Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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It’s My Kid Who’s Sick, So Why Do I Feel Half-Dead?

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The week got better and then it got worse. I managed to get through Halloween and get a smidgen of work done and also get Cassie in for her flu shot, which is very ironic because she was okay on Wednesday, when I did plenty of work, but she came down with the flu on Thursday and now I can’t seem to get Jack done. Well, not entirely true. I am getting a lot of TV watching in, catching up on all my favorite shows like Sesame Street, the Wiggles, Doodle Bops… I frikkin’ hate Doodle Bops!

To top things off, I don’t even look human right now. Since Cassie is sick, I’m having to take care of her and Sam all day long, and even with the non-stop TV marathon we’ve been running, I can’t find time for myself. So I look U-G-L-Y (You ain’t got no alibi, you UGLY!). I’m running around in ratty old sweats, trying to find a little time for exercise. I’d like to do some karate practice but the best I’ve been able to do is ride the bike for fifteen minutes today and then jitterbug around the house while putting away laundry. The jitterbug would be a great mood booster if I could avoid looking in a mirror. My hair desperately needs to be washed, I’ve got crust in my eyes and circles under them from staying up yet again with Sam all night… Can someone explain to me why, oh gods why, an infant will cry for nineteen minutes (my limit is twenty) then just as you’re about to go in and get her, mysteriously go quiet? Only to start up again the moment your head hits the pillow, of course.

And then there’s the cats. I don’t know what’s up with those three, but I’m gonna start pulling off their little arms and legs if they don’t stop having the “All-Night Fight And Meow Fest” in my bed while I’m trying to sleep. Talk about plucking my nerves. I’m just about to doze off when one of the little twerps decides it’d be a good time to wrestle with the window blinds, thus making enough racket to wake me and the baby, who will then proceed to cry for nineteen minutes before mysteriously going quiet again.

Ugh. Cassie’s temperature is still over 100, so we’ll be home all day again today. She’s getting bored though, and wants to go to the playground. I may take her out for a bit after lunch, if I can pull myself together so I don’t look quite so much like Quasimodo. And maybe, just maybe, if I can get her to take a nap this afternoon, I’ll get some writing done. Maybe.

Today’s artwork is another self-portrait, this one done in Macromedia’s Flash. I wish I looked this good right now.

Self-portrait, 31 October 2006.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Stress And The Stay-At-Home Mom

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Today is not a good day. I feel frayed and tattered, like one of those terry cloth rags I use to scrub the kitchen every night. I’ve got holes worn through my fabric, and lots of loose threads just waiting to unravel at the wrong moment. Then there’s what feels like a big knot of matted cat hair wrapped up inside me. Naturally, I’m also covered in spit up.

What was it Bilbo Baggins said? “I feel like butter scraped thin over too much toast?” That sounds about right this morning.

Between my parents’ visit and Michael’s business trip, I’m worn out. The house is a wreck, Sam and Cassie are all off-schedule and even worse, I got almost no work done during the last two weeks. If there’s any sure indicator of my mood, it’s the level of work I’ve accomplished. No work means no joy in my book. To top things off, money is a little tight right now, which bothers the hell out of me because I don’t contribute financially to the household – I just suck out more funds. I’m trying to remind myself that there was a time when I made 42 grand a year and paid half the bills, and yet I was miserable because to make that kind of money I had to put in 80 hours a week at a job I absolutely loathed. If I still had that job and that paycheck today, I’d probably still feel even worse than I do now because it would mean I’d be spending 80 odd hours a week slaving away for some idiot instead of spending time at home taking care of my kids. I try to remember that. I try to imagine feeling worse than I do right now.

Yet I still can’t shake that worn out dish rag feeling.

Self portrait, 30 October 2006

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Ta-Daa!

