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ACW Episode 274 – Grinding and the Minecraft Life

By Cynical Woman June 1, 2015 June 1, 2015 Bitching & Moaning, Cartoon, Family, House Cleaning, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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The kids and I started playing Minecraft a couple months ago, and life will never be the same. Pixie seems to love the game the most, and she has spent quite a few hours at my desktop building houses and mining for ore and catching chickens, etc.

For me, the game has a rather ironic feel. I’ve been reading articles on productivity and recently came across this one on grinding in games versus grinding in real life. I realize that in real life, grinding translates to the everyday tasks I hate to do – laundry, dishes, making the bed, etc. I can get away with not doing most grinding tasks for long periods of time (for example, I dust the house maybe once a year). And some grinding tasks I’ve been able to pass on to the kids (I make them clean their own bathrooms, sort their own laundry, etc.). But there are some grinding chores that have to be done daily, and I hate them, because these are the most futile tasks. Cleaning the kitchen is especially miserable for me. I can spend an entire afternoon washing dishes and scrubbing down the counters, only to have all that hard work go “POOF!” the moment another family member enters the room. The kids make a mess every time they grab a snack. And when Hubster cooks, he can turn the kitchen into a disaster area beyond even FEMA’s scope to fix. (Okay, yeah, FEMA doesn’t have the best reputation for fixing things, but you know what I mean).

So I’ve been trying to find a way to turn these grinding chores into something that either seems more enjoyable, less miserable, or more productive. I haven’t succeeded yet, but I will keep trying.

In the meantime though, yeah, I live with a bunch of creepers. Really messy creepers.

Pray for me.

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ACW Episode 273 – What a crock!

By Cynical Woman May 4, 2015 May 4, 2015 Cartoon, Family, House Cleaning, Hubster, Marriage, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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I can spend hours cleaning the kitchen, only to have it destroyed by one man making one meal. And yes, this conversation actually happened. He’s lucky to be alive.

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ACW Episode 272 – Hello, dolly!

By Cynical Woman April 13, 2015 April 12, 2015 Cartoon, Family, Kids, Pixie Toons, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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When my girls were toddlers, my mother started buying them Barbie dolls. All kinds of Barbie dolls, but mostly princess dolls. At the same time, my mother was also buying the girls a LOT of pink dresses. We had one year where the mailman brought us a new package every week, and it always had a new pink dress and a new princess doll, and the girls just ate it up!!!

A few years later, my kids now like Goth fashion, Minecraft (and video games in general), steampunk, cartoons, and comic books. Pixie still wears pink on occasion, but her dolls are more often painted bright green, with splatters of red for that “zombie” effect.

It’s nice to know I have some influence on my kids 🙂

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ACW Episode 271 – Don’t drink and craft

By Cynical Woman March 31, 2015 March 30, 2015 Cartoon, Crafts, Needlefelting, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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Yes, this actually happened. I was working on a display for a Girl Scout recruiting event and thought it would be fun to make a camping diorama with needlefelted Girl Scouts. And I thought it would be even more fun to enjoy a glass of wine while I did this. Then I discovered a few weeks later that there are actually thimbles I could have used instead of bleeding to death for my art. Ouch.

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ACW Episode 270 – My Sick Valentine

By Cynical Woman February 26, 2015 February 26, 2015 Cartoon, Family, Holidays, Hubster, In Sickness and In Hell, Marriage, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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I have spent FOREVER working on this one simple comic. And yet it isn’t so simple. I decided to try a different pen for inking this one, a brush style pen with a rougher edge. It seemed appropriate for an image of Hubster and I feeling a bit “rough around the edges.” And once I had the image inked and colored, I decided that a bit of rough shading would look nice too, as well as some touches of texture, etc., etc., etc. The hard part was figuring out how to make a brush style balloon pen for the text box in the back. I must have spent two hours today playing with settings and searching on the internet for information on how to make a custom brush tip and assign it to the balloon tool.

But, it’s all done now, and I’m very happy with the end result. I think it very accurately depicts how Hubster and I felt on Valentine’s Day this year, which is to say absolutely AWFUL.

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ACW Episode 269 – Sleeping Beauty

By Cynical Woman February 9, 2015 February 9, 2015 Cartoon, Kids, Parenting, Princess, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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Kids are so much fun to draw comics about. And so easy. They offer so many real-life instances for inspiration.

Princess does not wake up easy. Even as a toddler, she would sleep hard for hours at nap time (ah, those were the days) and then wake up all bleary-eyed and groggy. Not much has changed now that she’s a pre-teen.

When I started work on this cartoon, it immediately reminded me of some of my favorite “Bloom County” comic strips. Nobody draws groggy, sleep-deprived people like Berke Breathed does. I even pulled out some of my “Bloom County” books for inspiration and spent all day reading comics. That was not a waste of time at all. Nope, no-siree-Bob.

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ACW Episode 259 – Relaaaaaaaaaax…

By Cynical Woman January 21, 2015 January 16, 2015 Cartoon, Girl Scouts, Hubster, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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I don’t know exactly why, but right now, I’m not that stressed. Cookie season started on January 10th, and so far, I’m feeling… okay.

It may be the meds. Of course, I’ve been taking the same subscription for the last three years. It’d be kind of strange if they started to kick in a little extra after so long.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m scheduling everything and that makes me feel more in control of my time.

Or maybe, I just decided not to get wound up about things this year. Whatever it is, I’m feeling pretty chill so far. We’ll see how I feel in another couple weeks when cookie booth sales start.

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ACW Episode 258 – Peace on Earth?

By Cynical Woman January 14, 2015 January 10, 2015 Cartoon, Family, Holidays, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

So, Hubster got us a new toy over the holidays, and it’s been… interesting. The Amazon Echo looks exactly like a dark grey tube, and if you call it by name – the default name is Alexa – it will respond. Though it doesn’t always respond the way you would expect. She’s a lot like Siri in that respect, I think.

Of course, it can be hard for “Alexa” to respond when everybody is shouting at her at the same time. But what’s really weird is when no one is speaking to “Alexa” and she starts talking to us anyway. And that’s a little creepy. But… whatever.

But that was the big family gift for the holidays, and it is pretty nice. Especially now that the kids have gone back to school.

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Happy Holidays from all of us in the Cynical Woman Family!

By Cynical Woman December 29, 2014 December 29, 2014 Cartoon, Family, Holidays, Hubster, Kids, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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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ACW Episode 257! To be a bum, or not to be a bum…

By Cynical Woman December 17, 2014 December 17, 2014 Cartoon, Family, House Cleaning, Hubster, Marriage, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman, web comic, webcomic

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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!