We went in for the 20 week scan extremely excited to not only see Little Doodle on screen again, but to also finally find out the gender of our baby.  Despite many attempts by the ultrasound tech, we couldn’t see what Little Doodle was packing:  the baby’s legs were firmly crossed.  Not only that, but through the entire ultrasound Little Doodle had it’s hands up in front of it’s face, covering it!  Thankfully, the scan did confirm the baby was healthy and progressing nicely, even if we have a very stubborn baby!  We have one more scan at 34 weeks to try again for the gender.  I could be wrong, but I get the feeling it’s a boy!

Little Doodle is getting stronger every day.  What used to be a question of “Was that a kick?  Was it gas? Am I imagining things?” is now a very definitive KICK.  And Little Doodle loves to kick.  Sometimes it’s marathon kicking (usually of my bowel or bladder… which is hella comfortable) for several hours before taking a break.   But for as often as he IS kicking, it stops suddenly whenever Mark puts a hand on my tummy to try and feel.  EVERY time!  Then, shortly after Mark removes his hand, Little Doodle begins again.  Difficult baby!

I’m feeling less tired and less hungry all the time than I did in the first trimester, which is good.  I’m no longer falling behind on my schoolwork due to the tiredness.  I’ve been busily burning through my holiday time at work before I go on maternity leave and I’ve got enough left to have a day off nearly every week until mid June!  Which I plan on utilizing in that manner.  I can’t go anywhere as the Home Office still has my passport and visa application (a rant for another entry) and it doesn’t roll over to the next year so… why not??

The maternity benefits in the UK are really awesome.  For starters, everything is free.  Doctor and midwife visits, hospital tests and scans, the birth of the baby, and the home visits conducted for weeks after the birth… all cost nothing.  On top of that prescriptions and dental visits are also free to pregnant women during the pregnancy and, I believe, up to a year after the birth.

My maternity leave from work will be 39 weeks.  Weeks 1-14 will be at 100% of my normal pay, and weeks 15-39 will be at SMP (statutory maternity pay), which is about 50% of my normal pay.  There is no pay after the 39th week, but women in the UK can have as much as a year off and still be legally entitled to return to their job.  I will then probably tack about two weeks of my holiday onto the end of my leave, giving me 41weeks with Little Doodle.

Socialized healthcare = awesome.

What this also means is I will be on maternity leave over the Christmas holiday, allowing me to spend longer than average in the US with family.  I’ve already got my plane tickets booked, Little Doodle included, and I am staying for three weeks!

Sometime in the coming week I will get the ultrasound scanned and post it to my blog.

I don’t consider myself to be a person who asks for a lot.  But when I ask a person for something relating their job, you know… data they SHOULD know because they are getting paid for this, I expect an empirical answer.  For instance, if I ask a colleague at work “What is the timeframe for that?” I do not expect to get in response, “How long is a piece of string?”  I expect a number or approximation or YOUR BEST GUESS FOR CHRISTSSAKE BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE PAID TO DO.  “Normally it’s 10-15 working days, but you know we are backlogged, and Vicky is statistically likely to call in sick in just another two days time due to her ‘time  of the month’ approaching.” Even that is a slightly better response.

“And when do you expect to have your bill paid?”  “How long is a piece of string?”   It makes me cringe.  I’m sorry Sensei, your answering my question with a question of no intrinsic value must be one of those metaphorical journeys of the mind I’m supposed to undertake in order to grow as a person, much like discovering just what IS the sound of one hand clapping?  Or, more importantly, how hard can I punch you in the mouth? (Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth).

All I know is, I know EXACTLY how long MY pieces of string are, so stop being lazy and measure yours.

So imagine thus:  I’ve just gotten off of work, having just spent the entire day talking to crazy people (I say that figuratively but, based on some  of the conversations, I’d have to go with literally as well).  All I want to do is use the twenty minute bus ride home to zone out and listen to my music.  This is all well and good  until, out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman boarding the bus.  I can hear her asking the driver questions over the volume of my music.  She is carrying a large bag/small suitcase with her, which she promptly leaves right in the middle of the aisle, causing the driver to abandon his post long enough to move it out of the way.  At this point I am tense, suddenly I can no longer enjoy the sweet rhythm of Bohemian Rhapsody because I’ve got to keep an eye on THIS fucko.  No one wants to be the person whom the crazy person selects to sit next to on the bus.  My eyes quickly dart to other available seats as I think about moving next to someone and discarding the empty pair of seats where I was currently sat.  Luckily, she picked another hapless victim to sit next to, a victim who now has to endure a bus ride full of the ASBO’s crazy talk and urine-scented presence.

