Category: Personal

On Vacation

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I am at oak Island, North Carolina.

My time is being taken up by showing my baby what sand is, enjoying the sand and sun myself, eating really good food, and generally relaxing a whole bunch.

You may have noticed that I did not upload a new episode. Even though I did have the time to record the next episode, I never finished editing it. I might be able to edit it when I get home saturday evening, or perhaps sunday. But I doubt it. The episode will go up when I finish it.

On the other hand, I do have a blog post (The Lily Story, chapter 3) already prepared and will have that out on thursday. I anticipate a good deal of time may be spent catching up and re-building my (painfully small) backlog. While I am doing that, I will probably put up more recent pictures of my adorable baby and probably some vacation pictures. And maybe a video of me locked in epic combat with a crab in a very cold swimming pool.

The Lily Story, Chapter 2: The News

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Like I may have mentioned before, Lily was quite a surprise (By the way, do not ever call a child a ‘mistake’. They are either planned or a surprise). We were not actively trying to have kids, we were on birth control, we were getting used to deflecting the ‘when will I get a grand-child’ questions. So the story of getting the news is a little dramatic. Well. Dramatic for me.

After she was done with a bout of stomach gastro-intestinal issues (which was confusing, long-term, and expensive) about a month went by without anything really happening in our life other than thinking “Man, paying off these bills is going to be awesome! Here comes an actually useful savings account!”

And then she started to get nauseous again, which was the primary symptom for her previous GI issues. So we waited a little while to see if it was temporary as her systems got back to a pre-medical-intervention state, or if we would have to go see a doctor specialist. Again. It was certainly much less severe than it had been, and her other presenting symptoms (notably: pain) were absent.

In case you can’t tell already, this was “morning sickness” (which I now know: it rarely, if ever, occurs consistently in the morning), and we just thought that our doctors would once again call for some strange tests.

During that week she basically ordered me to move our bedroom from the attic to the main floor of our home (we rent the 2nd floor and attic) and clean a whole bunch of stuff. This was a little out of character, but not really demanding or otherwise terrible.  Only… she normally doesn’t just tell me to do things. She usually asks. I also didn’t mind: house needed cleaned. Turns out, the “nesting instinct” is a very useful, very powerful urge that many women get when they are pregnant.

Then I went to a class/lecture thing that she had been planning on attending with me, but was instead too nauseous to leave the house. About halfway through the lecture I get a text message from her:

“So, I used that last pregnancy test…”

That’s it. That was the entire text of the message.

I am sure that her head was doing what mine was about to do (more on that next week in Chapter 3), and apparently she thought she was being pretty vague.

I read that text message really quick, and read it again. I put the phone back in my pocket. I Thought about it. Took it back out and read it again. Looked back at the speaker, and tried to focus. Couldn’t focus, too much baby in my head. Tried to not reveal to my friends sitting on either side of me that suddenly very deep emotions were stirring – like an earthquake on the pacific ocean’s floor that is about to make Hawaiians very sad. Almost failed. Got up, walked out of the building. Sat down under a tree in the parking lot, and called Amanda.

I don’t really remember the conversation really well, but there was a lot of “Hooooly crap.” and “What? You already told your mom and dad?” and “Haha, which word of the text message did you think was vague?” and some very brief plans of who we would be telling ASAP vs. later.

After that, my brain got all fuzzy.

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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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Order of Events

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I am admitting defeat.

This website was started as an interesting hobby and it’s initial idea was to have a home for various podcasts and a blog.

My podcasts have sorta fizzled as they started, mostly because of changing life circumstances that force me to prioritize certain things over hobbies. The blog has sorta done that as well, except instead of fizzling it has turned into a ‘daddy blog’, I think.

The defeat that I refer to is that now I am just going to admit that I am mostly blogging about being a (new) dad. I still plan to write about other things, and there are a few things in queue. But I am going to write an entire series of posts detailing the last 9 months.

So, I am going to just let it happen – I will be talking about family stuff quite a bit, and let that be interspersed in my more nerdy stuff. Hopefully, the family blogging will get boring enough that I will want to write about something else.

I am also going to be recording every one of these posts and putting them into a miniseries of podcast episodes, probably with extra detail, and probably with a guest to talk about it… but very little post-processing (no music or anything, that is).

This list is going to be regularly edited to include the links to the posts themselves, and perhaps changing the titles as needed.

