Diary!

12-9-12

I wake up to the bots around 8am and once again, the wife gets to sleep in. How? I have no clue. But it is what it is. So I seep down the stairs and hang with the bots till 10:30, when I hear James get up. I decide its time to wake the wife so I can go get more Xmas presents for everyone solo. I feed James and then take off. I head to Okemos and find some great deals. Then to my work to look at what my Secret Santa wrote down for their potential gifts, cause I have no idea what to get them. Their answer was very generic and not much help at all! I head to Walmart and grab some pizzas for bots and a couple other things, then home.

The wife gets ready and heads to work. I start more pencils on Expendables 4 and deal with James and bots. I attempt a mini-nap on the couch but it doesn’t take, natch. The wife calls with her work schedule for the next month. I email it to the day job boss. I end up passing out around 1am.

12-10 – 12-11 are a complete blur. I worked on art, worked a shift at the day job and I cannot remember anything else.

12-12-12

I get up, do a morning show and work on Burlesque cards all day. I finish the set later that night. The wife and I get into a tiff about lack of sleep and who does more. So she falls asleep mad at me. I stay up till 3am working and then pass out.

12-13-12

I get up and put bots on the bus and then am taking care of the baby. Wife wakes up and we’re all good. After baby falls back asleep, so do we. Around noon, I wake back up and check email. I get the news that I got onto a new sketch card set that is sports related! Very excited to work on that. We get bots off the bus and head to Family Fare for groceries. We get Mcds and head home. The wife gets ready and heads to work. I give her one of her xmas presents early to soften the fight from the night before. It was a purse she pointed out to me that she wanted and I remembered. Then two more of her presents arrive via Amazon: Looney Tunes on BR and Tiny Tunes.

I watch cartoons with bots all day while sketching, and cook a cake, steak and taters for me and bots. Bots finally passes out at 8pm, I watch Argo. Baby falls asleep after that and I wait for the wife to get home, watching the Bengals beat the Eagles on Thursday Night Football. Wife gets home and we rent the unrated TED on On Demand. She ends up really liking it. She hits the bed and I join Mark and Andy on BFB podcast. I doodle while the show is going on. I end up passing out around 3am.

12-14-12

I wake up at 8:30, to bots making noise. He and the wife get ready to go to his school for a Christmas party. I feed James as they leave and we read Hobbit reviews. I update blog, record a new morning show and look up times to see the flick. The wife gets back and shows me pics of bots with Santa. I look up the news and read of a school shooting in Connetticut. As I read, there’s one child dead and I am pissed. I head to the theater and hang out for an hour early. A clerk there shows me the new XTREME 70 foot screen room, which is cool. I chat with her a bit about my desire to be employed there. I am encouraged to apply again. I go in and sit to watch The Hobbit. 45 minutes later, it starts. And I love the flick!

I emerge ready to tweet and message everyone I know saying I loved it, but the news in CT has expanded to 26 dead and everyone is freaking balls. All I can think about are my kids and that if someone did that to them, how I would fall apart. I drive home in silence, angry about the evils of the world. I stop off at Best Buy to get the Hobbit Score and use a $5.00 off coupon I got. I was gonna go to East Lansing to get my comics, but I suddenly don’t feel like it. I get home and the wife is glued to CNN about the shooting coverage. After a while, we cannot watch anymore,  so I load the bluray player into the living room and we pop in her new Looney Tunes box set. We feed and play with the kids and watch old cartoons until they pass out. The wife and I opt to hit the bed early around 8pm, but I read the first 100 pages of The Hobbit book and finally pass out around 11pm.

12-15-12

I wake up at 8am to the baby crying and bots wide awake in his room. I get em both up and do a feeding. I catch up on emails and pack up some things I have to mail. I work on some cards I have to do for a commission and then move my art doings into the living room to draw at the coffee table while bots watches cartoons. Finally around 5pm, the wife comes home and has ordered pizza. It comes as we are enjoying some AVGN on disc. We eat hearty, which my stomach regrets the rest of the night. I just cannot handle pizza anymore, despite what I read about the sauce being good for prostate cancer health. (true) Bots goes to bed around 8pm, James struggles with sleep until around 10pm. Meanwhile I read another 30 pages in The Hobbit and try to fall asleep. But thoughts of my mother and my own death jolt me out of sleepy mode, that I have to distract myself somehow. I turn on Netflix and watch the last episode of season two of Sherlock. It’s a great one! I toss and turn after that, but finally pass out around 1am.

