Sheila’s Broom

Note: I’ve added a link to my website on the sidebar. Prints are up if anyone wants one.

Edit: site was borked but should be working now

The last snow storm after St. Patrick’s Day is called Sheila’s Broom in these parts. Nobody really agrees on who Sheila is - St. Patrick’s wife, girlfriend, just some lady he was annoying while she was doing chores - but it’s agreed she flicked her broom at him, and she’s sweeping him (and the hungover men laying around after the holiday, depending on the telling) the fuck out the door.

This sweeping has lasted 3 storms so far this week, but people are adamant that it’s all the same broom, and spring will be here to stay once it’s finished. 

I went on my walks around the pond every day anyway. I’m not adversarial with winter.

Same spot, two days apart

How to get killed by a porch light

Over the weekend I took down the dangling broken plastic porch lights and installed a couple barn lights. I threw the breaker to the shed, which cut power to all the lights inside, stood on a chair, took the external fixture off, touched the new wires to the old wires, and just about blew myself off the chair. I made fire! I am a survivalist! It turns out the shed is powered by the house, and the porch light is hooked up to the line before it gets to the breaker box. I had to leave the damn things live and exposed while I raced to the hardware store for help. The guy at Canadian Tire showed me how to use a hot wire detector, I zoomed back, threw all the breakers in the house to find the right one, and finally got the damn thing installed without burning the shed down. Bonus: my hand suddenly stopped buzzing and shorting out, so maybe shock therapy is the way to go with carpal tunnel. I think I may have a future as a health influencer. Or a law suit defendant.

Cute

In the evenings, while watching Tom Holland Spider-man movies with the kid, I hand-stitched a piece of wood block print gauze ($4 on Etsy) into a pocket-rod valance for the kitchen ($3 curtain rod from Dollarama). I love it.

I don’t know where the ravens went, but suddenly the crows have taken over. They have started knocking on the glass door when they smell me cooking, and then they cuss me out for standing too close and watching them eat. I’ll wear them down.

SURRENDER BANANA BREAD

fank oo 

Between the melt and the new snow, my yard revealed something amazing that had been buried all winter: GIANT WITCH’S CAULDRON.

I’m curious to see if anything grows out of it this summer. If it’s all weeds, I’ll put some witchy flowers in there for next year. I have two apple trees working on buds right now, and I can’t wait to discover if I am actually a terrible gardener or just a terrible tropical gardener, now that I’m in the right climate for roses and tulips and peonies. Let’s go, Sheila.

The bounce back

Leif was accepted into university in Scotland! He texted me all afternoon, sharing pictures of the cheesecake he was baking to celebrate with his girlfriend and her family. It’s wonderful news, he’s been working toward this for a long time. He still has to pass his AP exam to lock it in, but that shouldn’t be a problem for him. He and his girl are pretty serious, but they’ll need to part ways in the fall as they head to different schools. It will be rough for them, but often the people you love in youth stay loved for life. Maybe they’ll find their way back onto the same path, even if they have to take the long way around.

With the birthday a success and the good news from the boy, I started feeling light in the foot again. The weather has been trying on all its outfits, switching from sunny to snowy to hurricane-windy. Every day I stubbornly zipped up my coat and went out for a walk, splashing through slush and letting the wind blow me around Salt Pond like a lawn chair. Yesterday the winds suddenly stopped, and the temperatures dropped from 13 degrees to -13 in a matter of hours, freezing the spring melt into impossible patterns. Ice grew up from the moss in fragile stalks like mushrooms, the river shallows froze into ripples, and sticks of crystals branched across puddles. I had my nose tucked into my coat collar and couldn’t feel the tops of my legs through my jeans, but I felt happy again.

My painting hand is recovering, now that the shoveling is done and I’ve been rubbing Tiger Balm* into it while drinking anti-inflammatory turmeric tea and popping NSAIDS. A few days ago I had gotten exasperated about my failure to find gig work and threatened to start selling foot pictures, so I drew a big sarcastic panel of classical-style foot studies and started painted them in the evenings. Hands and feet are really good practice, because they are hard. You’ll see artists go through all kinds of compositional contortions to avoid drawing them. By the time I started getting the hang of it, I was feeling good enough to start a real painting again. (And I can replace my nearly-empty tube of white paint now - thank you F. for stuffing a bill in my pocket and giving me an encouraging shove in the right direction.)

I saw the first flower buds of spring, and gathered pussy willows that broke off their stems. People complain about winter, but nature really works at break-neck speed. Blink and you’ll miss it. I’m so glad to have seasons again, it makes time feel real. And me, too.

