More Ponies...

Did I mention that I was reading this article in some magazine in the break table at work the other day and it said something to the extent of, "have fun like you would have as a 10 year old"?  Well, if I didn't, then I guess I should mention it now because lately I've been hooked on drawing My Little Pony since quite a few people at the anime conventions I go to have been drawing them.  I guess if they do it then so can I, right?  Even if I'm over 30?  Hrm... okay, well, someone has to be drawing them to make them into cartoons on HUB right?  Not all of them can be under 30...I hope.

Anyway, what really made me want to start drawing them was a webcomic: www.alexsguide.net who started charging people a few bucks to draw them as a pony.  My friend Jon decided he wanted to get one done for himself in order to support the artist and when we got back to the house he said he'd like to color it.  But I said we should scan it first before he touched the original so once I got it scanned I thought to myself, 'how about I color it?'  So I did:

The original drawing was done by Alex but I completely redid the line art and colored it for Jon since it was fun to do and then before I knew it, I had decided to try drawing that first Mitsuki pony that I posted the other day.  Now today I took out my pencil and paper again and did the new version.  It's a bit sloppier than I'd like.  I was rushing but I think the main reason for that was because it just wasn't quite good enough yet to do the full ink and color... if you're an artist you'll probably notice things that are a bit off.  If you aren't an artist... I hope you like it and don't notice the problems!  ^_^;

I decided to record My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic with my TiVo...I'm currently waiting for them to replay the first season so I can watch the entirety.  I'd really like to see the episode about "cutie marks" - if you don't know what that is, it's basically the butt markings.  Well...dur.  But what's interesting is that when they're little they don't have them, but, well something happens for them to get them but I haven't watched that episode yet to find out!  >_<;  I'll get back with you on it.

What is interesting to me, is that growing up as a kid in the 80's I had a few ponies and over the 90's I collected over 40 of the buggers, which is pretty good since for a time there they didn't even make ponies and I thought they'd stop and I had dreams about finding them in some shop or garage sale and it was just the one I wanted or something.  Heh.  Anyway, when I was a kid when the pony craze was just new they had "horseshoe points" and if you collected so many you could get discounts on special ponies by mail order.  The very first baby I got...I think it was "baby bluebell" or something of that nature (I'll have to look it up someday) and as the very first baby pony made, it was completely bare of any such cutie mark.  So, to me, for that to roll back around and for them to make mention of it on this new cartoon, it's kind of cool to me.

And yes....I went out and bought three of them the other day...  for artistic reference.  Yeah, yeah, that's it.  Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle.  I'm trying my hardest not to go get Fluttershy since she reminds me a lot of a pony named Posey that I have being yellow and pink (but she was a earth pony) and one of my all-time favorites.

BOY....I'm kinda pathetic.  When I thought I'd get into another series I didn't think it would be something I was originally into as a 10 year old!!  Ah...but it would make my 10-year old self proud to know I can actually draw them. LOL

Quick Pony Sketch

Why yes...I HAVE gotten back into the My Little Pony craze... why?  You might ask?  Because, truth be told I've NEVER gotten out of the craze since I was about 5 years old when I got some of the first ones from my Mom for my birthday.  I still have every single one I've ever gotten since day one.  Probably 50+.

Anyway, this one is based on the character from Tsubasacon, our convention in Huntington, West Virginia, her name is "Mitsuki" - this is a quick sketch for now, I'm thinking about changing her cutie mark a bit later and re-designing it to do it CGI style.

Enjoy the silliness!

You Can Never Go Home Again

I always thought that the phrase "You can never go home again" was kind of silly.  Of course you can go home again, provided certain criteria still existed; for example the building existed, the people still exist there, etc.  My Mom still lives at home, she still lives in the same house and thus, I could always go home again if the need arose, and I have visited home a couple weekends ago.  But that's not really what that saying means.  Because once you leave home, it'll never be the same home again.

Oh, I'm sure many of you who might read this have realized it before, and I'm pretty sure on some level from time to time I have as well.  But as I was finishing up a book today, it took on a different meaning to me.  The book was by Alan Dean Foster, who is one of my favorite authors, and I collect nearly every book that he's got out there I can find.  This time I found his "Taken Trilogy" which is about a fellow who gets kidnapped off of Earth by a bunch of aliens and then has to find his way back home, light-years away with no one to come get him, because obviously we humans don't have faster-than-light travel.  Spoiler alert, but after years of being away from Earth, when he finally gets a chance to come back, he realizes he doesn't want to because the universe is now open to him.

Imagine going back to live with your parents and they're still changing your diapers and spoon feeding you; kinda like that.

