Piling On

And now he has diaper rash.

It really should be called "diaper raw," because it's a sunburn in his pants. The common zinc oxide creams hurt him, and my almost-brilliant notion of aloe did no better. The daycare uses A&D which is mostly petroleum, and we've moved to that at home. Your Sis had me run out last night for a stronger ointment, but virtually all of them have zinc oxide. I went with the old-fashioned A&D (I hadn't heard of it before this week), and it does seem to help the most. We also started baking-soda baths.

We called the local nurse hotline. We were told to try an athlete's foot cream under the possibility that this is fungal. Your Sister wondered if this might be a yeast infection brought on by the antibiotics for his ears, and the doctor had in fact checked his mouth for thrush Monday at the follow-up. The soda baths were confirmed as a remedy, and it was suggested we give him as many as four a day. It was also advised that we skip the wipes for now and wash him off in the tub to clean him.

He was miserable for the last two days, but was almost normal this morning. The irritation is still there, but he's not as sensitive to a dirty diaper. We know the daycare folks have seen everything, and we trust their recommendations. I hope he's getting all the maladies out of his system before we go to Atlanta.

Picture of the Day
This behemoth towers over Asheville. I took this outside the Blue Spiral art gallery Wednesday.

Workload

Your Sister crashed into sleep early last night, driven to comaville by a weekend of class preparation and two days of student wrangling. Also she was frustrated by a lack of empathy from fellow teachers when she mentioned that she turned down a request to mentor a new teacher. They countered by citing their own workload.

I think they meant to be encouraging to the teacher fresh from maternity leave. Instead they sounded competitive, as if she were slacking off. That rankled Your Sis. I reminded her that these were two teachers who very recently applied for positions outside the department. They were clearly hoping to escape some job obligations as well. They also refused to take the department chair job, letting it fall by default to her. They don't take on all the potential responsibilities. Neither should she. She was asked to mentor a new PE teacher, not someone in her department or even close by her classroom. She hasn't coached a team in five years. How could she mentor that position?

After putting down the sidekick, she shuffled into the TV room where I had Little House on the Prairie waiting for her. She plopped on the couch and vegged. She thinks her work pressure will ease off as the semester moves forward under its own power. That's encouraging. I slapped together dinner to the chirping of Melissa Gilbert.

Kathy and Travis asked that I draw a picture of their eldest daughter as Spider-Girl, and I sketched that out as the missus slept.My Mom's fried also asked that I draw her grandson based on a school photo.

Picture of the Day
This DragonCon beard is getting scraggly.

Rage. Mow. Rage. Yank.

You know that my job can rub me the wrong way. Monday was especially bad. Something minor -- and I could admit even then that it was minor -- got under my cuticles, and I was ready to walk. The sidekick shuts down that line of thinking pretty quick, much quicker than I might have entertained it.

When I got home, I handed him off to Your Sister and explained that the weather made mowing the yard too convenient to put off. Also, I needed to burn off the frustration. I only mowed the front yard. The backyard would take too long, and I didn't want to force Your Sis to do the boy's entire downtime herself. I figured I could shave the yard and get back inside to bathe him. And I did. I timed it just right.

The yard really did need the mow. My neighbor hires a crew to manicure his lawn to the height of a golf green, and mine looks like it belongs to a meth lab by comparison. As soon as his yard is cut, I feel that tractor beam of friendly competitive home ownership.

It got cut, and I got inside. The boy got bathed. I fed him his bedtime snack and turned on the oven to warm for supper. When Your Sis put him to bed, I prepped the wings. The oven temperature alarm went off, and I shoved the food inside and hit the timer for the usual 20 minutes (wings bake for 20 minutes before I smother them in sauce and bake for another 20 minutes). I added two minutes and ran outside to slip on the waiting yard shoes to weed the sweet potatoes.

Those vines have been covered in weeds and grass for weeks, and I could never quite get to them. That ate at me since I first noticed it, and I knew I had the lingering anger to power through it in record time. But I wanted to get back in before the first timer went off. And again I did. I got back inside with three minutes left, so I would have returned with just one minutes to go before I added the sauce. I did that, showered, and called My Mom to report on the sidekick's follow-up appointment yesterday morning. The second timer gave me an excuse to get off the phone and yank Your Sis away from her desk; she needed a dinner break amid the schoolwork.

