The August Dal Report

Guys, I popped the fuck off this month. This will probably be my most positive and happy blog post ever written, I’m feeling incredibly grateful and blessed to be where I’m at currently.

Officially Moving In

It’s been a long time coming. I’ve only spent the majority of my time at Cass’s for the last… two years or so? But I’m finally officially moving in. I’ve got 90% of my stuff at her place now, I just need to sort some of it out so I can move my furniture with my brother and his truck. Still figuring out how I’m going to get rid of my bed and shit. Why is it so complicated to throw out a mattress? Like what the fuck is the point of the giant garbage trucks if they can’t take a mattress or two?? I’m sure there’s some reason that’s extremely obvious to anyone with any actual understanding of waste disposal, but I don’t have that knowledge and honestly don’t want it. I just want to throw away my stupid mattress.

And before anyone suggests it: No, I’m not giving it away. When I was a teenager I had a horrible habit of spilling soda just like. Everywhere. I don’t know what my deal was but there are some extremely suspicious looking stains from Dr. Pepper and red cream soda.

Unfortunately, for better or worse, my new job (which I’ll get to soon!) has slowed down me moving. I have just. Piles of random shit in the guest room that need to find a home somewhere. I haven’t had a proper weekend since starting, since they were filled with doing work for my other job and visiting my parents. This is my first actually free weekend and I want to use the bulk of it for my writing. I’m woefully behind on uploading my Shadow of the Demon Lord notes and I want to get caught up before it gets too bad. This is also a long weekend, so I may spend my Labor Day sorting my shit.

New Job!!!!

I officially started my new job a few weeks ago!! I am loving it so far. They treat me great, I am more than fairly compensated, the work isn’t that difficult, it’s close by and my hours are good. It’s fucking awesome. I’ve wrote before what my job is, but going over it again since its been a month, my job is to create custom embroidered panel designs that are inserted into the lid of caskets for funerals. We get orders directly from funeral directors who will pick out a design from our catalogue with the family, maybe with personal touches, and I’m the one who runs the machines and mounts the embroidered fabric onto the plastic panel board that gets inserted into the casket.

Image of embroidery embedded on the lid of a casket.

I am aware that I am turning into the friend who you have no idea what does for a job.

But that’s the bulk of the job. Sometimes they won’t want something embroidered, and they’ll request for a custom print. We have some stock designs as well, but a lot of the time families just want family photos or collages. I’ll usually do my best in Photoshop to get these photos looking as good as possible. Unfortunately, these photos aren’t taken in the best quality. Most of them are screenshots from people’s photo albums, scans from a home printer, or are super artifacted jpegs. There’s only so much I can do, but I do my best with these. There have been a few times where it feels like I’m working miracles knowing the source images I’ve been given lol.

Image of embroidery mounted on a rectangular panel. It says 'Going Home' in gold thread with several flying birds around the text.

When I’m not doing that, I’m usually running stock, making sure we have enough fabric ready to go for if we get busy, doing maintenance on the machines (which usually amounts to blowing canned air and slapping oil on em), or sitting on my phone and being real lazy. Something that has been insane for me learning about what “”"”real”””” jobs are like is that.. nothing really matters. It’s super weird, going from working at Walmart where if a customer gets their groceries 10 minutes later than expected my livelihood is threatened to my current job where I get told I work too hard because I respond to most emails within 5 minutes if I’m at my computer. It is extremely jarring. I can’t even begin to unpack how badly Walmart fucked me up working there. I got called into the store manager’s office because I took my scheduled 15 minute break and they “couldn’t find me.” I didn’t get in trouble, although I assume only because it would’ve been illegal to punish me, but they strongly encouraged me to make my 15 minute breaks shorter than 15 minutes and the constant feeling of surveillance never left me. I got pulled into the store manager’s office for every mistake I made, no matter how big or small. If I said we were out of an item, but we actually weren’t and the item was moved out of its spot my job was threatened. If I took too long to find items because I was double checking if the item was actually out or if it was moved, my job was threatened. I could not win.

And now I’m in a laid back office setting where as long as all the orders for the day get out before FedEx picks them up, nothing matters. My shift ends at 4 and FedEx picks up our packages at 6. So even if I fuck up an order to the point I have to stay after my shift, or we get so behind I have to stay late, it doesn’t matter as long as its finished before 6. Hell, even then, I can take the packages to FedEx myself. I love being trusted to handle orders on my own. That I can decide for myself what the best method is to get through the day. That there aren’t cameras inside my job that are constantly checked, that my every movement isn’t monitored. God, it is such a breath of fresh air.

