A blog post interrupted by mom and baby walking in the door

 Mom and baby are on a walk. I'm researching Cabinetry specifics because I mentioned to Heather that we could redo the kitchen before my mom comes in November for thanksgiving. I also demoed the mudroom and stairway to the basement because it was all ratchet as the tide rises quality-wise the next projects always reveal themselves in this old house. In the mudroom there lies a drain line underneath concrete, and there used to be a flush out line but someone filled it with concrete and framed and finished a wall on top of it. such, that room always was dank and smelly subtly, and now we know why. It was always seeping out moisture and gasses below the flooring. we will have to amend this. 

Baby is currently under the weather. I think I brought something home from work 

...

Three lifetimes have passed!

 Hey, been a long time. 

SO my mother gave me this computer about a year ago. I'm such a spoiled guy, the youngest of two, and a blessed financially family, that I have been clued into a trick, that I can lament to my mom anytime that I don't have a functioning computer, and she will oblige sending one of her old ones, or in this case, a refurbished one from the factory. 

A band I listen to called Krill has a line; "if you were having a good time, while everyone else was suffering, then you're the oppressor, you're the oppressor". Well that's what I think of when I get treated so nicely from my family/mom. That's also why I seek out hard work and try to challenge and improve myself. I try to be a good person, and it takes constant effort, and I'm not always so good. 

I hung out with a friend Dan here yesterday. I met him through a social media app centered around homesteading- I mentioned I do landscaping in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and he messaged me that his place needed some work. Wildly long story, but I did work for him at the rate of $30/hr through a Native landscaping company I was working for at the time; and I'd damaged the Landscaper's truck, and this homesteader guy, Dan was a welder who could solve my goof-up, and I solved his yard problem. 

Anyways, that was a year back, and yesterday, my birthday, he called me again and said "it's that time of year!" I thought he meant my birthday, but he actually meant, time to do more yard work for him. 

Allow me to describe my birthday; but first, something I probably should have lead with. I'm a father as of three months to Heather and I's beautiful Daughter, Edith!

Since my last writing, I was on my way to grad school at UDEL, The University of Delaware, in Wilmington, Delaware, and I did go and teach classes, and participate in weekly critiques of my co-students' works, and I did work for their maintenance department doing as the joke of MFA's goes, literally 'Moving Furniture Around'. And I did take pedagogy class, and I did teach one semester of core painting to undergraduate students, and I did get in a bunch of trouble for not sticking to the School's prescribed curriculum, instead having my students paint on too-small of surfaces, or in the 'wrong' color palettes, and I did not do a great job at applying for fellowships or grants, or appealing to the staff at the college, but rather I did the strategy of holing up in my studio and producing as much work as I could, and tried to push my painting's imagery and themes, and admittedly I did assign to my peers in our art theory class excerpts from Ted Kaczynski's 40 page manifesto, (but in my defense, or whatever, the dean of the college had us read from Weather Underground's Bill Ayers' graphic novel about reforms in teaching ie. deskilling and listening to the students in a bid to decentralize education into feelings). But I heavily digress, point is, they could smell something on me, and I did get invited to leave the school in my final review before the board of faculty. 

They accused me of not wanting to be there, which an hour and a half's drive to and fro each day, no income permitted outside of the stipend granted by the school itself ($1100 pre tax per two weeks excluding holidays etc, which calculated to about $11/hr for the required work stipulated), having a car die out in me, buying a motorcycle to continue to attend, riding through whatever weather was in the cards; rain, hail, snow. 

I was doing well at the college, I thought, a true hero's tale of perseverance and my peers saw progress and began to 'get' my art, and laud compliments during what should've been critiques. 

Anyways, technically I was put on academic probation, and asked to paint a new body of work over the summer to resubmit to the school for re-admittance, but I was already stretched very financially thin and, overall Fuck them, and, also, they were probably right to do what they did, and may they enjoy their insulated ass community. 

Admittedly, my attention was split. During school to help with finances, I worked for my friend's native landscaping company almost full time for a while, and when I'd first started school in the fall of 2022, I worked maybe three days a week helping a guy from Craigslist build decks and additions. 

