Get Off My Lawn!

R.I.P. Screen savers

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The other day it occurred to me that screen savers are a thing of the past.

They just serve no purpose anymore. Now we have “energy star compliance”, and it really is better: automatically turning off the monitor saves your screen *and* saves energy (and by energy, I mean money). Which means screen savers are something only old people care about. How sad!

I was a proud owner of the After Dark collection of screen savers (among others). You may remember them as the “flying toaster” guys.

I used to love playing with these screen savers. No joke, back then I probably changed my screen saver, or at least the settings, every few days.

These days, I am enamored with the Picasa photo screen saver. All of us in the family have been known to become entranced by seeing random old pictures from vacations, or from when the kids were younger. But it only comes on for a little bit, and then the screen shuts down. You probably only get to see 20 pictures or so before it all goes dark.

Am I the only one who is depressed about this? Screen savers used to be a conversation starter. “Wow, that thing is awesome, where’d you get it? It looks like a real fish tank/burning log/dos prompt/dog taking bites out of your screen!” Or “Oh, you’re still using scrolling marquis/one where the corners of the laser shape bounce off the edges of your screen and change color? What an out dated LOSER!”

Oh well, I guess it’s just one more thing to tell my kids about when they grow up. “Back in my day, our screens didn’t shut off! They got burned-in images if you didn’t have toasters flying all over the place! And the toasters had to fly uphill both ways!”

We used to be better parents

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I have recently become more and more eccentric in my parenting. The more crazy articles I read, the more things start to make sense to me. It occurs to me that things really were better, back in the good old days. As a society, we used to be better at parenting.

It wasn’t something that was necessarily done on purpose. It was more just a consequence of the way people’s lives were back then. Say what you want about today’s world, but we increasingly have more (material possessions, food, what have you), while doing less (less in the sense that I work at a desk job and don’t produce my own food or fix my own house, etc.). This is generally considered a good thing, but perhaps there are unintended consequences.

So this comes down to two major areas: choosing less, and giving your kids more work.

Choosing Less

The idea here is that you want to keep your kids busy, but not by over-scheduling them. Natural busyness, not a series of activities. I firmly believe that kids need time to do nothing. They need time with their parents, time to explore, time to play on their own, time to read and be quiet, and time to be bored, all of it structured by more routine. It means forgetting time-outs (which used to be our go to in times of crisis), less explaining and bargaining (this one is particularly hard for me), and less choices.

This article really resonates with me, and inspires me to try to be a better parent. We’re always busy, going from one trip to the next, debating music class vs. swimming lessons vs. dance classes. We schedule days and times to go to the park. We do it because we think our kids will enjoy these things, and they do! But it’s stressing me out, what’s it doing to the kids?

Giving Your Kids More Work

When I was growing up, my mom worked us hard, and I didn’t like it. But now I’m a hard worker. Coincidence?

The articles explain the why and the how. The thing is, our kids love to do play “work”, or even do real work. They love to do dishes, put their babies to bed, help unload the dishwasher, or set the table. They pretend in the play kitchen, and they always love to help cook (which is something I actually used to do more of, and haven’t been lately, shame on me). They love these things! Evie will actually cry if you set the table without her. I don’t think this is that unusual; I think kids like to pretend to do the things they see adults doing. Kids like to imitate work, and that is good for them. So why do we try to curb this natural impulse?

Well, the reason why is because it’s hard. It requires an immense amount of patience. I guess the key is to not look at it as getting things done, because you’ll just get frustrated that it’s taking too long or not being done correctly. This is where I tend to get frustrated. It’s easier just to say, “I’ll do it myself.” But when you look at the big picture, isn’t a little frustration worth it if it teaches your children life lessons?

I’m not ready to move out to a farm and live off the land just yet, but I’m getting there. I’m not totally Amish. But then again, I don’t have a texting plan, so how far off am I really?

A Very Thoughtful Birthday Present

/ Shane / 4 Comments

We have been on the warpath lately about homemade gifts, and so far, everybody has risen to the occasion. Since we made our decree, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the results! Yes, it is very difficult, but the gifts have really been amazing. And people have really come up with some amazing ideas, including people who thought they had nothing to offer in the homemade gift arena.

So I wanted to talk about one such gift, my mom’s present to Evie for her birthday. For those of you who do not know my mom, she is somewhat obsessed with the Wizard of Oz (along with the rest of her family…Aunt Emily and Aunt Laurie proved they have no problem reciting the script word for word!) And Evie is no slouch in this arena either, given her love of Wicked and the way she orchestrated a Wizard of Oz play for Oliver’s birthday.

So my mom’s present to Evie was a big box of Wizard of Oz dress up clothes.

Almost indistinguishable from the original cast!

Let me tell you why I love this gift.

