Episode 41 - Halloween!

Oy, I hurt. I had this brilliant idea that I could do the text for the cartoon in Adobe, which would look much better than my own hand lettering. But then I got the cartoon scanned in and I thought, "Hey, if I can do the lettering in Photoshop, why not do the screen tones too? I know I've got a tutorial on that somewhere!" Several hours later…

I'm kicking myself because I should have just done the lettering and let it go at that, but nooooooo! I had to do the screen tones. And then I made the mistake of resizing the image down and then I saved it over the larger version of the file!! That hurts because now if I ever want to edit this particular episode again, I'll have to start all over from the beginning, scanning in the line work and then adding the text and then adding the screen tones…

Ugh.

So anyway, I have a question. Right now, I'm resizing the cartoon to 1200×410 pixels. This is the size you see after you click on the thumbnail. I've got a giant flat screen monitor, so I have no idea really if this is too small or too large for anyone else viewing the cartoon. Let me know if you'd like to see the cartoon a little larger, or smaller, because the size I shrink things down to affects how the screen tones work (and yes, I'm just stupid enough to try that technique again, because in spite of the time I wasted this evening, I really like how this turned out).

Enjoy your Halloween!

Episode 39 - Who's Yo Mama?!

One day, this is going to happen to me. It just has to. In addition to reading my stories aloud to catch mistakes, I also record most of them for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast (which is a free weekly audio show I do that you can download to your MP3 player or listen to on your computer, and if you're not listening you should be!). Most days I only write or record when the kids are in school or in bed. When they're home and awake, I'm so busy taking care of them, I don't have time to do anything else. But mark my words, one of these days they're gonna walk in on me while I'm working...

You may have noticed that this cartoon is done "old style," which is to say I did it on the computer using Manga Studio 4. I still love MS4, and much prefer the way the cartoons look when I do them on the computer, but the fact is, it takes too long to do the cartoons this way. This particular cartoon was penciled back in April, and then inked yesterday morning. Had I done this by hand, it would have taken me an hour at most to do the inking and then the cartoon would be finished. In Manga Studio 4, the inking takes longer, plus there are extra steps I do to add the tones and text balloons, which is part of what makes the digital cartoons so pretty. What to do? Continue drawing by hand, but draw better! It'll come with practice. Meanwhile, I'll just use Manga Studio for other projects, since I'd really like to do some Manga style artwork, and this is the best program I've got for inking.

Anyway, here is this week's cartoon, and I hope you enjoyed it ;)

Episode 37 - Something smells funny around here.

True story. Honest to god, Pixie came up to me one day and said exactly this. And it does not surprise me to hear this news, given the amount of stinky accidents we've had in the last couple months.

First, there was the poopie incident at the pizzeria in Chicago. Then we had an accident last week while she was home sick from preschool. Then yesterday, I hear a bunch of yelling coming from the upstairs bathroom. It wasn't clear what was going on until I got halfway up the stairs and smelled that smell. Sure enough, there was a turd the size of a dinosaur egg sitting in the bathroom floor. Less than a foot away from the toilet. And there was a tiny little shoe print in it. With matching little brown shoe prints all over the bathroom.

According to Pixie, she did not reach the potty in time because it was dark in there. Yes, dark, as in the light was off. Of course, this happened in the middle of the day, which means the upstairs bathroom was dim, at most. Sigh. I just keep reminding myself that she will not be pooping her pants when she walks down the aisle on her wedding day.

I hope.

So how's things with you all?

Episode 29 - Thunder Pants!

We are actually mostly finished with Pixie's potty training. She's been in "thunder pants" for a few months now, only wearing a pull-up at night. Potty training is one of those things that as a parent you never think is going to happen, and in Pixie's case I was starting to wonder if she'd still be in pull-ups on her wedding day, but we eventually got things straightened out. It seems that so long as she was in a pull-up, she'd pee in it no matter how many times a say I sat her on the potty. Once I switched her to underpants, that quickly stopped.

