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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Move It Mama Monday! Of Sweat and Steam

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I exercise. I do karate. I walk. I run sometimes. I go to the Y for water aerobics. I keep moving and I keep fit. And the reason I do this is not so I can look good in my clothes. Well, yeah, okay that is one of the big reasons why I exercise, but really, the reason I exercise is so I can do what I did today.

I exercise so that I have the endurance to take on big, dirty household chores and working frikkin’ miracles, baby!

What am I talking about? Well, a couple weeks ago, my neighbor across the street was packing up to move. She was moving to a smaller place and had more than she needed to take with her, so she offered me a few items which I happily accepted. Among those items was an old steamer trunk.

Yeah, you steampunkers out there, I know your ears have perked up right about now. This steamer trunk appears to be the real deal. There’s a tag on it that says “Petersburg Trunk & Bag Company, Petersburg, Virginia.” I looked it up and apparently the Petersburg Trunk & Bag Company was a division of Seward Trunks. This particular trunk is made of wood, with wood slates over a canvas covered frame. There are lots of metal parts – corner pieces, hinges, locks, etc. And the interior is covered in striped blue and white fabric. At least I think it used to be striped blue and white fabric.

It was an amazing gift and I was delighted to accept it from my neighbor. However, it is a really old trunk, and it was apparently stored in her garage for many years. So when I got it, it looked like this…

And this…

And here’s what the inside looked like…

Love the pop out drawer, but the smell is something awful! Oh, and here are a few details of the bottom side of the trunk…

Yep, it has tiny little wheels on the bottom. And it also had…

Lots of insect and spider egg cocoons! And cobwebs! YAY!!!

I can hear you know. “Well, Helen, that is a lovely trunk you have there, but what does any of this have to do with exercise?” Well, I’ll tell you. I spent 6 hours today scrubbing and scouring and oiling this trunk up, and I had to haul it onto one side and then the other to get at all the spots that needed cleaning, and I had to do all this outside in the hot sun, and by the time I was done I must have sweated off 20 bazillion pounds and every muscle in my body hurts like crazy! That’s what this has to do with exercise. But the efforts were worth it…

Ta-daaaa!!

I still have a lot of work to do, of course. I did a quick search on the web and found a site with information on how to restore old trunks like this, so I no know what I need to do to get those metal parts all nice and shiny. I plan to use a Dremel tool with a wire brush attachment rather than use the hand scrubbing method because I love exercise but I am not interested in seeing my arms drop off. Oh, and I still have the interior to work on. I’ve started scraping out all that rotted fabric but it’s going to take a while for me to finish that. I expect that in another couple weeks, I may have this all finished, and when I do, I’ll show pictures again. But for right now, I’m going to collapse because I am damn tired after all that hard work. Good night folks!

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I Bought a Better Dye!

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The semi-permanent dyes were driving me crazy. Even the best brands needed refreshing every week. So I went ahead and bought something more permanent. I redid the dye today. Colors have not changed, but hopefully the colors last more than a couple weeks. We’ll see. Anyway, here’s the latest pic of my hair.

There are a few place where the teal and pink have mixed together to make a nice purple. I love the color. In fact, I love it so much, one day I may eventually bleach all my hair just so I can go crazy with the color.

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ACW Episode 119 – I Didn’t Know She Was Irish

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I meant to put this up yesterday, but got sidetracked by things like re-recording audio for my podcast, paying bills, etc. Plus, you know, the whole “my desk broke!” thing has put me a little off schedule. And did I mention Hubster’s car died on Monday? Been a fun week.

Anyway, I have an iPod Nano, which I love, and I’ve got some Queen songs on it. I’ve been playing the Nano in the car, thanks to a little device that allows my radio to pick up the signal from the Nano on an empty radio channel. Everytime Pixie hears “Radio Gaga” she starts singing “Lady O’Gaga” instead. Pixie knows who Lady Gaga is, but apparently has never heard of Queen. How this has happened is beyond me. I mean, the kid does know the lyrics to quite a few songs by the Beatles and Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons. But apparently we skipped Queen in her Rock N’ Roll education.

