Doodle With a Dying Pen

It's funny how tax-time simultaneously makes me feel both incredibly dumb and incredibly smart.  Dumb while I'm doing them, smart once they're done.  Also, it never ceases to irritate me how complex taxes are.  Isn't it a basic rule of business that you should never make it difficult for people to give you money?  Then again, I think a lot of people end up giving more away in taxes than they need to because they just give up trying to learn all the deductions and such.  I know I've definitely done that in the past.  But this year I made an effort to save receipts, and thus I emerge from the Great Tax Battle victorious- by a whole $8 (after paying to file).  Woo!

Dying pens are the WORST.

By the way, Janelle is not the name of this sketch; Janelle is the name of the Turbo Tax employee who helped me figure out why the heck my employer had sent me two W-2s.  But then again, I suppose there's no reason it couldn't also be the name of the lady in my doodle, which was inspired by the music of Citizen Cope.

Bowling for Puppies

Day two of Puppy Kindergarten, and I swear it was just like bowling for puppies- and our dog was the ball.  ::sigh::  After the first few minutes of interaction they divide the class into two groups: high-energy and -low, with the idea that by doing so the lower-energy pups won't be overwhelmed.  What that actually means is that on one side we have Isis and Bernese puppy (ie, big enough to stay standing during the enthusiastic greetings of Isis), and then on the other side are all the other puppies.  She's exuberant, our pig.  It makes me feel like a terrible dog mom because my puppy is so completely unaware of the fact that she's just Way Too Much for most of the other puppies.

At least she calms down after the first ten minutes or so, and quits bouncing so much.  (She really is a Tigger of a dog- doesn't quite get that not everyone is as thrilled by bouncing as she is... but we're working on that...)

Also?  Man our dog is gassy.  Possibly we could use her for some biological warfare...

(sound effects pretty true-to-life)

Furthermore, my life is now the sort of life that involves cleaning freeze-dried-liver out of my backpack.  Yep.

Bone Pain

I'm sore all the time these days.  Oh, it's for a good reason- getting stronger requires the tearing of muscles, after all, and tearing, generally, is a Painful Thing.  But I can't help but think I'd be slightly less sore if I was getting my full allotment of sleep.  Which I am not.  Because of (you guessed it) the puppy.

But girl, she'll be a dog soon, and then this up-to-let-her-out-at-four-in-the-morning nonsense will be behind us, and I can once again indulge in a full eight hours of fully restorative sleep.

Anyway.

This is the week I've finally managed to actually implement "going to the rock gym twice a week" policy- well, that is to say, I went today, which is Tuesday, and normally my Climbing Day is Thursday.  So I guess it would be more accurate to say I've laid the foundation for going twice this week.

I go to the gym alone, and avail myself of the auto-belay.  Sometimes I manage to sucker in a fellow solo-climber and then we have a belay partner and can get a break from the same damn routes (although my new thing is to climb an easy-ish route up, and then climb it back down.  Woo, endurance!).  Today was half-and-half.  I climbed alone for a while, then tried to strike up a belay partner, but he demurred (and after listening to him talk for about ten minutes I wasn't exactly disappointed).  So I climbed a bit more, then found another girl and chatted her up- and she was game.  And a better climber than me, too, which I always enjoy belaying for, because I learn things while watching them.

Normally I have a full week to recover from one climbing session to the next, and feel fresh as a daisy.  Today, however, I'd had five days- and, as you may remember, had learned to climb a rope just three days prior.  Gentle Readers, I felt it.  My arms essentially quit on me after an hour.  I was maybe four feet from the top of a route, but it was an overhang and I literally could not pull myself up any higher.  I was super grateful that I had a real human belaying for me at that point... I don't mind the free-fall that is consciously releasing myself to the auto-belay, but to just plain fall is exceptionally unpleasant.

Anyway my forearms ache now, deep down in the bones.

But I can't say that I really mind.

Here is a vampire that has nothing to do with anything, and whom I am  now thinking looks disturbingly like one of my ex boyfriends...

Mercy Me

Mercy again, but full body this time.  As of a few chapters into the fifth book, her arm tattoos have yet to be described, so I just sort of improvised.  And then I was just going to do flat gold-on-red, but ended up experimenting a little.  And now it is way past bed time.  Oh so very past.