Regarding the potty, does anybody else have a singing potty? Ours sings all sorts of little songs depending on what the occupant is doing. There's one song for lifting the lid, another for sitting on the pot, a third for actually making a deposit in the pot, yet a fourth song for rolling the faux toilet paper roll attached to the pot, and then a final song for closing the lid and pushing the little fake handle. It's all a bit much, in my opinion, and the whole singing potty thing really started to creep me out when the potty developed a short circuit of some kind and started randomly singing in the middle of the night while the Hubster was away on business. Nothing like waking up in the dark to the eerie strains of "Let's all sit on the potty!" Needless to say, I didn't bother to switch out the batteries when they died.

I'm headed out this week for a visit to Arkansas to see my folks. We're really looking forward to the trip, but alas I'll have no internet access while I'm there, which means yet another wait for the next cartoon. I'm starting to clear stuff off my plate however, and hope to get back to a schedule where I can turn out a cartoon a week, or at least every ten days. I'll get there by this summer, I promise.

In the meantime, you'll be seeing some changes around this site and my other sites as I merge all three blogs and websites into one mega-super site. I'm just spread too thing between the mommy blog, the cartoon blog, the writing blog, and the supporting websites. I figure if I get it all into one place, I'll be better able to keep up with blogging and you'll have an easier time keeping up with all the crazy wacky fun I have to offer (insert canned laughter here).

Have fun over the next week or so, and I'll be back with another cartoon as soon as I can!

Episode 25 - This Is My Life!

This is mostly an update on work, but...

Yes, this has been my life the last several weeks. Since November, I have struggled to survive the holidays, a convention (9 panels, 1 reading, an all-day author table!!), final edits on my new book Future Perfect, creating the cover art for said book, getting set up to join the "Oh Get A Grip" group blog (read us - we're fun!!), keeping up with the Heat Flash erotica podcast which now airs on Thursdays at 8PM on Radio Dentata (streaming internet radio with teeth!!), clean the house, feed the kids, help the Princess with her homework, potty train Pixie, and somehow find a few moments to have sex with my husband.

Yeah, it's been a little busy.

Things are starting to slow down a bit. I got my last major deadline out the door on Friday. I submitted a short story to Alessia Brio's Coming Together: Al Fresco, and regardless of whether or not I make it into this volume, I highly encourage everyone to buy a copy of any of the Coming Together books (I do have a story in Coming Together: With Pride, if you're interested). Coming Together is a charity anthology and all the proceeds go to the organization of choice for each volume. It's doing good while being bad, and ya gotta love that.

So this week's cartoon is just a glimpse into what's been going on at la casa de Cynical Woman. I'm tired, but things are evening out and I hope to be back on some sort of regular schedule in the next couple of weeks. I'll be at the Farpoint science fiction convention on Valentine's Day weekend, the same weekend as the release of Future Perfect, so I will be gearing up for that, getting promo ready and preparing for the panels I'm on (only six this time, I believe). Otherwise, I'll be turning my attention back to the podcast and this cartoon, putting in a little more time on my two favorite projects for a while. Hopefully, I'll have another cartoon ready within the week. See ya then!

Ephemera 01 - I Am a Baaaaaaad Cartoonist

I did not quit cartooning. Seriously. And no, my artistic inspiration didn't shrivel up and die. I have simply been too dang busy for words. Honestly. Right now, I'm trying to finish edits on my next book, get the cover artwork done for said book, get my podcast out the door, prep to participate in TEN panels at a science fiction convention coming up this weekend, and put together a workshop outline on podcasting for EPICon 2009 (Vegas, March, be there, baby!). Not to mention trying to recover the house from the holidays, recover the kids from the holidays, and oh, I've been sick the last week and a half.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Whine, whine, whine. Quit being such a big cry-baby, Helen, and get with the cartoons already! Well, I don't have a Cynical Woman cartoon done right now (although I already have the next few episodes scripted out and they will be funny, I promise!). What I do have is this…

I know, it's freaky, but this comes from my current sketchbook, which I carry around with me and doodle in whenever I get a free moment (free time? Ha! What's that?). This was mostly done in the dojo our family attends, during Princess' karate classes. The Saturday morning classes, that is, when Saint Michael the Magnificent takes Pixie shopping so I don't have to keep an eye on that hyperactive little busybody who gets into everything.

