Redecorating = Love and a New Toilet

The Feng Shui in our home is off.  Or maybe it’s the Wang Chung.  I dunno, I always get those two confused.  Anyway, everything is all higgledy-piggledy in la casa de Madden to the point that I don’t know what goes where or what happens in each room.  And why is that, you may ask?  Because…

We are redecorating.  Nothing major, just a fresh coat of paint on the downstairs walls.  And new paint on all the trim.  And the doors.  And then Michael’s tearing up the floor in the foyer and the downstairs bath so he can put in new tile.  And then maybe when all that’s done, he’ll finally put the toilet back in downstairs.  You know, the one he took out two years ago?  Right after our darling pixie Sam was born?

Yeah, that one.  So it’s not a BIG job because we’re not replacing furniture, but maybe it’s a big job because Michael’s doing all this painting and ripping up the floors and tiling and re-toileting stuff.  Oh, what am **I** doing?  The most important job of all – keeping the kids out of his hair.  And out of the fresh paint.

I love my husband, and he loves me.  And I will be so grateful when we get that downstairs toilet re-installed that I think I will take that man to bed…

And let him sleep for a week.  ‘Cause he’s gonna need it.

Episode 22 - Yoga!

Allow me to introduce my good friend Patricia (also known as ‘Other Patty’)!  She puts up with an awful lot from me.  Of course, so do Mary and Patty…

The four of us form a gang we call “The Screeching Harpies.”  Remember, this is a posse, NOT a mommy’s group.  Yeah, we get the kids together to play, but our real purpose for meeting up is to plan the next Apocalypse.  So if you see a gang of forty-somethings (we’re not quite that old but we’re getting there), sitting in your local sushi restaurant, cackling evilly as they devour platter after platter of sushi, you know who you’re dealing with.

This week’s strip got done a little quicker than last week’s, thanks to the fact that I now know what to expect from Manga Studio Debut 4.  Since I bitched so much about the program last week, let me say something nice this week.  The program’s got some new nifty features, especially in the drawing tools.  The pen tool can now adjust its line width according to how close you’re zoomed into the picture (that’s a big help, believe me!), and I can save customized settings for the tools I use most often, which also helps a lot.  The pencil tool stinks – it draws a line so faint I can’t see it on screen – but that’s okay because I can set up a customized marker tool instead for roughing out the artwork.  And the text tool and word balloons are pretty nifty, so long as I save **every couple of seconds**.  Otherwise, working with text will crash the program so bad I have to restart my computer to get it to work again.

But that’s about it!  Over all, we’re doing good this week.  Now go practice some yoga.  Seriously. 

The Adventures of Cynical Woman, Episode 22 - Yoga!

Allow me to introduce my good friend Patricia!  She puts up with an awful lot from me.  Of course, so do Mary and Patty…

The four of us form a gang we call “The Screeching Harpies.”  Remember, this is a posse, NOT a mommy’s group.  Yeah, we get the kids together to play, but our real purpose for meeting up is to plan the next Apocalypse.  So if you see a gang of forty-somethings (we’re not quite that old but we’re getting there), sitting in your local sushi restaurant, cackling evilly as they devour platter after platter of sushi, you know who you’re dealing with.

This week’s strip got done a little quicker than last week’s, thanks to the fact that I now know what to expect from Manga Studio Debut 4.  Since I bitched so much about the program last week, let me say something nice this week.  The program’s got some new nifty features, especially in the drawing tools.  The pen tool can now adjust its line width according to how close you’re zoomed into the picture (that’s a big help, believe me!), and I can save customized settings for the tools I use most often, which also helps a lot.  The pencil tool stinks – it draws a line so faint I can’t see it on screen – but that’s okay because I can set up a customized marker tool instead for roughing out the artwork.  And the text tool and word balloons are pretty nifty, so long as I save **every couple of seconds**.  Otherwise, working with text will crash the program so bad I have to restart my computer to get it to work again.

But that’s about it!  Over all, we’re doing good this week.  Now go practice some yoga.  Seriously. 

Episode 21 - With Friends Like These...

…who needs enemas? But seriously, this one is for Sam and Terri Pray of Under The Moon press.  They were recently screwed out of buying a house because the local community voted to ‘not harbor producers of gay porn.’  Under The Moon produced one anthology of gay erotic romance, which automatically brands them as undesirable elements according to this particular pristine community, but hey, the hetero erotic romances were apparently okay.  It was just that one book of gay smut…

Anyway, this is the first cartoon produced with the brand spanking new Manga Studio Debut 4.0!  I was so excited when I got the notice earlier this week that the upgraded software was out, I went right ahead and bought it.  I couldn’t wait to try it out.  Among the new features listed on Smith-Micro’s website were an improved text tool and WORD BALLOONS!  That’s right kiddies, for just $20 I could upgrade to a product that was going to solve the biggest problem I’d been having with producing the cartoons – getting the words onto the panels.

