Dummies & Diapers

I recently read about the brilliant Spoon Theory and while I am not sick I felt it was easily applicable to my current situation with a 2 month old, colicky baby. Obviously I am not comparing being ill to having a baby (I love my little baby girl and I am pretty sure noone ever said that about their illnesss), but the idea of having a finite amount of spoons resonated with me.

Spoons however are not really that geeky, so I came up with my own version of the theory.

Life with a colicky baby is like playing oldschool D&D. You roll your character and based on your stats you have a certain amount of hit points. Once your hit points reach 0 it is game over.

Here is my stats sheet:

© Mistel 2013

Every morning you start out with full Energy Points, but each task you do takes away a certain amount of points. Want to go grocery shopping? Roll a D20 to see if your baby gets hungry midway. You rolled too low, ouch, baby lands a critical wail at you in the middle of the supermarked. You loose 4 Energy Points!

Want to vacuum? Roll the die again to check against your luck. If you roll high enough the white noise from the vacuum cleaner will lull your baby to sleep so you only loose 1 Energy Point.

Baby is crying, roll the die against your ability in baby decoding. Result: 1... Ouch critical failure, you thought the baby was hungry, but she wasn't now she is in hysteria and it will take 1 hour of walking back and forth singing to her before she calms down. You loose 5 Energy Points.

One of your friends ask if you want to meet up for lunch. Preparing to leave the house includes feeding and changing your baby. You loose 2 Energy Points for that and another 1 for packing the changing bag and walking back and forth to the cafe because you have to take an extra long route  as the pavement on the route you normally take does not accomodate a pram.

Your Energy Points got to -3, because you had to change diapers 3 times during the night? You will have a negative modifier for tomorrow... it is going to be a loooong day.

I hope my geeky version of the Spoon Theory helps non parents understand how it is to have a baby. When I decline a lunch invitation, it is not because I don't want to hang with you, it is simply because it is only 11:30, my Energy Points are already at 2 and I am fresh out of potions ;)

You shall not pass... gas.

Diaper Party

Being a geeky girl growing up in the 80th and 90th meant that the majority of my friends through life has been boys. Nowadays it is more common for girls to be into gaming and geeking and with the help of the Internet us nerdy girls have an easier time connecting, but when I was in my teens growing up in a small town, I didn't find many females sharing my interests.

As mentioned my hobby often meant that I preferred to hang out with boys and boys are (sorry to generalize) oftentimes quite liberal when it comes to sharing bodily functions with the world.

I have heard my share of loud burps followed by an applaud from everyone present except yours truly. I have experienced nasty smelling farts that caused delighted giggles by the entire group (again excluding me) and I have had my share of stories of floaters or diarrhea proudly shared while eating dinner or under similar circumstances.

It seems to me that the male species revels in celebrating bodily functions in a way I have never understood.. until now.

Everytime my baby girl burps or farts I squeel in delight and when I see her diaper full of poop I almost do a happy dance.. every time.

Because I know that every burp and every fart means a little less whimpering and tears and a fully loaded diaper can buy me half an hour worth of sleep.

The question is, do guys remember how revered we held their eructations, their flatulens and their stools? And is this why they still as grown ups share these feats with childish glee? If thats the case, why do we women find it embarrassing?

Is it because we celebrate womens bodily functions for a shorter time and then starts reprimanding us for them instead?

Who knows, but I have to end this post now as I believe my daugther just gave me yet another reason to party.

Real life multiplayer

Screenshot from Neverwinter Online

Everyone can probably guess that playing MMOs is not something that goes well with having a newborn in the house. Especially if said newborn is being breastfed exclusively.

However yesterday I thought I would try my luck anyway with the newly released Neverwinter Online. And in my naive optimism I thought, "hey maybe I can even do a dungeon and try that out". I mean I had just spent a couple of hours interacting with my daugther. Her diaper was new and clean plus she had fed for 35 minutes and were soundly a sleep in her moses basket.

Yay a bit of time for myself! And what better way to spend quality alone time than to group up with a bunch of strangers in an MMORPG?

Anyways lets not discuss my weird habbit of self inflicted punishment and instead return to my story.

