Monday Musings - Snow Days

 

My kids were supposed to start back to school on Friday.  Instead, Mother Nature decided that middle Tennessee (along with much of the rest of the country) needed boat loads of snow.  To be fair, we only got about 6"-8", but for the South, that's a lot.  We don't have the infrastructure in place to make any amount of snow a non-problem.  We also usually have a problem with black ice, and a very large school district.  We've had snow WEEKS out of school because some of the more far flung areas of the district still had dangerous icy patches a week later.  Not a problem this week, of course.  It was dump a lot of snow on Thursday, still be super cold so it doesn't melt on Friday, warm up into the 50s on Saturday and have every bit of snow gone by Sunday.  My kids were really hoping that they wouldn't have school today either.

I used to love snow days when I was growing up.  I lived in New York State, where snow from November through March was a constant way of life.  It took a lot for us to get a snow day, because there we had plows and salt trucks all standing at the ready when bad weather was forecasted.  I remember listening to the TV and the radio for the hope that school would be cancelled, wishing that my school would be called.  Very rarely, it was.  But those were the days that I could go outside, bundled up in snow pants, a heavy jacket, gloves, hat and scarf and push snow into snowmen, trying to get the balls large enough that I would see the brown grass underneath.  I would try to make snowmen on the hill above the road, wanting to give people driving by a small smile.  And when I was cold enough that I'd lost feeling in my extremities, I would come inside and ask for hot chocolate.  They were magical days where school didn't matter and the glittering white stuff was all that counted.

Things are very different for my kids' snow days.  Not only is there smaller amounts of snow necessitating it, but they can find out through the internet that school has been cancelled.  No waiting to see if their district is called, watching the television eagerly.  More often than not, we would get a call at 5 am telling us that school was closed for the day, and we'd groggily tell the kids before going back to sleep ourselves.  We rarely would get enough snow to make good snow men.  The kids would go outside and play for a little while, but they didn't have the cold weather gear that I'd had as a kid.  More often than not, they would stay inside, making it a day of video games and watching TV.

After last year, I thought that snow days would be a thing of the past.  Not because we didn't get snow, but more because we'd gone fully virtual.  Even with coming back to in person schooling, the virtual infrastructure was still there.  All the kids had laptops and (I believe) hot spots to get online if they couldn't be in school.  I expected that instead of saying we had a snow day, they would tell us it would be a virtual day.  I was kind of ok with that - having the virtual schedule we did last year gave my kids breathing room to do other things throughout the day, which is something we all loved.  But the governor of our state, along with the Commissioner of Education, made it so that schools cannot go virtual when they need to without prior approval and then only in strict circumstances.  Our district was in the cross hairs because we are one of the largest and we didn't bow down when the governor told us to have all kids in classrooms and no mask mandates, instead following the science to keep the kids safe.

So snow days are here to stay.  And that's probably good.  It gives my kids a chance to be kids, even if it's only to play more video games.  And it gives me a chance to reminisce about the snow days of my own youth.

Snow covered Tennessee

Monday Musings - New Year, New Me

 

The new year is a traditional time to reinvent yourself.  To make the promises that (if you're lucky) change you for the better.  In reality, these promises end up broken within a few weeks, if they even last that long.  I used to make resolutions every year, and failing at them within a few days.  Then I tried doing a 101 in 1,001.  Those lasted a bit longer, but the list was so unwieldy that the 1,001 days would be over and I'd have checked off maybe 10 things from the list.  Mostly because I'd forgotten about it before the end.  I've tried just setting goals (exercise 3x a week, clear my email nightly, etc), but I ended up giving up on those soon too.  My habit tracker only helped so much - there was shame seeing "exercise" not shaded in for months on end, but that didn't seem to push me into what I needed to do instead.

I think the biggest problems I've had is setting long term, repeating goals.  I'll say that I want to exercise 3 times a week, or call my mom once a month, or take my meds every day.  And the daily ones, I manage at about 75% accuracy.  The weekly ones... maybe 50%.  The monthly... about 5%.  It seems like if it's something that I don't have on a daily calendar, or something that I can't keep up as a habit, I forget to do it.  Or say, "I'll do it tomorrow."  I have a bad habit of procrastinating.  (Which is part of why the blog hasn't been updated in 3 months.)  It pushes things off until tomorrow becomes next week, becomes next month, becomes next year, becomes never.  And then I feel bad because I didn't do it.  

