Mindfulness. For Smart Phone Usage.

While my phone wasn't working, I got pretty good at not staring at it all the time.  But as soon as I got a new one, I went into overdrive catching up on all my favorite websites that I'd been missing out on.  And then I realized that I was turning into a zombie.

So I've been working on cutting back.  (Again.  Is it just me, or do I blog about this every other week???)  It's been interesting, because I consider myself to be a fairly hands-off parent: I don't really get down on the floor and play with my kids-- mostly because I find it mind-numbingly boring (sorry, kids!  I still love you!!!).  But also because I think they're supposed to play without my help.  I mean, half the reason I I HAD a bunch of kids was so they could all play together!  Plus, my own mom wasn't big into playing with us, and I think she was a wonderful mother, so I'm fine with following her lead.

However, as I smugly congratulated myself for my laid back parenting style, I realized that I had slipped into a bad habit of ignoring my kids because I was staring at my phone.  And that is most certainly NOT how my mother parented me!  Along those lines, I also figured out that there's a very different level of annoyance when I'm interrupted while reading a book, versus when I'm trying to scroll down through an article (or blog or facebook or click through several pages of clickbait), and I have no idea where the ending is or when I'll ever "finish" whatever it is I'm looking at.  I feel more annoyed at the interruption, and I tend to put my kids off longer, which means they feel more annoyed with me, too.  It creates bad feelings all around.


So I'm trying to not stare at my phone while my kids are around.  Staring at it when they're napping or sleeping is still okay-- I don't think I'm ready to completely give up my phone.  And of course, some day when they're all in school I'll have to come up with new rules.  But I think this works for now.

I told my sister all my thoughts about this, and she pointed out that most websites are designed to keep you reading as long as possible.  Really, the people who design them try to make them addictive.  That makes sense, of course-- the more I stay clicking around on their website, the more advertising money they're getting.  But it really made me stop and think about how I want to be spending my time.

The first day I tried to stay off my phone, I made a list on paper of things to do.  And I got almost all of them done!  Which, of course, brought into clearer focus just how much time I was wasting each day staring mindlessly at my phone.  I've also found myself getting a lot more reading done, which makes me happier.

But the whole thing bugs me.  I keep thinking, Man, how did I let myself go so far?  It's kind of horrifying when I think about it.

But the point is, I'm trying to do better.  My Dad used to talk about how when you're driving a car, you make little course adjustments along the way-- and how it's easier to steer back into the middle of the lane before you're in the ditch.  I find myself doing that with parenting-- and really, with life in general-- all the time.  Trying to be aware how I'm going astray, and then trying to get back on track.

This is yet another one of those times.

And now, my kids are in bed!  Time to get caught up on the Daily Wire!  ;) 

Okay, okay, I'm kidding-- I'm actually going to get back to reading Fablehaven.  Really!

Sometimes I am So Stupid

So I think you all know that I work with the Young Women in my ward. This ward is different from my previous ward (or maybe the rules have changed? I don't know) in that we're allowed to do fundraising.  While I appreciate that this can be really helpful for people, I don't know the first thing about stuff like that.

Last year, I was supposed to plan a fundraiser for the cub scouts, and I suggested a yard sale.  This seemed like the easiest thing to do, since my neighborhood organizes a yard sale every 6 months.  I figured that meant the advertising and posters and stuff were taken care of, and that was half the work, right?  But then I got released from cub scouts and put into Young Women.  I was still trying to be supportive, until we discovered that the yard sale was scheduled for the same day as the father-son campout.  And the new cub scout committee chair suggested that the young women could run the yard sale FOR the scouts!  I did everything but laugh in his face to keep that from happening.  In the end, the scouts ran it themselves on a day they were around.  Which happened to be a day that we were out of town.  So I didn't really do anything, and they didn't make much money, but they tried.  And that was the end of that.

Until this year, when the Young Women needed to raise money for their camp.  And I suggested the same thing, since I never actually did it.