1. Relationship (Amanda)
2. The News (via text)
3. Immediately after the news (Fuzzy brain)
4. Dispersal of information and initial thoughts (telling the family)
5. Baby costs what?! (providing and prioritizing)
6. Nesting (prepping via instinct)
7. News for more people (friends, etc)
7.5 Reactions and others stories
8. Secrets and hatred (keeping the gender a secret)
9. Class
10. Impending doom
11. Symptoms and contractions
12. Comfortability with what may happen
13. Actually realizing that I will have a child – terror
13.5 who the child is and who it is not (asshole roommate, not focus of life)
14. Waiting, anxiety
15. The shower and other children (Especially Zach and Marlaina)
16. Cleaning and Support
17. A new person

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To my child

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Dear Lily,

This is your dad, and I am excited to meet you.

We are going to spend a great deal of time together. I want to be there for you. This world that you are about to share with your mother and me is an interesting place, and a hard place. There will be people you meet that are amazing and people that are not, and there will be some people that you will love so much that, even when they hurt you, you will keep loving them.

There are bad things out here. Some of them are obvious, like snakes and spiders or hurricanes and tornadoes or house fires and car crashes. Some of them are not, like cancer and depression or corporate advertising and minimum wage or failing school districts and the IRS. Some bad things are people and their actions. Some bad things can’t be helped. There are too many bad things out here to be able to tell you about. You will learn about them, and I will do my best to prepare you for them.

But that’s just it. I want to be here for you. I want to be here to tell you about it when it is happening. When you fall off of your bike, I want to be there put you back on it. When your high school sweetheart leaves the state because of some other person, I want to be there so that you have a firm, safe place to come back to.

I want to keep you safe, but I know I can’t. That fact terrifies me and tears me up inside. I won’t be able to stop your heart from being broken or your bike to keep from crashing, or your grades to keep from failing. But I can be there for you, in successes and in failures. I have found that I am good at that – being there. I will be there for you. I want to fight for you. I want to help you through the events that give you scars, and I want to help you learn to live with the scars themselves.

I want to teach you.

I have so much to show you. Some things that I will only realize they are worth teaching after your presence has shown me their value. Some things you won’t see their value until after you are grown up. The world is opening up to you soon, and it is vulnerable to your touch. I am going to protect you and hold you back until I know that you can use your touch well – and sometimes, you will hate me for it.

But if I teach you correctly, the world will be better for your touch.

Love,

Dad.

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Fighting.

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I like fighting. The sheer brutality about it. The conquering of something. Sometimes things that were larger than me. Larger than life. I have only been in a few fistfights in my life, one was in middle school – and I lost in a positive way. But as a 21st century westerner, most of my physical fights are exclusively daydreams, or they are not physical fights.

The only physical fights that I daydream about are the ones where I swoop in and kick the ass of a mugger threatening someone else. The one where I take out the office shooter with extreme prejudice. The one where I stand up to some ignorant asshole and send him packing.

But the things that I need to fight? Those things are sometimes hard to even put a name to. They often have names, but learning what their name is can be tricky. Depression is a good candidate for that category. Laziness fits there, too. Ennui and other existential terrors. Sleep.

Sometimes they have no name, and I have to fight for their opposite. Discipline (which is not always the opposite of laziness) with my body, with my money, with my emotions. Time management. Health.

These are things that stop me from doing things that I want to do. They are limiting factors. They are the “things in the way”

So, what stops me more often is myself.

I had to stop writing for a moment and think about that again. I think that I hear it all the time. From myself, from others, from media, from everywhere. I am not sure I really believe it.

Emotionally, I know that this isn’t true – I am good to myself, right? Of course I am. There is nothing that I want more than my own fulfillment, joy, and happiness- why would I short circuit that with some bullshit that gets in my way?

Intellectually, I carefully follow a trail of terrible black footprints round and round the dark caverns in my mind until I realize that I am walking in a circle – the monster I am tracking, the one that keeps me up at night and tells me that I am a terrible person – it is me. and nothing but me. The only evidence I find on the ‘stress’ region of my internal world has all been placed there by myself. I will not take the blame for all the stressful and traumatic things that have happened to me – but my reaction to change my inner landscape because of those people and situations, and to maintain that landscape by emotionally attending to it without emotionally dealing with it is most certainly me.

