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.

Caturday: Birchy's Bathtime Adventures

Birch likes to keep me* company when I'm in the bathtub.

Or maybe "keep me company" isn't quite right...it seems more likely that he's baffled that anyone would choose to get wet on purpose, and the concept is so grotesque to him that he can't look away.  At any rate, when I'm in the bathtub he has a tendency to come up to the edge and stare at it with trepidation...

...And then lightly pat the water with his paw as if checking to make sure it's really there and not just a mirage induced by some bad kibble...

...And then recoil as if it bit him.

...Usually several times in a row.

When he gets tired of ascertaining whether the bathtub is in fact filled with water, he'll jump up on the edge and pace fretfully back and forth, pausing frequently to stare into my face and make sure I'm okay.

"Just say the word and I'll go get help!"

Sometimes, he'll actually calm down enough to lounge on the edge of the bathtub for a bit.  On at least two occasions, his tail has fallen in and he just sat there oblivious, swishing it back and forth through the water.  I don't know how he didn't notice his gaffe.  My bathwater is hot enough to boil cabbage in.  

The last time he accidentally dunked his tail, the realization did hit him eventually...all at once.  He jumped about a foot in the air and then tore out of the room like a maniac.  Naturally, he managed to slash his soaking wet tail across my face in the process.  Why wouldn't he?

For the next hour or so, his tail had a visible high tide line on it.  On one side of the line, a luxuriant floofy column of awesomeness; on the other side, a gross, scrawny little whip made of gristle and vertebrae.  He kept thrashing it around.  It's unclear whether he was trying to air-dry it or he was just plain pissed off.  I'm guessing both.

It never stops surprising me how tiny and sinewy cats really are, underneath their fur.  Maybe that's the real reason cats hate getting wet - it's not because it feels gross to them, it's because they know that without proper fur coverage they look like ugly little mutants.

Uh...no offense, Birchy.  Wuv you!


*Only me.  Never The Boy - at least not since The Boy tried to pull Birch in with him. Never let anyone tell you that animals have short memories.

*****

Do you live in Toronto?  Then you totally need to swing by my stall at the Arts Market!  I've just started selling necklaces and magnets with teeny-tiny prints of my paintings on them.  They are vibrant and beautiful and will add a glorious finishing touch to your sternum and/or refrigerator.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH!!!

I've had my booth at the Arts Market for about three weeks now, and it's been an adventure!

First off, remember that giant piece of masonite that would later become my booth's back wall?  At the last minute I decided (well, realized) that the idea of taking it on the subway to save money was totally whackadoo and that it'd be faster and easier just to splurge on a cab (special bonus: I could also fill the cab with more merchandise and tools than The Boy and I could possibly carry with us while manhandling that board everywhere).  But the cab companies I called said that their largest car would accommodate items up to 6' long...and the masonite is 8' long.

"But I was finally ready to stop being cheap!!!!"

Soooooo, The Boy and I ended up taking the masonite on the subway, after all.  And then we walked with it from Pape Station down to Queen Street (I'd guess the distance at two miles?  Maybe?) because we didn't figure they'd let us on the bus with it.  I'd tied rope "handles" through the holes all along the outside edge, which helped a lot, but what really saved our lives in the end (or at least our poor sore hands) was each of us looping a belt through one of the top "handles" and using it like a shoulder strap.  It was still pretty harrowing though because it was a really windy day; on several occasions the wind shoved the masonite around hard enough to almost knock us off our feet.  I was a little afraid The Boy would be carried off entirely, like Piglet in that Winnie the Pooh story about the blustery, blustery day.

But we did make it there in the end.

Arts Market administrator Daniel Cohen is awesome, by the way!  He's happy to help each artist get their area customized the way they want - in my case, he attached some beams to the ceiling girders for me so my wall would hang properly.  Look how pretty!

Since then he and his crew have helped me hang a second wall, too!  I'm grateful for the assistance because even if I didn't need to actually alter the building's ceiling - which I'd never presume to do without asking - I'm terrified of ladders and would never have been able to get up as high as he did without either a) falling or b) fainting (which is still technically a form of falling...).  So now I have two beautiful walls hung up and I didn't even have to risk my cranial integrity. :D

Further adventures: last Sunday I brought a folding chair to the Market and sat by my booth all day, just to see what it's like there when I'm not focused on getting things set up.  Well, okay, I didn't sit all day - I also took some time to walk around and look at everyone else's wares so I can (hopefully) talk intelligently about them if given the chance - I want to support my fellow artisans!

I got to polish up my slightly rusty retail skills* with some customers (mostly by chatting with them about other people's stuff, but still!) and I met some of the other booth-owners, who were all friendly and fun and generally awesome.  One of my immediate neighbours, Marjorie, even told me some cool stuff about needle-felting - an art I've always admired but never knew much about.  It's so cool to be surrounded by such creative talent!  I feel so inspired that I'm thinking of resuming my long-neglected Shoutout Sunday posts so I can write about a different cool market vendor every week!

So yeah.  I think I'm settling into the Arts Market nicely.  It's starting to feel like home. :)

I'll leave you with this picture of me setting up the inaugural wall of my booth.  This is just a bit of a tease - a hint, if you will, of what wonders lie in store.  It's the booth equivalent of cleavage.

Bow-chika-wow-WOW...

*Believe it or not, despite my whole "painful shyness" thing I used to be a retail superstar.  Probably because I'm genuinely interested in helping  people find the perfect item - I don't have it in me to do the skeevy high-pressure thing.  Customers may have bought less with me initially than if I'd pressured them, but they liked me more and tended to give me repeat business so I figure I did better in the long run.  Selling my own products feels more awkward and scary than selling someone else's ever did, but I'll adapt.  Eventually.

