Car seats and dislocating knee caps

The little one started dislocating her knee caps on longer journeys when we go over a bump. This has added a new terror to traffic calming schemes with road bumps. I can see a pretty simple solution –  a more supportive car seat. At the moment at maximum recline, which isn’t much, the standard out-of-box budget car seat we picked up from Amazon does not offer much support. Her little legs are dangling off the edge right at her knee cap and it is obviously placing a lot of strain on the joint.

The little one’s car seat

It doesn’t help that as soon as she relaxes, her neck lolls around without support and that results in some fierce clutching and screaming when the vertebra refuse to stay put either. It’s worrying, it’s scary and it makes me want to fix it. I always thought the amount of pain that comes with my condition is just the worst, but watching a 2.5 year old suffering is unimaginable. I have made us pull over, taken her out of her car seat and refused to put her back in.

Help. I’d love to help. If I could, I would be purchasing a supportive special needs car seat with a footrest on-line on my phone the first time it happened, for next day delivery. But those are pricey. The cheapest I can find with neck support but no footrest is Britax’s Traveller Plus that retails for £599. For £750, there is the Recaro Sport Reha car seat, that offers a footrest as an accessory, but no pricing on the footrest. I tried searching for footrests, but those do not seem to be available independently.

Next stop – Aeryn’s health visitor. An occupational therapy referral seemed like the sensible thing, but three weeks later and the health visitor has not even been able to get anyone to answer the phone (and forget about email) so that she can make a referral. We’re not even on the waiting list, which is usually weeks to months long.

Our experience of paediatric OTs are this: Waiting list 2-3 months. Then you’re assigned to an OT, who then usually takes a while to find a spot in her schedule. One month later we have the first visit, which is informative, taking down all the information and then they go off to think, which takes a few more weeks. At which point they get busy, triage happens, we move down the list, a few more weeks go by, they forget we exist, a few more weeks go by and seven months later they get back to us with a solution. The solution then cannot be funded without a grant. So it takes a few months to apply for a grant. Then equipment is ordered, which takes another month and once ordered it takes another 1-3months before the manufacturer ships it. It took over a year for the little one to receive her special cot. This is not the type of time frame I am willing to adhere to with dislocating knee caps.

The solution – hack it. I have finally found what looks like a good and safe idea, a pool noodle foot rest:

Pool noodle foot rest

Buying a pool noodle and luggage strap for a fiver now and will hack it when it arrives.

Pockets of Time

Life is busy and filled with too many things to do and never enough time to do them. I love routines, which is a good things as living within a set routine reduces the frequency of my migraine headaches significantly. Get up an hour earlier or later, and within 24 hours, almost without fail, a migraine aura hits. Have my morning coffee a couple of hours late and a migraine hits. Late lunch and what do you know, a migraine arrives before food does.

It’s a good thing that I live with people who also thrive on routine. Two year olds thrive on a set schedule and so does those with Aspergers/Autism*. Routines are funny things. They are hard to establish, but self-perpetuating and once you have cultivated it, near impossible to break. I love healthy and positive routines, they make living with a chronic illness/disability a lot easier. No thought required, we know what’s happening next.

As a child, I thought adult life was the most terribly mundane experience and never wanted to grow up to be working (middle) class. It felt a lot like being a hamster trapped on a wheel, unable to stop or get off. Life stretched out in front of me with so much predictability that I wanted to pack a bag and run away. I did this, quite often. Not in a serious, running-away-from-home kind of way, but as fantasy play. My childhood games often consisted of packing a decent lunch, a bottle of water, pulling on my good walking shoes and setting off across the garden and when I was older, straight into the woods. Escapism at its best.

As an adult, I find that its these mundane routines that provide meaning to my life. Living with a routine provides more opportunities than living without it. Without routines, it is much easier to allow pain and feeling unwell to get in the way. I have also discovered that I enjoy quite a bit more of my life than I realised. I love the small pockets of time that hide underneath the familiar.

