New Mama!

I'm organizing our stuff in the attic for a tag sale. I've been going through boxes and boxes of photos, children's clothes, baby stuff, books, toys, files, journals. My head is swimming in memories (and dust).

Today I am sorting things we no longer want or need, setting boxes aside that we still want or need, throwing away things no one would probably want or need. Making way for more stuff. It painsme to part with some of the baby stuff, but hopefully my sister in law will find a use for them because....

I'm an Aunt! Moya Ezekiela Sofia... was just born around 1 pm today.

Bad Friend Foods

When Ingrid was an infant she was allergic to dairy products. They gave her weepy, oozy, itchy, eczema patches all over her face, the back of her legs and her elbows. The best way to prevent them was to avoid all dairy. That meant I had to avoid all dairy. Goat, cow, sheep, water buffalo. No dairy. No cheese, yogurt, no fun for me, pirate dairy queen that I am.

She grew out of it, and now dairy doesn't bother her, and now I can eat it, too.

Actually, no I can't. I've been battling another health issue since Ingrid was born, too. It comes and goes, and when it comes, it does so with a vengeance. At times I've been miserable and uncomfortable. I've tried everything, except a change in diet, because I know it would require a radical chance in my eating habits for at least 6 months, and this radical change in diet will mean no more of favorites. No more comfort food.

I can't stand it any more. I'm back to being physically uncomfortable, and I don't want to go the pharmaceutical route again, because it's only a temporary fix. So starting tomorrow, I'm getting on the restricted diet train. In a word, I'm bummed. Here's what I won't be eating for the next six months:

Sugar in all forms, including honey, except occasional whole fresh fruit.
Fungus, molds, and yeast in all forms, including vitamins and minerals.
Most B vitamins (unless label states otherwise).
Most breads and commercial baked goods.
All alcoholic beverages. (At least I can still make wine!)
Mushrooms
Starchy vegetables like corn and potatoes.
Dry roasted nuts.
Barbecued potato chips.
Most commercial soups.
Apple cider and natural root beer.
White flour.
Bacon and other pork, which often contain molds.
Wheat, oats, rye and barley, (gluten).
Fruit and diluted fruit juices, high in fructose (fruit sugar)

Then there are the things I will have to limit:

Whole grains
Nuts and seeds (small amounts).
Beans and other legumes (small amounts).

I can have kombucha, meats, fish, poultry, vegetables. No bread or pasta.

Bummer.

UPDATE! Fermented foods and vinegar are back on the list! Hello Kim chee! (And no way was I going to give up kombucha!) Still no dairy or alcohol.

Vertamae

I picked up my bike on Wednesday. It's big and green. You know how some bikes are sleek and sexy? If they were human they'd be tall and svelte, they'd have deep voices and wear slinky clothes. Even my Giant hybrid has some sex appeal in this way, but she's more like Greta Garbo.

Not my new bike. Vertamae, as I've named her, is the kind of sexy where if she were human she'd look like Lena Horne with hairy armpits and cat eye glasses. She has a big wicker basket on the front, and fenders, and a bell. I rode her to town on Saturday and had a little accident where I broke the bracket that holds the derailleur to the bike. As luck would have it, this happened in front of the co-op, and a couple of friends whom I haven't seen in a really long time happened to run out the store and offer me a ride. They took me to the bike shop, I dropped Vertamae off, and picked her up today. It was actually a good thing. I got to spend time with my friends, who are moving to Costa Rica in August, and the damage was minimal.

Vertamae and I are going to have a good summer. There will be biking for the whole family. I'm going to ride to work as often as possible (except when I work in Amherst). Ingrid is big enough for our tandem bike attachement this year, and she still fits into the bike trailer. Bea looks so cool on her Electra Cruiser (if it were human it would look like, well, Bea). And Chris isn't taking any classes this summer so he'll have a chance to get on his road bike. His bike is sexy in that sexy husband way. So I guess if our bikes had babies they'd look like our kids as bikes.

I Am Made of Win!

I entered a raffle contest from my favorite local radio station last week. From the title of this post you can guess what happened. I won something! Something kinda big and wicked cool. Actually I won a couple of things: organic cotton bedding, a wool comforter, and best of all, a Raleigh hybrid comfort bike.

