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Around about the end of my sophomore year or the start of my junior year, the Army ROTC program came up with something called “Professional Military Educational Requirements,” or something like that. The acronym was PME, the reaction was, “Oh f—-!”  The PME was a list of courses the Army had decided all ROTC cadets needed to take, and it included many classes that were not part of some people's majors.  For instance, I majored in broadcast journalism, but ended up having to take courses in politcal science and military history, plus an additional English course, to fulfill these new requirements to get my commission.  Many of my fellow Army ROTC cadets ended up going from the 4–year program to the 5 or 6–year program because so many of the PME did not fall within their degree field and they had already completed 2 years of college not knowing they'd need to take these classes.  It kind of sucked.

However, looking back I can understand the need for the extra classes I was required to take. I was going into the Army, after all. Military history might not have been related to my degree, but it was certainly related to my plans to join the Army. It just would have been nice if they could have informed my classmates and I about this before we'd already spent two years taking classes.

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I'm always busy, always. And I will freely admit there have been times when I've been too busy and I fumbled a few things. The past two years in particular have been rather difficult. In part, it's due to my kids going to a new school, and in part, it's due to my increasing involvement in Girl Scouts.  But really, it's mainly due to the fact that I've slowly let my work hours get eaten away by non-work related activities.

The Hubster realized this before I did.  I was complaining to him last week that I just didn't have enough hours in the day, and changes to next year's school schedule were pretty much going to kill my work schedule. He pointed out that from 8AM to 2:30PM, the kids would still be in school and he'd be at work, just like they are now.  Those hours ought to give me plenty of time for me to sit down at my desk to work as well. Problem is, I don't spend that much time at my desk.  Why?

Well, for starters there's exercise. I go to the Y two mornings a week, and then at least once a week I go to the dojo for karate class. And when I'm not at those places, I go for a run or ride the bike.  Exercise usually takes an hour out of my work day, and getting ready beforehand and cleaning up afterward takes another hour.  Plus I do try to get a load or two of laundry washed and folded every day, and I like to clean up the kitchen, and the floor needs to be swept, and by then it's lunch time, and of course I ought to read the news…

You see where this is going, right? All these non-work related things are eating away at my precious work hours, keeping me away from my desk. Yes I need to exercise, and yes I need to clean the house and stay on top of the laundry.

But do I really need to do it between 8AM and 2:30PM?

I'm hoping the answer is 'no.'  I'm hoping that I can find some other time during the day to do those things, and still get them done.  For example, there's a 6AM deep water aerobics class at the Y that I could go to on Monday and Friday, instead of my usual 8AM. Yeah, it means getting up at 5:15AM, and it also means that the Hubster is on his own those mornings, getting the kids up and out of bed. But you know what? That's okay. Hubster says he doesn't have a problem getting the girls up and moving and fed and out the door, and I can actually drag myself out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn if I set my alarm. And let's be honest, a dip in a cold pool will wake me up just as well as a cup of hot coffee, won't it?

As for the laundry and house cleaning… Well, it's time the kids started earning an allowance anyway.  Princess can fold laundry, not perfectly, but she can do it. Pixie can help sort it, and she can also pick up around the house. Both girls know how to clean a toilet, and Princess can wash dishes while Pixie feeds the cats. I would still be doing a lot of chores myself, but with two helpers in tow, I'd hopefully get the house clean and teach the girls a few things about responsibility in the process.

What's really funny about all this is that I already knew what I needed to do to steal back my schedule. I just didn't know what I needed to do until the Hubster said it out loud for me. So here's hoping he and I are both right. We'll see. I've got a couple of weeks to try it before the girls are out of school for the summer. Then I'll have to come up with a new plan to keep all those eggs in the air for summer.  But I'll think of something, I'm sure. And if I don't, Hubster will. Or we'll just eat a whole lot of eggs. Who knows!

“Still Life with Oranges” by Helen E. H. Madden, colored pencil

This was probably done during my grad school years, early 1990s. What's fun to note about this one is that the blue gingham fabric in the foreground eventually went on to become this costume. Ja!

