by jphilo | Apr 27, 2012 | Current Events
A long, long time ago God invented mothers because He knew kids needed someone to:
- tuck them in bed at a decent hour so they could pay attention in school.
- remind them to be nice to their friends.
- shoo them outdoors to run around and get some exercise.
- make sure they ate 3 balanced meals a day.
- tell them to think a little while and see if they could figure out the answer for themselves.
- limit screen time.
- put them in the corner until they were done sassing and ready to treat people with respect.
- teach them to deposit half their allowance in the piggy bank so they learned to save.
- force them to drink water instead of pop because water is free.
- regale them with pregnancy stories.
- keep track of how often babies pee and poop and send older kids to sit on the toilet when they have stomach aches.
- tell kids to go upstairs and read a book ’cause they’re driving their parents crazy.
But according to yesterday’s episode of On Point (an NPR show hosted by Tom Ashbrook) entitled “The Quantified Self,” computer apps now can do everything mothers used to do. The webpage about the show lists the following what-your-mother-used-to-do apps:
- Sleep Cycle The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase. It aims to make you wake up more refreshed.
- Facebook Timeline The social networking site now includes a timeline feature that puts your interactions with the site and your network of friends in chronological order.
- Fitbit A machine that tracks your sleep and physical activity.
- Meal Snap Take a photo of the food you eat and this app — amazingly — can figure out how many calories you’ve consumed.
- Honestly Now helps you make decisions by getting you the answers you want to your burning questions.
- What Pulse This app tracks your keyboard and mouse use.
- Mood Scope This app records your daily mood, tracks it over time, and can be integrated with your friends — with the aim of improving your well-being.
- Mint An online tool to track your financial transactions.
- Waterlogged This app keeps track of how much water you’re drinking each day.
- My Pregnancy Today Track your pregnancy with this app.
- Baby Connect records information about your newborn: feeding (bottle, nursing, solid, pumping), diapers, sleep, mood, activities, milestones, health, medicines, vaccines, photos, and more.
- Azumio This app measures and records your stress levels.
I am not making this up, According to Tom Ashbrook and his guests, almost everything mothers used to monitor can now be monitored and quantified by computer apps.
Why? Well, Tom Ashbrook didn’t say why (click here to listen to the show), but my guess is that grown up app creators prefer having a computer analyze their lifestyles and tell them to get enough sleep, eat right, and get off their butts and exercise than to have their mothers tell them the same things. Or point out the obvious: Companies aren’t interested in hiring people engrossed in digitized navel gazing. People obsessing over data about their sleep cycles, diets moods, bowel movements, water intake, and financial transactions don’t have a social life. So these app gurus are stuck in an endless, self-perpetuating cycle. They sit around creating apps about everything and anything except what they need to hear.
Stop navel gazing and think about somebody else for a change!
But God knew young adults need someone to tell them the truth now and then.
So he created an app for that.
And named her Mom.
by jphilo | Apr 13, 2012 | Current Events
Attention all Downton Abbey wannabes! You know who I mean.
- The career woman ashamed to admit her childhood dream was to be a princess and live in a castle when she grew up.
- The mom who saving up for mother-daughter Belle gowns from the Disney catalog.
- The hunter who secretly wishes he could wear a scarlet coat and riding britches instead of a fluorescent orange vest when deer season opens.
- The husband who dreams of a life where he can ditch his wife and spend the evening smoking cigars and drinking cognac with his posh buddies.
Yup, we’re the people who make the Masterpiece Theater creators eyes shine with dollar pound signs once we’re hooked on a show like Downton Abbey.
But it’s very, very important for us wannabes to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. Otherwise, we won’t have the emotional energy needed to remain suspended on the season two finale’s cliffhanger, worrying about what really matters. Things like:
- Will Matthew and Mary really tie the knot?
- Will Mr. Bates go to prison?
- Will Thomas quit smoking?
- Will the Dowager Countess of Grantham (aka: Maggie Smith) turn quickly and knock someone over with her hat?
- Will the wardrobe mistress ever let Edith wear a pretty dress?
Those issues weighed heavily on me until a friend and fellow wannabe sent a link to a YouTube video. Those who take themselves and Downton Abbey too seriously should be prepared to be indignant. Everybody else, be prepared to laugh at this spoof entitled Downton Arby’s.
[youtube]http://screen.yahoo.com/downton-arby-s-28723019.html[/youtube]
by jphilo | Mar 12, 2012 | Current Events
We did some mighty fine eating during our Savannah vacation. So fine that I’ve been fighting an unsuccessful battle of the bulge since arriving home last Tuesday. For days, my inner dialogue has been a free-for-all of complaints.
Why did I indulge in so many afternoon snacks, and evening ice cream runs?
Why did the food down south have to be so tempting?
Why didn’t I walk more while we were there?
I was complaining last Thursday when our church secretary sent the following prayer from a dad requesting prayer for his son:
“Jaxson and his mom will be in Omaha for eight weeks, starting Monday, where they will be working on issues with his food aversion. Since coming home last year, his only real source of food has been through his feeding tube and an occasional (when he is in the mood) bottle or a little bit of something solid. When eating, he has constantly gagged. He is on at least four different medications at any one time and taking those at least three times per day. He is on constant oxygen all day, and we have been visited at least three times a week by medical and AEA staff who have been working with Jax on his development. We are definitely praying for success out of this because, to be honest, it is our best and last shot (this is only one of three food aversion clinics nationwide) to get help in getting him off the food pump, g tube, and oxygen and eating right!”
