i know i said i was done drawing the old house, but i'm not, okay? here is my grandparent's bedroom. that is the actual color of the carpet that they commit to for 57 years in that room.

i was a jewish girl alone on christmas. tater tots better watch out.

dog love is a very, very specific kind. also, i couldn't surrender this mug to the dumpster, even though it is the ugliest, ever, of all mugs. how come things can suddenly become so precious and other things just don't?

it's just that for some reason i don't want to throw out the pencil shavings from this specific pencil. that's not that weird, right? so im keeping them in a jar. whatever. it's fine. here are the contents of my purse and some flags.

well, if i am going to have a blog where i show all of the private details of my life, eventually we'll have to get to menstruation, so, here it is. also, go read east of eden, right now.

i don't think i can ever consider myself a good artist until the scraps of paper i use to blot my paintbrushes on or mix paint on stop being better looking than my drawings themselves. isn't that little black strip i glued in here so handsome? stupid accident.

well, i've been drawing beets a lot, but i can't explain it, and i dont think you'd want me to try, even. but, rest assured, in case you were worried: all sorts of tiny scraps of paper scattered around my desk have small drawings and paintings of beets. i had started a much larger painting about beets, since i seem to be obsessed, but i think they are meant to be small and on scraps, for now.

i've been keeping my apartment stupidly cold. post-shower lagoon-monster is a side effect of this.

during my drive back from thanksgiving in new york, i listened to a whole lot of history podcasts, leading to a very strange and surprising interest/obsession with royal families and their quirks. i was really extra interested in catherine the great, who married peter the third. he was, apparently, totally weird, childish and into toy guns. he was eventually sent to prison where he died mysteriously, and many people believe catherine had him poisoned there. i'm interested in murderous women.

im glad my friends stay friends with me. usually i am a big old sack of crazy, as illustrated in these comics, and they stand by me and even support me. which maybe makes them as nuts as i am. the one called "easily freaked" ties in with the one called "irrational towards eleanor", from the last post. hi, eleanor! thank you for staying my friend. sorry i hate it when you shiver.

it's just i spend a lot of time with eleanor, so when she gets new clothes, it really throws me for a loop. okay? jeez.

well, if you haven't read east of eden, you should run to the library RIGHT NOW.
this is a steinback quote. i could never write this eloquently.

my grandma is spicy, again. and some days you have peanut butter and some days you don't! sometimes i have epiphanies while walking linus.

my grandma's friend betty is really, really fabulous. she can use words like 'divine" and not sound like a drag queen.

it walked, slowly, under my car, as i was going like, 10 miles an hour. im sorry, opossum! it was the worst.
spent some time in north carolina in the yurt that my friends dan and becki live in. they both mostly do listen very attentively to what i have to say, despite what this comic says.

a six word biography, a spicy grandma, and a halloween candy experiment.

the tag sale was awful. besides this nice man, there were a few other nice people--one woman wrote a note to my grandparents thanking them for parting with some of their treasures so she could have some.

he lived there for 53 years! leaving the house was very hard for my sweet grandpa.

i have major goat future dreams. where other girls dream of weddings and dream homes and celebrity husbands, i dream of goats.
also featured is a photo of moto the cat, fighting an evil scarf, and a drawing of my favorite hiding/nap place as a kid, laid in for the last time. with my uncle billy's american legion hat on.

really. i can't get it right for getting it wrong.

two more rooms. i might be done drawing the house now. it is sold and some new people are living in it and it is a felony if i try to go through the front door, now. there is a LOT of stuff left out of the basement drawing. like, every object in the entire world.

my grandparents are moving out of the home that they raised me in--the home that they raised themselves in for fifty seven years. it is really hard for me to think someone else will live in this space, even though i've not lived there for years. the house has hardly changed at all during my whole lifetime, but for the past few weeks we've been tearing it apart, packing and selling and throwing away. the house barely resembles the one that is in my memories. so, being the sentimental obsessive that i am, i've became fixated on drawing all of the rooms the way i remember them. what if i do this for the rest of my life? i might have to build a diorama. i might have to build a life-size diorama.

this is formally dedicated to sky sabin. i am pleased that he likes my drawings enough to want to be in them. but, for the record, i'd have probably made the witch joke into a comic either way.

i wish i had a secret language. i found a journal from my great grandmother, and she wrote sometimes in code. if i don't explain my imagery, that's a sort of code, right?

life skills.

if you give me a pen, the likelihood is high that i will eventually draw little cartoons of the bones in my hand ON my hand.

it is strange that this is a pattern in my life, but i have been in a lot of situations in which i am totally shocked and surprised that someone has just kissed me. i think, normally, people see a kiss coming, but there have been enough incidents where a kiss is a total shock that it MUST be something that i'm doing wrong. this was a harmless surprise kiss during a mountain goats concert, but unnerving all the same. and then also, that down there is iron and wine. i (thanks to some generous and talented friends) got to see him sing in this little church in london, and it was lovely.

stonehenge was not as impressive as i thought, although it still made me feel a little spine shiver and ignited a small interest in druids. mostly, they really did just look like big stone pants.

i missed linus SO BADLY when i was in europe. i kept feeling like he was behind me or near me. i love that guy.
every morning, at this music festival i went to, i woke up in my tent, and went to this bakery that was set up in the woods, and got a cream scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream and a cup of earl gray tea and sat on the grass and read my book. it was the best. since i've been back home, i've been trying all sorts of things to reenact those moments. to no avail.

my airplane didn't crash, don't worry! but those things are CRAZY. i've flown in plenty of airplanes but every time, i'm like, what the HELL is happening? more about that, later.

i am going to england tomorrow! all my stuff is strapped onto my backpack and ready to go! this is what it looks like. and that is emily dickenson.

in fact, all of these things were cooked while i was in my underpants only because it was too hot in my kitchen. don't tell anyone! they tasted just like if i had cooked them with all my clothes on.

even though earl was the wimpiest hurricane, ever, he made the ocean REAL crashy the night before he swept by.

i really would have NEVER recognized bruce willis. sorry, action movie fans. and up on top! is a tiny pictogram of the things i am packing to take with me to england.

i CAUGHT A FLY IN MY BUG CAGE. this is TRUE.
also, the first comic in my newest sketchbook. this is always a stressful time for me, but i am sure this is a good omen for this little book.

a lovely sentiment lifted from a chapter from villette, by charlotte bronte. last page of my sketchbook! important.

first is a message with questionable grammar to a bad man, second is a comic about a good coworker.

it was a warm windy night and my dog is a wimp.

these are two separate thoughts that both happen to contain the word "secret."

i came home drunk, had a lot of remorse about my treatment of cats, took off most of my clothes, knocked over all my utensils, and then sat in front of the refrigerator eating leftover risotto. normal people maybe wouldn't let this image escape the quiet secrecy of their empty house, but it is my duty to commit these things to paper. do you see this, future self? this is how you act.

some birds in some direction, i guess.

these, all three, are true. a true story, a true statement, a true fortune.

some nice words that were said. and the state of awareness i'd like to be in, for a while.

something really funny happened at work, but then it was lost. how many good comics have vanished in this manner! jeez. i never learn to write things down RIGHT AWAY. even though i have a tiny notebook that i carry around for exactly that purpose.

it turns out that this past week of drawing has been very shoe-centric. maybe i want to be walking somewhere else?