And it happens all too often.  I’m sure it’s related to living in a city ie. more population more percentage of wackjobs.  However, I also cannot ignore the fact that, in the 22 years I was in the US, I encountered two crazy people.  Two.  Both in Louisiana (Go figure /rimshot) and both harmless.  One was a man who walked the perimeter of of the Lake Charles mall day in and day out for hours, all the while talking loudly to himself (and sometimes arguing); and the other a rather large (read: 300lbs) black woman who would come into the grocery store I worked in a few times a week, lift up her shirt, and dance in the aisles.  Both of them harmless.

Here in Brighton the crazies seem to have a more dangerous edge to them.   I’ve seen fights started on the bus, people thrown off the bus, and too many times to count have I seen time and time again some poor person become the object of conversation and attention from these people, all the while considering getting off the bus and waiting for the next one.  I’ve considered the possibility the same amount of crazies exist in America as over here, however I think we tend to lock ours up.  The UK, on the other hand, takes a more liberal approach, allowing them to roam free in their natural habitat.

I’ve learned a few things about riding the bus with crazies:

-The person whom the crazy person sits next to and draws into their crazy world through conversation is unwittingly the hero of other commuters.  That person is doing what no one else on the bus wants to do:  occupying the nutter until they get off, thereby relieving everyone else on the bus of being in the awkward position of having to pretend nice with the crazy out of fear they might snap.  Of course, this person never WANTS this position, but I think everyone is under the mutual acceptance that, chances are, your turn will come around sooner or later.

-The crazy person has the inability to see headphones.  If you think conspicuously setting your earbuds in place and selecting music on your iPod is somehow going to save you from the crazy person should they sit next to you, think again. They can’t see them, the headphones are invisible.

-The person will typically smell of alcohol or piss or, if you’ve hit the jackpot, both.

-Everyone is under the assumed agreement on the bus that one must never provoke this person as it will only make the journey more uncomfortable.

The woman in my aforementioned scenario continued to get up from her seat at every stop to check something in the bag she had carried on board, presumably the dead and rotting carcass of a stray cat she talks to when not bothering good, honest folk on the bus.  When it came to my stop, I gratefully got off, never more grateful for the rides to and from work provided by my husband.

It really begs the question: should people like this who, while not causing an outright disturbance of the peace but certainly making life uncomfortable for everyone around them, be allowed on public transportation?  Should they, if they are going to be allowed in with the general population, be marked in some way like a scarlet letter?  Don’t the other commuters and society as a whole have a right to know if someone boarding the bus is an ASBO or wackjob?

I think so.

- I think I’m going to take advantage of some of the time off I have whilst on maternity leave to learn how to cook.  It’s been a long time coming, and with nine full months off work after Little Doodle is born, I really should utilize any time not devoted to the baby.   Because really, when you fear screwing up boiled rice, it’s time.

- I’m asked on a fairly regular basis in the office if I watch (insert reality show du jour here) or (cheap soap opera here) and it really surprises people when I tell them we don’t have TV/cable.  We have A tv, which is used to play games and watch movies, but we don’t get any channels.  It’s a great way to alienate yourself from idle office chatter, but I am grateful to not have it.  I mean, with such quality entertainment out there such as Jersey Shore and I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here, why DON”T we have cable, amirite?!   Lately I’ve had to google terms such as “snooki” and “fist pump” and “who the fuck are Heidi and Spencer Pratt?” (an ironically fitting surname based on what I’ve read) just to decipher Twitter tweets and other pop culture references on the internet.  In doing so, I’m glad I’ve spared myself the braincells.  The day I become obsessed with Jordan or “guidos” or who danced what on Strictly Come Douchenozzle, is the day I kill myself.

-Sometimes I think people post ten million photos of themselves and other people in various locations on  Facebook just to prove to others they leave the house.

-I need to get out of the house more. But it’s cold and miserable and wet all the time.  Or dark, it’s dark all the time too.