The worst for these are my open ended goals.  Get the house completely clean - well, that can never happen with the family living here.  Lose 100 pounds - eventually, that may happen, but not in a time frame I can see.  Go through my closets for Goodwill - well, great, but then I have to find time to actually BRING them to Goodwill.  I end up cascading one thing into another into another and then feel overwhelmed and get nothing done.

This year, I'm putting one big thing at the top of my list - Self Care.  That can take the form of taking a bubble bath, spending a day reading, congratulating myself for getting one thing off of my To Do list when depression is weighing heavily on me.  It also means forgiving myself when I stumble.  Whenever I berate myself for not being (in my mind) good enough because I didn't do XYZ, it feeds into the depression and just keeps looping.  I am trying to change that.

I have a few things that I think will help me be more successful this year.  The first is that I've lost 40 pounds in the last 3 months.  I knew what the numbers said, but I didn't recognize how I'd changed until I did a 10 year challenge on Facebook.  I put up a picture from 2011 and 2021, expecting to see more wrinkles, a fuller face, those kinds of changes.  Instead, I saw that my face had slimmed down a LOT.  I looked older but I also looked better.  It was a good shock.  I haven't really noticed the change in clothing because I wear leggings and baggy shirts more often than not.  But I did put on a pair of jeans the other day and had to hold them up.  So mentally, I'm feeling like I'm headed in the right direction with my weight loss.  And that makes me feel as though I'm successful in at least one thing.  

The second is that, for the most part, I was able to keep up with my Bullet Journal as well as my Today I... Yes, I have some months with missing moods tracked, or holes in the habit tracker.  But there are more days filled in than not.  Just the act of putting everything down makes me feel better.  It was one of my goals from last year and it's one that I've managed to be pretty successful with.  I also set up a large part of my 2022 Bullet Journal before the end of 2021 so I'm able to hit the ground running.  Last year, I had a separate planner and Bullet Journal and it was hard to keep up with both.  So I'm adding the planner into the BuJo.  I'll be posting more about that on Wednesday.

So I'm hoping for a new me this year.  A better me.  A happier me.  It may be early in the year, but so far, I am feeling positive that it will happen.

Me, a few days ago.  I'm liking who I am.

 

Monday Musings - Role-playing games

 

I started role-playing in college.  My friend Eric didn't care for D&D but loved GURPS, so he'd been running games for friends  before I got to college (he was a year ahead of me).  He invited me and two other friends to play - Jay was an RPG old hand, but Allison and I were newbies.  We each created a character based on ourselves with bits added.  Allison realized quickly that it wasn't for her and bowed out.  But me, I was hooked!

Through college we had a fantasy game where I played a magic user (and was then forbidden to do so because I death touched everyone from the end of my quarterstaff) and a Supers game that took place at our college with the serial numbers filed off.  I enjoyed the Supers game more, I think, because that was the character based on me, adding psyonic powers.  And it was so much fun to play off of my other friends.

After college, I was in a gaming lull for awhile.  My step-mom had definite negative feelings about D&D and even mentioning it around her was a bad idea.  At one point, I bought a copy of the GURPS players handbook and hid it away.  Not that it mattered much because I didn't really have anyone to play with anyway.  But owning the books made me feel better and gave me a chance to play with different characters.

Upon my move to NYC, I found some people that I was able to game with occasionally. It was my first introduction to D&D and it wasn't nearly as scary or boring as I'd been afraid it would be.  Rather than going magic user, this is where I found my love for playing rogues.  Gaming was still sparse but at least it happened more regularly than in the previous 5 years.

Of course, when I met my (now) husband, the fact that I was a gamer girl was a big draw.  He'd been playing D&D since he was 10 years old and here was someone that he could share that passion with.  We played occasionally when I was in NY and he was in Philly, but once I moved to Philly with him that's when our real gaming love took off.  We had a few friends in the area from the message board we'd met on.  A couple had RPG experience, the other was a complete newbie.  (He wanted to roll dice on an electronic device!  The horror!)  We started regular campaigns and for those three years, we met every Tuesday night, either in a local bar or in our apartment.  It was as much BS session as it was gaming and some of my fondest memories came from those days.

