boingoloidburke

there's no such thing as easy

2009-12-03T05:21:25Z

So, a while back, I signed up for Wally Conger's email list. I am trying and failing to remember exactly how or why that happened, though I suspect it might have been a link from Steve Pavlina's site.

Mr Conger doesn't strike me as a bad guy. He seems genuine, and he has an engaging story. Basically, he used to be fairly successful (lower middle class), but he was fired during company downsizing. His wife was getting on his case about getting a new job, and they were concerned about losing their house. Perhaps in response to spousal nagging, perhaps just out of a need to get out of the house every day, he started getting up in the morning and going to the local coffee shop.

He'd stay there for four or five hours a day, drinking coffee, reading, and meeting new people.

Just about everyone he met asked what he did for a living, and he'd say "I help people." He'd also describe his previous job, with an added caveat about why the job didn't make him very happy, and what his skills were.

Through normal conversation, people would bring up problems in their life: "I can't get this newsletter finished at work." "I need to bring more visitors to my company website, but I don't know how." "My car's brakes are going bad, so I don't like to drive it that much." "I think my wife might be cheating on me." "My house payment is due at the end of the month, and I have no idea how I'm going to get it paid." Et cetera.

Whenever somebody mentioned something Wally thought he could help with, he'd tell them, and he'd ask for their contact info. Most people were relieved to hear he could help and would gladly hand over their phone numbers, addresses, or work contact info.

He'd go home. He'd think about these people's problems. He'd do whatever he could to try and help them - not with the expectation of a reward, but out of basic human goodness. Then he'd deliver his results to them.

After three or four weeks of this, he realized he'd created his own "job". He was a go-to guy. Most of the time, people paid him for his help - sometimes with meals or a coffee or a new book; sometimes by referring him to a business opportunity - but many of them paid him regular money, just as they would have paid a contractor. People came to the coffeeshop specifically looking for him. People called him at home, and said "You helped my friend, I was wondering if you could help me with something.."

Wally turned unemployment into a positive prospect, simply by refusing to let it stop him. He discovered what he really wanted to do in life - just help people solve their problems - and he did it. Because this was what inspired his passion and brought out his best, he was successful at it, and now he's living well on the West Coast.

Wally's yet another living example of the "spiritual millionaire" philosophy espoused by Steve Pavlina and Wallace Wattles. Based on the sincerity of his tone, I trusted him, and signed up for his newsletter.

For a month or two I'd receive messages from Mr Conger that were informative and thought-provoking. Early in November, I received an email from him about "dozens of free wealth-building ideas from Internet business professionals".

My gut said "It's a trap, get an axe", but I decided to check out the link anyways.

Mr Conger wasn't lying, but he had omitted an important fact: in order to gain access to these resources, I'd have to submit my email address to each of the "Internet business professionals", effectively joining their newsletters.

Since I got my rocketmail address there has never been more than fifty unread messages in my inbox. I've now got 458 unread emails - more than 300 of which are from affiliate marketers, "joint venture" professionals, and Internet marketers.

Some of these emails might have useful information, but most of them - and this is where I'm getting to the entire point of this post - most of them are chock full of this nonsense:

"You may have been told it's all about ranking high
on search engines such as Google and that in turn
depends on getting backlinks.

Yeah, right! How's the ordinary person suppose
to understand all this Burke ?

Haven't you ever wished someone would simplify all
this for you so that you just have a to click a few
buttons?" - Rick Faulise

"LOOK: We're revealing how anyone - including YOU - can instantly
tap into these step by step methods to put more cash in your pocket
- FAST!

Imagine - just a few days from now, YOU using exactly what you're
about to discover on this FREE webinar in your business and seeing
amazing results.

This webinar has even had the "guru's" calling each other "off the
record" to discuss what's being revealed." - Rodger Hyatt and Reed Floren

"What if I told you there is a way to get more visitors
and onlineadvertising automatically, and it's GUARANTEED
to work?

Now what if I told you it won't cost you a fortune...in
fact it won't even cost you a dime! ...

Now if you're skeptical, good! You should be... with all
of the hype out there it's hard to believe anything anymore.
I know I didn't buy it when I first saw the tool.

But then I USED it...

I can tell you, without a doubt, it works! In fact:

- You do NOT have to trade time or manual effort for traffic
- You do NOT have to install anything on your computer
- You do NOT have to paste tedious HTML code on your webpages
- You do NOT need to know anything about programming
- You do NOT have to agree to getting slammed with ads yourself
- You WILL increase your traffic and advertising, guaranteed
- It WILL work for you regardless of what niche you're in
- It IS 100% legal, 100% ethical, and 100% "above board"
- You WILL be reaching REAL prospects who want to buy your
offers
- The traffic and advertising you gain will INCREASE the longer
you use it" - Alex Perez-Prat

"HOW COMPLETE IDIOTS MAKE MORE ONLINE THAN YOU...

The simple truth of the matter is that the only way you're
going to make real money on the net is if your business is
based around two crucial things:

1) Large Demand

2) Buyers

The ball is now officially in your court. Are you tapping
into markets with massive, valuable demand?...

... or are you struggling to simply make a few dollars
occasionally with a business that's based on your own
passionate interests but, has no real market?" - from a 'sponsor message' embedded in an eAuthors Resources newsletter email

What's so terrible about those messages?

They support and imply the reader's stupidity and/or laziness.

"How's the ordinary person supposed to understand all this?" says Rick Faulise about getting backlinks. Seriously, Rick? You don't get it?

I've never made a website. I've made a few blogs, but I don't consider any of them "finished" - publication-ready, that is - but I understand the basic essence of obtaining backlinks. Here it goes. Get your thinking cap on.

Step One: Figure out what your website is about. (Most Important)
Step Two: Find other websites related to your website.
Step Three (still with me?): Contact the owners / moderators of those other websites, and offer a link exchange.

Ta daaa! I get the feeling I must be missing something, because I have trouble believing people are actually that stupid. Maybe in Rick's case he's talking about building dozens or hundreds of backlinks per day, which either requires some serious time at the computer, programming ability (for building a bot to send out queries for you), or a reality adjustment. It's just not possible for a website run by a single person to build hundreds of backlinks every day.

If you assume that 10% of the website owners you contact will respond favorably (and that's a high rate of response), you'd have to email over a thousand people in one day. This means sending approximately 42 emails per hour, for 24 hours. No sleep. No eating. No researching sites to contact. You get the message.

"Haven't you ever wished someone would simplify all this for you so that you just have a to click a few buttons?" Rick asks. He wants you to say yes, or maybe look for a convenient "Yes!" button to click. What's life without buttons to click?

Honestly, I've never wished that building a business would be as easy as clicking a few buttons. I believe in getting a return on your investment. If you invest little effort, you're not going to reap huge rewards. If what you're doing is insincere, super-easy, without thought, then how can you expect anyone to believe in it?

You know, in an offhand sort of way, this reminds me of a link Chris Baty posted on the NaNo site a week or two back. It's an Onion article talking about a fictitious "instant update" site, a parody of Twitter, called Noveller. Just as a novel can't be written in its entirety and to the best possible potential over a lunch break, a business can't be built with a few clicks of the mouse. Or, at least, neither of those things SHOULD be created so easily.

The fact that one of these "Internet business professionals" is promoting such laziness - to his own benefit, of course; he's willing to sell me thousands of dollars worth of "information" - is flat-out insulting. Unsubscribe!

Messages promising to put more cash in my pocket FAST!! just make me mad, for the same reason. I know that sometimes money falls in your lap, but if you trace it, you're likely to find it's from some action you took a while back, which you might have forgotten about or written off as unprofitable. For example - lawsuits, insurance claims, and sometimes even payments can take months or years to process. When you finally do get that check, it's easy to think "Wow! I suddenly and quickly have money!"

Also, the speed at which I acquire money is not as important to me as the amounts in which I acquire it. I'd rather make ten grand over a period of a few months than get an extra $20 tomorrow, assuming my current cash flow hasn't been interrupted.

These messages bother me because they prey on people who are desperate for money (and/or greedy). Greed, in essence, is not a bad motivator; it's when this greed comes at the expense of someone else that it becomes wrong. Too often greed has no moral controls attached, and is aimless, untroubled by intelligence. Greed becomes its own driving force: I must get more money.

This is every bit as effective and very similar to lonely people who become focused on getting into a relationship. There's a foul psychic odor attached to these people - something that tends to drive away the very thing they're searching for. Their efforts come from a place of scarcity - "I am lacking this in my life, and I must have it" - rather than thinking or building on the positives.

Let's look at it differently: if you wish to become a millionaire, but you spend all your time fixated on the fact that you can only afford to eat Ramen noodles, how likely are your chances of success? Chances are, if you remain focused on what your life lacks (or where it's displeasing to you), you'll fail to build towards what you want. What if, instead, you sat down and figured out what you'd rather eat, how much it would cost to eat better foods every week, and how much money you would need to make in a week (or a day) in order to afford that.. do you think that would make your goals seem more accessible, and help you spend less time and energy focused on the negatives?

Being positive yields better results than negativity, in any endeavor. By "better", I mean more genuine, longer-lasting, more sincere, stronger. Advertising that insults the buyer or the competition tends to fall flat; ads that compliment the buyer (especially by implying that the product or service will make their lives even MORE awesome) work so well they're an industry standard.

This reminds me of an article I read, sometime earlier this year (of course I can't find it now), about a beggar whose money-making strategy was to give passersby a compliment or two. People were often surprised or flattered, and would spend time talking to him, hand him a few dollars, and feel good about themselves all day.

Anything worth having is worth working for, or, as a shortcut, paying for. Paying for something is definitely less preferable than working, as working teaches you along the way. These messages that promise no hard work, no effort at all, no need for knowledge, make me ill. Gosh, you know, because learning is HARD. And it takes TIME and EFFORT. Uuuuggghhh. Right?

It's comforting to know that people with absolutely no desire to learn, grow, or work hard will continue uselessly spinning their wheels until they wise up or die. However, they're going to be in everyone else's way the entire time, trying to push their inferior services and products, grabbing at money at every opportunity, being loud about their meagre successes and bitter as hell towards everyone happier or wealthier than themselves. They don't understand what they're doing wrong, and they hate others for having what they want.

As evidenced by the sponsor message I quoted earlier:

"HOW COMPLETE IDIOTS MAKE MORE ONLINE THAN YOU..."

What does this first line do?
Inspires instant competition. I'm better than a complete idiot! Why are they more successful than me?! ARGH! LACEY SMASH!!

"The simple truth of the matter is that the only way you're
going to make real money on the net is if your business is
based around two crucial things:
1) Large Demand
2) Buyers"

Right. The foundation of capitalism. Okay..

"The ball is now officially in your court. Are you tapping
into markets with massive, valuable demand?...
... or are you struggling to simply make a few dollars
occasionally with a business that's based on your own
passionate interests but, has no real market?"

Wait, what?

This last paragraph implies that my passion and interests have no place in business; that I should be cutthroat and impersonal about my business decisions; that money is much more important than satisfying the drives of your mind, heart, or soul.

You know what? They're EQUALLY important. I like having money, because it makes some things in my life (such as eating and keeping a roof over my head) much easier; I like doing things in which I have a passionate interest, because it feeds my brain and soul, and helps me grow into a better person.

I received an email earlier today from one of these schmucks about how many millionzzz of DOLLAR$$ I could make in an Internet celebrity look-alike wig business.

If I was a cancer survivor, I might see the value in that. Wigs have a purpose. Sure. But here's the thing: If you build a business, you had better love it. It's not going to be easy to grow. It's not likely to make you millions of dollars in the first six months to a year, though such huge successes have happened. What's the point of investing money, time, and energy into something you don't care about?

Why waste your life working on something you have no opinion about?

This brings me to my final point. I just got this email, and it infuriates me.

"If you aren't using articles in your marketing
efforts yet, you are really missing out.

Of course, it helps to have the right tools to
get the job done, and you can now get one
of the best tools available for FREE!

=> http://www.articletoolchest.com/

Not only does this software help you to
organize your files, it also rewrites them,
through "spinning" or manually.

It also has a unique blending feature that

can give you hundreds of well written

articles in minutes." - John Lagoudakis

Hear that, freelance writers of the world? YOU'RE NOT NEEDED ANYMORE.

The intelligent businessman thinks "Well, there's only so good an automated article writer can be, right? There's no possible way a robot can actually write good, unique, coherent articles. Writing requires insight, passion, fluency. Skills and talents. Interest. Understanding. Thought. Knowledge. Right?"

Right, Mr or Ms Intelligent Businessperson. I'm totally with you. The problem is, there's one of you for every fifty of these other guys:

"Write 20 Articles

1. Payment & Delivery
- Pay is $30 dollar for all 20 articles, pay through GAF
- Payment is made once all articles are submitted
- Submit at least 1 article a day, delivery within 7 days
- All completed articles will be own by me and therefore cannot be publish or sell to anyone

2. Article conditions
- Articles must be within 500-510 words
- Unique, Original and copyscape passed
- I will provide article titles

3. Writer's preferences
- Can write creatively, casually, easy to understand, simple english, and no grammartical error
- Has a knowledge about SEO
- Good English
- Again, good English

I'm in need of constant fresh article, if I like your article I will hire again in the future. Please send sample, thank you." - from Freelancer.com - see it here

This guy isn't even the worst of it - but his pay rate is. That's $30 for 20 articles, 500 words apiece. That's $0.003 per word. Oh yeah, and he wants them in the next week - so that's 3 articles a day, for $4.50 total. Oh yeah, and he OWNS them, so when he republishes them on content sites such as Squidoo, eZinearticles, Associated Content, Hubpages, etc., all that revenue goes straight to him.. and you can't use them as samples.

And if you're wondering whether or not this guy downloaded the "article toolchest" offered by Mr Lagoudakis in the previous email.. I'm guessing there's about an 80% to 90% chance that yes, he did. Or he built an Excel spreadsheet to do that exact thing. And he doesn't care what this does to the industry, if he even understands it, or has bothered to put any thought into it.

People think it takes no talent to write. People think that anyone who can type, is capable of writing. People think that building content for their websites is not so important that it demands quality, or should be worth any more than, say, the cost of ordering pizza for dinner.

If you love your business and want it to prosper, get the best content you can. Either pay someone a liveable wage to create it, or build it yourself. Put some effort into it. Heck, you could even hire a freelance writer to proof what you've written, to save yourself some time but still guarantee quality content. Inferior content makes your business look unprofessional and at times downright idiotic online. If you don't have the time or the abilities to write good, coherent, error-free copy, then hire someone who can.. and don't pay them peanuts, because the quality of their work IS the quality of your website.

Whatever you do, don't buy into the bullcrap about "no effort!" and "fast cash!"

Don't hire the person who replies with "Please sirs, I am pleasd to met you, can give good job right away, please to respond." (Note: the criticism here is not against foreigners or people who speak bad English, but against people who can't write advertising their services as a writer.)

.. and don't give your email address to anyone you don't trust.

I still trust Wally.. I'm still on his mailing list. Most of his emails are actually very thought-provoking and interesting. But he'll need to convince me to click on a link in his emails again, and if he links this same sort of stuff, I'll know better than to opt in this time around.

* * * * *

In other news..

I hope in the coming year to begin working with more reputable clients online. Odesk and eLance are both higher-quality sites than Freelancer.com, with more "serious" jobs.

Why haven't I begun working with them yet? Well, because their "serious"ness demands more effort from me to build my profile and portfolio; and because I'm nervous about having to show my skills. I'm good, but I don't have a degree that says so.

So, this month / the coming year:

- Studying tech writing with WikiVersity, and finding a good tech writing course (online or off). College?

- Building a portfolio of technical writing (manuals, installation instructions, FAQs, walkthrough help).
- Polishing and promoting my business blog, as well as other "hobby" type blogs; guest blogging; etc.
- Get a "real job" to pay the bills. Eeep.
- Build profiles on other freelance sites. Dedicate two to three days a week to looking for new, better work.

More and other stuff. I'll be making a list and posting it on FB towards the mid-point of the month. Who's joining me? Or are you ascared? ;)

boingoloidburke @ 2009-09-07T21:47:00

2009-09-08T01:49:55Z

A couple of Nordic gentlemen calling themselves Black Drop Studios are developing a platform racing game called "Boingo". Here's Nordic gamester website Game Reactor's interview with them.

Is it just me, or does the bizarre pseudo-Indian percussion throughout this interview make you think of very early Boingo.. say, "Nasty Habits"?

GetAFreelancer.com Is A Crock

2009-07-18T22:16:53Z

Any dolt with half a brain
Can see that humankind has gone insane
To the point where I don't know if I'll affect the status quo
If I threw poison in the water main..

- Dr Horrible

Writing, it seems, is a heinously undervalued art.

Any moron with the ability to copy & paste can claim to be a writer these days, if "plaigerism" is just another one of those nasty SAT words to them. Or if they simply don't care. Which it appears very few of these so-called "writing professionals" do.

Maybe instead of being angry with the hordes of unscrupulous mongoloids masquerading as talented authors (dragging down what little credibility I had to begin with), I should be angry at Robert Bly, for giving me the impression that professional freelancers can and do make a decent living as such.

Over the past several days, I've seen some very upsetting shit. Shit that is directly contributing to the destruction of the Internet's search engines and social media sites. You've seen it yourself, obliquely: you run a search for "locksmiths Nevada" and there on the first page of results is some crappy, loud website, probably with flashing graphics and at least one naked woman, having absolutely nothing to do with locksmiths or Nevada yet inexplicably there anyways.

It's gotten better. Google, followed closely by Yahoo, is sniffing out those black hat SEO bastards and shutting them down. Well.. not really. Closing them out of the database, to be more accurate. Removing their waste from the Internet gene pool of search results.

They're still out there, though. Spamming blogs with irrelevant links. Littering social networking sites with fake profiles. Abusing AdWords and affiliate programs (and lots and lots of gullible people) to buy themselves a brighter future. Filling the virtual world with robots disguised as humans, because the only way to tell a human from a bot in cyberspace is by measuring their interaction level and the evidence they leave behind.

I'm pretty good at writing persuasive marketing copy. I enjoy it; it's fun. But oh, do I hate the general mindset behind marketing in America. Money-focused, value-negligent. The perfect exampe is the superfast voice at the end of toy commercials: "Someassemblyrequiredbatteriesnotincluded." In other words, buy this but don't expect us to make it useful to you - in fact, we'll do the exact opposite, and make it more difficult than is actually necessary.

I'll be honest, not all of my rage is so noble. Here's the personal side - the human side - of the story.

GetAFreelancer (GAF) allows non-paying users to place only 15 bids per month, but they get more than two dozen new projects posted every day. I used all of my bids in two days. Stupid on my part, but I need money now, and don't really have time to be picky. So yes, I'm annoyed now that many of my bids, in retrospect, were placed on projects that are less than professional, low-paying, and part of some stupid black hat scheme.

One of the projects I bid on got back to me. The hirer wanted a sample article, inquired about where I am (looking for US/native English writers), so on and so forth. I had quoted $400/week for twenty original, well-written articles - a bit steep, but not bad. $45/hr is low, typical for newbie freelancers, and I'm asking less than half that out of desperation.

I asked how long the contract was for. "There is no contract," he said. "You show up, you do good work and prove you know what you're doing, we might give you more work in the future." What? You "might"? And, he reminded me, he had mentioned in his project post that he was only willing to pay $1.50 per article. So why even bid? It renders the entire process pointless.

I composed a very diplomatic response, suggesting he reconsider his budget in light of the fact that he's receiving well-researched, well-written work that then becomes his in perpetuity..

He's probably not going to. What does he care? He can go find some Indian or Chinese bot-farm to jumble up something another writer wrote months ago, slip it past CopyScape, and make a measly few bucks. Yay, exchange rate. I guess.

I see so many of these crappy job posts. "Write articles for me so I can illegally post them on Associated Content, Helium, HowTo, About, even Examiner.. and make hundreds in advertising revenue and PPV payments."

"Post repetitive and misleading ads for me on craigslist. Ha ha, my IP's not in danger, and if you take the fall for me I don't have to pay you!"

"Sell me the databases you've stolen or gotten through deceptive practices so I can spam them every day to make affiliate marketing dollars!"

"Create empty profiles for non-existent people to populate my dating / travel / social networking site, so it won't look like the absolutely deserted dot-com wasteland it is, and I can more easily trick trusting surfers into signing up for my newsletter and/or worthless membership!"

That's it, right there: lack of worth. Lack of value. None of this shit means anything. None of these people are trying to help each other; they're preying on one another, feeding off of one another's time and energy, funneling it into the great golden cash cow called the Internet. It's not "what can I do to help you", it's "what can I take from you to help myself". While I, like an idiot, am looking to actually find work that is helpful, valuable, appreciated, mutually satisfying.

So, yeah, a bit down today. But on the plus side, I did find what appears to be a genuine offer of a part-time Virtual Assistant position based in the UK, with potential for permanency. I'm one of only two bidders, and have been communicating with the original poster for the past day about the job. I hope it comes through. The bad news? The OP's original budget was $60.. for one week (four hours a day, three days). That's $20 a day. $5 an hour. Um, no. I quoted a bid of $300 ($100 per day, $25/hour), which, again, is a bit steep.

I'm bidding high. I figured out our regular monthly bills earlier today. I need to get $2k a month JUST to cover bills.. and I know that really isn't much, but when you're starting from nothing, it's a steep hill to climb. And the market is saturated with liars, cheats, and copy-paste pretenders.

Workaholic, Day 3

2009-07-02T02:11:42Z

Monday, June 29th: I actually put in six hours of work-related activity. A good portion was reading, research, and creating the WordPress site skeleton.

