Feeding the crazy…

You know, my mom is a super-impulsive person.  She will make the most life-changing decisions with no forethought and no agonizing about it.  She just decides and BOOM moves forward.  For example, once, when I was in high school, she  decided, on a whim, to move our entire family across country one day, and we SET OUT to do this the very next day.  She pulled us out of school and said we’d send for our things and we packed one bag a piece, grabbed our cat and left.  This didn’t go as planned, (thankfully!) but this is the sort of thing I am talking about.  I love my mom, and things with her are never predictable.  But… a little predictability would have been nice, growing up, I think.

I have always maintained that I am not like this.  That I am a planner.  A plotter.  But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that I really am not.  I seem to have inherited at least a taste of my mother’s impulsivity.  I met my husband and knew I wanted to marry him within weeks.  We bought the first house we looked at.  Our first child was a “What the heck, why not?”  decision.  All of these have worked out quite well for us, but I could name dozens of impulsive decisions that have not worked out for us.  Impulsivity is not necessarily a good trait even if it is an interesting one.

I can just hear y’all thinking (yes I did just use y’all.  I was born and raised in the South, thank you very much!) where is she going with this?  Well, I DO have a point.  Last week when I announced my retirement, I had vaguely decided that I was probably going to have to retire because of family commitments, but when I wrote that post on bin Laden, I just decided there and then to retire.  I told no one beforehand (not even my husband or kids) I just did it and didn’t think about it.  And then I got a bunch of emails and calls from friends and family members who were just a TAD put out that I hadn’t told them first.

Frankly, I was amazed.  First of all, I had no idea these people were even keeping up with CBW anymore or paying any attention whatsoever to what I do or say online.  (Note to self, be more careful here!)  Second of all, it made me realize that this is probably a decision that most people would have taken just a bit more seriously.  Eh, live and learn.

Now that I’ve had a bit to get used to it, I am more convinced than ever that it was the right decision for us.  I had been planning on just posting the last few cartoons I had done and calling it good, but THEN I got to thinking… (cue scary music).  Wouldn’t it be better to actually post one last cartoon from all the major characters?  Wouldn’t it be better to write one cartoon specifically for Manny and Eve to end on?  One that said all I ever wanted to say?  (Don’t hold your breath here, I just ain’t that deep, folks!)

So be it.  So shall it be.

Clear Blue Water was supposed to end last week, and it IS ending, oh yes indeedy it is.  But it might take a few weeks for me to decide she’s good and done.  Every few days I will post a cartoon or two or three until one day it will say THE END, and then you will know (if you choose to follow along just a little while longer) that we are done.  The blog?  As I’ve said, I’ll keep it going for awhile or longer.  And when I finally announce what I am currently hard at work on, I hope a few of you will be interested.

The Comics Archives are all updated. Whew!

For anyone who cares, all the toons I’ve posted since my strip became a web-comic are now in the archives, in order.  What a wonderful resource, you say?  Why thank you!  I agree.

The archives are located to the left, underneath my blogroll.  Instructions on accessing them are posted as a sticky above this post.  They are listed in order, so the most current ones are on the bottom.  The archives I posted today were Archives 29-35.  This takes you right on to today.  I’ve done a better job with these ones (thanks to some help someone posted to me), so they are one stop shopping.  If the are not big enough for you, just click them once or twice and they should get bigger.  Oh, and Archive 32 is messed up.  There is one lone toon at the bottom posted after the others.  I just couldn’t make it work the way I wanted.  Sorry.  Oh, and the Sunday’s are not colored anymore because my computer saved them wonky and I cannot figure out how to fix the color.

I am still not completely done.  I have some more toons I want to publish before I stop the presses.  They will be posted, a few at a time, over the next few days until I am dun fer good!  I’ll definitely let you know when the real final cartoon is posted.  Thanks for stopping by…

Not the end yet

I posted one cartoon.  I will post more tomorrow and the next day until I am done.  I was going to post these in batches but I am rusty and this took longer than expected to fix and upload and all that stuff.  And now I need to go run.  Look for a batch of 2-3 tomorrow.