-I Just finished the book Bright Lights, Big Ass by Jen Lancaster and, while it was a bit too “chick lit” in places, it was a good, light read.  The book is basically a memoir about what it’s like to live in a big city, deal with anti social types, the horrors of rent prices, and the comedy of life.  Oddly, I recommend it.

-Customer service is dead…. and the customer killed it.  I may write a full blog about that one actually.

-I got an 82% on my Chemistry coursework (an A- ish in the American system). Oddly the unit I was dreading the most turned out to be my best grade yet.

-I really wish I could find/ be friends with a group of people in the UK interested in either old school table top gaming or Magic: The Gathering.

-After seeing no less than three dozen properties for sale in the Brighton area, one can safely assume the following:  1. For the price of the average two bedroom maisonette with no outside space and tiny rooms in Brighton,  you could buy a five bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, two story, two and a half car garage, renovated basement, granite counter top-having, sits-on-a-full-acre-of-land, fuck off HUGE house in the USA.  Fact. 2. Whatever number they give for bedrooms in the listing, you can safely subtract one, as they will be counting a room that is nothing more than a glorified walk-in closet as a bedroom.  3. Most people have not updated their homes since the 70s.

-I never realized just how much being a goth is about the attention seeking until observing a girl at work.  There is a definite behavioral pattern where, when the shocking appearance and garb fail to garner the required attention, this girl will step it up by being louder and louder, singing (in the office? Really??), being random, and generally annoying.  Hey, negative attention is still attention, right?

And lastly, I added a new photo to my portfolio:

Don’t get me wrong, I like WoW as a game; my current burnout is sure to last a few months and, barring I don’t find something that captures my imagination, I’m sure to renew my account down the line.  But as far as MMOs are concerned, it really is the only popular MMO. Looking back over the dozen or so titles I’ve played over the last ten years, I find myself adorning the rose colored spectacles of nostalgia for games-gone-by and “how it used to be.”  And these are my thoughts.

No other game can thrive in the shadow of WoW.

It’s true:  with WoW having the monopoly on MMO players’ hard earned subscription money, it’s near impossible for other games to sustain a large playerbase.  What’s more, with the pressure of Blizzard expansion releases and major game updates, many competing developers find themselves racing to push out a near finished or half finished products, just to contend with release dates.  When a player then leaves WoW to try out a newly released MMO, and finds that it’s buggy or doesn’t have much (if any) endgame content on release, they leave and go back to the familiar.  Which leads me to my next point:

The new-to-MMOs player that WoW attracted.

With twelve million subscribers, there are quite a few MMO newbies who have recently discovered the niche genre over the last five years thanks to WoW.  Many of these players did not start at launch either, and instead came into the game with Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King. They started their MMO careers in the middle of a well established and hugely popular title, one that had years of post release development to make it as rich as it is today.  Polished leveling, massive amounts of endgame content, well balanced classes, casual player content, achievements…. these are all things that come with time with an MMO.  Those of us who played WoW from day one know that this hasn’t always been the case.  WoW has undergone years of post release development to get to where it is today.

Now, when you have a player who has only ever known a polished, impeccable WoW for an MMO go and try another game JUST released in the genre, you’ve got trouble.  They expected a myriad of endgame content, polished gameplay, and a flawless experience.  What they got was horrid latency, bugs, crashes, falling through the world, and areas of the game lacking all content.  They pack up their toys and go home, because a game like this obviously sucks, right?  No matter that it’s just been released.  They tell their friends and guildmates upon their triumphant return about what a terrible experience they had with the new game and loe, the new game gets a bad rap on the web just weeks into it’s launch.

WoW has set the bar for easy and casual content.

Does anyone actually remember a time when MMOs had some challenge to them?  I do.  WoW has a second monopoly: the monopoly of the casual player.  Let’s face it: WoW is easy.  It’s so easy you can practically beat the entire game solo simply by rolling your face across the keyboard a couple of times.  Leveling takes no skill, and you can do virtually levels 1 through 80 entirely solo.  Once you reach 80, a day or two of easy heroic dungeon grinding and you’ve got a full set of one of the latest tiers of gear.  Raiding was taken down from 40 to 25 man dungeons, and all current endgame raid content can be PUGed (Ie. pick up groups aka not guild organized).   Where did the challenge go?

