Sunday, May 12, 2013

Bad Day 306--Mummummummummm

That was Child 3's first word: Mummummummumm. I knew immediately what it meant. The other two chose to say "Dada" first, but at least one of them picked me.

I am blogging early not because I'm tired, but because I am waiting for the party to start and I have a feeling we might be eating late. Just guessing, but since at 7pm no one has begun to cook dinner, it is going to be a while. I asked for chili dogs for dinner tonight for just this reason. Already, three people have told me they don't know how to make them and I explained, carefully and lovingly, that it is not that hard and involves only heating things up. The Doritos, which I asked for as a side dish, are even easier. I'm pretty certain they can handle opening a bag. It's been a little bit of a challenge for them this year without Husband to help with the cooking. Still, it's one of the only days I don't have kitchen duty, so I'm not going to cook, although I did help with the eggs for my breakfast which they served at 2 pm.

For a mother's day present, I bought myself a new phone. I know! It was such a surprise! I had no idea I was getting a new phone for mother's day. Unfortunately, it is a smart phone and I don't exactly know how to use it yet. Last night, I was facebook messaging with my friend "Jan" about something very serious and emotional and I hit the wrong button and this big, huge, smiley face popped up at the very wrong moment. Imagine that you were talking about starving children in the Sudan, and then someone suddenly posted this picture without warning.


So wrong. Clearly I should not be allowed out of the house with this phone. So Jan, I apologize for the inappropriate smiley and I promise to message you only on my computer until I can figure out the phone. I am becoming like the mom in this text message.


The sad thing, is I should be better at technology. I even used to work in the software industry at a very famous company whose name I won't mention because then you will really know how old I am. Either that, or you will say who is that and then I will feel even older. But my job was to run macros which I was really good at because I was a whiz at BASIC. See, now you know. I am really as old as the dinosaurs. I was good at BASIC because my dad bought one of the first home computers ever and it had a couple of those adventure games and I spent a lot of time trying to figure them out. One day he came home and asked me why I was printing reams and reams of paper on our dot-matrix printer and I told him I had dumped the code to read it so I could get to the next level which basically meant I was cheating by reading computer code. I think it was his proudest moment of me until the day when he got to meet Secretary Condoleeza Rice at my swearing-in ceremony at the State Department.

My mom's proudest moment had to be when I gave birth to Child 1. She came to help and I don't think that baby was ever put down for more than 5 seconds because mom would scoop her up as soon as I was done feeding her. She sang to her, played with her, and I realized then how terrible and amazing a mother's love could be. You love this child that you made so fiercely and you are afraid from the very first moment that something will take her away from you and yet you know at the same time that your job is to raise her to want to leave. So I finally knew what my mom felt for me. My heart breaks a little every day as my children grow. I want them to grow up, but if only it could take a little longer. . .

Speaking of software companies, Microsoft is having a worse day than me. Apparently, Windows 8 is not all that. It's so bad that the Financial Times and The Economist both compared it to New Coke. New Coke, for those of you not alive in the eighties Coca Cola once replaced their formula with a sweeter version that made Coke fans everywhere revolt in protest and they brought back the old formula. The problem for Microsoft, though, is that they can't just bring back the old version because that's not how software works. So thank you, Microsoft, for reminding me that sometimes, the old way is better and that mothers can't be replaced with an upgrade. Thank goodness. I have job security for a few more years at least. And a final gratitude note--Child 3 put blue streaks in her hair just for me for Mother's Day. I love my children, so, so much.

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