I enjoy packing away laundry. It’s quite a difficult task for me, but I have help. The little one fetches and Chris does the buttons, zips and heavy items. Some days, I don’t get to participate. Yesterday, I was stuck in bed with a migraine that was too severe to tolerate. But I could hear the pitter patter of little feet and when I woke up and made it out of bed early evening, the pile of folded laundry was a comforting glimpse of normality. Life does not spiral out of control quickly if you  trim a little every day.

My biggest weakness is unpredictability. I don’t know when joints will dislocate, when I’ll have a bad asthma attack or severe migraine or a seizure. I don’t know if today will be a good day or a bad day or an average one. But I do know that on Saturday mornings we have pancakes, on Friday nights I watch an episode of a favourite TV series and we have take-out in bed, once a week we go out for lunch, on Wednesdays we go to the pool and on Sundays if the weather is nice we stop in at a car boot sale.

Sometimes I participate, sometimes I don’t. The life I actually live is very different from the routines I fold around me like a comfort blanket. But they’re there nonetheless and they make life easier, more relaxed and happier. I love predictability and the more we turn good habits into a schedule, the more productive I am able to be.

And the best part? Our routine allows for more creativity. It’s impossible to do anything spur of the moment with chronic illness, disability, a toddler, a low income and severe dietary restrictions. Part of our going out routine includes a packed lunch, snacks, a meds bag, a first aid kit and always bring a tablet.

 

*There always seem to be the impression that those on the Autistic Spectrum Disorder are great at creating routines; they’re not. In my experience, getting someone with ASD/Aspergers into a routine is very challenging. Once you have established a routine though, don’t ever expect to be able to change it, even just a little bit.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts

It’s difficult most of the time to keep a positive outlook. There’s a lot of good things that aren’t happening or should’ve happened a long time ago and there’s a lot of bad stuff that happens every day. Life has a lot of restrictions and it because it is so complex to do even the simplest things, it is much easier to notice the obstacles that sick out like a sore thumb. Obstacles are big and painful and easily obscures the view. Support and help on the other hand, when it works well and as intended integrates into life seamlessly, invisibly and it is very easy to forget that it is there.

We drove to Salisbury this morning for an appointment. We left our three bedroom council house, the one that has  mouldy unpainted walls in the bathroom, cracked floor tiles and splintered floorboards and tiny pink rose wallpaper in the main bedroom. It needs a lot of work and trying to figure out how to get that done when all three of us have chronic health conditions that worsen with activity, is a headache in a lot of days. We’ve even contemplated handing the 2.5 year old a paint brush and saying, go for it, make some modern art, but figured the mould is too much of a health hazard, nevermind that fingerpaint won’t really do the job. But I love our house and I wake up in the morning and hear the birds (and the next door neighbour’s chickens) and I’m happy. It’s the first place I have live that felt like it belonged to me. We don’t own it, but a council tenancy feels a lot more permanent than a private rental property. We live here and it’s the album in which we are pasting memories every day. I remember a tiny little girl playing with a plastic train set on the floor a dining room with a ton of boxes and virtually no furniture. We receive a dining table as a Christmas present that year. Memories are precious things and having a safe, sort-of-warm (if only we could afford to turn the heating up a few more degrees) place to live, is a very precious thing to have.

I have friends in various countries that does not have the NHS. As much as we all complain about the NHS, free access to health care is something pretty amazing, even when it is creaking under the pressure of austerity. Chris broke his leg and sustained a nasty head injury a few years back and our biggest medical related expense was the hospital car park and just over £6 for his monthly prescription. My specialists, his specialists, the little one’s specialists would cost a small fortune if we lived somewhere else. Yes, waiting times are long, treatments are the economic choice and tight budgets are obvious and pervasive, but I’ve stopped breathing and within ten minutes an ambulance turned up, the nice men performed manual ventilation, took me to hospital where I was admitted into ICU for a while and at no point did we have to worry about the cost.

