It’s been a couple of weeks and I now wake up at 3:30am and think about posting something. Then I realize how many chores are still left on the house, drink an excessive amount of coffee, and continue the slog.

I miss posting. I’m super-happy to say I’ve always been grateful we can in terms of our talent, time, and energy. Soon. Relatively soon. I’m looking forward to it. Quips on social media or the occasional live podcast are nice warm-up exercises, but they don’t replace the real thing.

Maybe I know what real authors feel. Maybe.

The POD arrived today. The delivery was impressive. I’m not sure how our entire house will fit in an 8′ x 8′ x 16′ space, but I suppose once we remove the air the walls and floors will collapse and with a couple of prying bars we can wedge in the “end bits”. Like a sleeping bag. Or a recalcitrant turkey.

Also, ‘haboob’ is a word. Spell check doesn’t recognize it, but then neither did I. It’s now in the vault of “funny” words like “Walla Walla”, “Discombobulated”, and “Green Energy”.

For the record: a ‘haboob’ is a dust storm ginned up by desert winds in the more inhospitable places on the planet such as Sacramento. In this case the storm took place in Minnesota, which is also in the ‘Funny Words’ vault.

I’m mostly still alive and just barely able to write checks. My hands work fine, the pen works fine, and even the pages of the book are okay. It’s the spirit in my bank account that weeps every time we give money away. “That’s a part of my soul!” it wails. “How many Horcruxes must I divide myself into to satisfy your wanton monetary needs?!”

“Just one more,” I reply.

“I’m not the Fed!” it yells back.

Then we go to therapy with our pastor. He doesn’t charge.

Our realtor does though. We’ve know her for more than two decades. She helped us buy the house way back when. But she put her foot down. A firm stiletto heel directly to my liver. “The House Will Go Up Thursday Morning!” My pain is about to end. And begin. We have a POD to pack. And many, many chores to finish.

In the meantime: ‘Haboob’ is funny. ‘Haboobs’ is hilarious.

–> Quizzer

… yet.

But, things have continued apace. Much to my amazement, the landscaping is down to “manageable” in what we have left to do. The heavy lifting (20 yards of bark-dust) is up to the landscapers. It’s just money at this point. Our realtor will love it. We hope. We’re on acreage so we have to make about 2 (of seven) look like civilized people could live here.

We’ve been faking it for fifteen+ years. Having kids will do that.

Goodwill and the local women’s shelter love us. That’s important.

It’s snowing outside on April 14. It snowed yesterday too. It never snows this late. The TeeVee will blame global warming but we all know it’s Putin’s fault. He probably didn’t burn enough mammoth fat after digging it up for spite in Siberia. We told the grass shoots; they agreed not to die and we agreed not to mow them prematurely.

Our paint collection needed to be trimmed, so I found two huge sheets of cardboard, poured old, drunk paint onto them, and let ’em all out to dry. Don’t worry. The paint drank because it could legally buy the alcohol. Some of the cans dried out years ago because they secretly attended AA meetings and their lids were never properly hammered. Back on, I mean.

Packing… is a process. Apparently my strategy of “Here. It’s a box. Fill it.” isn’t good enough. We have to organize, coalesce, combine, sort, and put everything into a ‘hierarchy’. I blame the approximately 1000 hours of DEI training Codex has attended in the last 12 months. All the boxes need to be equal or we’ll suffer even more intolerable YouTube adds.

Speaking of Codex: she is job hunting. We have several leads, so we’re praying that we’ll be led someplace besides here. Did you know both Redfin and Zillow will let you scroll across the map and will automagically fill in real estate needs according to your whims? Amazing! Both Blade Runner and Robocop were terrible at prophesying the future. I’m still a firm believer in Mad Max. The second movie, not the first. We’re welding propane tanks to our bumpers in prep.

Dramatic explosions don’t make themselves, people.

Now, someone type something pithy in the comments explaining to our dogs how two weeks of “Dog Camp” is awesome and they want to go on doggy vacation because otherwise… we’re looking at 30k+ of rental hell. There are no rentals, and what there are want a twelve-month lease at prices higher than our mortgage and approximately $2300 per dog. We. Live. In. Freaking. Insanity.

We’ll get through it.

–> Q

I didn’t want to do this but the comic has to officially go on hiatus. We have less than a month before we need to get the house on the market – something, something, money, roofer, wheezing. It’s hard to make out through the sobs of the checkbook.

