Well, shit

Mjolnir has cancer. He’s only a year old,  he’s Gavin’s special guy - the tiny kitten he rescued from a roadside ditch next to the gruesome remains of a littermate. We’re going to do everything we can to save him. Gavin’s last special young cat, Astrid, died terribly of a blood clot. I can’t stand the thought of him losing another.

Finally reading a book I really connect with. Freezing cold, rural isolation, dangerous people in the darkness  - these are things I know about. I can feel this story in my bones. Pick up this one if you read Tolkien as a youth and are interested in winter survival stories.

Feeling sad and tense. I don’t really have anybody to talk to, and my notepad had to be put away. Spending my lunch breaks and early mornings in books right now, instead. It feels like a small existence. I’m grateful to have it, and worried about losing the security we’ve cultivated, but I’m lonely I guess. Should get outside and have a walk through the woods, maybe.

Roses and water

Finished the roses. Roses are okay. And it's a good thing I like painting dead ones, because they don't grow here, and the ones you can buy give up pretty quickly. I have a living stalk (stalk?) of a rose plant growing in the yard, but no idea how to coax it into making flowers. I have tried... well, almost nothing. But if I had, it would be dead, so I feel like I'm winning.

My drying corner is getting out of control. If I put them in the basement, the cockroaches lick them. And you can't get rid of the roaches because the basement opens up into the underside of the house, so you'd have to poison the entire outdoors to fix the problem. Or seal it off, which is beyond me. Last week I found rat dropping down there, and so I told off the cat for shirking his duties and left the studio door open (which, again, is kind of unnecessary, but I guess the cat is too lazy to crawl under the house to get into the studio), and now there are dead rats all over the yard, which I have to pick up every morning. The cucumbers and tomatoes were dug up by chickens, but we’ve got a bumper crop of dead rats. So that is going well.

Next on the goals checklist is a landscape. Decided to warm up to landscape painting by painting some water. Water is kind of like a landscape. I have definitely seen water in landscapes.

Kind of fun, and you don’t have to make it look like anything. No eyes to set too far apart, no perspective to get lopsided. Water is great, you just slosh it on wherever, nobody gives a shit. A+ painting subject.

Work went back to normal public hours, we lost half our staff, and now I'm on that chair for 8 hours a day. The chair has lost its novelty. I'm getting kind of attached to the day-glo vest, though.

yes, I've got that Patterson book for you

win/lose

Finally got a gold star on my license, through no skill or effort of my own! I don't know which DMV employee went through the declined applications and decided I deserved one, but I could kiss them - if it weren't considered attempted murder under present circumstances.

Still playing phone tag with kitty surgeons, all of whom seem to be on vacation unless we want to come as walk-ins and pay emergency fees. Getting aggravated.

Mjolnir hasn't noticed the hump yet and is happy snogging shoes like usual, so it doesn't seem like an emergency? I DON'T KNOW, that's why people make appointments!

Painted my kid again. I love their little faces so much. Gavin has been hiding his face under a beard, but I'll go ahead and paint him anyway. Nice try, kid.

Started on some roses that have been waiting for weeks to be painted. They are dead now. I kind of like painting dead flowers better, though.

Tried painting those bottom two petals after it got dark, and surprise, they don't match.

Lesson I will never learn.

Reading a book that is juuuuust interesting enough to keep me turning pages (who's going to find that dead body rotting in the woods?), while not having any likeable characters for me to root for (I don't care if they all end up dead bodies in the woods at this point). Listen up, authors of 'contemporary literature': your writing is not any more sophisticated if all the characters are assholes. People crack jokes all the time, especially when they are depressed or nervous. Even assholes. Figure this out. 

Baby birds and cat pie

It’s lost baby season again. One of the wild chickens freaked out when her eggs started moving and was trying to murder the babies when my mother rescued them. They finished hatching in a plastic carrier. One of them got pecked in the eye before help arrived. We will need to sew a very tiny eye patch.

Whoop

Between the rain and the neighborhood fireworks, the very dim bulbuls in our lychee tree dropped another fledgling. It spent all night in a cold pile of wet leaves before I found it this morning. It took a few hours of warming to convince the little guy he wasn’t dead. He’s not sure how to feel about that.

