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Level Up - LiveJournal.com Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:43:28 +0200 we're in the car driving to get chicken for dinner. twinkie 1 is singing to herself while twinkie 2 and boy wonder are horsing around, tickling each other, poking each other and giggling up a storm. there is a particularly riotious episode of laughter when twinkie 2 squeals in disgust: "EEEEEEWWWWWW, YOU SPIT RIGHT IN MY MOUTH!" to which boy wonder replied with the most perfectly executed undead warlock laugh, "heh heh heh! now you have Boy DoTs." and he pronounced it "dots" too. I'm so freakin' proud.... Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:05:28 +0200 before I was really ready for it, I'm having to make plans to accommodate the unexpected bonus of peaches from the broken tree.
first, deciding how to use them. on the agenda: jam, jelly from the peels and stones, chutney, spiced pickled peaches, peach butter, all of which require prepping the canning equipment, jars, lids, pectin, sugar, spices. secondly, freezer bags for storing the ones for cobblers, cakes and baking later. washing all of them. sorting: smallest and greenest ones for pickling. medium ones for jam, chutney and peach butter. larger, riper ones for slicing and freezing. grocery lists, canning lids, ice for blanching. cleaning the kitchen scrupulously, disinfecting the counters. this is a process that requires a high level of sanitation for the best quality product. last thing you want to do is poison your family after all this frickin' work. yesterday was the first batch of jam day. I realize why in amish communities and throughout history the domestic work of women was bolstered by camraderie and teamwork, as I do every year undertaking this kind of crap. many hands make short work of tedious tasks. scrubbing, boiling, blanching, slicing, measuring, tending to the cooking. you stand a lot. you get very sticky. humorous company during this labor would have been welcomed. happily ~ total win here~ I avoided either stabbing, slicing, burning, scalding or otherwise injuring myself during the first process. the fates smile upon me for once. now, you might think what precious, antiquated simulacrum of self-serving pioneerism compells me to do all this with the windfall of peaches? or how I'll do it again in september when my arbor is burgeoningly begging me for clipping clusters of concord grapes for grape jam and grappa, and the 50 year old rhubarb plant requires culling and slicing and freezing for coffee cakes and muffins. or in october when I'll pick the apples off the two trees and slice them for the freezer. truly, I'm not the kind of woman who starry-eyed reads self-sufficiency books about how you can grow your own food easily and cheaply. that my darlings, is total bullshit. there is no easily or cheaply about this. I think it just boils down to my perturbance at letting anything good go to waste. this frugality will be the death of me. its nice to be able to give the few tolerable neighbors I have a jar of sparkly, unrefined and fully natural tasting homemade something or other. it surprises them, coming from miz technogeekgirl who spends most of her time gaming. if they only knew the fascinating scientific appeal of the brute chemistry involved in making jam, the'd realize I'm not just a domestic goddess playing dress up in t-shirts with "d20 ftw!" pasted across the front. first batch of jam comes out serenely divine, jars sealed up nicely, jam set spectacularly. I could not stop licking my fingers it was so succulent. despite the fact we should have waited about 12 hrs to access the first jar it was impossible. half a loaf of bread and one empty jelly jar later, we're all content that the picking, fuzz-scratchy and sweating was worth every agonizingly delicious bite. back to my simple syrups, blanching and hot packing. Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:39:17 +0200 my clingstone peach tree suffered a terrible tragedy, resulting in a premature harvest and an abundance of potential peachy goodness for all. last year, the first the tree bloomed, we had about two dozen peaches that never fully ripened and eventually went to the squirrels. when the peaches first started coming on the tree this year we realized we were going to suffer an overabundance. by my estimation, the 15 foot high self-pollinating varietal had likely close to 600 peaches on them, most of them about the same size as a raquetball. smallish but beautifully blushy, rosy and gorgeous all over this tree, weighing the branches. which in part led to a dilemma. big storms through the area, heavy winds. this past wednesday I looked out to see that two of the three main branches, one of them the leader of the trunk, sheared straight off. the two most peach-burdened limbs lay on the rain-soaked ground. my heart just cried! all those lovely peaches and my tree coddled through two years snapped in half. the trunk was nearly four inches around where the shear occurred. unfortunately, the fruit once sampled revealed that the sugars were nowhere near developed enough to pick despite the purply peachy skins. they could have used another month on the tree to sweeten up. most were still smallish. I decided to leave the limbs where they were and let the fruit hang until it started to drop, so that it would get as ripe as possible before being forced to pick them. yesterday morning they started to drop so we sawed the branches off and laid the cut portions on the trampoline. armed the minihorde with bags and baskets and set them to work plucking the fruit. sweaty and peach-fuzz scratching, the twinkies pulled and collected all the ruby blushed fruit they could. boy wonder picked up all the dropped fruit around the perimeter. when we were done, the poor maimed tree looked insufficiently limbed to even survive this. fully a quarter of the fruit is still on the living limbs with hopes they'll continue to grow/ripen. god knows I couldn't have picked all the fruit so I'm glad for this last part. as it is, I have three bushels worth of peaches in my kitchen right now. sad, spindly tree. I hope she'll recover. then the conundrum: how to find a use for all these peaches. Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:57:20 +0200 posted by
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} triple_g in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} gamers:and seriously echoed here with wtfness? http://www.massively.com/2008/07/11/mark-jacobs-announces-major-features-cut-from-warhammer-online/ (sadly, I know a very dear someone in particular who is going to be a weepy mess over this little tidbit of total gaming ballbusting) Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:58:38 +0200 I so thieved this from
gleckia. like I told her, the younguns don't believe me when I tell them of this fateful time in history. they just chalk it up to one more of my "episodes." Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:17:53 +0200 the weather here is particularly pleasant, and I'm loving all the rain and the damp loveliness of the very heavily forested mountains. all that moist, humidly pleasant, body-caressing wetness just hanging in the air. I wish I could describe it to you more; since you've grown up and lived somewhere else your whole life, in my impression it might be hard to imagine just how muggy but actually enjoyably so it is. and the smell of everything is overwhelmingly nostalgic for me. we drove into town from the state route that I used to take when I lived in college and drove to see my grandparents once every month or so. the road is incredibly winding, with hairpin turns and the kind of curves that make you feel you're driving in one of the craziest road rage games. seriously sick, somebody should map out the road for some insane track for *any* racing game, its just blisteringly tough to drive. driving in this way, which was about a 40 min drive, I had to put all the windows down and let the whole humid, resplendent air wash over me. it untames my hair into whipped silver threads caught between my lips, and turns my skin to this dewey pinkness that makes my eyes shine green as new magnolia pods. that smell, the combination of freshly washed pine trees and gently decaying pine needles, mimosa trees in their garish flouncyness and creek beds sponged thick with runoff. everything wet and blooming and new. that's what sprung my heart. to see this place that changes and never changes, smell the same things that as a child reminded me I was coming home. that wild little mountain girl came back to me, pulling me by the hand up the hill where I ran barefooted wearing clover blossom crowns and whistled crabgrass between my thumbs. I'm back to the time where the people who knew me most love me still. in the place where I rolled down hills and caught junebugs and watched fireworks and ate every delicious concoction my venerable aunts and uncle blessed us with - delicacies I can't find anywhere but here. all that sweet tea and apple butter and banana pudding, green beans and new potatoes and roasting ears of corn, fried pies, tomatoes and peaches that dripped down my chin and made me grin. something about here is what I needed, only for a few days. maybe I need more. it grounds me, bolsters me. when I got here I fought against being here; I want to leave, to get back to the necessary but how badly I needed this place I'm only just realizing again. I want to hear all over the gentle cadence of speech here, peppered with the pronunciation of words that confound anyone outside appalachia: twiced, warsh, git, thar, hailf, hunny, darlin. the soft and sedentary ways of those who despite being highly intelligent and educated are content to rest and sit and rock on the porch in the firefly blinking dusk while the whippoorwills twee at each other and the glittering eyes of creatures at the edge of the woods watch us. I'm alien to them all, prodigal, with my burnished brown children, my too-long-gone-from-home ways and my tastes that reach far beyond the ridge behind the house, and the next ridge, and the next. they love me nonetheless. they make me belong somewhere. rootless, unowned me, homeless, the one who belongs nowhere in particular, she needs that. love
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:00:06 +0200 been all up in all kinds of stuff lately, and very busy to boot.