So, after getting the boot from school, I scrambled around to find a job in residential construction, because I thought it would be practical to learn about home flipping and improvements, as I imagine I'll derive some income from that as I continue the rat race towards a small empire of family, land, self-reliance etc. Heather and I made the conscious choice to try for a kid, and I thought if we can land one in March, that would be cool, because I thought we'd land an Aries baby, or one whose perspective originates in the springtime, plus the pregnancy would go through the winter, and it seemed like a sensible time frame. I got a job at All Phase Construction LLC. in Lancaster when Heather was about five months pregnant, and stayed with that company for until two weeks ago. Until my resignation, I assisted an electrician and did a wide variety of home remodeling tasks. I took the role of the f.n.g.- the 'fuckin new guy', with a twist of self awareness, and excellence. All my life, I'm used to being the scapegoat, so the shit roles downhillism of being the new guy is something I excel at. Also, like any good hire, I was already proficient at most of the tasks I needed to do on the job, and eager to polish up and learn new skills. Well, it was all good until a new new guy joined the crew, and he was a 45 year old former marine, and he was terrible to work with. A know-it-all and a bully. His work was fine, but his need to put others down, (specifically me), was untenable, and to make it worse, he was stupid, so good rhetoric wouldn't land on him. He would often corner me out of work because in his estimation, he could do it better. He would demean me while nudging me aside to take my task away, always simple tasks which he would often overcomplicate. Over the course of maybe five or six weeks, my work dried up, absorbed by an over leveraged meathead, so..what was I doing there? My whole goal in working trades is to learn new skills. 

Meanwhile I was clocking in after work to a cabinetry wood shop of a neighborhood friend, who is from Finland and has a lifetime's worth of expertise in the Northern European furniture making craft. I was building a mudroom bench in his shop as a commission from a customer I'd met on a worksite. The Finnish man's name was Petteri and his wife's was Michelle. They bit the bullet opening this wood shop only a year prior, and by chance Heather and I had met them at some Halloween dance night at a bar maybe 8 months before she was pregnant. Well, one night Heather and I were volunteering for our neighborhood's garden alliance, offering free rain barrels to neighbors, and we knocked on Petteri's wood shop doors and what a great surprise to see him! I told him that I had some furniture to build, and offered him the contract in full, but he said, "why don't you just build it here?", so over the course of a few months, I did and he helped greatly, and educated me on several tools and concepts. So as this All Phase Construction job was going sour, I asked Petteri, "Hey, how could I do this kind of work full time?" 

He said, "well, there's a lot of turnover in wood shops, but also few shops really do this type of custom building, but there is one shop, my friends; Cedars Woodworking. So, long story short I work there now. I interview very well. I probably have a 70% yes rate in my interviews, when I'm not batting way outside of my lane; (like for example three years ago when I got a wild hair and interviewed for several managerial office positions in construction management, and of CAD based departments, having no experience meanwhile other applicants had proper gone to undergrad in those fields. 

Well, I realized a quarter the way through that this should really be about six posts. let me try to sort those out for now before I conclude; to give me a leg up on the next time. 

1. Going to University of Delaware

2. The motorcycle and the Subaru and the Truck

3. My studio experiences at the University of Delaware, politics, my thoughts and actions, my income summer break, etc. 

4. Mayapple Native Landscaping

5. All Phase Construction LLC. 

6. Side work, side quests

7. The decision to make a baby

7.5. Heather's sister dies

8. Pregnancy and delivery, and Edith

9. the end of painting. 

10. Cedars and the future. 

Thanks for reading! baby is crying and I have to go. 

Along a Garden Path

 "I built horse barns the past two years"- is what I tell people. But really I was a helper driver carpenter on a horse barn building crew. I used to emphasize that they were Amish, and I had all these takes and experiences to share about the Amish. Not as much anymore. Year-and-change with the barn builders, and about four months with an Amish hardscaping crew. Hardscape is digging out footers and gravel drainage bases for paver patios, and applying stone veneer to CMU blocks, and building with CMU and stone stacking walls and fireplaces and that sort of thing. Mixing mortar, lots of digging, some demolition and finish work on outdoor kitchens and stuff like that. Those four months I count as six months, there's hardly time in my life to review and count the exact amount of time I was with them, so I'll call that a half year, and the carpentry I'll count as two.