The move to Nashville meant that we were once again groupless.  I think it took about a year for us to find a group that we could game with.  It had been a bit rough because by then, Teddy was born.  But the group we started playing was hosted by a couple that had three kids, one of whom was Tedd's age.  We had a lot of fun with that group, playing a lot of different games over the couple of years before that couple moved.  By then, though, we found our other gaming half.*

I'd met Becca during a Mom's Club get together and noticed that she had a D&D book.  We started talking, then traded numbers, and before long she and her husband met with Rich and I to play a couple times a month.  It helped that our kids - first Tedd and her daughter, then along came her son, then Pete - were close to the same age.  We expanded for D&D to a few indy titles (Burning Wheel, primarily), and then into board games.  Over the past 13 years, we moved apartments, they moved houses (closer to us) and they had two more kids.  Our families became chosen family.  Whenever a new game idea came into someone's head, or a new board game was purchased, we talked about getting together and trying things out.  Some of our RPs lasted, some ended up being one shots, but they were all fun.

As our kids got older, they became curious about D&D and wanted to play some with us.  Rich and I ran the boys through a couple of scenarios as they grew and, by the time Tedd was in 6th grade, he was wanting a bigger group.  So Rich started DMing Tedd, Pete, Becca's daughter and a pair of brothers that my boys were friends with.  When Tedd moved from Apollo Middle to MLK Magnet, it gave them a chance to get together.  We tried for once a month, comnined it with sleepovers and had a lot of fun.

Things slowed down all the way around when COVID hit.  By then we had the kids group and our adults group, who had grown by one more thanks to my librarian friend wanting to get back into things.  The adults group had been bouncing back and forth between a few scenarios, and the lack of gaming killed me.  It was about a year before we were able to start getting the group back together.  We pretty much started over, partly for personal reasons and partly because it felt right to get into new characters.  Gaming was now at our house (which helped me keep things a little cleaner).

Yesterday, we played our second session of the D&D module "Out of the Abyss".  Becca, Chris (my librarian), the older two kids (Tedd and Becca's daughter) and I played while Rich ran it.  And it felt so good to get back into charcter.  Tedd learned not to get too attached to NPCs, and I learned that playing a Wild Mage can be fun but it's gonna take awhile to get my brain out of Rouge thought.  I'm again looking forward to playing and wishing that we could get together every weekend to play.  But teenagers, COVID, and real lives don't let it be that often.  But I also know that it won't be too long before I get to game again.

* Also in this time, I was playing games online, both play-by-email and play-by-post. It was through those that I was introduced to the world of Amber and the freeform world of Tazlure, where I got my first taste of being in charge.  I'll probably write more about that later.

Monday Musings - Conventions - TN Game Days

 

This past weekend, my family and I went to TN Game Days.  This is a convention that we've attended for the last 4 or 5 years, though usually in the Spring rather than the Fall.  Because of COVID-19, this year's Spring even was cancelled.  18 months without a gaming convention was a little much for us so we're really looking forward to it.  It was a slightly different set-up than usual - no Tours to try out new games, far fewer people, things like that.  But one of our favorite parts of the weekend, the Play to Win room, was still there. 

Over the years, TN Game Days has introduced us to many favorites.  Through Tours (where people teach a variety of games on a theme), we have found Clank!,  Alien Artifacts and Carnival of Monsters.  Through Play to Win, we fell in love with Bob Ross: The Art of Chill, Super Mario Level Up! and Hero Realms.  Through the Library, we've been introduced to King of Tokyo, Cartoon Network Crossover Crisis and Terraforming Mars.  Needless to say, TN Game Days has increased our gaming collection by quite a bit over the years.

This year, our big winner was Crossed Words - a game that Pete has stated, "I never win, but I love it anyway!"  There were several others that, thanks to the Play to Win room, we tried and loved.  We even walked away with 4 new games (all of us won something) - the aforementioned Crossed Words, Hack and Slash, AKA and Marvel Funkoverse with Thanos Expansion.  We also picked up Mansions of Madness and Shared Dream.  So, yeah.... it was great being back at the Convention.

Here are some pictures from the weekend to show some of the fun.

Andor

Marvel Funkoverse

Everybody Knows That!

The Big Winners

Monday Musings - Then and Now

 

I see the world that my boys are growing up in and I can't help but compare it to my own life at their age.