She ate as we caught up on the day. Her first day in front of kids was fine, but she has hours and hours between bathroom breaks, and there's still some sort of organization to do, requiring time at her desk. I draw. I surf online. I clean up.

I did burn it all out of me and eventually figured out how the sparking event could actually be turned in my favor. I call that a minor victory.

Picture of the Day
That was my face as I mowed. (Which one? ALL OF THEM.)

Make That Bird

We took a road trip to Greenville to see the Rollergirls. The home team is just starting, and their facilities are small. It's a county rec center, and the entire game -- bout, benches, audience, ticket booth -- was inside a hockey rink enclosure. You know the set-up the Asheville Civic Center uses for winter ice skating? We were in that in Greenville. Maybe three hundred people were in attendance, but I'm sure our team went through the same dues-paying foundation building.

I got to talk finally to my contest liaison, and she apologized for what happened with my logo design. I said I still consider the logo 90% my design (she agreed), and I still get to see it in action and on the streets. I told her I've worked for years in jobs where my artwork goes through committees. She seemed relieved.

Because this was the county pavilion, it's food bar catered to kids. No beer. We went to the afterparty to get our beer, and it was a karaoke party for the local team. Our team left early to drive back home, and we didn't stick around either. I did get to see four rollergirls table dance to Def Leppard, so I feel like I got my birthday party.

It was also the birthday of one of our rollergirls, and I congratulated her after the bout. Funny trivia: If you wanted to find anyone from the two teams in intermission or after the bouts, they were outside the pavilion smoking. How can they compete doing that?

Oh, and Your Sister gave me a six-pack of money to spend on the road trip.

A six-pack of money!

I spent Sunday fixing my DragonCon bird prop. My character, Shipwreck, has a green bird, and the one I bought in the Outer Banks is red.

It just wasn't close enough for my liking. I spent some lunch breaks buying glues and feathers and paints and devoted Sunday to my bird upgrade.

I peeled the feathers off the bird and arranged them in a vertical exploded fashion so I could see how many and in what arrangement I'd need to recreate with my new feathers.

But my new feathers were larger and fluffier -- more like duster feathers -- than the flat plastic originals. I could trim and cut, but the half-feathers fell apart. My bird would be fluffier. I couldn't avoid it.

The real trick was figuring how to apply them. The Elmer's glue I bought wouldn't adhere to the Styrofoam frame. By studying how the larger original feathers were attached, I saw that they were glued together and then glued to the bird. I was surprised the quills weren't jammed into the Styrofoam, but I decided to follow their method. I hot glued them together, and that was very successful. But applying hot glue to the frame was a problem because the hot glue ate into the frame. Eventually I tried rubber cement in the classic dry-to-dry method. That worked fine.

After periods of gluing feathers and frame and allowing them to dry before combining, I had a fully feathered bird.

The pictures make it look much less shaggy than it really is. It looks like it's molting. But it's now the proper colors.

I can trim and shape the feathers to smooth it out. That will be easy work after the experimentation of glues and paint. (Paint didn't work. I would need the plastic aerosol paint that you use for swing sets and metal benches. That would make the bird heavy and lacquered.)

Your Sister spent a lot of time this preparing her classroom for today's grand opening of the fall semester. I think she overplans, but I understand wanting to direct momentum.

Easing Off the Meds

Following a few days of good spirits and sleep habits, we're gonna rein in the sidekick's drugs. He'll stay on the antibiotics. I mean, we're not Jenny McCarthy. But the ibuprofen and ear drops go back on the shelf. The daycare folks were advised to use the drops only if he seems uncomfortable. I slept the entire night last night -- no ear-drop alarms, no baby rousing -- and I feel like I could wrestle the ears off a whatever the hell that was. (Gundark. Yeah, but what is that? It's in the comics. THAT'S NOT CANON! Indoor voice, indoor voice.)

Your Sister's first day back went well, she thinks. The school is still settling, but she and the other English teachers got an early start on their schemes over the past few weeks. There's still the matter of what to do with some summer reading lists; a departed teacher assigned Wuthering Heights, and no one wants to teach it.