I just went back and reread a bunch of my blog posts and man, that Osama bin Laden post made me sound like a psycho!  I’m usually not so blood-thirsty (I’m a liberal for goodness sake!)  I’m just glad he’s finally been, um …”neutralized”, and I’m glad he was finally, er …”neutralized” on Obama’s watch.  And that’s all I’ll say about that!

In our life not all things have been going to hell in a handbasket.  Sawyer has been doing fabulous lately.  And I don’t say this lightly.  I used to be afraid of jinxing us by saying things were going well with him, because he almost always seemed to go downhill shortly after one of my good updates.  But lately God has brought it to my mind that HE is the one in control and if Sawyer is doing better, praise Him for the blessing and make sure we ENJOY it while it lasts.  So that is what we are doing.

I think pre-puberty and early puberty are very bad times in an autistic boy’s life (or so other mom’s have told me, and I’ve certainly noticed it in our own life).  But now that Sawyer is almost at adult height and his hormones are starting to settle down a bit, he’s just a much more enjoyable kid. It doesn’t hurt that after literally YEARS of tweaking, his meds are finally working FOR him rather than against him.  They are gettin’ er dun, and gettin’ er dun right!  He is calm, he is happy, and so are we!

Thank you Jesus!

Awww, ya’ll are just so sweet!

Thank you for the well wishes.  I am hard at work on my final toons.  They WILL be posted this week!

In other news, I just now realized that today is May 3,  which was CBW’s first day in newspapers in 2004.  I totally missed synchronicity by a day.  A DAY.  …Story of my life, I tell you…  I think it would have been super cool to announce my retirement on the same day as CBW began it’s run.  If Osama bin Laden can be killed on the same day that Hitler killed himself, well, I just think this was a missed opportunity.  Of course, it would have been better to actually announce retirement  with finished cartoons to post so I could have wrapped the thing up in a nice little bow, but that is obviously expecting too much.

I will keep the blog open.  I do plan on blogging a bit.  I like it and it takes much less time than cartooning.

In other other news, my friends have been sending me kick-ass Obama stuff and it’s hilarious.  Hilarious!  I am going to see if I can post any of it here.

…Well, I can’t.  I must figure this out because they are too funny not to share.  I came up with none of them, but any enjoyment you might someday get out of them on this blog can, of course, be traced to me.

President Obama’s having a good week, huh?

So Osama bin Laden’s dead.  I have so many things swirling around in my head right now, and I want to get them out.  Be aware that some of them (most of them) are terribly revealing and you will now know just what a petty, vindictive little mind I have.  Sigh.  I shall proceed anyway.

1.  I am SO glad this happened on a democrat’s watch.  Boo yah!  In yer FACE Republicans and Teapartiers!  Who’s yer daddy?  Who’s yer daddy now?!!  Woo hoo hoo!!!    I am especially glad that this happened on Obama’s watch because I just love him (still) and I think  he’s done a good job as president and I was getting sick of defending him.  Now we can see what was going on behind the scenes all the time, and it shows him in a much greater light.  No wonder every president ages 40 years in office.  They deal with stuff 24/7 that would make anyone’s hair white.

2.  My first reaction to the news was cheering and a few heartfelt curse words and some glee about bin Laden waking up in hell.  Then I read a blog by a friend of mine (who is obviously a much better Christian than me–and who I am not going to link to only because his blog is too close to my in real life here).  Anyway, to paraphrase it quickly, he made the point that this man was made in God’s image and Jesus died for him and he has now faced his ultimate judge.  And God is not gleeful about anyone going to hell.

Sigh. Man.  WHAT a buzzkill.

Can I at least be glad he’s dead in a “Now HE won’t be hurting anymore innocent people around the world way?”  Well, I am going to be.  I already warned you I was both petty and vindictive.  And proud.  Proud of the US military and proud of our president.