Tuesday, June 30th: Seven and a half hours, over five of which was actual writing. Yee haw.

Today: technically my "day off" but I did spend a few hours earlier putting effort into Examiner.com. I'll be emailing them tomorrow to tell them thanks but no thanks. There's a part of me that's scared to do that - "you got a JOB, and it's really hard to get jobs these days!" - but honestly, this isn't a job. This would be full-time work for little to no pay. If I had a pre-established system of passive income, then I could do something like that in my spare time, just for the publicity.. but right now? Not worth it, IMHO.

I might be wrong. We'll see.

Tomorrow I've set out eight hours for work. I'm really hoping I'm able to meet that goal. Anything more than four hours a day is an accomplishment, but the more time and effort I invest, the more - and the faster - I'll get rewards back.

Examiner.com Is A Crock

2009-07-01T16:09:15Z

Yesterday I spent more than two hours creating two articles for Examiner.com, as well as a planned list of additional topics. By the end of the night I felt pretty good about this and resolved to spend some time today hunting for photos to add to the pieces I'd written.

After breakfast today, I spent about 45 minutes looking for suitable pictures online. Then I checked the "Welcome!" email they had sent me, logged into their writers' site, and started looking over their publishing tool, preparing to publish my articles.

I peeked at their FAQ, and realized that the pictures I'd gotten off the 'net were not going to be of any use. They had a list of suggested resources for free and legal pics, though, so I spent another hour trying to find some photos that fit my articles.

This was a pretty frustrating endeavor, as most of these free resource sites had faulty search engines, sloppy organization, and, let's face it, kind of crappy pictures. You get what you pay for.

I began to count up all the time and effort I'd already put into this project. From their emails, I had learned their 'associates' earn a residual based on the number of page views (like all massive, advertising-driven online content providers); they had boasted payments of $10 per 10k views.

That's a penny per view.

If everyone I knew on Facebook came to see my article, I'd earn less than two dollars; and the chances of that happening are slim. No marketing ploy I'm aware of has a 100% return.

So: I can either work a full-time schedule for Examiner.com and HOPE to EVENTUALLY make a MODEST profit; OR I can continue putting that same amount of time into building a freelance business, and build up to an excellent profit, if all goes according to plan.

The only bonus to Examiner.com is clips. But I'm willing to bet I can get more impressive clips (in less time and with less overall effort) if I just made a plan and quit being a scaredy-cat. Trade publications, local businesses, that sort of thing.. I just have to get my rear in gear and DO it.

Writing for Examiner.com would just be the old management run-around: "Do the hard work for us; we'll give you a smidgen of the profits." All they have to do is juggle around their advertising, sell more spaces; they've already got people creating the content to fill those pages, bringing in search engine leads, and paying for the advertising space. So they lose a fractional amount of their profits by "paying" these people. Sweatshop writing. It's insane. It's greedy and malicious.

Anyhow.. today is supposed to be my day off, and I've spent my entire morning fussing over this absolute waste of time. Well, I got a good lesson out of it, I suppose.

Goals & Values

2009-06-26T18:28:03Z

Basic Values List: (These are the major driving factors in my life. Every decision I make is related to one or more of them. They are in roughly descending order of importance.)

1 Happiness
2 Love
3 Creativity
4 Learning
5 Wonder
6 Financial Independence/Security/Abundance
7 Adventure
8 Playfulness
9 Variety
10 Fitness

The problem here, as I see it, is that those first 3 values support living without much direction or drive. Happiness is great, but I'm not investing any true effort into discovering *lasting*, *sustainable* happiness.

Considering that I intend to start a business, I'm changing my values list for the next 3 months to:

1 Excellence/mastery
2 Learning
3 Clarity/Focus

.. to assist in consciously directing effort & energy into learning the ropes, becoming the best, and having a crystalline vision of my success.

4 Family
5 Creativity
6 Financial Independence (etc.)

.. because my kids need me; because writing without creativity quickly becomes stifling and frustrating; because the acquisition of wealth is still extremely important to me and my family during the early phases of the business.

7 Love/Relationships
8 Courage
9 Playfulness/Fun
10 Fitness

.. because my marriage and relationship with Hawkeye could always use more focus; courage to keep me strong and fearless, or at least aware enough to recognize when I'm fearful so I can work on it; playfulness and fun to keep the business and play aspects balanced; fitness because I'm already losing baby weight and, as long as this is somewhere on the list, I will continue to be mindful of my weight, my eating habits, and my exercise habits.

List to be revised again in September/October, at which point it might morphose into:

1 Financial Independence/Security/Abundance
2 Creativity
3 Learning
4 Fitness
5 Love/Relationships/Family
6 Adventure
7 Playfulness
8 Wonder
9 Happiness
10 Variety

Yes, it's Steve again. See here.

Intention-Manifestation, Law of Attraction, etc.

2009-06-26T14:56:57Z

In this article, Steve Pavlina discusses the Law of Attraction and the "intention-manifestation" model. Internal resistance is caused by fear, which, if left unrecognized and "untreated", will completely prevent an intention from manifesting due to self-sabotage. This is all in keeping with his theory of congruent living and living consciously & with purpose.. but it is, thus far, the most "New Age"-y of his articles that I've read.

I have a passing familiarity with the LoA - "passing" meaning "I understand it but am not sure things could really possibly be that easy". The thing is, it SOUNDS much easier than it actually is.

I believe in the basic principle. It's an ancient one, one I was introduced to during the long-ago days of studying the occult: the theory that one's will can affect one's reality. Intent can produce (manifest) its own results, with little or no conscious effort. And, just as when I read about this in books about witchcraft, wicca, demonology, what-have-you, I can understand and give credence to the theory.. but I'm still not 100% sure whether or not I believe it would actually work.

As an experiment, I'm going to do some exploratory journaling on one of the points that Steve brings up in his article: the necessity of a well-envisioned future 'goal'. It's definitely synchronicity that this same point was brought up in detail in Kathleen Stone's "Time to Write", which I read about a month ago.

OK, so. Here are a handful of scenarios I would like to happen in the next year:

- getting my license
- officially starting a freelance corporate writing business (including website and regularly updated, relevant blog)
- becoming a more pro-active mom.. and wife (really, reach a point of contentment with these states of being, as they're largely met with resistance and fear now)

If you're on my Friends list, you can read how I broke down these areas and came up with positive solutions. It might give you some insight into how to do the same exercise yourself. I think the exercise was a smashing success, and I feel incredibly improved having given these issues specific, directed, focused attention!

"The second reason priorities matter is that we human beings tend to be fairly inconsistent in how we invest our time and energy. Most of us are easily distracted. It's easy for us to fall into the trap of living by different priorities every day. One day you exercise; the next day you slack off. One day you work productively; the next day you're stricken with a bout of laziness. If we don't consciously use our priorities to stick to a clear and consistent course, we'll naturally drift off course and shift all over the place. And this kind of living yields poor results. Imagine an airplane that went wherever the wind took it - who knows where it would eventually land? And the flight itself would likely be stressful and uncertain. " - http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/living-your-values-1.htm

I tagged this quote on here because this, in a nutshell, is exactly what I've been struggling with for the past six months.. or six to ten years, depending on how far back you want to start counting years of lethargy and struggle, confusion and cloudiness.

If you're reading this, you should go read these, too. I'm experiencing some really amazing improvements in my quality of life from reading Steve's articles.. and I want others to experience it, too. These are just some of the recent articles I read that affected the outcome of this particular post; there are literally thousands of worthwhile and interesting articles on his site. Go explore. Learn something new. Grow!

"Cause-Effect vs. Intention-Manifestation"
"Manifesting Intentions Without Resistance"

Growth & Self-Awareness

2009-06-24T23:38:57Z

This has really been a red-letter year for growth and self-awareness thus far. I mean, the essence of Lauren's challenge to "hold ourselves accountable" has spurred me to finish tasks I'd been putting off.. and continue putting off still other tasks.. and, in the process, I've learned a lot about myself. Not all of it (in fact, most of it) has been happy shiny truth. But at least it's truth.

Sometime last month I discovered Steve Pavlina's website and blog. He's fascinating. His articles are well-written, thought-provoking, and highly valuable. I think the reason I'm so amazed with him right now is because he's promising that anyone can, through sheer force of will and intelligence, change their personal reality; and he hasn't tried to sell me anything based on that theory yet. In fact, in many articles he talks about WHY he refuses to "market" satisfaction and happiness. He repeatedly points out that everything on his site is absolutely free, yet he's making thousands of dollars off of it monthly. Why does he do this? Is he insane? No.. he just sincerely wants to help people, and has finally, after years of searching, found the perfect way to do this.

It's in sync with his personal belief system, what he calls "context", and it also suits what he perceives to be his purpose in life.

I agree with Steve when he says (in The Meaning of Life: How Shall We Live?), "It is important to make a global choice about how to live our lives, since this decision sets the context for everything else we do. If you don’t choose your context, you get the default/average context, which means you’re essentially letting others dictate your context. To make a gross generalization, in the USA this is a largely commercial/materialist context. It says to get a job, have a family, save some money, and retire. Be a good citizen and don’t get into too much trouble. But don’t really matter either. Be a good cog. Other cultures have their own default contexts. Most people simply subscribe to the default context of their culture with minor individual variations." (bold is mine, for emphasis)

I've adopted this context, sure. I wasn't really aware I *had* a choice; I figured you just do what you're expected to do as an adult, and that's all. The few times I've tried to think outside this box, it's been met with puzzlement by others: "Why are you doing that? Why would you want to do that? Don't you think that's weird? There's no point."

Since I began reading Steve's articles, I've realized and come to terms with the fact that I don't want a job. Ever. I've been working for other people since I was 16; except for a brief time period while I was living with the Sewards, I never kept a single one of my paychecks to myself. There was always someone around who needed it more than I did, or who seemed to think they'd have a better idea what to do with it. Please understand there are two sides to this coin: there are orders of magnitude difference between my handing my paycheck to Dad so he can buy himself food while at work, and my paycheck being expected of me so my boyfriend can pay the bills.. or whatever. There is a difference of choice.

I never really felt comfortable holding on to money, especially before I had bills to pay. I wasn't sure what to do with it, so I'd usually wind up spending it, very slowly, on food or amusements. By the time I had bills, I also had a boyfriend, who would collect my paycheck from me when I got home.. and if I'd spent any of it, he'd interrogate me about where that money went, then lecture me. So I quickly learned not to spend any of the money I'd earned, so as to avoid the humiliation and judgement. Like many things in that relationship, I didn't feel right about it, but I thought the problem was me, so I focused on changing my attitude rather than trying to change the situation.

While I was working at Cindy's office, I was still handing off every one of my paychecks to Hawkeye. I swore I wouldn't do this, because I knew what would happen: the money would disappear without the basic necessities being taken care of (bills, groceries, rent); I'd get stressed and freaked out, which in turn would lead to sickness, frustration, lack of sleep, lack of focus, which in turn would affect my performance at work, which would actually endanger my continued employment - creating a vicious cycle in which my concerns about our financial well-being were actually removing us further from a potential state of financial security.

For the past year or so I've been periodically whining about my need for a job. What I really mean, though, is that I want an income stream of my own, one that I can spend how I please, without having to worry what Hawkeye's doing to it when I'm not looking. One that I am entirely responsible for, rather than relying on a boss to control or mandate how much I make. The problem with this is.. well.. I'm still stuck in a "context" that supports and promotes laziness.

Back in December 2008, I told myself "In 2009 I'm going to start making money as a freelance writer." There are numerous psychological roadblocks I've thrown up in front of myself: am I any good? am I even entitled to money of my own? isn't that, somehow, a betrayal of Hawkeye and his manly responsibility to provide for his family (of which he's not doing such a stellar job, and shouldn't really be expected to, given his personality)?

I am very aware that I'm just dragging my feet, waiting for some sign that will never come, waiting for permission from an authority that doesn't exist. Fact is, I don't *need* permission, just like I don't *need* a boss to control my money flow and work hours. I'm struggling with the fact that I have control. I'm nervous in the spotlight.

Back to Steve.. the other night, Gina came over to visit, and we got stoned. And I was sitting in the back room when I suddenly realized: most of my negativity about my life - frustration, annoyance, depression - stems from simply being BORED. I'm not challenging myself, and the life that I have isn't enough of a challenge, or isn't a challenge that I'm facing up to. Raising kids is hard, but I waste so much energy on being stressed and uncertain that I don't have any left over for the fun parts. I'm stretching myself too thin doing things that, ultimately, have no consequence in my life. I spend a lot of time in avoidance of activities, too: not playing with the kids; not cleaning the house; not writing. It seems to take a great deal more energy and time to *avoid* doing something than it does to just *do* it in the first place. Resistance is very taxing.. as well as ultimately futile.

There have been days where I feel like I'm just waiting to die. That's boredom at its most extreme. Those days are also the ones where I tend to get extremely depressed at the drop of a hat - as if all the energy I have, without a creative or communicative outlet, is converted into negative emotions. This can be likened to becoming so hungry that you stuff yourself with junk food: there is a void that needs filling, and when it goes ignored for too long, instinct or primal controls compel it to be filled with whatever is available. (except that I see the 'creative energy' aspect as being like a cup overfilling, rather than a ditch being filled - either way, it is a renewable source.) You lose the option of choosing a healthier, happier you, and must instead exist on the lowest grade of satisfaction.

My apologies for how disorganized this is. I'm pretty much writing stream-of-consciousness, and mainly making this entry just for my own edification. I have a lot of disparate, loosely related thoughts that are all converging on the same or similar main points, and I'd hoped that putting them all out in a bundle would help clarify my thoughts and build a plan.

Back to context. When I first read about this on Steve's site, I was very confused. It didn't make any sense to me. Steve gives a good example of changing contexts being similar to changing religion or life philosophy in his Meaning of Life: Intro article, which helped me to understand what was meant by the word "context".

The context in which we perceive our existence determines what we can accomplish within those same boundaries. If, for example, you believe you will reincarnate, you might have a different attitude towards perfection or accomplishment than someone who believes this is the only chance we get to make a difference in the world.

There is a difference between a belief that is truly held and a belief that we understand but don't support with our actions or our thoughts. I support gay marriage and I believe all people should be unashamed of their sexuality; am I living as an openly bisexual woman, free of fear and shame? No, not at all. I wish I was. I would like to, one day, or at least, I'd like to feel comfortable with wanting to live that way. I have a long way to go before I get there. So I can't honestly say that a belief in open sexuality is part of my context, because my own actions don't support it.. yet.

Determining these very basic beliefs about the world we live in is an enlightening process. Sometimes you don't really know what you know until you try to explain it - in writing, or to another person (which is basically the same thing but in a different medium). You can pinpoint beliefs you feel are incorrect, refine your thoughts and philosophy, and actually decode the system of rules by which you're subconsciously living on a daily basis. I don't know about you, but I find that fascinating and very exciting.

Once we have an idea about the context in which we're living - once we can understand the gaps in logic or faith that separate us from other people's contexts - we can begin to determine which beliefs are paramount, which ones are inaccurate, dangerous, or unhealthy, and from there, we can actually figure out the purpose of our life.

Well, actually, you can try to figure out your life purpose at any time. Steve can suggest at least two ways to do this. It would be easier, in my opinion, to have a clear idea of your context first, so you can further lower the number of 'false' answers.. but it's going to be a lot of work either way.

I've been trying to figure out my purpose since I read that article last night. You want to know something weird? I haven't thought about "life purpose" since I was about sixteen years old. Back then, I believed experience was king; the purpose of life was to live - to try and experience as much as the world could offer; to squeeze as much enjoyment out of being alive as humanly possible. That sounds like I should've been spending more time parachuting and cliff-diving, and maybe a little less time holed up in my room writing.

I might have been on to something in my original philosophy - I still hold the basic theory in high esteem, the idea that enjoyment and happiness can be a 'triggered' reaction rather than something you wait to come to you - but, as of this very moment, I think my focus was too broad. Just as anyone can make a list of things to do before they die, anyone can say "I want to live happily, and have lots of different experiences." There's no real substance there.

And once you've uncovered, realized, or determined your focus, you can then think up ways to monetize that purpose. Then you're tying your financial future together with a deeper, more meaningful purpose. If you put yourself to work doing something you truly believe in, how can you fail?

* * *

I've spent a good two hours, despite interruptions, trying to figure it out.

I'll have to try again tomorrow night, or in a few days maybe. I'm watching Cathy's kids all day tomorrow so it's doubtful that I'll have even a moment's peace.

Besides.. Hawkeye "needs" me to come watch TV with him. Ghost Hunters, yay. :s

This is going to bother me until I get it figured out. And it's one of those, when you know, you KNOW. ...

Enneagram Results

2009-03-06T01:47:51Z

From HelloQuizzy's Quick and Painless Enneagram Test:

your Enneagram type is SIX (aka "The Loyalist").

"I am affectionate and skeptical"

Questioners are responsible, trustworthy, and value loyalty to family, friends, groups, and causes. Their personalities range broadly from reserved and timid to outspoken and confrontative.

How to Get Along with Me

Be direct and clear.
Listen to me carefully.
Don't judge me for my anxiety.
Work things through with me.
Reassure me that everything is OK between us.
Laugh and make jokes with me.
Gently push me toward new experiences.
Try not to overreact to my overreacting.

What I Like About Being aSIX

being committed and faithful to family and friends
being responsible and hardworking
being compassionate toward others
having intellect and wit
being a nonconformist
confronting danger bravely
being direct and assertive

What's Hard About Being a SIX

the constant push and pull involved in trying to make up my mind
procrastinating because of fear of failure; having little confidence in myself
fearing being abandoned or taken advantage of
exhausting myself by worrying and scanning for danger
wishing I had a rule book at work so I could do everything right
being too critical of myself when I haven't lived up to my expectations

SIXes as Children Often

are friendly, likable, and dependable, and/or sarcastic, bossy, and stubborn
are anxious and hypervigilant; anticipate danger
form a team of "us against them" with a best friend or parent
look to groups or authorities to protect them and/or question authority and rebel
are neglected or abused, come from unpredictable or alcoholicfamilies, and/or take on the fearfulness of an overly anxious parent

SIXes as Parents

are often loving, nurturing, and have a strong sense of duty
are sometimes reluctant to give their children independence
worry more than most that their children will get hurt
sometimes have trouble saying no and setting boundaries

* * *

Thanks, Poppy

2009-03-05T05:21:46Z

The Blogalyser reveals...

Your blog/web page text has an overall readability index of 14.

This suggests that your writing style is conventional
(to communicate well you should aim for a figure between 10 and 20).Your blog has 132 sentences per entry, which suggests your general message is distinguished by verbosity
(writing for the web should be concise).

CHARACTER MATRIX

male		female
self		world
past		future

Your text shows characteristics which are 54% male and 46% female
(for more information see the Gender Genie).
Looking at pronoun indicators, you write mainly about yourself, then the world in general and finally your social circle. Also, your writing focuses primarily on the present, next the past and lastly the future.
</small>
Find out what your blogging style is like!

My readability index is the same as Poppy's.. heh.. with a higher word count. Um, woo? Or not? With a stronger masculine slant (hers is 52%). Wild.

Freebirthing: The Choice to Be Gross.. Naturally

2009-02-26T16:17:57Z

I was browsing through all my friends' status updates on Facebook and found a recent one I'd missed where Erica was feeling grossed out by the concept of "freebirthing". Ever eager to put in my two cents (or start an argument.. or both), I looked it up.

In the most basic terms, freebirthing is a labor and delivery method where, upon going into hard or active labor, a woman chooses to be alone or surrounded by close friends and family, as opposed to medical personnel. It takes a dim view of doctor-assisted births, but allows for doulas or midwives to assist. The gist of it is to have your child in the most "natural" manner possible, which, apparently, creates a more loving bond between mother and child - as well as family and child, since getting to see the truly newborn baby is an amazing and unique experience for other family members, too.

Hospitals have always made me uncomfortable. I don't like the scrutiny of doctors, especially in matters of my own reproductive system. The attention of an OB doctor, during regular check-ups, prenatal visits, and even delivery, is seen as a necessary evil, and not particularly welcome.

I continue to see doctors for my reproductive health (and the health of the unborn infant) because I understand that the doctor has the benefit of education, whereas I have only the benefit of experience. Between the two of us we can reach a middle ground where we each understand what the other is saying: the doctor gets to help me with my problems, and I get to live a healthier and thus happier life.

I understand freebirthing's opposition to the treatment of pregnancy as a "disease" or a condition that warrants medical care - but only in the most basic and selfish sense. Because doctors make us uncomfortable, we will not go to them; we'll have the baby here in the house. I know my body better than any doctor anyways. While that may be true, you must have an excellent education in childbirth complications and methods in order to guide yourself through it - not only for your benefit but for the benefit of the baby. And are we completely neglecting to bring up the fact that some small amount of immediate medical care is always necessary for a newborn?

Yes, in the "good old days", women hunkered down in the bushes or the washtub and squeezed their babies out into the world. They also had a habit of dying shortly afterwards due to loss of blood, massive hemorrhage, internal trauma, infection, or exhaustion. Those infants, born free as the wind blows, had a one in ten survival rate, at best - due to lack of adequate medical care, rampant disease, the possibility of infection, lack of indoor heating and plumbing, et cetera. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's good.

On the topic of pain medication: I have a deep admiration for women who claim to have gone through labor and delivery without the aid of any pain medication. That is truly amazing and wonderful, and I'm sure their experience was heightened as a result. However: pain perception is different to everyone. What works for one person may not work at all for another. Being in a distracting amount of pain can prevent you from being the most active participant in your labor, at a time when the medical staff, your baby, and your own body are truly demanding your presence. I say, if it helps labor progress and doesn't harm the infant or the mother, go for it - and anyone who wants to make you feel like you took "the coward's way out" deserves a good solid punch in the nose. Suffer THAT naturally, bitch.

