Category: Self-ish

About Willa

For those wanting details, here are details. Everyone else, feel free to skip.

Willa is named for her paternal great-grandmother – my father’s mother. G-gma was Williamina and known as Mina, but we went with the alternative spelling Willamina to be known as Willa (and for an easier time spelling her name). Both versions are Scots variants on the Germanic form, Wilhelmina. It means “protector”, which is a pretty good name meaning to have.

Willa’s middle name Therese appears on both sides of the family tree. She’s taking my last name, Davie, at least for now. We don’t have a long-term strategy for a family name. We can talk about it with her when she’s old enough to have an opinion, I guess.

Willa arrived weighing just under 9 pounds (just over 4kg), which is big but not huge. She was long, 53cm I think, so she might have inherited my height. She could just lift her head right from birth, and a week on is easily able to support her own head long enough to turn it towards whatever she wants to look at.

Willa likes to sleep with her hands on either side of her forehead, fingers curled forward. She’s a good healthy feeder and is generally very content and happy. We are seriously counting our blessings in this regard because a lot of our friends have had rough rides with their new babies; hopefully this good streak will continue. (Cal jokingly argues that she deserves some easy time after a long nausea-ridden pregnancy!)

Willa has big feet. I took four randomly-selected pairs of baby booties to the hospital; three pairs were much too small, and the other just fit.

We read her her first story today; Hairy Maclary. Of course she had no idea what was going on but I think she picked up that something a bit special was happening. She spent most of the duration looking at the book rather than at Cal or me, and Cal thought she liked listening to my voice. (It’s a good book, lovely to read. Also: full of dogs, which fits into Cal’s masterplan to have every child in the world love dogs.)

She’s wonderful, basically, and the most amazing thing is how much it seems like she belongs here. Having her in our lives is perfectly right.

Oh also I’m total stereotypical dad with a camera full of baby photos. But I will try not to spam y’all.

[We haven’t opened our hoose to visitors just yet, but I look forward to showing her off soon!]

On Having A Girl

It is Monday and I am not at work and do not yet have a baby.

We are likely to have a girl-baby. Can never be sure: sister of my office-buddy was expecting a girl, but last week got a boy. Still, my brain is mostly pointing towards girl, and that – that! It has given me cause to ponder. And ponder’d I thus: it makes me glad that I know so many amazing women.

Like, for serious, I know some *amazing* women. Doing incredible stuff, selfless stuff, high-powered high-achievement stuff, visionary stuff, good friend stuff, generous soul stuff. Stuff in all directions. Women who make me collapse with laughter. Women who walk up to dumbness and kick it in the gonads. And, not least, women gone through tough times & come out firing on all cylinders.

(Needless to say my Cal is all over these. Women in my family also strongly feature, yo.)

I am thankful for the privilege of knowing all these people, and being shaped by them, and seeing the world around me get shaped by them too. Because it reminds me that the bad is not insurmountable. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last few months: the bad. Frex: the gender-coded socialization that doesn’t even bother to hide itself and will engulf the wee beastie in body-anxiety and social submission; I hope that the tools we give our daughter (if we do get a daughter) will help her not to breathe it all in.

Except hope isn’t the right word. Because of all these people I know, and because of the way I was brought up, and because I’m not doing this alone, I am confident she won’t breathe it all in. Hell, she might find a way to dodge the flood entirely.

We can do this stuff more-or-less right. I am surrounded by examples of doing it right, after all. And yes, I know they fcuk you up your mum and dad, but: it is my heartfelt intention to fcuk my little girl up in ways that run counter to the ways society at large is trying to fcuk her up. Society doesn’t need the extra help. (And besides, I’m a psychology nerd, and everyone knows psych-heads have a lock on finding new and unique ways to mess up our children.)

So what am I worried about? Like all these women I know, like her grandmothers and aunties, and like her mum, she’s gonna be awesome.

Unless she turns out to be a he. In which case, y’know, all bets are off.

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Prompt for this post was Simon C linking to this TED talk about growing up as a man. “My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman.” Strong stuff.

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Also: paying tribute to women by no means diminishes the many men I know who are also awesome. Particularly the dads of daughters who are making a bloody good go of it. Nice one dads, I am taking notes.

Xmas Gift Idea: JAAM 28

The latest issue of JAAM has been out for a few weeks. JAAM is a literary journal containing poetry and prose and varying amounts of non-fiction essays, photos, illustration, interviews… This time it also contains something by me. So naturally, a blog post telling you to buy it. That’s how these things work.

JAAM has been published out of Wellington since ’95, when it launched at the same time as a Victoria University Writing Club – the product of Mark Pirie’s enthusiasm and drive. The club lasted a few years before dissolving into a loose network of friends, but JAAM has published regularly since ’95. Currently an annual publication, edited by Helen Rickerby and Clare Needham (who were both in that original Class of ’95), this issue has the theme of “dance”.

I’m pleased to have a story in there because I really have a lot of love for JAAM, and its relaxed and unaffected sense of style. Also because, as mentioned in my author bio in the issue, I was there in ’95 when the club began and the journal was announced. It took me a very long time to submit something.

