Taking Apart Her Crib: The Instructions

The following is the true story of my daughter, Freya Rose. She passed away on January 21, 2016 and was born a day later.

Part 3: The Instructions

I find a pamphlet that was hiding under the changing station I had built for her. In it are the directions on how to take the two boxes of scrambled parts we were given by my mother-in-law and turn them into a crib. Everything is simple: pictures, not words. As I flip through it for the second time in the span of a few months, I remember how complicated it seemed to put together despite the man in the instructions showing me plainly what to do. 

Taking Apart Her Crib: The Mattress

The following is the true story of my daughter, Freya Rose. She passed away on January 21, 2016 and was born a day later.

Part 2: The Mattress

I wrap the mattress tighter than I do the wooden slats. I know that if I could just put enough pressure on the mattress, if I can squeeze it tight enough, it might just take up less room in our crawlspace. Maybe then I’ll have room for something other than this crib.

Taking Apart Her Crib: The Screws

The following is the true story of my daughter, Freya Rose. She passed away on January 21, 2016 and was born a day later.

Part 1: The Screws

The screws are hard to take out. I’ve assembled and disassembled a lot of furniture in my time but I’ve never encountered any screws that were this hard to take out. Were they this hard to get in when I put it together? I can’t remember now. 

Taking Apart Her Crib: An Introduction

I haven’t written anything for a while. In fact, it’s been over a year. It’s always been normal for me to take long breaks from this platform, whether that’s a few weeks or even a few months. This is the first time I’ve had a good reason.

Over the next little while, I’m going to be sharing the story of my daughter’s birth as well as her death. It isn’t an easy story to tell but I feel that, on some deeper level, its telling will be therapeutic for me. I’ve told my story to many people in my circle of family and friends but some of you, including you internet strangers, haven’t heard it before. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to accomplish in writing this all out: dealing with the death of a child is a strange and uncomfortable experience because no one talks about it. The death of a child is so unnerving to some that they would rather ignore it altogether than acknowledge the deep impact it has on a family. I hope that by sharing my story I can change that, even just a little.

This is the story of how I had to take my daughter’s crib apart before I ever got the chance to lay her down to sleep.

Rocket League Review

RELEASED
July 7 2015

PLATFORMS
PS4
PC
MAC (TBA)

DEVELOPER
Psyonix

PUBLISHER
Psyonix

Rocket League hits home with punchy action, streamlined mechanics, and more polish than you’d expect from a game so humble

Nothing really prepared me for how much I would enjoy Rocket League. I remember watching the trailer for the game when it was announced as a free game for PS Plus subscribers back in July and thinking “that might be fun.” More than fifty hours in and I can now say that I definitely stand by that initial statement.

Rocket League does almost everything right when it comes to competitive online games: it has a system of suspiciously simple mechanics that can be pushed to the extreme to pull off stunts a beginner would have previously thought impossible. On top of that, the game is extremely polished and, despite providing a consistently even playing field, gives you character progression on top of that.

Pixel Dungeon: what makes a mobile game amazing?

In January, I bought an Android phone. This is only my second smartphone, an iPhone 4 being my first. I had that iPhone for almost three years and loved it, especially the way the App Store organized and presented games. However, I didn’t realize how much I appreciated the Apple App Store until I got an Android.

The Google Play Store, while more expansive, is way too inclusive. Even though I could find my old standbys like Threes and Crossy Road, I was having a really hard time finding any new, high-quality games on the bestseller lists. All of this is just a prelude to me grabbing my new favorite mobile game, Pixel Dungeon, after finding it at the top of many bloggers’ “best of” lists. But what was it about this particular game that made it so addictive?

Gaming with my girlfriend: how to get someone to enjoy playing video games

When I moved in with my girlfriend, I warned her that I was hooking my PS3 up to our TV. She said “that’s fine as long as you don’t mind me hogging it!” I soon realized that she was joking and that the last console she’d played on was the Sega GameGear. Still, that statement stuck with me.

Last winter, I started gushing about how great this game Don’t Starve was.  Because I often played on my Vita.while we were watching TV, she had plenty of opportunities to glance over to see what was so great about these little 2D sprites waddling through forests and cobblestone paths. I eventually convinced her to chop down a few trees herself, guiding her through the process by looking over her shoulder. Within minutes, she was hooked.

Far Cry 4: “emergent gameplay” and why it’s not just a buzzword

Far Cry 4 does a lot of things well. It does driving well, it does badass knife kills well, it even does a pretty good job setting up combat scenarios. Probably the best part of the entire game, though, is the inclusion of tons of different animals and, subsequently, the inclusion of animal bait. It was the specific uses I found for these living elements that made me look more into the term “emergent gameplay.”

A while ago I heard some podcasters complaining about the use of the term when it came from PR reps who worked for big publishers. The podcasters were arguing over whether or not the term was being overused to the point where it was starting to sully the reputation of games even before the game was released. Of course, instead of looking into the term myself, I took this to be true and taught myself to hate the word “emergent”. I have now come to realize that there’s more to the concept than I previously thought.

Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor: why I sometimes actually do side-quests

Shadow of Mordor was definitely not a game I was planning on buying. I had played Assassin’s Creed and I had played the Arkham games; there was no reason for me to play a game that conflated the two. But, as time went on and reviews rolled in, my interest started to grow, especially since no one seemed to be able to really pinpoint anything unique about the game despite loving it so much.

The Nemesis system was lauded at first as being something interesting that draws you in but people were really fawning over the minute-to-minute gameplay loop. I didn’t get it. So it’s parkour from AC and fighting from Arkham Asylum? It’s been done! Turns out there was more to it than that.

Service announcement: join my book club (or any book club for that matter)

I recently set a challenge for myself: start reading again. Don’t get me wrong, I read things all the time. I read street signs, news articles, forum threads, work reports, even receipts. But not novels for some reason. I used to read fiction all the time as a youngster. I consumed so many books I was often told to go play outside “for once.”

But as I went through university and was forced to read “their” books and as the internet became more of a thing for me, my reading habits died down. A lot. As someone who writes a lot, this is a bad thing. If you want to be a professional basketball player, you don’t just practice your layups all day; you have to watch pro games and analyze what you’re seeing. So, with that analogy in mind, I started a bookclub.