I'm Cleopatra!

This has been my birthday weekend.  
In fact, today is actually my birthday. 

If you've been paying attention,  you know my birthdays are kind of hit or miss.  You can read about some of them here. 

Today is family time and dinner with a possible pumpkin pie.  

Yesterday wound up more exciting than I thought it was going to be.  

My friend and I had been trying and failing to see this particular exhibit at one of the bazillion museums around where we live.  

An Egyptian exhibit, I was assuming a cover price meant the museum would be... bigger.  It was still a nice place.  
...And I still prefer the giant one I volunteered with for a while.  It's free and there is a carousel.

But this one was neat and a bunch of friends joined! 

...I was trying to take a picture of the Christian Science window because I was entertained by the knowledge that they can apparently create zombies by waking the dead.  

Instead, I got a nice shot of bird shit.  This poor man's car was attacked by birds.  Some of the poop is speckled with blood.  Obviously a dying bird. 

Hey, maybe they brought the bird back and it's a zombie, shitting bird?  

I took notes throughout the visit via sketchbook, so I'm going to post them here and do my best to decipher them for you.

I love these.  The imagery, the meaning, the use even when they are "dummy" jars...  

I told my knight that when I die, I want this to occur.  
He misheard and seemed to assume I was going to kill him sometime soon and steal his organs.  

Next up was a mummified dog:

I wondered if it had been left to die before mummification, or if the dog was killed just to be buried with the master.  

Because my brain had already concocted a story involving a mummy coming back via curse and just wanting to find a better replacement limb for an old fake one, I added that perhaps he was also looking to raise his dog from the dead.  

...
I want this table.  
It looks better than I drew it (which goes for everything, really) but it's awesome and I shall make a replica and it shall be mine.  ...Yes.

My knight and I wandered into a little room with a television just as lights went on beyond a glass wall.  I felt as though we were seeing what was meant to be unseen, as it seemed to be a window into the storage area of the museum.  

...Just...  Walls and shelves of chairs, couches and pianos, as far as the eye can see. 

Eventually we wandered to other areas of the museum.  

They aren't even sure who made it. 
...
Chickens. 


*ahem* 

Well done marble sculptures are amazing with how an artist can capture fabric, hair, and even flesh in ways that aren't even easy enough to paint.  

I was particularly intrigued by a few set into little alcoves in the walls going up the stairs.  

Of course, every now and then, you catch something that isn't quite right.  

For example, if you look at certain pieces by Michelangelo, you'll start to see that he knew how to capture incredible amounts of detail, and he understood the male form to a degree which still astounds, but he actually wasn't so great at painting the ladies.  

Part of this is because of the times, and part is just that they seem to be dudes with effeminate faces and little boobies tacked on in ways that just don't happen in human lady bodies.  

Even female body builders don't look like whatever the Hell he was doing. 

In this image by Nehemiah Partridge in 1721, we see that either he ran out of room having planned the composition poorly, or he forgot around the middle that he was painting a three year old girl.
Her face is haggard and her arms are incredibly long.  
...And her body is... wrong.  Just wrong.  



I mean, maybe she was a three year old who looked like an adult and had been cut off at the knees and forced to wear shoes on her stubs?  Maybe?  

Or perhaps the poor girl was somewhat orangutang in shape?

Actually, one of the first paintings we came across involved a double rainbow:  

  
I felt the need to point it out.  

Later on, my companions happened upon a sort of hidden image within an image.  

You see, from far away, it was a highly detailed landscape.  

On closer inspection, there are two men discussing something on the road. 

...Then you notice their dogs.  

Maybe the dogs were just poorly placed, but holy crap.

Some of the modern art was neat.  
The modern stuff tends to be hit or miss for me, as a lot of things are items I would consider an intelligent practice or for fun, not so much something to hang in a museum for others to contemplate.

One of my favorites looked like an ocean from far away, and when close up...  

