Post 5.3.0.1 I Need to Find the Right Pants

“I sat and stared at the page for about twenty minutes going “What is in those bushes?” before drawing the first appearance of the shadowchild.

If it wasn’t for the seat of my pants, I’d have no plot at all.”

Ursula Vernon (from the Digger webcomic)

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WuseMajor said, in the comments section: 

"Given that the seat of your pants gave us Ed, the Shadowchild, and who knows what else, I obviously have been shopping for pants in all the wrong places."

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My mission is clear.  I need to find out where Ursula Vernon buys her pants. 

Post 5.4.0.1: A Little Personal Whimsey



(You're looking for the little sign that says "This Workplace Proudly Velociraptor Free Since 2003".)

OK.  I stole the idea from someone else on the internet. 



Post 2.8.0.1: Getting Back to it Slowly & I Come in Peas

It's been two months since I did a real post.  I think I needed the break. 

Since the last little post was about fabric, here's another link to a fabric design.  If you don't want to open another window, it's a repeating pattern of this:

It's for a Halloween costume.  I'm going to make a dress and loose-fitting jacket with it.  There may be a pair of tasteful antennae.  I'll be a visiting space alien.  When asked about the dress, I'll say "I come in peas."

[7/5/2014]  I'm updating and making the odd correction, here and there.  I thought I'd add that the fabric pattern above did not make the final cut for the costume.  Nor did the costume get made in 2013.

But fear not!  I have persevered and developed another pattern that is more densely pea-ridden and much more garish.  It's here.   I have purchased enough of it to make the costume.  I have a pattern for sewing it up.  And I have made pea and pea pod beads to make a necklace with, for wearing with the costume.  

The pattern was cleaned up a bit and then mosaicked, before it was fabricked.

Yes, the first design looks better as a single block.  But if you try to print it as fabric, it's either so small that no one can tell that it's peas from any kind of distance, or it's large enough that it's mostly empty space.  Also when if you cut the larger version into pieces that will be sewn together, the pattern does not line up at all on the final garment.  Pattern 2 is all peas, everywhere.  It may be necessary to do some aligning before cutting, but there's no danger of losing the idea that these are PEAS.  

I still need to string the beads, sew the dress and jacket, and buy a suitable hat and, possibly, a pair of tasteful antennae.  But I'm not past deadline, yet.  Yes, I thought of the concept three years ago, but I'm not going to count the time spent just thinking about it once in awhile and collecting pea photos from time to time.  Morally, I've only missed the deadline once.  And I got pretty close.  

Post 2.8.0.0: Drafting fabric

This is a first attempt at designing fabric to make a scarf for someone. 

It's brown, salmon, and pink. 

That's probably showing the heart at twice the size that it is on the fabric, depending on your screen size.  After being entered into the Spoonflower.com engine, the block gets repeated in a pattern that you choose.  So the fabric is brown with little salmon/pink hearts sprinkled about.  

Updating later:  Here's me flirting with trademark infringement.  I sooth myself with the thought that I've only made 50 cents from posting it, and that's probably all I'm ever going to get.  

Are you old enough to remember this one?  

Post 3.9.0.0 My Sister Threatens a Caterpillar

[Blogger refuses to let me set the font, today, or the font size (this is supposed to be small).  No matter how many times I change it, it sets different paragraphs in different fonts.  If it were an object, I'd have thrown it across the room by now.]  [7/4/14 - looks like it's taking font edits today.  We'll see when I check the actual blog page.]

My sister, S2, once threatened to bite a caterpillar in half.  This may not seem terribly important, without context, but it was a significant family event.  Let me add the context.  It may seem like I'm going back a tad far, but trust me, the background is necessary.

I'm the oldest daughter and the oldest child in my family.  That includes being the first grandchild on both sides of the family.  My sister, S1, was born two years after I was, so there wasn't that much alone time for me to resent her taking away and there wasn't that much developmental difference between us after a few years.  We mostly learned playing-related things together. 

Our younger sister, S-2, on the other hand, was five years younger than me and three years younger than S-1.  S-1 and I had developed our playing processes and friends by the time S-2 was old enough to be sent outside to play.  S-2 was always playing catch up. 

Now my parents, my father especially, were hermits.  Dad watched the news and read the newspaper and obsessed about how dangerous the world was.  While other children roamed the neighborhood to play, he put up a chain link fence and required us to stay inside it.  Other children could come in but we couldn't come out.  As a result, we got to know our back yard really well.

In our back yard, up against the garage, were several acacia bushes surrounded by a curving line of bricks to keep the grass out of their bed.  The bricks weren't mortared in place, they just sat on the soil and slowly sank in a little.  If you lifted one up, you'd find bugs under it.  All of us were interested in the bugs.  That includes our friends. 

