Back From Vacation

After 17 hours on the road and we are back from Dallas, Texas to Arizona. The trip was a partial success; but my kids were very patient with the parts which should have gotten them very upset. The single biggest and most painful incident was one in which my kids and their step-cousins (children of my wife’s stepbrother) were scheduled to attend a post-Christmas gathering, gift-exchange and family meal at their mutual grandparents’ house last Sunday. The time came and my wife’s step-brother showed up at his mother’s house without his kids or his wife because they “decided they didn’t want to come”. The grandmother called over to their house to talk to the mother and the kids to find out what’s up and they basically give that same answer to the tune of “mom just came back from traveling to California and we would rather spend time with her.” Their mom is a stay-at-home mom, whom they normally see day-in and day-out. They get to see my kids 2 times a year, when we travel to Dallas. My daughter got on the phone with her cousin, a girl about her same age and she got the same answer. We were astonished, and my kids were hurt, but hid their disappointment pretty well. I was impressed with them.

Aside from this moment, we pretty hit all the parts I wanted to hit. My kids got to spend time with both sets of their grandparents and had about as much fun as they could have, considering the grandparents mainly wanted to spend their days watching all the college bowl games on TV, and the kids got pretty stir crazy. We did have one outing to the National Cowgirl Museum in Dallas, where I had never been before, and my son and my daughter both got to go on individual shopping trips with their favourite grandmother (the one who visits us in Arizona). It definitely could have gone better, but we did put forth the effort anyway, to try to keep in touch with my wife’s Dallas-area relatives.

As for the wonderful world of For Better or For Worse, it was interesting to see what did (and in particular) did not happen. I was quite surprised we did not get an authentic proposal from Anthony Caine to Elizabeth Patterson by New Years’ Eve. An indication that the two are definitely living together (instead of vague hints they are sleeping together) was not what I expected at all. Lynn Johnston did virtually the same thing with Liz and Eric Chamberlain living together at university. I thought she would not repeat the same situation with Liz and Anthony as a contrast to the inferiour Eric and Liz relationship.

April and Gerald are in an odd state of perpetual farewell. It’s almost like the April/Becky McGuire feud where they would fight and make up, and then the next time they got together, they would repeat the same sequence with no regard to the prior “make up” part. April and Gerald seem to be “I love you, but wait…we are leaving each other because we are going different ways when we graduate high school in 2009.” I think Lynn Johnston is determined to let us know, in each of April’s farewell appearances with her friends, exactly what April’s life is going to be like after she retires from doing this strip. Maybe April could wear a sandwich board listing all those things in her future. That might be easier and would make about as much sense.

Grandpa Jim was the one I found the most interesting. My wife’s grandmother, during the year she died, continually made reference in conversation with other people to the idea that “This is my last Christmas” or “This is my last Spring” and things of that nature. The usual response from my wife and the other relatives was “You’re wrong. You’re in good health (which she was for the most part)” or “Don’t talk that way.” As it turned out, she was right. So, when Grandpa Jim dropped the line about it being his last Christmas, I was immediately reminded of my wife’s grandmother. Unfortunately, Lynn Johnston has decided to completely eliminate Grandpa Jim’s ability to communicate, so none of those denial kinds of reactions to Grandpa Jim’s statement can occur, except in the mind of the reader. Ultimately, it doesn’t make any difference, since Lynn Johnston is going to eventually freeze time, so a storyline about Grandpa Jim’s death is a moot point. However, if Lynn Johnston were going to continue on, I would expect Jim to be dead within the year.

Elly/John or Mike/Deanna. These couples have gotten into a permanent reminiscing mode of operation, so they don’t seem to be able to do anything anymore without thinking about how it was when they did that thing before. Lynn Johnston could delete all their most recent strips and no one would notice.

The strip sequences in general are hopping from person-to-person in strip-to-strip in these last few weeks. I don’t like it. It’s very jarring and makes for poor story-telling.

As for the art, it looks to be all Laura Piché these days. In today’s strip, the figure-drawing has a flatness and a straightness very similar to Laura’s figures for her background characters. I think Lynn Johnston has given up the art chores at least on these strips, even on the main characters.

I am back and Happy New Year!