Taking refuge in the garage, I was greeted by the most massive black and scarlet arachnid my eyes have ever had the misfortune to gaze upon.

I implored my husband to fetch me a shoe so that I might dispatch with the Devil’s handmaiden and since my fine husband was already present, might he be chivalrous and do the deed himself?

Nay! My husband wanted to remember the sanguinolent beast for all times.

What occurred next, you may wonder?

The dear man’s head collided with the whore’s web of torture and the succubus disappeared into the ether.

Now, after many minutes of reflection, I am convinced the demoness watches my every move. She bides her time content in the knowledge I will eventually become less vigilant and allow myself to be lulled into a sense of safety by the good book I have before me.

I continue to remonstrate my consciousness. I must continue to stay vigilant. One moment of idle thought and the beldame will be upon me.

Ever vigilant…

Yes, I am sweating. Yes, Sophie the Wonder Pit Bull refuses to remove her geriatric self from the tile floor. Yes, everyone is at everyone else’s throats. It is tons of fun up in here.

I’ve been so proud of us for not turning the air conditioner on before last night and when I finally succumb to all of the complaints?

The thing’s busted.

Wonderful.

What makes it all the more painful is the fact this house is less than three years old…as is the Carrier unit. Then again, it’s still under warranty so I figure things could be worse, right?

I want to go camping. Now.

The heat trapped in this house–even with all of the windows open and the fans running–make me wish for the woods. Even with the mosquitoes. And the fact the kids will get filthy. Remember the last time we went camping? I’m pretty sure I scrubbed soot and dirt off of them for like two weeks or something. Point? I want to go camping. Immediately.

Good news? Tucker and I made tentative plans with our neighbors down the street to go with them. The total number of mammals to be included in the trip: ten. Scott and Val have three kids ages six, four and eleven months. Then Tucker and I would be bringing ourselves, Cara, Ollie and Sophie the Wonder Pit Bull. Madhouse, much? And one hell of a blast. I’m craving the camping to such an extent that I made a Pinterest board for camping gear so I don’t forget stuff I want. I’ve got it bad, y’all.

I got me a new gig, yo.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this or not–Guess I could go back and look, huh?–but I’m officially the Editor In Chief of Project FrontBurnr.

Feel free to sign-up for our beta and check out our gaming blog since it has tons of awesome original content and we’re diligent about posting aggregated gaming content/news. And follow our Pinterest board. I pin as me and the site and then Josh’s wife also pins. There’s tons of rockin’ stuff there and I’d hate for you to miss that much awesome.

Reading. Riting. Rithmetic.

Cara is no longer in kindergarten. They’re actually going to let the kid into first grade…silly, silly people. Don’t they know she will soon rule the world if they continue to learn her brain things?

Ollie got into Cara’s school’s pre-k program. Guess the school is now Cara AND Ollie’s school. Any who.

Now those poor, poor teachers will have two of them roaming the school’s halls.

I’ve been all healthy and stuff; I’m shocked, too.

If you follow me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, you’re well acquainted with pictures of me all flushed and sweaty. [You have the mind of a 12 year old boy and should be ashamed of yourself.]

This is when I stuffed the thing in my SUV. I was impressed with myself. You should be impressed, too.

Come on! Be impressed!

Actually, more impressive than me getting that honkin’ thing into my SUV is I’ve actually BEEN USING IT!

Other than when I’ve injured myself [Never would have guessed I'd like this running thing.] I’ve been running three times a week for quite a while. I can wear cute clothes now. This makes me quite happy.

I feel like I’ve been cheating on you since I haven’t talked about it but I sure don’t want to turn this into a fitness site or some silliness. Check out my Daily Mile profile if you’re interested in what’s up. Sometimes I write more than just, “It’s HOT IN MAH GARAGE!” Sometimes.

All done.

I don’t think I’ve left out anything.

That pleases me.

Whole thing started over the dumb sidewalk chalk I made her.

Cara wanted to go draw outside; I was 100% cool with that. I told her to get me a ponytail holder so I could put up her hair. She told me to hold on because she was going to get the chalk. Since she had to go through the garage–where the chalk lives–to get to the driveway, I told her to just get me the holder. She got the chalk. Bad move.

Tucker called Cara on what she had done and sat her in timeout.

