don't talk

I've been feeling really sad and angry about the hurricane and it's aftermath. I can easily get worked up into an overwhelming feeling of impotent outrage. I haven't been writing here because I haven't yet detangled my thoughts. I already detest this administration, and this makes it even worse.

Besides that I've been thinking about poverty and survival and preparedness and planning. I'm done with being poor. It's really not at all fun, and not what I want for my kids. I mean, I'm not dirt poor. I pay my rent every month, and we're not hungry, and I have a car and a computer and the internet. But every month I'm wiped out, we have no health insurance, no savings, and nothing extra, and it makes me feel way too fragile.

I'm working harder, doing more eBay listings, making more paintings. I'm going to try to be more proactive about building my career and marketing my work.

I'm also starting to put together our earthquake kit. I've put it off for far too long, but something like Katrina reminds you that disasters do happen, and you can't count on someone else to save you.

On a more uplifting note, Scott and I spend half of Monday building me an unbelievably bountiful stack of beautiful wooden painting supports. I think we made about 100 of them! And the best thing is, it was all free! We salvaged a ton of nice wood from a dumpster behind a cabinet shop. Any painters out there should check out the back sides of their local cabinet shop, because it's incredible. The one that we went to throws away a 20 yd. dumpster full of wood each week. I love being able to save beautiful wood from the landfill. I consider that as part of my artwork.