The epidural is a wonderful thing. In the best case scenario it numbs you from the waist down, completely removing the sensation of pain while still allowing you to experience contractions and the sensation of pressure. You're alert, aware, and fully able to take part in the birth of your child. Sure.. you're a little bit loopy, but pain has been removed from your sphere of awareness, and you can focus on the task at hand. The down-side of the epidural only makes itself present after delivery, when one or both of your legs might refuse to move, and for the next two to six hours you have a minimal awareness of hunger or needing to use the bathroom. It's worth it. The baby has arrived, with your help, and those after-effects can be easily dealt with.

It's unrealistic and insulting to say that natural childbirth, free of any and all medications during labor and delivery, is the "best" method of childbirth. Like any generalization, it doesn't apply to all groups, nor does it apply all of the time. It might have been the best method for you, but pushing your beliefs and abilities on another person is unkind at best, and demeaning at worst.

I believe a woman has a choice in how and where she chooses to have her baby. In the Western world, unassisted birth is still a 'fringe' interest, enjoyed by the wealthy and eccentric and endured by the incredibly poverty-stricken. It's intriguing to consider other methods of delivery but most American women would still opt to have their babies in the (relative) safety and comfort of the local hospital's maternity ward.

I think these "freebirth" supporters would view me with disdain and pity, because I don't see the experience of childbirth in even remotely the same light as they do. Granted, yes, the act of bringing a child into the world is medically and scientifically amazing, worthy of immense respect, an awe-inspiring event. But it's also very primal.. which in lay terms translates as "gross".

Over the past century America has made huge strides forward in personal hygiene - so much that, if we were to suddenly be reverted to the common style of living during the end of the 19th century, most people would be absolutely appalled at the conditions. Modern Americans are obsessed with their hygiene and their health - how straight, sparkly, and white are your teeth? How shiny, full, and thick is your hair? Are there spots on your face? Do you have body hair anywhere you (or society) says body hair shouldn't be? Are your eyes not pretty enough, not sharp enough, not the right color? Are you short, fat, disfigured, smelly? All of these things can be fixed through the miracles of modern medicine.

No place in America is as squeaky clean and hygienic as the doctor's office (one would hope). Gloves, surgical masks, brightly-marked locking boxes for medical trash - these are the standard gear of the modern office, emblems of security in an increasingly uncertain world. Here, you are guaranteed to have a sterile, detached, professional experience (again, one would hope). They might violate your wallet, but their relationship with you is purely one of interest in the name of business. Ideally.

The hospital has seen all of this before. Your delivery is not news to them. They keep alert for any changes or danger in the situation, but they've done this before, they know what to expect. They clean up the mess, keep you informed, and go through the procedure just like they have dozens of times previous.

Now imagine these people are witnessing a live birth for the first time. Now imagine these people, shocked and appalled and fascinated as they are, are also related to you: your mom, your husband or partner, your in-laws. Watching you give birth. Having never seen such a thing before (because it's only during the last twenty years or so that men have been welcomed into the delivery room). Oh yeah, let's add that layer of awkwardness in here: your brother, father-in-law, friendly male cousin, etc. have all been coerced into attending this "event of love" by some female relative.

Especially if it's your first time. No amount of research and reading can prepare you for the actual experience. The sentence "labor pains can become quite intense" means nothing until you're actually having them and thinking "Hmm, 'quite intense' eh?!" Labor bears a brief and passing resemblance to having your period, but there is no way to fully prepare yourself for all of it - the pain, the pressure, your water breaking, et cetera. Like anything else, you can only truly learn by doing.

So why isolate yourself from skilled medical assistance by choice? Why make the decision to risk your health, as well as the health of your baby, just because of some minor objections about modern medicine? You DO have the option of telling the hospital staff your wishes ahead of time.. and I believe there are some laws in place stating that a medical care facility can't deny you urgent care when it's needed.

From Wikipedia, here are the basic principles of freebirth:

The conviction that birth is a normal function of the female body and therefore not a medical emergency.
The belief that most interventions commonly used by the medical profession during birth cause more harm than good in a normal birth.
The sense that the mother will be more apt to follow the natural flow of her individual birth in an undisturbed birth setting, thus enabling her to find the optimum positions or techniques to birth her child safely.
The understanding that birth is an intimate, sexual, and potentially orgasmic experience,^[4] and that privacy is absolutely essential for the erotic dimension of birth.
A noted increase in the feelings and ability to bond with and take responsibility for the welfare of her child.

I agree that birth is a normal function of the female body, but I'd much rather have experienced, educated personnel on hand to help than not.

I'm sure there's plenty of evidence to refute point no. 2, which I don't have the energy to research right now.

Giving birth in a hospital is safe! And, again, you DO have the option of informing your delivery staff of the position(s) and/or technique(s) you'll want to use during delivery. In most cases, as long as neither your health nor that of the baby's is endangered, they will be accomodating. You can even research this ahead of time to find the kind of open-minded and flexible hospital that will gladly welcome your unique birth plan.

Point no. 4 just plain creeps me out. I know society is cultivating this "whole self" image - an ideal person whose many aspects are combined into one healthy, happy, fulfilled individual - but, I'm sorry, my maternal and sexual selves should not be mixed. I agree birth is an intimate experience, and in that regard, it's somewhat embarrassing to have a room full of strangers helping the process along. But erotic? Please, no. I'll take the pain instead. The thought of having an earth-shattering orgasm while giving birth is just about the most repulsive and humiliating experience I could imagine.

And point no. 5? There's no way to prove this! What if a psychologically unstable mother 'freebirths' her babies and then kills them? Are we going to blame the freebirth process for her murderous impulse? No! We're going to blame the mother's flawed psychology. The fact that she chose an eccentric and unusual method of delivery will probably come to light during the trial, and give that particular method a bad name (as in "only kooks do this"), but it certainly won't bear the full weight of her guilt.

Of course I can understand how feeling completely in control of your labor and delivery, and making the choice of location and method, would increase your sense of responsibility for the infant - but these are mental adjustments that can just as easily be made by a woman giving birth in a hospital.

I suspect 'freebirth' is the brainchild of women who felt out of control, neglected, misinformed, or misled during hospital deliveries, and decided instead to take matters into their own hands. So now, because they encountered indifferent or overtaxed hospital staff, they are advising other women to make a risky and potentially fatal choice about their own delivery experience. It's different from mere homebirth in that the primary contention is a woman knows her own body better than anyone else - whereas homebirth is more about being in comfortable surroundings to remove the stress that a trip to the hospital can cause. Both philosophies make a big deal out of "pain-free" childbirth (or rather, "painkiller-free" childbirth) and like to tout themselves as the definitive empowering act of motherhood.

You know what? Becoming a mother is empowering, in many ways. Whether or not you choose to boast about that depends on your personality. But the way in which you become a mother - whether you had the baby at the hospital, in a cab, in a wading pool, in a pit full of writhing Brazilian anacondas - really makes no concrete difference. You only choose to change tradition because you can; because the story, when told afterwards, makes people regard you differently. As in "Wow, no pain meds? I couldn't do that." So, in essence, the only reason you would choose to have your baby in a non-traditional manner is so that you earn respect and admiration from other mothers.. and from yourself as well.

The human body - the female body - is an amazing machine. It doesn't matter where or how we give birth - the most impressive fact of all is that we do. When you look at your newborn baby and the realization fully sinks in, there is no more empowering feeling known to humanity. It is for that moment that we labor. Not the one that comes weeks or months later in the grocery store check-out aisle as you describe the Pagan drumming circle whose unending primal rhythms helped to bring your baby into the world. Even that spectacular and unique memory pales in comparison to looking into your baby's face for the first time, seeing perhaps a glint of recognition in their eyes, knowing that this living breathing creature is completely unique and that you brought it into the world by love and dedication.

Why sully the rewards of childbirth with layers of pride and selfishness? Why assume that we, spirits temporarily confined to biodegradable shells, would honestly have an awareness of our bodies that surpasses the sum of an entire team of educated doctors' knowledge? Why strive for any reward greater than the simple and magnificent joy of pregnancy's end and infancy's beginning?

If having children is about you - if you are not content until you have controlled and micro-managed every facet of the delivery - consider what this predicts about your parenting style. If parenting is about you and your capabilities, it's not parenting; it's ownership. If you are only in it for the rewards or the status, you're not making a wise decision. .. Then again, who knows what will change in that miraculous moment when you see your baby's face for the first time?

* For more on freebirthing, links, references, general overview, etc., see here.

Da News

2009-02-26T03:09:22Z

No concrete updates on Haleigh Cummings' disappearance, though the paternal grandmother is casting blame on a known pedophile cousin of Misty Croslin, her son's live-in girlfriend, and there's a rumour going around that Misty wasn't actually in the house when Haleigh was taken but partying next door instead. *shrug*

Casey Anthony's trial date has been changed to "sometime in the fall of 2009". Damn it! And just when it was almost March, too! Arrrggghh. I can't wait to hear that woman's story. It's going to be a fish tale for the ages, I'm telling you.

"Daughter tried to hire hitman to kill her father" - Tammy Lewis and her mother, Shirley Hughes, are in jail after they offered an undercover detective $25,000 to kill Kenneth Hughes for his $200,000 life insurance policy. Mr Hughes is saddened by his daughter's betrayal, but firmly believes his wife had nothing to do with it, and has been visiting her in jail regularly.

"Professor beaten to death by autistic son" - A political sciences professor was found severely beaten in her home on January 29th. She died under hospital care on February 6th without having regained consciousness. Her 18-year-old autistic son, who kicked a police officer in the face when they tried to apprehend him, may be charged with his mother's murder.. and we will never know why he did it.

The daughter of a prominent small-town family talks about her mother's death at the hands of a hitman hired by her 74-year-old father. Police say he was having an affair with a 28-year-old woman known to be a drug dealer and prostitute. Commentators on the story point out the man may have been senile or suffering mental illness due to a stroke suffered years prior to his wife's murder. See here.

Miami music teacher shoots wife, two daughters, then himself; a teenage son flees the scene after calling the police. I hope they find a suicide note.

So, picture this: You've been unemployed for several years. Your wife's health is steadily declining, and medical bills are piling up. The two of you lose your home to foreclosure and are forced to rent a tiny house, which, after several months, you can no longer afford. You receive the formal eviction notice the same day your wife is released from the hospital. You drive around, wondering how to tell her about this most recent failure, how to tell her that once again you have failed to provide for her most basic needs, when she is in more need than most due to her failing health..

There is no chance of her recovering. She will be ill until she dies.
There is nowhere for you to go. You have no home, no job.. and there is very little chance of you getting a job that can provide even the essential amenities of life.

So, what do you do? Shoot her, apparently.

I believe this man intended to kill his wife, then himself, out of financial desperation and stress. I think he hesitated when he shot her, which is why she was struck in the chest and not the head, and then upon realizing what he'd done he immediately felt remorse and realized she would need medical help.

Now, more medical bills; his name, his picture, in the paper, being labelled a killer and a criminal; the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail.

I will be amazed if this man doesn't kill himself.

A Dallas mother and her two children were found dead in their home, each having been shot once in the head. In the days prior to the discovery the mother had reported several bizarre attacks in which she was threatened with rape and murder by two assailants, but police found no clues. Hmm.

Should a man ruled guilty of his wife's murder be allowed to take custody of their child?

I link this article about moms-who-kill because of Michelle Kehoe, arrested in November 2008 for the slaying of her 2-year-old son Seth and the attempted murder of her 7-year-old son Sean. She's due to appear in court on March 18th, 2009.

If the timeline can be cleaned up, this would make an awesome novel.

And in other pseudo-fictional news.. A screenwriter uses the plot of his own short film to 'rehearse' a murder, which he then actually commits (okay, okay.. allegedly). Wow. Awesome. Sounds like the plot of a David Lynch film. LOL.. on a side note, Edmonton police are looking for information and sightings of the suspect's red four-door Pontiac sedan, with the license plate DRK JEDI. Sweet.

How Not to Raise a Toddler

2009-02-16T05:49:34Z

The search for Haleigh Cummings has been suspended so the local authorities can devote more energy to the investigation of her 'abduction'. As stated by Chief Deputy Rick Ryan: "We're still treating it as an abduction because, as we said early on, that brings out the highest level of response." Umm.. so does it actually look like an abduction, or not?

And those "items of interest"? Not as helpful as initially thought. Almost a week after the girl's disappearance, police still have no leads. This does not bode well.

The latest update, along with a list of previously posted articles on the little girl's case, can be found here.
FOX's take on it can be found here, including back-tracking links.

* * *

On the other side of the world, an Australian father embroiled in a custody battle decided to throw his four-year-old daughter Darcey Iris Freeman off a bridge - while her brothers Benjamin, 7, and Jack, 23 months, remained in the family car, watching as he tossed her over the railing and into the water 190 feet below.

Other drivers on the same bridge immediately called police. Within 10 minutes a rescue team was dispatched, and they were able to pull the little girl from the Yarra River. She miraculously survived the fall, and was airlifted to the nearby Royal Children's Hospital.

Arthur Philip Freeman was arrested an hour later when police were called by security at Commonwealth Law Courts. Security described him as wild-eyed, shaking, and visibly distressed. He was taken into custody peacefully. The arresting officers were not aware he had thrown his daughter off a bridge earlier that day.

During Freeman's questioning by detectives, Darcey Iris died of massive internal injuries.

He has been charged with murder, and will appear in court on May 21st.

Read the original article here.

* * *

Edgrr had a somewhat serious developmental delay which was in full swing when he was two. He couldn't talk. His only method of communication was screaming.. endlessly. He screamed when he was happy; he screamed when he was sad; he screamed when he played; he screamed when he got angry. His inability to communicate the most basic needs was immensely frustrating for everyone, and there were times when I'd listen to him shrieking at increasing volume and pitch in his room and be absolutely overwhelmed by wave after wave of inadequacy, despair, and shameful self-pity - as in "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?"

I think this, combined with my own experiences with my mother (and the eerie and horrible moments when I've felt the urge to mimic her 'mothering'), is why I'm so fascinated with stories of infanticide. On some level, I have been there. I had moments when Edgrr was very young (and I was suffering from post-partum depression, extremely confused, and scared) where it would occur to me how much easier my life could be if he wasn't there. There were times when I fantasized about simply ignoring him until he "went away". Maternal instinct would kick in and I'd go tend to him, with extra attention and love if anything, because I'd feel guilty for thinking such horrible things. In some backwards way, though, I came to feel he knew how much I resented his impositions on my life; he was an aloof baby, not fond of being held or cuddled unless he instigated it, and his continual angry rejection of my love would only make me feel angrier, more hurt, more confused.. more inadequate.

There were times when I wanted to hurt him. There were times, I'm ashamed to admit, when I did.

There are many, many mothers out there who have been through the same dark moments. It's shocking, repulsive, and inexplicable, wanting (however fleetingly) to hurt your own child. The thought alone is disgusting. Acting on the urge - out of rage, confusion, fear; trying to control an uncontrollable situation - makes it ten times worse: you feel sickened by yourself, enraged or scared or upset by your actions, and absolutely helpless in the face of your child's intensified emotions.

The two of you are helpless together. The infant doesn't know why he cries; he doesn't understand the concepts of hunger, exhaustion, pain, boredom. He only knows he needs attention.. and he wants that attention NOW.

There is an indescribable but palpable pull on you, as a mother, every time your child cries. For a strong-willed, independent, selfish, or lazy mother, the sensation is at least a little bit irritating. It can be outright infuriating, as when you're woken from a brief and well-earned nap at 2 a.m. by demanding screams from the other room. And for a first-time mother, I think it's incredibly difficult to adjust to: Who is this person in my house, who now thinks they can summon me anytime they want with such obnoxious noises? When will they learn to ask politely? Why can't somebody else do this for me? How do I get them to stop?!

Then you go and look at your baby, and you see yourself in his eyes, and you realize this demanding little creature is a part of you. You have to help it. Without you, it is completely helpless and alone in the world. He isn't crying to anger or offend or manipulate you; he's crying because it's all he knows to do.

When I felt angry at being woken or disturbed by Edgrr, I would make myself joke with him: "All right, mister, you win this time. But next time you might not be so lucky." And he would gurgle and wave his fists, or just stare at me, or continue to cry.. but I'd feel better having acknowledged him as a person, and having (even jokingly) given my irritation vent. It put the situation in perspective.

Or you go in and look at it with no love at all.. It's those mothers that snap. But for the blessing of a rational voice in the back of my mind and the basic determination that I Can Survive Anything, I might have been one of those mothers.

It gets easier after the first baby. The first baby changes your entire world - every aspect of your day is altered; you have to learn to plan your time differently, to run down a list of baby essentials any time you consider any activity - you have to include this person as if they are an additional limb suddenly sprung out of your midsection. After this jarring, painful, and abrupt adjustment, having a second or third child means just carrying more stuff.

Gone are the days of sipping tea and reading the newspaper on a whim. Gone are the days of long soaks in a bubble bath, or of reading a book cover-to-cover uninterrupted. Your independence is suddenly and completely surrendered to a tiny lump that demands sustenance and requires you to clean up when it turns that sustenance into reeking filth. It also demands to be held, and will frequently and unexpectedly fall asleep while being held, as if you are the most comfortable and safe place it knows to sleep. (It's usually when you're in the midst of enjoying these beautiful bonding moments that you notice the unescapable stench of a freshly-made diaper. Coincidence? I think not.)

They get bigger. They get smarter, meaner, dirtier, faster. They also learn to give hugs and kisses, and to say "Momma", and to smile when they see you - and there is absolutely nothing comparable to seeing your baby smile at you with recognition, or hearing him call you by name, even if it's just "Maa". I think there should be a foundation that sends mothers medallions to commemorate that event - it feels like you've finally hit some kind of a finish line, or at least finished the first leg of a long and grueling marathon. You're doing something right - it knows who you are now; it's grateful.

There have been mothers, throughout history, who simply didn't want their children. They didn't have a maternal instinct; they had children out of poverty, or stupidity, or (worse yet) a desire to trap the baby's father into financial dependency; children were objects to them, and often these objects, when they failed to "work" properly, were purposefully broken and discarded. These mothers exist to this day - selfish, stupid, or scheming women who view their awesome natural ability to create life as an alternative to earning a paycheck.

I'm waiting for scientists to discover the gene they all have in common so they can be rounded up and eliminated. It would be better for the world.

On one hand, I think some of them would benefit from free basic training in baby care and understanding. Perhaps some of these women simply don't understand they are taking care of very tiny people - people whose total lack of social grace has more to do with psychological immaturity than any malicious desire or willful temperament. Assuring the mothers of rambunctious two-year-olds that, yes, anywhere from six months to a year from now they WILL stop saying "No" and start making more of an effort to follow rules might save some lives.. or at least some hides from getting tanned. Perhaps these women are acting out of desperation, and giving them some small measure of hope will make their lives that much easier.

On the other hand.. well, some women just don't care. Some women, like I said, make a living off of having babies. They take in their welfare checks (and child support, or a husband's paycheck, if he has a job, if they're married), beat the disobedient little brats, watch copious amounts of daytime TV, and generally harbor couch fungus and spores until the day gracious Death releases them from this realm. Their children grow up neglected, disturbed, maladjusted, under-educated, and completely lacking in ambition.. and the cycle continues.

There was a woman across the street named Kelly, with whom Rob had a brief and rocky relationship while he was living on our couch last summer. She had two children, a girl of about 7, Isabelle, and a very angry little boy who was about 5, Koby. Both of them had been beaten by Kelly's abusive ex-boyfriend Brian, so Rob, who didn't strike them and routinely took time to talk to them, was like some kind of amazing superhero father figure to them. They LOVED him.

Rob was frustrated that Isabelle still struggled with learning to read. He sat down with her at the kitchen table night after night, pushing her to try while she routinely shook her head and called herself stupid. When he asked Kelly why she wasn't doing more to help Isabelle learn to read, Kelly said, "No daughter of mine is going to be smarter than me."
"Kelly," Rob asked, "do you know how to read?"
"Yeah. I'm not real good at it but of course I can. I'm not an idiot."
"Do you want your daughter to grow up to live in a trailer park?" Rob asked. "Is that really the greatest ambition you have for your own daughter?"
Kelly shrugged. "I don't care. All I'm saying is she better not think she's smarter than me or better than me. I'll whip her good."

A week or two ago Kelly called to demand that Rob give up his parental rights to the baby boy they had in December. Rob was infuriated to hear about the birth in February, and equally pissed to be flat-out told to sign off his rights. When their relationship ended back in July or August, it was unclear whether or not Kelly actually was pregnant or was only claiming to be so she could manipulate Rob; and she had already begun cheating on him with her abusive ex, whom she then moved in with. So.. apparently Kelly would rather put all three of her children in the presence of a dangerous man who has been abusive to them (and their mother), than honor the fact that Rob fathered one of those children and is actually a much better father than that beer-swilling bling-wearing fist-swinging redneck ever could be. Because, you know, she "loves" him (the abusive guy). And she's "happy" with him. And she's going to drag her poor messed-up children right along with her, because God forbid they should do any better in life than she has.

That is exactly the kind of mother I'm talking about. Kelly's priorities in life put her own desires at the top of the list, and everyone else, especially those damn kids, can go suck an egg for all she cares. She doesn't know what to do with them; she doesn't care to learn, either. They're hers, and she will fight to keep them, but she'd do the same for her car, or the TV, or a favorite pair of shoes. Property. Not living things. Not thinking, breathing, feeling people, with opinions and ambitions of their own - no. Walking welfare checks.

