empowering, feminist Halloween costumes even when they reach adolescence and beyond!) My dad was more chipper than I have seen him in years! Even in his best humor he is quiet and stoic, so it took a while to get the reason for his good mood out of him. It turns out his spirits were so buoyed by fixing Captain Tweaker’s meth mouth that he has decided to start a nonprofit dental clinic where he will fix the teeth of former meth addicts who have over a year of sobriety. This news makes me feel extremely mature—the old me hit my mom and dad up for money more often than I’d like to admit, but now I am a grown, independent woman who has helped my father find his path out of the dark aimlessness of Sun City to the light of productive community service.
I will likely be mush this entire weekend. Having a full-time, nine-to-five job is exhausting. I seriously do not know how people do it. At the deli I told myself I worked full-time, but it was really more like four shifts a week and at random times. At my new job, I do about four hours or so of work a day for the store—in that amount of time I can draw a sign start-to-finish if I’m cranking. The rest of the time I spend on an invigorating and surreal acrylic series of wiener dogs painted on flattened cardboard boxes leftover from shipments to the store. I have to say I’m really happy with how they are coming along, AND they will show at the Puppy Adoption Center for the grand opening!!!
After making all that art, I’m so tired by the time I leave in the afternoons that I can hardly see straight. I’ve been getting an IT guy named Lorne to walk me to my car. I keep thinking about Dirty Steve and his “I’m watching you” hand gesture. And once or twice I could have sworn I saw him kind of skulking around the parking lot. I’ve thought about reporting him to HR but worry about coming across as (a) paranoid or (b) vindictive. Also, in our own way, Dirty Steve and I walked a lot of miles together as dickhead boss/underappreciated employee.
I don’t miss my deli days, I promise, especially not since my first paycheck will hit my bank account in another week. Despite this daily grind, I wake up early enough to walk Roscoe before work AND make a small offering to Venus. That powerful (and sometimes fickle) goddess seems to be getting me through my days. Making signs for the Lululemon protest really primed the pump—I haven’t been “blocked” for a moment since I started this job. It’s funny to think back to all the teeth gnashing I did when I wasn’t making art about how badly I wanted to make art. It feels like I was swimming upstream with all my might and now I’m just floating along on my back, letting the creative energy of the Universe carry me.
Last week when I first started my job, I thought for a moment about trying to get Topher Doyle to chuck Duckie & Lambie out of Whole Foods, but then realized I have no reason to do harm to Brant Bitterbrush. Being over someone means really letting them go, not trying to stay emotionally snarled up with them by seeking revenge. I’m so glad Venus has helped me get clarity on that situation!
With days of vacation stretching ahead of me, I have to admit I am lonely. Annie is mostly too busy to hang out outside of work. She is still dating Jeff Castro. (Though their relationship has been made rocky by the fact that Annie kept hugging his identical twin Joe and claiming to have mistaken him for Jeff. But last week Jeff got a small neck tattoo of an empty birdcage with its door open. While he claims he’s always wanted a neck tattoo and that it has no relation to Annie, she now worries she has no excuse for not being able to tell him and Joe apart. When I asked Jeff about the meaning and significance of the open-door birdcage, he said, “Don’t cage the bird, man.”) Anyway, he and Annie—despite or because of their ups and downs—are hot and heavy, and so her free time is limited.
Artemis is unemployed, so ostensibly should be available to hang, but she’s still mostly MIA. Ever since she got sober,