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: webcomic
webcomic
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 256 – Don’t tell me which way to lean
Click on the webcomic to see it full-size.
The above webcomic is not about Girl Scouts. Or rather, not just about Girl Scouts. It’s about all the organizations and groups I’ve volunteered with over the last several years. I’ve had conversations about leadership and “leaning in” with all of them. Some of those conversations were subtle suggestions that I might take on more work. Others were outright demands for my time and energy. In the worst cases, people simply refused to believe that I do not exist just for them. So what if I have two kids, a husband, parents, and friends who need me? That’s not their problem. They don’t care that I have my own work that I love to do and don’t get nearly enough time to spend on it. And forget trying to tell these people that just like everyone else in the world, I only have a limited number of hours in the day.
“Get up earlier!” one person barked at me. “Then you’ll have more time for our organization AND your work. Sleep is for the DEAD!”
The problem with that, however, is that if I give up sleeping to do more volunteer work, I’ll be dead sooner rather than later.
I don’t want to die soon, and I don’t want to give up everything in my life to BE A LEADER AND SAVE THE WORLD. So when people who want to fill up all MY TIME with THEIR PRIORITIES tell me that I need to “lean in,” I remind them very firmly that I am leaning in, every single day. I lean into taking care of my kids, spending time with my husband, helping out my family and friends. I lean into drawing webcomics and digital art. I lean in like a BOSS when I sit down on the couch to crochet. Just because I choose to make my priorities MY PRIORITIES, that doesn’t mean I’m not a leader and I’m not leaning in.
It just means I choose which direction I lean instead of giving up my life’s direction to someone else. And that is the very definition of being a leader.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Lean back, relax, and enjoy the holiday.
ACW Episode 255 – Mo’ Money!
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The conversations I had with Pixie this past weekend regarding chores were not nearly this pleasant. I swear, that kid has mastered the stink-eye. Of course, it has no effect whatsoever on her terrible, horrible, EVIL mother.
To quote Bill Cosby, “I brought you into this world, kid…”
ACW Episode 254 – Morning Glory
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Yeah, so this actually happened when we went camping last month. It happened a lot.
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 Episode 252 – She’s a STAR!!
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Pixie sure does love her pop music! But I can’t help but cringe when I listen to the actual lyrics of the songs she’s trying to imitate. The kid is 8 years old! She doesn’t need to go BOOM BOOM and bring booty back at her age!
ACW Episode 251 – Rescue me!
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This was part of the Girl Scouts small watercraft test I had to take. After flipping the boat, I had to get back into it. Without anyone pulling me in. Which is actually quite hard. Especially since those flotation vests don’t bend. Do you know how hard it is to get back into a canoe when you can’t bend at the waist? I ended up going over sideways, across the part of my torso that wasn’t covered by the vest, and that’s how I cracked a rib. Fun!
I’ve scheduled more time to draw webcomics, so hopefully I’ll start to get them drawn and posted more regularly. The webcomics have gotten more complicated to draw, as I’ve mentioned. This is because I’m trying to draw more detailed backgrounds and do more technically challenging things (like drawing canoes in perspective). I think it’s been worth the effort to push myself to do these things, but it does take more time. Hopefully, I will get faster at this, and I will definitely be spending more time in the mornings drawing webcomics before I do anything else.
Anyhoo, have fun! Now that I’ve got this posted, I’m going to put down my Wacom stylus and head out to the gym! See ya!
ACW Episode 250!!! Row, row, row your boat!
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Wow! 250 webcomics and I’m still here. Which is pretty surprising considering the above cartoon did happen. Row the canoe out to the middle of the lake… tip the canoe… turn the canoe upright… get back into the canoe… row the canoe… tip the canoe… etc., etc.
It’s taking me longer than I’d like to get the webcomic done. I do work on it every day, usually for at least an hour, more when I can. But I am slow. Script writing goes very quickly, but penciling takes me forever to get done. Inking is a bit faster, as is coloring and adding dialog, but it still all adds up to a lot of work.
I think part of the reason why is because I’ve gotten more ambitious in what I draw. The backgrounds are more detailed. And every now and then I try to do something I’ve never done before, like drawing a canoe in perspective (that was a huge challenge this week). I think it makes the webcomic better, even if it does slow things down.
So I will keep working, and do what I can to get faster at putting out the comic. Hopefully all the time and effort I put into it is worth it 🙂
ACW Episode 249 – It’s fitting time!
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Princess is 11 years old. Seriously. Keeping up with school uniforms is getting expensive.
The kids are back at school, and I’m trying to get to work on a schedule that will let me get comics done on a regular basis again. Of course, I’m once again juggling volunteer work with my own personal work. I’ll have to see how this works out.
I’m also trying to do more blog posts. You may start seeing quick posts that are just shots of whatever my current work in progress is. I’d love to start doing some posts on craft projects, like some of the crochet toys I’ve done, but that means I’ll have to find time to do the crafts as well as write the blog posts.
Anyhoo, if you start to see lots of quit photos of drawings and weird cat or crochet pictures, that’s just me flailing around, trying to do some blogging.
Ya know, strangely enough, it was easier for me to write blog posts when I had a pre-schooler and an infant that it is now that I’ve got a pre-teen and a grade schooler. What happened to my time?!