A Look Inside...For Better or For Worse: Browse The Strips

Sunday April 9, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I did this for Aaron…to let him know that I put stuff off, too. What surprised me was the kids really did read my work, and sometimes they knew it was personal.

Sunday April 23, 2017

Lynn's Comments: My husband and I rarely raised our voices to one another. This Sunday page actually came about after one of my friends in town told me this had happened to her. I never told her I was going to use the story in the strip, and she never approached me about it afterwards. Either she never read the strip or never associated the story with herself and her husband. Lucky for me!

Sunday May 7, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This little scenario was performed by yours truly to an unappreciative audience, several times. Yet, the concept of replacing the roll seemed to elude an otherwise capable crew. I took to putting the roll on the seat in full view with the hope that it would be correctly reinserted in the aperture created for it. Eventually, I gave up. You have to pick your battles, I guess, and in the scope of large family concerns, this was not on the radar. It pleases me no end now to see my kids in their own homes replacing their rolls with skill and dexterity. I guess you can teach by example after all.

Sunday May 21, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Another embarrassing home truth. I did this, and felt like an idiot afterwards. Fortunately, we lived in the countryside–a good distance away from our neighbours. What made the strip work was the thought: "What if?" What if I had done that in a tightly knit, urban community? "What if?" was a muse I regularly relied on!

Sunday June 18, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I recently found a birthday card I’d made for my mother. She'd saved it in a photo album, something I hadn't opened for years. I had forgotten about the card. It said, "When you're very mad at me, you're awful for a mother, But even if I had a choice, I wouldn't want another." I think I was 8 when I made the card. She and I didn't get along well and I wondered why she’d kept it. I think I was trying to rewrite history here. The strip often had a sweetness to it that wasn't part of my own childhood experience.

Sunday June 25, 2017

Lynn's Comments: My first husband used to watch all kinds of sports on TV. It didn't matter what else was going on or what time it was, if there was a game on TV, he’d be lying on the couch watching it. I once suggested screwing legs onto him and turning him into a couch–that way he’d be useful. He didn't respond. He was too busy watching television.

Tuesday July 18, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This is an observation from my childhood. The neighbours next door were building their house and had left a big wooden box in the yard. My girl friends and I claimed it as ours, telling my brother and his friends to keep out. We managed to hold our position, but it was a hot day and we nearly died of the heat. It wasn’t the victory we had hoped for…but then, war is full of disappointments.

Thursday July 20, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This series of strips is based on the wonderful and dilapidated "Camp Tillicum" just outside North Bay, Ontario.

Friday July 21, 2017

Lynn's Comments: We were not able to send our two kids to the same camp at the same time, but for the sake of the story, this is what the Pattersons did.

Saturday July 22, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Stories are made so much better when familiar characters share the same experience…so in the strip, Mike and Elizabeth went to camp with their best friends. Unlike the real world, a comic strip artist can make anything happen!

Tuesday July 25, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This was another serious comment. I have always wondered how a mother would feel if she lost her child to war. In jest, I could voice an opinion in very subtle ways.

Thursday July 27, 2017

Lynn's Comments: When I was a kid, Camp Kawkawa was the name of the camp my family went to every year. The cabins we stayed in are still standing on Kawkawa Lake in Hope, BC.

Friday July 28, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Luccia Messina is the name of a good friend and neighbour who lived across the street from me in North Vancouver. She moved to Canada from Sicily with her mother and dad and older brother, Pedro, and we have been friends since grade one. This was my way of saying "Hi" to her when she read the strip. Cartoonists do this all the time. It’s great to know we can send out a "hug" that might appear in 1000 papers!

Saturday July 29, 2017

Lynn's Comments: When I went to Brownie Camp in the 50s, the beds were old and the springs were sagging. The bigger kids always seemed to get the top bunks, and I remember being terrified as I lay on my lower bunk looking up at the perilously sagging shape in the bunk above mine.

Sunday July 30, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I had a lot of fun making up funny lyrics to these imaginary tunes…but readers focused on their objection to the word "crud". Today, this word would be conservative. How times have changed.

Wednesday August 2, 2017

Lynn's Comments: During our offsprings’ retreat to Camp Tillicum, parents were invited to a family day so we could see what was going on. The dining hall was of great interest to me. I remember thinking how much fun it would be to sit with 50 other kids and eat wieners and beans.

Thursday August 3, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I had a chance to meet the two cooks who provided the meals, and it didn't take long to figure out why, at the end of the day, they were more exhausted than the kids were.

Saturday August 5, 2017

Lynn's Comments: My son, Aaron, told me that porcupines had made a hole in the girls’ shower hut. The rest of this story is all "What if?"

Sunday August 6, 2017

Lynn's Comments: King-sized beds were invented for a reason. Our bedtime habits truly establish our tolerance threshold. If you are OK with your partner’s sack-time etiquette (or lack thereof)…then you might be destined for a long lasting relationship. If not, you are doomed. King-sized beds and separate bathrooms have been touted as saving graces. I wouldn't have dreamed of separate bathrooms until this luxury presented itself in my most recent living space. Yes…give me a home where the buffalo roam, but make the privy a two-holer!

The strip you see here was inspired by a friend of mine. He once complained to me about his wife’s ability to swipe all the blankets in her sleep: she would roll toward him, tucking the blanket under her side. Then she would clutch the top of the remaining blanket and roll the other way, pulling everything with her. He called it "The Russell roll." (Russell is her maiden name). I thought it would make a great strip…but this is how the muse made it turn out.

Monday August 7, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This didn't happen, of course, but as Farley Mowat liked to say, "If it didn't happen, it should have." The buildings at Camp Tillicum were old and in need of repairs, but nothing like this! Kids scoured the walls for knotholes hoping to see into the showers, and when none existed, stories were told anyway. I couldn't help being a bit jealous of my kids’ camping days at Tillicum. This was a place where great memories–true and false, could be made.

Tuesday August 8, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Because the Patterson house was a combination of two houses I had lived in, it was a real challenge when it came to renovating. The real house on which this aspect of the cartoon house was based had a bedroom on this side, and there was no room for an addition anyway. My head sometimes spun with the decisions I made, and the storylines I fabricated.