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.
No comments

Rats! Episode 63 – It Has Come To Our Attention…

  By ,

I told you the Rangers were out to get me. I ended up drawing this a week later, after hearing there had been discussions about stuffing me into my sleeping bag, zipping it closed, and tossing the whole she-bang into the duck-pond. You can see how sorry I was to have offended the ROTC Ranger company. Not.

What amazes me is that the Rangers even cared what my little cartoon said. I did not poke fun at them so much as I was poking fun at that particular character, Irwin, and yet they took it rather personally. Why? Is a college newspaper cartoonist really that big a threat to a bunch of big burly guys in uniform who can scale walls using just their fingers and toes and can open canned goods with their bare teeth? I mean, come on! These guys were tough. They ate MREs all the time, for Pete’s sake.

And yet I had apparently stepped on my toes with my little twice-a-week, ran-only-in-the-college-newspaper, measly little comic strip. All of which goes to show the Army ROTC department really needed to issue those guys a sense of humor along with their M-16s.

One Comment

ACW Episode 121 – Let’s Pause for a Brief Rest

  By ,

Mich swears the old steamer trunk I’m restoring is not big enough for me to fit inside. Mich is so nice, I’m pretty sure her comments are not a slam about the size of my butt. 😉

In any event, the restoration is coming along, though I think it will be a few more weeks before it’s done. I can only work on it a day a week, it seems. When I do, I spend hours scrubbing and scraping and sanding and oiling and polishing. Then I’m dead tired and sore as all get out for the next few days. I usually recover just in time to get back to work on the dang thing.

But it’s coming along nicely, and hopefully before summer I will have it done and then be able to store all my art supplies in it. Or take a very long nap in it. One of the two.

No comments

Move It Mama Monday! I Want to Ride my Bicycle…

  By ,

Last week one of my best friends gave me one of her bikes that had been sitting unused in her garage. I had not ridden a bike in almost 3 decades. I went out that evening, bought myself a helmet, and the next morning went on my first bike ride in years.

I loved it.

I was a bit wobbly at first, and rather slow, especially when it came to taking turns and corners, but after a little bit I was doing just fine. I rode half an hour that first day and then almost an hour the next. That second bike ride seemed like a breeze and I barely broke a sweat, but I was dead on my feet the next day, so I know I must have gotten a good workout. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to go on another bike ride, this time with my oldest daughter who actually couldn’t keep up with her dear old mum! I rode laps around her and she peddaled along and then stopped every few minutes. I’m obviously going to have to take us both out for a bike ride more often so we can build up our endurance.

Anyway, I really enjoy riding the bike. So far, I’m sticking to just riding around my neighborhood, hitting every cul-de-sac and side street to stretch out the ride as long as I can. Hopefully, I’ll be ready to hit the main road outside our neighborhood in a couple weeks. Then I’ll be able to ride to the Y, work out there, and ride home. Or ride through other neighborhoods that have longer stretches of road. We’ll see!

On a side note, I think my deep water aerobics instructor is secretly Ursula the Sea Witch. The woman is in her 70s and can get around the water better than a fish! She has repeatedly worked me into exhaustion and today was no exception. After getting home from the 6AM class, I managed to stay awake long enough to do a few chores. Then I made the mistake of sitting down and before you know it, I’d been asleep for an HOUR. On the plus side, I have much better muscle tone than I did a few weeks ago!

3 Comments

Steamer Trunk Restoration Update

  By ,

For those of you who have been following along with my adventures in antique restoration, here’s an update on the steamer trunk I’m working on.

This trunk was given to me by my neighbor who moved two weeks ago. She’d had it in her garage for years and it was a mess, as you can see below…

The interior was really bad of course. It was lined with rotting fabric and reeked of mildew…

Well, I’ve spent a lot of hours working on that trunk. In addition to thoroughly scrubbing it inside and out, I’ve now also removed the interior fabric, replaced the bottom of the drawer (which turned out to be mildewing cardboard but is now wood), and sanded down the interior. I still need to clean up the metal parts and have gathered up the materials to do so. I also need to stain and finish the interior. However, it looks much better than it did and it sure as hell smells a lot better! Take a look at it now…

And here’s the interior with the repaired drawer…

I’ve worked on it on three separate days, between 5-8 hours at a time each day. I estimate I’ve still got at least another two days worth of work to go. I plan to tackle the metal parts on Monday and then hopefully stain and finish the interior come next weekend.

For now though, my back hurts and I’m exhausted from standing hunched over that trunk for several hours today. I’m going to grab a glass of wine and soak in the tub until I no longer smell of saw dust and wood soap. Taa!

No comments

Rats! Episode 62 – Ranger!

  By ,

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I almost got lynched for the above cartoon and a few that followed it. You see, we had a group of rough and ready guys in the ROTC Rangers at Virginia Tech who took a little exception to me making jokes of any sort about them. I never heard anything about it until some months later, but at the time these guys were apparently discussing stuffing me in a sleeping bag, zipping it closed over me head, and then beating me silly with whiffle bats before dumping me in the campus duck pond.

But they were actually a good bunch of guys, and apparently they were able to resist the urge to do all of that to me.

One of my most frequent memories of the cadet dorms is of people walking around in boxer shorts. Not just the guys, but the women too. I drew Irwin in stripy boxer shorts above, because that was such common dress for cadets when they weren’t in uniform. Honestly, it made sense. We had to wear these clean, neatly pressed uniforms to class and they weren’t very comfortable, so obviously when we came back to the dorm, we all got changed. But why bother changing into another outfit when you knew you had to put the uniform back on again a couple hours later for another class or evening formation? So we just all walked around in boxers and t-shirts most of the time.

