Last Night

Last night, when I went to say goodnight to Buzzy (he was sleeping on the porch), I noticed his breathing was a little labored. This continued on and off during the night. For an hour or two I couldn't sleep, just watching him breathe on the blanket next to the couch and trying to decide if it was bad enough that he needed to go to the vet. When my parents got up, they gave him a dose of antibiotics and he seems to be doing well enough. I decided I wouldn't be able to get any more sleep on the couch, and he didn't really need me there if my parents were up, so I went upstairs and konked out.

because it was late, either nine or midnight, and I really wanted to sleep and I knew they would be loud.Whereupon I had a horrible dream. I don't really follow the plot, but I think I was playing/living video games with my girlfriend Amanda, and we spilled cherries on the sheets and the blue robe she gave me, and they left violent red stains that were sometimes cherry and sometimes blood that we had to wash out. Then I was going all around the house locking the doors over and over because there was someone I didn't want to come in, and I had to keep unlocking them to let the cats in and then relock them. The doors were essentially like the ones at my real house, but the locks were strange and different, and I had to lock some windows as well as they were like doors. He got in anyway (I think he was the one I was trying to keep out; it's hard to tell in dreams sometimes), along with a bunch of his friends carrying amps and speakers, and I was upset because it was late, either nine or midnight, and I knew they were going to be loud no matter what they said, and I really wanted to sleep. I guess none of this sounds too nightmarish, but the really horrible part was that in the dream, not only was Buster still sick, but Amanda had the same condition.

I guess that's about the only way this situation could possibly be worse right now.

The Fall of 2010

Working in a college, I've been thinking of "the fall of 2010" as no more than a semester we're still entering applications for (and still will be well into the semester... but I'm hoping to be many miles away from this job by that time). Weekend before last saw a redefinition of "the fall of 2010." It is now something my friend Betsey and I will be commemorating next year by, among other things, heavily tipping the spikey-haired waitress at the Post Office Cafe in Provicetown.

So I finally made my yearly journey to Provincetown. It didn't pan out quite the way I'd envisioned. It felt a little strange from the start, actually: I normally feel totally comfortable and at ease in P-town, completely at home, but I felt a little awkward this year. I chalked it up to the fact that it was closer to the in-season, and there were more people around, which may be all it really was. At any rate, something felt a little off. I still had a wonderful time, at the start. My friend Betsey and I had a pretty good drive there with a lot of great music, the bed and breakfast was nice, we took pictures of the ocean and bought lots of wonderful queer, arty things. Then the day we were to leave, as we were doing one last tour of Commercial Street, Betsey twisted her ankle on an awkward curb and plowed face-first into a brick sidewalk. Someone called an ambulance, they looked her over and cleaned her up a little but didn't think it was too bad. She didn't get to look in a mirror, and I couldn't really assess the damage very well (what I thought was a nosebleed was actually a mass of cuts below her nose), so she declined to go to the hospital. Being very resilient, she attempted to keep hobbling down the street until her ankle became too painful and she got a glimpse of her reflection in a storefront window. The aforementioned waitress saw us from across the street, came out of the cafe, and offered to let Betsey use their bathroom to clean up. She also helped us across the street, brought her a first aid kit and some ice, told us what hospitals were in the area (not many, unfortunately), and called a friend of hers who's a cabbie to drive us around the corner to our rental car for free so she wouldn't have to walk to the car. Hence, the large amount of tipping she will be receiving.
The rest of the day was spent in the hospital and on the road. Fortunately, Betsey didn't need stitches, but it's too soon to tell about scarring.

Then, as we were about to pull out of the hospital parking lot, my mom called me and let me know about the nightmare she and my dad had been living through all weekend in my absence. Apparently, my cat Buster (aka the light of my life) had developed extremely labored breathing and had to make an emergency trip to the vet. The vet discovered he has an enlarged heart and a heart murmur. One of his suggestions was to put him down, but fortunately it did not get to that point. He gave him a shot of antibiotic, not really expecting it to work, but it helped significantly.

Today we took Buster to a cardiologist (everybody was shocked that there's such a thing as an animal cardiologist, but I'm really not surprised), who confirmed the enlarged heart and heart murmur. He's given us prescriptions for heart medicine which should help Buzzy feel better. Nobody's given us a timeframe of his life expectancy at this point, so we're just trying to appreciate every day we get (secretly hoping that those days will stretch into years, but he's 18 and has heart problems, so I don't know how realistic my dreams of him living forever are...). Pretty much the good thing he told us is that it's not degenerative like cancer, so he'll most likely look good on the outside and maintain his personality up until the end. Which is good, because it's hard enough without having to watch my little boy waste away. My cats have always acted very healthy and very young for their ages. It's very hard to think of them being this old, or being sick. And it's very easy for me to be in denial, since I wasn't here for the worst of his illness. I have changed my treatment of him, though. I'm careful not to scoop him up or hug him too firmly. And I've been sleeping downstairs on the couch to keep him company. Sometimes he sleeps on me, but mostly he's been sleeping on a warm spot on the floor next to the couch, first on a pair of my pajama pants, now on a fleece blanket my mom put there for him.