Two years ago I won 4 tickets to the Vermont Renaissance Festival from the same radio station. That time I had to guess the current event correlation between three songs. They all somehow related to George W. Bush taking the prime minister of Japan to Graceland. That was a natural for me. I'm from Memphis, I was an exchange student in Japan, and, um, when I lived in Memphis, George Herbert Walker Bush came to my high school and I got to ask him a question. Okay, so the latter was a stretch there.

Basically, I won 4 tickets (a $40 value) for keeping up with current events. This time around, I won some things (I'm guessing close to an $800 value) for knowing my name, phone number, having an email address, and knowing what town I live in. Quite simply, I am made of win.

The Sun Doesn't Set on Our Love

Another playtest of Tales of the Fisherman's Wife. This time we had 4 players, and it rocked. I'd eventually like to try it with 3 players, and I'm pretty confident that it would work. I tested new card mechanics and they worked much better. I'm still not confident about the final scene play, but it could be just insecurity. We created a great story and had fun, and that's most important to me for now.

I'm going to shelve my plans to make M'Alice an ashcan by August and focus on Fisherman's Wife.

He're a quick synopsis of our game. Emily was the Fisherman, Vincent the wife, I was the Fisherman's demons, and Meg was the Wife's demons.

Act I: The Fisherman leaves for his trip. His wife packs him rice balls with little surprises in each one. After drawing clubs, the Wife reports that she has mended 3 nets for him, and his boat is big. After drawing spades, the Fisherman tells is wife he will be gone 4 days and he has a premonition that he will lose something to the sea.

Their 6 words--The Fisherman to the Wife: "The sun doesn't set on our love."

To the Fisherman: "Turtles come alive under the moon."

Act II: The Wife encountered 3 different demons and she prevailed over all three. Sort of. The first one was a spider demon who wanted to serve her. I can't remember what she wanted from it. But at the end of the first scene, the Wife had a new little servant, who helped her around the house. The second demon wanted to seduce her, and she wanted to merge with it or steal its power, which she did. She turned it into a comb for her hair. The third demon wanted to devour her beauty. The Wife destroyed her, if I recall correctly and did away with her quickly.

Cut to Act III: The Fisherman met a demon who wanted to devour him, but the Fisherman would have no part of it. It was a creepy eel looking thing, the Fisherman prevailed. For the next three scenes, the Fisherman met the same demon, who alternated between wanting to seduce and devour the Fisherman. The Fisherman seduced the demon, and to keep from being eaten, successfully seduced her again.

So the Fisherman brought a seductive water demon home from his fishing trip. You might guess what he lost at sea.

Act IV: Meg played the industrious spider demon who now served the Wife, I played the seductive water demon, and we played in teams, demons vs. humans. The thing is, we both drew the seduction suit. So the question was, who would seduce whom. In the end, the humans won. Now that the wife had the power to breathe underwater, she could go swimming with the water demon.

They all lived happily ever after. Sort of. The Wife told the tale about how the sun did in fact set on their love, and related it back to the Fisherman's behavior with the water demon.

My memory is sketchy, and I've forgotten some details, but this game was terribly fun. Other players, please chime in!

(Cross posted at the Forge, typos and bad syntax and all.)

Clam produces an enchanted pearl of cinnabar

Last night Meg and I played Tales of the Fisherman's Wife. I have a few mechanical kinks to work out, and as I mentioned before the end is really clunky, but we had fun, and told a hilarious story complete with sex with giant fish and kelp men.

Act 1
The story begins with the Fisherman preparing for his journey. I was the Fisherman, Meg was the Wife. The Fisherman asks "How many nets have you mended and what is the condition of my boat?" Meg draws a Spade (can't remember the number) and says, "Four nets and I have made sure your boat is in tip top shape. And here's your lunch!"

The Wife asks how many days would the Fisherman be gone. I draw a Diamond card. "Two days, and because you have mended so many of my nets, I predict my baskets will overflow with fish."

They leave each other with the following 6 words. To the Wife: "Clam produces an enchanted pearl of cinnabar."