12-16-12

I am woke up by every light in the house on at 7am. The wife says bots is awake. No shit. So I turn off everything upstairs and trot downstairs to find bots has got into my box set dvds and has em scattered all over. I get him to clean up the mess, get him breakfast and set at my comp to get work done. I update blog, do some other writing, catch up on net shit and flesh out some more drawings. I make the wife breakfast in bed and she gets up with the kids so I can head out to do some stuff. I go shopping for my secret santa at the day job. Then I hit the copy store to shrink some new artwork.

I get back home and the wife naps on the couch while I finish two commissions and start pencils on War of the Worlds cards. She takes off for work, so bots and I Watch cartoons all day. James sleeps most of the day but he gets up around 6pm and we play. He pukes on me, natch. Around 8:20, I put bots to bed and then get James to pass out by 9:30. I plan to stay up late and get artwork done. So I head down to the office and pencil all the remainder of the 15 War of the Worlds cards. I ink 5 of them by the time the wife gets home. She brings home food and we eat and catch up. I’m feeling tired so I retire to the bedroom, where I read some more of the Hobbit and pass out around 1am.

12-17-12

I wake up at 6am to the baby crying. I take him downstairs for a feeding. Then hear bots crying too! So wife takes over on bots getting dressed and I finish up with James. James passes out in his chair in our room and I play and feed with bots until the bus arrives. The wife heads to work at 10am and I get up shortly after that with James again. We hang out and I get some colors on the War of the Worlds sketch card set done.

I get bots off the bus around noon and we hang out till 6pm when the wife calls and says she’s heading to get groceries and will be home by 7. UPS comes and drops off my blank cards for the new set I am on. I shoot some questions to the editor involved and start pulling reference. Wife comes home and I make tacos for everyone. We watch the new AVGN while eating hearty. She puts bots to bed, which takes quite a while tonight for some reason. I am downstairs on James duty. Finally around 10pm, they both pass out and I get to work. I finish up the War of the Worlds cards and pack em up. I shoot invoices to the company for that set and the other set I worked on with them. I also scan the cards and submit scans to the editor there at Cult-Stuff. With all of that, I check off a lot on my TO DO list!

Around 10, I ask around if anyone is interested in doing a talkshoe reunion on a Studio Chatter. I get a few interested parties. We make plans to start at midnight. From 10-midnight, I detail pencil on Expendables 2 and start inks. Around midnight, I start the show and chat with the old gang. It feels good and its much looser than anything else I do on the BFB show. Felt kinda like old times, even though some of the major players weren’t there. We conclude around 2:20 and I pass out shortly after that.

12-18-12

I am woke up at 4am and 5:20am to our cat Hobbes howling throughout the house. This is the second night in a row where he’s doing that. Pisses me off! I wake up at 7:20 for the alarm and put bots on the bus. The bus arrives early, so I scramble to get him ready and out the door. I hit the pillows once again. At 9:15, James wakes up screaming his head off louder than normal. I get him up and fix a bah, and he chows down. We go downstairs where I update the blog and start on more pencils for Expendables 4. I loose pencil 3 pages and start tightening them up when its time to get bots off the bus. He comes inside and we hang out with the baby. Jimmy is being incredibly needy and moody today for some reason. I cook Pork Chops and Taters and the wife finally gets home a bit later than normal. She’s dead tired, so I offer to take bots to town and let her get some quiet, if the baby cooperates. She agrees.

Bots and I load into the Silver Surfer and head to East Lansing to score my comics. Inside bots is really well behaved. I’m impressed. But what impresses me even more is that at one point out of nowhere he says, “Comics.” I am taken aback. He’s never said that before. Maybe he’s picked up on me saying that.

“Yes, these are comics! Do you want one? Pick one out to read!” I say excitedly. He goes straight over and picks out a STAR WARS one. I have no idea what series it is, or who is in it, but he seemed to really want it. I am delighted to get it as the clerk is ringing it up!

We leave and get him some fries and then head to Target. Town is busy and people are honking and yelling at each other. Real holiday spirit-like, eh? The wife texts to say the baby is cranky and she has not got any sleep so far. I run into Target and get bots some cereal, new shoes and a few other things. We leave and head back home. I’m itching to go back out to another comic store for more books, but decide to wait until tomorrow, being Wednesday (new comic day) after all. The wife and I deal with a fussy baby and I sit and read older comics that I am in the process of re-reading. I suggest that perhaps the baby is teething. I turn on my light and start scanning his mouth. Sure enough we see the beginnings of the edge of a upper tooth poking through! I think the wife gets a twinge sad that her little baby is starting to grow up! The wife puts bots to bed and I deal with moody James. I finally get him to sleep and then take him upstairs. The wife comes back down for a backrub before she goes to bed. Shortly after, we hear James upset again. So she rocks him to sleep. Finally around 10:30, I head to my office to get work started. I update blog, clean up things a bit and start working on 2013 dates on my new calendar. I get a few emails from my card editor with some clarification on the new set I am working on. I spend the night doing various stuff and pulling tons of reference for the cards I gotta do. Then hit the bed around 12:30am.

