Category: The Adventures Of Cynical Woman

My cats get into all sorts of trouble. Not just the two cats I have now, Hiccup and Toothless, but also the original three cats I had for years. BJ, Lydia and Fritti “moved in” with me back in 1992, and they gave me years of delight and plenty of broken objects to remember them by. While Hiccup is the one who has it in for Pixie’s playhouse dolls, it was Lydia who managed to fall through an open access panel on the second floor of our house and end up trapped between the walls on the first floor. BJ, my Himalayan, was the one with the dirty panties fetish. He’d love a perfectly good pair of Victoria’s Secrets to death, if I let him. As for hair clippies and ponytail holders, that’s Toothless’ preferred play toy.

Then there was Fritti, our big orange tabby, whom I secretly suspect snapped the head off the groom of a Lladro statuette after Hubster accused Fritti of swiping his wedding band. I can’t say for certain it was him, but that fat cat did have attitude.

Anyway, my house has plenty of cats, and they do lots of crazy things. That is the definition of ‘cat.’

I cannot tell you how incredibly hard I laughed after hearing my dad’s story. My dad is the original practical joker in the family, and for something like that to happen to him is not unexpected. He lives a strange life. And now you know where I get it from.

My dad is also sort of a cartoonist. I drew today’s cartoon in his “style,” in honor of him. He always draws these little stick figures doing goofy things. He was sort of like a pre-internet xkcd. If xkcd drew cartoons about evil little children tearing their father’s hair out while he snored.

Anyway, this week’d cartoon is for my dad. My poor, bald dad, whom I love even if he does shoot and eat Bambi. Keep deer alive!!!

So last week I had this weird virus thingy I was dealing with – aches and pains, a slightly sore throat, no energy whatsoever. Then just as I was getting over that, I got hit with a lovely, simply LOVELY case of insomnia. Three nights of staring at the ceiling, elbowing the Hubster in the ribs every time he flopped onto his back and started to snore. I just live for nights like that.

Not. I’m supposed to be up at 5AM most mornings to get a jump on work, and you know that between the virus thingy and the insomnia, that just didn’t happen. So now I’m scrambling to play catch up. Last night was the first decent night of sleep I’ve had in a while, and I’m groggy this morning, but at least I feel somewhat human. Come 5PM, I’ll probably be feeling more like that eggplant in panel one.

Hope you all have a good day and a good night’s sleep! I got to get on with my work.

Two things have surprised me about learning to knit. The first is the number of people who express surprise that I can knit when they see me doing it in public. Not surprise as in, “Oh wow, I didn’t think you had enough brain cells to be able to do something like that.” But more like, “Holy cow! What is that bizarre activity you’re doing? I could never do that!” Why people think they can’t knit is beyond me, as the basics are pretty… well, basic. Things do get more complicated, but you sort of work up to that. Which brings me to surprise number two.

Naughty knitting patterns. I knew about the penis cozies. I can’t recall who told me about them, but I had heard of them before. What I wasn’t aware of was the patterns for lingerie, stockings, garter belts, etc. I keep finding fun new patterns that I want to try, and I’m just waiting to get busted while knitting one of them at my daughter’s Catholic school. Nuns don’t scare me, just so you know, but it does hurt when they hit you in the back of the head with an eraser.

And speaking of things nuns wouldn’t approve of, here are my boobs again…

If you have not yet bought your “Fear Me!” t-shirt, you can still get one! I’m going to keep these t-shirts available on Zazzle.com for the indefinite future, because I’m hoping they’ll sell well and send some much needed money to DonorsChoose.org. This is the shirt I’ll be wearing at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and since I’m obviously going in hopes of keeping fear alive, I’ll be tricked out in full cynical regalia, with the horns, the demon wings backpack, funky sunglasses, etc. Anyway, buy a shirt or donate directly to DonorsChoose.org, and do something good with your dirty, dirty money!

I recently bought a pair of size 19 knitting needles and HOLY COW are those things big. They’re about as long as my forearms and nearly as big around. I was joking with Mich the other night about how I could use them for kobudo (Okinawan weapons, which I do as part of my karate training). Then I decided to see if I actually could use them in a kata. Guess what? Those size 19 needles work just fine for sai and tanbo kate! I can’t wait to take them to karate class and show my sensei what I can do with them ;D

In other news, I’ve posted the “Fear Me” t-shirts for sale on Zazzle.com. I have both women’s fit and uni-sex shirts available. All profits from the sales of these t-shirts go to DonorsChoose.org, the charity supported by the Colbert Report and the March To Keep Fear Alive. I will be at the march with my t-shirt, devil horns, and demon-winged backpack, so if you’re there too, keep an eye out for me. Until then, buy a “Fear Me” t-shirt for yourself or for that strong, smart, scary woman in your life, or donate directly to DonorsChoose.org. The money goes to help classrooms in need.