then tomorrow I'll be travelling out of town for what most would consider vacation. however, for the one who does all the laundry and plans out what will be worn by whom on what day, packs said assortment of clothing and accessories for multiple people, plans the agenda and the driving routes, fills the gas tank and tops oft the reserves as well as evens out the tire pressure, prepares and packs snacks and drinks, cleans out the car, gathers the accoutrements necessary for travel and an extended stay, sets out a schedule of when stops will be made and meals will be acquired, secures adequate in-pocket cash and lets the bank know that the cards will be used out of state, then makes sure all the bills are paid ahead of time and deliveries made/postponed until after the return, *AND* prepares so that the one not going has enough food, finances and instructions regarding pets, etc., so that he will not shrivel up and die..... well now, that's not a vacation for one person in particular, is it? I'll be back on or around 8 July. Mon, 26 May 2008 03:38:06 +0200 previously mentioned, here is the latest grief with the leetest griefer evar, the IRS by way of the Franklin County Children's Services' ultimate back door breaking and entering without courtesy of a reach-around. prior to adopting the Boy Wonder we were aware of a grant through the county children's social services for non-recurring adoption expenses. we applied for and received this grant from the county for the Twinkies' adoption in 2000. the stipulation of the $2,000 grant was that we had to apply for it prior to finalizing the adoption of a child. because Boy Wonder was born in the Philippines and the Inter Country Adoption Board of the Philippines required a custodial placement and six months of post placement visitations, we knew we would not finalize his adoption until 6 months after our return to the states in June of 2003. we applied for the grant upon our return from the Philippines. months later, with no reply received, we finished up our post-placement visitations and reports and received our consent to finalize. but we could not finalize until we received the approval that the grant would be....well, granted.
in retrospect, we could have filed our taxes and then filed amended returns. but how the hell were we to have known it would take five years to get this child's grant approved? we kept thinking, "it should only take one more month, one more document, one more phone call." other issues really to complex to get into here are the fact that as an internationally born immigrant who was eligible for adoption he was not eligible to get a temporary SSN (we could not claim him as a depend. with that), and the fact that the certificate of citizenship issued by the BCIS was estimated to take approximately 24 to 36 months to be received after application. the muck just gets deeper and deeper. since we get a refund every year (due to the amortization of the federal adoption credit for the Twinkies still running concurrently every year), we filed an extension and began a long and arduous battle with the county in which we live for what boiled down to a fight to whether Boy Wonder qualified as both a) a lawfully relinquished child and b) a candidate for US citizenship. I'm talking phone calls, extensive phone calls. visits to the county children's services office. calls to our congressional representative, every lawmaker we could find, attorneys, our adoption agencies, social workers, advocates, the representatives in the Philippines and eventually an attorney in Manila and the Ambassador to the Philippines. when finally I camped out at the children's services offices and refused to leave unless they gave me the reason why they were balking, I was gonna lie right down and let the police carry me out while I called the local tv station on my cell, I literally had the temporary director of this program say to me: "well, we really don't like to give this grant to foreign born children. we prefer to give it to children who are adopted within the county." ....... (insert rant here) at this point, the battle for the grant turned into an ethical and moral sacred cow for me, the ire that spawned in me was venomous and unstoppable. what it really boiled down to was that the county children's services refused to give this grant to my kid because he had the mischance of being born in another country. it didn't matter he was special needs, or met every legal requirement for this grant. they wanted to keep the money, as she SPECIFICALLY told me, "in the system." (follow up rant here) ....... ok rant over. at this point it was 2006. three years until they would even give me this answer. to which I blew an almighty gasket as he was QUALIFIED UNDER THE FEDERAL STIPULATION AS AN ADOPTABLE CHILD, VERIFIED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLACED WITH US WITH ALL DUE LEGAL PROCESS AND BY GOD WE WERE FREAKING RESIDENTS OF THIS COUNTY AND HIS ADOPTION *WOULD* TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME STINKING COUNTY." (assorted colorful and unique swearing to be inserted here). this is very complex. we could not apply for a certificate of citizenship without either one document or another that we did not have. could not get a passport for the same reason. could not get a birth certificate for the same reason. everything tied up in everything else, all because the county would not allocate a stinking $2K grant to us for a child who under every letter of the law was qualified to receive it. it did not even matter to them that he had been qualified special needs, they just firmly refused to budge. so for the next year and a half I called every day. I mean every day. every stupid freaking day. begging, nagging...."what more do you want from us? what is it gonna take for you to recognize that the federal and state government already recognize what you will not?" finally, long time coming. long time. 2007 we finally received their grudging admission that they would allocate the grant to him but this was after we had already spent money in attorney's fees and the expense of having our home study redone, fed ex packets of information and further documentation sent from Manila, zillions of phone calls to everybody in the world asking for intervention. it was a clear financial loss but a moral victory despite the cost. even though they would not release the grant until they had his adoption finalization documents from the county probate court, we could at least proceed with the legal finalization. this was in June of 2007. four years after he came home. we succeeded in having a wonderful judge and an easy process, thank god, but seriously, this issue was not over so easily. it took us 18 weeks to get his birth certificate due to a glitch in the system, which delayed getting a passport. once we got his birth certificate and applied for the passport, the passport agent told us we did not need to send X document with the application. we paid the expediting fee, only to find 4 weeks later (2 later than the anticipated expedition receipt) that we did need X document, which we fed ex'd. our passport for him did not arrive for another 10 weeks. so much for expedite fees. then, we have the birth certificate, the passport, and go to social security. oh please....please don't get me started on that damn rigmarole. in theory, they sent his card. we never received it. had to go back and get another. never received the second. on the third go, I just got the number and said fuck the card. at this point, we had re-spent almost 2.5x the amount of the grant getting the stupid grant approved, but I felt it had turned into more of a fight for my kid's right to be recognized on the county level for what he was on the federal and international level, a perfectly qualified child who was relinquished legally in his country of birth (with every documentation attesting that fact), who was a child of US citizens, who's sisters had already previously been awarded this grant, and who's adoption would be finalized in the county responsible for recognizing this. at this point, its January of 2008!!!! wheeeeee! happy new year! and we get our first letter from the IRS. you did not file, and we is gonna charge you $8,000 in back tax for 2003 and a penalty of $900. a week later, the second, for 2004. and...you can guess the pattern from here on out. we go back, find our docs, restructure our expenses. complete our taxes, mail them certified. they get the 2003 but not the 2004, and then we get the letter for the 2005. its long, all of this. but the stress of having the IRS breathing down your neck for proposed past-due taxes and non-filing penalties sucks. I'll eventually get the taxes all done, it just takes such a long, long time to sort out what year each expense happened in (and I'm talking adoption expense, as you can only claim it in the year the adoption is finalized). thank god we don't itemize. we will eventually receive a clear record for this, but you can imagine how tense the situation is, because they make it very clear that if you don't respond or reply in a favorable manner, all sorts of liens, penalties and seizures can happen. the fact that I will work my everloving ass off to make sure this does not happen doesn't really diminish the worry and concern that we're defaulting on paper this many years of taxes. and recreating your tax situation in previous years from the accumulation of documents and diaries, well let me tell you its just one more damn thing I have to manage. the gratitude of all of this is, at least he's done. at least the last hurdle was cleared. now for the financial headache of dealing with the IRS and things should be just fucking peachy. Sat, 17 May 2008 17:38:43 +0200 I don't often go on about how hard it is to be a gamer and do the mom thing, but here's a little bit of gamer happiness that happened despite real life. yesterday my pusher (you know who you are) says "I feel like killing, lots of killing" and we set up an online match in DoW. only it shakes the bejeebus out of me, its a full-on match between us and however many max players you can get in a match (the others are computer AI). I "eeeep!" briefly about how my sweetass is gonna be sliced and handed to me on a servette with a sprig of parsley garnish and au jus. I issue the edict to the realm: "you canNOT interrupt me for the duration of this match -- if you have any questions or problems you must go to the padre and let him mediate all conflicts. do not ask me for snacks or tell me somebody called you a booger head or ask if you can bring peanut butter jars of ants into the house. I will be more than happy to accommodate you AFTER the match so please give me 30 minutes of uninterrupted concentration on smearing the pulpy innards of the blasted orks and squishily penetrable imperial guards all over the landscape with my dreadnaughts. Period." it lasts perhaps 10 minutes. I'm off to a ragingly decent start acquiring my resources and fighting like the living hellcats of satan's own whorehouse when the first inopportune moment happens: "waaaaaaaah! I was doing blah blah and then blah blah and then HE THREW A LOG ON MY FOOT! AAAAAAHHHHHH!" as quickly as possible I triage the damage, hug, toss the injured a cookie and shuffle her off, then try to recoup my position on the map. my machine cult is up and running, I scan through