Thoughts

I generally go back and read old posts that I have written and inevitably find spelling errors. I always go back and correct them, so you can be assured if you read something like "elictric" on my blog, if I find it, I WILL correct it! If there is spell-check on blogspot, I don't know how to use it. I've never been much of a spell-check person. I also generally keep phone numbers in my head instead of in my phone. Although, in my advancing age, keeping things in my head isn't working as well as it used to.

We just got back from a long weekend of camping. We even went on a hike and saw wild horses! Pictures will come eventually. We are hooked on the game Five Crowns right now. We were playing the other night in the camper and there was some typical family banter going on. I have no idea now what it was even about, but it was on the idea of "did not, did too, did not, did too." As the frustrated mom, I made a comment like "why can't you stop fighting/ why does it always have to be like this/ blahblahblahblah........" Jonathan in his infinite wisdom replied, "this is what all families do." The moral of this story is. I like to keep it real around here. We are definitely real. If your family doesn't banter like that at least once in a while, I don't want to know about it.

I often wonder what the headlines would've been if some major event hadn't taken place. Like for example who would've been on People magazine last week if Gary Coleman hadn't died? Today's front page news story was about female "castmembers" at Disney not having to wear panty-hose anymore. I'm not even sure if that word is hyphenated or what because I certainly don't wear them. It is good news though because it means there was no big bad news story to bump them from their spot! Another front page story was about a 16 year old girl assisting in the birth of her baby sister because they couldn't get to the hospital on time. Generally speaking I dislike the news. I know that doesn't sound very good, and I truly like to know what is going on and I see the value of being informed. I just think news is generally bad for you. Today, it was pretty good. I mean most people probably don't care one way or another about what Disney workers wear on their legs, but I think we should all be thankful that nothing terrible happened yesterday that would be front page news.

Some really great friends are moving out of state this week. I hate that! They are the eighth (I think) really close friends to move away from here. By really close, I mean like "have the whole family over for dinner close." All my life before living here, I was always the one to move away. I moved away after 1st grade, after 8th grade, in the middle of 10th grade, I transferred to a different college after my freshman year, etc... I was always the one leaving. Some of those times I was really sad about the move, but I, at least, had the new adventure ahead. Now once again, we're going to be here and there's going to be a hole where our friends are not.

I think we are going to get rid of our home phone. I've not wanted to do this in the past because it seems like a weird thing to do, but truly we don't need it. We get more calls for people that are not us than we do for us anyway. It's just one of those things from the past that we're just hanging on to, but it is really outdated and unnecessary. This kind of came about in a "if you give a mouse a cookie" sort of way. The thing is, we are planning on getting rid of our satellite TV. There are many reasons for this including there being so many better ways to spend time other than watching TV, too much news is bad for you, and with Netflix, the internet, the library etc...we can watch whatever we want to watch whenever we want to, so there is no reason for the channel surfing and/or just watching what's on because it is on. So... with a free trial of Netflix, we decided no TV, eventually we are going to want at least network TV so we then started leaning towards regular basic cable, with that we will switch our internet from DSL to cable and eliminate the need for a home phone. Just while typing this, I've discovered another thing about the phone. I think it is just something that we are used to. Houses have phones. Sort of like babies drink from bottles and sleep in cribs and kids go to school. We've managed pretty well to be functional and fairly mainstream without those other things, do we really need a home phone? It's not like we'll be unreachable, we have our cell phones. In the process of switching all this stuff we will add one more phone to our family plan, so Jonathan and Madi won't just have the shared phone anymore, and if someone is home a phone will always be too.

We now have the ability to connect with anyone anywhere anytime. I am now facebook friends with my girl scout leader. I think we adapt to change easier when it is adding something new and harder when it involves taking something away. That is why it was a fairly easy transition for people to get cell phones and harder to let go of the home phone. It is easier to be the person moving on to a new adventure than it is to be the one left behind.