Before and after getting warmed up and eating some banana

Babies are tiring, but I’m glad about them.

It is pie day. Made an apple pie, and Zenny decorated it, and then she made a tiny peach pie with the leftover dough.

Walked to the store by my mother’s house to find a domestic beer and we got yelled at by a big half-naked man for not buying him a quesadilla just because he wasn’t Jesus. “Your nose is hanging out of your mask,” my mom told him. “YOU LET GOD WORRY ABOUT THAT.” “Yeah, okay. God can buy you that quesadilla, too.” 

Left with Guinness, guiltily arguing that supporting a local grocery chain was kind of like buying local beer. Did not have to swing the bag of beer at the quesadilla Jesus man as we walked back, because he was sitting at a bench eating a half gallon of ice cream and spitting the peanuts onto the ground. 

There is meat, there is corn, the trees are dropping fruit (and babies) and the weather is warm. Things are pretty ok.

writing, sentient ads, and bad news for the cats

I have a few recurring dreams. Most are bad (the narrow passage, dead animals in forgotten cages, the house with no wall), but one is nice, and I'm always sorry to wake up on those mornings. I had this dream again a few days ago, and felt sad getting up to make coffee. Got in the car, told the radio to play my feelings. It played this:

Someone call Paul Rudd right now

Well, thanks for that, radio. I'll just ask someone to punch me in the face next time.

This week I accidentally made allies with the taco truck guy. I had been sitting and spying on the truck from my little chair in the library doorway when a couple of drug addicts got into a fight in front of the truck and threw garbage everywhere, then ran off screaming into the bushes. The taco guy came out of the truck and seemed a bit nervous, trying to pick up trash and looking around to see if they were coming back, so I went across the street to check on him. I told him to come and get me if he ever needs help. Now he waves at me in the morning, and on Friday he sent one of our mutual patrons over to let us know that a scary-looking guy had been messing with the book drop after we closed. We appear to be looking out for one another now. I am going to have to buy a taco. This feud is going terribly.

Helping walk-ups is better than a lot of other job duties, and I enjoy the folks who send me on quests ("I need five historic mysteries that are kind of funny, I'll take whatever you choose!"), but I'm not really allowed to do anything between patrons, even though it would be a good way to pitch books on whittling or miniatures or urban sketching. After spending a week skimming the terrible paperbacks on the sale rack and naming all the birds that hang around the front walkway (my favorite is Blobert, the dove with no legs), I started carrying around a notepad and writing an outline for a book. Nobody minds if I'm writing on a pad of paper between checkouts. And I'm making progress. Except sometimes I only have a minute to scribble plot points or ideas in the margins, and then later they turn out to be not so helpful.

 ENERGY ZEPHYRS, gotcha

After the mayonnaise mug cake incident, I had a serious sit-down with my phone's microphone settings, and the number of creepy eavesdropping ads dropped. And then it redoubled its efforts. I spent a couple minutes drawing thumbnails of my hero's failures in battle, thinking I could paint 14th-century illustrations to go along with the story, and when I picked up my phone a few hours later, it offered me this:

my doodle on the left; my phone's ad on the right. I had not been looking up horses or toys.

It can read minds now. Fantastic. Into the ocean it goes.

Home

The cats have been malfunctioning. Po started peeing blood and is now on a diet of expensive food for kidney stones, and Mjolnir needs surgery for a tumor. Waiting on the quote from the kitty surgeon. Looks like I need to get my butt in gear with the online painting shop so I can pay for this thing without draining my savings. I'll never be able to run away and become a wood witch if I keep using the cabin money to chop off bits of my cats.

it's not very visible here, but the lump is on his left side, below the shoulder

Baked some kolaches to comfort the kids. These are easy and delicious, if you have cream cheese on hand. Which I do, because I bought an entire costco log of cream cheese and then only ended up needed 4 oz. of it for the Japanese cheesecake I made last weekend. Read the recipes first, folks.

The in-between minutes add up. Kurt Vonnegut wrote an entire book on scraps of paper, a paragraph at a time. There is still time for us!

Fun with minor concussions

In the age of pandemic, the hamster ball party rentals are doing a brisk business. To celebrate a 12th birthday, the middle schoolers crashed around in plastic bubbles, occasionally getting upended and kicking their feet in the air until someone came over and rescued them. Leif managed to make it through the battle arena before taking off the bubble, running to catch a football, and tripping face-first into the turf, concussing himself. He'll be joining a target-based school sport instead of a contact-based one until he learns to stop traveling across the ground on his nose.