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Sorry for not posting these the last couple weeks. Once again, real life sort of eats up all my free time.

I must have been obsessed with the weather back in February of 1991. This comic and the one prior both dealt with the inadequacy of the cadet uniforms and the fickleness of the weather in Blacksburg. Of course, the weather where I'm at now is just as fickle. It's freezing one day, sweltering hot the next. But I no longer have to wear a cadet uniform, so it's not as bad.

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This is far too true to life.  I've been struggling for a while to drag myself out of bed a little earlier in the morning so I can get more work done.  My office hours are constantly being squeezed by family and school issues and an extra hour in the morning would go a long way to helping me get more done.  Problem is, this plan doesn't work on the days I wake up dead tired…

By the way, I dyed my hair aqua blue with a pink swatch in the bangs. What can I say? I get bored easily and I like to freak out the other moms at the kids' school.

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I drew this comic on Saturday. I spent all day Sunday working on a commission for a client. I finished this morning at 4AM. My house is a disaster. My office looks like someone vomited computer graphics magazines all over the place. I have email coming out the wazoo because my inbox can no longer contain it. And then there's the actual physical mail which, combined with the unwashed laundry, is probably going to topple on me and kill me the moment I open the office door to resume the rest of my life.

Oh well! I'm taking a day just to sleep because I've been up 24 hours straight. I'll deal with all that stuff when I wake up. Sometime on Tuesday, I think.

Current Work-In-Progress by Helen E. H. Madden
Photoshop, 30 April 2012

“Cynical Woman (with Pookie)” by Helen E. H. Madden, Sharpie pen on sketch paper, July 28, 1993

Long before Cynical Woman became me with horns, I drew her like this. And I think when I'm older, this is exactly how I'm going to look, so consider this a prescient self-portrait. The bug in the picture, Pookie, is a Madagascar hissing cockroach, a nod to the original Cynical Woman, Joelle.  Joelle studied entomology and wrote her master's thesis on cockroaches. I remember sitting through her presentation. I didn't understand any of what she said, but she did mention the word “ootheca” an awful lot.

Anyway, sorry for posting this late today. I've been busting ass on my current commission, a book cover for a publisher I work with.  I've been posting screen shots of the work-in-progress on Twitter and on Facebook, so if you follow me on either of those, you may have seen what I've been slaving over the last couple weeks.  (If you don't follow me on either Twitter or Facebook, why not?! I'm a perfectly nice social media person, and I haven't bitten anyone on Twitter in days, and the guy on Facebook that I did bite did NOT contract rabies, contrary to popular belief. He was already rabid to begin with.)

But I've been working very hard on this digital painting and staying up way too late too many nights and today it really caught up with me. After the Hubster left to take the girls to school, I went back to bed and had nightmares for the next few hours about Hubster switching out our phone for a complicated media center remote that I couldn't operate to save my life (don't laugh, he does this to me in real life all the damned time!) and it was very important that I call 911 because an undead Anne Romney might or might not have invaded our home and I was not putting up with that. 

Needless to say I woke up in a cold sweat and all the coffee in the world cannot help me feel normal and fully functional today. Oh well. Back to the digital painting.

Work-In-Progress by Helen E. H. Madden, Photoshop, 26 April, 2012

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Oh yeah, this really did happen. Weekend before this, I took Princess' Brownie troop camping. And do you want to talk about whining and fighting and complaining! I made bacon and eggs with the girls to feed everybody Saturday morning and all those girls wanted was cold cereal! And they were the ones who voted for bacon and eggs in the first place!!  Heathens!

So the Brownies were driving me nuts, when out of the blue, Pixie shows up with her Daisy troop to tell me she lit a real fire!!!!!!  YES!! Just what every mother wants to hear her 5–year-old say!  Fortunately, I knew this was one of the scheduled activities for the girls, and I knew the woman running that class, so I only had a minor heart attack before I recalled that yes, it was in fact okay for my youngest child to light a fire in this particular instance.