After four rounds of six minute timeouts–and getting talked with at the end of each round–Cara still wouldn’t admit she had put herself in the situation. I could completely empathize since I can remember being in similar situations when I was little and my pride would ball up in my mouth like cotton and I lost all ability to admit anything close to me being at fault. Obviously the other person was perceiving the situation incorrectly.

I’m not saying she’s right, I’m just saying I get it.

Tucker: You’re the only one keeping you from drawing with chalk right now.

Cara: We’re all partly responsible. You, me and Mommy. You guys have the bigger half of the circle and I have the smaller half.

Tucker: OK. Ignoring the geometrical problems with that analogy…you disobeyed your mother. All we want from you is your assurance you will work harder to get better with minding us. Can you do that?

Cara: I think I’ll just sit here for longer.

I had to leave the room. She had gone passed the point of pissing me off and to the point of just being downright funny.

As I was pulling together stuff for their snacks, Cara came streaking by the kitchen completely overcome with hysterics only a six year old girl can muster. She had completely lost the privilege of drawing with sidewalk chalk today. Since timeout was no longer sufficient punishment, Tucker had to step it up a notch.

I guess the bright side to all of this is I know parenting her won’t ever get boring?

Being woken up by a dog that sounds like she’s about to puke and then screams as she jumps off the bed. Lots of fun, let me tell you; I didn’t go back to sleep.

I ushered the old lady out back (She kept her tail tucked the whole time.) and once I was sure she wasn’t going to vomit, I let her back in.

I spooned out her yogurt and Metacam–which she lapped right up. I stumbled back off to bed.

I knew for sure something was seriously wrong when Sophie didn’t follow me into the bedroom to take her rightful place as Blanket Anchor. She wouldn’t look at me and as I tried to check her gums and feel her stomach, I considered the very real possibility of her taking off a couple of my fingers.

By the time I had to take Cara to school, Sophie had perked up and had some of her personality back. Tucker and I agreed I would watch Sophie and if she didn’t get any better, I would take her in.

Tucker left and Sophie headed to the garage–tail still tucked–just like every morning to help take Cara to school. Unfortunately, when she went to jump in my SUV, she made it half way, fell back out and started screaming. Poor Cara had been the one to open my door–which she does every day–and she lost it with hysterical crying.

I had to call Tucker back home in a panic since I wasn’t sure I could get Sophie in the back of the SUV by myself without hurting her more. By that point she had started rolling and panting. Not a fun thing to watch.

To Sophie’s vet’s credit, even though she didn’t have an appointment, they came out and got her out of the back of my SUV for me and got her right in.

Now, several hundred dollars lighter and with three prescriptions and two supplements, Sophie is sleeping on the bed…which I put her on. Her doc gave me some Tramadol for any breakthrough pain and it seems to have conked her out.

The bone I gave her yesterday caused a lot of gas and discomfort. The double-edged sword of all of this is we know for sure she’s developing arthritis in her back (Two of her vertebrae are compressed with spurs.), she has hip pain–so there’s a very good chance she has developed arthritis in that joint as well, her kidneys are pissed off, she has white cells in her urine, her urine isn’t as concentrated as it should be (Her kidneys aren’t efficiently performing their jobs.) and we have to go back in a week to get another blood draw.

It’s a double-edged sword since if she hadn’t been so miserable, we probably wouldn’t have found out about the kidneys until it was potentially too late. I was expecting some compromisation of her kidney function due to the Metacam. Sophie has been on the stinky medicine for a while and her creatine is at 1.8 right now which is the highest for “normal” with her kidneys.  Hopefully getting her to drink more will help bring that down. The draw next week and then a month later will set a baseline for what’s doing and we’ll be able to figure out if decreasing her Metacam a bit and adding the supplements is doing any good.

Unfortunately, we’re about to reach the point where she’s on Tramadol and will stay on it until she dies or we have to put her down. Sophie’s kidneys will participate in the excretion of the Tramadol and will also bring her liver to the party. Cause we can fuck up just one set of organs, huh? Nope. We have to be overachievers.

All is not lost!

Yeah, all of that sounds bad and it is bad but she’s still alive and if the pain can be managed while maintaining decent liver and kidney function, she should have a pretty good quality of life.

