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.

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.

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.

Short and Sweet Today

Posted by jupe

I spent all my time this morning working on the inks in my daily drawing that I’ve left very little time for a shower and to get ready. Today, I have High Tea at the Embassy with the art ladies of Toronto, hosted by the lovely Meghan Hendricks and Keiren Templeton-Smith. I’m going to bring some tea along to share since I couldn’t bake that Spanish Bar Cake last night. I had no icing sugar for the frosting and you can’t have that cake without the frosting. It’s against the law.

After tea I have a meeting for Toronto Comix Vol 2. I’ll either be assigned as an artist or an inker. I think I’d prefer just ink and lettering, as I have a lot on my plate, but I’ll take whatever is given to me.

It should be a nice day of just me and not having to be a full time mom. Those days feel really far between right now so I appreciate them when I can.

I had a nice long talk on the phone with Carol Shaw, who is like a second mom to me. I miss her terribly. I hope that maybe we can visit Thunder Bay this summer. We’ll see, yes?

Anyway, happy Sunday, everyone!

Chugging along.

Posted by jupe

Well, I was up fairly late last night writing, but I got a bunch of kinks worked out. The story is coming along really nicely. Hopefully, I’ll have the script done by Thursday so I can ask Ty what he thinks of it and for any ideas. The story has really come a long way since I pitched it to the class and I’m actually really proud of myself.  I’ve thought of a bunch of great angles and shots to draw and I’ll be headed down to the area I need to draw to take photos soon. I want to have all the pencils for my story done by Christmas.

And all of this is thanks to Ty’s writing class. If any of my readers are from Toronto and if any of you want to draw or write comics, take Ty’s course. It’s worth it a hundred times over.

In other news, we had a family game day, yesterday. Nick played Wii Sports and Wii Play all day. He loves the mini tanks game the most and is getting better and better at it. We ended game day with Mario Kart.  I think Sunday will be the game day if he’s had a good week and that Wii would be a good reward for when he finishes his homework.

His reading is coming along really nicely. He tries to read everything he sees and gets it right a lot of the time. I’m really proud of him.

Rusty’s speech is also coming, though slowly. He’s picking up more words. I worked on and finished his word charts yesterday. We have a schedule now and a “I want” chart so he can tell me what he wants without screaming at me.

I’ve decided on life drawings for today for the daily drawing. I drew Russell from an existing photo because he’s a squirmy little bastard who won’t stay still. It looks like him, so I feel successful today in my art.

 

Today’s tea was Canadian, EH? from T by David. Super smooth and yummy.

 

Today’s agenda is pretty chill. Nick is home from school with a mild fever and a sore throat so I imagine the tv and the cartoons will be going all day. That’s all right. At least I can get some things done.  if I get a chance, I’ll head up to see my knitting friends later and drop off their popcorn orders from Nick’s scout troupe.

On the knitting project front, I have one doll dress to make, the brunette doll, a dwarven battle bonnet, a cowl, something for my mother, and a mystery gift for Ty. I’ll post pics of the projects after Christmas so that nobody is inadvertently spoiled.