Category: The Adventures Of Cynical Woman

Click on the thumbnail above to see the full-sized image!

Just when I thought I was done busting my butt with Girl Scouts for the year…

Actually, I knew this camping trip was coming up and I knew I was “the adult in charge” for our troop (thankfully, I do have two other moms helping me out this weekend, but I’m the sucker who’s staying for the full trip).  I also knew getting ready for this weekend was going to be a lot of work.  I have to pack not just my stuff but also Princess’ stuff and Pixie’s too, plus I have to pack all the food the entire troop will be eating that weekend, plus all the equipment we’re going to need. And I have to figure out how to feed everyone!

Fortunately, my years in the Army Reserves come in handy in such situations. I was a Food Service Officer. I know quite a bit about what’s involved in feeding large groups out in the field. However, I was only the fool who signed off on the paperwork. I never actually had to cook anything.

In preparation for this trip, I had Hubster buy me a charcoal grill on Saturday. Saturday evening, I tried grilling burgers for the first time ever. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to get the fire going and the coals heated up, but I got it done.  Sunday morning, I got up early with both girls and spent even more time trying to cook breakfast on the grill. We did “Breakfast-In-A-Bag” –  bacon and eggs in cooked paper bags over the grill (you lay down a few sheets of foil first so the bags don’t catch on fire). That experiment was… edible.  Then Sunday afternoon I had the Brownie troop come over so we could inspect packs, make swaps to exchange with other troops, and try more cooking. This time, I had to have someone with Outdoor Cooking 2 training on hand. I’ve only got Outdoor 1 training, which means I can cook, but I’m not allowed to light a fire on my own without supervision.  So while our Outdoor 2 person watched, I somehow miraculously got the fire going quickly this time and we had hot coals ready very soon after.  We made kabobs with the girls and I am amazed at how smoothly it all went.  And once everyone finished cleaning up and left, I went and collapsed on the couch for a few hours because I was DEAD TIRED.

Anyway, the camping trip is in two weeks. Be prepared for an interruption in the comic then. I’ll try to have one done ahead of time, but I’ve got a lot to do between now and the trip, including more cooking practice (which I can do on my own so long as the troop isn’t around). If you’re interested in how these experiments go, follow me on Twitter or on Facebook. I’ll be posting the results of these experiments there. Even the ones that go up in flames!

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized image!

I keep telling myself I’m going to take a day off soon, but it hasn’t happened yet. I spent all day yesterday working on taxes.  I spent all day Saturday in Manteo, NC, attending a Girl Scout training class on Techbridge. And I spent the entire week before that catching up on work and cleaning the house. I’ve accomplished quite a bit, but I can’t wait until I get a day off. Unfortunately, it’s looking like that won’t happen until some time in late April.

Anyhoo, I somehow managed to find time to crank out today’s comic. Sorry about the spottiness of the background color on this one. I thought I had covered it pretty well, but once I got it into the computer, I saw I had not done so at all! I’ll work on fixing that in future eps. For now though, enjoy!

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized image!

I apologize for being late with today’s comic, and for missing Friday and Wednesday’s posts entirely. I knew it was going to happen, and there was simply no way to avoid it. We were down to the last few days of Girl Scout cookie season and yours truly was pretty much buried in paperwork and bank deposits. I have never been so sick of cookies and money at the same time in all my life.

Fortunately, cookie season is over. We got everything turned in on time, all the cookies sold, and now I don’t have to deal with this mess again for another nine months.  Yes, I will be cookie mom again next year, unless some fool-hardy soul decides they really want the job instead.  The fact is, cookie sales is how a troop earns money to do things like go camping, participate in community events, help with charity projects, etc.  Keep all that in mind the next time you see a Girl Scout cookie! Those cookies do an awful lot, and not just for the girls but the community at large as well!

