Moving into the 21st Century

I've whined about explained my computer troubles over the past two months, and probably shouted from the rooftop mentioned that I finally gave in to the frustration and went out and bought myself a new computer. A Hewlett Packard -- which has been my computer of choice for as long as I've been buying computer (15 years!) -- purchased at Amazon. It's fast, it's got a ton of options (video game excellerator, sumthin' sumthing gigga somethin', media sumthin sumthin and more). But - here's the kicker - it's wireless. WIRE-LESS as in Yippy Skippy I am no longer chained to my desk 8 and 10 hours a day!!! Look! (holding up computer) No wires to the modem! No plug! I'm sitting out on my deck, sipping a cup of coffee, listening to the birds chirp as I type. How cool is that? I don't even need to have a mouse because it has this thingie here (pointing) that is every bit as easy to use as a mouse, but it's not one of those itty bitty buttons that I've never mastered on my husband's laptop. It's like a "pad" instead of a mouse button. I've whined boasted mentioned that I've been spending a lot of hours working on my other blog, Quilting on a Budget. With my old computer, that meant I was pretty much tied to the desk in my office. No more! I take my computer outside when Brayden is riding his bike! I put my laptop on the kitchen counter while I'm cleaning the kitchen so I can watch NASCAR races live and not miss anything! I bring my laptop into the family room and work while Jeff is watching TV. And it just occurred to me yesterday that I can even bring the computer into my quilt room and pull up patterns on the screen, rather than printing them all out! How did I live without this?? Honestly, I feel like I've moved myself into the... ummm... twenty-first century with this computer. There are far more expensive computers out there, but I am as happy as anything with the one I bought for under $600. Online reviews call it an entry-level computer, but considering how much I surf the 'net, watch YouTube videos, play around with graphics and photos, I just can't imagine what the $2400 computers have that this one doesn't. So if you happen to be still chained to your desk with a desktop computer - come have a cup o' tea with me in the 21st century! Oh wait, it's starting to rain, so we might just have to move our laptops into the kitchen.

Spread the love...

Found this video on one of my favorite blogs, It's Always Something. Inspiring. The blog and the video. Spread the love, spread the word, maybe even spread a little of your hard-earned money. I wonder if I can also send Joey the Killer Cat?

Make this clock stop - please!

When my son and daughter were small (just 21 months apart, so they were pretty much babies and toddlers at the same time), time did NOT go by quickly. They were in diapers forever. They spoke baby talk and then toddler chitter chatter forever. When you're a mom to little ones, it can feel like one day is a week long, one month a year long. Not so when you're a grandmother. Mr. B is changing, and changing fast. You almost can't see the "baby" in his face anymore -- you now see a little boy. (Ha! It makes me tear up to look at this picture! Silly Umma.) This photo was taken about two weeks ago, PRE summer haircut! And here's Mr. B yesterday (POST summer haircut - I had them leave the curls on top!). By the way, he's sitting in front of a cat-themed wallhanging and pillow that had just arrived in the mail from Robert Kaufmann fabrics. How cute is that? Apparently this very wallhanging and pillow were in an issue of Fons & Porter's quilting magazine last year. Mr. B's interests are also changing. Although he still loves playing with his cars, he is now all about being outside and riding his bike (yesterday I caught him riding down the driveway with his feet up on the handlebars! yikes! Should I put the local ER's on alert?), playing any kind of sports - golf, soccer, baseball. He is still showing a real interest in playing the guitar. Yesterday he sang Jeff and I the alphabet song while accompanying himself on the guitar. Uncle Jeff, we need you! Conversations with Mr. B have totally changed as well. Yesterday I picked him up at his house and gave him the GPS to tell me how to get back to my house (just for because it was fun and we've been talking and learning about maps lately, so it was good practice for him), and the GPS took us on a different road than the one we normally go on. When we finally got back to the main road we both knew, an excited voice from the car seat in the back pipes up and says, "Boy, Umma, I never been on THAT road before. Have you? When we got to that stop sign I said WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT ROAD! because I've never been on THAT road before, have you?" LOL And his sense of humor is maturing rapidly. At a yard sale last week I picked up a very cute wooden wheelbarrow that's only about 7 inches long x 3 inches high. I had it on the kitchen table when Mr. B was here yesterday, and he spotted it right away. "What's this, Umma?" Before I could answer he said, "It's a wheelbarrow?" I said yes, and then I said, straight-faced, that it was Joey's (the killer cat) wheelbarrow. Brayden thought that was SO funny, and then added, "But he can't use it yet because he can't find one of his work gloves." LOL Oh no - they're not going to make me do yard work again, are they?