Funny the things I remember when looking back at these cartoons.

2 Comments

ACW Episode 121 – Princess makes “The Big Pitch!”

  By ,

I’m running late today, so I’ll be quick about this one. Suffice to say, Princess has decided to make a movie, which I think is great. Except that I keep having to explain to her what a budget is and what our limitations and abilities are.

The movie is entitled “Electro-Cat!” and we have already begun preproduction. We’re still working on the script (for some reason, Princess wants to write “War and Peace” even though I’ve explained YouTube will only allow 10 minutes max on movies). We’ve made a set/backdrop from some packing materials that came with our new vacuum cleaner, and we’ve made 4 of our “actors” out of poster paint and old toilet paper tubes. Trust me, this will make sense when I post more updates on the movies.

Anyhoo, I’ve got to scat. There are not enough hours in the day, and I have a movie to help produce now as well as my own work to do. I’ll hopefully post updates on “Electro-Cat” as things progress.

2 Comments

Move It Mama Monday! Sweat, Steam, and… Bicycles?

  By ,

I had so much fun spending all last Monday cleaning up an old steamer trunk my neighbor gave me, I decided to do it again today. After spending an hour at deep-water aerobics and then coming home to clean house, I pulled the trunk out of the garage and went to work This time I focused on the interior, which was lined with musty old fabric that might have been stripy and blue at one time.

I tried just wetting the fabric down and then scraping it away with a paint scraper, but the trunk is so huge, that task quickly became exhausting. So I decided to carry the trunk out to the side of the yard where I then proceeded to hose the interior down. The sprayer nozzle did a good job of blasting out the old fabric and cardboard underneath without destroying the rest of the trunk, though I did have to re-clean the entire thing once I was done and apply another layer of lemon oil everywhere. However, it got the job done. One problem I discovered though was that the bottom of the pop-out drawer in the top half of the trunk was nothing but cardboard. It was also musty and stinky, so I had to tear it out. Now I’ll have to remove all the old nails in the drawer, get a new bottom cut from wood to replace the old cardboard, and then hammer that in place before I can sand, stain and finish the interior.

One other problem is the metal fixings. They need to be scrubbed, and scrubbed hard, to get rid of all the dirt and rust. It’s going to be quite a job, and I may need to invest in extra batteries for my Black & Decker hand tool to ensure it gets done before next year. My hand tool has a small wire brush attachment which does help cut through the worst of the dirt. Steel wool will finish things off. Looks like a trip to the hardware store is in order!

Here’s the pic of the trunk’s interior before I began cleaning it…

And here’s the trunk after 4 hours of hard work…

It does look better, I think.

By the way, as I was cleaning out the trunk today, my best friend Mary stopped by and dropped off this…

I plan to get a helmet later this afternoon and see a) if I can still remember how to ride a bike and b) how quickly I will wipe out and tear up my knee. Mary swears wiping out only hurts the first 4 or 5 dozen times.

Anyway, I’m tired an filthy and sweaty now and I’m going to make lunch and get cleaned up so I can go buy that helmet and then pass out for the rest of the day.

Oy!

2 Comments

Rats! Episode 61 – Short, But Talented

  By ,

Been a few weeks since I posted one of these. My apologies, folks. Things have been crazy around here. Or crazier than usual, I should say. I’m trying to clear out all the extraneous stuff from my schedule, but with the kids off from school for the summer, I’m still juggling to get stuff done.

Anyhoo, the world’s shortest upperclassman was at one time a member of the Highty-Tighties’ flag corps, or so I recall. Was she any good at it? Well, she only hit herself in the head a few times, and she survived that, so I guess she was good enough 😉

Do the Highty-Tighties still have a flag corps? It was new I think when I was at Virginia Tech. Don’t know if they still have one now. Anyway, here’s the cartoon and I’ll do my best to keep up with things from now on. Enjoy your summer!

No comments

ACW Episode 120 – When I say “ZOMG!” the ‘Z’ stands for ‘Zombie”

  By ,

True story. The kids and I went to the beach last Friday along with my best friends and their kids. Pixie was running around playing in the sand because she’s too scared of the waves to even dip her toe into the water. She kept racing up and down the beach finding seashells and bringing them back to me. Then while I was chatting with one of the other adults, she came running up shouting, “MAMA! I FOUND SOMETHING FOR YOU!!!” And then that darling child of mine tried to hand me a rotting turtle corpse.

It was BLECH! Missing the top half of its head plus half of one of its legs. It was all black and gushy red and rotting and I just screamed and screamed and screamed as my darling blonde Pixie toddled toward me holding its rotting corpse… Finally, I got her to drop the damned thing far enough away from me that I could then grab her and haul her kicking and screaming into the ocean to wash the dead turtle zombie cooties from her chubby little hands. Sadly, we had no Purell.

Events like this are what make me realize how much Pixie is like my dad. I mean, the kids looks just like him, if my dad were really short, blonde and female. They certainly act alike. When my dad was a boy, he convinced his baby sister to hand his mother a dead rat. He also left a dead skunk under his mother’s mattress and once shot the poor woman through both ankles. He swears that was an accident. What’s really bad is that I’m named for my paternal grandmother.

I wonder how long it will be before **I** get shot through both ankles. Accidentally, of course.