An Invincible Summer

Sampler Saturday: Where It All Began

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Debora

When Elizabeth was six years old she discovered candy corn. And oh sweet mystery of life, how she loved those little nuggets of corn syrup and food coloring.

Not to eat, mind you. No, they became action figures: new characters in the rich tapestry of her inner world. She wasn’t writing books yet, but for months her drawings were populated with sentient candy corn kernals going about the business of collecting food. This is a Walking Candy Corn:

In her world they were industrious creatures much like ants, who spent all their time stashing food away for the winter, usually to the consternation of whoever they were stealing the food away from.

One day she decided to sit down and create her very first Actual Book. She began with the title: Spots And The Walking Candy Corn. (Spots was one of her Fisher Price toys, a little giraffe.)

Then she got so wrapped up in Spots’ tale of woe that she forgot to actually include any Walking Candy Corns in the story.

This one is by special request: the first complete book Elizabeth ever made, at age six.

It’s an I Can Read Book!

Spots is the tiny creature at the bottom of the page. Parental figures are always towering giants in Elizabeth’s drawings.

Love the wiggly reflection in the water. Click on any image for a larger view.

Yeah, I’m thinking Spots could maybe use some Prozak.

Pull it together, man!

But what’s this…

A carnival! Now we’re talking!

Not sure why there are vicious dinosaurs at the carnival…

This is an erupting volcano. Spots is just having the crappiest day ever.

I love this image. Spots and his enormous mother sleeping snugly in a giant bird nest. It’s so cozy. :^)

And there you have it — Elizabeth’s first book, fresh out of the Wayback Machine. Seems like forever ago that she started writing them, but I guess it’s only been four years.

It’s been a fun journey. I can’t wait to see what she’s writing in another four.

Categories: Artwork, books, Family, kids, Life, Sampler Saturday | 6 Comments

Respecting the Personal Dignity Of Ur Pets…

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Debora

…Ur doing it rong.

Categories: Animals, Cats, Humor, Life | 2 Comments

Wordless Wednesday: Autumn Sweetness

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Debora

Categories: food, Gardening, Self-Sufficiency, Wordless Wednesday | 1 Comment

Curse Those Internet Bugs!

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Debora

The kids’ school Fall Festival fundraiser was Saturday, and other than the fact that I TOTALLY FORGOT that I’d promised to make cookies for the cakewalk, the whole thing seemed to be a grand success. I was helping with the throw-darts-at-balloons booth, and we had brisk business from start to finish. I was mildly concerned that we might run into, you know, complications, what with handing sharp metal implements to tiny toddlers and rowdy eight-year-olds and goth teens, but we didn’t have a single problem all day. Other than the wind occasionally gusting up and blowing our dartboard down, which usually necessitated the replacement of a bunch of popped balloons. I kept an anxious eye on my cardboard jail a few booths away, and saw that they’d solved the wind issue in the simplest possible way: the guys running the jail booth just stood on each side and held onto it when it threatened to blow away. Kids loved the jail concept, and there was a steady stream of “prisoners” in and out of it the whole time.

Steve brought the kids to the Festival around noon and they seemed to enjoy it, though I didn’t get to see much of them while they were there. AND there were plenty of baked goods for the cakewalks even without my forgotten cookies, so all was well.

****************

One by one this past week or two I’ve watched my favorite bloggers succumb to the the vicious cold that’s been going around. Maybe I should have been more careful when I visited their blogsites, because sure enough that nasty little bug CLOBBERED me Sunday morning. I snuffled my way through church and our Sunday dinner party, went to bed early, and then got maybe four hours’ sleep because I felt too crappy to doze off. I really need to stay away from sick peoples’ blogs; those internet virii are freaking relentless.

Monday I dragged my sorry self down to Temec to do my weekly shopping. I would have put it off, but I had an appointment to get my hair cut and didn’t want to reschedule. I had her touch up my highlights at the same time, and asked her to match the chlorinated silver shade because I’ve decided I like it that way. I’d post a pic, but this cold is seriously kicking my butt. Aside from the pretty pretty haircut I’m about as photogenic as a day-old serving of cold Spam in a dirty ashtray right now. Pics later, when my nose isn’t red and my skin isn’t chapped and I don’t have purple shadows under my eyes.

****************

When I got home from Temecula yesterday I didn’t feel like doing much of anything that involved effort, so I went to hang out with the kittens for a while. They live in the back of the house for now (the kids’ rooms and the adjacent playroom), so I hadn’t really seen much of them. The kids attend to their food and water, and other than cleaning out their litter box a few days ago my life has been simplified rather than complicated by their arrival. But I felt like it was time for me to get to know them, so in I went to officially introduce myself.