At almost 13 (like Pete is now), I was living in rural New York.  I was attending a school that housed kindergarten through 12th grade, maybe about 400 kids in the whole school.  My 7th grade class was about 30, 35 kids.  They were the kids I'd known (for the most part) since kindergarten.  The furthest I had to move was from the bottom and 1st floor of the building up to the second floor.  It was neat to get a locker, to move from class to class.  Much like in elementary school, we had the same kind in every class.  We all moved together from Math to English to Social Studies to Spanish.  We had PE every day, all year round. I was able to be in chorus and, for a little while, band as well.  Though I stopped band so I could be in the color guard.  I had some very good friends, but there were also some (mainly the guys) who could be really cruel.  Every mistake I'd made - and, being an awkward kid, there were a lot - was remembered.  I was overweight, smart, and so very awkward.  I know I wasn't the only one that had trouble, but it really seemed like it sometimes.  

My days were often spent outside, sometimes running around our property, sometimes going down the hill to spend time with my cousins, often times with a book in hand.  It was an awkward time, partly because my dad had moved to Florida the year before so I didn't have him nearby (I was a true Daddy's girl) and partly because I was too much like my mom, and we would fight all the time.  While it wasn't the best year for me, it also wasn't the worst.

I was a strange one in middle school!

Pete has a different time in 7th grade.  He's at the same school he's been at for the last two years, but kindergarten through 4th grade were an elementary school.  He's been changing classes for several years now, and it's old hat for him.  For 5th and 6th grade, each class had different students in it (6th, of course, was partly because of virtual and hybrid learning).  This year, to make contact tracing easier if any of the kids get COVID, he has the same kids in all of his classes (except for related arts).  He doesn't have daily PE, though this year he is getting it for two quarters instead of just one.  He's learning a lot more than I ever did - pre-algebra instead of some lower level maths, chemistry instead of earth science, world history instead of American history. Computers are a part of his every day life and he knows them a bit better than I do - even after using them for almost 40 years!  Of course, he's also having to maneuver through a global pandemic - which isn't something that I had to worry about at his age.

But there are some things that are the same.  He doesn't have a lot of friends.  Part of it, I think, is because he doesn't care as much.  It's the ASD that makes some kids think he's weird.  Though I will say that all of the kids in his classes, while not good friends of his, are at least kind.  I can't complain about that.  And he spends a good deal of time outside.  Pretty much daily, he leaves the apartment to run up and down the streets within the complex.  He doesn't read as much as I do, but he does love to learn as much as I did.  And I'm watching him grow in ways I never could have expected even 2 years ago.

Growing tall, growing up.

By the time 15 and 10th grade came around, so much had changed for me.  I had moved to Florida to live with my dad and I went from the tiny school I was in to a high school with 400 students per grade level!  It was scary for me, because I didn't know anyone.  But I took a computer class over the summer and made a few friends.  When school started, I was put into the choral group where I ended up making most of my friends.  The classes weren't any harder for me than they'd been in NY (though I did have to do some class switching because they put me in some classes that I'd already taken).   I didn't participate in color guard any longer, but Chorus was a much bigger deal than it had been in NY.  I had friends close enough by to visit with, and the ability to take the bus home with my best friend's on several occasions.  It was one of the happiest years in school for me, giving me a bit of a chance to reinvent myself and put all the embarrassing past behind.

Me, in 10th or 11th grade.  I was so happy then!

 Tedd is in a strange situation.  He's at the same school he's been in since 7th grade, but in some ways, it's like a brand new school for him.  Last year, because of virtual learning, he didn't really keep up with the friends he'd made before.  There was no real time to talk to them in class because the videos were more about learning.  So when he came back in person this year, it was like it was a whole new school.  (I think he's got one friend that is still in a class with him.)  

He was also able to kind of reinvent himself mentally, thanks to the year of virtual schooling.  He has a lot of social anxiety  and that negatively affected his schooling in 7th and 8th grade.  Being able to take his time, not having to show his face, he was able to focus on the work and not on the fears that were holding him back.  He's got a heavy course load this year - Chinese III, IM III, English Honors II, Chemistry Honors, Men's Choral and his first AP class: AP Human Geography.  It's only been a few weeks, but he seems ore on top of things than he had been in the years before.  Hopefully, he'll also be able to make a few more friends.

Enjoying marshmallows over the summer

As I watch them both in this first few weeks of school, I can't help but think of my past and their present.  I think it's common for all parents.  And at first, I though this post would be talking about what was better for me and what's better for them but after writing, I don't think any of us have a better or worse time.  Just different.  And I'm glad that I get to see my boys growing.