-----

Can't get out to Toronto to buy my work in person?  Fear not - you can always satisfy your cravings for funky, original paintings in my Artfire store!  In fact, I have some stuff on Artfire that's too, shall we say, family unfriendly for the Arts Market, like this "ad" for a sparkly pink lipstick or this pirate flag with a twist, so you get to see a side of me that my in-person customers don't. :)  

Caturday: My Cat the Supergenius

So, my booth at the Arts Market is coming along...although it's not nearly in the state I want it to be, yet.  It's surprisingly slow going when you have to schlep all your tools, supplies, merchandise, etc. on the subway an hour each way.  But in the process of getting things in order, I realized just how smart my cat Birch is.

See, one day I was sitting on the couch making signage for my booth, and I had paper and paint and foamcore board and wire and scissors and god knows what else spread all across the floor at my feet.  Birch - who had been asleep beside me - woke up and went to jump onto the floor, and I quickly stuck my hand out to stop him and said "Dude, don't do this right now, you'll mess up Mommy's supplies."

Birch's expression very clearly said "Well what the fuck am I supposed to do?" so I told him "You can go around, like this" and drew an imaginary line around my heap of art supplies with my finger.  Birch immediately hopped down and followed the exact path I'd mapped out for him to go to the kitchen.  After he'd had a drink of water, he came to the kitchen doorway and paused uncertainly, looking at me like "now what?" so I drew another imaginary line back to the couch and patted the cushion beside me and he followed my unspoken directions again.

At the time, this exchange felt totally natural to me: my cat had an issue, he mentioned it to me, and we negotiated a solution, simple as that.  But when I stopped and thought about it afterward, it occurred to me that these sorts of interspecies conversations are probably not standard.  And I'm no expert on feline psychology, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure expressing the sentiment "tell me how I'm supposed to get to the kitchen with all this crap strewn across the floor" with a single look and understanding the concept of "pointing" pretty much makes Birch the Stephen Hawking of cats, or at least the Carl Sagan.

I used to believe that Birchy isn't very bright.  I mostly based this belief on the fact that he'll do the same annoying thing fifty times in a row, even though I punish him; it seemed like he must be too dumb to comprehend the simple cause-and-effect of "putting my paw on Mommy's dinner plate makes her yell and push me."  Now it's dawning on me that he totally knows he's making me mad, but just doesn't give a shit.

So he's not just a genius, he's an evil genius.  I should probably start locking him out of the bedroom while I sleep.

Tell me about your genius animals!

***

You can purchase adorable original paintings of kitties - both evil and non-evil - in my Artfire store.  Go see!

Guess who just became a vendor at the Arts Market?

As some of you may already know, I've signed on for a booth at the Arts Market, an awesome little store on Queen Street East here in Toronto.  I start on Wednesday and have been running around like crazy for the last few days, getting ready.  

Stock is not a problem - I have paintings a-plenty.  Paintings stacked on top of dressers, paintings leaning against the walls, paintings in my dresser drawers.  Frankly, I'm afraid that my next major creative spree will finally bring the art-load to critical mass and The Boy and I will be immobilized by an avalanche of canvases and either starve or be crushed to death and the only way to remove our putrid, stinking corpses from the building will be to lift off the roof and haul us out using a crane.

So that's pretty awesome.

The daunting part, for me, is that my "booth" is really just an empty space - if I want any walls or fixtures in there, I have to install them myself.  I've never had to do anything like that before.  The freedom is exhilarating - I can customize my space however I want, as long as I stay within my designated 4'x4' turf - but boy, it's gonna be a lot of work!  Especially since The Boy and I don't drive, or even really know anyone who does.  We'll have to do a lot of schlepping on public transit, I think.

To give you a better idea of what I'm up against, here's a picture I just took while sitting on the couch and pointing the camera down our front hallway.

Pictured:

a) My childhood toy box with arts-and-crafts detritus and camera tripod on top (this is normally the area where I take product photos).

b) Desk lamp protruding into picture (I use this - and its identical twin - to light product photos).

c) Front door with pretty red tassel thingy that my ex got me when he was travelling in China.

d) Bedroom door.

e) HUGE FUCKING PIECE OF MASONITE STRETCHING FROM MY TOES TO THE HORIZON.

You don't really realize how big 4'x8' is until you have something that size in your apartment and have to choose between letting it block the bathroom doorway or the living room doorway.  It is huge, you guys.  And it will hang from the Arts Market ceiling and act as one of my booth walls.

Oh, funny masonite story (that's gotta be the first time anyone has ever said that phrase...): I was too cheap to bring it home in a cab so I wrapped a chain around the middle of it and lugged it home slung over my shoulder like a purse.   

A purse that weighs around forty pounds and is longer than I am tall.

I live at least half a mile from the home improvement store, by the way.  Maybe more.  Also, my apartment is up two flights of stairs.  Once I reached the landing, it looked as though the masonite wasn't going to fit around the corner (and/or the weight of it would keep dragging me down the same four stairs over and over again as though I were an modern-day Sisyphus with boobs and a kickass haircut) but obviously I was victorious in the end.

If you visit the market and check out my art (and if you live in Toronto, you totally should!  I might even be there in person and we can hang), you can look at my glorious turquoise booth wall and know that the one corner is rounded off like that because it kept dragging on the sidewalk while I was lugging it home.  It can be an inside joke between us.

Anyhoo, it's 10am and I haven't been to bed so I should probably go do that.

p.s. The Boy doesn't know it yet, but I'm gonna try to persuade him to carry the masonite to the market with me on the subway.  I think if there are two of us carrying it and I tie rope "handles" through all the edge-most holes, it might not be so bad.  And it'd save me like $50 in cab fare.  Yes indeed, this is a good and sensible idea.