I've been in a funk for the past couple of weeks, and then I came across this. This is why I love You Tube.
Also there's a huge photo of me in the local paper today, along with Meg, Emily, and Vincent. They did a whole article about the local role playing game designing and playing scene. I bought six papers!
I have all these things I could write about, such as JiffyCon, my new autoharp, my wedding anniversary (#9 today), my present rpg character and the awesome game we're currently playing, Christmas dinner planning. I can't decide which one should have a full post. So here's what I'll do: Here's a quick summary of each of the things mentioned. If anyone wants to know more, let me know, and I'll make full post.
JiffyCon
I ran Acts of Evil and Steal Away Jordan during the day. At dinner I had the most disappointing crab cakes ever. Later in the evening, I played Murder Ballad Blackjack and we told the story of "The House Carpenter/Daemon Lover". With SAJ, I cranked up the supernatural, complete with a hellhound, evil haints, and a wheelin' dealin' Devil at the Crossroads. This was one of my favorite games yet. I find the extra supernatural stuff takes some of the pressure off the players, but the GM can still throw the crap at them, like the threat of being sold away (why not make a deal with the Devil to prevent your friend from being sold away?) Like fantasy in your role playing games? There ya go!
Murder Ballad Blackjack didn't work as I had planned, but I liked the way it worked. It needs work, and I'm getting abck to working on SAJ revisions in December, so I think I'm going to let simmer, then come back to Malice. So please, someone play MBBJ!
My New Autoharp
21 chords on a zebrawood body. It has a sweet sound, good action, stays in tune, is fun to play. I'm practicing a little every day. Chris and I had a fun little jam session this weekend, and I showed him how to play a murder ballad. For now, I'm learning to strum chords to accompany my singing. Here and there I try to pluck melodies. Most of all I'm getting my folk music geek on.
Happy Anniversary to the "Ellingsgards"!
As of November 28, Chris and I have been married for 9 years, together for almost 13. This year we went low key and low budget. Friday we left the kids at my in-law's and came home. We had grand plans to clean the house, but the most we did was put a load of laundry in the washing machine, and a load of dishes in the dish washer. We slept in, had breakfast at Kafe Koko, drove to several antique shops, almost bought an old mantel clock, ate more food, had a jam session (see above), watched Orlando and 28 Weeks Later. We went to East Heaven Hot Tubs, ate appetizers at the new restaurant in Northampton, and saw Beowulf. I really liked Beowulf. I'm sure many others would beg to differ, but It's like the movie version of Murder Ballad Blackjack, Beowulf style. And I love Ray Winstone's voice. And there was a dragon. And medieval garb. And the queen played a harp. As Chris put it, it was a "Fwamish" movie. In other words, it had elements which I would love, and thus be more forgiving of the work as a whole.
One For the Road: Elizabeth Rutherford/Ben Smith
We're playing Prime Time Adventures. Our show is One for the Road, an 18th century drama/farce set in Yorkshire England. My character is Elizabeth Rutherford, a cross dressing highwaywoman. Benjamin Smith is her alter ego, also the name of her Scottish cousin who taught her how to be a highway robber. This really deserves its own post. I was inspired by another character from the Poisoned game we played at JiffyCon. When we're done with the game, I'll do a little write up. I watched Orlando, because I imagined Elizabeth/Benjamin looked like Tilda Swinton.
When I had really short hair, I was always afraid of being mistaken for a man. I was once. My hair was shoulder length, I was on an airplane strapping Bea into her seat. The man behind me said, "excuse me sir..." He was as stunned as I was. I think it was the height, not the hair. It hasn't happened in a long time, but I wear skirts about 70% of the time.
I'm really into folksongs about women disguised as men, and then go off and do "manly" things like become soldiers, highwaymen, etc. They tend to do it for the love of a man, though, rarely because they want to do something they're not expected or allowed to do (like kill and steal?). Elizabeth dresses like a man because she likes it, and gave it up (temporarily) because she fell in love. This isn't going to end well.
Christmas Dinner
I'm roasting a goose again this year. And there will be blodpudding, and Getjost cheese, and Tonya's bringing collard greens, and I'm going to make cranberry relish, and maybe a pecan pie. Hopefully my father in law will bring glog. In the morning there will be venison sausage and mimosas. My parents aren't coming. My dad is recovering, but he's still not ready to travel. We'll go to Memphis in February.
My Lovely Daughters
My kids are beautiful, smart, witty, and a joy. I have nothing more to say about them.
So what do you want to know?
Crossposted at Stone Baby Games...
I’m running a session of Steal Away Jordan at JiffyCon this Saturday. I’m trying to decide what the setting will be, and here are some that settings I’m toying with:
An Amistad-esque journey. Not quite sure where it would begin. I’m thinking I could encourage the players to stage a mutiny and go from there. It could be interesting if through most of the game, the subjugators were the stronger soon to be slaves. One of the conflicts might include divisions between the slaves of different villages. (The title of this post does not indicate what setting I've actually chosen.)
That Wikipedia article has several links to other revolts. That could be fun, too. I really want to see a good rebellion. Successful or not, of course.
Seth Ben Ezra was researching a Civil War era game. (Hey Seth! Have you played it yet?) This idea excites me as much as a good slave revolt.
I also want to play Kindred. I could play any of these and still have an unfortunate time traveler.
Folk Story Narratives heavy laden with devils with souls in their mouths, flying slaves, and trickster rabbits.
A more fleshed out version of that 18th century Carolina Rice Plantation I demoed a thousand times at GenCon. This is really the least appealing to me.
Come to JiffyCon and find out for yourself! I’m also running Acts of Evil. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some Murder Ballad Blackjack playtesting in, too. It only takes an hour, folks!
It's on it's way. My custom built 21 chord chromatic B model zebra wood autoharp by Timbreline Music. I have the UPS tracking code. As I type this, it's still in Colorado. Estimated delivery date is this Thursday. I have a good feeling it will be worth the wait.
The arrival of a new autoharp makes me want to finish putting the Lumbert Mountain Music diatonic chord bars on my OS EBH/R. (That's an Oscar Schmidt autoharp made in the 70's) Steal Away Jordan forced autoharping to the back burner this past year, but since I'm working on a game where folk music is an integral part of play, I'll have good reason to get strumming. Murder Ballad Blackjack will have the lyrics and chords to about 25 murder ballads.
My heart's all a-flutter! I'm also expecting some blodpudding to show up on my doorstep any day now. Blodpudding, autoharps, what joyful things arrive by mail.
I've been doing this off and on for years. Sometime between October and January, I color my hair black. My hair is naturally black, but the sun turns it reddish, and then I henna it mahogany in the summer, so it doesn't stay black for long. In the past I've used Miss Clairol blue black, and other "safer" herbal coloring kits from the health food store, but since I henna my hair, traditional color doesn't stay in very long, and it makes my dreads very unhappy. Tonight I'm trying something new: indigo! The recipe will follow.
