Monday, June 15, 2009

i've grown accustomed to her "voice"

so today . . . i miss my mom. she is at the beach with my dad, sister-in-law, and nephew for a few days.

she lives 1000 miles away from me, so you wouldn't think it would matter if she is at home or if she is an hour away at the beach. but it does matter, because there is no internet access at the beach . . .

my mom embraces electronics and what they can do to enhance our lives. she was one of the first people i knew to get a palm pda, and she still says that if she could only have one electronic device, that is the one she would keep. her whole life is in that thing! she has a powerful desktop computer and two laptops (one for her and one for my dad.) she has an ipod and a speaker system for it. she has a digital camera and video camera. she has a cell phone, (although we are still working on the whole texting thing . . .) she is working on digitizing her slides and photos. in her defense, in case she needs one, many of her purchases have come after she has seen what we do with our electronics . . . so i take some of the credit. or blame, depending on how you look at it.

one day i was on facebook, and my aunt kaye im'd me. aunt kaye is my mom's sister, and after talking for a few minutes, she said, "i am on the phone with your mom, telling her that we are talking on facebook!" this just cracked me up!! i could just see my aunt, cell phone in one hand, eyes on the computer, talking to both of us. and then she said, "we have to get your mom on facebook!" i did not think this was ever going to happen, but my aunt kaye is very persistent--and cheerful, which is a deadly combination :) it is hard to tell her no, and so it wasn't very long before my mom was on facebook.

she was a ghost person for a while--you know, no profile picture. i was going to help her with that, but she figured it out all by herself. she added a few friends, and superpoke pets. her pet is a cute little white rabbit named snowflake. as i may have mentioned before, this app is like playing with colorforms--you choose a background, and then decorate it with things that you can "buy" with points that you earn by participating and getting your friends to play as well. it's fun, but it is very low maintenance.

and then, we discovered farm town.

farm town is definitely NOT low maintenance. farm town requires almost daily attention or your crops will die, and you will lose money. well, "money." what has evolved is this little group of farm town friends--my mom, two friends i used to teach with that live in different parts of oregon, and a friend who lives here that i rarely see. we are all on and off facebook all day now, checking on our farms. and we are almost always online in the evenings, harvesting, plowing, planting, and most importantly, talking.

this has been going on for a few weeks, and i have become accustomed to being able to talk to my mom several times a day online. but as i mentioned, she is at the beach now and has no internet access. being the responsible farmer she is, she planted long term crops before she left, so that she wouldn't come home to a dead farm. but that doesn't help me!

it isn't that i really have anything i need to tell her. that's the beauty of chatting online--you don't have to have anything important to say. you just start out with, "hi! what are you up to?" and then go from there. but i've found that i like hearing her "voice" every day, and now i miss it when she isn't there.

i think she is either going to have to stop going places without internet access, or she is going to have to add texting to her cell phone plan . . . i can live with either option :)

4 comments:

Diandra Ann said...

I vote texting!!! then I can talk to her too :)

Mom said...

I missed you too. I was distracted a lot thinking of you and all I was missing out on so I read and caught up on the blogs I missed, as soon as I got here. I'm anxious to get to farmtown and see what all has happened since I've been gone. I told Dad I may never go anywhere again. I am going to check into wireless for Govt. Camp. Thanks for all the nice things you said and thanks to you and your family for keeping me up on electronics. I probably wouldn't have been aware of much that was out there without your help as I am rather out of the loop since I don't work full time.
Thanks again and we'll check into texting when you come this summer. Love you!!!!

Jewelielyn said...

well, diandra, if you were farming with us . . .

Albert said...

wait.. do you work for fb? you got everyone i know in the farming community.