Category: The Adventures Of Cynical Woman

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I’ve been dealing with schedule issues since school started, trying to balance my roles as parent and as business woman, and not having much success. It was getting to a point where I was so overloaded with work and obligations, I was stressing out over the tiniest little things. I even had a melt-down over the new hand-mixer Hubster bought for me because it came with too many attachments and I had no idea when I was going to have five free minutes to sit down and read the manual to figure out how the damned thing was supposed to work.

So I made a decision last week to cut some stuff out of my schedule. Some of it was stuff I wanted to do but know I don’t have time for, and other stuff was stuff I was expected to do by other people and I didn’t have time for. I let folks know that my priorities are family, then work, and then everything else. And since family and work take up 99.9% of all my time, I did not have anything left over for anybody else. Thankfully, everybody involved seemed to understand, and my stress level went down considerably after I made those changes to my schedule. But it was pretty bad for a while there, and I need to be very careful that I don’t get that overloaded again.

So anyway, I thought it would be fun to draw a steampunk cartoon, and here it is. This was the comic I spent all my drawing time on Sunday, which is why I never got a PerCoDraMo comic up that day. I was drawing, working very hard on this in fact, but it wasn’t supposed to go up until today, so there ya go. Will I continue PerCoDraMo after this month? Ah… no. Again, I’d love to, and I may still do a quick drawing every day, but getting it posted some times is a bit of a problem, especially when I try to do the web comic in advance, because then I have to draw two things that day. As I stated earlir, I need to be very careful to avoid adding extra obligations and stress to my already hectic schedule.

Cheers!

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A funny thing happened to me last Thursday. I had been contacted by the girls’ school about helping out with a t-shirt for a fund-raiser the school is hosting in two weeks. They needed someone to convert 16 JPG graphics into EPS format, which I said would be simple enough to do. But when I got to the school to talk to one of the staff, things sort of snowballed on me.

Not only did they need the JPGs converted, they also wanted to know if I could lay out the back of the shirt. Apparently, the printing company had decided to tack on extra fees this year to do the EPS conversion at the price of $35 an hour. I understand why they would charge that, being a freelance illustrator myself, but this is a shirt for a fund-raiser. The point is to raise more money than you spend on running the event. So I said yes, I could design the back of the shirt as well. After all, how hard could it be to convert 16 black and white JPGs to EPS and then lay them out in a 4×4 grid with a bit of text above saying “Thank you to our sponsors!”

Only the graphics weren’t black and white. And a lot of them were very tiny and badly pixelated. And some of them were in file formats that I had never seen in all my years of doing computer graphics.

And did I mention the school also asked me to do the artwork for the front of the shirt as well?

In the course of 24 hours, I went from converting 16 sponsor logos to converting 27 sponsor logos and designing both the front and back of the t-shirt.

It was supposed to be a 3-day weekend for us. The girls had off from school on Friday, so I was going to spend the day with them running errands, swimming at the Y, picking out pumpkins to carve from the local pumpkin patch, and helping them finish up their costumes. I had also planned to do a bit of client work and draw today’s cartoon, plus polish off a personal project that I had been waiting weeks to get to. And there were also several loads of laundry to do, a kitchen to clean, a pumpkin carving party to go to, a couple 15 mile bike rides to take, and so on and so on…

The girls and I did run errands, get pumpkins and go swimming, although by that point I had already pulled my first all-nighter so we were a little slow getting out the door and I had to cut the day short to get more work done. And we did make it to the pumpkin carving party, where Mich began assembling the braid for Pixie’s “Rock Star Goth Rapunzel Vampire” costume. And I made it out for one bike ride around the neighborhood. But that was it. The rest of that 3-day weekend was devoted to creating that t-shirt. I pulled 3 all-nighters in a row. I bitched and moaned a complained on Twitter and Facebook while doing it. I played very nice with the ladies organizing the charity event and did not kill anyone. And I worked 27 hours in 3 days and basically pulled a few miracles out of my ass.

I have been asked if I would design another shirt for next year. I have said yes, upon the condition that we start this process in the spring of this school year, after I get through Girl Scout cookie sales. That way I won’t be forced to deal with another rush job that leaves me sleep-deprived and dangerously snappish. I have been thanked heartily for my work, which is always nice, and I have ensured that I will not need to do any further volunteering for the school for several months.

Yesterday, after the worst of this weekend was over, I told the Hubster how psyched I had been at getting this shirt done. In spite of all the hassle, the lack of sleep, and the stress over doing a rush job, I did actually enjoy myself. This was in my area of expertise, after all, and I was in the zone the entire weekend, crushing each and every challenge that came my way. I worked miracles, folks, and I enjoy doing that. But I was also really depressed that all this work had been done for someone else. Sure, it was for a good cause, but it upset me that I never got to do that sort of thing for myself. If I were to spend that kind of time on my own projects, there’d be no stopping me! I’d rule the universe! But I could never possibly put in such long hours making my own miracles and masterpieces for myself.

