The Hypertextualization of Society

You know what I'm talking about. The teens and tweens, eyes glued to their phones, thumbs twittering about. Everywhere you go, you see it. Now, the affliction has spread to my very own house!

My older boys have long been suffering under the impression that they have a case of neglect for CPS. "Jake has an Iphone touch!" "Hunter has a Blackberry!" "You're only cool if you have the coolest phone, and I don't even have one at all!" Boo hoo.

I have been unmoved by all this whining. If my boys can't remember their lunches on a regular basis, how in the world are they going to be responsible for a small, expensive piece of telecomunications equipment? My son's mp3 player just went through the laundry. I rest my case.

If they did, indeed, ever get a cell phone, my plan was that it would be a disposable-type of jobbie with a total of 5 monthly minutes. There was a bit of a wrinkle in my plan.

I went out of town for the weekend.

Upon coming down from the mountain, like Moses, I got bad news.

In my absense, my husband had gotten my boys a cell phone. To add insult to injury, it was cooler than mine!

He had a really good reason, that didn't even involve the kids. It was a business decision, a calculated move. That didn't avert my nuclear reaction.

And it didn't phase the boys who were blissed out, dreaming and planning their future coolness.

My life has not been the same since.

Example:

I'm sitting with my kids in a booth of a restaurant. My phone beeps, I check my messages, because I get a lot of business ones these days. There is a photo of myself, taken a scant minute earlier. "You look tired."

A few minutes later, my phone beeps again. I check my phone. There is a big smiley emoticon bouncing with the message "Hi."

This goes on and on.

They have a limit of 400 messages.

Any bets on how soon they blow through these?

Forgiven

You know what this boy did today? I had a dental cleaning this morning, and didn't get around to finding a babysitter for him. I took a huge risk and brought him with me. And do you know what? He was an angel. He sat on the twirly chair and drew spaceships. He chirped and chirped to the hygienist about how he used to be two, and now he's three. How three is a 'pink' birthday, whatever that means. He told her all about Peter Pan, and how if you think happy thoughts you can fly. He sat still for a whole hour, and thoroughly charmed everyone.

I think I'll keep him after all.

Mommy Hell

This is actual footage from my cell phone at the grocery store today. Sorry for the poor quality, but it's had a bit of a journey to get to this blog. Here's a transcript: (screaming at the top of his lungs)

"AAAAAAAAAAH! I HATE YOU!!!!! I WANT THIS TO TIP OVER!"

At this point, I still thought it was funny. He's usually an angel whenever I take him anywhere, so I could appreciate a little spice. However, it got waaaaaaaaaaay worse. I've actually never had a fit like this in all my years of parenting rascally boys. I ended up having to haul him out of the cart, sit right down on the floor in the frozen food section and put him in time out. We sat there for what felt like an hour, with him shrieking about how he hated me, and how much I was hurting him. Nice. I think I've gone and lost my "Mother of the Year" award for this one.

And We Have a Winner!

Congratulations Lee, random.org chose you to be the proud owner of this quintessence of loveliness!

Send me your street address by the method of your choice: email, facebook, skywriter, whatever. Congratulations!

What These Hands hath Wrought- An Earlgirl Giveaway!

I realized this morning, that I tend to get a bit obsessive in my interests. I have equipment stored in various places all over my house for all kinds of skills. I love to sew, paint watercolors, draw, knit, blog, take pictures, cook, garden, make jewelry, etc, but I never do anything in moderation. If I knit, I knit for a month straight and then never touch it again for two years. I get on a sewing kick and sew ten skirts, then put the machine away. My husband is still waiting for all the beads he bought me two Christmases ago to be put to use.

I knitted a handful of berets as Christmas gifts this last year, and the day after Christmas, I thought to myself, "Earlgirl, what if you started knitting in January, and you just made a few hats every month. Just think of all the cool gifts you could make! You could save yourself so much stress and pressure come December!" So, for the last couple of weeks, I have been eating, sleeping, breathing knitting. And I've been having a ball! I've taken on cables and jacquard knitting (knitting with multiple colors at the same time). I love the challenge.

I'm definitely no pro, but I'm so proud!

Take a look-

I found this pattern in a knitting book, but the colors were red, white and black. I thought to myself, "Wouldn't that be perfect with a deep red, oatmeal with flecks and chocolate brown?" I knew exactly who it would be perfect for as a Christmas present too. Do you think I could keep it a surprise though? No. I'd only been done a few minutes before she'd seen it. The pattern I had was just a square, so I had to adapt it, see that star on top? That was my creation.

Yay! I love it.

I'll have ended up giving away most of my hats, so I decided to make one for my very own self. I'd done a square of knitting cables that go straight up and down, so I wanted to try making them go diagonal. There was no pattern for this one, I just made it up. See how it makes a swirl on top?