We’ll fix that. I’m sure once she hears “You’re My Best Friend,” she’ll be singing along with that quite happily. That is, IF I can get her to stop singing the theme song to “iCarly.”

Oy!

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Move It Mama Monday! Hey, remember how I used to blog about exercise?

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Hey, remember when I used to blog every Monday about exercise? Been a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it?

All I can say is I got eaten alive by my schedule the past two months. Between end of school year activities, Balticon, Girl Scouts and other things, Move It Mama Monday has been a low priority. And exercise has been a low priority too, I’m afraid. Not that I haven’t been exercising. I have, just not the way I normally do.

I’ve managed to make it to at least 2 hours of karate class a week, but not 4. I’ve been walking a bit, with a little running mixed in. I think I did a few workouts on the Wii this past month. But mostly what I’ve been doing is cleaning my house.

Housework is dirty, sweaty work, especially when it involves a lot of heavy lifting and going up and down stairs. I’ve done plenty of both activities thanks to my desk breaking last week. Afnd I’ve been actively hauling bags and boxes of stuff out to the local charity shop for donation. The house is slowly becoming habitable again, and I will continue to clean out the place until I can easily navigate through every room. My biggest task is still ahead – the garage. However, I. An’t clear that out until the rain stops, so it may be another week before I tackle that.

So anyway, the house is getting clean and I’ve been getting a workout, but I haven’t been doing my regular activities. But that’s changing. Mich got a Y membership and she started doing deep water aerobics so I decided to join her for a couple classes a week. Due to schedule constraints and Pixie’s outright refusal to be left in the Y nursery for any reason, we’re going to class at 6AM. That’s pretty early, but worth it.

In other news, I have been informed by friends that I will be riding a bike. Patricia is donating a hybrid bike to me and I’m going to see if it’s true that you never forget to ride one. I’m looking forward to the challenge, I’ll admit. If I start biking, I could ride my bike to the Y, do water aerobics, and then ride home. I’ll save gas and squeeze in a bit more exercise, assuming I don’t get myself killed by a dumbass driver. This should be interesting.

So that’s what’s going on right now. I had water aerobics at 6 this morning, so I’m going to get my second cup of coffee now. See ya later this week!

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New hair colors!

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Got bored with just having spots of blue in my hair, so I redid it. The pink didn’t come out nearly as intense as I would have liked, but the effect is interesting. I used Manic Panic’s Cotton Candy (pink) and Atomic Turquoise (the blue/green). For now, I’m going to stick to just bleaching the bangs to do the more intense colors. I used a dark auburn demi-permanent color on the rest of the hair, but may put a fun color over top of that later this summer to give it an interesting sheen. We’ll see.

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ACW Episode 118 – Oops

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I had a lovely hand drawn cartoon ready to scan in for today. Then I decided to clean my office last night and when I moved my desk, it broke. So I spent all day today replacing my desk and moving all the stuff I had to take out of my office back in. I took an hour to put together this strip instead tonight to explain what happened. You get the other cartoon next week.

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ACW Episode 117 – Crazy Train!

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My follow up to last week’s cartoon. Summer break is here and it’s hit like Ozzie Osbourne’s Crazy Train. That’s why it’s been so quiet here at the website, as well as at VeryScaryArt.com the last few weeks. The end of school year period is always an awkward change-over in schedules and this year even more so. I hope to be back to a more regular schedule next week, but right now I’ve got one child out of school and at home with me all day and I’m desperately trying to recover the house from the mess it’s been buried under in the last several weeks. I’ve cleaned the kids’ rooms and mine is next on the list, followed by the art room and my office. Once I’ve got about 50 tons of crap cleared out and the rest of our wordly belongings cleaned/repaired/organized/stored, life should return to normal.

