Still Ploughing on!

Posted by jupe

Well, I’ve finished some art today. Page 1 of The Red Surge is finished, all inks and lettering complete. I need to do some of page 2 today, and I need to do some knitting in the worst way.  I also need to draw a picture for Nick’s principal sooner than later and finish his teacher’s Christmas craft.

Oy, vey. Have I taken on too much?

It snowed last night; how rude. About a foot of snow on the ground and probably an extra hour to and from my class as a result of it. I’ll be leaving home right after Nick gets out of school and braving the terrible drivers. Snow, I can deal with. People? Not so much.

So, yesterday a few things happened.

I spent the day drawing and inking, as I usually do, and Rusty didn’t nap. We went to get Nick, then went to CostCo because Nick had no more snack foods for his school lunches. Once that was taken care of, we went home, only to find that the gifts that my mother had sent us were left on our doorstep by UPS without a signature or confirmation. Just left out there for anyone to take, should they desire. What a piss off.  I brought them inside, then I dropped off the groceries, and then we went back to school, the three of us, because Nick had his Christmas concert.  Alex was stuck in traffic because people are morons but made it JUST in time for Nick’s performance.  I didn’t properly videotape it with the phone because I was distracted, but we amusingly discovered that he’s the kid who yells the lyrics of the sounds, rather than singing them. It was adorable.  He was also very into the choreography and whole ordeal. Such a good kiddo.

During the show, Rusty decided that he was gonna be a terror, more than usual.  He got out of his seat, pushed past the people in the aisle, and made his way right up to the stage where the kids were doing their show.  One of the teachers grabbed him and brought him back to me, then the lovely librarian took him to the kindergarten room so we could actually watch the show.  Later during the performances, she had brought him back to the gym where the Principal was keeping an eye on him.  Unfortunately for him, he took his eyes off of Russell for ten seconds, during which time Russell made another dash for the stage, and was once again apprehended.

I was just glad it wasn’t my fault that time, and thankful that the little bugger didn’t make it ON the stage, as he knows exactly how to get up there.

We had Harveys for dinner afterward because I had a coupon and Nick took FOREVER to eat his burger. I’m talking, 40 minutes to eat a kid sized burger. Bloody hell, kid, seriously? We spent way too long there cos all Nick did was fuck around.

The last stop was the dollar store for some candy canes for our trees and for gifts.

When we got home, Alex rushed in and I took care of getting the kids inside. One of our letters in the mailbox was from the dentist’s office and they had misspelled our last name, meaning I couldn’t mail in the claim. That, coupled with the kids being wild animals, I was happy to get Rusty and Nick ready for bed. After the kids were in bed, Alex and I worked on my homework and I think we have a nicely solid story in mapped format.  We’ll see what kind of subplot Ty will throw in there for us. Tonight, if class isn’t cancelled, Ty will also be teaching us how to write a roast, which will also be awesome. I can’t wait 😀

The last thing I did before bed was work more on The Red Surge. Sometime while drawing, the layers got merged down. I didn’t notice until I was out of Undos. OMG, I was PISSED. I put the work down for awhile and played PVZ until bedtime. This morning, I rectified the mistake and finished the work.

All good, all good.

Oh, I also stepped on what used to be a banana, all mushy and cold and slimy, on a chair which I was resting my foot on. A gift from Rusty.

How thoughtful.

It’s GO GO GO Time!

Posted by jupe

After waiting quite some time, I’ve been assigned a story for Toronto Comix.  This happens the same day that penciled pages started coming in for The Red Surge. It looks like I have a LOT of work ahead of me, coupled with Christmas and family stuff.

I’m going to put commissions on hold, I think, until this is all done, with time only to draw Nick’s principal’s gift and work on his teachers’ gifts.

Otherwise, anyone who asks me what’s up will most likely get the response, “JUPE DRAW. JUPE JUST DRAW. DRAW, JUPE, DRAW.”

Monday was exhausting. Tuesday is another day of doing stuff.

Posted by jupe

Yesterday was a busy as hell day.  Between daily drawings and planning crap and getting dental stuff sorted, I was ready to nap before I got Nick from school — but I didn’t. I got him from school first.

So, Nick got home, watched tv, and I passed out for about 45 restful minutes with only a couple interruptions from my spastic three year old.  The kitchen was still a mess and I was lazy, so I just made the kids Kraft Dinner, which went over really well, and by 6:55 I had Nick off to Beavers.  Then, it was up to me and Rusty to get some shopping done for holiday fun.

We piled into the car and drove over to the Oakville Michael’s where I picked up a bunch of kids craft items, plus the elements to make a lovely wreath for the front door. Almost everything I bought was half price so I ended up getting a lot of handy stuff for the kids to play and create.

Alex helped me get the garbage out after he got home from Fred’s. Fred is off to South America and none of us know when or if he’ll be back. He’ll be missed. Alex brought home some new mugs and bakeware and spices and such, which Fred had to get rid of. Thank you, Fred. 🙂 Bon Voyage.

