Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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The Adventures of Cynical Woman – Pop Goes the Hair!

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So my adventures in hair color continue. I was blonde and pink for a brief few days this weekend, in preparation for dying my hair blue and purple. I make a lousy bright blonde, but don’t look half bad as a strawberry blonde. It was not to last though, as I really wanted the blue and purple hair. It’s almost to the shade I want it, but the blue isn’t dark enough nor solid enough. I still have quite a few light streaks so I will be dying my hair again this weekend. I’ll post pics once the final shade has been achieved.

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WIP Wednesday – Medusa and Bats

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Medusa and Bats, WIP – 31 August, 2011

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Work-In-Progress blog post, and it’s been even longer since I’ve done any work on the image above. According to my files, I’ve not touched this piece since November, 2010. But I pulled it out on Monday and have played with it over the last few days and have actually seen some progress. There’s still quite a bit of work to go, but I’ve definitely gotten farther with it in the last few days than I would have been capable of almost a year ago.

I think this marks a big change in what’s going on in my life right now. A couple weeks ago, I wrapped up my podcast novel, The Little Death, and decided to take a break from writing and podcasting. I had simply reached a point earlier this year where it was a massive struggle to write, record, and produce the podcast all at the same time, and I was drowning under the workload. Plus, I was doing more and more digital art, thanks to the iPad I got last Christmas. In fact, I’ve done so much digital art this year, I’ve produced over 50 paintings since first cracking open the packaging on the iPad. It’s ridiculous how much drawing and painting I’ve done, compared with previous years.

So I made the decision to take a break from podcasting until I have something new completely written. And I’m taking a break from writing until the whole family’s schedule has settled down for the school year. I expect in another few weeks, I’ll start writing again, probably picking one day a week to knock out as many words as I can. Once I have something written, then and only then will I look at podcasting it. And I will not write and podcast at the same time. It’s just too much to do right now.

But as for the artwork, that’s become a daily thing. I’m now getting up most mornings at 5AM to spend time working on digital painting. Once I finish up Medusa and Bats above, I’ll move onto a robot painting I’ve got sitting in ArtRage waiting to be finished. And while I’m not working at my desk, I’ll probably be working on something on my iPad. Or maybe even pick up an actual pen and paper and do some drawing there.

Basically, I’m finally making the big shift from full-on writing to full-on art, and I’m very pleased with the results. I’ll keep posting pics of the the WIPs as I go, and when I’ve got something finished, the plan is to make it available for sale as prints or whatever else people might like. So look forward to that!

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Episode 127 – When Disaster Strikes

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Wild fires in the Great Dismal Swamp. Earthquake just outside Richmond. Hurricane Irene. It all happened while my parents were visiting.

To be fair, they were in New York with my sister the day the earthquake hit. But they had been with us the week before and came back to us a couple days after. And then stayed all through Irene, even though my folks swore they were headed out to Pennsylvania on Saturday, the day Irene was supposed to hit us.

They ended up staying though. My parents aren’t careless when it comes to driving, and I think my mom and dad really wanted the extra time with the grandkids anyway. And in spite of what I drew above, this did not turn out to be a disaster. The days before, during, and after the hurricane turned out to be the most pleasant of their visit. I just thought it was strange that they came to stay with us and all hell broke loose in the natural world.

For the record, I look a hell of a lot like my mom, except that her hair is much shorter, and not pink. And Princess looks like exactly like me. And these days my mom looks an awful lot like my grandmom, and my sister is sort of a dark, slimmer version of me, or my mom. Or maybe my grandmom. All the women in the family look an awful lot alike. Except for Pixie, who’s a blonde version of my dad, right down to his evil laugh and practical jokes.

Kids are back at school now, and next week Pixie will be going to kindergarten full day. Right now, she’s on a half-day schedule, which really chops up my work hours. But hopefully next week I’ll be back on a regular schedule. You’ll know for sure once I get back to blogging on a regular basis.

Ciao!

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Episode 126 – Summer Portrait of Princess

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She’s under that moptop somewhere…

Yes, I dyed both girls’ hair pink. No, it had not washed out by the night befor school orientation. So yes, I had to dye their hair back to a natural color, and yes, you can still see pink in both shaggy heads. And somehow, Princess managed to lose her glasses and didn’t realize it until the day of the school orientation. We searched everywhere for them but couldn’t find them. Then on Saturday they turned up… In her underwear drawer.