I also finally have paid holidays! And I’m off weekends! Life feels so magical again!

Visiting My Parents

Me, my brother, and his girlfriend took an impromptu trip down to South Carolina to visit our parents for the weekend. Cass was of course invited, but she wasn’t too keen on spending 16 hours out of her weekend in the car.

Image of passing forest and mountains through a car window.

While we were there we visited the factory my dad works at, where we found he was stashing away literally dozens of tubs of raisins in his office. He showed us around the plant, the different things they produce. I’m genuinely not very clear on what my dad does for work. He’s explained it before, I know the things they produce. But I couldn’t tell you what his day to day looked like. I just know they put hot metal in molds. And I guess my dad eats raisins. I seriously couldn’t get over the raisins thing, never in my life did I ever see him eat a raisin, and suddenly he’s got 15 tubs of them hidden in drawers and cabinets? I asked my mom and she agreed, she had never seen him eat a raisin before.

Image of a dirty, white machine in the middle of a concrete floor. The room is dimly lit. The machine is surrounded by other nondescript heavy machinery. Image of a dusty CRT TV connected to a large square slab of concrete with a metal door. Signs on the side of the concrete read 'X-Ray.' The concrete slab is surrounded by nondescript small pieces of metal in large crates. Image of a mysterious dark hole in the floor. A ladder leads down into it, but it is too dark to see in.

Anyway, we looked at heavy machinery and a mysterious pit. My brother and I drew dicks in the dirt, but for some reason my dad didn’t like that and erased them. Luckily I drew a smaller dick when he wasn’t looking, though I didn’t get a photo of it.

Image of two penises scraped into black dust and dirt on grey concrete.

We also went to this warehouse called Book Outlet in Easley SC. It was pretty far out of the way, but we’d pass it going home. Basically, at the end of every month, this warehouse would sell books for 75% off retail price. I’m not sure where exactly they get these books from, a lot of them had Target or Walmart price tags on them. I guess this is where the books that don’t sell go? To be moved to some other big box store? I’m not sure. I didn’t really question it once I got 5 brand new books for about 20 bucks.

Image of people walking through a crowded warehouse with books everywhere on metal bookshelves.

I picked up Dracula, Frankenstein, The Book of Bill, Gravity Falls Journal 3, a Star Wars book with Kenobi as the main character (Padawan), and a Nightmare Before Christmas behind the scenes art book.

Image of five books stacked on someone's lap. Dracula by Bram Stoker is on top of the pile.

While with my parents was also the first time I vomited from drinking. I.. forgot my tolerance had gone downhill. I was drinking keeping pace with my dad, who drinks every weekend, if not every night. And before I knew it, I was going to bed at 10pm because I “didn’t feel good.” I did attempt to go to sleep, but my stomach wouldn’t let me and I threw up in the bathroom. I laid on the tile for probably about an hour before I could find the courage to stand up and shower.

Shout out Michaela and Rachel for dealing with me lmao.

Screenshot of a text conversation on Discord between Dallas and Michaela. Dallas is typing sporatically with lots of typos. He says: 'I'm in bed now. I feel awful actually. I fucked up, I fucked up. I drank too mych, my stomach hurts.' Michaela responds with: 'RIP.'

Conclusion

And uh.. that’s basically it! This is probably my shortest ever post when it comes to the amount of actual topics I talk about. I have been busy in other ways that hasn’t been expressed here, but it’ll be clear what I’m up to in the coming days when some more writing gets posted. Here’s the link to the photo dump. Same password as always.

Also, Michaela and I decided to commission an artist to draw Javier and Larry together. We got this through an artist we found tumblr named Drew . We got the sketch back last week and we are SO THRILLED AND EXCITED!!!!!!! for the finished product.

Sketch of Javier and Larry holding each other lovingly in dim light.

And of course, here’s Guppy.

Image of a tabby cat loafing on a grey blanket with wide eyes.

Image of a tabby cat sitting at the foot of her large cat tree in front of an open window.

Image of a tabby cat curled up on someone's lap looking at the camera curiously.