Re: Re: camping  was: bbsing
  By: Nancy Backus to Damon A. Getsman on Tue May 19 2015 19:25:12

 NB> That's still pretty young... although, by that age, I was oldest of 5
 NB> kids, and learning that other things often had priority over what I
 NB> might have liked...  ;)

  Yeah I had a pretty atypical situation growing up around those ages, so I
don't really know what I can compare to and not.  I've been explaining to him
how finances are working, though (as well as the fact that they're currently
getting better-- albeit slowly from being in the hole over 6 months).  He gets
it, it's just the shinies at that age are so enrapturing...  ;)  He's gonna get
something nice really quick here, though; his 9th birthday is tomorrow.  ;)

 NB> Makes sense... and if he's not set up to expect something, he won't miss
 NB> it if it doesn't happen after all... probably wouldn't hurt for him to
 NB> know, more in the abstract, that you are trying to figure out ways to do
 NB> some special things, though...

  Yeah.  It was a great piece of wisdom that a fellow parent helped me with. 
He's had some great insights in some areas.  Hope I've been able to return the
favor a little bit in some other areas.  Either way I try not to bring him up
just to squash him down if I can help it.  Other times he has to learn to
disappointment, yes, but I think that he gets enough of those situations in
everyday life so that I don't need to be adding to them.

 NB> That does sound like things are stabilizing a bit more...  :)

  They're doing unbelievably well at the moment.  I'm still only getting about
50% of the work that I'd like to have carved off given to me in slabs I can
take right now, but it's getting better.  Much like you alluded to later on in
this message, I'm also that much more able to handle bigger projects on this
suite as I become more familiar with it.  Hell, we paid rent EARLY this month,
though.  That's sign enough of improvement for me.  We're well on track to
being able to do it even earlier next month now, too.  Things are definitely
stabilizing, and we're settling into a pattern of productivity that I'm hoping
cements pretty soon here.

 NB> Yeah, as you get more familiar with the whole project, you'll be able to
 NB> handle bigger chunks at a time...

  It's happening.  ;)  Slowly, but I'm getting there.  That's what I get for
having no choice but to take almost a decade off from this IT junk.  ;)

 NB> And some kids just travel better than others...  I remember taking my
 NB> son on long trips, just him and me, when he was only about 6... I
 NB> remember joking about how I must be out of my mind, to even consider
 NB> that sort of trip, but he was just fine... Until he actually started
 NB> driving his own vehicles, he'd be asleep within 10 minutes, and probably
 NB> sleep the entire trip, more or less...  ;)

  Yeah.  I'm lucky to have my jewel shining in the back of the vehicle while
the others are being discoballs illuminated by those laser pointers that cause
real retinal damage.  ;)  Well, you get the point, though the better allusion
probably would've been to something auditory.  Heh.
  It's amazing how well my son has always been with those situations.  I
suppose being on the road for so long when he was still 2-2.5 years old really
helped prep him for it a bit, though.  Not to mention the wilderness camping in
the mean time (though there's no way in hell I'd go back and repeat that stuff
if I had any choice in the matter).  He's always just been great about it; only
recently has he started getting more imperative about things when he's road
tripping, and that's out of sheer electronics addiction and subsequent
withdrawal when we're on a trip where I haven't let him bring his tablet or
it's long enough so that battery runs out on him at some point.
  I've seen bits of how some kids are affected by being spoiled on matters like
these, though.  That...  well that just sucks when it happens.  Inconsistent
parenting really makes life rough for everybody around those kids when they
don't get what they want.

 DAG>> I was able to for the first 6 years with my little man, either. 
 DAG>> I've been lucky in a whole lot of areas. 
 NB> Good thing to think about and remember...  :)  Another way of keeping
 NB> perspective...  :)

  That's one of the few things that I usually am able to keep in perspective
really well.  Just having a situation with him and I, and not having to work
(being able to be a fulltime parent) that whole time has given him and I a
relationship that I think I've only seen the same shade of in others a very
small handful of times.  I count that blessing often.

