Dog in a Dress.

Before we acquired Tinydog, I was intending to get a second dog. It was going to be a cattledog or cattledog mix like Awesomedog, and it was totally going to be a girl. I had been checking rescues and sheter websites, looking for the perfect new dog. She was going to be friendly and athletic and I would put pink collars and ribbons and tutus on her like I did with my late cocker spaniel.

Then we brought home Tinydog, who is a boy. It's already pretty tough to find a landlord who will rent to people with two dogs, so a third dog is definitely out. No girl dog for me. Initially I had decided that Tinydog was going to be a Real Dog and sleep in a crate and compete in obedience trials and not wear stupid sweaters. Then I discovered that Tinydog's lack of hair or body mass made him incredibly cold all the time and his first night in the crate he shivered until I let him sleep in bed with us. Turns out a chihuahua isn't a Real Dog after all. Within a couple of weeks I had sewed him a blanket coat and a pretty dress.

Tinydog proudly demonstrates that gender is a social construct and that boys can wear dresses too. He is our pretty princess.

Bubba.

A couple of years ago we had to move very abruptly. We found a place that would let us rent with three cats and a dog, but unlike many other rental homes this one lacked a refrigerator. We were pretty broke after the move, but I was reasonably certain I could find a fridge for free on Craigslist of Freecycle, having used these resources before. Within a couple of days a free, working refrigerator was posted and we snapped it up.

Note: Free refrigerators are often free for a reason. This particular specimen functioned perfectly well, but probably dated from the early 90's and smelled horrendously of fish no matter much bleach was applied. It was also equipped with a padlock and covered with bumper stickers advertising various conservative politicians, firearms, and outdoor sports that are all somewhat unusual here on the coast of southern California. We named it Bubba and planned to equip it with a gun rack and a pair of antlers, but our living situation changed before this plan came to fruition. Since the new place had a fridge, we needed to find Bubba a new home.

Do you know what sort of people respond to that?

Now look, I understand that hillbillies exist. I've read about them in books, I've seen them on television. However, I have lived my entire life on the furthest edge of California with the massive urban bulk of Los Angeles insulating me from anything resembling country folk. Even in the inland deserts of California people generally look and sound just like people in the urban and suburban areas. These guys...apparently drove their spray-painted truck out of the Appalachian mountains and right to my door. They may have had an entire set of teeth between them, one was actually wearing overalls with no shirt and the other wasn't wearing shoes.

It was not unlike spotting a polar bear in the neighborhood.

My Cats are Stupid: Exhibit C

The Hellions do not appear to have any sort of consistent skeletal structure, and I'm pretty sure they are filled  with the same sort of goo that can be found inside a Stretch Armstrong doll. This is quite fortunate, as they lack the self-preservation instincts found in higher forms of life. 

Not that regular animals don't occasionally get squished in doors, it's just that the Hellions neither notice nor car. In one of our previous houses the bathroom door didn't stay closed reliably and occasionally required some force to get it to latch. Hence my first reaction when the door didn't shut properly was to try slamming it a few times.

If I was very sleepy or distracted it sometimes took me several slams to realize I was squashing the hell out of a cat. The cats, however, are apparently immune to massive internal organ damage and were entirely unconcerned no matter how hard they got smashed in the door. Our current house is even worse because there is a high counter beside the back door where they enjoy sitting and looking out the window. Occasionally when someone opens the door they take the opportunity to get a screen-free view of the great outdoors.

Every time this happens I am astonished they aren't decapitated, particularly when I've just attempted to kick the door shut behind me. The Hellions don't just fail to sustain serious injuries, they don't even bother to move their heads out of the way so I can close the door properly.

The Buddy System

The more socially ept and extroverted people of the world often fail to realize just how difficult it is for the socially awkward to handle large groups of novel people in a social setting. For me, a large amount of this difficulty stems from figuring out what on earth to do with myself at these gatherings. If everyone is playing a game or eating a meal it can be a little bit easier, but for me the worst case scenario is a party that involves a bunch of people standing around talking, even if I already know many of them.

