Category: Parenting

What’s a Side Quest, you ask? Well, it’s anything above and beyond your day-to-day necessities. Or maybe week-to-week necessities. Let’s be honest, they’re your Side Quests, so you have control over what goes on the list.

I’ll be honest, it wasn’t my idea. I saw an ad on Facebook for several days about Side Quest cards – a way to randomize chores you might not otherwise get to. Of course, when I went to look for them again all I found were litter box ads, and had no luck finding them through Google. I did, however, find this amusing article about a woman who gamified a chore list for her spouse.

How do I differentiate my Side Quests from my chores? I’ve defined as chores anything I do routinely on a schedule – cooking, changing the litter boxes, washing dishes, even the weekly laundry load. Those are always going to get done, and typically have a deadline of some sort, such as when I’m hungry or before I run out of clean underwear. (Putting laundry away though… that might be a Side Quest.)

Last Saturday, I completed several Side Quests and realized that some Side Quests are single tasks and others are a collection of tasks. Dropping donations off at Goodwill was a single task (creating the donations pile was more like a Quest though, and not entirely my own), but repairing the kitchen bookcase entailed multiple steps: empty bookcase, repair bookcase, wash the placemats and napkins that had been gathering dust on the bookcase, and repopulating the bookcase. (No, not with the cat, please don’t bump the wood while the glue is drying.)

The Side Quest I completed today was a detour when I went grocery shopping, to pick up carrot cupcakes at Smallcakes in celebration of what would have been my Dad’s 95th birthday. I realize they won’t be quite the same as the carrot cakes we used to get him at La Cenicienta, but the commute’s a bit far for that.

People have been making exercise games for centuries, frequently referred to as “sports”. As we moved away from hunter/gatherer societies, the skills that were once essential eventually became entertainment, frequently with a competitive edge. For those of us not making a living from sports, our more sedentary lifestyles necessitates seeking out fitness opportunities, whether at a gym, a dojang, online workouts, or virtual walking challenges (which can be stacked with Pokemon Go or similar games)… we are fortunate to have so many options.

A couple months ago, a friend mentioned the Oculus Quest 2, a virtual reality headset, and I had absolutely no interest in it… until a couple weeks later, when a co-worker regaled us with tales of his weekly virtual reality boxing matches. As it happens, that weekend I was shopping at Costco and realized they sell the system, and it was something I could use my annual credit card rebate (which is tied to my Costco membership) towards.

It’s essentially a gaming console, and priced accordingly, so it wasn’t something I wanted to buy without trying it. I reached out to the friend who initially mentioned the system and invited myself over to try it. His system is set up to cast to his television, so I was able to watch what he was doing, and then work through the First Steps app that trains users on the Oculus. He didn’t have a boxing app that worked (the one that was installed wanted a subscription), but he introduced me to Beat Saber.

I can’t begin to tell you how dangerously addictive Beat Saber is. The basic solo game has you holding two lightsabers – different colors – and slicing “notes” that come towards you as the song plays. Most notes have arrows indicating which direction you need to slice them, and all of them match the color of one of your sabers; it counts as a miss if you slice with the wrong color or in the wrong direction. There are also blocks that you need to avoid by stepping to a side or ducking, so you’re constantly moving and hoping the cats don’t pick that moment to walk between your feet. And bombs… just don’t touch those at all.

In addition to the albums included with the app purchases, Beat Saber has additional songs and albums that can be purchased, including partnering with some big names like Lady Gaga and Imagine Dragons. Songs can be purchased individually or at a discount album price. I haven’t reached that point yet, as I’m still playing with the various difficulty settings and optional features like the smaller notes and 360 degree play.

I also installed the boxing game my coworker recommended, along with a perennial favorite, Fruit Ninja, and while they’re fun, Beat Saber holds my attention more while giving me a good workout.

By now, you’ve probably heard of Wordle, a daily word game reminiscent of the classic board game Mastermind, where you use logic to determine what the hidden code is. Wordle locks you into six guesses to reach a five-letter word in English. Many variants are already available online, including some other languages, an equation option, and a rather educational geography one.