Many people with disabilities are isolated. I certainly never thought I’d get married or have kids or strong family ties. I wake up most mornings with a little girl clambering over me to get her hands on my tablet whilst my lower legs are numb from a cat sleeping curled up snuggled into them for most of the night and husband dearest ducks his head under with a  n e-reader and finds a few minutes in what will become a very busy day, to wake up slowly reading for just ten minutes. When we met, he had his nose in a book pretty much every waking hour of the day. I’m an avid reader too and not a morning person either and thought it was heaven to not have to talk at all in the morning. We’d wake up, get up, get dressed, make breakfast, have breakfast, all without saying a word, both engrossed in our own book. He really expanded both my love and knowledge of science fiction and introduced me to military sci-fi, which quickly became a personal favourite. Gone are those days of reading for hours, replaced with a few minutes in the morning whilst the little one plays Dr Panda new one! Thank goodness Dr Panda keeps coming up with new apps regularly. I can’t wait for her to learn how to read so we can reclaim some more reading time back!

We had an appointment in Salisbury today. We got up, got dressed, dropped the little one off at nursery for 3 hours, drove to Salisbury, got out the electric wheelchair and went to the council offices where there was level access (the usual interesting roundabout route, but of the time I don’t mind those, they’re sort of adventurous). We almost made it back when the engine light went on, telling the driver that the van needed oil. We couldn’t find what kind of oil, rang up motability who gave us the exact type which we were able to pick up at Tesco when we went to pick up the little one from nursery. This would not have been something within the realm of possibility in the past. It required a nursery happy and comfortable to take care of a toddler with asthma, Coeliacs and dislocating joints. It required the electric wheelchair  that NHS wheelchair services made for me, the adapted van motability rents via the scheme paid for with DLA and generally good access in the city centre and council building. Electric wheelchairs need level access, half a step and I’m stuck outside. Many places when we ring up say they have level access, except, hang on, wait, there’s a single step or half step at the entrance. Manual wheelchairs can be lifted over those, electric wheelchairs with 200kg or so (including the passenger of average weight) cannot. The world is still a pretty inaccessible place, but today, we hit no barriers. There were convenient dropped curbs in all the right places, level access and  on-street parking that left plenty of space to get the wheelchair in and out. Sometimes things do go right and when they do, its an amazing experience.

Adapted Renault Trafic

Using a wheelchair sometimes makes me feel like a second class citizen. I’m ushered in through back doors, via kitchens and freight entrances reached via dark dirty alley ways. There’s the usual way and then there’s the back way. It doesn’t really phase me, I’d rather go round the back than be stuck in the street in the front whilst someone goes off to find a ramp that they then can’t find or just shake their heads and say, sorry, no access I’m afraid, at least I get to go inside, but when it happens often enough, it steals a bit more of the normal chunks of my day.

I’m special. I have terrible chillblains all over my hands at the moment and with the plastic finger splints pulling attention to my hands, its hard not to pay a lot of attention to them. People stare. They stare at my hands and its the kind of stare that makes you squirm in your seat. The kind of stare that I used to cringe from when I started using a wheelchair. I don’t feel uncomfortable with the wheelchair any more, but that stare, its disconcerting. They’re not being judgmental or impolite and they’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just a normal thing that people do, the unusual catching attention. I understand that. It’s the same thing you get when you go out with friends and you have to go round the back, it isn’t nice, it makes people uncertain, it takes them out of their comfort zone and it pulls attention to me being “special”. I want what everyone else wants, a job, a house, a family, a life, holidays, hobbies, friends. I want to blend in and be just like everyone else. And when there is access at the front entrance and even better, when the lady showing you the way is polite and friendly, I don’t feel different even when we aren’t following the usual script. When things go right, even the unusual start to feel normal and that’s an amazing experience.

I’m lucky. I have people who care, I have a place to live, transport that allows me to go outside, affordable healthcare, access to many things and a cat, a garden and a loving family and some truly amazing friends. I love where we live, I love the countryside and I love that I have cool stories to tell, like this one.

Last week we were coming back from lunch with (great) granddad. As we drove past Stonehenge, the little one woke up from a noise. She looked around, quickly, scanning the sky. “It’s a helicopter,” Daddy says. “There!”, she says, “it’s an Apache gunship!” It was a golden moment. I’m always told off for not being precise enough. I looked out over the English country side, Stonehenge and the sheep grazing against the hill nearby and there wasn’t anywhere in the world I would rather be. This is home. I am so very lucky to have one of those.

