Showers, Baths, and Referring to Poop Too Many Times

Showers and I have a strictly business relationship. 

I get in, I do my business, I get out.  While some have a more loving relationship with both the shower and the toilet, I treat both with some amount of disdain. 

"You, Mr. Shower, are here to get me clean.  The end.  No funny business."

"You, Ms. Toilette, are here to catch whatever happens to come out of me.  Good luck."  *shakes toilet-hand*

EDIT: A friend/apartment mate of mine, Dustin (at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wiserobot) took this picture:

 
He had asked me to give the toilet eyes and arms.  Without question, I said "HELL YES" and did it.  So, now I can actually shake it's toilet hand.  Our apartment mate says it makes him feel like he is now one step closer to golden showers, having now peed in something that has eyes.   There are actually some pictures of me directly up on his site too...  Just sayin'.

In general, I'm just very uncomfortable while taking a shower.  I like feeling clean, but it's the standing up to do it that bothers me. 

Maybe it's my heritage and I have a strange association between showers and Nazis? 
More likely though, I've just watched Psycho too many times.

Fun fact, until a surgery leading to where she had to take showers instead, the star of Psycho took baths, often with someone in the room, due to the film. 

I love baths.  I could easily say to my apartment mates "Hey, I'm going to be in the bathroom for at least ever, so I need you guys to use it while you can." 
These are the guys who have had no issues peeing outside when the bathroom was taken, so they would be all, "Sure!" "No problem." *salutes* "Have fun in your bath, Princess!" 

But I don't ask.  Living with three to four people in an apartment with one bathroom makes me needlessly nervous and ultra aware of my bathroom time. 

Even having to take a crap becomes a stressful endeavor, once I feel I'm taking too long. 
I start thinking progressively more irrational things like, "Oh god.  Oh god.  What if someone needs this?  What if someone is really sick?  What if a cute little girl just came to visit and she needs to poo and I'm in here and so she has to go outside like an animal??"

I'm even the kind of person who turns the fan on, in hopes no one will hear me do what is meant to be done in the room with the toilet. 

Like I'm pretending to be some magical creature that excretes gummy bears instead.

Again, I know my roommates would be more than happy to ignore me while I crap.  This has nothing to do with reality or how people actually work.  This has to do with my screwed up brain. 

But baths... Man.  Baths are awesome. 

When I was a kid, I would make a fuss about getting into the bath, and then once there... I was sooooo freaking happy! 
And then I'd make a fuss about getting out.



I'm still like that, to a certain extent.  

And then I get in and it's, "Oh.  Right.  I like this.  This is awesome.  I forgot."

My mom would put this metal...plastic... who knows what it was made of...  It was white and it was a grid type thing that went across the bath tub.  Then, I had a series of cups and toys and even Little Mermaid figures.

Sometimes, Ursula would sing songs.  Sometimes, I was a mad scientist. 

I was awesome.

As a grown up who's too weird to ask to take a bath, I either take baths when no one is home, like some secret guilty pleasure, or I take showers begrudgingly. 

It helps to shower with someone, but even then, it's strictly business for me.  I have to be convinced to do otherwise. 
My boyfriend is there to wash my back if I ask for that.  ...He puts up with a lot from me, actually.  The whole typically-endlessly-patient thing is rather nice.

He doesn't wear glasses in the shower.  Just so we're clear. 

I will admit, there is a kind of comfort to showering with my boyfriend.  I figure, with him there, I won't get stabbed.  If I slip, he'll catch me.  Things like that. 
And washing my back if I ask.

He and I both have an issue with one sensitive eye.  ...Meaning that we each have one sensitive eye... Not that we share one.

His reacts to light.  Mine, as sucky as it is, reacts really poorly to water and sometimes to wind. 
...I wish I was kidding. 
It's from an old dog-stepping-in-my-eye-while-I-was-on-the-ground-after-falling-down-a-flight-of-stairs related injury. 

Therefore, washing my face is done very carefully, and often outside of the shower. 

The only other issue is that Boyfriend likes his showers boiling hot.

Oh well.


Also, I drew this a while ago.  It always bothered me that Flounder was not... a flounder... so I fixed it.

Of Dentists, Sick and School

Even though I have a brand new sketch done for yet another girl for the "Girls in Cups" post, you don't get to see it.  I've been sick.  I don't mean that I've been coughing or a little lightheaded either.  No.  I've been sick.  I managed to catch one of those 24 hour stomach bugs and I am currently praying that the title is accurate.  Comin' out both ends kind of sick.

