Went to bed without uploading this page, but fortunately I get up by 5am EVERY morning so many of you probably didn’t notice… seriously, no matter when I go to bed, still wake up by 5.  Sometimes I can kind of go back to sleep, but I usually just roll with it and start my day.  It happened kind of slowly as I finally lost all the remaining baby weight (and then some!) and at first I was really annoyed, now I’m used to it.  It does feel weird to have made such a change to my sleep patterns (circadian rhythm?) by just dropping weight…hormones are complicated things.

So about last week’s milestone update: thank you so much guys for all the nice comments and messages, they are super appreciated!  I have been asked about Patreon before, but I’m not sure I want to go that route…it just feels odd to me.  Sure I have a Paypal button on the side, but I’ve never really liked that either and I don’t actively promote it.  I suppose the level of interaction is the nice side of Patreon… all kinds of things to consider!  Meanwhile the kid’s show we’ve been painting backgrounds for just got renewed for a new season while we’re only 4 shows into the current one, so Jim and I should have that contract going till Jan 2020…which is crazy for us.  Most animation contracts seem to go in the 3-6 month range and we’re stumbling into longer ones these days (Jim managed to stumble his way into a supervisor position) so the stability is great, especially with 3 kids.  The work load is something else… LOL.

Inevitable aftermath when Tanked is involved and this week’s vote incentive (baby Hulk!)

Hey guys!!  School starts tomorrow!!!  On Sunday Jim let the kids do a 3 movie marathon of the first Jurassic Park movies (I didn’t remember the sequels at all) and there were no issues.  I once had Evan clinging to me and sobbing that he wanted to leave the theatre… because the trailer for the live action Jungle Book was too scary.  Lol.  The boys were quiet and attentive the whole time, no fidgets, no whining.  That movie came out in ‘93 and it holds up pretty well actually.

Had some time to do a derby entry this week on Shirt Woot:  ‘House Fight’ Please go VOTE for my design and help it get printed on Woot!  All you need is an Amazon account.  Thanks a lot guys! :D

Happy Belated Canada Day!  We had a busy day: the twins ran their first race (1K), they went swimming at Nana’s for nearly two hours, then we were out till 11pm for a fireworks show.  I just put them to bed (writing this Sunday night) so I’m hoping they sleep in super late and I can have a nice quiet morning because I miss school :(
Please go VOTE for these Dooomcat entries in the latest Shirt Woot derby!!  All you need is an Amazon account (or a Woot one of course).  “Book Lovers Club” and “Zombie Protest”
Thank you guys!  Every vote helps :D

If I still had the time to do mini comics I’d totally do stuff like the Misadventures of Detective Crack and his sidekick Goose… and I’m still backwards/behind/discombobulated with school ending, summer starting, and the inevitable chorus of “Mom! I’m bored! He punched me! He bit me!”…etc on the way.  I usually run a free t-shirt contest on the FB page for my birthday…which was two Mondays ago, but it’s up now!  So head on over to the BN Facebook page and like/share/comment (let me know your fav design, or what you’d like to see next!) on the contest post for the chance to win a Dooomcat tee!  Like this one below: (from Neatoshop, my favourite printers :D )

And a new vote incentive image is up: for all the cat lovers! (within reason)

If only my kids could get along so well… first week of summer they did camp so no major issues, and Sam misses school and wants to go back already (some of the time!).  Second week they’re home and the fighting (or sometimes it’s just the noise level) is constant.  I try to keep them occupied (limited tv time) and get them out on walks and stuff, but we work from home and I have to fit that in…argh.  It’s going to be a long summer.

Last week we ran a t-shirt contest post on Facebook and our randomly picked winner is Kerisa Ricketts! PM me on FB or send me an email (alison@dooomcat.com) with your details!!

Vote incentive: It’s been so hot I’m feeling this guy lately…

The lions are hungry! ;)

Jim made me some vegetable boxes this year so we have a few tomato plants, some bell peppers, and some carrots.  I wish I’d gotten more yellow tomatoes, they’re awesome!  They have such a nice flavour, but I have one plant and it’s growing slowly and so far I’ve gotten three small tomatoes off it and shared most of them with the neighbours.  I’ll have to figure out how to get them through the winter and then get more next year!  By the way, how do you know when the carrots are ready??

