The Me Phone
Those of you have been reading my columns through the years know how enthusiastic I am about embracing any new technology that comes along. I love the newness, the challenge, the unexplored frontier. There’s nothing I relish more than learning that a device that I depend on everyday to make my life easier is being upgraded with new bells, whistles and an entire drum and fife corps. Yep, that’s me, drooling at the thought that I will be spending weeks figuring out yet another plastic piece of buttons and frustration.
To the advertisers credit though, they no longer mention time-saving when describing some new piece of software, because they know that it’s going to take most of us a long, long time to learn how to use their newest creation. Instead they wax eloquent on how it will expand your life and your ability to live it. You will move on a cloud of information that seamlessly ties your life together so that you can text, tweet, blog, and cook a roast simultaneously.
Still, I do covet some new technology. I enjoy my Kindle. It’s wonderful not having to lug a heavy book to work each morning. However that enjoyment is tempered by the fact that I have to keep an eagle eye on the battery icon. I’ve had mornings when I turn on my book to find that it has turned off because I haven’t powered it up the night before. Things like that don’t happen with a real live book.
This latest rant is the result of having to upgrade my phone. My new phone is now smarter than I am or will ever be. My old phone was getting old and quirky, (kind of like me) not receiving calls or voice mails till hours after they had been sent, and whispering it’s ring so that I never heard it unless I taped it to my ear. Work has also become more complicated so that I have to check e-mails throughout the day.
Earlier in the year Lisa had gotten a new phone when her contract had run out. They were offering a free smart phone and reduced data package fee so we took it. I kept thinking that I should get one as well, but I was feeling particularly over- hassled and the thought of the month-long learning curve daunted me. I figured that the company would offer a similar package in a few months and I would upgrade then. However unbeknownst to me the company would be introducing a new smart phone and so would not be offering any new deals for a while.
Steve had done his research and found out that the best phone that we could afford was the low-end Apple iPhone. So suddenly I was the owner of a sma-h-t new device that could do so many things that I was completely intimidated, outsmarted, and incredibly nervous to even touch the damn thing. I was thinking that maybe I should be getting that PhD that I had been thinking about, if only to keep up with my phone.
I spent just enough time with the salespeople to shred the last of my already fragile ego to bits, then left holding my new device nervously and with the appropriate awe. When we got home I searched through the box desperately looking for the manual. My usual routine when I get a new phone is to sit at the kitchen table with said phone and manual and spend a few hours figuring it out.
Alas they no longer include a manual. All you get are a few tiny pages to “quick-start” you then you are directed to go on-line. I grumpily found the website only to discover that it basically regales you with all the neat stuff that you can buy to play even more joyfully with your phone. “But I need directions!!!!” I screamed.
Shatz suggested that I look up a generic user guide on-line and thank goodness that worked. He also wondered, only half jokingly, if an, “iPhone For Dummies” book had been published. I was beginning to hope so. I spent some time on the site, learning the basics: how to text, take a picture, retrieve voice mail, fricassee a chicken, and then proceeded to spend the next week feeling like a total idiot.
How have we gotten to such a state that merely answering your phone has become a vehicle for utter embarrassment? I’ve spent the week apologizing to people for looking like a jerk, explaining that I’m learning a new phone. Their responses have ranged from eye-rolling from the younger set, to utter respect from the older generation, who have shared their new-phone horror stories or confessed that they need a new phone but are terrified of getting one.
I have learned that my phone’s touch pad is so sensitive that if I breathe on it incorrectly I am calling the police station. That no matter how long I search on my on-line manual to solve a problem the only sure way to get a question answered is to find a citizen of the younger and cooler generation to solve it for me. They were born with these phones in hand.
And I? I was born in another world with rotary phones, dials and knobs and plugging things in and using them without an advanced degree. I’m so doomed.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
The Me-Phone
The Me Phone
Those of you have been reading my columns through the years know how enthusiastic I am about embracing any new technology that comes along. I love the newness, the challenge, the unexplored frontier. There’s nothing I relish more than learning that a device that I depend on everyday to make my life easier is being upgraded with new bells, whistles and an entire drum and fife corps. Yep, that’s me, drooling at the thought that I will be spending weeks figuring out yet another plastic piece of buttons and frustration.