“Well, why not?” the Hubster said.

“Because you’d never see me,” I replied. “If I worked like that on my own stuff, the laundry would never get done, the house would be a disaster, the kids would have no idea who their mother was and you’d probably forget what I looked like too. I just can’t do that every weekend.”

“Well, no, not every weekend,” Hubster said. “But what if you did it one weekend a month…”

And at that moment I knew I had married the best man in the world.

Essentially, Hubster has agreed to give me a free pass once every month to disappear into my office and bust my ass on my own artwork. He will take care of the kids and the house while I do it. It is an incredible gift on his part, and I love him dearly for it. I don’t know when the next weekend will be yet, but when it happens I will let you know. And when it happens, I’m going to call it “Helen’s Art Binge” and I’m going to gorge myself silly with time spent on my projects just for me. I will tweet and post to Facebook all through that weekend to let folks know of my progress, just like I bitched and moaned all through this weekend over that t-shirt, and when the final product is done, I will share it for all to see.

So stay tuned. There will be interesting things happening in the near future. All thanks to my very understanding Hubster.

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Honestly, I really do feel a lot of pressure these days, but I drew this because I wanted to draw me with just a skull for a head. I thought it turned out well.

But about that pressure. We haven’t even finished October yet and I already feel like my head is about to explode. A lot of it is due to Girl Scouts. Both Princess and Pixie are in Girl Scouts now, so last week we had 3 troop events. This week I have two meetings and a training class to go to. Next week we’ll have another troop meeting. And very soon, cookie sales stuff starts up again. We don’t actually start selling cookies until January, but we do start paperwork and training prior to that, and it’s my goal this year to get started before everyone leaves for Christmas break, because once folks are gone, it’s kind of hard to get all their permission slips signed and turned in on time.

So yeah, a little bit of pressure these days. I saw a news piece last week about how more and more women are taking anti-depressants and it really struck a nerve with me. I know why those women are taking meds. I’d like to figure out how I can avoid taking them myself. As I told the Hubster, the problem isn’t how I handle the stress, it’s how much is being piled on me. If I can reduce that load, then I’m good. The question is, how do you reduce that load.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know!

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My apologies for the lateness of today’s cartoon. I had planned to get up at the crack of dawn this morning to finish it, but when I woke up I was dead tired and I recalled I was going to spend all day chaperoning a bunch of kindergarteners on a field so I went back to bed for another hour to rest up. That’s my glamorous life, folks.

Anyhoo, I spent a morning at my local public library two weeks ago to see if I could still write. Apparently I can. What I produced was only a couple thousand words of rough outline, but it is a story idea typed out on the netbook and it looks like it will shape up pretty good. I was excited about it anyway. Then on Sunday night, I had a really strange dream about being shipped off to a sanitarium by my family, only the place turned out to be much more than a sanitarium, and after exploring it I woke up with a question on my lips – “Where is La Isla?” Expect to see that come back to haunt us all at some point in the next year or so.

Then I had another bit of interesting news yesterday. The publisher for my first novel, Demon By Day, seemed interested in having me podcast the whole novel, so sometime this winter I may pull that bad boy out and begin production on it for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast. It’s pretty hard core, in terms of erotica, probably some of the most hard core material I’ve ever written, so it will be interesting to see how it will be received.

And that’s all the news I’ve got today. Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday!

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Well this week’s episode took a lot more effort than I’d anticipated, much like the ride Mary took me on last week.

Mary and Patricia are the two who got me into cycling this summer, with Patricia donating an old bike of hers to me, and Mary coaching me along. I’ve been riding around my neighborhood all summer, slowly going from 4 miles up to 22 miles in a single ride (and let me tell ya, 22 miles is a lot of laps around my neighborhood). Anyway, Mary decided it was high time for me to hit the road outside my neighborhood, so she took me to historic Yorktown and we road the tour roads there. Our first ride out, we did 15 miles, which was a bit tough considering there are a lot of hills in Yorktown. But the second ride….

Oh, that second ride. Mary needed to put in some extra mileage last Wednesday, so she suggested we go 25 miles, and I agreed. And you can see the results above. Now, I am no slacker in the exercise department, you know this. But I am not as experienced a cyclist as Mary is, nor do I have a road bike, like she does. My bike is heavier, and a bit slower as a result. So whilst Mary zipped along, I trudged behind, desperately trying to keep up. We managed to do the first 15 miles in an hour, but then took another hour to do the last ten. Mary was kind enough to slow down for me, otherwise I would have gotten completely lost and probably died out there.

But as Mary pointed out, when it was over, it was over, and it felt really great to say, “Hey, I just biked 25 miles!! What did you do today, bitches?!” I like being able to do that.

And as for getting this week’s cartoon done, let me simply say that nothing is ever as easy as it looks. Especially when you want to get the joke just right.