After he got home, he basically dumped the cats litter box on me, when it’s well overdue to be his turn to clean it out, so in exchange, I made him finish cleaning the kitchen — which he overdid, and I am not complaining about. I can actually breathe in there.  At this point in time, it’s about 12:20am, and the litter box is now empty. I went back upstairs with it to fill it, only to discover that we were out of litter. So, I got dressed, drove to Metro, and bought some, all whilst grumbling. The self checkout there is SO cumbersome. DO YOU WANT THIS? DO YOU WANT THAT? DO YOU WANT THE OTHER THING? CAN I INTEREST YOU IN? LET ME HOLD YOU UP SOME MORE. For fuck’s sake, just let me pay for my cat litter and fucking go.

When everything was done, it was 1am and I was ready to pass out… and boy, did I.  Alex was even kind enough to let me sleep in until he had to leave with Nick. Bonus.

I want to start baking some gingerbread soon, so I need to make some templates for a gingerbread house to bring to next week scouts party. Icing is easy and candy is cheap when you get it at either the dollar store or the bulk barn. It should be a pretty fun house to smash.

Any additional gingerbread I have will be made into cookies and iced accordingly. I’m also considering shortbreads because it’s been a couple years since I last made them. Perhaps, perhaps.

I have a lot of knitting to get done. I should stop procrastinating and get it started today; I have two dolls done and two to go, plus three gifts for people at Nick’s school.

Hm. perhaps another cup of tea to get things going. Genmaicha was my daily tea and it was pretty nice. A lovely earthy, roasted flavour. It was offputting at first, but after the second sip, I decided I liked it.

Let’s see what I have to show in tomorrow’s post.

It’s beginning to look like Giftmas in my house.

Posted by jupe

We put up the tree last night. The kids had an awesome time and Alex and I enjoyed watching them.  We went to Home Depot to pick up a tree and found a beauty without any tags. All the other trees in the same section as that tree had pink tags, so we grabbed a pink tag from the ground and paid a sweet $20 for it.  As the tree relaxed at home, it became quite apparent that we got a tree worth much more than $20 because it is absolutely beautiful and full. It’s nearly as wide as it is tall.  I really do need to make a new tree topper, though. Almost all our ornaments are handmade ornaments and it would make sense if the topper was also a handmade ornament. I think I might just do that and we can make it a family treasure to pass down through the family.

That was the basic theme of yesterday. Here are some pictures! Some of them are a little blurry, but that’s because my kids, like most kids, don’t stay still for very long.  Looks like Alex caught me in some of them, and I caught him, too. We’re even.

It’s Tree Day

Posted by jupe

Today is Christmas tree day!

And as for yesterday, I don’t really want to talk much about it, other than we got the boys’ bunk beds put up. Nick was thrilled to be able to help out and was even happier to be on the top bunk.  Russell wasn’t happy to be on the bottom and disallowed access to the top, but hey. That’s kids, right?

I’ll post pics tomorrow of the tree and of the kids putting up decorations. It’s one of the best days of the year 🙂

I finished that daily drawing, finally. It’s all coloured and inked so tomorrow we’ll have something completely new. Not sure what it’ll be yet, but I’ll figure something out. Don’t I always?

I almost forgot again.

Posted by jupe

And forgetting to blog would’ve made me a bad jupe.

Yesterday was a combination of good and bad. Good in that I got a lot of drawing done, as well as my blog post, and good in that I went to class. More on class later.

First, the bad.

Nick had a day at school. He got it into his head that it was a good idea to tell all the girls in his class that they were inferior and that boys are better, and then after getting a talking to about compassion by the teacher, did it again. He was in charge of handing out papers to the class and only gave the boys paper. He upset one of the girls so much, she went into hysterics.

SO, he spent the rest of the afternoon in the office, which I approve of. There’s no need for my son to become a pigheaded woman hater. He’s only six and such habits must be broken early. I’ll be keeping an eye on him at school.

Aside from that, the only other bad thing is the sheer amount of time I had to sit in traffic yesterday. I left home around 4:10 and after dropping the kids off at Alex’s work, then picking up Greg, I finally parked the car around 5:45.  Then, after class, after dropping Mandy off at Union, driving in Traffic where everyone loses their shit and forgets how to drive, and dropping Greg off, I got home an hour after leaving. Thursdays involve 2.5 hours in the car to drive only 62km, round trip.

BLARGH.

But aside from that, pretty good day. My class read their pitches and we all voted on the best ones. Next week, we must have 17 pages worth of a story map and a story bible all done and then Ty will teach us both sub plots AND then, later, roasts. We will get to roast Ty. OMG, I can’t wait! My class picked my Gimmick story. The Sidekicked story got a few votes, too, but it’s too much like a story that was put out in the past… and my Wavebreak story got almost no votes, which is unfortunate — but I’m super happy being able to work on the first issue of Gimmick. I’ve been wanting to refine it for quite some time and will finally be able to do so.