At one point, I found myself crying in front of the toilet.

At another?  I stood up, my head started spinning, the room went dark and then I woke up on the floor.  I checked for pain or bruising and determined that I had had the sense to lay down, rather than just collapsing, so that's good at least. 

Another "oh thank the powers that be" moment, was when my dentist's office called to tell me all appointments were canceled.  This was because of the weather.  I was happy to not have this appointment as it was for a very tiny hole that is threatening to be a problem.  Had a cap fallen off or something, then I would have been more upset.  Instead, this was a blessing.

...but then...  I started thinking about it.  On the phone, she had stated that my dentist would still be in today for emergencies.  That means that he had the sense to say "I don't want any of my patients to die just for the sake of a cavity" but then he braved the weather himself, ice and all, to be there "just in case".  The man has children. 

So, in my already ill state, where I personify objects and make up ridiculously dramatic stories in my head (and outloud) about where the people in commercials come from, I pictured my dentist, for whatever reason, walking through an ice storm, with no winter coat, just desperately trying to make it to the office in case someone's cap fell off.  I will not draw this, for it will upset me.  Serial killer's birthdays are fine to draw.  This one?  Not so much. 
Edit: Okay fine.  Here.  

Being sick and thinking  of my dentist suffering made me less than happy.  That's "< <3" for those who only speak in fancy computer language.


Lastly, there is school.  I want to get this degree... but I don't want to have to go to class.  Mind you, I haven't even met this teacher yet.  It'll be my first day with him.  My other two teachers are my adviser and a guy I've had for other classes.  I like them.  ...But I've been ill and unhappy and ick.  I do not want to meet someone today and have my first impression be ick.

Yesterday, school was canceled.  I have no classes on Tuesdays.  ...Yesterday was a Tuesday for those who did not piece that together.

My horse and I will still be picking up my last book, but tomorrow.  Today... Today is a crap day.  It's a leftover sick day with snow that I may have to trudge through.


OH!  But!  Okay, so, one of my pieces was donated to a benefit, and a few others may go up in a place in North Adams MA!  I'll keep you all posted on that!!

And, come February 11-13th, I'll be selling prints and stuffed cats at Genericon.  That's a convention (Genericon= generic convention) at RPI.  Woot.

Edit: School was fine.  My teacher is very nice and there is a funny girl in my class.  I remember liking her in another class, but never caught her name.  ...I failed at that this time around too... Whoops.

Me vs. Bike

I wrote this recently because many people have asked me why it is that I chose to not ride a bike.  I own one.  It is nice and shiny.  Well, it's not so much that I don't want to ride a bike...
I want to ride a bike in the same way that I want to be paid to draw forever, or I want to have a well known cartoon, or even in the way that I want to have a million college degrees in a million different things... I just don't want to do the work to get there.  I want it to be done and I want to never have to think about it again.  To have everything be magically natural without any practice or effort would avoid the fear aspect entirely.  Below, I shall explain further, knowing that it really doesn't explain anything.  However, it will make me feel better about myself.  Yay!

Here is a drawing I did for a friend, (who required it as a template for a gift for his mother) because the rest of this post gets wordy.  

 It's a birdie!

Okay.  So, it started out normal.  A lot of people assume that my parents must have been monsters who didn't allow me to ride a bike and instead did so in front of me like happy goons mocking the fact that I would never learn to be a real child.

This isn't how it went.  In reality, my parents didn't know how to ride a bike either.
As it turns out, there are two truths at play here.
1: That old saying that you never forget how to ride a bike is complete bullshit.  My mom forgot.  Entirely.  Can not do it.
2: It's pretty difficult to teach someone to do something when you can't even do it yourself.
Ah!  But I had TEACHERS!  Oh yes I did. 
Victoria was one.  She was one of my first best friends.  She was my second "best friend" but really my first because she actually liked me and stuck around for a while.


TANGENT TIME!
My first "best friend" was Dara.  ...Darah?  I don't know anymore.  I couldn't spell then, so I don't have much to base this off of.  In any case, Deddrie's (my webcomic) little sister is named for this girl.  She and I were inseparable. We had so much in common, like our love for purple!

