Moving Day
Filed under: The Blog Author:
The moving vans have come and gone, and MotherBunker is outta here. Come visit over at the new place, http://motherbunkerblog.com. And pardon the dust while I settle in ...
I do. I really do want to be a geek. Remember, back in the days of leg warmers and Aqua Net, when being in the know about computers meant you were kind of a nerd (and not the good kind, either -- think dudes from Weird Science)? Those were the days when the coolest possessions you could have were the oversized sweater with neon-colored block patterns and the latest Poison CD. Now, being a geek is all the rage. Hundreds of geeks line up outside Apple stores to get the latest iPhone -- normal people, like you and me, who don't study quantum physics. (Wait -- I'm not the only one not studying quantum physics, am I?) And speaking of that, CBS has "The Big Bang Theory," which proves that not knowing what the hell a genius is talking about can be really, really funny.
Be a nerd ... all the cool kids are doing it.
Sadly, it has come to my attention that I have a long way to go before reaching geekdom. Yes, it's true: I was once the only chick in the theater for Star Trek: Nemesis, but I was on a date with the nerd that I married, so I'm not sure that counts. Every day, I learn something new that makes me feel like I'm the only kid at school without a Swatch watch. (And believe you me, you don't want to be the only mid-1980s kid at school without a Swatch watch ... or shoulder pads, for that matter.) I was watching "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" this week -- which, particularly whenever the blond cheerleader and her family is on, is absolutely awful (but yes, I watch it anyway) -- and they threw out this little tidbit of info from a high school freshman on the show: "Nobody e-mails amymore." Apparently, e-mail is, like, so yesterday. So my main mode of electronic communication is now as current as the bag phone.
I also read in Wired that Twittering is the new blogging. I just started this site in December, and I'm already outmoded? It's taken me this long just to figure out what an RSS reader is. I am amazed by the people who find the time and patience to Twitter, and I can almost guarantee you I'll never be one of them. Why? Because I waste my free time watching crap shows like "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." (Although, in fairness, I am reading Unaccustomed Earth right now, by Jhumpa Lahiri, whose writing I love ... so I don't actually waste all of my free time.)
I do think I should get geek bonus points for reading Wired, but then again, that, too, is because the husband subscribes. And he is, as previously mentioned, something of a nerd. I literally just took his new laptop from the FedEx guy ... a new laptop that was delivered directly from Shanghai, I kid you not. And he called me five minutes after it hit the doorstep to ask me if, as his sources had told him, his package had been delivered to "reception/front desk." (How great is that? I'm the front desk now.) He even ordered my engagement ring online -- which, to the untrained eye, might seem impersonal, but in this case is actually the highest compliment.
But I digress ...
I never thought I'd wind up so beyond of the realm of tech trends that my 13-year-old niece would have a better cell phone than me. I've been reading Randy's copy of Geekipedia to find out just how much I don't know. I'm only on the A's, and I'm already out of my league. Take your J.J. Abrams, for example. Creator of "Lost"? Yeah, that guy. Remember the "sat phone" that the Losties kept calling each other and the bad guys and the boat on? The Geekipedia article on Abrams says: "viewers may have thought that the sight of a KRZR — a Motorola phone marketed two years after the story was supposed to have taken place — constituted a continuity error. Nope. It was a tip-off to season three's time-bending finale." OK, um ... you have to be a special sort of viewer to 1) know the model number of that phone and 2) know the year that it was manufactured, vis a vis the year in which "Lost" takes place. If this is the kind of stuff you have to know to be a cool geek, I've got a really long way to go.
But, you have to start somewhere. There have always been a few bugs with this blog's layout, a lot of things I have to work around, a lot of tweaking that's beyond my understanding. So beginning Monday, MotherBunker is moving to self-hosted Wordpress, where I'll have a bunch more stuff to learn ... but, I think, more resources to learn it. I think the new site is slightly more geekified (that CommentLuv thing? Genius!) ... and therefore cool. You know, until I move in, anyway. That's a preview of my new place above; and on Monday, I'll post a forwarding address here, so that all three of my readers will know where to find me :)
Be a nerd ... all the cool kids are doing it.
Sadly, it has come to my attention that I have a long way to go before reaching geekdom. Yes, it's true: I was once the only chick in the theater for Star Trek: Nemesis, but I was on a date with the nerd that I married, so I'm not sure that counts. Every day, I learn something new that makes me feel like I'm the only kid at school without a Swatch watch. (And believe you me, you don't want to be the only mid-1980s kid at school without a Swatch watch ... or shoulder pads, for that matter.) I was watching "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" this week -- which, particularly whenever the blond cheerleader and her family is on, is absolutely awful (but yes, I watch it anyway) -- and they threw out this little tidbit of info from a high school freshman on the show: "Nobody e-mails amymore." Apparently, e-mail is, like, so yesterday. So my main mode of electronic communication is now as current as the bag phone.