To the Fisherman: "Moon makes a silver necklace for a lady."

[Note: Articles, i.e. "that", "an", and "a" don't count in the 6 words.]

So off the Fisherman goes.

Act II
The Wife tends to their kelp drying business (they sell nori.) I'm playing the demon now. I draw a 10 of Clubs ("Devour"), Meg draws the 5 of Diamonds ("Enslave"). The demon approaches the Wife first as a giant piece of seaweed. They exchange witty barbs back and forth (ex, "I want to have you for dinner"), and when we get to the final card, the kelp demon transforms into a handsome man, and declares that he wants to "devour" the Wife, but not in a food way. I have the high card for Clubs. But Meg as the high card for Diamonds. The first round ends up in a tie. The kelp demon devours the Wife in a conjugal way, and is her slave for the night.

The next day (Scene 2) the kelp demon returns. This time he wants to Possess (Spades) the Wife. The Wife wants to "Steal a Power" (Clubs). Meg wins this round. She is immune to his charms, and at the last minute she steals a shell from his hair and gains the power to summon water creatures. Dejected, the kelp demon turns back into kelp and floats away.

Act III
(Scene 1) I now play the Fisherman, and Meg plays the demon. I draw a Heart (Seduce), and Meg draws a Diamond (Serve). Fisherman discovers a giant golden fish in his net. Immediately he is smitten. He places her in a giant tank and woos her, while she offers to serve him. I win this round, and the Fisherman seduces the fish demon. Yup, while she's still a fish.

(Scene 2)
The demon returns, this time to Possess (Spades). The Fisherman wants to Seduce (Hearts) her again. This time she changes into the form of a woman with glistening scales. Now the demon has 4 chances (4 Scenes) to succeed, since the Fisherman has 4 nets. And in the end, Meg and I both had the high card, but the Ace of Spades is the unbeatable card. When played by the demon it becomes "Supplant", and when played by a human it is "Destroy". So the Fisherman is supplanted. The fish demon controls him outside his body with strings like a marionette. They return home early.

Act IV
The Wife suspects something, and the fish demon knows her brother the kelp demon has been consorting with the Wife. The fish demon was going to try to Enslave the Wife, and the Wife was going to try to Destroy (Ace of Spades) the fish demon. The end game mechanics need some work, so we just fudged it. The Wife tries to save the Fisherman from the clutches of the fish demon by using her new power to summon water creatures. She calls on crabs to try to clip the strings that bind her husband to the fish demon. In the end, the fish demon strikes a bargain with the Wife. If she takes the Fisherman with her back to the sea, she'll call her brother back to become the Wife's lover. The Wife was happy with that, especially when reminded that kelp can grow up to 2 feet a day.

The Fisherman asks his Wife to tell him a story with the 6 words before they part forever. She tells the cautionary tale of how a clam fell in love with a bird, and out of love and from a piece of wood, the clam produced a beautiful pearl of cinnabar. The bird died, the clam died, and that's all the Wife had to say about inter-species love affairs.

The kelp demon returns, the fish demon gets her man, and they all live reasonably happily ever after.

There are a few mechanics I want to change, but as it is, it's playable and definitely fun. It's a short game, and playable with 3 and 4 players. The end game needs the most work. I'm going to take the rules down for a day or two while I make the first round of changes. Chris and I are going to play it tonight and see how it goes.

First Draft! Tales of the Fisherman's Wife

Wow! That was fast. I love it when I have an idea and it just flows to completion. I wrote the rules for Tales of the Fisherman's Wife last night, and even got it from notebook to computer. Print and play it and tell me what you think. The final act is a little loose and needs work, and there are parts where play might be a little clunky, so please give me some feedback. I got rid of the d4's and use cards only for the whole game. D4's are too pointy to play with in bed.

Some feedback questions:
Is play long enough or too long?
How do the cards aid in narration?
What really works? What did you love about it?
What's confusing? What totally doesn't work?
What needs work? What needs explaining?
What would you be sad about if I changed it?
Anything else you'd like to say.

The pdf is here: Tales of the Fisherman's Wife draft. EDIT: Down temporarily while I make a few changes.

Enjoy!