My Level of Awareness

Just a break from the Q&A session for a public service announcement.  First, I want to say, that overall, I really love my job.

 Right Now?

Not. So. Much.

Bri out.

And I don’t mean emotionally, either.

Sheila gets next dibs in the oh-god-give-me-material quest.  Don’t worry, I am getting them all in approximate order, and if you posted a question I will get to it.  Plus, I need to milk this until my writer’s block is over.

To post an earlier pic, this:

Is my armor.  It is a product of 26 years of trial and error about what works and does not work for me.  The first 20 years were pretty much all about function.  I did not have a very good-looking, coherent or historical kit.  The last five years have been a concerted effort to move myself in an actual direction, which is more or less Varangian as far as the hard kit is concerned (my soft kit has advanced a little more and is solidly Outer Hebridies).

Let’s see, starting from the top:

Helmet - this is from White Mountain Armories.  Adam Berry (Master Magnus, in the SCA), is not only a highly skilled armorer, he is a truly fabulous human being.

Gorget - unseen - from GAA, who is, to my last understanding, out of business.  Too bad, I got a lot of nice work from Master Geoffrey.

Arms - I wear no upper arm protection.  This is not recommended for the new fighter or the faint of heart.  My lower arms/elbows are from a former worker at GAA.  Hardened leather and a perfect fit.

Body armor - lamellar cuirasse again from White Mountain.  Adam had this set already laced for a small fighter.  I SWEAR it had my name on it.  I won’t tell you what I paid, but I promise you it was worth every penny.  He put on the pteruges (the leather flap skirt), to which I added the medallions.  The skirt, however, is eventually on its way out.  It will be replaced when I upgrade to a new gambeson (and here is where I skillfully insert an answer to Sara’s question) - I am making a linen aketon (gambeson) diamond-quilted with cotton batting.  At that point, the cuirasse will have a black scalloped edging put on it.  The shoulder pieces were hand-tooled with combattant rams by THL Malcolm MacAdaim, and will stay.  The belt is a gift from my Knight and was his original squire’s belt, made when he squired to Duke John of Ean Airgead.  It will also stay as long as I don’t piss him off.

Tunic - I made this - red linen embroidered with white crescents.  They are my Knight’s colors and symbols.  See, even Duchesses wear livery when appropriate.

Groin - unseen - a commercial women’s athletic protector, available at Academy Sports.

Legs - I don’t wear thigh armor (see disclaimer in “Arms” above).  I do wear Crash pads, which are hidden under my pants, and don’t do much more than take a bit of the sting off. The lower legs are shovel greaves from GAA again.  I LOVED their stuff. They will eventually be on their way out. I am going to hidden knees and shinguards with wickelbanden and turnshoes.

Gauntlets - my full gaunts are EGG armories.  It is the only nod to plastic that I make, but they are truly the very best I have ever worn as far as function for these little mitts of mine.  The half gaunts are a gift from Duke Maelgwyn of the Outlands - another very cool dude, and an unexpected gift.  I have a pair Drogo made me as well, but I need to shorten the cuffs.  I rotate my wrists too much.

The shield shown is not my usual shield - Charlotte has that to paint, but I have slacked and not sent her a picture to use as a model.  Bad, bad squire.  The sword is also not my usual sword.  Borrowed from Ulrich.  He has some fast sticks, I am telling you.

So that covers ONE of her questions.  The chronology of my epic travels will form another blog…

Okay - Kat got first dibs in my little “please, please tell me what the heck you are interested in reading” exercise.  And it’s a convenient two-fer since it also answers part of Sheila’s question/s.

First, for you non-SCA folks, an explanation - in the SCA’s medieval organization, it is the common practice to register personal heraldic arms with our College of Heralds, like the nobles did during the time period we cover.  My arms look like this:

I have used lilies to represent me on other things - tokens, gifts, embroidery.  So, Kat’s question is “Why the lilies?”  Fitting question, as she is a heraldic-type person.

Well, there are a few reasons, but first, you need to keep in mind that I joined the SCA as a teenager.  This explains a LOT of my stranger residual SCA behaviors.  Although I didn’t register my device until much later, I was actively using and displaying it for years essentially unchanged.