Our mornings now have definite shifts. She gets up early with him, and I bat cleanup at 7. She dresses, caffeinates, and walks to work. I feed the boy, change him, and pack for the commute. I realize I'm gonna have to wake up much earlier to tackle the next comic. Also, we'll need to turn the TV off and work evenings to stay ahead of our workloads, and I'm fine with that. We can goof off on weekends. Also also, I need to get to running.

As DragonCon approaches, all I have left to do for my costume is to take apart the parrot toy and replace his red feathers with green and yellow. I bought feathers and glue to do this. I tried to paint over the plastic originals, but the acrylic paint wouldn't adhere, and getting plastic pant would make him heavy for my shoulder. I prefer the feather route.

Your Sister realized shortly after her haircut that it now matches that of the character she's dressing as for the con. The haircut is growing on me. It was this length if not shorter when we started dating, and I remember seeing her with such short hair way back when we were still just buddies. She and my ex came by my office to show off her new do. It was a test: Would the guy notice a new haircut. They might have skunked a lesser man, but I grew up with many female friends and learned to stay vigilant.

At Tuesday's picnic and last night's gardening, I am all ate up by bugs. They are ravenous. In fact, ravens wouldn't leave these many marks. 

Addendum: During the sidekick's bath, an NPR program on Wagner played a piece of the Star Wars score, and he lit up. A momentous moment.

Picture of the Day
It's nice to be nice.

A World of Difference

He was almost bubbly when I picked him up from daycare. He laughed all the way home and may have bopped along to my iPod (Istanbul Not Constantinople specifically). He was in great spirits when he got home, and he crashed hard at bedtime. We put drops in his ears before our bedtime, and he slept until 5:30. The stronger medicine has definitely taken hold. We were practically happy-drunk from relief during his supper. Your Sister remains concerned about how the mornings will go as we trade him off and she leaves for school. I think we'll be fine.

Travis called me last night to invite me to the Rollergirls' away game in nearby Taylors for my birthday. No matter how well the night goes, it can't make me happier than being invited out by a guy friend for my birthday. That has never happened.

Picture of the Day
Here's the first image of next year's Superman movie. I'm getting burned out on the crosshatch costume texture for superheroes, but that S symbol is a nice throwback.

A Time of Suffering

This weekend was horrible.

The sidekick continued to tumble after a few steps, and he started these half-hour throat-shredding screaming fits, often in the dead of night. What we thought was the hallelujah rash turned out to be a reaction to amoxicillin, and he wasn't showing any improvement. Sunday morning, Your Sister officially had it and made an appointment that morning for the doctor. She drove like the devil to get to Hendersonville.

We were told his ears looked terrible and he needed stronger medication. He got a shot of rocephin and new prescription for cefdinir (a lost Lord of the Rings character, we think) and more ear drops. We took turns last night getting up every two hours to flood his ears with the drops and stave off the pain. He slept through almost all of it. But we are the walking dead.

Your Sis and I are on eggshells with each other as we are frazzled, but we are grateful to the doctor for assuring us that we did exactly the right thing by making a new appointment based on his unusual behavior. While the initial prescription was for ten days, we couldn't wait that long for the first sign of improvement. He was miserable. We were miserable. We became impatient parents, and it paid off.

After some redundant conversations about his medicine with the daycare staff, he shocked us all by going with the employees with no fuss or tears. Not a sound. I think he may have crossed over. We really hope to sleep through the night tonight.

Picture of the Day
Chez Debacles is a testy house.

A Long Night

The boy's fever spikes and wanes. He got a sponge bath in the dead of night and went to bed at 5 am. Your Sister had him most of the night, and I came in at the very end to put him to sleep. She's the starting pitcher, working the majority of innings with a variety of pitches, and I'm the closer. I throw only fastballs and work for a tenth of the time. It's not fair, but it works. If he's not better by tomorrow morning, we take him back to the doctor for stronger medicine. His nose seems cleaner at least. I wonder if I myself have some of this ear infection. I can hear some popping in my right ear. My won crud is vanishing, thanks to a cocktail of Quils and cough drops.

