Category: Cartoon

Click on the cartoon above to view it full size!

I have to mention that because occasionally I get complaints that the cartoon is too small. The image above is actually a thumbnail that leads to the full size image. I did up the thumbnail size this week, so maybe that will help. If it doesn’t, I may have to redo the website template to allow me to post the full size image in the blog post. Just let me know if you’re having problems viewing this.

Anyway, about this week’s cartoon. I did my hair a week and a half ago, and it looked fantastic. Still does, which makes me happy because finding temporary hair dye that lasts in my hair has been a challenge. But anyway, I had just done my hair and the Hubster told me we were going to Busch Gardens the next day. Now Busch isn’t my favorite place to go (I used to work there and it sucked), but I’ll go on a family outing if we decide to go. So we went, and shortly after we arrived, Hubster announced we were all going to ride the Roman Rapids which is this big water ride they have, and all I could think was, “But I just dyed my hair yesterday!!!”

Fortunately, I didn’t get splashed too badly, and Hubster did the manly thing of taking all the waterfalls we passe while letting me get through relatively dry. But there were a few drops of color here and there when I got out. That’s the thing with these temp dyes. It takes them a while to quit bleeding, and by the time they do, a lot of brands have faded. It all depends on the brand and your hair, I’ve found. Brands that last only a few days on my hair work like magic on the girls and won’t wash out for months. However, I seem to have found a brand that works pretty well (it’s Fudge Paintbox, FYI). We’ll see how it looks after another week or so.

So there ya go. Amusement parks and hair color – just another fantabulous day in my life. Yay!

We had an energy crisis in the household last week. Namely I had no energy to do anything whatsoever. I had to force myself through the entire week. I’m still a little tired this week, but not as bad as I was last week.

However, this week I’m dealing with stress. The whole Girl Scouts thing has started up again, and I’m up to my eyeballs in patches, paperwork, and meetings. I don’t mind the meetings and patches so much, but I hate the frikkin’ paperwork. I’ve got a ton of old mail to get through that I’ve let sit all summer, and to have to deal with a rush of incoming paperwork is just a bit frustrating.

And then last night I nearly killed a woman when I thought she had volunteered me to be the troop leader for a new Daisy troop we’re trying to put together over at the girls’ school. Pixie wants to be a Daisy, and I said I’d help out, but since I’m already cookie mom and assistant troop leader for another troop, there’s no way I could be troop leader for a new troop. But this woman wrote me a note during a meeting last night saying she had found a troop leader for the new Daisy troop, and then she pointed to my name on a list she had on the table, and I almost leaped across the table and killed her in the face. I could only control the Fist of Doom by firing off the Double Middle Fingers of Rage instead.

Fortunately, the whole incident was just a miscommunication.

My apologies for posting late today, but I am still worn out from ouf weekend trip. I always plan to do the cartoon on the iPad wdhenI travel, but this particular trip was so busy, I only managed to get the pencilling done before we returned home.

And yes, for those of you wondering, this is exactly what happened in the car on the wa.y up. Next time, we play MY iPod.

Yes, this actually happened. And yes, Pixie actually said this.

Man, did I get an earful from that kid last week. The girls had been in school almost two weeks already, but Pixie’s kindergarten class only did half-days the first couple of weeks. The day they started full days was the day of “The Dreaded Nap.” As Pixie so succinctly told her teacher, “I don’t do naps.” And she doesn’t. Hasn’t, in fact, since she was 18 months old. Not for lack of trying on my part. I used to do my dangedest to wear that kid out so she’d sleep for an hour or so in the afternoons. But no matter what I tried – long walks around the neighborhood, swimming in the local pool, never-ending games of tag – nothing seemed to wear her out. In fact, I usually only wore myself out, which made the problem even worse.

