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Can’t Be Too Careful

Aug16
by on August 16, 2013 at 3:40 pm
Chapter:

I was inspired by all of the kind words of the commenters recently, and dredged up some energy to get this page put together.

I’m still out here, but I’ve had a few shakeups.  I hadn’t been feeling well for a while after the last page, and I’m pretty sure it was because my right kidney wasn’t functioning properly. I found out I was right at the end of May, when I was hammered with a massive kidney stone attack that put me in the hospital for the better part of a week.  If you haven’t had a kidney stone, you don’t want one. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life, including the pain from my neck. They got me stable, but determined that the 1.5cm stone wasn’t going to pass on its own, so the doctor had to go after it with a laser and chop it up. That, and all of the recovery, took all of June’s energy.

Then, in August, came the laser surgery on my eyes for the incipient glaucoma that was starting to rear its ugly head.  That took a few more weeks — first a consultation, then one eye, then the other.  I had reasonable energy, but my eyes hurt from having little holes zapped in the iris to prevent pressure buildup. The right eye still aches a little, but I think it actually improved my vision. The creeping glaucoma was causing very slight blurring, which seems to be gone now.

I’ve had three kicks in the pants in the past few days to get the comic back on track. First, the Collective of Heroes, in which I was an honor roll member, restructured their site.  I got a very nice email saying that since my comic wasn’t updating regularly, they had to take me off the honor roll. Of course, if I get back to updating, they’ll put me back on, so I thanked them politely and pounded my forehead on the table for a while.  Second, I got some wonderful comments from some very dedicated fans, who sent me good energy and thoughts.  I’m pretty sure that good energy made the difference. Third, and probably the saddest for me was that I missed Jenny Everywhere Day! Arrrrgh…

*Sigh…*  Let’s see if I can take a stab at getting this comic back on track.

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STRIPPED! And some news…

Apr01
by on April 1, 2014 at 2:01 pm
Posted In: Blog

Hi, everyone. NO, I’m NOT dead.  I’m deep in the throes of creative block, and apologize for my absence and the lack of updates. I hate to use the “H” word, but maybe a hiatus is exactly what this is.  Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, is named Howard, it’s probably a duck-like object. I didn’t WANT to go on hiatus, but as Mick Jagger said, you can’t always get what you want.  Last year, two bouts of kidney stones (one from each kidney, one of them mistaken for a moon but was really a space station) and laser surgery on my eyes for incipient glaucoma really drained me physically and emotionally. Add my “normal” chronic pain, which has been worse lately than usual, and you have a spoon-sucking vortex of mind-numbing malaise.  The upshot?  I’ve got more art for a couple of pages that I’ve been staring at numbly, occasionally doing some work on it, but it’s really got me down.  But I haven’t given up. I want to tell this story, and will tell it, when I’m able. Bear with me.

On a happier note, I backed a Kickstarter program a while back for a documentary on the origin of comic strips, leading into the modern phenomenon of webcomics and indie comic publishing. It’s the film STRIPPED!, directed by Dave Kellett and Frederick Schroeder.  Because I’m a backer, I got my digital copy of the film a couple of weeks ago. Let me just say this is the BEST film about comics I’ve ever seen in my life. I was teary-eyed several times during the film, partly because I’m one of those people (though I’m not in the film), and I know many of them personally. I’m beyond proud to be part of the comicker community, and if anything, this film is helping kick me back into gear and creating again. You can get the film online from iTunes or in multiple physical formats. They’re trying to get it to #1 on iTunes for TODAY, April 1, and that’s not an April Fool’s joke. Go check it out and get it on iTunes or another format — you’ll enjoy it!

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Everybody Must Get Stoned…

Sep24
by on September 24, 2013 at 10:23 am
Posted In: Blog

Posting on this blog, much less comic pages, have been a bit thin this year.  To a degree, I’m disappointed with myself. I should be months further along in the storyline, and should be talking more about interesting and useful things.  But I’ve been a bit sidetracked, and my energy level is not where it needs to be in order to produce.

Right now, I’m nearing the end of my second bout of kidney stones in the past six months.  I had the first bout at the end of May, going into June. I suffered screaming pain (and projectile vomiting) due to a 1.5cm stone in my right kidney. They had me in the hospital for the better part of a week, just stabilizing me so the doctor could go in and zap it into tiny fragments with a laser.  All told, it was a month-long struggle against the feeling that you’re trying to pee out a jagged, red-hot meteor that doesn’t want to go. This isn’t just pain, it’s Spinal Tap pain — on a scale of one to ten, it goes to eleven.

But wait, there’s more! On Friday the 13th (unlucky? For sure!), I was BACK in the ER with that same gnawing, piercing, wrenching agony…but this time, on the LEFT side.  Sure enough, a CAT scan showed a 5mm stone in the left kidney.  A lot smaller, but still enough to have me screaming on a hospital bed until they’d done enough tests to give me morphine. I was back at the urologist’s office, and I’m once again scheduled for the stone to get zapped on Wednesday.

You’ve heard about living from paycheck to paycheck. Some of you might even be doing it. I don’t use the paycheck to paycheck metaphor to describe how I’ve been living. Instead, I say I’ve been living from “spoon to spoon”.  A wonderful blogger named Christine Miserandino posted how she explained a disabled person’s energy level to a friend by giving her a handful of spoons, and asking her to plan her day, each task “costing her a spoon”.  She had a limited number of them, and if she was out of spoons, she couldn’t do anything more.  It’s the most poignant description of how I live, I adopted it to describe how I feel at any given time.  Right now, as soon as I earn a spoon, I barely have time to register that it’s in my hand before it is snatched away again, spent as fast as I gain them.

I simply do not have the “spoons” to do more than I have been.  I don’t like it. It makes me feel rotten that I always feel rotten. I’m sincerely hoping that I can get past this period and become productive again, because frankly, this sucks.

Please don’t think I’m whining for sympathy. I simply need to get out why I’ve been so lax in updating, because I feel awful about it.

 

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Things Are A Bit Sketchy

Sep21
by on September 21, 2012 at 9:42 am
Posted In: Blog

…Inasmuch as I’ve been doing a bit of sketching lately.

Sorry, it’s early, I’ve only had one cup of coffee, and I’m trying to come up with a blog post title. Ok, I’ve been working on a story page, but the creative juices haven’t been flowing very well after the funeral trip. I just got a bit of a creative kick in the pants, and am hoping the trip to InterventionCon will really stir things up a bit.

I’ll be at InterventionCon this weekend, but don’t look for me at a table, I’ll be buzzing around in my powered chair, bothering people. I might set myself up in a corner somewhere, just sketching or something, but that’ll be entirely for fun and enjoyment, not because I’m part of the Artists’ Alley or anything. (Maybe some year.) I love InterventionCon for the incredible array of creators that show to share their works, and the panels are some of the best I’ve seen. I would be really torn about getting a table, because that would mean I’d have to sit there all day and not take part in all the other cool things going on, and that would make me crazy!

So, if anyone is near Rockville, MD this weekend, that’s where I’ll be. If you’re at the convention, look for me, and say hi!

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A Family Emergency

Sep01
by on September 1, 2012 at 11:25 am
Posted In: Blog

My apologies for the long delay in getting another comic out.  My mother passed away last weekend, and I’ve been away from home for the last week, dealing with the funeral and other arrangements.  I’ll work on a comic as soon as I can. Bear with me.

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