Happy Holidays!
To all of you out there who read and support this crazy little webcomic, thank you and Happy Holidays!
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Happy Holidays from all of us in the Cynical Woman Family!
Category: Marriage
ACW Episode 257! To be a bum, or not to be a bum…
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Oh. My. Glob. I have been working on this webcomic since Thanksgiving, and I thought it would never be finished. I’m going back to 4 panels for the next webcomic, I swear. Six panels is a lot to do.
Anyway, the irony of this webcomic is that about the time I started working on it, I also started putting in more time on house cleaning and the laundry (though I will NOT do any ironing unless it’s for a craft project). Thus that’s part of the reason why this webcomic is late. I did get up off my lazy butt and clean the house.
Like a lot of people, I find myself constantly caught between cleaning the house or doing other things that are just as (or even more) important. I realize I can’t do everything all the time, and so I swing back and forth between one and extreme and the other. I can clean the house, but not get a lot of work done. Or I can do the work, but the house looks like a garbage dump.
It’s the same for everyone else in the house, too. The kids can get their homework done, but by the time they’re done, there’s not really enough time for them to clean their rooms. And by the time the weekend rolls around, they’ve done so much work, they need time to just relax and play. And Hubster… he works hard all week. He manages to do a lot of the major chores around the house that only come up a couple time a year – paint the porch, clean and seal the deck, etc. And he also keeps up with the lawn. But that’s about all he’s got time for as well.
What I finally decided to do was come up with a list of the minimum that needs to be done each day to keep the house livable. I listed the chores that I’d ideally like to get done each day. And then I try to do at least a little bit toward completing each chore. I may not completely get that chore done, but doing a little bit toward it each day certainly helps to keep things manageable. I might not get all the dishes done, but at least there aren’t dirty dishes scattered all over the house. I might not get the whole house vacuumed, but the downstairs looks good. And at least the laundry gets sorted, washed, and dried. If anybody needs anything, they can pull it out of the hamper.
And then iron it themselves.
Yep, I can live with that!
ACW Episode 253 – The Great Outdoors!
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Hubster and I took the kids camping in the Blue Ridge mountains last month, and this is exactly what happened. It was like someone dropped a big, wet, dense blanket all over the mountains.
As you can see, I’m still struggling to get the webcomic done on a weekly schedule. For now, I’m just going to keep working on it every day and then publish as soon as the webcomic is ready. I’m doing my best to juggle between Girl Scouts volunteer work, paying work, taking care of the house and kids, and trying not to kill myself in the process. You’ll notice, the first thing on that list is “Girl Scouts volunteer work” and the last thing is “trying not to kill myself.” That’s pretty much the order of the priority list, sad to say.
But I’m just going to keep working away at it and things will get done as they get done. I’m going to get back to working on the next webcomic now.
ACW 245 – Letters from the Doctor, finale!
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Both Pixie and Princess have sent and received letters back from the Doctor. I have no idea how this happens.
ACW 244 – Letters from the Doctor, continued
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Hurray! Another comic is up. I thought I’d never get this one done.
I try to work on the webcomic every day, but between taking care of the kids and volunteer work, my schedule gets pretty messy pretty quick. So I am drawing as fast as I can and posting comics as fast as I can. Of course, I did fall asleep on the couch this morning, which kind of slowed things down today. Oh well! That’s what I get for waking up early and exercising.
We’re surviving summer break so far. Later this month, we’ll be attending a 3-day karate camp in DC. That should be interesting. Meanwhile, I’m cleaning house as fast as the kids can destroy it. Lots of fun.
Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!
ACW Episcode 242 – Letters to the Doctor, part 2
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How does the Doctor respond to letters written to him by small children? He’s not exactly Santa. In fact, when the Doctor shows up on Christmas, things get more dangerous than merry.
ACW Episode 240 – Doctor Who?
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This happens every weekend. We watch Doctor Who and Pixie spends all night complaining about nightmares. Then she comes sneaking into MY room, saying she can’t sleep. Of course, Hubster can always sleep, and he sleeps through anything and everything, so guess who has to get up and take care of Pixie? Yeah, me. It’s gotten to the point where I’m getting scared of Doctor Who too, because it means I won’t get to sleep through the night!
Stealing Time
I've been playing with my schedule lately. I know I've been all over the map with getting stuff up on the website. Adventures of Cynical Woman is behind and Bitchcraft is WAY behind. It all comes down to having to juggle my work with my responsibilities as a parent and a Girl Scout volunteer. I think if I only had the one volunteer job – troop leader OR cookie mom – I'd be okay. But instead I've spent a good part of this year putting together events for all the troops at the kids' school, and that's turned out to be a lot of work. Handling the email alone on that takes almost 2 hours every evening, and that's just handling the email! That doesn't include filling out paperwork, budgeting for events, meeting with troop leaders to plan events, preparing for meetings with troop leaders to plan events, etc.
I've also been sick most of this school year, which hasn't helped at all.