As you can tell, even right up to it, I had trouble figuring out what the white lines were.  At first, I thought they were white paint strokes in little ribbons, but they were too uniform, so I thought perhaps it was actually string... 
Nope.  Fucking claw marks, man.  Gouged paint in this thing.  Really neat effect.  

The other one I liked a lot was a wall thing involving birds and guns.  

Yep. 

We went to the gift shop (of course) where Rob and I found a little scarab to put in our collection of stuff from things we've done together.  

The plan is to look through said box on our anniversary.  
That'll be fun to figure out what the Hell some of that crap is from.  
Not everything is labeled.  

Then, from the suggestion of a friend, we went to an arcade/bar/food place.  
...Restaurant.  The word is restaurant.  

Said friend handed me a card and a few tickets and I went to town on the skeeball machine.  (Sometimes "Ski-ball" or other names.  Depends where you go.)  

I was rocking it until I was being watched.  BUT tickets were achieved.  Of course they were still only enough for random crap...  

So we got some glorious random crap.  

Ol' Benjamin there is on a pack of cards.  We didn't win money.  

Good times.  

Goooood times. 


 
  

Instinct Vs. Logic: A Never Ending Battle

Before moving across the country, I couldn't handle cold very well.  I was more than pleased to be boiling hot instead.  Since getting back, any temperature extreme seems to suck.  

Our apartment is wired like a monkey just shat out the plans for the building and then left someone else to figure it out.  

In fact, that is probably what happened.

One outlet in the kitchen, one in the office, and one in the livingroom each have their own circuit breakers.  EVERYTHING ELSE shares ONE.  

This means that we can't have the air conditioning on  in more than two rooms at once, nor can we have any of them on while using the microwave or running the dishwasher, or else the electricity will go out.  

As a result, I am typically either melting:

or freezing: 

 

This has led me to feeling sort of panicky for no reason or just ill.  This is unfortunate because... Well...  
You know those lizards that shoot blood out of their eyes when threatened?  (Yeah, it's a thing.  Look it up.)

 I've always kind of been like one of those.  If I'm too stressed mentally or physically, I will get my period even if I just had it.  

Now, before this past year of fear and flipping out over foods and such, I never really noticed any extreme hormonal changes during my period.  This may have been because I had trained myself to care WAY too much about the welfare of others: 

While pretty much ignoring my own needs, no matter how uncomfortable I could get.  

 

Of course, something should be said for the fact that I often couldn't tell if I was really sick or just, you know, how I normally felt all the time anyway.  

 

This led to some problems in cases like The Birthday Bashing.  So, after I came home and started feeling everything, this meant that I was hyper aware of my hormonal state too.   

Rob figured the best way to see if I was legitimately upset or just hormonal was to have me look at cute things. 

Loaf animals are the best for this.  A loaf animal is when a rabbit or a cat winds up looking more like a guinea pig:  

 I actually have another story involving guinea pigs and meatloaf, but that can be for another post. 

 Cartoons also helped my hormonal state, as well as when I've been freaking out and going into existential panics over my career choice, what I'm going to school for, and what I really would rather be doing but don't think I could make a living doing. 

Enter our apartment-mate and My Little Ponies: 

 Sometimes he dresses like Deadpool. 


Rob does his best to fix ALL PROBLEMS EVER even before they are fully explained.  This is appreciated to a point.  The only issue here is that he is significantly more lovey dovey and romantic than I'm good at used to.  

 This hypersensitivity and panic has left me irritable and I worry about putting too much pressure on him.  He is possibly in denial, lying to make me feel better, or he honestly just doesn't see me as the flailing weirdo I've become over the past two years.  Either way, I need work and he seems to be more than happy to just stand there being overly peppy by my side.  

The over sensitive thing goes way beyond just emotional and sometimes physical into simple daily things.  My sleep has always been strange due to nightmares, but now the sun is a problem.