* My mother always kept a little Tiger Balm in the medicine cabinet. One day, on the reservation, our neighbor’s uncle came knocking because he heard she had some. He explained that he had been riding in the rodeo the day before and hurt himself. “I need some Tiger Balm for my groan.” “Huh?” “You know,” he rubbed the insides of his thighs, “my groan.” She went to get the tiny jar and said he could keep the rest, and he waddled away gratefully. Ever since, we have always used Tiger Balm to relieve our groans. (HEY TIGER BALM I HAVE AN AD CAMPAIGN FOR YOU.)

Endurance

I warned myself I’d be hit by grief and question everything - quitting my career, dumping my life savings, and moving to another country in the middle of winter to work a job at poverty wages with no support system. It will get better, I told myself. After one year you will qualify for grants, receive assistance credits, and get a step movement. Until then you will hunker down like an animal in a storm and you will ENDURE IT. 

So I knew it was coming, but it still sucks.

On Friday I dropped Zenny off at a classmate’s birthday party, feeling a bit guilty that I couldn’t throw her one of her own but glad she was still getting a hit of celebration on the week of her birthday. She had a blast, dancing with her friends under black lights, covered in glow paint and stuffed with pizza. And I felt validated for my years of social awkwardness at parties, because every mother drove up in a line of cars, threw their kid out, and left. We all returned in a horde at 9pm, the doors of the Lions Club flew open, and the kids spilled out into the night and ran to their vehicles. Not a word was exchanged, everyone was punctual, and I realized that I have not been socially awkward all this time, I was just raised with Newfoundland party rules and had no idea how to navigate the “stay for a glass of wine, party ends whenever” beach moms on Maui.

On Saturday I ruined a painting and wiped it out, wincing about the cost of the paint I just wasted. I need to make something to sell or I can’t buy more, and my hand still isn’t working right. This copy-editing gig isn’t going to pay much, and my client is an older guy who likes to pay by check, so it will take 3 weeks to get here through international mail. I ran out of grocery money buying ingredients for Zenny’s birthday cake and favorite meal (Panda Express-style honey walnut shrimp, hell yes), so I swallowed my pride and onboarded for a remote job training language AI models, but didn’t get a gig because it’s high demand and I choked in the video interview. I looked for part-time local jobs, and only found a listing for a job straightening greeting cards, which didn’t pay enough to be worth the gas to get there (currently about $7/gallon and going up), let alone the last scraps of my pride. It feels like I can be more useful than straightening cards.

On Sunday I talked to my mother, and then took a call from Mike so I could talk to Leif, who likes to sit in on our video chats so he can answer texts from his girlfriend. Mike’s mother lost her partner of 25 years last week, so he had just gotten back from the funeral. Between him running into his most heinous affair partner, talking about how broke he is since I left, and comparing how much money his siblings take home with high-paying jobs and no mortgages (a lucky inheritance; Habitat for Humanity), all my insecurities and anger rose to the top. I got off with them, fumed for a few minutes while hand-stitching a curtain hem, and then got a call from my oldest and best friend. I have kind of been avoiding talking to him, because I don’t want to drive him away with how pathetic I am right now, but another friend reminded me to take the hands that reach out to me and let people decide that kind of thing for themselves, so we finally talked. And it was good to talk to him, but when I sat down to try to paint a bit afterwards, I started crying anyway.

Well, goddamn. Get your shit together, Braffet. You have a kid who is having a birthday this week, and I know how it feels to be managing a depressed single mother, so we will be having NONE OF THAT. I know I’ve been happier in general since breaking free, and that this feeling will pass. My ancestors would think I’m doing pretty good, with a house and electricity and hot showers. Cheer the fuck up.

When I feel like shit, I bake. I don’t have a mixer, so I kneaded my feelings out on a loaf of milk bread, then baked a birthday cake that is way too big for two people because I only have a 9-inch pan and a single layer cake is just too sad.

My slicing skills are matching my painting skills lately. At least it’s consistent.

I knew better than to even attempt to slice the layers thinner.

Chocolate cake from scratch, raspberries and whipped cream filling, chocolate silk frosting, and lucky chocolate coins for my St. Patrick’s Day girl.

My last baby is a teenager today. I got her a couple small gifts, wrapped up the presents from her dad and brothers, and her grandmothers sent her money. We will have shrimp and cake, say hi to everyone on FaceTime, and binge Project Runway. She’s been thriving, and everything is going to be great, I’ll figure this all out. It’s only been 3 months, that doesn’t really count as being a failure at life. This is just the part where I put my shoulder down and push through.

