Lots of Feel-Goods

Whew, where to begin?

The other day, I cleaned out my car and reinstalled the boom-boom in the backseat. Although it was unfortunate to see the lovely blue crystals on my battery terminal, the good news is I am competent enough to rewire things in my car. Thus, I has moar bass again. This of course spurned a loud ride to my doctors appointment this morning, blasting Bayside and singing along. And I realized, this guy here, he is one of the best songwriters I've heard--at least, since the likes of Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano. So simple, so straightforward, yet with that play on metaphors I love so much. Snarky, heartfelt word play, showing a glimpse of pain so deep you feel it too. The funny thing about Bayside is that even though his lyrics tend to be fairly specific, they are still so relateable. So, as Mrs. K predicted, I have spent my free time today cleaning my metaphorical wounds with ink and paint. One of the tips I'd been meaning to try was printing onto tissue paper, and holy crap. I'm not done with this one yet, but below is the progress so far. I'm waiting for the clear coat to dry before I start layering the tissue paper on. I'm really excited to see how it turns out, I'm just hoping I don't have the same issue with the ink bleeding that I did when I got into stamping.

One of the other wonderful things--aside from cooking home-made baked ziti from scratch [happy Italian], followed by crock-pot beef stew today... Anyways, now that we're all hungry, moving on.

If you know me at all, you know how pleased I am when I am able to help people. Especially good people. So although tomorrow I have to put the blasted uniform back on, I have been able to help someone because of it. A while back, someone from my bootcamp division separated and based on my descriptions, decided to move to WA. We talked about meeting up to jam a time or two, but it never panned out. After I made an off-handed comment online, he ended up coming over for dinner and socializing. Fun fact is, he's closer to my brother's age than mine! He's enlisted the Italian's help with navigating the VA, and today they have made quite a bit of progress. The boys are getting along famously, which makes me smile inside. As my dad said once, I have quite a soft spot for "puppy dogs and broken boys," and given the chance, I will feed and comfort both of them. When the holidays come around, I make a big effort to invite displaced military folks for meals. I realized last night, that it's almost like I've adopted a little brother--no offense to my actual little brother, he's just a little too cool to talk to me these days. He'll come around eventually, I'm sure, but living three states away doesn't help either.

Anyways, just the interactions between those two cracks me up and makes me happy. Loud music with good words. Making art, exploring, testing, results. Kitty cuddles, especially with a little rumble of purr... surprisingly my typing has yet to disturb Miss Z, who is draped across my arms at this very moment. Homecooked food. And of course, top it off with a bit of British humor. Ah, good days. I can't wait until my life is filled with this on a daily basis and punctuated with school and working with awesome people.

I hope you are all having some small victories or small happiness, and leave you with this--so at least if nothing else, you can say you saw a cute cat picture today.

Day Two of Temporary Freedom.

Not quite going as I had expected. Don't get me wrong, I am loving this. Of course I have a giant multi-page list of things that I want to get done in these too-short ten days, and so far I'm not sure I've actually accomplished a damn thing on it. But then again, part of being on leave is recuperating and relaxing. So I figure tomorrow will start my productive days.

I haven't cleaned up much, but we did sort of reorganize the upstairs. Moved my desk, but still waiting for the bed frame to show up. I put a little bit of stuff away, but nothing significant. The Moving Process is still in progress. I don't really remember what we did on Monday besides watch a movie, and then I made fried rice. Snack Bar is still continuously in awe of the combination of my culinary skills and the multitude of delicious food places T-Town has to offer. Like Italian delivery--not just pizza, but I mean like, homestyle Italian food, delivered to your house. Moral of the Story: After we get settled in, we are all definitely going to have to start working out. Because I certainly can't stop cooking. The boys would never allow that.

Today was supposed to be my first productive day... but... the universe has a sense of humor, or irony, or just timing, I suppose. This morning was supposed to be up-n-at-em-Atom-Ant to drop off a car for service down south, followed by a breakfast date and matinee of Guardians of the Galaxy. But alas, a good friend was leaving the new house on his motorcycle around midnight, and ended up crashing. Hit-n-Run. Seriously. So, we picked him up and took him home so his wifey could see he was in one piece, and then the guys left to pick up the bike and we had some girl time.

She's very spiritual and into art and such, so we generally have some good conversation. She showed me her newest tarot deck and indulged me with a brief reading. We even have the same opinion of such things--There is an inherent wisdom, but things like tarot and astrology are tools, and they are what you make of them. Like, they are a frame work, a way of organizing you thoughts or looking at things in a different way. So I think I will be getting back into that world a bit more these days. I have never been a particularly intuitive or spiritual person, but I do like to analyze these mechanisms in a logical or physiological manner. I find it interesting. When I step back and thing about it, I am almost a jack-of-all-trades... I have many many interests, but I don't necessarily delve deep or stay consistent. I take things in bits and pieces.

On a sad note, my dad had to put down the family dog, Molly. She as a really great dog, an Aussie, and loved the family as much as they loved her. I'm bummed for them. His birthday is in a couple weeks, maybe they will fill the gap with a new puppy. Sometimes it helps. But, with his birthday coming up, I sort of stumbled on making him some art. He always wraps my birthday presents in the spare aviation maps from his trips, and I think they are awesome. When I was setting up the art room, I found a few pages of them, and laid them out. For some reason, a flying fish stood out, so I slapped that on there too. Then I started putting the ideas together, and I took a quote of his for the finishing touch. He always supported me, even when I was stupid and rebellious. He raised me with this idea firmly rooted in my head, and I just wish I could figure out a way to make it happen. He sure has, and it never ceases to amaze me.

I experimented with Gel Medium once, and it worked phenomenally... but when I set this peice up for the official go, it completely failed. I actually went out and got another copy of the magazine just to get that photo again, because it's so crucial to the imagery that I can't replace it. Second try is pending, I'll be sure to update everyone if it works out or not.