I have a love-hate relationship ball point pen drawing. On one hand, you can’t hide anything, so you instantly look like a lot worse drawer-girl than you do with an eraser.  On the other, you can’t erase so you end up focusing on the fruit on the table or the life-altering firsts in front of you.

Monday was full of firsts.  First plane ride for T1 and T2.  First tornado warning of the season.  And first shave for Thing1, just a few days shy of his fifteenth birthday.  I managed not to get the sketchbook too soaked.

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Cartoons are on a hiatus for a week or so.  We set out for Lake Michigan points on Friday and Saturday, with plans to visit points further west on Monday.  

I brought watercolors and the full bag of art supplies for our few days of rest in Michigan, and Sunday was a day of rest and looking at the lake.  It was almost hypnotic, and I only managed a few doodles of things on the breakfast table and, of course, the lake.

 Sunday night was marked by a violent storm that came over the lake with a tornado warning to wake us from any reveries we might have slipped into too early in our vacation. I knew upcoming plane travel combined with my commitment to carry-ons only would necessitate stripping down the art supplies to the bare essentials, but I think my little Pentalic and my ball-point pen will be ample for 10 days.

In the meantime, there’s nothing like traveling with two kids, including an eight-year-old with penchant for schtick to generate plenty of cartoon material by the time we get home.

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I realize that being overweight these days is the moral equivalent of cannibalism, but in spite of all the moral deficiencies popular culture assigns to the obsese (disgusting, undisciplined, insert pajorative adjective here), no one has ever said being fat makes you stupid.

At least not to our faces.

Or maybe they do.

Take my favorite store, for example.  A few days ago while I was out running errands, I noticed they had opened a location relatively nearby.

“Let’s go in,” I said to Thing2.  Thing2 groaned. “It’ll only be a few minutes,” I said.

We walked in, and I noticed a dress I had been eying online.  I knew they had my plus-sized size, which is why I’ve liked this store for a while.

“How can I help you?” Asked the perfectly coiffed 20-something at the register.

“Do you have this in size E?” I asked.

“Oh, we don’t carry any plus sizes in the store,” she said. “But I can look it up for you online.”

“I can do that at home,” I said.  “Is it free shipping if I order in the store?”

“No,” she said, “but I can ship it to you as our valued customer.”

“And if I need to return it, can I bring it back or so I have to ship it back?” I asked.

“You would need to ship it back,” she said.  “But I can look it up for you.  It’s something we do for our valued customers.”

I thought for a minute about how to answer her.  It’s nice that they offer my size, and if they don’t want to offer it in the store, they don’t have to.  But when she called me a valued customer again, I really had to try not to laugh.  Instead, channeling Inigo Montoya, I said, “You keep calling me that but I don’t think you know what that means.”

I, however, do know what it means to be a valued customer.

It doesn’t hurt my feelings one iota if the CEO of High Fashion Inc and/or their staff think plus-sized women are so repugnant that we should probably kill ourselves. If they don’t want the 61% of American women who are overweight in their stores because we are immoral or don’t fit their image, that’s fine with me too.  But, contrary to what their marketing departments think, being overweight doesn’t make me stupid which is why I turned and walked out of my favorite store for good.

And when I do get the weight off and go looking for a celebratory little black dress, I will be heading to one of the few stores that did see me as a valued customer – at any size.