12-19-12

I wake up at 7am to bots staring at me. We go downstairs after getting him dressed and he has breakfast. I put him on the bus and attempt more sleep. But I hear the baby stirring and the wife gets up cause she’s got errands to run. We all get dressed and head to the Post Office where tons of things are mailed. Then to the bank and to Denny’s for an expanded nice breakfast. I drop her off to work and then head to Hobby Lobby to get some pens and a couple hangers for the Living Room (Our living room is movie/cinema themed). I stop off at the used disc place but talk myself out of buying a few things. I’ll come back later with the wife.

At noon, I get bots off the bus and cook him a pizza. I clean my office and do the dishes and do some light inking with my new pens on Expendables 4 pages. I try out some new .02/.03 Microns and I quite like the line width. (something I am always obsessed with!) At 5pm, we head out and pick up the wife at her work. On the way I stop by the mail and in it is a letter from our old landlord! I get excited thinking its our $650 security deposit refund. However it’s a notice saying that the carpet was “too badly damaged” and needed replacing. Even though we bought a Bissell cleaner and cleaned the fuck out of it. So they took our refund and want an additional $500 to cover costs. I lose my shit. I get to work and tell the wife and she’s surprisingly calm about it. We hit the Kroger and then home. I stay up inking and then do a podcast with Mark Walters and then pass out by 2am.

12-20-12

I wake up at 7am and put bots on the bus. Then take care of Jimmy while the wife is at work. I am dead ass tired. She leaves early and takes care of errands in town and then comes home in time to relieve me of the major freak outs that both kids are doing. Thank goodness, I need a break! An old friend emails me saying he is starting to design a video game and wants to bring me on as a concept artist. I agree to some small drawings for the gig and see where it goes. I still do other Video Game design stuff as well! (yay!) I get dressed and head in early to work for the Christmas Party. Its surprisingly upbeat and fun. We exchange gifts and it works out quite well. Finally it ends and I punch in early since I am there anyway. I work my 7-4am shift and its uneventful. I drive home in the snow dead tired and pass out by 4:30.

12-21-12

Welcome to the end of the world!! I get up at 7am to put bots on the bus. I am sooooo fucking tired! But thankfully James lets me sleep in till 9:30 until he gets me up. After a feeding, I nap for another 30-40 minutes on the couch until Bots’ bus arrives. Outside it is snowing real bad, winds are high and its no doubt gonna freeze. I text Cody’s mom to see if they still want to try for the drive this weekend. She ain’t into it because their car might not handle well. I got 4 wheel drive, but tires are a tad worn down. Plus during the first major storm, people drive stupid and get into wrecks. I leave it up to her and she decides its safer to maybe try another date. So we re-plan for Jan. 4^th weekend. I say that I am gonna mail out his Christmas presents via UPS when Kelly gets home. So I feed James again, text with my parents and then pack up his presents for mailing. I feel bad that this happened, but if we move the date to Jan 4^th, we’ll have more time together anyway. So I guess that’s good.

The wife is late getting home and I am getting anxious about her getting here so I can mail out the presents on time. She gets home with my xmas present: A Retron 3 system that plays old NES, SNES and Genesis games. Took our last $50 for it. I felt honored. I went out and shipped Cody’s presents and hit the grocery store. Now that we didn’t have to spend the gas to an hour out of town to get him twice, that frees that up a bit. I get back and we play some old NES games and it brings back the memories. She ends up putting the kids to bed and I am up playing Metroid till 1am. I pass out after that.

12-22-12

I wake up at 9:30, the wife let me sleep in (YAY!). Obviously the world did not end, so that’s a good thing, eh? Or else I slept through the apocalypse and now my life is an illusion. (Great. I just fucked my mind up!) I get up and we all head out to sell some stuff and get some more cheap NES games and a controller. Bots is moody the whole morning and I lose my patience with him about it. We get some games, replacement controllers and head back home. We play some rounds of Family Feud and other games. The wife wants to go see Skyfall again as we have a free ticket still. But opts to stay home for a nap instead. I watch the kids and keep bots out of trouble. Finally around 7:30, the wife gets back up as I am watching a Ric Flair documentary on Netflix. She puts the kids to bed and we play and beat TMNT 2: The Arcade Game. Its been 22 years since I last played it. Man my hands and fingers are numb after button mashing! An old co-worker texts me to say he’s returning to the job. We chat a bit. I hit the bed around 12:30am finishing my Ric Flair doc on Netflix and finally passing out. All day I am moody because I can’t get the fact out of my head that 12 years ago today, Mom died.