My So Called Life

Alas poor Tivo, I hardly knew ye

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Well, after 8 long years together, my Tivo is officially kaput.

Here today, gone tomorrow. It was working one day and not the next. In some ways 8 years doesn’t seem like a long time, but then I think about how that Tivo has been with me longer than Evie and I do feel a little sad. I suppose 8 years is a pretty long time for a piece of electronics.

Of course, this meant an immediate, 2 hour re-wiring of my entire entertainment and computer networking systems. I tore everything apart and put it back together so, as Sara put it, everything can basically be the same. What’s that you said about having laundry to fold? But now I know it’s done properly, and I can sleep easy at night. Oh, and I removed about 10 pounds of excess copper wire from our living room.

I guess this is officially going to put the final kibosh on my tv watching. I just can’t imagine sitting down at a certain day and time to watch a show. That seems so…anachronistic. But I can’t really justify spending any money on a DVR, when we hardly watch any tv anyway. (Can you believe we’ve been without cable for more than 3 years already? Based on my calculations at that time, we’ve saved around $1750 so far by not having cable.) Off the top of my head, the only two shows I can think of that I’ll miss are Downton Abbey and Supernatural, which are both available online for free anyway.

I have not regretted reducing my tv watching time at all, so I guess the silver lining is even that much less tv watching (and thus, more time for other things. Certainly right now I have a lot more projects I want to do than time to do them. So it’s probably all for the best.

But it does sort of seem like the end of an era, losing a device that’s been with me for so long and that I once described by saying, “TV with no Tivo is like having electricity without anybody ever inventing the lightbulb. What’s the point?”

I guess it’s back to living in the dark for me. Fortunately, that is increasingly where I want to be.

Search Term Roundup

/ Shane / Leave a comment

“if the zombie apocalypse comes it will be hard pretending not to be excited” – RIGHT??

“genital guillotine” – No. Just…no.

“quotations on jock itch” – Nothing says inspirational quote like jock itch.

“ewok weight training” – As in, weight training programs for ewoks, or tossing those little buggers like medicine balls?

“wisconsin camping babes” – Clearly looking for a family reunion wrap-up.

“chemotherapy jokes knock knock” – Knock, knock. Who’s there? Chemotherapy. Chemotherapy who? Cancer is not funny.

“gorilla,bacon, peanut butter and mustaches” – Possibly the new tagline of my blog.

“chainsaw licking” – Not a sport for the weak of heart.

“how to get crumbs out of teeth” – So you can master google, but not toothbrushing?

“tickling nala’s footpaws” – I swear that had to be Evie googling that

“moustache tied to train tracks” – Now that’s a hilarious prank!

“fort wayne ww2 hitler” – I think the connections are pretty obvious when you think about it.

“volcano pirate birthday party” – YES! Not sure what the connection is between volcanoes and pirates, but sign me up.

I think I’m doing something wrong

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I am at the bottom of a big black hole of parenting badness lately.

I have been losing my cool multiple times a day for weeks on end. 0 patience, end of my rope, etc. etc. etc. I am not being the parent I want to be.

Logically I can look at the situation and say, “All of this is typical behavior for their ages. This will pass and they really are good kids.” However, illogically I have two little tyrants who know every possible little way to get under my skin and no ability or desire to restrain their use of said irritating power. Every possible minute of the day is a power struggle; from getting them dressed, to getting out the door, to picking things up, to any other possible required action. All of this on top of a heaping helping of constant meltdowns and you have a recipe for disaster.

Each of them have their own fun little twists. Oliver is in a “no!” phase, as well as an “I didn’t do it!” phase. He’s also emotionally raw, with his heart on his sleeve and ready to sob at a moment’s notice. I think this last is part of just going through one of those phases where he feels like he’s having trouble expressing himself properly, or he’s not understanding why he can’t get/do whatever he wants. So I think he’s feeling a lot of frustration and not knowing exactly what to do with it.

For Evie’s part, she’s going through a phase where she feels like the queen of the world (well, she’s kind of always going through that phase, but it’s a little more right now). It’s like she’s just realizing how much power and control she has and just reveling in it. This is both power over her brother (usually physical power in the form of violence of some kind) and power over her parents (usually in refusing to do what we want her to do, especially if it prevents us from doing something, like going to the store).

Of course, when the two of them get together, it’s multiplicative. And with all this summer we keep having, they’ve been spending a LOT of time together. Always in the past, only one of them has gone through a difficult phase at a time, which is apparently within my grasp as a parent. Two at the same time is apparently not.

Parental authority relies on an elaborate series of bluffs. As soon as one of the children starts calling you on those bluffs, you both quickly realize that you have practically no leverage over them. We really can’t MAKE the children do anything. We try, oh do we try, but actually what do you do?

I make a lot of threats, which I absolutely HATE and always try to follow through on, but the problem is even with the follow through, the threats just don’t work. There’s nothing that we can threaten with. Our children already live a practically monastic existence to begin with; no tv, as minimal possessions as possible, no junk food, etc. We accidentally made our lives very difficult by already removing anything we could possibly use as a threat. And we’re very averse to using food as either a punishment or reward if at all possible (enough food and body issues in this world as it is).

So often I resort to “making” them do something, which is ultimately “defeating” them physically and not something I would like to set a precedent for. I would much rather reward than punish, but that’s not really helpful in the middle of a confrontation. It is very difficult to out-maneuver Evie, because she is so quick and perceptive. I feel like I’m stuck in a maze where every turn is wrong and every choice is a dead end!

Sara: “Just remember that you’re smarter than her. Er, well…at least you have more experience than her.”