In the early 80’s, when I was picking my device, calla lilies were cool in the popular teenage art world of the time.  Not only were they cool, they were VERY cool in Calontir (not surprising for a Kingdom founded by teenagers and ex-hippies), and still form a part of the Calontir symbolism.  Calontir at the time I joined was a region, and we went from region to Principality to Kingdom during a very formative time of my SCA participation.   I BLED Calontiri purple, even though I was forced by college to be living in Ansteorra (specifically, Tulsa, OK).  The choice of Lilies was rather a patriotic statement, letting the Ansteorrans know that I may have my feet in the land of the Sable Star, but we all knew where my heart was.  In fact, the original field of my device (that’s background to the heraldically impaired), was not black, but purple.  After some thought, that was a little too much immersion (even for me), and I changed the field to black.  Hey, I was going through a Goth phase at the time.

That’s the public answer, and it is MOSTLY accurate. 

There is another private answer, which sounds a bit uncharacteristically dramatic for me, but here we go, nonetheless. 

There was a guy (specifically, a Calontiri guy) that I never actually DATED, but we had a rather, well, complex relationship.  Not stormy really.  Just … complex.  One day he sent me a bunch of calla lilies (very expensive at the time) with a note.  I don’t have the note anymore (I said the relationship was complex, right?) but essentially it said that he thought of calla lilies when he thought of me - tall, fair and straight, beautifully elegant without being showy, cool, and just a tiny bit unattainable.  It was the first time anyone ever told me I was beautiful without trying to get in my pants.

So basically, they are an artifact of my drama-laden teenage years, but I kept them partially out of habit and partially out of nostalgia.  And partially, because, even this day, I was honestly flattered and touched. 

It’s not that I don’t have things to write about.  It’s just that I don’t have anything that is exactly lighting my fingers on fire here.  I have some things brewing in the back of my head, but they just haven’t found their way to the front door yet.

Soooo…  I am going to go all interactive on you.

If you read my blog regularly (and there are some IP addresses that pop up pretty frequently, so you know who you are and so do I), I want you to ask me one question that you always wanted to ask me, but never found the right moment to ask.

Now is the right moment.  I am all ears and typing fingers.  Ask me a question and I will blog you the answers.  Nothing is particularly off-limits if it within the bounds of decency.  If, however, I deem the answer will hurt or embarrass somebody other than myself, I will reserve the right to answer privately.  And I am the final arbiter of what that means, since this is, after all, my blog.

If you only lurk, now is the time to delurk, drop a comment or an email, say hi, and keep me in material.  Otherwise, I will start chronicling my child’s daily activities in minute and gory detail until all of you are asleep and drooling on your desks.  I’m a mom.  Trust me, you will wear out before I do.

My son is not talking.  Not really anyway.  He says something kinda sorta like “Mama” when he gets really desperate (like when he is trying to make me wake up at oh-my-god-too-early).  At one year old, this had me a bit concerned. But he babbles with intent - it’s like he’s TRYING to tell me something that I am obviously too dense to understand.

This is not to say that he does not communicate.  He is learning signs like crazy. You can really tell a lot about his priorities by how fast he learns a sign.

“Cookie” he learned right off the bat.  Nothin’ like a little positive reinforcement to encourage communication.

 After he discovered that fabulous elixer that is cow’s milk, he picked up “Milk” in about two repetitions.

He has also become proficient at “all done”, mostly because he knows it gets him out of his high chair.  And “more”, but sometimes he likes to use that as a weapon - I jump up to get him another cup of milk, only to have it used as a ballistic missle to keep the dogs on their toes.

 And, of course, “bye-bye”, which he starts doing the moment I pick my keys up in the morning.  That’s the saddest sign of all, but since he learned it, he has stopped crying so much when I leave in the morning.  It’s like once he learned how to acknowledge that I was leaving, it gave him a little more control over the situation, and he deals with the separation much better. I wish something that simple worked for me.

I think the trend started a few weeks back when he discovered that he could get where he wanted to go by pushing a toy into position as a convenient stepstool to greater heights.  Nothing in the house is safe from his exploration. Kris left him alone for a few minutes in his room and came back to find him with his feet on the Brio table, hands on his activity bench in the downward-facing-dog postion and NO idea where the heck to go from there.  Unfortunately, his lagging ability to get himself down from heights he has taken himself have resulted in a few hard-earned lessons in “gravity works”.  But the fact remains that he pointed himself in a direction, analyzed the obstacles and formed a plan (albeit a bit flawed) of attack.