what research updates need making, get all the loser servitors off their asses and repairing damages. within five more minutes or so somebody's wailing with a bee sting. ingame freneticism while I set my marines in cover and turn the dreadnaughts onto patrol, scrape stinger out, turn over the stung littl'un to the padre for ministration of injuries. then have to deprive a starving child for whom two cowtails, a paper cup of Yan-Yan cookies with frosting and a bowl of shrimp chips was just not enough to stave off hunger. I tell him, whatever you want to eat help yourself only please please please don't interrupt me again or remember how those flayers in WoW get all enraged, blazing red and three times their size when you keep pummelling them? I don't think you're geared to take that on, buddy. I recover, build up my marines once again. then the third comes in having fallen off the playset, bloodied and wailing. at that point, I realize that although I've attempted to secure the vital center core of the map I am going to lose, lose, lose in very painful and gut-grinding ways. I resign myself to certain death and abandon what I'd started with such high hopes, and literally leave the map, game running, to tend to the necessities of this and that. during the bandaging, I also deal with two arguments, one about somebody eating somebody else's ferreted-away snack, and another one discussing with the padre about Twinkie 2 not turning in her homework again and therefore likely having to miss a zoo trip planned for her class. I answer 13 questions about can we get hula hoops from the attic and when can we go buy sandals and can we take babydoll strollers out into the yard and can we listen to Tom Jones on the stereo and can we have tocino for dinner and I think I hear the ice cream man coming.... I get back a full 20 or 30 minutes later. I've been annihilated, of course. sooooo irked but generally apologetic to my gaming partner. days like this, I don't even know why I try gaming its so full of fail. and he just laughs and emotes all kinds of smiles at me. tells me he tapped out at around 18 minutes into the match. and then, tells me that I was the last one defeated by the winning computer AI. .....huh? I have to go back in and exit the game so I can see the standings. whaddya know. he was dead right. oh my freaky, FREAKY goodness..... so yeah. despite all the craziness, I'm riding a two day high over this. just imagine what I could accomplish if I *weren't* distracted. /dance Thu, 15 May 2008 15:59:11 +0200 for the past month or so no less than four people on my flist made posts about hair and the arrival or one or two of the colorless strands that cause you pause. so I'm writing about this today and posting several of the most recent pix of mine in . . . . solidarity? with respect to the originally private nature of these pictures, as they were taken expressley for someone, I debated posting them at all. yet because the horse I'm riding is at least 30 hands high when it comes to individuality, I had to give my little pictoral testimonial to the nature of hair. its the hair, its the color, its all mine. and I did not come to love it easily or in all due course. on the paternal side of my family, premature white. as in like white hair in their twenties but stunningly white. the kind that you see on blood elves and in japanese mystery horror films. on the maternal side also a premature color loss but not very attractive, the kind of half-drenched urban blacktop after a trepidatious August rainstorm kind of color loss. for years my mother, whom I look like genetically and sound identical to, had forlornly admonished me (not in words but by practice) to follow practice and color my hair.   I think it can only get better from here. Wed, 14 May 2008 17:22:52 +0200 What follows is purely opinion-driven proposal, so take it as such. Its all suggestive, and not meant to be taken comprehensively: an all-access buffet, feel free to sample whatever you see that you like. Re-evaluate and/or re-work your mission statement
Suggestions for growing and keeping membership valuation Institute a membership representation organization of possibly three members (one long-time, one short-time, one Euro member possibly, or some combination): even credit unions have committees meant to represent the majority members and their interests. Don't give me crap about hurting anybody's feelings through a nomination or election process -- we live in democratic societies. Terms could be short. This group could be a sounding board for concerns, help evaluate and implement content changes, make suggestions for improvements, and generally help to find ways to make the site more exciting, accessible and productive. It saves you having to hear all the complaints, and it prevents you from looking callous when you are unable to respond to every one of those complaints personally. Consider going beyond the appreciable but dated concept of the forum interview. We need podcast interviews. We need podcasts period. User-created podcasts. User created video. Anything MORE than purely text based information. Consider implementing a tiered membership system that will aid you in monitoring posted content, personalized icons and sig lines, images posted in threads, etc.. Its done in guilds with access to resources. Additionally, a code of conduct in writing that you can rely on in situations where behavior is called into question could save you a lot of hassle. This is without question a gaping hole in this site for which a code of conduct could pre-emptively prevent enormous amounts of administration by the staff and moderators to be poured into. Yes, you have your representation here and there on the internet and in person at gaming events. Why not have WomenGamer's affiliates in cities across the country and the world who would be willing to tout the site, their participation, and generally be your walking PR committee + billboard (read: free t-shirts and give-aways) at ANY kind of gaming event or con. On an individual level, like members, given the blessing to wear your gear and talk about your site to anybody they meet at events they attend. I mean, we all go to those, don't we? We all shop in game stores, right? What does this cost you? Really, not much for the amount of exposure and word of mouth that could be generated. We are your best, free advocacy. Suggestions for increasing membership participation and loyalty Contests are good (i.e., user icon design contest, sig line contest, new t-shirt design contest, site motto contest, even goofy stuff like a site mascot contest, WomenGamers Game of the Month/Year, random drawings, wtf ever) Scheduled gaming sessions or user participation - mini tourneys for halo, COD4, TeamFortress, what have you. make your prizes free t-shirts, messenger bags or non-cash compensation (this is another thing your committee could organize for you) Allow users to write some of the editorials, reviews or news features. Here's the bonus -- it costs you nothing, yet earns you everything. Your readership doubles in that whoever writes for you will likely get their family/friends/contacts reading the content as well. Schedule a Q&A podcast or chat session with somebody the membership would really like to talk with -- game developer, gaming icon, somebody notable in the industry who'd be willing to participate in an open-chat forum. Allow participants outside the womengamers membership to sit in on this and listen. Require a code of conduct be signed for participation by members, and suspend users who don't abide by it. Feature game-related merchandise reviews, content and access -- itsy.com has hundreds of artists making things like dice earrings, geekbaby accoutrements, gamergirl clothing, fimo jewelry based on game characters, art, etc. Bottom line If your lives are really too busy or detracting from prioritizing what this site needs, please consider all of us willing to help/assist/implement this. Let us help to make this site a place we want to be active participates in. Rely on our skills. Don't shy from implementing change that has the possibility to veer from your perception of a user-owned, monitored and moderated site: this site has the bones, the history, the caring members and the excellent administrative staff to continue reflecting values we all share. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now having posted all this, I'm challenging any other participant on this site to do the following: if you have something to say regarding any of the foregoing, feel free but don't come bitching about crap if you don't have a suggestion for a solution. And not a selfish, personalized one or two things that would make *you* feel better, but things that are actually cost-effective, feasible, manageable and site-supportive. There's nothing productive at this point in venting for venting's sake -- step up and say what you've gotta say in a constructive way or you are more than welcomed to gtfo. Wed, 14 May 2008 16:00:29 +0200 Dear WomenGamers.com: I'm not going to go on about our history or our love affair, how wonderful it used to be or reminisce about finer points. I think to do you justice I need to say what remains unsaid by anybody who belongs to this site. If it causes us to part ways then so be it; I'll know that I'll have weighed the right decision on my conscience to try and make you a better place and let you know why I feel I just don't love you any more. If I didn't care about you at all I'd del this post and bid you a silent adieu and move on like so many other regulars already have. You went to all that work to revamp the site, update your image, comb your hair a different way. You look luscious and smart, well-put together. But the more I hang around, the more I realize your substance has not changed. I feel you aren't offering me anything that I can't get somewhere else, somewhere like 1up, Kotaku, gamasutra, gametrailers, magicbox or heaven forbid, IGN. I mean, here's a harsh wake-up call but honestly, you don't even rank with the content I get from LiveJournal's gamer_girls community for godsake. I don't understand why you want me around, I mean, in the forums or on the portal site side. The site is divided neatly into two halves, the informative side and the forum side and rarely do the two interact or support each other. And I hate to say it but both halves are failing me. On the one side, we have the portal. I think that's what you mean it to be in the 1990's sense of website design. A place where you can look at jobs, get news blurbs, see the latest reviews, and shop if you like. Only this concept fails me when I can get that information better and faster and with more concise delivery from the news sites you are linking me to follow. Honestly, I can set up an RSS feed on my own blog to siphon that information directly from the incepting sites to my blog or inbox without having to visit the news forum. In eight years I have never purchased anything from the store because there is never anything new there that I would say, "oh I gotta have that!" The job section, well that is a very handy thing if you live on the east or west coast and are looking for gaming industry jobs but for the rest of us in between the coasts, in Canada and Europe, how many of us can say we frequent that section? In the Games section, I can get any number of the games