Except that it wasn’t exactly that easy.

First off, I bought the download version (with a back-up disk on its way to me).  When I installed and started up the program, it asked me to install the materials for MS Debut 4.  Materials are those nifty gray scale images that I use for backgrounds and fills.  I knew I had the materials – I’d seen them when I checked out the program folder after installation.  Problem was, I couldn’t figure out exactly which folder to point the materials installer to.  I tried the folder marked ‘Materials’ but that didn’t work because that would be too easy, apparently.  After an hour of trying to figure out how to get the materials and tones installed, I finally sent an e-mail to tech support.  To their credit, tech support answered within a couple of hours.  In the meantime, I searched around the Smith-Micro websites (there are two of them, and it took me a while to figure out which one had a FAQ on it for technical questions) and the Manga Studio website to get some answers.  What I discovered is that the good folks at Smith-Micro wrote up perfectly nice installation instructions… if you were installing from a disk.  But they left out a few details if you were installing from a downloaded version of the program.

Once I finally heard back from tech support, I was able to get the materials installed and I went straight to work.  The pen tool has some nifty new updates that make it ever better for inking cartoons, which is a huge plus.  However, the text tool crashed the program repeatedly, which led to yet another e-mail to tech support who replied that they couldn’t replicate my problem so obviously the fault was with my computer and not their program and I would have to un-install and re-install the program to fix things.  Joy.  That only took another hour or two of work time to accomplish.  And even after that, the text tool still kept crashing the program unless I saved after every use of said tool.  It’s annoying, and it bugs me because if I add more than two text objects to a page, that program is gonna go down like Moses in the fifth, and the only way to get it to come back up and cooperate is to shut down and restart the computer.

However, I can get the text tool to work, and once I figured out where Manga Studio kept the word balloons hidden (the user’s manual says they’re in the materials window – they’re not!!  They’re in the Beginner’s Assistant window), I was able to add my dialogue to my cartoon and finally output the finished work.

So this week’s image was all done in Manga Studio Debut 4, which is really how I prefer to do it, and it was done in the space of a single day (would have happened even quicker if not for technical difficulties…).  Drawing by hand is fine, but I really do prefer doing the whole thing digitally, and in just the one program.  The quality of the inking, the ease of adding tones, the supposed ease of adding text… If it weren’t for the fact that the text tool is buggy as hell and the fact that the user’s manual is unfortunately obscure on certain important aspects of the program (like installation and where to find those bloody word balloons!), I’d give Manga Studio Debut 4 a perfect 10.  As it is, the best I can rate them is a 6.5.  The program has great potential, but it’s also got some serious flaws.  Let’s hope Smith-Micro figures this out and does something to address the problem.

You Know...

You know that only a child could get away with running around the house wearing nothing but a cape, a mask and a pair of mismatched high heels, shouting “I’m Batman!”

When my youngest daughter does it, it’s so dang cute.  But if I did that, I’d be locked away for good.  Why do kids always get to have all the fun?

Episode 20 - Sudden Death

Oh my god, I think I just gave birth to twins.  Twin strips that is.

Please notice that while this week’s strip is THREE WEEKS LATE, it is also TWICE AS BIG.  And I got railroaded by a butt-load of work and the Princess’ kindergarten stuff.  For details on all of that, see my other blog here.

But at last this episode is done, and I can honestly say I still haven’t figured out how I want to draw this.  Manga Studio or Adobe Photoshop?  By hand or on the laptop?  All options have their advantages and disadvantages, and I’m seriously wishing that Smith-Micro would hurry it’s ass up and put out Manga Studio 4 so I could test it and see if the new version solves my current problems. But noooooooo! That would be asking a bit much I suppose. I’m only a heavy consumer of computer graphics programs after all.

So about the cartoon itself. This is something that has happened all too frequently to me.  I get a great idea while I’m out with the kids but when I finally make it home, ‘I got nothing,’ as Orziel would say.  I have learned to keep a notebook with me as often as possible, and I even have a handy little folding keyboard for my PDA, but none of those really gives me the freedom to write the moment the inspiration strikes.  Because I’ve always got to keep an eye on the kiddes, see? I look away for a few seconds and the next thing I know they’re tattooing someone else’s darling child with purple and green Sharpie markers.

But the writing does eventually get done and the inspiration is never completely gone.  It just goes into hiding.

The bastard.

To learn more about Orziel and his lovely boy-toy Jarresh, visit Mojocastle Press at http://www.mojocastle.com/demon/byday.html and BUY A COPY OF MY BOOK, DAMMIT!