I have begun knitting again. I blame it all on my friends Mich and Sue. Sue makes this gorgeous hand-dyed yarn, and I bought a skein from her. Mich decided I then actually needed to do something with the yarn I bought. So she found a shawl pattern and has been tutoring me through it. Unfortunately, the yarn is sock yarn, very thin and very hard for me to see what I’m doing at times. You see, I’m getting old and slowly going blind… for various reasons.

But I do enjoy knitting. I’ve got the shawl project going, and I’ve only had to rip out the whole thing once. Plus I’ve got a scarf in the works. I’m using bulky yarn for that, and it’s a very simple pattern, so it’s going a lot easier than the scarf. I have gotten good enough at the knitting that I now take it with me wherever I go – to the kids’ karate classes, the school carpool, the state fair… Basically any place I know I’ll be sitting still for a bit. On Sunday I even walked around a kids’ museum while knitting, because I knew it would keep me happily occupied while I waited for the girls to run around like wild hooligans.

So I’m knitting. As for the other hands on activity mentioned in today’s cartoon, I’ll keep the details of that to myself for now 😉

Recently, our cats have taken a very keen interest in Pixie’s doll house. Specifically, they like to grab some of the dollies and bat them around the house like mice they’re only sort of interested in eating. It’s always the same three dolls – the mommy, the big sister, and the little sister. And once they’re done tossing these dolls around, they then like to give them a very long bath. Thus the reason why all three of those dolls have very bad hair dos and smell like tuna-breath.

What’s really bad is when I catch the cats chewing on a doll’s head. I try to rescue the doll, but the cats will quickly jump up, grab the doll by the hair, and run off. Then I’ll find the doll later in some strange place, like say, behind the toilet, or on top of litter box. I always do my best to wash them after these brutal excursions, but I cannot seem to get rid of the tuna-breath smell. Oh well. Pixie doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, I think she’s decided the dolls make better play toys for the cats anyway.

“Look, Mama! Kitty is chewing on your head!”

My kids and my cats are really, really weird.

I am a lunatic. I hate early mornings, and yet I keep my alarm set for 5AM so I can haul my ass out of bed to work. I have been doing this every since I first had kids. It’s the only way to get in enough work hours every day, to be honest. Yet even the promise of writing the hottest porn scene will sometimes be overcome by the sleepies.

I work in the mornings from 5AM to 6:30AM, then I’ll put in another 2-3 hours later on in the day. From 2:30PM until 8:30PM, I am a full-on mom, supervising homework, cleaning house, shuttling kids to karate classes or swim lessons. If I’ve still got any energy left after the kids go to bed, I might put in another hour or so. It depends on what’s left on the to-do list and how tired I am by that point.

It’s far easier to stick to this schedule during the school year, I’ve noticed, than it is to keep any kind of schedule at all during the summer. I’m not sure why having the kids home throws such a monkey wrench into my plans, but it do so enough this past summer that I’m planning on cutting my work load in half next summer. I simply can’t do it all, and honestly, I’m not sure I want to. After all, I am a mom as well as an erotica writer. I should spend plenty of time on both activities.

Ah, Moist Magazine. I believe that was my third erotica sale, after the PlayGirl reader’s forum and a now defunct website called CherryBomb.com. Unfortunately for me, Moist folded before they ran my story, so I never did get paid for it, nor did that particular story get published for another four years. But that’s okay. It all worked out in the end.

The cartoon above was an actual conversation I had with my mom. My parents have always known what I write, and they don’t seem to mind. I had a similar conversation with Dad once, back when he was running for U.S. Congress a few years ago. When I told him I’d sold yet another erotica story, his response was, “That’s great! You don’t mind if we don’t mention that in the campaign literature though, right?”

Speaking of sales, I recently sold a story to Dreamspinner Press, and I’m very pleased to say that from acceptance to signed contract to payment only took about a month. That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen a publisher move on a sale, and I have to say, I like it a lot. I definitely look forward to working with them again in the future. I was a little stumped when they asked me for my author bio, though. They wanted a bio that made no mention of previous sales or current works-in-progress, which was a first for me since the common wisdom is that author bios should specifically include that kind of information. However, with a little brainstorming I was able to come up with the following biography:

Helen E. H. Madden is a writer and graphic artist who quit her lucrative day job years ago to tell dirty stories for fun and profit. In the last three years, she has written at least one erotic short story a week. That’s a lot of smut! Helen’s mother often introduces her as ‘her daughter who writes porn.’ She introduces Helen’s sister as ‘the actress.’ Helen’s mom says Helen can write whatever she wants, so long as her sister doesn’t star in it.

Not content to simply write erotica, Helen also records her work for audio podcasts and does readings where she frequently proves to her audiences that she has no shame whatsoever. In her spare time, Helen draws dirty pictures. When she’s not writing or drawing, Helen thinks about sex. A lot.

Mom is going to be so proud of my latest sale 😉