Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

[gs_silva]

I thought this one up in a dream.

Ella is on the phone. Surely a pay phone, although I didn't feel like drawing a pay phone. Cathy is sitting at a tiny table with a glass of wine, sketching in a sketchbook. In front of her, drawn a little bit too big but oh well, cry me a river, is a pole dancer. In the background are more people at more tables.

"My bad," Ella says into the phone. "I shoulda known "Melons" didn't mean they serve fruit. But Cathy is into it, so we're gonna stay."

***

My spouse pointed out that 'my bad' is an anachronistic phrase in 1990, but actually its origin is not too far into the future! so maybe this scene is what's anachronistic. But I would've forgotten it if I'd waited. I've been on a kick lately of making light of 'adult material' but this is the last one for a while. My next story arc is only 'adult' in that it's emotionally complex, and draws from themes that young people may not have the life experience to understand. Unless they're disabled. Even then, it'll really depend on the individual young person.

***

My executive function is failing me. Some of my existing ongoing problems developed additional complications. I've been spending hours sitting at the computer, trying not to squander my time and energy, trying trying to get the graphic novel edited, and several more time-sensitive responsibilities are slipping by me. I've also been short-tempered, which is the absolute worst thing to be right now. If I snap at one person, I hope they have the perspective to realize that I'm holding back from snapping at a more vulnerable person and they just got in the way.

It's been raining all day, but I went out and yanked a bunch of bittersweet roots out of the ground anyway. Right now is the perfect time to do it. The ground is thawed and mucky and it all comes out surprisingly easily. There's another reason, though, I learned yesterday. I was chatting with my other neighbor (not the one with the grandkids and the pachysandra) and he revealed that he'd had the landscapers spray the back side yard with bromide solution to get rid of the bittersweet. He's very elderly and he didn't quite seem to know what was up with the bittersweet, so it was probably the landscapers who took initiative on that project, and the neighbor just agreed to it. So I filled him in on what species were there (bittersweet, buckthorn, poison ivy, spotted lanternflies) and some information about eradication methods. We agreed that spraying the whole area was damaging and wasteful, and he's going to hold off on doing anything further until I can get in there and use good ol' muscle to pull the invasives out.

I didn't completely understand that the herbicide spraying had already happened. But by the look and feel of some of those roots, and the fact that the worst damage was done on his side of the problematic patch, I surmise that it did.