The inspiration came from the spectacular lunar eclipse I witnessed on February 21, 2008—which is also when I got my first hint I might be pregnant. My last cycle had begun right before the full moon in January, And as my cycle is a fairly regular 26 days and I’m more likely to start early than late… Well, let’s just say that five days later I bought my first and only pregnancy test.

A quick explanation of the symbolism: the hare helps identify the red disk as the moon, but also happens to be our family’s totem animal. As for the four cloud birds —I happened to see the eclipse with clouds—they reference to the ol’ folk augury rhyme, “four is for birth.”

(Tattoo done by Matt Reed of TigerLily Tattoo, designed by me.)

• - I’ve posted 10 pages of Dicebox, the latest, page 11 of Part 9 : Out of a Molehill, having gone up today.
• -Patrick has posted 18 pages to the bring his epic Dicebox guest comic, “Don’t Look Back” to a whopping 52 pages (and it’s still not done).
• -Kip has added three chapters to City of Roses.
• -Taran mastered crawling and has started walking.
• -I took part in two group art shows.
• -I gave JennManleyLee.com a complete overhaul.
• -Lived through off-and-on house renovation and repair.
• -And did many other things I can’t talk about yet or are too boring to recount.

Next up, after opening the Store at jennmanleylee.com and fixing some broken things at dicebox.net, I plan to try to use this journal once a week. We’ll see how I do.

If you are so inclined, please hie thee hence and give this design a score. Another one of mine should be appearing in a day or so on the Threadless site for scoring as well. Fun fact: these first two design aren’t actually the original idea I has for a Threadless t-shirt; I’m still tinkering with it.

First, there was an update to “Don’t Look Back” last week, I just neglected to post about it. (permalink)

And then there’s this week’s page; I could not have asked for a better page to end up in Taran’s scrapbook. (permalink)

The Kid isn’t here yet, but she will be before the weekend’s out–by hook or by crook–thanks to the wiles of medical science.

Really, I’m looking forward to Molly’s reaction in the next week’s page.

We discover Griffen’s secret talent–the one I didn’t even knew she had! I mean beyond the way she can sport a fedora.

I’d also like to mention that I have been taking time to update other parts of Dicebox.net , most significantly the Gallery and the Store where I have a new t-shirt design for sale, which I call the Green Man:

I’ll also be doing a reprint of the Poppy design at the end of August. I’m only planning on doing a run of the dark green ladies cut, but if you want the design on a different color or style of shirt (or tank top or pants, etc.) contact me and I can probably make it so as a pre-paid pre-order.

And now for a word on updates for the rest of 2008.

Though there will continue to be weekly updates, this’ll be the last update of new material of Dicebox proper for a while–perhaps for the rest of 2008. Yes, this is due to me being pregnant and all that goes with it, present limitations and possible future ones.

As is custom, I have a fill-in cartoonist lined up for my post-Part break, this time out it will be Patrick Farley.

After that treat, I will be doing page revamps, rewrites and pages notes, the whys and wherefores of this are outlined in this post here. This is something I feel confident I can make some sort progress, as well as something I need to get cracking on as we are coming to the end of Book 1.

The week I actually give birth (which could be anywhere from October 16th to November 7th) will be covered by a short fill-in of some sort, as will the couple of weeks following birth.

Then I will return to page revamps until at least the beginning of December but maybe until January 2009 depending how things go.

will be working on the last Part of Book 1, Part 9: Out of a Molehill while all this going on, writing, laying out, drawing pages, etc. But I won’t begin releasing this Part until life has resettled into its new pattern (now with infant!) and/or I have a large enough back-up of pages to provide an extravagant buffer for myself. I really want no un-expected breaks or interruptions to this last Part. Regardless, by the start of 2009 I will be updating the story proper again.

Why not just go on hiatus? That makes me nervous. I need that weekly update as a goal and obligation. I’ve ingrained that so into my psyche that I can get a bit depressed if I miss an update. Not to say I don’t enjoy and desire to work on Dicebox, but I know what creatures of habit we all are and I want to make sure I don’t break this habit.