To the advertisers credit though, they no longer mention time-saving when describing some new piece of software, because they know that it’s going to take most of us a long, long time to learn how to use their newest creation. Instead they wax eloquent on how it will expand your life and your ability to live it. You will move on a cloud of information that seamlessly ties your life together so that you can text, tweet, blog, and cook a roast simultaneously.
Still, I do covet some new technology. I enjoy my Kindle. It’s wonderful not having to lug a heavy book to work each morning. However that enjoyment is tempered by the fact that I have to keep an eagle eye on the battery icon. I’ve had mornings when I turn on my book to find that it has turned off because I haven’t powered it up the night before. Things like that don’t happen with a real live book.
This latest rant is the result of having to upgrade my phone. My new phone is now smarter than I am or will ever be. My old phone was getting old and quirky, (kind of like me) not receiving calls or voice mails till hours after they had been sent, and whispering it’s ring so that I never heard it unless I taped it to my ear. Work has also become more complicated so that I have to check e-mails throughout the day.
Earlier in the year Lisa had gotten a new phone when her contract had run out. They were offering a free smart phone and reduced data package fee so we took it. I kept thinking that I should get one as well, but I was feeling particularly over- hassled and the thought of the month-long learning curve daunted me. I figured that the company would offer a similar package in a few months and I would upgrade then. However unbeknownst to me the company would be introducing a new smart phone and so would not be offering any new deals for a while.
Steve had done his research and found out that the best phone that we could afford was the low-end Apple iPhone. So suddenly I was the owner of a sma-h-t new device that could do so many things that I was completely intimidated, outsmarted, and incredibly nervous to even touch the damn thing. I was thinking that maybe I should be getting that PhD that I had been thinking about, if only to keep up with my phone.
I spent just enough time with the salespeople to shred the last of my already fragile ego to bits, then left holding my new device nervously and with the appropriate awe. When we got home I searched through the box desperately looking for the manual. My usual routine when I get a new phone is to sit at the kitchen table with said phone and manual and spend a few hours figuring it out.
Alas they no longer include a manual. All you get are a few tiny pages to “quick-start” you then you are directed to go on-line. I grumpily found the website only to discover that it basically regales you with all the neat stuff that you can buy to play even more joyfully with your phone. “But I need directions!!!!” I screamed.
Shatz suggested that I look up a generic user guide on-line and thank goodness that worked. He also wondered, only half jokingly, if an, “iPhone For Dummies” book had been published. I was beginning to hope so. I spent some time on the site, learning the basics: how to text, take a picture, retrieve voice mail, fricassee a chicken, and then proceeded to spend the next week feeling like a total idiot.
How have we gotten to such a state that merely answering your phone has become a vehicle for utter embarrassment? I’ve spent the week apologizing to people for looking like a jerk, explaining that I’m learning a new phone. Their responses have ranged from eye-rolling from the younger set, to utter respect from the older generation, who have shared their new-phone horror stories or confessed that they need a new phone but are terrified of getting one.
I have learned that my phone’s touch pad is so sensitive that if I breathe on it incorrectly I am calling the police station. That no matter how long I search on my on-line manual to solve a problem the only sure way to get a question answered is to find a citizen of the younger and cooler generation to solve it for me. They were born with these phones in hand.
And I? I was born in another world with rotary phones, dials and knobs and plugging things in and using them without an advanced degree. I’m so doomed.
Those of you have been reading my columns through the years know how enthusiastic I am about embracing any new technology that comes along. I love the newness, the challenge, the unexplored frontier. There’s nothing I relish more than learning that a device that I depend on everyday to make my life easier is being upgraded with new bells, whistles and an entire drum and fife corps. Yep, that’s me, drooling at the thought that I will be spending weeks figuring out yet another plastic piece of buttons and frustration.
