Time to start quitting

I have no voice. Not figuratively. I cannot make any sounds with my vocal chords AT ALL. I am reduced to communicating via white board and crude, made-up sign language. This could not have happened at a worse time because i have a shit ton to say. I'm at the end of various ropes - have been for a minute.

First, Cousin Roommate has been using my car nearly every evening for just about 6 months now. Fine, whatever. He needs a vehicle and his piece of shit is broken all the way down. Has he taken it to be looked at? No. Has he helped me pay for insurance or maintainence? No. Is he saving to buy a new car? No. Does he have a plan at all that involves him not mooching off me for the rest of existence? No again. If he would put more than $6 a week in the gas tank, i might not want to punch his guts out. Every day he takes it, he says he's putting gas in right away. Every time i get in my car the tank is running on fumes. But he just bought himself a sweet new 2nd keyboard to compose on and he stays stoned pretty much 24/7, so bully for him! I guess i'm the asshole.

Then there's my house guest. Six weeks ago, a long-time friend of mine was in a situation up north that was not healthy. He needed to come home for a while. We all encouraged that. He, Thorton, asked if he could stay at our place for a couple (2?) weeks. Still here. No problem. I love the guy, of course i'm going to help him out. He helped me put together a custom work bench for my arting that fits quite nicely in my bay window - AFTER i rage cried in the bathroom because he and Cousin Roommate kept saying they would definitely help me in any way they could as they sat around getting lit, playing guitar and piano respectively, and generally not getting off their asses at all unless they were hungry. So i carried all the lumber to the porch and started doing it myself. At which point, a man certainly stepped because that's a man thing, building. Well, one man stepped in and the other ran to his room. That was 3 weeks ago. I've been able to use my new work space a total of two times. It happens to be behind Thorton's sleeping area. I have two lamp orders i cannot fulfill because the times when i'm not at a job, the space is occupied by mountains of whatever, a bed roll, or the man himself. Also, i am hosting a Halloween party this year and i need to get that room ready. I cannot do so and it's particularly more irritating as the date approaches.

And this work space thing...i spent a considerable amount of time before Thorton even got here designing it. It incorporates all my current furniture and allows for two work spaces and a sitting area. I moved all but one piece of furniture myself, as per usual. I cleaned for many hours and prepped for many more. I got rid of butt loads of useless materials and garbage. After my space was set up (although not organized, see above), Thorton says to me, "Now what i'd really like is for you to do something like that for Cousin Roommate." Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? No one did it for me. Why can't Mr. Humble Genius do it himself, other than being too high to function 90% of the time and utterly lacking any sort of motivation? But, in true door mat fashion, i was determined to figure a way to unfuck his rat-hole-studio using only the furniture i have, save for a custom built topper for my dining room table so it won't get ruined like everything else. I spent more than 3 hours coming up with a work space for two people (so he can have art night with his pal), a sitting area for watching YouTube videos of street fights and epic fails, display space for his paintings and sculptures, storage, AND a space for his keyboard (but now he has two, so that's fucked). I showed the plan to Cousin Roommate and he loved it. All i asked was that he pack up all the shit, clean a bit, and help me when it's time to rearrange. That was almost 2 weeks ago. What's been done? Not. A. Damn. Thing.

On the other hand, when i showed Thorton the plan, his response was, "Well, i was thinking someting more like this", scribbling on my design while explaining a thing wherein i have to get rid of 4 pieces of furniture and disassemble then reassemble 2 more and eliminating all hope of displaying anything or being able to entertain, "so that he has one big giant surface area so i can do animation." Ok. I'm sorry...Charles what now? My mind just sort of broke when he said that. If he thinks he's staying long enough to still be here when Cousin Roommate finally gets his ass moving on this, he better be drawing up plans for bunk beds in his bedroom. I want my gawddamn studio back.

Anyway, all of that was to illustrate how atypical my life is at the moment - and i'm going to quit smoking tomorrow. Because it's killing me. The smokes are killing me and not being able to tell people off is killing me. I'm getting my voice back, for good, even if i become a morbidly obese super bitch. Send good thoughts...please.