Starting today we have a new strategy: Evie gets a sticker each day that she’s “good”. If she gets 5 in a week, one of her parents will spend a little special time with her (i.e. play a game or read a book). If she gets 6 stickers in a week, she gets to pick the parent (i.e Sara). Hopefully this will be rewarding (get it? rewarding?) for everyone and help us get through until she grows out of her current difficult state, rather than just turning into one more thing to threaten her with. For now it’s just Evie; Oliver’s a little young for that, but he’s a little easier to manage when he gets in an obstinate mood (basically you just have to distract him for 20 seconds or find the right way to word it, and he’s putty in your hands).

I’m hoping it will be enough to break me out of my parenting funk and get back to where I’d like to be.

Spam Goes Legit

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Remember spam? All those sketchy advertisements for escort services and viagra that would clog up your inbox with their general ickiness until spam filters started getting smart enough to block them? Have you taken the time to look at your spam folder lately?

Once the mode of communication strictly reserved for Nigerian princes, spam seems to have transformed into general advertising. I don’t think that spammers are getting better, I think that regular companies are just getting slummier.

A quick look through my spam folder reveals emails from insurance giant AIG, ads for window replacement, Christian Singles (really Christian Singles? Spam?), LASIK eye surgery, and a whole bevy of stock tips. Spam, not just for tool enlargement anymore!

At this point it feels pretty normal to see friends liking the Facebook page for Windex, or for Subway Sandwiches to show up as a sponsored search result from Google. Practically every webpage you go to has ads. WordPress runs ads right here on my very own blog!! (As should be obvious, that revenue goes to them, not me.) Companies exploit your friendships and gather information on you in ways that would make the NSA blush. They have made themselves as intrusive as possible.

Why WOULD they restrain themselves from sending you direct emails? That’s actually less creepy than a lot of other forms of advertising.

I must have accidentally angered the forest gods

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We have just not been able to make it up to The Haven this year. We knew there weren’t a lot of opportunities to go, but it seems like every time we have a chance, something just seems to come up. And of course, the one time we did make it up was an unmitigated disaster. I’m starting to suspect supernatural influence.

We were all set to go up and meet my sister on Saturday morning. Giant pile of camping gear in the living room, house cleaned, kids excited, the whole nine. Sara and I had stayed up late getting everything ready, so we had only just fallen asleep when suddenly the bedroom door banged open.

There stood one very panicked 5 year old, clutching her throat, unable to breath.

As with any emergency in the middle of the night, my body was operating well ahead of my brain. Right away I knew what was the matter, but for some reason I just could not communicate this to Sara. My sister had terrible asthma as a kid, and waking up in the night unable to breath was, unfortunately, not an uncommon occurrence for her. This just snapped me back there right away. So finally Sara was able to piece together my incoherent panic-babbling (something about shouting “Rachael!” and forcing Evie to lock eyes with me and slow her breathing), and grab Evie’s inhaler.

Poor Evie was a wreck, coughing and crying, which was only making it worse. Luckily for us, our daughter is so amazingly mature for her age, and she managed to understand what I was saying to her, think through the situation, and calm down enough to get it a little under control. We got a couple of breathing treatments in her, and though her breathing still sounded like a freight train, she was so exhausted that she wanted to go back to sleep.

We put her in bed with Sara, but I was too agitated to go back to sleep. It really pains me to think that I cursed my daughter with asthma. So I was alternately pacing around in the hallway, listening to her wheeze through the closed bedroom door, and looking up “What to do when asthma attacks!” websites, when I just couldn’t take it anymore. I went back into the bedroom.

“Do you think she’s okay? Is there something else we should be doing?”
“I don’t know, should we give her another dose of the inhaler?”

Even with the extra dosage from the inhaler she just didn’t seem to be getting any better, but she didn’t seem to be getting any worse either, so I went out again. I think that was about the time that she threw up all over herself. This poor girl, she was really trying to hold it together, and we were trying to help her hold it together, because we knew if she didn’t stay calm it could get bad again really quick.

Ultimately, we opted to take her to the emergency room. Sara took her and I stayed home with Ollie. “Start kicking the seat if you can’t breath,” she told Evie. You never really know if you’re doing the right thing, going to the emergency room. Am I overreacting? Well, apparently not, based on the alarm generated by Evie’s entrance and speed at which they got to work on her. So I guess we did the right thing after all.

It turns out that Evie had croup, so it wasn’t even asthma related (which explains why the inhaler wasn’t helping). However, that croup is no joke, and it can be fatal. It was pretty scary for us, so I can only imagine how scary it was for Evie; waking up and being unable to breath, having no idea what is going on or how to stop it. And then, despite all of that, to have the wherewithal (as a 5 year old!) to be able to calm down and work through it.

Anyway, this is just a long way to say we didn’t exactly make it up to go camping the next morning. Sara and Evie were at the ER until about 4:30 in the morning, and we certainly didn’t want to risk a recurrence when we were out in the woods somewhere.

Evie was pretty much okay, other than she didn’t really want to go to sleep Saturday night in case it happened again (and who could blame her on that score?). Her other big concern was that she completely lost her voice in all of this, and of course she had an audition for a part in The Little Mermaid yesterday. Fortunately, her voice was more or less back, and she performed her audition piece successfully.

I’m sure they get their share of precocious little girls, but man-oh-man would I have loved to see their faces when Evie performed. I admit to being a little biased, but I think she might have blown a couple of people’s hair back when she really opened up. Anyway, as should be no surprise if you’ve watched that video, she will be playing the role of Ursula, the Sea Witch.

Maybe she can use her Sea Witch powers to commune with the Haven spirits and figure out what I did to offend them so badly that they’ll stop at nothing to keep us away…