well, it IS the 21st century...

so today . . . my dad initiated a video chat with me on facebook :)

i have the best parents. i think they can pretty much do anything. but all this new technology can be confusing! just ask me how many times i've been at the "genius bar" in the apple store during the last three months!! but as each new thing comes along, they figure it out. here's how it works...

usually, either rollie or i get a new electronic gadget. ok, usually rollie gets a new electronic gadget, then after listening to him tell me all the amazing things his new electronic gadget will do, i get one. then i convince my mom that she needs one. and my dad sees her playing with her new toy, and after a while, he decides that maybe he would like one too. this process takes a few months, but eventually, we are all playing with the same electronic gadgets.

a side effect of this progression is that since my dad is usually the last one on the train, it takes him longer to figure out how to make his new toy do all the things that we do with ours. luckily, my mom is there to help him out...

this is the way it has always worked. until today. today my dad initiated a video chat on facebook with me. my dad.

last night, while we were farming, he hit the video chat button. i don't know if he did it on purpose or accidentally. since he doesn't touch type, he sometimes inadvertently hits the wrong key, which sometimes causes him big problems. but this time it turned out to be a good thing...

so i was farming along, when i got the message that he was "calling" me. this has never happened to me on facebook before, so i wasn't quite sure what to do. so i hit the video chat button, but then i realized that i was "calling" him. all that this accomplished was to confuse everything! i got another message that i had missed his call, and he had missed mine. now i really didn't know what to do. i didn't know whether to try to call again, or wait for him, or message him, or just turn off the computer and go to bed. and then i got a second message that said he was "calling" me. and then my mom's face appeared, and suddenly we were looking at each other and talking!

isn't technology wonderful :)

so we talked for a while, and she showed my dad the results of his experimentation. but you know how it is when you accidentally do something wonderful and then can't remember how you did it? that's kind of what happened. so we disconnected and my mom showed him how to initiate the video chat if he wanted to. i figured he would never want to. when he is farming, my dad is a man of few words...

and then tonight he did it again. on purpose! and my mom was nowhere in sight!! he just wanted to tell me to move some of my trees so that he could harvest a few hidden crops. he could have typed me a message, but he didn't. he video chatted with me!! all by himself!!!

i'm so impressed. and while my farm didn't function all that well while we were chatting, it was ok, because i could see his face. and it had a big smile on it. i think maybe he was kind of impressed with himself, too! and he should be!!

my electronics confound and frustrate me quite often, but i am so glad for the technologies that we have. remember when video phone calls were so futuristic that we only saw them on the jetson's?? and now they are a reality for anyone with wi-fi and a webcam! and as our families and friends spread out (diandra lives clear across town from me now, you know,) it is nice to be able to see their faces (even if they are kind of pixelated,) and hear their voices (even if the audio is a little bit behind the video,) no matter where we are...

now if someone could just perfect that whole robot maid and instantly cooked meal thing that the jetson's had...

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 :)

what day is it again???

so today . . . it is really tomorrow.

i spent the whole afternoon and evening playing on my virtual farm. i really love the way it is turning out, but i had to move things repeatedly to get it to where i liked it.

i'm a perfectionist, and tonight it cost me. if only everything didn't have to be perfect, i would have been done much earlier. but i moved fences and pathways and trees several times in order to get them just where i wanted them. so now it is actually 12:50 a.m. saturday morning, although it is going to post at 11:54 p.m. on friday night.

here is my dark little secret--i can manipulate the time my blogs post. really, i can. so, mom, those nights when my blog posts at 11:54ish . . . it was really well past midnight before i got done. but again, perfectionist that i am, i want to post one blog every day--not skip one day, post in the early morning hours, and then post again that night. that would just be wrong. i am not going to post two blogs on one day. nonononononono! not happening.

i had a good blog rolling around in my head today, too. we took the school kids on a walking field trip to the park, and i was going to write about it. i have pictures and everything. so i am thinking that i will write about it tomorrow, even though it happened today.