Monday's Musings: Trying to get back to where I belong

One week from Thursday will be the quarterly pest control spraying for my apartment (at least, based on my calculations - I haven't gotten the calendar from the office for September yet).  I always freak out and worry whenever they come to spray, because when we first moved in to the apartment, I was having problems keeping on top of cleaning.  When the pest control people came in, they gave this information to the office.  The office then told us that unless we got things cleaned up, they wouldn't renew our lease.  I worked hard to clean things up and they renewed our lease.  Ever since, I go into panic mode every three months, scared to death that the cleaning I do won't be enough.

During the year of quarantine, the complex didn't do regular pest control.  Having all four of us home meant that trying to keep on top of things was nearly impossible.  You'd think it would be easier, but there are just some fights I can't get into.  And with Pete, asking him to do anything is a fight.  I was grateful that I didn't have to keep on top of things, but it meant that I had so much more to do once they started pest control again.  I managed to get to bare minimum with help from Rich and the kids on the days before, but the kids were still home and Pete still forgot how to put things away.

My grand plan was once the kids were back in school, I would dive in and be productive.  I would have plenty of time to clean, to organize, to deep dive into some of the big projects, and to write every day in my blog.  The kids are now in their third week of school, and I've managed to get done... nothing.  Well, not nothing.  I did get the dining room straightened up on Monday.  But I still look around and think, "There's so much to do.  Why am I not doing it?"  Rich thinks I should go easier on myself.  I've been dealing with back spasms, dizziness and depression, all of which make heavy cleaning more difficult.  But physical/emotional problems or not, I keep beating myself up for what I'm not doing.

The fact that I'm writing a blog post today gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to get some things done.  No promises, of course.  But it's a step in the right direction.  And I know that, even if I don't get everything done this week, I have next week.  I will be successful, because I always manage to make it through.  

But by the heavens, do I wish I could afford a maid!

Monday Musings - School is Back On, and So Are Masks

 Writer's Note: I'm not sure why I've been getting more a one-week-on, one-week-off schedule to my blogging, but I'm hoping that will change to the Monday-Friday, every week schedule that I want to have.

Tomorrow, my youngest starts 7th grade.  My oldest, 10th.  Neither has regularly been in a school building since March 2020.  This year, as much as I'd prefer to keep them home with the surge of COVID cases all around, the state Department of Education won't allow any schools to go either all virtual (unless classified as such) or hybrid.  I can understand their reasoning, to an extent.  When the numbers came back for testing, there was a lot of learning loss.  But still, I worry about the youngest students that aren't eligible to be vaccinated yet.  I worry about the virus mutating again and the vaccines not even being enough.  But I'm still sending them to the school building anyway.

Part of it is because of the schools they are in.  Pete is at the local (but not our zoned) middle school.  I know the teachers and administration there, and they know Pete.  If he has a meltdown (far more rare now than in elementary school), they know how to handle it.  And they know how to keep him on task for his schoolwork, something I found increasingly difficult while he was virtually learning.  Tedd is at one of the two academic magnet schools, which needs not only excellent academic scores but luck of the lottery to get into.  He's been there since 7th grade and if I were to pull him out to put him in virtual for a year, he wouldn't be able to get back in.  Plus I don't expect that he'd get the same level of classes in virtual that he gets currently, and he wouldn't be able to sing in chorus, which is one of the things he looks forward to most of all at school.

Thankfully, even at the threat of the Speaker of the House calling a special session to prevent it, our school system has put a mask mandate in place, so my kids will be ready for school with plenty of masks to wear and mask washing happening weekly.  All of the parents and teachers I know personally are very happy about this.  Though based on the rate of transmission and the low level of vaccinations, I do think that the DoE will have to make the choice between allowing virtual schooling or closing schools all together because there won't be enough students or teachers making in school education viable.

Regardless of all of this, tomorrow my kids will be off to school.  No more carrying Pokemon backpacks stuffed with crayons, safety scissors and washable markers.  No more matching shirts and pants, happy grins on little faces.  No more meeting one new teacher for the year, and a classroom full of kids they'll be sharing their whole day with.  Instead, there will be laptop bags stuffed with laptops, pens and folders for paper homework.  There will be baleful glares through long hair and over masks with all the disdain a teenager can give.  There will be meeting many new teachers, a few new friends and several old.  There will be moving from class to class, finding a place to sit, and trying to blend into the background.  (Because, after all, these are my kids.)  It will be a new year, and a different year, even from before March 2020.  But I'm hoping it will also be a great year.  Because after the past 18 months, a great year is something they should have.

