The Big Three Oh

I’ll be doing a blog post all about the wedding (that happened) and the move (also happened) soon enough. 

I thought I’d start with this.

See, I turned thirty on November 17^th. 

My dad likes to say, “You can’t trust anyone over thirty, or people who work for the government.” 

I’m both.   

He’s kidding, but I started to think about how different thirty is now than it was in the 60s.  

Mostly, I just don’t feel like an adult yet.  I don’t think that has much to do with my age though.

I like that I can still enjoy what I’ve always enjoyed. 

Gaze upon my Bat-Belts!  This isn't even half of them.  

I wear these to work.  No one cares!  Or notices. 

I like that I can play.

I’m proud that I HAVE come as far as I have, regardless of trauma from all directions for so long.

That being said, I still have a long way to go.  I’m aware of that.  

I know there are things I still don’t like about myself, and those awful things are going to be the hardest to overcome. 

I’m happy with my body now, and my confidence is so much better than ever before.

I’ve learned to stand up for myself, though I still struggle with that from time to time…

I’m eating better and better every day, while still being careful about my allergies. 

I can BE careful without it ruling my life, even when I'm scared.  

…and that’s just really cool.

Still though, there are so many times where my imagination takes over and goes from “being creative” to a true sign of the mental illness I’ve faced for so many years.  

The dark, mirrors…  I’m actually terrified of a lot of things to an incredibly embarrassing degree.  

I’m thirty now, and I still take the whole Bloody Mary thing too seriously.  It’s another level of sad.

Now it’s a matter of not wanting to see the endless darkness that may or may not reflect something that I just can’t perceive when the lights are out…

I already told you about the time as a kid where I left a bathroom like the little chicken I am during the era of Spice Girls and pogs.  

(As a side note, we were doing a dance thing in a PE class once, and I was elected to be Scary Spice as I was the darkest one with curly hair.  That’s how bleached white our fucking middle school was.  Fuck.  Sure.  “Close enough.”  …  These days, I would take it all as a compliment, though I’m not sure how she would have felt being played by a Slavic Jew.  Really, I wanted to be Posh anyway.)

Seriously though.   

Under the bed was scary enough that I just put my bed straight onto the floor to avoid having an under-the-bed at all.   

The closet…  Ugh.  Especially when the door was just slightly open?  

All the way open or all the way closed.  That’s what it had to be.

My sister solved this problem for me by simply tearing the doors off of my closet in a fit of unbridled and seemingly entirely random rage.

Doors slightly open at all, ever…  For whatever reason, my brain immediately goes to, “Yeah, but what’s looking in?”  

Why is there ANYTHING looking in?  What??

Walking to the bathroom at night encompasses all of these things in some way or another, especially that first mirror-in-the-dark bit. 

This was all before the food thing became… a thing.

The worms and ants almost-phobia may have to do with the hidden nature of them, just as the dark poses for everything else.  

And yet again…

Ants though…  They’re like the Borg. 

And worms like maggots, eat the dead.

Realizing I’m very much alive, am I just afraid I’ll find out the hard way?  I’m more afraid of my own reflection in the dark than seeing someone other than myself…  Maybe it’s all existential.  

Fear and phobias are interesting things when they start to rule your life.

I was always super anxious about everything, but I very rarely expressed this openly.  I felt like a had to keep myself with a steely expression for my family, so that no one would know that I was scared or in any pain.  

That may have been a fear too.  I didn’t want to be a burden, and I didn’t want them to feel bad.  

So… I just pretended I was fine for as long as I could.

This led to weirdly humiliating moments, because it translated as being shy when I wouldn’t just speak up and say, “This is really shitty.”  

Good example? 

That time I had a mat in my hair. 

Why my parents didn’t just take a fucking scissors to my hair is beyond me.  It was in the back and under all my other hair.  No one would have noticed.

The whole thing was kind of my own fault anyway because I didn’t want anyone to touch my head.  

I was little then…  Elementary school I guess?   

And my head was an unruly mess of curls and tangles.   

Dad would (jokingly?) chant, “Rip tear!  Rip tear!” as he tried to brush my hair.   

I have since learned to either start from the bottom 

or just cut it all off.

So there we were at the hair stylist. 

The lady gathered everyone around to see. 

So, there I was, SURROUNDED by random people staring at my head.

“IT’S A PERFECT DRED!” she kept saying.  

I did not do this on purpose.  I mean, good to know, but having all those people stare and touch me, and have to sit there in silence pretending I wasn’t scared and embarrassed…  

Ugh. 

You know what?  I’m exhausted enough, let’s stick to the hair for a minute. 

Lemme tell you ‘bout my hair. 

I found my first single grey hair in middle school.   

Since this was the era of being called “Witch Girl” and being made fun of anyway, I decided to be how I wanted to be.  

Fuck ‘em.

I’d rather be poked at for things I choose than the things I have no control over.  

Cue my Rogue-style blonde chunk right in the front of my head.  

This was then blue for a while, various shades of “strawberry”, and green for a very short while.   

It’s hard to keep green without it becoming a variety of snots.

Eventually, I dyed the underside of my hair red, so when it was up in a half-ponytail you could see it… 

I very rarely did that though.

Finally, there was the black and red stripes. 

“Make it look like it’s bleeding.” 

When that proved too hard to maintain, straight red or maroon happened.

There were some mishaps, such as the orange frizz…  

  

And some disappointments.  

