I was offput from my drawing responsibilities earlier today because mami had an episode. She's being irresponsible with her meds. I noticed it when I asked her to melt me a little stick butter for my breakfast toast and instead, shows up in my room with the entire waxpaper-wrapped stick microwaved into the Pyrex cup. I had to fish out the half-melted drippy butter stick out of it. Pretty nasty.
I ask her, "Mami, are you being dumb on purpose? Why did you do this?" But I knew the answer even if she replied with silence.
"You stopped taking you meds, didn't you?"
She said "Yes, because I didn't want it to interfere with other medicines I'm taking right now."
"What other medicines?"
"You know, Aleve, the Alka-Seltzer I took for my cold, -" and other holistic crap she takes.
*sigh* "Mami, that has no effect on it whatsoever. Take your meds."
She then pretended not to hear me, smiled, did a little spin and laughed. This is her typical goofy defense tactic to diffuse my anger. It didnt' work. The thing about alzheimers is some of it can be contained in the first stages. I discussed this with her. Once those brain neurons are wiped out, there's no getting them back. She agreed to be diligent about her medication.
I looked at the pop-out tablets. She must've skipped a week and a half's worth, and I was pissed to say the least.
My dad, in typical dad fashion, is not alarmed and oblivious. Way to demonstrate support there. Some unified front, eh?
These two will be the death of me. My dad hands me a few min. ago the auto insurance report dude's rep notification of some weird claimant law imposed only in the state of New York. And I ask him "So? They're supposed to notify you in writing of this law. They explained it over the phone, remember?"
But he just wanted to demonstrate again, for several minutes, how he can effectively waste my time, now with redundancy! Like yesterday when they both decided to pay 77 cents of $12.77 in as much pennies as possible on a crowded Sunday at the Stop & Shop. Oh, and they argued over which coins they were going to use; more pennies or more nickels?
I, of course, turned to them in anger and said that this is the reason everyone hates old people. They both laughed at me. Then they couldn't make up their mind over which exit we should use since we were placed exactly equidistant from either one. I yelled at them to follow me already, and made sure they both kept up. They're honestly not old enough to act like bratty kids yet but make sure they annoy the shit out of me once a week abouts. They're so sweet, tiny, and adorable that you'd never see it coming. Their calculated attempts to confuse me so.
That's riiiight...you two just keep dancing on those landmines...
And this is why I never go anywhere with them. One walks fast enough she dissappears and the other walks slow enough he dissappears. Like little kids. I may have to get them chipped soon. I wonder if the local animal shelter will do it for free? Oh hey, just an afterthought. Chillax.
But I was so livid from earlier I went straight for the wine bottle today. Managed to spill some on my wacom tablet that I was such a bundle of nerves. Called an old friend to unwind. That was a 4 hrs. phone call.
And why am I complaining about my folks? Because it's clearly difficult to get my own shit done when I get to witness their decay. The line between self-serving adults and incapable adults is quickly diminishing. I'm beginning to feel like a full-time nurse on clock. It's actually more frightening than anything. And certainly non-conducive to progress. *sigh*
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Now before that episode, I was able to take that design from the post below and clean it up a little before placing it onto one of Zazzle's Tshirt Templates.
What I've discovered upon using Zazzle templates is that they suck big bears' balls.
I was expecting an outline of a shirt, or a dashed outline of my printable area.
BUT NO! Zazzle must think it's cute to be confusing.
Did my folks call them earlier and told them I needed a great challenge?
Dude, all
their Tshirt template is is just an illustration of perpendicular rulers with notes telling you which measurements and DPI to adjust your drawing to. Don't be fooled by that shirt-looking avatar- download the file and you'll see what I mean.
And the template isn't even fixed into place or anything; it slides all over the place. And you never know if you're supposed to draw only within the rulers, given that it exceeds beyond your canvas area. And it has these set crop marks but the damn template, again, slides in and out of place. WTMF?!
They give these to you as PSD files (the other type are the same so I expected the PSD files to automatically sync with my design application) which are supposed to be saved as SVG according to Zazzle but, BUT, Photoshop doesn't give me that option. So I have to re-import that right back into Illustrator where I first drew my artwork, and re-save it for web, as a JPG, then as SVG. Why so many useless steps? What the fuck kind of horseshit is that?
- If the drawing needs to be 12" x 14" @ 150 dpi then just say so!
- Have your template fixed to snaps. Please.
- Don't make me guess where printable area should sit
- Don't make me guess where to place your template - in or around my canvas area
- Your shirt template is useless. Stick to giving me just the measurements, thanks
I was able to squeeze in enough time to use the skateboard template. That, I did find useful. Oh look, a skateboard shape. That tells me I'm supposed to draw within that shape! Brilliant!
But honestly, just an outline will do. I don't see why they don't draw a shirt and box in the printable area over it. That would help me visualize how far up - down my image can stretch and how wide it would appear upon my garment. Because I find myself imagining how small this image will show up on the garment, and me spending many useless hours trying to resize that shit.
Yea, I'm so sure there's a forum for this somewhere. But the amt. of time I'd waste perusing 18 pages and 6 diff. topics and several hundred posts, I'd most likely figure it out first.
*sigh* Why is everybody always pickin' on me?
As you can plainly see, I began drawing on printer paper and taped it with drafting tape onto corrugated cardboard backing (my clipboard dissappeared). The drafting tape part is important. It makes peeling off super easy and holds strong. And for the drawing, a regular #2 pencil and Sanford™ Eraser Stick.
Above you can see the finished sketch, complete with a multitude of erased-over indentations. Kinda sloppy, so I remedied this by printing out a copy on my All-In-One printer, at full dark.
Next, as soon as I finish I tape onto the cardboard and slide a blank shirt over it. That shirt is then affixed to the cardboard to prevent sliding around as I draw over it with the paint marker.