If I'm lucky I'll be able to find friends or new people to talk to for long periods of time, thus minimizing those 'oh shit!' moments. I almost invariably end up gluing myself to some unsuspecting friend who seems to be able to enjoy those sorts of interactions. Hopefully this person does not notice or mind that I am relentlessly following them around all night.

However, unless that friend is as awkward as I am, it can be difficult to stay stuck. This is why I prefer to have an Awkward Buddy at parties. This is a friend who wishes to stay stuck to me just as much as I wish to stay stuck to them. An Awkward Buddy is a good solution for office parties and other situations where I feel obligated to attend but know I won't be capable of maintaining fluid socialization. Even if the people I was talking to have wandered off, Awkward Buddy will save me from standing there alone while I try to figure out how to start the next social interaction. If we cannot manage to join another conversation, we can still talk to each other and at least maintain a thin veneer of social normalcy. We can also feed off each others' anecdotes and knowledge of different subjects to keep the conversation from petering out for a while.

The Awkward Buddy: Great for weddings, baby showers, office parties, and even just large gatherings thrown by friends.

Dress to impress

I like to draw myself as a relatively skinny person, but the truth is that I have enormous thighs. Disproportionately large thighs. I-have-to-alter-my-own-clothes-to-make-them-fit thighs. It's genetic. It's also a huge pain in the ass to have size 12 thighs on a size 4 body.

I'm told that thigh fat is also called "starvation fat" and that I will have to look like a famine victim before my body will give up the tiniest bit of that sweet, sweet thigh flab. I'm sure everyone has some part of their body that they hate, fortunately there are ways to de-emphasize those bits. There are also ways to emphasize them that make me look like a circus freak.

Long skirts are a great solution for most women who have trouble finding pants. I have lots of skirts, but I tend to shred anything that doesn't allow a full range of motion and isn't made of denim or possibly Kevlar, so I wear jeans most of the time. Nobody really makes an adequate jumbo-thigh style of  pants to I just buy a size 12 and alter them and/or wear a belt. Picking out the right jeans is basically the key to looking like a normal person vs. looking like a hippo.

The trick is to draw attention to some other part of my body. There are a number of ways to do this. I've found that anything that makes a line across my thighs is bad news. This includes shirt hem lines and shorts. Meanwhile, anything below my knees tends to make my thighs look smaller. I only ever wear wide-leg or flared jeans, or capri pants that do something exciting at the bottom.

I don't necessarily like being a "size 12", but it's certainly more flattering than cramming my thighs into a size 4.

Crane flies aren't scary.

I used to be absolutely horrified of these fucking things:

They look like flying spiders, they fly unpredictably, and you never know when one is suddenly going to decide it absolutely must land on your face. They're called mosquito hawks or skeeter-eaters or daddy longlegs, depending on who you ask. They don't bite, unless they do, or maybe only some of them bite.

Actually, they are called crane flies and they don't bite at all. Some of them eat nectar, but for the most part by the time they get to a recognizable phase of life they are just looking for another crane fly to mate with before they die. Armed with this knowledge, I am no longer scared of the little flying freaks. Also, they make really excellent cat toys.

Sometimes I even open the screen door and shoo them in from the porch light just to give the cats something to do.

Freckles.

This is how I normally draw myself.

Note the total absence of freckles. In reality I am absolutely covered in freckles. Like, every molecule of my skin that has ever seen a suggestion of natural light is covered in freckles. I am so freckly that people assume my hair is red underneath the pink. The fact that I leave the freckles out when drawing myself is not actually because I am ashamed of my freckles, or even that I'm too lazy to bothering adding them. I just kind of...forget. Not just when I'm drawing, either. Pretty much anytime I look at myself closely in a mirror I am startled.

Gonna try to blame this one on the ADD...