So eventually, I struck a deal with Pixie, which was that so long as she played quietly in her room for 2 hours every afternoon, I would not force her to take a nap. And this is pretty much the deal her pre-school teacher struck with her as well. But in kindergarten, it’s a whole different ball game. They don’t have a separate room she can sit in to read or play a game. She has to stay with her class and the class has to lie down and be quiet. They don’t have to sleep, but they do have to be quiet. And Pixie does not like that one bit. Nor did she care for the puppet that was offered to her when she complained about it.

Other than that though, the first few weeks of school have gone well. We start Girl Scouts again this week, which should be interesting, and I’m finding my free time being eaten up just as much as it was before both girls were in school. I can’t seem to catch a break so I will have to continue to cut back on some of the work stuff that I do. I’ll continue to cartoon, and hopefully will get “Rats!” back up and running this week, along with one or two other regular blog posts, but beyond that, I make no promises. I’m working from 5-6:30AM these days just to get some extra hours in, and even then, I’m still having a hard time getting everything done. Hopefully though, now that we’re finally on a regular school schedule things will even out.

But you and I both know they won’t, so I’ll survive as best I can.

So my adventures in hair color continue. I was blonde and pink for a brief few days this weekend, in preparation for dying my hair blue and purple. I make a lousy bright blonde, but don’t look half bad as a strawberry blonde. It was not to last though, as I really wanted the blue and purple hair. It’s almost to the shade I want it, but the blue isn’t dark enough nor solid enough. I still have quite a few light streaks so I will be dying my hair again this weekend. I’ll post pics once the final shade has been achieved.

Wild fires in the Great Dismal Swamp. Earthquake just outside Richmond. Hurricane Irene. It all happened while my parents were visiting.

To be fair, they were in New York with my sister the day the earthquake hit. But they had been with us the week before and came back to us a couple days after. And then stayed all through Irene, even though my folks swore they were headed out to Pennsylvania on Saturday, the day Irene was supposed to hit us.

They ended up staying though. My parents aren’t careless when it comes to driving, and I think my mom and dad really wanted the extra time with the grandkids anyway. And in spite of what I drew above, this did not turn out to be a disaster. The days before, during, and after the hurricane turned out to be the most pleasant of their visit. I just thought it was strange that they came to stay with us and all hell broke loose in the natural world.

For the record, I look a hell of a lot like my mom, except that her hair is much shorter, and not pink. And Princess looks like exactly like me. And these days my mom looks an awful lot like my grandmom, and my sister is sort of a dark, slimmer version of me, or my mom. Or maybe my grandmom. All the women in the family look an awful lot alike. Except for Pixie, who’s a blonde version of my dad, right down to his evil laugh and practical jokes.

Kids are back at school now, and next week Pixie will be going to kindergarten full day. Right now, she’s on a half-day schedule, which really chops up my work hours. But hopefully next week I’ll be back on a regular schedule. You’ll know for sure once I get back to blogging on a regular basis.

Ciao!

She’s under that moptop somewhere…

Yes, I dyed both girls’ hair pink. No, it had not washed out by the night befor school orientation. So yes, I had to dye their hair back to a natural color, and yes, you can still see pink in both shaggy heads. And somehow, Princess managed to lose her glasses and didn’t realize it until the day of the school orientation. We searched everywhere for them but couldn’t find them. Then on Saturday they turned up… In her underwear drawer.

Plus a few days before school started, Princess pulled out 17 worksheets that she had been given at the end of the school year previously to do as summer homework. If my mother hadn’t been there to help supervise Princess while she got her work done, I think I might have killed that kid.

Anyway, school started yesterday and I’m looking forward to getting back on a regular schedule. Once Pixie starts up full days of kindergarten in two weeks, I should get back to the old blogging schedule. That’s the plan anyway!

Enjoy your Tuesday.

My family is in town, so I’ve paired down my schedule drastically this week. Thus instead of a full comic strip, I present to you this, a portrait of Pixie at the end of the summer…

And just to clarify, no, she’s not allowed to have pink hair or tatooes at Catholic school.