Ahh, Monday morning. I actually like Mondays, because I like having time on my own where I can organize myself and create things.

This is the first proper week of the new year — or so it feels like — and over the weekend I made a new “book of days” (I’m calling it). Last year, I did a little tear-off planning page for every work day, and then I had a paper calendar, but this year it made sense to incorporate those so that I don’t miss appointments or double-book myself.

I also wanted to do this just as a creative project, because I’ve not made a book in a while. I saw one of my old planners on the shelf and liked how it looked with all its tabs and colours, and wanted to do that again. This was the biggest book I’ve ever assembled, I think, and I didn’t make a single mistake in sewing the signatures (groups of pages) together — a first!

So here it is, Monday morning, and it’s time to use my planner. I’ve had breakfast, altered the dog’s wee winter jacket so it won’t cover his willy (since peeing is kind of the point of going for walks), walked him, made a coffee…. Now it’s time to slowly, gently approach the tasks I want to get done today.

Today I’m grateful for this home, and all the family stuff that it’s the setting for. (Like my nephew visiting at the moment.)

I had a work-call early this morning. (Couldn’t find my tablet’s pen, so I had to draw crudely with a mouse as my boss described what he had in mind — most awkward!)

Afterward, Doug and I went for a walk through a perfect just-before-Christmas neighbourhood scene.

Of course, my lousy photography makes the lovely park look like a crime scene, but don’t let that put you off.

And Doug isn’t exactly glad to have his picture taken, either.

I was in Toronto this week for work, and I stole some time away one evening to write and draw in my sketchbook.

I returned on Thursday, and managed to make it to Comics Club, where I cracked open the new sketchbook I’d made.

I picked a random Shakespeare-style phrase and had to make a four-panel comic from it. I figured I’d use the exercise as a chance to practice drawing the same character multiple times — and try to have him look like the same person!

Finally, the banter gets pretty salty at Comics Club, and in this instance I think I was working from the phrase “barbequed penis”.

I’ve been doing a lot of research and thinking work for this comic I have in mind. It’s fun and exciting having ideas clumping together in my conscious and subconscious minds, just like when I was writing novels.

Especially reassuring is having a personal project I actually want to work on, because for a long time nothing stuck.

…But I’m not going to talk about it here. Not yet. I believe it’s really important for me to draw this thing just for myself, and not jump ahead to considering what anyone else would think of it.

So, instead, I present dog pictures!! That’s what the internet wants, anyway.

First, the test-run of Doug’s winter jacket.

Is it me, or is his face saying, “You’re kidding, right?”

Unfortunately, it also covers up his willy, and he spends much of our walks peeing on things, so that doesn’t work. I’ll need to make some sort of adjustment to it — though I don’t know how we’re ever going to do a fitting with him.

Second, I present The Amazing Douglas, who has the uncanny ability to detect a buried piece of bread at ten paces (and finds bread where one would not expect there to be bread).

I better post what I drew at last week’s Comics Club before I go again tonight!

There’s so, so much I didn’t capture from our recent trip abroad, but I had a little time this week and wanted to at least do a few sketches — and use ink, because pencil was fine after the accident, but it’s really time to commit to something more finished, even if it’s scarier.

(Sorry, honey, this is a terrible drawing of you.)

(Geez, haven’t done calligraphy in a while. I started in here, and had to continue, even though it looks like a thicket more than letters.)

Craig’s got the cold, so I went on as his understudy for last night’s Playing with Choir.

We had a visitation this morning — not aliens, but social workers from Family Services, continuing their interviews with Craig and me as part of the adoption process.

The conversations are very friendly, and I think we’re doing well — honestly sharing all our ups and downs in life, and our thoughts and concerns about parenting.

(Unfortunately, I drank three cups of coffee, forgetting that it was from the drum of fully caffeinated Tim Horton’s coffee my brother gave us, so now I’ve got the jitters!)

Yesterday in the park, I looked at Doug had the thought, “This is your childhood. I should enjoy it, and make it a good one.” More and more I find myself looking at this house, its rooms, our backyard, the schools nearby and thinking, “This could be where someone’s childhood happens.”

And it doesn’t scare me anymore. I feel compelled to make it a good one for someone.

It helps that my cartooning work keeps flashing me back to my childhood, and being here on the Island with Craig and my parents makes me feel connected to my past, and like part of a family, not just an isolated element.

~

The past few weeks in Comics Club, Tyler has been leading us through some exercises that have been a good stretch, and feel like great preparation for any other comics work I’d like to do.

In last night’s session, he had us fold a page into eight panels, draw a story without using any words, then go back and, on a separate piece of paper, tell the story again using only words — just to see how word and image interplay in comics, and where each of them might do the job better.

(Below I’ll include the images I drew, then the text I wrote later to tell the same story.)

The first thing that popped into my mind — the only thing I could think of — was a recent news story, which I told from my memory of glancing quickly at it, filling in the gaps with my imagination.

(In a way, this was a breakthrough, because for once I wasn’t drawing myself — that is, a diary comic.)

Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, a Republican Senator, revealed this week that she was abducted by aliens as a child. [ED: Aguilera is actually running for a seat in Congress.]

One night, when she was seven years old, she saw lights in the yard and went out to investigate. The ship teleported her aboard in a beam of light.

The ship sped off into the night sky.

Bettina, alone and afraid, found herself in a sterile examination room.

One of the aliens introduced himself and showed her around the ship. She was touched by his kindness. [ED: Here I depicted a ‘Grey’ alien; when I read the news article this morning, I learned that she claimed to have been abducted by a Jesus-like ‘White’ alien. Naturally.]

Returned to Earth, Bettina grew into a confident young lady, excelling in her studies, ambitious about the future. Was this because of the alien’s influence?

Through the years, the alien visited her, and they discussed their respective cultures. He convinced Bettina of his world’s success and happiness, which he attributed to free market economics. [ED: I made this part up. The notion has no more proof or credibility than the existence of aliens, yet our whole society is founded on it.]

“And that,” she explained, “is why I’m a Republican!” [As one internet commenter said, “How is believing in aliens and deriving your policy-making from that any more of a stretch than thinking that God is directing you, like other Republicans regularly claim?”

P.S. My sketchbook is nearly full, so I’ve made the next one (along with a protective cereal-box sleeve):

So that was fun: My mom and Craig have been going to a local “recreational singing” group called Playing with Choir, and last night my friend Tina and I joined them for a guest evening.