Social Media and Cell Phones

I reflect uneasily and often on the culture my children are growing up in right now. I'm not talking about the big news stories, actually, which are issues enough to manage in themselves; I'm just talking about technology.

Technology can be a great blessing.  And yet it can also be a terrible distraction.

Lately I've been trying to puzzle this out.  My sister has been texting me a lot, so I feel I've been on my phone a ton, because I want to be available to her. (She just closed on her first-ever home on Friday!  I helped her with house-hunting, financing details, insurance coverage, inspection report, and a million other little details.)  She is unmarried, and so in many ways I'm her support person. ;) 

And then there's social media. Instagram. Facebook.  Those are the only two things I do, but that's enough, and some days I am tempted to just get rid of it all and see what life would look and feel like.  It's a double-edged sword: on the one hand, I like the connection it can provide.  On the other hand, sometimes the connection is pretty tenuous and superficial.  On the other hand again, sometimes the connection leads to genuine help and encouragement. 

And there's a dark underbelly of social media, too: the combination of negativity plus the distraction/addiction that it can provide.  (Facebook was designed to be addictive!)

I am the type of person who loves meaningful interactions and conversations.  Interestingly, my best friends, most of whom do not live locally (only a couple do), are not really my social media friends at all.  I just prefer in-person discussions, deeper connections.  I think most of us do, when we step back and think about it.

And always underlying my analysis of this is the reality that my children, with every second of every day, are getting older.  Finn is a teenager now!  Annie is nine and a half!  I wonder how much time I have spent of their childhood distracted--?  I only got a iphone 2 years ago (right before my husband's surgery, because I knew that I'd need fast and easy communication with multiple people), but lo, that is a distracting device.  Before that, I found myself easily distracted by my ipod and even the laptop!  I keep notifications off on my iphone, do not have the Facebook app, and have it always turned off (so I don't hear any bells or dings), but it's still extremely distracting.  

When you are in the room with someone and they are on their phone--texting, scrolling, etc.--it can be so annoying.  And I think for children in particular, this must be particularly annoying, when their parent is on the phone.  Sometimes I will say "just a moment while I reply to this text" and I KNOW I am doing something helpful (communicating with another person about something--often something important, but admittedly, sometimes not), but my child has no idea.  They are not part of that. I don't want my children to recall me as someone who was so easily distracted by her phone/laptop/etc.

So where does that leave us?

I need to begin to pray for guidance on this. 

(A few years ago our internet quit working, and I didn't have a cell phone. I took our laptop to the coffee shop to answer emails 1-2x per week, and it was the best couple of weeks EVER! I loved it!  I asked my husband if we could just not fix the internet, but he thought that was unrealistic--because, given our situation, it really is. But I loved it.)

I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks/does about this pervasive cultural issue that doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. How do we balance the people in front of us with the people behind the screen, especially when the people in both scenarios mean something to us? And how do we manage social media?  Do I just pretend that I don't have internet except for twice a week?!

It's a challenge for sure. 

Summer Plans

The days slide by so quickly right now!  I struggle to find time to sit at the computer and actually write anything, because my work at home is so demanding. 

It is good work and I'm grateful for it.

Finn and Annie are continuing to work on math.  (I just switched Finn to a new curriculum, in preparation for transitioning into high school math). He's on his 11th day of it so far and I am amazed at how much we like it!  Annie should finish on July 3rd, if she's diligent, and Finn will work steadily on math through July 31st.  We are taking about 5 weeks off from everything after that!

Annie just had her last violin lesson, and Finn's last piano lesson is next Tuesday.  

Summer is here!  Of course, summer isn't quite as normal as it used to be.  Our pool is closed, for instance (at least for now).  But we have some experience in changing our expectations, so the changes this virus has caused in our lives haven't bothered us all that much.  

We just returned from a trip to North Carolina, where my husband got a good report at UNC.  He continues to be cancer-free!  We are so thankful.

I've been thinking about how to make this summer full of little joys, learning experiences, and memory-making.  Finn turned 13 earlier this month, and it's never far from my mind how quickly my children are growing. I genuinely want to enjoy them before they are all grown up and on their own!!

One thing I am doing *NOW* and am almost done doing is all of my planning for the upcoming school year. My goal is to get it all done ASAP so that I have absolutely none to do when I'm "off" this summer.

So I'm compiling a summer list:

*listening to Anne of Green Gables on Audible (we have started it...and got a lot of listening done a couple of weeks ago when we pitted a lot of sour cherries!)

*doing a couple of dissection kits that I bought last year

*running through the sprinkler/doing outside play

*making a few journal entries into our nature notebook featuring birds (we are enjoying the company of a pair of house finches whom Annie has named Lily and James) and some of the flowers we have blooming in our garden

*berry-picking.  We've already picked strawberries, and some black raspberries.  Blueberries are next!

