Thursday 21 October 2010

Turning tables.

Deep in the soul
Is the space I control
It's the one thing I can call as mine
Ben put Facetime on my macbook yesterday. I was able to call him once I figured out how to add contacts to my address book (I have an address book on this machine? Huh?) and then I connected and began to blather away, waving. He put his finger to his lips. Shhhhh. He was in a meeting. Would have been nice to hear that before I rang him to test it. A very cool addition to the experience but probably will be more useful once it moves beyond the limitations of wireless fidelity. Also hopefully the iPhone 5 will be made of rubber and clouds. Because the odds of me being able to navigate my days with an all-glass phone successfully are less than zero. Case in point, iPhone number one's untimely death in a haze of South American liquor, circa summer 2009.(Steeeeeeeeeeeve, make a phone for Bridget! Pretty please with gigabytes on top. In green too, please. I like green, but mostly I like indestructible.)

We are doing a review of tying shoes with Henry. He's pretty good. These days most of their sneakers have the stretchy laces with a locking clip at the top. Which is convenient and all but when I was a kid you had to learn to tie your shoes or risk breaking your neck. Now there is zero incentive. That's on par with children today having difficulty with money problems in math class. Simple coin addition. When do they see actual coins anymore? I have to work to remember to go to the bank machine and then pay in cash so we can get coins to take up to the general store to buy treats. Which is actually a blessing in disguise. I have moved to credit cards for large purchases and cash for everything else. It's too easy to have debit fraud and I'm doing everything I can to prevent it.

I am going to be baking our cakes from here on out. I know your vision of me as a domestic goddess must be cloudy and fading quickly but once upon a time I was a phenomenally crunchy cloth-diapering, homeschooling, scratch-baking hippie mother but now I'm just trying to be me and not some ideal that I saw once that I thought might fit. But I need to pull out the drawer where I put her and rummage around until I can grab a corner and pull her out, because the cakes here aren't all that great. I'm still looking for a good bakery but really I'm partial to simply good chocolate cake with chocolate icing so for the moment I will make them myself. Of course I can order specially made ones from any one of a number of bakeries around here but cake is an inspiration that strikes in a rumble deep within me, it needs to be an impulse purchase. But at least twice a week.

Lastly it's corn-maze weekend coming up and I am still looking for someone who can implant a GPS in me before I'm forced to swallow my blackberry in case, well, you know, in case they can't find me. To sweeten the pot I'll have a death grip on my children. Possibly we'll be able to make a human tower cheerleader-style to see our way out when the boys play the inevitable practical joke and disappear, since they can see over the corn and I can't. Then I'll accidentally throw pumpkins at them until they're a whimpering pile of suck and then we'll all head home for hot chocolate and cake, should I be able to find any.

There. That's what's in my head today. Why? New Jake is STILL talking. Even though he isn't feeling well again so I forbade him to go anywhere today, he's going to stay home and rest. At this point I know him well enough to see that he runs on air and has all kinds of energy but fails to really look after himself well enough to avoid becoming run down. He needs possibly to be stapled to the floor for a day or so and see if that renews him so that's what I'll attempt to pull off today. Failing that I have duct tape.

And Facetime, so Ben can give him a lecture face to face on what happens when one runs on fumes indefinitely.