Supposedly, I'm there to comfort him, but really he comforts me.

subterranean - Illustration Friday

They used a word I submitted this week, so I kind of felt obliged to submit a drawing to go with it. Not my best effort, but more than I've been doing lately.

http://illustrationfriday.com/

Provincetown

Every year around this time I get this incredible urge to go to Provincetown. I've really only been there a small handful of times, but even the simplest memories there run deep. Sometimes, especially in February and March, I'm completely consumed with longing for the empty streets, the vast expanses of cold sand and water, the feminist craft shops, the queer bookstores, the art galleries, the hundreds of bizarre and beautiful things everywhere you look...

It almost hurts, I want to go back so badly.

Murphy's Law as it applies to comics.

You're familiar with Murphy's law, yes? The rule of the universe which dictates that everything that can possibly go wrong will? I think Murphy is deciding to have a little fun with one of my comic book projects. I had this odd but intriguing idea for a comic a few months ago. One of those ideas that just pops into your head out of the blue without any of the usual struggle and hassle you get when you're actually *trying* to have an idea. And with the way the images popped into my head, it was immediately clear to me that it could only be made properly if it were made using scratchboard. Those (if any) who have read my previous posts will know what difficulties I've already been having with locating usable scratchboard. After failing to locate my usual brand in any stores (well, to be fair, I've found the brand in stores quite easily... just not in plain blank black and white. if I wanted to do this comic in black and rainbow or black and copper I would be having no such difficulties), I ordered some scratchboard from Dick Blick and was severely disappointed in the quality. Then my mom bought me a different brand in an art store in New Paltz, which was slightly better quality... but still unworthy of the project at hand (it scrapes pretty smoothly and doesn't flake off in chunks exposing grubby paper like the other stuff, but because of the way the black was applied to the white, it is impossible to get a totally clean white space without light black lines running across it).

So eventually I broke down and ordered the scratchboard I wanted all along from the one place in the US that still seems to stock it in that particular flavor: the official brand website. This morning it came in the mail.

Well, technically, I guess it came in the mail yesterday... During the torrential downpour. And it was left outside of the mailbox. In a paper package. Absolutely no plastic. Completely exposed to the elements. (Despite the fact that with the money I paid for shipping on two packs of it, I could have bought a third one, USPS apparently can't be bothered to provide their workers with cheap plastic bags for delivering priority mail in pouring rain)

So essentially, after all of that, after months of searching for a suitable scratchboard, I finally got exactly what I wanted all along, and it was completely and utterly destroyed before it even made it into my hands. And it costs a dollar a sheet, and I paid out of my own pocket. And I was really excited to get some actual work done on this rare week of freedom from my fulltime job.

So yeah... Apparently Murphy hates comics. Or maybe just scratchboard comics. Who knew?

Illustration Friday - Undone

This week's Illustration Friday word is "undone." My response is inspired by the jackassery of my neighbor, who has recently decided to raze dozens of beautiful trees along the property line to build himself a driveway to the creepy little barn he lives in (in the middle of a vast, empty field which he can easily drive over and in which he has never grown anything). (see my previous post below for further ranting) The whole thing is senseless and repulsive, and the damage sadly cannot be undone. Hence my sketch.

I feel like I'm going to be drawing a lot of trees for a while...

More Sad Things

Speaking of things that are sad: my landscape is changing in the most awful ways. All my life, I've lived in the middle of the woods and loved it (despite it sometimes being a little creepy). Now my creep neighbor has decided to build a second driveway so that he can drive right up to his sketchy little barn (where he lives. never trust a man who lives in a barn, raises no animals, and grows no crops) without having to drive over the vast, empty field he normally just drives right over judging by the tire tracks. The tire tracks which are now painfully visible, because he's decided that paving over part of his vast, empty field, in which he has never grown a damn thing, would just be too easy, cheap, and quick, and that instead he must cut down trees. Dozens upon dozens of trees. It's tree genocide over there. Senseless tree butchery. And now there's no barrier between our properties. We used to have a protective veil of beautiful trees. Now he has a straight line of sight right into our windows. It's truly creepy. And infuriating. And stupid.

I don't hate many people. But I truly, truly hate this man. Not just for this, but this really tipped the scales.