And it turns out that yard sales are a LOT more work than just making signs and advertising.  We collected stuff from the ward for weeks, and the ward was wonderful about donating lots of stuff.  But that also meant that we had to store all that stuff.  And then we had to sort all that stuff.  And it was SO. MUCH. WORK.

We'd also decided to have a bake sale, so in addition to making my living room look like it belonged on Hoarders (and completely taking over my garage), I was also busy making cookies and brownies (and maybe doing a lot of sampling along the way).  And, we were going to have to get up so early to get set up, that everyone decided to just spend the night at my house, so I was also cleaning the whole house (because my downstairs bathroom is where bugs go to die, so knowing people would want to use that shower meant I had to be downstairs scrubbing) and trying to plan dinner and breakfast for everyone.  I'd set aside all of Friday for sorting yard sale items, but the other leaders had other plans and never really managed to be available until afternoon when all my kids were home and I had my hands full with them.  And then Craig's school play was happening that same night and we'd planned to bring Bentley and Kendra (they did Mary Poppins and it was wonderful!).  So I left with leaders sorting through things and hoped that some of the girls would actually show up.

Mary Poppins was a super long play that didn't begin until 8pm, so we got home around 11:30.  And my driveway had been transformed-- leaders, girls, and a few extra people from the ward who took pity on us were all busy placing things on the 12 tables that had been set up.  And my garage was STILL full of clothing!  They worked until midnight, went to bed, and then we all got up at 4am to get some breakfast and get back to work.  People began showing up around 6:30.  And we were done selling stuff around noon.  And then we needed to haul everything that was still left to Goodwill and the dump, and bring the tables back to the church.  We finally finished everything around 4:30, giving me just enough time to shower and tidy up the house before Kendra's very belated birthday party.  Because, yup!-- I scheduled those for the same day!

This picture was taken several hours in, so a lot had been sold.  And you can't even see the racks of clothing hanging in the garage.

I manned the cash.  And the bake sale.  And no, I didn't look that grumpy the entire time!

Saige takes a few minutes to sit in the shade and read to Camille

Oh, and did I mention that it was 90+ degrees that day?

Because it was.

I guess I should be glad it didn't rain and postpone everything (and keep the junk living at my house).  But still!  90+ degrees!!!!!!


Anyway, the good news is that it was a raging success.  The girls made more than enough to cover all their camp expenses, and even had a little left over for high adventure.  So I'm glad for that.  But whew, that was a lot of work.



This last Tuesday, two of the girls were asking if we could do another fundraiser.  They would like to have a car wash now.  I shouldn't (but I will anyway) point out that these girls spent the least amount of time at the yard sale-- one could only come for a few hours because she was also busy decorating for prom, the other was sick and didn't come at all.  Not their fault, but still.  I later pulled the Young Women's leader aside and told her that I was done with fundraisers for the year.  Those girls are more than welcome to hold a car wash if they so desire, but I will not be there.

I guess I learned something from all this.

Ratatouille

Craig is gone a lot more evenings now than he was when he was a teacher.  This isn't the end of the world and sometimes I enjoy a little bit of TV time where I can watch whatever I want (not that Craig is so domineering he won't ever let me choose what we watch, but I do feel weirdly guilty when he sleeps through the show I pick).  But, not having Craig here does make dinner time even more challenging.

I used to just use his absence as an excuse to make something really easy for dinner-- Eggo waffles, frozen pizza, macaroni & cheese?  Coming right up!

But ever since spring break, we've been trying to eat healthy (ugh)(more on that some other day, if I ever decide to really bore you) and I can't seem to figure out any way to justify waffles as "healthy."  So this has made dinner infinitely more difficult.  Sometimes I just make a huge salad for me and mac'n'cheese for the kids.  Other days I make something healthy and try to bribe them to eat it.  It all varies depending on my mood and how much energy I have that day and how I think the kids might feel about whatever I'll be making.  (Spoiler alert: Ryder will ALWAYS hate it.  Bentley and Kendra will usually be good sports about.  Colton will only eat bread for dinner ever.  And Camille is my wild card who may or may not like anything.  The girl love LOVES broccoli and tomatoes; anything else is hit or miss.)