Pill bugs (what my Mom called, we thought, Sell Bugs) were a favorite.  Ants aren't very interesting and earwigs are scary, but the pill bugs roll up like little armadillos and you never know how long you'll have to hold your hand still before they'll open up again and tiptoe, tickling across your palm and fingers.

Better than pill bugs were the fuzzy, black caterpillars that nibbled at the acacias.  S-1 was more interested in bugs than any of us, and especially lover the caterpillars.  She was more patient with them and would hold still or would move in slow motion while they crawled on her.  She was rapt at their undulating velvet movements.  The rest of us could catch them and play with them a little, but we'd eventually get impatient with their slowness and put them in an old peanut butter jar with holes in the lid. 

S-1 would also keep caterpillars in jars.  Sometimes multiple jars.  She was better at keeping the jars clean and the caterpillars fed.  I don't know about our friends, but I would usually let the caterpillars go after a week or so.  I would have lost interest in cleaning and feeding by then and either Mother would issue warnings about them dying or I would get nervous about it, myself, after hearing previous proclamations of doom.

S-1, on the other hand, quite often got caterpillars to make cocoons and sometimes they even hatched out.  I think they were moths, rather than butterflies. 

So S-1 was established as loving caterpillars.  S-2 was often passively left out of our play, just because she was younger and smaller and couldn't keep up.  This came together one day.  One day we were playing in the back yard.  No surprise there.  We had collected many caterpillars, where we were keeping in a red wagon.  There may have been as many as a dozen.  I think there was some vegetation in the wagon to occupy them.  But they still tended to wander off.  Together with whatever else we were doing, we would gently pick up the ones that reached the lip of the wagon.  With the wagon, we could relocate the caterpillars to wherever we wanted to play.  Well, wherever we wanted within the back and side yards.

At some point, S-2 had enough of being ignored.  She demanded that we play with her.  Unfortunately for her, that was easy to ignore.  I mean, we weren't deliberately snubbing her or anything, so it didn't seem like we were doing anything wrong.  So she picked up a caterpillar, put it halfway into her mouth, and threatened to bite it in half if we didn't play with her.

Talk about shrieks.  S-1 went  ballistic.  She couldn't grab the caterpillar or swat at S-2 without risking its goo-filled life.  After yelling more than a bit and after all of us telling S-2 to spit it out, either S-1 ran to get Mom or Mom heard the ruckus and came out.

There were enraged and tearful complaints.  S-2 didn't resist when Mom took the caterpillar away from her.  Mom told her not to do that again because it wasn't fair to the caterpillar.  She also told us to play with our sister.  Since she went right back into the house, that worked about the way you'd expect.

We spend a good amount of time sternly and/or aggrievedly telling S-2 how horrible she had been.  Since that made her the center of attention of four older kids, I don't remember that she minded that.  We eventually came to just naturally include her.  I'm assuming that it was mostly that she had just become old enough to include, with her protest being a sign that she was ready.  The threat might have had something to do with it.  Not so much because of fear of retaliation (Mom had forbidden her to do it again, after all), but due to a grudging respect for her being willing to go that far and clever enough to hit us in a weak spot. 

Bad girl, S-2.  Well done

Post 9.2.1.0 Dear Son Is Allergic To Minnesota

Dear Son and I are on a road trip that will eventually take us to the wedding of one of my nieces, or one of his cousins, depending on perspective.  Yesterday was the third day.  We discovered that he is allergic to Minnesota.  Seriously.  We crossed the state line, stopped at the first rest stop, and he threw up.

He complained that throwing up was not accompanied by feeling better, which to his mind is the purpose of throwing up.  I sympathized.  He's been feeling lurgy since then.  

Today we're visiting Beloved Son and his Dear Wife.  Eldest Offspring will fly in on Thursday and the four of us will continue the road trip to Ohio, the location of the wedding.  The day after the wedding, at the latest, we'll reverse the procedure, only with less visiting.  

It hasn't been too tough so far.  We've averaged twelve hours driving per day.  We've slept on real beds.  Dear Son has forced me to do stretches and squats every time we stop, which, thanks to my bladder, is often.  So my bones may be vibrating a bit but I'm not feeling run down.  

We passed the Spam Museum last night.  According to their website, "Referred to by some meat historians as The Guggenham, Porkopolis or M.O.M.A. (Museum Of Meat-Themed Awesomeness), the SPAM^® Museum is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of spiced pork artifacts."  I can only say that there must be a SPAM^® processing plant nearby.  You can smell hot spam from the highway.  