you link or promote through any other site specifically dedicated to offering dowloadable content, with effective downloaders and demos. And while I am a diehard Geek Woman fan, I have to say your editorial/review section is severely, morbidly lacking in *amount* (not in quality, please note). One review every month or so, and not of necessarily contemporaneous games/hardware/tech but of standard industry games we could find reviews of on any other site like Yahoo! Games for instance. With all the excessive information, none of it shines, all of it mumbles together. All that information clammoring at me at the same time, what is it you're trying to say to me? That you are a gaming review site? A jobs portal? A news hub? A cache for great indie or small dev games (i.e., "Play Games at WomenGamers")? How is this meant to inspire us to keep coming back to the site to see what you have to say? What is it you feel is deserving of the market share attention you are working for? Why do you think you are the same caliber of other sites that have more editorials, more user features, more user contributed content, more active forums, more up-to-date and comprehensive news (comprehensive meaning, "reported on, not just linked to"), more defined intent to provide a specific service to the gaming community and MORE GAME STUFF, PERIOD....? Why are you resting on your laurels, is it because by your mission you "represent?" Because its expensive to keep up with other sites like that? Because its too hard or you're too busy? Your content is....great when I see it but I don't see it nearly enough to make me feel you are filling the objectives you had in mind when you wrote your mission statement, or that you're fulfilling what it is you want to do most for women gamers by offering a community that ranks with any of the hundreds of other gaming sites and still distinguishes itself from them. Because honestly, there is no community, just a bunch of information that is lumped together without any contemporary edge or deep relevancy to gaming in general. Which brings me to the other side, where we have the forums. The Women(and Men)Gamers-driven voice of the special interest gaming sector that has for years supported the WG site, encouraged others to come, perpetuated the interest in what's going on here. All I can say is, why are we pouring so much love and admiration into staying here, and perhaps lingering where we're not getting our gaming information needs and desires met? We want to believe what you stand for, we believe it too. We want to be proud not just of what you've accomplished in the past, but what you are doing and continuing to provide the gaming community. Only, in my eyes and my heart I don't feel that I'm getting one ounce of what I really need from you other than the cameraderie of like-minded people who, like me, are starved for content to whet their wit, opinion and participatory membership on. Not only are we starved for content, but we are famished for *user* content as well. Why is it not possible for the users to help build the content of this site that other than posting in a predominantly text based, img-dropping, personalization-lacking bbs style forum? I know I am not the only one feeling like the love has died, or is at least struggling on life-support. This does not mean I do not appreciate everything you've done, all the work gone into the site revamp. Its very nice how its all reorganized. But like a guy who tells me he's gonna change, I'm finding that really not much has substantively changed: your content is thin, the search engine for the forums is essentially the same as before the revamp (only this time, a huge chunk of archives is inaccessible, as I've mentioned in a previous post in the forums), and there is even less for us to feel a symbiotic relationship with between the membership and the site itself. I miss my friends, Brumm and Beli and Dac and every other single player here, all of whom have an opinion of substance I want to hear and discuss and discourse and laugh with, not just lol over the latest pic in the Kitty Thread. Our conversations in general are reduced to substandard emotes in impotent response to bored posts on topics that come further and further apart. Please don't make this about how I don't understand how hard you've worked, or your dedication, or the fact that you are people with real lives because I get all that. Don't misunderstand my voiced concern as a LACK of consideration when it is exactly the opposite. And its not all about complaining, because without some suggestions for solutions this post would be worthless. For months now, I spend my mornings scouring the internet for interesting news, articles, gaming stories, release information, trailers, special interest editorials, *anything* that I could post on your forum to incite your membership to engage and populate any kind of discussion. Only now I see what I've been doing -- trying to pull any interestingly relevant content and plunk it down on your site because its not there to begin with. I can honestly say every thing I've tried in the past nine months has been in an effort to buoy what was once a place I envied being a contributing part of. Even in criticism I've attempted to be plaintive yet productive. I've tried my very damndest to keep the love alive, even pouring my heart out in this post and many others. It would be so easy to bitch about what's wrong and then tail-end it out of here but I just can't. Neither can the rest of us suspended in inactivity who are waiting for something, anything to make us want to stay and keep you alive. ~Belle Tue, 13 May 2008 17:48:55 +0200 Someone convinced me to try the demos of both Dawn of War: Soulstorm and Sins of a Solar Empire. Yeah got hooked on DoW to the point that its subverting my addiction to WoW. Not a bad thing actually, as I'm easily teetering on the edge of redunancy there save for a certain priest whose delectible buffs I am powerless to resist. Soulstorm demo, loved it but damn and screw me silly if it took me a wicked bit of time to get up to speed. Holy carp I can't remember when I last dredged out Starcraft and loved that so much, and I'm all rusty with regard to RTS play since last I went there was AoE: AoK. Crap. Ancient shite like that and I oughta pull out the medicated arthritis rub. Lot of stuff between then and now has happend that derailed most of my gaming pleasure.
And godbless you, you sweetest cupcake-sans-icing of a gamerguy (ok so yeah, its basically a muffin if it has no frosting, but as I said, I don't care for frosting) for introducing me to the series which I never got to play first go round. Here you go and buy me the Platinum Edition just so I can get all gooshy in the history and roil around in the factions with verve. I LOVES YOU TO BACON BITS! Yeah I like it, I love it, I want some more of it. My learning curve is somewhat off and with all due respect to my patron, I will never get up to speed as quickly as he has. Not that I'm incapable of actually getting there darlin, its just that so many things prevent me from immersing myself wholly in the game itself for huge chunks of time; I get easily distracted by the goings on here; I have three other games going simultaneously; my nature is to take it methodically and in regular bites until I master levels, then progess to newer undiscovered territoy; plus you tend to be the best distraction yourself above all other things. And the fact remains that my gaming style, while agressive in versus AI play, entails exploring the depth of the factions, unit structure and strategic play by engaging the other factions in a level playing field. In other words, with most RTSs I can play the scenarios over and over again with losses and still enjoy the gameplay despite infrequent wins. As I've mentioned, its getting there but its gonna take a while for me to get up to speed. Or at least get to a level where I can hold my own against you in multiplayer. My ignorance of the factions, the specific structure progression, the resource development, and keeping on top of it all while not losing my mind (a key component to staying sharp in RTS), these little detriments are for now going to inhibit my ability to play as aggressively as is necessary to singular victory over the computer gen'd players and you in multiplayer. The good thing is I do love this game, love it to freaking kibbles and bits. I am constantly reading forums to improve my play, watching the replays, and as always am my harshest yet most constructive critic. For instance, it did give me some confidence that the general opinion is the AI in the multiplayer version virtually requires you to play steamrollingly aggressive from the minute the clock starts or you end up bent over your Chapel Barracks with your squads penetrated by all manner of heavy artillery mech in the most vicious, armor-rupturing ork-banging an underappreciated Space Marine could sustain. Its a tribute to my perseverance that I don't *mind* that kind of thing and that I'll go back again and again for more until one day, I'm gonna flip those mutherfakkers and be the one delivering the magic missle to the rear flank. Now for me right now in this early stage of getting my bearings and learning about a game I never experienced before, you know most assuredly and I've mentioned this, that its still gonna take me a while until I can hold my own against you in any self-created multiplayer map. In this particular genre you are much more adapted, responsive and knowledgeable about your strategy and tactics with regards to the faction you are playing, plus you have played all the games in the Platinum version. So yeah, I might beat you silly sauce in Puzzle Quest, but you are (for now) always gonna pwn my sweetass in DoW. And you know what? I'm ok with that as you well know. :) I can't be beating you all the time or you'll just become a shadow of the win gamerguy you are. Take my complimentary adoration of your skill in this game and wear it like epic PvP gear 'cause you deserve it hun. For now I get the biggest kick out of beating asses to butter in the skirmishes and seeing my skills get progressively better and my tactical play win levels. Yeah I still need to go back and finish the campaigns. And then, there are the other factions I want to play so badly. I may never log off Steam, seriously. And someday, just so you know? I am gonna be leveled and skilled enough to take you on and make you eat your Imperial Guards smeared on toast, with honey and a steaming cup of holy-fuck-did-she-just-beat-the-living-shite-out-of-me-or-WHAT. Yes I love this game, and I love you eternally for giving me this experience, for all your encouragement and your blatant flattery (p.s. don't stop doing that part, cause I likes it so much). It is effing gorgeous to play with you and watch you pwn the AI and me. As you'll well recall I've told you honestly there is something so damn sexy in acceding the day to the victor and having him spare me no quarter. Promise me you'll spare me no quarter, right? Even if I lie down and beg prettily? You *always* make me glad to be pwnd by you.... Tue, 13 May 2008 16:26:35 +0200 server maintenance tuesday.
need to get my EU account re-activated. I has a bucket of fail. Sun, 11 May 2008 17:25:20 +0200 on another note, I fail at mother's day because I did not get my mother anything.