Education can save lives. If Kelly was taught to see her children as people, perhaps they would have better lives as a result; perhaps she would be a happier person because she'd finally feel she knows how to provide higher quality of life for her children. If first-time mothers were taught about their children's needs, goals, and abilities, stage by stage, it might help them to cope with the stressful and emotionally trying job that parenting can be.

The trick in educating anyone, however, is that they have to want to be educated in the first place, or it's wasted effort. I would think in this case it would have to be free, mandatory after birth (determined by income level, marital status, and/or age), or required for some welfare programs, and delivered in-home, preferably by a nurse or a social worker.. or both. It would require a great deal of effort on the state's side, but it could cut down on the number of cases of child abuse and neglect.. even death.

Riley Ann Sawyers, 2 years old, was brutally beaten to death by one or both of her parents during an extended "discipline session" in their home on July 25th, 2007. Autopsies have determined the actual cause of death was multiple skull fractures, which Riley's mother, Kimberly Trenor, blames on her husband Royce Zeigler, claiming Riley suffered the wounds when he threw her repeatedly across the family room, causing her to smack her head into the tile floor.

During the investigation, police found a list written by Riley's mother and stepfather - a basic list of nine 'good' behaviors her parents wanted Riley to learn. According to FOX, 'the list, called "Rules for Riley," included such things as "being polite," "behaves in public," "toys stay in her room" and "listen to mom & me." ' There was room for a 10th item, but the line was left blank.

The methods of "discipline" Kimberly Trenor and her husband Royce inflicted on this little girl would have left her permanently scarred - physically and psychologically - if they hadn't killed her first. I can understand any parent wanting their child to be well-behaved and polite, but let's be realistic: she's two.

Had Kimberly Trenor or her husband done any research on the psychological or emotional state of your average two-year-old? Were they aware that their demands on her behavior were far beyond the capabilities of your normal toddler? Would they have changed their methods at all if they had been aware?

Let's look at the rules the FOX report mentions, shall we?

Being polite. Since birth, my kids have heard me use "please" and "thank you" on a consistent and frequent basis. I'm a generally polite person, so this requires no effort on my part, while having an excellent effect on them. Edgrr, who will be four in July, routinely adds "please" to any request (and in an adorably exaggerated upwards-inflecting tone, too - not so much "please" as "pleeeEEAASE?!"), though he has to be reminded to say "thank you" most of the time. Trevor, at nineteen months (a little more than a year and a half), has only begun using "please" - but he's still learning to talk and has to be asked to say it more than once before he complies. While he understands saying "cookie" will probably get him a cookie, he has yet to grasp that saying "cookie please" will get him a cookie much faster, and probably a hug too.

Trevor's speech is advanced for his age because he has an older brother whom he imitates constantly. I wouldn't expect him to be able to understand the reason for politeness, nor would I expect him to behave in a consistently polite manner. He's still a baby! He can't dress himself, he can barely use a spoon and a fork - expecting a child of two to behave politely, all the time, is an exercise in futility.

Two-year-olds are just beginning to understand they are separate from the world around them - they are starting to grasp "cause and effect". If I cry, this happens. If I make this precise combination of sounds, this happens. If I hit my brother, this happens. If I stick my fingers in the door, this happens. They learn these relationships and then they test them over and over and over, to see which ones are constant and which are flexible. This is why consistent parenting is so important: telling a child to say "please" once is not going to stick with them for very long at all. A two-year-old's memory doesn't last much more than a day; he may remember spilling a drink, but the next day, the scenario could very well repeat itself exactly and he won't be able to draw a connection. In six months or so his memory will be long enough for him to realize "Ah ha, if I don't use both hands on the cup, it's too heavy and it goes on the floor." .. And then also realize "I like the face Mommy makes when the cup goes on the floor; it's funny. Let's see what happens if I drop it on purpose, over and over and over." Wicked little things.

What constitutes "polite" behavior for Kimberly Trenor and Royce Ziegel? Were they expecting Riley to put her napkin in her lap, know the different uses for different forks, and not put her elbows on the table - or were they just expecting a regular "please" and "thank you"? At any rate, any expectation of politeness from someone so young is outright foolish. The occasional prompted "please" would probably be the best she could do, and that deserves praise.

Behaves in public. The single worst experience I've ever had in public was with Edgrr when he was about two and a half. Maybe it was the timing; maybe he was exhausted, or hungry, or just overwhelmed - but when I wouldn't let him gnaw on a package of sliced cheese at the grocery store, he spent the time until we left the store screaming and crying as loud as he possibly could. The store was packed; I was getting dirty looks from everyone. It was humiliating. I was sorely tempted to give him back that damn package of cheese slices, but I stuck to my guns, and we got through it just fine.

Again.. the question is, what would have satisfied this requirement for Riley's parents; and were they honestly expecting someone who can't even control their own bowel movements to be capable of enough emotional self-restraint to stop themselves from throwing a tantrum at the store?

Toys stay in her room. Okay, I tried this one. I got sick of tripping, stomping, and navigating through the veritable sea of toys my house had become - so I told Edgrr (at age two) he had to keep his toys in his room. We got a toybox. I demonstrated how, when he was finished playing with toys (and regularly before bed), he was expected to put all the toys back into the box. Umm.. that didn't work.

So I took more extreme measures. I gathered up all the toys, sorted through them, and threw out the hundreds of little junk toys he'd collected in his two years of life - McDonald's trinkets, dollar-store impulse buys, cheap gifts from family members, et cetera. It reduced the quantity of the mess, but did nothing to improve Edgrr's ability to clean up after himself.

At the age of three, when Trevor was one and starting to play with toys, I made sure they each had a box for their own toys, and put one in the living room as well. I told them at the end of the day before going to bed all the toys had to be picked up. Now, in all honesty, if I had made more of an effort to routinely follow through on this directive, by now they'd probably be used to it - but I got lazy and usually wound up cleaning up the toys myself. At least it was easier now, with three different receptacles, conveniently located.

Now, finally, at three and a half, Edgrr has mastered the ability to clean either spontaneously or on demand. Just last night he and his brother rounded up the mess of toys they'd strewn across the living room and dumped them all back into the toybox. Sure, some of the toys shouldn't necessarily be in there; some of the things in the toybox aren't toys at all, but articles of clothing (for some reason my boys love to play with hats) - but it's clean, and I got to sit in a chair and marvel without lifting a finger.

I don't expect this to become a routine occurence. I'm a little shocked it has happened at all. But I'm grateful, and I can see now that Edgrr has learned to tell the difference between "neat" and "messy". He wants to make Mommy and Daddy happy, so if he learns that turning a "messy" room into a "neat" one makes us clap and smile and give him cookies, he's more likely to do it on his own more often. Positive reinforcement will eventually teach him to prefer cleanliness over "big mess", as Trevor gravely says.

Eventually.

Did Kimberly and Rocye help Riley pick up her toys and put them back in her room, or did they simply yell at her for taking them out of her room? How old were they when they learned to keep their own stuff in their room (I didn't start doing that routinely until I was about eight)? Did they expect her to understand *why* her toys weren't allowed in other rooms - because, quite frankly, *I* don't understand why a toddler's toys should be confined to one room. Did they not want her to leave her room? Because if that's the case, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble (and possibly Riley's life) by just locking her in her room. Cruel.. damaging.. but less harmful than beating her to death for being disobedient. When she removed toys from her room, what happened? Was she rewarded for putting toys back, or only punished for breaking the rules?

Listen to your parents. I have a theory about the listening habits of small children. When they're very small, under six months old, you have their undivided attention. They will listen to you for hours, fascinated with the sound of your voice, lulled by it, absorbing every thing you say and filing it away in some secret spot of their baby brains.

Once they achieve the ability to crawl, however, listening takes a back seat. Hell.. everything takes a back seat to being in control of their own motion. Most babies under one don't fully understand the word "no", so you can shout, scream, whine, and croon it all you want, but you're going to have to physically separate them from whatever it is they aren't supposed to have. They'll listen half-attentively as you talk to them about toys, but they're just as likely to wander off in search of something else to do when you're in mid-sentence.

When they start talking, they begin listening again - trying to pick up new words and phrases they can then turn on you. "Kitty" is Trevor's most frequent demand - he grabs my hand and starts pulling in the direction of the hallway, coaxing me to take him to the back door where he can peek through and possibly spot Fritz sleeping on our bed. But toddlers this young aren't really listening so they can absorb the meaning of what you say - they're trying to get the sound patterns down, watching the way you move your mouth, so that they too can announce "I can't believe she said that! Who does she think she is, anyways?" .. without having the slightest clue what they've said.

Normal, developmentally on-track two-year-olds have a very limited vocabulary, often revolving around needs (eat, drink, more), desires (yes, no, want, cookie), and favorite or familiar things in their environment (Mommy, Daddy, Kitty, teddy bear). The average two-year-old can use anywhere from 25 to 200 different words, but recognizes many, many more. Their understanding is much more than their ability to practically use the language.. but in the span of a few short months, most toddlers this age experience a sudden burst of learning, picking up words everywhere, and then they begin to surprise you by conjoining two or three of them into short, coherent phrases ("see kitty", "want cookie", "more drink", "Mommy hug").

Riley's ability to communicate needs to be examined. Was she talking yet? What sort of things did she say?

In a written confession she claims her husband forced her to pen, Kimberly Trevon writes, "I went and woke her up for breakfast and one of the first things she does is say I want milk. No Riley say please can I have milk. All I got was a please after asking her to say please can I have milk about 5 or 6 times." She goes on to describe Riley making a mess with her breakfast and not standing in the corner for punishment as she was told. Then, "I just snapped when I told her to get back in the corner and she told me no. I started yelling at her you don't tell me no. You listen to me you need to say please and thank you. I ask you a question you answer with yes ma'am or no ma'am. When Daddy asks you anything you say yes sir or no sir. Do you understand me? She just looked at me and started to cry. I needed something else a belt one of Royce's belts that'll get a response out of her. the belt worked on me got me to stop what I was doing right away when I was younger."

So: abuse begets abuse. Surprise?

Trevor will be two in July. He can't reliably eat without making a mess, and he's an excellent eater - one of those lick-the-plate-clean types. It has more to do with motor control than any willful desire to make a mess. Would I attempt to make him clean it up? No - he's too little to understand why. Has that stopped him from trying? No - in fact he ordinarily picks up the crumbs and bits left over from his food and hands them to me, one by one, sometimes saying "Uh Mommy" to get my attention. He doesn't like the mess.

A two-year-old doesn't have the attention span to stand in the corner, unsupervised, as punishment. I've taken to giving Edgrr time-outs on the couch, and even then I have to check in on him every ten seconds or so or he's up and about like nothing's wrong.

In the beginning of the confession, Kimberly expresses irritation that many different people have been telling her Riley is "out of control" and "needs discipline". She says she's embarrassed by her little girl. You know what? Everyone in the whole world has an opinion about your skills as a parent - and, more often than not, they're going to share it. There's nothing you can do to stop them, because they think they know better than you, and really, they're just trying to help. You have a choice: let them get to you (which means continually thinking you're a bad parent because someone, somewhere, criticized your parenting), or take what they say with a grain of salt and realize you're the only one who really knows what your child needs.

For example, that day with Edgrr at the store. Yes, I was embarrassed. I didn't feel like a terrible person, though, because I knew that what Edgrr was doing was beyond my control (probably beyond his control, too), and that the absolute best way for me to handle it was to completely ignore it. Yelling at him would accomplish nothing (except more dirty looks from old ladies); trying to calm him down would accomplish nothing; giving him the cheese he was screaming for would only teach him that screaming = success. I wanted to apologize to everyone for his screaming, but I grit my teeth and stuck it out. And you know what? That is the only time he's behaved in that manner, and once we were out of the store, he dissolved into sniffly, confused tears. Exhausted. Poor thing.

And you know what else? Everyone is embarrassed by their children sometimes. The media liked to point at this confession's admission of being embarrassed as if to say "Look, she's a horrible mother, she's ashamed and embarrassed by this beautiful little girl." Kids do embarrassing stuff. One day, at about eight months pregnant with Edgrr, I was waiting for Hawkeye and our roommate-to-be Bill to pick me up. A little girl about three and her nicely-dressed career-woman mother were headed towards me from the parking lot. As they approached, the little girl squinted up at me and asked her mom, "Why is that lady so fat?"

"Oh, well," stammered the mother, giving me a mortified smile, "I think she might be going to have a baby soon. She has a baby growing inside her belly."

I felt bad for the mom; I wanted to tell her it was absolutely okay, that I wasn't in the least bit offended by her daughter's noticing my size. If an adult had commented on it, I would be offended - but to take offense at a completely innocent question? Ridiculous.

Children are embarrassing at times, and they can get us in hot water with other adults, as far as differences of opinion over parenting techniques go. At the end of the day, though, you alone are responsible for how you handle those moments. That is your child, and their behavior is their own, and only the parents can say what is good for them.. or teach them to be better.

Kimberly Trevon was found guilty of capitol murder at the beginning of this month. She has been sentenced to life in prison because she isn't likely to repeat the offense. Since all the trial photos I saw of her show her smiling and seeming to have a good time, I wonder if life really will be the living hell it should be for a woman convicted of her young daughter's murder. Her husband, who blames the entire debacle on her, will go on trial later this year - I have yet to see a trial date mentioned.

The real kicker? They met playing World of Warcraft. Augh, god, why?

Pets vs. Kids, and a missing little girl

2009-02-14T04:44:27Z

Tonight I'm going to try to untangle a complicated knot of beliefs, set off by a comment Lauren posted to one of Erica's notes:

"... you lied? You do have children regardless if they are human or came from the fruit of your loins? You have a total of 2+5+3+1+6= 17 (Yay, my lucky number!) 17 furry, dirty, feathery, critters that you put before all else in your life hence the term child can apply! Lol!"

First of all, let me say that I understand when people compare their pets to children they are not in fact saying their relationship to those pets is directly comparable to my relationship with my children. It's a joking statement, based on superficial similarities between the two different dynamics. I know that.

Yet it is one quirk of some people's personalities that continues to aggravate me.. and, now that I have children, it offends me on some level as well.

Yes, pets can be demanding, lazy, needy, inconvenient, cuddly, messy, adorable, greedy, selfish, and important, similar to people. Animals do have personalities.

Like having children, having a pet demands that you meet certain responsibilities and stick to a schedule in order to keep them healthy and happy (walks, feedings, cleaning up after them, et cetera). Also like children, pet ownership requires a financial investment; and most folks also make an emotional investment in their new pet. Not all pet owners feel their pet actually merits such effort. Not all parents feel their children do, either.

Pets, like people, grow and change over time. They learn new things; they develop new interests. Basic facets of their personalities remain the same, but they are a constant source of surprise and amusement (and, sometimes, aggravation) to the people in their family.

Like children, animals need to be taught codes of behavior so they can interact with their environment in a manner pleasing to everyone. They need firm boundaries, clearly defined limits, and rewards for good behavior. They have to learn how to interact with people; where and when to 'do their business'; which toys are theirs and which are off-limits; where they may go and where they are not allowed. Again, however, not all pet owners (or parents) are willing to put in this much effort.

I believe getting a pet is, basically, adding someone new to your family unit. People who buy animals only to discard them weeks or months later, when they're no longer cute or affordable or amusing, disgust me. However, this illustrates an important difference between the social value of animals, and that of children: animals (for the most part) are seen as 'disposable', whereas children are not - except to a very small and very tragic segment of the population.

Pets deserve respect, consideration, and space of their own. They aren't living stuffed animals to be manipulated for your amusement, but they also shouldn't be handed the keys to the kingdom, with their supposed 'owner' as a willing servant. It is your responsibility to care for them, let them know they're loved, and discipline them when they misbehave. This isn't easy or fun all of the time, but it can be very rewarding, and in the best cases it results in an unforgettable emotional bond between two creatures.

When you have children, the basic "rules" are very similar, but there is a difference of emotional magnitude between the two. This difference amplifies the experience of parenthood to something that only vaguely resembles pet ownership, and to equate the two is demeaning and offensive to parents, as well as children. Amusing.. occasionally accurate.. but somewhat insulting nonetheless.

You can walk into a pet store, pick out a puppy, and leave with it that same day, losing nothing but money in the exchange. Having a child is a complex matter, involving personal choice, timing, pure luck, and nine months of increasingly difficult 'growth'. No matter how cute your puppy is, it can't compare to the knowledge that your own body is building a completely new person.

Becoming a parent (specifically, becoming a mother) instills in you a sense of awe about humanity at large. You naturally become a bit more self-centered as you begin to realize the amazing things the human body is capable of. And then, once the baby arrives and you get to see it taking in this strange, blurry, overwhelming world, that sense of awe grows and grows - translating itself into love and admiration for this unknown little person who spends 80% of their time asleep. It isn't just love for the individual - it's love for humanity as a whole; you can look at that baby and know, once upon a time, you were like that - everyone was like that - and from this basic template there will grow someone with a smattering of your particular traits and quirks, someone you created to share the world with.

A pet can teach you amazing things about yourself and about the world they inhabit, but they can't give you that sense of history. They can't help you realize what amazing creatures humans are; only what amazing relationships humans can have with them. They can enrich your life, surely; they can make you a better, stronger person; they can give you a sense of companionship and unconditional love which no human could possibly replicate - but they can't make you feel personally responsible for the continuation of your own species.

Being the self-centered and "superior" beings we are, it's logical to some people to see themselves as the authority of their pets' lives - the judge, the keeper, the ruler.. the parent. However, this attitude is no more fair to animals than it is to children. Ownership is a myth.

I'm willing to forgive people calling their pets "babies" (or, as my mother-in-law calls them, "furbabies") because babies, in most cases, are seen as objects. For the first six months or so of life, human infants are completely lacking in human characteristics or behavior, only similar to people in appearance. They are driven by instinct and spend their awake time (what little there is) imitating, absorbing, and observing the people around them. They're not yet fully interactive. To their parents, they're amazing and beautiful; to childless people, they're creepy and uninteresting.

The term "baby" for a pet is less offensive than referring to them as your children. Some people call dolls "babies" or "baby dolls". The word "baby" is used in so many different contexts that it translates easily to anything small, very young, or precious - and always with the connotation of ownership and helplessness.

A baby is a thing. You dress it up, you feed it, you play with it, you put it to bed. You take care of it. When it becomes a child, it's something completely different. That's the reason for the invention of the term "toddler": a toddler is most definitely NOT a baby.. and it will tell you so.

A pet (according to most people's opinions) is also a thing. You feed it, you take it outside, you play with it, you give it a place to sleep. It relies on you. Have you ever caught yourself addressing your pet as an object when you're angry - for example, instead of "Bad girl, Abby!" you simply shout "Bad dog!" ? There's a difference there. You're removing the pet from a friendly context (a name, a gender, familiarity) to a more distanced and objective one (a type.. a species).

When I get mad at my cat, I call him a stupid cat. When he does something that annoys me (but is still endearing), I usually say something like "Ah, damn it, Fritz." .. And I explain to him what he did wrong, which probably sounds a bit weird, but having young children has taught me to TALK a lot more when I'm doing things, because you never know what they'll learn. .. Not that I think my cat could learn anything from me ranting at him about knocking over his water dish for the umpteenth time. Moving on.

At any rate - my personal view on people who refer to their pets as their kids is generally pity. I feel sad for people with such empty lives that they must transform a perfectly good relationship with their animal friends into the difficult and strangely parasitic one of parenthood. It shows ignorance of normal parent-child relationships, as well as a desperate yearning for family. These same people often dress their pets or give them (non-ironic) human names like Steve or Casey. It's creepy. It's not healthy.

Don't try to turn your pets into people. They're not supposed to be people. They aren't your children; they're horses and dogs and rabbits and cats and hamsters and birds. They can't talk to you, they aren't a replacement or substitute for human interaction, and they really wouldn't like to be your children. They're animals. Enjoy the relationship you have with them, and foist your fantasies of family life onto your stuffed animals where they belong.

That's what Nurse Bendy does. Even though it goes horribly, horribly wrong for her in the end. (Warning: Link goes to "Moral Orel" Season 3 Episode 4: "Alone", a harsh and somewhat disturbing look at the private lives of Moralton's spinsters. Definitely NSFW. Contains claymation nudity, the implication of autoerotica, creepy talk about eggs, and simulated non-consensual sex with a teddy bear. Watch at your own risk.)

And stop insulting the complexity of parenthood by equating it with pet ownership. The two are very different, and while owning many pets can be a difficult and full-time job, I hardly think it's the same *kind* of difficulty as raising a child.

* * *

In other news..

Another Florida child is missing: 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings, of Satsuma, FLA disappeared from a bedroom she shared with her three-year-old brother and dad's 17-year-old girlfriend between 10 p.m. February 9th and 3 a.m. February 10th.

The girlfriend (who is not the children's mother), Misty Croslin, tucked the kids into bed around 8 p.m. February 9th. She went to bed in the same room, in a bed about four feet away, at 10 p.m., and says both children were sleeping soundly. When she woke around 1 in the morning to use the bathroom, she noticed Haleigh was gone, that the kitchen light was on, and the back door was propped open with a brick.

She waited until the girl's father, Ronald Cummings, came home from work at 3:25 to tell him what had happened. Two minutes later, with him shouting in the background, she called 911 and reported the girl missing. (second part of the transcript is here) (links to the audio recordings are at the bottom of the page here)

Both of them insist the back door is always locked, both with a lock on the doorknob and a deadbolt. Neither of them can think of any way a person could have gotten inside the house. Investigators found no sign of forced entry.

