Welcome Summer!

The Summer Solstice saw the Austin Family awake for a good portion of the evening nursing a new born and a 3 year old with a urinary infection.

That's right. For a limited time, you too can enjoy constant screaming, unrelenting crying, high fevers, baby poo, kid puke and all around crankiness. Our state of the art technology has allowed us to create the perfect in home Chaos Filter, which delays each cry, diaper, TV volume spike, toddler whine and phone call until the last possible moment, then unleashes them all at once.

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If you order today we'll enter you into our Going Broke Sending Two Kids to College Sweepstakes where you and a friend can celebrate the next 24 years of budgeting what will basically come down to beer money. This contest is void in Texas where the legislature is already spending education funding on intoxicants.

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Of course the fine print will read all the medical costs of having a delivery in a hospital, clothing for someone who grows faster than you can keep track of, food for someone who eats 25% of what you put on their plate and entertainment to keep them placid. Because let's face it, raising a newborn is a constant effort in keeping a creature asleep. That's all you want to do, make it sleep. Quick, feed it, change it, pat it, burp it, wrap it up, make it sleep. How much did it sleep today? I can't get it to sleep. Don't babies sleep 20 hours a day?

I'm starting to get the familiar muscle twitches that accompany lack of sleep. They start in the eye. The slow madness that creeps over a person from a week's worth of eye twitching is just a primer for the rib cage twitches. Finally, the breath is robbed from my lungs as the back twitches swing in to full gear. My only hope is my brain stem will twitch loose and I'll be free from this insanity.

It's chaos I tell you. Of the highest order. Last night was a good example. We're currently playing a game of Musical Beds. There are 3 in our house and currently, with LMA being sick, whoever wants to sleep will rotate to the bed that's not occupied. The other will act as a gravitational force for small people and pull the kids with them to another room. After 90-120 minutes, the orbits shift, medicine is administered, diapers are changed, thirsts are quenched, bellies are filled, and the beds are rotated again.

But it's all part of the duty. You become a parent, you become a Doctor, Psychiatrist, Friend, Story Teller, Rocking Chair, Restaurant and Police Officer. I hope I act better now than I did 3 years ago when it comes to interrupted sleep, because this time I know it's going to happen. It's just a fact of life that for 3 months we aren't going to get 8 hours of sleep.

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Moving on. Father's Day was pretty hip, I got some cool T-shirts and some DVDs, notably season 1 and 2 of The West Wing. We've been trading nights off so I've been able to see a couple movies, Mrs. Austin's been able to go out with friends, it's not too bad.

I am a little upset because I lost an important notebook the other day. I had this little red notebook that had 2 issues of my comic book plotted out with thumbnails for each page. There was dialogue, reference material, sketches, names, clothing designs, places, plot points, etc. I made a schedule for myself a few days ago that would get me back on track for making my book. I had it planned out from now until November. I would be drawing character sheets, pinups, covers, material to be put on my nearly defunct Cafe Press merchandise, images for the web site. Now it's all gone.

This stupid little notebook was in my backpack for months. Every time I thought of something to add or change or remove, I had it right there. When we went to the hospital, I took it all out to pack clothes and necessities, and now I can't find it. It's no where. I even called the hospital's lost and found. Boy that was a lame call. "Hi, I lost a notebook. It's red. No, no name on it. Um, it's got some really bad handwriting and some sketchy images that look like a comic book. Hello?"

So now I'm in a creative tail spin. I know the characters I'm working with and how they look so I can still draw, but I've lost the story. I know where the story is going, but I lost the dialogue and the pacing and the plot points and the page layouts. I feel defeated on the eve of a creative surge. It's a deflated feeling, so I'm taking liberal amounts of West Wing viewing to cure my little depression.

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Little Miss Austin (Spazoid) and New Mr. Austin (Space Cadet) are having their own issues. As mentioned, LMA has an infection so she's been dealing with a fever and lack of motivation and appetite for the past few days. Her friend came over on Sunday and we had to send her home because Spazoid had suddenly developed a very high fever and we didn't want her friend to get sick. It was a bad situation in that we were watching this girl because of her parents overlapping schedule, but we didn't want her to get sick. Tough spot. In the end we decide the last thing this girl needed was more reason to see a doctor, so we erred on the side of being bad hosts and sent her home.

Space Cadet just grunts a lot and turns red. So far that's his only trick. He's starting to focus on faces, or eyes, or whatever. There's no motor control and he still scratches at his face. The jaundice is gone, the weird breathing has abated slightly. He's now just another squirmy little bag of still forming bones. He's adding weight though, which is good. He looks less like an elephant’s knee and more like a human baby.

So that's the news here. I realize there aren't any photos at this time. Frankly, if we had time to take and upload pictures that would mean there's a small human necessity not being met elsewhere.

Carry on.