Monday *yawn* Morning

Okay, okay. I'm outta bed. I have an eye peeled open and am working on consuming enough caffeine to power the other one. Why am I so tired? Because I was up until 3am-ish working on a slide show.

I discovered the other day that Adobe Photoshop Elements does slideshows. So...I hadta do one, just 'cause. That's how I do.

Apparently, how I do also includes staying up obnoxiously late on a Sunday night to finish one of these little projects. I so totally ignored the fact that I have to drag my ass out of bed by 7:45 to drive the kids to school at 8:00...*yawn*....

Good news is, I got it done. Bad news is, the file's too big to send it in email. So I guess it'll have to wait for distribution. That's okay - it's just pics of me and some music, so I'm sure some poor unsuspecting soul will be glad they can't be ambushed with it!

Well, that's all I'm writin' for now. Tough cookies. *yawn* I'm gonna go rest my eyes....

The Tween Years

Today is picture day at school, and late last night, I had the girls pick out what to wear. Middle daughter (from here out, D8) had little trouble finding something suitable to wear. Oldest daughter from here out, D11) ended up crying when I asked her if she had a pair of black pants.

Nonplussed, I asked her what could be so awful about black pants that made her cry. Come to find out, it wasn't the pants at all (I didn't figure it was, but you have to start somewhere). She was feeling like there was too much pressure about how she was going to look for the pictures. I wanted her to dress one way, and she felt that it was going to be very different from what other kids were doing. She said 'you can't understand how I feel'.

Well, we had a heart to heart on that one. I showed her pictures of me at her age - glasses, bad hair, the beginnings of teenage skin...it was painful for me, but I wanted her to see that I DO understand. I know a lot of parents seem to forget what it was like to be a kid, but I'm not one of them. Maybe it's because it was so rough for me. I don't know. But talking to her was a little funny, because I remember my Mom giving me some of those same pieces of advice. Things like "you might want the same haircut some other girl has, but it might not look as good on YOU as it does on her" and "fads are fine, but classics are timeless". And I laughed at myself and TOLD her that my mom had said some of those same things to me, and that, like D11, I wasn't willing to listen.

I think there's a difference, though, and I told D11 this, too. My mom would just deliver a statement and not discuss the reasoning behind it. So it always felt like she was making arbitrary statements rather than taking ME into consideration. But with D11, I made sure that I took the time to talk to her about how these things relate to HER - that while Skye has a cool haircut that looks great on her, getting the same cut wouldn't make D11 look like Skye. And I explained to her that while the Hannah Montana t-shirt is cool, it doesn't make for very good portraits. And I backed that up by showing her the section in my photography lessons on portraiture that deal with backdrops and subjects, and simplifying. She didn't have much to choose from in the way of solid color shirts without distracting graphics, but we came up with a black polo shirt and black pants. And when I did her hair this morning, she looked fabulous!

I hope this teaches her to trust me a bit more. I know kids think they know everything - I've been there, I remember. And being 11 is SO awkward for a girl. Not a little girl, not yet a teen...hence the name they've come up with for it - tween. I just want to get her through these years with some semblance of self-confidence. It will be my gift to her - and something I never had. Rather than hide wounds behind false apathy, I want her to be armored against them with a solid sense of who she is and what she's worth. I want her to be able to shake off comments from rude brats, and also be able to accept a compliment with grace. She deserves to be happy - I want SO badly for her to be a happy, confident young woman. Maybe I feel that something good will have come of my own messed up youth if I can use it to make things better for her. It kills me to see her suffer such self-doubt..it's too much like looking back at myself at that age. I can't reach back and help that version of me, to tell her it will be okay, that she will survive even when she doesn't want to. But I can maybe head that all off for D11, and let her not only survive, but thrive.

I think maybe guiding her through this is helping to heal me a little. She is so terribly much like me in some bad ways, and if I can just steer her in a better direction....she can have a better life than me. I might be able to stop her from becoming bitter and shutting herself off from any real friendships or relationships. Maybe she won't be afraid to love, and won't suffer from a lack of it. Maybe she'll be confident enough not to marry the first (and second) man that comes along. Maybe she'll have the courage to be true to herself, and to speak up for what she needs or wants.

I was going to say you couldn't pay me to go through my tween years again...but through her, I am.