Last week I made ratatouille for the first time, and I have to say, I was pretty proud of myself.  I mean, I'm not ready to be a TV chef or anything (and it turns out that the eggplants I bought were twice the size in diameter as my squash, so I couldn't line everything up perfectly like they do in the pretty pictures on food blogs), but despite all that, it still looked very pretty!

Clearly I need one of those mandolin choppers or something...

Then, sneaky mommy that I am, I tried to drum up support for this meal by having them watch the Pixar cartoon by the same name!

I mean, good try, right? Unfortunately, it was met with this reaction:

He'd been absolutely howling, but shut his mouth when he realized I was taking his picture.  Then he went into hysterics over the picture and sobbed in the other room for five minutes before returning to the table and actually eating his food.  Go figure.

All this to say trying to get my kids to eat healthy food is a pain.  And I should probably stick to waffles.  But dang, if it wasn't actually fun to make!

However, even I am finally going to admit to myself: I hate eggplant.  I think I'm done with that vegetable.

More on Colton's Speech

Time for an update on Colton! 

Remember how it cost $600 to get a speech evaluation and I didn't know what to do about his stuttering?  Shortly after that, I remembered that a friend from church had a daughter in speech therapy (this little girl doesn't stutter, she just doesn't say anything that anyone can understand).  So I asked my friend how she'd gone about doing this and she said, "Just have the schools do the evaluation.  It's all free then."

WHAT????

How had I not known about this???

Thank goodness she told me before I shelled out that $600 for it!!!  I made phone calls, found the right person, set up an initial appointment where they just talk to me to find out why I think there's a problem.  Then this lady-- her name is Blake and she's tall and blonde and pretty and I always want to call her Blake Lively, but I think it's actually Blake Walter or something-- came to our home and spent an hour hanging out with Colton and playing games with him and taking notes on how he speaks.  I was delighted with how the evaluation went-- that morning Colton hadn't been stuttering at all and I was worried she wouldn't believe me or something (kinda like how your car NEVER makes that weird noise for the mechanic!) but after the full hour was up, I felt like she'd gotten a really good idea of how he talks.  Also, she came during spring break, so most of my kids were home and I was afraid she wouldn't hear Colton at all.  But Ryder ended up going to a friend's house, and the other kids were VERY well behaved and helpful for the whole thing. 

Within a week she sent me her report, including her personal recommendation that he receive services and set up our next meeting to decide if he would actually receive services.  (All this stuff is government regulated so there are a TON of bureaucratic steps to the process-- fortunately we've been through it all getting speech therapy for Bentley, and Craig had learned about all this in grad school AND we've worked with great, competent people, so everything has gone very smoothly.  I imagine if any of those factors didn't play into it, this could be a real nightmare.)  Craig was able to attend that meeting, too, so we all sat around a big table while they went over the report with us and explained that Colton falls right in the middle of "moderate stuttering"-- it's not severe, but it's definitely there.  Blake explained that she recommended therapy but that it was a group decision and then asked what we thought.

Well, that seemed sort of silly.  I mean, why would I have gone through this whole process if I wasn't interested in him getting therapy?  But I didn't want to appear too eager, either, so I asked a few questions-- what does speech therapy for a 4-year-old entail? is it effective?-- and when I was assured that it is very effective I just said, "Well, yeah, I think we should do this."  And everyone looked VERY relieved.

I found out later from Craig that it actually isn't all that uncommon for people to refuse services for their children, but that's usually for kids whose teachers are recommending they be evaluated.  So I can see how that might have a very different feel to the whole process.

I had one last meeting with Blake to sign all the paperwork, and then the speech therapist at my kids' school emailed me to set up his first appointment, which was on Wednesday!