I know Tucker and I are coming very close to having “the discussion” and putting a dollar amount on just how far we’re willing to go to keep her alive. She just turned ten. She has developed arthritis in multiple joints. We’ve also had her for her entire ten years of life and it’s not going to be an enjoyable conversation. Very cold and calculating but it’s necessary.

I listened to this edition of Marketplace a couple of weeks ago and it’s stuck with me since I knew this day was coming.

One of the crafts was a sheep made out of Cheerios and melted marshmallows. Basically a strange approximation of a sheep rice krispie treat. Unfortunately, Cara missed that station since she and I had to leave early so Tucker could get to his last weekend of eMBA classes.

We’re a rather crafty family–in more ways than one–and I knew we could create superior sheep.

The first attempt at the treats happened last night; I let Tucker ride herd over the kids and the three of them ended up making a pretty tasty concoction. It wasn’t strong enough to be molded into sheep. The next batch should turn out better.

But it wasn’t all a lost cause.

The stuff would stick together just long enough to shape it and then melt into a mass of sweet, crunchy goodness.

Tucker’s first attempt at rice krispie treat shaping:

Today is Sophie the Wonder Pit Bulls tenth birthday!

I saw this dumb dog be born. I put up with Tucker’s bitching about her when she always chose his clothes to pee in when she was a puppy. Not to mention all of the things she destroyed because she decided to embrace her terrier side which mostly means she was an asshole. I’ve put up with the fact that, even though she’s supposed to be MY dog, Sophie chose Tucker to be her human.

Over the years, she and I have developed an appreciation for each other. I appreciate her for letting me cuddle with her sometimes and for not eating my children and she appreciates me because I feed her.

Sophie’s developed this big chesticle of a tumor on her chest and the vet suspects it might be a mast cell tumor. The doc wants to remove the tumor and then send it off to pathology to be tested but I’m going to push for him to aspirate the tumor prior to surgery. Time will tell what we’re dealing with here but jerk dog continues to act like the jerk she is and continues to be naughty and beg for food and shows no sign of discomfort other than her elbows–which we treat with medicine.

Here’s to hoping the tumor is benign and idiot is with us for several more years!

Happy birthday, jerk.

This post contains spoilers, quotes from The Silver Linings Playbook book and I discuss the movie in detail.

If you haven’t read the book and/or seen the movie and you don’t want to know what’s gonna happen, I suggest you go read other awesome things I’ve written.

For instance, you might check out “My Favorites” where you can find at least 12 posts for each year this site has been around and kicking.

Consider yourself warned.

I read The Silver Linings Playbook a couple of months after the movie was released.

I have this rule where I read the book first. Maybe it’s an underlying hipster compulsion I’m not quite willing to acknowledge.

The book was very…raw.

And honest.

I hate those two words in reference to a book. They sound pretentious much like when a writer calls himself a “storyteller.”

Unfortunately, for me, those aforementioned adjectives fit The Silver Linings Playbook perfectly.

Two very broken people who broke their families and who manages to be less broken together.

If the movie had been as raw as the book, would it have received as many awards? I would like to think so but I suspect I’m being a bit too hopeful.

I wish I could go to some parallel place where I could have read the book and have seen the movie and simultaneously have no knowledge the other existed.

My Gripes About the Differences Between The Silver Linings Playbook Book and Movie

1. Drastically shortening Pat’s stay in the mental hospital.

Reducing Pat’s stay in the “neurology hospital” from four years to eight months minimized not only the severity of Pat’s sickness and the amount of damage he inflicted on Nicki’s lover but also took away Pat having to deal with the fact he spent four years in his head and hardly knew who he was anymore.

2. Letting Pat know why he was hospitalized from the very beginning.

I think the first mention of why Pat was committed happens in like the first ten minutes or something of the movie. Want to know how long it is before Pat knows why he was institutionalized? Almost the entire book.

Cliff grabs his chin, which lets me know he is going to say something my mother has told him. “Pat, I know how you lost your memory. Everyone does.” He pauses here, gauging my reaction. “And I
think you remember too. Do you?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to tell you how you
lost your memory?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I don’t say anything.

“I know Dr. Timbers used to tell you the story every day as part of your therapy. That’s why I never brought it up. I thought maybe you would talk about it when you were ready, but it’s been almost five months[...]“

For almost the entire book, Pat doesn’t know he’s no longer married and hasn’t been since soon after his institutionalization. He doesn’t remember what he did to cause him to be committed.  Maybe David O. Russell didn’t feel he could fit all of that into a movie and still have a likable character you want to root for?

