Tick one off the yearly to-do list

In January I typed up a checklist of goals entitled "Take the thing you love and make it a nightmare". This list includes: publish another children's book (check ); paint 16 pieces to submit to a gallery (I had 8, and then mother-in-law took 3 of them); and enter a local art show. I immediately missed/ignored all the major local art show deadlines, and was going to sneakily roll that goal over to next year, but then the Friends of the Library decided to do a community art show and politely offered to include a few pieces of mine - maybe a bit nervously, only knowing that I had published a toilet book for babies. CHECK. My art is officially hanging in a local art show.

Me and my cheeks were in attendance

The reception was located on the library lawn, next to the portable toilets. The refreshments were hotly contended, but cookies prevailed.

TEAM LEMON BARS 4EVA. Take your veggie platter and STUFF IT, Betty. 

Drink and Draw

This week, the kids tried a fancy craft root beer by Maui Brewing Company, and the grownups split a can of beer favored by the winos who hang out in front of the Goodwill. I think I am going to have to seize the reigns on this endeavor before my liver tries to escape out my neck.

At least I stopped trying to crosshatch my way out of every misplaced pen stroke.

Kind of. Don't look too hard at that nose.

Sneaky Saturday Painting

When Sarah came to visit, I thought it would be cute to demonstrate the crazy fishpond irrigation system in our backyard, and cranked one of the many dangling faucets suspended by long pipes that hang everywhere. And it broke, because it's 60 years old. Today the man tried to cap it, and the pipe exploded in a spray of rust holes. 

So he dismantled the pipes and ran away, with a text saying "Maybe don't turn the water back on." Faaaantastic.  I came home to a beautifully empty house and ate beef jerky for dinner and painted.

Alexa, play something to cleanse the sex scene from my audio book from my brain.

ALEXA YOU'RE FIRED

Monday painting - ex-limes

A few weeks ago, someone at the library gave me a branch of kafir lime leaves. I was all set to paint them when my model was tragically murdered.

victim and suspect

Luckily, that is why I take back-up pictures, and I had already drawn it out, so I went ahead and started painting it anyway.

First step: get it covered with paint. Second step: fix it. Will work on it in the evenings.


In other news

* Someone dropped the porta-potty key down the toilet hole. Also the lock. And the cleaning guys stole our hand sanitizer. Some helpful person has been locking the stalls in the open position for an endless line of liquor store customers to use - will figure out who's doing it and shake my finger very sternly. So the portable toilet situation is starting to get some results.

* The man decided we needed to cut down a tree that had gotten too big and was breaking up the back wall, so he had me stand and hold the ladder while he chopped the top off and pushed it onto the roof of the garage. I put on a tiny child's bicycle helmet in case a tree trunk and a concussed man and maybe a collapsed garage might come crashing down onto my head. There was a broken saw blade, a horrible crack, a thunderous crash, and then a terrible moment when the trunk swung wildly as it went down and hit the edge of the building - but the roof and the ladder and our brainpans all survived. I went straight inside and had a Cocoweizen, which tasted a lot better spiked with adrenaline.

This is fine, I will just stand down here and see where it falls

* My favorite and best Canadian librarian came to my house. While we were standing around taking pictures of her fairy project in the banana tree, a streaking light made us turn around, and we watched a meteor burn across the sky and flare out. "That was a fucking fireball," I said intelligently. Sarah laughed, because this happens wherever she goes. She is very relaxed for someone who keeps getting space rocks lobbed at her. Next summer, Sarah. We will take out Lake George with a meteorite.

* Went rollerskating and was the only person not to bust my butt, owing to my A+ strategy of pottering around the perimeter very, very slowly and getting lapped by preschoolers with walkers. Preschoolers who ended up on their backs like flailing, screaming turtles. Ha. I win, babies.

Drink and Draw

Honolulu Beerworks Cocoweizen, the beer that answers the question nobody asked: does coconut belong in a Hefeweizen? The answer is no. No, it does not.

Did I drink it anyway? Yes. Yes, of course I did. 

Then I overworked another goddamn pen and ink drawing. Flowers have no business being cross-hatched. Who instituted this weekly event anyway? Drawing is stupid.

Alexa, play something that will make me want to jump off a bridge.

Next week I'm going to draw cats or something.

ACM

The porta-potties were all still standing after the weekend, and nobody spray-painted dicks across them. Disappointing.

Monday painting

This week I've been working on aluminum composite panels again. They're fantastic. Instead of flying to the mainland for a workshop this winter, I'll just spend all my money on squares of aluminum. They hold a brushstroke beautifully, the cockroaches won't eat them, and you can decapitate critics with them. "Why are the background colors so FLAT?"

Oh no, she's talking about chickens again

Blackbeard the Head-Ripping Rooster has been apprehended and relocated. The girls ain't give a damn, but I feel unreasonably guilty anyway. I wasn't involved in the string-and-box contraption, and hid in the kitchen when the wrestling match into the car took place, but still. He was just so handsome.

Dept of Good News: Chickadoo does not have a face-eating parasite! It turned into a case of regular old pox, and she's already getting over it. Probably thanks to all the cake I've been giving her as an apology for abducting her boyfriend. The coop sleeps easy once again.

Drink and draw

I am breaking a blog rule by posting after a drink, but OH WELL.