Indigo reminds me of the film Daughters of the Dust, and Nana Peazant's indigo stained hands. (Daughters of the Dust is a Steal Away Jordan inspiration, too).
I need 2-3 boxes, bottles, or jars of any hair coloring preparation to do my hair. Three will cover it all.
Here's the recipe I used:
This afternoon, as I returned from the Y,
I went to the co-op, some dinner for to buy
I espied Farmer Tom, in the Co-op parking lot
And I chanced upon his truck, and we talked for a spot.
He told me about his crop this year at Three Sisters Farm
We talked at length of murder ballads amidst the park'ed cars
He gave me a snippet of a song, and I pass on to readers fair
Now I would like to hear it, but the details of it are bare.
I pass along the hints with the hope a reader might know
The who, what, and wheres and how one might just go
About getting a copy of this haunting murderous tune
For my Murder Ballad Blackjack game, which I want to play again soon.
And here is the snippet. I'm not sure if I have it all correctly. I'm transcribing Tom's writing, and the only thing we found to write with and on was a crayon and an envelope.
The closest thing I've found is "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" as recorded by Mike Waterson.
"...She said Sailor, O Sailor come spare me my life.
When out of his pocket he drew a sharp knife.
He ripped her and tore her and cut her in three.
Then he laid his poor Mary underneath a green tree....
O green grow the laurels, and red grows the rose
and the raven will follow wherever he goes.
A cloud will hang over his...head
And he will never rest easy
Now that Mary being dead."
Name that tune! Please!
Is going to drive me nuts until all is confirmed. Once confirmed, I'll announce it in full at Stone Baby Games, because it has something to do with Steal Away Jordan. So without spilling the beans prematurely, I'm going to talk around the issue:
Back when I was looking at colleges, my grandmother really pushed for me to go to an historically Black women's college in Atlanta. But I didn't want to. I didn't want to live in the Dirty South anymore. I opted for a women's college in Massachusetts.
My grandmother would be proud. I've been invited to speak at that college, as part of a 2 day event on black women and the moving image, and I have the chance to talk about this project that I worked on for the past year in a different circle.
I am just blown away that someone might want to hear me talk about my project. I'm honored, excited, and feeling a little validated. It's not just because someone saw what I did and liked it enough to invite me to an event (and I think they're going to pay me!). There are very few people from my cultural/ethnic community engaging in the creative endeavor that I engage in (rpg design). The thing I did is very much about the strength and struggles of my cultural/ethnic community. Lately I've been doubting myself and the thing I did, but this invitation that I can't yet disclose reassures me that I did do something pretty damn cool, that's less controversial and easier to "get" for some folks because they are working with a similar subject matter (strengths and struggles of my ethnic/cultural community).
Is that vague enough? I think I even lost myself.
**See the update in Comments!**
The picture is of Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman pilot.
I've been thinking about this game for months. It finally came to me last night.
It's a short game, the GM is the "Bard". Here's the link to the wiki. Bear with me as I figure out the technology.
Technically you can use any kind of ballad, and long as there are plenty of unanswered questions, contradictions, and conflict. I wouldn't call "Barbara Allen" a murder ballad, but it would work for this game. I'm jonesing to play this with any given version of Tam Lin.
Inspirations
Inspired by Charles Vess' The Book of Ballads, which I read so many times on vacation last year that I almost wore it out; those antique books of English and Spanish folk ballads that I bought on the same vacation; Pentangle; Steeleye Span; Solas; Silly Wizard; Silly Sisters and consequently Maddy Prior and June Tabor; John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee (whom I've seen live twice and are two of my all time favorite shows along with Ravi Shankar); Anne Briggs; my autoharps; Rise Up Singing; Ewan MacColl; murder ballads; Meg's 1001 Nights; my Dog's in the Vineyard character named (Pretty) Polly; the folk tale component of Steal Away Jordan; Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention; bluegrass; and all the other random sources of "Barley Music" I encounter. (Chris calls the folk music I listen to "Barley Music" after "The Wind that Shakes the Barley".)
And, of course, Blackjack!
Ingrid and I took a little trip to the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. This was one of my favorite museums when I lived in Memphis, and it's still a small yet wonderful place to spend a couple of hours, even with a two year old. We made it just in time to hear the last few minutes of Mary LeCompte from Lake Charles, Louisiana tell stories about growing up in Cajun country. Then we walked through the gallery at a toddler's pace to view The Blue Dog: The Art of George Rodrigue exhibit. Ingrid loved it. I did, too. Those blue dogs are joyful and uplifting. Then we walked around the gardens and took pictures. That was Ingrid's favorite part. She got to run up and down a wooded path, talk to sculptures, pick up rocks, socialize with people captivated by her cuteness, throw pennies in a fountain, walk over bridges, and pick more stuff up.
It was just what we needed after spending the past three days cooking and planning meals for my parents. I had not left the house since Friday night. I was hoping to be able to address some of the food issues in the house, and how to avoid caregiver fatigue, but no one wants to hear me preach the gospel. So I just cook and hang out with Ingrid and my dad, and my mom when she's not working. Every once in a while, I retreat to my old room and read. Unfortunately Ingrid's not getting much quality grand parent time. My folks are stressed out. They talk to her through me, avoid hanging out with her even when I beg for just some time to take a shower. (The house isn't childproofed at all.) I think Ingrid's having a moderately suck ass time, but at least there's cable, a friendly dog, and frozen yogurt.
I have recused myself from giving injections, but tomorrow and Tuesday I'll be doing it again. I'm really good at giving injections. I'm rusty on being a nurse, and the drama that surrounds injection time grates my nerves. I sound like a bad daughter. Really, I'm just a impatient nurse. I'm glad to be able to help out, family drama and dynamics notwithstanding. The alternative is much, much worse, and my dad looks better every day.
I'm in Memphis visiting my parents, helping to take care my of dad who just returned home from a two week hospital stay following a diagnosis of congestive heart failure following a heart attack. Physically he is very weak, and it hasn't quite set in (to him) just how seriously he is. It is difficult to see him in this state. He has a three page list of meds to take, he must follow a strict low sodium diabetic diet with serious portion control. He's so weak he has trouble walking from the chair to the kitchen or to the bathroom, and he's sleeping in the mother-in-law-suite downstairs on a rented adjustable hospital bed until he is able to go upstairs. If you read back far enough on this blog, you can guess that his heart attack was inevitable. In December I figured he'd have one within 2 years given how poorly he managed his diabetes and took care of himself. It is what it is. It happened, maybe it will be a wakeup call, maybe not. And here I am with Ingrid until Wednesday.