and I'll call her like every year. and she will be gracious and thank me for wishing her a nice mother's day. but really we both know what a thankless little shite I am. Sun, 11 May 2008 17:18:55 +0200 I get to sleep late. even if it is on the sofa and everybody is whispering around, scuffling, wrapping paper shuffled. I'm awake but pretend I'm not. I smell the coffee and whatever it is they're making with their dad's help. I roll over and sigh, and they explode - "SHE'S AWAKE!!!" smothered in a pile of warm, giggly bodies by the minihorde. "Its MOTHER'S DAY! Did you know?" Come eat breakfast and we made it just for you and will you open my present now and can I get you some coffee? its sweet, so sweet. breakfast is mini-sausage biscuts, hash browns, pineapple juice, coffee. an enormous apple danish that they eyed like ravenous buzzards until I offered to quarter it and share it with them. :) a lovely mother's day card with (yayglomps) a renewed GameStop Edge card inside. a pen that looks like this, that Twinkie 2 made for me at school, because I never have a pen handy that is both functional *and* beautiful. so now, I do:  A picture frame that looks like this that Twinkie 1 made for me in school, except way more personalized with pastel insect stickers and a picture of her in the middle, because I don't have nearly as many things made of popsicle sticks as I wish I did:  and a very fashionable jute and pony bead necklace personal crafted for me by Boy Wonder, that looks a little like this, which I think will go with just about everything I have (only the beads are blue and white. my best colors, of course):  a gorgeous picture of Twinkie 2 with her most recent toothless grin, in a hand-colored pic frame made at girl scouts. a similar frame made by Twinkie 1 without the picture because she was absent on that night, also personalized and colorful. a hand-made coupon book from Twinkie 1 that informs me she will clean the kitchen 100 times but will clean her room 0 times. a lovely handmade book from Boy Wonder about how awesome I am. then, they all absented the house for the next three hours so I could game in silence. it doesn't get any better than this, folks. Sun, 11 May 2008 16:51:28 +0200 Sun, 11 May 2008 03:41:38 +0200
Wed, 07 May 2008 07:34:48 +0200 just cause I loves it
 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:04:30 +0200 sick again. head cold this time, likely brought on by spring and the currently dispicably coincidental overabundance of both a) grass pollen and b) tree pollen, hitting me like sledgehammer headphones. real life lag. gimme a couple days & I'll recoup.
unfortunately, the nature of my relationship with my mother takes weird turns, especially at times like this. I've avoided calling her for weeks at a time due to conversations like this: "Hey, its me, how are you?" I say in a voice like Lauren Bacall coming off a three day drunk having smoked about 9 packs of cigarettes and gargling several tablespoons of play sand. "Who is this?" she says, alarmed. I tell her its me, call myself by name. "Oh! I didn't recognize your voice! You are really sick. You sound just horrible!" "Yeah, well, sick again. You know me. Spring, allergies, exhaustion." "You really need to go see a doctor." "What for? He'd only tell me what I know, that its allergies and to take a decongestant." I break off into hacking lung spasms, come back and apologize. She asks what my symptoms are, I tell her head cold, sinuses, allergy drainage kind of stuff, chest congestion, tiredness. Now, this is nothing new. I get seasonal allergies every freaking year, mostly multiple times. And head-colds, etc. Yes, I know. I'm typically sickly and frail like with regard to colds, allergies, flu and sinus junk, but I have been all my life so its not like I haven't learned to cope with it. "I am particularly worried about you." Oh here it comes...I know it, I just know it. Its the lead-in to another opportunity for her to.... "When we were there last, I was watching you at dinner and I noticed your ______. I was just shocked. It looked excessively _______. I mean, that worries me, it cound mean you have some kind of _________ or _________. Please, for me, you need to go get that checked. It could mean you have a serious infection or some debilitating disease!" *sigh* I leave the blanks, not because the convo is about anything I'm embarrassed about, but because its the same convo we have all the time, and ANY words could be put in the blanks. Its formulaic and trite. This time the blanks were filled in with "ear, inflamed, tympanitis, infection that might destroy your hearing." So for the past few days, in addition to feeling like the worst kind of muck scraped from a dairy farmer's milking boots, I keep going into the bathroom and looking objectively in the mirror at my ear thinking, "why does she always kick me when I'm down?" In addition to feeling generally crappy, exhausted and weak, trying to muster the energy to even take a shower so I don't look like death hungover, I now find myself time and again looking at the particular object of her fixation this go round and worrying -- ok should I get this checked out? its not as serious as she thinks, is it? maybe other people notice the same thing? whatever. Then I remembered, its not only when I'm down. She's pretty much not exclusive to waiting until I'm weak and weary to insinuate I'm somehow less than together. Thanks mom, I feel so much better now we've had this talk. Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:39:35 +0200 In the passive aggressive, codependant LARPing of my family, I am for all intents and purposes the archetypal nemesis that both accuses my purportedly innocent father of the infamy of psychotic alcoholism while preventing every one in my family from just getting along splendidly. Life would be just a never-ending cotton candy dream of happy go lovely if only I were not harshing the buzz don't you know. No, I haven't been to an AA meeting yet. Yes, I need to go. But I have an excellent therapist who has helped me really hold it together through all this, and understand my behavior and how to remedy it so that when I feel smothered in toxic fallout it doesn't cause my whole life to fall to shitty pieces. Back in August when we were renovating the kitchen of the house in hopes of putting it on the market and escaping the miserable neighborhood we live in, I wrote in my LJ about the emotionally lacerating experience with my father, drunk and threatening me, scaring the kids. As many times as he's pushed us all to those limits before this was the first time, looking at their faces I realized some vital ephiphanies: If I continued to endure this behavior, what example was I setting for them? That its ok to let people who in theory and explanation love you but just as easily treat you like trash? That you should put up with behavior like that from family just because they are family? That it is in ANY way acceptable to allow your personal behavior ro hurt or damage someone without taking responsibility for it? And most of all, why the fuck would I let anybody, ANYBODY...least of all my father who has treated me like this for years....get away with doing that to *my* kids? Blame me for being the one person in my family to put my foot down. I told him to get out of my house and he was not welcomed back. He threatened me, physically. I kicked him out to my mother's misery and humiliation. She was still apologizing for his behavior as he sat on my porch gibbering to his dead father, pausing only to rush back into the house for the bottle of scotch and storm out indignantly. I was appalled that he'd forced us all to go through that miserable several days, and that my mother somehow felt that the best recourse in dealing with him was to ignore it. After they left, I called my brother and sister. I knew it would not go well. I also wrote about this in my LJ back in August. Yet my concern at that point never having seen such *extreme* ends, was that my dad had a chemical imbalance due to rheumatoid arthritis medication he was taking, combined with the stress of helping us reno, topped off with a sloshy fifth of scotch to well grease his maniacal sense of self-importance. It was the worst I could have hoped for, as I expressed my main intention was concern that he was either suffering from the chem imbalance, a stroke or blood pressure issue, or that he was in fact an alcoholic. From that point on, being the first in our family to actually say the name of the thing we all avoided, I'd pretty much given them the materials, hardware and schematic for my crucifixtion. They vented, and vented and vented. How I just could not get along, how accused they felt, how I was wrong and troublemaking and how, ultimately, I was making the whole issue about.....me. ? Wow. To this day, I never saw the truck that hit me with that accusation. And he're my problem, and will always be my problem. I assume that the more information people have, the more likely they are to draw a reasonable conclusion. Ignorance of the intelligent. No, they did not feel in any way that this information clarified the issue, it was merely me, making it a situation of me vs. dad, working my damndest to garner attention and draw camps. We argued at length. They made me cry with the very horrible, hurtful things they said. They fought me, fought hearing this by dredging up the most stupid, lame and worthless accusations from years and years and years ago. I gave up. I realized, they are not where I am now. They cannot wrap their head around it. And my mother, like all long-term codependants, her theory is that time and avoidance will remedy behavior. Since then, my father is still unwelcomed in my home and every holiday, communication and occasion that necessitates contact with my siblings is tense, vile and returns again and again to what a failure I am to comply with the standard behavioral norm (a misnomer if there was one) and preserve our family dynamic. My mother speaks of vacations over spring break and summer time where I can come up and visit them. This will not happen. My conditions have been made clear to him, to my mother and my siblings. He will not be around my kids until he stops drinking. He must get counseling. He must take responsibility for his behavior, and apologize. It took him four months and I had to ask him outright to apologize to my kids. It took him longer to apologize to