Tag: iPhone

Carter, Confessions

How to Get Crayon out of Carpet

Was having a bit of trouble yesterday with the synchronization of my iPhone with some music on iTunes.  (User friendly, indeed.)  Needless to say, it had me a bit worked up, and as a result, I was upstairs, mostly ignoring the girls while they terrorized the downstairs.  Before I had a chance to worry about what they could possibly be getting into without my noticing, Carter came up to me repeating, “I clean it–up.  I clean-it—up, Mommy.  I clean-it, up.”

Naturally, I assume she means the toys I had instructed both her and her sister to pick up so we could go to the gym (little did they know they would really have closer to 45 minutes to do this than the originally dictated 5).  When I finally acknowledged her by saying, “Yes, Carter, yes, I hear you.  You cleaned up.  Good girl.”  I looked down to see that she had remnants of pink and blue crayon stuck in her front teeth.  “And you’ve been eating crayons again.  Awesome.”

At about that exact moment I hear Eliott yelling from downstairs, “Mommy!  Carter colored on the stairs!  Well.  Not all the stairs.  Just one stair.  Just one.  The first one.”  (How exact.  Thank God for Eliott.)  “Right on the carpet.”

At this announcement, Carter’s eye begin to show tinges of fear.  I finally extricate myself from the frustration that is –what I thought– the simple act of putting some Lady Gaga on my iPhone to work out to, and go down to survey the damage.

There are about three spots ranging in diameter from 1-3 inches of blue and pink crayon on the first light beige carpeted stair.  (I silently curse my mother for the Disney Princess glitter non-washable $1 crayons from JoAnn’s.  And I curse JoAnn’s again for having them.  And well, just for being JoAnn’s.  Because we hate JoAnn’s.)  As soon as I see it, Carter plants herself on the floor (protecting her bottom) and begins almost whimpering, eyes like a frightened doe, “I clean-it, up, Mommy.  See?  See?  I clean-it, up.”  Feeling the spots, I notice they are in fact, wet.

A little too confused to be immediately angry I ask, “How, Carter?  Show me how you cleaned this up.”

She immediately stands up, puts her face to the carpet, and starts licking it.

Dear God.

My mind immediately flashes back to Fitzhugh, our family dog in Kansas whom we believed to have been abused by a former owner demonstrated in the way he immediately cleaned up after himself by eating his own poop.

What have I done?

I had to pause for a moment, just to hold her, and tell her it was okay and she was very responsible to try to clean it up all by herself, but next time, just come tell Mommy.  Of course I honed in on the fear and really drove home the point that crayons do not belong on the carpet or anywhere else but at the table on paper.

When I got out the carpet spray and actually cleaned it up, she thanked me.  Profusely.  And rubbed my arm in support.  I feel fairly confident the lesson was learned.  She did repeat at least three times throughout the course of the day, “No crayons on the stairs.  No no. Crayons (indistinguishable) table.”  So at least there’s that.

Confessions

Dear iPhone, Before I Say Goodbye

As my iPhone anxiety slowly weans, I’m finding my hormonal re-balance manifesting itself in the form of “nesting.”  When a woman is pregnant, nesting is the technical term for “Dear-God-somebody-make-my-wife-stop-cleaning-and-organizing-things!”  No, I’m not pregnant.  I’m just saying that my hormones often seem to treat me like I am.  (This is what it means to be a woman.)  Right now, it is all I can do to stop adding more things to my things to do list.

When we moved into this “gigantic” house 6 months ago, we had enough furniture and belongings to fill not even half of it.  It is amazing to me how quickly the little things start to add up and how furniture and clothes manage to multiply like rabbits.  We’ve only lived here for 6 months and I’m sort of wishing we’d taken about half of the stuff in the moving truck and just kept driving it to nowhere.

So in a last-ditch effort to give myself more guilt after I give up the idea of an iPhone later today, I thought I’d use it for one final purposeful project.  I’m about to invite you into a very personal part of my life.  This actually makes me a little bit nervous because I like to pretend that I’m just as Type-A as John.  I like to pretend that I’m skilled at organization even if I don’t pretend to like it.  (As a teacher, my classroom was really neat and organized, and my system was so simple I could put actual students to work at my Type-A tasks, and found success in the form of dictatorship and delegation.)  But the current truth is that John is directly responsible for most of the tidiness of my house.  Once my home became my office, all things Type-A went the way of my high school novel collection.  That is to say, they remain in a classroom somewhere, either ignored or abused by strangers.

