Good Will Humping

The Boy and I recently had a Robin Williams movie night: we rented Good Will Hunting and One Hour Photo*.

During One Hour Photo, The Boy had to pee so I paused the DVD for him.  When he came back, he stood next to the tv and did a gyrating, lascivious naked dance.  Initially, I assumed he was trying to seduce me.  Then I realized that a) he was flapping his penis at the tv screen, not at me and b) he had deliberately positioned himself so his flapping penis was right in paused-Robin-Williams' eyeline.

I was laughing so hard I could barely manage to wheeze out the words "I...need to...blog this...!!!!"  The Boy obligingly stopped flapping long enough to take a photo of the tv screen so I could make this visual aide for y'all:

Note: not to scale.

Robin Williams' eyes are not as visible in this photo as they were in real life, but trust me, he is looking down and to the left.  The Boy lined things up perfectly.  It was epic. 

And let's take a closer look at Robin Williams' expression, shall we?

He seems deeply mistrustful of The Boy's swinging, twirling junk.  Or possibly the junk is making him really sad.  Maybe the slappity sounds of The Boy's frenzied undulations brought back poignant memories of a long-deceased family dog who used to flap its ears, and now Robin Williams is meditating on the fragility of life and the fact that eventually, everyone we love - canine or human - will die.

I mean, I feel nothin' but joy when The Boy does one of his naked dances.  But there's no accounting for taste.

*One Hour Photo is fascinating, by the way.  Williams gives an amazing performance unlike anything else I've ever seen him in, and the script and direction are really tight...and yet overall the movie comes off as a totally unremarkable thriller, which is a shame. 

Cat Lesson #3: Cats are Secretive Bastards.

I read somewhere that wild animals will usually eat their own vomit so predators don't find it and realize there's sick, weak prey in the area.  I've never seen a housepet do this, though, so I assumed that the barf-eating instinct must have faded away over centuries of domestication.  After all, when you live in a household with a bunch of doting humans, you don't wanna hide your illness from them, you wanna flaunt it so they can snuggle and spoil you*.

Well, it seems I was not entirely correct in my theory.  No, Birch doesn't eat his puke - but he tries to bury it!  I picked some socks up off the floor one day and found a pile of rapidly cooling Chunky Kibble Surprise underneath.  Since that day I've actually witnessed him throw up and then immediately try to scrape something over the mess (or just compulsively and repeatedly scrape the bare floor).

So, okay, I guess some domesticated animals still have the instinct to cover all traces of sickness.  I get that.  But the thing is?  Birch does the same thing with his food and water!  Sporadically, for no reason at all, he'll finish eating/drinking and then shove any available floor clutter into his bowls to cover up the leftovers.  I've had to pick grocery receipts out of his water on several occasions.  Once, he rolled a big ball of yarn in there.

Birch is our only pet; there are no other animals in the house.  Who, then, does he think he's hiding his food and water from?  Is he concealing it from me - the person who decided to put his dishes there in the first place - or from The Boy, who's in charge of keeping the dishes filled on a daily basis?  It's a mystery.

Do you have a cat or dog who does this stuff?  Do you have theories about why they do this stuff?  Tell me your stories in the comments!

*I may be projecting here.

Diary of a Trailblazer: Quitiversary!

Holy crap, I just realized it's April 6th - which means it's been over a year since I left my day job to focus on painting!

When I first quit, I had no idea my savings would last this long.  I mean, I thought there was a chance I'd still be a full-time artist in a year's time, but only if I were making a good chunk of money each month from said art.  But frankly, I'm not making too terribly much yet and what I do make goes right back into buying more supplies*.  The money I pay my monthly expenses with?  Pure nest egg, baby!

How have I made my money last this long, you ask?  I credit two things: happiness and hermit...ness.

Happiness, because I love my life so much that I don't often feel a need to "reward" myself with trinkets and goodies like I did when I was devoting like twelve hours a day to my office job**.  I mean, it was a very nice office job, don't get me wrong - great atmosphere, great people, opportunities for advancement, etc. - but I've always felt that full-time work takes up a cruelly ridiculous amount of time.  We shouldn't have to sacrifice our lives in order to maintain our livelihood!  And so I'd get out of work bummed that I had so little time to do the things that really matter to me, and I'd find solace in a $4 chocolate bar or a $400 pair of boots.  (Okay, the $400 boots only happened once.  But still!).

Hermit-ness, because being a homebody means I spend almost no money on restaurant meals, movie or nightclub admission, or (and this is the key difference between now vs. before) even laundry - I can easily stay in my pajamas for a week at a time vs. the old days when I wore a different office-appropriate outfit every day.  And since I'm not out in the world that much, I don't have a chance to see things in stores and want them.  I don't think I've bought a single new item of clothing in the past year except a bulk pack of socks, and that's only because my previous socks were getting threadbare.  Being a dorky loner has been great for my budget.

But I think I should start looking into having an income again***.  A part-time job, maybe, or temping...something that'll make my remaining money last longer while still leaving time for me to paint (and list paintings on Artfire, and hang paintings at the Arts Market, and make paintings into necklaces and magnets and prints and greeting cards to sell also, and blog about it all to you guys!).

TO THE RESUME UPDATEMOBILE!


*The best advice for entrepreneurs that I've ever heard: if you're gonna go into business for yourself, pick a field you love so much you'd do the work for free - because for the first long while, you will be.

**Only eight hours at the actual job, but then there's the commute time to and from work, doing laundry in order to look presentable at work, making lunch so I'll have something to eat at work, etc.

***Upon reflection, I probably shouldn't have shaved most of my head recently.  Hindsight.