Things are Really Great Here, Sort of

Sometimes things go just swell.  The day job is going well and the stress and obligations that go with it are stressful but manageable.  The family’s routine is chaotic but at this point we’ve been doing what we do for so long it becomes, well, maybe not easy but you know what I mean.  And although you’re not going to be rich anytime soon…or ever, the money coming in is covering not only your bills but maybe a little extra to take the family out for dinner once in a while.

And then everything just collapses.

As I write this, my house sounds like a factory due to the four industrial blowers scattered throughout my home, not to mention this…thing in my garage.

Let’s back things up to last week.  Long story short, a faucet in our bathroom was left running for, oh, six or seven hours last Saturday.  The bathroom in question is directly above our garage.  When I got home it was raining in my garage.  It was…terrifying.  Over the next few hours we cleaned up the puddles and, like Thor, I got to use a hammer to punch holes in the garage ceiling to air it out to lessen the risk of mold.  Our neighbors, my sister-in-law and best friend were invaluable with their help and support.

The insurance people came out and soon our flooring in our lower level was torn up and huge humidifiers and dryers were placed around the home to suck up the moisture under the floor and everywhere else.  There are these giant mats in the kitchen that are designed to absorb the water under the floor there, too.  The ceiling in the garage was ripped out and the damage is going to exceed 10k.  Insurance will cover some of it and that’s all we know for sure at this point.

It’s all I can do to keep myself from laughing and crying at the same time.

This will all be…fixed somehow.  Things work out and it’s hard to see HOW they will when you’re in the moment but once things settle down you can look back to see how it was resolved.  At the moment though it’s a little heartbreaking to come home to see your floors and ceiling torn up and trying to fall asleep while a half dozen machines do their thing gets a little old.

Work has gotten more stressful and our budget suddenly got tighter.  When it rains it pours, I guess.  Literally.

But on the plus side, my projects are going well.  My new graphic novel that I started last year underwent some rewrites and redesigns and I almost caught up with the pages I needed to redraw.

The two pages below are the same scene but the second is the new version.  The differences are clear, not only with the design of the cat-fox character, but also to the overall page.

 

When I drew the first version, I could tell I wasn’t happy with it and my displeasure is evident with the lazy crosshatching and backgrounds.  It was obvious to me that I wanted to finish the page and move on.  Hopefully the cat-fox character would look better on the next page.

It didn’t.  I just couldn’t get the hang of it.

But when I did the second version, it’s obvious I was happy with how things were going.  I can’t quite describe it, but you can tell whoever drew the second version put in a lot of…joy into it.  It took twice as long to draw it but it’s clear they loved every moment of it.

I am happy with the new design, I am happy with the revisions and I look forward to continuing work on it.

But that’s the silver lining right now.  Right now it’s enough.  Thank God it’s enough.