To the advertisers credit though, they no longer mention time-saving when describing some new piece of software, because they know that it’s going to take most of us a long, long time to learn how to use their newest creation. Instead they wax eloquent on how it will expand your life and your ability to live it. You will move on a cloud of information that seamlessly ties your life together so that you can text, tweet, blog, and cook a roast simultaneously.
Still, I do covet some new technology. I enjoy my Kindle. It’s wonderful not having to lug a heavy book to work each morning. However that enjoyment is tempered by the fact that I have to keep an eagle eye on the battery icon. I’ve had mornings when I turn on my book to find that it has turned off because I haven’t powered it up the night before. Things like that don’t happen with a real live book.
This latest rant is the result of having to upgrade my phone. My new phone is now smarter than I am or will ever be. My old phone was getting old and quirky, (kind of like me) not receiving calls or voice mails till hours after they had been sent, and whispering it’s ring so that I never heard it unless I taped it to my ear. Work has also become more complicated so that I have to check e-mails throughout the day.
Earlier in the year Lisa had gotten a new phone when her contract had run out. They were offering a free smart phone and reduced data package fee so we took it. I kept thinking that I should get one as well, but I was feeling particularly over- hassled and the thought of the month-long learning curve daunted me. I figured that the company would offer a similar package in a few months and I would upgrade then. However unbeknownst to me the company would be introducing a new smart phone and so would not be offering any new deals for a while.
Steve had done his research and found out that the best phone that we could afford was the low-end Apple iPhone. So suddenly I was the owner of a sma-h-t new device that could do so many things that I was completely intimidated, outsmarted, and incredibly nervous to even touch the damn thing. I was thinking that maybe I should be getting that PhD that I had been thinking about, if only to keep up with my phone.
I spent just enough time with the salespeople to shred the last of my already fragile ego to bits, then left holding my new device nervously and with the appropriate awe. When we got home I searched through the box desperately looking for the manual. My usual routine when I get a new phone is to sit at the kitchen table with said phone and manual and spend a few hours figuring it out.
Alas they no longer include a manual. All you get are a few tiny pages to “quick-start” you then you are directed to go on-line. I grumpily found the website only to discover that it basically regales you with all the neat stuff that you can buy to play even more joyfully with your phone. “But I need directions!!!!” I screamed.
Shatz suggested that I look up a generic user guide on-line and thank goodness that worked. He also wondered, only half jokingly, if an, “iPhone For Dummies” book had been published. I was beginning to hope so. I spent some time on the site, learning the basics: how to text, take a picture, retrieve voice mail, fricassee a chicken, and then proceeded to spend the next week feeling like a total idiot.
How have we gotten to such a state that merely answering your phone has become a vehicle for utter embarrassment? I’ve spent the week apologizing to people for looking like a jerk, explaining that I’m learning a new phone. Their responses have ranged from eye-rolling from the younger set, to utter respect from the older generation, who have shared their new-phone horror stories or confessed that they need a new phone but are terrified of getting one.
I have learned that my phone’s touch pad is so sensitive that if I breathe on it incorrectly I am calling the police station. That no matter how long I search on my on-line manual to solve a problem the only sure way to get a question answered is to find a citizen of the younger and cooler generation to solve it for me. They were born with these phones in hand.
And I? I was born in another world with rotary phones, dials and knobs and plugging things in and using them without an advanced degree. I’m so doomed.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite
Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite
I couldn’t stop laughing. Steve called out from the living room wanting to know what was so funny. All I could do was point to the article in Sunday’s Boston Globe about a new book by Adam Mansbach aimed at sleep deprived parents called, “Go the F**k to Sleep.” Although it looks deceptively like a children’s book, it is aimed at parents with offspring who will go to any lengths not to go to sleep at night. According to the article’s writer, Beth Teitell, the book,
Hit the top spot on Amazon’s bestseller list in May — five months before its original publication date. It pulled off the incredible feat of going viral before it even came out, after author Adam Mansbach gave a reading in Philadelphia in April at the Fourth Wall Arts Salon, and parents in the audience told their exhausted friends, who told their exhausted friends. The book leaked online, and many parents reported having it forwarded to them by multiple friends. The intense interest prompted Akashic Books to move up the official release to June 14 — in time for Father’s Day. Akashic initially planned to print 10,000 copies but ended up printing 50,000 in the first run. By the publication date there will be 275,000 copies in circulation.
