Letters to Holly

Friday, May 13

A New Tactic


The doctor said our deputy can sleep through the night easier if we fill him up before bedtime with food. She thinks we're underfeeding him for his size. Agewise, we're providing the right amounts, but he's taller than average and needs more eats. She said he won't be able to finish the food we provide, but he'll learn to take in more. That will either power him through more play and exhaust him or he'll fall into a food coma.

Last night was horrible. Your Sister went to a county budget meeting (and spoke before a crowd of nearly 500) and handed him to me as I returned from work. He had just taken a long nap, scotching our usual sleep routine. I fed him, bathed him, read to him, and gave him milk. He refused to sleep. I removed his sleep sac in case he was too warm. Still wouldn't sleep. Gave him Orajel in case he was teething. Nothing. Gave him a side of sweet potato to fill him up. Nothing. gave him thawed milk to fill him up. NOTHING. This was now 90 minutes beyond his normal bedtime and haggard and screaming. I thought out loud that I wished we could try the whole night over again. And I realized we could. Except for supper, we repeated everything to see if he'd conk out. Before I could dress him after a bath, she came back home and relieved me. I was exhausted. That was three straight hours of intense baby time.

I repeat our parenting mantra: One and fucking done.

+  +  +

I sent my last projects to the printer: a portfolio spine and copies of the monster comic last page. I'll pick them up tomorrow and buy stands for the eMMA comic. That will be very close to it for convention preparation. 

+  +  +  

The majority of the sweet potato plants I ordered through the mail (from a very reputable seed company) are dead. I shan't do that again.

Picture of the Day
He'll grow into it.

Thursday, May 12

A Bad Night for Doom

Yeah, dinner didn't go so well last night. Your Sister liked it. Not I.

She went to yoga, and I put the sidekick down. She returned with a notice of free classes this weekend at the club, including some faux fighting exercise classes I've been curious about. I'm going to at least one of them; two of my high school buddies are certified instructors in a type of Body Combat/Flow/Something Something.

I occasionally try side kicks to see if I've retained anything from my very brief Te Kwon Do and Aikido classes, and I think I can walk into an introductory class and keep up. If nothing else, I'll use this and the recent gardening and lawn mowing to prepare me for running again. I'm keen on the idea of muscle confusion lately; last year's race was a failure because I only ran.

Your Mom dropped off bags of old race souvenir shirts, and I picked out a dozen or so to wear in the yard. She came by the house to watch The Boy while Your Sis talked to the local priest about baptizing him. I've so far heard no details. Maybe we can make him muy macho if we dip him in gasoline.

I printed out my table display signs this morning. We're inching ever closer.

Picture of the Day
There may not be anyone in there.

Wednesday, May 11

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

I discovered Monday that the Asheville Ingles cleaned their bulletin board over the weekend, ripping down all the promo materials including my flyer. I put up that flyer just last week after being told they clean the board at the beginning of the month. This is why I keep a stash in the car, and I put up another one that day. Earlier that day, I put one up at our local Ingles after removing an outdated poster to make space. I felt hinkey about that, but that poster was a) outdated; and b) huge. I have become a ruthless promoter of my material. I also added sample face cards to my website to hype them for the convention.

I finally got a press release from the convention organizers and added quotes and info for my comics. I'll send it to the local paper today. They didn't use the one I sent last year, but my material was used by Asheville papers.

+  +  +

The sidekick is full-on crawling now, blazing across the floors with surprising speed. He may also be teething again.

Picture of the Day
I'm officially addicted to astronaut artwork.


Monday, May 9

Seeds Are Planted

When Your Sister got back from Asheville, she made the following offer: She would do full baby duty for the rest of the day, and I could skedaddle. She specifically mentioned my hope to work on the garden and suggested I tackle it when she got home. I deferred, citing the heat, and said I'd do it after we made our grocery run.

And I did. I went out about five and got back in around 7:30. Between then, I planted the new tomato, squash, and sweet potato seedlings. I can't tell the difference between sprouts from the seeds I planted last month and weeds. Also, I suspect I have wild sprouts from last year's garden, including corn shoots. It doesn't look like the celery came up at all, so I retrenched that row and planted snow pea seeds (which, I think, are dehydrated peas). I added a second row for them between the old celery row and my original tomato seed rows.

I squeezed another row of sweet potatoes between my plantings from last week and the garden fence. Potatoes are supposed to be planted in hills so the tubers will have soft ground to grow in. Instead of doing that for this new batch, I dug deep holes and refilled them with loose soil and planted the new potato sprouts in them.

To avoid the confusion between what I wanted to grow and what grew voluntarily, I snapped off sections of dowels rods (used long ago to stake tomato vines) and stabbed them in the dirt next to what I just planted. I also ran string above the pea trenches to distinguish them from the creeping ground cover. They will need trellises as the vines sprawl, and I may buy cheap garden trim fencing to keep them off the ground. I haven't grown them before. When the squash vines die off in late summer, I'll plant zucchini and pumpkin.

+  +  +

I got my convention seating chart this morning -- finally -- and I am relieved both to confirm my table space and the location.


This is the first floor of Pack Place. The blue circle is where I was last year. While it's convenient to the courtyard and the bathrooms {the end of the gray hallway), it was separate from the foot traffic. The bathrooms may have been the lone reason why people shuffled toward us. The red circle is where I am this year, smack dab in the middle of what's traditionally called Artists Alley, the coagulation of folks selling sketches or comics. We're separate from the vendors selling back issues or collectibles (they're almost all upstairs), and I'm near another entrance, meaning I'll see a decent amount of peds xing from those not seeking us minicomic folks.That entrance will be handy when I load and unload my car.