This has been a debate amongst the MMO community for some time: What constitutes “hard?”  For MMOs, it’s mostly time investment and group organization.  In Everquest,  raids took up to 72 people, and were done on world bosses (ie not instanced, most world bosses would not reappear again after being killed for days, some a week or more).  In WoW, everyone can have their piece of the pie in a minimal amount of time with virtually no challenge.

Let’s take another example: Dieing.  In WoW, dieing is a momentary inconvenience. You die, you spawn at the nearest graveyard, you run as a ghost back to your grave, and you resurrect.  A small amount of damage is done to your armor.  In Everquest, death carried actual penalty. You died, you spawned buck naked at your bind point (which, if you forgot to bind close to where you would be hunting… could be a few HOURS away), you had to make it back to your corpse to retrieve all of your armor and stuff, whilst things could attack you in your defenseless naked state, and if you made it back to your body alive without a cleric friend to rez you, you also just lost a couple hours worth of experience.  If you had just dinged to the next level before you died, you probably de-leveled as well.  If you died on the way back to your body, you lost more experience. In the early days of Star Wars Galaxy, if you spent months of your life building your character into a jedi all it took was one death.  Die one time as a jedi and your character was a ghost permenantly.  You were done, finished.  No more jedi for j00! (of course, subsequent SOE patches have changed this to make it easier/less harsh).

Some people argue that this is making a game unnecessarily hard, but I disagree.  People work harder at their roles in a group when dieing poses a real threat.  Death loses it’s meaning in games like WoW because their is no penalty.  So instead of grouping with another player to beat the pack of three mobs you need to kill, why not just rush in, kill one, die, respawn, kill another, die, respawn, and then kill the last one.  See what I am saying?

There is also no real reward for beating the top of the top dungeons, either.  So you’re in a full set of teir-du-jour armor?  So is everyone else.  Because the content is easy enough anyone can experience it.  In Everquest, if a player walked into a city with the top gear you knew about it, you could see a crowd of people gathered around him or her, drooling over how elite this person was.  Because it meant that person went to near inhuman lengths to get that armor, and people knew it.

I recently debated with a WoW player about hard content.  His argument was why would a company create a game where it’s top echelon of content was only experienced by 1-2% of the playerbase, as that’s not what someone pays for in buying an MMO.  I say that’s incorrect, as most people who buy MMOs are acknowledging in their purchase of the game that X amount of time is going to  need to be invested into the title to achieve Y goal.  It’s not the makers of the game who are at fault if that person’s expectations are unrealistic.  You need to have top content for top players or else there is nothing to aim/work for.  MMOs are a time sink.  Making them into something that can be done on a casual player’s two hours a week is making them easier.

Thus, all games post WoW launch have been suspiciously easier, perhaps to compete for the casual player subscription base.

Chuck Norris, also known as “there goes the neighborhood.”

Any player across the realms of WoW can tell you that trade channel chat is perhaps the most intellectually devoid verbal diarrhea one has ever had the pleasure of reading.  Simply step into any major city at any time of day and your once peaceful chat box is instantly filled with a cacophony of retarded children on the topic of the moment, anything from religion, to politics, to your mother, to Chuck Norris, to the latest internet memes and, as always, an update on who’s a ninja.  WoW brought MMOs mainstream and, as such, you have more people than ever in your personal playing space… and there goes the neighborhood.

MMOs used to be a niche appeal sort of thing.  With the advent of MUDs, to Ultima Online, on through to the first 3D MMO experiences like Everquest and Asheron’s Call, most of the playerbase were twenty and thirty somethings, and the type of people who grew up on pen and paper RPGs and Magic the Gathering.  This group of people held these game experiences with high regard, an online social experience coupled with a living, breathing world much like those in fantasy novels or in the tabletop RPGs. General chat channels were usually filled with people exchanging information about aspects of the game, helping each other out, etc.  Occasionally you’d experience other people roleplaying and, whilst I was never a roleplayer myself, I could appreciate what RPers added to the overall environment.  People were patient with each other, wanted real adventure, and took their time with things.

In WoW, when not expressing their horrid political views (which always end in a punctuated “lulz”) we have players who are impatiently tapping their foot over a new-to-dungeons players, calling them a noob and telling them (helpfully) to “learn to play, lulz.”  Ask a question in the channel about a quest or item, and you can be sure to be greeted with a “Check wowhead.com, fag.”  More under 18s than ever are playing MMOs, particularly WoW, and the mature, respectful, roleplayers seem to have all but disappeared.  Most stayed behind, loyally, on MMOs living past their prime like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot.