On being Spontaneous…

It all started when Jeff and I sat down Wednesday night and watched a show on PBS about a mother and daughter taking a road trip from Chicago to California via Route 66. This is something Jeff and I have always talked about doing, but haven’t… yet. As the show ended, Jeff said, “Let’s take a road trip!” When asked where we were going, he said, “I don’t know… let’s be spontaneous and just go.” He decided we would leave Thursday morning and not come back until “we feel like it – or Monday, whichever comes first.” The first thing that occurs to me, of course, is that I must make a list of what to pack. I can be spontaneous – as long as I can plan all this spontaneity that’s going to happen…

So the plan is, no plan. We will get up on Thursday morning, pack (and oh  yea, Jeff’s new deal is we must both be able to fit our clothes in one small carryon suitcase… harumph), and leave for regions unknown. Except Jeff gets on the computer and decides we are heading to the general area of Richmond, IN because they have “Antique Alley” and antiquing is something we both enjoy. We go to bed Wednesday evening feeling quite pleased with all the spontaneity we’re about to imbibe in.

First thing Thursday morning the phone rings – Mr. B is sick and can I babysit? OK, spontaneity postponed until Friday. Life gets in the way of spontaneity – we all know that.

Friday morning arrives and we sleep in later than expected, not getting up until around 8am. That’s fine – we’re spontaneous – there was no plan to leave at a certain time. I squirrel myself away in the bathroom and secretly make up a list of what to pack. He’ll thank me when he has a headache and needs the Advil I remembered, or has heartburn and needs the Rolaids from my list, or if we have a major car accident and I whip a first aid kit out of the trunk. Oh yeah, he’ll thank me. And he’ll thank me when we arrive at a smelly hotel room and I just happen to have a scented candle with me – and he’ll thank me first thing in the morning when our coffee pot, cups, sweet n’low and Cremora are sitting there ready to prepare him for the day. He’ll thank me!

List complete, items packed, the trunk mysteriously much fuller than Jeff’s anticipated carryon suitcase, GPS routes in place and charged waiting in the front seat – hi ho hi ho, off to the land of spontaneous we go. Who said we can’t be spontaneous?!

First, though, we have to stop at the drug store for sunscreen and a battery for my camera, at the bank for some cash, the gas station to fill up, and, oh yeah, we have to drive by the library to drop off the DVD’s that are due tomorrow in case we don’t get back from our Trip of Spontaneity – no late charges for me, thank you. OK, so NOW we’re ready for our spontaneous experience.

Three miles from home, following the GPS route I’d programmed in to head us toward Richmond, Indiana (the spontaneous part, I explain to Jeff, comes with my programming it for “least use of highways” – back roads are the essence of being spontaneous!), we’re driving down the highway – yeah, I did say highway – Jeff decided to bypass the GPS instructions just to get us around high traffic city stuff – but hey, ignoring the GPS can be spontaneous, can’t it?), we’re travelling at 65 mph (OK, 76 mph, but who’s casting side-glances at the speedometer and gripping the door handle? Not me! Oh no, I never do that…) and we drive up behind a big gravel truck – which is spewing out boulders all over the road. OK, not boulders, gravel – but when they rained down on the car and TWO came in my window and hit me in the head – it FELT like boulders! OUCH! I yell. And as Jeff pulls around the truck to pass it, I roll my window down the rest of the way and angrily gesture at the truck driver that he’s putting our very lives (and car paint) in danger by raining rocks down upon cars – and watch in surprise as the truck pulls over to the side of the road. Wow. I can gesture pretty darn good, evidently. And everyone who was driving on that road behind us can thank ME for the fact that the sniper of a truck driver shooting people with gravel pulled over and, hopefully, fixed the cover on his truck load.