My parents don't throw away anything, and their house is so big, it hasn't yet hit critical mass with all the stuff. They've never had a tag sale in the 38 years they've been together. The last time I was here the (walk in) closets practically burst with clothes and junk. So my mom recently boxed up some of the junk and sent it to the attic. This means she boxed up 24 years of my crap. So much crap. I went through some of it looking for scary dolls. I found a couple, but not the one I had in mind. I did come across oodles of books and other strange things from my adolescence and early college. Some of the highlights: my skate board, clothes from my thrift store phase, an awesomely hot black lace corset, notebooks, sketchbooks, and one handmade book of poems and photographs that is so raw and painful to read it makes my stomach ache just thinking about the night I created it. And the poetry is bloody awful! I've only been able to read a few lines here and there. Talk about dark night of the soul. I must have been drunk or high or something that night, even though I remember it like it was last week. It was 15 years ago. I want to bring it home so I can burn it and give it a proper burial.
My mom and I are bookworms. You find books in every single room of this house, including the bathrooms and kitchen. There are even books in the garage. My mom actually has a library. This is one of the things I love about snooping though my parents' house. If I'm not careful I could replace the clothes in my suitcase with books. I have several titles that I'm bringing home to use to finish the revisions of the next edition of Steal Away Jordan (which I'm working on while I'm here when I'm not helping out with my dad's care). I also have a bunch of beloved books from decades gone by. Here are some of the gems I'm packing up in a box to send back with me. Some of these I'm bringing back for their 1950-60's pulp covers:
Black Women for Beginners, Saundra Sharp (for more books on antebellum life check the Stone Baby Games website in the next few days.
A Fairly Honourable Defeat, Iris Murdoch.
Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges.
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, retold by Joseph Bedier. (with cool cover, not like the one in the link)
The Dream Merchants, Harold Roberts.
The Mesh, Lucie Marchal.
Missing Time, Budd Hopkins.
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (wicked cool tawdry cover! Not the one in the link.)
The Problem of the Wire Cage, John Dickson Carr. (another tawdry pulp cover)
Missing Time, Budd Hopkins.
Skin and Bones, Thorne Smith (yet another awesome cover, same as the one in the link!)
Sin Doll, Orrie Hitt ("The only way Cherry could get places was by going bad...and cherry wanted to get places! A novel which focuses in on the hot picture racket--boldly revealing how girls are recruited--and why!" And then there's the cover!)
Primitive Orgy, Bob Tralins ("'There is only one way to get the evil spirit out of my body!' she moaned...." see the awesome pulp cover in the link.)
The Big Sky, A.B. Guthrie, jr.
A Story of Deep Delight, Thomas McNamee (autographed even!)
A Victorian era three volume collection of the works of William Shakespeare.
The 1887 edition of Cyclopaedia of Obstetrics and Gynecology, volume III (Obstetrics : The Pathology of Labor)
The complete score of A. Maillart's, Les Dragons de Villars (from around the mid-late 1800's as far as I can tell)
Chris brought Ingrid up to the farmer's market. My boothmate Crystal had her 3 year old daughter there, too. Fun was had by all. Asha and Ingrid are both cherubic blond little imps, and they get along very well. Crystal and I watched Asha and Ingrid do cute things, ate free food, and didn't sell much of anything. I sold one bottle of edible massage oil. Slow day, end of season. Anyway, so this woman came up to our booth to ask if we were interested in having a booth at a local charity event in December. After she gave us the details (I thought about it), she asked if Asha and Ingrid were sisters. "Nope," we said. We pointed out who was whose baby. Then the woman looked at me with total disbelief and said, "How on earth did you get a blond daughter?"
Let me just stop here and describe what's going through my head at this moment. I want to be rude. I want to point out to her how obnoxious her question is. I want to say equally obnoxious and flip things, like "I had sex with a blond elf or fairy or some freakishly blond unhuman creature. Doesn't matter what he was, he was so blond I was blinded by the light in his hair. Nine months later I felt ill, I leaned up against a tree and pushed and pushed and out came this little blond thing. I think she might be a changeling, or a halfling. It's amazing when you think about it. They've written songs about this sort of thing, and I never believed them until I gave birth to a blonde baby." Unfortunately I didn't say any of this, because I might want in on her little charity event. So I say, "Her father's blond."
And she just doesn't stop. "Well he must be really blond." Now what am I to say to this? "Why yes, you nosy and annoying wench, he's freakishly blond. The doctors thought he was an albino until they ran tests on him. He's so blond he was given automatic citizenship by Denmark and Norway, on top of his Swedish citizenship." I don't say any of this. I'm trying to be polite and I'm horribly insulted. Instead, I say, "yeah. He's pretty blond. But my older daughter looks just like me."
At this point I have no interest in participating in the charity event. I don't really like having to justify the genetic makeup of my children. I thought the "are you babysitting" comment I've received was insulting, but this one takes the cake. It wasn't so much what she said, as much as it was her attitude. How could I possibly create such a thing? I must be part of some kind of freak family to have such a freakishly blond child.
Why do people say stupid shit and get away with it? Why did I hold my tongue?
Well, of course things got better. I stand on the sun sunny side of the street, and once again everything is right with the world, and what's not right will be so eventually, with a little work and love. My dad is still in intensive care. I'm going to visit him next week. Let's talk about something else.
This afternoon I walked to town with Meg. It is a gorgeous day and I had to ask myself what in tarnation possessed me to wear jeans. My legs yearned for a skirt. I've fixed that now.
After Meg and I parted ways I went to the Co-op and got some tea. Sometimes I'm a little self conscious about fixing tea in public, because I generally use two tea bags of the strongest black tea, a good deal of soy milk, and a big gob of honey. I'm not a tea purist in the sense I think some health food store frequenters are. I like it sweet and milky, organic or not, and never just plain, except for when I'm drinking really good Japanese green tea, which I only buy at the Asian food market. Green tea is for special occasions. Give me black tea, and lots of it every day, at any time of the day, as long as there's milk and honey. Today I used something called "Choice Black Tea", but Pu-erh, Irish Breakfast, Yorkshire Gold, and PG Tips are my favorites. I like Twinnings in a bind. It reminds me of the Ellingboe Norigarn (family cottage) in New Harbor, Maine.
So I like my tea strong, dark, sweet, and milky. As I said, I don't generally do with this high quality Japanese green tea, but I even put milk and honey in the Chinese green tea that comes in the cool tins from the Asian food market. While I like my tea sweet, I don't like to mask the natural bitterness. At home I'm very particular about how long I steep my tea. I steep pu-erh for at least 10 minutes (until it's murky and black), PG Tips, Yorkshire Gold, and other English black teas sit for no more than 5. If I'm at a restaurant, I'd rather drink something else if they have crappy tea. This doesn't mean I drink something else. I'm a little addicted to tea, and I'm too hooked to be a tea snob. I can make bad tea taste good to me. Okay, I'm really addicted to tea. There are worse things to be hooked on. I like my addictions to be life-sustaining.
