December 2010

I do think Mike & Dee's relationship could improve - and part of that would be stepping back a bit from attaching themselves to Mike's parents at the expense of Dee's.

As for Mira, I'd hope that seeing some of her daughter's family problems (with a few accompanying clue-by-4s courtesy of Wilf :) would help her, well, act better.

Springtime for Foobville with Foobery ... Milborough is Happy and Gay!

Yeah, I'm getting out of the little tidbits... just one more

Springtime for Foobville VII

I've been having some trouble with gradients in my photos of the pictures. Then I zap some of it if I have time, but it leaves more "fussy" parts a little grey

... and the closest thing I'll get to an "Easter" strip:

and over dinner

I just can't seem to stop sniping about the FOOB storytelling*, what with "Mike learns to care about his interview subjects" being forgotten at least twice, never mind the increasingly detached parenting.

* = not that that's a bad thing.

No, this isn't turning into some PSA about depression - but I did put in off-panel that Wilf has known people with it, so it seems a pretty natural worry, given how Dee acts.

a different dinnertime

well this was supposed to be Saturday's...

... but I had GIMPing issues. So it was a quickly-drawn one:Just what Mira thinks can be done (since I hope it's clear she isn't talking about divorce) is almost ready for tomorrow.

continuing along

Special longer bit

I've usually done these as little "strips", and once I realized I had more than would go in a "strip", I plotted it out pretty much like a Sunday one:Still to be continued, but we'll see how long it takes me to get it done.

Update: ETA Thursday/ Friday. I know what will get said, just not with which *words*.

Mira presses on in conversation

[nar] Over coffee after shopping, Mira tries to talk to her daughter [/narration]Definitely to be continued...

And now for another parent-child pair

No, I don't know what I was thinking about Deanna's dress design. Except that I'd put in that there was draping, and I think I merged that with the prairie-dress style on the old Who's Who page.

25 Dec 2009: Merry Christmas from the Sketchpad

I've got some looser stuff covering vignettes of the 25th...
Yeah, I know, that is the world's worst drawing of a walker.

Anyhow, Foob's Paradise goes on hiatus for my Christmas break, where I head back north of the 49th into the frozen tundra :-) It'll pick up again in the new year.

24 Dec 2009 (late): Christmas Coda

Well, Mira isn't all sweetness and light, but we knew that.
A few things:

• That "Eva" had to come from somewhere
• Yes, I know that both flower girl dresses had teal bodices & lavender skirts. But the Yahoo colouring gnomes apparently didn't, so at least one of the dailies had the colours swapped. And since all that ended up only being in Elly's mind, which was confused, hey, maybe they did initially want "complementary" L+T and T+L. Possibly the only thing that could have made it any more hideous, so I'm going with it.
• Mira and Wilf really have had the short end of the stick on Christmases. It annoys me greatly that young April in 2002 complained that the Sobinskis "got" all the holidays. Let's review the bidding:
• 2000: Elly has "everyone at home" just after the secret marriage
• 2001: Mike & Dee split up where they are for different parts of Christmas Day based upon (in-strip) Elly wanting to have them for dinner
• 2002: Christmas Eve and morning are at Mira & Wilf's (not stated whose preference). Same arrangement as the previous year, yet April complains. Ah, well. She still had some maturing to do to understand tradeoffs.
• Not that her family gave her the experience to understand them, however, because in 2003, Elly hosted a big dinner "for 14", and the listed folks leave 3 spots - possibly Mira & Wilf had to come if they were going to see Mike & Dee. In 2004, Mira & Wilf came to Elly's. In 2005, Christmas Day had Meredith with Elly, and no sign of Mira and Wilf at all. 2006 was post-fire at Elly's, and in 2007, Deanna hosted, so her parents came along with the Pattersons.
• And wouldn't it be nice if Deanna got that "after marriage, you'll become roommates" attitude only from her much-admired mother-in-law?
  