They've been talking a lot on the radio this week about how all of these college students are leaving home for the first time and how things will never be the same again.  A couple were in tears over remembering the first time that they left home and how it felt because they never went back to live with their parents again.  I don't think people ever think about it when they finally leave, because there are so many things going on during the leaving - packing, classes, weddings, etc.  Only later we reflect about the things that have changed and how our worlds have expanded into something so much bigger and better that even if we did go back to the physical location of home, it will never be the same home ever again.  We can't just settle back into things with the way our worlds have expanded.

My own personal world has expanded very un-noticeably until I headed home again a few weekends ago.  Going home, everything was familiar, but there were so many other things that I have come to take for granted, that home seemed oddly lacking.  Of course, the city I've moved to recently seems kind of lacking too, although just a 20 minute drive will take me to where my old apartment was located and all of the stuff that was there, it seems like I went from having everything conveniently located to having something taken away again.  That's when it really struck me this afternoon and why I haven't been feeling entirely like myself these past few months.  I can't go home again, I can't go back to the place I first called home since I'd left my original home.

We've been making this place more and more like home since we moved here, but it's still not completely home.  There are familiar pictures on the walls and things everywhere, but when I come home I still feel as if I'm not completely home yet.  A home is not only a place where you live, where you hang your hat, where you keep your stuff, but where you come home to family, or even where others know where to find you.  Mind you I have a few friends who have come over, but all of those people I used to know when I lived in the original house I grew up in, none of those people (besides my Mom) have been over.  None of my other relatives like Aunts and Uncles will probably ever visit because they have no interest in coming into town.  My brother has gone off across country and will probably never see this house.  None of my friends from then will ever visit because, again, they have no interest in making a trip to come see me.  I keep up my flower gardens and I enjoy keeping my house tidy and decorated by the seasons, but only a few local people, my Mom and my In-Laws will probably ever step foot here.

How can this place be called a "home" without people stopping by to say hello?  Without people saying, "Oh!  Congrats on your house, I'd love to see it!"  And then actually following through?  I had one co-worker of 20+ who actually came over when I invited all of them to my house warming party.  Maybe I'm just being bitter again about the whole ordeal, but in fact, it's true.  I don't feel like I live here completely.  I rarely venture out of this house without my husband, and even though I know I could, I don't feel like I want to either.

So what truly constitutes "coming home again"?  Being greeted by family and friends?  Having pets greet you after years away?  Moving your stuff back?  I guess it would be different for all of us, but it wouldn't be the same for we've all expanded our horizons and pushed back the curtains that originally surrounded our lives at home.  Maybe I'm not satisfied with my own living conditions because I remember having people stop by unexpectedly.  I remember having family and friends want to come over and see where I'm living and what I'm doing.  I remember going out and having fun on my own, taking trips and enjoying the view, only to return home and it felt like home.

So maybe that is what I truly need: to come home and feel like it's home, to want it to be home every time I return to it.  Maybe that's why when we move away from our childhood homes, we can't do that anymore, because we want to come home to our own houses, not those of our parents.  Perhaps it's the lack of that which makes it harder for some people to leave their parents.  They feel like they are home too much, and that they could never make another place feel as much like home.  That fear, that their house/apartment/flat will never be just like the home their parents have made for them, and thus they never try, they never leave, and they never expand their horizons to the full potential that they could.  There is so much out there to see, to do, to feel, to experience, and maybe it's just easier to imagine having that home anchor somewhere you've always been.

As for me, that home anchor is still a fleeting thing.  I've experienced so many things and been places that have somehow made it harder to feel at ease even here in my own chair, in front of my own computer, in my own house that I painted top to bottom, cleaned and decorated to suit my own tastes.  What will make it a home? What will make it the home that I want to return to?  I'm not sure, but I'm waiting to find out.

For those of you who might try going out there on your own for the first time, whether it be for college, just moving out to get married, or whatever, you'll never go home again.  It'll be different every time you return, and the only hope you have is to make whatever place you next live in the next home.  And then you can return to that one, the new one, because there are endless possibilities of home.  You might not be able to go home again but you can sure as hell create home with each new place you live.

Whatcher Beginnings

"Blacky" Early Paint Version

After working on some graphics for Tsubasacon this evening I thought maybe I should try actually posting an image in a blog like I keep talking about doing.  So here's number 1.  At least, this is the first whatcher that I scanned in digitally and colored in Paint of all things.  That's before I put money into Paintshop, Photoshop and the Wacom pads and the like.  This was me scanning an image that I drew in pencil into the computer and then reversing the colors and adding a bit of color to the eyes and ears.  I still use the same color scheme for Blacky today since I've always loved how the pink and green stood out on a black critter.

