Murder Mystery

I think the reason why my blog posts have slowed to a trickle over the past few years is that as I get older, I become less and less sure of my opinions.  Time and experience has revealed the multifaceted nature of most things I earlier had assumed to be one-dimensional.  Age has made me kinder and less able to judge.

Also, the children have stolen my computer.  

Actually, it's mostly the children's fault.

Over the years there's been a number of computer-y obsessions.  Minecraft, internetertainers (Good Mythical Morning!) This week's favorite is Roblox's Murder Mysteries.

How does one blog when one must shift a hundred pound child away from a tense round of Murder Mysteries?  That child is already wound up to the edge, murdering and being murdered, he's not likely to move away without a fight.

Roblox Murder Mysteries, for those who do not know, is an online mini-game that players can join where one player is the murder and the rest have to either figure it out and catch (kill) the murderer as a Sheriff with a gun or just try to avoid being murderer fodder as an Innocent.

As a parent, there are several things to freak out about with this game, but the one that usually gets me is IT'S THE GUY IN YELLOW! HE'S GOT THE KNIFE! HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!  RUN! RUN!! RUN!!!

I have not the constitution for first person perspective murder games. And, frankly, I think that is a positive aspect of my character.

The children have quickly figured out that playing Murder Mystery is fun, but watching mom freak out because HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU is even better.  I try not to watch but our home is small and the laundry must be folded on the couch beside the computer and, damn it, my kids seem to have the survival instinct of lemmings.  I try not to get into it, but then I'm looking over their shoulders, and they stumble across a body and I can hear the shink shink sound of a busy knife and RUN RUN RUN!  They are always being murdered.

I'm starting to suspect that they are getting themselves killed on purpose, just to break their poor mother's heart. 

Of course, when they the are assigned the role of murderer, there is a whole new level of intensity.  My babies are the best murderers. Ever.  Or they would be, if they could listen to my advice.  Like, 'don't walk around with your knife out, honey, they'll know it's you and the Sheriff will shoot you,' or 'follow that guy into that empty room, he doesn't suspect us,' or 'look in the stalls, they always think they can hide from you there,' or 'LOOK OUT LOOK OUT, IT'S THE SHERIFF, HE'S GOING TO SHOOT Y- oh, nevermind.'

Anyway, the point is, it's really hard to find some time to sit down and write a post when the computer is constantly occupied by murdering fiends intent on giving their mother a heart attack.

Suggestions of playing Murder Mysteries outside, in, like, real life away from the computer, have been rejected. I even offered to craft up a miniature knife and gun (from soap?) that could be concealed easily in a hand, and each person could be given a sealed envelope with their role.  Then they could play out the mystery in the backyard with their friends.  Gosh, each person could even be given a character with a personality and background, and they could dress up and play out their character!  Sounds like fun, hey kids and not at all like something drama geeks from the '80s would do?

"Wow, mom, that's kind of sick.  You want us to murder our friends?"

Sigh, no.  But I do want to use the computer ever once in awhile, so maybe a bit of murdering is okay?  I mean, they already play Hunger Games, which if you think about it, is pretty deranged and it wasn't even my idea.  It's infuriating that they think it's okay for them to kill each other over limited resources in some contrived scenario and dispel blame with, 'the man made me do it,' but it's not okay to kill each other just for good old fashioned the sheer titillation of figuring out who the real psycho is.  Pssht.  Kids today.

Thus, the sporadic blogging.  For which I apologize, though it is entirely the children's fault. 

peg games

Last week, or maybe the week before, I was fabulously, hideously ill with the flu and then lingering strep throat.  Some evening during that hazy time that I am unable to pin point, The Man and childs made these little peg games using scrap wood and pencil crayons.  (Or perhaps, if you are not from western Canada, you will call them coloured pencils.  Or colored pencils if you are not from Canada at all.)

The games rest, incidentally, upon a scrap wood picnic table that The Man also built and stained during the last few weeks.  I'm not entirely certain what about my being sick drives The Man to woodwork, but I suspect it has something to do with having to do so in the garage and thus neatly avoiding the house where the ill woman lays about whining.  Even though The Man has only a hand saw with which to slowly and labouriously cut wood with.

The square game is tic tac toe and the triangle is that one where you jump a peg and take the jumped peg away, eventually ending up when you can't jump any more pegs.  The lower the number of pegs left, the more a winner you are.  Whatever that game is called.

I personally find the games about as fun as a dental appointment, but boy child in particular has a love of tic tac toe and I have played an obscene amount of rounds with him as of late.  He's getting trickier.  I may have to concede that the student may be surpassing the master.  Maybe, hopefully, I can gracefully retire from the tic tac toe circuit soon.

Faces

One of my favorite games my children and I play is Find the Faces.  It's always a delight to find a personality in the most unexpected of places.  We are all hardwired to see eyes, noses and mouths on even the most inanimate of objects and fascinated by the expressions we find.  Who hasn't seen the Man on the Moon or found an old woman on the linoleum floor? 

This time of year is perfect for this game, with our collective attention on the spooky and weird.  Faces in the trees or on the bedstead can take on a sinister look or be freakishly clowny.  Smootch and Birdie both have tendencies to create fantastical personalities to go along with the face, who often have stories to tell, sometimes happy and sometimes terribly, ghastly unfortunate. 

The only downside is that it's very difficult to shut off your 'face finding' radar and once you get going, it's hard to not feel like the world is a very crowded place indeed.