Family time and travel-limbo

This was an actual text exchange with my sister, cartoonified with permission in my best imitation of Dykes to Watch Out For. I used to do a lot of hatching and stippling (see this 12-year-old comic on the website I never update) because "that's what indie comix look like." I started playing with watercolor and ink wash after that, so it felt like a weird nostalgic treat to dig into lots of patterns and textures with my pen. Working in black and white proved handy when I drew and redrew the text balloon tails, too. I could just use white-out pen. (How do you convey that the person in the panel is typing on her phone? I hope this worked.)

My family schedules the holidays around who has the most trouble getting time off work, so we've been visiting the doctor-sister in Omaha, NE for the past couple years.

I left this cartoon in the AirBnB guest book:

In retrospect, this sign is where things started to go wrong.

My sister was driving me to the airport in Omaha for a 5:30am flight (which was plan B after my scheduled afternoon Boeing connection was grounded). I reached for my phone and knocked my open water bottle into my lap, soaking my leggings and underwear. The traffic light changed and I missed the chance for a photo. At the airport, I grabbed some new leggings and undies from my suitcase, went to check my bag, and was informed that I'd "missed my flight" which left in half an hour (this is a tiny airport). They booked me into a slightly later flight out of Omaha which was delayed due to weather which rendered all connecting flights to Portland impossible, then rescheduled me for 5:30am the next day.

Zen Coffee is my go-to for when my flight out of Omaha is cancelled and my sister is already at work (2 years in a row now, lol).

The next morning, I had my phone out ready to capture the funny sign. Apparently I'd missed this other sign the day before:

So, flight home, take 2:

The 3-hour layover in Phoenix turned into a 5-hour layover. They had a nice variety of food-n-drink, though.

I do enjoy the headspace I get into after there have been so many travel delays that my give-a-fuck gets broken and there is only the now. You usually need to take Amtrak to achieve that level of enlightenment.

Anyway, I was very happy to get back to Portland.

Thanks for supporting me through all manner of drawtimes!
Becky