My heart broke for them as I remembered our son’s food aversion as an infant. It hadn’t lasted as long as Jaxson’s, but it had been traumatic. More than that, I knew this family. I interviewed them and told their story in Different Dream Parenting. I sensed God calling me to pray for them for the next eight weeks. And I sensed His gentle chastening, too. Instead of complaining about my battle of the bulge, he called me to thank Him for blessings too often taken for granted.
Thank you, God, that I can chew. Thank you for the ability to swallow, for being able to eat and enjoy food. Lord, make these blessings I take for granted part of Jaxson’s life, too. Amen.
by jphilo | Feb 7, 2012 | Current Events
Last weekend a friend sent an email about the Washington Post’s Annual Mensa Invitational. According to the email, this year’s invitational consisted of two parts. In the first, “The Post invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. For those of you who, like me, can’t follow all that in your head, here’s one entry.
Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
The email described the second part of the invitational which asks readers to supply alternate meanings for common words. Such as:
Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
By the time I finished reading the 17 entries in the first category and the 16 entries in the second, my sides ached with laughter. This response confirmed a long held, secret suspicion that if I could be queen of anything, I would choose queen of word play. The email made me so happy, I also decided to blog about it.
That’s when an internet search disclosed a disturbing truth.
The Washington Post’s Annual Mensa Invitational doesn’t exist. Once upon a time, someone ran a contest and an almost identical list has been circulated year after year…since 1998. The news kinda broke my queen of word play heart.
Until I stumbled upon the WPM Invitational website.
WPM took the idea, though they clearly state they are not associated with the Washington Post, and now oversee their own annual contest. Their rules are identical to the first half of the original contest. At the site, you can see:
You can also:
My fave in the 2010 contest was…Ussues Issues shared or inherited by virtue of being in a committed relationship which was submitted by Michale Bertani.
Now if you will excuse me, it’s time to wrap up this blog and get to work on my entries for the 2012 contest. If you’d like to vote for them, just look for the ones by Queen of Word Play and vote for royalty.
This queen will be quite amused.
by jphilo | Jan 31, 2012 | Current Events
For a couple weeks after the caucuses, Iowans were conditioned by political pollsters to give short answers on the phone we almost forgot how to engage in casual conversation. But since the ISU Cyclones defeated fifth ranked KU over the weekend, conversation has picked up quite nicely in our little state. Even after the “How’s about them Cyclones?” talk dies down, I think the weather will give us plenty to talk about.
Optimists can talk about how nice it is to walk to the mailbox in shirtsleeves in January.
Environmentalist can talk about how this month’s weather is a sure sign of global warming.
Farmers can talk about how Elwynn Taylor thinks the drought of ’12 is coming down.
For those of you who’ve never heard of Elwynn Taylor, he’s an uncannily accurate Iowa State University extension climatologist. He studies long term climate patterns and predicts long term trends rather than day-to-day weather.
In July, if he predicts a snowy winter, you’d be wise to buy a snowshovel.
But if he predicts a mild winter, don’t buy a new winter coat.
In January, if he predicts the summer will be wet, cancel the cabin at the lake.
If he predicts a flood, buy a boat.
And if he predicts a drought, take it seriously.
Guess which one he’s predicting for this summer?
A drought.
Which means I’m taking out stock in a garden hose company.
Because the last time Elwynn predicted a bad drought was in January of ’88.
When the dry fall and winter weather pattern was similar to this fall and winter.
When La Nina was getting old.
When Alaska had lots of snow.
I was three months pregnant with Anne way back then. By the time Anne was born in July, the drought was awful. To be clear, Elwynn didn’t know about my pregnancy, so it didn’t figure into his prediction.
But, even if ISU loses every game for the rest of the summer, my shelf of conversation starters is well-stocked for the rest of 2012. I’ll be the life of every party, chatting about Elwynn Taylor drought predictions, pregnancy during drought stories, and labor during drought stories. Really fascinating stuff.
So, when would you like me to come to dinner at your house?
by jphilo | Jan 27, 2012 | Current Events, Reflections on the Past
Yesterday morning, my first thought was not, “Today, I’m gonna feel old.” But thanks to the Girl Scouts – yes, those cute little cookie peddlers who sell sugar highs in a box – for the first time ever, I am feeling a wee bit ancient.
Not just old. Ancient.
The realization was gradual, increasing the longer I listened to Talk of Iowa on the radio. The topic was the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts, and the host interviewed some Girl Scout leaders and a couple honest-to-goodness present day Girl Scouts. The girls were about the same age I was during my short career as cookie salesgirl and sash wearer.
And they made me feel not just old. But ancient.
It wasn’t their fault. But, while they talked, I thought about how 1912 was a century ago for the little girls. Just like 1865 was a hundred years ago when I attended Girl Scout meetings after school in 1965. So if and when they watch a show like Downton Abbey, the events portrayed there are as long ago and far away to them as the events chronicled in Gone With the Wind were to me.
And that’s when I started feeling not just old. But ancient.
Not because the Civil War seemed like a long time ago when I was a Girl Scout. And not because 1912 is a long time ago to the girls in the radio interview. And not because 1912 didn’t seem like such a long time ago in my GS days. But because the Civil War probably didn’t seem like such a long time ago to fifty-five-year-old adults in my GS days, but I thought those people were old.
But they didn’t seem just old. They seemed ancient.
Which is how today’s Girl Scouts view everybody old enough to tuck an AARP membership card next to the packet of Metamucil in their wallets, old enough to wear sensible shoes, sport age spots, and wear pants with elastic waistbands.
They view us as not just old. But ancient.
Oh my, the depression is coming on thick and fast. I think there’s only one way to fight this thing. I’m gonna find a Girl Scout, buy a box of Thin Mints, and snarf down the whole box. After all, my mom says old people like me have earned the right to eat whatever they want. And she ought to know.
‘Cause she’s not just old. She’s ancient.