But: Good Things are happening. Codex is looking for a new job and on a whim she checked a website and her Dream Job just opened up. She spent most of the day frantically applying. It will keep us in Washington but we’ll definitely be away from the blue hive that keeps creeping outward every month.

Also: We’ll be able to put the house on the market for much more than we originally thought when this all started around Thanksgiving. We’re shooting for May 1. It’ll be May 1, whether we’re ready or not. It might be sooner. Does anyone know of a bridge that isn’t already occupied? Does it take 75lb dogs? Maybe someplace that sells used yurts?

Finally: I’m really, really close to my “Ten Commandments for Churchians” to go live. I’m challenging myself to do three posts per week, and I’d really appreciate feedback. For those of you who blog or social media: mention them, blast them, whatever. I’m no expert, just hypothesizing. They need to be written, discussed, and refined. It’s in the same category as the SSH in my not so humble opinion.

I’ve been working on them off-and-on since the comic started because it’s important to make fun of Churchians in the right way. Rory is almost there, after all.

The First Commandment of Churchians is going to be Friday. Tomorrow I’ll have some humor, because there are a lot of odd ways people are making bank and I might be able to inspire a career change for some of you.

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen the comic on Arkhaven go and check it out. The format makes it look even better than on our own site. In fact, Codex has sneaked humor in over the years that I never knew about.

And please, if you are the praying type: A little mention for discipline, wisdom, and comfort right now would be appreciated. Our “life changes” scale has gone parabolic.

–> Codex and Q

Power died at the Studio. We’re in emergency power mode. It was a perfectly clear day with no wind, snow, wrecks… so why wouldn’t it just… go out? Pretty common in third-world countries like ours.

Comic should be out by noon.

Given current circumstances we’re announcing an official schedule change. New comics will be Tuesdays and Saturdays. We’ll pump ’em out at 5:00am pacific. I think that’s better than Mon/Fri at noon pacific, but I’m also willing to listen to feedback.

So if you really, superly, supremely object to this, sound off. I’m almost certainly in agreement. But Real Life has interfered in obnoxious ways and that’s the most realistic way we can pump out new comics consistently.

The countdown to 300 continues and the fam is debating about what we should do. Drama WILL ensue…

And holy monkey chowder. 300 comics!

–> Q

We’re approaching episode #300, and we’ll be at episode #100 at Arkhaven around the same time. We have 71k total views at Arkhaven as of Episode #58.

We’re so, so blessed.

We’re also in the midst of massive life changes.

But.

We want to do something special for one of these milestones. Last time we gave away a piece of “original art” and we’re perfectly willing to do that again. The problem is the entire comic is digital now so “original art” isn’t. Not really.

We can make it “special art” however.

I asked on Social Galactic for ideas and I should ask here too. Any suggestions on what we should do? We still have a couple of major toon groups to unleash on you before the cast is set: a variety of Churchians, and The Blackbirds. There’s a third group but it’s pretty much in concrete. ‘Prince’ is a name that is still controversial in our household but it’s gonna be. It has to be. It can’t not be. And we’ve been arguing over Silk for more than three years. Silk is in the same category as The Finality. “Give me a different name and I’ll consider it.” Then Codex couldn’t. Silk is fine. I might (10% chance) make it Silke but… no. No I won’t.

Rory is going to Churchi, and so will our readers. That scares me. That takes real writing skills that I’m not sure I’ve developed yet. The material is… delicate. Renaming the entire comic Vegfolk Fables takes a little pressure off, but still…

Did I not announce we’ll be renaming The Churchians? I should have. You should check out vegfolkfables.com. It’s been a broken spring, and we’re way behind all my goals for the comic.

Fix the house. Sell the house. Land… somewhere. And then become the “dark, dangerous, Veggie Tales for older teens” studio. We’re all insane now. Let’s do this.

–> Quizzer

If you are reading this, it is because I am either dead or dying.

Packed up 50 boxes of books and moved them to another area of the house. Removed all the bookshelves said books rested in (Levenger). Prepped the huge, scary, 2-story walls around a stairwell/house entry way/library for the paint guys.

Fortunately, neither “dead” or “dying” is a fatal condition. Stents overcome all.

But if I vote in November for the “right” party, whatever party that is, someone hunt down my zombie corpse and put me out of my misery with an ax. Or fire. Fire is probably the more appropriate ending.

Comic tomorrow for sure, and we really think we’ve passed the peak insanity so we’re crossing our fingers that we’re back to our Mon/Fri regular schedule.

–> Q