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My week was a complete bust in terms of meaningful work, except for this one piece…

I am worn out from breast feeding, chasing a preschooler, doing Halloween decorations and otherwise struggling to survive on my own, but I feel like I accomplished something just because I got this one little drawing done. It’s funny. This is my entry for the Ben Caldwell Weekly Cartoon Challenge, and my cartoons look absolutely nothing like the other entries. Very different stylistically (all their stuff is way neato-keen airbrushed) and I think also in subject matter. It’s like watching an episode of Sesame Street and hearing someone sing “One of these things is not like the others…” I don’t care though. I like Claudia. She’s one gnarly chick, and she knows how to swing that shovel, so watch out.

PS – Yesterday was my day off, and once again, it was a disaster. I spent most of it at Sears Portrait Studio waiting to get Sam’s picture taken. The pictures came out beautifully, but by the time we walked out of there, she was in full crank-meister mode and very ticked off with me. I was hoping she’d at least let me enjoy a brief spell at Barnes & Noble’s, but then she grabbed my lunch (a very delicious Italian Strata) and threw it on the café floor, so that was that. At least she didn’t spill my coffee.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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A Phone Conversation With My Husband

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The following is an actual telephone conversation I had with my husband last night…

Michael: Hey honey. How’s it going?

Me: It’s after 10 PM and the baby is still up.

Michael: Uh-oh.

Me: She’s in my lap nursing right now. I put her down at 8:30 but she woke up screaming a little while ago and wouldn’t go back to sleep. Oh well. I wanted to watch “Lost” anyway.

Michael: Poor sweetie. Sounds like you had a rough day.

Me: I guess. Sam only spent three hours in bed with me last night. I did manage to transfer her to the bassinet in our room around 5 AM so I could get a little sleep. Then we all woke up late. Cassie came running in at 7:30 and I let her climb into bed with us while I nursed Sam again. I got a few more minutes of sleep that way.

Michael: Uh-huh…

Me: Then we got up, had breakfast, and everybody took a bath. Cassie played in our tub while I washed Sam. Then I tried to put Sam down for her morning nap. She wouldn’t sleep though. Just kept screaming. But I left her there, because I needed a bath myself. I figure she did about forty-five minutes of screaming. Aren’t I evil?

Michael: Yep. So what else happened?

Me: Um, let’s see. Cassie insisted on helping me with my bath. She washed my hair and cleaned my ears, and then she tried to convince me she should shave my legs but fortunately I won that argument. Then when I got dressed, I got Sam out of her crib. Since she kept screaming any time I put her down, I ended up strapping her to me in the front pack. I must have carried her around for at least an hour while Cassie and I put up the Halloween decorations in the front yard. Cassie wanted me to put up the Christmas tree too, by the way.

Michael (laughing): Oh man! Is she still going on about the tree?

Me: Quit laughing. It took me half an hour to convince her that we weren’t putting up the tree, and she still keeps bringing it up.

Michael: I’m sorry. She saw a Christmas tree set up in Sears when we went shopping last time.

Me: Greeeaaaat. Anyway, I got Cass to forget about the tree by taking her to the pumpkin patch. Only problem is she wanted two pumpkins. One for her and one for Sam.

Michael: What’s wrong with that?

Me: Well, at first nothing, because I figured you’d be the one carving them at Patty’s pumpkin carving party Friday night. Then I remembered you’re not going to get back in time for the party, so now I’m stuck carving two big-ass pumpkins by myself with a couple of screaming kids hanging on to me.

Michael: (laughing hysterically): Oh no!

Me: I said quit laughing! When you get home, I think I’m going to shoot you.

Michael: I’m sorry, sweetie. So what else did you do today?

Me: After the pumpkin patch we had lunch and then I put both girls down for a nap. Sam kept fussing and rubbing her eyes. Cassie wanted a story, but Sam was so cranky I knew I wouldn’t be able to read and nurse at the same time, so I had to give Cass a rain check. She went off to bed and I finally got Sam down. She still screamed, but eventually she passed out. I got half an hour of sketching done before Cass woke up. Then I read her a story like I promised. And then Sam woke up so I had to nurse her. After that, we made some Halloween cookies.