First day of Kindergarten and 3rd grade

Getting ready to start 7th and 10th grade*

* If I can/remember, I may come in an put new pictures in of them after their first day tomorrow.

Monday Musings - Back to School

 

On August 10th, my boys will be entering school for (almost) the first time in (almost) a year and a half.  The pandemic has kept them as virtual learners from mid March 2020, through the end of the 2020-2021 school year.  When school started last year, we were asked if we were going to want to keep our kids virtual for the year or if we would want them to go back in person when that option opened up.  We chose in person for the year, thinking better safe than sorry.  We were again given the choice at the end of the first semester, and again chose virtual.  This time, it was partly because we didn't really trust that COVID would be under control enough to feel safe sending them back, and partly because we wanted to keep things as stable for the boys as possible.

This year, we're not given an option to do virtual schooling.  In some ways, this is a good thing.  Being back in the school building will be good for Pete and his need for consistency.  It will also let him get back to the services that he's entitled to through his IEP.  Virtual schooling worked for him in one way - in that I knew what his assignments were and was able to keep on top of what he had to get turned in.  But it was so much harder to keep him focused and engaged unless I was sitting on him all the time.  Add to this the fact that being among people will help reinforce the socialization that he needs to practice.  At school, he won't be able to throw a temper tantrum whenever someone asks him to do something he doesn't want to do - which, sadly, becomes the norm here at home.  And if we're really lucky, he'll be able to make a friend or two as well.

Tedd is going to be trickier.  He really did well with virtual schooling.  Since his classes didn't require cameras to be in, he was able to focus on the lessons instead of his social anxiety.  He could engage with others at his own level.  He kept on top of his homework far more readily than he had when he was in the school building.  He felt more comfortable, and that translated to doing better in school.   Our school system does have a Virtual High School, and they opened that up as an option for more students for this upcoming school year, but for all the success that Tedd had in virtual schooling, we decided not to transfer.  A large part of it is because currently, he's at one of the top academic magnet schools in the state - Martin Luther King Jr Magnet.  Elementary and middle school before he transferred in to MLK bored him to death.  He needs the push that he gets at MLK.  And if we were to transfer out to Virtual, we wouldn't be able to get him transferred back in.  So, MLK he stays.

There are also a few other changes coming for the boys from the last time they were in the classroom.  For Pete, his middle school is allowing them to have a common-sense dress code - no offensive clothing, nothing ripped, no sandals, that kind of thing.  It means he can wear his comfortable T-shirts instead of collared polos.  His pants won't change - partly because he only has one kind he'll ever wear anyway.  But he'll be so much more comfortable in T-shirts.  Finding sneakers instead of his sandals... that might be tougher....  For Tedd, his school has been the same common-sense dress code since he started in 7th grade, so no changes for him there.  His change is the fact that the district has gone back to free school lunches for all.  Because the school zone that Pete is in is low-income, lunches were free for everyone there already.  But MLK, being a Magnet pulled from the whole district, didn't have a high enough number of low-income to allow it when they switched to individual school eligibility a couple years ago.  This year, they've announced that all schools are back to free lunches.  Tedd not having to remember to pack a lunch or bring cash with him will be a huge weight off his mind.

This upcoming weekend our school supply Tax Free Weekend, so I'll be going to pick up a lot of things that the kids will need.  Pants for Tedd, shirts for Pete, laptop bags for both, some school supplies (as much for me because I love them as for them - I still have a bunch that they never used last year.) , and probably a few new masks, because even if the schools aren't requiring them, I am.   On the 4th, we'll find out what Pete's schedule is and get a chance to meet his teachers.  On the 9th, I'll make sure their bags are all ready, laptops charged and in their bags, in bed early enough to have an awesome day.  Tedd will try to catch the city bus, I'll drive Pete in to school, and the year will be a touch closer to normal.

Tedd, focusing on his school work

Pete, at his most comfortable
for school

Monday Musings - Being Someone Other Than Me

 

I've been a role-player for almost 30 years. I started in college when a friend pulled me into a GURPS game that he was running.  He started my friend Kat (who was also a newbie player at the time) in a GURPS Supers game, having us base our characters on ourselves.  Kat kind of shrugged and said it wasn't for her.  But me.... I was hooked.  Through our time in college, I played my psionic-self (who managed to create a 3 day long building party thanks to a REALLY good roll), and a magic user who had Death Touch on her staff and used it without abandon (I didn't completely get it... I'm much better now.)  And it was one of the best times I had throughout my 2 1/2 years at Florida Southern.