He has also started to try dressing himself.  The baby who once screamed anytime we tried to put shoes on his little feet, and only barely tolerated socks, has now become obsessed with the concept of shoes.  What makes this odd is that neither Kris nor I are “shoe people”.  Mine come off the minute I get home from work and we never wear them around the house.  But somewhere some light switch came on in Harry’s head, and he has figure out that there are actually these things that seem to go on your feet, and then YOU CAN’T SEE YOUR TOES!  FASCINATING!  If he could only make the association between pants and his butt, my life would become incrementally easier.  Right now, shorts are a strange variation of shirt, and if I would just let him keep trying he KNOWS he will be able to put both arms through the leg holes and force his head out through the crotch.  But the point is that he sees clothes that he wants to wear, and goes about the business (rather ineffectively), of putting them on.

So, big deal, right?  As a non-parent (and I spent a LOT of years being on of those on the outside looking in with incredulity), this stuff is not particularly amazing.  But when a year ago you had this tiny being that couldn’t hold his own head up, and whose desires could only be expressed by screaming until rather dimwitted and sleep-deprived(depraved?) parents hit upon the right solution through a series of desperate trial and error, it is miraculous.  When ONE MONTH ago, he couldn’t/wouldn’t drink from a sippy cup without help, these small steps are nothing short of brilliant. 

It’s not so much question of showing off a new skill. In his first year, we got rather accustomed to waking up and seeing him do something completely new and fully-formed overnight.  Having no true basis for comparison, I don’t know if this is normal, but Harry has never done anything in halves.  He seems to simply make the decision to do something one day and does it.  No mucking about for our little Yoda -  ”there is no try, there is only do.”  No, what makes it amazing is what is going on INSIDE.  He suddenly has developed this idea that he can actually make a decision on his own and then DO something about it.  His life isn’t driven by a series of “I needs” any more.  He looks around, ponders, comes to conclusions and acts on them by himself, without feeling the need to involve a mommy in the process.  I know ADULTS who have never progressed to that point.  The beginning of the second year should come with the label “Caution, self-actualization in process.”

I am never sure whether to celebrate or mourn.

I SHOULD learn a lesson from Sarah.  I have blog accounts everywhere, I mean - EVERYWHERE.  Most of them just refer you to this one - Sarah is smarter.  She has figured out the magic of RSS feeds.  I am not entirely sure I want that much exposure, but if I decide I do, you can be sure I will be emailing her.  Nevertheless, I have resisted blogging on any of the others since I bought my own domain.  Except MySpace. 

Well, okay, I have published the link to this blog on my Myspace blog, but for some reason, I can’t just leave it at that.  I feel COMPELLED to actually write things there.

 Hi everyone, my name is Robbin and I am a MySpace Junkie.

Let me start by saying I have a real love-hate relationship with MySpace.  I have found some old friends in the incredible polyglot that is MySpace. That’s very cool.  I have also messaged with some folks that I have only known through other people before.  That’s also cool.  That’s the big advantage to MySpace.  Almost EVERYONE has an account.  Even if they actually blog over on TypePad or LiveJournal or Blogspot or Wordpress, they have that guilty little MySpace secret hanging in the back. 

That’s where my infatuation with MySpace ends. 

I hate it for the same reason I hate casinos.  The overt, blinking, flashing, moving, dizzying commercialism of MySpace always makes me feel a bit nauseous when I page over to it.  From the time I was a small child, I have been overstimulated easily, and it is just too, too much.  For the record, the movie “Cool World” (now THAT dates me), gave me that same sick feeling.  I just could not focus with that much going on in the background.  I lack the ability to screen out incidental stimuli and focus on what I am trying to read/hear/watch.  I hate crowded rooms, and MySpace is THE giant virtual, smoky, crowded singles bar of the internet.  Great to meet a friend and grab a quick opener, but you go someplace else when the real conversation starts.

So I will admit to having a perverse interest in perusing my friend’s friends lists.  But I always feel like I have to wash my hair and change my clothes afterward.

I have decided that I must have THIS:

http://www.cafepress.com/tobh.62159367

for my son before he is old enough to protest (or read, for that matter). 

Yes, the truth is that one of the rewards for 18 hours of labor, a c-section scar and 11 months of breastfeeding is the fact that I get to dress my child in whatever I darn well please.  And write about it if I want to.

Don’t worry, I have a “Harry-needs-therapy” investment account.  I am, above all, a responsible parent.

