Musical Interlude:
"It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got."
Dear Diary,
Today was Parents' day at camp. The day, allegedly in the middle of the week, where kids can see their parents they've been missing all week. The camp holds a dress-up dance where Parents can come for an hour or two, and spend time with their precious child. It's a great photo opportunity, and I'm sure that it's a beautiful occassion.
Unless you're one of the kids who doesn't have anyone coming to see them.
In that case, camp is dead for hours on Parents' day. The lag is intense, and sim crossings are nearly always fatal. The whole schedule of events goes into the toilet as the staff tries to appease those kids whose family members showed up late, crashed, etc etc.
The result if you're one of the kids without parents, is that any hopes you had for doing any event that sounded like fun, turns into a big gamble. When will it start? Will it be late, cut short, cancelled,rescheduled, or moved? Add to this the hours during the day where there's simply nothing scheduled aside from the Parent's events.
Today was beach day for the rest of us.
We have a lot of names for kids without parents in SL.. Orphans, Single Kids, Lost Boys (or Girls), etc. The problem really is that so many of those terms are emotionally loaded. I don't like the terms available, because what I am isn't so much "without a parent" or "without a family".. as it is just "there's a close friendship there, but it's just not working as a family anymore." I don't want to let go of it, and I'm not ready to try and replace it either.
I've spent a lot of time on this blog, talking about my family issues. So there's no need to delve too deep into the subject again here. Suffice it to say that last camp, I had a Mommy, and she came to Parents' night. My family didn't survive much beyond the last camp, and shows no real sign of recovering. Momma didn't come to the Parent's dance this time.
I woke up late, with a horrific headache, dizziness, difficulty reading, and so much pain. I got nowhere enough sleep, and had convoluted stress dreams involving Hugh Laurie. Thankfully I woke up and logged in in-time for Yoga.
Yoga ended too soon, and I quickly realized it was time for the mid-day Parent's Dance. I decided to make some breakfast in real life.. not just a quick bowl of cereal, but actual scrambled eggs and toast. It was a good decision.
When I got back, I made my way to the beach where Mari was setting up some more photos.
We had some fun, including discovering something in the water.
Others started showing up too.
At some point, the events started up again, and I decided I wanted to attend the Bingo game. I played a couple of rounds, and allegedly won when they went into the "we'll play til everyone gets a Bingo" mode.
The second Parents dance started at 6:00 PM.. which meant that nearly half the day was gone again. 2 more hours of deadsville, but some good news came.
A couple of kids had to quit camp for whatever their reasons might have been, and that meant that a few last minute slots opened up. One of the kids to get in was Mari's friend (who is a boy), Johnny. Johnny came in around the time of the dance, so Mari took off to go see him and help him get settled.
After a while of feeling sorry for myself, fishing alone, I decided to go find them, and bum around.
Unfortunately, when I found them, I found them setting up another photo shoot.
Not wanting to interrupt them, I decided to back up out of their shot. Problem was, I didn't know if I was in their shot or not! I also didn't want to make Mari feel rushed by my just standing there, waiting. I spied the "Warbugs" rezzer on the grass over to the side, and decided to rez up one of the mini planes. I figured, I'll take one of those, go for a little flight, and entertain myself. That way Mari won't feel rushed, and she can IM me when she's done.
I right clicked the plane and clicked "sit".
Did I mention the lag? What happened next was a tragic sequence of unplanned slapstick comedy, the likes of which, only people in infomercials who can't make a sandwich without setting their hair on fire, can contemplate.
Instead of getting out of Mari's shot, it turns out, I'd rezzed the airplane in the one place that was IN her shot. Not only that, but when I sat on the plane, SL lagged out on me. My avatar and camera view went to the underwater "<0,0,0>" coordinates, and the plane.. well..
The plane lunged to one side, so I'm told, and promptly exploded, registering a collision with the walking path as some kind of weapons fire hitting the plane. My computer locked up as the plane sat billowing a column of black smoke in the middle of Mari's shot.
I won the "You Tried" award today.
See that windsock over Mari's shoulder? That's the rezzer.
After the laughing stopped, and the Parent's dance ended, I made my way up to the Mess Hall, got a happy meal sort of thing, and then headed to the cabin for "Bedtime".. Once again, the counselors focused on the TD kids, and the "Big Kid" didn't get much of a nod yea or nay when she sat playing the Ukulele instead of going to bed.
That's a whole other issue, for a whole other blog post.
When the "bedtime" phase ended.. I had to skip out on the only really interesting event, "Harry Potter Trivia".. sounded like fun, but I still haven't seen all the movies, and I've never read the books. I didn't want the movies ruined for me any more than they already have been by jerks on the internet.
I made my way to an Archery event, which I'd promised the Counselor I'd try to attend. I ended up pretty much owning the system, because I understand the limitations of SL physics as it relates to weapons that fire from the HUD position. in other words, it wasn't hard because once I found the bullseye, I stopped moving the mouse.
Oh well. Not everything in videogames can simulate real life. It was still fun, and nice to have a target system that actually tabulated the scores based on collisions by arrows, rather than by the honor system.
I got my fix of difficulty and entertainment though, as I pulled out my plasma launcher and fired a few rounds at the targets to see what would happen. What happened is that one of the other kids pulled out a crazy blaster of their own, and we started shooting up the place, and each other, until one of her blasts sent me through the wall of the skybox and plummeting several thousand meters out of the sky.
After that, The depression from the Parent's night events returned, and I ended up needing to get offline for a while. Played some minecraft and (mostly) talked with a friend on Skype. When he went to bed, I returned to SL.
Momma had sent me a couple of 'care package' items from some store. They were neat.. various items of junk food, and some Harry Potter themed stuff. Kinda cute, I like the Hermione pillow.
I was able to talk with Mari a bit more, about the day's events, about just life in general. And then when she logged, Momma came online, and we talked for some time about how I was feeling, where things have been, where they went wrong, and where they are going, or seem to be going, versus where we wanted them to go. It's a complicated situation, and it's not something easily solved with one night's talk. Honestly it may not be solvable, regardless of how willing we both are.
But now that headache is back.. and I need to get some sleep. It's already almost 4am. I'm going to hurt so much tomorrow.
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