The Anxiety Monster

My Knight and I were talking about what our anxiety looks like, assuming it has been personified into some kind of horrible creature.  

We very quickly came up with this:

It was quick because, well, OF COURSE it looks like that.  

Now, on good days, there are people who can ignore the anxiety monster.  

I've never been so good at that, so while he isn't the most threatening thing in the world to me, (these days) he can still be super creepy.  

Like... 

Really. 

Though, for the most part, he's just kind of annoying.  
He is annoying in the way that he does shit like this:  

He is the opposite of helpful. 

He also enjoys SCREAMING in the middle of the night.

Normally I'd give some advice on how to deal with the anxiety monster.  
I usually try to use these kinds of posts to offer some helpful hints on how to avoid the ball of stress I had become in my life.  

Unfortunately, I haven't quite figured out how to get rid of this guy.

Ugh.  
 
 

PA Comic Con!

We've been making our rounds this year for conventions, and in a couple of weeks, Team Manticore (Bad Grey Matter and Tight Rope Noose) will be at THIS one!  

Table V12!

Come see me!  

I'll have prints, cats, NEW prints of Donna stuff, some pins, earrings...  STUFF.  

Show me some love!

Bee Entertained

Today, I'm going to tell you the tale of one of the very few typical-of-pretty-much-everyone's-childhood stories I have. 

Bee stings.  

My first (and so far only) was completely avoidable and I can absolutely blame it on my older sister. 

No, but like... Seriously.  

Okay, not really, but I'll tell you how it all went down. 

First off, my sister is almost eight years older than I am, so when I was a kid, I automatically looked up to her and wanted to do as she said, regardless of whether or not that was a good decision.  

I have since learned. 

Many years ago, my family was stopping by a little shop that opens in the Summer for hotdogs, ice cream, and the like.

I was looking forward to these things.  

Instead, I got this.  

We were standing at the top of a hill: 

Now, most children do want to roll down hills.  
I understand this.

I was not most children. 

So, to begin with, I really just did not want to do the normal-child thing of rolling down the hill.  

Grass is dirty, worms freaked me out, sometimes grass made me itchy (which got worse with age), I feared rolling right into traffic... and so on. 

With some coaxing, I (for whatever reason) was convinced that doing this thing was actually a proper plan. 

Much like her frustration when I was not a fluent English speaker at two years old, all she wanted was to have me experience an authentic childhood thing. 

All I wanted was ice cream. 

So, I roll, like any other child would have done.  

And, of course, I roll over a bee. 

You know, despite the literal pain in my ass, I remember being very concerned about the bee.  

I pictured a bee-crime scene and I wondered if his bee family would miss him. 

Perhaps they'd send the bee-bulance, but it would "bee" of no use.  

I had killed him.

With my butt.

We rushed home for an embarrassing round of "Here, hold that chair while Mommy takes a tweezer to your ass," 

And I resigned myself to a life inside, forever, because screw the outside world and its hills.  

In case you are on the edge of your seat wondering, yes.  

Yes, I totally did get some ice cream. 

 



 

Albany Games Fest!

The first day of the convention went rather well.  

Housemate and I made him a mask, as seen here: 

Obviously, I took this before he painted it. 

Though he didn't get a chance to do a cosplay contest.  

Still, there were events, stuff got sold, we met some new people, and we talked to some old friends... Well, I did, anyway.  

Rob made us turkey sandwiches for lunch and everything.  

There were games of both video and board varieties, and there were prizes to be won. 

Or, as one announcer stated, 

While this was a very busy con for those actively participating in the events, it was not so busy for the venders.  
This meant that we had some spare time. 

During this boredom lull in the convention, I found ways to entertain myself. 

I made more stuff,

I drew stuff,

I went over my to-do list, 

I drank too much water and had to go to the strange bathroom that doesn't make any sense to me...

You know what, let's take a moment to talk about that bathroom.  
I was told the men's toilet area was not this way. 

First off, I understand why that mirror would be so low.  If someone were to be in a wheelchair, that would be really useful. 

However, why were all the other mirrors segregated to another room?

  

And why did this other room require one solitary chair and trash-bin??

All that being said, it was a really nice, clean bathroom.  A+

*ahem*  

Now, while there wasn't a regular cosplay contest, there was the "Iron Cosplay" that involved using only newspaper and tape in a short amount of time to make a costume.  

My favorite was the narwhal, 

Followed closely by Cthulhu.  

Letsee...  
I started texting my friend at one point...

I braided my hair a few million times...

I complained about the cold a lot...

Oh, I also totally accidentally stabbed myself with this pencil: 

I still have a red dent in my wrist. 

I took pictures, but I won't post any here.  
I'm fine, by the way. 

EDIT: Almost a month later, and I still have a scar. 

What else did I do? 

Well, I spent a lot of time coming up with randomly terrible scenarios about everything for no particular reason...  

And I spent some time watching Rob play a videogame on his tablet...

When people were actively at the table, I kept my eye out for any wandering children. 

I also worried too much about my prices being too high or too low at any given time. 

To give you an idea of what our table looked like from our end, here are some photos!  (Are they still called that, if taken with a phone?  Phone-tos.) 

 

So many chairs.  This was before they were all filled with gamers. 

Earrings!  

More earrings...

So many earrings.  

A bowl of stuffed cats.  

Random spider.  

There were actually a lot of other things, but I got tired of taking pictures after a while.  

I even drew a thing for a sign for a thing!  

Day two went pretty smoothly, since we already knew how we were going to be set up.  

They had the "Iron Cosplay" again, this time with the best little girl ever. 

 Rob said if we ever entered such a contest, he would dress me as the shoe from Monopoly.  

It started as a mocking sort of plead from me not to ever do this: 

 And then it became weirdly dire in my head:

Eventually, tiredness took over.

And some really intense back pain.  

Around this time, I started making little stories in my head about the cats...

I wasn't the only one feeling the burn of it, so we left a little early.  Still, it was a fun, productive day.  

I highly recommend the Albany Games Fest at UAlbany next year!