Salt Pond

After sitting through a work webinar on personal finances/credit counseling and having a minor panic attack about my bank account, I had the first pangs of homesickness - but they were for the mall, and the money to buy nice clothes and a good lunch. I ate my bowl of shredded wheat, put on my coat, and walked across the road to the trail around the not-a-lake; Salt Pond is a little ocean cove fed into by arteries of river water. 

I saw a squirrel, and a miniature fairy garden. A family of ducks sunbathed in the melting snow, and a seal climbed out of the ice to flop around and scare me into thinking a dog needed rescue. Passing hikers waved and said hi, happy with the 3 degree weather. “If the sun’s out, I’m out!” one of the ladies laughed, and I agreed that would be my motto as well.

For the next three days, I walked two miles around the pond on my lunch breaks, and started recognizing some of the happy dogs and walkers in puffer vests. The seal poked its head up to have a look around, the ducks swarmed up to the bridge optimistically, and the squirrel in the fairy garden posed for pictures. Then on Thursday the freezing rain blew in, glazing my car in ice like a donut and whipping my hair up into a mass because I didn’t tie it back. Throughout the afternoon, a few dudes I work with came in to chat and squint at my head. One of them asked if I did something different with my hair, it suits me. I picked up a pen afterwards and jotted a note… men… like… werewolves. 

Today it is warm enough to go outside in just a sweater (and, you know, pants), but gales of rain and hail keep rocking the building, so I’ve been going back and forth to the window, trying to gauge whether I can make a muddy speed-walk around the pond for half an hour in between cloudbursts. I’ve just eaten half a pound of leftover pasta, so it’s probably a good idea to at least try. I can shake off like a wet dog if my coworkers come around to see what my hair is up to later on.

I’m happy. I love the animals and the trees and the smell of the air. The Pearlridge mall is not going to lure me back into a bear trap. 

Some pictures from a walk down to the beach in front of my house over the weekend:

Learning is hard

I took down my thoughts on love because events transpired over the weekend that refreshed my cynicism like a cup of Waffle House coffee. 

The song can stay, though.

Right after declaring sleep delicious, I stood on the chairs in the studio to change the lights and then washed the upholstery with a salt solution to get the old stains out - using a wet cloth, and bare hands - and I poisoned myself with nicotine AGAIN.

Who needs sleep anyway? The clocks jumped forward an hour and it was perfectly fine getting up half an hour early and roaming the house at 4:30am. There is a fluffy white cat that visits the porch at that hour. There are no strays in this climate, so it is probably my neighbor’s cat - and I would definitely not try to steal my neighbor’s cat. Definitely not, I agreed to myself, putting a handful of the ravens’ cat kibble out for it.

My cousin gave me detailed instructions for fixing the dangling bare lightbulb over the urinal that is wired in through two walls, so I am learning how to install Romex connectors this week. Then, while dragging branches from a fallen tree into a pile in the yard, I found a fancy pillar lantern that is cracked in two and hanging over the fence. It still has lightbulbs in it, and I have no idea which switch is even supposed to operate it, so I guess I’m getting a voltage meter, too. All of this, and still no beard. The injustice.

I have been knitting doilies, for Reasons. One of them got out of control and I had to switch colors, because all I have is a pile of tiny dollar store skeins, and I hate the muddy rainbow effect on it but it was too much work to rip out, so I am stuck with it. Maybe I can soak it and leave it outside to dry, so it freezes into a deadly circular saw of ice to frisbee at the neighbors when they come to find their cat. 

Tomorrow is pay day, finally. The girl turns 13 next week, and I’ll be able to pick up baking chocolate and cake pans for her birthday. St Patrick’s Day is an observed holiday over here, so she is feeling pretty fancy and important. I’m going to try to make it a good one for her.

And I still don’t have a beard

I would look good with a beard. The older I get, the more I look like Benjamin Franklin. I am the “after” picture of a sad man who has shaved his beard off after 20 years and discovered his own jawline. My father can’t grow much of a beard, so I probably would have just looked like a patchy, hungover Benjamin Franklin anyway, but I still think it isn’t fair that I don’t get the chance to try. Well, hope springs eternal.

The weekend was full of learning and discovery, mostly in a way that cost me money and fucked up my carpal tunnel syndrome.