Vote incentive: me trying to nap and the kids are home for the summer :(

Zombies!! (prints/tees/mugs/skins at Teepublic)

Oh when is summer vacation over already??  Lol, I’ll miss the weather, but I’ll miss the noise level and fighting even more.  Of course Sept last year was amazingly hot, I wonder what it’s going to be like this year, considering the heat we’ve already had.  Most of the summer camps I signed them up for are in Aug, but not next week :(

Vote Incentive: Summer enjoyment with ‘good’ Stitch and ‘bad’ Stitch :)

With Disney eating Fox and set to take over the world, we may as well get some out there team ups :)
(Get ‘New Member’ at Neatoshop!)

Continuing with the super humid weather this past weekend, and probably all this week though they’re currently calling for thundershowers Mon/Tues (oddly, the forecasts have been off a lot lately: they call for rain and it often doesn’t happen…aren’t they usually pretty accurate the day before??) We’re super curious to find out if Sept is going to be as insanely hot as it was last year!
Sam has a new obsession: the Harry Potter lego sets are pretty cute/expensive.  He has the most trouble actually saving his money, and frequently bargains with me about getting into debt (with me) over various things.  He’ll have a savings goal in mind, and then see something shiny and blow it.  The twins are a lot better in general about not spending their allowance/bday money unless it’s something really special (though if I let them, they might just blow everything on Pokemon cards).  Hopefully this improves (he needs $140 for the Hogwarts Hall set, I don’t think he has the will power).
Now can I justify getting this totally awesome Voltron set for myself for xmas…

Vote incentive: speaking of 80s cartoons…

The twins are going to a new camp this week: our local Humane Society has a kid’s day camp.  They do the typical camp activities, but I guess with some simple animal husbandry thrown in?  Maybe they make them clean the cages?  Take the dogs for walks?  Whatever it is, Evan will love it.  He’s super excited and can’t stop talking about all the “beautiful and wonderful animals” he’s going to see.  Owen, on the other hand, is a little nervous around dogs and isn’t so sure about this… we’ll see how it goes!  I have to drive about 25 minutes both ways too… buggers better appreciate :D

We watched the original Jurassic Park with them last night and at no time did one of them run and hide under the couch.  We seem to be past the stage of paralyzing fear and sobbing: Evan once cry/demanded we leave a theatre because the preview (for the Jungle Book) was too scary.  Vote Incentive:  a definitely not scary T-Rex!

As always, support the comic!  Buy some tees!  Impress a cat! (not possible).

Vote incentive:  the inevitable aftermath…

Last Friday was the 10th anniversary of this webcomic starting… and I likely wouldn’t have remembered if some of you didn’t point it out.  Years ago, before kids, this was kind of my baby and I spent lots of time planning/prepping/producing pages, plus all the pre-work I put into a couple of companion comics I wanted to work on as well.  It’s amazing to look back at how quickly 10 years can go by, and feel like you haven’t actually accomplished that much :(  I’m definitely not where I thought I could be after a decade: long ago, I was updating 3x per week, averaged 50 comments per page, made $2-3 every day in ad revenue.  Dropped to 2x per week after Sam was born and had trouble maintaining that.  The twins arrived and life kind of stopped for a couple of months/spent all my time in the NICU, but things evened out and I kept going once a week.  Having three kids meant we got more serious about finding jobs/contracts (always fun when you’re freelance artists) and my vanity projects time got whittled down even more.  I still enjoy the comic, it’s still a fun outlet away from our day to day pay the bills projects, I still have lots of stories I want to draw… but it is a bit disheartening sometimes to see how slow I’ve been (I want to print books 3/4/5 dammit! And do more of those mini Versus comics!) And with Project Wonderful shut down I’ve gone from pennies a day in ad revenue to $0…yay!
Well, perhaps some new goal setting is in order: I want to do a Kickstarter for the 3rd book.  I had help from a small press publisher to produce the first 2, but they went out of business.  I’ve looked into some other options to help with all the shipping and stuff because I just don’t have time to do that, plus it would be ridiculously expensive coming from Canada.  Might be putting the cart before the horse here since I’d have to get the book funded first, but I do like to research :)  I also like to procrastinate and part of the problem with printing volume 3 is the 20 or so pages I’d have to re-color that I lost in a drive crash years ago (still sad about that, epic fail on my part for not properly backing up… back your shit up people!!!)
Anyway, here’s to sticking with something this long.  And huge thanks to all of you that have stuck right along with me :D  (same to any more recent readers!)  Your comments and encouragement over the years have been so appreciated and I love you all!
Now buy some tees, lol!