Slaves and Pets

I've been fortunate enough in the last month or so to be RPing in Shang with a really good partner. One of my slave alts is owned by a man who is involved in some sort of shady business, the kind that requires him to have a 'crew' that watches his back and helps him run things. He is big, tall, rough and gruff and not someone to meet in a dark alley. He bought this slave without any prior rental - just saw her and bought her. Well, it's amazing, but the RP has been fantastic and fun. And it has gotten me thinking.

About a year and a half ago, I had a Master that I thought was perfect. He didn't seem to think he was, though, and his doubts sort of derailed things. Along the way off the track, he aked me if I wanted to be a slave or a pet. I didn't know what to say. I had never thought there was a choice; in my mind, a sub is what her Master or Dom wants her to be. I didn't want to make a choice, but he was insistent. I don't remember what I chose now, but I guess it was wrong, because he's not my Master anymore. I still sometimes think about all that and wonder what the hell happened, but I suspect it's more a who than a what.

Anyway, this new RP partner and the way his character (JD) treats mine (Calista) has gotten me thinking about that question again - slave or pet. And I realize, after seeing the way JD treats Calista, that a choice isn't necessary. When my former Master wanted me to make the choice, I had thought I was doing something wrong, and that I was being punished by being limited to one role because I couldn't handle both. Well, I know now that I can handle both, and they flow seamlessly together for me. JD can treat Calista with incredible care and tenderness; he calls her his "Hellkitten" or "kitten" for short (which I adore) and dotes on her at times, but he's also able to treat her as property - sharing her with his crew, punishing her, whatever he needs to do.

Asking me to choose between slave and pet was like asking me which I wanted to keep, my arms or legs. It felt so wrong and so strange, and I agonized over it and drove myself nuts over it to the point where I was so confused I couldn't function as either. I wanted to sit in his lap AND kneel at his feet. Then after I chose, it was constant self-monitoring and doubt. Was I allowed to do X, or was that only for what I didn't choose to be? If I did Y, would that be taken wrong?

I'm so glad I'm getting to RP being both for someone. It's just RP, yes, but the effect of having my gifts of submission AND affection both equally accepted is helping alleviate the confusion and self-doubt I carried away from my last Master. With some more positive experience under my belt, maybe I'll be ready to try again. Because being a sub without a Master is awkward, at best.

Dice!

My 1-pound bag of D&D dice arrived today! Ninety-seven new polyhedral dice in a variety of colors and sizes. Way too cool!

After plucking out a few choice ones to augment the 56 dice I had from my college days, I put the rest in a clear divider box for the gaming table. I now get to keep my original dice (my pwecious) to myself to use as a DM set. Never realized DMing took so many dice! To make it easy on myself, though, it helps to have enough 10-siders for all the monsters' initiative rolls, etc. I assign each baddie a different colored die and roll 'em all out at once.

What kind of geek am I do be doing a happy dance over dice? Well, a happy one, of course!

I have to say, most of the dice in the bag were not what I would have picked, but for bulk dice they're okay. The kids like them - good thing, too, because they're going to be using the speckled buggers! I'll keep my pretty marbled ones, my glittering ones, and my gem-like transparent ones.

Roll a Life's Little Delights check.

It's Raining Caterpillars and Frogs

Well, it's raining here, and it seems to have brought out tons of fuzzy caterpillars and billions of baby frogs (okay so maybe not that many..). The kids and I keep trying to identify the caterpillars; Mom got the kids a 'Butterflies of the Carolinas' field guide, and about 80% of them show small photos of the larva stage. Our little fuzzballs seem to be in that 20% that aren't pictured. Of course.

We had to rescue a baby frog from the cat last night. Oliver was extremely interested in one spot of the kitchen floor near the back door, and when we investigated, there was an itty bitty baby frog (fwog) hopping frantically around. You could almost hear the "oh shit! oh shit! oh shit!" that had to be running through the poor thing's head. The look on Oliver's face was, of course, "I wonder how he'll taste...."

Not getting much done lately, but I don't feel that bad about it right now. I started DMing an AD&D campaign for hubby and the girls, and it's been a little hectic. I haven't run a game before, so I decided to use modules I got for free from www.dragonsfoot.org to get me going. They were designed for 1st Edition AD&D, but I'm having no trouble using them with AD&D rules. The XP and gold values are a little screwy, but they're easy enough to alter. My main thing was needing the basic story and the maps, and this is working out great for our little first-level group. Right now, they've just solved a murder and are about to go on the chase. It makes a DM proud. *sniff, sniff*

Maybe next gaming session, I'll throw in some caterpillars and frogs...