I learned how to replace a broken toilet button with a toilet handle, which led to me discovering that the flap doesn’t seal. In replacing the flap, I discovered that toilet floats can go bad. While trying to replace the toilet float, I discovered a wine cork shoved between the refill device and the wall of the tank. When I discovered the cost of replacing the entire refill/flap/float apparatus, I decided to just leave the cork where it was until payday.

All the door locks arrived in the mail, and I learned why you shouldn’t take off an old door knob, slide in the new latch bolt, and then close the door to see if it locks before you actually have the handles installed. 

I say “learned”, but I did it three doors in a row.

On the last door (the studio door, OF COURSE), I discovered that Himself decided to shove a doorknob into a hole that wasn’t lined up properly and then forced it into place at an angle and stripped the screw. Then I learned how much screw extractor drill bits cost. And how to fuck up a screw so badly with extractor bits (despite dutifully following demos on YouTube) that you finally just drill the head off it completely, yank off the doorknob cover, and finish unscrewing the damn thing with pliers. I learned that artful high-volume profanity is a byproduct of screw extraction, but not beard growth.

The house is secure, and the doors look nice. I even programmed a fingerprint lock and only got myself shut outside without a coat on twice. 

Also this weekend: replaced the window and door gaskets in the wood stove, assembled two bed frames, and put together two dressers. The house is looking more like a home, and I am proud of myself, even though I can’t feel my right hand, my armpit and elbow are buzzing in a way I swear I can hear, and my fingers look like I fed them to a beaver. You know how pliers have a sharp wire-cutter in the crotch of their handle? You can actually use those to pinch part of your index finger off if you try to use the pliers as a wrench and lose your grip while pulling on them. Also, box cutters don’t make good chisels. Look, I am broke, OKAY? This is why pirates have peg legs instead of orthopedic surgery, you just do the best with what you’ve got. I have plenty of fingers left. And anyway, I’m done installing doorknobs. All I have to do now is learn to cut a 2x4 to fix the studio door frame. If people can escape prison with a spoon, I can cut a piece of wood with whatever is in the garden shed.

I figured out how to enable photos again. 

DIY home biopsy skills

The ravens have figured out how to shell peanuts, and they cuss if I’m late putting them out.

(ravens = big guys with fat beaks, wedged-v tails, and smoker’s voices, crows = dainty guys with sleek beaks, rounded tails, and radio-announcer voices who loiter around until the ravens leave)

Ocean vanished into the snow

Oh yeah, before nearly sliding backwards off a cliff, we rescued a duck. 

He went back home after his legs thawed out.

Starting to look like a bedroom in here!

I am taking a break from home repairs/mishaps and just resting my hand for the rest of the week so I can paint again. Knitting seems to be ok, since it’s low-impact (also typing, evidently), so I frogged the bear-yoke sweater I was mangling and started over with something more classic. 

Aftonsol (or on Ravelry)

Maybe the beard will come with it.

How to get killed on a mountainside cliff for a $20 used table

 If you need adventure in your life, get yourself onto your local Facebook Marketplace group.

This morning I had twenty dollars in my wallet, and I was on a mission to stuff a dining table and four chairs into my hatchback before it was time to be at work. The lady selling the dining set gave me her address, adding “steep turn to get into the driveway, down by the water, red house.”

I overshot the driveway and had to turn around. My map app pinpointed a steeply-turned driveway, and I could see a big red house at the bottom of the hill. The driveway was covered in snow, with no sign that anyone had been outside to shovel in the two days since the storm. I hesitated at the top of the hill, because I was pretty sure it was a bad idea to go down a steep hill over three inches of snow, but a) there was no room to turn around where I was, b) I didn’t trust the car to have traction to back up on the slope, and c) there was a truck with a plow parked in front of the house. Well shit, they live here, they wouldn’t have all their vehicles parked down there if they couldn’t get them out, said my first thoughts. Especially with a cliff going straight down to the ocean at the end of the driveway, said my second thoughts. Which is why they are spending the winter somewhere else and it’s your stupid ass heading down the hill to your death, said my third thoughts.

I slowly crawled to the bottom, backed up, and parked next to the truck. “I think I found you,” I texted the table lady, “Red house with a plow parked out front?”

“No, that’s my neighbor, I’m one driveway over.”

My first thoughts began cursing, my second thoughts started calculating angles and velocity and snow density, and my third thoughts composed a funny epitaph for my headstone. I aimed for my own tracks, because at least those parts were compressed, but only made it about 10 feet up the hill before my wheels spun and I began sliding backwards. Managed to stop, pulled the hand brake, got out, and had a look at things. It was not good. Gave it one more shot, and this time started sliding sideways towards the gulch. ABORT. I cranked the hand brake again, got out, floundered through too-deep snow banks to the front door of the big house, knocked on the window, and looked around at the porch. Gardening things. A bag of frozen soil. No shovel, no salt, no signs that anyone had been home all winter. FUCK.