Leif is the hamster second from right

My mother has lived another year, sticking it to the NICU doctors who told her parents to say goodbye to her as a 3lb preemie in 1959. It is a day for shrimps and cakes.

A homemade cake, even a bad one, is a sign that someone loves you. I am not a skilled cake decorator, but I can make a cake from scratch that tastes like someone loves you. This year my mother gets a devil's food cake with an elderflower glaze, chocolate buttercream, Italian buttercream piping, and chocolate covered raspberries on top. 

and it looks like a spider-eyed monster, but WHO CARES

I'm happy with it.

This week the library opened up for computer users, and they immediately began squeezing through the security gates and prying open the automatic doors before we could unlock them, smashing their faces in the crack while I told them to back up, put their masks on, and wait for me to finish the usage spiel. One hour! That includes bathroom breaks! No coughing!

HELLO LIBRARY I AM HERE FOR THE YOUTUBES

I have been herding people around, sanitizing workstations, and picking piles of books for people. Yesterday, as I ran by with a stack of comics, someone pulled up and yelled, "HEY, DO YOU WORK HERE?" I stopped and looked down at myself. 

No, I just dress like this OKAY?

It's been fine, people are happy to see us. I sat on my little chair during the slower moments and read the new Hunger Games book. It was good.


No hunger at home, though; the banana trees have finally decided they're ready. We've got three of these, and the lychees are almost ready. In 5 years, I still haven't figured out how to preserve lychees. We just let the neighbors rob us until they're gone. Should work on that.

Painting update: I don't have time to paint, and my model is still being disagreeable. By the time I get this thing blocked out, it'll have an adult head on a kitten's body. 

Maybe there's a prize category for "wtf happened with this one".

bananas

At the library, there are lots of people picking up books about racism and social justice, stopping to have a laugh at my day-glo traffic vest (this is good). Also lots of people getting in fights, screaming, and making me write incident reports (this is not so good - whoever  “Patricia” is, she should definitely dump these guys). The good weather is bringing everyone outside to stretch their legs/fists. Being stationed at the front door is much more interesting than being strapped to the print station all day, I’ll be sad when we open back up for computer use.

Painting

I gave up on having time to myself and just painted some bananas that were sitting on the table, in between making snacks and breaking up kid arguments.

spot my assistant

I don't like paintings of bananas. It seems like an arbitrary thing not to like, so I was hoping that spending time with them would fix my attitude. It did not. I am just not a fan of bananas in art. Add it to the list.

White women in white dresses looking out windows
Children in pastel-colored clothes at the seashore
Martini glasses
Sunflowers 
Dead birds
Masks
Dolls
BANANAS

Pretty fussy for someone with a raw porkchop hanging on their wall, I know.

How’s the pandemic?

Hawaii’s cases are ticking up again, slowly. Ross reopened, but their staff didn’t have enough time to summon the barge, which takes 6 weeks to arrive from California. There were apology notes taped to empty shelves.

I found a tablecloth anyway.


Kitten content

Drupiter (the kids accidentally named him "Droopy" and felt bad because that is a stupid name, so they upgraded it to sound like "Jupiter") has been trying to train Billy to be a proper cat, but he still rolls over and yells "HELP DROOPY IS BEING MEAN TO ME" whenever he's losing a match.

And then I come over and take pictures instead of helping

One of these two smelly babies is going to help me try to win $1,000 in art supplies. Trekell is having a pet portrait contest, and the entry fee is the purchase of the fancy wood panel to paint it on. A QUEST. My panel arrived today. So far most of my reference pictures look like this:

BILLY. I can't paint with these, people are going to think I've never seen a cat before.

There is still time to buy a chinchilla. 

Hey look, I'm on the youtubes

It took a few weeks, but my storytime videos are being added to the library system's youtube channel. Here you go - a fun story, my nonstop grimacing, and a peek at my socks. I'll add the other ones here as they're posted. Note: I did not choose this terrible clip art, I wasn't invited to be on the editing committee.