The failure of other MMOs.

Over the last couple of years a few games have been released worthy of mention: Vanguard and Age of Conan.  These should’ve been top contenders to share in the MMO glory at the top of the food chain alongside WoW or, at the very least, not crash and burn.  This wasn’t the case sadly.  When I canceled my WoW subscription I thought I’d go see what Vanguard had become.  I downloaded the game, renewed my old account, and logged in.  There were FIVE people on the ENTIRE continent.  No more than TWENTY on the entire server. What happened?

The Vanguard forums were dead, and according to those still around SOE was concentrating it’s business on developing an MMO for 2014, rumored to be Everquest 3.  The game was no longer receiving regular updates, and it appeared as though SOE had simply put this glorious-in-concept MMO out to pasture to live out the rest of it’s time and die peacefully.

I had high hopes for this title before and after it’s release.  It was an AMAZING concept, a rich world, a Brad McQuaid creation.  And it’s not to say that WoW was Vanguard’s failure, because it wasn’t.  After all, you can’t blame WoW that Sigil developed a game that would run on a computer that was invented two to three years in the future (and even my current beast of a laptop could only run it on low settings).  And you also cannot blame WoW that Vanguard still lacks endgame content three years from release.  But this is the state of MMOs that are not WoW. They lose subscriptions, they lose funding, and eventually they fade into being just another dead title in the genre.

Warhammer, a game that tried to be so much like WoW they even went to great lengths to completely copy the design style, is also dead.

Age of Conan is fairing a bit better.  Servers had been merged but it at least created a sense of a living world, as you can see other players quite frequently going about their day.  There is still an active community and an active development team.  My Laptop had no problems running it flawlessly on the highest settings,  and I was surprised to even hear about an expansion due out this year.  AoC may still have a hope for not completely failing but again,much like Vanguard, it’s lack of content at release and the bad press it got for it has really put a dent into what it COULD achieve. You can see it’s still in the recovery phase from a poor launch and, whilst you do see oter players in the world enjoying the game unlike Vanguard, it’s not the bustling metropolis that is WoW.

Oddly enough older games have an easier time holding on to  loyal subscribers than do newer, failed MMOs.  You still have loyal, active communities in Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot, as well as a scattering in Star Wars Galaxy.   Vanguard is a ghost town, as is Warhammer, and Age of Conan looked to be going the same way at release but make actually make a comeback in the coming year.   I think it’s hoping to much to herald any game awaiting release as the “WoW killer.”  WoW isn’t going to die.  No game will ever be released that will simply overtake WoW and pry it’s 12 million subscribers from it’s cold, dead fingers.  It will be interesting to see if WoW can match the longevity of the previous most successful MMO, Everquest, still going in it’s 11th year.

I think all that will simply happen is a developer will create an MMO that serves to satisfy another niche MMO desire other than high fantasy, and this game will do well as it will provide different content.  Not because it’s better or more successful or destined to be a WoW killer, simply because it’s different.  Many MMO players are looking towards Star Wars: The Old Republic to achieve this niche position, due out in the next two years.  We will have to wait and see.

Until then, you’re either playing WoW or playing by yourself.

Pregnancy cravings are in full swing, mostly for salty/very salty food.  I’ve been enjoying salt and vinegar rice cakes, olives (which I hated pre-pregnancy), pickles and, quite embarrassingly, spam (its super salty!).  Also jalapenos and milk .   A few things I used to enjoy but can no longer stand the sight of: fruit squashes you add to water to flavor them, cornish pasties, pretzels, and anything with ginger in it.

Not that any of the calories make it to me, mind you.  Little Doodle takes what it needs first, usually leaving me hungry a mere two hours later or sleeping for 15 hours straight due to being exhausted.  I’ve gained 15 pounds, coming in at just under a pound a week.    Other weird and wonderful symptoms include: gagging when I cough (or see something gross, or smell certain smells….), erect nipples which not only hurt but are extremely fun when in public for all to see (not), getting up to pee every hour at night.  Although I will say on that last one, there is no better feeling in the world than getting up to pee at 4am, realizing you are off and do not have to be at work, and then slinking back under the covers to sleep until noon.