I'm never going to take this one off. Oh, and don't you love my snowflake jammies? I wonder how many times I've been seen on this blog wearing those.
Now, for the grand giveaway. One of you can be the proud owner of this baby:

I didn't know about traditional giveaways when I hit 100 posts. I was sewing skirts when I hit 200 posts. Try giving away one of those! But a hat, a hat can be done. So here you have it- I love brown, pink and yellow together. I like the tropical looking flowers. If this baby is meant to be yours, let me know.

Ghetto Beauty Tips by Earlgirl

Have you ever fretted over dull and lifeless hair? Is your regular shampoo just not working like it used to?

I have the answer for you!

Help is no farther away than your kitchen sink.

Strip away all that build-up and grime left by your favorite styling products with liquid dish soap. Just lather, rinse and repeat to have squeaky clean, shiny hair!

Just make sure your detergent doesn't have bleach.

'Cause that's a bummer. Really.

Lost.

No, this isn't about the TV show. It's about why I haven't posted in a couple of weeks.

Lost-
as in my cell phone after a weekend trip. As my husband helped me look for it, I felt like such a flake. He always has a 'place' for his. I was sure I'd left it in my purse, so after a quick search, I dumped out the contents of my purse on the dining table and did a thorough one. No luck. I looked all over. I tried calling it, no dice. Then I had a flash of memory- I saw myself turning it off, and zipping it in a little pocket of my purse I never use to keep it safe. Bingo! Earlgirl is a flake no more! Until we went to the bank.
My sweet husband set up a bank account without me, which is a problem because I do the banking, and they kinda like you to be on the account if you use it. They're sticklers that way. We were walking into the bank and he asked me, "You're sure you have your ID with you, I think I saw your wallet on the table earlier."
I did a quick scan of my purse. It wasn't there. I searched the whole house for 2 days. No wallet. No license, no recommend, no $100 in babysitting vouchers for the gym I've been squirreling away to be used at some future point. No cards, no medical ID, which is a biggie. If you're already stressed, you know how much a lost wallet will compound the problem? Last night, the blessed wallet was found. Half the contents were in Hercules' golden treasure box in his closet. The other cards were under a pile of toys I'd searched through before. All clues implicate a certain 3 year old. It's a good thing he's cute, I tell you.
Now if I could only find my keys.

Lost-
a library book I'd been searching for and enlisted the help of our friendly neighborhood library. They checked their shelves, I paid some fines, but we still couldn't find it. It was due 30 days before when I finally found it wedged between a book shelf and the wall. I turned it in, and checked to see what my fine was. Surprise, surprise! I owed them $10, and they sent it to collections. Yeah, I know. I was freaking out. The library supervisor couldn't tell me if it was an internal collections thing or real-life-destroy-your-credit collections. I needed to call a certain gal to find that out. I left no less than 12 voice mails with no response. I tell you, they were getting pretty creative too. I was about to set my messages to show tunes and sing them, or Dr. Seuss language, and pretend I'm reading them a story. It turns out, they were all out of the office, but I'm sure they were entertained by my messages. No damage to my credit either, I had 120 days to settle my fine before it did. It's a good thing too, because I was about to go "Library" on them, which is the same thing as "Postal", but quieter.

Lost- my dignity.
Have you ever been one of many guests in a home, and you have to use the bathroom, and there's this huge one inch space between the door and the acoustic-friendly tile? And it's one of those new toilet that can hardly handle any toilet paper and so you accidentally use too much because you live in a home where 'power flush' toilets are a necessity? And you plug the toilet, and you try to plunge it quietly while you can still hear conversation on the other side of the door? You're barely breathing because somehow you feel like that will lessen the "Blorp- Slosh" sound of the plunger that should be working, but it's not. Have you ever decided that letting the toilet paper dissolve on its own is a better plan than coming up to your host and whispering, "Um, I plugged your toilet. Sorry."? Me neither.

Lost- my sanity.
Have you ever obsessed about a parenting issue to such an extent that it grows and grows until it's all you can see? It's no fun, but it's easy to do. It's easy to think that by worrying, you can take the problem on yourself and solve it just by the sheer weight of how much you care. You can't, at least I can't. I realized last night that it's not that bad, and I'm already doing everything I can to help the situation. Worrying doesn't actually count as helping either. With that slap upside the head, I'm seeing the situation more clearly and I realized that it wasn't the huge, hairy deal it had become in my mind. Hooray! Sanity found.

So here's the scorecard:
Found:
Sanity
Wallet
Library book

Still Lost:
Dignity
Keys (I'll keep you posted)
Not bad for a couple of week's work, eh?