I also read in Wired that Twittering is the new blogging. I just started this site in December, and I'm already outmoded? It's taken me this long just to figure out what an RSS reader is. I am amazed by the people who find the time and patience to Twitter, and I can almost guarantee you I'll never be one of them. Why? Because I waste my free time watching crap shows like "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." (Although, in fairness, I am reading Unaccustomed Earth right now, by Jhumpa Lahiri, whose writing I love ... so I don't actually waste all of my free time.)
I do think I should get geek bonus points for reading Wired, but then again, that, too, is because the husband subscribes. And he is, as previously mentioned, something of a nerd. I literally just took his new laptop from the FedEx guy ... a new laptop that was delivered directly from Shanghai, I kid you not. And he called me five minutes after it hit the doorstep to ask me if, as his sources had told him, his package had been delivered to "reception/front desk." (How great is that? I'm the front desk now.) He even ordered my engagement ring online -- which, to the untrained eye, might seem impersonal, but in this case is actually the highest compliment.
But I digress ...
I never thought I'd wind up so beyond of the realm of tech trends that my 13-year-old niece would have a better cell phone than me. I've been reading Randy's copy of Geekipedia to find out just how much I don't know. I'm only on the A's, and I'm already out of my league. Take your J.J. Abrams, for example. Creator of "Lost"? Yeah, that guy. Remember the "sat phone" that the Losties kept calling each other and the bad guys and the boat on? The Geekipedia article on Abrams says: "viewers may have thought that the sight of a KRZR — a Motorola phone marketed two years after the story was supposed to have taken place — constituted a continuity error. Nope. It was a tip-off to season three's time-bending finale." OK, um ... you have to be a special sort of viewer to 1) know the model number of that phone and 2) know the year that it was manufactured, vis a vis the year in which "Lost" takes place. If this is the kind of stuff you have to know to be a cool geek, I've got a really long way to go.
But, you have to start somewhere. There have always been a few bugs with this blog's layout, a lot of things I have to work around, a lot of tweaking that's beyond my understanding. So beginning Monday, MotherBunker is moving to self-hosted Wordpress, where I'll have a bunch more stuff to learn ... but, I think, more resources to learn it. I think the new site is slightly more geekified (that CommentLuv thing? Genius!) ... and therefore cool. You know, until I move in, anyway. That's a preview of my new place above; and on Monday, I'll post a forwarding address here, so that all three of my readers will know where to find me :)
Well it's official: Cars has reached irrational levels of adoration in our home. MJ has the bug. I have the bug. Randy ... well, he still likes real cars better. And LL Cool Baby is much more into dollies. So I guess it's just MJ and me. She likes this movie so much that she even watches the deleted scenes (the ones that are just drawings, not all Pixared-out yet ... the "brown" ones, as she calls them) over and over again. I find myself telling Randy things like: "You know what line I love from this movie? The one where Sheriff asks Mater what he had told him about talking to the prisoner, and Mater says: 'To not to.'" How bad is it, people? Let's borrow a line from one of Mater's cousins to explain:
You might be obsessed with Cars if:
... at 10 p.m., when your toddler has been in bed for an hour and a half, you don't turn off the movie that has been playing all day. You, in fact, stop what you're doing twice: to watch the scene where Lightning McQueen fixes up Radiator Springs and then the one when he goes to the big race at the end.
... and you think to yourself: Man, I would have loved to have been at that race.
... while picking up a Cars book for your daughter, you buy the soundtrack for yourself.
... your kid and your husband get a boo boo in the same place, and each of them gets a Cars band aid ... Sally for her, Mater for him.
You might be obsessed with Cars if:
... at 10 p.m., when your toddler has been in bed for an hour and a half, you don't turn off the movie that has been playing all day. You, in fact, stop what you're doing twice: to watch the scene where Lightning McQueen fixes up Radiator Springs and then the one when he goes to the big race at the end.
... and you think to yourself: Man, I would have loved to have been at that race.
... while picking up a Cars book for your daughter, you buy the soundtrack for yourself.
... your kid and your husband get a boo boo in the same place, and each of them gets a Cars band aid ... Sally for her, Mater for him.
As he was leaving for work yesterday, Randy asked MJ and me what we had planned for the day.
"Oh," I said, with genuine enthusiasm, "we're going to have lots of fun ..."
He laughed. Not an "Oh, good, wish I could be there" kind of laugh, but rather a cheerful snort. A chortle, if you will. A disbelieving snicker, you might say. Now, give him his due: He had been up since 3:30 a.m. with MJ, when a fake need to use the potty turned into a need for toy cars and who knows what else. So the idea of having any sort of fun when watching this particular toddler for the next eight hours was, admittedly, not a viable notion to him. But I really did have plans for the day. Good ones.
Which is, of course, where I went wrong. Randy had plans to sleep all night, after all, and look where that got him.