The story printed is one of the dozen short pieces I wrote last year in my short story binge. I sort of dread reading it in printed form because nothing makes you see all the limitations in your own craft like being published. But people have been very kind and it did get accepted in the first place, so. (In the JAAM-linked writing group there was a running joke that was also partly serious, where you’d always preface sharing your new work with a comment about why it sucked and you hated it.)

Anyway, even though I talk about me in this post, I’m only a few pages of a wide-ranging and nimble collection. The Xmas gift idea suggestion is a genuine one. This is good stuff, to be enjoyed.

JAAM is (or soon will be?) available at Unity Books in Wgtn and other places like that.

SockBunny vs Cthulhu

One of the amazing things about having a baby on the way is that people get excited and give you stuff. We have received lots of wonderful gifts from very generous people. Its pretty special, actually.

I want to draw attention to two recent gifts, simply because Jenni made big posts about them! Crafty types out there might find this inspirational!

Baby Quilt & Sock Bunny

(We have also appreciated all gifts that did not come with blog posts attached.)

Thanks so much Jenni!

Lines From The Bard

An honest man here lies at rest
As e’er God with his image blest;
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so informed:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
-Robert Burns, On My Own Friend And My Father’s Friend, Wm. Muir In Tarbolton Mill (sourced)

Thinking of you on this anniversary of your passing, Percy! Whisky + Burns. That’s the ticket.

What I’m doing this week

Part of my life is being manager of the Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research. Every week the researchers get together and there’s a presentation of some sort or another.
This week, I’m doing one. I’m not a cross-cultural researcher, but I am a giant geek. So:

Playing culture: Dungeons & Dragons, fantastic ethnicity, and the undisciplined mimetic imagination

For several decades, intercultural education has made productive use of interactive exercises, role-plays and simulations. These “infinite games” offer a way to explore and practise cultural interaction in a way that is immersive, memorable and supportive of exploration. Such engagements are carefully managed with inductions and post-experience briefings to contextualise what has taken place.

However, there exists a vibrant strain of parallel activity that is purely informal. For forty years, small groups of people have gathered together and imagined intercultural experiences without any inductions, briefings, or contextual guides. Tabletop role-playing games use an infinite game structure for the shared creation of character-based narrative fiction, and intercultural engagements often feature. In this presentation, I’ll describe how these games have presented and explored culture, and how innovative techniques are opening new possibilities for playing culture. To explore some of these ideas, a prototype for a new game based directly on cross-cultural research will be presented for discussion and feedback.

Happening Thursday. Should be fun.

Online Stocktake

This weekend I got to turn a virtual acquaintance into a real-world one (heya Andrew) (also heya Phil) and it got me thinking about where I exist on the internet at the moment.

Obviously: From The Morgue, formerly part of the additiverich collective and now a member of the isprettyawesome crew. Here is for thinking out loud, and talking about media, politics, and things I’ve seen or read. Occasionally I try to be funny. I used to make an effort to blog every weekday, but those days are gone. Isolated personal blogs like this one are on the way out anyway.

And my livejournal, which is only rarely updated. LJ used to be a busy hub of activity but it has been on a long, slow fade for several years now, because isolated personal blogs are on the way out. I’m more self-indulgent on LJ, and will not hesitate to post self-promotion or be incomprehensible. I guess I see LJ as a more forgiving space, content-wise. (From The Morgue is also syndicated to LJ, don’t know who set that up but thanks.)

I’m mr_orgue on Twitter. I don’t tweet much, and when i do it’s mostly just to say “I’ve blogged”, but I reply to other people and re-tweet messages a fair bit. I don’t try to keep up, just drop in and read a bit from time to time. Twitter is a fun time. I’m a bit scared of what it’d be like with a smartphone, though; I only access Twitter from desktop at the moment, but I think it’d be a completely different social experience with constant mobile access.

And of course I’m on Facebook. Facebook is mostly for tracking events, seeing photos and saying happy birthday to people. I’m pretty capricious about accepting friend requests – some days I’ll approve some random friend-of-friend I don’t actually know, other days I’ll refuse someone I’ve met more than a few times. Generally, if I want to say happy birthday to you, I’ll happily be your facebook friend.

Those four sites cover probably 98% of my online presence (outside of RPG-related activity, which is a whole separate issue). I have legacy accounts on MySpace, and WAYN, and probably several other sites I can’t think of right now. And of course there’s my rarely-updated personal site, which I’ve had for over a decade, Apocalypse: A Kind of Revelatory Experience. I should probably let it pass into history, but I like it, and also it hosts the infamous Leon Is A God subsite.

Oh yeah! I’m also on Hoffspace, which is where I ironically celebrate David Hasselhoff. Join me!

State of Play

Man, I’m looking forward to when that baby gets born so I can finally catch up on some sleep!

No, wait.

Still in the depths of a sustained busy like there has not been since I cleverly arranged to finish my Masters thesis in the weeks leading up to my wedding. Achieved the rare trifecta of working Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Unsurprise: this has severely hindered progress on Day One in the novel vs. baby race. But I am not downhearted. When I get through these weeks I might be able to put some proper time in and make up the deficit. It’s about how much I want it done, innit?

Timely link: Chuck Wendig on how to be a writer. (Thanks to the people who took a look at the opening pages of D1, by the way. Comments v. helpful.)

Right. Back to work.