So, every now and then, when I get a sketch done (or as I find a few old ones I've got lying around), I'll scan it in and present it here. These will be called 'Ephemera' and they will be a nice little bonus to the usual comics. Or they will be a way for me to buy some time when my sorry ass gets behind in my work again.

Episode 24 - Happy Holidays, You Perverts

It's 12:30AM, Christmas day. I've been up since 5AM, and refused to go to sleep until this sucker was finished and posted. That's how much I love all of you. Really!

Aside from the web comic and the book I'm currently editing (Future Perfect, due out in February 2009 from Logical Lust Publications), I decided to take it easy this week. My parents are here, along with my sister. I had one day where I buried myself in editing, and I missed out on making the gingerbread house, so that was the end of my daytime work hours. Since then, I've played Twister, made fudge with the kids, gone book shopping (our extended family overwhelmed the cafe in Barnes & Nobles!), wrapped presents, gone to church (yes, my family dragged the only Buddhist they know to church, and I had to stand through the whole mass, it was so dang crowded), and tossed naughty story ideas back and forth with my good friend Kathleen Bradean. We want to write something super-naughty, kind of like that cartoon up there.

Anyway, I need to hit the hay, because I know the kids are going to yank me out of bed at any minute, screaming, "Santa came! Santa came! And he left presents!" Here's hoping Santa hits your house too and leaves you something fun.

Merry Christmas and happy Boddhi Day ;)

Cartoon up! The Adventures of Cynical Woman

Well, Picassa has effectively killed my incentive to use it any more for posting any further artwork there, including the cartoons I've been doing. Sometime in the past week, they changed how they handle links to web albums, so that I can't simply e-mail the link from my computer, but have to do it from the Picassa website instead, meaning I have to have addresses set up there, probably need a Gmail account (which I don't have and don't plan to get at this time), etc. And it looks like if folks want to see the cartoon, they now have to log into Google as well, which don't work if folks don't have a Google account. Basically, Google took what used to be a simple, handy operation for me and made it useless in their attempts to pimp themselves.

Fortunately, I think I have found a way around that.

I'm testing out Zoundry's Raven this week, to see how it works for posting blog entries and images. What I like best is that I can upload images from my computer to a designated place on MY webhost, as opposed to some third party service like the aforementioned (and now useless) Picassa. So let's see how this works shall we? I'll upload my cartoon with the click of a button and...

Presto baby! Now if you click on the thumbnail below, you get the cartoon but not the Picassa album. Looks like this will work just fine for now. Still need to get a regular web comic site set up though. I'm working on it...

Cartoon for 31 August 2008

My youngest has been on an inquisitive/destructive streak lately. She gets into my purse, Michael's briefcase, her sister's dresser, everything. She's just got to have what everyone else has, although she doesn't always understand what she's got. She even gets into my laptop. I caught her rearranging my e-mail earlier this week. She's a hazzard! But I love her.

Cartoon - Who Wants To Be A Super Hero? ME!

Today's cartoon is about podcaster and writer extraordinaire, Mur Lafferty. Mur has a novel coming out about super heroes and it's really cool! It's called Playing for Keeps. Be sure to buy a copy from Amazon.com on Monday, August 28th!

And no, I did not forget last week's cartoon. It's here:



Sorry it was late. All I can say was, I got eaten alive by REAL LIFE! Enjoy the cartoons!

Cartoon for 8 August 2008!

I'm sorry this was late. It was actually done on Friday, but everything went all screwy that day and I never got around to posting the cartoon here. Many other places, yes, but not here or on my erotica blog. Michael has been out of town most of the last two weeks. Sam was sick all last week, and I didn't feel so hot myself. In fact, I just dragged last week. Now I'm suffering from insomnia and Twitter addiction. I am so screwed up. But you don't care about that, do you? You just want your damned cartoon. Well fine. Here it is!



And you have no idea how true this one really is...