I didn't game again for almost 10 years.  My step-mom had a lot of problems with role-playing games in general, so at the times I was living with her and my dad, I didn't even dare have books in the house.  Even if I did, I had no idea how to find other gamers.  The Internet was still in its infancy and I had no idea how to find anyone.  When I moved to NY, that's when I found out that a friend was a gamer and we played a one shot or two.  But that, and my previous love of GURPS, was enough to help catch my future husband's attention, because he loved the fact that I was a gamer girl.

That's when role-playing really started for me again.  While we were living in Philly, we had a regular 2nd Ed D&D game that we played with three other friends.  It started as minor-horror, Ravenloft, in an awesome place called Eulogy.  (They had a room with coffins as table - it was our room on Tuesday nights.)  For a few years, I played my rogue, Lidda, with occasional forays into some other characters that never really stuck with me.  But my rogue.... some of my favorite stories involved her.  That was also the time I was getting into play-by-email Amber Diceless games and going to a few local Gaming Cons.  I played flirty characters, fun characters, any character that wasn't me.  

I worried that motherhood, and the move to Nashville, would change my ability to role-play.  But it didn't.  I played in a few online games, even moderating occasionally.  And within a couple years of Tedd being born, we had a few different friends that we role-played with semi-regularly.  One couple, my best friend and her husband, became our regular gaming partners.  For over 10 years, we tested out 3rd Ed D&D, 3.5 Ed, 4th Ed, and even playtested 5th ed.  We tried to introduce them to some of the indie games that Rich fell in love with, but they didn't get into them the way we had.  We played post-apocalyptic  games, games set in Eberon, games from pre-created game books, games that were just... wherever.  For the most part, I stuck with my rogues, though I would branch out occasionally into other classes.  

Within the last couple of years, all of our kids have joined us.  Tedd has tried just about every class, while Pete fell in love with his barbarian,, Bob.   When we started, I played to help herd them and keep them from wandering too far afield.  They don't really need me for that anymore.

Over the years, I have found that I love to subsume myself into the characters I play.  I can set them aside when a session is over, but for the few hours when I'm someone else, I don't have to worry about the problems happening in my own world.  I can be as amazing as I want to be in my mind, doing fantastic and wonderful things that the real me would never dare try.  If I'm Naivara, my drow elven assassin, I can be quieter and a bit inscrutable, sneaking behind foes and doing far more damage than one expects her to do. If I'm Glenna, my halfling rogue, I get to Mama our little team of odd balls, ushering in the next generation. If I'm Pure Riddle, my Tabaxi Wild Magic Sorceror, I can be more playful and let my "what will THIS do" unpredictability come through.  Playing Imogen McKena, my teenager with severe OCD, lets me delve into my mental health issues.  Playing Ciasteczka "Chess" Piekarski, my 1st generation  Polish American baking teenager, lets me dive a little into my Polish heritage.

Each character lets me be a small part of who I am and who I want to be without the consequences that would happen if I let those parts out all the time.   They, along with more regular writing, are what helps keep me sane.

Sitting at the table, character sheets and dice at the ready.

Monday Musings - Finding Out Way Through Meltdowns

 From around the time Pete was 3, he started having some pretty bad meltdowns.  At that age, I thought it WAS just the age.  Tedd had had some as well, but they never seemed to be as bad.  He made lots of problems for his teachers at PDO, and eventually we brought him to a rehab specialist for evaluation.  That's when I first heard of Sensory Perception Disorder (SPD).  Basically, he doesn't feel things physically the same way that we do.  Things that may feel soft to us is scratchty to him.  Sounds that might be a little loud to us are ringing through his head.  His senses were being overloaded by the things around him and he didn't know how to deal with it, so he acted out.  By kindergarten, he was diagnosed with ADHD and by 3rd grade, ASD.  All of those are things that go hand and hand with meltdowns.