3. Changing Pat and his father’s relationship.

Turning Pat and his father’s relationship around and making Pat’s father the pursuer in the relationship was wrong. For me, one of the integral struggles in the book was Pat’s desire for his father’s approval.

I enjoyed seeing the father’s character fleshed out but an essential part of the character was changed in the process. I say to the detriment to the story. Yes, there was still an element of shame in their interactions and you can’t deal with mental illness without touching on the shame issue, [I have a post coming up about that soon.] but Pat’s father didn’t spend the movie ignoring Pat like the father in the book did for quite a while. This movie dad begged to spend time with Pat. Brought it up multiple times. Made excuses to spend time with Pat.

Then again, the movie dad was highly superstitious and a bookie and thought Pat was good luck. That might have factored in a bit.

4.I very much dislike the changes made to the dance practice and the dance competition.

Throughout the book Tiffany’s strong and deeply flawed but she’s also driven and this “dance thing” is HER thing. Heck, she uses the “Nikki” letters to blackmail Pat into being her partner.

Turning the competition into a professional level competition when, in the book, it was the Dance Away Depression showcase full of little kids and teens changed the entire feel of what Tiffany was doing. In a way, the Dance Away Depression competition was another way for Tiffany to express her inappropriateness: a woman hell-bent on decimating little depressed children.

With the movie competition having pro competitors, Pat and Tiffany look like fools…like crazy people since they’re going to be going up against people who dance for a living and you know they don’t stand a chance.

The dance practice section of the book showcased Tiffany at her most bossy best and her most dishonest worst.

She choreographed the routine. She figured out the costumes. She manhandled Pat into a dancer. She didn’t need any help. Tiffany wasn’t a bumbling novice who didn’t know where she was going. You don’t see a lot of that in the movie.

You see Pat’s friend, Danny, coaching Pat and Tiffany on how to make their dance better since they have nothing. It was funny and the movie did a good job with it but I hated seeing some of the wind taken out of Book Tiffany’s sails.

5. Making Pat OK with Tiffany writing “Nikki’s” letter. <–Watch out! This is a biggie!

Let’s just get this straight right now. Pat did not appreciate Tiffany writing him letters as Nikki. Not even close. It absolutely crushed Pat on many levels.

This is from near the end of the book:

I sit down under a huge tree—on a dry spot of grass—and wait.

Rain clouds swallowed the sun a long time ago, but when I look at my watch, the numbers officially make it dusk.
My chest starts to feel tight; I notice that I am shaking and breathing heavily. I hold my hand out to see how bad the shakes are, and my hand is flapping like the wing of a bird, or maybe it is as if I am hot and trying to fan myself with my fingers. I try to make it stop, and when I can’t, I shove both hands into my father’s overcoat pockets, hoping Nikki will not notice my nervousness when she shows up.

I smell a woman’s perfume.

I recognize the scent.

I breathe in deeply to ready myself.

I open my eyes.

“I’m fucking sorry, okay?” she says, but it’s not Nikki. “I never thought it would lead to this. So I’m just going to be honest now. My therapist thought you were stuck in a constant state of denial because  you were never afforded closure, and I thought I might afford you closure by pretending to be Nikki. So I made up the whole liaison thing in an effort to provide you closure, hoping you would snap out of your funk and would be able to move on with your life once you understood that being reunited with your ex-wife was an impossibility. I wrote all the letters myself.
Okay? I never even contacted Nikki. She doesn’t even know you’re sitting here. Maybe she doesn’t even know you are out of the neural health facility. She’s not coming, Pat. I’m sorry.”

My eyes burn. My face flushes. Suddenly I realize that for the past two months I have been completely delusional, that Nikki is never coming back and apart time is going to last forever.

Nikki.

Is.

Never.

Coming.

Back.

Never.

I want to hit Tiffany.

I want to pound her face with my knuckles until the bones in my hands crumble and Tiffany is completely unrecognizable, until she no longer has a face from which she can spew lies.

See what I mean?