Feb 10th - The search begins.
Feb 11th - Crystal Sheffield and Haleigh's maternal grandparents talk to the media.
Feb 12th - Ronald and Misty with Greta Van Susteren "On the Record".
Feb 13th - Police call off the search Friday, Feb 13th, based on discovered 'items of interest'.. but will not elaborate until tomorrow.

The Strange and Tragic Case of Sametta Heyward

2009-02-02T04:53:59Z

A single 27-year-old mother, Sametta had just moved her one-year-old daughter Triniti and four-year-old son Shawn into a tiny low-rent apartment in South Carolina. She had a job working for the state Disabilities Board at a group home called Dana House. She refused to go on welfare, instead relying on friends, neighbors, and family members to supervise her children while she worked, trying to save up enough money to move her children into a bigger and better home.

On Sunday, July 29th, 2007, the neighbor she had asked to watch her children while she went to work revealed she was too sick to watch them. "She said she'd speak to her aunt about it," the neighbor told police. "She didn't seem upset. I didn't think any more of it."

It isn't clear exactly what happened, but police theorize Sametta tried to call in sick to work and was given an ultimatum by her manager, along the lines of "If you don't come in, you're fired." She probably thought she wouldn't have time to find another sitter before her shift started.. so she took the children to work with her, and parked her Chevy Cavalier a few blocks from her workplace.

It was three o'clock on a late July afternoon. Sametta rolled the windows down a crack (not too far, she said, because she was afraid someone might try to steal her babies, and she didn't want to endanger them), turned on a small battery-operated fan, and made sure her children had access to the food and water she had brought along for them. There were toys and dolls for them to play with, pillows and blankets if they got tired; she had packed the car as if preparing for a road trip. Assured they would be all right, she went to work.. leaving them to sit and swelter. (I wonder - were they buckled in to their car seats? Or were they allowed to roam free through the car? Were the doors locked?)

She was supposed to work a double shift that night. She claims she checked on the kids (it is not clear how frequently - she changes her story from "several times" and "every few hours" to "once"), but at one point things got very busy and she wasn't able to check on them for some time. At 11:30 p.m. she told her supervisor she had a babysitting emergency, and returned to the car to find both children in the trunk, unconscious and limp with very weak pulses.

Again, it's not clear exactly what her motivation at this point was. I think she may have been afraid to take them to the hospital because she'd have to admit to leaving them in her vehicle - which might have prompted a call to Child Protective Services, which might have resulted in her losing her children - and by all accounts Sametta Heyward adored her children and worked very hard to provide for them. She may have been scared to contact authorities because of several arrests in 2006 for minor offenses, none of which resulted in a conviction. At any rate, whatever her thought process was, after attempting CPR on both of them, Sametta drove her children home.

She bathed and dressed them. She brushed their hair.

Then she put them in plastic garbage bags and stuffed them under the sink.

Sametta wrote a suicide note, apparently intending to return the children to the car and abandon it at a local Arby's before hanging herself in a nearby park, but police found the note at her home and found nothing in the car she could have used to kill herself.

A neighbor says she saw Sametta returning to her apartment around 2 p.m. on Monday afternoon carrying a bag and a drink from Arby's, which implies she may have driven herself out there with the intent of carrying through, or done a "practice run", but wasn't able to actually complete the scenario. Or hey, maybe she just really wanted some Arby's, who knows.

Police received a call from a relative of the father of Sametta's ex-boyfriend (re-read that as many times as necessary), who lives in Maryland, asking them to check on her and the children. He was able to tell them the children were beneath the sink. This suggests Sametta, needing someone to talk to, tried turning to people she had been close to in the past - either hoping they would counsel her out of a suicide attempt, or help her find the "right" thing to do.

According to the police report, Sametta bit, kicked, and yelled at them when they attempted to enter her apartment. She then begged them to kill her and collapsed in tears when they found the bags beneath the sink.

The final autopsy reports, released to the press in early September 2007, indicate the children died of heatstroke, which means they were indeed dead when Sametta placed them in the garbage bags.

It's easy enough to say "Any parent - or any pet owner, for that matter - knows not to leave children and animals inside vehicles in the sun." But I think Sametta was under a great deal of external pressure - afraid she might lose her job, putting their future at risk; unable to find suitable supervision for them on short notice; afraid of being seen or categorized as a "bad mother" for the financial shortcomings that had put her in such an awkward and untenable position. She was desperate. She had to go to work, or her children were doomed anyways.

Several of the articles I've read question why she didn't try to talk to her supervisor, or bring the children inside the group home. If the theory that she was given an ultimatum ("come in to work or you're fired") is true, then it's also safe to assume her manager would not have been receptive to the idea of small children in the workplace, or of allowing her any leeway because of them. Sametta probably felt bullied into having to risk her children's lives so she could afford to keep a roof over their heads. Her decision was not wise, but it might have been the only option she could see available at that point in time.

The forensic examiners differ greatly in their interpretation of the case. While they all agree the children were healthy and showed no signs of being mistreated, some chose to focus on the fact that both children had "possibly significant" levels of acetaminophen (Tylenol) in their systems, along with trace amounts of nicotine and caffeine. One negative report focused on the sixty-plus scars found on one-year-old Triniti's body, while another mentioned those scars as being normal given the context of an urban upbringing. "None of them are suspicious," coroner Glenn Rhoad said. "I don't think they are an indication of abuse or anything out of the ordinary, really."

For whatever reason, Sametta Heyward's case has not made it to trial. She spent several months in jail, but multiple suicide attempts led to her being released into house arrest. She is under constant supervision, receiving mental health care, and is by all accounts simply trying to return to living a normal life.

I've seen many articles blaming the state of South Carolina for this tragedy, and that strikes me as ridiculous. Sametta Heyward was proud enough to refrain from going on welfare; are people actually going to stand up and say now that she *should* have been relying on the state to care for her children? And are they saying that in light of the fact that her children died a tragic and preventable death, rather than considering the already overburdened state system, or the humiliation she would have suffered as a part of it? The fact is, her children should not have died - but that's hardly the state's fault. Perhaps she should have compromised her values and left them with someone she didn't know as well as the original babysitter she had scheduled.

I keep coming back to the manager, though. I feel sincerely bad for this woman, who was so whipped by the need for money that she wound up in this scenario. As a single mother, she knows she must provide for her babies; she is their only source of food, comfort, and shelter. If she loses her job, she's not only unemployed, she's also an unfit mother. The immense pressure this must put on her means that any retort from her employer - whether sincere or not - weighs on her twice as heavy, because she knows, in order for her children to survive, she must have a job. If that means she must compromise every other value in her life, she will do it, because she needs her job.. because she loves her kids.

The amount of power this grants her supervisor is astounding. They could tell her to work two double shifts in a row, and she would probably do it - and be excited about all the extra money she'll be getting. They could take away her lunch breaks (if she had them to begin with, which, according to the sparse descriptions of her job, is not likely), and she wouldn't put up a fuss. To some extent, any parent in a low-paying or labor-intensive job is in a very similar situation. Having children adds an amazing amount of stress to the job.

In fact, when fathers "snap" and kill their families, seven times out of ten it's because they were recently fired or demoted. Failure as a provider means failure as a human being; rather than watch their family suffer - the disappointment, the struggling, the change in lifestyle - they decide it would be much better to just kill them now and save them the pain. Some people say this is more status-based than it is driven by emotions, but I disagree. Men are routinely discouraged from showing their emotions, and few things in life trigger as negative and overwhelming an emotional response as getting fired. It makes sense then that this overload of bad feelings would drive them to make such a desperate attempt to "fix" everything.. by destroying it.

Of course I'm just making assumptions about Sametta's employer and the type of job she had. It makes sense in the context of her life. She was one of a hundred thousand similar women - struggling mothers living barely above the poverty level, fighting to take care of their children and carve a place for their families in a cold and uncaring world. Most of these women are under-educated, underpaid, overworked, and heavily reliant on either a support network of friends and family or the welfare system. She wanted to be strong and do it herself, without relying on the state for help - that's admirable.

Obviously this was not the first time her manager had threatened her job, or she might have risked it by calling in sick, asking for an hour to find care for her kids, or even bringing them along with her to the workplace.

It is a fairly progressive (read: wealthy and open-minded) employer that will allow employees' children in the workplace. And it's also fairly progressive for a manager to *not* flip out on employees who need extra time to take care of their family's needs. Having a family makes you expendable in the workplace. A single person has nothing better to do; someone with a family is treated as an annoyance because they are constantly focused on their family's well-being. This means inconvenient interruptions to the work schedule, ill-timed emergency room visits, calling off for things like "my wife is having a baby" or "my kid needs to be picked up from school". Chances are, if your boss doesn't have children and you do, and you try to be an active and responsible part of your family unit, you're not going to last long. Or - worse yet - if your boss has children but never sees them because he's always working, and you have children you'd like to see more often, he'll resist your demands for time off based on the resentment he has for his own situation as compared to yours. "If I can't see my kids, neither can you."

Who held the power in this case? I think if it wasn't for her abject fear of losing her job, Sametta Heyward's children would be alive today. She didn't make a wise decision - and she realized that, halfway through her double shift that night - but it's impossible for me to believe she did it out of malice towards her babies, or out of plain stupidity. Frustrated and overwhelmed by her responsibilities, unable to find someone to care for her children, she did the only thing she could think to do. It's tragic that she will spend the rest of her life regretting that decision.

Winning the Losers' Lottery

2009-01-28T04:23:13Z

Because of last night's decision to spring for pizza rather than force myself to cook, today I had to make a little phone call to the cable company to grovel for their forgiveness and plead with them not to turn off our internet access on the 2nd as they would like to do. (Well.. to be totally honest, whether or not we had pizza last night wouldn't have impacted the need for this phone call. It was more like "Are we totally screwed now, or are you folks willing to cooperate until our next paycheck?")

Thankfully they were in a merciful mood and decreed we shall pay them on the 5th. Excellent.

Then I called Cathy because she had mentioned possibly needing me to watch her kids this afternoon.

This is where the day gets interesting. In the first phone call, she says yes, I do need you to watch Becky and Adam, but it will only be for about an hour. Great, okay, fine.

She calls back half an hour later: "Well, my neighbor said last night she would watch Andy, but now she's saying she can't. So he's coming over too." Argh.. okay. It just means I'll have to be more vigilant, that's all.

She calls back again, another half an hour later: "Would it be okay if I brought them over early? I have to go to the store," blah blah blah.
"Sure. How early?"
"Well, Becky doesn't get off the bus until 12:30, so.. would one o'clock be okay?"
"Sure."

She drops the kids off at 12:45, hurried and flustered. "I'll see you at two," I say, as I'm shutting the door.
"Oh," she says, turning back towards me. "Actually it's going to be longer than that. I have to go to the store and then I have to drive out there and they said they'll have to do blood work so it's probably going to be a while."
"Oh. How long?"
"I should definitely be back before four."
I nod, disappointed but accepting. "Okay. We'll see you then."

I think this time, because Rob was here playing WoW and I was actually in the living room with all of them, they behaved themselves much better than they have before - which isn't to say the day was problem-free. Edgrr got a little over-excited and started throwing toys around the living room, earning himself two separate time outs. I caught him later helping his brother climb up on top of the dresser in Trevor's room, and punished both of them for that - the thought of Trevor falling off that thing is terrifying! It's a good four and a half feet off the floor!

Edgrr had fun pushing Becky down the hall in the tote bin used for Trevor's toys; Andy went through every single toy in the toybox, talking about each of them and asking me where they had come from. Adam was his usual adorable, snuggly, non-verbal self, and spent a good portion of his time simply sitting on my knee, grinning to himself. Trevor really, really wanted Adam to play with him, and kept giving him hugs and kisses, but Adam seemed disinterested in doing anything other than chilling on my lap and occasionally going to sit by the coffee table, making sporadic grunting / growling / dinosaur noises.

So Trevor, Becky, Edgrr, and Andy amused themselves with toys, running up and down the hall, and a long laugh-and-bounce-athon on the couch, while I supervised and continually checked in on them when they'd wander into Trevor's room. I checked the clock on my phone when I felt myself finally getting antsy, and saw that it was almost 3. This was exciting news, although I hoped Cathy would be back sooner rather than later, as Edgrr had already mentioned he was hungry twice and I knew I couldn't afford to make dinner for all of them.

Hawkeye came home a little bit later and was irritated to see Andy. "Cathy should be back in about half an hour, forty-five minutes tops," I said, now even more anxious for these kids to be gone so I could spend time with Hawkeye instead of them.

She called at four o'clock. "I haven't even gotten back to see the doctor yet," she said. "I wanted to let you know."
"Do you know how long it will be?"
"I have no idea. None at all."
"Okay," I said, and I knew I probably sounded annoyed, but I didn't really care. "We'll see you later."

"Was that her?" Hawkeye asked.
"What time is she coming by?" Rob asked. Both of them were excited.
"She has no idea," I grumbled, and we heaved a collective sigh.

Cathy showed up at 5:30. "I'm so sorry," she said. "Once they called me back it took no time at all, but there were twelve people ahead of me in the waiting room.."

"It's all right," I said. "I know how it can be, going to the doctor, expecting to be there for half an hour and having it take three hours or more. Listen.. Hawkeye and I got tickets for a movie tomorrow night. Would you be willing to watch the boys? It's in Birmingham so it would probably be from about six until nine-ish. Is that okay?"

"Oh, sure," she said. "No problem at all."

And this is why I continue to watch her kids, even though this scenario repeats itself over and over. Sigh. I need more mommy friends.. ones who have only one or two kids, and who are just as willing to watch my kids or drive us places as Cathy is. Argh, I hate myself for being upset with her sometimes; she's a good person, I just wish.. I wish I didn't have to watch all three of her kids at once; I wish Andy wasn't so obnoxious; I wish she would stick to the timetables she gives me when she asks me to babysit. That's all. Is that so much?

Funny Things Andy Said Today:

"Trevor has been hitting Edgrr and pushing Becky, too, I think."
"Oh," said Hawkeye, irritated. "I'll wait until later to punish him."
When Hawkeye turned to walk away, Andy knocked Trevor onto his back, stepped on his hand, and called out "People are getting hurt!" as Trevor started to wail in pain and anger. He saw me watching him from the couch, and smiled - not a "Look at me being innocent" smile but a "Ha ha, I got away with it" smile. I hurried down there to comfort Trevor, who was inconsolable for several minutes, showing me his reddened hand and repeating "Boo-boo!", and I sent Andy into the front room to sit on the couch. He was smart enough to not protest.

"I know what happened. Edgrr was over here, and Trevor was playing with toys, and then Edgrr probably, like, hit him in the head or something, like this."
"Did you see Edgrr hit Trevor?"
"No."
"Edgrr, why is your brother crying?"
"Um," says Edgrr, frowning. "Fall down. Was climbing on toybox and fall down."
"He's lying," Andy says when I turn to him.

"Edgrr's like five or six, isn't he?"
"No, he's only three and a half. He's just a little bit bigger than your sister. He'll turn four in July."
Andy nods, absorbing this. "So he'll probably stop being bad when he's that big, right?"
I can't help but laugh, and Hawkeye and Rob are giggling too, amused and annoyed at the same time. "How old will you have to be before you stop being bad, Andy?"
"I don't know," he says, smiling uncertainly. He thinks maybe he said something funny, but he can also sense we're making fun of him, and he's not sure whether he should be angry or not.

"They were good," I told Cathy as she herded them all into coats and hats. "Edgrr had a few time-outs in his room, because he was throwing toys and stuff, but they played together well; they were good."
"See, Mom?" Andy said, stepping between us, checking to see if I'm paying attention. "I *told* you Edgrr was bad."
She pauses, obviously startled, bothered and embarrassed by her son's nerve. "Listen," she says, leaning down to his level. "Edgrr is younger than you and is still learning how to play nicely with other kids. He's not bad, he's just little. You could help him learn to behave better instead of saying mean things about him."
"It's not mean," Andy grumbled, again looking at me, making sure I'm watching. "It's true."
She doesn't know what to say to that, and neither do I, although secretly I'm shooting daggers at him with my eyes and wishing he had said that half an hour ago when I could have done something about it.

Once everybody left, I asked Edgrr what he wanted for dinner, and he said he wanted pizza. Hearing this, Trevor raced into the kitchen ahead of me in his clunky winter boots (winter boots and a onesie, what an ensemble) and started climbing up into his chair, chanting "Peeba! Peeba! Peeba!"

There was enough pizza left for each of them to have two slices, and two slices of Daddy's pepperoni-and-banana-pepper for Hawkeye himself; but after picking all the pineapple and tomatoes off his slices Edgrr demanded peanut butter and jelly. Trevor, seeing me making a sandwich, instantly wanted one for himself, as well. So it was a slap-together slightly messy afterthought of a dinner.

Cleaned the boys up, let them run around for a while, then at about 6:30 announced it was bedtime. The usual ritual of collecting cups and bas. Clean sheets for both beds, clean blankets from the dryer. They both fell asleep within an hour, exhausted from a long day of goofing around. Good stuff.

* * * * *

Scene: Several years from now. I have somehow managed to write and polish a piece of work which somebody else thinks people would spend money on and possibly even enjoy. This is the day the publishers' check arrives in the mail.

H: What's that?
Me: ... It's my paycheck for that thing I wrote.
H: Ooh, really? How much is it for?
Me: It's money.
H: How much money?
Me: It's money.
H: Is it enough to buy a house?
Me: No.
H: Is it enough to buy a car?
Me: Not a new one, no.
H: Is it enough to buy us pizza for dinner?
Me: Yes.
H: Hooray!

And they lived happily ever after, the end.

Current Events

2009-01-22T18:49:31Z

The bad:

Over MLK weekend our pipes froze, and the park-sponsored handyman who came out to have a look at it informed us we have a bad leak in our water heater which, left unchecked, will continue to freeze up the pipes in the winter, rot away the back bathroom floor with water damage, and could potentially kill us with carbon monoxide poisoning due to its lack of proper venting. Any of that, or cause a deadly explosion when we go to re-light the damn pilot due to those same gasses building up inside the little closet that holds the water heater.

This, less than a week after we get our furnace repaired and functional again to the tune of $100. Christ.

So we were feeling pretty glum about this. We had no water for a full day, but luckily the heat tape has decided to do its crappy job, and the water flows. It's freezing cold because the heater won't stay lit (due to the leak), but hey, at least it's there. And, by the way, I want everyone to take a minute or two to really think how difficult your daily life could be without running water. That means: no water to cook with, no water to wash with, no toilet facilities. Now add two rambunctious, frequently sticky, hungry toddlers to that equation. They want mac & cheese; Mommy says no because there's no water - and of course this makes NO sense, because they don't want water, they want mac & cheese. "Make with the mommy magic," they insist, and I look at them wondering how I can reduce it into terms they'll understand, or if it's even worth the effort.

It occurred to me that there is snow on the ground, which if heated on the stove would become water, but to my deep personal shame I couldn't quite stomach the thought of cooking food in water that came from outside. Is that sad or what? Sometimes I'm sickened by how spoiled modern conveniences have made me.

Now, by all rights, this malfunction is mostly our fault. Hawkeye heard the thing leaking - it makes a hissing, dripping sound whenever the pilot is lit - but wasn't sure what to do about it, and neither was I. My darling husband also neglected to check or turn on the heat tape under the trailer, without which the pipes are basically exposed to the elements and defenseless against freezing weather. Could I have done it myself? Probably. Did I think to do it, or even remind him to do so? Nope. So, oops.

A new water heater, by the way, runs about $500. That's a pretty big chunk of change. The poor man has been in a funk since getting this news, and seems to have an all-out doom-and-gloom-athon happening inside his head. First the car (brakes are dead - $200), then the furnace (some old grody deelybopper needs replacing - $100), now this (the luxury of warm water in winter - $500). My mother-in-law assures me the family's bad luck always runs in threes, and is hoping our luck changes.

The good:

Last night, Hawkeye calls me from a job, all excited. He was given the task of pulling out all the wet, partially frozen insulation from beneath a woman's trailer where she too had a leaky water heater. While talking to her about the damage, she mentioned she'd looked up the manufacturer online and discovered her unit was under warranty, so she wasn't worried about having to buy a new one. (Despite this, when he discussed the extent of the damage with her later in the day, she broke down crying on the living room floor - even though all costs are being covered by her insurance policy.)

So, bright idea: look up the information on the water heater and see whether or not we're actually financially responsible for replacing it. After all, we were told the water heater was new when we bought the place back in 2006.

I did so, but was dismayed to find there was no warranty on file under its serial number, according to the website. I left a message with the manufacturer and resolved to call the front office in the hopes that they'd retained information on such things as installation date, or maybe even the original warranty card. I felt a little discouraged by the setback, though, and had little hope of a favorable solution. The front office here has never been helpful, and at times has treated me with outright rudeness and suspicion.

About an hour ago I remembered I was supposed to call the front office. I tried to talk to the idiot receptionist, who at first told me they didn't keep files on the homes, then told me they "throw away all that kind of stuff" at the end of the year. I could hear in the background the quiet authoritarian voice of Tony, the park manager, trying to advise her on how to answer my questions. She put me on hold three times to confer with him, and finally, after a fourth brief moment on hold, he answered the phone.

"I just need to know when the water heater was installed," I said, because really that was the only reason I had called - to find out how long ago it was put in place, by whom, and what had happened to the warranty paperwork.

"Well, we don't know," he said. "I understand you've been having problems with your furnace and that the water heater failed as a result of that. We're not liable for that."

"I know," I said, after a slightly stunned, slightly offended pause. "It's just that I was wondering how old the water heater is. When we moved in we were told it was new, and I'm curious.."

"You would have to call the manufacturer. We don't keep any of those records."