Can you imagine that? The book hasn’t even hit the book shelves, yet 275,000 parents are laughing exhaustedly, hysterically, probably with feelings of great relief that they are not monsters. Because let’s face it, who among us would ever admit to another parent that we would like to tell our dearest children, “Just go the f**k to sleep already!!” We may think it in the depths of our mortified psyches, simultaneously beating ourselves up for being horrible parents and for using such “descriptive” language to our beloved progeny, but let’s face it, every parent who has ever faced a child who refuses to go to sleep has thought it at one time or another.
Mansbach, an otherwise serious writer and poet and, the father of a young child who wouldn’t go to sleep, said he thinks his latest work resonates because it lets parents know they’re not alone.
And that’s the crux of the matter. The fact that many of us are raising our children alone with self help books taking the place of supportive families. We all feel that failing at parenting is a shameful thing--after all, we had this child and so we should automatically know how to raise it.
I’ve been there. When Lisa was born, Steve’s Dad had just died and his mom lived in Florida. I have no siblings and my parents lived in Israel. I had been working full time until Lisa came so all my friends were working women and none were parents. When Lisa was born in December we spent our days alone with just each other. Still, we were doing okay with the exception of one thing—Lisa was not a sleeper. She hated to nap, hated going to sleep at night and unbelievably, also woke up in the middle of the night. I was so sleep deprived that when I was driving and came to a red light I would think to myself, “I’ll just close my eyes till it turns green.”
Our pediatrician blamed me. She told me that I shouldn’t feed her at night, I shouldn’t rock her to sleep, sing her to sleep, cajole her to sleep, but should just put her in her crib, walk out the door and let her sob herself to sleep. I hated the woman.
Eventually we did tough it out and after two nights of crying Lisa caught on and slept. Miracles did happen. But then the champ appeared—Mariel. Compared to Mariel, Lisa was a lightweight. Mariel would wake up every night, her yells waking us all. Every night my little angel would sob, scream, and worst of all call out pleadingly, “mommy, daddy!” I was a wreck. Steve bought me a Walkman to plug up my ears, but even locked in the bathroom with the fan’s noisy whirring and the music at top volume, I could still hear her. I felt like the lowest scum on earth. And the only advice we kept getting was, “She’ll just have to cry it out.” Light years later I read that according to Doctor Rosen, associate medical director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital sBoston,
About 1 out of every 4 children age 10 and under have sleep issues. These range from night terrors to sleepwalking to “behavioral insomnia’’ of the type described in Mansbach’s book. Despite the prevalence of sleep problems, Rosen said, less than one-quarter of parents with affected children seek medical help. The rest, apparently, are just toughing it out — or are self-medicating now with Mansbach.
I could have used that book back then for a laugh and the realization that I wasn’t a horrible parent, just an exhausted one. Mansbach’s book may seem extreme to some, obscene to others, but it does a good job of reducing the guilt monster. If anything, it seems more obscene to beat yourself up over normal life stuff. We’re all just doing the best we can. And if it takes a shockingly funny book to jolt us back to normalcy then I say, bring it on and goodnight moon, goodnight guilt and good night guilty parents everywhere.