Cartoon for 2 August 2008

I actually feel like the goddess of Hell fire today. The kids and I spent all day yesterday at a beach in Kitty Hawk, NC. We went with my best friend Mary and her family. We brought sunblock and I swear we used it, yet somehow the only one of us that didn't end up looking like a crispy critter was Sam. The blonde pixie is as brown as a little nut, but Cassie and I are toasty red. Mary's stepson has it worse though. Poor kid is Irish - red hair, fair skin, freckles. Only now he's got red hair, red skin, and you can't tell his freckles from his sunburn. I swear, before yesterday, that boy would have glowed in the dark he was so white. Nice kid though. I was hunting for seashells all day to take home to photograph. Would have photographed them on the beach but Sam + Ocean = Imminent Disaster, so I couldn't really juggle the camera and watch the kid. I could hunt for shells though, especially with everyone else in the group helping out. Mary's stepson dove under the waves a lot and kept brining up these incredible shells. And before I left, I scooped up a bucket of sand from beneath the water. The plan is to take a glass backing dish, lay a layer of sand in the bottom, put the shells on top of that, and then add water. Then I can photograph the shells the way they'd look best - in their not-quite-natural habitat. If only I can figure out how to get the lighting just right, so that it looks like sunlight streaming through the water over the shells. You know those wriggly lines of light that play on the sand beneath the waves? That's what I want.

That and a vat of aloe vera gel. Ouch.

Cartoon for 25 July 2008

I'm late, I know. I had to check the URL that I included in the cartoon. This is both a true story and a bit of shameless promotion for a project that has become near and dear to my heart. Coming Together is a series of erotica anthologies put together and sold for charitable causes. I have a story in Coming Together: With Pride. The proceeds go to AVERT.org to support HIV and AIDS research. There are a number of other books in the series, some of them award winners, all of them good anthologies put together for good causes. You can find out more at the Coming Together website. Alessia Brio, the editor, will be a guest tomorrow night on Passion Internet Voices Radio. That'll be at 9PM-11PM EASTERN time. She'll be playing audio excerpts of some of the stories, including mine, and some of the writers will be joining her for interviews. If I still have a voice tomorrow after fighting with a nasty cold, I'll be there.

I'll get to work on another cartoon right away, I promise. It looks like it'll be a couple more weeks before I've got a website set up for the cartoons, but once it's up, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

And here's another cartoon...

Does this sort of thing really happen to me? Yes and no. I've done the stand up and announce I'm an erotica writer bit, but most people don't seem to want to confront me about it. Apparently I intimidate a lot of folks. I have no idea why. I'm a really nice person. I am. Stop laughing. I know where you live.

I noticed today that Google's Picassa will not put these toons in order, so if I'm doing a series, like I am right now, they're going to be all jumbled up. But that's okay. I've taken steps toward getting a web comic account set up, and by next week, I should have a page dedicated to just the comic strips. I'll link to that page from here and from my erotica website, and probably from my podcast, so that wherever people find me, they can go look for the comics as well and find them all in one place. The web comic page should have a nice archiving function that will let people scroll through the comics by calendar dates. But that will happen next week. For now, enjoy the mixed up mish-mash on Picassa!

A Cartoon and a Story About Freaks and Normal Moms

True story, although this happened a week after I started work on the above cartoon. I met with Patty and other Patty and their kids at one of the local playgrounds. While the yard apes ran amok, we sat in the only shady area in the place. Another mom showed up with her daughter and they joined us, seeking a little relief from the heat. The daughter seemed very nice, but the mom? A little too mundane, if you know what I mean. A little too normal, a little too scrap-bookish, a little too Bunco-playing. She was the kind of mom that wears Birkenstocks and volunteers for the PTA so she can tell other moms what to do. She wasn't rude, but she sure as hell didn't fit into our little freak clique.

See, Patty is a member of the SCA (she was a Baroness once) and was making adjustments to a medieval period coat while we were there. Other Patty was discussing the finer points of yoga and getting her massage therapist certification, and such talk will occasionally veer into chi, pressure points, and other metaphysical stuff. Me? I was nattering about the best way to promo my erotica e-book, and was dressed up in my fav pirate t-shirt and plaid school-girl skirt. Individually, we're odd. Together, we're a freak clique.