3.  Donald Trump has been shown to be a blowhard, wannabe and an absolute IDIOT.  And I am glad.  We now know that at the White House Correspondent’s dinner Obama already had given the OK for this operation.  He went there and kept a poker face all the while knowing this was in the works.  Here is a clip of some of what he said to Trump.

The best part was at 1:50.  Yes, Trump has to fire people on his reality show while President Obama just has to make a few life and death decisions everyday.  It really puts Trump, that sad, silly little joke of a man into perspective.  Trump will be president when pigs frickin’ fly.  And you can quote me on that.

One last thing about Trump.  I was so surprised that he jumped on this birther thing.  I had never ever liked him (he has shown himself to be thin-skinned and a mean, woman-hating bully), but I had always thought he was smart.  This showed that he was super stupid.  To ringlead a racist fight against out first black president is not the mark of a smart man.  Not at all.  And the way Obama easily batted him and his insane allegations away just showed Obama to be the better man.  By far.

Well done, Mr. President.  Well done indeed.

On another note, some may be wondering where I’ve been.  Well, I’ve been on vacation.  It is probably permanent.  Clear Blue Water is pretty much dead.  I will try to post my last cartoons soon.  I have written them.  And then I think I will be done.  I just have too much going on in my life to do this anymore–as much as I love it.

Here are the main reasons I am retiring.  My husband is sick.  He is finally in remission (praise God!), but the drugs he is taking that put him there are hardcore and have some nasty side-effects.  He does not have cancer (Hallelujah!), but instead has a pretty nasty something else.  And I will leave it at that.  I have needed to focus on our family more.  My oldest is leaving for college soon.  Clem got into the college of her choice.  She also got into the program of her choice.  She has received some really great scholarships and we will hear soon about many more that she applied for.   We are hopeful that she will be able to fully fund her college years without going into debt with student loans and such.  But, all this has taken work–work that has almost taken over our lives the last few months.  And finally, I am just burnt.  I am working on another project that is taking up all of my free time and so Clear Blue Water (which earns no money–my own fault, I know, but that’s the reality) has been put on the back burner to focus on actual money-making.   How very …capitalist of me.

So if anyone is still reading this claptrap, look for CBW to go out with a whimper before the week is out.  And thanks for the fabulous ride!

Bye bye bye 2010!

What a horrendous year.  Really really terrible.  Cannot wait for it to be over with so the good times can come rolling in.  Sigh…

In case anyone is wondering where I have been lately, my husband has been sick.  In fact, he is still feeling pretty sick.  We were afraid it was cancer, but after many months and many many tests, we finally have a diagnosis.  Thankfully, it is NOT cancer.  Whoo hoo!  Luckily, medication is making him feel a bit better day by day.

I’m just glad he’s not dying.

In other news, on the day after Christmas, my autistic son woke up and instead of coming into our room to get us like he has always done before, he snuck downstairs and stuck all the remote controls and the cellphones, the electronic toys and keys and toothbrushes, Barbies and game pieces from under the tree–basically anything he could get his hands on, into the toilet and tried to flush them.  Whatever wouldn’t flush, he then stuffed into our couch–soaking wet, mind you, with TOILET water, to hide them from us.  He was SO pleased with his mischief.  I didn’t even yell at him.  Just took him upstairs for a shower and to scrub his hands, and then we spent the morning scrubbing and decontaminating our downstairs and salvaging whatever we could.  Most of the electronics are shot.  We are still missing a cellphone.  I doubt it would flush–God only knows where he put it–sadly, we had turned it off for the night.  Thank goodness my purse and my husband’s wallet were in our room with us.

We watch Sawyer at ALL times when he is awake.  He has no alone time.  So now we know what he will do with alone time.  He didn’t waste a minute.  Those remotes have probably been on his hit list for years.  No wonder he was so excited to finally nail. those. bastards!  It was his finest hour–I mean he was SO pleased.  Bragged about it all day long (broke remote.  Remote in toilet.  Phone in toilet. Etc.)  Fun, fun times…

Other than that though, our family is well.  We had a nice Christmas.  My daughter dyed her hair red.  My little ones got a sewing machine and I made (er… helped them make) my very first doll clothes ever (2 very nice skirts, thank you very much!)  They are not very good but my twins think I am amazing.  Gotta take it where I can get it, y’know?