I don't drink coffee any more. I had my first cup at age six and gave it up for good when I was pregnant with Ingrid. I don't really miss it at this point. But I was the same way about preparing a cup in public. I liked my cream and honey in my coffee. You don't find this mentality with tea drinkers so much, but I had on more than one occasion, felt a scornful eye as I filled my cup with cream and counted to 5 or 10 while the honey flowed. I could almost hear people say, "Why didn't you just order a latte?" I ordered plenty of them. I ordered coffee and doctored it appropriately when I was short on cash.
But my coffee drinking days are long gone. Back to tea. I'll take it strong, dark, sweet, milky, a little bitter, always hot, nearly black, sometimes green, sometimes spicy, in a cup, from a pot, with a friend, caffeinated, often fermented, rarely herbal (but then mostly medicinally). And naturally I ask, what does this say about me? Draw your own conclusions, and I'll reveal later what I think.
But let's talk about you, gentle reader. Tell me how you like your tea. Don't like tea? Tell me how you like your coffee. Don't like coffee? Tell me how you like your favorite beverage which requires thoughtful preparation.
Off topic, I don't talk about Steal Away Jordan here anymore, but I had to share this great review with the lacquer box readers.
David Lanham Art
It comes shortly after Talk Like a Pirate Day. Without going into too many details, I was the Optimist in question, and the smacking was severe, continuous, and came out of nowhere. Much of the morning (and the night before) I spent reeling from the smack down, listening to Alice in Chains and exclaiming "I don't understand!", and exhibiting other physical manifestations of acute trauma and stress. Yeah, it was that bad. No, I can't go into details, but I'll say to the two people I talked to about what was going on, thank you a million times over, my friends. And to the two people I talked to (not about it), thank you, too. It was helpful not to focus on the drama for a while.
This morning, while the worst transpired, my mom called. I called her back an hour later. My dad had a heart attack, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He'll be in the hospital until Tuesday. Lots of tests, still trying to assess the damage, the heart attack may not have been "mild". Unfortunately, regular readers here can surmise it wasn't a huge surprise.
The afternoon improved. I managed to recover from the original smack down, and we're well on our way to working things out. Yeah, the optimist is back! The day is over and I can reflect and say "I just had one of the shittiest days of my life, and now it's over." One good thing was the person who shared the shitty day and I came to a new understanding of each other and can move forward more positively.
I had forgotten how much I like Alice in Chains.
We had a mini playtest of Malice the other day, and the mechanics that I tested did what I wanted them to do. This game will be GM-less. Players take turns telling the story from their character's point of view. You will always have a doll, a child who has a relationship with the doll, and the family, friends, and maybe the pets of the child. The first scene sets up a conflict between the child (and I use that term loosely. It's anyone under 21) and her family. The next scene establishes through a dice roll the relationship between the doll and the child. The child always loves the doll, but dice roll determines if the child trusts or fears the doll. And that's where I left it. That's where I got stuck.
Malice is supposed to be like those ghost and horror stories you tell while you sit around a camp fire. In the story, the ghost, the monster, the evil doll is, well, evil. You're not supposed to empathize with it. You're supposed to be afraid of it. You feel it staring at you, and you see it lurking in the brush, ready to do horrible things to you. By making the doll a PC, I think I changed that. The doll in Malice is the protagonist.
Where I thought I was doing campfire story, I'm actually doing Disneyfied fairy tales. It is the alleged villain who is the most dynamic character. And I say alleged, because I always believed that Maleficent had every right to be pissed at Sleeping Beauty's parents. And how can one possible feel like part of the family if she's always referred to as "The Wicked Queen"? Snow White was a brat, and she was not the fairest of them all. Her step-mother had brains, beauty, and power. She was the real hottie in the kingdom.
I'm not stuck anymore. Malice will explore pediophobia by making the object of fear the protagonist. I didn't say good guy, I said protagonist. Where Steal Away Jordan has gobs of dice, Malice is all about bluffing. You never know if the doll is acting with benevolence or malice.
I might run Acts of Evil at JiffyCon in November. I played a little of it at GenCon, and I'm very curious. If I understand it correctly, the PC's are the antagonists. I didn't realize that until we wrapped up our scene and talked a little about it. How cool is that? I can't wait to see how it works.
The Project Gutenberg Ebook of Household Stories, by Grimm
The Villain
And oh crap, I just discovered someone is working on a game called Malice. It has nothing to do with dolls, but still. I need a new title. Crap.
Based on a true story, and only slightly embellished. The names have not been changed.
The moment she saw the baby doll, Ingrid fell in love with her. She loved her musty old house smell, the crazing and cracking on her composition finish, her frayed red cotton dress, and even the voice box that sounded more like a death rattle. The doll was older than her grandmother. Mama wouldn't tell her where she got it. It didn't matter. Ingrid named her Alice and she loved her dearly. She swaddled Alice in a fabric scrap that mama gave her and supported her neck so her head wouldn't fall off.
Her big sister, Bea, on the other hand, would not go near Alice. She smelled like the creepy basement, she looked dead, possibly evil. Where Ingrid saw a loving gaze in Alice's hand painted eyes, Bea saw malice--towards her. "Keep that thing away from me!" cried Bea when Ingrid held Alice up to her to adore. "She's scary!"
At last, Ingrid had something that Bea didn't want. She had something that kept Bea away from her. Ingrid loved Alice, and Alice loved Ingrid. She didn't even notice that the cats hissed at the baby doll. Alice was special. By the end of the day, Ingrid and Alice were inseparable. Mama tucked both Ingrid and Alice into Ingrid's toddler bed. Ingrid snuggled up to her old new friend, and whispered secrets in her ear.
That night, something startled Bea awake. Something lurked in her room, and it wasn't a cat. Something crept up on to her bed. Something hard and cold touched her foot. She turned on the light. There sat Alice at the foot of her bed staring at Bea with those dead painted eyes.
This is a picture of one of my scary doll project dolls. I got another one today, and four more are on their way. That will be all for now. I asked my mom to send me the doll I was originally afraid of, but she couldn't find it. It wasn't where I last left it when I visited them!
So when Bea came home today from school--Proud mama moment: Bea rode her bike to and from school. I just happened to be getting the mail when she cruised up with her little black corduroy messenger bag, in her black yoga pants, on her black Electra bike with the pink flames details. Bea is just so much cooler than I ever was in school. I mean, at eight years old she's got more cool in her dirty little finger nails than I did in my size 9 1/2 army surplus combat boots that I wore with my cheerleading uniform my senior year of high school. Even better, she's so cool, she's not embarrassed that she's wicked smart. And not only that, she's cool, smart, and disturbingly beautiful. Chris and I have our work cut out for us in 5 or so years. And it won't let up, because Ingrid follows in her sister's skateboard tracks.
Anyway, so I just happened to be getting the mail when she cruised up on her bike, and there was a package on the porch. "Oooh It's another scary doll!" I said.
