one small corner of the universe

Let me start by saying that this getting up an hour before the kid has been working out pretty well for me, but not so much for my writing habit, which is why I started doing it in the first place. I won’t bore you with reasons why I haven’t been writing, but they are completely legit and have actually provided me with writing material. But for another day, because right now I have some other things to toss around, and I’m falling back on my friend the bullet to help me remember everything.

• My laptop died at the ripe old age of 1 year, 7 months. I know someone in real life who could have fixed it gratis, but his father passed away a few days ago and he has enough on his plate, so I took it to the Ge3k Squad, and here is what happened: I stopped counting charges at $350, and this was before we even discussed the actual cost of repair. So I left and found a guy in the phone book who is going to back up my hard drive (which I had been investigating doing myself for the past few weeks prior to the crash!) for $95, and the manufacturer is going to fix it for nothing, even though it is technically no longer under warranty.
• I am borrowing the laptop I have used at school for the past two years, the exact same one, which I complained about endlessly and called awful names, but which is still working perfectly. Huh.
• Unfortunately, the laptop I am borrowing only connects to the internet via a wireless router, which I do not have, so I either have to use it in a WiFi zone or hold it up above my head on the screened porch and hope it picks up one of my neighbors’ wireless signals. And yes, that is what I’ve been doing.
• I realized in the mountains last week how attached at the hip I am to technology. I can check and send email with my phone, and I can even access the internet, and so both nights I was there I would wait until Mia went to sleep and then I would sit on a trunk by the window in our room and read email and catch up on blogs. Isn’t that ridiculous? I mean, we complain as as society about being too connected too much of the time, but I think deep down inside we are all addicted to the connection. I need to think further about this. I’ll get back to you.
• My daughter has a love/hate relationship with our vacuum cleaner. When I get it out she will come sit as close to it as she can get, sometimes ON it, and lightly touch the hoses and compartments while softly mumbling something I can’t make out; but as soon as I fire it up she takes off in the direction that affords her as much distance from the machine as possible. And when she is running away she looks exactly like Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow when he is running away from the natives in the second pirate movie. I would try to capture this on video for the sake of comparison, but every time it happens I fall down laughing.
• I might have a new job. Shhhhh. I don’t want to say it too loudly. I believe I have the power to screw it up by feeling TOO optimistic about it. I cannot tell you how nervous the whole thing makes me. I have been working in the same school for 12 years. TWELVE. I have never resigned a position, nor have I had to start fresh in a new one in a long, long time. It’s damn scary. And also exciting–don’t get me wrong. But mostly scary right now.
• I yelled at some pre-pubescent boys in the lazy river at water park yesterday, where Mia and I go almost every afternoon. What IS it with me and lazy rivers? Or maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the real question is this: Do lazy rivers simply attract obnoxious people? Because these boys were having a bumper car rally with their floats, and they were banging into babies. One of them was mine, but it was over the other baby that I lost it. He was much younger than Mia, and his mother seemed unconcerned that these little cretins kept splashing him right in the face. I couldn’t help myself. For all I know they were her kids–she didn’t say a word to me after the incident–but I didn’t care, I morphed into Classroom Manager Mommy before I could stop myself.
• ANd finally–Happy Independence Day, whatever that means to you.