Tuesday, May 3, 2011

My Dependency on Power...

So, for those of you who follow my other blog, I tried to start a painting-a-day segment... Day One was quite a success. I painted a painting, photographed it, and posted it online, both in my blog and in my online store. It sold within a few hours... Yay! Day Two; not so much... I went to get online and although I was connected to the internet, it was SOOO slow that I just watched that little rainbow thingy spin for two hours. I called the wonderful people at Comcast  and was disconnected three or four times, then on hold for a half an hour, and when a representative finally picked up the call my phone started beeping in my ear to tell me the battery was about to die. It took several more phone calls and a visit to the local Comcast office to get my service running again. A day and a half later... I was back online. But, when I went to photograph my pictures the batteries in my camera were dead. It was day two in a series of nasty, rainy days, so I opted to wait for some better weather to go get new batteries. For those of you who are not familiar with my situation, I am a starving artist with no car and ride a bicycle for transportation. A very cool bicycle, but a bicycle none the less. Going into town in the pouring rain was not high on my list...

The rain had ended the next morning so I went into town for a cup of coffee and two double A's. Returned home with a nice caffeine buzz and was ready to get down to business. Photographed some work and went to put it into my computer when I realized that the batteries on my mouse were dead too! Still buzzing from my triple latte, it made sense to get back on the bike to go get more batteries. (I know that I could have taken the ones out of the camera, but I would need to buy some more anyway, so I thought, "What the heck.") To cut down on the length of this story I'll just say that with all I had to do that day, between life and my side job that I took painting a house... the actual house, not a picture of it... I never got back to the task of updating my blog.

The following morning I was up nice and early. It was a bright and beautiful morning. I took the dog for a longer walk than usual. I put on a pot of coffee... cold watery coffee. ( I have a Bunn coffee maker... It works on displacement and keeps a reservoir of hot water ready to go.) Since I really have only two outlets in the house, I thought I must have popped another breaker. I went to the cellar stairs, turned on the light... Damn bulb blew again... Walked down the dark stairs to find the fuse panel. Actually, I went to get the rechargeable flashlight first, which was not there because my brother had taken it with him. The breaker appeared to be fine... ?

Upon returning to the main floor I soon came to realize that there was no power at all. I could hear the town digging up the next street over and thought they must have cut the power. Oh well.

At about five that afternoon I realized that the workers had gone home, and I still had no power. I couldn't believe the town would do that with out notifying us. I shook my head and took the dog for his long afternoon walk...

Returning from the walk, I noticed a piece of paper tucked in the crack of the front door. It was a notice from the power company we'd been shut of for non-payment. Shit!

I texted my brother to let him know... No response. It took almost a week. I have power again.

The night before the power was shut off, I had gotten paid, so I went grocery shopping and filled my fridge and my freezer. I had no idea the billed hadn't been paid for months. I dug through the pile of mail in my brothers room for the bill thinking that I would pay it and get it turned back on. It was four hundred dollars! There is no stove of oven, no real fridge, and only a few working outlets in the house.
How the hell did the bill get that high? How long had it gone unpaid? All I  know is that I have power again and once I dig out of the pile of dirty dishes and laundry, and the three inches of Golden Retriever hair that seem to have covered everything in the house, I'll get back to painting again!

Thanks for letting me vent.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

So... I'm Not Bitter, But....

Okay, okay... I know, I'm the one who wanted to be an artist. I started a blog about making a living as an artist to document that move. It got a little bitter. It's not that I don't love being an artist. I do. It's just that some days poverty sucks. So, I've created this separate blog to be able to vent my spleen on those days where the frustration just seems to build to a point where I need a release.

This week was one of those weeks....

If you've been following my other blog you've heard me bitch about things like:

---> Having no car ( I spent a winter in New England Riding a bicycle... enough said)

---> I don't have a TV ( I use my computer for entertainment...)

---> I live in the ghetto (just draw a circle around the shootings in town, put a dot in the middle...That's me)

---> I've been heating my house with wood because the heating system wasn't circulating...

---> There is no real kitchen.

---> Two outlets are powering pretty much everything....