Oh no, I found the ones where I sing, ha. Here I make barnyard noises:

Here is the song that makes babies cry if I get too dramatic with sad mamma duck at the end:

librarianing, fake graduation, and a close call

Nobody needs to hear about my feelings right now. Brutality and racism are bad. If you're being asked to harm people, don't. Do what you can to help the people around you. As a librarian, I’m in a position to purchase relevant books and put them straight into people’s hands, and I’m doing that.

Curbside checkouts are going well. I've been stationed by the doors on a little wooden chair for 5 hours a day, staring out through the security gates at the taco truck across the street and watching one of the homeless guys try to make a harpoon gun out of a broken umbrella, sticks, and a chunk of metal with a hole in it. He hasn't figured it out yet. I've been thinking about books that might help him - except that I'm the closest thing to try it out on afterwards.

When it's slow I've been reading Season of Storms on my little chair. When it's busy I've been jogging around in a reflective vest throwing books into people's cars. It's an okay way to spend the day.

Housekeeping note: I’m re-adding some of my old entries again, slowly moving back through 2011 into 2010. Going through old memories without being able to yell warnings at yourself is like carving at your own chest with a melon baller. I don’t recommend it, as pastimes go.

This week, Leif ‘graduated’ from 6th grade. “Congratulations!” I said, “You’re still not qualified for anything.” We decorated the car and honked our way through his parade anyway. It was fun.

mask for photo-op with principal in the school driveway

After work the next day, I was almost killed by a drunk driver. Got home, walked into the house on shaky legs, and had nice lie-down on the floor.

Rescued another baby bird from the cat. It’s recovering - because I gave it to my mom to take care of. I've got this bird rehab thing figured out.

Red-vented Bulbul, from the same family that keeps dropping babies out of my lychee tree every spring

Been listening to this song in the car lately. Hadn't seen the video until just now. I like it.

Schrodinger’s plague

I’m trying to be a good employee and dutiful citizen, but dang, it’s depressing.

The library is a maze of quarantined boxes of books, and the phone rings all day with people I have to disappoint. "You're open!" "No!" Two weeks after reintegrating with coworkers, our staff PPE arrived - one pair of gardening gloves and two reflective vests. Very helpful.

It’s cool, I have a lineup of homemade masks. My coworker has a favorite mask that she won’t wash or change, and keeps taking off. It’s cool, it’s cool. Because it turns out I am also very bad at wearing a mask for 9 hours a day. It’s hard to go back to your normal, safe workplace with your normal, safe coworkers and remember to try to treat everything like it might kill you. Without meaning to,  I pull the mask down to breathe, sneeze into it, and forget to put it back on after answering the phone. Also, the mask does nothing to curtail my horrible face-touching habits. I rub my eyebrows in exasperation, sit through meetings with my forehead in my hands, nap with my face smashed flat on my non-disinfected desk because I'm low on oxygen/vitamin D/living essence and can't stay awake. It's ridiculous.

applying virus to face 

So it will surprise exactly nobody that I’ve spent the weekend like a wet sock on the couch, tired, headachey, feeling my lungs struggle with a painful pressure in my chest, wondering if I’ve been exposed or if I’m just having a reaction to breathing through masks my cat has been sitting on. Statewide, we’re down to 0-2 cases a day, but I wonder how much that has to do with assholes like me just not wanting to get a swab up the nose for vague symptoms. I don’t know. It’s Sunday on a holiday weekend, my doctor’s office is closed, and I don’t have a fever. It’s fine, probably.

In positive news, Billy Boy has learned how to be a proper kitten this week. He eats wet food and sleeps through the night. He’s the best. Except that I caught him peeing in the dining room and ran through the house with him held at arm’s length while he sprinkled like a tiny hose, catching Leif across the chest with the spray as I went screaming by. Had to wipe up a trail through the entire house. But that was my fault for forgetting how peeing babies work.

Also some renovation happened, because the kitchen faucet broke and wouldn’t shut off, and we decided to do the bathroom fixture while we were at it. 

I’ll get back to painting if I can stay awake long enough. Spending most of my down time watching Korean time-traveling detective shows with the kitten sleeping across my neck while the kids work on their tiktok choreography. Only feeling motivated to solve crimes with a tough-yet-wholesome partner who lives 30 years in the past, sorry paint.