Sugar Based Hydration

 So my darling dear has not shown up in my comics in a bit. She is eating table food which is both good (she can share my snacks) and bad (she demands to share my snacks). She always wants to grab what I'm drinking, and this comic was sparked when I got a frozen hot chocolate from Dunkin and gave a sip to Lucy. This comic is also inspired by the time I had a coffee-drinker tell me that "Sugar is a drug!" to which I replied "So is caffeine." But honestly neither sugar or caffeine is ideal for the little one. But I do look forward to having tea parties with her. 

Text:
R: Are you giving your baby caffeine?!?!
L: No worries, it's a sugar-based drink.
R: !?!?!

Input Output Problems

So when I was visiting my family for my brother's graduation, there were some tech issues at church that Sunday and said issues sparked this comic. This is my mom freaking out that there's an issue, me singing a song about said issue, and my brother clapping along to increase the mild panic. Because singing helps just about as much as sarcasm. 

Explanation: There's an old children's song "I’m Inright, Outright, Upright, Downright Happy all the Time" and I adapted this song to be about livestream issues. I don't think this song is theologically sound since happiness depends on happenstance and sometimes life is just sad, but we can always have joy in Christ. Doesn't mean you're gonna be happy when life kicks you down, but you won't be despondent and you will have hope since God is in control. 

Text:
L1: Why isn't the livestream working?!?!?
L2: Input, output, upput, downput, Problems *clap* all *clap* the time *clap*.
L3: *clapping along*

Nebraska Wedding

A big congrats to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who have been married over a month now. They had a very traditional wedding but it's fun to imagine how it could have been. I stayed in the quiet room so Lucy could wander about during the ceremony, and she was bopping along to the hymns that were sung. They weren't very boppy songs, but it worked for her.  

Text:
A: What's a wedding in Nebraska like?
L: Thankfully, no dysentery.
M: Ten gallon hats.
L: The bride had a flannel veil.
M: Banjo processional.
L: They left in a covered wagon.

How to Pass

 After seeing many of these signs out West (I know they are everywhere, it just stuck out to me for some reason while we were driving across Colorado, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Nebraska), I felt the need to draw a companion sign. Like when you're in a school zone and there's the "No Drug Zone" signs, is there signage marking where the drug zones are? If there is an absence of the "DUI Enforcement Zone" signage, does that mean they don't enforce DUIs? Inquiring minds want to know. 

Text:
Sign 1: PASS WITH CARE
Sign 2: PASS WITH WILD ABANDON

Crabby Ice Cream

 So I was at the grocery store and they had super discounted pints of ice cream (some were down to $1!) and that should have been a warning sign but NOPE I got some non-dairy ice cream and it was good and I got my Mark two pints of Best of Baltimore. Two because I knew the "I'm So Crabby" one (seasoned with Old Bay potato chips) was not gonna be a winner. The Orange Creamsicle flavor was good, according to him. 

Wow, just looked up the history of Old Bay seasonings for the link there and the creator of the spice blend escaped Nazi Germany? Give it a read if you have time, it's an interesting story.

Text:
L: I bought some Best of Baltimore ice cream for you!
M: Please say it does not have Old Bay in it.
L: ... I guess I won't tell you about it. [holding a pint of "I'm So Crabby" flavored ice cream]

Insolvency

 

Going into tourist shops, I can see how people easily spend way too much money. But Lucy really needed that woolly mammoth! It's very soft and she likes it. And it reminds us of going to The Mammoth Site which was totally awesome and it's SO COOL to see paleontology at work! Digging up massive bones! All just sitting there in the ground waiting to be discovered! 

Text:
Title: Getting souvenirs
N: This is why you're insolvent.
L: What's insolvent? (holding a stuffed buffalo and woolly mammoth)
N: That's also why you're insolvent.

Mount Conradmore

When out west, looking at so many natural cliffs, it's just natural to think to add your face to one or more of them. Surely that wouldn't take decades to do. Actually looking into what all was done to create Mount Rushmore is quite amazing, how they had the models and transformed the mountain to match. I cannot imagine carving rock, hoping for no landslides or other issues that would wreck everything. 

Text:
L: That mountain needs a face carved on it.
N: Why not ours?

Slapjack

 

I was over at my in-laws and someone had a deck of cards and a group was playing slapjack and it was mentioned that my nephew Jack (who was not at the gathering) would hate that game and that sparked this comic. Not much else to say, other that why on earth are Jack-in-the-Box toys a thing???? Who wants to be jump-scared by a toy???

Text:
Slinky Dog: Let's play slapjack!
Jack-in-the-Box: I hate that game.