 “We have… semi demi purple?  It’ll wash out in a day or two.”  

I have since stopped dying my hair due to a combination of fear, lack of funds, lack of time, and straight up laziness. 

I have a few more grey hairs now though. 

You know.

Cause I’m thirty.

Strawberry (and Chocolate Milkshake) Fields Forever

I am by no means a "food blogger," nor do I intend to become one.  
However, I am thankful that Rob went from setting the stove (electric, no less) on fire while boiling water, to making delicious things mostly in the name of my recovery from the food phobia.  

I trust him, which means I eat the things he makes without serious panic about my allergies.  
It is pretty awesome.

So, while Rob DOES also make lovely actual food-food:

and this has probably saved my life...

 I'm also partial to his desserts.  

We'll start off with the Oreo milkshake.  It was in celebration of the Fourth of July, so we were picturing making it red and blue...  

We'll get to that later. 

 All you need for this is some vanilla ice cream, Oreos, and milk.  
Obviously, the cookies could be replaced just as easily as the other stuff can be replaced with lactose-free varieties.  

I can't even give you exact amounts to use of what, as we just kinda...  

"Whatever.  Blend it."  "More of this?"  "Yeah, sure." 

So much blending...

More blending...

Add more cookies...

AND BLEND.

Forever.

Eventually,  you will have a milkshake that may or may not bring all the boys to your yard.  

As stated before, we experimented in food dye...

It made it kind of pretty?

But didn't really work in the way we were hoping...

So fuck it.  Just stir that up.

Delicious.

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

And now for my favorite thing he's made so far (and we have strawberries in the house...  Can this happen today?) 

THESE THINGS.

All these photos probably could have used some photoshop, but I'm an honest person, damn it.  This food ain't plastic.

*ahem*

The ingredients you'll need: 

 Cream cheese in either tub or stick form...

 Strawberries...

I prefer my strawberries GMO and bigger than my head.  Feel free to not.

 A metric ass-ton of sugar...

 SPOON

And a plate, if they make it that far.

Once everything but the strawberries are mixed together, you'll have something like this: 

Now for coring!  Just cut out those little strawberry innards. 

Then fill with the mixture...

And arrange. 
Here's what the steps themselves look like: 

 

...and devour.

YAY!

The Long Con

Team Manticore attended the Central PA Comic Con two weeks ago, and then we went to another convention this past weekend.  

The first went really well.  We made connections, sold some stuff...  

The second one was just a series of mini-terrors wrapped in terrible luck.

There was blood.

Confused cat.

So, let me start by going back to that first con.  

Like I said, we were pretty successful, and we even sold the last of the Shuffle comics! 

This was super exciting to me, because I had the chance to sign some stuff and feel like... I drew that thing that I drew.

There were a lot of awesome costumes, and it was great to see such diversity.  

Also, like eighty Black Widows.  

That is NOT a complaint.  

I made some cats while we were sitting there, because they were selling faster than I thought they would.  

...Some came out a little wrong.

So, now we know what it looks like when a large head is put on a small body...

Like a UFO cat. 

Oops.  

In any case, people were pretty happy about the up-cycled comics and "dead records", because we're making things that are otherwise going to be thrown out into something new.  

Here's another shot of the tiny kitties: 

We also sold a surprising number of teeth, and got some neat suggestions for Walking Dead inspired jewelry.  

Good times.  Good times.

The head-crab, sadly, did not find a new home that day.

Go home, Head-Crab.  You're drunk. 

The second con...  

You know what?  

Here: 

Before even setting foot instead the building, I set knee inside of asphalt.  

See, it was the second day of Spring, so I slipped on some ice, because New York. 

It hurt like a bitch, but once I could stand at all, I realized that nothing was broken.

That was enough for me.

And honestly, I was more concerned about my hand than anything else.

So, I'm limping along...  

Kinda walking bow-legged...

And I feel this cold trickling down my leg.

I figure, "It can't be blood.  That would be warm."  

The other problem was that I was wearing these pants:

(Post fall, hence the hole and caked-on dirt)

So I couldn't actually tell the real blood from the fake blood, because why would there be real blood when all I did was fall down wHAT??? SHUT UP I'M FINE.

At this point, I became a giant baby. 

Rob ran around for first-aid stuff...

Thankfully, a week later, THIS works just fine:

  
I was FAR more concerned with cleaning off the extra blood, than actually tending to the wound itself. 

It was pretty bad.  Approximately this:

A week later, it looks more like this:

The fact is that while kids will skin their knees, that's really just a scrape.  
I actually, literally, SKINNED my fucking knee.  SKINNED IT.  
TOOK THE SKIN OFF OF A CHUNK OF MYSELF LIKE MY KNEE WAS SOMETHING OUT OF HELLRAISER.

...and it hurt.

...and Rob got really frustrated by the fact that I was semi-in shock and just would not stop talking about my knee.

Putting up with each other is half of love.

Going to work, I refused to bring my cane.  
I have one.  
My father gave it to me.
It has served me well.

I don't know why I decided that I didn't need it... Cause... I did.

So, fine.  
We didn't really sell anything, due to the timing of the con.

We got REALLY bored.  

I made a bunny out of stuffing.  

Dusty the dust bunny. 

Here is Rob's creation photobombing. 

Dusty's butt.

We are classy folks.

OH! 

I got to have another injury before we left!

Yaaaaaaaay...

See, the needle broke.

BROKE in half. 

Yep.  

Fine.

The end.