Why I’m terrible at twitter

I was late to arrive on Twitter and I don’t chat. As I went through a different suggestions and lists today, I realised that twitter probably killed my much beloved Google Reader, or at least contributed to its demise. All the news feeds and sites I follow on RSS, tweet new articles as well in a much more compact format. Using a social media client like HootSuite, it starts to look an awful lot like a compact RSS feed with a whole lot more immediacy.

I pretty much learn everything I know about the world by reading first. Google Reader has been the first thing I look at in the morning and one of the last before I go to bed for quite some time. Other people may pick up their phone a 100 times a day to socialise, but I am a reader, not a socialiser and mostly find my computer more accessible than tablet or phone if I want to do anything with articles that catch my eye. I definitely do not pick up my phone 100 times a day. And I don’t really tweet.

I have tried and I do try and occasionally  very rarely, I’ll jump into a conversation for a few exchanges. My obstacle to twitter is the same as the huge big massively tall wall that surrounds my life – reliability. The only way I manage any semblance of normality, particularly on-line, is subterfuge. It’s amazing how much you can fake. I live and die by schedules and scheduling.

I write when I can, and by write I mean type a little, but also dictation, either to a willing party that have a few minutes to spare to type for me or by using speech to text software. Usually the willing party also acts as a bit of a social buffer, you wouldn’t believe what a concussion, seizure, pain medication like morphine and fentanyl can do to your sense of proprietary  Friends and family also often smooth things over for me by showing up for me. “I’m sorry, Lily couldn’t make it, but she asked me to….”

Twitter conversations require instant responses, it has a sense of immediacy that I usually miss by hours. I take a lot of breaks, my brain gets tired even quicker than my muscles and if I had to pick up my phone once an hour I would be just too exhausted to function. So I schedule. I check feeds once or twice a day, sometimes once or twice a week, and the highway information totally passes me by whilst I have a seizure or a cluster of seizures like last week or a migraine for 3 or 7 days and once I slap a fentanyl patch on my arm, the world becomes a dreamy haze for 72 hours. I can’t keep up.

The pockets of my life that’s left with my personality stamped on it is tiny, not long enough to keep up with twitter. Yes, the beauty of something that is always on, always moving is that it flows like a river and whenever you show up for however long, it’s always there. The beauty of twitter is that you can just show up and talk to people about mutual interests for quite often short bursts of time.

I don’t get to access that part of twitter much either. Joint dislocations and subluxations happen quite frequently, bones shift when I move all the time and whenever they do so particularly painfully, I’m no longer in the mood for small talk. Most of the time, I just want to curl up and be quiet for a while until the world stops spinning so fast.

Between frequent bouts of chronic pain doubled with severe fatigue, I don’t have it in me to hold a conversation for an hour or an evening. And when I do have the time and ability to engage on some small talk, friends are a lot less stressful to talk to than strange people I have a ton of respect for on the internet.

The more I use twitter, the more I enjoying using twitter and the more my fingers itch to join in on conversations. The times I have done so, it’s always turned out fine, twitter doesn’t really care if I reply once or twice or ten times, it’s a constant flux of conversation and conversational partners that continuously change and adapt and never stops.

But actions do have consequences. And twitter has resulted in quite a few job losses (or benefits), social ostrification and scandal. I’m nobody, but I don’t want to become somebody for the wrong reasons. And chatting on twitter with a concussion, post-seizure confusion, in the throws of a marathon migraine or when high on legal pain meds, still doesn’t feel like a good idea.

The beauty of life on line is that it’s so much easier to blend in. The most unreliable person can come across as a rock, I’ve seen quite a few shy and socially awkward people bloom in 140 character blocks and when your real world is falling apart, it can be a lifeline and sometimes the only contact a person in desperate need has with the outside world.

Picture the scene: I am lying in bed on my front, with my head turned to the side. My right arm is flat on the bed, a phone propped up by my hand. The only part of me moving is my thumb, pressing the on screen keyboard. Pain is tearing through my body, what I feel in my arms, my legs and my hands is agonising. I don’t have the strength to lift any part of my body from the bed. And yet, I have one, tiny connection to the world  - I can send messages out through twitter, and I can receive replies, 140 characters at a time. - Latent Existence

Twitter is full of possibilities and I am learning to be a little less shy and self-conscious, but it still doesn’t feel like the haven I’m always hoping for. There’s always barriers and yes, there are a lot less on-line with all the smoke and mirrors available to deflect from reality, but it’s hard not to feel a bit like an imposter.