I had probably played for about 10 minutes. Just long enough to sit in the queue for the instance, get the invite and kill the first 3 packs of monsters, when my daughter started crying.

My partner, who is awesome, got up checked her diaper, tried calming her down and to his credit did his very best to buy me enough time to finish the instance.

My daughter however wouldn't have any of it. Apparently my daughter like a platypus is capable of consuming her own weight in food on a daily basis and like her mother she gets very cranky when she's hungry. So she wants to eat often, but preferably when I have:
A. Just poured warm food onto a plate (wont be warm when I get to eat it HAH!).
B. Just laid down on the bed in hopes of a bit of sleep.
C. As was the case yesterday, just for once loaded a game that requires more than 1 hand.

Now I am not a bad player, in fact I like to think myself above average, I mean I raided in the 2. best guild on my server in TBC *flex virtual nerd muscles*, but even my level of skill can not handle feeding a squirming, displeased baby while doing a dungeon run. And this is where my partners pure awesomeness really shines.

"You handle the mouse I will deal with the number keys and awsd based on your commands" he said. So for the next 15 minutes I shouted "3" "e" "r" "double tab s" etc. while feeding my baby and stearing the point of view with my mouse.

Did I top the damage meter? No. Would it have worked in a hardcore raid instance? No.

But I got to finish my instance and half an hour of as good as uniterrupted gaming.
No loot dropped for my class though damned RNG!





The moral of my story? Well I guess if there has to be one it is that my real life has gone from being a single player experience with a lot of interesting side characters to full multiplayer mode with forced grouping. And frankly that is quite awesome even if somehow slightly frustrating. :)

When a gamer turns mom (From the perspective of the computer)

It is not only me and my partner who have to get used to changes now that my daughter has arrived. Life has changed for my computer as well and the view is slightly different.

From owning the noobs...

..to feeding with boobs.

I love my computer! It has followed me all the way from Ireland to Denmark and is now sitting with me here in Malta.

It has been here for some of the most significant times in my life (albeit, parts have been added and replaced). It was here when I worked for Blizzard Entertainment, it was here when I got my first real promotion. It was part of my life when I met my awesome boyfriend and it has witnessed my growing belly and my beautiful little daugther.

After the birth of my daughter my relationship with my computer has suffered though. It is hard to play games with only one hand and your focus on the little new wonder in your life. Believe me I did try. ;)

My computer has been acting up trying to reclaim my attention. Lately it has been bluescreening on me and generally acting offended, but I know it is just because it miss me and when I do have time for it again our relationship will bloom once more.

My mission in the weeks and monhts to come is to find a way to squeeze a bit of gaming in between feeding, diaper change and power napping on command when my daughter falls a sleep.
She likes sleeping in my arms so feel free to ad game recommendations in the comments below for games that can be played with one arm and does not require reflexes or precision.


Pictures © at Sigrid Zeuthen. Do not use without permission.

Baldur's gate enhanced edition

Baldur's Gate was originally released in November 1998 and I can't even begin to count how many hours I spent playing it back then. It was the beginning of my love affair with party based RPGs. I played through Baldur's Gate 2, Icewindale, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights and Wizardry 8 and I loved them all.

But for some reason the computer industry moved away from these games and started spewing out first person, single character computer games and they never looked back. Until now. Today the 28th of November 2012 Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is being released and I am like a kid in a candy store.

The game is a remake of the original computer game, but complete with new characters, a new adventure and over 400 improvements to the base game. One of those is a much needed upgrade to the multiplayer system.

Furthermore a lot of bugs has been fixed from the original version and more importantly to some is maybe the fact that the additions to gameplay that were introduced in Baldur's Gate 2 has been included in Baldur's Gate: Enhanced edition. This includes the new subraces and classes.

For me though, the most interesting aspect of this relaunch is that the developers has decided to release Baldur's Gate: Enhanced edition for iPad and Android tablets and users will be able to play multiplayer with people across all platforms. It is a very smart move that should ensure an influx of players once the tablet versions are out.

I have of course Pre-ordered my copy and I will return when I have had some time to play it through. My current advice though is to just go ahead and buy it, you can't go wrong with Baldur's Gate!