Michael: Oh? That sounds like fun.

Me: Yeah, you weren’t there. It took us almost three hours to finish two cookies.

Michael: Why so long?

Me: Because I had to supervise a certain precocious little preschooler through the whole process, while wearing Sam in the front pack again. Cassie had to help break the eggs, mix the batter, roll out the dough and cut the cookies out. She insisted on decorating them too, but by the time the cookies were done baking, it was almost bedtime, so we only decorated two of them. One for her and one for me. I think we’ve still got about twenty cookies’ worth of dough left to cut out and bake.

Michael: Well, that’ll give you something to look forward to tomorrow night.

Me: Shut up. Anyway, I let Cassie eat her cookie in the tub while I gave Sam a bath and nursed her down for the night. Sam went down at 8:30 and Cassie was in bed by 9. Cass is still asleep but Sam won’t give up the ghost. She woke up screaming and kept at it until I came to get her, and then she spit up all over me.

Michael: Oh, that’s too bad.

Me: Yeah, well, that’s my day. What did you do today?

Michael: I repaired the Hubble telescope.

Me: … I hate you.

To clarify, Michael is in Huntsville, Alabama, on a business trip for NASA. Yesterday he attended Space Camp at Marshall Space Flight Center. He didn’t really fix the Hubble telescope. It was just a simulation. A really cool simulation where he got to run around in a mock space suit, fly a fake space shuttle, pretend to go on an EVA, and walk through an exercise on repairing the Hubble telescope in outer space. All I can think of this is, ain’t it amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have two kids hanging off of you 24/7?

Screw it. I’m going back to bed…

***

Here is my sole, non-child related accomplishment for yesterday. It’s the second draft of the cartoon I’ve been trying to get scanned in and uploaded to this blog. I’m thinking of calling this character Claudia L’Strange, Voo Doo Prom Queen. She really digs her date…

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Blow-Off Week – Two Frustrated Artists And A Hungry Baby

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Remember last time Michael took a business trip and left me home all alone with an infant and a preschooler? Remember our little discussion about Blow-Off Day? Well, how about today we talk about Blow-Off Week.

It had not been my intention to completely blow off work, exercise, play dates, house cleaning and all the rest of my daily grind this week, but due to circumstances way beyond my control, everything I had planned to do has gone right out the window. See, Michael left for Alabama on Monday. My parents, who spent a week riling up the grandkids, left yesterday. Sam developed a fever on Sunday and has done nothing but nurse since then, and Cassie has been her usual exuberant, tantrum-prone self. And me? I’m just plain wiped out.

Michael won’t be home until sometime Friday evening. In between now and then, I somehow have to keep Cassandra occupied and satisfy a ravenous baby. Both tasks are impossible. Attempting to accomplish some meaningful work at the same time is even more so. I had thought that I might catch a break last night. I nursed Sam early and then gave Cassie plenty of crayons, glitter pens and construction paper along with instructions to draw scary ghosts for our Halloween decorations. I figured a well-fed baby plus an occupied preschooler would equal free time for me. Naturally, that plan backfired.

Cassie, seated at table surrounded by a mountain of craft supplies: “Mommy, I can’t draw ghosts.”

Me, reaching for my drawing pad in hopes of doing some sketching: “Of course you can, sweetie. You drew lots of ghosts yesterday.”

Cassie: “No I didn’t. I can’t draw ghosts.”

Sam, lying on her full, distended belly on the play mat: “Waaaah!”

Me, pulling pencils, erasers, and a sharpener from my art box: “You’re not hungry Sam. Cassie, you drew ghosts for Grandmama just last night, remember?”

Cassie, pushing her construction paper away: “That was ghosts for Grandmama. I can’t draw ghosts now.”