"So you wouldn't be able to tell me how old the water heater actually is?"

"No."

"I thought it was installed by the park's staff."

"No."

"So it was in place when you purchased the trailer?"

"I don't know."

"Well, where was the trailer located before it was purchased?"

"I don't know."

By now, my head was swimming. How could they run a business like this? If I chose to say the water heater had failed as a result of the park's faulty installation, they would have no legal documents to back up whether or not it was their fault. I tried one last time, knowing there were probably no answers to be had from this man.

"So.. you don't know how old the water heater is, when it was installed, who installed it, or what happened to the warranty paperwork?"

"Look," he said, clearly irritated, "we don't hang on to those sorts of things. We throw it all out when somebody purchases the home. Go look at your water heater, there's probably a date of manufacture on there."

"Yes, but a date of manufacture is not the same as a date of installation."

"You would have to call the manufacturer. It's your responsibility. We're not responsible for maintaining paperwork on your home. You purchased it, we didn't need the documents any more, we threw them out. It's office policy."

"All right," I said. I have to admit, it pleased me to hear him so flustered and annoyed. "I'll call the manufacturer. Thanks."

Why on earth would you throw out valuable information on the appliances installed in a home you sold, rather than give them to the new owner? And if the receptionist was telling the truth when she said they throw out those documents at the end of the year, does anyone in the park have any documentation on the park staff's installations, repairs, or service calls on their appliances? Why not retain them for legal purposes, to protect himself if somebody decides to sue over a faulty water heater or a leaky fridge? It's completely ridiculous.

Anyhoo.. I called the manufacturer a second time, figuring there was no point in waiting for them to return my call, and after getting bounced around the switchboard for ten minutes or so I was happily informed the unit was indeed under warranty (yay!) and given the number of a local shop that could replace the unit. We'll have to pay for labor costs, but hopefully that won't be even half the cost of a new water heater.

Tried to call Hawkeye to tell him the good news (and to tell him to tell Rob that if he hopes to have any information on the water heater recently installed by the park, he'd better go get it from the office *now* before they have a chance to dispose of it), but he didn't answer. Probably busy or out of range. He will be very happy to hear this, though.

Now, a question: Would that story have been just as good if I'd merely typed "Our water heater broke, but it's under warranty so no biggie." ?

11 words vs. 1506. I know writing is not so much a matter of quantity as it is a matter of quality, but...

Oh yeah - what I did last night / this morning:

So Hawkeye finally comes home at about eleven-thirty, with a few bags of basic groceries to get us through the day today. (We were literally down to three packs of Ramen noodles and several bags of beans.. period.) He has been working in horrible conditions all day and all he wants to do is sit on his butt and play Warcraft.. what else is new? So after putting away the groceries amidst some brief chatter about his trying day, he starts up the game and is surprised and pleased to see the Blizzard updater start to download a new patch.

A minor side note: For months, at least since November, Rob has been using the (not quite legal) private server method for playing WoW. He downloaded trial versions of the game, which installed the necessary software to run the game, then connected with a privately-owned server running an emulation of WoW. While he can access most of the same content as paying Blizzard customers, the private servers have been tweaked by their owners, so that players level faster, get a great deal more treasure from kills, and can even get items custom-created by the hacks who run the server. In addition, Rob doesn't have to pay a penny for the service.

The up side: He gets to play WoW for free.
The down side: He's not playing the actual game; the servers have not been updated since 'WotLK' was announced (not released.. announced) - so he can't access any of the content that's "exclusive" to the 'WotLK' expansion.
Because he's not playing the version run by corporate money-grubbing programmers with leet skillz, the servers are full of bugs (such as NPCs who don't move, quest items you can't delete, strange "empty" loot boxes that only reveal their treasure when you try to close the loot window, et cetera), frequently shut down on their own, have no scheduled maintenance or update days, and.. oh yeah.. there's NOBODY THERE.
As in NOBODY. As in, when you log on, the start-up dialogue reveals today's Maximum Online to be 4. FOUR. That's four people, around the entire world, playing WoW on this particular crappy server. Umm.. yeah. MMORPG be damned.

Yes, I'm now playing on the same private server. Yes, I'm still ethically opposed to doing so. Yes, I know it's cheating, and no, I'm not proud of it.. but it gives me basically the same game experience while saving us $15 a month - which probably doesn't sound like much, but that's a month's worth of diapers right there.

Our WoW bill was due on the 17th this month, and we cancelled our accounts because 1) there wasn't enough money in the bank to pay the bill without bouncing and 2) we wanted to spend what little there was on dinner. We've been scraping by food-wise for the past two weeks, and I couldn't take another night of Ramen noodles. We do plan on re-instating at least Hawkeye's account because he loves the "real" game, and considers Rob's servers a fun diversion for the time being. I might not reinstate my own because, as much as I generally enjoy the game, it's not all that great to me, and I haven't been playing video games much at all lately anyhow.

So. After Blizzard put their new patch on Hawkeye's installation, he tried to run the game, and it wouldn't allow him onto the private servers. He started to get paranoid about "what if they blocked me from using that server", while Rob told him he just needed to change what his realmlist said, so it would direct back to the private servers instead of the Blizzard ones. No luck - the game still hung while "Retrieving character information". Hawkeye was getting more and more discouraged as Rob tried tweak after tweak. His own game wasn't working either.

This went on for about an hour before I stepped in. See, although we had cancelled our accounts, I knew they were still accessible until 4:30 a.m. on January 22nd. So I went in and re-set Hawkeye's game to its original settings. He was delighted to see his "old" characters, and spent the next several hours joyously raiding heroic dungeons.. while Rob sat and cursed at the hacks who create and run his beloved private servers for failing to mention the upcoming patch or prepare for it.

Around 1:30 a.m. Rob decided he was going to buy a WoW game card so he could log on to the actual game and play. He didn't want to go alone, and Hawkeye had just gotten into a group for a dungeon, so I was coerced into accompanying Rob to Meijer's. He offered to buy me something just so I would agree to go with him.. and I figured I could cut our diaper costs in half thanks to his generosity.

We wandered around; he suggested I get a big bag of candy to munch on while we walked, so I scooped up a good two and a half pounds of gummy candy from the by-the-pound dispensers. Then we went by the diaper area so I could snag a big package of them for Edgrr, as well as some diaper wipes. We made our way to the Electronics department in a round-about sort of way, and spent about twenty minutes there searching every shelf, nook and cranny for WoW game cards. They had none.

They did have a few WoW "free trial" discs, though - both of which had already been torn open by thieves too stupid to actually take what they needed - one held a game disc and a passcode, and the other still had the passcode inside, although the disc was missing.

These Rob nonchalantly stuck in his pocket. I couldn't figure out why, since he could have just downloaded the exact same stuff from the website (and I told him this at the time, while he tried to correct my understanding of how the Blizzard software works), but I thought it would be funny to see the look on his face when he got home and realized they would be no help whatsoever.

We got up to the register - only the self-scans were open at this hour, and there was one bored-looking young woman standing on duty at the cashier's station, overseeing them all. A group of rowdy teens was loudly discussing their plan to go to a nearby strip club, and she joined in with them, joking and laughing along.

I held up the bag of candy, realizing it had no "code" on it, and said, "What do we do about this?"

"Nothing," Rob muttered. "Hang on to it."

I nodded and swung it into an open plastic bag at the end of the aisle, tossing the baby wipes in beside it.

So, free candy and baby supplies in tow, we returned to the house, where Rob (after spending another hour trying to get the trial cards to give him full access) decided his only option was to uninstall and re-install the game. This will not get rid of the patch; in fact, when he tries to run the game again, it will try to download all of the patches at once, giving him no option of sticking with the next-to-last patch. Ha ha ha. I can't help but find it funny, in a mean sort of way. It's great to see Mr I'm-Always-Right faced with a problem he can't solve.

I haven't checked today to see whether or not the private servers are up again, but I'm guessing they aren't. The main hack is probably trying to scramble to get his servers updated so they function again, on top of a full-time job and his own personal hobbies outside of WoW.. if he has any. Rob gave up around 3 last night, while the game was re-installing very slowly, and hasn't checked on it since.

For my part, I went to bed around 4:30 (uugghh, I know, I was up all night writing and goofing off). The boys both started waking up around 5, so I slept intermittently between then and 7:30, when I finally roused myself to get Grr ready for school. The lack of sleep is catching up with me, so I'm hoping I can coax Edgrr into taking a nap (or at least playing in his room for an hour or two) while Mommy takes a short nap and recharges for the evening.

Here's to hoping. :)

random thought(s)

2009-01-22T14:42:32Z

There is a point at which the need and desire to speak is replaced by the need and desire to write. This might be what Prof. Elbow is calling "voice": the writing may still, technically, suck, but the energy and style that was once used in speech is now easily translated into text. The writing is facile and has a "genuine" sound to it, a sincerity which more polished or practiced efforts have bled out of them.. and I suspect, in the near future, I will unlock the secrets of how to push that sincerity back into those paragraphs bled dry.

And I'm afraid what I'm trying to say here is the exact antithesis of the theory I'm trying to describe, because of word choice and clunky sentence structure.

(It's the best I can do on two and a half hours of frequently broken sleep, and for that, it's not so bad.)

My roundabout point being: I have been here before, and now I am arriving again. It's good to see familiar territory, and even more encouraging to discover I've achieved some perspective on it since I was here last. This bodes well.

Addendum: Poppy Z. Brite is bumping her eBay auctions, lovely hand-decorated custom-made journals with her signature (upon request). So, so, so want. And yet.. I would be incredibly intimidated by such a beautiful little book, with its naked pages begging for something beautiful, worthwhile, memorable. Would it require a promise of quality to open one, or would such a prized journal elevate the mundane to the level of sublime beauty?

Writing Shtuff

2009-01-22T00:58:47Z

Having just put the kids down for the night, I was sitting here contemplating what I feel like writing tonight, and had a sudden slew of writing-related stuff occur to me all at once. Not ideas - questions and observations. Not having close ties with any group of writers, I thought I'd work them out here, and then go in search of some answers.. or, more likely, validation and comfort.

Without further ado..

1 - For the past several years I've had little problem coming up with plots, but my characters tend to be quite shallow. Prior to 2000, I had the exact opposite problem. (And when I say "coming up with plots", make no assumptions they're GOOD; they just ARE - coherent and in some cases logical, but not always good.) So.. what the hell is that? A sudden distancing from writerly invasion of imaginary people's minds? Logic muscling out intuition? Order overcoming creative chaos? (On a side note, I have noticed my attitudes leaning more towards law-abiding citizenship and conformity than ever before, and I have been somewhat obsessive with list-making, meal-planning, and schedule-keeping; so maybe this is a sign of the left brain currently having dominance?)

2 - Is it a distinct sign of bad quality if you re-read a story concept, ideas for a project, or a plot outline and are bored with it? Or could the boredom be coming from the knowledge of how much time and effort will need to be invested in order to bring that plan to fruition? (not sure if anyone other than myself can answer that one)

3 - Is it possible and/or beneficial to view each chapter of a novel as a short story? Or does that completely break up the "flow" of the storyline? I'm curious if anyone has done this or read something like it. Since I have an easier time writing short stories than long-form projects such as novels, this would be a "happy medium" for me, making any future novel projects that much easier.

Thus far, the 2k-a-day is going quite well. It's true I've skipped a few days (two, in fact, if I recall correctly), but it's becoming an ingrained habit again. The continuing problem with it is a) finding the time (or, to clarify, resisting the urge to bum around and/or clean the house instead of writing) and b) prodding myself into writing something Profitable.

On that note.. While I began the year expecting / hoping to jump-start a freelance career, I've since come to terms with the fact that I really honestly do not like the idea of writing non-fiction, period. This is not to say it won't be done. From time to time, I get the urge to write essays, and non-fic writing is much easier than writing fiction in a thousand little ways. It's more like.. I've accepted the fact that right now, trying to conform the bulk of my writing to writer's guidelines, editorial calendars, and submission schedules sounds painful, would be detrimental to the writing itself, and is far beyond my current capacity (not to mention *cough* talent). So instead I'm allowing myself to focus on other things - writing what I want to write - and knowing that, in time, the "pressure" of creating for pay won't seem so great.

Well. I'm off to Seventh Sanctum for some short-short inspiration(s), and then.. we'll see.

When Amusement Becomes Abuse: Video Game Addiction and Its Victims

2009-01-16T05:07:52Z

In October 2007, when his parents decided they had put up with enough, they took away 16-year-old Daniel Petric's "Halo 3" game and hid it in a lockbox. They decided their son had been playing the game too frequently and that it was affecting his behavior and his performance at school. (He admits he would play sometimes for 18-hour periods; it's unclear whether this was at home, or while visiting friends.)

A little more than a week later, Daniel stole the key to his father's lockbox and removed both the treasured X-Box game and the 9mm handgun stored within. He went into the living room, where his parents were watching television, and said "Hey, could you guys close your eyes for a minute? I have a surprise for you."

The surprise was a bullet in each of their heads, as well as in each of his mother's arms. He then tried to fit the handgun into his father's hand, saying, "Here, Dad, take this - it's yours."

The Petric family had been expecting Daniel's sister and her husband for a visit at 9 p.m. to watch the Indians game on TV. She arrived at 7 p.m., two hours early, and became suspicious when Daniel wouldn't let her into the house. He told her their parents had been fighting and it would be best if she left. Instead, she and her husband forced their way into the house, discovering the grisly scene.. and Daniel fled on foot, "Halo 3" still in his hand.

AJ Glasser at Kotaku, like me, believes blaming video games (or horror movies, or comic books, or ...) for violence is a tactic chosen by the lazy and the scared. He doesn't think we should take "video game addiction" any more seriously than any other "Twinkie defense", or the claims made by the widow Huberty after her husband shot 40 people at a San Ysidro McDonald's.

Truthfully, it all makes me think back to Lauren's statement for 2009, that we need to hold ourselves accountable. How can parents, spouses, or any intelligent individual attempting to explain their own violent and/or anti-social behavior place the blame on anything OUTSIDE of the person who committed the act OR people held responsible for that person's behavior? For example, a kid wears headphones to his graduation, earning a stern reprimand from his parents - is it Apple's fault, the iPod's fault, the kid's, or perhaps the parents' fault for not making sure the iPod was left at home?

Granted, there are some people with valid mental disorders which prevent them from being able to separate fantasy from reality, or causing them to hear and obey commands from entities that aren't there or don't exist. But I don't think Daniel Petric is one of those.

Judge Burge, presiding over Petric's trial, as quoted from the Times Online: "Judge Burge said there was ample evidence that the boy planned to kill his parents. But the judge said he believed playing the games long enough caused physical and psychological changes in the teenager's brain, similar to drug use. "When you stop, your brain won't stand for it, just as it wouldn't stand for it when you quit using heroin or crack cocaine," he said."

So while we rational-minded casual gamers laughingly refer to WoW as "Warcrack" - are we unwittingly taking part in our own gradual mental decline? Am I one day going to wake up and have my identity confused with that of my video-game character? As Petric's defense lawyer implies, am I going to assume that, because death is not permanent in the fictional pixellated world in which I play for fun, then death in reality must not be permanent either?

It's a ridiculous assumption. It's an assumption that insults the intelligence and mental stability of every decent human being who ever picked up a video game controller or learned to navigate using WASD. It's an assumption that damages the entire video game industry and gamers everywhere with its implication of a threat embedded in our amusements.

The games themselves aren't the problem - the behavior that governs their use IS. When a person plays Warcraft for sixteen hours straight, it's probably safe to assume their brains are no longer working at optimal capability.. but we have no data to back that up. We may point the finger at Blizzard for creating a damaging video game, but in truth, it is the end user's responsibility to limit and carefully monitor their use of the game - whether or not it actually is dangerous.

Take a look at drunk driving. Across the nation law enforcement agencies are working to make drinkers more responsible for their behavior while intoxicated, with sometimes appalling results. Off the top of my head, I have read more than ten news stories over the past six months where an intoxicated person was arrested driving with their child in the vehicle, usually to buy more liquor or on the way home from doing so. I can think of at least three instances where a child was asked (or forced) to drive their parent to the liquor store because the parent knew they would probably get arrested or kill somebody if they took the wheel. Are these acts the fault of their drink of choice, or the drinker? Of course you would say the drinker - so why on earth are we pointing the finger at video games instead of the gamer (or, in the case of a minor, the gamer's parents)?

There is nothing wrong with setting limits on gameplay - and, in fact, it's my opinion that all parents ought to take advantage of their right to do so, long before it becomes an issue. Neglecting to do so (to be The Good Parent, to seem "cool", or maybe because you bought that console partially for yourself and don't want to set a double standard) is always ultimately harmful to the parent-child relationship, because the issue is bound to come up at some point, and your kid will wonder why you suddenly don't want him to have any fun anymore. This results in feelings of resentment, anger, maybe even acting out.. maybe even you getting shot in the head.

If Daniel Petric were truly a child - a person between, say, five and eight - and had committed this heinous crime, I would be more likely to give credence to the theory that it was because he had "mixed up" reality with the video game. Unfortunately, I believe by the age of sixteen an otherwise mentally stable person would be capable of telling "real" from "not real", "right" from "wrong", "good" from "evil". Not to mention the fact that according to psychiatrists consulted for the case, Daniel had been talking about hurting or killing his parents - in retaliation for taking his game, it should be noted - for at least a week prior to the shooting.

It's also worth mentioning that Daniel's father is a respected Reverend. Now, whether or not their household follows stereotype remains to be seen, but I would think having a clergyman for a father would mean living under stricter guidelines. It's fairly open-minded of Rev. Petric to even allow his son to own a game like "Halo 3" - an impressive immersive 3D environment in which the player hunts down and kills invading aliens.

So my questions are: Was Daniel Petric mentally sound before this event? Does he have a history of violent behavior or talking about violent behavior? Have his parents ever had to take away other playthings he'd formed an "addictive" relationship to - Pokemon on his Game Boy, Magic: The Gathering cards, favorite albums, magazines, or comic books?

Had his parents attempted to control, monitor, or limit his gameplay before? What were the results of those confrontations?

Was he actually noticeably more violent or aggressive after playing "Halo 3", or could it be that his parents, already annoyed by their son's excessive gaming, picked up on those behaviors and their importance seemed connected somehow - used as justification for their anger, because they felt silly being angry over a video game?

If we're going to entertain the notion that "video-game addiction" could be a factual mental disorder, then we can't limit it to one form of media. Think back to the formation of the Comics Code; the ruckus raised by Elvis Presley and other icons of "devil music"; the stigma that still hangs over Dungeons and Dragons; gruesome happenings during the past 20 years that have been pinned on everything from rock bands to junk food and allergies. Not to mention that what we're discussing here isn't simply addiction, it's psychosis stemming from an addiction. If people can blame their favorite waste of time for their crimes, then soon enough we'll be looking at a generation of "Facebook Slasher"s and "MySpace Mutilator"s. Again, it is not an issue of use, but one of moderation. And sometimes, even that moderation isn't quite enough - take, for example, Megan Meier's MySpace-inspired suicide.

For the past fifty-plus years we have found convenient sources in our media and entertainment to blame for misbehavior, when in fact, these are not the source of the problem. The problem is not the availability of the media; it's a question of parental monitoring and the ability to self-monitor. Putting a warning label on video games is not going to stop them from being habit-forming any more than the Surgeon General's warnings stop people from smoking.

Is there any way we can prove, conclusively, that any particular source of entertainment has a profound effect on the human psyche?

I believe in the possibility of Internet addiction and video game addiction. For about a year, I spent a good eight to twelve hours a night playing Sims Online, and I knew other players who were even more absorbed in it than I was. But even then I recognized the basic flaw in my functioning: I was using Sims Online as a substitute for reality; I was using a social video game to satisfy my desire for social interaction in the most comfortable and effortless way possible. I was able to see the problem, and while I didn't take steps to remedy it, I figured it would reach an endpoint on its own - I would get bored, or find something else to do with my time, and the game's hold over me would be finished. As it happens, I made friends online outside of Sims Online, who then became real-life friends, and I no longer needed the game to satisfy the craving for social interaction. I still played, but to a much lesser extent and with less commitment.

Was it wrong of me to use an MMOG as a social outlet? Possibly, but that's the reason the game was created. Did it make me any more anti-social than I was to begin with? No; if I hadn't been playing TSO I would have been watching TV or listening to music by myself - which would be effectively less social than playing TSO.

I think some people are not able to see the problem - they aren't aware of their addiction, or they consider it harmless ("I can stop whenever I want", yet they don't) - but before we can discuss how best to treat those people, we have to determine what qualifies as "addiction", and that has always been a nebulous term. (From dictionary.com: "the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.") And, as I mentioned earlier, what we're really discussing here is not the addiction itself, but a psychotic need to satisfy the addiction. It is this need, which is not present in all addicted people, that makes them act in violent, unpredictable, or uncharacteristic ways. This need may indicate some psychological weakness in the addicted person not present in others. Perhaps it is a matter of maturity, as the majority of Warcraft-addicted people are between thirteen and eighteen years old.

When a person plays a violent video game for hours on end, regularly, does it have a cumulative effect on their brain chemistry? Are they actually being altered somehow by what is, at its best, a movie they can control in a very limited fashion - the way that listening to a recording over and over will eventually engrave its message into the subconscious, re-programming the listener? Can we determine what psychological benefit a player gets from their addiction, and find real-world replacements (e.g., creating a social network outside of an MMOG)? Is our learning from video games strictly limited to the virtual environment - learning the map, creating a plan of attack, strategic weapon choice - or does it spill over into reality?

