Happy Mother’s Day to the best wife and Mom a family of misfits could hope for. We promise we’ll clean our rooms if you lay off that wicked backswing of yours.
Mother’s Day crept up on me this year. I almost ran out of time to draw my wife, Jodie, a Mother’s Day Card, something I’ve been trying to do every year since I started dabbling in comics and illustrations six years ago. Jodie has been really ( and I mean really ) into Paddleball this last year, so this particular theme seemed appropriate. And no – I don’t dare go up her against her on the court less I have my ass handed to me. I’ll stick to drawing her instead.
Yes, rabbits can lay eggs, but only bedazzled pastel ones – and only once a year.
And, that obese man who wears a red velvet suit? The one who is ferried about in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and squeezes down chimneys to give you free gifts? He’s real, too.
It’s no wonder our kids want to be so independent. After all the lies we tell them they just want to figure it out on their own.
This particular comic idea has been lurking in my head for years. It spawned from the Easter Egg Hunts that my cousins, Tony and Michelle, would invite my family and I to every year. The invitations ceased, like many things, during COVID. As luck would have it we received an invitation again for this year, inspiring me to finally put stylus to tablet and draw.
My father-in-law, Bert, passed away last month. When my wife, Jodie, posted a eulogy on Facebook she referred to her dad as “a character”. Her assessment of him was quickly confirmed in a flurry of responses, thumbs up, and heart emojis, making it, in the day and age of social media, absolutely correct. Bert was a character and the truth is, as much of a pain-in-the-ass he was, I miss him. He drove me nuts but made me smile, too.
Being such a character I always felt Bert was ripe for inclusion in one of my comic strips, however I was always hesitant to draw him ( strip him? ) lest I offend him. When I did, I was always very careful and made sure my drawings pass the appropriate “censors”, mainly my wife and sister-in-law, Jayme.
I’d like to dedicate this series of strips to my father-in-law, Bert. They take place a long time ago in a memory not so far from my heart – about a month after I met a beautiful young college student named Jodie Fagan.
Every Valentine’s Day for as far back as I can remember Jodie has surprised me with a delicious hand-made dessert. Three years ago I started reciprocating by drawing her a Valentine’s Day comic. For more go here.
Every Valentine’s Day for as far back as I can remember Jodie has surprised me with a delicious hand-made dessert. Three years ago I started reciprocating by drawing her a Valentine’s Day comic. This year, to celebrate our addiction to LEGO, I drew her the comic you see here. In return, to celebrate our almost two years on a whole food plant-based diet, she made me delicious Flourless Sweet Potato Brownies.
If you’re interested, here are some Valentines comics of years’ past…
Happy Valentine’s Day to my wife, sweetheart, best friend, and mommy extraordinaire!
Love is messy …
The best gifts are made by hand with love – even if you can’t tell what the heck they are!
We’ve all been there – but not my wife, she never farts.
Bye bye, 2020. Can’t say that I’ll miss you. For my end of year wrap up go here.
2020. What a year, right? My family and I started the year off strong with back-to-back trips to Legoland and Universal Studios, and then life got interesting. In March, just as COVID was rearing its ugly head in the United States, Kaylee and I underwent surgeries for a broken elbow and a prostatectomy. I owe our quick recovery to Jodie, Ashley, and each other – and the fact that, like everyone else, we were stuck at home with nothing to do but recover. Over the next few months of lockdowns, social distancing, and travel restrictions my family and I all did our best to maintain normalcy as much as possible.
Ashley and Kaylee adapted to virtual “distance learning” and used Chromebooks to finish 4th and 2nd grade at Westwood Elementary. Ashley is now in her final year at Westwood and, sadly, likely to graduate without ever setting foot in a classroom there again. On the upside, both girls seem to be learning and doing great. Ashley, known as the “human calculator” by her classmates, has joined Math Olympiad for the second year, a national mathematics competition and study group. Meanwhile, Kaylee has joined “Roadrunner TV”, a weekly school news broadcast. She loves being in front of the camera and interviewing staff and students and reporting on school affairs.
Ashley and Kaylee have continued to excel in Karate and, after two years, have both achieved Green Stripe Belts. The classes, which were held online during the initial months of the pandemic, are now outdoors with face coverings, no-contact restrictions, and gratuitous use of hand sanitizer.