Why the hell would he be happy to find out the woman who he has obsessed over for years is never coming back to him? Why would he be happy to be forced to confront his delusions head-on? Even the sanest person has moments when they just want to believe something is possible and Nikki was Pat’s something. Hence a lot of his issues with her since she became a “something” instead of a “someone” but that’s not really the point here. Not only all of that, but Pat was betrayed by one of the very few friends he had and the only woman he’d been attracted to since his wife.

The parts I quoted above are the start of Pat dealing with one of his biggest demons and these moments don’t exist in the movie…not really. Pat’s getting close to his “excelsior” moment and you can feel it in the book. There’s this tension that is almost palpable; you know something big is about to happen. I never got that feeling with the movie.

Pat viewed his entire life as a movie and held the delusional belief if he tried hard enough and cared enough, he would get his “happy ending.” While the book–and the movie–has dark moments, Pat’s optimism–however misplaced–is the thing which holds him together and that’s ripped out from under him when Tiffany finally comes clean.

The only conversation Pat and Tiffany have about the letter [In the book, there are many letters with each one getting more hurtful for Pat.] is at the very end when he gives Tiffany a letter he wrote confessing his love. The only clue you have that Pat knows Tiffany wrote the letter is when she says “reading the signs” and Pat remembers it from “Nikki’s” letter.

BUT, instead of having the compulsion to “pound her face with [his] knuckles until the bones in [his] hands crumble and Tiffany is completely unrecognizable [...],” Movie Pat looks back at his parents’ house with a look of awe and wonder like he’s grateful the girl who is supposed to be his friend, impersonated his wife and used the letter as a form a blackmail to get him to dance in her competition.

6. Pat never talks to Nikki. Not one single time. Never.

Near the end of the book, Pat had his brother drive past Pat’s old house and saw Nikki with her new family. This is Pat recounting it to Tiffany right before the end of the book:

“And I squinted hard trying to see Nikki’s face, and even from a block away I could tell she was smiling the whole time and was so very happy, and somehow that was enough for me to officially end apart time and roll the credits of my movie without even confronting Nikki, so I just asked Jake to drive me back to New Jersey, which he did, because he is probably the best brother in the entire
world. So I guess I just want Nikki to be happy, even if her happy life doesn’t include me, because I had my chance and I wasn’t a very good husband and Nikki was a great wife, and …”

In the movie, Nikki decides to come watch the competition and maybe give Pat a second chance. Pat whispers something in Nikki’s ear and chooses Tiffany. Book Pat’s way seems more him. NikkI doesn’t even have to know he’s seen her. He just wants her to be happy even if it’s not with him.

7. They made the ending too sugary sweet.

The ending of the movie bugged me. They changed it into the perfect guy-runs-after-girl-and-professes-his-love scene from many romance movies. The book wasn’t a romance for me; it was journey Pat had to take and Tiffany helped him make that trip. I won’t go so far as to say they “cheapened” it because it was a perfectly GOOD ending but it wasn’t what I was expecting and wasn’t what I wanted.

Last scene of the movie before the epilogue scene [Pat is reciting the letter he just gave to Tiffany.]:

Ending of the book:

She says, “I need you, Pat Peoples; I need you so fucking bad,” and then she begins to cry hot tears onto my skin as she kisses my neck softly and sniffles.

It is a strange thing for her to say, so far removed from a regular woman’s “I love you,” and yet probably more true. It feels good to hold Tiffany close to me, and I remember what my mother said back when I tried to get rid of my friend by asking her to go to the diner with me. Mom said, “You need friends, Pat. Everybody does.”

I also remember that Tiffany lied to me for many weeks; I remember the awful story Ronnie told me about Tiffany’s dismissal from work and what she admitted to in her most recent letter; I remember just how bizarre my friendship with Tiffany has been—but then I remember that no one else but Tiffany could really even come close to understanding how I feel after losing Nikki forever.

I remember that apart time is finally over, and while Nikki is gone for good, I still have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful.
In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher’s Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I’m on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There’s something honest about all of this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me—in the middle of a snowstorm even —impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.

Nikki would not have done this for me, not even on her best day.

So I pull Tiffany a little closer, kiss the hard spot between her perfectly plucked eyebrows, and after a deep breath, I say, “I think I need you too.”

Definitely not as much of splash as in the movie ending but it’s still hopeful. Pat’s making strong progress. He’s not delusional about Nikki; he’s let her go. He acknowledges what Tiffany did to him, but he also makes the conscious choice to move forward with her and a new life. I much prefer this ending. Like lots.