Sam, rolling over onto her back and discovering she is now stuck there: “Waaaaaaaaaah! Waaaaah!”

Me, pushing the paper back toward Cassie: “Sam, you just ate. You’re FINE, trust me. Cassie, why not draw more ghosts for Grandmama and we’ll mail them to her?”

Cassie, dropping the paper on the floor: “I can’t. I need markers.”

Me, pencil in hand, ready to sketch: “I don’t know where your markers are right now, sweetie. Use the glitter pens I gave you. You like the glitter pens.”

Cassie, pushing the glitter pens away: “I want markers. Miss Erica let us play with markers in class today.”

Sam, scrunching up her face and turning beet red: “WAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAH!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!”

The conversation halts as a gargantuan fart explodes from Sam’s dinky little butt. The resulting shockwaves are strong enough to knock me senseless while simultaneously launching Sam into the air. She lands in my lap and grabs at my left breast. I regain consciousness just in time to prevent her from gnawing a hole through my shirt to get at my nipple. I can barely fend her off long enough to get my shirt up and my nursing bra open.

Cassie, ignoring my current plight: “We have markers in the craft bin, Mommy. Can you go get them for me?”

Me, as Sam proceeds to latch on and Hoover all the milk from my body; the suction is so intense, it’s a wonder I don’t implode: “My hands are a little full right now, sweetie. Could you please just use the glitter pens?”

Cassie, rolling her eyes: “Mommy, I’m an artist! You just don’t understand.”

Me, wearily eyeing my drawing pad which will remain untouched for yet another evening: “Trust me, Cass. I understand far better than you think.”

So that’s how the week has gone so far, and how I expect it will continue to go. I have plans to write and draw, but realize that I’m probably going to have to chuck all of that at a moment’s notice. Oh well. It’s Blow-Off Week. I’ll just keep doing the best I can.

***

I still haven’t made it to the scanner yet to scan in my cartoon from this past weekend. However, I managed to get this done on the computer yesterday. It’s a portrait of Cassandra. I think it’s a rather stunning likeness.

Flash illustration of Cassandra Jane, 24 October 2006.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Living With A Sick Baby

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Well, the grandparents have been here since Wednesday, and it’s been non-stop activity since they arrived. We’ve been shopping, sight-seeing, playing, arguing, cooking, eating, etc., etc. So that’s probably why I didn’t notice Sam had a fever until yesterday.

Now Sam is not one to make a fuss, not like her sister. Sam will cry a little, maybe whine, but not out-and-out howl like Cassandra does when she’s unhappy. And I expected to see a little whining and fussiness from my darling baby with all the commotion going on in the house. So this fever kind of slipped under the radar because Sam was doing exactly what I expected her to do. But the fussiness got a little worse than normal, so even though she didn’t feel warm to me, I decided to check her temperature last night and whoops! There it was, 102.5 degrees.

I gave her some infant’s Tylenol and a bath and then we both got into our jammies and I took Sam to bed with me. I went down with her at 7 PM, thinking once she fell asleep, I’d be able to get back up, tuck her into her bassinet and go watch some TV with my folks. Never happened. Sam latched onto me to nurse and didn’t break suction until sometime around midnight (that’s five hours, folks!). The she nursed again at 2 AM, 3 AM, 5 AM, and 6 AM. She was in her bassinet from 3 to 5 AM, so I managed to get two hours of sleep, but that’s been about it. I got up at 6:30 to help Michael with Cassie, and then I had a little breakfast with Sam still in my arms, trying to latch on through my pajama top. After that, I gave her another bath, put her in some clean jammies, and we both crawled back into bed so she could nurse some more and I could steal a few Z’s.

That’s about all the sleep I’ve had. Once Sam unlatched, I tried putting her back in her bassinet, but she woke up and started to cry. So I let her sit in her bouncy chair and watch while I took a bath. I was hoping she’d give me enough time to soak my spine until it no longer looked like a question mark (as a result of sleeping hunched around an infant all night), but she started fussing, so now I’m hunched over her again as I sit and type this blog entry.

