gloom

I got woken up early because Charlie had to be awake early to drive to Chicago. He went back to his place to pack and whatever and I went back to sleep. He came to my place again to say goodbye (he was also supposed to pick up a coat but he forgot) and give me my frisbees in case I wanted to play disc golf. He hit the road and I didn’t do much productive the rest of the day other than working on my painting, which I supposed is a worthwhile endeavor. I had errands to do and things like that but I felt vaguely malaised so it was a good day to lounge around, kind of rainy and gloomy. Charlie called in the afternoon to say that he was at a mall in Chicago to buy a coat since he had forgotten to take one and it was cold up in the northern realms. Amusingly he misplaced his car at the mall. For dinner I cooked up asparagus risotto from the Joes with shrimp in it which made an excellent meal.  Watched some TV in the evening, didn’t stay up excessively late.

 

Slept over at Charlie’s, woke up before he did and cleaned up some of his crap. I’m not entirely sure he appreciated it. I wanted to rearrange his bedroom but I would like to note it’s not because I’m an interfering weirdo, it’s because he has his bed blocking both the closet door, the other door and it generally makes it awkward to get into the room. Sadly that plan was vetoed, he likes his ill-arranged room how it is, thankyouverymuch.

Came home and worked on the Utah painting. I finally figured that I would actually get somewhere with it only if I just didn’t care how the first layer of paint went on and just got the white out of the canvas. That was an important lesson I learned in the painting class I took this spring, that one should consider the first coat of paint to be the first of several and just try to get the general colors blocked in rather than doing detail in one inch patches at a time. That’s something that used to really hold me up, just the idea that I wasn’t getting anywhere on these huge canvases and I was never going to finish so why bother? When I get all the white covered, it feels a lot more like I’m making progress.

Had yesterday’s leftovers for dinner, the fish reheated well but the pasta was a bit dry. Then I went over to Charlie’s to watch the Red Sox/Rockies playoff with him and some of the amis. This was a generally tolerable activity, the game was a crushing victory and thus not terribly exciting, so I played some yahoo games and whatnot at the same time. I get along fine with most of Charlie’s friends but there’s one guy who thinks he’s funnier than he is and sort of tries to pick on me in an unfunny way. It doesn’t hurt my feelings or anything, it’s just lame and irritating and I honestly wish he just wouldn’t talk to me if he can’t find a more adult/socially normal way to interact. After the friends took off Charlie and I played some FIFA soccer and then came back to my place to sleep. We went to bed early-ish (for us) since he had to get up early-ish but we weren’t tired and just chatted for a while. We fell asleep squished tightly together; sometimes I wonder how we manage to untangle ourselves in the night without waking up.

 

sunday is not football day for me

Woke up, called Charlie to see if he wanted to go to the Sioux Passage pioneer fest, no answer. Looked up other stuff that was going on and realized it was the Shaw art fair, decided to go to that instead. Charlie showed up looking hungover and offering to go to pioneer fest, I told him to go home and sleep instead. Went to art fair, parked in Tower Grover park, wandered around, got some food. Raviolis with sauce and sauerkraut (delish) and Oberweiss ice cream (ehh). Lots of artists I’d seen before, I was especially tuned in to the guy who does art about environmental disasters, in particular the piece with a leopard caught in a noose by a human skeleton wearing a leopard skin coat. Actually bought a necklace, shock, amazement.

Walked back through TG park, took some photos of the waterlilies and ponds there. Stopped at a garage sale on the way home and bought Charlie a laundry basket. He came over later, we had peas/tortellini/prosciutto soup for dinner and then went over to the WU for an evening stroll, followed by hanging out at his place. A pleasant sort of day, nothing terribly noteworthy other than that for Oct 7th, it was bloody hot (92?) and one of those days with big clouds moving slowly across the sky.

 

the 275th day of the year

Charlie is sleeping and I have crawled back into bed to hug him. Sometimes I think about how we look from above when we are sleeping or cuddling, spoons each way or limbs tangled or back to back pressed together, do we form a symmetrical shape? What it looks like when he is on his back and I am on my side with my head on his shoulder, in one of those movie-esque shots. I lie there and think about how I could capture these pictures, how an arms’ length camera would never work, how I want to paint that scene but fear getting it incredibly wrong without some sort of photo to go by.

And he is the big spoon and I am the little spoon and his hand rests heavily on my bicep and I place my hand on top of his and consider how similar our hands are, square with long fingers and oval nails and no fat, all muscle and tendons. My sister’s hands are like that only even more so. Big joints, protruding tendons, short square nails. Man hands, but I bet she wouldn’t like it if I pointed it out.

Today I discovered http://xkcd.com/about/. I like it. It confirms my suspicions that I’m a huge nerd.

Dinner with R. at Mi Ranchito, mental note not to get the arroz con pollo again. Not enough different flavors. Then a little Are You Being Served and I almost locked us out of his apartment, fortunately we got back in through the front balcony. Late night steaknshake with Charlie, we went to the one way the hell out on Midland and the fries were dry and… dry. I don’t think I’ll go to that one again.