Princess’ Brownie troop will be using their cookie money for a couple of camping trips coming up, of which I am in charge of one.  I’ll be taking 10 little girls out to the woods and trying to keep them fed, safe, and occupied for 3 days and 2 nights. Thankfully, I won’t be out there on my own. The entire service unit is participating in this encampment and I’ve managed to team our troop up with a troop of older girls and more experienced moms. I’ve had camping experience, but that was with the Army Reserves, which I understand is very different from camping with Girl Scouts. We’ll see which one I enjoy more!

Pixie’s troop will also be at this encampment, and I’m sure that’s going to be interesting. I don’t envy her troop leaders. Those Daisies are quite a handful.

Anyway, I’m working to get back on track with the blog and the rest of my life this week, so you should see both Rats! and Flashback Friday posts here at their usual times. As for the color in this week’s comic, let me know if you like it. I’ve developed a serious fondness for markers, and may continue to color the comics if I can work it into my schedule. It is extra work, but I like the results. Let me know what you think, and as always, enjoy!

Click on the thumbnail above to see the full-sized image!

This is a true story, and I was so ready to pull my hair out over this last week. Princess’ Brownie troop decided to work on the “snack badge” this past month, and this was one of the activities they wanted to do to complete the requirements.  Hubster walked in the door while we were baking and asked, “What are you doing?!”  When I told him what we were doing, he burst out laughing.

We’re down to the last two weeks of cookie season, which means my posts on the blog may be spotty this week and next. I’ve got a ton of paperwork to fill out, inventory to clear out, one more booth sale to do, etc.  It’s that last frantic rush to sell Thin Mints before I can finally collapse in a boneless heap and swear I will never eat another cookie again.  I plan to take a couple days off after I turn in all my final receipts. I’m hoping to take one day to go shopping with Mich and one day to just sit on my cookie-bloated butt and play video games. The third day will be devoted to recovering my office and possibly the rest of the house.

So if posts here and at www.veryscaryart.com aren’t on schedule this week and next, you know why.  Hopefully, I’ll survive this.

Take care!

Click on the thumbnail above to see the full-sized version!

I turned 43 last Thursday, and unfortunately I am too overwhelmed with Girl Scout cookie business right now to take time off to properly celebrate. I did spend Friday night on the couch playing video games, but that wasn’t exactly the celebration I had in mind for my birthday. That was more time to veg out and de-stress my cookie-obsessed brain.

Anyway, an explanation of the image above… Screw it, I can’t really explain it, except to say that at Farpoint I told my good friend Dwight I wanted a flying pink pony. Only that wasn’t cool enough, so I decided said pony had to poop marshmallow cream. I kept thinking about that damn pony, because it amused me so, and when I got home I told the girls about it. They thought it was a hysterical idea, and I thought it was hysterical that they thought it was hysterical, and the Hubster just generally thought all the women in the family were completely nuts.  And so on the morning of my birthday last week, I woke up the kids by decreeing that from now on, I would only travel by flying pink pony that pooped marshmallow cream. Oh, and I decreed that every time I walked into a room, the girls had to curtsey and say, “Yes, your Majesty!” And they actually did do that all morning long.  But by the time they’d left for school, the toaster had spit my toast out onto the floor, and so I knew the birthday celebrations were officially over.

Anyway, I wanted to do something about the flying pink pony that pooped marshmallow cream. And I wanted to play with my markers that I’ve recently started collecting. And so this was the result. Happy Birthday, people! You will never be able to erase this image from your minds. Nyah!

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized image!

Woo hoo! Purple hair! Boooooo, bad knees!

For the record, I changed my hair color again. I dyed it mostly purple with orangy-pink bangs, at the request of Princess’ Brownie troop.  Actually, they wanted purple only, but I had to have a second color in there.  And I’ve still got some streaks of blue as well, so it’s looking pretty funky.

As for the knees, I’ve injured both knees seriously enough that I’ve had trouble getting up and down the steps at times. I’ve definitely got arthritis, a fact which drives my dad crazy.

“Helen, you’re not old enough to have arthritis!”

“Uh, Dad? I’m almost 43.”