Michael is off at work. Cassie is at preschool. Mom and Dad decided to head out for one last trip to Barnes and Nobles and I did my best not to cry as they went shopping without me (waaaaaaaaah!). I am at least dressed and clean and I even got my teeth brushed. Once I’m done with this blog entry, I’m considering doing some shopping online for a new set of nipples because Sam has worn out the pair I currently own.

Not much else going on. Michael leaves this afternoon for Huntsville, Alabama and my parents head out for Arkansas tomorrow morning. I’m going to be on my own with a sick baby and a cranky preschooler for the rest of the week. I am so screwed.

***

If you close your eyes and imagine very hard, I am sure you will see the lovely cartoon I worked on this weekend. It’s a redrawing of the last entry’s work, only done in pen and ink, instead of digital. It looks very cool, and someday I may actually be able to put Sam down long enough to scan it in and display it here on the blog. Won’t that be cool?

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Invasion Of The Grandparents

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My folks are here. I got a call from Mom on Sunday that they planned to show up this week. They left Arkansas on Tuesday and arrived yesterday. Dad got food poisoning from a roadside restaurant, but otherwise, they made it unscathed.

Of course, we all know what a visit from my parents means… SHOPPING! ALL DAY, ALL NIGHT NON-STOP SHOPPING! AND MY MOM IS BUYING!!!

She’ll buy stuff for Cassie. She’ll buy stuff for Sam. Most importantly, she’ll buy stuff for ME! It’s like Christmas arrived early, but without all the annoyance of tearing off the wrapping paper from the gifts. We already hit the most important store on our shopping list – Barnes and Nobles – for books and coffee. Aaaaaah, coffee. Yes, Mom loves Barnes and Noble’s almost as much as I do. Unfortunately, her “local” B&N is over three hours’ drive from the house. Of course Mom also claims the little mom and pop grocery store just thirty miles down the road is about a three-hour drive away, but that’s because in Arkansas everything is impossibly far away, including her grandkids.

Well, I can’t do nothing about the three-hour drives Mom has to suffer when she’s home, but I can help her shop while she’s hear. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go crash in bed now. I got another heavy day of shopping ahead of me tomorrow.

***

I’ve been playing around a bit more with Corel Photopaint, trying to get a better grasp on all the natural media settings. This image was done mostly with the watercolor brushes, felt tip pen brushes and a few oil brushes. The hands are terrible in this one, but I was more concerned with figuring out how to blend paint on a digital canvas than I was with drawing this time around.

Claudia, 19 October 2006

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Work Report for 3rd Quarter, 2006

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Well, it’s mid-October, which means it’s high time I sat down and reviewed my work accomplishments for the last quarter, rather than sit and bitch about how hard it is to be a mom like I usually do. I dug up the list of goals from the last quarter to see what I did and didn’t manage to do. Here it is:

Writing

  • Write new erotica story for ERWA Blasphemy week – finished 6 July, 2006. Story title – The Messenger.
  • Write three ITEM articles for ERWA, one per month – finished 28 September, 2006.
  • Write one flasher per week for ERWA – who was I kidding? I did manage to write four flashers, all of which were published at ERWA this past quarter.
  • Begin background work on novel – “The Mirrored Sun” – postponed. I had my hands full with the baby.
  • Begin background work on novel – “Lady Dragon.” This has sort of mutated into a different project. I did end up writing a brief synopsis for a graphic novel/manga that I’d like to do, so the basic idea is written down and stored for later use. Completed 30 September 2006.
  • Submit at least one story for publication this quarter – completed 27 July 2006. I sent the story “Alienated” out to Circlet Press for consideration in one of their anthologies.