You may have heard of microfiction, which is a subcategory of flash fiction – microfiction stories cap out at one hundred words. Wordle Microfiction combines those by using your Wordle guesses as story prompts, which gives you anywhere from one (if you’re really lucky) to seven (if you fail the day’s Wordle) five-letter words to use in a story.

From this example, you could write something like this using the day’s Wordle as a prompt:

That loser was sadly mistaken if he thought I’d relinquish my seat just because he’s my elder. He should have watched where he was walking instead of bumping into me just as the train approached. He wasn’t even on the train long enough to justify a seat, on at one stop and off at the next. Lazy old fart. Wait… where’s my wallet?

For an extra challenge, you restrict yourself to only using the words in the order they were entered on Wordle.

Feel free to share your Wordle microfiction in the comments!

Having defeated the undead dragon, Faris rushes back into the city to deal with the necromancer.

I rushed back to the city, evading flames and corpses. Edvarius seemed undeterred, vowing to retrieve the dragon bones and try again. Tired of his boasting, I attacked him immediately. He responded by animating several of the dead villagers around him, forcing me to slay them again. (Not that I slayed them the first time, mind you… that was the dragon.)

More zombies rose as Edvarius cackled. I fled, just slowly enough to encourage the undead horde to follow me, leading them away from the villagers. I led them out of the city, dashing back in just before the guards locked the gate. Panting, I chugged a couple health potions before returning to deal with Edvarius.

Alas, he had more tricks up his sleeve, conjuring corrupted spirits to attack me. They slowed me down a for a couple minutes. I hurriedly quaffed my last elixir, boosting my physical prowess, just as Edvarius attacked me directly with his magic, leering at me with glowing eyes. Every part of me hurt, but I eventually fought him off, evicting him from my mind.

I rushed to attack, transforming into a wolf and stunning him with my ferocious teeth and claws. He almost recovered from my last attack, but Richard swooped down for a killing blow with his talons. Transforming back, I retrieved the Dragon Staff from Edvarius, along with some gold and a couple potions.

Lord Fellmont and Rufus were released. Young Victor was arrested and then lectured by his father about the damage done to the city and its people. Treason is punishable by death in West Haven, but Lord Fellmont had his son locked in the dungeons until his fate could be officially decided.

I was summoned to Lord Fellmont’s audience room, where he thanked me for my efforts and knighted me, and gifted me a majestic horse for my travels.

Thus ends the core adventure, and Faris leaves the town of West Haven for a mini-adventure over the last couple weeks of the calendar.

The sun has barely risen on this first Saturday in fall when I step outside for the first time today. Not to start the harvest, but to dump my coffee grounds from the French press into a garden spot. Today’s should be a large harvest, including pumpkins, possibly all four if they’re all solidly orange. And if all the pumpkins are picked, it turns into a bigger gardening effort to remove the remaining vines, opening access to the raspberries lurking behind them.

I grab the Mickey Mouse bandana to keep dirt out of my hair, a fanny pack for my phone to make up for shallow pockets, and after a brief hesitation, with a step out the front door, my Tigger gardening sweater. Gardening shoes, gloves, and the clippers are acquired in the garage, then I pull a couple small beheaded sunflower stalks on my way to harvesting the pumpkins. As I cut the stalk for the second one, I realize one vine has a baby pumpkin, with flower still attached. The odds are against it ripening, but I leave that one streak of vine while removing the rest, not realizing it was the wrong vine until later.

The spaghetti squash vines are mostly withered already, but the cucumber and acorn squash vines still have some green and young fruit. The acorn squash, like the pumpkin, surprises me with new fruit. I clear the spaghetti squash vines, along with some weeds (mostly mulberries) that were hiding beneath them.

I carry handfuls of fruit to the bench by the garage, peering in the side door at the cats who glaringly say I should be feeding them again. They don’t seem reassured when I tell them I’ll be in after the harvesting that uses clippers. In my mind, that’s just the sweet peppers. In fact, I have one glove off before I remember there’s a muskmelon as well, and the cats are already fed when I realize, while changing the kitty litter, that I need clippers for the okra. Okra is handled slightly differently, since I keep count of that harvest: 73 (so far) compared to last year’s 353. (I have fewer okra plants this year, so the difference is reasonable.)