This followed an evening that left me walking on air, drunk on my awesomeness, following the Lions Club speech. You can read about it here.

Picture of the Day
The first image of Anne Hathaway from next year's Batman movie was released today. Hard to tell what she's wearing. At least it's black. 

Diagnosis

It's an ear infection. He saw a doctor yesterday and was prescribed drops of amoxicillin, benzocaine, and antipyrine. His fever is down to a manageable level, and all the medicine helps him sleep. As does mine. I took NyQuil after a hot soak to get through the night. It worked. I feel better than yesterday, but my throat is tight. My speech is tonight, and I am armed with green tea.

The speech is 17 pages double spaced, and I think that will get me through 20 minutes as requested. Still don't know what kind of crowd to expect. I'm taking a sample of comics as examples of singles, trades, etc. I picked expendable copies as I expect they'll either be mangled or taken home by someone who thinks they're free samples.

Addendum:  I just saw on their website that their last two speakers for their monthly meetings canceled. I shall be their hero. And they had 12 people attend last month. I can handle that audience. I've performed in front of four people and other times, 600. And I have my script in front of me this time.

Picture of the Day
Gather 'round, everyone. Let's dissect comics.

Sick Leave

The boy's fever and nose continue unabated. I think the fever spiked last night, and hope he'll be over this by the weekend. I'm at the office today, and Your Mom and Sis are watching him today. Becoming a parent has not made me less disgusted by sick babies, but my empathy helps me clean him up and comfort him. I'm throwing back Vitamin C to fend off the bug. My Lions Club speech is tomorrow, and the text is virtually finished.

Picture of the Day
USAToday broke the news yesterday that Marvel will put a mixed-race teen under the Spider mask. This will take place in an alternate-universe title, but the reaction has been as sweeping as you might expect. The only question I have is how he can embody the "great power/great responsibility" credo that makes Spidey so good a read.

Quick Update

The sidekick has run just enough of a fever that the daycare won't take him, and I've been home Monday and today. He is flush with energy and snot, making him literally a running nose. By happenstance, this is a downtime in my office load, so I'm not falling behind. Your Sis and Parents are at her school reassembling her classroom. Also she might find out what classes she's teaching today. Maybe. If he's still sick tomorrow, Your Mom may have to watch him. This is the worst time for him to be sick. Your Sis can't get a substitute teacher to set up a classroom.

On Sunday morning, I yanked the rest of the potato plants (and their meager yield) and planted the next round of squash plants. And then it rained for nine hours. That should spark the seeds.

So ... Yeah

The sidekick is a walking bruise. As he plays at walking faster and longer, he falls a lot. He comes home from daycare with new bruises daily. I fret that we'll get a call from social services.

As the school year approaches, we have to redo the household budget and plan for interrupted nights. He's able to sleep through the night again, but there are times he rouses and chirps before going under again. We're trying to encourage this ability, and we're able to distinguish noises to determine when he really needs attention.

I had one of those weeks that delivers a series of stomach punches. There wasn't one thing that alone was so distressing, but the number of them left me dazed and unsettled. Matters have stabilized as the week's progressed, and I'm again left confused if I handled each haymaker properly with my default, maddening patience or if I could have defrayed some frustrations by going volcanic. That option becomes so very tempting, if for no other reason than its novelty. It doesn't help that I too carefully pick my battles. Ultimately I pick no battles. I'm left then unsure what I'm more frustrated by: the situation or my reaction to it.

Picture of the Day
I cook angry!

Publicity Tour

Out of the blue, the local Lions Club contacted Chez Debacles to ask if I would speak to them at their next monthly dinner. They saw my article in the paper and were apparently curious enough about making comics and comics in general that I seemed like a good idea for a dinner speaker.

(Aside of Insecurity: I suspect they desperately needed a speaker. The dinner is next week.)

I was told to prepare to speak for 15-20 minutes and hold a QnA session afterward. Easy enough. I'll talk about comics in general and their current pop-culture dominance. As I expect an older audiences, I'll toss in references to mid-century Superman radio dramas and Scrooge McDuck comics.Also, Captain America for the 'contemporary relevance' points.