As a kid, that was one of the most pervasive feelings I grew up with. Pretend to fit in long enough and nothing feels authentic anymore. I hid most of who I was and pretty much anything bad I was going through. I still think that turning a smile upside down is an essential life strategy, but not always being brutally honest does come with some drawbacks. After a while, you start to feel a little fake. Stop doing it though, and life just becomes too depressing.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong on twitter. Maybe it does provide the potential for brutal honesty. The freedom to vent about every bone that moves out of place, to lament about medication side-effects, to share my post-bad things states of confusion. Maybe I’ve been doing twitter all wrong.

Sin by silence

I retired this blog over a year ago for a few good reasons. I’m unretiring it now for one even better. So why did I stop writing about life and living with a disability? Here’s why:

One: Fear

We started a game accessibility and technology website around the time I stopped writing here. I have limited time and starting a game accessibility and technology website required all of it and I told myself that I wanted to focus on more positive things, not the black hole that living with a disability on benefits in the UK is and as technophiles and gamers, we figured investing in our passions was the right way to go. All of that is true.

Tomb Raider: Lara Croft

I never have enough time, too much of my life is gobbled up by being so sick I can’t do anything and focusing on the positive is a better strategy than dwelling on the frustrations and depressing facets of life. But neither of those required retiring this blog. I could find a few minutes once in a while to write a good piece and retaining a sense of balance between positive and negative seem a lot healthier than fixating on the positive and completely ignoring whatever doesn’t fit into that box. To be honest, I was a little terrified of entering the world of gaming journalism as a woman in a wheelchair living on benefits.

I am not commenting on the gaming industry here, but solely expressing my personal state of mind. To be clear, pretty much all my Steam, XBLA, PSN and mmo friends lists are filled with guys under forty who have been nothing but helpful, amazing and extremely supportive.They’ve carried me through hundreds of hours of co-op, multiplayer matches and raids and I’ve had seizures, have required an extended break because I dislocated my shoulder getting up to go to the bathroom and have greeted an ambulance crew arriving whilst still on vent still raiding even though I needed an adrenaline shot to reboot my breathing ten minutes before their arrival. I needed a good distraction to keep me calm and they happily provided it without fail. Women have started quite a few dialogues lately about what it’s like for them working in the gaming industry and that’s great, but I worry about all the good guys who aren’t being talked about.

There’s a difference between having friends and putting yourself a bit more in the public eye. Whether a realistic fear or not, whether justified or not, entering the world of gaming journalism as a woman, not a girl, in a wheelchair to boot, was daunting and I didn’t have the courage to provide potential ammunition to the hoard of angry internet commenters who are constantly looking for a new target.

Two: Fear

I didn’t want to be so personal in public. It’s one thing writing to the anonymous 11 strangers who stop by on any given day, hoping that something I say helps one of them or makes one of them either feel a bit better or at least a bit less alone on their own journey. It is something else entirely when the audience grows and starts talking to me.

On good days, I struggle with the good comments. Being admired, wished well, told I’m an inspiration is uncomfortable territory. I’m the kind of person who brushes off praise and compliments. The psychologist who diagnosed me with depression when I was 12 said one useful thing to me – when someone pays you a compliment, whether you think its justified or not, smile and say thank you and leave it at that. It was the best social skill I ever learned. Smile, “thank you”, silence. I’m often told that I’m an inspiration. Nobody really wants to be ‘an inspiration’, it lies a bit too close to pity for comfort. I lead a pretty dreary life, I don’t inspire, most of the time I sit in a corner and complain how much pain I’m in and how nothing ever really helps. That’s not inspirational. Medical queries are a quagmire.Negative comments are difficult to deal with. Is it valid criticism? Should I pay attention or even read it?

The more I wrote, the more people started to read what I wrote. I got a little stage fright. I think I’m over it or at least ready to get over that now.