me. I reminded him, anything we had, any respect I owed him as my father or a human being has been wiped from the slate, and its going to take an effort to build it back. He's very good at martyrdom. He has his mea culpa's and his metaphoric hair shirt and his verbal self-scourging down pat. My sister and brother make every motivation I have revolve around persecuting him. Its clear to me how my siblings feel, and my mother who, having fallen into predictable numbing of emotions regarding the issues, implies with her tone during our phone converstions that somehow I am being unreasonable in my "relentless attempt to punish your father for his mistakes when he's clearly not been drinking and he has been getting counseling, and things are better because he regrets his actions." This, yet I've never spoken to him about it. It must be great having your own spin-doctor/wife to manage all the icky interpersonal bullshit for you. And my brother and sister, they continue to dredge up, if I cannot oblige their needs however small or imminent, how I seem to think I'm better than all of them. Several weeks ago the ongoing months of tension in my extended family reached a boiling point. My mother and father want to give me a car because I do not have one in my name only, and I need it. They decided to give me my mother's car. I was suspicious this was a bribe, not a peace offering. During the conversation with my mom about this, she told me that she and my father would like to bring me the car over such and such weekend. I hesitated, and then realized I have to stick by my guns. So I broach the subject succinctly: while I appreciate your gift, is this meant to somehow appease me into seeing my dad? No, she assures me, it isn't. Then why, I ask, would you be willing to embarrass yourselves by having me turn him away at my door? I've never heard one word from him that he has worked to resolve the circumstances arising from August, nor that he's received any kind of counseling to fix the situation. She launches into a confessional of all the things he's done, working towards that end and spending vast amounts of time in personal introspection. Convenient, isn't it, that he's solely and omnipotently able to fix all his problems just by thinking about them! But, I say, he has not told me any of that. I have no assurance from him, nor accceptance of responsibility, that he has done those things. And since I do not trust him any more, your word means nothing to me. They drove in. I opened the door, said hello. The kids, innocently forgiving and full of nothing but love for them, rushed to hugs and kisses. My mother walked past me into the house. I stepped into the doorway as my father walked up the front steps. "No," I said and shook my head. My heart was cracking my ribs while it thundered in my chest. My head spun and I thought I would vomit. "Pops, come in and see our new turtle!" Twinkie 1 cries. She takes his hand, Boy Wonder the other, and they drag him to the door, push me out of the way gently and he walks past me without daring to have the balls to look me in the eye. He crosses the threshhold, and just like that, I've lost. I am nothing. The ground I held liquifies beneath me and before I know it I'm in the same quicksand I've been fighting to get out of for years and concluding that there is no escape. Nothing matters. I don't matter. My children don't matter. He's won again, he's charming and witty with the kids. My mother starts to go on about how my wallpaper border needs repasting. I feel like I'm walking through a Bosch landscape as both surreal and parable, its so ironically distorted. I am transparent, thin and brittle as late April ice on a shallow puddle. I am as small and overlooked as the blown, grey knot of a down-less dandelion head. I am worthless, suffocated, trivialized. All the words and actions without true purpose. I hate who I am for his being my father, and I wish he were dead, because then maybe I could let all the ugliness die with him and memorialize him, commemmorate the good things about him. The longer he's here, the harder it becomes to even think of them. Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:57:35 +0200 Its not surprising that things come in threes, as Twinkie 1 has not been without her persistent, idiopathic symptoms. My darling little peanut, artistic and introverted, shy and yet giggly, dimpled, gymnastic and creative, Twinkie 1 has developed an ulcer. Her concern over the health issues facing her siblings, the stress of the many other things going on here and her extreme attempts to be so perfect as to cause me no worries, so much contributes to her condition.
Stress affects her deeply and emotionally, and she internalizes much of her anxiety and worry. She will always be the kind of girl who when she's upset will not be able to eat. This is specifically manifests itself in stomach pain, vomiting and weepiness. She is not a child who complains of ghost pains, or fabricates symptomatic conditions for attention. The only times she's come to me wailing has been with bloodied lips or bee stings, the kinds of things you'd expect. So when she complained of stomach pain the week after Thanksgiving, I thought perhaps it was holiday/end of year anxiety combined with the stress of this time. Her appetite waned - this was a sure indicator that she was not feeling up to par because despite being a mere slip of a girl she eats with the robust energy of a 16-year-old boy at every meal. Vomiting, more stomach ache, treated with a mild diet and bismuth. This developed into fever, more pain. Several pediatrician visits with no results. Sick over Christmas, so much so that the little sweetie could not enjoy stocking treats or even Christmas dinner. She lacklusterly opened gifts, and then went back to bed and slept for hours. Nights she spent moaning and weepy in pain as I consoled her with hot water botles and back rubs, warm baths and maalox. I panned the gamut of motherly diagnoses and remedies, from the basest to the most unusual. Not gas, overeating, constipation, ear ache, ear infection, appendicitis, etc. Apple sauce, ginger ale, plain steamed rice, toast, saltines, weak broth, popsicles, jello -- she could keep nothing down. Over New Year's and in January, she became gaunt and sallow-eyed. I could not coax but a bite or two of saltines into her, and she refused to drink. Everything that hit her stomach came back up again. A trick I learned from a pharmacists helped slightly: half a dramamine tablet, crushed, mixed with a half-teaspoon of applesauce. Fools your body into thinking its not nauseated. This worked on and off for many days, and I was able with persistence to eke a bare minimum of bland food into her. Tiny little girl, precious golden sweetheart. Her pediatrician and I grinned with triumph back when she first made it *onto* the American infant growth charts at -- she has always been at least 15% lower than the third percentile for height and weight. But then, the Twinkies are ethnically Vietnamese; their birthmom was barely 4'10" and slightly more than 80 or 90 lbs soaking wet, I'd guess. And at this year's annual checkup Twinkie clocked in at a whopping 34 lbs. (by comparison, most kids in her class weigh about 15-20 lbs more). Day after day, she withered and looked more gaunt and emaciated than I've ever seen her. Febrile and in constant pain, every bouyant aspect of her personality was muffled and dulled. She stopped smiling and caring what went on, lived on the sofa, watched tv for hours without a peep. I think by our estimation she lost approximately a quarter of her body weight during the time between when she first showed symptoms and when we started implementing a working remedy to her prognosis. Three weeks of school were missed due to sporadic bouts of this pain, fainting and severe nausea. As previously mentioned I have been simultaneously dealing with Boy Wonder's infections due to the severe eczema, and Twinkie 2's continuing issues with school work. But having to take Twinkie 1 to the ER on several occasions because she has been rigid with pain, and pale and drenched in cold sweat, this broke my stringently unswavering resolve into two jaggedy halves. Why should any child have to suffer like that, children with lesser and more severe conditions than this. I would take every bit of her pain onto myself and smile through it to spare her. Unrealistic, but still, yearned for. Thank goodness for our excellent pediatrician who has been my support and priceless resource since before they all got here. After vigorous exams and upper g/i x-rays, we discovered about four to five weeks into this condition that my little bitty one had grown herself a not-so itty bitty ulcer. As grateful as I could be for a diagnosis, I thanked the pediatrician, the staff at Children's and the radiology technicians profusely. With a diagnosis it was finally possible to treat her and help her to get better. Medication. Restrictive diet. Sympathy. Waiting for the symptoms to pass and then building her gastrointestinal balance back up with Culturelle (she is allergic to milk products, so ingesting yogurt and the like to restore the lactobacillus in her digesstive tract is not an option). Keeping a keen eye for whenever she sits with her hand on her stomach and that look on her face, knowing I need to give her prevacid right then and there if we want to be able to get through the night five hours later. She's had two bouts since. One around her birthday, controlled well enough with prescription medication and rest, and one from a few days ago. Already, we're managing it better every time. I just have to keep reminding her its important that she tell me her stomach hurts, that its not burdensome to me in light of all the things going on, and that I want her to be happy, healthy and smiling. Nothing's as important to me as that, as hearing her gloriously infectious giggle and see her dimpled face happily munching dumplings, kale, vegetable soup, oranges, pancakes, spring rolls, shrimp cocktail, chicken salad, cream puffs, anything and everything she craved that I could cater to her whim. Content, satisfied, pain-free. Of all of them, this has been the most easily remedied. I'm grateful for small things. Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:19:24 +0200 Twinkie 2 struggles to overcome a borderline learning disability for which no one, least of all me, can help her manage.
