eleanor and i moved into a big old house by the water, as i've said. there is a huge sweet garden plot here, and we (well, mostly eleanor and jesse) are growing tons of stuff. before we could grow, we had to pull out all the overgrown weeds that have been taking over this entire property for decades, probably. we decided to forgo garden tools and use our hands. best.

god, seriously. why can't i remember this? my sketchbooks, lately, have been having huge gaps because of my stubborn refusal to do what is good for me.

this one is about straight boys, when they drink too much, and overcome any fear of gayness. you all know what i'm talking about. also, i drew it on the back of a paper bag.

Hey, Listen.
I live largely in a tent and although i do have internet in said tent, setting up my scanner and getting my drawings up on this thing is a task i am not cut out for, currently. But, no, no! Don't fret! Very soon, I promise, I'll get my shit together. Right now, it is too sunny and the birds are too chirpy to start fiddling with cords and color correcting. Sorry! Soon!
Love, always,
Melissa

ps: here is the big tree that lives in the backyard of the giant house i am being allowed to stay at. it is older than you are. the house, and especially, the tree.

it's almost mother's day! have you sent out your cards yet? i am lucky enough to have five people that are owed mother's day cards from me, so, here they are. funnily enough, none of them are actually my momma.

i can sleep with the windows open again! there are some problems with this arrangement, however.

a petal fell off it's tree onto my page. the first one of spring! then i glued it there.
also, that's eleanor. jesse, chris and i all drew her quickly one night.

poorly scanned, sorry. i tried to draw my grandparent's bedroom from memory. it was harder than i thought. it's worth another few attempts.

out of sight, out of mind.

sometimes i forget that you should just sit down and draw what's in front of you. also, sometimes you should draw directly onto your skin.

eleanor and i played this game the same way we would have when we were little girls. it was a windy night, and we had to stop the candles from getting blown out--first they were a ship's beacon, and then the last embers of a fire that we had to keep going in an encampment in a forest, and then each was a small animal in our care that we were protecting, and then we were bears who had found the precious stuff and were doing everything we could to keep it burning.
if eleanor and i had met when we were five, we would have gotten along as well as we get along today.

i drank a lot of wine at one of archie's parties again and drew this one about how i felt being surrounded by all those great wine-drinking and pasta-eating folks. and a little documentation of the necklaces i've been wearing for the past two years at the top of the page.

typical. also, some feathery drawings from the coffee shop, including a drawing of one of my biggest fascinations in providence.

listen: being single is really great except for three things that are so much easier with a boyfriend. 1. i like to share my food when i cook it and i don't like to eat alone. 2. i want someone to drive me to the mechanic so i don't have to sit there to wait my car to get fixed. 3. drawing comics about my love life is always an easy storyline.

three seperate things pasted in. a small reproduction of a list i made half in my sleep about the dream i had, hatchmarks designating something mysterious, and a ghost with nice wallpaper.

something is missing. it's likely more obvious than it seems. no matter how simple it is, i'll probably keep doing weird witchcrafty things to try to summon what's absent.

i did something brave this week, by sending a very earnest letter out blindly in the mail.

these were nice resounding words said to me by lee.

i get to live in a haunted mansion pretty soon, because i'm way lucky, but i'm pretty nervous about having to sleep in the big scary house by myself. it will be an excellent challenge in aloneness. plus, i always have that sweet dog to talk to all night.

some replicas of the eggs we dyed this easter. every day should be a day when i'm permitted to dye eggs and then make fritattas with their insides. also, i'm trying to figure out some un-figure-outable things. bummer.

p.s. my favorite ever part of this sketchbook is somewhere on this page. can you find it?

i spent easter weekend at eleanor's family's house on cape cod. i am so lucky to be adopted for non-jewish holidays by such excellent people with ten pound bars of chocolate in their house. eleanor fell asleep and lily the greyhound is almost always asleep, except when she's being the weirdest creature on the face of the planet.

just a conspiring couple at coffee exchange.

not always appropriate in public. thank goodness my friends jovially put up with it.

there's a magic trick in this comic strip! in the first panel, i've drawn jesse. in the third, he's GONE! how'd he do that?