Frenzied Daddy

A Girl on the Intarweb!!1 cracks me up. And then I get thoughtful.

Yeah, so I got lucky- I married a real live woman who likes playing computer games. She’s more comfortable with nethack than with monopoly. In MMORPGs– like World of Warcraft or Everquest (1 or 2), there seems to be more female characters than male characters- in fact, most, well, ok, many female characters are played by boys. Heck, my main EQ2 character, Eddison, is a girl. It seems to be an accepted fact that most girls and “girls” on the Internet are, in fact, guys (and some of the people who believe that have their own little reasons for it).

But my daughters are growing up in a computer-centric world, and I have to believe that when they get online (Miss B is already online, playing EQ2 with supervision; she seems to like arranging furniture more than killing goblins ), that other players won’t believe they’re really girls. I have to wonder how that’s going to affect their sense of self, as they move through childhood, into the fragile adolescent realm, teenager-ness. Eventually I hope that they will understand that other people’s perceptions of them don’t define them, but there’s that whole puberty thing to get through.

I trust my girls on the Internet, and I believe that good parenting skills will get around the violence presented by computer games and the seductions presented by online communities, but how do I handle this visions of “omg no pics? u r not a girl” that Teleios gives us?

Nothing major to report, just a quickie to say … my younger daughter is pretty cute. She was rending flowers into their constituent parts, yelling at us to get her “Moah Howah!” and then bringing them back to the porch and ripping the petals from the buds. Honey, “he loves you.”

I updated again.
I’m using a Yahoo Library for layout, trying to solve the IE problem I’ve acknowledged in face-to-face meetings. But I can’t get it to work right, and have spent plenty of time today trying to figure it out. I’m sorry IE users, you’ll find the sidebar at the bottom…

When Miss B was born, I really started focussing on ‘being a terrific dad.’ And I admit that sometimes when I was out walking with her, taking her to the playground or the fountain, I imagined people looking at us and thinking “oh look … what a great dad.” I don’t do that anymore (the imagining other people part), and with Miss K, I’m trying to ‘live in the moment’ more. Which leads me to ‘living in the moment’ with my elder daughter, too.

It’s hard. It’s really hard. Last night, for instance, we sent Miss B to bed at 9:30. She was late, but her homework wasn’t completed. And then she cried and complained and whined until about midnight. At 11, we had let her go into our bedroom, hoping she’d go to sleep, and then at midnight I had gone in to go to bed, but kicked her out of bed because I wanted to sleep and “didn’t want her to win by crying for three hours.” While she got herself all worked up and unable to relax and let the sandman do his job, I had also allowed myself to get all worked up, and forgotten the most important lesson I’m learning from my daughters.

They may be my kids forever, but they won’t be kids forever.

Mrs B is a whole lot better about it. She is able to negotiate a lot better with Miss B, and frequently steps in between the two of us as we’re fighting. A lot of times, I’m too stuck on how I think it should be, and can’t be bothered to frame it in a more child-like context. For instance, last night, cuddling with my daughter for five to ten minutes would have saved me three hours of anger. In fact, I was focused on trying to get some work done on various computing projects, and her fit was really distracting me and sucking my energy– ten minutes of chilling with her on the couch would have helped me focus. And it would have helped me focus on what was really important– not “paying the bills” but “enjoying my kids.”

Miss B played hookey today. Mrs B “let” her, although when we discussed it, I was still caught up in “not letting Miss B win by throwing a fit for three hours,” but was more interested in getting everyone to bed (at 12:30AM ). I went to work, and Miss B worked her entire day on a “minerals” project due tomorrow. I have to say that if it weren’t for two things, that project wouldn’t be done yet, and she’d be finishing it this weekend. Those two things are … taking today off, and the amount of work that Mrs B put into keeping her daughter focussed on the task. The project is terrific, and Miss B is really (rightfully) proud of it. She’s put a lot of work into it.

She also shaved her legs this week. She called her mother into the bathroom during her bath, and they discussed leg-shaving, and then she went ahead and did it. That’s really what I meant to talk about today– my daughter “growing up,” but maybe I’m growing up too.

My last two posts have been both wordy and political. This weblog is primarily my ‘my family’-oriented weblog. I have a separate weblog for work stuff, and two others for which I’m currently writing content (Portland Parents and Portland Scrapbooking).

I don’t see stopping posting political rants like these last two posts, and I’m concerned that they “dilute the brand,” that they mess with the family-orientation. Domain names are cheap (less than a double mocha) at Yahoo.com at the moment, and for a lightly trafficked blog, I can have it hosted for free.

Do you folks think I should move my political rants to a different blog?

Talk amongst yourselves.

I hate listening to Randi Rhodes. But I do it. I hate it because she uses a lot of the radio tendencies that conservative radio hosts do, like running roughshod over her callers, and like sticking to one thought for an hour and bringing back every. single. topic. back. to that thought. I listen to her because every once in a while she says something smart.

Like … about two days ago, she said that the Supreme Court didn’t step into the Anna Nicole Smith inheritance debate because they had jurisdiction over the issue. They stepped in because they wanted to establish that they did have jurisdiction over the issue– that the Supreme Court can address issues of who can marry whom, and who gets to benefit from marriage. In other words, they used the discussion around her inheritance to increase their domain.

She went on to expound on the idea that marriage is a state-level function, not a nation-level function. Note that this chart shows that each state has its own rules about age of consent and about common-law marriages. She’s got it right; the US Supreme Court should never have been involved in Anna Nicole’s inheritance battle.

However, Frist’s Plans are not a secret. While Frist is ignoring problems with already-established checks-and-balances (he’s pushing for this vote rather than focusing on the Presidental use of Signing Statements or on the Search of William Jefferson’s Office), he’s instead riding a doomed horse to get the House and Senate to pass a bill restricting State Rights to condone same-sex marriages.

And the Supreme Court has recently gone out of their way to show that marriage is a Federal-level issue, and not just a state issue. This Supreme Court, with the new Bush appointees. Really makes ya think, doesn’t it?