Apologies for the delayed blog post. But things have settled down and everyone is okay.
If you missed the earlier message, the blog was delayed because I was sitting in a walk-in clinic with Cami who was suffering from a 103° fever that she’s been battling on and off for the last three days.
Why didn’t I prepare the blog last night? Good question. Basically, it was the culmination of a handful of frustrations over the last few days.
As I mentioned, Cami has been sick since Monday. Fever, chills, exhaustion — the whole ball of wax. She went to the doctor on Monday, but they couldn’t diagnose her. It wasn’t strep, it wasn’t mono. It was something that was just passing through her system.
Cami being sick puts me on Henry Duty full time. I don’t mind it, but managing a 2 year-old is much easier when you have someone you can tag-team with. Monday night wasn’t bad, actually. I made him dinner, we played with toys, I gave him a bath and read him bedtime stories. Once he was settled down, I recorded our weekly broadcast of The Triple Feature. All routine.
Tuesday was… worse. The novelty of hanging out with Daddy wore off. Henry wanted his Mommy and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t be around him. Reminder: The is no reasoning with a 2 year-old. They want what they want and if they can’t have it, they wail.
That really makes you feel like a hero — When your chasing your child around the house trying to keep his shoes on his feet while he’s crying for his Mommy. At that point, you basically have to become a hard ass and say “Well, you’re already crying for no good reason, so we might as well continue doing things you hate and you can deal with it once I’ve buckled you into the car seat.”
I had a doctor’s appointment myself on Tuesday to have someone take a look at a head-to-toe rash I’ve been suffering from. Which, as it turns out, was an alergic reaction to an antibiotic I was taking to clear up a different skin condition!
That’s probably too much sharing. I’m sure your not interested in my rash. I’m just building a case for why Tuesday sucked.
So, I come back from the doctor’s appointment I took during my lunch break putting me behind on today’s comic which I had hoped to draw and ink over that hour. I put in my remaining four hours for the day and head out to the parking lot.
I try to start my car — nothing. The battery has died. Meanwhile, Cami is still at home sick and can’t drive to pick Henry up from day care. I call my inlaws who were planning on coming over to our house yesterday evening anyway to help Cami with Henry while I was at my night class and they swing by to pick him up on their way over (thank goodness they have a car seat in their car already!)
Meanwhile, I sit in the freezing cold waiting for a tow truck service that I’ve called to find me in the parking lot for a half hour. He gives the car a jump and charges me $50 for the trouble. Talk about highway robbery! But what can you do?
At this point I only have a half hour to make it to my night class before it starts. So my dinner comes from a vending machine. The class itself was fine and luckily my car started up again afterwords. By the time I got home, took a hot shower and had a proper dinner, it was 10:30 and I hadn’t started on the comic yet.
Some penciling, inking, scanning, coloring, shading, and lettering later and it was 3:00 in the morning. Blogging was out of the picture.
I went to bed anticipating about 3 hours of sleep before having to get up and go back to work. Of course Truman decides he wants to go out at 4:00 in the morning, so that kind of shot that idea down.
Went back to bed, got up again at 6:00 and Cami said she needed to go to the doctor again after waking up in a cold sweat. We put Henry in the car and took him to daycare before Cami and I turned around and went to the walk-in clinic.
Again, the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her. They did a battery of tests, even took a blood sample. Basically the only thing they learned is that her white blood cell count was a little low and that typicall means your body is fighting a virus of some kind. There are no antibiotics to fight it. You’re body just has to work it out.
And that brings us to the present!
I’m glad Cami doesn’t have anything serious like mono or… goodness knows what. And I’m sure things will get back to normal soon. But the last 24 hours have been a challenge and that’s pretty much all that’s on my mind at the moment. Truthfully, I’m still kind of cheesed about the $50 charge for a battery jump! But today is a new day.
Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to pass out.
Whoa! Tom is turning into a bit of a pervert in these last two strips, isn’t he?
Don’t worry, ladies. It’s only temporary. These are exceptional circumstances. He’s been given the keys to the kingdom, don’t you understand?
Imagine being invited to The Playboy Mansion. You’d be a little disappointed if you didn’t see topless chicks running around everywhere, right?
Well, Tom has very low standards in this regard.
Seriously, though. What’s going on in your bathrooms, ladies. I remember walking past one as the door was closing and I saw a couch in there! Do you have a cappucino machine and gossip magazines as well? Do you know what’s in the men’s restroom? 10 years of caked-on urine, a flickering flourescent light and a weird smell.
So what do you think of the story-line so far? I know we’re just three comics into it, but I’m curious if I’ve hooked you yet? Curious as to Jimmy’s anxiety about the women’s bathroom? Want to know more?
Even though I haven’t figured out the pace of the story yet, I have the major points outlined in my head. I’m trying to keep from wandering too far off the path while at the same time providing a logical progression.
If you haven’t noticed, Theater Hopper is more of a “talking heads” comic. So I’m not used to writing things that require characters to move around from point A to point B. I feel like I have to explain how Tom and Jimmy moved from the theater lobby to the women’s restroom. Eventually I’ll have to explain how they move from the restroom to somewhere else. I have to explain it because I’m not good with backgrounds. If you navigate by landmark, you’d get lost pretty quickly in the Theater Hopper universe!
At any rate, I just wanted to keep the lines of communication open because I know that the last time I tried to tell a longer story, people were wondering where the movie commentary was. That’s been suspended somewhat for the time being, but I’ll come back to it eventually. Don’t worry.
It’s been a pretty long week for yours truly. Cami is feeling better, but not before a false-start yesterday morning. Cami thought she was up to putting in a full day at work, so we car pooled. By about 10 in the morning, she was feeling pretty lousy and all of her co-workers told her to go home. So I picked her up and took her home.
She’s feeling better today, but moving a little slow. Whatever virus she had pretty much wiped her out. But she’s determined. She feels bad for not being able to help me with Henry. I feel bad that we’ve had to lean on her parents twice this week as I went to my night classes! Everyone feels bad. Everyone but Henry. He just wants to play with toys.
Now that Cami’s feeling better, she’s going to reward herself by catching up with Henry and I will reward myself by seeing Liam Neeson in Taken. I’ve been hearing great things about this action flick and I can’t wait to see it. For some reason, it reminds me of Rob Roy, where Neeson played a similar bad ass with a sense of pride. Should be good times, but I’d listen to Neeson read the phone book.
Real quick poll: The Super Bowl is this weekend and Dreamworks is going to premiere their 3D trailer for Monsters Vs. Aliens. Have you guys picked up your 3D glasses yet? I have and I’m psyched to see this trailer.
In fact, I’m so psyched about this promotion, I might actually watch Chuck on Monday night when it’s aired in 3D! I loves me a gimmick! How about you?
Leave your comments below. In the meantime, stay close to the site today. I have an important announcement regarding the Theater Hopper – Year Three pre-order and some of the other problems I’ve been having with the story lately. The good news? I’ll soon be sharing a coupon code for 15% everything in the store. Yow!