Except they wanted nothing to do with me. They skittered under furniture when I tried to pet them, indignantly objected when I cornered them and picked them up, and wriggled free as soon as they got the chance. I was an unwelcome invader in their little kitten lives. This worried me, because I’ve adopted kittens in the past that have turned out to be irredeemably non-domesticable, and that wasn’t what I’d wanted for my kids. I finally left them alone, feeling disappointed in their lack of sociability.

That evening, Elizabeth called me into the playroom to show me something she’d made out of marbles and plastic blocks. Luke and the kittens were in there too, so after I’d admired her marble sculpture thingy I sat down on the steps to see if there was any interaction between the four of them.

HA. I needn’t have worried. The kittens treated Elizabeth like a big fun climby toy, and from time to time Stripes would leave off frolicking to come over to Luke for petting. He would absently stroke her while going on with what he was doing (building beautiful little houses and cars out of paper), and then she’d dash back and scramble up Elizabeth again.

So, no worries about the four of them not getting along. I guess I’m the only suspicious-looking stranger here. I can live with that.

****************

Elizabeth says she has renamed her kitten “Madcat.” You know, like Dr. Claw’s feline henchman. I’m not entirely comfortable with the fact that she’s named her cute little kitty after the evil pet of of an evil genius, but I suppose one must pick one’s battles wisely and let the little stuff go, right?

Is it bad that when I saw this pic at the Cheezburger site I immediately thought of my sweet girl?

Siiiiiiiggghhhhh.

Categories: Family, kids, Life, School | Leave a comment

Saturday Sampler: Exposition

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Debora

I chose today’s excerpt because it combines a few elements that 1) require some explanation, and 2) recur often enough in her comics that I might as well get all the explanations out of the way in one post.

Okay, so first of all there’s the whole El Chupacabra thing. I hardly know where to begin with this one without making my lovely girl sound like a complete looney, but here goes.

When Elizabeth was seven or eight, she began to imagine that one day she would transform into a new, magical, powerful creature. She would gain rabbits’ ears (for super hearing), a cougar’s tail, dragons’ wings, sharp talons, a unicorn’s horn, and a “powermark” (the source of her magic) on the bridge of her nose. She talked about it all the time, and at some point for some reason her PE coach dubbed Elizabeth’s alter-ego “El Chupacabra.” Elizabeth latched right onto the lyrical sound of the name, and her creature has been “El Chupacabra” ever since.

I thought it was just a passing phase she was going through, and didn’t fuss too much about it. But it didn’t pass; in fact, it worked its way slowly but steadily deeper into her self-image. When she was in third grade I finally had to put the smackdown on the situation when I was called to pick her up from the school principal’s office. Apparently she had been dragged there kicking and screaming “WHEN I’M EL CHUPACABRA I’LL BE THE ONE IN CHARGE! AND I’LL CONTROL YOU ALL WITH THE POWER OF MY WILL! AND YOU’LL ALL HAVE TO DO WHATEVER I WANT!!”

Righty-o.

I knew it would do no good to order her to drop the El Chupacabra bit entirely. It had become too much a part of her mental landscape. I told her she could still talk about it at home, but from now on her alter ego was an absolutely verboten subject at school. She mostly complied, slipped once or twice, was immediately punished, and eventually it stopped being a big problem.

But it didn’t go away. Deep in her heart my brilliant, creative child really believes that one day she will shed her mundane chains and emerge as a powerful, magical creature.

The reason I bring all this up is because Elizabeth is a character in many of her own comics, and that’s how she draws herself. So that’s why she looks like that.

The second thing that might need an explanation is Elizabeth’s habit of indiscriminately co-opting other artists’ characters into her own universe. She doesn’t see anything incongruous in drawing a story that contains, say, Calvin (from the Calvin and Hobbes strip), Otto Mattic (from a favorite computer game), and Buizel (the Pokemon critter) interacting with one another.

Most recently, Eve from WALL-E has joined the party.

The third thing you may be wondering about in this week’s offering is the addition of random splashes of color. I…actually don’t know what that’s about. It’s new, and may or may not be a permanent thing.

So without further ado, I give you an excerpt from “Elizabeth And Sparky, Book 4.”

(Oh, one more bit of ado. Sparky is the dragon. For some reason he only appears in one frame of this scene.)