"You mean, like a Living Dead Doll?" Bea asked. She was fishing to see if it was for her.
"No, it's an old creepy looking doll I'm using for a project."
"Can I see it?"
So I spent the next 10 minutes trying to open the damn package. (I'm not really cool in action.) All the while, I explained to Bea why I wanted scary dolls, where the other scary dolls were, and did she want to see them?
"NO!" She yelled. "I'm scared!"
"I can show you pictures..."
She settled on pictures on the computer. She would not let me bring the dolls upstairs, or even pick up the bag. After she saw the pictures (and was sufficiently freaked out), she asked me over and over again where I left the dolls, because she wanted to go downstairs and get a snack. HA! I scared my "I collect Living Dead Dolls, I love to wear black, scary movies don't bother me, so why can't I stay up late and watch them with you and papa" daughter. A small but significant victory.
I'll post more photos of my new acquisitions very soon.
That there is a picture of yours truly, because today is my birthday. I love birthdays, especially my kids' birthdays, but mine's been pretty fun so far.
And here's a quick run down of what I did:
Bea and Chris woke me up singing "Happy Birthday" and bear carrot cake and gifts. The gift was a game called Dread Pirate: Buccaneer's Revenge. He said given my interest in pirates lately (even though they aren' funny), he thought I would like it. He was right. I still think highwaymen are cooler, unless you're talking about the pirates we played at GenCon. Anyway, I hope to play Dread Pirate tonight.
Chris took Bea to school.
I went to the TV studio and taped another interview for Local Bias, the talk show I host.
Ingrid and I hung out for a while. I surfed the internet, she napped. I ate more cake.
I picked Bea up from school, and it all went downhill from there. I took the girls to the grocery store and they about tried to kill each other, and take me down in the fray. I grounded Bea from the County Fair parade today. I know, I'm a mean mom. You should've been there. I wish someone was. It was hard to keep my cool, but I managed just minimum amounts of annoyed mother snarkiness.
And here I am, talking about my birthday. Tonight I'm going to play with Emily, Meg, Joshua, and Vincent, maybe Chris will hang out a little, too. We're in the middle of In a Wicked Age. I hope we continue with that.
I almost forgot! Two very old, and very scary composition baby dolls came in the mail today. They are of the Scary Doll RPG and Doll Embellishment Project. They're scarier than they were in the photos. I have five more dolls coming soon, and hope to have a skeleton draft of rules worked up by the end of September. I'll take pictures soon and share. The working title of the game is Malice: Stories of Doll Love and Fear.
Dear Friends,
Please update your blogs, help me stay awake, and save me from bad television.
I have one more night before my 10 work day marathon ends, and I'm off until Sunday. In other words I will have worked 7 out of 10 days, 7 pm to 7 am. That's lots of overtime, lots of late nights, and occasional periods of sleep deprivation. I really love my job, and I'm clocking in 20 hours overtime, plus holiday pay tomorrow, plus my usual weekend shift differential, so the crazy schedule is easier to do. On the other hand I miss my kids, my husband, my bed. One more night.
Tonight I'm doing sleep studies in a hotel. I love the hotel shifts. I have internet and cable and my own hotel room. When I work at the main clinic I don't have cable tv, but high speed intenet, and as luck generally has it, my favorite co-worker. I got to watch a little of Big Love before I did a patient set up. My second patient got a little freaked out and left early (like 7 hours early), so take down will be easy in the morning. Idlewild came around the time he left, so I got to watch great dancing and Andre 3000. Then there was the CSI marathon on Spike TV, and now Purple Rain is on VH1. I haven't seen Purple Rain since I was in high school. I started watching House of Wax, but even though it's a bad horror movie, I scare easily, and hotels already give me the creeps. I don't watch scary movies at work.
And then there's the surfing. I check my regular fora, my blog stats, my email, and then my friends' blogs. Not much in the way of new stuff there. And I do all these things to stay awake. I can only drink so much Coke Zero and Red Bull without getting ill. I need brain stimulation.
I could work on game notes, but it's hard to look at paper while I'm monitoring sleep studies, and that's why I'm here. Yes, I do work at work. I don't mean to make it sound like I just surf and watch tv all night. I monitor my patients' brain waves, EKG, muscle movements, respiration, pulse, what position they're sleeping in. If they have a certain number of "events" (apnea and hypopnea) after at least 2 hours of sleep, I hook them up to a CPAP machine. In some studies patients actually begin the study with CPAP. And some people wake up frequently and require assistance to the bathroom. Sometimes electrodes fall off, and I have to replace them if the patient is awake. There's lots to do. Some nights, like tonight, are a little slow. My remaining patient hasn't stirred since I left her room at 9:20, and she didn't meet the split night with CPAP criteria.
I have 40 minutes before I wake my patient, take off the electrodes, do my paperwork and go home. This is where I get to the worst part of my job: my patients' morning breath. If you ever have a sleep study done, do the tech a favor and don't say anything in the morning. Don't share your funky yuck mouth.
So friends, please update your blogs, send me some email, post on a forum. Think of me, staying up all night with bad tv, scary movies, and no updates on your lives.
Nighty night,
Parthenia
I'm working on a supplement to Steal Away Jordan which will be set in Brazil, where the PC's will attempt to escape to Quilombo de Palmares. It will be the uplifting sequel. But I'm brainstorming another game. This one's a little more fun, horrific, and unnerving, but in the fictional could-never-happen-or-could-it way. Today I started jotting down ideas for Doll: Tales of Love and Horror. I've mentioned it a few times here, I love dolls. And I've had some scary ones in my life. So this game will be a love and horror story to ti-bonanj (or petit bon ange, New Orleans style), the smirking Barbie, the bubbly Kewpie, that lives in our room or toybox, whom we love and fear, and to whom we reveal our deepest darkest secrets. And these dolls love us, keep our confidences, and hold nasty grudges because we are children and treat them like toys and don't give them the respect they deserve.
So each player will create a two characters: a child and a doll. The child has a secret, something she's done or has been done to her. It can be truly horrible, even to adults, or truly horrible as perceived by a child. Stats I'm playing with are secret, age, imagination, and fear (Child's stats). But each player also creates a a doll character, with the stats, love, malice, life, loyalty, and movement. So the players look at the doll characters and each one chooses one as her very own. The person who created the doll, plays that doll to the player's child who chose it. The child confesses the secret to the doll, and so play begins.
I'm trying to go for scary, intimate, and deliciously terrible. At first I wanted it to be pure scary story telling with no allegory of relationships, but I realize that's inevitable. Que sera sera. I want the game to be like children sitting around a camp fire or at a slumber party, telling each other horror stories, trying to out-scare each other, trying to decipher what was real and what was not real in the story.
I have in mind a complimentary project for this game, though. I'm scouring ebay for old dolls in disrepair (like the one you see above. I'm bidding on it, for sure!) to fashion into nightmareish looking dolls for artwork for the finished project.