Colton was thrilled.  He's been dying to go to school since September, so this was a dream come true.  I had to carefully correct some of the wrong ideas he had about it, though-- like when he said he couldn't wait to ride the school bus, and when he told me that his teacher would make him breakfast (???).  But mostly he was just happy as could be about the whole thing.  He bounced all over the office while we waited for his teacher, and when she brought him back a half hour later he bounced all the way back to the car.

I'm glad we finally got through this whole process.  And I'm glad he'll be getting some help for his stutter.  And I'm glad my little boy is so happy to finally be going to school! 

A Slow, Painful Death

Back in October, the touchscreen on my phone suddenly stopped working.  Sometimes you'd have to push each button twice for it to register, sometimes you'd have to turn the phone off and on a couple times.  And sometimes nothing could convince it to work.  (I'd try to turn it off, since that usually fixes everything, but you can't swipe it to power off if it's not recognizing your touch at all, so the only solution was to wait until the battery died.)

Yeah, try setting up an appointment with the Apple Store with your phone's touchscreen not working-- first you can't even push the buttons to indicate what sort of help you need, and then if you do finally get there, the computer will ask for your the id numbers on your phone and good luck getting that page opened!  I did finally get a person to help me, and they set up an appointment for me.  But it was two weeks away (and the location is an hour away!) and by the time it was time for my appointment, my phone had started working just fine again!  So I didn't go.

I'd made two changes with how I handled my phone that I hoped were what fixed it-- I stopped carrying it in my back pocket (I read somewhere that this could bend the phone and break it) and I stopped keeping it in the bathroom with me if I was using hairspray, just in case that was sticking to the screen and messing it up.

And it worked!  I guess?  For several months my phone mostly worked fine!  Until one day it didn't any more.  It got more and more erratic-- the day we went to the art museum over Spring Break, Craig tried to send someone a text from my phone and it was having an "off" day and he was like, "This is AWFUL.  What is wrong with your phone???  We need to get you a new one."  So I'd start looking, and then it would be fine again and I'd go back to not worrying about it.

Then one day the screen in the background started dancing.  Every time I turned it on, that background picture would just wiggle around like it had picked up a stellar beat and just had to move to the rhythm.  The first time I saw it I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but it continued to do it all day long, until I finally shut it off.  At least that meant I had plenty of time to show Craig and prove that I wasn't crazy or making this up.

AND THEN, it began doing this really nutty thing where it would push buttons ALL BY ITSELF.  My phone had become autonomous!  It was like some weird sci-fi story where the computer takes over (what is that, 2001: A Space Odyssey?).  Except my phone was absolutely bonkers.  I'd try and open a website and it would flip back and forth between several different sites, faster than any of them could load.  (Yes, once it managed to open a porn site.  Awesome.)  Even from the home screen, it would open up my calendar or my notes when all I wanted to do was read a new text.  I once was trying to find someone's contact information and it was this close to trying to call some guy I knew in high school (I only have his contact info at all because we're friends on facebook and that somehow synced with my phone and added everyone as contacts).  While I was talking with my sisters it would try to facetime with them.  Once when I was showing this new trick to the girls in YW it took a picture of my shoe and tried to put it on facebook, all without me touching a thing.  (The girls agreed that it was completely creepy.)  And just today it almost posted an article I was reading about Trump onto my facebook timeline (I can't imagine how that would have gone down-- I never managed to read the article, so I have no idea if I even agreed with it or not!).

Clearly, this was a problem.  And while I could often be fast enough to read texts sent to me, responding was impossible while my phone was punching buttons of its own free will.  And when it wasn't playing this trick on me, it would go back to be non-responsive.

It turns out that both problems were annoying in their own very unique ways.

So I've finally called it quits.  I was hoping to finish out my contract on this phone (in June), but I decided it was worth it to pay the $43 I still owed and just get a new phone already.

It irritates me, because I don't care a bit about updating the technology-- I'm absolutely fine with what my phone's capabilities (okay, fine-- I wouldn't mind having more storage), but I just can't handle this level of quirkiness any more.

We're done, phone.  My new iPhone 6S, with 128 gigs, arrived today.

Good riddance.