Month: April 2015

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The Lily Story, Chapter 1: The Relationship

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In a previous post I mentioned how I was going to do a whole series on what it has been like becoming a father.

This post is about my wife: Amanda Kleinpaste, and our marriage.

Obviously, if the idea of you having children is anywhere near a possibility for you, then you have a relationship with someone – you know… Considering what traditionally needs to happen for babies to happen.

Amanda and I got married February 5th, 2011. We had no particular plans about having children except…you know. Eventually. When we got around to it. I suppose I was thinking that at some point we would figure out precisely when we wanted to have kids. We are busy people, though – and we are people in need of medical attention. Basically it was just something that we didn’t have time to seriously consider at any point.

and then last July, SURPRISE! BABY TIME! Lily decided that she was coming, period.

Amanda and I know each other. We trust each other. We are committed to each other. We have been shitty to each other in some deeply personal ways. We forgive each other for things. We keep doing the marriage thing.

I have exactly zero experience having children outside of marriage, but I already know that having them inside of marriage is goddamned terrifying. I have no idea what it must be like without a committed relationship.

I do have experience with one thing, though – being a child born into a marriage that ended. I know that things were difficult for them, and I know that they were difficult for me. It must have been very hard for them to make the decisions that they did. They made them, and they affected themselves and their children (myself and my two brothers).

And no matter how much I am currently thriving, I would never wish that situation upon young children. Knowing how much more  work Amanda had to put into normal every day tasks just because she was pregnant is… a little humbling. It’s on the same level as living with someone who recently got into a major car accident and are still recovering physically – she couldn’t stand up for long periods of time, putting on shoes occasionally presents a problem, there is daily pain and uncomfortability, etc., etc., etc.

I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to raise a child or three as a single parent. Not having someone that you can rely on for normal life stuff – venting, having fun, going out for drinks, whatever.

I am not entirely sure what exactly I am driving at here, only that my relationship with my wife really matters to me, especially when I start thinking about how I am raising Lily. Our daughter is going to be watching us, probably before we are aware that she can make real memories. The foundation of her trust in us is going to be associated with our ability to trust each other and maintain our relationship. If we do something wrong, then we need to work at repairing it, or Lily is going to learn that broken relationships are dealt with long term by ignoring it.

So, I guess what I am trying to say here is that Amanda is a critical piece of the “raising my daughter right” pie. Not only would it be biologically impossible without her, it would be mentally and stress-fully impossible to maintain basic operating parameters for life, much less sanity. If I didn’t have Amanda, then I wouldn’t feel confident about even taking care of a child 24/7, much less raising said child.

I am also saying that you should not try to raise a child without help. Holy shit, kids are expensive and incredibly stressful. There are government programs and charities and all sorts of other thing to help people in bad circumstances, but without a spouse, without friends? That would just be a nightmare.

And what’s crazy is that they are stressful in this way before they can even breathe by themselves. Amanda and I enjoy and rely on a wonderful support network that consists of dozens of generous people among our family and friends, and I don’t know what we would do without these people.

But the first level of that support network is each other, and if it weren’t, it would be  a cause of alarm. I love Amanda, and because I love her, I will work to make our relationship better. I love Lily, and because I love her, I will work to make my relationship with Amanda better.

[FINAL EDIT] I’ve been sitting on this post too long and I’m just posting what I have.

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Ep 3 Equal Equal Greater Than

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This is episode 3 of Equal Equal Greater Than, which brings us to the end of Act 1 (ending on this page). This episode is a little bit shorter, because I didn’t really realize how close I was to such a good stopping point.

I realized that my method of editing was a little bit strange especially at the end of last week’s episode – but that is what this whole thing is about, right? Me figuring out what I am doing with recording and editing. I’ve changed my methods a little and I’m not editing out some of what I thought were “pointless pauses”.

I will have a text-only post up soon, and I am hoping to get a schedule established for those. This one will be in the series of “The Lily Story”. I finally added an element to the infrastructure of my website that allows me to do it in the way I wanted to. There is also a post that I want to put up about how I do things and things I want to do for you (and perhaps, with you).

Also this episode brought me above the data cap for the lowest level of LibSyn service, So now I am spending a little bit more money on that. Which means that I have more data than I can reasonably use. Which means that I am going to more easily find things to publish. Like a “what I am thinking about my website/podcast” episode. Or a “here is my wife making a Pathfinder character” episode.

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Equal Equal Greater Than

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I’ve come up with a name for this podcast, “Equal Equal Greater Than”, which is specifically a reference to an element in the meta of MSpaintadventures.

This is Episode 2, and has Lily crying and being observed acting out her addiction to pacifiers, as well as Amanda folding laundry and running machinery.

I plan to have another non-podcast post up before the next podcast episode, and I plan to continue publishing the podcast every monday. I will have an RSS page for it up soon.

Lily Homestuck Podcast

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Here is the first episode of a new direction for my podcast (somewhat explained in the previous post).

The first 15 or so minutes talks generally about what this podcast will be (hopefully), as well as why and how I am changing direction – all mostly because I have a daughter now and she is an enormous time sink.

Then it gets into what I want this new podcast to be – Primarily (for me, secondarily for my listeners): An excuse to get behind the microphone, and using it. Primarily (for the listener, secondarily for me): A page-by-page description of the webcomic “Homestuck“, as if I am describing and reading it to my daughter.

If you want to download this to put on your listening device of choice, right-click the “download” link, and use “save as”. I have yet to get a solid RSS feed up for it, but I will be putting every episode in a feed once I get that all squared away.

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General Update

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I don’t know how many people actually use this website to keep up with what I am doing, But I figure I may as well let people know what I am doing most of the time.

My daughter is almost one month old. That is pretty much the number 1 thing in my life as far as time spent or emotional energy goes. She is getting pretty consistent at starting to sleep around 10-11pm, sleeping until 2 or 3, and then not falling asleep again until 5 – but staying asleep until Amanda and I are awake.

So…annoyingly awake at certain hours, but she is getting pretty consistent about it. Which makes it easier to plan around.

I am still working on the series of posts that talk about the whole “becoming a parent” thing. The next (first? I forget) will be up within the next week.

I am still working on podcast stuff – and I recently removed a pretty big mental block: I got a dynamic microphone, which allows me to record audio without building a thick blanket-fort around my computer to keep the noise from the busy street out.

The podcasts themselves…have changed direction. At least until I can manage my time better (or get more time, I suppose), it is going to be reduced to only a few things:
1 – Amanda is actually interested in playing Pathfinder, so I am recording that and will be putting some barely-edited portion of that online on a regular basis. This is now the main thrust of “Apprentice Game Master.”
2 – There is a pretty auspicious date coming up for a certain fandom, so on April 13th I will publish the first episode of describing a certain webcomic to my barely-conscious daughter. I am going to try to be very consistent with this, as it is mostly an exercise in comfortability with podcasting. Starting at 1 episode/week, hopefully increasing quite a bit.
3 – General nerd world stuff. Maybe the old categories of “apprentice storyteller,” and “Nerd’s apprentice,” will still be there, but probably lumped in with this general one.

I am trying to make more time to write – both short fiction (which will undoubtedly be very bad) and posts on this site – thought the temptation to talk about Lily is pretty severe. I will avoid it if I can (Spoiler – I can’t).

So, uh. Yeah. That is what is going on in my world (at least as regards to this website).

If you want to support me or this website, you can buy some stuff from amazon through this link – I get a portion of whatever you buy for a time after you click that link (you don’t even need to buy that particular thing). So if you were already going to buy something – buy it on Amazon instead, through me. Thanks!