#52 weekends

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND THIRTY THREE

Making the transition to working at home was interesting. My biggest problem was knowing when to stop for meals and showers. Stay with me, it's not a gross as it sounds. 

When my husband and I worked at the same office, the morning routine was really simple. I'd get up first, feed the cats, and eat breakfast. He'd get up, coffee would be brewed, showers would be had, husband would pour his coffee into a red-lidded zojirushi travel mug, and we'd drive to work. We'd eat lunch at 1pm, and make dinner at a set time every evening.

In the new world order, I still get up before him, eat and brew the coffee. And then, instead of showering and dressing for an art bullpen, I sit down at my desk, and start to work on whatever freelance project is of the moment, or marketing outreach. What's missing out of my morning routine? Here's a clue: I always lose track of time and only realize I'm still in my jammies when I get hungry at some lunch-approximate time.

It's not an issue that I work in my sweats at home. It's great. What bothers me is that I'm forgetting to shower and change into my big-girl clothes. The massive sinkhole that is the trope of the freelance artist, shut-in and hunched over a table and a screen is opening up before me, and I am peering into the abyss.

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND THIRTY TWO

When there's nothing special to talk about, you get a regular old self-portrait of my husband and myself. Dullsville!

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND THIRTY ONE

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND THIRTY

Husband and I took those plane flights from last week's updates in order to spend time with one of my English aunts -- other great family too, but my husband hadn't met her yet. Due to some health complications, she isn't able to travel. She live out in the Olympic Peninsula area of Washington State, in a town made famous by sparklepires. The area is one of the most beautiful in the United Staes - one of the globe's three temperate rain forest, miles and miles of amazing beaches, eagles and elk that just kind of hang out in civilization.

One of my favorite moments of the visit was a trip we took to Kalaloch Beach (pronounced 'Clay-lock"). My aunt, like most of my English family, loves seafood and shellfish, and I've heard from many of the siblings on that side how much my beloved grandfather used to dig up all kinds of shellfish on English beaches and eat them directly from the shell. I didn't get enough time with my English grandfather, so I love whatever stories of the family I can enjoy. My Aunt showed me how to stomp for clams, which seems like such a small thing, but feels like it is very big. 

My husband is a champion stone-skipper, and skipped rocks. We all collected seashells and stones, a particularly favorite pastime of my Aunt. I have a little Starbucks envelope on my dresser right now, waiting to be sorted to find some place in our home for display. 

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND TWENTY NINE

On Weekend Twenty Nine, we flew to the West coast. Husband has no problems with flying. I turn into a weird Smeagol-esque bundle of nerves. Fortunately, he sees the humor in the situation enough to have found this illustration very funny.

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND TWENTY EIGHT

When this weekend rolled around, husband and I were looking at some immediate and drastic changes to our lifestyle. Change can be scary, but it's also exciting, and brings all sorts of fun and excitement with it. This particular selection of changes feel like we're in a bullhorn blast of color. It's gorgeous, but also extremely loud.

I am still getting used to my new Yiynova, but I can't recommend it enough to digital artists!

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND TWENTY SEVEN

Easter weekend!

My parents are agnostic buddhists, and have been since before I was born. Things like Easter were celebrated, but never in any spiritual sense, just in the sense of "We've hidden a bag of jellybeans in the living room, go find it!" and then after that it was a normal day. My mother really didn't allow for sugar, so having jellybeans was a pretty big deal. My parents are now divorced, and my mother love on the other side of the country, while my father lives on the other side of the globe. My in-laws only live an hour away, and we take every excuse to go visit them (which is awesome - we get along wonderfully, and it's a treat to have family so close after being isolated for so long). Easter is no exception!

My husbands parents are Catholic and Lutheran, so we take turns on religious holidays as to which church service to attend. But that's not the only Easter tradition we indulge in - we're showered in candy, and we actually make honest-to-God Easter Eggs. This year we decorated them with food coloring markers. They allow for a lot of fine control (great for artists and eaters alike).

My mother-in-law made a very nice egg with tulips on it. I made a very nice egg with a flower pattern on it. And my husband made an egg with Rupert Murdoch on it.

Because nothing says "Yay, we made it to Spring!" like a caricature of a media magnate.

Here's a picture of the actual eggs for proof.

This is my first post made with my handy dandy Yiynova MVP22U. The Yiynova is a pretty high-quality, affordable alternative to the Cintiq, and while I'm still getting used to it (dual monitor setup is a real gear change), I'm really happy with it so far. It's not my first tablet, but it's my first screen tablet, and I'm LOVING it!

[52-weekends]

WEEKEND 25

A little past midnight on last Sunday, just as I was beginning to drift off to sleep, Paul jumped out of bed, ran to bathroom and began a night of puking.

This week's post is about fear.

I have a phobia. Most lists you can find mark it as one of the most common phobias you can have.  It's the hangup I cultivate as an adult  leftover from teen years that were choked with neuroses and odd compulsions.

Vomiting.

It's gotten to the point that seeing puke on tv, or knowing that someone drank or ate too much doesn't send me into flop sweats, give me the shakes, or raise my heart rate -- any more. But contagious diseases vomiting, the germs, the bugs, the knowing that it's coming for me and there's nothing I can do to stop it. When that happens, I cant sleep and I can't eat.

I was once trapped on a plane for nine hours with a girl in my row who started throwing up while the plane was sitting on the runway waiting to take off. On that same flight, there was a man carrying a very contagious bug. He started a few hours in, and it spread so fast that the people around him started coming down with it a few hours after he started. Nine hours, trapped.

I once did an extended family Thanksgiving for forty people at a dorm-style cabin at a State Park that was thirty miles from civilization, and got two feet of snow while we were there. Snowed in, blizzard conditions, and someone started on the second night. Within twenty-four hours, it had spread to three quarters of the people there. There was nowhere inside to go that was safe. It was like The Shining. 

Still with me? 

On Saturday of last week, we visited my husband's family for his Babci's 88th birthday party. The bug got about half of us ultimately. It didn't get me, but it did get my husband, and almost everyone else.

This post is also about how I'm a jerk when I'm in the throes of phobia. 

I got him water and ibuprofen, and I made some calls when I got alarmed at how long he was sleeping, how hard he was to wake, and how bad his fever was. I brought him chicken soup. And then I set up shop on the living room floor and slept there for the rest of the week. 

I'm pretty said something to my husband about smallpox blankets when he asked me four days late, when he was clearly better, to sleep in the bed like a normal person again.

I washed my toothbrush with soap before I used it for a week. 

These are not things that normal people do. I couldn't control my phobia for long enough to make someone suffering more than me my priority.

I feel like a bad wife.

This post is a really drag. Next week, funny crap resume. New Game a Thrones was awesome, right?