that will make tomorrow's blog so yesterday . . . instead of so today . . . even though today's blog was, in reality, so tomorrow . . .

don't even try to figure it out. your head might explode! i know mine is threatening to do just that if i don't lay it on a pillow within the next ten minutes . . .

the electronic connections

so today . . . i realized how much i depend on my electronics.

i know i have blogged about how much i love my electronics and can't live without them, but today i realized that it is about more than just my entertainment--it is what is keeping me connected with people. without my smartphone, my laptop, and an internet connection, i would be a man without a country . . . well, maybe a woman without a country . . . let's just say solitary . . .

my phone plan has unlimited everything for only one "small" fee. i guess it is small compared to my car payment or my grocery bill, but it is still a chunk of change. i think our very first cell phone plan was for 60 minutes of talk time a month--can you imagine?!? we guarded those minutes like gold! and we had ways of circumventing the actual use of the cell phone ("i'll call your cell phone, and when you see my number on the caller id, don't answer it. just go call me from the nearest regular phone at work.") if we left diandra at home alone, we would tell her, "don't call us unless the house is on fire or you are bleeding and a bandaid won't fix it." when text messaging came on the scene, we didn't see the need for it, and so we only had 100 text messages per month on our plan. but once we started communicating by text, we very quickly realized that 100 was not going to be adequate. and don't even get me started on the joy of being able to access the internet from my phone anytime, anywhere. yes, we now have the "talk all you want, text all you want, surf the net all you want" plan. and it is a good thing.

yesterday i texted diandra because i needed someone to come harvest the crops my kindergarten boys had planted. their crops have to be dealt with in a timely manner if i want them to be able to be involved, because it all has to happen during the school day. so when it was time to harvest, and none of my farmer friends were online, i texted diandra. she got on her computer, harvested for us, and then went back to whatever she had been doing. was i going to call someone and ask them to do that? no, that would just be ridiculous! but there is something casual about a text message . . . it didn't seem ridiculous at all to text her.

this afternoon i was at costco, and i got a text from a friend of mine who had seen me driving there. she just wanted to know if that was where i was headed. (we have a brand new costco near us--thus, the excitement!) i texted back, "yes." and then we proceeded to text each other back and forth for the next 45 minutes or so. we could have called--we both had our cell phones. and had we called, the conversation probably would have only taken 10 minutes. but text messages are much less intrusive. i could shop at costco, and read her message any time after it came in, and respond while i was just wandering the aisles.

pictures add another whole level to the communication. i rarely go shopping without diandra, but when i do, picture mail is a necessary part of it. i send her a photo and say, "what do you think?" and quite frequently i will get a picture from her while she is at the mall, asking my opinion of a coat or shoes or top she is looking at. we can help each other shop without even being at the mall together!

the other day i was sending a text and mentioned to rollie that i needed an angry face smiley for my message, but my phone didn't have one. after he and diandra got done laughing about the incongruity of that, he sent me this picture:
and now, when i am texting and need an angry smiley, i just insert his picture. (and since that is such a scary picture of a really nice guy, i'm also posting this picture for balance--but since i don't know how to crop pics yet, it is of all of us.)i've blogged about how facebook has allowed me to reconnect with old friends who live far away. but it isn't just about sending email--we can message each other in real time and have conversations.

tonight when i settled down with my computer to farm, it wouldn't load onto my computer. i tried several times, but kept getting an error message. oh no, i thought, what was i going to do with my evening? working on my farm was my plan for tonight. so i watched, and as soon as i saw my mom come online, i messaged her and found out she couldn't get on either. then wendy popped up, and i asked her too and got the same response--no farm town for anyone. so we just talked to each other on the computer for a while. but soon wendy messaged me, "i'm on farm town." my heart leaped--i messaged my mom, "wendy is on farm town. i'm going to give it a try." my mom messaged me, "i'm on my way too," or something like that. and soon we were all happily plowing, planting, harvesting, and plotting about what we were going to do on our farms. because you see, farm town isn't just about the farm. if it was, we would probably tire of it fairly quickly. it is about the people and the communication with them that happens while we farm. that is what keeps us going back night after night. it isn't really about the white farmhouse, it's about meeting our friends every night and catching up on what's been going on in our real lives.