First off, dress up clothes are infinitely variable, because they allow for unlimited imaginary play. The simpler something is, the more fun you can get out of it; think of how much more opportunity for play a doll offers compared to some super complicated, technologically advanced Barbie playset. With the doll, the sky’s the limit. With the playset, no imagination is required; you can only really play with it in the way it was designed to be played with. Your imagination can be lazy.

But second off, I’m sure one could go out and purchase a “Wizard of Oz dress up set” with outfits and props. But in this case, the items were things my mom already had, things that were handmade or sewn, or things re-purposed from thrift stores. Things were combined in new or different ways (like the Tinman’s painted oil funnel / hat, toy gas can / oil can, and Halloween meat cleaver / ax). It’s very clear that a lot of time and effort were spent putting everything together.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of the best times anyone has had putting together a present!

“Excuse me sir, do you have any brains to spare?”

Every homemade gift is so much more charming and special than a simple store purchase!

The ruby slippers and their cloud of magical rubies which follows them everywhere they go

Of course, the set got some use right away, in an impromptu performance.

The cast takes a bow

Thanks for the thoughtful gift! It’s well appreciated (especially by me!)

Chicago Public Library, you have let me down yet again

/ Shane / 2 Comments

::sigh::

As you know, we have had our differences with the library in the past. Today certainly wasn’t that bad. It was more of an annoyance than anything.

After braving torrential downpours with my two children, we finally made it into the library only to find that the entire children’s section was closed, due to “lack of air conditioning”.

Me: “Can’t we just go in for a few minutes and pick out a few books?”
Library worker: “There’s no air conditioning in there.”
Me: ::blank stare::
Library worker: “You could tell the librarian which books you wanted and she could get them for you.” (Assumedly in her fire-proof asbestos suit, or else how could she possibly?)
Me: “…we don’t really know what books we wanted.”
Library worker: “You could look them up on the computer.”

What good is a library that doesn’t let you look at the books??

Now I certainly can understand not wanting people to sit around all day in there on the computer or something. So put a sign up, by all means. But to blockade the place because it’s a little hot?

The building was built in 1896!! Did they wait until air conditioning was invented to open the doors??

The Dangerous World of Illicit and Illegal Gardens

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Okay everybody, check this one out. A woman in Michigan faces 93 days of jail time. Why? For planting a garden of course.

Long story short, the lady’s yard was destroyed for some sewer work, so she decided to build some raised-beds rather than re-do her grass. Seems very reasonable, and looks pretty nice to boot:

Unfortunately though, such gardens are apparently outlawed by city ordinance.

I know you’re probably thinking what I was thinking: there has to be more to this story. But there really doesn’t seem to be anything else (well, there is in the sense that she wouldn’t stand down, not that she should have, but you have to wonder what exactly her attitude was like). However, the weird thing is that gardens are not specifically outlawed (and why would they be?). The rule says only:

“suitable” plant material is allowed on the lawn area of residences. When local media asked city planner Kevin Rulkowski what that meant, he said suitable means “common:” lawn, nice shrubs, and flowers. However, the city ordinance does not specifically state that those are the only allowed plant materials.

So, even if she was being petty, the city was obviously being *more* petty.

This is so horrible, I don’t even know where to begin. However, I am not surprised in the least. I used to think that draconian property restrictions were the domain of fancy-pants subdivisions (where I wouldn’t want to live anyway), but I’ve recently discovered this is not the case. Who would have thought that it is nearly impossible to find vacant land in the middle of nowhere which allows you to build a tiny house? Through an endless supply of township regulations, such as minimum square footage, roof pitch angle, and land usage restrictions, such as no trailers, you have practically no say over what you do on your land.

The supposed justification for this is multi-faceted:

  1. We have to keep out the hordes of drifters.
  2. What you do on your property can bring the value of my property down. So you can’t do whatever you want on your land, because now its affecting me.
  3. You pay property tax based on what your property is worth, so if you have a crappy property but you still use the same amount of services, you’re somehow gaming the system.
These reasons are a load of crap because:
  1. Drifters? What is this, the 1950’s? This only makes sense if drifters is a euphemism for poor people or certain targeted races, which is about as illegal as it gets.
  2. So what? You always run that risk. I can build a mansion and shoot holes in it or paint it puce, or put up signs saying, “This neighborhood is full of dog-rapists” and you don’t have laws against that (although that would be less oppressive than some of the “grass length” rules I’ve seen) (and now a bunch of townships are probably enacting these laws as we speak).
  3. This one has a little merit on the surface, but if that’s really the problem, then pass laws on property tax reform. Besides, if I have crappy property that isn’t worth anything, then my punishment comes when I try to sell it and I can’t.
I think this garden story really highlights the fact that 1) your stupid rules prevent reasonable people from doing reasonable things, and 2) your rules are stupid to begin with (and possibly racist or classist) because you can’t make a rule that says, “I want to stop people from doing things that I personally don’t like.”
Link via Sara.