The table woman walked over from her house with a plastic shovel. “Um, I have to go to work,” she said. “You okay, you got this? You can leave the shovel in my driveway.” Okay SURE.

I shoveled that 30-degree incline for almost an hour, down to the ice underneath. I chopped at it with the plastic shovel and scraped gravel over it, hoping the weak sun would melt it enough for me to break it up, then got overheated in my parka and finally stopped to call my coworker at the college. Do we have a plow at work? No. Do we have salt? Also no. She gave me the phone number for the local rescue-plow guy, but he was out of town helping the power company access some downed lines. I was standing there at the top of the driveway, imagining breaking into the house and surviving the winter on canned goods (or, you know, walking the mile back to campus), when a snow plow suddenly pulled into the top of the driveway to clear the area around the garbage bins. I sasquatched up through the snow, waving the shovel, and he stopped. My hair was in full werewolf mode, and my face was sweaty and red, “Hi! I did something really stupid and I need help!” He looked like he was trying not to laugh at me as I explained the situation, and then told me to stand aside.

VOOM. He plowed on down the driveway, to the top of the steep hill. I ran and shoveled the frill of plowed snow away from the bit I had cleared, and showed him the ice. He looked at it, looked at my car, looked at the cliff, and said, “Yep, you’re gonna need momentum. Gotta back up all the way to the edge and then go full throttle.” He saw my face. “Want me to do it?” I really did. 

He slowly backed the car up to the cliff, and I wondered if I maybe should have taken my purse out before it took a plunge into the ocean, but then he stopped, aimed, and accelerated. The car fishtailed briefly, but he got it under control, hit the gravel, sailed over the icy patch, and growled all the way up the freshly plowed driveway to the main road. I ran behind, cheering. I told him he was amazing, and offered to give him the twenty dollars I brought for the table, but he waved me off. “No trouble, darlin’. There’s more snow coming tomorrow, mind.” “I will be staying safe at home and not chasing tables down strange driveways,” I promised.

Safely back on the road, I returned the shovel to the driveway next door (100 feet away, damn your eyes, Apple Maps), and finally made it to work, an hour and a half late. I broke down laughing at the front desk at the look on my coworker’s face when she caught sight of me. My cardiovascular system is part clown, I go completely red except for bloodless white circles around my eyes and mouth. It’s the main reason I was on the swim team instead of the soccer team in high school - face in the water, goggles on. It was bad enough being one of the only white kids on the team; being the only translucent one was just asking for it.

And so I did not get a table, but I did get a lesson that will maybe save my butt some day: keep a shovel and a bag of salt in the car, and stay the fuck off of unplowed hillsides, stupid.

Money is imaginary and stress makes you bald

My hair is growing back. I've got a little lunatic fringe when I push my hair back, and it's gone bushy and wild again. It's in flyaways around my ears, and sticking out around my neck when I tie my hair up. I look like a werewolf, but it is better than when it was coming out in handfuls in the shower a couple months ago; when I looked in the mirror at my limp thin hair, I always heard Amy from Little Women say, Oh, Jo, your one beauty. Amy was a bitch.

I don't know how I managed not to hit myself in the face with a hammer or get a nail through my leg while I was prying up baseboards in the studio, but I still have a chance to get a fresh tetanus shot when I crack them all into garbage-bag-sized pieces this week, since there is no bulky-item pickup this month and I'm not burning wood covered with boat paint and cigarette tar. My career as an electrical engineer screeched to a halt when I came up against a situation that was beyond my 2-light-fixture skill set: one of the lights in the studio is just an empty screw-in socket that had been partially dislodged from the ceiling; I turned off the breaker and switch, unscrewed the socket fixture, and found two stiff black wires, two stiff white wires, and a weird taped bundle of filthy wires of indeterminate color, with no visible grounding wire attached to anything. I began to suspect there was no light bulb screwed into it because Himself knew it would catch on fire, probably after he shocked himself and left it unfastened to the ceiling. I looked it up on YouTube and found a video of an electrician helpfully examining the same kind of setup I was looking at - and then he sighed deeply and explained that he'd have to remove the entire casing from the ceiling and rewire the whole thing. I am not going to be doing any of that without having a second adult present who is strong enough to kick me off the stool when I become the accidental grounding wire. It is just going to have to dangle from the ceiling until I talk to the electrical engineering instructor at my school. Maybe he can send some students over to get some experience with ancient electrical death traps for extra credit.