I'm getting a bit confused by what I put on my previous incarnation of this website and the new one, so forgive me if I repeat myself, but the whatcher critter came from a book I worked on when I was a teenager.  I never managed to get it published, although I sent it out to a dozen publishers.  Most of them sent back the copies without even looking at them (many of them stamping it with 'not interested') and I wonder just how many of those they go through a day, someone there in the basement sorting through the mail using that stamp on all of these books, one after another.  I'd even made sure to get the address from the most recent authors publications.  But what I realize now was that the book wasn't even that good, and I have yet to re-read the whole thing myself once it was finished.  I don't think anyone else has ever read the thing in its entirety, not even my husband or any of my friends have asked for it.  I probably wouldn't give it to them at this point anyway, because I did start a re-write of it at one point, and perhaps this is where I'll share it.  If I ever get the book finished, then maybe I'll self-publish it since that's so easy to do nowadays.

Back to Blacky and this sketch.  Originally the whatcher creature was a small hamster-sized critter with black bat wings, short hamster ears and a long mouse-like tail.  The first sketch looked like this:

I believe the drawing was done somewhere around 1993/1994.  The whatcher evolved very quickly from this sketch to look more like the one at the top of this blog.  It later evolved into what you see at the top of this site, a more finished specimen that looks somewhat more like Ryo Oki (Tenshi Muyo!) but with wings.  This wasn't really on purpose, although I did watch the show when I was growing up, I had forgotten about the character and decided there was some very obvious differences from whatchers and that Ryo Oki... after all, these critters were telepathic and some of them could even talk.

The fun thing about drawing these little buggers is much like the trend right now of drawing My Little Ponies to look like any and every television, video game, and movie character - when you have a cute critter that can talk, you can give them any personality imaginable.  The critter above is named Cleveland and is Native American in origin (hence the turquoise beads).  Cleveland started out at a little ink sketch that I later colored using Paintshop and it's still a rather early piece of artwork from my collection, but I still like his expression.

You may have noticed by now that whatchers don't get mouths drawn in very often (if at all, only when they're eating something).  It's just a style choice that I made early on.  They also aren't entirely anatomically correct, some people comparing their back legs to that more like a horse (so sue me, I used to draw unicorns religiously until my teens) and they only have two toes on each foot.  The reason for this is mainly because they have wings which they use the majority of the time as well as a somewhat prehensile tail for balance, so why would they need more toes?  Heh.  

More recently I've been working through ideas of children's books talking about the whatchers rather than the novel idea that I had to begin with.  Whatchers were, afterall, just minor players in the original story line.  Later on they took on a larger life than the other characters and since I draw them better than I do the more human main characters...you get the point.  They're just easy to draw, and that's the reason the studio is named as it is.

Technical Difficulties

Having problems with the change over.  My husband was helping me get things moved but then deleted the page...restored it...but apparently the delete overrode the restore and thus we're working on getting things up and running again.  Hardest hit at present are the photos, and I'm not sure whether I'll have to play with something else before I can get those working again or if they'll just work on their own.  *crosses fingers*

Anywho, bare with us as we get things sorted out.  Once it's all working again I'll post my most recent sketch since I just uploaded it.  Although, it'll probably be more toward the weekend since I'm heading to see my Mom this weekend for a few days.

The good news for me is that I've actually pulled the tablet out of storage. It's been packed away since before I moved, and that was months ago....I haven't really drawn much at all since then, so it's a slow improvement.  Hopefully it means things are going to get better for me now that the heat has finally broken and summer is winding down slightly.

Whatcher Studios is Live!

With the help of my husband, this is now the NEW Whatcher Studios!  Welcome everyone!  Thank you for dropping by!  Hopefully soon I'll be updating with actually pictures rather than just my long-winded blogs.  I'm hoping to show a bit of what I'll be working on for my upcoming Anime Convention Artist Alley appearance (I only get one a year so it needs to be capitalized - heh heh) at Tsubasacon.   For those of you who do not know, check out www.tsubasacon.org and come to the Huntington, West Virginia convention.  The only perk I get for working my butt off on publications staff and running the artist alley is my chance to get a table in order to attempt to sell things.  Some years I've done really good, last few years though, not too great.  Most of my money comes from stalkers and my family members.  ^_^;

Since I happen to be on the topic of websites going live, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about myself and my world in the website "business".  No, I don't make any money for website stuff, although sometimes I wish that I'd gotten into web design back when I first started teaching myself HTML back in 1999 or so.  Back then there was Geocities and there was a pretty straight-forward editor where you could make a title, place a picture, and write some text and put some kind of obnoxious backgrounds in.  It took me awhile to learn all of the fancy text in order to get more pictures on there and before I knew it I had created a Highlander: The Television Series website.  It had quite a few incarnations until finally it became "Ricki's Immortalisque".  During that time I played with multiple other websites, and had one that was very pretty and floral-ly that basically hinged on my interest of Paris at the time ("A Walk in Paris" was the name I believe) and then another little website I posted artwork on (long before I discovered deviantART) and later on one that I started to dabble with anime stuff.