More updates on that as it comes along.

Also, for anyone wondering about Strays, I’m still working on it. I need to revise the script with the suggestions Ty made but I’ve been so busy lately with my daily drawings and with other life crap. It’s coming along and I’ll post again as soon as I’m ready to go.

TGIF, BITCHES!

BAD BAD BAD, JUPE

Posted by jupe

I had this window open yesterday to post the blog post but got distracted by something shiny. Stupid attention span. Here’s the low down on what went down for the last couple days. It kind of works out since yesterday was pretty uneventful.

Tuesday

Did my daily drawing, etc, did some surfing, and found some recipes online; the usual stuff, really. Ravelry got some love, too, as always. The one huge task for the day was getting Nick’s fillings done… or at least, the first half of them. Little bugger had cavities on both sides of his mouth and they won’t do both sides at once because it’s just cruel and unusual punishment to freeze both sides of a person’s mouth.

So, I called Alex about an hour before it was time to get Nick from school and he came home to watch Rusty, as I couldn’t find a babysitter. I stuffed Nick into the car and we went to the dentist, arriving JUST in time.  They had him drink this awful blue gunk and then eat a freezie to get the taste out of his mouth, but the damage had been done. Nick was already complaining and upset about the awful blue stuff. It started the process of him being upset and everything just escalated from there.

I helped him walk to the chair and held him so he wouldn’t fall, as the blue stuff basically kills all your instincts. If Nick had fallen face first, he wouldn’t have had the where-with-all to put his arms out to stop the fall and would’ve just faceplanted. SO, he went into the chair and chose to watch the Spongebob movie. Not that it did a lot of good. Once things started, so did the screaming. The flailing. The fighting. He was dead set on getting out of that chair, no matter how much nitrous they pumped into him.  I had to sit on his legs and hold his arms down — and still, my six year old managed to lift me off of the chair with his legs and nearly ripped his arms out of my arms. In fact, he did rip his arms out of my hands, and at one point, grabbed my fat roll (you’re allowed to laugh at that) and squeezed and twisted to try to get me off of him.

An agonzing 30 minutes later, he was done. Still frozen, crying, generally upset. I brought him home and Alex tried to play some Wii with him to cheer him up but that wasn’t working. I went to get Alex and I some dinner and I made the boys Kraft dinner with chicken nuggets because Nick’s mouth was still sore and kraft dinner was the easiest thing for him to eat for dinner.

He was weepy and agitated all night and we eventually got him to bed. He went out like a light and slept through till morning without incident.

Wednesday

Nick woke up with no memory of what happened the day before at the dentist. Thank freaking goodness. I took care of the boys’ breakfast and Nick’s lunch because Alex wasn’t feeling great in the morning; he had a slow start. Then, off to school. It was an uneventful day, other than the daily drawing and forgetting to blog. I did some cleaning, hung out with Rusty, and mostly chilled.

I have homework to do later and class to go to tonight. Same old routine.

Have a great day.

Being sick is balls.

Posted by jupe

Yep. Still sick. I woke up with barely any voice and extremely congested. Nick woke up before we woke up and decided that it would be a great idea to let his brother out of their room to terrorize my living room. They ate candy, advent calendar chocolate, and THEN some yogurt. Sigh. At least they got SOMETHING healthy to eat.

Anyway, I had a talk with Nick, without freaking at him, and told him that the advent calendar chocolate was something we eat after dinner as a special treat, and that it was something he should do with his brother and with mom and/or dad. He seemed to understand, but the real question is, does he give a shit? Or will he just do what he wants, instead? Guess what I think.

I finally finished up my Daily Drawing colouring. It was pretty fun to colour the city in the picture. Would I do it like that again? Probably. It’s more challenging to do it by hand than to use a gradient tool, but that’s partially why I use SAI. Photoshop was used at the end only to adjust the colour balance to make the viewer feel like the character really is outside.

What happened yesterday? Stuff. Not a whole lot. I was miserably sick all day and freezing cold at the end of the day. Alex worked late again so I had to take care of bringing Nick to scouts. He got a promotion and now has a blue beaver tail on his hat. Good for him. Alex then subjected me to a cut version of Episodes 1 through 3. It was nearly 3 fucking hours long. Good god. He told me it would only be  90 minutes. So, here I am, watching this, wondering why these 90 minutes are taking so goddamn long to pass by.

I ended the night by playing some Civ V. I do enjoy the BNW expansion.

So, for today, I need to do some cleaning and I need to take Nick to a dentist… and if I can find a babysitter for Rusty, Alex won’t have to leave work to watch him. We’ll see if I can find someone.

Today was day 2 of my tea advent calendar. I got to try Organic Vanilla Chai. It was actually quite lovely for a black tea. I didn’t have to add anything to it in order to enjoy it. I usually find black tea fairly bitter and add a bit of sugar to cut that… but there was enough sweetened ingredients in the tea to make up for that. Organic Vanilla Chai gets a thumbs up.