The man and my mother sent money for Valentine's Day, and I was able to order a cheap couch and a toaster oven (a money saver, not having to heat the whole oven for two biscuits). I'm down to my last hundred dollars in the world, with a week to go until payday. Plus 9 dollars in coins in my purse if we need milk or something. I'm trying to get some paintings ready to upload to a print-on-demand art site to try to generate some extra money, but I have to say that even broke, I am so goddamn happy. I am an actual librarian instead of a public toilet attendant. I have spent the last few days researching obscure scientific journal articles from the 70's-90's about ice-structure physics, printing them out and binding them into professional little booklets with neatly typed labels on the covers for one of our instructors. The rest of the time, I fix spine labels, re-cover books, help students find full-text articles, and compile acquisition lists. Today we had free pancakes and bacon for Pancake Day. Nobody has yelled at me, called me a racial slur, made me clean up blood, gone on homophobic rants about picture books, or asked me to check if someone is dead in two months. And look! I have hair again! 

Zenny chose the photo

Oh shit, it's letting me post photos again! Picture dump while it still works! 

 You could say she has an aesthetic 

View from the loft at sunset

 

What the fuck is that molding, I ask you. Don't tell me it's antique and valuable, because I already ruined it. I installed that track light in the corner! Criminal light socket not pictured; it's directly over my head. Got the ceiling and upper walls painted, working my way down. I'm not a big fan of the grey but it was what was cheap and pre-mixed, I can paint over it later, it's better than tobacco walls. Behind that door is a urinal to nowhere. They just peed into it and it went behind the shed. Maybe I can install some plumbing in the future and make it a real bathroom.

 

That's it for the kid's bedroom decor so far

 

Used desk is the dining table for now, chairs from the shed, giant bird feeder in background

 

Soon to be prints

 

 

More view from the loft

 

Blue pot of victory 

Hammer and drill took care of this shit

Valentine's day cookies

Zenny knitting in the thrifted chair. I took down the striped curtains that came with the house after this photo because I irrationally hated them.

 

We're getting there. 

How to get murdered by a guy selling a couch on the internet

It took 4 days for the nicotine poisoning to wear off. I feel less guilty about buying a big clawed hammer to violently pry the shelves and molding off the walls. I don’t know what kind of leftover refuse they used for baseboards, but it is cut out in u-shapes that collect every bit of soot and dirt and dead bugs in the room, impossible to clean. I could bang 2x4s on there and that would be better.

The nesting instinct has a grip on my neck, I can’t shake it, even with my tiny bank account. I scraped out some cash and went questing for Facebook Marketplace used goods. I met a pregnant woman for a $15 Victorian tufted chair. I met a woman doing renovation and hauled away a beautiful $30 desk. I squinted my eyes at messages from a guy who was pressing to meet up to take money for a couch set, sight-unseen. Hmm. “If I disappear this afternoon, Devin did it,” I texted family, and after work I drove down past Smuggler’s Cove to meet the couch guy in Burin.

I have listened to too many murder podcasts to be murdered by a guy with a couch, I told myself as I pulled up behind a car in an empty gravel lot. 

A rangy young man in a plaid flannel shirt got out of the car. “You want to follow me to my workshop? I’ve got them stored down there,” he said. He was cute, in a high-school-weed-dealer kind of way, with blue eyes, a shaggy mullet, and a wispy youth’s mustache.

I could take him in a fight, I told myself as I followed him to a second location.

We walked down to the water, where three rotting wood planks made a bridge from the shore to an old garage on a pier. “Just in here, mind the soft spots in the wood,” he said, walking gingerly across the bridge, the boards bending under him. 

I could survive hypothermia if I fall into the ocean with a couch on top of me, I told myself as I followed him across the planks and into the structure.

It was immediately apparent why he was hoping to do the transaction before I saw the couch set. The chair was torn and mildewed, the couch was filthy and damp, and the ottoman had a fatal oil stain which he had tried to wipe off with a wet rag. He offered to knock off another $20, looking hopeful. I considered the furniture. The couch could be saved with cleaning and a cover, but the other two were a loss. He seemed really keen to make a sale, so I shrugged and said, “How about we see if it even fits in the car?” We each took an end, he pivoted so I wouldn’t have to walk backwards across the planks, and we hauled the couch with little creeping caterpillar steps across the bridge and up to the car. Best efforts couldn’t get that thing into my Subaru, thank god.