That website, which was under the unassuming name "whatcher_2" with a geocities prefix, became waaaay more popular than my Highlander site ever was (although at the peak of that site I had some 2,000 visitors a year).  My second huge website hit was Ricki's Anime Planet.  That name eventually was changed to "Ricki's Trigun Planet" because at first I talked about all sorts of anime, but by that point had basically become obsessed with Trigun and thus www.trigunplanet.com was later born when Geocities announced it was closing down.  By that time I wrote all of my own HTML, designed most of my own graphics, and I still update it when I can, although back in the day I had a LOT more information to post because Trigun Maximum the manga was still being published in Japan and I got it hot off the presses a week after its release every month.  That basically dwarfed my measly Highlander site when I would get some 2,000 hits a week, sometimes over 200 a day.  Not to say that's anything like what Facebook or heck, many blogs get out there, and I'm not tooting my own horn.  But, for a hand-made little website with information on one subject which not a lot of people look for, it did pretty good for awhile.  I think I get only a hit or two a day now on that site, but I do get an occasional email and since the Trigun: Badlands Rumble movie is still playing in theaters and is set to come out on Blu-Ray later this year, I'm keeping the website around.

Meanwhile, that's when I decided that I should start a blog site for myself.  This site was to have nothing to do with any fan stuff.  Just me, my writing, my blabbering, my artwork and just some random things here and there that make me happy.  If I only get a few hits here and there from a friend on Facebook or two, that will make me happy.  It's not for you, dear reader, whoever you are, this one is for me.  Although, I will admit that it would bring me additional joy if you happen to comment and say something from time to time in response to what I write.  That'll be nice too.  ^_^

So, here I am, writing what I know and getting down to the nitty-gritty of what Whatcher Studios is all about. I'm all about pointing out my own personal flaws, laying some things out on the table, and making peace with myself during the trying times of my 30's.  I'll try not to bring my work into it, nor will I bring a bunch of friends or point fingers or anything like that.  It's about me, what I'm thinking about, what I'm doing, and if you're interested, I'm glad to share.

Meanwhile - it's live!  Whoot!

A Bit on Overeating

I said on the last post that the next one would be about overeating.  Well, the reason I'm going through all of these different topics is because they're all kind of close to home when it comes to personal problems that I have.  So... they say "write what you know" and that's exactly what I'm doing.

We start this discussion on overeating with a word of advice.  Don't.  Don't start.  Keep yourself from going to buffets because all you're going to do is convince yourself you need to eat enough to pay for the cost.  Don't go out to eat. Don't go out to fast food joints.  Do learn to cook at home.  Do grow your own vegetables and herbs.  Do eat small portions and do so 4-6 times a day, every few hours an apple here, a protein shake there, or a small salad here.  Do eat dessert when you're in the mood for it, but get one of those 100 calorie things and don't eat more than that.  Wait for a few hours before you eat anything more.  Wait until you feel a bit empty or your tummy starts to rumble.  Keep your metabolism high, whatever you do, you need to go number 2 at least once a day if not more.  If you start to get to the point where you don't, then there's something wrong with your body and you need to re-adjust something.

Okay... I'll climb off my soapbox for a moment and tell you what I've learned over the years.  It's EASY to be fat.  Especially when you have no idea that you're getting there until people start making fun of you and your friends feel sorry for you because you're the chubby one.  Maybe, like me, you don't even realize you're getting fat, or maybe you already are, because it seems like a completely acceptable way to be, because the people around you are fat as well.  Maybe you have a lot of skinny friends and you feel bad for them because they're mighty skinny, and don't they get enough to eat?

The reason I'm mentioning all of this, is because that is how I grew up.  My Dad loved to eat.  His days off consisted of going to restaurants.  I kid you not, that was his hobby, or at least the only other one besides the Bible study that he held at work.  I don't remember much else about my Dad but that he loved to eat, loved to travel to new places and see new things, and he loved to spoil his kids.  My brother wasn't really affected by this tendency to overeat until he got past his teenage growth spurt.  I'm not entirely sure what he looks like now (haven't seen him in a year) but he had to do a drastic eating change to be skinny and get fit before he moved to California.

Anyway, (sorry, I do tend to ramble, I think I've mentioned that before) I grew up thinking it was perfectly acceptable to be big.  My Mom was big (bless her heart she's working on losing weight now too) and my Dad had a large belly (and I'm sorry to say, died of a heart attack in '99, 50 years of age) and so when I started going up in adult sizes, I thought I was growing.  Why didn't anyone tell me that being a size 14 at 14 years old was a bad thing?  My Mom wore a 20 at the time (she's down to a 14 now) and so I just thought I was growing to be like her.  It's funny how easy it is for a fat kid to be picked on.  But I always thought it was just because they didn't like me, not because I was fat.  Later I thought it was just because I wore glasses (that was short lived, I got contacts soon after) and here I was, always thinking that these skinny people just didn't know what it was like to eat really good food, and that's why they were so skinny.

