No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on August 17, 2013

In two weeks I will be in the thick of Dragon Con.

I have talked about things for the convention and things at the convention so today I am going to touch on things to do before the convention.

So at less than two weeks out here are some of the things I do and think about.

1) Start gathering your paperwork including your proof of hotel reservation, airline or/and car reservations, your badge paperwork, any receipts for things you are going to pick up at the convention or photo ops and the like.

2) Check to make sure you have enough of your vitamins/supplements/medicines for the convention. Especially your medicines. If you need to get refills or script for refills, start now. Running out of things you need is a bad idea.

3) Start making your packing list. In fact start setting aside/packing the items you are taking with you that you don’t need in daily life. I have started my sewing kit and double-checking my make-up kit. We have gathered some stuff that Caroline wants to get autographed.

4) Have you been breaking in your shoes? Blisters are NOT your friend at Dragon Con.

5) Start gathering the phone numbers of the people you are connecting with at the convention. Start figuring out where you are meeting up with people. (If you are trying to find me, Peter’s table in Artist Alley is a good start, my panels are as well, and I will also be helping out at the Puppeteers Table.)

6) Start figuring out what you want to see. The tentative schedule is up on the App. Not all the panels are there. Also if you are doing the walk of fame, look at the guest list and figure out who you want to see and then budget for it both time and money.

7) Get those costumes done! Paint needs time to dry as does glue. (Yes, I am the worst offender in this and I know it)

8) Get ready to have some fun.

Please feel free to add anything I have missed or that you do to get ready for a convention.

I am grateful for everything that I have gotten done and in place.

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Posted By Kathleen David on August 16, 2013

Movin’ right along in search of good times and good news,
With good friends you can’t lose,
This could become a habit!
Opportunity knocks once let’s reach out and grab it (yeah!),
Together we’ll nab it,
We’ll hitchhike, bus or yellow cab it!
(Cab it?)
(Music and Lyrics by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher)

Yesterday we got a copy of The Muppet Movie: The almost 35th Anniversary Edition (1979) and showed it to Caroline who has vague memories of seeing this film but couldn’t remember much. She loved it. She laughed at jokes and gasped at the gunfight. It was fun seeing it through her eyes. She was also amazed that I knew the lyrics to so many of the songs.

I have to say that the first verse of “Moving Right Along” got me to thinking. I have been lucky in life that I have such good friends and they have been there for me. I still keep in touch with friends from elementary school, high school, and college along with my convention buddies and professional friends. Sure social media has made this much easier but I was doing this before Facebook and web logs and the like.

I have been moving right along in my life. I have traveled a lot and had a ton of adventures and made friends because of it. I may be a bit more stationary now (being that this house is the longest I have stayed put any where besides my parents home) but I still move forward. I try to continue to learn and expand my skills. Now I have reached a point that I am both student and teacher, which is an interesting position to be in. The point was hammered home at Shoreleave where younger people were seeking me out and my advice. And continued as I got my Dragon Con schedule (tentative) and found myself mostly teaching the entire weekend which should be a lot of fun.

Again a lot of this introspection is probably because I am turning 50 in less than a month. I don’t think I have thought this hard about my life…well ever.10 I was in elementary school. 20 I was in college. 30 I was stage managing and having a blast. 40 I was with Peter married with 3 stepdaughters and a daughter. Now 50 looms and a lot has changed in the past year, heck the past week with going from 5 to 3 cats.

I will say I am much calmer as each decade goes by. I have learned to let things go which was hard for me to do. I have learned to only really care about the opinions of the people that matter to me. I am still working on not caring when people say mean things about my husband, family, or friends. Guess that’s my Momma Bear peaking out. I think it get more frustrated for me when I could refute what is being said but I can’t because I was told in confidence or am under an NDA but I am getting better about it.

In two weeks I will be at Dragon Con. Hard to believe. I am looking forward to seeing my friends and spending some time catching up face to face.

I am grateful for my friends and the Muppet Movie.

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Posted By Kathleen David on August 15, 2013

Well the fever I have had off and on for the past couple of days seems to have finally broken. I am back to “normal” right now and hope to stay that way. My tinnitus is kicking it up a notch which is annoying but I have lived with it and will continue to do so. With any good luck it will calm down in a day or so.

I wanted to thank everyone for the kind words and condolences. Caroline is holding up pretty well. There are tears and “I miss the kitties” but that is to be expected since she is 10 years old and this is the first time any of her pets have died. Not that it makes it any easier when the next one goes.

Peter is coping too. He misses the cats since he was the one who brought them into the house. In other news, his right arm is getting closer to where it was pre-stroke. His range of motion is increasing and his hand is getting stronger. Both very positive things.

“Face-Off” has started again with a twist of veteran (previous show participants) verses the newcomers (newbies). I think that advantage will probably last about two challenges. I do hate that the one person who reference Jim Henson got booted first but I understand why the judges did it. I don’t understand how the ogre was the hardest piece to pull off. Making fake arms that they have to use should have been a no-brainer for most of these people. As it was there were some very poor choices in materials and execution. It is nice to see that the veterans did learn from their previous time on the show and they went back and worked on their weaker skills to bring them up to snuff. There are some of the newcomers that have mad make-up skills and I expect to see greatness from them. Caroline loves this show and loves learning how the make-up goes together. She told me I should try out. I laughed and said I am good but I am not that good. She replied well at least their costumes wouldn’t suck.

