Vacationing with small children has once more broadened my appreciation of my own mother and father, proud parents of five once small children. It also makes me realize I don’t remember going on many vacations when we were little, which probably also makes them the wise parents of five once small children. (They probably laugh their heads off watching me try to wrangle my little monsters.) I found myself frequently saying things like “We’re almost there, honey, calm down.” and “Sweetheart, Mommy has a special treat for you if you can use your calm voice.” and “Boys, it is nap time (or night time). Go to sleep. Mommy wants sleep. WHY WON’T YOU SLEEP?” To be fair, they both did remarkably well, given the lifestyle we forced on them for a week. We became veritable gypsies, sleeping in a different place every night, and performing neat toddler tricks for our food. Since last posting, I have levelled up to Master Carseat Nurser, which is a class I wouldn’t not have imagined possible in my pre-baby days, and Robert became a Grandmaster Meltdown Diffuser, and we’re not talking about the children’s meltdowns.

On the way out of the airport back home in sweet, sweet Fairbanks, Alaska, Robert and I looked over at one another, he carrying a Herculean load of gifts from grandparents and other relatives, and I carrying an infant on one arm and dragging a screaming toddler away from yet another vending machine, and we both decided that, some beautiful day, we needed a vacation sans enfants. Hello, Grandma.

So… that said, I haven’t finished the next page of the comic. Shocking, I know, but here is yet another cheater update of Dead Timmy novelization. Enjoy!

So, about two hours after I wrote the last post, in which I promised an update in the next week, I remembered that I was having all four of my wisdom teeth removed on Friday. Chop, chop, out they came, and I’ve been just a little loopy ever since. I find that vicodine makes me less loopy than just plain pain does, though. Vicodine mostly makes me drowsy. Why on earth would I commit to making an update I haven’t had time for in the last year, while in pain, on drugs, and overwhelmed by an overnight doubling of the number of my children? Well, because unhealthy masochism thinly veiled as strong work ethic is the American way!

…

Hello?

It’s really rather remarkable how productive I’ve been since I stopped blarging and doodling dead people. Incredible, really. For starters, I made a person. He’s chubby and cranky, but oh so much nicer to me than my first was, and we expect he’ll get less chubby as he gets less short. And five days before he was born, I took the last final of my last class for my bachelor’s degree. (Busy week…) So now I’m just waiting for them to mail me a diploma. I’ve also managed to grow the world’s most pathetic garden, whip up a few ideas for my next awful NaNo novel, and wind up for yet another draft of Star Daughter. (Only one of the middle sections, though. My husband insisted: this being the guy who pesters me to stop endlessly editing, so you know it was bad.) The house doesn’t look like a complete train wreck, neither of the kids are sick, and I think the bills are all paid for the time being. In short, my life is generally in order. So clearly it’s time to throw a monkey wrench at it.

I approach you today with no offerings, but I know that if I didn’t tell you to expect something soon, I wouldn’t produce anything soon. So… you can feel free to start expecting. (Personally, ‘expecting’ is one of my favorite ways to be.) Inside of a week, I plan on posting a comic involving our favorite depressed zombie-possessing spirit. Hopefully, someone’s still hanging around here to enjoy it. Wish me luck! I haven’t tried to draw anything more complicated than etch-a-sketch doodles for my two-year-old since… well, probably June. Of last year.

PS- Gulliver got repossessed (loooong story) and I have a new computer now, but I still haven’t come up with a good name. He’s a smallish and black Acer with really nothing exciting about him and I’m still a bad mommy and spend many dissatisfied thoughts comparing him to Gulliver. Any suggestions?

Aaron eats up most of my time. He’s eighteen months now: runs, jabbers, and makes messes, all with increasing proficiency. Robert and I are still both chipping away at our degrees, and both plan on being done this summer. Toward the later-middle-ish portion of summer, we should be having another bundle of pukey, screaming joy. But, fear not, sweet readers! (You’re still there, right?) Since I last wrote to you, I fully scripted out the rest of Dead Timmy, every line of it (although I’m still open to divergences, when the fancy strikes me- and I’m a fan of striking fancifully). In fact, that was what I did for NaNoWriMo last year- I novellized Dead Timmy. (And lemme tell ya, my grades noticably tanked that one month and then hopped back up at the turn of the month.) There are some details in the book that I don’t think will make it into the comic, so after the comic is through, I think I’ll put the book up, too, just in case I’ve generated my very own nerds by that point. So now that I’ve teased you with possibilities and half-promises, I think I’ll say goodnight and adieu until next time.

I was about to tell you about my vacation, but Aaron just woke up. Ciao!

UPDATE: He’s happily playing with things that might put his eyes out, so I’ll type some more. To be honest, I feel unreasonably bad when I don’t post anything, despite the fact that there are approximately two of you who seem to read with any regularity, as far as I can tell. (Hi, Jonathan! Hi, Hubby!) So I’ll type a bit more.