Kaylee is wrapping up her second year of singing and piano lessons with her awesome music instructor. This year she was introduced to the Ukulele and has now performed several recitals, the latest of which have been held virtually over Zoom. Her voice and ability have improved remarkably since she started. Jodie and I are looking forward to her upcoming virtual Holiday Recital where she’ll be performing, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”.
LEGO has now officially taken over our house to the extent that our formal dining room now looks like a toy store, and gets much more use because of it. During the early months of COVID Jodie and I started holding weekly LEGO Master competitions over Zoom with our friends to stay connected. We’ve been amazed by what our daughters and their friends are capable of building and just finished our 35th competition.
We tested the limits of our health insurance plan this year. In addition to Kaylee and my surgeries in March, Ashley has had several tooth extractions (and subsequent tooth fairy visits) whereas I have continued to receive hormone therapy and, more recently, radiation to fight off my cancer. To keep everyone healthy Jodie and I have continued to maintain a plant-based, no dairy, low sugar diet for ourselves, and be more mindful of what our daughters eat as well. Jodie has had fun experimenting and replicating some of our favorite dishes including sloppy “Jods”, vegan nachos, pumpkin-quinoa chili, stuffed sweet potatoes, and plant-based fish tacos.
Jodie, after more than ten years of working as a real estate agent, has decided to start her own brokerage and will be taking her broker exam in early January. 2020 has proven to be a challenging yet successful year for her; even with COVID headwinds she has managed to complete several transactions. I am looking forward to supporting her in her new endeavor and have passed the realtor exam in preparation to be her first “part time” employee.
As for me, after losing my job due to COVID-related cutbacks I took some much-needed time off. I have just recently started a new position at MedImpact Direct as a Software Engineer. I will be working on their direct-to-consumer and specialty pharmacy platforms, two things that I have become very familiar with during my battle with cancer.
Last but not least, we have added a new furry four-legged member to our family, Maddie, a small black-and-tan Rat Terrier with hugely adorable ears. Since we adopted her, she has brought more smiles to our faces than I thought possible and has proven to be the perfect sidekick for our other dog, Chip.
Overall, it has been a difficult yet strangely rewarding year. As a family, I feel that, throughout all the weirdness that is 2020, we have all become much closer and have a much better understanding of what is truly important – each other.
…with that, bring on the vaccines and an ultimate return to real normalcy!
Now that we are all entering the holiday season under COVID restrictions I’ve realized that there is one thing that I miss more than anything, having good friends over to eat.
“Dad! Can we do an Easter Egg Hunt on Minecraft?”, my oldest daughter, Ashley, asked me.
In years past we would go to the Westwood Club, our community center, for an annual Easter Egg Hunt with our friends and neighbors. However this year, due to social distancing restrictions enacted to slow the Coronavirus, the community center would be closed and the Easter Egg Hunt, cancelled.
“That is a great – wait, no, fantastic idea!”, I told her excitedly, “Let’s do it!”
So, during the week leading up to Easter Sunday we created a Minecraft World, populated it with a bunch of colorful “eggs” ( we substituted in-game colored wool blocks ), and scheduled a Zoom teleconference so that the participants could talk.
We kept the rule simple.
Each participant would be provided a “basket” ( an in-game chest ) that would reside in the starting area.
Each basket would contain tools ( a pickaxe and shears ) which would allow the participant to “mine” the eggs.
A hunt would last 15 minutes.
During the hunt each participant would have to find and mine as many eggs as they could and return them to their basket before time ran out. Only eggs inside the basket at the end of the hunt would be tallied.
And most importantly, the participant with the most eggs wins.
For each hunt we also hid a special “golden egg” ( an in-game gold block ) which would be worth ten regular eggs.
To get by Minecraft’s 8-player limit we would hold two hunts. The first would be for the older kids who would re-hide the eggs for the second hunt, which would be for the younger kids.
The hunt had it’s hiccups, but everyone seemed to have a good time. Hopefully next year we’ll be able to once again meet up with our friends and neighbors at the community center for a real, in-person Easter Egg Hunt, but desperate times call for desperate measures and this measure, in my humble opinion, wasn’t so much desperate as it was fun.
Take care. Stay healthy. Live life. And stay safe everyone.
Drawn and Coded 