Or not, because you know, life never, ever really returns to normal. Especially not around here.

Enjoy your week. I’ll try to have a “Rats!” cartoon up on Thursday.

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ACW Episode 116 – It. Never. Ends.

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I am getting the absolute crap kicked out of me this week. Right after I got back from Balticon, I had to get to work to finish up Princess’ Maori costume for her class presentation. Then the same day she gave her report, she also performed in her class play, “Charlotte’s Web.” I wasn’t about to miss either event, so I spent most of Friday at her school, cheering her on. She did fantastic in both events.

Then Saturday came and I had to head out to a local museum for a Brownie troop sleepover. Museums are lousy places to get sleep. This particular museum didn’t shut down until 11PM and then all the lights weren’t off until midnight. The cleaning crew came in at 1AM and didn’t even try to be quiet. At 6:15AM, the small theater we were camped out next to came to life and started running a short film on the history of flight every 15 minutes AT TOP VOLUME. Plus there was something in the building that went “SQUEAKY SQUEAKY SQUEAKY CLANG CLANG CLANG!!!” all frikkin’ night.

So I was dead on my feet by the time we finally got home Sunday morning, just in time for me to bake a cake for Pixie’s birthday party which lasted 4 hours. Hubster and I scrambled to get the place cleaned up and ready for guests, all of whom were pretty well-behaved. Then I had to get back to work as soon as the last guest left because I had completely forgotten that the next day we were supposed to take Pixie in for kindergarten placement testing. Oh, and I had volunteered to help out with the school’s field day that same afternoon. And it was just by chance that we found out the next morning as we arrived for the pre-testing that Princess’ class was doing a special party for all the parents that day…

I’ve had four days straight eaten alive by my parental duties. I’ve got today off, but I have to be at the dojo for two hours today and then after school pick up I have to get thank-you gifts for Princess’ teachers. Plus I still need to pick up a birthday/anniversary present for Hubster. And I just realized that I will be spending this coming Saturday at an 8 hour class on CPR and First Aid so I can be an assistant Brownie Troop leader next year.

Yes, I did it to myself, but also no, I didn’t. It is not my fault that everyone has to pack everything into the last week of school, and I’m starting to get a little peeved with some folks about this. I got a snarky email today from one mom chastising a group of us for not contacting her this weekend to make arrangements to pick up some stuff she has for the Girl Scout troops in our area. Excuse the hell outta me, but just like you, I have a very busy life, and if you tell me on Thursday you need me to pick stuff up in the next two days and I’ve got the weekend from hell about to drop on me like a ton of bricks, I’m not jumping through hoops for you. Forget it. Take your damn snark and go vomit it all over someone else’s day.

I’m beyond cranky and tired at this point. The house is a wreck because I simply don’t have time to stop and clean it, and I’ve got certain work projects still waiting for me to get to. And my email is overflowing with messages from people who need me to do even more stuff. Life was supposed to be slowing down at this point. But it hasn’t and it doesn’t look like it ever will.

I am taking next week off, no matter what. Except for the podcast and the cartoons, I am not working. Princess will be out of school and she has already been informed she will be helping me clean the house because we simply must get rid of 50% of the crap that’s piled up around here. Nobody is going to be happy with me while this happens, and I simply don’t care. I can’t live in a trashed house and take care of the kids and do my work. It simply doesn’t work for me.

I’m going to sulk for a bit then pull on my gi and head out to the dojo. Here’s hoping I don’t kill someone today.

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ACW 116 – Balticon Ate My Brain

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\”Balticon Ate My Brain\” on YouTube

 

 

This was done in Sketch Club on my iPad. The Sketch Club app now allows me to record while I draw, so you’ll be seeing quite a bit of these recordings. If you like them, please let me know! As for the actual sketch, I will post it later today. Right now I’m on my way out the door for some exercise. Yes, I feel as dead as I look in the video above. But take heart! I should be recovered by next Balticon, just in time to do this all over again.