Plus a few days before school started, Princess pulled out 17 worksheets that she had been given at the end of the school year previously to do as summer homework. If my mother hadn’t been there to help supervise Princess while she got her work done, I think I might have killed that kid.

Anyway, school started yesterday and I’m looking forward to getting back on a regular schedule. Once Pixie starts up full days of kindergarten in two weeks, I should get back to the old blogging schedule. That’s the plan anyway!

Enjoy your Tuesday.

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ACW Episode 124 – A Day of Debauchery… Or Not

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This is a true story. In response to Rick Perry’s “National Day of Prayer,” some folks on Facebook decided to do a “National Day of Debauchery.” I was sort of looking forward to this as an excuse to be slothful that day and spend all morning eating ice cream in bed while watching cartoons, but as it turns out, Hubster volunteered us to be elsewhere that morning, doing helpful things.

We spent four and a half hours on Saturday pulling up weeds, edging lawns, trimming bushes, raking up dead grass and leaves, etc. I am still sore from all this work. The girls helped, of course. After all, it’s there school and I’d kill them if they didn’t help. And with the four of us working, we managed to clean up a nice patch of the school yard. Other volunteers trimmed back trees, moved dead branches, all sorts of dirty work. Needless to say, we were one very tired group of volunteers by the time we were done.

So I got dirty, but I didn’t get to participate in a Day of Debauchery. Or did I? After the volunteering, Hubster took us out shopping for clothes and school supplies. It was a tax-free weekend in lovely Virginia, so he intended to hit as many stores as he could to get everyone what he needed. And I have to admit, all that shopping did make me feel pretty debauched. I got 3 pairs of biking capris, a new pair of shoes, and ice cream before we left. That’s a pretty good haul, in my opinion.

But the debauchery is definitely over now. I’m back to being mom/writer/artist, trying to keep up with all my responsibilities and deadlines. Next week my own mother shows up, so you better believe I’m scrambling now to clean house before she gets here. Though I do wish I could take a break.

Hmmm… maybe I can convince Pixie to watch cartoons with me all afternoon while we eat ice cream in bed.

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Rats! Episode 64 – Look! It’s Super Rat!

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I swear, I cannot recall where the idea for Super Rat came from. He just suddenly showed up in the strip one day, and made a few more appearances after that.

This was drawn in October of my senior year at Virginia Tech, so our rats that year were probably still dragging through the hallways, though I’m sure they had some privileges by that point. During my senior year, I was the Academics Officer for Hotel Company. I swear, I saw more freshman engineering students change their majors to history that year and in more than a few cases it was because the students flat out weren’t studying. Yes, they had a lot to deal with – the Corps, ROTC, adjusting to college life, etc. However, if some of those freshman had just spent a few more hours at their desks, noses in their books, they might have remained engineering majors.

Anyway, here’s Super Rat. He won’t save your failing grades, but he might help you out in the hallway when you get cornered by a senior cadet. Just as soon as he fixes his rat belt.

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ACW Episode 123 – I’m Tryin’ to Communicate Here!

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So I had a little melt-down last week when I got overwhelmed by social media. You see, prior to last week, I had never had a Facebook account. Mich kept threatening to set me up with one and on Wednesday she finally carried out that threat. But setting up the Facebook page wasn’t the problem, in and of itself. It was what came afterward, my attempts to interconnect my various sources of social media, that caused my melt-down.

I have a blog, obviously. I have a podcast. I have two Twitter accounts. Which reminds me, I have another blog. And I’ve got a Flickr account. And oh yeah, a Tumblr blog. And did I mention I’m on Google+? I knew I could interconnect the Twitter feeds to the Facebook pages, but I’ve been having problems with Twhirl, the application I had been using to get my twitter feeds. Mich set me up with TweetDeck, which is very different from Twhirl. And since I’ve been having problems using Google+, I put Google Chrome on my netbook, hoping it would make life easier. But then I found out Twitterfeed was still set up to log me in only through OpenID, which I hate because I’ve never used my LiveJournal account, so I had to contact their tech support twice to reset my password and login…

You can see why I had a melt down.

