My iPad, My Wrath

An iPad scuffle caught on camera:

I got an iPad for Christmas! Remember that editorial I wrote about only getting one present for Christmas? Turns out that’s A-OK if it’s an iPad. Tim certainly knows how to play this game.

I’m loving it. There's only one thing that stands between me and full enjoyment of that iPad: my children.

There’s Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds and DoodleJump that call their name. However, this is a legitimate business write-off and the iPad will be used for conducting business correspondence only. Such as posting my high score for Fruit Ninja to the GTWoman Facebook page.

Well, I'm tired of the constant battle for my only Christmas toy, so I've decided to institute an “invitation only” rule. They cannot get on my iPhone or iPad without an invitation. You don’t invite yourself over to someone’s house, you don’t invite yourself to someone’s party, you don’t invite yourself on my iAnything.

Agreed?

Amazingly, this is working for me. I am shocked to realize they understand that it is mine (only thing, ever). Sure, they’ll lean into my shoulders, one on each side, while I’m on it, to the point that I can’t actually move my arms and operate it, but still, it is mine.

Or sometimes they’ll pick it up gently from the countertop, travel the harrowing four feet to the living room, hold it in their lap, and burn holes in the side of my face with their pupils.

But they do not OPEN the cover for fear of my wrath.

My wrath goes something like this: 

1. Head whips sharply. Works best if hair flips over forehead in erratic pattern.

2. Eyebrows shoot up. I did not just see you open that, did I?

3. Lips set. Pressure making lips disappear altogether into the face of fury.

4. Hand held out. Give it to me. Fingers stiff, death by Pinky.

5. Eyes bug out. Make eyes look as large as inhumanly possible. An alien force has entered their mother’s body and there is no accounting for what will happen next.

6. Silence. Deafening silence. My arm is starting to shake with anger (and effort), my eyes are drying out, but I’m enjoying myself. How ugly can I make myself look?

7. Stand-Off. At this point I’m having more fun than any iPad app. I’ve got a fair amount of improv theater invested in the moment and I’m in no hurry to end this. Let’s just see how hard they can push.

About now is when a banner alert beeeeep comes in. I pounce on the child and yank it from his hands. Momma has work to do, stand back!

Wait. Looks like there’s an update for Angry Birds.

Slide… App Store… updates… install …password… waiting… loading…  the blue bar….

Game on.

So. Who wants to play with Momma?

Mom's Handwriting

I just had my friend Barb mail me a Christmas card my mother sent her years ago. It's a TREASURE! If you have an old card or letter my mom sent you and would like to pass it back to me, I would treasure it. Please let me know. Seeing her handwriting and her thoughts and her life at that time would mean so much to me. ♥

I wrote this passage below after I got it. It might go in my book, who knows! It was hard to read the card, but nice to feel close to my mom. I will tuck this card into my Christmas decorations box and find it new again each year. Thank you to my friend Missy for such a perfect idea.

~

The handwriting was in blue ink, by a pen that was spotty and uncooperative. But her mother had written through the fading in and out of it, two sides worth. Lainey liked that, the optimism it implied, that she would carry on her conversation with the pen and the page regardless of what either thought of it.

The Christmas card was seven years old, sent to her by her mother’s friend Barb who had come across it in an old drawer. Lainey did the math. It would have been the last Christmas card her mother had written to her. Lainey’s stomach turned at the thought. That her mother had written a long, cheerful note, and not a word of it about how her body was betraying her. How this card sounded like any other year, any of the countless years her mother sent out cards. It was a small, envelope-sized picture of her mother’s strength. Maybe, Lainey thought, at the end, you go back to the things that comfort, the things that work. The growing kids and the new snowmobiles and the neighbor’s dog.

Her mother wrote of Lainey and her sisters, her husband and her neighbors. And then she wrote of her two grandsons and Lainey stopped reading to touch the words on the page, shocked and comforted by this, this concrete evidence that her mother and sons had lived in the same lifetime.

