Is a cell phone a musical instrument?

I was planning to write a post today about my plans and non-resolutions for the new year, something reflective and maybe even a little profound. But then I got distracted, spending a good portion of the day sorting out a situation with Child One’s cell phone that was brought about by his love of music.

I’ve written before about the fact that both my kids are very musical. Sometimes their talent borders on the bizarre. For example, a couple of years ago our trusty old vacuum, which was duct-taped and repaired to within an inch of its life, became unusable. The new one is okay, but there’s one thing I hate about it: It emits a horrible noise, a high-pitched squealy kind of noise so awful to my ear that I’m tempted to buy an iPod just so I can wear it while I’m vacuuming.

A few weeks ago I heard Child One squealing along with the vacuum. He told me that he’d figured out that the vacuum made a high E, and now when it’s on, he’ll sing that note and hold it until I want to duct-tape him. Then Child Two told me that she likes to sing along to the vacuum too. What is wrong with these kids?

Child One hasn’t taken piano lessons, but he likes to pick out songs by ear on his sister’s piano. And since we bought him a cell phone in September when he started high school, he’s done the same on his phone. Remember when push-button phones first came on the market (please tell me you’re old enough to remember that) and we all learned to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by pushing the right sequence of numbers? It’s quite amazing the songs he can get out of that cell phone keypad.

Well, last night he came to us, saying that his phone wasn’t working. After spending quite a lot of time on hold listening to “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and other great tunes from my early childhood, I finally got through to a support person at the wireless company, who determined that Child One had somehow managed to enter the code that locks his phone’s SIM card. Locks it tight. Or “hard locks” it, as the term apparently goes. Meaning it couldn’t be unlocked and we had to buy a new card for $40.

Here I’d been worried that he’d accidentally call China or Australia or an equally expensive place while figuring out how to play some classic rock tune. I had no idea that he could actually break his phone.

It worked out okay, though. When I got home from getting his phone fixed, I found a message on our machine saying that the $40 parking ticket I got a few weeks ago had been cancelled. Twit that I am, I’d accidentally placed my parking stub upside down on my dashboard, and the parking company had, to my surprise, taken mercy on me when I appealed the ticket. So the money I would have spent fixing my mistake could go to fixing his.

Child One may have inherited his musical ability from his dad, but he definitely inherited his ability to be a twit from me.

Wordless Wednesday #27--Snowy beach

Taken December 19, 2008, in North Vancouver, BC.

For another one of my Wordless Wednesday photos, see my other blog. For other people's, see wordlesswednesday.com.

Starting the new year with homemade bread

What could be better on a snowy New Year's Day than warm-from-the-oven bread? Not much, according to Child Two, who is in the kitchen right now cutting herself another piece.

Earlier today I came across a One-Hour French Bread recipe on the Simple, Frugal, Green Co-Op blog. I used to (before kids) make most of our bread, so yeast doesn't scare me one bit. But even if you've never made yeast bread before, try this recipe. It's truly easy.

Photo taken December 24, 2008.

The end of the year

My goal for the end of the year was to be able to take some time off over my kids’ Christmas break without the constant feeling that I should be working. So November was “Enough trying to do everything at once, already!” month. My priority was work and almost everything else just had to give—hobbies, reading, taking photos, staying in touch with faraway friends. And blogs, both the reading and the writing of (my blog reader has given up trying to keep track of how behind I am, telling me only that I have a total of “1000+” unread posts in the blogs I subscribe to).

There are almost no pictures on my camera between this one

Taken October 25, 2008, in Burnaby, BC.

and this one.

Black bench, white snow. Taken December 19, 2008, in North Vancouver, BC.

Due to the hell-inducing project mentioned in my last post, “Enough trying to do everything at once, already!” month spilled over into December, merging with “Enough Christmas mayhem, already!” We’ve never been a family for consumeristic Christmases, but this year we scaled back yet again. Between work, the cold that never ends (please let it end soon; I’m tired of coughing), the usual slew of Christmas performances to attend, and being snowed in, there just hasn’t been time for as much shopping or for writing so many Christmas cards.

The result of all this is that, for the first time in years, there are no longer several large projects pitching battles for space in my schedule. I’m starting the new year with a reasonable amount of work and a much-improved ability to say no to my clients when I need to. This is one of the most important outcomes of my Year of Living Differently.

Because of the unusual amount of snow we’ve been getting, most of my time off has been spent shovelling, learning how to put chains on the car, and crossing my fingers that we’ll be able to drive to within walking distance of the house whenever we go out, but still—time off! Just like I used to be at the end of every term during my ridiculous number of years in university, I’ve felt a little lost, at loose ends, not sure what to do first.

The intensity of my work over the last couple of months has also made it hard for me to write. Sometimes spending so much energy on other people’s words makes it difficult for me to find my own. And I’ve been going through some adolescent blog-angst, wondering whether I should combine my blogs or even whether I should start blogging again at all.

As the year comes to an end, though, I’m finding my feet. I’ve taken some pictures. I’ve done some knitting. I’ve slept a lot. And now I’m planning for the new year.

Is it hot in here?

I have not fallen off the face of the earth, although I'm kind of wishing I had. I am working on a project from hell. I can't say anything specific about it, of course. All I can say is that my little office has become an inferno of bad writing that needs to be made good. And like any true hellish form of punishment, it's lasting an eternity. I'm now feverishly trying to get what is supposed to be the last (please, God, let it be the last) round of substantial editing done.

I could swear I just heard Beelzebub laughing from behind the filing cabinet.

I must have done something terrible in a previous life, because I'm paying for it now.