I think by the time I got to high school, the weight thing finally started to kick in.  Of course, by that time I was also wearing a size 20, and if it weren't for a late growth spurt putting me at about 5'6" (rather than the 5' 3" I'd been through most of Junior and High School) I would have looked rather like a watermelon.  And it showed on my face in photographs and my clothing options (which were surprisingly few, this was before the obesity thing really hit the USA, just before "Supersize me" became popular), and I vowed that I'd lose weight in college.

You have to understand that I was a kid that was dragged to every kind of buffet known to man.  We were a "eat meat and then vegetables" kind of family.  Pick your protein, maybe fried chicken for example, or what about a slab of roast beef?  Throw on two or three rolls (I love bread) and add to it some mashed potatoes, oh and that slice of cake, and oh, I guess I feel bad, maybe I should have a small salad to top it off?  Side that with Coke, two or three glasses at least, keep those refills coming!  Go back for one last dessert, because, I was good enough to eat a salad and that will cover the bad of the sugar, right?  Each meal was similar to this, go to a "Standard American Buffet" and then maybe a Chinese buffet later, or maybe we'll find somewhere that's having an all-you-can-eat deal (like Olive Garden, which is the one that I still do, but feel miserable afterwards) and in between all of those buffets there were plenty of fast food joints to have a 'small' meal.  Little did I know many of those were probably even more calorie packed than the buffet I'd just eaten at.

So, when in college my Dad died and I lost about 10 pounds (I was over 200lbs at my weightiest), I thought I was doing pretty good climbing all the stairs at college, and look at me, I was only eating a couple times a day, and that's gotta be pretty good, right?  But eating so rarely and such large portions basically kept me at the same weight for years to come, and it would be another 10 years before I'd fall even below 180lbs.  All of those diet fads, reading about things that I should and should not eat, and yet none of it really sank in.  Overeating is just a habit, just like smoking or drinking or anything that you do in excess.  If at any point just don't see yourself doing wrong, it just becomes a part of you, a bad part of you, but a part, nonetheless.

Maybe I should have titled these blogs the Seven Deadly Sins or something.... Today's topic was brought to you by the letter "G" for Gluttony.  Next time... *shrugs*  I'll come up with something interesting, I hope, and perhaps add pictures.  See you then!

On Hoarding

Just finished watching the upteenth Hoarders show.  Can't even tell you which one it was, Hoarders, Hoarders: Buried Alive, Hoarding... I think there's more than that, animal hoarders too as I mentioned in my previous post. It's something of an interesting thing to me, because out of all of these strange "reality" shows that are out there, I don't like the ones that are game shows, or the ones that show glamorous people, or the ones where people are constantly bickering or doing unsavory things.  I like the shows where people are just doing what they've always done, working, hoarding, or just trying to get by, and maybe it's a bit messy and maybe they fight a bit, but most of the time something gets resolved by the end.  Most of the time.

I grew up in a pretty messy house.  The pictures when I was a baby say otherwise, and I don't really have any photographic evidence of the piles and piles of mail on the counters and kitchen table, or on my mom's desk or on every single flat surface in the house.  I remember paper, and lots of it, everywhere.  I also remember the piles of toys in my brother's room at one point where my mom actually hid a Christmas present for him and he never knew it was there.  I think at that point I realized I had to become organized or something would just snap and stay like that forever.

My dad hated the clutter, but he was probably just as guilty as my mom was when dealing with the mess.  Have company coming over?  Dump it all into a paper bag, shove it into a closet, or into the basement, and there it would stay.  When I got older my brother had a friend who lived in a REAL hoard.

Most of my neighbors were just messy.  We didn't live in slums, but we did live around a lot of people who could be considered white trash for one reason or another.  Mainly because of the trash part.  The house around the corner was constantly filthy.  I remember my first impression of the place from the chicken bones in a corner, spilled out of a garbage bag and when I asked if we should clean it up my neighbor said, "No, someone else will get it."  Another neighbor had a laundry room but just threw the laundry onto the floor, and maybe it would be cleaned, and if it was, it usually went right back onto the floor.  And then there was the hoard.

If you've watched the shows like I have, there's something very curious about why anyone would let floors get dirty or kitchens get so piled up that they couldn't be used. But it's another thing to actually see it first hand.  To take a step into someone's house and have a tiny little, grimy pathway though old metal box springs, TVs piled on one another, a computer over there you had to climb over stuff to get to, a kitchen that had two of the four chairs available to use, but only if you wanted to share it with the cockroaches that ran everywhere.  There were people living in this place, not one, not two, but a whole family including a little baby who grew up in that mess.  There was a fire at one point, and a lot of that garbage disappeared, only to reappear as soon as the insurance covered the rebuild.

