sunday: Browse The Strips

Sunday October 16, 2016

Lynn's Comments: The thing that attracted me to my husband, Rod, was his wonderful sense of humour. Once again, a true to life incident became a Sunday page. I can still hear the clerk in the hardware store laughing!

Sunday October 23, 2016

Lynn's Comments: When you are writing material for a comic strip or for any other dialogue, be it a stage play or even stand-up comedy, you create a situation in which there is sentiment, a reason to question, observe or pontificate. Then you write a possible exchange of views as you see here. Sometimes the exchange is within yourself, but there is always a path to the punch line. In writing with the voice of a child, I wrote a question I thought would be realistic using the right turn of phrase. With luck and a little guidance from the "muse," I got a funny response. On days when the writing goes well, you feel like a genius. On days when the writing goes badly, you feel like a jerk. The roller coaster of this job sure made life interesting!

Sunday October 30, 2016

Lynn's Comments: This Sunday page wasn't a brilliant piece of writing, but the visual fun of the yell, the swipe, and the "WHACK," made it worth sending in.

Sunday November 27, 2016

Lynn's Comments: There were times when we lived in Lynn Lake that I just couldn't get warm. I wrote this strip as soon as I'd served the hot chocolate.

Sunday December 4, 2016

Lynn's Comments: My mom always had the sheers drawn. Heaven forbid that anyone should see into the front window of our little house on 5th Street. If we wanted to look out the window, my brother and I would kneel on the couch, press our faces to the glass, and see what we could through the sheers: the white, almost transparent drapery, which smelled of dust and cigarettes. I hated them. As a kid, I thought the curtains should always be open. Surprisingly, when I had a house of my own, I too was determined to have the curtains closed for privacy. This Sunday strip was, again, a true story!

Sunday December 18, 2016

Lynn's Comments: My mom called these small annoying carpets "scatter rugs." I never really thought about it until I had hall floors to protect, then the word "scatter" made sense.

Sunday December 25, 2016

Lynn's Comments: This is what I do and have always done: I carefully remove wrapping paper from a gift and fold it gently for reuse. I then try to use it as packing material, if possible. I also keep the bows. Good ones I do reuse, especially the ones I make myself. Both my daughter, Katie, and I have a wrapping space in our homes--complete with paper, tape, ribbon and cards. It drives me crazy to see someone scrunching up and discarding a perfectly good bow. I have launched myself across a room to grab a bow before the gift recipient casually crushed it into a ball! I love gift-wrapping and I prefer to make my own bows. I learned how to do this when I was about 8. Before the introduction of commercially-crafted gift toppers, the making of an attractive bow was an art. At the back of our jewelry store on Lonsdale, we had a gift-wrapping table. My mom did gift wrapping as a courtesy to our customers and she taught me how to make her famous bows. If you'd like to learn how, you can watch my quick video tutorial here.

Sunday January 1, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Yes, this is from my childhood, then from my children's childhoods...and I'm still writing letters on everyone's behalf! Mind you, they email more than I do. I still send hard copy. Maybe that's what's hard about it.

Sunday February 5, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This is the story of my life. As a non-sleeper, I am often reading or doing my mail in the middle of the night. Oddly enough, when I have an early morning deadline, I manage to sleep so soundly that I am comatose when the alarm goes off. Strange stuff!

Sunday February 19, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I didn't learn to skate until I was over 35! What gave me the courage to try was a really good pair of skates and the lure of a rink made by the neighbours on Trout Lake outside of North Bay, Ontario. It was one of those perfect days. The ice was thick and the snow was fresh. Just a few passes of the snow blower and a small private rink was cleared. The kids both had skates that still fit, and my mom-in-law had borrowed skates for the rest of us. She’d made hot chocolate in a big thermos and the Harrisons, whose house we were visiting, had built a fire in the pit down by the dock.

For the first time since I was a kid, I strapped on skates (dull rentals) and shoved off from the snow bank. To my surprise, I discovered the bite of a sharp blade and was actually scraping my way forward. That’s it. I never went again, past those surprising few turns around the ice, but it was enough to let me know how it’s done and why some people become champion skaters. You just have to experience this exhilaration when you're young!

Sunday February 26, 2017

Lynn's Comments: While making a big cuddly fuss over the dog one day, I noticed a wistful glance from my husband. Whether he was cringing at the "dog-ma" of mother and dog or a bit jealous, I didn't know. The scene made for a good Sunday page!

Sunday March 5, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Man, I was happy with this punch line. Now and then a great one comes along, and when it does, you kinda look around to thank the spirit that handed it to you. I rather think the line came from a famous player–someone who played hard but played fair. I wonder who it was.

Sunday March 19, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This strip began with the Garfield pin. We had gone to visit Jim Davis (creator of Garfield) and his family, and had returned with some treasures–one of which was a tiny Garfield pin. I can't remember if I ever told Jim that the pin had been lost and found, and that a Sunday page had been the result. Thanks, Jim!

Sunday March 26, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Yes, this is another actual conversation; an actual situation. Really, the strip saved each one of us from time to time. Having an outlet for our normal confrontations was absolutely wonderful!

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 16, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Sometimes it’s hard to find something to say about these strips! This one is interesting only in that my colourist, Francie, and I had a discussion about the colour of the chocolate bunnies in panels 8 and 9. She wanted to make them brown chocolate. I said brown wouldn't show up in the packages, so to make them white. Well, as usual, readers sent their own thoughts, and Francie was right. I was surprised by the number of folks who had never heard of white chocolate, and those who had said it wasn't really chocolate at all. This was before the internet, so these were actual letters! Sometimes the simplest of subjects brought in the most mail.

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 14, 2017

Lynn's Comments: A mother with an entire day to herself…this, I thought would be the ultimate gift. Perhaps when this was printed, others thought the same. Funny how something precious often comes for free.