I couldn’t stop laughing. Steve called out from the living room wanting to know what was so funny. All I could do was point to the article in Sunday’s Boston Globe about a new book by Adam Mansbach aimed at sleep deprived parents called, “Go the F**k to Sleep.” Although it looks deceptively like a children’s book, it is aimed at parents with offspring who will go to any lengths not to go to sleep at night. According to the article’s writer, Beth Teitell, the book,
Hit the top spot on Amazon’s bestseller list in May — five months before its original publication date. It pulled off the incredible feat of going viral before it even came out, after author Adam Mansbach gave a reading in Philadelphia in April at the Fourth Wall Arts Salon, and parents in the audience told their exhausted friends, who told their exhausted friends. The book leaked online, and many parents reported having it forwarded to them by multiple friends. The intense interest prompted Akashic Books to move up the official release to June 14 — in time for Father’s Day. Akashic initially planned to print 10,000 copies but ended up printing 50,000 in the first run. By the publication date there will be 275,000 copies in circulation.
Can you imagine that? The book hasn’t even hit the book shelves, yet 275,000 parents are laughing exhaustedly, hysterically, probably with feelings of great relief that they are not monsters. Because let’s face it, who among us would ever admit to another parent that we would like to tell our dearest children, “Just go the f**k to sleep already!!” We may think it in the depths of our mortified psyches, simultaneously beating ourselves up for being horrible parents and for using such “descriptive” language to our beloved progeny, but let’s face it, every parent who has ever faced a child who refuses to go to sleep has thought it at one time or another.
Mansbach, an otherwise serious writer and poet and, the father of a young child who wouldn’t go to sleep, said he thinks his latest work resonates because it lets parents know they’re not alone.
And that’s the crux of the matter. The fact that many of us are raising our children alone with self help books taking the place of supportive families. We all feel that failing at parenting is a shameful thing--after all, we had this child and so we should automatically know how to raise it.
I’ve been there. When Lisa was born, Steve’s Dad had just died and his mom lived in Florida. I have no siblings and my parents lived in Israel. I had been working full time until Lisa came so all my friends were working women and none were parents. When Lisa was born in December we spent our days alone with just each other. Still, we were doing okay with the exception of one thing—Lisa was not a sleeper. She hated to nap, hated going to sleep at night and unbelievably, also woke up in the middle of the night. I was so sleep deprived that when I was driving and came to a red light I would think to myself, “I’ll just close my eyes till it turns green.”
Our pediatrician blamed me. She told me that I shouldn’t feed her at night, I shouldn’t rock her to sleep, sing her to sleep, cajole her to sleep, but should just put her in her crib, walk out the door and let her sob herself to sleep. I hated the woman.
Eventually we did tough it out and after two nights of crying Lisa caught on and slept. Miracles did happen. But then the champ appeared—Mariel. Compared to Mariel, Lisa was a lightweight. Mariel would wake up every night, her yells waking us all. Every night my little angel would sob, scream, and worst of all call out pleadingly, “mommy, daddy!” I was a wreck. Steve bought me a Walkman to plug up my ears, but even locked in the bathroom with the fan’s noisy whirring and the music at top volume, I could still hear her. I felt like the lowest scum on earth. And the only advice we kept getting was, “She’ll just have to cry it out.” Light years later I read that according to Doctor Rosen, associate medical director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital sBoston,
About 1 out of every 4 children age 10 and under have sleep issues. These range from night terrors to sleepwalking to “behavioral insomnia’’ of the type described in Mansbach’s book. Despite the prevalence of sleep problems, Rosen said, less than one-quarter of parents with affected children seek medical help. The rest, apparently, are just toughing it out — or are self-medicating now with Mansbach.
I could have used that book back then for a laugh and the realization that I wasn’t a horrible parent, just an exhausted one. Mansbach’s book may seem extreme to some, obscene to others, but it does a good job of reducing the guilt monster. If anything, it seems more obscene to beat yourself up over normal life stuff. We’re all just doing the best we can. And if it takes a shockingly funny book to jolt us back to normalcy then I say, bring it on and goodnight moon, goodnight guilt and good night guilty parents everywhere.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Our Garden of EdenOur Garden of Eden
Our Garden of Eden
We’ve just finished reading two short stories by Mark Twain entitled, Eve’s and Adam’s Diary. Twain describes Adam as a man with little imagination, caring only about building structures and animal husbandry and Eve as intelligent, imaginative and courageous but also vain and self important. The task that Eve loves best (besides naming all the animals) is taking care of the park, as she calls the Garden of Eden. I thought to myself it’s a good thing that in our family things are reversed because if it were up to me to maintain our “grounds” we would have put down Astroturf long ago.