Several years back I recall reading a book review in the Metro Times for "Gamers: Writers, Artists & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels". In the review, written by Jeff Parker***, it states: "Video-game columnist Jim Munroe suggests that the virtual world of video games bleeds into the players' realities. He references online gaming message boards where 'Grand Theft Auto'-crazed teenagers discuss the ways the game affects the risks they take while driving. ... Munroe himself describes the recent experience of passing a store window offering silver jewelry for sale, recalling that he needed some, though not remembering for what. Then it occurred to him: In a recent game of 'Evil Dead: Fistful of Boomstick', he'd learned silver was the only thing that could stop a pesky horde of zombies. "Silver' was beside bus tickets, bread and orange juice in my mental shopping list," Munroe writes."

Based on this we can suppose, in a purely unscientific manner, that all of our brains create and store memories in the same basic spot. While Mr Munroe didn't actually need any silver, because he had made a mental note to get some (in the game), it carried over into his waking, non-gaming life.

However, there is a huge difference between adding a 'virtual' item to your 'real' shopping list, and believing that people will respawn after you kill them. A rational person should be aware of the differences in physics and natural laws between a programmed virtual environment and the 'real world' in which they function all the time. Just because Spiderman can leap fifty feet and cling to the sides of buildings does not mean you can, too.

Daniel Petric is rational. He made a choice when he picked up that gun, and he attempted to shield himself from consequences when he placed it in his father's hand. He even lied to his sister and tried to hide his crime. He knew exactly what he was doing. Questioning "why" he did it - because of a video game, because of his age, because of anger at being punished - is pointless at best. Perhaps, when he understands his motivations better, he'll be able to tell us. Until then, changing the laws to govern who buys video games, or alerting parents and players to their potential dangers, is an unnecessary and reflexive response - one that ultimately does nothing more than alert what Corey Mitchell calls "the Uptight Ninny Brigade", and damages the reputation and income of video game manufacturers.

Petric has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his mother and the attempted murder of his father, who, amazingly, survived. Reverend Petric has publicly announced that he forgives his son, and as the boy was lead from the courtroom, he called out "We love you, Danny!"

It takes a great man to forgive his son for shooting him in the face over a video game.

Links:

Petric found guilty despite defense
X-Box users talk about the Petric case (interestingly, they are more irate at the judge's likening of video games to hardcore drug usage than they are outraged or disturbed by Petric's crime)
Suggested law to put health warnings on video games

*** - I can't link the review, because for some reason it isn't archived on the Metro Times website, but at least I can give you a link to the book's site. Why don't you buy a copy? It's only $15. Better yet, buy me one, too. My birthday's only five months away. ;)

Day of Wasted Minutes

2009-01-14T01:51:14Z

Last night, a little past midnight, Hawkeye and Rob got called out to a job about an hour's drive away. It had been snowing all night, so the roads were horrible. Hawkeye tried to put the job off until tomorrow, but an angry man in the background during the phone conversation insisted they come out tonight. So.. as I was headed to bed, they were leaving for work.

Apparently the work itself wasn't so bad, but the Man of the House treated them horribly the entire time - cursing, shouting, and insulting them as they tried to work. Rob tossed down some tools, and he shouted "Don't mess up my tile!" - and when his wife told him "Honey, they're nowhere near the tile", he shouted at her "Was I talking to you?!" Rob got so annoyed with this guy that he eventually had to go sit in the van and cool down, or he thought he might punch the guy in the face. Hawkeye finished up the job on his own, and they were on their way back home.

He called me around three-thirty to say they'd installed the equipment and were headed back towards the house. He said the snowfall from earlier had turned into an all-out blizzard, so they were driving at less than 25 miles per hour, on the freeway, in the snow, from way out around St Clair Shores. He'd woken me from a very strange but enjoyable dream (I can't recall much more than the mood of it now) so I mainly just grunted and made monosyllabic replies, until the end when I found the strength and awareness to tell him to drive safely and that I missed him.

Woke up to my phone alarm at 7:30 this morning. I was still alone in the bed. Edgrr was calling for me down the hall, and I figured they either were still driving here, or had come home already and left early to pick up equipment at another job. I was a little surprised to see both of them parked in front of their computers, playing WoW in near-silence.

Got the boys up and dressed, gave them breakfast. Edgrr didn't have time to finish his Cheerios and was very upset when the bus rolled up, insisting on finishing the cereal before leaving the house. I had to literally lift him out of his chair, coax him into his winter jacket, and lead him out the door, with him stomping and complaining the entire time. I felt bad, but the bus will only wait for a few minutes, and there would be no other way for him to get to school!

Same as yesterday, once he actually got outside and saw the bus waiting for him, he was very excited and hurried into his seat. Becky was there, which was surprising since Cathy had told me a day or two ago that her kids were all quite sick, but she seemed chipper and even said "Hi".

Trevor and I cleaned the living room. I had assumed Rob would lay down for a nap, but he stayed at his computer while Hawkeye went into the back room to sleep. This made me a little bit worried, as he was supposed to be watching the boys later in the day and I was afraid he'd fall asleep or be too drowsy to do an effective job if he didn't catch a few winks somewhere, but I figured it was his call - if he needed to sleep, he would, and it's not my place to tell him what to do.

A quiet and drowsy morning for everyone. We did some minor cleaning in Trevor's room, but mostly I just sat with him in my lap, looking at his favorite baby book, dozing off against his cuddly warmth. Around 11:30 I put Trevor down for a nap, tried to join Hawkeye in the back room but he had locked the door from the inside to keep babies out, then returned to the kitchen to do some cleaning up there. I was so tired, and I couldn't figure out why - I'd gotten a good six or seven hours of sleep, which is usually more than enough for me.

Edgrr's bus arrived, and within minutes of coming through the door Trevor started calling for me. Fed them some kind of lunch.. PB&J?.. and hurried down the hall to try and rouse Hawkeye, since it was about one o'clock and I needed to be at the doctor's at two.

Hawkeye woke up slowly. We didn't leave the house until about 1:45, and even then he was still drowsy, rubbing his eyes and scowling at the slushy road.

I thought this was a preliminary appointment for the colposcopy that's coming up in February. After staying up all night, pulling strings to get the necessary block of time off, arranging for Rob to watch the boys, and an hour's dangerous drive in these snowy conditions, we were in and out of the doctor's office in less than fifteen minutes.

When we went back into the waiting room, I couldn't stop laughing. Hawkeye looked puzzled, a little angry, as if someone had offered him cake and then given him a cow pie on a paper plate. I apologized, but I couldn't help finding it laughable. All the hoops that poor man had to jump through just to get me here, all the various roadblocks that came up along the way, and we went through it all just to be told "Yep, you're still pregnant". Hee-larious.

We spent the drive talking about WoW, with Hawkeye eventually asking in a round-about sort of way if I was willing to play on Rob's "free" server (using a piggyback program to run Blizzard's software, but not actually paying Blizzard for the access, or running the "full" version of the program). I mentioned my nightly writing goals, and he thought I was turning him down, so he explained the epic drama currently taking place on this server.

Long ago, a young man created this server because he felt all WoW should be free, easy, and fun. He built a realm and worked hard at it until the money and loot flowed freely, and his few subjects prospered and flourished. A small group of role-playing junkies arrived and asked if they could use his server to run their RPGs, and he said Sure. Shortly after this agreement was made, the young man was called off to war (he's in Iraq right now).. and within a month or two, the roleplayers had declared themselves the lords of the realm.

They have GM status, so they have the power to kick people from the realm at will, but can't ban a player for more than an hour at a time. They're hardcore, in that if you speak to them out-of-character, you earn a severe lecture or possibly getting booted out of the game. They can deny you access to the realm for having a "non-RPG appropriate" name (as Hawkeye found out with his recently created rogue, This; he was forced to rename the character That); they will tell you to get rid of equipment they feel you shouldn't have; they will tell you whether or not your character is actually able to do the things your character can do in-game; and they are, by all accounts, a cluster of snooty, hoity-toity Blood Elves who think they know better than everyone else.

Their average age is about fifteen, and their average level is eighty.

They hate Rob.

They hate Rob because he takes advantage of every opportunity to mock them. He tries to play along with them, when they're feeling civil, but more often than not one of them says something that gets him ruffled and he (for example) kills the gigantic monster they were gathered to "battle" in epic turn-based RPG format, out of spite. Most of the GMs disapprove of Rob and consider him a waste of pixellated life. One, however, is a bit fond of him, and has been giving him extravagant gifts of epic gear and weapons.. which the other GMs have all told him he must dispose of, because he's not allowed to have such things. And his reply was, basically, "Stick it."

Hawkeye has gotten bored with his warlock; he's frustrated because Wormworth ought to be doing a great deal more damage than he actually is, and he can't figure out what he's doing wrong. The idea of starting a fresh new character at level one and building them slowly over months of effort sounded daunting, so he instead decided to create a character on Rob's server, where levelling happens much much faster.

He made a rogue, and named him This. The storyline is, basically, Slip (Rob's rogue) found This eating something out in the wilderness among the jackals. This does not speak; he babbles incoherently, runs around like a maniac, and screams random words for no apparent reason. He's mentally unsound. Hawkeye is, of course, playing This to the hilt; he hasn't said a single coherent thing in-game for two days.

So earlier today Hawkeye mentioned that, while he and Rob make for pretty awesome DPS in a dungeon party, and they have a beefed-up paladin serving as tank, they have no healer. And he wanted me to become their undead priestly chick, because he misses actually playing WoW with me, and he thinks it would be a lot of fun.

While the idea of playing what is basically an illegal version of the game annoys me, I'm flattered that his rationale included "I miss playing WoW with you." When we initially bought the game we were together almost every night. Then, as he got more and more into it, he began playing whenever he was home, whereas I could only play after the boys went to bed. He leaped ahead in levels and never looked back. I didn't think he missed those days of exploring the wilds of the Eastern Kingdom together, two level fifteen nobodies, running for our lives from the menacing shadows of velociraptors and giant spiders; but apparently it's been affecting him.

"I know I play that game too much," he said. "And I don't think there's really anything I can say to redeem myself for that. But I feel guilty when I'm at home, playing WoW instead of spending time with you. If I could play WoW AND spend time with you, life would be perfect."

WoW is his escape. And I'm the one who talked him into it, and even way back then I knew there was a strong possibility of him getting irretrievably sucked into the game. I knew that for $60 and an additional $15 a month I might be paying some technological husband-sitter to take him out of my life every night, indefinitely. I hoped that wouldn't happen, but I figured, if it did, I'd be there with him, in all probability.. and if not, then we'd deal with it, somehow. Similar things have happened in the past; I'm forgiving of his on-again-off-again addiction to video games, because he's forgiving of my own on-again-off-again love affair with Sims. (By the way, Sims 3 comes out in three weeks. Eeeeeee!)

After all, we're only human. Some of the time, anyways.

Tonight, as soon as I hit my 2k mark (because, you know, journalling counts *grin*), I'm going to make an undead priestess. I wonder what sort of mindset one of the Forsaken would have about religion. If you rise from the grave, relatively whole, knowing you were dead, not remembering your past - how would that alter your views of 'god'? Is god favoring you by bringing you back, or is this a chance at redemption for some evil act you can't remember? I assume it would become all-consuming to discover who and what you were before your death - are there family, friends, lovers, children waiting for you somewhere, mourning your memory? - or perhaps you would quest in an effort to be laid to rest forever. Grant me redemption, and let me die.

The rightful ruler of this realm is away, protecting it, even as it becomes corrupt in his absence. Ruling powers are out of balance; there is no justice, just us. Slip has been a loyal citizen here for some time; he knew the ruler personally before he was called away. It's up to us to fight this encroaching evil.

I'm looking forward to war on the RP'ers.

Getting Things Done

2009-01-13T04:35:12Z

Actually got up on time today, which is awesome. Rah me.

Edgrr was up - not sure how long he'd been awake, but he greeted me at the door - and Trevor woke up just as we entered his room. Both were in very happy moods.

Cereal for breakfast. Had to argue with Grr a bit about getting dressed, didn't he want to go to school and see Becky and his teacher, et cetera. I'd gone shopping with Cathy yesterday and brought home some new books for the boys, so he wanted to sit and look at them instead of getting ready for school. The great thing about his age is that, if I want him to do something himself, all I have to do is suggest I'll do it for him and he instantly wants to do it first by himself. Finally, just as he was wriggling into his boots, the bus rolled up. I threw on my own boots and walked him out.

Becky was very happy to see him, and once he actually saw and heard the bus, he was ready to run out the door. Barely paused to scoop up any snow.

Trevor was incredibly cuddly and talkative this morning, asking for "cookie", "bread", "drink", and continuously walking me down the hall to peek through the back door at "kitty" and "Daddy". Hawkeye got up around 10ish, spent some quality time with his loving little man, and headed off to work.

Spent the morning immersed in quality time with Trevor, in between Facebook stuff and the occasional foray onto one website or another. We played with "block"s, "sheep", and "shoe"s. We read a few books, with him cuddled up on my lap, or the five inches or so that remain of it beyond the edge of my belly. He is such a naturally affectionate, enthusiastic guy. The final page of one of his baby books is a photo of a sleeping baby, and he stroked the hair and face, patted the blanket as if tucking it in, said "Awww" and gave the baby's cheek a kiss. Must've done something right with him. :)

Put Trevor down for a nap around 11:30 so I could get in a shower. Ran the dishwasher, did some minor cleaning on the kitchen. It is driving me nuts that we're out of garbage bags. I've resorted to using plastic grocery bags. Should have spent the free hour while he slept doing something productive along the lines of writing, but instead.. Facebook. Shock, surprise, dismay. Yawn.

Edgrr announced he wasn't hungry when he got off the bus, so we put off lunch until Trevor woke up. In the meantime, we played with toys in the front room and read one of the new books.

Lunchtime. Baloney sandwiches, spaghetti-o's, and mixed veggies. Trevor ate the innards of his sandwich and tried to climb out of his own chair by going over the tray; Edgrr took a few bites of the spaghetti-o's and went to turn on the TV. Later came back and ate half his sandwich and the rest of the spaghetti-o's.

Um.. I think I gave them a bath around now, but am not sure why, because neither of them was very messy from the spaghetti-o's. At any rate they had a bubble bath in the early afternoon; then after dressing them in PJs I took a brief nap on the couch while they emptied the toybox and munched on baby carrots.

Edgrr told me he was hungry. By my clock it was about 5:30 so I figured dinner was definitely in order. We had PB&J sandwiches all around, two each because everyone was hungry, and then a second bath because Trevor was horrendously sticky.. and stinky. This time no bubble bath, but I pulled the shower curtain shut so they could splash as much as they wanted, and they played peek-a-boo behind it, which was adorable. Little dripping happy faces peering around the shower curtain: "Mommy!" "I see you, Trevor!" *mad giggling as he pulls the curtain shut again* Or Edgrr's slightly playful "Where's Mommy? Where's Mommy, Trevor?" to which Trevor would jerk the curtain aside and point at me with an indignant, triumphant look: "Eee da," he says - Right over there, you doofus, what do you think?

They went to bed after a long and thoroughly enjoyable soak in the tub, neither of them with any complaint, although Trevor did demand cookies several times. (We're out, again. I went online and found some super-simple cookie recipes. Unfortunately my flour is very low right now so it'll be a while before we can make any of them, but that will be fun, when the time comes.)

Hawkeye and Rob came home just before I got them in the tub, so the boys were able to snuggle with Daddy before bed, which is great. (ugh, that's an ugly sentence, but I'm leaving it there because I'm tired)

After they went to bed I wrote an article on Anti-Valentine's Day (almost 2k on its own so I'm running over my goal WCFTD), looked up cookie recipes, looked up super-cheap dinner recipes, and.. did this. So, hooray. Getting things done.

Have set myself a hard-and-fast bedtime rule so I can start rising earlier, in the hopes of having more time to get writing done. We'll see how that goes. I suspect the boys will hear me moving around and wake up. Hmm, but maybe I can stay in the back room and write "the old-fashioned way" (i.e., by hand), which might actually be more productive than using this Internet-enabled addiction-feeding machine. Sigh.. damn you, Internet, and your inescapable grasp on my brain..

Tomorrow, doc's appt. Wheee. Hopefully Hawkeye will be home in time to take me, if not, I'll have to reschedule, which will suck.

Yay for bed!

Too Much Pressure

2009-01-09T03:19:15Z

Today:

The alarm clock thought it was 9 a.m., when it was actually 7:30. Told Hawkeye he'd be the one to turn it off because my pregnant self can no longer squeeze around the heaps of junk surrounding the shelf that holds the alarm clock.

As usual, fell back asleep. But woke up when Hawkeye's phone alarm started to go off. It thought it was 7 a.m. when it was actually 8:10. What the hell?

So, got up, got babies up; Trevor was in a GREAT mood with a horrendous diaper so whatever sickness hit him last night has been, er, flushed out of his system. Edgrr was a little resistant - didn't want pants, didn't want shoes - but when I offered to put his boots on for him he shouted "No!" and immediately started trying to put them on.

He hardly ate any snow on the way to the bus. Good boy. And he gave me spontaneous hugs and kisses after I buckled him in.

I made a super-small stack of French toast - had been hoping for six pieces but only got four, so I wound up giving one and a half to Trevor and keeping the rest for myself. I also gave him a bowl of Cheerios, because he's really working on learning to use a spoon and I didn't think one and a half pieces of eggy bread would fill him up.

Swept the kitchen floor and arranged the dirty dishes so they're ready to be loaded. Using the dishwasher around Trevor is a long, difficult process; he wants to climb in it, and/or take everything inside it out, and/or slam the door shut while my arm is still inside or barely clear. So dishes could wait. Played with him in the front room off and on for a while. I thought about cleaning Edgrr's room, since he trashed it earlier this morning, but figured it would be a better lesson if I waited until he got home and had him help me do it.

Trevor led me up and down the hallway several times on sightseeing trips to the back bedroom. The door is locked, but can be pushed about an inch and a half open, so the boys like to run down there and peer through the crack at Fritz who is usually sleeping on our bed. Fritz didn't make an appearance this morning, although he did yowl at us a few times.

I put "Here Come the ABCs" on for Trevor; we watched the beginning together, but then he wanted to dance and sing along and play with toys, so I went to go fritter away time on Facebook.

Edgrr came home in a happy mood, with his backpack finally returned. (It had been over at Cathy's since Monday.) It was full of stuff - pre-Christmas projects, the teacher's usual assortment of flyers, the monthly calendar, and a free parenting magazine from Great Parents Macomb. Fun for everyone!

One of the projects from school was a gingerbread man Christmas tree ornament. I oohed and aahed over it, then continued pulling stuff out of his bag, when I heard behind me a loud SNAP-CRUNCH sound. I turned, and Edgrr had a concerned, guilty look on his face, as if to say "Hmm, not sure that was a good idea." He'd bitten off one of the gingerbread man's feet.

"Uh," I said, taking it from him, "why don't we put this up for right now, so Trevor doesn't get it?"

We had mac and cheese for lunch, as well as the three remaining Arby's sandwiches from last night. Edgrr enjoyed half of his sandwich but gave me the rest, and Trevor (who had been yawning since 11) barely ate more than a few bites.

I put Trevor down for a nap, and Edgrr and I sat on the couch reading books for a little bit. We started to look through the magazine he'd brought home, but Edgrr got bored with that pretty quickly and went to go empty the toybox instead.

It was probably about one-thirty, I'm not sure, but I was suddenly struck by a wave of exhaustion. Not just "wow, I can't wait to go to bed" tired, but "oh my god, I'm going to pass out right now" fatigue. I watched Edgrr playing with toy dinosaurs on the floor, weighing my options.

"Edgrr," I finally said, "Mommy's going to lay down for a little nap. Do you want to lay down too?"

"Yeah!" he said, and he actually did lay on the couch snuggled up in my arms for about ten minutes before hurrying off to do Important Stuff.

I dozed. Every so often I'd wake up, startled by silence, then hear Edgrr humming to himself in the kitchen. Or making unidentifiable sweeping noises (did I leave the broom out?). Or stirring the small saucepan of dry beans I'd been letting Trevor play with this morning.

I snapped awake when he placed an ice pack on my arm. He smiled. "Look," he said, pointing to it, as though I might not have known it was there. "Cold."

"Edgrr, that's not a toy," I said. He frowned, a little disappointed, and wandered off down the hallway with the ice pack in his arms like a stuffed animal. I lay there, already slipping back into sleep, when my phone rang. It was Hawkeye, and he was having a bad day. They'd found mold at an old lady's flooded house earlier in the day, so now the insurance company wasn't going to pay for her flood damages.. and she'd been a very sweet old lady to them, so he felt really bad. There was also a ton of housing drama going on with Rob, and he was concerned for his friend.

We talked for a little while. I was having a really hard time following the conversation, and at one point he asked, "Are you feeling all right?"

"I'm so tired," I said, and I heard the desperation and confusion in my own voice. "I can't keep my eyes open. And my throat hurts really bad. Maybe I'm sick." I didn't want to worry him, though, so I continued, "It's all right though - I took a little nap earlier and I feel better."

"Oh," he said, uncertain, and we continued to talk about other stuff.

When I hung up, I noticed the time - 4:13. Trevor had been asleep since about 1. That's an incredibly long nap for him. "Edgrr," I called, because he'd gone back into the kitchen. "You need to pick up these Spiderman cards; Trevor's going to be up soon and he'll want to play with them."

"In a minute," Edgrr replied. I had to ask two more times before he came running into the room to shuffle them back together. I don't really care if the cards are out or not, but they're one of Edgrr's prized possessions, the sort that if Trevor attempts to touch them he gets soundly smacked. So, easier for everyone, really, if they're put away first.