I vowed after that I'd never let myself become a hoarder.  But, it's hard, and I'll tell you why.

Where ever you are sitting right now, be it a computer room, bedroom, living room, maybe you're at a school or somewhere else, look around.  What do you have that's personal to you nearby?  Think about the most important thing that you have on you or around you right now.  Is it your wallet?  A ring?  A favorite knicknack?  A pet?  A family member?  Whatever it is, think about how much it means to you and imagine at that same instant someone has come to take it away from you.  And you can't stop it from happening.  I mean CAN'T.  It's gone.  Right now that object, person, or pet is now gone and you can't get it back ever again.

Imagine that you feel that way with EVERYTHING that you own.  Now you have just a tiny little idea of what these hoarders go through every time they think about throwing something away, donating something, selling something, or even at the mere mention that something like that might happen.  Every day they feel that way, with every new item they feel that same emotional attachment.  Maybe they haven't seen it in awhile, but as soon as they see it again that item will become the most important thing to them.  Then the next thing and the next thing.

I used to feel a pain in my chest when it came to throwing things away.  I still go through moments where, even though I haven't used something in a long time I think, "should I keep this for awhile longer?  Maybe I could use it someday."  Yeah, I think everyone has had those types of feelings once in awhile, and it gets harder the more times you listen to that little voice.  I have a drawer of rocks that are still at my mom's house. I haven't been able to stand to go there and just dump them into her rock garden, no, because they are precious and they hold memories.  It's especially bad for me sometimes because I have a really good memory and sentiments can get dragged up from just a short peek at something again.

So... why am I not a hoarder?  Some people probably would say I am.  You should see the huge book collection that I have.  But I do get rid of them.  I'm intelligent enough to know that I will probably never read that book again, so maybe I'll donate it.  I also have something many hoarders don't have going for them, and that's a certain knack at organization due to an uncanny ability at spacial recognition.  I can look at something and know right away whether it'll fit somewhere or not.  You should have seen the stuff I managed to get into our two room little apartment.  It took two big ol' moving trucks and various other vehicles to get it all in.  And our house might not be filled with furniture, but it is filled with stuff.

Do I consider myself a hoarder?  No.  I collect things.  But I know that's just one little step away from hoarding.  I can jump from one collection to another in no time flat.  I collected marbles for awhile.  I collected bouncy balls (I seem to be attracted to round objects) and I collect cat figures now, well, I've tried to stop adding to my Jim Shore collection, but I still have a few more holiday cats I'd like to get.  (See?)  I collected knives and swords for awhile.  I still have a collection of My Little Ponies (which I'm happy to say are back in style, that amuses me to no end) and I have, of course, my books.  Could all of this push me over the edge one day?  Maybe.  I can see what depression does to me, and I could see myself just not caring anymore, and that scares me.

I think that's what makes me different from a true hoarder, and that's the fact that I'm afraid of going over to that side.  I think a true way to get a hoarder to stop hoarding would be to find that point in them where they go "Holy crap what am I doing to myself?"  And you get that fear in them that if the rest of their life is reduced to nothing but hoarding, they might start realizing they need to break the cycle before it's too late.

I'm sure people have talked about this kind of thing before, but it's something that hits home to me.  After watching that show I really want to clean again.  But then again, maybe it's because even after I've gotten the kitchen perfectly clean like I did last night, my husband managed to go in and completely destroy it in a day.  I know there ARE people who have NO IDEA what the meaning of clean really is.  My husband is one of those "it's mostly there, must be good enough" kind of cleaners.  What that kind of cleaner does is clean it just enough, and then they're done.  If they went the whole nine yards though, they'd know that if you just went a bit further you wouldn't have to clean as often.  Now, there's the ticket.  This is coming from someone who got the entire deposit back on our apartment when we had the pickiest landlords known to man... (although sometimes I think we lucked out we had a hoarder living next door so they forgave a few little spots here and there!)

As this blog now hits a dead end for me, I want to leave you with this parting thought:  Don't let your stuff own you.  I think I just got that from a Buddhist quote on Warehouse 13, but it's quite true.  You own your stuff, and if doesn't make you happy, get rid of it - throw it out, recycle it, donate it, regift it, something, anything, but replace it with something that makes you happy.  If you ever think "oh, shoot, another thing to dust..."  Then it's probably not as dear to you as you think.  And if you're not really sure when you got something or what it's for - get rid of it too!

Next blog:  Overeating.

On (Not) Being a Cat Lady

As I mentioned in my previous post, a good topic for me lately is the decision I made not to become a cat lady.  At one point in my life when I was single with no hope of finding the 'one', I thought to myself that I'd become a crazy cat lady.  I LOVE cats (but not as much as the girl on the eHarmony video) and when I don't have a cat I'm kind of weird and collect anything I can find that has anything to do with cats.  That includes, pictures, cups, bowls, figures, websites, apps, calendars, decorations, fabric...well, you get the idea.  And growing up at home with my Mom and brother at the time, after my dad passed I obsessed over getting a cat until Mom finally caved, and eventually we got a second one as well.

