Motivation

I had some great videos for you today, but unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Well, maybe. We're not going to story time today, though, so I don't know if we're going to make it in to town at all.

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The lights in our kitchen are acting screwy. By that I mean that the one above the sink won't turn on at all anymore, and the main kitchen light goes on and off as it pleases, totally ignoring my use of the switch (as an aside, does anyone know if CFLs are supposed to get hot when they're on? I kind of thought they weren't supposed to, but when I've jiggled the bulb in the kitchen to see if I could get it to turn on, it's been warm, which seems like it could be an additional symptom of the problem).



So, it's hard enough for me to get motivated to cook supper each night. That time between when the older kids get home and supper is my busiest and most stressful time of the day. It's even harder when Scott's not home, because I know that I'm going to hear displeasure about my choice of entree from at least 33% of our children, and who wants to hear that every day? But when it's dark in there, too? Forget it!

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I am a vanishing breed. I don't have a cell phone. Even my parents have a cell phone. I've never really wanted to be that available. In fact, unlike some people, I have no trouble at all letting my answering machine answer the phone for me when I'm busy or even just don't want to talk to anyone. And to be honest, having a cell phone seems like an unnecessary extravagance, and to be honest again, I don't know that I'm willing to give up any of the other things that I spend money on (like food, electricity, our house...) to make room in our budget for that. It's interesting to me how so many see a cell phone as a necessity, when human kind has survived for centuries without them. I guess that's the way it is with any new technology. At first, it's novel, and expensive, but as time goes on, these things become a part of our culture, and somehow we start saying things like, I don't know how I ever survived without my .... whatever it is.



Something bugs me about cell phones. People talk on them all the time. It's as if they're afraid to be alone. At one of Cody's soccer games, I watched one of the other parents get out of her vehicle talking on her cell phone, walk over to the field talking on her cell phone, and spend the entire time that I was there (about half an hour before I had to leave to take Logan to his game) talking on her cell phone. I've seen parents pick up their kids at school doing the same thing. Parents talk on their cell phones at the playground, instead of watching their kids. And perhaps you've seen the commercial for Velveeta where the mom and her son are traipsing through the grocery store, and the mom is cutting everything in half before putting it in her cart? She's yakking on her phone the entire time. Do these people really think that being physically present is good enough? Yikes. They're so busy communicating with all these faceless people on the phone that they don't have enough time to communicate with their own children face to face. You hear about distracted driving. I call this distracted parenting, and it's dangerous.