This is one of the reasons that I hate my inner self. There is this part of me that is convinced that it has to police the rest of me  – out of the fear that the rest of me will start getting into some extraordinarily bad situations if I am not constantly policing myself. It is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, only without the amazing super-strength that makes it almost worth it. Jekyll always controlling what situation that he is in, being very careful to discipline his emotions and reactions, while this terrible beast within is raging at him and telling him that he needs to let loose so that he can overpower the world to their mutual pleasure. To get a little Freudian on you, basically my superego has been given too much power.

Only I don’t have a Mr. Hyde. Or perhaps, the normal me is the Mr. Hyde, and there is this annoying little pipsqueak Jekyll constantly telling me that I need to calm that shit down before I hurt something, keeping me out of situations that might upset the very careful balance between me and … other me. But I don’t need him. I am a gentle man. I do not fly off the handle until I know that I am in the right situation – defending someone’s physical body, for example. Or a metal mosh pit (which are a ton of fun, by the way). I am a disciplined man – not as much as I would like, but I’ve been paying my bills (mostly) on time for a really long time now – even though I don’t exactly have a salary that matches my experience.

Sometimes the things that stop me are not me, as well. Sometimes they are other people. Sometimes they are fundamental concepts. Time, for example. Sleep, as another. The importance of my family, as third. My loyalty to my friends. My need for food. My (oft-neglected) need for exercise.

[personification of these things as demons. not in a religious way. not in a physical way]

I like to personify these things. Matthew Inman does a great job talking about the personification of your personal problems in his running comic at the oatmeal. Reading his story about running has helped me to do this well. I have a little graphic of the blerch posted everywhere I have a computer, and one in my wallet. Because I need to fight him.

Obviously, I cannot fight the need for exercise except with exercise. I cannot fight the need for time management/discipline except by being disciplined about my time management. So I turn it around a bit and personify these negative behaviors as little demon thingies that are telling me to do things. This helps me to fight them.

[philosophy of fighting. you fight for a why, not a what or a who. you fight “because…”, not “for…” or “against…” (those are just extra details); you fight to conquer the future and to be free in the present, not to wrestle the past.]

But here is the kicker – you never fight anything just because it is there to be fought. No one does.  You only ever fight because there is a reason to fight. You don’t line up a bunch of dudes near a football because you like making touchdowns, you do it because you like playing football. Matthew Inman doesn’t fight his Blerch because he hates fat fairies, he fights his Blerch so that he can find peace. I don’t fight laziness because I enjoy productivity – I fight laziness because I want to get something done.

Those specific things, the “Whom do we fight?” the “Where do we fight?” the “What do we fight for?” the “Whom are we fighting against?” – these are not anywhere near the question “Why do we fight?” Those are just extra details. These might be important details – so important that you would be otherwise unmotivated. But these are just details. We only fight “Because…”

Because I want to see a more just world. (other details: abuses by the government. Dishonesty amongst friends. My local community.)

Because I want my children to look up to me. (other details: bullies at their school. My job. My overall ability to provide.)

Because generosity helps me to become a better person. (Other details: My job and professional ability. Room in my budget and schedule. People who put a strain on my resources.)

Because personal growth is important. (Other details: Myself. In my head. The alarm clock)

Because I love my wife and my children. (Other details: everywhere. Anyone who endangers them.)

And I have so many of these demons. Despair. Laziness. Depression. Confusion. Greed. Selfishness.

And I will fight back the demons.

Every. Day.

Not because they are demons.

Because they stop me from doing what I need and want. They stop me from giving you something good. They stop me from giving myself the tools that I need to pull myself up. They stop me from empowering me, and from empowering you to be the greatest things that we can be.

An Important Event Planned for the Spring

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First off, I am apologizing in advance for the nerdy style of speech that I am using. I am apologizing mostly to my family – many of my family are not nerds and I suppose they just have to put up with it. I am also apologizing to my friends, but I think if you are still my friend, then I already know that you will excuse my language, which can be very over-the-top sometimes. I love analogy, metaphor, and other flowery ways of saying things that are just downright overdone.

One way or the other: please read the whole post. I like to write, and you reading it will encourage that. Also this is a much better way of communicating things to people en masse.

That being said, I am not exactly the sort of person that will put their kitchen remodel on Facebook. Or their cat, dog, lizard, or hell, even family. That’s right – I don’t like to put my family on Facebook, because I’ve noticed how little I like seeing your family on Facebook. I’m not going to tell you not to put it up there, because I suppose that is what Facebook is for. Probably not a popular opinion that I hold, but hey, there you go. But considering this blog is for me what Facebook is for seemingly everyone else, I also don’t plan on putting them up here.