“Well, it was a good try, but it’s not meant to be,” I told him, and we carried the couch back to the garage. “It was worth it just for the drive down here, though, it’s so beautiful.” It really is. I had veered off the road a few times, struck with awe as I rounded curves and saw the view of the bay, with its islands, craggy snow-covered mountains, and ducks flying over the water while the light turned gold and pink. I have lived in many rural places and driven through nearly every state in the US, along with half of Scotland and Canada, and the drive to Burin is right up there with the road to Hana and the mesas in Northern Arizona. Wild beauty, terrible poverty.

“Ah yes, I’m blessed to be born here,” he said, smiling and turning his blue eyes up to their highest wattage. I might have given him some money anyway, if it had been in smaller bills. There’s a line in one of the Sookie Stackhouse books that has always stuck with me: Folks here are the same as folks anywhere; some are poor and proud and good, and some are poor and mean and worthless. Maybe I can hire the boy for a painting some time. Poor and proud and good.

In Herself’s efforts to renovate the house for selling, I can guess she let Himself buy some clearance light fixtures from Canadian Tire, and that is why the walls are tastefully painted and an ugly silver three-headed track light ended up on my bedroom ceiling. It’s not bad for the studio, though, so when school was canceled for snow on Thursday I shoveled our way to the car and we spent the morning at the house, learning to install a ceiling light. I have seen Mike electrocute himself enough times to know what not to do, and managed to get the fixture switched out on the first try. Zenny and I jumped down from our chairs, flipped the breaker back on, turned on the light, and crowed about our electrical engineering skills. 

“And people think that’s a man’s job!” she said.

“If anyone says that to you, you tell them that if they’re using their penis to install a light, they’re doing it wrong,” I told her.

Now I want to do every light in the house.

Our beds should arrive this week, and some silverware. I’m itching to take the hammer to the studio and do some painting this weekend, with promises to christen the oven with cookies for Valentine’s Day. I finished a couple paintings in the evenings last month, and now that they’re dry I’m going to prepare to upload to a print-on-demand art site, so I can hopefully sell a few prints to help pay for things. If anyone is in the market for Dutch-style floral paintings with Tim Horton’s donuts and Mary Brown’s chicken sandwiches, they are going to be in luck.

Kidnapped by model ship enthusiasts

Weirdly, the threat to shut down made the bots stop. If that’s someone I know out there, stop being weird and just email me (except you, Sam, get off my blog). My stats don’t show who’s who since vpns became standard on everyone’s devices, they just show unique vs returning visits and country code. Calm down with the shuffling vpns, it logs dozens of separate entries instead of just one and it only stands out more.

The latest word on Robert is that he didn’t have a bullet wound. The gunman shot the engine, and Rob’s last act was to maneuver the falling helicopter away from homes. He and Tish are Mormon, and believe avidly in an afterlife, so their family is finding comfort that he’s back with loved ones. I’ve been unconscious too many times to believe in consciousness after death - but then, we were all dead before we were born, and we got better. It could happen again, why not?

 

New place, new crew, new injuries

On Friday I ran into the loft, pushed Zenny into the car while she was struggling into her coat, and we peeled up to the lawyer’s office to get the keys to the house. I found two heavy old wood chairs and a flimsy card table in the shed, and carried them into the dining room. We ate Subway sandwiches, looking at the ocean and crows while I fought with a chatbot on my phone, trying to set up power service and home insurance. The house is empty, but it’s ours, and we were so excited to open all the cupboards and find the small items the sellers didn’t take with them. A dehumidifier. Two 5lb dumbbells. Adult diapers. A cat toy with treats. Two old tea cups with “Himself” and “Herself” on them in Irish calligraphy with shamrocks. Clues about a life lived in these walls.

On Saturday morning, I picked up armloads of cleaning supplies and paint rollers at Dollarama before stopping at the hardware store for floor paint. When the helpful man in a vest asked , “Looking for something in particular, or just want to be left alone?” I showed him the video of the studio floor. “Ah, you only have one choice for that, here you go, don’t get it too dark or you’ll see every footstep. That place looks familiar, where did you just move to? Ah, well you’re my neighbor! I owns the store here. Here’s a picture of my house, just up the road from you. Aw, yes, there’s my horses. And there’s my goat. Now, I’m also on the city council, and you says you’re a painter? Lots of artists here, you’ll be in good company, beautiful place to paint. Now, the council has been looking for someone to do art classes with the kids at the Model Ship Museum, try to get a bit of revenue going, is that something you might be interested in? My buddy Jim helps us run the museum, he’s a painter, too. Hey phone, call Jim. ‘Jim! I have a young lady here, just moved into town, she’s an artist, we might could get her to do some art classes with the kiddies. You gots the keys? I’ll send her over.”