Going to grad school at UDEL soon here. Delaware and I have no relationship; except I have been three times to graduate critiques in the UDEL arts building. Seems like a cool little school with a good intuitive vibe. 

I don't have further thoughts on the school that are valid here yet. They did say no outside employment, so I quit my job and now I'm just taking side work. I built some nice stairs for a good budget, and I dug a French drain for a high budget. Now I'm working on a garden path in a neighboring town and the budget is high. I subcontracted my best friend Riley to come up from Baltimore to help out; who's been spending his time bartending and making art and constantly networking- he's a scene kid. So it's a lot of work, and I'm trying to get a portfolio out of it kind of- (I mean, really the homeowner has a nice garden and the vision that appears to me happens to be a very beautiful project- even though it might be considered overkill).

Anyway, so Riley hasn't been doing manual labor and I'm trying to help him out with some money. He gets out of his truck from his drive up from Baltimore and announces that he just got his test back for Lyme's disease and lets the silence hang. I say, "Oh, jeeze, what is it?" and he says, "Positive". I say "Man, I'm sorry to hear that." Then I don't remember just how we got back around to the topic of digging out this path, but I described the project to him and we started cutting a flat plane out of the burm. He was alright at clearing the dirt; we were both fresh to the job and eager. The first day he put in six hours which we counted as eight because of his waiting for me to get to the jobsite (I was waiting on the contractor too, by running errands gathering supplies for the project, but whatever, I am expecting a bigger payout anyway, so I comped Riley for waiting around), Three hours the next day; he spent most of the day on the phone mitigating beef in his circles, and five hours the final day. His ethic really slacked off after the first day. It happens. He went home after three days and I gave him $400. 

I've worked myself to fatigue on this job too. We ran into a bunch of rocks in the hillside and either have to dig them out or break them apart with a sledgehammer. It's a railroad tie retaining wall along a hill to make for a garden pathway where the customer can service her garden while not climbing akimbo hillside. I'm building steps and a recessed walkway (below the level of the railroad ties, to accommodate for decorative stone. It's getting close but recently I've been returning home to collapse on the couch for a necessary nap. It happens on these big projects. How much can a single person tackle- that's the idea of designing a project. You vs. the project. A will-to-power kind of thing. Or the participation in the Power Process. It's a natural thing, as far back as I can remember, before I knew the terms, a challenge. blah blah. 

So this is what I have to deal with and wrap up soon here. Should go fine. I will staple those verticals into the hill with rebar, no deadmen to speak of but the wall has those LVL braces front and back and there's a good drainage system behind it, so the idea is that it won't need to do much retaining- plus half of that hillside is buried boulders. Anyways, the company that I'm subcontracted under is happy and thinks I'm going plenty overboard and is happy I'm working for him. As evidenced by my blogging, my mind is approaching a better state. I put in about seven hours of work a day in this fatigued state- once I get going it's not so bad, and I'm actually working the whole time. That's a huge improvement from the hardscaping job where I had little say in my tasks, often felt useless and I was.. I don't know, it was demoralizing and I lost a lot of respect for them. 

My guilt has to do with how I treated Riley. I got to step into the lead role, which rhymes with what I'll be doing in UDEL- teaching the undergraduates, and I got to see what juggling cats was like a bit. Compounded by the fact (idea) that he's my friend, I have to pay him well and accommodate his personal life. Well, my idea was to let him participate in the power process a bit; because that's what I needed so badly from my last job; agency, but when you're green you're green; and Riley was a green worker. It went alright at first, but at some point, when he asked for something to do I gave him a big trench to dig out, and he instead grabbed a push broom to brush out a big boulder to see how large it was before he got to digging. He set to cleaning off the rock with a push broom. It's very frustrating to interrupt someone's logic while also paying them to do work they're obfuscating. He was tired. I kind of invited him to leave. This will have to be something I get better at. 