Back to being spontaneous. With or without a concussion.

Ten miles from home we come into a small town that is having a community yard sale. Jeff stops at every sale. He finds several new additions to his “I want one of everything in the world” collection. The trunk gets fuller. We get back on the road. We arrive in Richmond, IN at around 2:00pm.  We head to the “National Road” Welcome Center and ply ourselves with brochures (which, by the way, I had already printed out from the Internet and had in a file folder in the car), and, now that we’re here and open for some serious spontaneity, can’t decide on anything to do. “I thought you wanted to go to Antique Alley?” I ask Jeff. “Naahhh.. I bought enough stuff at the yard sales.” We look through brochures and folders and print-outs and more brochures and maps… “Let’s go see this Madonna of the Prairie statue,” I suggest. “Let’s go look at this Whitewater Gorge,” Jeff says. Oh yeah, we’re being spontaneous now! We agree to do both. Back down the “National Road” (which is nothing more than a very busy small city street with stop lights every two blocks), looking for the statue first. “There it is!” says Jeff, pointing to a statue across the street – a street he decides is too busy to cut across so I can actually get up close and personal with the statue. “You saw it, right?” Sigh… (The photo here was found on the internet.) OK, so let’s just head to the gorge now. The gorge has a street address?? The gorge is on this busy street? That doesn’t make sense. We drive several miles and see no gorge. We turn around and come back the same road and finally find the address and turn into a park. No gorge signs. We drive around and around until we finally come to the end of the park where a big sign stands “Trail closed.” Okie dokie, no gorge sighting today. The photo here is also from the Internet! (We did, however, find a great playground that we want to bring Mr. B to – the next time we’re being spontaneous we’ll bring him along. How to Be Spontaneous is a good life lesson to teach a 3 year old.)

Now what? We decide to venture to an Amish Cheese Shop on the outskirts of town. We’ve been to Amish Cheese shops in mid-Ohio and enjoyed the tours (and samples) thoroughly. Let’s do that! Off we go. Fifteen miles down the same road we have now travelled three times. We arrive at the Amish Cheese shop. Not quite what we had in mind. Unlike the enormous farms complete with cheese-making tours and pretty Amish ladies in bonnets and long skirts pleasantly cutting  cheese samples, this store is a one-room renovated gas station with samples so teeny you can’t stab them with the delegated toothpicks. I buy a tiny wedge of blue cheese (at $13 a pound, a tiny wedge will need to go a very long way), and we’re back on the road.

Now what? “Let’s just go check out Antique Alley… maybe you’ll feel like going once you see it,” I suggest. So we go back 12 of the 15 miles of road we’ve now travelled four times, and can’t find Antique Alley. We find one small antique store and stop – and are politely informed the store closes at 5pm – it’s now 4:45. Antiquing under pressure. Where’s the spontaneity in that? We don’t buy anything and get back in the car.

We get into that “What do YOU want to do – Oh, whatever YOU want to do” thing, like two five year olds. Finally, I say what we are both thinking.

Talk about spontaneity! Here we are all packed (and OK, over-packed) for our big night or two of adventure, and we SPONTENSOULY decide to travel the hour’s drive (which took us six hours to make the first time)… and go home.  I’m still thriving in all this spontaneity (and still a bit concussed from the attack of the highway sniper), and enthusiastically announce, “OK, but I’m NOT cooking tonight!”.

“Let’s order pizza and have it delivered!” responds Jeff.

Now you can’t tell me that’s not spontaneous!