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I have to mention that because occasionally I get complaints that the cartoon is too small. The image above is actually a thumbnail that leads to the full size image. I did up the thumbnail size this week, so maybe that will help. If it doesn’t, I may have to redo the website template to allow me to post the full size image in the blog post. Just let me know if you’re having problems viewing this.

Anyway, about this week’s cartoon. I did my hair a week and a half ago, and it looked fantastic. Still does, which makes me happy because finding temporary hair dye that lasts in my hair has been a challenge. But anyway, I had just done my hair and the Hubster told me we were going to Busch Gardens the next day. Now Busch isn’t my favorite place to go (I used to work there and it sucked), but I’ll go on a family outing if we decide to go. So we went, and shortly after we arrived, Hubster announced we were all going to ride the Roman Rapids which is this big water ride they have, and all I could think was, “But I just dyed my hair yesterday!!!”

Fortunately, I didn’t get splashed too badly, and Hubster did the manly thing of taking all the waterfalls we passe while letting me get through relatively dry. But there were a few drops of color here and there when I got out. That’s the thing with these temp dyes. It takes them a while to quit bleeding, and by the time they do, a lot of brands have faded. It all depends on the brand and your hair, I’ve found. Brands that last only a few days on my hair work like magic on the girls and won’t wash out for months. However, I seem to have found a brand that works pretty well (it’s Fudge Paintbox, FYI). We’ll see how it looks after another week or so.

So there ya go. Amusement parks and hair color – just another fantabulous day in my life. Yay!

We had an energy crisis in the household last week. Namely I had no energy to do anything whatsoever. I had to force myself through the entire week. I’m still a little tired this week, but not as bad as I was last week.

However, this week I’m dealing with stress. The whole Girl Scouts thing has started up again, and I’m up to my eyeballs in patches, paperwork, and meetings. I don’t mind the meetings and patches so much, but I hate the frikkin’ paperwork. I’ve got a ton of old mail to get through that I’ve let sit all summer, and to have to deal with a rush of incoming paperwork is just a bit frustrating.

And then last night I nearly killed a woman when I thought she had volunteered me to be the troop leader for a new Daisy troop we’re trying to put together over at the girls’ school. Pixie wants to be a Daisy, and I said I’d help out, but since I’m already cookie mom and assistant troop leader for another troop, there’s no way I could be troop leader for a new troop. But this woman wrote me a note during a meeting last night saying she had found a troop leader for the new Daisy troop, and then she pointed to my name on a list she had on the table, and I almost leaped across the table and killed her in the face. I could only control the Fist of Doom by firing off the Double Middle Fingers of Rage instead.

Fortunately, the whole incident was just a miscommunication.

My apologies for posting late today, but I am still worn out from ouf weekend trip. I always plan to do the cartoon on the iPad wdhenI travel, but this particular trip was so busy, I only managed to get the pencilling done before we returned home.

And yes, for those of you wondering, this is exactly what happened in the car on the wa.y up. Next time, we play MY iPod.

Yes, this actually happened. And yes, Pixie actually said this.

Man, did I get an earful from that kid last week. The girls had been in school almost two weeks already, but Pixie’s kindergarten class only did half-days the first couple of weeks. The day they started full days was the day of “The Dreaded Nap.” As Pixie so succinctly told her teacher, “I don’t do naps.” And she doesn’t. Hasn’t, in fact, since she was 18 months old. Not for lack of trying on my part. I used to do my dangedest to wear that kid out so she’d sleep for an hour or so in the afternoons. But no matter what I tried – long walks around the neighborhood, swimming in the local pool, never-ending games of tag – nothing seemed to wear her out. In fact, I usually only wore myself out, which made the problem even worse.

So eventually, I struck a deal with Pixie, which was that so long as she played quietly in her room for 2 hours every afternoon, I would not force her to take a nap. And this is pretty much the deal her pre-school teacher struck with her as well. But in kindergarten, it’s a whole different ball game. They don’t have a separate room she can sit in to read or play a game. She has to stay with her class and the class has to lie down and be quiet. They don’t have to sleep, but they do have to be quiet. And Pixie does not like that one bit. Nor did she care for the puppet that was offered to her when she complained about it.

Other than that though, the first few weeks of school have gone well. We start Girl Scouts again this week, which should be interesting, and I’m finding my free time being eaten up just as much as it was before both girls were in school. I can’t seem to catch a break so I will have to continue to cut back on some of the work stuff that I do. I’ll continue to cartoon, and hopefully will get “Rats!” back up and running this week, along with one or two other regular blog posts, but beyond that, I make no promises. I’m working from 5-6:30AM these days just to get some extra hours in, and even then, I’m still having a hard time getting everything done. Hopefully though, now that we’re finally on a regular school schedule things will even out.

But you and I both know they won’t, so I’ll survive as best I can.