Gigantic Throbbing Neon Ratbags
Also, doodle update.
You didn’t doubt me, did you?
And just in case you’re wondering, yes this is larger paper: it’s A4. * I’m not, in fact, all that good at small, and gigantic throbbing neon ratbags . . . well, they need room to move around in. ** This is the paper size for the bats in the belfry doodle since to get the grins on the faces of the bats satisfactorily grinny I again need some extra space.***
I should have mentioned the doodle level last night, when I was busy moaning about everything . . . but then I spent too much time gloating. Yes, I absolutely am still stumbling through the doodle orders, but, all appearances of extreme silliness to the contrary notwithstanding, doodling is . . . no, really . . . a brain drain. Okay, pick yourselves up off the floor and wipe your streaming-with-disbelieving-laughter eyes as you will. Let’s put this incomprehensible datum down to a variety of factors: first and perhaps foremost that when I started this auction nonsense I hadn’t held the business end of a drawing pencil in about twenty years. That yanking myself back into drawing, ahem, fitness, even when it’s only doodles, takes time, practise and thought. It’s about eye, you know? Well, any of you who draw know. Eye and hand—er—coordination, coordination of any sort not being my strong suit at best. Even though it’s just doodles. Also . . . I’m actually really happy to be drawing again, and I don’t want to ruin it for me. Plus, even at silly-doodle level I have standards. If I’m not happy with a doodle, I’ll do it again.†† This is why I mostly pencil each doodle in first, and go over it with pen after I’m (relatively) pleased. ††† But this takes longer than if I were boldly and expertly dashing off each uniquely brilliant design.
And then, speaking of dashing and uniquely brilliant, there are the challenging petitions. Again, these are fun, except for the time element‡ involved. I admit I am still a trifle stymied by a request for a doodle of a ‘squirrel running away with a brain’. A brain? No, no, I’m sure I don’t want to know.
Meanwhile . . . Fiona was supposed to come today, and haul the next load of doodly things off to the post office, but I got very nearly nothing done last week barring a little of SHADOWS and a lot of moaning. So she’s now coming next Tuesday. I won’t be finished yet. I’m hoping to finagle her into coming once more about a fortnight after that . . . and that should be all the basic doodles, either on their own or in books. I’ve already warned (I hope) the people with the really exotic orders that they may still be waiting a while, and I’m afraid I can’t guarantee to have got the doodle-icious books done yet either—they are INCREDIBLY labour-intensive.‡‡
Again, I’m sorry. Aside from my pig-headed stupidity about not recognising what was going on with PEG II, most of what’s gone wrong is circumstances out of my control . . . but if I hadn’t been pig-headedly stupid about PEG II circumstances wouldn’t have got out of control, because I’d’ve set PEG in its varying lengths and incarnations aside several months sooner, instead of putting off the auction till I got it sorted, because I wasn’t going to get it sorted . . . thus also leaving me trying to write a novel in five months as well as fulfil the auction obligations.
You know this living even a censored life on line leaves a lot to be desired: it’s very hard not to demonstrate your essential feeble-minded pratness even when you’re trying to be careful.
HEY! IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT! IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! DARK CHOCOLATE MOUSSE‡‡‡ IN EIGHTEEN HOURS!
* * *
* http://www.papersizes.org/a-paper-sizes.htm The standard doodle paper is A6. If I weren’t trying to keep the postage costs down I probably would have used bigger paper even for the basic doodles.
** I’d’ve coloured the houses too, but I ran out of marker pens. The only colour I had left was purple. Clearly I need a better assortment of marker pens.
*** I have a friend thinking about coming to visit next spring. Maybe April? she says. WILL THERE BE BATS YET? ::Headdesk:: And, just by the way, no, there shouldn’t be bats yet. Bats are supposed to arrive—that is, indoors—in May. Although they were early this year because we had such an early spring.^
^ Which then pissed off and left us with a non-summer. Never mind. We all seem to have thrived+ anyway.++
+ !!!!!!!!!
++ I have got to get that mosquito netting before . . . April. I’m going to have an interesting time trying to rig up a frame over the sofa bed for insane visiting friends. Not to mention buying a second lot of netting.
†† My standards may, of course, be a little unusual.
††† And you better believe I pencil it in first when it’s a doodle in a book. I’ve still already had to throw a couple out^ BECAUSE I AM TOO DUMB TO LIVE AND GOT THE DEDICATION NAME WRONG.
^ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH
‡ The end of January^ is MUCH TOO SOON.
^ What do you mean ‘what’s the end of January?’ SHADOWS is due the end of January.
‡‡ And I hope you like them. They’re huge fun to plan and to do but . . . time-consuming and Demanding of Brain.
‡‡‡ An entire chocolate cake in the house, with post-menopause zero-metabolism, is not to be thought of. Sigh. There isn’t that much about being young that I miss—aside from the ever-shortening future—but I miss eating.
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