I love grass, trees, and flowers—I just don’t want to be the one who takes care of them. I like to work outside for an hour or so and then go back in the house for some iced tea. Because of this poor Steve is the one who takes care of our great outdoors. It wasn’t like that when we first bought our house. I would plant impatiens everywhere and water them faithfully all summer. I fertilized, planted, weeded and generally, “took care”. But I learned early on that planting anything in our rocky New England earth is a challenge. Lisa learned that too--the hard way.
One beautiful September day Lisa saw bags of daffodil bulbs in the supermarket and pleaded with me to buy them. Since Mariel adored Lisa and did everything that she did, she also began to beg. I warned them that bulbs weren’t easy to plant and that I didn’t want to be the one who ended up digging all those holes.
“Of course not mommy, we’ll do everything and they’ll be so pretty, please, please, please…..” two pairs of eyes gazed at me hopefully. I gave in and bought a couple of bags of daffodils, some fertilizer, gardening gloves and two planting tools. From the size of their smiles you would have thought that they had just won the lottery. Lisa had visions of a front yard filled with yellow flowers and Mariel, well Mariel was just happy that Lisa was happy. She had no idea of what she had just signed on for and neither did Lisa.
The next day I showed them how to dig the hole, where to place the bulb and the fertilizer and warned them that the digging would be tough.
“Don’t worry mommy,” Lisa told me. “Mariel and I will do it. You won’t even know we’re out here.”
I left them wondering how long it would be before the first call for help. Sure enough I soon heard Lisa screaming at Mariel that she’d better get back and help or she would tell mom. I closed my eyes and put my fingers to my forehead feeling the beginnings of a headache. I knew that I was going to be on my knees digging holes before the day was through. I pretended not to hear what was going on, fervently hoping that those two would work it out in some way that would not involve me.
Soon I heard the door slam and Lisa yelling, “Mom!!! Mariel won’t help me plant the daffodils even though she promised. She broke her promise. You have to come outside and make her help me!!!!!!”
I tried to tell Lisa that Mariel was too little to be digging roles in impossibly rocky soil where the rocks outnumbered the dirt 100 to 1. But Lisa was having none of it. For her, breaking a promise was unheard of. So then I tried to explain that Mariel was too young to even know what a promise, or the breaking of one, entailed. But my explanations weren’t going over very well so I went outside to search for the truant daffodil planter.
I found her in the sandbox, digging happily. She looked so adorable sitting there with her pail and shovel but I had another offspring to placate so I knelt down and asked her why she wasn’t helping Lisa.
“It’s too hard, mommy,” she told me. “It hurts me, I can’t do it.” I kissed her and told her to have a good time in the sandbox and then I turned to the ball of fury beside me who was insisting that I had to make Mariel do it! I took her aside and explained as best as I could that Mariel just wasn’t old enough and that I would help her. She wasn’t happy with that. She thought that Mariel had broken a sacred rule and gotten away with murder. But the two of us went out and dug holes for the rest of the afternoon and planted all the bulbs. I may have cheated by throwing in as many as 10 in a hole just to get rid of the darned things.
Happily, that spring many of the daffodils sprang up and gave us great joy. Lisa proudly told everyone that she had planted them and Mariel added, “And I did too!” I thought Lisa would strangle her, but strangely enough she kept quiet—but she never volunteered to plant anything again. And Mariel--Mariel ended up being Steve’s landscaping helper, raking, spreading mulch and weeding. Unfortunately now that she no longer lives at home the only helper Steve has is me. And the only thing I’m good for is bringing him a cold glass of water.