Going to bed now…

October nearly killed me...

And November doesn’t look much better.

I got trampled by kindergarten and doctor’s appointments and Michael’s business trips last month, which is why I wasn’t around much.  For some reason, the simple world of kindergarten exploded with homework and class projects at the beginning of October.  It started with the Letter Notebook, which requires Cassie to practice writing the Letter of the Week and then finding pictures that start with the Letter of the Week, which she has to cut out, paste and label in the Letter Notebook.  It’s been taking us half an hour a night to do this project – one night for practicing the letter, one night for finding and cutting pictures, and one night for the pasting and labeling.  This is ON TOP OF any other homework that walks through the door, like more practice writing on worksheets and books that she’s supposed to read for her Reading Log, plus art projects and Things She Must Bring In For Class (like an empty water bottle, a white adult t-shirt, an egg carton, etc.).  It’s been killing me to keep up with all of this.  And the ON TOP OF all this, I volunteered to chaperone field trips and co-host a class party.  Lots of work, I gotta tell ya.

But Cassie loves that I’m active in her class activities, so it’s not a bad thing.  But then I had a bunch of medical appointments ON TOP OF that.  Two of these appointments were for me – my annual pelvic exam and my annual mammogram.  These are the kinds of appointments I prefer to go to sans children, meaning I needed a sitter for Sam those mornings.  Michael was supposed to stay home those mornings so I could get to my appointments, but then he had one business trip after another and I had to keep rescheduling my pelvic exam until I finally threw a screaming fit and he told me when he was going to be home.  And then the doctor’s office called me to cancel THAT appointment because the doc had to go out of town.

I eventually did get my mammogram and my pelvic exam done, and I even got a flu shot to boot (my gynecologist gave it to me, a nice little bonus to go with the speculum up my… well, you know).  Then I had to get flu shots for the kids and guess what?  The pediatrician was booked solid on flu shots.  She does them on specific days and you HAVE to have an appointment.  I finally ended up calling in to have Cassie looked at for something else, a rash on her face, and the receptionist asked if I wanted to get flu shots for both kids then, since we’d all be there.

“Was this all I needed to do to get a flu shot for my kids, have one of them come up with some weird skin ailment so I could make an appointment to bring them in?”

“Yes,” the receptionist replied.  “They’re going to be here anyway, so…”

So next fall, I’m going to scribble all over Cassie’s face with a green marker to give her another ‘rash’ and get our flu shots again that way.

Beyond that, I’ve been overloaded with work.  You can read about that at my work blog – http://www.helenehmadden.com.  I’m working to cut back in preparation for the holidays.  Don’t quite know how I’ll do that yet, but I will.

Meanwhile, it’s story time now with Sam.  I’ll blog some more later, I promise.

Unless November eats me alive as well.

Writing and Self-Indulgence

I apologize for cross posting this to here and to my writing blog, but I’ve been slammed for time, and I need to get a blog post up here anyway I can. 

I’m feeling horrifically self-indulgent today, or rather I feel horrific because I was self-indulgent today.  The local schools were closed today for the election, so I didn’t have to worry about getting to the bus stop by 3:15 to pick up my oldest daughter.  She stayed home with me and her little sister, who had a temperature of 102 degrees.  The youngest acted fine most of the day, but because of the fever she actually took an afternoon nap for the first time in almost six months.  A very loooooooong nap.

With the youngest sound asleep and the oldest happily drawing and playing in her room all afternoon, I was actually able to enjoy my old work schedule of three uninterrupted hours of work today.  I handled a few e-mails, battled it out with a horror story that refused to settle on a plot line, and wrote over one thousand words in that time.  I didn’t focus on the story that was on my to-do list for today – I was too obsessed with fixing and then writing the horror story.  But I definitely got something accomplished.

And I feel horrible about it.

Should I have knocked off at 3PM like I usually do on school days and spent more time with my eldest daughter?  I know she was perfectly happy in her room, working on an art project for her kindergarten class (an art project that is due on Thursday and was going to require a lot her time to complete anyway, I might add).  I just can’t believe I had so much time today to write!  I haven’t had such a luxury in ages, three uninterrupted hours.  At best, I manage to get an hour in the afternoon to write most days because one child comes home from school at 3 and the other refuses to go down for a nap anymore.  I need this kind of time to write, and my taking it and using it didn’t hurt anybody, so why do I feel so crappy about having spent the whole afternoon doing what I love?

Maybe I ate too much chocolate today.  Damn Halloween candy…

But seriously, I need to do something about my work schedule, about my daily schedule.  I need to find a way to get back those three hours of writing time, yet still tend to the needs of my kids.  It simply kills me that I can’t do this anymore.

Anybody else feel horribly guilty when they get time like this to work?