    Graphics

  • Finish commissioned book cover for Eternally Erotic books – completed 5 July 2006. If you’d like to see the book cover, click here. The image is fairly work-safe but the link will take you to Eternally Erotic, an erotica e-publisher, so don’t click on it if you’re at work, okay? By the way, the web graphics on Eternally Erotic were done by me too.
  • Create website graphic commissioned for Crimson Succubus website – completed 2 July 2006.
  • Finish Great Hall tutorial and use set in one final image – not finished.
  • Check out Addictingclips.com and see if I have anything to submit – I checked. Hopefully, sometime in the future I will have some toons to submit to them. In the meantime, I submitted one of my other toons to a competition at Aniboom.com. Go check it out and vote for me!

    Cynical Woman

  • Continue writing daily blog rant – I’ve written almost two hundred pages worth of material in this blog since the beginning of June.
  • Fix animated header for blog – completed 15 June, 2006.
  • Design creeper/t-shirt for Café Press shop – postponed.
  • Design coffee mug for Café Press shop – postponed.

    Pixel Arcana

  • Review books I use for tutorials and graphics education and make an Amazon.com store link for website site – not done.
  • Archive 2005 work files – not done due to problems with DVD recorder. Hopefully that’s been solved.
  • Set up DAZ affiliate on Pixel Arcana website – completed 30 July 2006.
    Art
  • Finish mermaid drawing – finished 24 August 2006. It looks gorgeous too!
  • Matte drawing and prep for Marscon art show – postponed.

    And that’s the whole list of what I had planned to do and what actually got done during the past quarter. Looking at the list, I think things look pretty good. I had 18 items on the list, of which I completed eleven, plus I resubmitted the novel to another e-publisher on top of all that. So I’m giving myself a big high-five for all my hard work. Later, I’ll discuss my goals for the current quarter and my new plan for world domination.

    ***

    Since it’s been a few days since my last post, I’m posting three small images today. These are some sketch ideas for an art nouveau style stain glass window that I was going to put in the bedroom sketch I’m working on. I wanted something with wings or angel imagery. The window is out of the sketch now, but I may use the ideas later for something else.

    Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
    Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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    How To Sleep Late On Saturday

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    Friday night, 9:00 PM – 11:00 PM – Stay up late to watch your favorite television show, because you almost never get to watch TV anymore unless it involves cheesy cartoon characters, fuzzy puppets, or a bunch of Australian guys singing about a rose-eating dinosaur.

    11:30 PM – Change into your jammies and slip into bed. Just as your head hits the pillow, your four-month-old baby will begin to sing. This is something new she’s started doing, a little bedtime serenade of cooing, yodeling and not-quite-howling that goes on for about twenty minutes. Lie awake and debate with yourself whether or not she’s actually fussing and needs your attention, or if she’s just screwing with your mind again.

    Midnight – Lie awake for the next hour, waiting for baby’s encore. Eventually doze off.

    1:00 AM – Wake up with a start, recalling that you forgot to turn off your radio alarm which is set to go off at the ungodly hour of 4:30 AM, your usual wake up time during the week. You certainly do not want to get up at 4:30 AM on a Saturday, so you crawl out of bed and stumble across the room to switch off the alarm. Curse as you trip over your husband’s shoes and ask yourself: why keep the alarm on the other side of the room? Answer: so you will be forced to get out of bed to turn it off at 4:30 AM, thus ensuring you will be up and wide awake in the morning. Spend the next half hour contemplating this cruel fact of your life before drifting off to sleep again.