There will be a new cartoon tomorrow and I will try to get back into the swing of things.  Last year was a total bust cartoon wise.  This year I only have two resolutions- and I plan to keep both of them.  Clear Blue Water sort of relates to the first of them, so hopefully (cross fingers!) I will do better.  I’m just glad we finally know what’s wrong with MY Manny.  The stress of not knowing was driving us (me) mad.

I hope you and yours have a very blessed 2011.  I know I certainly plan to!

Be safe.

 

I am disgustikated. Warning: Liberal rant below…

The thing I keep thinking about this election is this–the Democrats still hold a majority in the Senate AND we have the sitting President.  The Republicans/crazy tea baggers won big last night, but they didn’t win everything.  We still hold 2/3  of the cards, and we better start acting like it.  Last night was not a mandate.  Last night was the 1/3 of the country who are chicken heads running around with their heads cut off squawking.

Let’s say that 1/3 of the country are hardcore Democrats.  They might occasionally vote outside of their party, but they mostly hold core values and vote with others who hold similar values.  Lets say that hardcore Republicans make up about another 1/3 of the country.  That leaves 1/3 of the country who don’t know what the hell they believe.  These are the scary undecided voters, and THESE are the people who just voted the Republicans into Congress.  THESE are the SAME people who just two years ago voted Obama into office. They flit around from one candidate to another— OOH, SHINY!

These crazy people with no idea what they stand for, with no intellectual curiosity, who don’t pay attention to what a candidate stands for or what the repurcussions of voting them into office might be, these people who might not pick a candidate until they are actually IN the voting booth, these SHEEPLE are running the country right now.  I’m callin’ it now.

President Palin.

With the nuclear codes.  Shaping our economic policy.  Making Supreme Court nominations… If that doesn’t cause a shiver to run down your spine you are reading the wrong damn blog!

I am afraid for this country.  Some of those teabaggers were scary.  Talking about taking up arms and taking back our government.  Um… isn’t that treason?  Which is kind of illegal?  Punishable by death?  And the people who voted for them… who are these people?  The candidates are all rich.  They only care about the rich.  They will take away your social security.  They will cut your medicaid.  They will let you die without healthcare.  And it will not bother them in the least.  THEY are not suffering, who cares if they break the backs of a few poor people to line their own pockets a bit more.

I am sorry to keep beating a dead horse here, but I am afraid.  The Dems need to stand tough in the Senate and President Obama will have to be tougher still.  Don’t let these newly elected chicken heads bully you.  And don’t try to placate them.  Decide what you believe and stand firm no matter HOW TOUGH IT GETS.  Play chicken with them.  Make them back down first.  Otherwise all is lost.

I wanted to edit this and add that I dont’ really think Palin will be the next president.  I think Obama will be elected again in two years.  Right now, hope springs eternal and I cannot believe the country has gone that far off track.  It can’t be true.  It just can’t.

…Can it?

The thing about Republicans…

I have deliberately not been political lately because I am just so disgusted with the whole thing these days.  Democrats are too nice.  There, I said it.  When the Republicans had control of everything, we played nice and tried to help the country because it was the right thing to do.  When the Democrats have control, the Republicans are hideous.  I really think that no matter what Obama said or did, they would be against it just because he said it.  Even if it agreed with their principles.  Even if they knew it was right.

And for some unknown reason, Republicans are known as the religious ones!  How is it moral to act like this?  How is it moral to think it’s ok to let the poor go down the drain?  The Bible goes on and on about being kind to the poor and the Republicans just gloss over that part (be nice to the who?  The rich?  OK, God…)  And they are so horrible to gay people.  They treat them like second class citizens.  It blows my mind that the religious party has so little concern for those less fortunate.

