Can you Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?

I mean this with no disrespect to my mother, first and foremost. I mean, I'm just trying to get as much insight as possible into how feasible my mother's latest idea is ...

She wants a BlackBerry. Yup, my 60+ mother wants to get rid of her simplistic cell phone (which, incidentally, she has trouble operating) and get a BlackBerry. I spent an hour or so last night showing her how to use mine, and she had two bottom line thoughts:
1) The keyboard is much easier to type on
2) You can Google whenever you want!

Oh, and she was also really into the calendar which, to be fair, is pretty cool. I have mine synched to my work e-mail, so any meetings or appointments set up through Outlook at work are automatically added to my CrackCalendar.

My main concern is that this is a woman unable to make any sort of technological inferencing or troubleshooting on her laptop (you wouldn't believe some of the questions she comes up with ;))

Which, I suppose, leads me to my next point: Facebook. My mother is convinced that Facebook is evil, that shhould she get one, identity fraud of the highest level will be immediately perpetrated. I (very patiently) showed he what would happen if someone tried to even look at my Facebook if I hadn't added them first, namely that they'd see nothing but my picture and "Click here to send a Friend Request to Katie". I still don't think she got it ...

She does love to look at pictures on my Facebook, though (Addie's got 400 pics from her recent trip, for example), and she's also moderately creepy about checking out my friends' profiles. "What does Aunt Sarah's say? Has Mary or Adam updated recently?"

Geez Louise, Mom ... Get your own!

So what do you think? Should I encourage her to pursue these endeavors? (And please don't say she'll get better with practice--she won't ... She gives a lot of presentations, and either Addie or I still have to be PowerPoint tech support after well over ten years of this)

Kids in Distress: Just Wrong

Sometimes I wonder why children are at times forced to deal with a degree of pain that most adults cannot handle easily.

There are some terrible things in the world, and I just wish there was a way to protect kids from this ugliness. Obviously, this isn't possible, and certainly working through horrible events can be character-building and an opportunity for growth. The greatest devastation can ultimately give the most valuable lessons.

I just wish you could get those things without the pain. Or maybe I just wish there was some sort of age line so it doesn't happen to kids. Or some sort of warning. Maybe a little heads-up.

My heart and thoughts and prayers are with your family, both biological and the greater community.

Just Stuff it Under the Bed

It's funny sometimes to think about where the line between child and adult is.

I am thirty-two years old. I'm married with two children of my own. I have a successful career, and I pay my bills on time (mostly). However, the mere thought of my mother coming to stay with us for four days while Pythagorus is in the South on business has me cleaning my bedroom in details that haven't been reached for ... oh, I'm going to say years. For some reason, my mother being in this house brings out the child in me.

I guess the reason for that is obvious. She lived in this house for almost fifteen years. What is now "my" bedroom used to be hers. The fact that it wasn't exactly clean on a regular basis when it was her room will no doubt be lost in her memories. Oh my God, the wainscoting is dusty! (I have a black lab and white wainscoting ... it's always going to look dusty).

What gets me, I think, is that you always want better for your kids, and I think that's why my mother is so quick to pass judgment on my (lack of) housekeeping skills. In a recent conversation with my sister, we came to the mutual conclusion that Kay (my mother) is "special", for lack of a better way to put it. She has a good heart and would do anything for anyone, but she has eccentricities that impacted us adversely when we were children and have made her the subject of many eye rolls and inside jokes she will never understand as we've gotten older.

I love my mother dearly. After the girls and Pythagorus, she is the most important person in my life. She knows this as well as I do. In fact, she was the first person to whom I e-mailed the illustrious first edition of the brand new school newspaper. In much the same way, I am the first person she comes to with things both good and bad. My mother, the bane of my existence for the first twenty-three years of my life, is now pretty much my best friend. Life is strange.

Which is why I can't figure out why I'm reeling on Klonopin as I clean my bedroom in anticipation of her arrival. This should be a photograph from earlier years, and I find it intriguing that it's still the case all these years later.

Is there some point in time where that magic parent/child role reversal takes place? Although I guess it's true, once a mother, always a mother ...