I have a lot of my friends from the SCA who read this blog who have mentioned a notable lack of posts on the SCA here.  For the uninitiated the SCA is the acronym for the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval-renaissance history group that has been described as the 800-lb gorilla of living history groups.  And I use the term living history loosely.  Because of their time span (roughly 600-1600 CE), and scope of membership (35,000 official members, and probably an equal number of unpaid members worldwide), there is considerably more “anachronism” than in more focused, true Living History groups.  But, despite it being primarily a social organization, I have learned and developed a deeper love and understanding of history over my life than I would have in any other structure. 

The love of history is not why I have stayed an active member for 26 years.  My interests come with a desire to bring a little authenticity to it’s representation that is probably more conducive to pursuing in other groups.  I stay, not for the history, but for the relationships.  More than any other group hobby that borders on passion, there are deep relationships formed in the SCA that substitute for the disrupted neighborhoods, villages and parishes of earlier, less mobile times.  In short, I stay for the people.  And the fighting.  I came because the call of the tournament field was too strong to resist, and it is my first and truest link to the SCA.

In any small, inbred community, there are times when the closeness is stifling and the interpersonal relationships turn petty and small.   Sometimes you just have to take a breath of fresh air, walk away and slow down.  It’s the only way you can really pursue any passion for the long haul without crossing the border into obsession. 

Plus, we have had an attack of life over the last year that our previous commitments did not allow us time to dwell on.  An attack that we pushed through outwardly well, in fact, a little too well.  I think while we were so busy putting a smile on the face of our tragedy that people forgot the profundity of the changes that we found ourselves in the middle of.  I think we forgot it ourselves.  In this way, the SCA was our saving grace - we had no choice but to suck it up and move forward.  Duty calls, and all that - it’s an almost military dedication to “doing what must be done.”   This dovetailed well with my upbringing.  The British have NOTHING on New Englanders when it comes to having a stiff upper lip.  No tears allowed. 

But now that we are allowed out of the fishbowl, we are taking a bit of time to inhale, reorient, and take the luxury of a bit of personal time.  We have a house to make a home, salvage to sort, baby books to update and lives to reclaim.  When we show up at an event we want the luxury of coming in our own clothes.

But (in a rare personal appearance, only because I am in a helmet) this:

 Is what brought me into the SCA, and this is what will bring me back.  The pure thrill of combat. 

Gotta go.  Got armour to fix.

Okay, a LOT of you know this.  A chunk of the people that read this blog day-to-day (and those that bothered to read the “About” page that I stress over on a daily basis), know that I am a (insert gasp here) “older mom”.

I conceived my son exactly one week after my 40th birthday.  And for those of you that are closer to 30 than 40 heed this warning - things in the rear-view mirror are closer than they appear.  This middle-age shit sneaks up on you. 

The struggle we had to bring Harry into being is something that is going to need to wait for another blog.  The tests, the tears, the unnecessary stress inflicted by a very-well-meaning medical establishment are just not what’s on my mind today.  But it is never far in the background, and it does have an impact on how I see myself as a mother.

Life choices are all about trade-offs, and nobody should place themselves in a position to judge how what the price was for the decisions that YOU made.  Like probably 95% of the people reading this blog, the course of my life was mainly intentional, and somewhat incidental.  It’s a worn phrase, but you get the cards life deals you - it’s how you choose to play them that ultimately counts.

So, in short, I CHOSE to delay motherhood.  I can list a multitude of factors - graduate school, a failed first marriage, career pressure, financial insecurity - but the basic truth of the matter is that I delayed it because I did not really feel the passage of time.  People seem to think that women delay having children because they are self-centered ‘have it all’ products of our materialistic society.  But, I can tell you that, if I am representative, that we are being given short shrift.  Most of us “late bloomers” were simply busy living life as it came and the thought of life as a finite quantity just didn’t make much of an impact on our psyche.  I feel like same person now as I was 15 years ago, only with worse knees.  I attribute feeling a bit more tired, not to age, but to being desperately out of shape.  Basically, I just don’t FEEL like an “older” mother.

Except in one important respect.

I covet my time.

When statistically you have more years behind than ahead of you, and you are given a major, major reason to seriously contemplate that, your priorities make a major paradigm shift.  As an “older mom” I have things I could not give him as a twenty-something - more financial security, and a lot more patience.  But I have traded this for time.  I most likely will not have the years to spend in his company that I would have if he had come to my life in my younger years.

I have heard all the comforting arguments of “Oh, you could live to 100, you know!” and “Anyone can get hit by a bus tomorrow”, but the fact remains that I count my moments with my child in terms of quality not quantity.  The double whammy of being an older mom and a working mom means there are some things upon which I will not compromise, and some child-rearing advice I will not take.