Speaking of costumes “Heroes of Cos-Play” is not what I was expecting it to be. The promos made it one thing but it is a totally different animal. More documentary than competition about the people who have a real passion for cos-play. And yes I have seen that much drama in a costuming group. In fact it seemed mild.

I have a couple of concerns but I think they were probably created from the editing process since we are only seeing a small percentage of the overall footage. One is the concerns was Rebecca (?) seemly body dimorphism issue that she was too fat to do Merida. She was not. People aren’t build like cartoon characters. I have a feeling that at some point (or may be more than one point) she was either told or heard that she was too fat or not right for a costume she was wearing that she worked on so hard and that stuck in her head and haunted her. She is a perfectly healthy young woman. But again they do try to find the drama.

The other concern is one that I have seen time and time again in fandom. One person stated that they were doing this so they could make a living at fashioning piece for cos-players. I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I know that are making a living doing this. Yes, it is specialized skills and techniques to create these items but the market is not as large as they think. Just because one person has figured it out and how to sell it so it can be their livelihood doesn’t mean that there is tons of room for others. I see this in the one of a kind doll and plush market all the time and in fursuiting. There is so much more than being able to make the product. You also have to be able to market it to your audience and get them to want to buy it from you. Yaya is not an overnight sensation. She has been busting her hump for a long time to get where she is today and she is really really good at marketing herself. Love it or hate it, she has her market figured out. Some people ask why I don’t have a website where I sell my puppets, simple answer is that I suck at marketing myself.

Yes, I will continue to watch it and Face-off.

DragonCon is 14 days away and I am further behind than I thought I could even be because of life, illness, and death kind of took over everything. Today I hope to get back into the groove. I plan to start this with getting back to the sewing machine and putting some bodies together. Caroline’s costume is still on the docket as well. 4 good days work should put me back on track for what I can get done.

Well Caroline is up now and I am through my first cup of coffee so I guess I will stop doing this and go back to my sewing machine.

I am grateful for feeling worn out but more human this morning.

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Posted By Kathleen David on August 14, 2013

Treat in the cone of shame after his cancer surgery last year
(For the VI: This is a photo of a black and white cat wearing a plastic protective cone. He is looking at Caroline who is wearing a yellow shirt)

48 hours after dealing with losing one cat, Treat Williams the cat aka the Monster Cat went into the great beyond. Cause of death was kidney failure.

Treat was here before I arrived. He was born in this house and grew up here. He was the runt of the litter but grew into the largest of all our cats. But he never knew that and thought he was still small. He was a Hemingway cat (polydactyl) with a large heart and a large stomach. You could hear his purr two rooms away.

His mother was Pandora and his brothers were Pinky (died after challenging a truck at a very young age) and Stalin who is still with us (in fact at my hip asleep right now).

Treat was a good cat. He could be considered a guard cat because if someone came to the door, he would let out a set of meows that would let everyone else know there was someone there. He could say “Hello”. I am not kidding. That cat had the word Hello down.

We called him the Monster cat and had to help him watch his weight. He had a habit of eating the food dish down to nothing and then stopping. At his highest weight, he was 24 pounds of fluffy cat. His coat could get so thick that we would shave him for the summer which, according to the groomers, he loved. He was so happy to get rid of the winter coat.

He thought he was a good lap cat. He would curl up on my lap…and the couch.

He went off on adventures with Gwen for a while and then returned here to become the basement cat (as he got older, he didn’t play well with others) where he lived out the rest of his kitty life.

He will be missed.

I am grateful I had Treat Williams the Cat in my life.

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Posted By Kathleen David on August 8, 2013

In a month and a day I turn 50 years old (or 50 years young as some put it).

I know I have done a lot in those fifty years. But it really doesn’t feel like that length of time has passed. Time does speed up as one gets older especially if one has kids. I swear that I blinked and my baby became a ten year old.

Fifty is one of those milestone ages that seems to cause one to think about their life so far and their life ahead or maybe it is just me.

I was thinking about turning 50 at SDCC (San Diego Comic Con: I just figured that I have been using the shorthand and not everyone knows what that it). I was looking as the younger fans who were running around the convention and braving lines I would not touch now but probably would have been in the thick of it when I was their age. There was a lot of “ah I remember when” going on in my head.

Given where my life has gone, would I have changed anything? Not really. What happened to me over the years has made me who I am today. I think if I could get a message back to my younger self it would be take care of your body because you are going to need it for a long time. I do wish I could go back and reassure myself that things will turn out OK even when it looks incredibly bleak and hopeless. So both the good times and the bad times have made me who I am.

I got an unusual comment at Shoreleave that I have been mulling over. A young lady in her early 20s came to me after a panel where I was up there with just male panelists. She complimented me on being able to hold my own with the men. I didn’t think I was. Honestly I was going with the flow of the panel. I inquired a little further as to what she meant and figured out that it was that I could talk in front of a group of people and hold my own opinion. I told her that I learned how to do that over time. When I was her age I couldn’t get up in front of a group of people I didn’t know and talk with confidence. It is something I learned over time and by this point I am totally comfortable doing so.

My skill set has improved over the years. I was not able to do half the crafty things I do now even at twenty-five years old. I have been very lucky and had a lot of good teachers long the way. At this point I am more than willing to teach what I know but I still have learning. I want to allow others to not have to go through the process of trial and error that I went through to figure out the best way to do something.

There will probably more of these as I get closer to the actual date of my natal day.

I am grateful for all the experiences I have had over the years.

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