This holds true with web apps and communities as well. It takes awhile for me to decide the usefulness of joining and using, this was true for LiveJournal, Flickr… and now Twitter.* (Interesting examples as I consider all three journaling sites: traditional, pictorial and expositional.)

When I redesigned my website and set up my new Wordpress blog, I realized I missed traditional journaling; documenting an event or thoroughly exploring an idea. Besides the discipline and mind stretching, I enjoy and find it useful to go back and see where I was at at a certain point in time. The only reason I didn’t start there and then is this was about the time I discovered I was pregnant. Naturally this would’ve been the topic most on my mind and I was far from ready to reveal or discuss anything about that.

But that (and this) type of journaling can consume more time than I have to spare. This is partly why Flickr became my default journal of sorts a couple years back. It’s an excellent way for me to document things I’d done and when. But, naturally, it doesn’t capture thoughts.

In walks Twitter. Actually, I was first introduced to Twitter about two years ago and was unimpressed and bewildered by the application. But then, the examples I saw all followed this model:

“What a nice day!”

“I had breakfast.”

“My neighbor mowed the lawn.”

And so on. It just took enough people I knew to join in and the standard use to tweak slightly before I became intrigued. Brenna’s regular Twitter collections helped soften me quite a bit, actually. It’s nice to have a place to share a thought or simple happening without feeling obliged to build a post around it nor look for commentary.** (People can comment on a particular entry, but it feels more conversational than an acknowledgment.) Or create an email and figure out who all to send it to. This way it’s out there free to amuse or annoy as folks may choose.

Also, as I do these things for my own benefit as well to share, I’m pleased to have a place to jot things down, have time stamped and then collect every week as an ersatz diary. And, yes, a lot of the thoughts and events are about my pregnancy—it is changing and ruling my life after all. It’s for that reason that I wish I had started Twittering before, then I would know exactly when Kip first felt Taran kick, laughing and crying as he did so. (Thankfully I happen to know when I first felt her as I was dashing off an email to Dylan at the time and chose to mention it to her.)

And, really, the biggest reason I decided I must start Twittering is that I can think of no better way to document my labor and delivery while sharing with those who can’t or choose not to be there first hand.***

* Yes, somewhere after Kris and before Dylan, I joined Twitter. And by god, I enjoy it.

***I imagine there will be a point in the process I’ll be handing it over to Dylan.

Mine have to do with my pregnancy, natch. My Body is a treacherous and willful beast these days that seeks to thwart me as often as possible. In regards to my producing Dicebox, the latest point of contention is that we’ve apparently developed a daily sitting limit–and most of it is taken by the day job during the work week.

I argued with my Body last night around 9pm, when I had maybe a half an hour left of work on this latest page and it insisted on calling in quits:

Me: Oh, come ON! Just til 10pm, we can do until 10! That’s nothing!

Body: Nope.

Me: Don’t be such a baby.*

Body: Feel that ache in the back? In your legs, your throbbing feet and head? It’s not getting any better unless you lay down, NOW.

Me: “whine”

Body: That’s what you get for having sex with Kip…

Me: But we LIKE having sex with Kip!

Body: Yeah, well, what has he done for us lately?**

And so it went. As usual, Body bullied me to bed. And proceded to oversleep so I had to bang out the last little bit of this simple page in a frantic pace before hurtling to the day job.

(Stupid Body. Just wait until November and I don’t need to worry about the effects on Taran. Boy, are you in trouble then. Yes, indeed.)

* Sorry, Taran, no slight intended
** My Body’s an ingrate, Kip, we both know this.

But that’s last week’s news, for there is an update today! It also includes the small update I made this past weekend. (permalink)

My sudden down time actually had more to do with plant fertility than mine–though what the hormones are doing to my sinuses didn’t help at all.