26 Dec 2009: may I just say arrgh

No, not about the story, about my liner pens. Blobs of ink out the side - wipe them, try using them. Kaput. &*^^%. The last panel was painful to get some use out of one pen.

Brush pens aren't steady enough and the main local craft store only stocks the liner pen brand that just went bad on me (and only down to size 0.01, not 0.005, but I digress). There's one more craft store to try, but I have a busy weekend ahead of me, so I may be back to pencils for a while. Or "pencils-plus": in panel 2, I used a non-photo blue to get the picture blocked out, then went heavy on a regular pencil, then used a light gray brush-pen (where the unsteady thickness isn't as much of an issue as a black one). It's better contrast than the pencils only, but I was getting used to the pens' job.

26 Dec 2009: Boxing Day Shopping?

26 Dec 2009: Comparing Notes

I imagine that off these "newspaper-level" panels, Therese and Liz have compared a lot of notes.

26 Dec 2009 (Therese again)

Therese still isn't a confident mother:I'm still not fully happy with the wording of the dialogue. Therese knows she's not a perfect mother by a long shot - she was able to almost ignore Francoise for a few years (the strip where they run into her and F wants more time, not more gifts). The strip's tone implied that because she could head off to work, she wasn't a good mother, I had Anthony directly tell her she wasn't a good mother, and I think she's still digging out from that a bit. But the "not missing" / "not a good mother" sounds a bit awkward to me.

And I couldn't get a fully satisfactory expression for Liz in the last panel. The FOOB thing would be laughing uproariously at Therese's "fine. if you want her right away on Christmas, you'll get her - after *our* traditions exhaust her" attitude. But that's not really a nice thing to do to a little kid. So I was going for "amused but concerned" or "amused, but know you shouldn't be" and it didn't come out well.

26 Dec 2009: Therese's Christmas

Not much to add. I don't know how much the economy will have recovered by 2009, but if Therese's vague "finances" job is at least not with a company that owns a fund, they might still be in business.

26 Dec 2009: so what's up with everyone?

I fully admit that I don't know much about behaviour disorders, but ADD has some spectrum of behaviours, so Robin's problems could partially fit. And I don't know what is recommended as therapy for that case. Or maybe Liz doesn't have the full picture - she's relaying what she knows and Mike & Dee may not want to give out all the details. That's my "out" if I need it :-)

And while F was born post-Xmas, if anyone could benefit from early kindergarten, it would be her.

Boxing Day Traditions (26 Dec 2009)

Maybe not quite the friends people were expecting Liz to meet:(Yup, panel 2 is my usual level of pencils, which I kept that way for comparison. The next few strips [ETA: M-W-F] have results from various games I played with different pens.)