Bad Dog; Betrayal at Puppy Ridge

Dear Blogger, last night I dreamed that shit person wanted my Rat...sexually.

I deserve a day off, just one. Having finally quit my job I deserve to just have a good day. No chores, no work, just sit back with a couple of drinks and a bowl and play video games all day. The shitdog disagreed.

After the Rat slow cooked the pork butt she woke up at the asscrack of dawn to pull all of the meat off of the bone before she went to work. She left the pork bone in a bowl on top of the kitchen counter. I went to work, put in my notice, and came back (the dog goes to daycare so there was no danger in leaving the bone out). I felt more free than I had in years. The idea that I would never have to go back there ever again (They were already in a hiring round so they wanted to waive my last two weeks so they could immediately hire a replacement, the money would have been nice, but meh) just made me euphoric. I came home and had a little party day. Just got a buzz on, played Black Ops 3, cooked up some delicious stir fry (cook with Sriracha, just do it), and didn't do any dishes. At 3 o'clock in the morning I woke up to a loud crash. Shitdog had went for the bone. Not a big deal in itself but he KNOCKED OVER MY HONEY.

Living frugally means I don't get to buy sodas, beers, or La Croixs. I've had to adjust to drinking tea, which I never really liked. I remedy this by putting a big dollop of honey in there and stirring it just enough so that it melts but still kind of hangs around the bottom of the mug in this delicious sweet hot honey water sub-layer. Living frugally, however, also means you can't buy honey. Honey is very expensive. My mom had just given me a big jar of locally produced granulated honey and it made such the most perfect addition to my tea that I genuinely look forward to a cup of hot tea. The price being what it is though once the honey's gone it's gone.

Because it's locally produced, however, it comes not in the plastic bear squeeze bottle, but a glass mason jar.

SHITDOG

There was so much honey left. So thick and perfect and just slightly bitter. Every time you took a spoonful the honey would drain out of the granules to fill the depression like syrup in an icee, leaving this little honey crystal crater with a lake of honey in it.

I spent a good half hour scrubbing honey off the floor and then scrounging the floor for glass shards. Despite how well behaved he was after his yelling at I knew that he would be back to lick the floor for any remnants of pig grease and the last thing we needed was for him to hurt himself swallowing glass shards.

That dog Judased me on my first day as a free man.

Quitting was much more amicable than I thought it would be. I was so afraid to disappoint all these people I worked with and respected I didn't think about the fact that they are my friends and that, after I had busted my ass for the past five years, they respected me too and wanted me to be happy. Even though I had left everyone in a small bind by dropping everything so quickly they just wanted me to be in a good place.

The shit person in question re: my dream is a prosecutor that worked on my last trial. Just an absolute liar. Malicious and vile in a way that only TV villains are. He was a big part of a reason I quit, not only did he break every rule in getting an innocent man convicted, but he was praised for it. I kid you not he fake cried during his closing argument and the stupid jury ate it up. It made the news. "Prosecutor chokes up in emotional trial."

Anyway here's the photo shitdog's headshot came from. I figured it was worth posting whole.

already in stripes

Firsty's the Worsty

Dear Blogger, last night I dreamed that London has some weird ideas about public bathrooms.

A week ago today I got the news that one of my clients died. I have been a public defender for almost five years. We always struggle with burnout. It's a hard job and people resent that we are needed. Client's insult us to our face (Just last month a client told me I was "a piece of shit" because the police hadn't turned over full DNA notes yet), make false claims about us in order to change attorneys, and constantly make these ham-fisted attempts to manipulate us. Prosecutors think we getting in the way of justice (literally told this), and judges ignore us (the judge fell asleep every day of my last murder trial).

I haven't been handling it super well for the last year or two. I gained about 100 pounds, got in the habit of drinking every night, and was sick all the time. When my client died it sent me over the edge. She was someone I was especially close to for a client. A really great person and completely innocent. She was accused of aggravated assault for pulling a gun on a man who was smashing her head against a concrete floor. It was a classic case of self-defense, she even called the police immediately after fleeing her attacker and the responding detectives recommended against pursuing charges, but still she was charged. She had never been in trouble before, had no drug or mental health issues, and was in every way a completely normal person, not at all like most of the people that come through the system.

We'd been pending trial for almost 2 years now, which is pretty standard for someone that was not being held in custody. During this time she lost her job (normal for someone pending charges), was diagnosed with MRSA, and became addicted to the opioids that were prescribed to her while she was being treated. Last Friday her fiance called me to tell me that she had passed away, probably from a drug overdose.

I've had a client die before (suicide), and I've seen far too many innocent people go to prison (my last trial, the one with the sleeping judge, my client went to prison for life plus 60 years on a murder charge; all five eyewitnesses said it wasn't him), but this one was it. Her life was completely derailed for no reason and it led to her death.

My SO and I figured out that I could live off of her for a little bit and try to make money as an artist and distiller. I've been painting ever since a kid and making whiskey for a little over a year. So this is going to be a little diary of the process of leaving my job and, hopefully, improving my life. My boss was nice enough to give me a week off, and Tuesday is the day I give notice, so I'm pretty much gonna drop everything and see what happens. Weirdly, absolutely all of my friends saw me quitting a mile away, so... I guess that's a good sign vis a vis it was pretty obvious that I was miserable.

I've never really blogged or anything before, so bear with me. I'm not super used to talking about my emotions, and a big part of this blog is going to about me learning how to be myself.

The last few days have been pretty good, I was a bit manic up until I went to her funeral, but the last few days I've just painted and worked on my whiskey recipe, and I've felt happy for the first time in a while. I find myself smiling randomly, I'm nicer and more friendly to people I meet randomly, and I've worked harder than I've worked in years.

Tuesday was a bit of a hiccup. I got drunk, which in and of itself wouldn't be a big deal, except that my SO had just agreed to scale back on everything that she loves in order to support me financially, precisely so I didn't have the pressures that led me to drinking every night. So, not a great confidence builder...

Anyway, a bit about me. I'm 31, a dood, and here's me being fat at a pear (take that pear):

I've been drawing since I was 5, I got into digital painting about 10 years ago, and I've been making corn whiskey for a bit over a year. Zombie Kill Girls comes from a character I've been doing for a looooong time, which has more or less become an alter ego of mine (called the Zombie Kill Girl) and I'm sure I'll talk about her more in the future but this is getting kind of long, so I'm gonna wrap up for today.

My artistic inspirations are Taiyo Matsumoto (Black & White), Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl and Gorillaz), Ed Roth (Rat Fink), and the Disgaea video game series. I consider myself a big time feminist (a lot of ZKG stuff is, in my mind, about playing around with beauty standards and confronting the fear of female sexuality), though I know that may be hard to believe given that my list of artists is all male (I don't know a lot of artists so please feel free to send any my way that you think may fit my style).

I'll be writing here, here is where I'll be posting artwork, collections of my favorite artists, and reference material for those who want to see the process behind some of my stuff, and I'll post a link to my etsy shop as soon as that's up and running.


And here is the dog that's super happy about getting to be home with me all day every day:

He's not sad that's just his face.