    4:00 AM – Wake up to the sound of your baby crying. She’s not quite in full-blown screaming mad mode, but she will be if someone doesn’t hustle his or her ass out of bed to take care of her. Decide it’s his ass that needs to do the hustling this time and jab your husband in the ribs several times while muttering, “The baby’s crying… get up… baby’s crying… GET UP!” Husband eventually rouses and gets the baby. Meanwhile, your three-year-old has also woken up. She starts up her own scream-fest, and since your husband now has his hands full with a howling infant, you become the parent who must deal with this pre-dawn crisis. Stumble into the three-year-old’s room. Listen to her hysterically describe the monster that woke her up by vomiting all over her bed. Sit on the mattress and discover as you land on something squishy that yes indeed, one of the cats has puked up a hairball all over the sheets. Curse at the cats. Then discover that your daughter has wet the bed. No, not just wet it; flooded it, in spite of the fact that you allowed her no fluids after 7:00 PM last night (my god, is it tomorrow already?!). Pull the three-year-old out of bed and change her pajamas. Strip wet sheets and blankets off the bed and remake it. Soothe still howling three-year-old and convince her that she really does need to sleep in her own bed because you just know that your darling infant daughter is waiting to be nursed and you are way too tired to do it while sitting in the glider. Return to bed and discover that yes, you were right, and take whimpering infant from husband as you crawl back into bed. Doze off while the baby latches on and sucks the life out of your right breast.

    4:30 AM – Wake up as the baby unlatches and drifts off to sleep. Swear at your silent radio alarm clock as you trudge back into the nursery and put baby to bed in her own crib. Trudge back to your own bed and crawl under the covers. Swear again as your three-year-old wakes up screaming again and comes running into your room. Swear even louder as she knees you in the gut while climbing over you to get into your bed. Resignedly scoot over to balance precariously on the very edge of your bed so your daughter can have plenty of room to sleep between you and your still snoozing husband. Fight the urge to throttle her when she complains that you’re still hogging the bed and she needs more room. Fall asleep wondering if you’ll wake up before or after you roll out of bed to crash land on the floor.

    5:00 AM to 7:00 AM – Sleep fitfully, waking up repeatedly to catch yourself as you fall out of bed. In between times, answer questions in your sleep as your daughter interrogates you about her upcoming trip to Disney World.

    7:00 AM – Wake up again as the baby begins to howl. Reach over your peacefully sleeping three-year-old to smack your husband in the head. Order him to go take care of the baby. Doze off. Wake up a few minutes later to see husband attempting to hand you the baby to nurse. Realize in horror that baby has blown out her diaper and has stinky, runny poop going all the way up the back of her pajamas. Explain to husband that he will clean up the baby if he values his life. Answer three-year-old’s questions about what she’s getting for Christmas this year. When husband returns, explain to him that the bed is getting way too crowded and he needs to take the three-year-old downstairs and fix her breakfast. Doze off as husband and three-year-old exit the room and let the baby proceed to suck the life out of your left breast.

    7:30 AM – Baby unlatches and rolls onto her back, drooling breast milk from the corner of her tiny mouth. Sesame Street plays at full blast on the TV downstairs. Realize that 7:30 AM is actually three hours later than when you normally get up (remember that 4:30 AM alarm?), so technically, you have slept late and now it’s time to get up. Enjoy your day! And for extra fun, repeat the whole process for Sunday morning.

    ***

    And just to illustrate my point, here’s about how I feel after two days of “sleeping late.”

    Self-portrait of a very tired mother, 15 October 2006

    Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
    Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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    It’s Gotta Be Friday The 13th

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    It’s not even five frikkin’ thirty in the morning and both kids already up. I had to change the sheets on both their beds and now Sam wants to nurse. These kids are supposed to be asleep so I can get some work done right now, ya know?

    What? What’s that you say? When do I sleep? Are you kidding me?

    I don’t even have any artwork to show you, because it’s too frikkin’ early in the morning and I haven’t had a chance to get to the office and scan it in. This is just ticking me off, folks.

    P.S. – I’m looking at switching over to Blogger Beta in the next week or so. I have no idea how badly that might screw things up, but from what I understand, once I switch, I’ve switched for good. So keep your fingers crossed and pray I don’t accidentally flush the whole blog right down the toilet, okay?

    Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
    Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.