I'm going to help the company owner who subcontracted me for this job today soon with moving his home from an apartment to a house outside of town. He's got a wife and a baby and a dog and is a good guy who I'm learning lots from and I'm very paranoid about the durability of landscaping projects, so I do a lot of research and my expanding knowledge base has proven valuable to him; so we are good friends now, at least symbiotic friends. 

That's it for now, My fiance is annoying me saying stuff like do you want to get a dalmatian. More dogs. I do not. Elsewise things there are good. She was watching me type so I jokingly wrote a dig. 

One Year since my last post

 I visited this site yesterday and noticed it had been a year. Well, I haven't stopped thinking about what I'm goin to write next. Gotta post later. It's almost midnight!

February through June.

I thought I'd make money in stocks and extra money by working construction. Well, I lost about three grand in stocks, one in particular called ENG. I sold after six long months. I vow to cut losses sooner next time, lesson learned. Heather quit a couple jobs and fell short on money. I hadn't gotten any covid money from the government, and expenses were up all around with the dog and cars. I had to pay a lot on taxes too. I had to cover a lot, but I did. 

March, April, May, June; The barn builders needed me more and more, and I needed money, so I worked in the shop in addition to on the road. I learned a lot about the process of building barns. We ripped through four modulars, from setting the sills to shingling the roofs and hanging doors. I thought of these days as my nest egg, but with losses from the stocks it was really just treading water. Some days I'd lose more than I'd made, and my body was being destroyed by the construction work. It was a very defeating feeling. 

After work I'd take the Hugo the Dog out for a walk at County Park. If I was lucky, I'd get an hour or two to paint in the evening upon returning home, then bed time and repeat. 

Barn work became less optional because of the nature of a two-month long project, to which I had to drive the crew, and therefore work the day. Some art deadlines flew right by because I was so busy. For a short while the dates with Heather went away, as I was usually working weekends too, and trying to make art happen, ironically, but they started to trickle back in when we could. We'd find a good Tuesday or Thursday or whenever to walk to a bar restaurant and grab a meal out. 

Heather's precarious employment was worrisome, but alas, now she has positioned herself well in two stellar employment positions, and it seems clear she has a north star. 

The barn work gave me a lung infection because I didn't protect myself while doing demolition work on a rehab project we've been on for a few months. I breathed in old barn dust, insulation, mold and rat and bird shit. Most of the damage was done in one day, and you know, sometimes you roll up to a jobsite not knowing what the nature of the day's work is going to be; so that's how that happened. I tried to breathe strategically, but it got me anyway. After the demo, the work got progressively cleaner, and the project has turned out very nicely. I am getting used to the work, and I think I will keep the job for a year or two, until I can buy a house. 

My sketchbook submission is being worked on. Some things take so much time that it feels as though you can waste a little and that would be okay in the long run. But enough of a little makes a lot, and that's what I'm dong with this blog entry- procrastinating. But also, these entries do help orient me and allow me to clear my head. If I have enough of them I begin to get into topics that I care about crafting a thought out of. The topical stuff needs to spill out into the sketchbook today, and the thought-crafting will go on inside of the minds of the viewer. 

I'm not sure whether or not my artwork is wicked or evil or anything. It is very often in consideration while I make it, because my thoughts are dark as I learn more about the world. Of course, the love becomes deeper and precious too, but the (perceived) realities are harsh often, so the work is dark. Dickens said after writing Moby Dick; "I've written a wicked book, and I feel spotless as a lamb!"  

