a draft a few days ago and I just hit “publish” on it so it wasn’t sitting in my folder. I’ve been reading the news closely and I’m very moved by the Ukrainian resistance. This dress shit doesn’t matter at all, and I know it.

My mother raised me on Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, and - incongruously - the smooth elevator jazz of the Manhattan Transfer. In high school it gave my peers whiplash when my mix tapes would switch from Immigrant Song and Iron Man to Java Jive, and this jarring uncoolness contributed to the loss of at least one boyfriend. 

I LOVE COFFEE I LOVE TEA I LOVE THE JAVA JIVE AND IT LOVES ME

They were the rogue skittle in my bowl of ‘70s rock M&Ms. I haven’t listened to them in a long time, but I still break into falsetto when it’s time to embarrass my kids.

So when my mother texted me to say the Manhatten Transfer would be performing at a jazz club in Waikiki this weekend, I said heck yeah I'd go with her. Bought a dress and some high heeled shoes and everything.

And then, of course, the band got Covid, so the show is off. Took some selfies in the dang dress anyway. Did not fall off the piano bench trying to get a full shot in heels, but do not recommend.

Bought the dress in black so I could wear it again to family funerals, because that is the kind of fun-minded party-goer I am.

My kids said I looked like a real mom. My orthopedic boots demanded an apology.