I've been working on ways to steal back time for myself. Again, 2 hours of Girl Scouts email every evening (unless I ignore it completely, which some days I HAVE to do, if I'm going to get anything done). And those 2 hours really cut into my free time. I consider free time to be any time I'm not spending on taking care of the house or the family. One hour of my free time goes into exercise because if I don't exercise my blood pressure goes up and my head explode (and that's not good). Another hour goes into getting cleaned up after exercise and doing some meditation (again, head will explode with out that). And that leaves me with about 15 minutes of free time, which I usually end up spending going to the bathroom (another thing I have to do to keep my head, or any other body parts, from exploding).
So how to find free time when my free time has all been used up by doing activities to keep my head from exploding? I think the first key may be prioritizing.
By prioritizing I don't mean deciding what's most important for me to do with my free time. I mean deciding whether Girl Scouts, house cleaning, taking care of Hubster and the kids, or doing my own work has the top priority.
I have a huge pile of “everything must be done NOW” tasks, but they can't all be done, so I have to sort through them everyday to decide which ones are going to the top of the heap and which ones are going to sit at the bottom and sort of ferment or compost until I really do have to deal with them. For example, my parents are coming to visit tomorrow. My to-do heap (not even a list anymore, it's a HEAP) includes exercise, plan the upcoming Girl Scout bridging ceremony, wash and fold laundry, clean Pixie's room (where my parents will be sleeping), draw webcomics, draw artwork for new cards and stuff on Zazzle, touch up the hair dye (it needs it, really), plan the next Girl Scout troop meeting, make some new jewelry because I have a really cool idea for a new ring, work on new clothes because my old ones are wearing out, buy new clothes for Hubster and the kids because their stuff is wearing out, go to karate class…
See, it just doesn't end. And I can't do all of this in one day, so I have to pick and choose. When I can, I pick a mix of things – something for Girl Scouts, something for the house, something for the kids and Hubster, something just for me.
Today, I started with me as the first priority. I have a robot drawing I'm working on, so I woke up at 6:30, grabbed a cup of coffee, and promptly went back to bed and read “Adventure Time” comic books. Because I should also mention that I deserve a little down time each day, and the best way for me to wake up is comics and coffee. I read one comic book, and then I pulled out my iPad and worked on the robot drawing for an hour. I didn't get as far as I wanted, but an hour is all I can spend on it, so I've gotten that priority out of the way.
The next priority was the kids and Hubster. Everybody needs clean laundry. So I got up, got dressed, and sorted through all the laundry and put a load into the washer. I'll probably wash and dry 3 loads today. Will I fold those loads? I'm betting not, because what everyone needs is clean laundry, so folding is optional as long as the laundry is clean and dry. If it doesn't make it into a drawer or closet, my peeps know they can dig it out of the hampers in my room.
Next priority is breakfast, which is happening right now as I blog. I gots to eat. And when I eat, I usually think, and it occurs to me that those thoughts could just as easily go on the blog so I have at least SOMETHING new up. I'll finish this up in a few minutes and post it, then finish my coffee and run out the door for the next priority, which is exercise.
I'll spend an hour today at the gym, and another hour getting cleaned up. It'll be noon by then. I'll grab a quick lunch and move on to cleaning Pixie's bedroom, because my folks are sleeping in it. The room doesn't have to be springtime fresh, but I should remove all the tripping hazards from the floor and put clean sheets on the bed. Also, I should probably check for any cat puke that may be hiding up there.
After that, I need to get a new shower curtain rod for the guest bathroom, since the old one broke. Guests need a nice guest bathroom. I'll wait to clean the guest bathroom until tomorrow though, because I've got to switch gears again and move back into “me” stuff. I've got an almost finished webcomic that seriously needs to be a finished webcomic posted on the website. Once that's done, it'll be time to fix dinner so the kids don't start chewing off my legs. And when dinner is done, then it's time to put together the plan for the bridging ceremony. I started on that last week, so there's only an hour or so of work left. Once that's done, I'm going the fuck to bed because it'll have been a damned busy day!
Yep, busy. And you'll notice that I only just barely made a dent in the ever-growing to-do heap. BUT I got the important stuff done. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.
I'm stopping here now and getting a move on my day. Enjoy yours, and while you're at it, enjoy this work-in-progress that I managed to spend an hour on this morning, because I made it a priority.
Posted with BlogsyACW Episode 239 – “WHAP!”
Hit yourself and then click on the thumbnail to see the full-sized webcomic!
Yep, this is exactly what happens in our car. And we just got back from a road trip, so you know the girls’ arms are a little bit bruised.
PUNCH BUGGY INVISIBLE! WHAP!!
ACW Episode 136! Finally!
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Finally! I have finished this webcomic! This is what I get for drawing a whole slew of new characters in the webcomic. Thankfully, this is the last of this series, so for now I can go back to drawing the more familiar for a while.
And now I’m going to be lazy for the rest of the day. So enjoy! I should have a new Bitchcraft cartoon up on Friday 🙂