Second cat was named Neo and he was THE BEST CAT EVER.  Okay, no cat is perfect, but for me he was the best, not to say my darling little Olivia isn't a good cat, but I still love Neo dearly and his life was cut short by some disease that destroyed his kidneys.  He went downhill for a good year before he finally passed away sleeping at my Mom's house.  Luckily I didn't have to be there when it happened (she lives a state over from me) and I got to say my goodbyes a few weeks before.  Anyway, he wasn't the reason I decided never to be a cat lady, it was actually the show Animal Hoarders that nailed me on the fact.

Now that I have Olivia I realize just how much work goes into owning an animal.  I didn't have to pay all the bills (some of them with Neo, but not all) and didn't have to do all the cleanup and playing because my Mom and brother were around.  Now it's just me and my husband and it's a LOT of work.  Just knowing how much work one cat takes, we've kind of decided not to bother with looking for another cat right away, if ever.  Olivia's enough for the two of us to handle right now.

Skip into the world of animal hoarding and you'll see a whole new world to the 'crazy cat ladies' out there.  As I said, even if my husband were to die, I'd never hoard cats.  NEVER.  In fact, I wouldn't get cats to replace the emptiness in my life, because you know what?  It's not worth the time and money and anguish, and I'd never want to do that to a cat.  So... I'll never be a 'crazy cat lady' with a dozen or more cats.  I might still be cat-crazy and buy a bunch of cat related things to the point where people buy me things that have cats in them and when people come over they think my decorating style is 'cats' - which it isn't really, it's more anime, but that's a whole other topic for another day!

I think I might like to stay on the topic of hoarding for a bit though, so in the next post I might delve into what it's like to be on that brink between "collecting" and "hoarding" and how easy it can be to slip over that edge if you aren't careful.

Married Without Kids

When you're first married, living in an apartment with your husband for those first years, it's pretty simple.  No one judges you for not having kids, they don't care.  Really, most apartment living, except for in some circumstances, people pretty much leave you alone.  I don't think anyone wants to get into long-term friendships with apartment people because it's a transitory lifestyle and who knows when you or they will move out in another month?  Not to say that I didn't try to make friends with the people around our apartment complex at the time, but the fellows to our right and left were both old and kept to themselves (or senile enough not to remember that we introduced ourselves five times before), and the young punks above us were at college most of the time and when they weren't, they were constantly bickering or getting drunk and having loud parties.

Eventually it was the drunken screaming matches above us (sometimes I wondered if I should call the police but I wasn't sure it wasn't the girl beating on the guy or the other way around) that finally convinced us to start looking for a house (that, and the fact our apartment didn't allow cats).  After all, it is a good time to buy a house, the market hasn't yet recouped from its downward spiral of a few years ago, and there's still lots of foreclosures and bank owned properties out there for cheap.

So, we house hunted, found a good one at one point but upon further inspection it was obviously flipped, and even though the outside details were pretty, there were mold problems and odd smells and the neighborhood looked a bit sketchy.  It's weird to talk about the first house we called the "Switchback" house (it was on a drive of the same name) because as I look across the street to the neighbor's, it's exactly the same house, same colors, everything, just on a different street.  That's what you get when you move into a Dominion Home  I guess - there's only just so many "little boxes" you can move into.  But, we got a good deal on our eventual home, and the neighborhood seemed tidy enough, quiet enough, and enough people were walking around even in winter that it felt comfortable.

Here's where moving into a neighborhood in winter is not necessarily a good thing.  You don't see the kids.  Sure, maybe when it snows they'll pop out and make snowmen, but most of the time they're bundled up or at school.  Summer hits and there's a million kids everywhere.

So, if you didn't guess already from the title of this blog, I'm married, but I don't have kids.  I don't want kids and unless it happens by mistake (and we've already talked that if it does we won't stop it) we're not planning to ever have kids.  Why did we bother to move into a family-friendly neighborhood with three bedrooms?  I'm not sure.  Maybe because it was the biggest place we could find that was nearest to the area we wanted to live in for the best price we could find, and it was relatively new, a bit of a fixer-upper, near to my work and I fell in love with it over all of the other houses that we'd looked at over the course of a few months.  It has enough room to store our DVD/BD and book collections, and a fenced in backyard safe from the oodles of children running around out there.

But we don't have kids.  Not to say the neighbors came over to ask if we did or anything, one directly to our right doesn't, the ones across the street are elderly, but the rest...  I guess we'd know them by now if we did have kids.  But through all this rambling I wanted to talk about how it's like to be married without kids and how friendships are really complicated when you don't 'fit' a norm.