My child does not cry himself to sleep EVER.  If he wakes and cries in the middle of the night, Mommy is there to soothe and rock him.  Because I know that Mommy-hugs-and-kisses will only heal his hurts and fears for a short time, and I covet that time during which I am the bringer of comfort.  I will not always be here to rock him in the middle of the night - and he will not always call for me first.

Despite many kind offers - I do not want an evening off to myself.  From the time he meets me at the front door until his little heavy eyelids close is a time I covet.  I will splash in bubble baths until my hands prune and sing him lullabies every night to sleep for as long as he will stand it.  There is a time when his evening activities will not include a Mommy clapping at his every attempt to balance a block on his head.  There will be a time when my nose and ears aren’t the most fascinating things in his life.  The movies will be there on DVD, and the restaurants will be less trendy and easier to get into later, when he wants my car keys more for their actual utility than because he likes the noise they make.

If my son isn’t welcome somewhere - I probably shouldn’t be there either.  The annoyances attendant to the “adult fun” I had in abundance in my crazier youth have taken all the sting out of this hardship.  I mean, give up the chance to have obnoxious, drunken, and usually not-very-attractive men throw up on my shoes?  The chance to come home and peel off smoke-saturated clothing and have the warm wine glow give way in the harsh light of morning to a massive migraine?  Oh, woe.

Basically, the best thing I have to offer my child is the realization that the sacrifices we make as parents are gifts.  They are gifts from God that tell us to slow down and cherish time.  Covet time.  It is our most precious commodity.

Somebody told me that you cannot spoil a child with what is given from the heart.  If you give in because he has worn you down or worn you out, you are spoiling.  But if you give of yourself out of joy, because you genuinely cherish your moments together, you teach them the truest meaning of love.

It’s just one of those rare and fortunate cases where selfishness and generosity intersect.

I made a tongue-in-cheek reference to this on my MySpace blog, but, at the risk of repeating myself, I am going to reissue this warning to the if-a-little-is-good-more-is-better crowd.

Over the counter drugs are NOT benign.  Do NOT exceed the dose on the package even if you think you are so much of a man that you need more.  And acetominophen is NOT the “safer” alternative.

At the risk of having my ass sued, I am not going to name brand names, but I have never been one to jump on the acetominophen bandwagon.  At the dosage on the package, it is an effective analgesic.  It has the slight advantage of being more easily tolerated by the digestive tract, but it is not as effective of an anti-inflammatory as the anti-prostglandins (i.e. ibuprofen), it has almost NO antispasmodic activity, and it doesn’t have any of the healthy side-benefits of aspirin.  I cringe every time I have see somebody chase a hangover with a couple of acetominophen.  Your head may thank you, but your liver is screaming.  I am not saying it doesn’t have a place.  As OTC painkillers go, it’s pretty much THE option for those who need to avoid blood thinners.  But I think that place on the shelf is narrowing.

Stepping beyond my anti-T bias, however, there is this macho I’m-a-big-man-I-need-a-big-pill issue to address.  Not to attribute this soley to the estrogen-impaired gender, but there does seem to be a rather bimodal distribution of philosophies among the men I know when it comes to taking (non-recreational) drugs.  Either they won’t take so much as an aspirin for the pain if they broke their leg in three places, or they down six Extra Strength Advil with a swig of beer.

So, speaking not as a nagging member of the distaff side, but as an actual, bonafide, diploma-on-the-wall biochemist:

More.  Is.  Not.  Better.

 No matter how burly you think your constitution is or how “special” your pain receptors may seem to you, taking twice the recommended dose on the package does not kill the pain (or clear your nose) better or faster.  Really.  Scout’s honor.  I have seen the uptake profiles and done the math.  With few exceptions (and no, you are not one of the few, so don’t even go there), all “more” does is crap out your liver, short-circuit your central nervous system, and blow out your veins - if you are lucky.  During the time I was in grad school, TWO undergrads died of diphenhydramine (that’s the B-antihistamine to the generically-impaired) overdoses on my campus in less than a year.  Apparently the second kid missed the month of front-page headlines (small town) and warning pieces about the dangers of dose doubling.  If the drug ain’t working, you need a different drug, not more of the same-old same-old.

So, don’t do it.  Your best-case scenario is that you are throwing your money down the drain - and who needs to give the drug companies more money, anyway?  The worst case scenario is that you will throw your health down with it.