This is certainly nothing that I expected in the wake of the article. But if I'm to be Local Comic Book Guy, this I can do. My Manager, Your Sister is giddy. We're working on names for this publicity tour. Like the Superlative Hyperbole Tour. Or the Inflated Sense of Importance Tour.

Picture of the Day
Super Macho Road Trip!

Cheat To Win

no mic for me yet. i've got a test and presentation Friday so I probably won't be able to join you this week yet. but i'll find you. i'm stuck in new orleans rescuing the purple power thing ontop of the roof with snipers on every other roof. yes, i'm stuck at mission #2.

I had to use online walkthroughs just this weekend to get me past a monster you'll encounter in a month or so. I like the guides found on this site.

EDIT: I played an Infamous2 demo at Best Buy to kill lunch, and it seemed to be the mission you're in. Aim low and blast the balconies and towers. The folks will fall and die. Also, those snipers fire once and then cower. You might have luck charging at them and wailing away with the tuning fork.

Don't worry about a mic for now. Let me figure out how to chat first.

A daylong rain kept me out of the garden. No taters yet. Someone Twittered my Bossk Office, and it went kinda huge yesterday. And a lot of those visitors went to the Doom Blog.

Yesterday was Your Sister's last full day at home with the sidekick, and she's got the sadness. Looks now like she'll have just one week to prepare as many as four distinct classes. More sadness.

Picture of the Day
Annie Lennox in her solo career prime.

I'm not sayin'. I'm just sayin'.

Melting, Melting.

The twin influences of home ownership dignity and property values demanded that I mow the lawn this weekend despite temperatures ranging into the millions. It was murder. I know I lost weight by the gallon. I had to take the weed-eater to the garden again, and, had the plants been further apart, I would have used the lawnmower. I hope to yank up potatoes today and ready the soil for planting more squash. The first batch of vines was pretty much a failure.

Instead of taking, say, a 13-year-old neighbor to see Captain America, I took Your Sister. We loved it. Loved it. It's a fun adventure film with great one-liners. I wrote about it in the new Bossk Office. It made me want to see Thor immediately. Next year looks to be huge for comic movies. Our babysitter is the sister to my movie-buddy, and I let her know I could take him within a few weeks if he needed a ride.

I stopped in at the local comic store and talked to the store owner about our newspaper page. He's gotten some business out of it and sold some of my books.

I've started shopping for PS3 mics and figuring out how to activate the chat option. I think it's done through the PS Home feature. It seems to be a mild version of Second Life. You can find me as heygregory on the PS servers. Currently I play around 11 pm as Your Sister begins her mysterious nighttime rituals. I'm probably 2 hours away from finishing Infamous2. I'm playing as a hero, and I'll immediately restart it as a villain so I can target street performers.

Picture of the Day
A photo from this weekend's Comicon.

Star Wars Blu-Ray Preview

We'll get the first three films for sure, probably not the prequels.

System Addendum

I popped into Gamestop during lunch and spotted this, a Wii controller designed like the XBox/PS3 versions:

I suppose this means you needn't disqualify Wii as an option. However, this contraption looks flimsy, and I can't vouch for the number of games it might work with. I'd still look to the other systems.

A used PS3 starts at $249; a used XBox runs $149. Depending on what comparable video services you get through your laptop, the PS3 price may be worth it.

Busted

"Oh, just traipse down to Blockbuster and rent a game system."

Or maybe you live in a town, as I do, that just lost its Blockbuster. I'm saddened. I relied on the Buster of Blocks weekly in my high-school days (for movies my parents would/will never approve), and it served me well through my 20s and even after I married into your family. We hadn't stepped foot in our local store in maybe two years as we took advantage of the satellite dish's recorder and on-demand movie service, but still, it was a comforting presence. If the internets collapsed, we could always rent a DVD. No longer.

Just last week, I bought my first DVD in a year. Barnes & Noble had a Criterion DVD sale, and I got a copy of Naked Lunch for $20. I talked it up back in January. I specifically got it for the director/actor commentary, and it may be months before I can crack it open. It'll play in the background as I work on the next comic.