I'm 30ish.  My friends have two-three kids each, been married for years longer than I, and most of them have gone their separate ways.  I haven't talked to most of my high school and college friends except for a quick "hello" on Facebook in years.  I don't have anything in common with them and they aren't interested in following a friendship like that.  My single friends split the moment I got married.  I think they were irritated that I'd found someone, and even though I was perfectly willing to spend time on them on my own, they found other single friends and moved on.  My dearest friends are the ones who a.) are past all the bullsh*t with the kids/no kids thing or b.) don't plan on ever having kids either or c.) don't plan on getting married ever.

Unfortunately that kind of narrows it down to one really good friend and a couple of acquaintances.  It's a pretty lonely life.  I'm kind of wondering how many others out there are just like me in this respect.  Lost all the friends that I had, made a couple here and there, tried to cling to new friendships but couldn't make any that stuck, and now just sort of drifting along wondering what purpose my life has outside of working, hanging out with my husband, trying to do creative stuff like drawing or writing, and feeding my cat.

(Future topic, on becoming a cat lady)

I work a full time job, as does my husband.  He's made friends at work, I haven't.  I'm not saying that I don't have acquaintances at work, because I do.  I try my hardest to get along with everyone there and from what I can tell everyone likes me.  But I'm afraid because at some point in the past I was labeled "manager" (even though I don't have a salaried position) anyone who is underneath me thinks we can't be friends or someone would find a way to point fingers and say I'm playing favorites.  I don't control anyone at work, and when I have tried to point out that this person isn't following code or that one, they conveniently remember that I'm not a full manager and ignore what I told them.  Doesn't matter, I don't want to be a bully, so I turned down further responsibilities awhile ago.  Maybe that makes me an underachiever, but heaven knows I have enough trouble as it is finding friends, I don't want to make any enemies.

I'm not really sure why it's so difficult to make a couple friends where I live.  I shouldn't have a problem, there's got to be a few people around here who just want to get out 'with the girls' but those I've asked... nothing.  I don't want to push the issue, but it feels like even those that I have something in common with don't want to pursue anything and so I back off and give up.  Maybe I shouldn't wuss out, but I do.  I'm comfortable being a childless housewife, but it feels like there's something more to my life that I'm missing.

So, this is where I'm going to begin.  This blog, I hope, will help me discover something about myself that people will want to get to know and maybe make me a bit more happy with myself along the way.  Maybe I'll find myself a reason.

A Little About Whatcher Studios

Welcome to my blog/studio website.  I bought this domain over a year ago and had about one good afternoon of inspiration pouring over new ways to post things and trying to come up with a good way to post my writing and artwork, thinking "I'll make my site into a blog since I already write a lot on Facebook and DeviantART" but at the time I failed to come up with a good way to post a proper blog.  Okay, I didn't try that hard, and a year went by before I decided to try fiddling with this again.

Now you're seeing what a bit of help from Blogger can do and I don't mind admitting that I'm glad I have something pre-assembled to work with for the time being.  Eventually I'll edit this site up, because I've been writing my own HTML since 1998, and I like to know how websites work.  But, for now this is easy; when I want to type, I can just type, and I don't have to put a bunch of extra work into adding the italics and bolds and paragraphs that I'm so fond of using.

Onto where the name "WhatcherStudios" came from.  The creature that tops this blog is a "whatcher" and it's spelled that way because at the time of its creation there were "Watchers" in both Highlander: The Series and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and these critters weren't people watching immortals or slayers, they were creatures meant to watch over people.  They spied on people.  In the original novel I wrote between the ages of 13 and 17 (never published, mind you) they were mouse-sized, could spy on your enemy and report back to you via psychic relay.  Pretty cool.  Whatchers evolved, however, into more of a cat-sized creature that still watched, but now was more of a pet and helper, but still psychic to their one master.

What's with the "-Studios" add on?  I needed a name for my art table at anime conventions and thus was born "WhatcherStudios".  It fit.  The critters have been on my 'plate' for drawing since I was 13 (and I'm MUCH older than that now, so they're pretty much a part of my every day life, even if they don't actually exist.... however, you'll soon get to 'see' them exist on this site if all goes well.

I have a LOT of hobbies, a few of which being drawing, taking photographs, writing about random stuff (ahem), gardening, reading, watching TV, cooking, playing video games... well, you get the point.  A few of my hobbies meld from time to time, and drawing and transposing those drawings onto photographs is one of my favorites, so you'll probably be seeing some 'real' whatchers in photographs I've taken from time to time.

If you want to see some of my artwork now, head over to MillyT@Deviantart and check out my galleries.

I'd like to share my life with you, and if you're willing to read through massive quantities of drivel from time to time, give me a comment once in awhile, then welcome to WhatcherStudios!