The theory is that she's laying back on a wolf, but that would have required a background, which as you know I tend to eschew... it's a weakness...

Marshmallow, Caramel, Cinnamon, Chocolate, Espresso (and Other Shades of Lovely)

The more I looked at the picture of Betty I put up the other day, the more it bugged me.  Her skin tone just didn't look... right to me.  It seemed too grayish, or maybe too greenish.  I'm not sure- maybe it's just because of the other colors I used in the image, but it got me to thinking that I really needed to make my own personal skin tone chart, just for quick reference.

See, skin tone has been on my brain quite a bit, lately, primarily because I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to make Pippa white.  Or, at least, not the glow-in-the-dark-Celtic-white my characters tend to be (see faces #2 and 3) (#1 is an albino).  Now, it is perfectly understandable that my characters are generally that pale- I'm that pale, especially after a PNW winter, so it's natural that my brain thinks of  "my" skin color as "default".  But... it's not default: I'm pretty solidly in the minority of skin tones.  There are approximately one bajillion other shades of pink and brown out there, and I'd like to write characters that take advantage of that, just as I write characters that have hair color other than blonde (the natural shade beneath all this dye).  This, of course, is a Dangerous Thing... it's a sad but true fact that authors can Get Into Trouble by writing outside their race, which I think is a damn shame, but then I'm a white girl so I might not get to have an opinion on that.  Anyway, in regards to Pippa I decided to take a baby step and make her father an African American (her mother being, for all intents and purposes, Celtic-style fae), which makes her a lovely cafe au lait baby, but more importantly carries with it the "mix-blood-who-truly-belongs-to-no-culture" theme which was already in the story- and so you see it wasn't entirely an arbitrary "I need to add some color up in here!" decision.  The next step is figuring out her hair, and as such  I've been spending a lot of time browsing through Women-of-Color Hair Blogs (and it's fascinating).  I'll let you know what I eventually decide... (it will keep the ginger-cast, tho': that's proof of fae heritage, in her world).

Today I Learned to Climb a Rope

And I have the typing-pain to prove it.  Poor, raw Jenny O hands...

Warm-Up:

x2
20 Back Extensions
20 Mountain Climbers
15 Walking Lunges
10 Hollow Rocks

WOD:

2 min/station, x2
Rope Climb
Push Ups
Sit Ups (with medicine ball)
Box Jumps (I got my wish!  Yay?)

First of all, I've never climbed a rope in my life.  Nope, not even during middle school PE (maybe I was absent that day- I don't know).  So I was both excited and intimidated by the idea of climbing a rope.  Aubrey showed me two methods- one of which I could not seem to get.  What I did immediately understand, however, was that wearing shorts was going to make it extra interesting for me- at which point Aubrey literally gave me the pants off her backside.  Pretty awesome, right?  I mean sure, she was wearing shorts underneath, but still.  (Also she is about 6 inches shorter than me, so they made for some sexy high-water action.)  So I was set for that.  Then she had me try the box jumps, which (as I mentioned) I wasn't entirely certain I could do.  I decided to try it first on the medium box, and then if I did that without killing myself give the large box a whirl.  The medium box was a piece of cake, so I took a deep breath and shocked the hell out of myself by executing a perfectly respectable jump up onto the large box (which was about 2' high, I think).  Who knew?

So there I was, full of confidence, ready to start my WOD.

They DO say first time's the charm...

Aubrey said "Go!" and I flew right the hell up that rope- it was almost easy, and I allowed myself a moment of amazed smugness (yes, that is possible- I know because I experienced it) before lowering myself back down, hand-over-hand.  And then I grabbed the rope and prepared to ascend again... and didn't.  Nor did I, on any of my subsequent tries, manage to get past the halfway mark.  Damn it.  And because Aubrey's pants were so short on me, I did to get a bit of a rope burn, but at least it was just on the ankle and nowhere else (well, my hands, but that hardly counts).

As for the box-jumps, I actually did a lot better than I'd thought I'd be able to do.  I figured I might manage ten before having to switch to the smaller box- but I did more like 23, and kept it on the large box the whole time.  I had to really push to get over twenty on the last round, an effort which made me want to fall down and vomit when Aubrey yelled, "Time!", but I did neither, so hey- go me.

She's All Wet

Tired tired tired.  Have a sketch of a kelpie:

Not as nice as the eyes might lead you to believe