Some days Lainey worried that she couldn’t remember a single word her mother had said to her children, or they to her. But there had been thousands. Thousands of words and kisses and hugs and minutes. Her mother had lived to see Kendall reach 4 and Nelson 2. Had Nelson spoken much at that age? Lainey was pressed to remember something specific. How would her boys remember if she couldn’t? But here, the card said it was so. Her mother had been here with them, it was as simple as that. She took that feeling and held on to it, thinking of her boys in her mother's kitchen, underfoot, laughing, her mother pulling them on her lap while she rocked in the living room, kissing their soft hair.

Lainey closed the Christmas card and recognized the cover design, having signed fifty of them for her mother, their writing then nearly identical. She had signed card after card, a simple “Judy and Barry” while she sat on one side of the kitchen table, and her mother sat, sick, on the other, insisting that she write some cards with personal notes. Lainey had forgotten about this, the last round of cards sent as a team effort. And it caught her breath to think that she could have easily opened this old card to find her own writing.

But she hadn’t. It was her mother’s, the writing so pretty and consistent that it would be a font a designer might use. Lainey’s handwriting was nothing like it anymore, sharp and hesitant from years of little use. The writing was like her mother, soft and warm and unassuming. The kind you read and folded up and saved to revisit again.

Lainey finished reading the card, twice, and then she let the sadness come as she stood in the driveway, her long dirt driveway, and cried. She wondered if her neighbors might come out to see what was wrong and hoped they would, the chance to share her mother’s writing welcome. But she stood alone in the January afternoon, an unseasonably warm breeze in the air, holding her mother’s hand in her own hand, cherishing it.

 

GTW Editorial: 2012 Resolution Repeats

Do you remember two years ago when we listed our 2010 Resolutions? Neither do we. So we thought we’d revisit them and see what 730 days of diligent behavior gets you:

 1. We will not wait until the last minute to write the editorial.
Not True. We fear the day the printer accidentally prints the initial draft of our issue where we send a blank editorial page with nothing but the word “Surprised?” written on it.

2. We will not promise everyone an article in the magazine and then have Kandy worry about the true space available.
Not True. Kandy still promises a story to nearly everyone she meets, even some she doesn’t. This behavior has become viral, like a YouTube video. So, if she promises you a story, can you gently tell her, “Promise nothing.” It’s the new motto around here and we’d like if it you could help Kandy remember it.

3. We will not wait to find something to wear to our own events the hour before we are to arrive.
Not True. In fact, Kerry found a silica gel pack inside her left shoe 20 minutes into a luncheon last month.

4. We will finally order name tags that are legible.
Not True. We gave up on nametags altogether. I’m Kandy, she’s Kerry.

5. We resolve, when asked to partake in a bowl-a-thon, to train for it.
Again, not true. We not only lost at raising the most funds this year in the BBBS Bowl For Kids Sake, we lost at knocking down the most of those little white things. We have put in a formal request that they consider Laser Tag For Kids Sake in 2012. We figure this would minimally allow for better photo opps. (Vests and guns, what’s not to like?)

6. We resolve to have more staff meetings.
Not true. We haven’t had a staff meeting in two years. Unless you count gathering once a month with our “staff” of 120-140 women, having lunch or wine with them. The more we think about it, our monthly GTW events are more productive than nearly every other meeting at every other job we’ve ever had. Turns out when no one’s looking, we appear to have a plan.

7. We will not bring work home with us.
Not true. While Kandy was typing this in her living room she was momentarily stunned by a Nerf bullet to the right ear. (Laser tag training not looking so hot.) Working from home has actually improved our quality of life, giving our children easier and more frequent targets.

8. We resolve to end each luncheon on time.
TRUE! People, do you see this? TRUE. Hallelujah we have met one of our goals! Wow, there is excitement unfurling here not unlike a parade.

9. We resolve to honor the Network Nite “after party.”
Another TRUE! Jackpot! So proud that we committed to more parties, the toughest resolution of all, and persevered.

Well there you have it. Two down, seven to go. We figure there’s no reason to write any more resolutions. At this rate, we’ve got another seven years of work in front of us. But never fear, when we are feeling weak and overwhelmed in the face of change, we will stand back and hold forth the strength and commitment we have shown in the last two years. In the New Year, we wish you the same.