Chore Day, Aug 31, 2019: Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund hears noise in the chimney

As I wrote the title for this post, I thought, Damn, I’m good — I broke every SEO “best practice” possible: vague title, nothing about the children’s book, no informative keyword that a search engine can make any sense of. It’s highly unlikely that any search engine will index this page in a way that would lead anyone looking for a diary of creating a children’s picture book. The thing is, I really don’t want to spend my time thinking about SEO. I have more interesting things to do. So it goes.

Today was my chore day, with the same chores as last Saturday: cooking for my furry friends and cooking enough food for myself so that I don’t have to cook everyday nest week. I made a pot of spaghetti sauce and a pot of curried cauliflower. As usual, I listened to my favorite Hair Metal bands while I was cooking. There’s only one chore that I didn’t enjoy: cleaning the food processor. The plastic top and complicated locking mechanism are nearly impossible to clean.

On the art front, I updated my “Bernie hears a noise” image. I extended the chimney and gave it a few twists to make it more fun. As a bonus, I added a pink cat to Bernie’s coffee cup.

Momma Jay Knocks on Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund's Door

I’m drawing close to the end of painting all of the images for the book. However, I’m not certain that I have completed all of the paintings. I suspect that I’ve missed some of the images that were part of the storyboard. To make sure I’m on the right path, my next step, tomorrow, is to insert all of the completed images into the inDesign template to see what’s missing.

As I’m writing this, I realize that one my lack of organization has slowed down my progress immensely. Sometimes I feel that I’m just rushing ahead, pedal to the metal, without knowing which direction I’m going. Inevitably I’ll have to backtrack to get back on the right path. Throughout this project, I’ve gotten off track dozens of times and I’ve had to correct myself dozens of times. Fortunately, I realize that it’s normal to lose focus. It’s also normal to make corrections. Getting distracted and noticing that you’re distracted is just part of any long term project. I don’t beat myself up about flying off into the wild blue yonder.

Picture #27, Jimmy and Buddy Emerge from Stove

Today’s post is a spoiler — Jimmy and buddy are alive even though they fell down that bird-eating chimney! They’re just lucky that it was deactivated years ago by the new home owner, Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund. Of course, the chimney is still lined with soot, which explains why they’re so filthy. Bernie decommissioned the wood burning stove because it was a gross polluter with a big carbon footprint. He kept it as a lovely decorative antique. Bernie has a great sense of interior design.

Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund

Bernie is always a good sport about the weird things I do to him. Perhaps he’s so patient with me because he’s a buddhist. Today I switched to my Daniel Smith watercolors.

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