Vacation was lovely. I think the best thing about visiting family is the fact that everyone else insists on looking after our child. I spent an unreasonable amount of time playing sudoku puzzles and watching NCIS or some other manner of acronym titled whodunnit show with the intimidating old boss guy who eerily knows everything and his team of youngish attractive tough crime fighters, at least one of which is female and/or a minority and/or from another country, and at least one of which who is a little geekier than the others and is the butt of most jokes, all of whom are just OH SO PASSIONATE about stopping evil because a) they have family who were baddies or were a baddie themselves(!) b) they have family or close friends who were victims of baddies or c) they saved someone from baddies once in their past and got a kick out of it and now they’re some kind of adrenaline junkie. (I’m talking way too much about TV. I think I watched too much TV down there. I can’t help it. Some kind of genetic disorder.) We did eat crab, but there was a price hike between last year and this year, so we didn’t go too crazy, although I did eat more seafood than probably in the rest of the time since the last Crabfest. I also met Parnell in a neat little house that was PACKED with art and people in suits (I was wearing a dirty John Deere t-shirt at the time, thank you), and Treadwell’s daughter was sick of campaigning and so she came over and hung out. And there were a few concerts that we went to that were awesome, particularly the Russian group an aunt was in. His other aunt runs a ballet school that I keep wanting to go hang out at, but I don’t have the guts to ask. I’m kind of fascinated by really graceful people, probably because I’m NOT one of those people. Robert comes from very musical, classy and political stock, I guess. (At least as far as extended families go, visiting my family tends to more revolve around BBQs and getting the cops called on us. NOT joking.) I also very much enjoyed getting rained in every day. The parade, which Robert and Aaron both got roped into the day before, was torrential and delightful. I love my menfolk. All in all, a wonderful success, although Robert’s grandma spent a lot of time lecturing me about rags that were totally not my fault. She’s pretty much an awesome old lady (86 and spunky!) and was kind of horrified that Robert and I would feed her delicate great-grandson pieces of food larger than his pinkie nail; she chased me away a couple times to carefully shred chicken for the boy. And Robert’s uncle and I share an interest in family history and pounded out about twelve generations of Beaches in the space of two hours using obscure family documents he had in a folder but hadn’t gone through yet, and a two week trial version of Ancestry.com that neither of us had any intention of actually purchasing, but MAN it was helpful; it made us terribly late for a dinner party and I kind of had to pry him away from the computer well after everyone else had left us. The trip back was a little yucky- rough seas. I threw up for the first time in years and that salty little sausage patty that caused it was SO not worth it.

I’m pretty much amazed that Aaron’s being this quiet. It probably means he’s ripping wiring out of the walls and chewing on them, so I’m gonna head off while he’s still alive. Sorry about the lack of comic, but shnerk.

I’m not much of an artist.  It takes me forever to draw a page of Timmy.  Like, silly, vaguely embarrassing amounts of time.  Furthermore, I am not well versed in the secret workings of redeeming programs like… oh, what’s it called…? The thing-y that makes your pictures prettier.  I saw someone using it once and they made a dumpster disappear from the background… Picture… something.  Hm.  This is also vaguely embarrassing.  You all know what I’m talking about anyway.  I don’t have that.  I have Paint.  And I don’t use it anyway, because either it’s too simple or I’m too simple to recognize its well-masked subtleties.  What I’m saying is I draw things and that’s how they show up on the internet an hour later.  Because it usually is an hour later- I’m that bad on deadlines.  And I can’t count the number of times I’ve blown the deadlines anyway.

I’m not sure what I’m getting at.  I was talking to my parents-in-law last night and probably sounded like I was on drugs or something.  My thoughts are scattered.  I probably still sound like I’m on drugs.  I do, don’t I?  I’M NOT ON DRUGS!  SAY NO TO DRUGS!  (I just had the urge to run a Google search: “How to spook your kids away from drugs”.  I bet it would be entertaining.)

Anyway, I drew this page because it amused me to do so and took about half an hour.  It really shouldn’t have taken that long…  And I WILL sort through the school thing.  Just… not right now.  Can’t think.  Anyway-

My book…  Ah, how I’ve missed it, neglected in the memory of a pensive Gulliver throughout the rigors of the semester!  Tuesday, I took my final final for the semester and that night I opened up the document, read about three words and just filled with fondness.  I love my book.  Love, love, love.  In particular, I’ve missed Cove kicking people.  But I haven’t posted that part and so none of you have met Cove yet.  Rest assured, he’s pretty much the best supporting character of all times.  And I don’t know why I’m posting this here because I’m fairly certain none of you care about my book which will probably never see the beautiful glimmer of real live publication (oh, internet publishing, you tempting charlatan!), but I love it too much not to gush.  It’s kind of like the slightly stupid kid whose parents think he’s brilliant.

In other news, I’ve decided it really makes a difference when I take time to draw the comics.  There’s the Death in the second panel and the Death in the final panel.  Hardly the same guy.  With the semester over, hopefully I can make the pages a little prettier without sacrificing the update schedule.  That said, read some Timmy.  Poor guy’s on a constant emotional roller-coaster.  I’m kind of mean to my characters, aren’t I?