Went to bed without uploading this page, but fortunately I get up by 5am EVERY morning so many of you probably didn’t notice… seriously, no matter when I go to bed, still wake up by 5.  Sometimes I can kind of go back to sleep, but I usually just roll with it and start my day.  It happened kind of slowly as I finally lost all the remaining baby weight (and then some!) and at first I was really annoyed, now I’m used to it.  It does feel weird to have made such a change to my sleep patterns (circadian rhythm?) by just dropping weight…hormones are complicated things.

So about last week’s milestone update: thank you so much guys for all the nice comments and messages, they are super appreciated!  I have been asked about Patreon before, but I’m not sure I want to go that route…it just feels odd to me.  Sure I have a Paypal button on the side, but I’ve never really liked that either and I don’t actively promote it.  I suppose the level of interaction is the nice side of Patreon… all kinds of things to consider!  Meanwhile the kid’s show we’ve been painting backgrounds for just got renewed for a new season while we’re only 4 shows into the current one, so Jim and I should have that contract going till Jan 2020…which is crazy for us.  Most animation contracts seem to go in the 3-6 month range and we’re stumbling into longer ones these days (Jim managed to stumble his way into a supervisor position) so the stability is great, especially with 3 kids.  The work load is something else… LOL.

Inevitable aftermath when Tanked is involved and this week’s vote incentive (baby Hulk!)

Hey guys!!  School starts tomorrow!!!  On Sunday Jim let the kids do a 3 movie marathon of the first Jurassic Park movies (I didn’t remember the sequels at all) and there were no issues.  I once had Evan clinging to me and sobbing that he wanted to leave the theatre… because the trailer for the live action Jungle Book was too scary.  Lol.  The boys were quiet and attentive the whole time, no fidgets, no whining.  That movie came out in ’93 and it holds up pretty well actually.

Had some time to do a derby entry this week on Shirt Woot:  ‘House Fight’ Please go VOTE for my design and help it get printed on Woot!  All you need is an Amazon account.  Thanks a lot guys! :D

So far we’re not getting the ridiculously hot Sept we had last year :(  The last couple of days have been sunny but windy… bye summer…at least school’s back!  Just wait till they all have homework to do at the same time and I start eating my words.

I got my butt in gear and did some updating to the site (and by me I mean I managed new links in the archive but my friendly neighbourhood web guy fixed some things and updated some things and now it’s not running so slow any more!  Yay!) Next up on my to-do list: buttons for social media (did you know I have a FB page?  Of course not because I don’t have a link anywhere!!) sign up for Instagram because apparently that’s where all the cool kids are, sign up for Patreon, start re-coloring lost book 3 pages, gotta get eat and sleep in there somewhere too… baby steps :D

Vote Incentive: Count down to Halloween! Pumpkins! Knives! Uncomfortable feelings!

Fun night with the kids at the annual fall fair in the town I grew up in (in weather more suited to a heat wave in July) and now for my annual rant at how expensive it is :P $25 for 16 ride tickets, which is not enough for 3 kids to get two rides each. Blah. 3 cups of slush each and some mini donuts, and the oldest one complaining non stop about how hot he was (Sam’s not a walker, lol). So yay, and we’ll do it all next year. I may have to go in the bumper cars, Sam’s still too short to go by himself. And Evan stepped in a sizeable pile of cow poo, in his sandals. The baby donkey in the petting zoo was the cutest thing ever!