Oh, except for a few that help me to effectively communicate things. I will be doing my best to keep posts on-topic. So…this post is about my family…

Ultrasound 1

Congratulations, Seth. It’s a potato. It’s an on-topic potato.

I will, however, talk about important things that happen to me. Things of cyclopean import that shake the very foundations of my existence and make my brain all fuzzy for days on end. The things that sweep through my life like a flood from some divine spring, scouring the landscape inside my head down to the bedrock. Things that throw all other things against the wall to become shadows in the glaring importance of this new-found truth. Things that, when the light finally dims from my new perspective, the shadows will have etched themselves upon the wall in bas-relief, while this new thing stands as a fully-realized sculpture within my mental vaults, an altar to a transformed state of mind.

And it’s not like this event was not somewhere on the horizon. Amanda and I were actually talking about having kids, considering that her stomach issues were getting figured out and we’ve had a few years to figure out stumble blindly through marriage. I mean, right now this event is only just visible below the line of the horizon, it is so far off. But it has separated itself from the ‘distant future’ and can now be faithfully predicted, firmly in what I understand to be called the ‘middle future’. That is – not tomorrow and not next week, but so frighteningly close that I need to start planning things that have to do with it. With a date – even one given to me by experts in the matter!

That date is March 11. On this date, I’m going to be a father. My brain has not been able to wrap itself around that fact.

We are not entirely sure how this will all look when we get to it, either. We may move (doing a pregnant waddle up and down icy stairs all day might not be what Amanda wants to do in the final month or so). We may get different jobs, more attuned to our new responsibilities (i.e. making more money because kids are hella expensive). We may turn into odd caterpillar-like things, wrapped in a cocoon of stress, unsure of the specific form that we will take upon breaking out into the rest of the world, but – just like the hypothetical butterfly in question, we are totally convinced that everyone will want to see and hold and make adorable noises at the product of our regeneration and stress – and they will probably take pictures of this product like mad, as well.

SO I figure you want to know some details:

First off: if you want ongoing details and updates about the littlest Kleinpaste, then email me [seth.kleinpaste@stumblestoryinn.com] and put “SUBSCRIPTION TO BABY” in the subject bar. If you use the form to the left, you will not get a subscription to baby. The form to the left is for a much more nerdy things.

Detail 1: As I said above, March 11th is the due date. This puts this post (that you are reading, right now!) at the very beginning of the 2nd trimester (specifically, 13 weeks and 6 days), which we have heard is the beginning of the more ‘out of the woods’ area of pregnancy in regards to danger.

Detail 2: Some people have known for a while, and they are either family or married/already-have-kids folks that are part of our regular lives (as in, we see them at least once a week). There are a few other people that know – but it was leaked to them on accident or they were just in a place where we had to be talking about it. I am not 100% sure what Amanda thinks, but I for one have been extremely excited and I am just done with my poker face – people have even asked me about ‘hypothetical children’ in the last month where I almost burst out laughing.

Detail 3: This was a surprise to us, as well as you. If Amanda and I would choose, we would probably wait at least until we get a solid extra set of wheels. Down one car is already time-consuming enough, now we need to pay various baby-related medical bills while trying to save for a car/find a loan that fits our budget. Considering this is a surprise, we are probably going to become very creative in our baby-supply-procuring-endeavors. We don’t want to put people out, but we may cleverly disguise ‘begging for free diapers’ with a ‘contest where you get a bottle of booze if you bring the most diapers to an event’.

Detail 4: Not as related as the other details, I have a website! You are on it right now! I am actually using this post as a sort of ‘stress test’ to see how my webhost does. I am using this website for a few different things, and they may or may not be of interest to you. Please check back often, especially if you care about nerdy things or if you want to know my thoughts about parentage, etc.

I still don’t know what the whole ‘baby’ business means for this website, but as of the time of writing, I already have a few posts planned that deal with the philosophy of parenthood and fatherhood (which I think are slightly different in… important ways).

If you want to comment on this post, I invite you to do so here on this website (you probably won’t see your post at first – the system I have in place requires me to moderate each one). Responding on facebook is also cool.

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My Life is Frustrating. But Only a Little.