The Creatures Shall Not Defeat Me

I live in a big house. Well, I live on the first floor of a big house. 2 bedrooms, lots of closets, living room AND dining room, plus 2 porches. I also have a garage and a big backyard. I am very lucky. However, I am also an artist, so that means there is never enough room for all my shit. Perhaps if I lived alone...alas, I live with Cousin Roommate who is also an artist. We have a lot of shit.

I have tried many arrangements in order to allow us both enough space in this incredible shrinking apartment. First we confined all the art stuff to the dining room. The hoard laughed at our efforts as it spilled into first the living room, then the kitchen, and finally my bedroom. After that I decided that since A) Cousin Roommate is sort of a recluse and B) I haven't been having many indoor parties lately, we should each have our own room for arting in. I took the former living room and Cousin Roommate expanded into the entire dining room. Also, at that time, several of our friends joined us in an adventure wherein we rented a huge studio space downtown to try and get the ball rolling on something (something some of us lost sight of, or never had, or whatever - that's another topic).

With the duel studio rooms going on, the hoard grew much more slowly and I was actually able to move, art, and breath in my space. However, recently, the downtown studio space became a thing of the past. Suddenly the hoard was back, with teeth. My "studio room" looked like 6 episodes of "Hoarders: Buried Alive" all smooshed into one colourfully lit area. Even breathing became hard.

I cannot art in those conditions. When I cannot art, I became restless, then angry, then depressed. Also, it's winter now and I have to fight against punching the stupid out of people harder than the rest of the year as it is. Something had to be done.

So I have moved into the one room in the basement that doesn't necessarily scream NIGHTMARE. All the other rooms are pretty terrifying. There is even a Murder Shower.

I used to have a "lab" down there when I first moved into this place with my former roommate. But a series of very soggy events led to everything I had worked on being ruined. I cleaned the room out but before I got my shit situated, I decided to let the place be used by some very cool people who were running a pirate radio station because fuck the FCC. The room has been abandoned for a very long time (ever since my paranoid landlord thought the antenna on the chimney was a bomb) so I'm back, baby.

Now here I am in a conundrum. You see, the spiders and other disgusting critters in the basement don't understand that I pay the fucking rent. They've been squatting on my dime so long that they are understandably pissed at me now that I am making them leave the only place that isn't a dank hell hole. But fuck 'em, right? They can have the whole rest of the cavernous, dark basement. I'm not going into the Murder Shower, even on a dare, so it's yours, assholes. Oh, that's not enough space for you relatively small monsters? How 'bout the haunted coal room where the light from 4 LED flashlights cannot penetrate? You'd thrive in there, you beasts. But, no. They keep coming back to my area. And now they've called in reinforcements.

It's my fault. The other day I got tired of nicely explaining to these stupid spiders that they could go over there or over there or even over there and I wouldn't tear down their webs or shoo them with paper or anything at all. Plus, they eat silverfish, I think, so I don't even kill spiders that have bodies smaller than my thumbnail as a rule. One spider, bigger than the ones I had tried reasoning with a million times, startled me. I noticed it out of the corner of my eye coming straight for my face - i'm assuming it wanted to get in through my eye to my brain so it could take control of my body and make me leave. At the time, I was working with my heat gun so I did the most logical and instinctual thing, which was burn it with a 700degree blast. Not nice, I know. And when I was 19 I caught the curtains on fire at my apartment killing another spider using a lighter and hair spray. I should have learned my lesson because this time the consequences were much more serious than flaming draperies. . .

The spiders have let bats in the basement. I'm not joking. Or a bat, anyway. There is no other explanation for that bat's arrival mere minutes after the spider's death. The survivors rallied in support and called on the creature of the night to frighten me. What they don't know is A) bats are one of my spirit animals and B) I've been inoculated against rabies. Bring it on, shit bags!

Actually, it scared the shit out of me. I've even been having dreams where I'm trying to give one of my friends an artichoke and I notice that there are flies on it but the flies are actually little tiny baby bats. So I don't give her the artichoke which makes me sad because, for some reason, in my dreams she really likes artichokes.

They've invaded my studio and they've invaded my dreams, but they shall not defeat me.