Vote Incentive: more Halloween shirts!  Beast Bunny from Neato, and some Horror BFFs.

It’s pretty rare that we get significant weather issues around here; it may get pretty cold in the winter but we have generally pretty stable weather patterns.  The tornado that came through on Fri was fairly localized: some people never power, while others lost their homes.  Losing power for an extended period never fails to make me both really out of sorts and incredibly pampered/don’t appreciate how easy my life usually is.  Especially in the evening when it’s too dark to draw or read, I have massive deadlines and I can’t use my computer, couldn’t cook anything so protein for dinner, couldn’t even work out cause I banged up my knee and it currently doesn’t like bending… fortunately it’s neither horribly cold or hot out!  Our thoughts are with all the people who are adrift this week.  Any locals, check out the shelters in your area; lots of people are needy right now :(

I feel guilty that I’m glad the roof didn’t get blown off my house, but still pouting that my weekend plans all got ruined (plus stupid knee) AND to top it all off, the school board is closing all the schools tomorrow just in case as lots of sections of the city are still without power…dammit!

Vote incentive: A little Mr. Skellington to bring with you everywhere you go!

More Halloween tees!  Get them at Neatoshop :D

October again!  Feels like it came really fast, but that might just be my usual slow acceptance of the cold weather coming…and the horrid drudgery of tax time (our year end is Halloween, the scariest time of the year!)  Normally I’m not big into the season of pumpkin spice but I did find a yummy sounding recipe for pumpkin protein pancakes; as a fan of lower carb substitutes AND alliteration I think we’ll just have to give those a try.  I made spaghetti squash pad thai on the weekend and 1 out of 3 kids deemed it edible!  (Owen sat for nearly two hours eating one strand at a time because he’s insane/stubborn.) Whatever, I loved it.

Vote incentive: Canadian Thanksgiving is next weekend :D

More Halloween tees!  I might have a new zombie one upcoming on Woot…. emphasis on the might because I have no idea if/when they’ll print it :P

Happy Thanksgiving Canada :D

Vote Incentive: cold weather comfort food and horror all in one!

Lech to the rescue??  Nothing will go wrong!

Ate too much for Thanksgiving weekend, wasn’t much better this weekend.  Swamped with work lately and spending waaaaay more time sitting than I like.  My rear literally gets sore.  And I always say I’ll take a break and get up every half hour and walk around! Easier said than done.  Our schedule doesn’t look like it’s going to lighten up for a year actually (well more than that).  Current show goes till Dec, then we may get a week off, and the next season is supposed to start right away and last 12 months.  We don’t usually luck out with back to back contracts like this, especially one that will go so long.  AND I’m supposed to start a new contract with the same company doing design work (finally! That part’s my favourite!) that could get going any day now… 20 year old pre-kids me would have been over the moon with the work load and the financial stability and potential career progression it represented… current me is wondering when I’ll sleep.

I need someone to come over and do the kid’s homework with them :P

New Halloween tee: ‘Pumpking’!  And Vote Incentive: some clever zombies

Busy weekend!  Sam turned 9 (9!  Nearly double digits!) and we ended up having two family reunions plus a birthday party.  I ate waaaaay too much, and spent too much time sitting/driving/not working.  Amazing packed weekends are awesome, but it leads to a stressed out and compacted week :(

New Halloween tee!  With ninjas!!

So that was an epic weekend… first snow storm of the year on Saturday, kids super busy, two parties and a cooking class, groceries/laundry/errands, Halloween party ended early when Owen had an epic 40 min nose bleed and the rec centre staff got nervous and called an ambulance…had to monitor him all night instead of dropping them off for a sleep over at Nana’s because Jim was AWAY this whole time and I had to go pick him up at 11 pm at the bus stop that night, in a snow storm, at a time when I’d already be asleep…HA HA HA.  Never again.

He did bring me a cheese cake from Uncle Tetsu :)

Vote incentive: a somewhat scary bunny….  (get it on a tee from Neato!)