Deer and Antelope Playing

 

♪♩ "Home, home on the range - where the deer and the antelope play" ♪♩

I still think they are playing together, that's just how things are out west. Everything is peaceful and the plains are wide open and there's tall grain swaying in the breeze. We did see quite a few deer and a few little antelopes, but they were chilling in separate groups. There were also many much buffalo. But I can misremember and say they were all playing together. And the prairie dogs were in on it, too. Multi-species game play going on. 

Text:
M: Look, antelope!
L: Are they playing with the deer?
M: No, but in the song -
L: I still feel misled.

Nebraskan Birds

Happy Birthday to my niece! So there's a theory that birds aren't real, something about they all died and were replaced with drones, and I have questions. Like, most birds fit a given mold of 'small flying thing' but what about all the birds that don't fit that mold? Are flightless birds just terrestrial drones, and penguins are semi-aquatic drones? If you could have a drone for every type of bird out there, that would be pretty cool. But on a technical note, drone makers do tend to look to nature to figure out how to do things (like I remember reading about one that made a solid wing pop out when an uncontrolled landing was happening so it would spiral gently downward like a maple tree 'helicopter' seed). Looking to nature is fascinating when we discover how magnificent so many processes are and we can't mechanically recreate them. God is amazing and nature shows that. 

Text:
M: That's a large eagle.
L: Or maybe it's a drone!
N: Birds aren't real.

Judging Music

 

Not a Nebraska comic! Gonna switch it up and mix in some new ones. So my husband and I have different tastes in music, namely that he has a wider range than I do of what he deems acceptable. Sometimes when I walk by his office (he works from home), I just have to comment. That's all, no judgement here :) 

Text:
Title: *barely melodic noises*
L: Not to judge, but what the heck are you listening to?
M: I feel judged. 

Nebraska Landscape

Happy Fridge Day!!! 
To be fair, buttes aren't just in Nebraska, and I don't remember if the ones that inspired this comic were in South Dakota or one of the other states. The mouseover is excellent for this comic - you should check it out. Also, there will be more humor involving that type of land mass because it works well and I find it humorous. 

Text:
M: To your right, the Rocky Mountains!
N: To your left, a red butte.
L: *snicker*

Closed Rest Area

Another one from my Nebraska comics, this one is a play on the phrase "no rest for the wicked." I like to question why there are rest areas near my home since clearly we don't need them, we can just go home. Also I thought about trying to draw a more realistic car, but then I remembered my comic has stick figures so I don't need to make this too hard for myself. Hence the car that I've been drawing like that since I was a small child. I took a Java course in college and we learned how to draw shapes and the project for that chapter was to draw a car and later animate it, which was pretty cool. I made mine a yellow submarine and I had a little school of cartoon fish (ovals with triangles behind them) following my 'car.'

Text:
M: The rest area is closed.
L: I guess we all must be wicked!

Sub Culture

 Thank you to all who have served! I hope everyone has a nice Memorial Day weekend. My hometown in CT always had a nice parade, complete with the local Fife & Drum Corps in their tricorne hats. My current town doesn't do parades and I kind of miss them. It was nice to have everyone gather on the Towne Green for the local festivals, whether it was for a nation holiday like Memorial Day or a hyper local event like the Shad Derby. I always appreciated the floats that threw candy. 

Explanation: A subculture is a smaller group inside of a larger group ('sub' here means 'subset'). A sub can also mean a submarine, which is a boat that goes underwater, and boats are part of the Navy. That's just a little picture of how my brain works. 

Text:
M: The Army is a subculture.
L: I thought that was the Navy?

Utah, Page 2

 

The second and final page of our Utah trip. It was a great time, just me and my Mark exploring the town of Moab and seeing the sites. So many dinosaur remains out there! It turns out, back in the day, loads of people mined for uranium ("totally safe!" said the government) and while digging around, they found some massive bones and paleontology is grateful for their findings! So many trails to explore and view fossils that are just lying about, specifically tracks that have been uncovered. Our B&B that we stayed at gave us fresh melons in the morning to take on hikes and it was amazing! We went to the local grocery store to get fruit and were shocked at how expensive apples were. Turns out, if you can't grow trees then tree fruit is expensive. Very few trees were seen on our Utah trip. Moab Giants was an awesome experience and I kinda want to upload some photos to show the life-sized dinosaurs with which we interacted.

Text:

Panel 1 - M: All the food here is tasty! [Pho! BBQ! Thai! Mexican!]

Panel 2 - M: Four apples are HOW MUCH?!? L: wow. [L is shocked while M holds a receipt and a bag of apples]

Panel 3 - Dino tracks in the wild! [two dinosaur footprints]

Panel 4 - Melons on a desert hike [M holding a container while L eats a melon piece]

Panel 5 - Life-sized Dinosaurs at Moab Giants [L posing for M in front of a massive T-Rex]