Having stopped most tomato harvests in recent weeks because the container was full, I select my largest pot, and start at the smallest tomato section, which is by the acorn squash, working my way up to the overflowing keyhole bed. The container decision is a good one; today’s tomato harvest is about double my normal effort. Now I just need some heavy cream and a bottle of V8 for a delightful tomato soup, which may be served with a side of bacon-wrapped acorn squash.

Between watching Loki and What If…?, I’ve spent a bit of time considering significant choices in my life that would have altered where I am today. Unlike Marvel, I don’t know what my alternate timelines would have been, but I can certainly identify major decisions I made. I’m only considering actual decisions that I made, rather than my parents’ decisions in my youth or things outside my control.

When I started college, I intended to follow my undergraduate degree with law school. Over the years, I wavered on that, considering a graduate focus on international studies instead. Then I took more computer classes. And wrote up a resume for the first time, which included many computer skills. In my final undergraduate semester, I made the decision to take the GRE rather than the LSAT and apply for a graduate program in computers. Either would have been an interesting path.

As I finished graduate school, I interviewed with several companies on campus, and one flew me into the Chicago O’Hare airport just before Thanksgiving for an interview. If you’ve never flown into Chicago, it’s pretty amazing to see from the air how much green space there is because of the many forest preserves. Once on the ground, all I saw was the route to my hotel, from there to the interview (not far at all), and then back to the airport. But I flew home with a job offer and a reasonably good impression of the area. A couple months later, I was able to explore a little while selecting an apartment, and I’ve stayed in the Chicagoland area since then.

An important what if for me is what if I hadn’t gone to that first local gaming convention, so many years ago? Except I realized, that wasn’t the right what if. It was actually at GenCon that summer, when I kept returning to the Out of the Box Publishing booth to play Shipwrecked, even after I bought the game. One of those times, a couple playing with me handed me a flyer to a Thanksgiving weekend gaming convention. Attending that convention resulted in joining my current role-playing group, meeting my ex-husband, and most importantly, the eventual birth of my daughter. All because I enjoyed a game.

I recently celebrated our spring weather by having eight yards of mulch dumped on our driveway. It’s the same amount I had delivered in the fall, and I mulched many of the same areas again, added a thicker layer in places to help with weed suppression. Fresh mulch also looks really good, as shown below where the old and new mulch display together. I mulched around the herb garden, though I already have weeds poking through there – that’s because my main weed up front is the mint that refuses to stay contained. (This is standard for mint, the roots spread out.) In the back, in addition to the large mulched area with raised beds, I mulched all around the mulberry bush (shown) and the peonies, as well as between the magnolia trees along the back property line and the hibiscus plants (not shown).

Distributing eight yards of mulch in two weeks is certainly a gardening victory, but what jumped out while I was working was that I seem to have killed off the burdock that been popping up amongst the peonies since I bought this house. Burdock is one of those plants that produced annoying sticky seed balls that attach to everything. Apparently it has various edible bits, but I don’t think that makes it worth having in my yard, given how annoying it is. The roots tend to go deep, which makes it difficult to remove.

So I was excited at this little gardening victory: the realization while mulching around the peonies that there wasn’t any burdock. Don’t ask about the burdock by the raspberries… that may be next year’s weird little victory. I hope.

In autumn, it’s easier to tell when to stop gardening: the first hard frost kills off many of the summer plants, and gardeners scramble to pick the last fruits before the frost damages them. Spring timing is a bit tougher… it warms up, cools down, warms up… essentially the reverse of the fall. Gardeners eagerly check the forecast to see if seedlings can be moved outdoors and late spring planting can start.

Early spring seeds are already in the ground. Peas, radishes, potatoes, and salad greens have already emerged, the lilacs and strawberries have flowered, and volunteer tomatoes are popping up in odd places. But those the pepper seedlings are getting a bit large for their starter pods, and I really want to get the okra and squash seeds started outside. (While squash can be started inside, I generally only start plants insides that are supposed to start before our last frost date.)

The general rule around here for the squash family is to start after Mother’s Day, except Mother’s Day was early this year, and we’ve had frost on the ground almost every morning since then. Until today, that is, and the forecast for the week is looking promising.