When he was in kindergarten, there were meltdowns at least once a week.  I would go in to try to work with the teachers to get him to a place where he could learn.  I was so grateful for the teachers and administration because they were all willing to work with me to get him through this.  In first grade, there were fewer meltdowns.  In second, fewer still and none that caused me to have to come to the school to deal with him.  Third and fourth grade saw even fewer - in large part thanks to teachers that understood and recognized that some battles were better fought than others, as well as his SPED teacher that would just take him for a walk-and-talk.

Once he hit middle school (fifth grade here), school meltdowns were non-existent.  I sometimes wonder if the teachers and administration thought I was a crazy lady who thought my kid had problems when he didn't.  No, he was just better at controlling it.  We'd found little things - like letting him have something non-edible to chew on during the day, or letting him write with a pen instead of a pencil - that helped keep him on a more even keel.  Of course, that also meant that he saved up any meltdowns for home, usually when I wanted him to do something he didn't want to do.

Last year, of course, was a completely different kettle of fish.  He didn't step foot back in the classroom for the whole year.  It was better for us that way, even though trying to keep him in front of the computer and paying attention was difficult.  My thought was leaving him as a virtual learner for the year would cause less disruption to him overall.  And I think it did.  He still managed straight As in his classes and if he had meltdowns at home, I could find ways to get him calm.

That's not to say that I've perfected dealing with his meltdowns.  There are so many times when I'm depressed or tired, when he will flinch when I ask him something and it hits my last nerve because I wasn't even yelling and if he wanted to hear yelling I'd show him yelling.... And we'd spiral into angriness together.  Every time, I would feel bad that I wasn't the perfect mom, able to get him calm, able to stay calm myself.  Because I know that me getting upset doesn't help either one of us.  But sometimes it's hard, when you're in the middle of the feelings, to get out of them.

Right now, I'm trying hard to find ways for both of us to deal with things. I bought him a book that we're working on together for mindfulness, things he can do when he finds himself getting upset.  When he starts crying, "Don't yell at me," I try to talk to him more calmly, reiterating what I'd said in a calmer voice.  When a game of his gets him so wound up because he's having problems with it but refuses to step away on his own, I make him come talk to me and then suggest something he can do to get away for a bit - usually something needed like a bath, or taking out trash, getting the mail... anything that will help him break through the meltdown spiral.  

They don't always work.  I don't always work.  But every day is a new one, every situation is a new chance to try.  And that's what I'm doing.  Because he's worth it.  And we're worth it.  It's what family is about, as far as I'm concerned.

Pete, last week, eating a s'more.

Pete at three, listening to my audio book.

Monday Musings - Father's Day

 

Father's Day is always an interesting time around here.  Not only is it the day that we celebrate mine and Rich's dads (who made us into what we are today) as well as the awesome Father that Rich is himself, every few years it's a double holiday because Rich's birthday is around that time.

This year both weren't on the same day, but it's sometimes hard to get out of the mindset of them being together and celebrated together.  I'm used to Rich working if his birthday isn't on Father's Day, and us celebrating in one big "You are awesome and we love you!" celebration.  This time, he took time off between his birthday and this weekend so we celebrated his birthday first and, after a few days of just not doing much at all, found ourselves on Father's Day.

For his birthday, Tedd and I made him dinner, let him choose everything he wanted for the day.  Tedd had gotten him a D&D shirt, Pete had gotten him Earthworm Jim on Steam and I had picked up Ticket to Ride.  The boys and I made him a lemon cake with lemon frosting.  It was a great day and I think he felt very loved.

Yesterday, even though Tedd and I had gifts for him, we didn't quite get into the same gung ho mindset.  Tedd had been busy playing with his friends online, while I was trying not to stress over something I shouldn't have been stressing about anyway.  Pete was the only one that was interacting him with him, though he was playing his own game.  He was telling Rich all about the game he was playing. When Rich decided to take a nap at 10 am, I realized I'd screwed up.  I tried to make the rest of the day as awesome as possible - including going out for lunch at Uncle Bud's Catfish and Stuff (they make the BEST hushpuppies around!), taking him to Rick's Comic city to pick up some new reads, and playing Ticket to Ride when we got home - with the boys.  I think we managed to turn the day around, but I still feel bad that we didn't get on top of things from the beginning.  (We did, however, give him our gifts before going out to lunch.  Tedd got him a "Loading: Dad Jokes" shirt and I got him a "Science: It's Like Magic But Real" shirt.)  I have to try to do better next year.

Rich and the boys, Father's Day

Figuring out Ticket to Ride