One of the reasons I went to Portland last fall was because there is a little gallery called Nucleus that was having an exhibition I wanted to go to. Nucleus has a space for artists on one side, and a little art shop on the other with a bar for local beers and ciders. Every Wednesday, they host a Drink and Draw event where they fill up the gallery with tables and people buy beer and draw on the tablecloths or coasters, and I missed it by one day. I have been jealous of that event ever since, and so I decided we should do it at home every week. The kids get fancy sodas, the grownups get local beers, and we listen to whatever music we shout out for Alexa until we're happy with our drawings.

This week was Waikiki Brewing Company's Skinny Jeans IPA. It was okay. I don't know why IPAs are the rage right now, but I will drink one, fine.

It went pretty well, even though Zenny knocked her root beer float over within 1 minute.

I did not eat my model this time, because it was a totally dead scorpion.

A bit heavy-handed with the pens, maybe, but I am going to get the hang of it eventually, if we keep this up every week.

 This thing is on a postcard, so if anyone wants it they should email me and I'll slap a stamp on it.

IN OTHER NEWS

* Went to dinner with a vacationing college friend and forgot to take a picture with him. Of course. But I had a beer in a giant tiki glass and we didn't get killed by traffic or the roving Waikiki arsonist, so it was a winning outing.


* The bathroom at work has been replaced with three porta-potties INDEFINITELY while a septic tank is installed. Some day. Probably. They're outside, sitting in the sun like blue poop ovens. The contractor told me to just let them know when the toilets are set on fire or knocked over. He said that usually when they're set on fire the guy who lit them doesn’t die inside them, but we should just call if that happens. And so "Portable Toilet Contractor" unexpectedly leaps to the top of my list of exciting second careers, and "dying in fire while trapped in a porta-potty" now tops the ways I definitely don't want to die but would not be surprised to see on my tombstone.

internet is not my veterinarian

Chicken people, wtf is this? I thought the pox might be going around again, but the little bump on chickadoo’s face suddenly became tuberous and developed a dimple in the middle. I’m afraid that if I touch it, a face-eating worm will crawl out. The internet is full of chicken horrors (foam can come out of their EYES?) but my keyword searches aren’t doing the job here, and Facebook just says “HURR TIME FOR SOUP LOL”.

Chickadoo doesn’t want to stay still for pictures so here’s a pissy chicken artist’s recreation.  


Ingrown eyelash? Tumor? Infection? Plague? Spider eggs? I’m opening up comments for anyone.

Oh you guys

This morning someone dumped a puppy by the library bookdrop, covered in fleas and open sores. 

I wrapped her up in my old cardigan, gave her a warm bath with dish soap, killed & picked about a thousand fleas, put ointment on her sores, and gave her snuggles until the Humane Society truck showed up.

Mike vetoed the puppy, just because we have cats and chickens and work all day.

I wanted this baby, ringworm and all.

But the animal cop had bacon treats and a fluffy blanket, so I know she'll be ok. I can lurk on the adoption website and get her back when she's healthy, if I work on the family a bit. Cute puppies get adopted easily, even if I can't make a persuasive argument.

Good luck, baby girl.

Hurricane season

This gif self-updates. Our banana tree is just about ready to harvest, so if the wind knocks it down again, HA. We win anyway. Finally. Unless it also knocks the lychee tree down onto the house.

This week was eaten by work, and I've started a new freelance project with New Zealand, so I'm going to be living in the void for the next few months. 

Here's a fruit I painted last week.

The kids want to plant my model so we can have dragonfruit all the time, but I have explained that it is difficult to cultivate dragonfruit because first you need to punch a hole in our dimension, and then you have to wait for it to crawl over your fence and eat your cats before it produces any fruit.

We will see.

It's official

I am "griping about my medication" years old. After suddenly puffing up like a bufo toad, I have  given up naproxen and salt and also food, just to cover my bases. Deal with it, shitty knee.

Body parts are the kind of problems where if you ignore them, they will eventually go away. I’ve got it  sorted.

Heading out for evening walk

Coming home

Dept of good news: everyone had gone snorkeling with dolphins when I got home from work, so I had an empty house and time to paint. I decided to paint another horcrux. This was a good idea.

Cursed object #2: the skinwalker knife. This is the very knife dropped under our bedroom window by the dark figure staring in at us for three nights, before shooting his brother in law, getting mired in the mud, and eventually taking his own head off with a shotgun. I leave that last bit out when I tell the story to kids.

It doesn't feel bad handling the knife. It doesn't give off creepy vibrations or a menacing aura - it has always been just a battered old knife. It feels like a thing that wasn't, a broken thread that led somewhere bad.

I have feelings about it, though.

Proof of life

Have been rummaging old boxes for physical evidence to satisfy the passport authority that I am, in fact, a citizen despite being foreign-born, and unearthed all kinds of artifacts. Among them, old photos, jammed between pages in no chronological order.

1991, the year I stopped dressing up for the school photographer

1986, the best school picture I ever took

spring, 1997

November 1996

If I can't get a passport, I can't get the gold star on my driver's license. If I can't get the gold star, I can't get on an airplane. If I can't get on an airplane, I am stuck on an island forever. Problematic. I'm not that good of a swimmer.