Green Friday--Working with the weather

The weather and I don’t always get along. I’ve been known to garden in the rain and to stand over a hot stove making jam on the hottest day of the year. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to think of ways that I can work with the weather to decrease the amount of resources that I use.

For example, we’ve always been ones to hang our laundry outside, if we happen to do our laundry on a sunny day. Now I keep an eye on the extended forecast and try to save the laundry for days when I can put it out for at least a few hours. Given that we live in a place with an average of 154.5 days of precipitation a year, this isn’t always possible. And sometimes, through a lack of planning or a spell of bad weather, someone runs out of clean underwear and a load just has to be done no matter what it’s doing outside. But there are some weeks in which the dryer has hardly any work at all and I would guess that we use it maybe 50% of the time we would if we were using it to dry all our laundry.

My office is cold—so cold that my fingers sometimes go numb and it’s hard to type. It doesn’t help that the only thermostat for the whole house is upstairs, where it’s brighter and warmer, and my office is downstairs, where it’s darker and colder. In the past, when it got cold enough that a couple more layers of clothes couldn’t keep me from shivering, I either turned up the heat for the whole house (which I hate to do, since it’s a big waste) or kept a space heater near me all day (which I don’t like much either, since it’s noisy). Now I take my laptop upstairs on cold days. Two added benefits are that (a) on particularly gloomy days, of which we have many, it’s much nicer to be upstairs and (b) I get extra exercise—and generate heat—by running downstairs several times a day for reference books, files, or the chocolate bar I’ve hidden in my desk.

If I’m planning to do some baking, I try to do it on a cold day rather than a warm one. Our oven is a 1970s classic and not very efficient, so it makes sense to have it leaking heat on a cold day instead of when the house is already warm enough. It heats up our tiny kitchen so well that I can do my work at the table and turn the heat down a little bit in the rest of the house.

Child Two and I walk to school whenever we can, but when it’s really raining, we drive. Now that the fall weather is truly here, that’s happening more often. If I have errands to do in that direction, I save them for the days we drive so that I can drop her off at school on the way and not use any extra gas. Errands that are closer to home I save for nicer days and I walk instead of taking the car.

I can’t control the weather. I have to stand at the sidelines at soccer games and cross country meets no matter how hard it’s raining (why can’t my kids pick indoor sports?). But in trying to work with the weather, I’m finding that, in addition to saving some energy, I’m a little more appreciative of the variety we have here. I’m grateful as I hang out the laundry on a sunny day and I enjoy the coziness of a warm kitchen on a rainy one.

Enough, already!--Month eight

Well, here I am being completely wordy on Wordless Wednesday yet again. It’s the eighth month of my “Enough, already!” project and this month—strange as it may sound—I’ve decided say “Enough reality, already!”

I don’t know if I can explain this clearly, although it makes sense in my own head. It’s based on two concepts I’ve come across in several different places. The first is acting “as if”—the idea is that if you don’t know how to do something, or don’t want to do it, you act as if you can or you want to until you learn how or start enjoying it or get it finished. The second is the idea that your experience of what is going on around you is heavily affected by the filters you see it through, and those filters are based on your past experiences, your relationships with others, and so on. I’ve heard this idea before but lately I’ve been coming across it over and over: online, in magazine articles, in books. I’m taking it as a message from the universe (self-centered, aren’t I, thinking that the universe is sending me messages again?).

I’ve been trying this out to see how I can use it. Take, for example, walking. Not the actual physical act of walking—even though I’m a total klutz and have been known to trip on air, I’m pretty successful at walking most of the time. For the past few years I’ve been wanting to exercise more by going for regular walks. But I don’t have the time. Really, truly, if I compare all the things I have to do with the amount of time in the day, I do not have time to go for walks—I barely have time to go to the bathroom. But since school started, I’ve been acting as if I do have the time and going right ahead and doing it.

I’ve also been spending more time cooking and crafting and gardening. In reality, I don’t have time for them. But I’m doing them anyway and somehow my schedule is shifting to fit them in.

These concepts work in other ways too. In reality, I’m a person who usually heads straight to the cookie jar for a snack. But now I’m acting as if I’m the kind of person who eats some fruit first. In reality, my sewing room is a cluttered mess, a fact that is often enough to stop me from working on a project. But now I’m acting as if I can find what I need—looking until I do and slowly but surely getting things in order as I look.

I’m refusing to accept the reality that I live with psychotic, plant-killing cats. I potted up some cuttings from our never-say-die spider plant and planted seeds for a kitchen herb garden and I will find a way to have plants in my house again (I am staying in touch with reality enough to plant only things that won’t harm the monsters).

I’m also refusing to accept the reality that over the years I’ve become very disorganized. Because I’m acting as if I were the old organized me, I now find myself filing papers instead of piling them on my desk and writing things down instead of trying (and failing) to remember them.

I’m finding that these concepts work well in dealing with people too. If, for example, when I ask my son to take out the garbage, I speak as if I expect him to remember and follow through, he’s more likely to do just that than if I’m thinking “I know he’s going to forget, just like he usually does.” If, when I’m talking to someone I’ve had bad communication patterns with in the past, instead of interpreting this person’s words and actions through the filter I normally use (and reacting accordingly, whether it’s warranted or not) I act as if we are perfectly capable of having a constructive conversation, we are less likely to fall into our old pattern.

So this month I’m going to ignore reality and live in my own happy little world—one in which people are mostly reasonable and cooperative, I’m organized and eat more fruit than cookies, I have time to do the things I love, and, I hope, a few plants escape death by feline.