Anyone want to join me in the Scary Doll Project? Gather your old dolls, and make them evil looking, send me a photo. Here are some examples and inspiration:
Cute Little Threat
Demon Kidz (kinda like Living Dead Dolls) I'm really going for a more subtle, organic look, but I can certainly appreciate a scary doll, as can Bea, my little punk rock/goth chick in training. (She's certainly one of my muses for this game!)
Yikes!
Creepy Dolls!
I'm going to be 37 in a little over a week. Ten years ago, on my birthday, Chris asked me to marry him. We had a little picnic and hike at Crag Mountain in Northfield with our late dog Kaya (she was three at the time). He put an engagement ring in my apple pie. I saw the box in his shorts pocket, but I wanted to be surprised. My hair was really short back then, no more than 3 inches all around. Chris' was even shorter. A year later Chris and I went to the very last Bread and Puppet festival. A few months later I was married and pregnant with our first child. I thought about this all day today. I even thought about cutting my hair on my birthday. That thought was fast and fleeting, but I might take a couple inches off to even it out.
I sold my first copy of my game from my website today. So Ingrid and I took a little bike ride to the post office to mail it. Here we are about to leave (I had to document my first internet sale!)
On our way home we stopped at the food co-op to get some lunch. We met the group of kids you see at the top, Eric, Lexie, and Nate. I was taken by Eric's facial tattoos. I didn't notice until I uploaded the photo that Eric has a black eye.
When I walked up to the group, they were definitely a bit apprehensive, but as soon as I said, "I think your facial tattoos are beautiful" everyone softened. Then I explained that when I turn 40 I'd like to get my face tattooed. That won them over. I asked If I could take a picture of them, all of them, and they happily posed. I gave them $5, the last of my cash. They were trying to get to Brattleboro, at least that's what their sign said. I won't argue. When we parted ways, I said, "safe journeys, guys." I wish I'd driven them to Brattleboro myself, but Ingrid was in no mood for a road trip. It was hard enough to get her keep her in the bike trailer.
I used to love road trips. I had the benefit of a reliable car, a little money, and no expensive vices, so I never sat on the street and panhandled in order to get to the next destination. I just hopped in my car and drove, or gathered friends and sought mayhem. Oxford, MS; Little Rock; Nashville, New Orleans, Atlanta. When I was in college, twice I drove from Northampton to Memphis without stopping for the night. By the time I got to Nashville I was falling asleep at the wheel, despite my chain smoking, loud music, and open windows. So I pulled over at a rest area, hung a blanket around my windows and napped for three hours. I clutched a hunting knife, and I was terrified, but too tired to do anything else. Even my friends who out-wandered me--the Deadheads and Rainbow family folks--chastised me for that stupid move. Another time, I smuggled Kaya into a shady motel room with me in Virginia. I still couldn't sleep, even with a rottwieler in the bed and that same knife in my hand, because I got a bad vibe from the hotel manager. He was a nasty, creepy looking man, and looked at me funny.
After college I tempered my wanderlust and limited it to planned road trips to Bread and Puppet and Reggae fests. Then I got married. Then I had children. Last year I backed out of going to a Rainbow Gathering in Vermont last minute. I had too much to do and no money. Backing out made me feel old.
Ten years ago, I would have seen a little of myself in those kids. Fifteen years ago, they might have crashed on my floor while passing through--as Marcus and Skitch (below) did back in 1992. They were train hoppers that my housemates met somewhere out west on their travels.
Today, I worried about those kids. It's quite possible that they were still in diapers when I haunted the roads or kept a light on for people coming off tour or off the train tracks. I actually thought to myself, things are different nowadays. You have to be more careful. The drugs are worse and more dangerous. People are not as charitable to young people who look different. Maybe I recognize the danger in my more settled state. Still, I'm a little jealous of their freedom. Godspeed, guys.
And in other "news", we (Meg, Vincent, Emily, Joshua, and I) played In a Wicked Age tonight. Later, Joshua and I sat on my porch while I pitched a game idea to him: Scary Dolls, the role playing game. Here's what I have so far: You are a child, you have a doll. Like all dolls, your doll has a soul. You tell your doll your deepest darkest secrets. You treat your doll like a close confidant and, well, a toy. Your doll hates you. I don't want this to be any kind of metaphor for abusive relationships. I want this to be strictly about the fuzzy line between a child's imagination and true, pure scary doll badness. Any allegory to anything deeper is purely conincidental.
So here are the top 25 keywords that bring people to Parthenia's Blog, according to Google Analytics. I've bolded my favorites, the ones I find more flattering or amusing.
1 and 2. steal away jordan and "steal away jordan"
3. naked sauna
4. tatooed women
5. blodpudding
6. japanese octopus tattoo
7. kombucha troubleshooting
8. people find it difficult to resist your persuasive manner [My favorite. It was a very appropriate fortune cookie message.]
9. how to make ginger kombucha
10. jacci gresham
11. kombucha hair
12. kombucha stomach ache
13. naked women in sauna
14. sauna naked
15. stone babies
16. "stone baby games"
17. ask me psychic
18. bead stuck in nose [Apparently we're not the only ones with a child who sticks beads in her nose.]
19. bead up nose
20. continuous brewing kombucha
21. i like it rough [WTF? I've never said any such thing. I like what rough? Sandpaper?]
22. kombucha addictive
23. kombucha continuous brewing
24. restringing autoharp
25. sauna blog
Some others further down the list include:
"hippie librarian look" (yeah, that's me), "kill your rapist", "see my bare breasts", phrases with "japanese tattoos" and the words "hannya mask" and "octopus", naked women big boobs, other phrases with "kombucha" in them.
Does this say anything about me? I'd like all these keyword hits to incidate somehow that I'm really a nice person with no hang-ups. But people don't do keyword searches for aspiring homebirth midwife, loving mother, wonderful wife, hippie chick with a young-looking face, or the best looking eyebrows in Western Massachusetts thanks to Brooks and Butterfield Day Spa. Kombucha is harmless enough, and I have no shame about my tattoos, except when it comes to telling my parents about them.
But what's up with all the "naked sauna", "naked woman", "naked woman with big boobs in the sauna" hits? I haven't been in a sauna in a few months, and when I go, it's in the women's gold locker room at the local YMCA. The YMCA for crying out loud! I spend much less time in the sauna than all those sauna-related hits would imply.
If you're looking for a cheap thrill you might find one here, but barring discussions of my affection for Bettie Page, my mild obsession with the Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, and my quest to cover my arms in tattoos there's nothing terribly titillating going on here.
That said, I'm going to start discussing most Steal Away Jordan items at Stone Baby Games. Stick around if you want to hear me talk about anything else. I haven't talked about autoharps in a while. I'm still crafting my GenCon 2007 story. There's plenty more to talk about.