We’ve just finished reading two short stories by Mark Twain entitled, Eve’s and Adam’s Diary. Twain describes Adam as a man with little imagination, caring only about building structures and animal husbandry and Eve as intelligent, imaginative and courageous but also vain and self important. The task that Eve loves best (besides naming all the animals) is taking care of the park, as she calls the Garden of Eden. I thought to myself it’s a good thing that in our family things are reversed because if it were up to me to maintain our “grounds” we would have put down Astroturf long ago.
I love grass, trees, and flowers—I just don’t want to be the one who takes care of them. I like to work outside for an hour or so and then go back in the house for some iced tea. Because of this poor Steve is the one who takes care of our great outdoors. It wasn’t like that when we first bought our house. I would plant impatiens everywhere and water them faithfully all summer. I fertilized, planted, weeded and generally, “took care”. But I learned early on that planting anything in our rocky New England earth is a challenge. Lisa learned that too--the hard way.
One beautiful September day Lisa saw bags of daffodil bulbs in the supermarket and pleaded with me to buy them. Since Mariel adored Lisa and did everything that she did, she also began to beg. I warned them that bulbs weren’t easy to plant and that I didn’t want to be the one who ended up digging all those holes.
“Of course not mommy, we’ll do everything and they’ll be so pretty, please, please, please…..” two pairs of eyes gazed at me hopefully. I gave in and bought a couple of bags of daffodils, some fertilizer, gardening gloves and two planting tools. From the size of their smiles you would have thought that they had just won the lottery. Lisa had visions of a front yard filled with yellow flowers and Mariel, well Mariel was just happy that Lisa was happy. She had no idea of what she had just signed on for and neither did Lisa.
The next day I showed them how to dig the hole, where to place the bulb and the fertilizer and warned them that the digging would be tough.
“Don’t worry mommy,” Lisa told me. “Mariel and I will do it. You won’t even know we’re out here.”
I left them wondering how long it would be before the first call for help. Sure enough I soon heard Lisa screaming at Mariel that she’d better get back and help or she would tell mom. I closed my eyes and put my fingers to my forehead feeling the beginnings of a headache. I knew that I was going to be on my knees digging holes before the day was through. I pretended not to hear what was going on, fervently hoping that those two would work it out in some way that would not involve me.
Soon I heard the door slam and Lisa yelling, “Mom!!! Mariel won’t help me plant the daffodils even though she promised. She broke her promise. You have to come outside and make her help me!!!!!!”
I tried to tell Lisa that Mariel was too little to be digging roles in impossibly rocky soil where the rocks outnumbered the dirt 100 to 1. But Lisa was having none of it. For her, breaking a promise was unheard of. So then I tried to explain that Mariel was too young to even know what a promise, or the breaking of one, entailed. But my explanations weren’t going over very well so I went outside to search for the truant daffodil planter.
I found her in the sandbox, digging happily. She looked so adorable sitting there with her pail and shovel but I had another offspring to placate so I knelt down and asked her why she wasn’t helping Lisa.
“It’s too hard, mommy,” she told me. “It hurts me, I can’t do it.” I kissed her and told her to have a good time in the sandbox and then I turned to the ball of fury beside me who was insisting that I had to make Mariel do it! I took her aside and explained as best as I could that Mariel just wasn’t old enough and that I would help her. She wasn’t happy with that. She thought that Mariel had broken a sacred rule and gotten away with murder. But the two of us went out and dug holes for the rest of the afternoon and planted all the bulbs. I may have cheated by throwing in as many as 10 in a hole just to get rid of the darned things.
Happily, that spring many of the daffodils sprang up and gave us great joy. Lisa proudly told everyone that she had planted them and Mariel added, “And I did too!” I thought Lisa would strangle her, but strangely enough she kept quiet—but she never volunteered to plant anything again. And Mariel--Mariel ended up being Steve’s landscaping helper, raking, spreading mulch and weeding. Unfortunately now that she no longer lives at home the only helper Steve has is me. And the only thing I’m good for is bringing him a cold glass of water.
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