Game!

This week we are having a return to gaming over in majes's campaign. After a two week hiatus, I am anxious to start back. His world is incredibly rich and the system has a ton of depth. And I miss getting to learn about my character, Chloe Blue.

I hadn't been a part of a table top gaming group in a really long time. Combine that with working in a completely new system to me and the fact that I seem drawn by odd character classes (eg here an artisan, specifically a cartographer), and I admit that I was a little nervous about it. It has been an incredible outlet though, one of the few regular just-for-me things I have managed to do over the last few months.

I am thinking about posting my session notes, but I haven't made any decisions yet. If I do so, it will likely be tagged and possibly filtered. If you would be interested in Chloe's adventures let me know, as I suspect it will only be a very small group.

So we are on for this week (as long as all goes according to plan), off next week for Solstice and then back again after that.

Nutcracker

Yesterday jasra, ifuonlyknew, Chiquita, my sister, my neice/god-daughter (age 4) and I saw the Nutcracker with many thanks to cintyber for getting us the amazing tickets and apologies to dancer for missing her baby shower.

I had not been since I took Chiquita in the first grade. Six years later it was an on-going drama of whether or not she was going for months, as she kept flip-flopping on the issue. Ah, there is nothing quite like the fickle mind of a 12 year old. In the end she seemed fairly glad to go though, even if it seemed to mostly get to see her cousin there.

This was Miss L's first trip to see the Nutcracker, although she knows a former Boston Ballet Sugar Plum Fairy from her dance classes. Her excitement was so completely infectious. She was so caught up in it that she kept asking if it was night time outside. (The show was at 1pm, but much of the show takes place at night while Clara is dreaming after the Christmas party.) She was also literally bouncing in her seat as intermission came to a close and the curtain began to rise again.

Small wonder then that she passed out about 3/4 the way through during the Sugar Plum Fairy's solo. The theater was incredibly warm at that point, and my sister noted that that piece of music is on the cd of music she always plays the girls for nap-time. She was very sleepy as we got her limp noodle arms into her coat to leave the theater, but she still gave me a giant hug before we left the theater and thanked me for taking them to the show.

My sister wrote afterwords: "Watching the nutcracker through the expressions on the face of a child experiencing it for the first time... Priceless!! [Ms. L] hugged me on the way home and told me 'thanks mommy today was the best day of my entire life!!' ".

I am so grateful to have chances like this to get to see the world through her eyes. It makes something already magical, so much more so.