 NB> How old was the kid that was having the meltdown(s)...?  Some kids just
 NB> don't travel well, either... ;(

  He was 5.  He had an older brother with, at early 7, who was doing pretty
well with it.  It was actually kind of funny, because most of the time they're
in the exact opposite roles.  This time around, though...  Whoa.

 NB> I'm glad that it was generally a good trip... with real benefits... :)

  Oh it definitely had one.  Now we're coming up on the last planned trip of
the season (at least for this initial stretch) where we're going to go down to
Cali and hang out in the giant redwood and sequoia forests.  At this stage I'm
honestly pretty close to wanting to just sit here and cement in the routine
along with the income pulling that needs to get done, but my friend has wanted
to take me to this area (what he calls A+ wilderness, as opposed to the B+
wilderness [which still blows my frigging mind] around here).  I've got to say,
I know it's going to blow my mind being around plant life like that, but I'm
pretty leary after that one trip...  Not to mention the fact that the one after
that I caught some bronchitis on.
  Good point on the bronchitis, though: my immune system has gotten a whole lot
better over the last few months, apparently.  I was able to kick it off myself,
and within a really short period of time, fever and all.  I was never able to
do that without a doctor before, so it was a huge, and quite welcome, surprise.
If I get sick or something horrible happens on this next trip, though (though
my son will be the only kid on the trip), I swear I'm not camping again for at
least a year, despite how much I normally like it.  The last couple of trips
have perhaps overloaded me a little bit on that little facet that I normally so
enjoy.

 DAG>> Even when it comes to the Earth 'can-do'ing an earthquake to try to
 DAG>> chuck me off into space.  ;)
 NB> One does need to draw the line somewhere... ;)

  Well in such case I tend to rely on where the Earth has drawn its lines... 
Far too many of which are drawn very close (and just offshore from) this
geographical location.  ;)  (j/k, I'm getting better about it--slowly)

 NB> Yup... sounds quite reasonable...  Keeping the illogical (mostly)
 NB> phobias at bay is a good thing, and I can see where the meditation, or
 NB> at least some diverting concentrations could help with that... and
 NB> minimizing the coffee jitters couldn't hurt, either...  ;)

  I've found a massive increase in my ability to deal with free floating
anxieties like that, especially since I've gotten up to the range of being able
to meditate for 12-14 minutes at a setting.  It's ever creeping up, too.  The
last time there wasn't that bad (not the tantrum trip, the other one since
then).  I had a few short anxiety spells, but by and large I was able to just
divert my attention elsewhere thanks to the jedi training and it was all good. 
;)  The fever was a little harder to get over, though.  Well, that, and the
fact that I wake up at the buttcrack of dawn whilst everybody else there likes
to sleep in until at least 9-11.  Ruined a pack of playing cards out there last
time after I got the fire stoked back up from the coals because there was too
much condensation on every surface to be able to play it somewhere dry!

 NB> Partly, and mostly by choice.  I don't get along well with mice and
 NB> other tracking devices, and I am quite content with command line... This
 NB> computer has some extra commands, some from *nix, and some from small
 NB> utilities my resident wizard has written... And I have some good
 NB> software for the things I do... :)

  Gotcha.  Sounds like you've probably got a good setup.  :)  I used to have a
heavily customized DOS/4-DOS environment that I used and it was perfectly
sufficient.  Much better for avoiding the distraction of being able to have 2
dozen web browsing tabs all screaming for attention when there's correspondence
that needs to be returned.  *grin*

 NB> At the very least, I suppose you'll just have to be sufficiently
 NB> efficient to finish composing the message in the one sitting...
 NB> apparently the bbs is seeing too long of a period of inactivity...
 NB> that's probably the setting, wherever it might be hiding... 

  Heh.  I'm working at it.  ;)  I still have yet to track down that damn
setting.  Something that the shell I'm working on changes goes through and
makes it so all of the accounts that normally aren't allowed to idle out start
idling out all over the place.  Yet another bug to have fun with...
  I'm gonna see if I can't catch up on Fido today.  No promises, though.  I've
got coding and some other stuff that it needs to be interspersed with and I'm
pretty sure I've got half a dozen, easily, of unread correspondence sitting in
the different echoes for me right now.  :)
  More later; best wishes!

  -D
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