And on my lunch break, I noticed the Tunnel Road Blockbuster is also closed.

Hey, if there's a GameStop in town, you might be able to buy a used system for a song. They can also hook you up with all the equipment you might need.

Picture of the Day
Here's Entertainment Weekly's first look at the new Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy. They look the part, gotta say. Not sure we need another origin retelling for Spidey though.

Let's Talk Game Systems

If you're looking for a game system to build eye-hand coordination, X-Box or PlayStation are your options. The Nintendo Wii is a motion controller with some buttons. It's a wand. Both X-Box and PlayStation offer body-motion control systems, but they also have the multi-button controllers too.

There are 12 buttons and two control sticks on their current controllers. You can swivel the sticks with your thumbs, and they also depress as a control option. There are wireless versions that provide vibrating feedback which parallels game action. The controllers recharge via USB connections to the systems. Here, the systems are equal.

So let's say you buy the system I have, the PS3. In addition to the eye-hand development, the system will connect online to allow Internet browsing and Netflix streaming. The PS3 is designed to be an all-in-one, providing photo, audio, and video playback on your TV. You can jack your laptop to it and stream your files. It's swank.

But to take advantage of the eye/hand development, you'll need to pick the big games, the biggest franchises in a variety of genres: sports, first-person shootes, role-playing, etc.

I recommend three games right now: Red Dead Redemption (a cowboy game), Uncharted 2 (an Indiana Jones adventure type, and I recommend this one for the humor and variety) and InFamous2 (a superhero game). These games make you use as many as four buttons at one time, meaning your thumbs and index fingers will be in play in various combinations within seconds of each other. This builds up your skills the most.

Almost any game offers a control tutorial to get you started so you could walk into any game with no previous controller experience and be fine. You'll go from random button-mashing to specific finger combinations within minutes, and you won't even look at your hands within half an hour. We had fun with Katamari Damacy, and that game also offers multi-button control but not on the split-second control change like the three games I mentioned above. You can download free demos through the PS3 and rent games from local outlets including, probably, the closest grocery store.

So, you gots options. Let's start from here.

+  +  +

The boy is back at daycare, and his extended time away did him no favors. He was quiet and nervous as we walked in the door and a crying wreck before I left. It's not easy, but I think I honestly can weather this better than Your Sister. She's still new at leaving him, and she hasn't dropped him off at daycare. She's at work today for a full-day school meeting.

Picture of the Day
My Buddy.
My Buddy.
My Buddy and me!

We Said No. No, We Said.

The boy has taken a decidedly obstinate turn, and we're playing the heavies. As a symptom of his daycare experience, he know think everything of interest can be grabbed and clutched. Getting a valuable item back from him is like yanking it from a lion's jaw, and he melts down when it's taken away. We try to distract him by pointing out the half-dozen geegaws he can play with, but the shrieking continues. This is pouting, and I'll only tolerate the silent version. Shrieking is verboten. Your Sister administered her first spanking last night when he stood up in the tub. I think I spanked him some months back to shock him out of a crying fit.

I missed the bath smack as I was watching Transformers 3, a film that exists for one technically astounding siege of Chicago that lasts one hour. Unfortunately, you have to sit through almost 90 minutes of inexcusable mugging and mindless plots to get there. The kid liked it, and I might have a movie date for Captain America. There's a cool revision of the Apollo moon missions involving talking robots, and I wondered what the Apollo astronauts might think of this. About an hour later, onto the screen walks Buzz Aldrin, the second moon walker. Good for him for getting a movie paycheck and a shout-out from Optimus Prime. That may have done more for NASA's cool factor than the last three shuttle launches.

Your Sis took the sidekick back to the doctor to confirm the hallelujah rash is just that. And he did. This means she can go back to daycare. Also, he isn't going to keel over at any moment, which is also good.

My eyes feel better, not so tender at the periphery. My stomach is a ruin after two consecutive nights of event food.

Picture of the Day
We're Facebook famous in a unidentified, regional, sport-specific manner. I mentioned derby to the movie buddy, and he said he was dying to go. I want to encourage his interest, but I don't want to expand our partnership much farther. I can be his friend, but I can't be his best friend.