So today, I guess we'll look at the no real kitchen aspect. My kitchen is just a room. A room with one outlet. There is no sink, no real appliances, just a makeshift kitchen. A dorm fridge, a microwave, my coffee pot, two hot-plates, a George Forman grill and a toaster all run off of one outlet. Luckily there have been no fires yet. Well, not electrical anyway...

I like to cook. A lot. So I have great cook-wear. Because there is no sink in my kitchen, I do the dishes in the bathroom. Needless to say, that's a total pain in the ass. It takes forever. There is no counter space, a tiny sink, the faucet is too low... It's just a cluster ----. So my week started out with me cooking. My non-stick Calphalon pans were dirty, So I took out one of my really nice stainless saute pans. I don't use them much in this kitchen. They apparently heat up much more quickly than the Calphalon pans do because I only turned my back for a minute when the olive oil that I was heating to saute some pork medallions decided to catch fire. Needless to say, there is no fan in my kitchen. My house filled with smoke instantly. I threw a lid on the pan and the fire was out instantly, but the entire house had already filled with smoke. (Not one fire alarm went off BTWs) I opened two windows and stuck a fan in one pointed outside. Did I mention that I heat my house with wood? Not only did the smoke from the fire start to go out towards the street, but the smoke from the fireplace as well. Instead of going up the chimney, it was redirected by the new draft and proceeded to fill the house with a new kind of smoke. ( Still no fire alarm by the way...)  I quickly shut the windows and fanned the fire... the one in the fireplace...and the smoke started to adjust itself back towards the chimney. But that took forever. I finally ate around eleven-thirty... in a house that was about 40 degrees.The next day a friend stopped by, walked in and asked if I was cooking cheeseburgers. "NO."

I didn't do the dishes that night because I was fed up. When I did them the next day, there was even more fun to be had. I am always careful about wiping my pans out with paper towels before I do the dishes... That way food particles and grease don't clog my drain. (foreshadowing...) Even so... It's a bathroom sink, it's mot made for dish doing. When I did the dishes the drain clogged. I didn't notice until it started to spill over the edge onto my feet. I shut the faucet off and got out the plunger... Up to this point in life  I guess I've lived pretty well, living in places with real copper pipes etc. (more foreshadowing...) I take the plunger and plunged the clogged drain. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. The drain quickly unclogged and I finished the dishes... almost. The funny thing about PVC piping is it will direct water, but wont stand up to too much pressure. The "pipes" under the sink had split. The sink had drained almost instantly, not because I fixed the clog but because the clog had simply been bypassed to the area under the sink. the vanity was holding the water well too, for a while... Eventually I realized that I was standing in a but an inch of water. Thanks to Doc Marten I didn't feel the wetness, so I wasn't aware of it's presence until I moved my left foot and heard the splashing. I had used the remaining paper towel that I had to prep the dishes so they wouldn't clog the drain. Not that paper towel is of any use when there is an inch or so of water... So, I started to bail the water, with my clean pans, into the tub.  The remainder, I mopped up with my clean bath towels. I thought that I was done when I heard the dripping... Even though I had acted quickly, a considerable amount of the water had found its way through the floor and into the basement... And apparently the outlet on the cellar wall below. (Is that allowed in the building code?) I dried what I could, avoided electrocution, and went on with the rest of my day.

Funds being low, I accepted a friends offer to help him with his new house. He said he'd pay me, and I needed the money. We worked some very long hours over the weekend.  I would stay late into the evening and he and his wife would feed me so I didn't cook for days. Monday night I had a little cash in my pocket and decided to get Tai for dinner. Tuesday, I thought about that nice steak in my freezer and went to take it out to defrost it... Have I mentioned that there is only one outlet in my kitchen? Did I kind of imply that it may be slightly over loaded? The steak was already defrosted. So was everything in the freezer. It was full too because I had recently been shopping. All that food was not just defrosted, but warm. Not too warm though... I thought. Now my dog and I (I sometimes share my dinner with him...) both have a little bit of the runs (Me a little... Him a lot) and I had to spend the money I made to pay bills on more food. Now today, it's pouring rain and my dog has to go out every five minutes... and I don't have a fenced in yard... And I live in the ghetto so every one else in the neighborhood seems to have an untrained Pitbull that they don't feel the need to tie up, so I walk him on a leash... So, I'm soaking wet and cranky. But I feel better now that I've vented.

Thanks!