Anyway, Normal Mom was just a little too normal for my tastes. I kept waiting for her to invite me to her church's women's bible group. I'm Zen Buddhist, which is pretty much like being an atheist that meditates. Normal Mom was also just a little too familiar and condescending with my kids. After I mentioned that Sam had painted her crib with poop, she tracked Sam down on the playground and told her, "Big girls poopie in the potty, sweetie!" Uh, yeah, we already had that discussion, thanks. Then when she introduced her daughter to Cassie, she said, "This is Clarice. You should remember that name, because Clarice and Cassie start with the same sound."
To which I said, "Cass, what letter does Clarice start with?"

"'C' just like 'Cassie'."

At which point I shot Normal Mom a look that said, "My girl can read and write, so back off, bitch."

We haven't seen Normal Mom since that afternoon. Patty invited her to join us again, but due to rain we ended up going to a different venue for our next gathering, and nobody had Normal Mom's number. Darn. But someone, she has haunted me since that play date. Last night, I had a dream that I was forced to join a formal mommies group, the kind where they have regular business meetings and you have to pay dues. They forced me to wear a mommy uniform and then issued me a baby (seriously, I had to sign for it and everything). The baby was adorable, a fat squirmy thing with dark curly hair that reminded me of Cassie and Sam. But the uniform was butt ugly. It had this ascot that made me look one hundred years old when I wore it around my neck. I hated it, but I knew if I didn't wear the uniform, the mommies group would take back the baby, and I couldn't stand the idea of that.

I will always be a freak. I've been one for as long as I can remember, and have been persecuted for it by various means. I'm used to that, maybe too used to that, so that I end up seeing enemies where there aren't any really. Maybe I should have gotten to know Normal Mommy better. Maybe we could have been friends. Or maybe I would have found out that she's the kind of person who comes after people like me with pitchforks and torches. We'll probably never know.

I hope.

Cartoon Up!

In spite of spending most of this week dragging my sorry ass through the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, I did manage to get a cartoon done. Not much of anything else, but hey, I took care of my priorities. Anyway, here's this week's cartoon:



And yes, this always happens to me.

Just Another Day In The Office

We had a fun weekend at La Casa Madden. On Saturday morning, after going through karate and swimming lessons, Cassie suddenly came down sick - temperature of 103 degrees, chills, sore throat, aches and pains. I promptly put the Princess to bed and babied her with juice, sherbet, Disney movies, whatever would keep her content while she rested. She puked once, all over the couch and herself, and complained of being cold and unable to sleep, but otherwise she was okay. Well, not **okay** okay -- she was looking pretty pale and scrawny -- but I knew with enough viewings of Beauty and the Beast, she'd live.

Cassie's illness sort of threw all our weekend plans into a tailspin, however. We missed her best buddy's birthday bowling party that afternoon, and I have heard nothing but, "But I wanted to go bowling!" and "I LOVE bowling!" ever since. Cassie doesn't even know what bowling is, but man she sure wanted to go to that party. Michael did get some house work done that he'd been planning, but since I spent so much time tending to Cassie, my plans to rapidly accomplish my work went down the tubes real quick. Tasks that should have taken an hour tops took five. I just couldn't concentrate when all I could hear is this tiny, whiny little voice in the background going, "But I LOVE bowling!" Mary, if you're reading this, we are taking the kids bowling SOON. Otherwise I may just have to throw myself through a window to escape that sound.

So I was all discombobulated as usual this weekend... the weekend that I had to proof my final novel galley, the weekend that I had to do up promo materials for a convention I'm headed off to in a few days, the weekend I had hoped would go so smoothly. Nothing new. Just another day in the office.

Belated Happy Mother's Day

I spent most of the weekend working on this cartoon (hurray, just what I needed - another really fun, really addictive hobby that sucks up a lot of my time...). I had meant to put it up Sunday, but then I got caught up doing the interview for the Balticon Podcast, so I figured I'd post this first thing Monday morning, only then I woke up feeling sick, so...

Here's this past weekend's cartoon!



And yes, that is me, both my kids, and Michael in the picture in the background. Happy Belated Mother's Day.

Mama Got Back!