I'm planning a sauna visit at the YMCA this week as I return to my workout regimen, which I neglected all summer. There will be nakedness, I guarantee.
So I had a mostly adequate time at GenCon. That's an understatement. I don't even know where to begin. As I type this, I'm watching Blood Diamond, which is one of the most upbeat and happy movies I've ever seen. That's a just a lie. But Blood Diamond is a fitting place to begin the tale of how I went to GenCon 2007 and had an indescribable time, and sold a bunch of copies of a game about slavery. By the way, the only diamonds I own are in my engagement ring, which is over 100 years old. It was my mother in law's grandmother's ring from Sweden. No more diamonds for us.
I'll start with the commerce aspect. I demoed my ass off at the Forge/IPR booth, which paid off. Steal Away Jordan made people uncomfortable, sometimes pleasantly so, sometimes unpleasantly so, sometimes somewhere in between. I had one couple pretend to get a cell phone call that they had to take. I had another guy tell me that he couldn't relate because, "there never was slavery in Canada." What-evah.. You can read an account of that incident at Alexis' LiveJournal., starting with "GenCon also had downside". But lots more people stayed on the ride, and came out the other side. This account from The Forge is my favorite so far. I sold 40 copies of Steal Away Jordan, and tied Dogs in the Vineyard for third top seller at the IPR/Forge booth. Vincent, you are the awesomest person ever. I just buy good candy, and pay attention.
Then there was the socializing and gaming aspect. After hours I had dinner with people I'd either first met at GenCon, or had met in passing on the internet. Too many to list and include everyone. I played Adventures in the Land of 1000 Kings, Best Friends, Poison'd, and Acts of Evil.
With Land of 1000 Kings, I met John Harper, whom I mentioned on the Stone Baby Games blog. (Oh yeah. It's up and chugging along, by the way.) I also got to know Seth Ben Ezra, who adopted some of my kombucha babies a few months ago. Also there was Matt Wilson, who designed the first rpg I ever played (as an adult), Ben Lehman, and Vincent. Now here's the cool thing about Land of 1000 Kings. You go around the table and basically say nice things about each other and what people say about you are marked as your stats: Brave, Strong, Sharp, Kind, and Beautiful. It was not difficult to find something heartfelt to say about each person there. By the end of the game, I could have added more loving kindness to each person's stats. Warm and mushy feelings abounded, and I got to work through some of my issues with raw tomatoes.
I'm going to skip to Saturday night's game, Poison'd, just for contrast. Now I've started two sessions of this already, and used the same character (Abyssinia de Cortez, daughter of a Barbary pirate), more or less. I recycled her for a third time, and am so happy I did, because I finally got to tell her story, and then some. So in this game there was Matt, John, and Vincent from last night, and Rich Harper, whom I'd met earlier in the day, and who has some of the most beautiful tattoos--and a dragony fishy sleeve, no less. While we didn't say very kind or flattering things about each other, we certainly got to know each other by the end of the session. It was one of the most intimate gaming experiences I've ever had and one of the most violent and brutal stories I've ever been in on. It was beautiful and disturbing and mind-blowing. We played themes of sexuality, power, gender, and violence. One of my favorite story lines was about the young pirate who tried to do all the nasty acts that the older ones did, but either we stood in his way, or just plain condemned him when he did it. Sorry, no actual play accounts here. I'm still sorta working through it. We played like a tight chamber ensemble, and we didn't need to look at the music. Ever.
In contrast to the Poison'd game, there was Best Friends, with John Kim, Marc Majcher, John (who gave me the fantastic list of Ghanan names, and whose last name escapes me at the moment), Gregor Hutton, and Emily. I've been wanting to play a full game ever since I had to leave the session at JiffyCon when Ingrid stuck a bead in her nose. This one was just absurdly hilarious. I have not laughed that hard and for that long in a while.
The ride home was fun, too. I dozed off and on, chatted with the van mates, reveled in the joy of sour cherries and homemade fudge, snuggled with Joshua, and missed Bea, Ingrid, and Chris. When I got home, Ingrid and Bea had grown up into young ladies, Chris was handsomer than when I had left, the cats were still fat, the house still messy, and I think my frogs are mating again. Ingrid did not wean as I had hoped, but we're working on it. We're substituting the marathon nursing sessions with stories about Razzle Dazzle the Chicken. A desperate mother's imagination will go to odd places if it's late enough and her breasts are on fire.
I'm leaving out a lot, I know, like how I lost my Dungeons and Dragons virginity. It'll all come back to me eventually. Stay tuned.
I'm taking the playtesting version down for Steal Away Jordan. You'll just have to buy a copy at GenCon. When I come back I'll set up a purchasey thing at the Stone Baby Games website (which will be www.stone-baby.com, and you can see the embryonic stages of that website here), and then points beyond.
I went to Nashville last week, and my mom read the proof. She thought it rocked.
See you in Indianapolis!
Update! Stone Baby Games is up and running, with copies of SAJ available for sale, and now they're also available at Indie Press Revolution.
Above is the cover of Steal Away Jordan. I finished it yesterday, for the most part. I'm sure that after GenCon I'll get to work on the revisions and clarifications and the putting stuff in that I forgot. But for now, I have a very good looking GenCon edition. So now, in the next few weeks I'll finish up the Stone Baby Gameswebsite. Yay!
The sense of accomplishment I'm feeling right now is amazing. It's that same feeling I got when I handed in a research paper that I really got into when I was in college and in nursing school. The two I have in mind are my seminar paper for Medical Ethics in college and my research paper on the Nursing Considerations for the Patient with a Heroin Addiction. The presentation for Steal Away Jordan is much snazzier than those papers.
Best of all, the people who have read through it have given me great feedback, and I'm really pleased with how it came back. Yay again!
I have this book on Nine Star Ki called The Ki: An Ancient Oracle for Modern Times. There are all these diagrams and worksheets to help you figure your Basic (aka Personal), Control (aka Character), and Tendency (aka Energetic) Numbers. Said worksheets remind me of character sheets! And the wheels start churning. Nine numbers, ten-sided dice (roll a 10, roll again). Flipping through the book, I just noticed there are actually "game sheets" where you figure out your relationship with other players--I mean relations, like family members, co-workers, lovers.
I've also been thinking about a game where time and characters shift in all directions according to the roll of the dice. Characters shift from player to player, time moves forward, backward, up and down. The whole premise is that there are endless points of view in one experience. After GenCon, I'll try to figure out a way to put Nine Star Ki and time and character shifting together to make another game.
Salvador (aka "Sal) ca. 2004-July 19, 2007
Not even two weeks ago, James was hit by a car. Yesterday Sal cashed in his ninth life.