As if on cue, Trevor started calling "Mommy, mommy, mommy" from his crib.

It was about five minutes later that I saw the kitchen, and Edgrr's handiwork. There had been a plastic container full of Malt-O-Meal in the cupboard by the fridge, which he'd taken out and dumped all over the counter and the floor. He'd been playing in it like a sand table - there were toy cars stuck in Malt-O-Meal dunes, sweeping trails of his fingertips, and carefully heaped hills around the base of his chair. The beans that I'd put in a saucepan for his brother to play with were scattered through the sandy white breakfast-grain desert like little red and black stones. When I saw it, Edgrr was trying to scoop handfuls of it off the countertop and drop them back into their original container, which wasn't working very well; most of it was going over the edge of the counter. Trevor was burrowing under his chair, a car in one hand, making "brrrrrm" noises.

It was one of those moments in parenting - in life, really - where I was keenly aware that I had a choice. I could go ballistic over the state of my kitchen and the fact that they had turned a week's worth of hot, filling breakfasts into play sand, or I could laugh and play along with them in the mess and not make a big deal out of it, OR I could make Edgrr help me clean it up. Unfortunately my sleep-addled brain was still not fully functional, and my reaction kind of spanned the board.

I tried to be amused at first. Then I felt the stuff sticking to my feet as I crossed the floor and I became very angry that it was there. Edgrr, sensing this, reminded me that he was helping, and I watched him sweep another half-cup of Malt-O-Meal down onto his brother's head. I got mad.

I kicked them both out of the kitchen, got the broom, and tried to sweep it all up. I got a good deal of it, but it's still there; mopping will probably get rid of it. In retrospect, I can't believe how incredibly angry I was at them over this - especially upon opening the freezer (Grr had left his ice pack on the floor) and finding literally everything that had been in the cupboard now crammed haphazardly inside. Cookbooks, three different kids of tea, a half-pound of brown sugar, three boxes of Jello.. Seeing that made me just slam the door shut and go sulk on the couch.

By now the boys, having recovered from their initial shock over my reaction, were both inside the toybox gleefully flinging toys across the living room and kitchen.

I was so angry. A part of me wanted to cry, but I rarely cry when I'm really angry. Why? I kept thinking, knowing it was a stupid and pointless question. Why did he do it? Why do I always have to clean up after these heathens? Why doesn't he listen to me when I tell him 'no'?

At the same time, some quiet, cheerful voice in my mind was trying to remind me that he had attempted to help clean up, and that he was probably aware what he was doing wasn't right. He's three. He can't control his impulses. He really didn't do all that much damage - it's mainly just messy. Messes can be cleaned up.. it's not the end of the world.

I seriously wanted to put both of them to bed right then and there. I was sick and tired of dealing with them. Putting them both in their rooms, turning off all the lights, and going to bed sounded like a really, really good idea. Luckily, I realized that was just my frustration talking, and that it could actually be traumatic for the boys - abruptly tossed into their respective beds and left in the dark for no discernible reason except "Mommy is angry" - and I talked myself back into being rational.

It was a fierce struggle, though. Despite Edgrr's repetitive bids for attention, I was more focused on my internal debate. He could probably tell I was at my wit's end, and was trying to see what he could get away with, maybe in an attempt to "fix" me. Walking on the table, hitting his brother, hitting me, shouting at me, screaming, throwing toys.. it ran the gamut. And I reprimanded him, but I was fighting not to just spank him soundly and put him in his room for the rest of the night.

Everything kind of spun out of control. It got to be 6:45 and they still hadn't eaten dinner. I split the last of the bread between them, and tucked Trevor in for the night. Edgrr and I put away all the toys (he gave me a high-five and a hug when we were finished), then got his cup and tucked him into his own bed. He didn't run or scream or protest at all, which was excellent, because I don't think I could have dealt with it. Gave him hugs and kisses.

Went back up to the front room and stood there for a long while feeling drained, frustrated, and ashamed. There are some days where I think perhaps I shouldn't have had kids. Not because of them, but because of me. I'm a flawed human being and some days I simply can't deal with them as well as they deserve. They didn't deserve to be yelled at for the state of the kitchen, but now that's what they'll remember, or subconsciously absorb. Mommy is angry. Mommy is mean. Mommy is kind of unpredictable.

I love my boys very much, and if I could have any wish granted to me right now, it would be to simply go back to that moment when I saw the kitchen and re-do the entire evening. Yes, Edgrr should be told what he did was wrong, but he *knew* that; he even pointed it out to me as I swept: "Edgrr very naughty boy." "Yes," I agreed, glaring at him, "this was a very naughty thing to do." That doesn't mean I should scare him by yelling at him, much less his brother who had absolutely nothing to do with it and was just exploring this fun new stuff on the floor; and I shouldn't have let it affect me as much as it did for the rest of the night.

Today has been a rollercoaster. My mood has been up and down all day, with only brief periods of regularity. This morning the world was a beautiful place; by this afternoon, I wanted nothing more than to disappear. There is no logical reason for that. At least, not one proportionate to the change in mood.

I want to go wake them up and apologize now. I don't think it would mean anything to them, though.

So, once again, I'm left sitting here questioning my overall sanity and wondering if I ought to be on mood stabilizers, or if they'll just turn me into a robot like they did before, or how we'd even afford such a thing. And also thinking maybe it's hormones, maybe it's the pregnancy, maybe life will be peachy once the baby gets here. And maybe I'll fall into a bout of post-partum depression and have to claw my way out of that hellhole, too. If I'm getting this moody *now*, it doesn't bode well for after the baby arrives, actually. If these swings continue, I could be looking at some major mental / emotional roadblocks ahead.

When I went to bed last night I lay there for a long while thinking about the possibility that I'd discovered the "pattern" my moods seem to fit, and wondering what that could mean. Assuming, that is, that my current pattern isn't related to being pregnant (which is not very likely; hormones affect mood a great deal). Being able to predict each day how I will feel overall would help me compensate for "down" days and learn to exploit "up" days. At the very least it would teach me to be more aware of the thought patterns that indicate either extreme, so that I can, for example, stop self-abusive or overly negative trains of thought in their tracks, and temper slightly the rampant optimism I feel on good days. Learn to work with it, rather than letting it direct me.

It has been a long and exhausting day. Despite my personal goals, I might simply not have the energy to be as productive as I'd like.

... yet WCFTD: 2784+.

Stuff this all reminds me I should do:

- Clean my bedroom. Yay!
- And/or move the dang alarm clock.
- Find clothes for Edgrr for tomorrow.
- Load the dishwasher.
- Seriously, you have GOT to modulate your Facebook usage. Once or twice a day is fine. Sheesh.
- The kitchen needs a long, detailed clean. Grr's old backpack is still out here, as well as the roaster and the silverware, which there's probably space for somewhere if you hunt around. Mopping.
- Go over the calendar sent home and make note of the days off.
- Finish reading that magazine. And the one you got a week ago. And maybe even the one you got back in early December.
- Talk to the doctor at the next appt (or the one after, if the next is with someone unfamiliar).. if these mood swings continue, they might be able to prescribe something now, or determine the risk of PPD after the baby's birth. :(

Pressure!

Wednesday in Brief

2009-01-08T06:07:16Z

Edgrr woke us all up around 6:30 by standing behind his bedroom door and screaming. Hawkeye actually nudged me awake for the first time in two years. Kind of irritating; I don't do that to him.

Trevor made extensive use of "Please". Helped me do laundry and clean all the clothes and toys up off the floor of his room. It looks MUCH better now.

Grr went to school (reluctantly) and came home in a pretty foul mood. Needed some hugs and some quiet conversation to get his head on straight again. Helped me make mac & cheese, and ate it all.

Trevor took a nap, but Edgrr refused, so I allowed him to stay up snuggled in on the couch watching "The Empire Strikes Back". I went to take a shower, after repeatedly telling Edgrr where I would be if he needed me and making sure the front door was securely locked. A little concerned that the scary Wampa scene would freak him out and I'd come out of a steaming relaxing shower to a teary-eyed and distraught little guy.

Au contraire - about five minutes into my shower, the door opened, and Edgrr peeked around the shower curtain at me. He played with the tub toys that were heaped at the foot of the tub, and creeped me out by staring at me for long periods of time. Eventually he asked what was wrong with my belly, and we talked about how there was a baby inside there. It was.. unsettling. I wasn't prepared for the "mommy anatomy" talk, and that's pretty much what we had. Urgh. So my showers from now on can wait until everyone's asleep, thank you very much.

After the shower I felt drowsy so I laid down on the couch to doze while Edgrr played with toys and watched Star Wars. He was well-behaved, even coming up to snuggle me a few times, but his energy level was too high for a nap.

Hawkeye and Rob got home fairly early - around 3:30, I think - and as usual hopped online right away for WoW. Trevor woke up soon after.

Hmm.. gave the boys dinner around 5:30ish, read them Edgrr's new library book twice, then tucked them into bed shortly before 7. Both of them were totally agreeable about it, although Edgrr got very mad when I refused to let him hit me in the face (seriously, he was asking me "Mommy, hit you in face, please?" and swinging at me, giggling), and it took a good ten or fifteen minutes of snuggling and quiet talking to calm him down again. I don't know why he wanted to hit me - I suppose he thought it would be funny - but it was absolutely shocking how angry and sad he got when I continued to tell him "No" and block or stop his attempts to hit. He was doing the whole-body sobbing thing, wailing inconsolably, and by the time I said "night night" my shirt was half soaked with his tears. Poor little guy. I think maybe he was too wound up before bed..

Rob revealed that he had money and suggested KFC for dinner, which sounded great. An hour later we brought up the dinner topic again, and he didn't respond. Around 8:30 the Internet went down (again), and while I was on hold with Comcast Hawkeye told Rob it was the perfect time to go get food.

"I thought you were going," Rob said.

"What? When did you say that?"

"Earlier, when I was talking about it. I said you would go get it for us. I drove out to get the crappy Little Caesar's pizza last night, you get to make dinner tonight."

Hawkeye made a face - he doesn't like chicken, in general - so we agreed on Arby's, which was still a tastier and more nutritious option than anything we have in the house. Then he was annoyed that he had to leave the house. By this time I'd spoken to Comcast, and they had scheduled a tech to come fix our modem tomorrow between 2 and 5 in the afternoon.

So I went with Hawkeye to Arby's. It was actually a lot of fun; we talked and joked around in the car, and on the drive back I told him how glad I am that we're able to slip so easily into friendly conversation, despite rarely having time together alone anymore. By the way, it looks like Rob might be buying the place next door, and moving in this coming weekend. Yay! No more annoying houseguest!

Got home, passed sandwiches around, turned on the TV. We were all halfway through our first sandwich when the TV went ominously blank. I threatened to kill Comcast, switching channels rapidly, cursing under my breath. After about five minutes of silence, the TV flickered back to life, and Rob went to look at the modem.

"I think they re-set everything," he said, and sure enough, he was able to successfully open his browser and even log in to WoW.

Seeing this, Hawkeye took the remainder of his dinner to the computer and logged on.

I suppose a part of me is getting annoyed with how often he plays. It's all he does, seriously. The reason we "rarely have time together" is because that's all he wants to do. The problem is, he's not all that great at moderation. If I so much as suggest there's a problem, he'll announce he's going to delete his character, and walk around pouting all the time, and generally make me feel like a terrible person for having been upset with him. So I'm not really sure what to do. I go to bed before he does; I get up in the morning before he does. I only actually speak to him and see him face-to-face for about half an hour before work and maybe an hour when he comes to bed. I don't want him to quit.. I just would like to spend some time with my husband once in a while. Maybe I should start scheduling dates for us.

Around 10:30-11 p.m. Trevor woke up crying, and when I went in to check on him, found him to be sticky, ridiculously smelly, and disoriented. I thought he'd lost his pacifier, but when I felt around his face to find it, I just kept finding the same substance that was on his face. I turned on the light and sure enough, he'd gotten sick all over half his crib. Poor little guy. Just sat there rubbing his face, whimpering, his eyes still shut.

He went into the bath, and Hawkeye sat with him while I scrubbed his crib and found clean bedding and clean pajamas. Every so often he'd start crying, then stop as if he'd startled himself, then sit there looking dazed, as if he'd forgotten what he was saying in mid-sentence. Very gassy, whiny, sad guy. Got him bundled into clean jammies and put him back in his crib, where he sat blinking sleepily at the blankets and leaning into my hand, already half-snoring. I hope he isn't sick. I think maybe there's something in the mac and cheese that makes him ill, because I've had similar experiences with both him and Edgrr before, when they were eating the same brand of mac and cheese (not Kraft). I suspect they might have a milk allergy because Hawkeye has a mild one that only affects him if he drinks several glasses of milk on a daily basis.

He fell back asleep without protest, and has been out since.

Yeah. That was my day. Now I feel a bit better. Heh.

The Old Stomping Grounds, and Other Thoughts

2009-01-07T15:42:44Z

I miss living in VT and would like to move back, but it would probably not be a wise financial decision.

A lot of people I know from school have friended me on Facebook and I'm a little surprised or disappointed to discover most of them are still living in the same areas they were way back then. I'm even more surprised or disappointed that many of them have profile pics showing themselves drinking, while drunk, or they seem to talk a lot about their next opportunity to be drunk. True, I have a pic of myself with a hefty pint of ale at a local Coney in one of my Facebook albums, but drinking doesn't define me, whereas it seems to be defining some of these people. I'm disturbed by this. These people were "normal"; a part of me envied them for being so socially capable during a time when I felt painfully awkward at every turn; and to find that they're still stuck in the "wow I can get drunk" phase of their lives is.. upsetting. Makes me feel a little stupid for having ever looked up to them.

Should I be happy that I escaped that claustrophobic small-town state's grasp, or mournful at being stuck in the impersonal "city"?

I don't like where I'm living because of the general attitude. There's a very active drug culture, a thriving community of angry rednecks, and everyone seems to have this sense of futility, as if there's no way for them to improve their lives. Everyone I encounter seems rushed, angry, distressed. It really agitates me. I'm not saying there aren't people like that in Bennington, or that nobody in the suburbs of Detroit is happy; but there is a definite difference in atmosphere. People in Bennington are struggling to survive, even with their town slowly dying around them. People here gave up the fight long ago and are filled with bitterness over the downfall of Detroit.

Reasons Why I Want to Go Back:

- Family, especially Grandma, Aunt Shelley, and Kim. The chance to really "meet" and get to know Nigel and possibly John. Increasing the family bonds, basically, which seems important right now because I have kids.

- The schools are exceptional. I'd love to be able to give my kids a good education, and schools in the Northeast are generally very good.

- Mild summers and gorgeous autumns. The scenery. Being closer to nature.

- Generally a more artsy, folksy population. Creative people, smart people, simple people. An increased chance of meeting like-minded folks?

- Seriously, I miss the Silver Street library something fierce.

Reasons Why I'd Hate Living There Again:

- Bumping into people I used to know.. or who remember me. Ugh.

- Mom. Although she lives a ways away now, so it might not be so bad.

- Having to readjust to the small-town lifestyle. No delivery pizza, no 24-hour grocery stores, no 7-11 - less convenience, really. (Although that would probably save us a good deal of money, all things considered.)

- There. Are. NO. Jobs.

- Bitter cold, long, deep winters. The weather can be deadly out there. Also, "mud season". Messy kids and high laundry costs.

- We'd be completely leaving behind everyone we know.. which we kind of already did two years ago, and we've had an absolutely stagnant social life since then. Would this really be such a big change?

Whether we are or not, it's definitely not happening this year. I've kind of decided it would be best for us to stay where we are when our lease expires. I believe (but have to check) our rent then goes to a month-to-month schedule, which means no more late payments, or we're out. Just the thought of moving one month after having a baby strikes me as awfully stressful, and I don't think it would really be good timing for any of us.

* * * * *

Was on Facebook earlier and noticed some clever marketing rep had put together an Event for the opening day of "The Unborn". I'm curious about the film and I'd like to see it (though not as much as I'd like to see "My Bloody Valentine 3D".. and, by the way, whose idea was it to release "My Bloody Valentine 3D" one month before Valentine's Day?), but putting it in the context of "you and thousands of others want to see this movie" makes it.. um.. less appealing to me.

I'm very concerned about it being from the co-writer of the Dark Knight (let's face it, no "co-writer" can be held solely responsible for the success or failure of their projects) and producer Michael Bay. Transformers, ugh. What I've seen of his stuff I haven't liked, and I'm concerned about him taking on a horror film. He seems to have.. bombastic tastes - not at all fitting for the ghost story the ads set this movie up to be. So I'm concerned there will be some confusion about exactly what the movie is trying to say and do. "Look, a ghost! And now things are exploding! Oh, but it's really a creepy ghost story, ooooh! Now here are some more explosions!"

I'll probably wind up seeing it sooner or later, though it's unlikely I'll be able to see it in the theatre. It doesn't seem worth the additional effort and cost to make a theatre trip, anyways. So give it six months and I'll pick it up on DVD.

* * * * *

How's the Year Going? (Note: What follows is about as close to a personal journal entry as I've ever gotten in this thing. So it's probably somewhat dull / whiny / pointless. I warned you.)

I'm doing pretty well keeping to my 2k-a-day resolution. But the second half of that resolution was to earn some money off all that writing, and the majority of it has been going right here. There's nothing wrong with that - writing anything is better than writing nothing at all - but writing for money would be better still.

I can't seem to find time/energy to write "productively" - This is a multi-part issue: 1) being too distracted during the day to really focus, 2) being bored/envious ("why do they get to have fun when I have to work?"), 3) feeling intimidated by the task, and 4) not taking it seriously because nobody else is.

1) OK, so working during the day isn't.. um.. working. Find another time. Yes, if it's evening there's a very high likelihood that Hawkeye and Rob will be playing WoW or watching TV or some such. If nothing else, lock yourself in the back room for an hour and drag it out word by word until it gets easier. Or you could try to get up earlier in the morning - say, 6ish? - and get something done before anyone else is up. That might be a better option, but you'd have to adjust your nighttime schedule accordingly. And, also, keep in mind ANY set schedule is going to go totally out the window when the baby arrives.

2) They worked all day, that's why. While you were chasing down a stinky toddler or re-folding the laundry for the sixth time or trying to get those unidentifiably sticky handprints scrubbed off the fridge, they were breaking down walls, mopping up floors, and vigorously scrubbing some unappreciative stranger's wrecked house. They've earned their time off, and they have no ambitions for themselves higher than the next Tier of WoW gear or getting that elusive Achievement they've tried for four times. You say you want to be a writer. So write, and quit worrying about what "everyone else" is doing.

3) OK, I'm not going to put on a brave front and say there's no reason to feel a little anxious about submitting stuff to strangers, especially for payment. But the facts are, you're a decent writer, somebody has to write that stuff, and somebody else is willing to pay for it. Pick easy tasks; be aware of your audience; remain focused. You're not letting it be as easy as it should.

4) You remember the bit on Family Guy with the two writers at a coffeeshop? The whole joke about people who write in public? One of the reasons NaNo was fun is because it allowed you - hell, even encouraged you - to walk around for a whole month announcing to everyone "I'm a novelist. I'm writing a novel."

A writer writes. Sure, they talk about writing, they read about writing, they might even write about writing (like you would ever do such a thing, right?) - but more than any of that, they write. It is all grist for the mill.. and it honestly doesn't require anyone else's support.

Writing will not become a "job" until you MAKE it so in your own mind. If you treat it like a hobby, an occasional amusement, then that's all it will ever be. Nobody else is going to come up to you and say "Lacey, I really think you need to get started on that article now." .. Unless you pay them. And you won't be able to do that until you've already solved the problem yourself.

Nike is right. Just do it.

Other stuff to consider:

- Overwhelmed by the thought that you can seriously write about anything? Make a list of five to ten topics. Pick one (or more, but one at a time) for the day and run with it until it goes dry. Alternately, find a paying source and use their group of main topics as a focus for brainstorming.

- Learn to work with and around interruptions. You could be getting a great deal more done if you were more forgiving of a temporarily derailed train of thought. Learn to make short notes or mentally "photograph" your thoughts as you go to take care of the interruption.. It's more important to be a good mommy than a good writer right now.

- Naptime is an often wasted opportunity to write. Set Edgrr up with something to do - coloring, a movie, a new or novel assortment of toys - and go to it. Expect frequent interruptions. As ever, if you can't handle the stress of that, put it away for another time and use the time instead to bond with the little man.

- After bedtime or before they get up would be ideal. You might need to start scheduling your leisure time to make sure you're giving yourself ample time to write and still getting enough "fun" time.. not to mention enough time spent solely with them.

It's starting to look like you're going to need to schedule everything you do, every day. At least until you get into a routine or are able to spontaneously switch gears easier than you can now.

* * * * *

I got a Christmas card from my mom the other day. I got an email yesterday, too. She's doing the whole "be really nice and polite as if you're old buddies" thing, which means, a few months or weeks from now, I'll probably make a ranting infuriated post here after she's taken great offense to some comment or another, and things will go back to their old silent, seething ways for another five years.

Trevor was sick earlier tonight. Hopefully he's okay. Our furnace needs a part replaced so we've been using the oven for heat, and I'm a little concerned he might have fallen ill as a result. Though his room is one of the warmest in the house, whether or not the heat is on. We'll see.

What else.. ah, stuff happened today. My brain is fried and I've been sleepy since four this afternoon so I'm really not fit to record it all. This post was built throughout the day as stuff occurred to me, then fleshed out in the last hour or three. Very slowly, because I'm tired and annoyed with myself (failure! failure!) and more than a little preoccupied with planning out the next few days/weeks.

Aaahh, WCFTD: 2002. Bed.