There's a billboard near the exit saying that the Spam Museum is where Hawaiians go on vacation.  I've never been to Hawaii, but I've heard from those who have that you can get SPAM^® burgers at McDonalds, there. I've also never been to the Spam Museum, but Roadside America has a nice writeup.  There's also a shorter and less flip (and therefore less fun) writeup at Explore Minnesota.  Google shows pages of reviews and a few YouTube videos.  Not sure I'd want to watch someone else's tour, but if you're undecided as to whether or not to visit this free attraction, you might find one useful.

I'll tell you about the truck fire later.  It wasn't our truck.  We're driving in a van.  Oh, and the word of the day is uropatagium, a word I discovered here, in a review of a childrens' book centered around a pterosaur.  You know you need one of those.  

Post 9.3.0.0 Fluff Dried

[Written when we lived on M St.  Probably the first year I delivered pizzas for Professor’s Pizza.]  [[It was originally typed, with strike-outs and everything.]]

The kids washed a dead duck today.  At least I hope was dead.  It certainly was when they were finished with it.  They mentioned that it was dying, when I phoned from work, and that they were trying to warm it.  This on a day that had hit the 90s. 

“No, Kevin, it’s not cold.  This isn’t a cold day. Take my word that it’s not cold and just leave it.  I’ll look at it when I get home.”

I could tell that they were really pooling their resources and trying to find a way to help the poor, half-fledged thing.  And they had already learned something from the experience.

“Mom, I don’t know what’s wrong with the cat.  She’s just acting crazy.  I don’t know what to do.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She just keeps attacking it.”

“She’s outside?”

“No, we brought it in.”

“Oh, OK.  The cat’s fine.  That’s just the way cats are, they’re hunters.”

“Oh.  Should we shut the bedroom door, then?”

“If that’s where the duck is, yeah, that would help.”

“Hey, David!  Shut my bedroom door!”  (If she’s crazy or being bad she’s supposed to get over it or control herself.  If it’s just the way she is, well, we can think of ways around it.)

“Mom.  David says the duck's dead.”

“Just leave it where it is.  I’ll look at it when I get home.”

“He says it’s stiff.  Does that mean it’s dead for sure?”

“Yeah, it does.  Get a plastic bag and put it in the garage.  Can you do that?”

“Oh, sure.  I can do that.”  (All problems solved, now.  Kevin in charge.)  “No problem.  I’ll go do it now.”

“OK.  The next pizza’s up anyway.  I’ve got to run.  See you in a few hours.”

A few hours is more than enough time to forget a duck when you’re working two part time jobs that don’t mesh together well.  More than enough.  When I got home at 10:15 and the dinner dishes were still on the table (although the bowls that I had told Kevin to do were done) and there was an unbelievable pile of things in the bathroom with my hair dryer, of all things plugged in in Kevin’s room, I did not, at all, think of the duck.

I went into Kevin’s room where the three of them were sleeping in a sweaty one-sitter-sacked-the-next-not-yet-found mass (I’m certainly not going to tell them they have to sleep in their own beds when any fool knows there might be something looking in the windows) and I got them up.  Sort of. 

They don’t wake up well in the middle of the night.  Eric tried his hardest to pretend he couldn’t possibly wake up and therefore almost couldn’t.  Kevin got up and laid back down four times before he actually knew he was awake and that someone was talking to him.  David got up. Was told to clear the table. Wandered into his room thinking he had been told to sleep in his own bed.  Got yelled at.  Got up. Almost went back to bed.  Decided he was supposed to be doing something and started trying to pick up his pants and take the belt out of them so they could go into the laundry.

When I stuck my head in the door and frowned, he groggily yelled, “I’m doing it!  I’m doing it!”  I led him to the kitchen.  I led Eric to the bathroom.  I asked Kevin what my hair dryer was doing in his room.

“Oh.  We were using it to warm the duck.”

Now they’re back asleep and I’ve unwound and there were soggy black pinfeathers stuck all over the tub when I went in and took my shower.  And I realize that what was for me a four minute phone call was for them the whole night and a good deal else besides.

It was a test of their ingenuity / competence / resources / knowledge / independence.  It was a chance to learn and do without an adult to map it out for them (until the phone call – but that was too late anyway). 

They had been proud and excited and had worked together on it as hard as they could.  And it took up so much of their time and their thought, even after it was all over, that of course they had no time to remember other things they were supposed to do.

It must have been really something.

I can picture the collaboration, the arguing, the suggesting, the deciding.  Of course warm water, but that wasn’t working and now if we try something else, it’s wet, and that will make it cold . . .

A fluff dried dead duck.  I can picture it.  If the duck went the way of it’s recently departed brothers and sisters (who died when I was home and the kids weren’t), it was dead when they found it in the yard.  I hope so.  They said it never moved the whole time they tried to revive it.

I think I know, now why there was a suitcase in the bathroom with one of the sheets off of their bed stuffed into it.  I’m not so sure about the tape player.  Maybe that was to cheer it up.  I’m not sure I want to know.