Anyway, most of my Girl Scout obligations have been met for the year.  I've got a few meetings to attend, a few training classes to take, and a picnic to help with, but that's about it. Summer is almost here, and with it comes blessed relief from the non-stop Girl Scout activity I've been doing since December.  My family and I will be attending a few Girl Scout events this summer, including Rock the Mall in DC and Thrill Builders at Busch Gardens, but I'm only responsible for getting the four of us there for those events, and no one else!

I'm not sure I can really explain the above drawing. This was done while I was in college, maybe while I was in grad school.  The three characters in this piece were all friends of mine, especially “Natasha,” who's real name is Joelle. Joelle originally invented the name Cynical Woman, although at the time that name did not refer to moi. Cynical Woman was just that inner voice Joelle claimed she always heard when things were going just a little too right.  You know, everything would be all hunky dorey, and then Cynical Woman would raise her ugly head—!! (Insert scary alien-bursting-out-of-your-chest sound effect here…)

So anyway, the above drawing was a very inner joke, so inner that even I can't remember it. I can only remember sitting and laughing over it with Joelle as we waited for Cynical Woman to rise up and smack us in the face with something else gone wrong. A lot of things went wrong back then, but somehow we survived.

Or did we?!!

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I'm always busy, always. And I will freely admit there have been times when I've been too busy and I fumbled a few things. The past two years in particular have been rather difficult. In part, it's due to my kids going to a new school, and in part, it's due to my increasing involvement in Girl Scouts.  But really, it's mainly due to the fact that I've slowly let my work hours get eaten away by non-work related activities.

The Hubster realized this before I did.  I was complaining to him last week that I just didn't have enough hours in the day, and changes to next year's school schedule were pretty much going to kill my work schedule. He pointed out that from 8AM to 2:30PM, the kids would still be in school and he'd be at work, just like they are now.  Those hours ought to give me plenty of time for me to sit down at my desk to work as well. Problem is, I don't spend that much time at my desk.  Why?

Well, for starters there's exercise. I go to the Y two mornings a week, and then at least once a week I go to the dojo for karate class. And when I'm not at those places, I go for a run or ride the bike.  Exercise usually takes an hour out of my work day, and getting ready beforehand and cleaning up afterward takes another hour.  Plus I do try to get a load or two of laundry washed and folded every day, and I like to clean up the kitchen, and the floor needs to be swept, and by then it's lunch time, and of course I ought to read the news…

You see where this is going, right? All these non-work related things are eating away at my precious work hours, keeping me away from my desk. Yes I need to exercise, and yes I need to clean the house and stay on top of the laundry.

But do I really need to do it between 8AM and 2:30PM?

I'm hoping the answer is 'no.'  I'm hoping that I can find some other time during the day to do those things, and still get them done.  For example, there's a 6AM deep water aerobics class at the Y that I could go to on Monday and Friday, instead of my usual 8AM. Yeah, it means getting up at 5:15AM, and it also means that the Hubster is on his own those mornings, getting the kids up and out of bed. But you know what? That's okay. Hubster says he doesn't have a problem getting the girls up and moving and fed and out the door, and I can actually drag myself out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn if I set my alarm. And let's be honest, a dip in a cold pool will wake me up just as well as a cup of hot coffee, won't it?

As for the laundry and house cleaning… Well, it's time the kids started earning an allowance anyway.  Princess can fold laundry, not perfectly, but she can do it. Pixie can help sort it, and she can also pick up around the house. Both girls know how to clean a toilet, and Princess can wash dishes while Pixie feeds the cats. I would still be doing a lot of chores myself, but with two helpers in tow, I'd hopefully get the house clean and teach the girls a few things about responsibility in the process.

What's really funny about all this is that I already knew what I needed to do to steal back my schedule. I just didn't know what I needed to do until the Hubster said it out loud for me. So here's hoping he and I are both right. We'll see. I've got a couple of weeks to try it before the girls are out of school for the summer. Then I'll have to come up with a new plan to keep all those eggs in the air for summer.  But I'll think of something, I'm sure. And if I don't, Hubster will. Or we'll just eat a whole lot of eggs. Who knows!