Day in the Life of an Idiot

I've been thinking that one of the ways I want to live my life is as if I were in a slice-of-life manga. You know, something like Laid-Back Camp or Super Cub.

But, because I am also like this, I actually started drawing it. I am, because I am a weirdo, drawing it as if you should read it right to left. I started on the last page of a book that I was already using for doodling and other art projects. Because I'm pretending this is a manga, I'm also including translator's notes, as though you are stumbling across this on some pirate site.

Because I'm not sure if this will be a one-shot or a full volume, there is no cover or title yet. I may continue in full-color, though I should really, if I want to be manga-like only have a few opening color splash pages and then move into black and white.

I kind of like coloring, though.

So perhaps this is an imaginary collected webtoon or manhua.



Image: a rendition of my actual kitchen in most of its actual colors and me (a little skinnier than I really am) doing the dishes, while looking out the window.

The narration starts, as manga often do, with the main's full name, age and occupation. So the first panel of this this reads: "I'm Lyda Morehouse, 56, a not very successful self-employed writer." Now before you yell at me for not talking up my successes (and I do actually think I'm VERY successful, thank you very much!), this often the type of main character you find in slice-of-life. They're doing OKAY. They're usually not on the fast-track at their job. Sometimes they're not-very-popular high schoolers, FREETs (someone who is content to live off a parttime salary,) or other people who are mildly out of step with the larger, fast-paced society. Not always? Like, I read a very delightful slice-of-life called Sweetness & Lightning that is about a single working dad trying to find the time and energy to make meals for himself and his only daughter.

The lower panel reads, "One day, I decided to imagine what it might be like if I lived my life as if I was in a slice-of-life manga."

Very self-referential so far! Very meta!

The next page looks like this:


Image: second page of the manga -- lots of outdoor images, no people.

So, remember, you're reading this top, right panel, then left. This page's narration says: "Outside of the kitchen window, the black-eyed susans and golden glows were a riot of color against the grey siding of our neighbor's house. All of my gardens are like this. Wild, out of control." Then you see the cicada who has a very Japanese cameo here, signaling not only that it is summer, but that today is VERY hot. The next panels read, "The weather forecast said there would be a be a heat index of 100 degrees.* We could tell. The cicadas were singing at 10 am. I hoped to harvest some chives before it got too hot." The bottom dialogue box is from the supposed translator and it reads, "T/N: America uses Fahrenheit. To most of the rest of us, this is 37."

I'm pretty impressed with my cicada:



Image: cicada hanging on a tree. She sings: "Bzzzt! Bzzzt!"

So, yeah, this is what I do in my copious free time when I should really be starting on the next novel. I mean, to be fair this did not actually take all that much time. I probably spend more time playing Solitaire, so, I mean, look forward to that chapter! ;-)

I started this in part, in response to a conversation I had with pegkerr over Zoom about what other people find boring. She's been doing a weekly visual journal and has been feeling like her life is boring, as if no one would care about the little things she gets up to every day. First of all, please!  I will point the gentle reader to the above. There is an entire deeply successful manga genre devoted to people reading about people's boring lives. 

Also, I have long resisted the idea that life is EVER truly boring. I mean, part of what I love about slice-of-life manga is that they often call to the reader to slow down, look outside their window, and revel in the fact that eating good food nourishes the soul. This is literally the stuff of life. Hear the cicadas. Feel the heat. Consider the wildness of the flowers outside your kitchen window. Do the dishes. Tidy up. These are all GOOD and valuable things!

So we got into a bit and so I have now dedicated my life to being as f*cking mundane as possible it and drawing beautiful images about my utterly plain life to prove that dullness is in the eye of the beholder. 

Maybe you wouldn't read 57 volumes of this, but maybe I can give you an interesting peek into my day-to-day life. 

When my nephew Jonathan was younger he tried to convince us that Canada didn't exist. It as a running gag for him forever--the kind where occasionally, I'd be, like, "Are you joking?" and he'd continue his serious rant about how it's all a government plot.

I, however, now have photo documentation that Canada exists.

Because, seriously, who would doctor a photo to make it seem like the highway signs all wear crowns.



Honestly, Shawn and I were actually unaccountably charmed by the royal highway signs and spent a significant part of our trip to Thunder Bay cooing over them. I also pointed out to her that if I robbed her, I was pretty sure that would make me a highwayman (well, highwaywoman, but the Roaches never sang about that.)

I also apparently am the worst at answering border patrol questions. I've been long schooled by the thought (something I saw on some cop show or other a zillion years ago) that if someone asks you if you have a watch, you look at your wrist and answer the question actually asked, i.e., "Yes/No, I [don't] own a watch," full stop, despite the inclination of most people to offer the time.

Shawn says that makes me sound suspicious. And it probably does. But, the border patrol let us through, anyhow, since I'm both suspicious and silly. Where did you come from?" "St. Paul." "Where are you headed?" "Thunder Bay." "How long will you be there?" "Overnight." "You came all the way from St. Paul to visit Thunder Bay for one day?" (he asked incredulously.) Shawn said at this point she was attempted to lie and point out that we felt there was a SIGN telling us to go (because OMG the Thunder Bay attraction billboards on 35 before Duluth were LEGION, though we do have them to thank for remembering to go back for our passports,) but I ended up mentioning that we just kind of wanted to go to Canada, a foreign country, as part of our honeymoon. This, of course, made the border guard shake his head like we were insane. I kind of wished I'd added, "Because, you know, we can't afford Paris. So Thunder Bay seemed like a good alternative."

Because he would have laughed.

I have to admit that we enjoyed the trip up to Thunder Bay more than the town itself. We ended up going to a Tim Robbins for breakfast on the day we left. I'd been hoping to go back to the Starbucks we spotted on the way in, but Shawn saw the Tim Robbins and told me she'd always wanted to go to one after reading about them in a Canadian murder mystery series. I can't deny a request like that, can I? The coffee was awful, but the donuts were fantastic.

We spent much of our time in Canada being ugly Americans. I was also inordinately charmed by the money. I'd gotten a 20 Canadian dollar bill at the bank before we left for Bearskin, and we broke that at the hotel's front desk so we could buy a bunch of Canadian candies in the vending machine. Having loonies in my pocket always amuses me far more than it should.

I also chatted up our hotel waiter about the World Cup. He, of course, was far more of a hockey fan, and didn't actually know if Canada was playing in the Cup (they're not.) But I kept telling Shawn that the way we knew we were in a foreign country was that people actually had the World Cup on the big screen TV in the main lounge. This would never happen in the US. It'd be Fox News or something awful.

We also saw Canadian Canada Geese, which also tickled me unaccountably.

Yes, I really am this easy.

On the way up, we stopped at Pigeon Falls/Grand Portage to look at the waterfall:



It was drizzling this day so the path to the waterfall was a little treacherous because they'd built a wheelchair accessible one that had nice wooden bridges and such... but they got really slippery in the light rain. At any rate, it was amazing.

The trip back home was also drizzly and Lake Superior put on quite the show for us with crashing waves and white caps. I tied to get a picture of its majesty, but this doesn't do the lake justice: