Now in "Actual Play" Stage

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.

There's a Game at the Print Shop

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!

There's a Game in There Somewhere

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.

I Brake for Living Things... Part 2

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.

Coming soon from Stone Baby Games...

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!)

I Brake for Living Things in the Road

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.

Sacred Red Placenta Roses

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.