Political leaders are clearly devoid of any moral anchoring; and that yields them upwards. Criminals go upwards so long as the state (or other competition) doesn't catch up with them to put a lid on the competition securing their monopoly. Statement making is a way of ratting oneself out, or pledging allegiance to the status quo, and so many 'statements' are built right into the status quo, like legalize weed, and gay rights and black rights, trans rights and the oft used 'what's next?'; they're rolled and doled out so long as the structures that be are further reinforced, never challenged; but perhaps I'm taking some the work of radicals for granted; just so much radical work is hacky and dumb- like why do you need the approval of everyone to live your life? Or why do you advocate for others' rights beyond just personally being nice to them and representing them well in your speech? Then also the other cannot be communicated about, though it is so often tried; marginalized groups are so often used as pawns. The kicker is that there are so many jobs on the market right now. Everyone is hiring. Get out there people! Not to be insensitive to.... what... those who choose not to work? Or 'cannot'? When I worked dispatch for a tow truck company, I'd call brokers and they'd clearly be at home taking care of kids; it can be done. In a way I think then that if you don't work or whatever, if you get left behind, that's a part of the whole process of change. I really wish the marginalized would get going (and many and most have), because that's the game. We can't grow weaker, the microorganisms are coming for us, if nothing else. Leave people alone too, that's huge. Shop as local as possible and as little as possible too. Take sustainability seriously. So now I'm like a working class hipster, equality seeking skinhead libertarian nationalist, who tries to shop organic and buy secondhand, and give back, like Jesus, but I also don't fucking know. Great, lol. So what is one to do regarding making art? What is to be communicated, to whom, and how? 

Therefore withholding opinions has become a part of the credo; to fly under the radar, and to what extent that has to do with a lack of conviction is where the art resides maybe. Because I don't know whether it's a lack of conviction or an allegiance to a lack of conviction. I don't know how to move forward. The matrix of it like fascia holding the thing together, begins to become palpable, tangible/physical. All the while I paint serieses of non-statements which I can only hope communicate a vision of what the thing is; wicked, beautiful but wicked, and all on the table; to be won or lost. 

. 

Lot's of free money out there- that's one last thing I have enjoyed saying recently; like it's a solution to my problems. It is so blanketing, the implication being that I have been severely scammed. And other's successes are unearned. 

I think the thing to do is keep this job, work it for a few years, get into a house, work work work, and paint; paint the whole time, and the network will work. Doesn't need to be New Yorker network or anything, just a network, and in my case with people I love and respect so much.

That should do it. Sketchbook due in July, Murals to come in July through October, Plein Air painting show in the hopper, and bringing me much monkey on my back energy, but in a good way. 

okay, godspeed. 

Site optimization

 I'm working for a barn building company out here in Lancaster, the best company of the bunch. They're Amish. The Amish call themselves plain folk. I love their way of life, and they work very hard. I was concerned the first time I worked with them that I would not be able to sustain more than a few days at a time of the work, so I expressed some flakiness when I returned from building a pole barn. 

I shoveled snow with a man who does parking garage restoration. After the snow, I did some concrete chipping. I used a chipping gun and we were indoors working under a garage in a boiler room, my coworker and I. We worked around scaffolding and wore respirators, and goggles, and ear protection. It was even more difficult than the barn work, and I kept the schedule spotty by acting flaky with that boss too. 

Both companies like me and want to keep me on, despite my lack of experience. The barn builders put me in the office once a week to optimize their website and advertise across social platforms. I am glad to do this because it is a skill I could utilize for my own promotions, of the art I supposedly make. 

The paintings come so slow nowadays, because I'm painting from my head maybe, or maybe because I'm working all the time it feels like. I'm expanding my life and it feels like it every day. I split my time up and there's usually none left. When the light of the tunnel seems near, something pops up- often an unanticipated expense, and I become motivated to work for the company hourly rate. 

I lost money in the stock market, but it should go back up, and I should adjust my exposure. 

I meant for this post to be about some site optimization, to drop in some words that would generate flow into my website, but now I realize it would generate into the blog only, not lead to my website. I should put the site in the header of the blog. 

2019 taxes hit me hard because I worked five months full days on a 1099, which is supposed to be illegal but in Philadelphia if you're not running a scam, there's no way to make money. Lew Blum towing in Philly ran into trouble because they just started impounding cars that weren't illegally parked, to scam money out of people. Now, the city has reacted; tow companies must wait for a car to be ticketed before they can tow. The result is that tow companies call the cops, and the cops don't bother to come out. If cops do come out, of course their ticket means they get some revenue off the car themselves. Terrible city. Glad to be gone. 