24 Dec 2009: The Traditional (well, sort of) Holiday Dinner

Getting everyone around the table: not easy. Getting them all to scale with each other during my "decompress" time: apparently impossible. Who'da thunk?

... and I think it's high time somebody took Robin to the Toronto Ex (CNE) for an education in what can be put on a stick :-)

24 Dec 2009: Nearing the endgame

[narration]While Iris offered Elly a cup of tea - so much more soothing than coffee, dear - others took stock of the situation.[/narration]I'm really not happy with my ability to light up the pics. I keep moving the lamps around, and never find a "minimal light gradient zone"

24 Dec 2009: Not that I've forgotten about Wilf & Jim...

All this stuff has been going on over a period of a couple of hours - the Sobinskis were there while the turkey was being prepped, so at least a few hours before dinner. Much coffee should be being drunk, many cookies being eaten (and let's not forget the zucchini bread!), as well as cards being played. Along with Merrie and Robin playing or reading/ being read to. But because those things don't advance the "deal with the Christmas From Heck" story, they only get to be implied or happen in the background. So I put Merrie and Robin in the foreground to show some of what they're up to.

And I finally blocked out how the events which must still happen will make it into strips ... I think I actually will get through this comic-strip day before 24 Dec 2008 rolls around :-)

24 Dec 2009: pause for a breather

I really ought to have put a narration box: With further conversation pointless, Mira offered some help with the potatoes and Wilf retreated

or: After venting, Deanna calmly went back to work on dinner while her parents retreated

Ever since I ended the initial Foob's Paradise un-wedding arc, I've mostly thought of vignettes of what would happen next - not a continuous flow of a story. So I don't think I'm giving a smooth, continuous flow of the Christmas Eve From Heck story here. Maybe some narration boxes would help.

As for Grandpa Jim, a little looking into aphasia indicates that there are many levels of verbal and written-word impairment. There can be major difficulties with both, or just one, and I expect the therapists would have worked hard to give Jim as many ways of communicating as possible. It's not unrealistic that he could write some things.

24 Dec 2009: another rare Wednesday installment

... in order to continue Deanna's conversation with her parents. It did look like something of a breakthrough was happening.

Well, maybe not quite the breakthrough they were hoping for.

Yes, this on-the-edge obsession of Deanna to make Mike a success is my tribute to the "small sewing school" future in the Strip of Destiny, which clearly wasn't going to work unless Mike could support the family himself. It hasn't occurred to Deanna that she might not feel work was such a drudgery if she weren't run ragged doing everything so that Mike is left free of all responsibilities except his muse.

Wilf clearly has his own ideas of the root of this obsession.

Either way, Deanna is doing everything, because while freelance writers complete projects on their own time, Mike has been given a ton with hard-to-schedule subjects. (Maybe he's annoyed people in the industry?) And it looks like Mike has neither been asked to nor has he figured out on his own to use the rest of his time wisely.

24 Dec 2009: Poor Wilf

So why do I keep making poor Wilf try to keep things from boiling over? Back in the apartment days, he was the only one of the older generation to do so. Deanna got upset with her mom at least once, and Wilf told Mira to cut it out at least once. Given where I've been going with Deanna's situation, that leaves just him.

There's a second part to this scene which I should get photographed and up tomorrow.

24 Dec 2009: somewhere in here, Elly must have gotten her coffee, right?

I expect somebody pried it away from Mira while Jim & Iris were getting settled. Possibly Mike while retreating from the kitchen - because it's not as if Mira's busybodyinsuggestions have been laid to rest.

Yes, Jim and Wilf have something of a Battle Of The Vests going. In my defense, they have both been shown to wear that clothing style.

UPDATE: I haven't been putting in people's names just to be sure they're IDed, have I? That's Liz, last seen in Nov 13's post (the first Christmas Eve strip). I try to make sure the dramatis personae is on the post labels.

24 Dec 2009: More of the Well-Meaning Rhino

... a phrase coined by dreadedcandiru2 in the comments, to describe Mira. I think it's in keeping with how she's been portrayed, especially concerning her grandchildren.