Archive for Family
I’m still here
Posted by: | CommentsApologies for the lack of updates here lately — I’ve been dealing with some urgent family issues over the last few months that have kept me offline most of the time. But I’m hoping to begin updating this blog again more frequently now, since I still have no shortage of opinions!
As for our Small Screen Stakeout podcast, that may be a permanent casualty of the family issues — between dealing with those and our day jobs (more on that soon!), Lori and I don’t seem to have much energy left over by the end of the week. But we’ll see how it goes.
Playing games with boys
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I was a teenager, I spent every spare minute when I wasn’t at school or playing sports reading books, by everyone from M.E. Kerr to Jane Austen to Chaim Potok.
Fast-forward 20 years, and my teenage niece spends all her free time playing video games on her Xbox with her four best friends, who are all boys (she likes having guy friends better because “they’re less judgmental”).
She and her guy friends even ditched their high school’s homecoming dance a few weeks ago in favor of a Halo marathon at her house. And when Halo OTSD was released last month, her aunts bought her a copy after a week of her dropping not-so-subtle hints about how all her friends had the game and she didn’t. (We hate to see her suffer.)
But in other ways, she’s a typical young teenage girl: a straight-A student, a fashion maven who gives me make-up tips, and a huge Twilight fan who has the New Moon countdown app on her iTouch and who thinks Robert Pattinson is the ultimate chocolatey goodness.
All of this has me wondering: how will playing video games shape who she becomes as she grows up?
Will the assertiveness she’s learned and rewarded for in the games carry over into her real life, in any kind of permanent way? Will gaming help her relate better to male classmates and coworkers as an adult? Will she turn out any differently than if she’d spent her free time reading, or playing sports?
Alternative Halloween family fun
Posted by: | CommentsLori and I have been conscripted by my sister into playing vampires on her Haunted Farm for the next two nights, and I snapped a pic of us at the run-through tonight.
Lori and I are the heads of a vampire family — with our three nieces as our children — and it’s our job to scare kids as they walk by. (So basically, what lesbian moms and their kids do to the Religious Right the rest of the year.)
Spending quality time with the nieces
I offered to frighten the guests by reciting the plots of bad lesbian movies at them as they passed, but was told that would “bore” them, not “scare” them. Clearly my sister’s never seen Bar Girls.
Happy Halloween everyone!