When your child cannot process language and information despite every best effort you make and recourse you pursue, you feel you have failed in every way as a parent. My beloved Twinkie 2, gregarious, bubbly and scientific, logical and introspective, sensitive and tender-hearted, cannot tell the difference between a "b" and a "d." She has a short term memory failure that renders her unable to read a word and then three words later, recognize the same word she has read before. She has no functional phonemic awareness. Her frustration and inability to match her twin sister's overachieving drive gives her bouts of sadness and compulsively obsessive behavior about things she feels she can and should be able to control. She has an Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and mild dyslexia. And despite my best efforts over the past three years I'm failing to find a solution to her needs. My patience and compassion for her situation bolsters my inability to concede defeat in finding her the help she needs. For the past three years we've spoken with teachers, counselors, therapists, pediatric specialists, speech pathologists, neuropsychologists, special education departments and, once again (in addition to the rounds we go with Boy Wonder) have come to confrontational ends with the school and the school district itself. Last year was particularly defeating. Her teacher repeatedly told me she believed Twinkie 2 had a behavioral problem that could be resolved with "more reading!" and "more discipline!" We began working with a competent therapist who helped Twinkie deal with her overblown, perfectionistic self-image, and her refusal to comply with rules imposed by me or teachers, or requirements for school achievement. After talking to my friend, a SpEd professional, we had Twinkie assessed for behavioral disorders, came to the ODD appraisal and worked faithfully with her counselor to alleviate some of the results from Twinkie's brain's inability to process information the way everybody else's does. A second, preliminary assessment by Marburn Academy did in fact reveal she had a mild dyslexic capacity. Armed with this and the 2007 Federal IDEA guide "Who's IDEA is this Anyway?", I broached the topic with her first grade teacher and wrote a letter requesting an assessment by the school. The academic confrontation occured due to her failure to meet significant achievement milestones, noted by her teacher after many months of my prodding that something was not coming together for her. I was subjected to the following: "Usually by the end of next year, she should even out with everybody else." "We don't recomment or pursue assessment of children at this age since developmentally they are still learing and adapting." "I don't think its really a disability more than its just her refusal to pay attention." "She simply needs to read more, and you need to read more to her." "It may be that you are putting too much pressure on her at home." "She's not even trying." "Whenever I point out her mistakes to her she just shuts down." "She cannot write legibly or consistently." "I believe she has a language processing issue and have referred her to assessment by the speech pathologist." "Her behavior is just way out of control. You need to address that at home." However, despite failing to meet the standard and exhibiting honest inability to process the information required for her to learn in first grade, not one of the professionals, teachers or staff of this school agreed that she should be even *preliminarily assessed* for having a disability, since for all intents and purposes she fell right inside the marginal parameter for acceptable performance. Now I'm nobody's fool with regard to the insulting way I was shuffled between meeting and meeting, the way the teachers avoided me like an ebola carrier bleeding out in the hallway on my way to my daughter's classroom. The dismissive aura of the "assessment" meetings, the refusal to "spend time on a child who is obviously performing within the paramenters" and the gushy, daisy-chain circle-jerking of teachers and professionals talking about what great teachers and professionals they were while avoiding actually discussing my daughter's performance, issues and needs. You can imagine the combination of this syrupy miasma of offensive carelessness caused quite a hair up my posterior. Before you ascertain (and I am the fault of possibly implying this due to my reluctance to write about these things when they happen/ed) that I am a landmine that waits for some unsuspecting footfall to trigger me into shrapnel-flinging, gut-rending armageddon mode, I'd like to explain a few things. First, if you haven't noticed from my LJ, I'm fairly literate and well-spoken, direct and unapologetic. I tend to do my research and explore information before I go talking out of any orifice, that orifice of choice preferrably (and credibly) being my mouth and not my ass. I'm diplomatic and yet committed to problem resolution. I do not flare easily and I'm even-handed about listening and communicating. I've stated before, as hard won as my children have come to me, I suffer no grievous concern about what the almighty fecking hell anybody thinks about me when staunchly pursuing a solution to my children's needs. Regardlessly, I will not submit to having my back door reamed with a blunt polearm by people who believe I am attempting to milk an over-budgeted and strained school district, since my daughter is clearly not in danger of causing standardized test scores to dip below federally mandated levels for school funding. Why output the expense and time to actually provide the child what she needs to excel when you can just push kids like her twin sister to "make up the difference" in the grand average of things? Nor will I sit through people intimating that perhaps her difficulties are due to "adoption identity issues," a genetically predisposed condition inherited from her birthparents" (excuse me but that the everliving bastard hell???) "comparative preference parents might spend on one twin over another," (ok, please, give me some fucking credit here) or "too high expectations on your part, mom" (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!). Roiling, livid ire does not begin to describe the bile that fouled my attitude towards these people from the beginning. And after judiciously and timely pursuing recourse from the school and being stalled and put off, by the end of the year last year the final meeting to determine whether her teachers would even recommend her for a basic assessment (not services, just determining if she required further help, like tutoring, for gobsake), lo and behold her teacher informs everyone that Twinkie has, within the span of two months jumped four reading levels! Hoorays abound and all the instructors pat each other on the back for a job well done, then sign a piece of paper that, in essence says, we're not doing anything about this any more and call the case resolved. This phenomenal leap in reading levels is noted quite duly by her father and I as nothing more than spurious bullshit. Free unicorn rides for everybody -- wheeeeeee!!! My final comment to this committee followed, "You have ignored my requests for even the basest of preliminary assessments. I feel that you are avoiding having to provide services to my child because in essence, federal law does not compel you to do so until she proves in the third grade that she cannot read, comprehend, or perform on the federal standard achievement tests. At which point you will come beating down my door telling me that it is essential she be able to achieve a baseline score so that you will receive your federal funding for No Child Left Behind. However, at that point, for my daughter, it will be too late and you will receive not one iota of compliance from me due to your callous and repercussionless refusal to address my concerns.. You will have wasted two years she could have been preparing to do her best, two years of continuing to tell her she's not paying attention and is not 'getting the information'." Their response? "We will be revisiting her situation in the fall, and determining whether we need to follow up then. Its not like we won't communicate with you regarding this." And mine: "It does not matter to me. You've proven that you are very happy to have her boost your minority statistics for this school, but obviously care nothing for her actual comprehension of the education you're providing her. If this difficulty she is experiencing does prove out to be a learning disability as we assume, and not, as you assume, a behavioral issue or a maturation issue, we will be sitting here again in a year's time. And very likely the year after that when you are required to have her take federal testing. At that point, do not expect me to force my child to comply with anything more than writing her name at the top of the test form and sitting in her chair without marking one answer on that test until the week is done." IDEA offers me no real, concrete options to pursue at this point. We are literally at the mercy of an education system that would reward my child with the help she needs were she only worse off than she is. So, this year. I tell her teacher about the situation. He's understanding yet he comes to me telling me, "she's just no getting the math/money/time/reading/spelling/comprehension/(insert subject here)." He recommends workbooks and "reading every night." I've told him, you aren't telling me anything I don't already do; rhetoric through repetition will not make her learn it any better." He realizes this, and he realizes as well she will not qualify again this year for remedial services. Yet he hawks the line to me, a continuous status report that the tank is half-empty and he doesn't know if we'll reach the destination by year end. Our achievable options are limited. Marburn: expensive and complicated summer program. Neuropsychiatric documented assessment at an exorbitant cost that our insurance will not cover, but could, eventually, spur the school into providing her services. Extra tutoring. Summer school. Patience. Waiting until everybody else comes around to seeing what I've seen for years. Hoping it won't be long. At times, I've exhausted my patience and compassion, although its not her fault and its not mine. I've tried to put it in terms that make sense of why she feels such failure and deep sadness over why it is all so hard for her. But the toughest part is, I have to push her and steel myself against the obvious pain I cause her by doing so. "You do have to work harder, and its not fair, I know. But you have to remember your rules that get your brain going on the right path....hold up your fists with your thumbs up and look at which one makes the b and which one makes the d, every time you write them. Use your finger to space the words. Try to remember what the word looks like in your head before you write it. Interview yourself about what happened in the story. Take out your mental camera and snap a picture of the word." "There are always gonna be two kinds of right, angel baby. the one that your brain and I know is ok, and the kind the world wants you to think is ok. Its important to your teachers while you are in school. You can always believe your brain but you have to prove to your teachers that you know how to think the way they want you to. I know you're smart, and we can find a way to do this." Meanwhile, we struggle to get through this year, every night's homework and reading. Spelling and comprehension and math and money. Applying the logic skills she has to the ways the homework problems are worded, ways that confuse and alienate her. I reminder her, "just keep swimming, just keep swimmming." :) ======================= The ice cream truck has jangled down the street and I've forked over a marginal six dollars for each of the threesome a child's treasure of cartoon character-shaped popsicles, resulting in a benevolent, unanimous contentment that will endure until dinnertime. Twinkie 2 has had a particularly tough day. Seven out of fifteen words on a spelling test wrong. I point out, at least she tried to spell them phonetically. She's unphased by my attempt to turn it into something good. "Its just that your brain works differently from other people, tidbit. And that's why you think clearly about some things and not so clearly about others," I console her while we rock on the front porch swing, eating popsicles. She can manage to eat the most drippy, sloppy popsicle and when done, you'd never know she'd eaten anything. She's precise, tidy, methodical and thorough. "Like why bees dance to tell other bees where the best flowers are. Or how the pyramids were made. And why condensation happens on the outside of this popsicle, right?" she says. "Yeah peachy sweet. You know important stuff like that." I kiss her glossy brown head. "But I can't remember when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking. And when I write "daddy" it looks like "babby." I dunno why my brain does that." "Me neither, darlin. How about we blow some bubbles, huh? You blow the most incredible bubbles I've ever seen." "I know why bubbles keep their shape, its because of surface tension between the air inside and the air outside." We smile and swing, and suck every juicy good moment out of the popsicles. Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:53:18 +0200 Boy Wonder has been suffering from extremely acute eczema. It is genetic, and it is severe.