...Okay so that was kind of it, but back in nursery school, color coordination between friends was like, a big deal and stuff.
We were so close that we at one point shared a toilet.

We were very small and in retrospect this creeped me out even at the time, but prevented me from falling in.
She understood me when I spoke and together we tormented boys and she protected me from nasty other people.
After nursery school, however, I was no longer allowed to play with her.  My family was apparently not religious enough (my father is CLERGY but, hey, direct line to the Big Guy is apparently not good enough) and so I was deemed to be a bad influence.

Given how I turned out, they may have been right, but that's not the point.

I wrote to her once.  I never got a response, but that may have been because I could not spell and so it probably read something like "gjioj ij ekj flije monkeybutt lafkj;fiej rackalaj flaggen."

/End Tanget

Anyhoo, back to Victoria.  She and I were fundamentally different people.

...Though she did once pull me out of a toilet into which I had fallen.  ...Toilets and I have a sordid history.

She'd deal with all my stupid games from "we're warrior princesses out to kill the goblins" to "we're scientist cat people trying to avoid being killed by vet aliens"...

And meanwhile she actually went outside sometimes, while I cursed the sunlight and sunk back into my little cave of bad movies and cartoons.
She could roller skate, ice skate, ride a bike and drive a car as soon as legally allowed.

I still can't do any of that.

So, since she was hyper active and I didn't like to speak and hated sunlight, obviously letting her teach me to ride a bike without any parental supervision at like 10 years old was a BRILLIANT plan.
Needless to say, I didn't get very far and then she got frustrated and then bored with me pretty damn quickly after my billionth tantrum.

SO!  My sister was chosen to teach me to ride a bike.  It's true, she's about eight years older, but she's also about eight shades crazier and lord only knows what she was high on at the time.  Somehow with training wheels on my pink bike (complete with white basket which sported plastic flowers) and while wearing my trusty Pee-Wee Herman-inspired helmet, (I had put stickers all over it, complete with a giant eye ball in the front) I still managed to flip the bike onto it's side and hit my head into the side of a (thankfully parked) car.
My dream of being like those girls in Now and Then was reduced to a pile of dog crap.  So much for growing up to be Janeane Garofalo.

Right.  So.  Flash forward about ten years.  I was dating a guy who also does not have a driver's license but claims to know how to ride a bike. This was possibly a lie. 
That, or he just wanted to avoid showing me how goofy he looked on a bike. 
Either way, it was me, my mom and this guy who I am no longer dating, (though we are still friends) all in the middle of a children's park parking lot, because that's obviously the best place for bloodshed.

I was told not to wear my awesome helmet because cool adults don't wear such things.
I was too afraid to go fast enough to stay up right lest I then not be able to stop. 
But then!  I did it!  I was going!  I was moving!  And then I screamed, went into a panic and fell over sideways.  ...And my head hit a car.  Without a helmet.

About oh... five years laterish?  I bought a bike.  It was orange.
A woman I refer to as my horse (which is, believe it or not, a compliment) was able to ride it effortlessly.  It looked fun!  I thought, "Well, my horse can do it.  Damn it, so can I!"  I pictured the two of us riding off into the sunset together.

Saying is easier than doing.  Also, in retrospect... the bike is too big.  Like woah now, too tall for tiny thing that is me.

I even bought myself a helmet.  It's awesome.

My current boyfriend who knows how to ride a bike and showed me that he could, in fact, ride MY bike, attempted to teach me.
For many days, he would go backwards and allow me to basically run right into him repeatedly as though this were not a metaphor for our entire relationship.
Metaphor or not, I did it.  I even got a few feet by myself and was able to stop with no issue.  I was proud!
And then we moved.
The moment we moved, the bike was put in the back and the helmet was put somewhere in the closet.
I came up with a thousand excuses not to ride the bike. 
"It's cold."
"We live in a scary neighborhood where someone may shoot me for my bike."
"We live on a street with many children and I may hit one with my bike and kill him or her."
"There are cats."
So ...I never rode again and after a while he got tired of desperately trying to drag me outside while I'm kicking and screaming about cats.

The end so far.

EDIT:  I still have no idea how to ride a bike.  ...And this boyfriend is no longer a boyfriend.  This is a very old post.  Shh.  Be thankful I added pictures.  You folks come from the internet, which is the land of short attention spans.

EDIT to my EDIT:  Also, I mention poop and toilets like four times or something.  The Hell is wrong with me?