Everyone knows that when it comes to productivity, Step 1 is to make a plan.  Thank you iPhone, for Step 1 completion.  Step 2, in my mind, is to get others involved.  Perhaps more for the purpose of indirect accountability, I’m involving others by revealing my To-Do list.  Much of the following should be pretty self-explanatory, at least for John, who is really the only person other than me who needs to understand the madness.

Things To Do List (honey), in Pictures taken with my iPhone:

Happy Weekend!

Confessions

iPhone Anxiety

Typically, I am not a fickle decision maker.

This is especially true when someone else is paying for the thing on which I’m deciding.

When it comes to spending my own money, however, I tend to be a bit obsessive about making changes to my routine, adding a new expense to the budget, or deciding on a major purchase.  It kills me, because, the longer I spend thinking about a decision, the less I trust myself.

But I think I may have discovered a solution to this problem:  Make the decision.  React.  Undo decision if reaction is more negative than positive.

Thank God we live in a 30-day money-back-guarantee world.

On Tuesday, John and I mutually ended a 6 year relationship with Verizon and committed to AT&T.  The decision was not made instantly, and most of it was out of my control.  John’s been flirting with AT&T for several months now as he’s building a business with nothing but Apple technology.  This is one expensive relationship which I fully support and plan to join at home as soon as possible.  The cell phone break up, however, has not been so stress free.

On principle, I hate AT&T.  I hate their customer service.  I hate their coverage.  I hate their website and its inability to be forthcoming about what is the best plan to fit my family’s needs.  I hate that their customer service representatives range from Johnny-On-The-Money-Saving-Spot to High School Dropout and that inevitably, whatever Johnny told you yesterday, is no longer available today and suddenly neither is Johnny.

However.

It turns out, for what we need right now, AT&T is cheaper than Verizon.  And, in all fairness, I hate Verizon, as a company, for all of the same above reasons.  The only difference is that I haven’t made any changes to my cheapest cell phone plan on Earth in 6 years, so I never have to deal with them.  And, because of the iPhone 4, the previous generation iPhone is currently $50 with an AT&T contract.  To John (and his business mind), this is a steal that he snatched up immediately.  My first (and entirely wrong) reaction was: “Why do you get all the fun toys?  That is not fair.”

What a stupid thought.  What a stupid thing to say.

Unfortunately, my husband agreed with me.

So I bought an iPhone and we signed a 2 year contract that will cost us $140 a month.  *GULP*

I called it a “business expense” and blinked exactly twice before signing the paper.

Then I went home.

I have been having mild to moderate to severe anxiety ever since.

My brain:

Can you really justify an extra $15 a month right now for a data-plan you may or may not need?  (Yes, probably.  That’s only $0.50 a day.  I’ll potty train Carter this summer and it will come out of our diaper budget.)  You have an iPod Touch that you rarely use.  What makes you think you’ll use the iPhone features if you don’t even use them on your iPod Touch?  (Good point.)  How often are you in an area that does not have Wi-Fi access where you could not live without the Internet?  (The park?)  Wait a minute.  What do you do all day?  Do you really need Internet access all the time no matter where you go?  What are you going to do, check your email?  How many emails did you receive in total last week?  (Not counting Groupon nor grocery store deals?  Four.)  Do you really want to be that available?  Do you really want to be that woman, checking her phone every 5 minutes like she’s so important?  (Oh God.  I hate that woman.  Is that what I would be?  Yes.  Yes it is.  And I hate her.  I’m not that important.  I don’t even have a desk job.  When I did have a desk job, my favorite thing about it was leaving everything on my desk when I left for the day and boasting of my ability not to do any work at home.  The most important things in my day haven’t even fully grasped fine motor skills, let alone the use of their fingers for things like typing.  In fact, any and all emergency situations would likely result from my lack of attention to them, the chances of which rise with the idea of portable Facebook.  Do I really want my children to associate me with a hand-held idiot box?  What kind of message am I sending?!)

And with that, my decision has been made.

I’ll be returning to AT&T tomorrow.