*Reading books.  We are finishing The Golden Goblet as a family right now.  The children and I are reading Little Women. I will probably draw from this list for more books this summer. 

*Harvesting and drying our own food. I bought a dehydrator and made myself ill on kale chips (kind of worth it, though--they were so good).  I've dehydrated all sorts of things, but I'm eagerly awaiting the cherry tomatoes.  I planted a lot of cherry tomatoes this year, mostly by accident--it's a long story--and look forward to a lot of dried tomatoes for my omelets all year long!

*Basketball together in the driveway!

*Badminton together in the front yard!

My children are fairly independent and do not require me to organize their days for them.  This is a blessing, but sometimes I have to remind myself to check in with them, sit down and read, and just spend time together.  They have their own agendas to accomplish most days, and I don't want to cramp those agendas, but I also want them to know that I'm here for them!  

When they are doing their own things, I'm painting dining room furniture.  One chair down, one chair almost done, and only 4 chairs and a table left to go.  (ha!)  Then I also may paint my coffee table.  

My own project list for this summer could be excessive.  I'm trying to keep it manageable! 

*painting furniture

*weeding and mulching my flower beds (and staying on top of the vegetable garden)

*re-organizing our schoolroom a little bit

*cleaning out our mechanical room (it always needs attention)

*organizing my laundry/sewing room 

I would love to paint our main room and our kitchen cabinets.  The walls were last painted 15 years ago, and the cabinet were painted 11 years ago.  They all need it.  I haven't decided whether I should tackle these huge projects yet, or wait until next year.

And, on a final note, today my sister purchased her first home!!  I am so excited for her.  I traveled to her city several times in April and May to housenhunt with her, and we finally found a home in her budget that had a full basement, 2 bathrooms, and was move-in ready, which all seemed like a total impossibility when we began.  She called me after the closing and was very happy!  My husband and I are giving her a lot of furniture from our home, so we are moving all that down in a couple of weeks: our dining buffet, my beloved barrister's bookcase (family heirloom), our downstairs sofa, chair and ottoman (we plan to replace our downstairs furniture with a sectional so that we all have a place to sit on movie nights), some paintings, and a bunch of stuff from my grandparents' home--a bed, a desk, a dresser, and a nightstand!  I hope to spend a couple of days this summer at her new house, helping her unpack, organize, and arrange.  After years and years of living in rental apartments, the fact that she finally has her own place is just wonderful. I am excited to help her with her settling in!

Happy Summering! 

Organizing the Garage

I am blessed by being married to a genius.  It's a running joke in our household, really: how smart my husband is.  He's a mechanical engineer, and those guys are handy to have around!  They're so capable.

My husband has few areas of weakness, but he'd admit that one of them is organization. Part of that is his brilliance: his mind is so good he remember details from decades ago. He has never, not once, used a planner, list, organizer, or calendar.  He doesn't see the point...whereas I depend on my plans and lists and calendar to keep me on track!  We are two very different humans in that regard.

Organizing is fun for me, but the garage has always eluded me because much of it belongs to my husband.  So many tools, mysterious gadgets and gizmos, random items.  I have tidily organized all the seasonal decorations, the gardening supplies, the canning equipment, the camping supplies, the recreational equipment...but I never have organized *his* stuff in the garage because I don't know what it is! It's all so elusive!

Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, I decided that before we do any summertime projects, I would organize once and for all. My husband was off for four days. For three days (because I didn't work on the project on Sunday), he was on call to answer my questions. I learned SO MUCH!  I can now distinguish hex bolts from sheet metal bolts, hose clamps from speed clamps, punching tools from drivers, jigsaw blades from files.  I learned more about tools in the past week than I had in the past 42 years of my life.


(I can't find my "before" picture, but there was basically nothing hanging on the pegboard, and there was a 2'-tall pile of random everythings on top of the workbench. Seriously!)

And I organized every last bit of it! Every scrap!  I sorted, tossed, grouped, labeled.  It was so satisfying.

Now, at long last, my husband knows where everything is (he once famously had to go buy a tape measure because he couldn't find his tape measure!). And my children have already spent an entire afternoon at the workbenches, building medieval tools from duct tape and PVC pipe, while I worked in the flower beds.  "The garage is so great!" they enthused.  And when they were done, it was quick and easy for us to tidy up because the garage finally follows my rule: a place for everything and everything in its place.



Sigh. So much better!


(We also got rid of all the random paints we no longer needed!)

So now I've moved on to painting the dining room furniture (while listening to Middlemarch on Audible). It feels so good to work on projects in an organized, tidy space.  At last!!