I have a confession to make. I am addicted. I know I shouldn't have, but last night I stayed up waaaaay to late playing with Manga Studio and drew another cartoon. I can't help it. I love to cartoon! And Manga Studio is so much fun to work with. I'm a graphics junkie!

But that's not really the addiction I wanted to talk about. No, I want to discuss the **other** addiction. The BIG addiction. The addiction that's getting to be a pain in my ass.

I am addicted to calories.

Yeah, I know. Shut up, you can't be addicted to calories you moron. Everybody has to eat **something**.

I don't usually talk about my weight here in the blog, mainly because so many of my friends look at me when I say anything about it and go, "But you look so frikkin' thin!" To which I always say, "That's because I keep all my fat cleverly concealed in my ass!" And I have to admit, I'm not really overweight. I have a shape and it's not round, it's hourglass. But there's a little more sand in the hourglass these days and that's getting to be a problem.

The problem started waaaaay back when, during my second pregnancy. I put on very little weight during that pregnancy, only 17 lbs. And then afterward I dropped weight like nobody's business. I mean, I didn't have to do anything, the fat just melted off of me like snow in July. So what's the problem with that, you ask. Well, for starters, I lost too much weight the year after Sam was born. Ask my best friend Mary. I got so thin she urged me to see a doctor and have some tests run. The tests all came back negative for whatever it was they tested me for, so I was all right. It was just hormones, my doctor said. My metabolism was running a little fast because of post-pregnancy hormones and breast feeding. It would slow down eventually and then I'd go back to my normal weight.

Except that in the interim, I got into some bad eating habits. Like say, polishing off a bowl of ice cream before going to bed every night, and drinking lots of coffee and tea with sugar and milk in it, and eating just about anything else under the sun because I kept losing weight and nothing, I mean nothing stuck to my ribs.

Until one day something did stick to my ribs and then my weight loss slowed. That's right, it slowed and then before you knew it, my weight crept back up to normal and then a little beyond.

I was fine with that for a while. I was a little heavier than I was used to, but only a couple of pounds and all my clothes still fit, so I was good with it. I mean honestly, I had a nice hourglass figure, right?

But then I stopped breastfeeding Sam and I started gaining more weight. And then my hormones started going wonky twice a month and that brings us to the current situation.

Two times a month, I suddenly pack on an extra five pounds and it takes me two weeks to get rid of it, just in time to pack it back on again. It's a menstrual thing, I know it is, and the weight is mostly water weight, but it's also some weight that I put on because I get these horrendous cravings for sweets and salty foods. During those two times of the month I will mindlessly devour anything I find that is not nailed down or else is not one of my kids. And on a few occasions, I have even considered eating the kids, the cravings were that bad. So I'm constantly gaining and lose those same five pounds and while I'm still not fat, I'm running into this little problem.

None of my damn clothes fit half the time.

I do not have the money to buy a whole new wardrobe. Really, I don't. I just bought new shorts because summer is coming and I know my capris will not fit during those "fat" times. But I can't afford anything else. And I don't want to own a second set of clothes just to have for those "fat" times of the month. I don't have the closet space for it. It's driving me crazy. I know in another week I'll be back to a comfortable weight and my clothing will fit just fine (and some pieces will even be a bit loose), but right now I feel like the Sausage Queen of Hamburg, I'm that swollen with water weight.

What to do? I looked up "water retention" on Web MD to see if there was anything I could do without getting a prescription, and all they told me was exercise and drink lots of water. Taking in more water is supposed to convince my body to not hold onto so much extra fluid. So I've been exercising and drinking water until I feel like my back teeth are floating. And my weight hasn't budged.

Oh well, the hazards of getting older. "One day I shall wear purple" and all that crap. Just as long as I've got something to cover my ass.