So the new read-along book I wanted to do with her ended after two pages, when she figured out this was the same story she could watch in movie form on the DVD player. I used to love read-along books when I was little, so surely she would, too? Nope. Not so much. But then again, what good is a read-along when you can't read yet?
Then there were the muffins that I thought we could make together. Like any kid who hasn't yet realized how much work is involved in cooking, MJ always wants to help in the kitchen. We have a toddler cookbook by Annabel Karmel that makes this task seem like a glorious mother-child bonding moment. Witness the shiny happiness on this page:
But what MJ did instead of pouring and stirring was to make "apple boats":
... which is altogether cuter than stirring and pouring, but was not in the recipe, aka, "the plan."
The day went on like this. I had a vision of how our day might go; she had an altogether different idea -- not worse than mine, just a different interpretation. A different plan. No plan, in fact.
A lactation consultant once told me that women who demanded (or demand) excellence from themselves in the workplace are often surprised or frustrated by the ways in which they can't control the daily tasks of motherhood. It starts when you devise a birth plan that gets shot to h-e-double-hockey-sticks as your labor doesn't behave right, and continues each time you make a plan, big or small. In my workplace, there were rules and etiquette and meetings and benchmarks. In parenting, there are questions, journeys, unknowns. Being prepared doesn't mean crossing off a checklist of to-dos; it means understanding that you might just have a better time at Chick-fil-A's customer appreciation day than your kid, who actually turns out to be afraid of the main attraction: The guy dressed up in the cow costume.
In fact, if motherhood were a job you interviewed for, it would be the only occasion where "I'm a perfectionist" would be a proper response to the question "What would you say is your greatest weakness?"
As a freelance writer, I knew the steps to putting together an article. I could envision the research, the reporting, the transcribing, the brainstorming, the writing, the editing. As a mother, the best days I have are usually the ones where one random activity takes us to another one, when I don't concern myself with entertaining her so much as I let her be entertained.
Most of the time, I know this; I've learned it through months of practice. But there are days still when I have to relearn it, relinquish control, rewrite the plan, and make apple boats instead of apple muffins.
"Oh," I said, with genuine enthusiasm, "we're going to have lots of fun ..."
He laughed. Not an "Oh, good, wish I could be there" kind of laugh, but rather a cheerful snort. A chortle, if you will. A disbelieving snicker, you might say. Now, give him his due: He had been up since 3:30 a.m. with MJ, when a fake need to use the potty turned into a need for toy cars and who knows what else. So the idea of having any sort of fun when watching this particular toddler for the next eight hours was, admittedly, not a viable notion to him. But I really did have plans for the day. Good ones.
Which is, of course, where I went wrong. Randy had plans to sleep all night, after all, and look where that got him.
So the new read-along book I wanted to do with her ended after two pages, when she figured out this was the same story she could watch in movie form on the DVD player. I used to love read-along books when I was little, so surely she would, too? Nope. Not so much. But then again, what good is a read-along when you can't read yet?
Then there were the muffins that I thought we could make together. Like any kid who hasn't yet realized how much work is involved in cooking, MJ always wants to help in the kitchen. We have a toddler cookbook by Annabel Karmel that makes this task seem like a glorious mother-child bonding moment. Witness the shiny happiness on this page:
But what MJ did instead of pouring and stirring was to make "apple boats":
... which is altogether cuter than stirring and pouring, but was not in the recipe, aka, "the plan."
The day went on like this. I had a vision of how our day might go; she had an altogether different idea -- not worse than mine, just a different interpretation. A different plan. No plan, in fact.
A lactation consultant once told me that women who demanded (or demand) excellence from themselves in the workplace are often surprised or frustrated by the ways in which they can't control the daily tasks of motherhood. It starts when you devise a birth plan that gets shot to h-e-double-hockey-sticks as your labor doesn't behave right, and continues each time you make a plan, big or small. In my workplace, there were rules and etiquette and meetings and benchmarks. In parenting, there are questions, journeys, unknowns. Being prepared doesn't mean crossing off a checklist of to-dos; it means understanding that you might just have a better time at Chick-fil-A's customer appreciation day than your kid, who actually turns out to be afraid of the main attraction: The guy dressed up in the cow costume.
In fact, if motherhood were a job you interviewed for, it would be the only occasion where "I'm a perfectionist" would be a proper response to the question "What would you say is your greatest weakness?"
As a freelance writer, I knew the steps to putting together an article. I could envision the research, the reporting, the transcribing, the brainstorming, the writing, the editing. As a mother, the best days I have are usually the ones where one random activity takes us to another one, when I don't concern myself with entertaining her so much as I let her be entertained.
Most of the time, I know this; I've learned it through months of practice. But there are days still when I have to relearn it, relinquish control, rewrite the plan, and make apple boats instead of apple muffins.