This, to the extent that the school has teetered into legal ramification minefield territory. We've been at our wits end with the virulent nature of the condition, which began shockingly on seeing the insides of his elbows while getting him ready for a bath. They looked like someone had poured boiling water on his skin. That was in January. Since then the condition has resulted in consistent scratching, bleeding, infections and in one instance, weeping blisters that caused part of his dermis to slough off. You can imagine my anxiety over this. All through it he endures, the child with the highest tolerance for pain and discomfort I've ever known. Gentle tempered and mild, he only says, "its itchy." High dose topical corticosteroids that are safer for children don't even have an effect nor do antihistamines. We've switched to hypoallergenic detergents and soaps, slathered him in eucerin and vaseline. We have allergen filtration filters on the furnace and a humidifier in his room. We had him allergy tested, and only learned he was allergic to neosporin which we had slathered him in for months to combat the broken skin and possibility of further infections. He contracted a staph infection, then a strep infection through the broken skin. Treated to two courses of antibiotics and we had to switch to a non-allergenic topical antibiotic after this. Meanwhile, his teacher, the school nurse and I are at odds. His teacher required that he come to her desk every day in front of his classmates and pull up his sleeves and pants legs to show her the status of the insides of his elbows and knees, after which she summarily dismissed him from her class to the nurse who bandaged him more severely than a corpse in the Valley of the Kings with the heavy-duty adhesived bandage tape. When removed, the bandage tape tore his skin, causing even more problems. The nurse and teacher, under the guise of "concern for his health" projected he had MRSA. Notwithstanding the other TWO of my children did not have nor show signs of this highly infectious/contagious skin condition. They screamed the sky was falling until I had skin tests and affirmations from lab results and doctors. I suppose it didn't matter that he's had this consistently since January, and although his skin looks miserable, no limbs have rotted off yet. : / Reports, letters, lab results and medical forms were appropriated to said school nurse. At one point, the offhanded comment was made that "they were concerned for his physical well-being" and something was intimated about social services. So, let me take a deep breath before this cranks up to epic proportions. First, I had to make clear that the treatment Boy was receiving at school for a condition that he obviously had no control over, one that was hereditary and verified by medical professionals, that this treatment bordered on exclusionary, prejudicial and yes, I even went as far as to make it a racial issue considering my kids are three of the whopping total of five Asian children at this school of approximately 480 elementary students (we are the minority demographic, as you can see). A child with a skin condition that is not contagioius, clearly inherited through an Asian genetic predisposition, made to feel somehow inferior because of this, removed from his classroom and basically quarantined repeatedly over the course of two months....I think my response to this was, "you can't possibly think I would not consider calling my attorney regarding this overtly and preposterously litiginous situation." But the ripest of my rant was saved for the social services intervention inferrence: "well, we are concerned that he may not be receiving the quality of care he needs for this, and we feel if it persists we might need to make a report to the county social services agency." (pausing for an insanely hysterical conniption of riotous laughter, which I experience every time I recall this) Let me say, I do not nor have I ever gone on in detail anywhere online regarding the circumstances of my children, who were all adopted. It would be obvioius if you saw us. And of course, the school knows this information. As you can surmise from this revelation, the process to be allowed to parent my kids was not easy, carefree, casual or quick. I endured the most intimate (and I do mean intimate in every sense of the word both physical and psychological) details of my life poked, prodded, questioned, examined, exposed and counseled. I've had this information researched, documented and compiled into various reports that every stranger from the city to the county to the state to the federal to the international level scrutinized by the most careless strangers. I have had state and federal fingerprints, income and employment history scrutinization, child abuse clearances, medical clearances, a slew of painful innoculations, extenuating processes for obtaining documentation, police reports, psychological exams, physical examinations and verifications, counseling, training, interviewing, and a rigorous, extremely invasive home study process completed to be able to call my children mine. It is not a process for the faint-hearted. It is demeaning, debasing, dehumanizing and strips you of every shred of dignity and personal sense of individual privacy you take for granted. And yet it was worth it. A hundred times over, I would do it again to be where I am. My response to the comment about social services? I laughed my fucking fool head off. In summation and said in more eloquent terms to them, bring it the fuck on bitches. Don't think I wouldn't go through every bit of that ass-grinding and invasive process to be my kid's strongest, indomitable advocate in anything. Don't think I wouldn't jump through every legal hoop, expose myself to the core, pay every dime over again to every government agency (which is where every fucking dime went anyway) to give me permission and ratify my right to hold them in my arms and love them and make them proud to be who they are. But this is not about my adoption advocacy, its about a child with a health condition for which I cannot find a solution. We have seen a dermatologist (himself Asian) who felt it necessary to educate me on what the hell eczema is. Laughable, as I'm the kind of person who has already done the research and examined the circumstances prior to requesting assistance and care. Laughable also, as all three of them have it to varying degrees since birth and I've been treating it for years, its just never been this severe. So far nothing prescribed medically or practically has alleviated the condition. And still, the poor kid wakes up every day with the skin around his ears caked with scabs and the lobe of one ear sporting a deep, raw split from unerring, habitual scratching. His pillow is flecked with little blood spots where he's unconsciously scratched through the night. The backs of his knees look like they've been scrubbed with steel wool. I slather him in flucticasone and vaseline, bandage him so he can't scratch (which works for all but the head, of course), and distract him when he's itchy. My sweet, bright, beautiful boy who should not have to endure the incompetency and culturally and medically ignorant school staff, the casually cruel treatment from his peers, and the protracted, shot-in-the-dark medical hit or miss to alleviate his condition. I'm angry and frustrated and fed up. Kicked into bulldog mode this morning. Unswavering in my call for immediate cessation of the fucking around by the dermatologist and a treatment that would combat the evidently unsuccessful remedies so far. No, I will not "try this and come back for a follow up in 8 weeks." No, I will not do the things you suggest like avoid using bleach in the wash or switching to Dove body wash, as we already discussed that and I *have* been doing that and it is NOT WORKING. You will give me a plausible prescription for treatment that I can see results from in two weeks, and it will not cost me $180 for the medication because you believe he should only take the licensed version of he medication and not the formulary that would be covered by our insurance. My case I presented thusly, in most unswavering manner: You have had three months to treat him and have failed. I forsee two possible outcomes: I will either come back in two weeks to show you whatever you are going to prescribe today has actually worked. Alternately, I will be contacting the state dermatology board to express my disgust with the situation and find out where I have to go to get adequate and effective treatment for the poor kid, not to mention contacting my pediatrician to warn her against ever sending another pediatric patient to you, and happily finding every resource I can to discourage future patients from patronizing your practice. Please contemplate your options and provide me with the solution that will result in the outcome you would most like to experience. Summer's coming, and he'll be in shorts soon and t-shirts. Two things will happen. The natural UV will help. But the patchy spots, the dark scars on his beautiful golden skin where the blisters are healing still stigmatize him. He is congenial; it does not bother him. For now with letters from his wise, competent and commmiserating pediatrician the school has realized their persistent pestering regarding his condition is fruitless and ineffective. I deliver him to their care leerily and testily, with a warning glance. I have no patience for their sheepish inconsideration of my child. I think they surmise what I'm capable of as I've made it quite clear, and how indomitably I'll fight them on this issue. Have fought this long and this hard for him, and believe me, its the kind of confrontaton I relish and am epically geared to undertake. In the meantime, we bathe and play with boats in the warm water. He tells me he will sail all the way to Sydney, Australia, or to the Bering Sea where he can fish for opio crab. The pokemon ball is the Alvin, and he is photographing glass fish in some deep rift on the Atlantic sea floor. He sings "I've got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence..." I ruffle-dry his hair. Smear him with corticosterioid. With my pale, freckled hands I slather his stunningly pecan-toasty skin languidly with vaseline. I boast about how handsome and beautiful and smart he is, and how lucky I am to love him. I tell him, "the day we first loved each other you were so frightened. You laid down on the floor of Heart of Mary Villa and cried and cried so sorrowfully. And my heart flew into my throat! I jumped up and ran right to you and picked you up and sang to you, and you stopped crying and held onto me so tightly." "I didn't know then that you would love me forever yet," he says. "And now, you are the reason for my happy." That's all I need. Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:36:35 +0200 I am recalcitrant in writing about what's been going on with me for several months. Mostly its very personal and overwhelming in both positive and negative ways, the details of which I'm intensely unable to still yet talk to everybody about even with those I YM, Skype and WoW with regularly. This is such an oxymoron, because I only seem to talk to people sporadically lately anyway. Part of this is done out of respect for the parties involved, the friends I do have and their level of knowledge regarding the circumstances, the players, the drama unfolding. I can only be as revelatory as my respect of them dictates. Time again I've upheld my belief that talking about situtions, grievances or the unsavory details of my life really doesn't make me any more comfortably friendly with people. I don't like to gripe; everybody's got problems. Mine are neither greater or less |
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