I secured two mural walls in Lancaster, neither paid, but both pretty close to Heather and I's apartment. 

The snow which sat for two months mostly melted off today, and I have my study done for one of the walls, which came with super clear instructions from the business owner. It'll be an underwater scene; something I've prepared for for a while, but in loose terms. Time to make a tight-ish drawing I think. 

The other wall the owner just wants me to do something better than what's on there now, which is a freight train looking piece of graffiti. So I'll do something beautiful and rhythmic, which is good because I have a wall like that in Philly, and it'll be good to reinforce that look for my portfolio.   

Unpaid walls often lead to paid ones, and I like Lancaster too. It'll be good to have a little representation in this town, and if we stay in it, maybe I can begin to conquer it like my friend Shaun Thurston did Jacksonville, Florida. When I remarked; "boy Shaun's work is really what Jacksonville looks like isn't it?" some critical friends remarked "well, he kind of forced it on them", which, that's fair, but over time his work will hold, and theirs will be at the mercy of trends, so my allegiances go to Shaun, and the crew that speaks clearly with their art. 

Painting outdoors again!

 Our dog Hugo is settling in nicely. We have taken him to a puppy manners class once, and his next class is tomorrow night. 

Heather surprised me this Saturday with the perfect date proposal; that we go to a park where I paint outdoors while she runs with the dog. I felt like Nabokov, who was known to ride in the back seat of a station wagon while his wife drove. They were interested in America's varieties of butterflies and they would travel to see them. Nabokov in the back would work on his books. Hugo and Heather frolicking around, I got back into the swing of painting outdoors; something that is so enrapturing yet moot feeling while you're not in it- like meditation. I had fun and made a painting of a field of clumpy grasses on a sunny but cold winter day. 

The next day I went out too; this time just Hugo and I and it was a much more overcast day, and I sat an made another painting- this time of a similar field but with a foreground birdhouse as the subject, with an echoing birdhouse in the distance too. Indeed I was reminding myself of Andrew Wyeth a little with this composition, but I didn't let it bother me too much. 

The night of the second painting, I went out to the graveyard, since Hugo was displaying that he had plenty more energy, and I took my acrylic gouache paints along- a faster and cleaner medium- and made another painting- one of tombstones and trees and columns. I took that painting home but didn't like it very much. Maybe the pleinair thing had seen its use for me then. I got sick that night from the turpentine smell in the house, which still persists; and I put the paintings in a closet to try to have a better night tonight. 

Hugo is a good painting dog companion. Unwittingly I have been informally training him by taking him out to paint plein air. The first time he was entertained by Heather, the second time he split his time between entertaining himself looking for birds and annoying me a little by stepping in paint, and eating a little bit of it, then licking himself to get it off his tongue (I tried to keep him out of it, okay?), staining his white fur permanent rose; (what was I thinking painting an overcast day with that color anyway?). My palette that day was permanent rose, titanium white, yellow ochre, pthalo blue, and black- a very 'fast' palette. 

The third painting session in the graveyard went well with the acrylic paints, even though I didn't like the painting. 

Today I worked for the Amish, helping the barn builders with updating their website. After work, I came home and knew I had to get a painting done lest I lose the streak.  I also feel hot to work on my website after I optimize and hook up the Amish one all day. So I worked on my site a little, then Hugo made it clear he needed to run, so I took the failed acrylic painting back to the graveyard this time with oil paints, and did another failed attempt. Tonight was much cloudier and the sky was orange due to city lights. the painting flipped from a cold scheme to a warm, and my blast over only half covered the surface resulting in a half cold half warm monstrosity. The thing I am writing on about though is that Hugo was a pretty good dog except he started DIGGING in the graveyard at night when I was painting. He was close, so I could stop him, and we were at least on a trail instead of atop a gravesite, but Jesus Pete!

The good thing is when he wasn't digging, he would sit neatly next to me and wait, then, bored, would spring back into a full run out and away in a big exploratory circle, before coming back to my side to sit by me again. "Why are we sitting quiet?" he seemed to wonder, then I think he totally got it- "we're hunting!"