A random rip on the book because this has bothered me since as soon as I read this part: The book does this deus ex machina thing where Pat magically ends up beaten and bloody in front of Danny’s Aunt Jasmine’s house. Pat didn’t know where Aunt Jasmine lived other than North Philly. Never felt good about Quick pulling that fast one.

The movie had several laugh out loud moments where I was very glad it was just me and two other people in the theater. The way Russel managed to take a book which had a whole heck of a lot of internal stuff going on and make a movie that made sense–and won a lot of awards–and was enjoyable is definitely an accomplishment. Especially when you consider the two main characters are crazy.

Even with all of my complaints, I still enjoyed the movie. And that goes back to my original statement way up at the top, “I wish I could go to some parallel place where I could have read the book and have seen the movie and simultaneously have no knowledge the other existed.”

Thoughts?

We now have six days of glorious freedom where we get to pretend we’re just 30-something married people with a dog and no kids. Until we happen to find a kid sock somewhere or one of us remembers something cute one of them did.

Or something.

When the kids aren’t around, we don’t have to break up fights and tell them to stop touching each other. That “alone time” leads to conversations like the one below.

I expect more videos like this in the near future.

I stayed up until 3 am and finally drifted off to sleep on a wet pillow.

Tucker and I have been longtime fans of John Green since we first discovered the YouTube channel he has with his brother Hank.

Anyway, I was telling Tucker how I’m dreading reading anymore of the book since I know it’s going to leave me shattered like Sarah’s Key and Room. But there’s a larger part of me which just can’t quit this book. Damn you, John Green!

Tucker asked if Green ever writes happy books or just books about sad things and teenagers.

To paraphrase Tucker, he says the mark of a good artist is someone with range. Like with musicians  he doesn’t want to keep buying the same CD over and over; he wants the artist to evolve. That’s why he doesn’t have all the Clive Cussler books, even though he really likes them, because they’re essentially the same book just with a different setting.

To me, this doesn’t translate well to writing.

A brain surgeon doesn’t have to also be able to preform cardiac surgery to prove he’s a great doctor. Same goes for writers. That’s why there are genres.

Tucker thinks specializing is a form of weakness for a writer.

I say I want to be able to know what I’m getting myself into.

What say you?

The days have been in the 50s and 60s around here and that means it’s chalk time.

The problem we run into is, even when we buy the big sticks of chalk, the kids run through the stuff after a couple of hours of drawing. We needed bigger chalk.

Solution? Make our own.

Not only do the kids end up with mondo chalk, they also get to “help” make the stuff. And by “help” I mean they get to watch and better not touch anything because I don’t want the stuff all over my kitchen. I can do that just fine on my own, thank you very much.

Let me say here, I’m a passionate lover of science but this is not, in any shape or form, a precise process. Trial and error, folks.

Luckily, you get to avoid some of your own errors since I made plenty of them for the both of us. You’re welcome.

What you’ll need to make your awesome sidewalk chalk:

• Toilet paper rolls
• Plaster of Paris–we got ours for like $4 at Walmart.
• Coloring of some sort. I picked up 4 little bottles of acrylic paint for $.97/bottle.
• Sandwich bags
• Mixing bowl
• Whisk

Steps to the magic:

• Put down some newspaper or something if you’re worried about getting stuff on your counters. We had some splatters and they cleaned up super easy so I wouldn’t get too obsessed over covering everything.
• Stick your sandwich bags in the toilet paper rolls and roll the edges of the bags over the edges of the toilet paper rolls. 
• Add some water to your bowl. I’d start with about a cup.



• Dump in some plaster of paris.
• Mix with your whisk until you have all the lumps out. The consistency should be somewhere between pancake batter and thin oatmeal. I had a couple of batches where the mixture was thicker and the chalk ended up being pretty “gappy.”
• Add in your coloring until you get the amount of saturation you want. I added a lot of paint to some of them since I wanted deep colors.



• Pour your goop into the prepared tubes and tap them a couple of times to get out the air pockets. 
• Let them sit for about an hour and then pull of the cardboard and slide the bags off. 
• Sit the guys out on the counter overnight to give them a chance to dry all the way.
• DRAW!

Obviously Ollie is a budding anarchist. Can’t say I’m surprised.