“Gack! Don’t tell me that! If you’re 43, then I’m…”

“Older than dirt?”

“Helen, you never were a loving child…”

So anyway, yeah, cool hair but lousy knees and an occasional twinge in my back. But I’m still rockin’ it baby! I just have to rock it in a rocking chair some days.

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized image!

I drew this cartoon on Friday, and wrote the blog post on the same day. Saturday around 9AM, I and two other troop moms were supposed to have picked up over 1900 boxes of cookies and brought them back to my house, where I was then expected to sign out about 1500 of those boxes to the rest of the troop to fulfill their orders. If you did not hear any blood-curdling screams this weekend, it all probably went okay. But I guarantee by this point I have eaten at least two full boxes of thin mints. Cookie season is stressful, folks.

Anyhoo, I’m still experimenting with offline blogging software. Zoundry Raven up and died on me after years of faithful service, and there isn’t a new version as far as I can tell, so this week I’m testing out BlogJet. We’ll see how it goes. I could always try MS Word, but I really prefer software dedicated to blogging, especially software that will let me grab my recent posts so I can see what got posted when. That’s kind of handy when you do a week’s worth of posts at once, and when you post things well in advance.  But if anybody knows of a good blogging software app I can try, something that will let me assemble my posts on my desktop and upload them to the web, drop me a note. I’d appreciate it!

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized comic!

Hopefully, this post comes through okay. When I sat down to write it, my offline blogging software, Zoundry Raven, just sort of decided to quit on me and wouldn’t restart for anything. Of course, Zoundry hasn’t updated this software in a few years, so I guess it was just a matter of time. Let me know if the post comes out weird though.

Anyway, about this week’s comic. Every time I go to a con, I get asked the same question. Mike Pederson, who runs Ravencon (no relation to Zoundry Raven!), always asks about the Hubster and the kids, and wants to know when I’m going to bring them to a convention. The answer is NEVER. We tried, when Pixie was a year old, to take the whole family to a few conventions, and it was a disaster. The kids couldn’t sleep in the hotel room, which meant the adults couldn’t sleep either. In fact, at one con, Pixie got up at 2AM (she was sleeping in a trundle bed on the floor), picked up the phone, and ordered room service. That ended family convention attendance right there.

The fact is, I go to cons to work. Yes, I go to see people and have fun, too, but the main point of my being at a con is to work. I have a table to man all weekend long, and books and zines to sell. Plus because I write erotica, most of the panels I do tend to be held around 11PM or later, which makes staying in a hotel room with two children a problem. They’d wake up every time I walked into the room, if they weren’t already being kept awake by the room party down the hall.

And on top of it all, Hubster just isn’t interested in schlepping two kids around a con all weekend. I mean really, it’s a pain to travel with kids under normal circumstances, even when you go some place where you know the kids will have plenty to do. But at a science fiction convention? I don’t care how family friendly a con says it is, it cannot entertain my two little monsters all weekend long. They get bored, they get hungry, and then they go feral and that’s it for the Hubster.

So no family at cons. But I’m there, and isn’t that what matters?

Next convention I’m attending is Farpoint, February 17-19, in Maryland. Be there, or be… absent? I dunno. Just show up and buy issue two of Mustachequerade, okay?!

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized image!

Yes, this actually happened. Our hotel room at Marscon was interesting. In addition to being directly across from the never-ending room party from hell (on Saturday night, it shut down at 5AM), we also had a little problem with the coffee maker. It would only intermittently heat the water. Now, I brought instant coffee with me, so when the water came out cold Saturday morning, I cursed my fate that most hotels don’t have microwaves in the rooms anymore. And I probably did that cursing while standing in front of the microwave that I was somehow blind to all weekend long. All I can say is, I was very, very, very tired. And really, it’s so frikkin’ rare these days for me to get a hotel room that actually has a microwave in it!

And did I mention that the shower handle had a habit of turning itself so that the water kept getting hotter while I showered? I nearly boiled myself like a lobster. Oy!