Not to mention, that President Obama is not afforded the same courtesy, the same politeness, the same… dignity that other Presidents have been.  The attacks on him are both vicious and racist.  It’s come to the point n my life where if I hear someone badmouthing Obama, I KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are racist.  And this makes me sad.

I am also weirded out that the Republicans and the Tea Partiers are so… not intellectual.  Where’s the curiosity about the world?  Where’s the ability to answer questions outside of the tiny little box of questions you studied?  Where’s the ability to think for themselves?

I’ve become so jaded.  This is not who I want to be, but I cannot help it.  I cannot STAND most conservatives (my church family notwithstanding).  A little kindness, a little less herd mentality  from a Republican would be so… inspirational.  Too bad I’ll probably never see it in my lifetime.

My sister and my dad are both going to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies in Washington DC on the thirtieth.  Oh, how I wish I could go!  My sister has agreed to be CBW’s roving reporter and give us the scoop–from a local’s POV.  I am so excited!

In other news, sorry about the delay in toons lately.  I have been having some health problems myself.  I am 90% certain it’s nothing to worry about (except for being totally annoying), but the 10% of me that is a worrier, wishes I’d get diagnosed and fixed, already, and be done with it!  My son is almost completely healed from his surgery, which was a resounding success.

We’ll keep on keepin’ on…

 

 

 

Where do you get your ideas?

I’ve been having some trouble sleeping lately, and I am quite tired and cranky. Lately I have both a short fuse and a lot on my mind. I am in the middle of a bunch of projects right now, and I keep flitting from one to the next, which means nothing’s really getting  finished, though everything is being worked on diligently.  I am feeling so out of sorts…  I am also in one of my fat cycles. Usually, I am either in the midst of losing weight or gaining it (I suck at maintenance) and right now I’m deep in the fun-at-the-moment but ultimately remorse inducing pig-out part of the cycle. Also, PMS is added to the mix this week.

So last night I sensed that obviously, the time was ripe for a relationship/ status/ do you think I’m fat and why do you love me? and can we cuddle? discussion with my husband.

I’ve never been one to leave a ripe fight unplucked to die on the vine!

…It did NOT go well.

I asked him if we could talk and he immediately looked around for an escape pod. Luckily, I’d already jettisoned the last one. He sighed heavily and muted the TV. He was spread out on the couch in full lounge mode, so I lovingly inserted myself underneath his arm and lay my head upon his chest. I closed my eyes.

“What did you want to talk about?” he said. “The commercial’s almost over with.”

“Ive been having trouble sleeping lately,” I started.

He began rubbing my back. “What’s bothering you, Babe?”

I looked up at him, almost ready to cry and said, “I just feel so …udderless lately.”

“I mean–” I started to say.

“Udderless?” he said quickly.

Irritated, I rolled my eyes. “I MEANT rudderless. Anyway–”

“Because I wasn’t aware that you WERE a bovine, dear,” he said.

…Title question answered.  Game, set, match.

Not dead yet!

Hey, I will be back on Friday with new cartoons and new posts.  Sorry for the delay.

One of my kids had to have surgery (not relatively minor surgery like ear tubes or tonsils, and also not major surgery like a new heart valve or the removal of a tumor of some kind).  It was in between,  (medium hard) and unexpected and it has been …difficult.  The child is doing pretty well–I just got majorly freaked out.  First I had to freak out on the lead up, then the day of,  and then on the recovery period.  It’s been a full-on crazyfest around here, and it ain’t been pretty!  In my defense, I have never had surgery.  Either has my husband and none of my kids have either.  I am not one of those experienced mothers here!  I have been there with others who have had surgery, of course, but when it’s one of your own, I found, it’s quite a different experience!

I admit it.  I am lame.

Luckily, my kid is on the road to recovery.  There might or might not be more surgery in their future–I’m praying for the might not!

Here’s hoping your last few weeks have been less stressful than mine have been.  …Even if I DID mostly do this to myself.  Usually I handle things much better than I did this time.  I let this one get on top of me… Gotta stop that stuff right now!