One option is to let the black out curtain drop enough that the sunbeam doesn't blind me in the morning: 

But, of course, there is always a catch.  Putting it down at night in order for it to be there in the morning means that I'm in pitch black darkness.  If I go to the bathroom in this, my brain assumes monsters will come climbing out of the mirrors to eat my feet.  

 Do other adults have cripplingly overactive imaginations or is this some other part of a larger disorder? 

*sigh*



Last on this list explains why there have been so many posts about sewing and dresses lately.  I've gotten excited because during my latest existential crisis, I remembered that I can sew.  Designing costumes came in handy in high school and has helped me in character design.  Sculpting with fabric to make stuffed creations has also been a treat.  Putting the two together to make wearable things that aren't just altered from previous articles of clothing is terrifying and exciting for me. 

Am I going to magically get a job as a fashion designer or seamstress?  Could that then launch my painting and cartooning career?

No.

Probably not.

However, I have a bazillion projects I'm working on, both personal and not, and some are drawing based while others involve sewing.

I'm keeping myself busy this Summer before school starts again in September much like some adults start obsessing over sports and fancy cars to avoid thinking about their soul sucking jobs.

For the record, what I'm going to school for will not be boring.  It is something I am genuinely interested in, even when I feel like an idiot.  I learn things every day and that is thrilling.  I have a chance to help others, and that is wonderful.

Unfortunately, my last year of classes before internship comes at a time when I am finally willing to think about myself and be selfish.  This is something other people get to do when they are younger, and I was always too afraid to go after what I really wanted.  Now I want to... And I feel like it's too late.  I'm already on another just as good path and I don't want to start all over again.

...I already have a BA in Art, so it wouldn't really be starting all over...
I worry more about time.

I worry about putting too much time and effort and energy into one side of this coin and having the odds always be on that side.  I worry that I'll lose the other or just stretch myself too thin.

Both take effort and energy and I'm not a terribly energetic person.

If I could only choose one, I'd choose Art...

...But that isn't logical.  It'll be harder to break into that.  Logically, I should do what I am doing and continue Art on the side, hoping that something will magically fall into my lap. 
...But that feels like I'm betraying someone important.

And that someone might actually be myself.

So, for now, it's cartoons, loaf animals, sewing like crazy, and trying to figure out what brought me here to begin with.

Wishy Washy Dishwasher

Our dishwasher was wonky and poorly placed when we moved in.  

This was our sad dishwasher:    

I had to hip check the damn thing to close it.  I had bruises.  

This was either because there was no slab of wood beneath it, and so it drooped into the empty space, OR it was too big and so they removed the slab of wood.
Either way, without that wood there, there was that GIANT, dusty, grimy, GROSS EW EW EW empty space for bugs and monsters and all sorts of things to hide:
 

(For the record, cleaning up, getting organized, spraying the Hell out of everything and caulking up the place relieved our squatter-roommate-cockroach problem.  They were coming up from a lower apartment and now they fear us.  :-D) 

Because it was off kilter, the dishwasher would take a while to right itself on the inside and would make horrible noises while it struggled. 

I was previously unaware of the noises, as I normally have headphones on while I play stupid games:

 

But this time I was headphoneless AND it happened to also vibrate the ground:

So, my totally sane response was:
 

I called my sponsor friend Dani to explain that I was about to fall through to the first floor and die. 
 
It was then that Dani and I determined that the dishwasher is, in fact, a dragon.  Dani then drew this to express what the dishwasher was trying to articulate:
 

Another fun fact is that when the dishwasher is running, nothing else can be.  It's not that nothing else will turn on, so much as that if you want to say… put something in the microwave…

 

All the lights go off.  Power goes out.  Total darkness besides, for whatever reason, the clock on the coffee maker.  

This is particularly problematic now that we've set up the office (read: has a lot of shit plugged in) in the room with one outlet that is, for WHATEVER REASON shared with the kitchen. 

Then the biggest bedroom has three outlets, one of which is almost to the ceiling. 
 