Three: Fear

I was worried about the impact of what I say might have on my benefits and support. I have had quite a few traumatic experiences in my life, but none have been as persistent, stressful and downright depressing as dealing with the benefit and care system in this country.

I have been accused of faking it, more than once, I have been required to strip naked, shower and get dressed whilst being observed by no less than three or four professionals at the time, more than once. I have been reported for parental neglect because my daughter subluxed her ankle when she was learning how to walk in front of a Continuous Health Care assessor who felt that she was in more pain than a baby should be. Why yes, I totally agree.Said professional, also didn’t notice my husband giving her a snack, a meal and a bottle during her multiple hour visit and yes, said professional also felt that we were not entitled to CHC care and should be reassessed immediately.

Other people sit in judgement of my life, my health, my disability, every penny I have and in many ways, we live in constant doubt and fear, wondering when someone who knows nothing about us, will decide we weren’t entitled to housing benefit (why hello, over occupancy tax), income support (here comes the annual carer assessment that refuses to acknowledge that a year old with EDS, Coeliacs and asthma needs more care than the average 2-year-old), DLA (it took years to receive a lifetime high rate DLA award which is now being stripped away across the country and we will have to start proving from scratch again that yes, multiple interacting chronic incurable health conditions are actually pretty disabling) etc.

We are luckier than most. We have a house, even though we’ve lived here for 16 months without disability adaptions, it’s a house with a roof and doors and central heating and I am grateful for it. I do have DLA and because of it, we do have a car now that will transport my electric wheelchair. I have an electric wheelchair, others do not. I have 44 hours a week of direct payments for parental support that we use to employ a weekly cleaner, a gardener to mow the massive lawn that came with the house the council OT recommended and assigned to us, nursery for 12 hours a week and a recent addition, a carer/nanny to help the little one for 19 hours a week and that’s that budget spent. I have a husband who also doubles up as father and carer-for-two, despite suffering (and yes, suffering is most definitely the write word here) from debilitating chronic cluster headaches, chronic pain due to past motorcycle accidents, a few other neurological issues persisting after a traumatic brain injury when his helmet malfunctioned and oh yes, Aspergers which we never mention or talk about because a) he is high functioning and so of course it’s irrelevant and b) it’s not the kind of sociably acceptable condition that his ‘headaches’ are.

On benefits, our livelihood is determined by other people who sit in judgement. Every day is filled with phone calls and meetings and appointments with people who are all under pressure to cut costs. In the past, benefits were hard enough, every conversation was about a judgement call and the overwhelming question in the air was always “Do we ‘qualify’?”. Now, with the added pressure on council and NHS staff, that question has become “Is there any way we can make it so you don’t qualify? Or, if you’re lucky, what is the smallest level of support we can provide you with?”

I’m tired of being afraid. Afraid of loosing our meagre monthly income, afraid of loosing my wheelchair that took five years of being virtually housebound to get, afraid of loosing our car and going back to relying on the headache that is public transport. Afraid of losing the little support we have to take care of a lovely but sick and very active toddler. Afraid of being judged and criticised and attacked because “you don’t look sick”.

I initially started this blog because I was asked so many times “what’s it like? The nature of the question has changed over the years: “What’s it like to have a migraine?”, “What’s it like to stop breathing?”, “What’s it like to have a seizure?”, “What’s it like to dislocate a joint?”, “What’s it like to use a wheelchair?”, “What’s it like to have a daughter with a disability?”, “What it’s like to play World of Warcraft with dislocating joints?” At first, I tried to answer those with short snippets from my life and in particular my life with chronic illness and disability. I’ve written about a lot of my life, I’ve also left out a lot, some things are just too depressing to dwell on. And now I’m ready to write some more. Those eleven people who landed at this URL on any given day, you can come back now. Also, the six hundred that followed.

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. (Abraham Lincoln)

I guess there is something to be said about wanting to make someone else feel better and if I was comfortable writing for 11 people a day in the hopes that just one will tap away with a smile or one happier  thought, I should be ecstatic that the odds are even bigger of that happening when more visitors stop by. So visitors, come on by. And leave comments, also I’m on twitter @liliellis

Hidden costs of game subscription fees

I play a lot of Indie and iPad games and at the moment I also play a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I have two monthly subscriptions – an Xbox Live and a SWTOR subscription. I don’t think I need both.