Whilst I’ve had to switch to maternity pants as some of my clothes no longer fit me, I still do not have a definitive bump.   Mark and I have noticed my mid section getting larger, and a new firmness has appeared just below the skin.  I’m anxiously awaiting the bump to form and to get out of this inbetween stage of simply looking fat rather than pregnant.

Which leads me onto a point I’ve been pondering for weeks now.  Even though I am happy to be pregnant and love Little Doodle, why am I still so hung up on body image?  I worry people will view me simply as fat until the bump is clearly visible, and I worry alot about being able to lose the weight after giving birth.   The reason I am is because I have been conditioned by society to be obsessed with a number for weight or a size for clothing.

This isn’t even something that changes with pregnancy.  One only has to go to any maternity shop online and see the women who are modeling the clothing:  They aren’t pregnant.  They are size 0 models wearing a fake bump.  How are things like this supposed to make pregnant women, who will be more vulnerable due to a changing body, feel?  More importantly, what is this saying to women who just became pregnant or may become pregnant in the future?  It’s perpetuating this unattainable look, even for those doing something as sacred as giving the gift of life.

Look below between the two women.  One is a real mother, photo from http://www.maternitygallery.com/, and the other is a maternity clothes model.  See the difference?

This is one of the reasons I worry about the possibility of having a girl.  It’s impossible to grow  up in the western world with a realistic body image.  From models, to actresses, to advertisements, to clothing… EVERYTHING bombards women and young girls with the feeling they aren’t good enough. They are too fat, too flat chested, too plain, their hair is too flat, they haven’t any hips, their hips are too big.  And it goes on and on and on.  How, if I cannot break through the bullshit to have a healthy image of what beauty actually is, am I supposed to impart those ideals in another human being?

I’ve found some sites that, regardless if you are a mom, mom to be, or single lady, every woman should have a look at.  We should be exposed to real bodies, real breasts, real women.  I recommend you look:

http://theshapeofamother.com/save-our-daughters/           <– and read the links on the page as well!

http://www.maternitygallery.com/ <— a gallery of what real pregnant women look like

http://www.007b.com/breast_gallery.php <– a gallery of normal breasts and the stories from the women behind them.

More disturbing is my need to eat… all the time!  I can have a huge meal and in less than two hours feel as though I am starving.  I always have something to eat on hand, especially at work, for when that feeling of insatiable hunger strikes.    I hadn’t been weighing myself during the first trimester, mostly out of fear of what that evil device might say.  After all, I had been eating my body weight in food.  I decided that I should know how much I’ve gained, so at the beginning of my 2nd trimester… I stepped onto the scale.  Surprisingly, I’ve only gained 6 pounds, which falls in line with the recommended weight gain for the 1st trimester.  I was, needless to say, relieved.  Little Doodle is a calorie machine, I think it needs more on a daily basis than I do!

Two days ago we went in for the 12 week scan.  We were very excited as we knew Little Doodle will have grown considerably more human like.  We got into the scan room and wouldn’t you know it, Little Doodle wouldn’t cooperate!  It kept turning lazily away from the ultrasound paddle, giving mom and dad a good 20 minutes of looking at the back of it’s head.  At one point the ultrasound technician had me lift my pelvis off the table, into the air, and give my hips a good shaking in order to try to move Little Doodle into a better viewing position.  When that didn’t work, she advised me to go drink something sugary and take a 20 minute walk.

So we did.

Once back on the table, the caffeine in the energy drink proved to have actually worked, and there was Little Doodle, bouncing and twirling around in the womb! And they confirmed what I had suspected all along: Little Doodle bounces right on my bladder.  They were finally able to measure it, inspect it from head to toe, and even get a profile shot.  Little Doodle checked out as growing nicely, we got to see it wave it’s little hands and arms around.  And I feel as though, due to the difficulty of it being in the wrong position for the inspection, we got to spend alot of time with Little Doodle that day as well… and fell more in love.

My next scan is at week 20, where they will be able to tell the gender!  Alot of exciting things are going to happen along the way to that scan as well:  Little Doodle will gain the ability to hear and hear us talk to it, and in another 5 to 8 weeks I will be able to feel it’s movements.

Below is a pic of the ultrasound. It’s the best I can do until we figure out what’s wrong with our scanner, but you can quite clearly see Little Doodle’s head on the right and a profile of it’s face,  with the ear on the side of it’s head.

