Pre-Con Stress: AWA 2011 Edition

I've spent the last week somehow convinced in my head that AWA is next week. It's not. It's the week after that. Still, the feeling that the convention is looming over my head like a ginormous dark cloud has lead to an increased sense of paranoia. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, dreaming about weird and usually bad things happening at the convention, or just this overwhelming feeling that I'm forgetting something really important, but that really important thing is stalking me; it's in the dark shadows out there somewhere just waiting to catch me unawares and then devour me whole... or maybe slowly and painfully.

This is what I call "Pre-Con Stress." I get some variation of it before every convention. I'm sure a lot of AWA's stress comes from the fact that I really, really, really want to get the zodiacs done before the convention... all of them... both the print and badge versions. Why? Because I will feel really bad if someone's sign gets left out. D= I feel sad when someone goes up and says where's my sign? Normally that's in context of, "I didn't have room to put them all up on the display, but you can look in this notebook here and see all of them." But, what if I had to answer, "I'm sorry I didn't have time to get your sign finished before the convention." It may be a perfectly reasonable statement; honestly I've only had one month to get all 12 print and 12 badge designs finished, and now I'm down to a week and a half to finish 6 prints and 12 badges. @_@ Still, I can imagine my customer looking disappointed, and I really hate that. It makes me feel bad inside. Nine times out of ten, even if I have the finished product there, they wouldn't buy it anyways. I really hate leaving anyone disappointed though, and the zodiac set is one of those where it really needs to be finished if I want to avoid that feeling.

Then, there's also the tarot deck... wait didn't I say that process was over a couple of weeks ago? Wasn't I just waiting for the cards to be delivered? Yes, and yes, sort of. The deck part is finished and they're already in my hands (they came almost a week earlier than I expected them), but I want to have a little booklet or something to go with each deck that gives a master list of characters and series, maybe a little bit about each card, and stuff like that. Does anyone know how many books I've tried to self print before? I'll tell you. None. So, I'm still working on the writing, well mostly waiting on my husband to get free time to help me write because he is an infinitely better writer than I am, and the layout and design, not to mention trying to figure out how to make it print the way I want it to, then cutting out all the pages, arranging them, and stapling them together. I may just end up printing on one big sheet that gets folded up to fit in the deck box. XD That's my back-up plan, because I'm determined to have these things ready by AWA.

I think all that's enough to warrant extreme stress. Do I think all this can be finished? I'm having strong doubts. I know the zodiac prints will be done--they're half done and the other half is in progress. The zodiac badges... that's a vastly different story. A lot depends on how soon I get the rest of the prints finished--if the prints are finished today or tomorrow, the badges stand a chance. If not, the chances diminish significantly. The mini-book for the tarot deck? I'll have something done, even if it's not the book I'd had in mind. I kind of wish I could outsource that one, but there really isn't time. I put it off for a while because I wasn't sure what the card dimensions would be, or if there would even be a deck. Even after the order went through, I don't think it really sunk in that the tarot set was really going to be a deck of cards until last night when I opened the box and pulled the wrapping off one of the decks to look through it. You're welcome to take bets on what you think I'll finish, and keep an eye out for next week's WIP posts for the next 2 weeks to see what happens and what doesn't.

Gothic Panda is missing

You are probably wondering where Gothic Panda is right now. Where is her zany blog post detailing her latest artsy/craftsy thingy? Where are the amusing anecdotes about her family and/or the monsters that live here? Well, that's a good question. Perhaps, it would be best to start at the beginning. Or maybe I'll just start in the middle. The beginning is boring and involves a sappy love story. So the middle it is then. The ninja cat pulled out a box of chocolate ice cream. That managed to distract Gothic Panda long enough for the alien toaster to wrap her up with her own yarn. Thankfully, it was a color she didn't regularly use otherwise she would have been very upset. There was a big flash of light and oh pumpkinfuzz...hold on. What? No, I'm not doing anything. No. I haven't seen your computer. Maybe you left it in the cave. Ok. Bye. Where was I? Oh yeah, big flash of light. Then, Gothic Panda went for pizza. They were having an all-you-can-eat buffet of pizza and girl scout cookies. And that was the last I saw of her. In the meantime, I will now tell you what it is like living in a household right before a convention. Imagine if you will a very orderly factory with everything moving along straight and clean conveyer belts in nice neat boxes. The floor is waxed to a beautiful shine. Brilliant light streams in the window. Some nice, gently music plays softly in the background. Have you got that picture yet. Yeah, nice and peaceful. Okay. Now, imagine that we have a box of rabbid squirrels dipped in paint and we've let them loose in the factory along with a herd of angry elephants armed with bazookas. Now, that's what the house looks and sounds like during convention time. Everyone is hyped up on so much sugar and caffeine in order to stay up each night trying to cram in last minute costume work, art table stuff, and other assorted devious plans. There's pins and strips of random cloth everywhere. Seriously, it looks like Jackson Pollock and Marilyn Manson painted our floor. Occasionally, one of the cats wanders into the room, stares blankly in disbelief, and then quickly hurries to the bedroom where they hibernate like bears until the damage is done. Either that or they decide to help with the costume work by vomiting all over the finished pieces when our backs are turned. They can't vomit on the proverbial tower of scraps in the middle of the room. Oh no. They pick their way to the box containing that jacket we spent six hours sewing trim onto and then...well I think you get the picture. Now this isn't to say that pre-con time isn't fun. After all, it gives me an opportunity to stay up late, say bad jokes, and then distract Gothic Panda with exotic dances. Then there's the dress-up part, which I enjoy immensely. She's just so cute. Well, I'm going to wrap-up now. Gothic Panda is demanidfthjj htyji9pjhjjk