My rule in the past has always been one monthly fee; but I really enjoy coop and it soon became just two and now Chris really enjoys playing with me and now we have four, no five.

I would count our fast-speed internet connection as a monthly fee. If we didn’t game and game online, our contract would be tiny. We use our connection for downloading games and gaming content, 2 online gaming devices connected simultaneously and a conference call or two. If we didn’t game, I wouldn’t even notice if we switched to 3G on our phones instead.

For XBLA we have a monthly subscription for Chris which we activate when a good coop game comes out. I have an annual subscription and regret that choice dearly. It is cheaper if you play every month, which I used to do; but I only play one multiplayer and at the moment and that’s Star Wars on the PC.

This year’s coop will be PC based: Star Wars, Torchlight 2, Diablo III, please let the Blizzcon cancellation mean that I get Diablo III in 2012. My next Xbox coop title will probably be Halo 4 in the fall; I might try a few minutes of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, but I don’t enjoy Player vs Player anything. I suspect the next time Chris will play coop via XBLA will be… maybe Halo 4, but I wouldn’t be surprised if its not. He’ll play single player campaigns but for socializing online, he is just too much of an MMO enthusiast at heart to bother with console based coop campaigns.

That brings me to our two Star Wars: The Old Republic subscriptions. Initially, we had decided to share an account; that lasted until level, mhm, about three seconds after watching the opening cinematic. The whole point of playing an MMO is to play with your friends; if we can’t play at the same time, it looses most of the MMO fun factor; and so we made a lot of changes to get us both ingame together.

Gaming is an expensive hobby. Retail games are £38 at release, downloadables are cheaper, but the money flows out quickly as there is just so many of them that just look so interesting. The kit can be expensive – game pads, keyboards, gaming mice, PC’s, new graphics card, consoles, an extra controller or two, headphones, a decent mic and there are so many interesting peripherals these days. These are the costs that I expect to pay and keep a close eye on. Monthly fees – I often forget I have them.

They’re insidious and although I begrudgingly accept them when I play a game almost daily, it annoys me that I’m never done paying for it. It makes gaming more complicated than a single purchase would and the hassle of constantly evaluating use, payment options, prices depending on those options etc steals a little bit of the fun. Do I feel strongly enough about it that I’ll change my habits?

I don’t know. Steam is free, but I often sell games after I complete them and games linked to Steam loose their resale value. I am very much enjoying Star Wars, enough so that I’m not cancelling my subscription any time soon. As for my broadband contract? I can’t imagine us not being gamers. Ever. It may be a pricey hobby, but the benefits are priceless. It’s the one place in the world where I can run and travel and fly and carry an awful lot of stuff and buy as many pairs of boots as I want. I’m not giving that up. Ever.

The cost of my PC gaming vs console gaming

I haven’t turned on my PS3 since I finished Uncharted 3 and I haven’t used my Xbox 360 for gaming much this year. With the exclusion of Trenched available on XBLA, I have been almost exclusively gaming on my PC; so much so that we’ve purchased an upgrade and reinstalled my N52te software for key mapping. Is it just me? Is it just the time of year?

I was reading an article about it yesterday. As a rule I would say that gamers play on whichever system they have access to.  I don’t know many PC-exclusive gamers, in fact, I think there’s a total of 2 people on my friends lists that do not own a console. I don’t know any console exclusive gamers, at the moment one of my friends are saving up for a gaming PC after his died a horrible death as PCs tend to do and so technically he’s exclusively console gaming, but that’s not a choice, its a temporary situation. I think gamers game across platform and usually own at least 2-3 different platforms.

When it comes to cost, I’m spending about the same on console gaming as PC gaming. My PC is more expensive than a console, but given that I have a propensity to shop for one model down on eBay at a quarter of the price a brand-new top of the range would cost me, it’s only twice the price of an Xbox. Retail PC games are about £8 cheaper at release date and Indie games compared to console downloadables are mostly a steal, particularly when you shop in Steam sales and buy bundles. Console gamers are pricier but consoles are cheaper than PCs and I think it roughly evens out in the end for me.