I has received cash for my birthday and insisted my mother take me up to Best Buy as quickly as possible in order to buy the same game I had seen my cousin play.  But when I got to the games selection for MMORPGs, I hesitated.  Next to Asheron’s Call was another game, one that I had never seen or heard of, titled Everquest.   I had unfolded the flap on the front of the box and gazed wonderously at the artwork of strange and fascinating fantasy characters battling it out.  The back of the box promised an expansive world, a large community of fellow players, and hours of enjoyment.   So I bought Everquest instead.

Ten years later I’ve played a total of eleven different MMORPGs, with the current one being the very game I also met my husband in: World of Warcraft.  I went from being the complete noob to veteran player over the years and I am still going, still leveling characters, still doing quests, gaining armor and raiding dungeons.  But why?

My love for MMORPGs exist for the constant world.  A living, breathing society of players, some nice and others rude, some well played and other noobish, some neurotic and some just your average people.   A true spread of all walks that make up our actual world.  The world in which we play does not simply shut down when you stop playing.  It continues on, grows, expands, and changes around you.  Players selling and buying goods form a real working economy based on supply and demand.

MMOs cannot be beaten, they cannot be fully conquered, and you never truly reach an end point.  Whilst with single player game experiences you play a game that may have 5 to 10 hours of gameplay or, if you’re lucky, on upwards to 40 hours or more.  But regardless of the amount of hours of gameplay promised on the box, it will end.  You will eventually leave the world and the characters behind, possibly to never return to them.  With MMORPGs, the “magic” of the game experience continues, the characters you get to know and love are other people from around the world sharing in the same interests you have, and the world will continue to be persistant, ever changing, always there.

For the last 3 to 4 years my gaming experience has run along side my guild: Fist of the Empire.  The very clan I met Mark in.  I’ve not only had the privledge of meeting a bunch of these characters in real life, but also forged friendships with them.  this is part of what makes the MMO gaming experience so rewarding.  A group of people, of friends, can come together in a game and work with each other to accomplish goals, to raid dungeons, or to build up the guild.  Many who don’t game this way may never fully understand the dynamics but, simply put, do you know how much it takes to get 40 people together and focused for a couple of hours, each doing their own individual role, to accomplish a task?  It’s no easy feat, not even in the real world.  But when it happens, it’s simply amazing.

I’ve bounced between titles over the years,  returning to Everquest a number of times but never for very long, and then onto the next title.  But one thing was always certain: I’ve always has a subscription set up to one game or another.  I’ve never lost that desire to be apart of that fantasy world, to log in and assume the role of the valiant knight or illustrious elf,  to meet new people and play with the ones I’ve grown to know over the past couple of years, and to make my own character the best it can be.  This is why I pay, this is why I log in, this is why sometimes, I may even go to bed at unreasonable hours.

This is why I love MMO gaming.

Mark and I were quite excited to get into the scan room, but when they located the baby they found it was only 7weeks and 5 days at the time of the scan, and looked a bit like a little blob on the screen.  It was a minor setback, but not enough to overshadow the joy that it was OUR little blob with a strong and visible heartbeat.  We fell in love.  That was on the morning of Thanksgiving.

The following Monday we experienced a bit of a scare with a little spotting and some pain, and were booked for an emergency scan the following morning.  All the worry and tears turned out to be for naught when the nurse confirmed there was absolutely nothing wrong with the tiny entity we’ve come to call Little Doodle.  In fact, just half a week later, Little Doodle already looked more human with a distinctly shaped head and even little arm buds!  I cried when I saw the little arm buds.  And of course, a little heart beating away. So as of yesterday we are 9 weeks along.  I have my 12 week scan on the 30th of December where we will see Little Doodle looking more and more human and less blobby.  And we can’t wait.

It’s true what they say in that you should wait untl the 12 week scan to tell people and, in our naivety, we told people when we thought we were 8 to 9 weeks but turned out to be just 4 or 5.  And while everything is ok now, I can see why people do choose to wait until the 12th week to share the good news.

This week Mark and I will be puttng up our Christmas tree and decorating it, and I’ve already busted out the cheesy holiday must watch movies.  We will be spending Christmas in the UK quietly this year as our passports are with the Home Office currently, but we are planning to spend Christmas 2010 in the states, plus one… Little Doodle.