Work-At-Home Mom Versus The Sick Baby

I had such a wonderful time last weekend. I left Michael and the kids on Friday and drove to Richmond for RavenCon. Talk about having some fun! I spent the entire weekend volunteering for the convention, a job that mainly consisted of me sitting in on discussion panels and filling out little forms on how good said panels were. I got to listen to discussions on costuming, podcasting, art, computer graphics, and web comics... all those geeky topics that yours truly just LUVS! And I got to meet an erotica writer friend of mine, Nobilis. Like me, Nobilis writes speculative fiction erotica (i.e. sci-fi and fantasy porn). Unlike me, Nobilis is tall. Freakishly tall, even. How tall was he? He was so tall that I never did see his face, but I could describe his belly button lint in detail. That's pretty frikkin' tall, folks.

But aside from the crick I got in my neck from having to look up all the time to talk to Nobilis, I had a great time. I also got to meet the world famous writer Mur Lafferty, Paul Fischer and Martha Holloway of the ADD Cast, and tons of other people I only know through my iPod or via the internet. And I stayed up late, really late! Way past bedtime late! And did I mention I actually got to talk to some other adults about things other than potty training and the hazards of preschool? So it felt like I sort of had a real life for two and a half days.

Then I came back home. Which was good, because I started jonesing for Michael and the kids after my first hour at RavenCon. I missed them soooooooo much. Cassie and Sam didn't see me at first when I came in - they were engrossed in a Barbie movie -- but as soon as they saw me they both jumped up shrieking and laughing and... ah, who the hell am I kidding? Cassie gave me a brief glance and said, "Hi Mama." Sam saw me and immediately held out her arms and wailed. "Pick up! Pick up!" And once I did pick her up, and I wasn't allowed to put her down again for twenty hours or so.

Turns out there was a reason for Sam's fussiness. She had a low grade fever with a small rash on Sunday, which jumped up to a full-grade fever with more rash on Monday, which transformed to Bubonic Plague on Tuesday. I should have known something was up when Sam didn't wake up until 11AM on Monday morning. No kidding, that baby slept waaaaaaaaaaay past her normal wake-up time, which meant I also slept until 11AM because there was no way after having so much fun that I could crawl out of bed before noon, only I had to because Sam woke up at 11AM.

But that was Monday morning. Tuesday morning Sam was up at 6ish, vomiting. By 9ish we were at the doctor's, who by 10ish told me that Sam had a fever (knew that) and the rash was probably a reaction to a virus (knew that too). Sam tested negative for strep, Bubonic Plague, and the Insidious Ear Infection, so we went home for lunch. On the way there, I stopped to pick up some groceries - rice, bannanas, ginger ale, all the stuff that sick babies should eat. Sam of course slept through this part of the trip, so I had to lug her around in my arms while I shopped. If I have biceps like Ahnold's, you know why. She woke up when we got home and had a temperature of over 102, which was up considerably from the doctor's office. We thus spent the rest of the afternoon watching Dora and fussing non-stop. Around 4PM we went to pick up Cassie from preschool. Once again Sam fell asleep in the car and she was so out of it that she actually stayed asleep when I brought her in (this NEVER happens in real life). Michael came home and took Cassie to karate while I spent the rest of the afternoon either in the our bed with a screaming Sam or in the glider trying to accomplish some work.

Ah, work. After RavenCon and meeting all those other writers/podcasters/artists, I was so psyched to get back to work. I wanted to create, man! And I am quite certain now that my urge to create corellates directly with Sam's fever. The more I want to work, the sicker she gets. By 8PM last night, Sam had a temperature of 103.6. We gave her a dose of Motrin and some Benedryl to help her sleep. By 5AM this morning, her temperature was up to 103.8. After dosing her again and getting her back to bed, I was wiped out, so we all slept late again this morning, though not as late as 11AM. Except for Sam, who did sleep as late as 11AM.

And today's work? Cancelled, naturally. Wednesday is Cassie's day home, so I've done nothing but ride the exercise bike, run some laundry, fix lunch, and watch a butt-load of Dora the Explorer. Around 2PM I dosed Sam with some more Benedryl and Motrin. She fights taking the medicine, but I've found that if I pry her mouth open with one finger and use a syringe to squirt the stuff into her mouth, I can get the medicine into her. I've done this twice and am proud to say that I still have eight fingers left.

So not much accomplished this week after an invigorating, inspiring weekend of creative thought. Except for the below cartoon. Hey, I had to do something fun today...