I paid for the paint and the bottle of mineral spirits he recommended, feeling that it was money well spent, and drove across the road to the museum. The museum is housed in an old Dollar store, and Jim was there unlocking the doors when I walked up. He shook my hand, opened the sliding door, and turned on the lights as I stepped inside. It was huge, filled with historic artifacts, intricate model ships from all through the past century, and original art on the walls. There was a large space for classes, with a taxidermied Newfoundland dog. “He’s popular with the kids,” he said, “especially the little ones who still sees it as a doll, but myself, I don’t really go in for the taxidermy. I wouldn’t be able to do that to my dog. Maybe my nan - prop her in the corner, bring her out for holidays - but ah, not a dog.”

We walked through for about an hour, talking about art and boats and model making and Our Flag Means Death. When we made our way back to the front door I wrote down my contact information on a post-it note, for planning summer art classes. He took it and said he’d love to get the other artists together and go out to paint, once the weather warms up, and he’d introduce me to them. The other artists are a group of about five old sailors - one “very old but tells a good story” - who get together to paint, talk, and drink. Yes please, I want to be in a crew of drunk painting sailors. I got back into my car feeling like Dirk Gently. I am a leaf on the stream of creation.

At our new place, I dumped all the painting and cleaning supplies in the studio and picked up the shovel to dig out the house. Almost put it down again when I realized I wasn’t wearing my smart watch. What is even the point of exercising if you don’t get credit for it? It took me two hours, but I cleared off the patio, leaving a nice neck-breaking sheet of ice where the snow had been, and put “giant sack of road salt” on my shopping list. My list is out of control. We don’t even own forks, let alone beds and furniture, and I have to change all the locks before I’ll feel safe sleeping the night, even if I do have friendly neighbors and a murder of crows who guard the house. The crows show up every afternoon at 4:30 and watch the back door, which is another clue about the people who lived here. Zenny asked to buy a bag of peanuts, and we dragged out the big heavy bird feeder we found in the garden shed. 

We went back to the loft at supper time, ordered cheap beds and pricey locks (you don’t skimp on door hardware, get the good ones the first time), and talked to family for a bit. I slept like a corpse that night, and woke up after 7am on Sunday, feeling not-unpleasantly like I had been beaten by a bag of rocks. Bought road salt, and ceiling paint, and food for my kid (who told her she could eat while I’m hemorrhaging money?), and drove back to the new house.

I am not spending any more money until payday, I told myself. I lied. It took me two hours of cleaning and scraping and cutting myself on splinters in the studio before my spray cleaner was turning to ice on the walls and my butt was frozen. We took a sandwich break (Zenny crawled out of her closet, where she had been reading on the floor in a nest of old sheets she found in a cupboard) and we drove back to Walmart for a space heater. Once I could feel my fingers again, I unscrewed all the ugly boob light fixtures, wiped yellow tobacco tar off the entire studio ceiling, and broke my box cutter trying to chip paint off the screws holding all the cheap old shelves on the wall. More clues: while Herself was feeding crows and playing with the cat, Himself was smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and dropping beer caps down the sink with the b'ys in the shed. Instead of cleaning, he just painted over everything every ten years or so. I could trace a path of where the men stood; someone liked to stand by the window, and two liked to sit in chairs next to the wood stove, because the tar was so thick it was dripping like resin from the walls and ceiling. Their lungs must have been made of amber.

By evening, the ceiling was painted and my arms were aching. We drove back to the loft for sausages and apples in the slow cooker, and I expected to drop like a log into bed again, but I had fitful dreams and woke up at 3am. My head was swimmy all day, and at work I wondered if I was overtired or having a stroke. It's only just occurring to me right now that I might have absorbed a few cigarettes' worth of nicotine throughout the course of the day. Calming? CALMING? I feel like I ate a caffeinated weed gummy, but without any of the fun stuff. Hoping for sleep tonight, how long does this shit stay in your system?

 In case I wasn't done draining my bank account (tomorrow is payday), I stopped at the insurance office and my favorite car insurance lady hooked me up with affordable homeowner's insurance. I'm totting up all the bills in my head, and thinking I just might be able to afford internet, too, if I stop buying coffee creamer and fresh meat. You can do a lot with a potato, you know.

 

 We'll have mattresses to throw on the floor and locks for the doors in 11 days.