On the plus side, the folks at Twitterfeed were very helpful and things got solved quickly. And I found an app on Facebook that automatically posts any new images I put on Flickr to my fan page for Cynical Woman. And I will eventually learn to like Tweetdeck, though not the Google Chrome version because it doesn’t do half the stuff I need it to do, apparently. And I’ve gotten the hang of Facebook, I think. But Google+ is just too damned clunky to use on my netbook and keeps losing messages as I type them…

Yeah, maybe I will join that convent and take that vow of silence after all. Or not. I never have been able to keep my mouth shut. Anyway, here’s where you can find me these days!

Facebook – Helen Madden and Cynical Woman

The Heat Flash Erotica Podcast – a free audio podcast of adult speculative fiction

Flickr

Tumblr – With a Cynical Eye

Twitter

Google+ – just search for Helen Madden. I’m too damed lazy at this point to figure out the hyperlink to that account.

So there you go. Now you can find me on the interwebs. Have fun!

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Move It Mama Monday! I Love My Velocipede

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I’m muddling through this blog post on Sunday night after a very long day. I got up yet again this early this morning and rode my bike, which henceforth with be called “The Velocipede” – for about an hour this morning. I’ve actually gotten used to riding this distance, by which I mean I’m not longer suffering through a lot of muscle soreness afterwards. Now cycling just wears me out and leaves me with slightly, but not unpleasantly, aching leg muscles.

In fact, I’ve gotten so used to this morning ride, I’m actually looking forward to it AND once I get on the bi- er, velocipede, and get going, I don’t want to stop. Even after an hour of cycling most mornings, I still want to keep going. And you have no idea how amazing that is to me. After every run, after every karate class, after every session in the pool doing water aerobics, I’m always eager to be done so I can go collapse somewhere and play dead for a bit. Not with cycling. I get going and I want to keep going. It’s peaceful, it’s quiet, it’s honestly and truly time for just me, and it doesn’t hurt, except to leave me with slightly sore legs. Sure, it wipes me out, but in a nice way that sort of has me energized in the morning after riding and then slowly winding down until I get to the evening and I want to collapse face first in bed.

But that’s not why I love my bi- er, velocipede. No, the real reason why I love the VELOCIPEDE is because of my knees. I’ve been having really bad knee problems all summer long. In fact, I’ve had problems with my knees since Princess was born 8 years ago, but this summer they’ve gotten worse. It was too the point where I was going up and down the steps like an old man or a toddler, taking each step one at a time, sometimes bracing myself with my hands. And it hurt! It just jurt for me to take the stairs. My knees where killing me and even a double dose of Aleve wasn’t getting rid of the pain.

But now that I’m riding the velocipede? Things are a little different now.

You see, the problem with my knees is that my outer thigh muscles pull so strongly on my knee caps that they are actually pulling my knee caps out of place. The solution is to strengthen the inner thigh muscles, but that involves a lot of physical therapy exercises, up to half an hour of exercises each day. That gets time consuming, not to mention boring, and I get tired of trying to keep up with it.

Well apparently riding the velocipede manages to work my inner thigh muscles enough that my knee caps are being pulled back in place. At least that’s what it feels like to me. All I can say for certain is that I can now get up and down the stairs like a normal healthy adult, I’ve got almost no knee pain anymore, and I can barely hear the sound of gravel crunching when I bend my knees.

So huzzah for cycling and huzzah for my knees!

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Episode 122 – Just How Hot Is It?

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This actually happened. One of my best friends, Patricia had dinner with us on Friday. She and I went out to pick up the Chinese food we ordered, and the weather was swelteringly hot even at 7PM that day. We were sweating when we came home from our short trip out. The moment we walked in the door though, Hubster yelled at us to come see what was on our back deck. This is what we found…

Yes, that is a squirrel melting on our deck. He apparently had been there a while, and he stayed still even though he had an audience of 5 gawking at him through our back window. I was able to grab my camera and get this shot before he finally decided to amble off and go melt some place else.

According to Mich, this is what squirrels do when it gets too hot outside. She told me she has a similar picture from this weekend and she’s sending it to me today. I’ll post it here when I get it so you can see more of this bizarre melting squirrel behavior.