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!