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I am posting this right before I post another, more RPG-nerdy post. I am doing this because I think that this website is not about my life – it is about a life that I share with the geeky community. Very little of this post relates directly to the nerds, so I am intentionally burying it in the archives. I am including it anyways because I want people to be able to see what was going on in my life as I was getting this website off the ground.
So, I am now (3^3)+1 years old.

Some of this is going to go into a chapter in the book that I talked about.

I thought at this point that I would be married, have a kid, have a low-level job in a career that I wanted to devote my life to, and be making enough money that the panic of ‘oh god rent’ will be only be a hold-over emotional artifact from my youthful college days.

Apparently, that is not so. The only one on that list that I actually have is a Wife, and she is great. I work in an industry I have zero interest in. One of our cars just blew a head gasket and we have to buy a new (cheap) car, – which means that rent is still a thing to be worried about.

Because money is tight, I am less able to pay for the things that would make this website a complete whole. Specifically, I don’t think that it is wise to pay for the level of media hosting that my overall plan was calling for (the $15/month level would allow me to do multiple Apprentice Game Master episodes every week and once-every-other for both Apprentice StoryTeller and Nerd’s Apprentice). Seriously – I cannot reasonably pay the very reasonable price of $15/month.

I can tell you why I cannot afford it. The specifics are not important – the car dying, the medical issues that Amanda and I dealt with recently, school loan payments, cars dying again, friends or family that desperately need help – all of these and more ate my budget, each to different degrees.

But it seems to me that I should still be able to afford $15/month. It is very discouraging that I cannot (responsibly) do that. It makes me less motivated to improve the website – the launch is pushed back even further, why do I need to deal with that right now? It makes me less motivated to record more audio – I have a big pile of unedited stuff just waiting for me – why would I make that pile bigger? It makes me less motivated to go edit the stuff I do have – I cannot release it in a responsible way to the public – why make a tool I cannot use? It makes me mentally constipated – I have all this stuff I cannot get done, but all this stuff has to just sit there and all get in the way of each other.

If you know of a way to get free media hosting at LibSyn (or BluBrry, I suppose) for longer than a month or two, let me know. I will not use media host that does not make real promises about ownership, advertising, etc. to their customers.

If you know of a way to make a bunch of money fall out of the air into my lap, let me know. I am an Amazon Associate, but I cannot really do a lot with that until I get more traffic, and my traffic cannot increase until I well and truly launch, and I cannot launch until I get media hosting.

 

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Need to get back in.

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I think I’ve been listening to too many people talking about podcasts, and not enough people talking about Pathfinder.

I know this because I got my website up so fast and I still haven’t managed to finish writing that first adventure or edit a single other episode. Those two goals would be switched, if I had my way. Have more content and a half created site would be better than half-finished content and a reasonably full site.

To be fair to myself, I have had a really stressful week or two, and building a website from nothing is a whole bunch of really little tasks that are easy to accomplish. So I am not really mad at myself – I am just acknowledging where I am and where I need to focus.

SO…  The only thing other thing that I want to work on for the site now is

  • the continual cataloging of my experiences, so that I can put it all into an e-book for free for my readers/listeners
  • make an email opt-in option

The first one is a continual task that will also contribute to my blog. The second one is something that I keep hearing is absolutely foolish not to put up as early as possible. I will do my best not to hit people over the head with it.

BUT…as far as content goes, I need to be ‘in’ the RPG world a little more. Which means I need to be writing the last of that adventure – the hardest part of which is going to be the hook.

I also need to be editing episodes of everything, which I don’t like to do without being able to say “I will have a full episode ready at the end of this,” but I don’t even know how long it takes me to edit a single episode – I have only finished one, and it is the first of the weird-format ones about character creation. I think not knowing how long it will take has been a mental block – I never want to take time away from my time with my wife, so I never want to sit down and edit when my wife is in the house, and she is never out of the house for the same amount of time as any other time. Not that she is unpredictable, just not consistent from day-to-day. Makes it hard to come up with a  plan for all this stuff.

But my goal for this weekend is to finish the adventure (with a hook) and to finish editing one more episode. I need 9 from the Apprentice Game Master and 3 from Apprentice StoryTeller and Nerd’s Apprentice to be where I want to be for launch.

I should also figure out a good schedule. Maybe 6 hours every sunday…

This is here as an experiment. You should probably just ignore it.

This is here as an experiment. You should probably just ignore it.