I had a really creepy dream last night where our late dog Kaya came into our bedroom and started licking Chris' and my faces. At first I was happy to see her and then I realized that she was there to take Sal. The details are sketchy now, but for some reason I cupped her face in my hands and it turned into this bloody fleshy mass that wouldn't go away. Yeah, it kinda looked like a placenta! I couldn't get it out of my hands. As the dream turned nightmare I did my "this is a dream and I can change what I want in it" trick. It didn't work. I got the lump of flesh off my hands, but couldn't make it go away. I woke up in a panic.
Kaya is truly living up to her role as a spiritual midwife through both death and life.
This is my draft cover for Steal Away Jordan. If Jupiter aligns with Mars then I should be totally done typing it all up by the end of next week and will commence with layout design. Jupiter probably won't align with Mars, and I'll be typing and doing layout design at the same time.
At some point there will also be a website, so bookmark Stone Baby Games now. Well, not now now, but soon now. There's nothing there yet. But there will be. Soon.
My mom left for Ghana yesterday (I didn't know she was going!!). She's going to bring me lots of fabric so I can play around with my new (to me) sewing machine. Speaking of fabric, Meg is doing this really cool thing for hardcover Dogs in the Vineyard books (and she used one of my character's dog coat--Sister Polly for a cover!)
Last week I saw a bear. That story will have to wait. I'm going to vent about the assholes who drive like maniacs on my street. In the three years that we've lived here, Chris has seen two dead cats, I've seen countless dead squirrels, we've both seen dead whistle pigs, Bea was hit by a car (she walked away with a few bumps and bruises), another child was hit by a car, Meg saw a car kill a chihuahua, and just today, someone hit our cat James with a car, and never bothered to stop.
James is okay. No broken bones, no internal bleeding, just a lacerated tongue and an enormous vet bill.
People use our street as a short cut to larger roads, and they act like they're on the fucking Autobahn, or they're being chased by a car eating monster, or something ridiculous like that. There's no excuse. The speed limit on our street is 20 mph. If you want to drive faster, don't drive down the side streets of small towns like ours! It's that easy. I'm inclined to sit on my porch and start throwing eggs or kombucha SCOBY's (because they have a mysterious flesh feel to them and I think that would get some one's attention) at the speed demons who pass, but that would probably get me in trouble. I've tried yelling at people to stop, and it only works for maybe 25% or the cars. I've thought about making pleasant and colorful signs that say things like "Welcome to our neighborhood", and "please drive slowly [you stupid asshole]", and "we love our children and pets and don't want their brains splattered on your windshield", and "If you hit one of our children or pets we will take your ass to court and sue you". I'm not confident those signs work. I might just start taking down license plate numbers and calling them in to the police. Actually, nagging the police is a common practice on our street. Not all of our neighbors are neighborly.
At any rate, if you live in Greenfield, and you drive down the side streets, beware. If I catch you speeding on my street it will not be pleasant.
I'm afraid that one of these days I might have to go to Bea and tell her that someone ran over her beloved cat. It was sad enough to tell her that we had to take James to the vet and we didn't know how badly she was hurt. She immediately burst into tears. It was heartbreaking.* So to the person who hit our cat and never stopped, fuck you, and consider yourself hexed.
*You may ask why do we let our cats outside. If we don't, they piss all over the house. They were indoor cats for two years.
Generally, when we do "sacred" or solemn acts, they come out awkwardly funny. For us, "sacred" means embracing the absurdity in what should be a solemn moment. Sacred generally involves dancing. Sacred means we call upon the Creator to come laugh with us. Laughter is holy. Silly or interpretive dance brings us close to the divine. Take, for example, how we say grace. Don't laugh. This is an important rite for us:
God is great, God is good.
God is dancing in our food.
Good is good, God is great.
God is dancing on our plate.
Amen. [louder]AMEN!
So this was our Sacred Placenta Planting Ceremony.
Ingrid's placenta has been living in our freezer for neary 2 1/2 years. Today we finally buried it. We sectioned off a new little garden space by the side fence and planted a rose bush over it. The rose bush was a Father's Day gift for Chris. I got it from BJ's for $10. For a $10 rose bush, it's quite nice.
Ingrid napped upstairs, Bea played across the street. Chris asked me to help him plant the rose bush. I said, "Let's bury the placenta while we're at it."
Chris said, "Okay. Do you think we should put it in the microwave to let it thaw?"
I said, "That's gross. I'm not cooking my placenta in a microwave. It'll be fine."
"Well, if you don't think it will the freeze the roots..."
"Dude!" I said, "It's warm outside. The ground is warm. It'll thaw before it does any damage."
So I fished around in the freezer and found the placenta, lovingly wrapped in two Ziplock freezer bags. No more mistaking it for frozen steak. I brought it outside and opened the bags. It was the first time I've looked at it in over 2 years. It was dark red and frosty, and I could see the umbilical cord, and the veins, and the fleshiness. "I made that!" I said.
"It looks like a kombucha baby." Chris said.
"You're right." I said. "Except it's bloodier."
"Maybe the midwives switched it on you and actually gave you a kombucha baby."
"I don't think so. I took a good look at it. It wasn't kombucha. Look how bloody it is. Kombucha isn't bloody."
"They could have poured blood on it to make it look like a placenta."
"That's silly." I said.
"But what if they did?"
I told him to shut up. Not in a mean way. Just in our "okay, it's not funny anymore" way.
And suddenly I got really sad. Ingrid's birth story is the poster birth story for the superior care you can get when you have your baby at home with competent, caring midwives. I couldn't make up a better birth story. I looked at the placenta and remembered it all, and then realized that this might be the last placenta I make. Ingrid could well be our last child. Yesterday at the farmers' market, I saw scads of pregnant women, and one mom with a newborn. I'm hit hard with baby-wants right now. Chris is not. Bea and Ingrid were both unexpected gifts. If we have a third, there would be no surprises. It would be a mutual agreement, an endeavor, a planned thing. We don't do many "planned things", which makes me think a third baby might never be. Things could change in a couple of years. We'll see.
But this rite was to honor Ingrid's birth, and to plant our rose bush. I snapped out of the baby wants for the moment. Chris dug a hole, noting he wanted it to be deep enough so that nothing tried to dig it up. I dropped the placenta in, and it fell with frozen thud. Chris covered it with a little more dirt and I watched some worms squiggle around. They must have felt exposed (and a little cold). I threw a banana peel over that (to feed the rose bush. It was a tip I learned from the man at BJ's who checks to make sure everything in your basket is accounted for on your receipt). We placed the rose bush over that, and set it.
"Should we say a few words?" I asked.
"I don't know. 'Here lies the placenta.'" Chris said.
That was good. To the point.
"I'll do a little placenta dance." I said. I twirled around a couple of times, and did a couple of stag leaps. "This is the placenta dance..." I sang to the tune of Nick Cave's "Weeping Song".
We took a few steps back and admired our rose bush, and made a plan to fill the whole flower bed with roses. (Yeah!) I thought about our third child who might never be, and wasn't sad.