…We have high ceilings. 
(And wall nipples.  What are they?  Were they something before?  There are two of them in the bedroom.  …I don't?  Wat?) 

I don't even understand. 

There are bullshitilly placed outlets in the living room too:

 

That's above the TV, if you can tell.  ...Basically ceiling. 

Also: 

Next to the radiator.  Does that seem completely unsafe to anyone else?

Anyway, my Knight got down on the floor and fixed the dishwasher issue.

He also fixed the tile:

 

So now that one rebellious tile actually looks nicer than any of the crap around it:

 

We just rent here, so screw making the entire thing all nice and shiny. 

I may still turn the dishwasher into a dragon (with completely removable parts, of course) much the same way I turned a toilet into a creature once.  
(See: Showers, Baths, and Referring to Poop Too Many Times) 

If I do, you internet cats will be the first to know. 

Going Domestic

To start this off, I should mention that my housemate FATE and I have a strange kind of friendship.  He refers to me as Mom and I refer to him as my son.  Normally, this means whoever I happen to be dating is by proxy his "dad" and generally that person just kind of shrugs, accepts it, and never brings it up.  

Rob took this Dad thing to heart.

I'm not kidding. 

We quickly became a bunch of grown ass adults playing house.  

...

My therapist says it's okay so shut up.


Rob and I have already domesticated each other anyway.

He cooks for me:

I do his laundry:

Domestic!





In any case, now that I'm finally settled in, moving is happening again.  

Technically, I'm not the one moving, so there is that.  ...  Rob is moving in, Xena is moving out, FATE and I talked about moving more rooms around, and we decided to have my room be a studio/office space for whoever is in the apartment, since Rob and I might need a little more space, but we'd be sharing a bedroom.   

*Cue Rob's grandmother asking what my clergy father must think of Rob moving in with me* 

Hypothetically speaking, this seems simple enough.

...

It's been chaos. 

The problem is that Rob needed to start moving his stuff in, but there isn't space yet.  As a result, we have boxes of stuff and some of my stuff crammed into weird places and everything is just teetering on a I-don't-know-where-this-goes string. 

After a bit of this, I had started to go a little utterly-too-intense over trying and failing to find things.  I stopped really communicating when I got too frustrated and instead opted for hand gestures and strange noises.  

For example:

Meant that I had lost this thing: 

And I wanted it. 

We've already invested in more shelving in an attempt to avoid our clutter invading the clutter of the other:

This shelf did not stay in that spot very long and it will be moving again, I'm sure. 

And in the meantime, we've each started organizing the few things we actually can have some control over until we are all settled on space again.  

Rob and FATE organized the entertainment area: 

And I have started doing little projects in an effort to eventually become this super-pseudo-mom.  
Between Rob and my own fuckery, we have a lot of magnetic, wipeable, and cork boards.  
Like this one:

I decided that these would become a giant area of wall.  I wanted one slightly bigger wipeable board, so I made one out of a frame that wasn't useable for it's intended purpose and some old color swatches:

 In the meantime, I've been stressing over where everything will go and what I could possibly fit now that I couldn't before.  

Can my vanity now fit in our bedroom?  I could use it as a side table... Maybe? 

What about my drawing desk?  Surely that'll go in the office/studio for everyone to use!  ...Right?

Lastly, we had cockroaches seep in from downstairs, but now that Rob sprayed the Hell out of every corner in this apartment, they seem to be leaving us alone. FATE saw two, "half-dead" recently, but that's it.  Next, we'll have to patch the giant holes where they were getting in.

On the way, we should probably re-caulk the asshole tile:

Every time someone steps on this thing, he or she assumes he or she was the one to magically break it.  I don't know if everyone I know collectively has no idea how tiles work, or if they all just think they weigh a lot more than is possible or what, but no.  No guys.  No.  The tile was already busted long before.  

I'm sure fixing it will be another post.  

...As well as rearranging, organizing these rooms, possibly painting things...  

Stay tuned!