The cost of a child

The last time I had a beard was 13 years ago.  I had just gone on parental leave from work and I was excited about not having to look corporate, so I let my hair and beard grow out.  It worked for awhile, but eventually Pinkie Pie got enough coordination to seize on my beard and yank.  Having my tiny person pull herself up on my facial hair was extremely unpleasant, so the beard came off. 

While I was bearded back then, this is how I looked.

Just recently I grew a beard again, though this time the reasoning was different.  This time I was getting into a cycle where I didn't shave until it *really* itched, then finally got grumpy and took the facial hair off.  After a few cycles I started to get comments about how terrible the constantly disreputable thing looked, so I let the beard grow out again.

This is how I look today.

I have a lot less hair, that is for sure.  Both in the 'I cut it short' sense... but also in the 'male pattern baldness' sense.

But what stood out more is the grey in the beard.  What a difference in look.

This is what having a kid around for 13 years will do to you!

Pinkie Pie thinks it is funny that I blame my grey hair on her.

I don't know that I will keep the beard for long.  One of the big reasons to have one is to save myself the annoyance of shaving, but people seem to think that I need to shave under my jawline to make the beard look better.  Shaving a bit less area just isn't accomplishing the No More Shaving thing that I want.  If I am shaving at all, I would rather just have the goatee because I think that is what works for me best.

I do find it amusing though that now when I have a cat on my desk while I game it is me who is grey, and the cat who is pure black.  Before it was me having the pure dark colour, and a cat with lots of grey.

Evidently somebody around here always has to be grey, one way or another. 

False alarm

A short while ago I wrote a post about how Pinkie Pie is doing better.  School was going better, though not great, and she was really up from where she was in months past.  Things were really improving.  I got lots of people telling me how happy they were that her mental health situation had finally improved.  Yay!

And then everything fell apart.  It isn't surprising, as it was just this exact time of year two years ago that her challenges first arrived.  Darkness and cold are not good for her.  She has fallen back from school being a challenge, but basically working, to just lying in bed all day every day.

It tears me apart.  I have to be available, there to try to get her up for school, try to get her to school in the afternoon, try to keep her life going.  Despite being there, I just can't *do* anything to make it happen.  All I can do is watch.

There is some extra frustration in having so recently written that things were going well.  I don't want to be going back and forth, cataloguing every change, but after several months of improvement I felt like there was real reason for optimism, and it was worth telling people about.  Then, without warning, it all collapses in a heap.

Now I have to face a ton of conversations where people ask after her, expecting more good news, and I have to tell all of them how much of a catatrophe I am facing.

Giving out news about health is such a fraught, messy process.  I don't like it.

I know that doing it via blog posts isn't ideal, and has its issues.  This is more than a news source though, it is therapy for me, so I write here as much for myself as for informing the world.

I just want to tell all the doctors to stand aside, I am going to fix this shit myself.  No more waiting for their slow, ponderous processes to make decisions.  I also know they won't put up with that, because they have to protect kids from parents who don't know what they are doing.  I get that in general putting an administrative wall between parents and treatment options is a useful thing.  But I can see so clearly what needs to happen, and I can't make it happen.

All I can do is sit here, wait, and feel helpless before a thing I can't argue with, or fight, or fix.

Poly Queer Love Ballad

This past weekend I went to a show called Poly Queer Love Ballad.  It is a two person play about a monogamous lesbian musician, a bisexual, polyamorous female poet, and their attempt at a relationship.

The basic idea is these two characters have a powerful, immediate attraction and try to start a relationship.  The central conflict is the the struggle with exclusivity - the polyamorous woman will not be exclusive, so the monogamous woman tries to cope with an open relationship.

I liked the show a lot.  The actors absolutely sold it, and the writing was obviously done by someone familiar with the poetry, music, polyamorous, and lesbian subcultures.  All the bits fit.

I struggled some with the way the relationship went though.  The characters made lots of foolish, disastrous decisions that made poly relationships look pretty messy, if you are a person who isn't particularly familiar with them.

That shouldn't be taken as a criticism though.  In shows people make stupid decisions of all kinds.  That is fundamental to storytelling - people creating problems through poor choices, and then trying to cope with those problems.  It is tough to watch though when you consider yourself an advocate for the thing that is being screwed up so badly.  I try to educate people about the options available in nonmonogamy and watching people do all the normal things that people do wrong makes me shudder.

Fundamentally the characters had an incompatibility that they couldn't resolve - they wanted different relationship styles.  They tried a bunch of strategies and rules that were doomed to failure, and eventually failure arrived, as it was always going to do.

The story felt real.  The results were predictable, but not in a bad way.  It wasn't about 'will this relationship last forever?' but rather 'how exactly will this relationship go?' and I am on board with that.  I love that poly relationships are out there in media and this one was a fair representation.

I want more than fair!

But if you are making art you have to make the art, not just do some pure advocacy thing.  Just its existence needs to be advocacy enough.

But damn I sure went "Aaargh.  No, don't do it!  Not like this!" in my head a LOT during that show.