i get to talk to my mom and wendy and sherry and albert almost every night, and that wouldn't happen without farm town. rollie and diandra are never further than a text message away--they cannot always answer their phones when i call, but they can almost always read a text. my facebook interactions sometimes move people i only know superficially into the friend column. my life is enriched because of my electronic connections with people.

but, if anyone ever hits los angeles with one of those smart bombs that doesn't destroy anything except the electrical systems, i am toast.

the results of one small action

so today . . . i had a major moment of panic. my jaw dropped. my heart went BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM in my chest. i got hot. my brain started flashing nononoNoNoNoNONOOOOO! i was paralyzed. that fight or flight response you learned about in psych 101? i was definitely in flight mode . . .

you see, i accidentally bought the white farmhouse.

i have been farming on facebook for a while now. and after the second time that i increased the size of my farm, i've had my eye on that perfect white farmhouse. i don't want a barn (60,000 coins) or a silo (30,000 coins) or even the small brown farmhouse which can be had for a mere 70,000 coins. i want the beautiful white farmhouse with the porch and yellow flowers all around it. when i reached the level in the game that made it possible for me to buy the farmhouse, i learned that it was going to cost me 300,000 coins. at the time, i had about 90,000 coins.

so, how to get the farmhouse, before all my animals die of old age . . .

i squished my crops closer together so i could plant more, which would result in bigger payoffs at harvest time. i haunted the marketplace, hoping strangers would hire me to come harvest their crops. i watched as my farming friends added windmills and white fencing and pathways and hay bales to their farms, adding personality and making them very inviting. but still i left my farm plain, crammed with crops. i planted crops that would mature in only one day to maximize my point total so that i could continue to level up and increase my property. every time i increased my farm size, it cost me--20,000 coins, then 25,000 coins, then 30,000 . . . i kept thinking that maybe i should be saving that money for my house, but i knew that by increasing my land, and therefore the amount of my crops, in just a few days i would be showing even larger profits.

my bank account grew. i kept recalculating how much i thought i needed before i bought the house. i needed more than the 300,000 for the house, because i still needed money to plow and plant my farm. my total hit 250,000 coins, and i started thinking that the house was going to become a reality (virtually speaking, of course.) i decided i needed at least 450,000 coins, and 500,000 would be even better, before i took the plunge. my farm is big enough now that it costs me about 100,000 coins to plow and plant after every harvest, and i don't want to be left without resources--even electronic ones. so by my calculations, i should be able to afford the house by this weekend, and i have big plans . . .

this morning, i saw that my bank account was now at 425,000 coins! i was so excited! so when my kindergarteners and i were finished working on their farm plots, i started talking about my plans. we were huddled around my tiny computer, and i went to the store to show them the beautiful house. they were very interested, not just in the house but also in the other buildings available for purchase. they wanted to know what a silo was for and why i didn't want to get a barn. they wanted to know what the windmill would do.

and then it happened.

joshua clicked the mouse.

it was positioned over the farmhouse of my dreams. and suddenly we were at my farm, and so was the house.

i couldn't breathe. i couldn't think. i wasn't ready for this. not yet. i needed more in my bank account. how would i plow and plant crops? would i have this huge farm with a lovely house and only three crops? what would i do with my evenings now if i couldn't afford to farm? it could take weeks to recover from this one tiny act. click. and suddenly everything had changed.

the boys looked at my panic-stricken face. joshua immediately said "sorry," and i have no doubt that he really, really meant it. i'm frantically trying to figure out how to cope with this surprising turn of events. ok, i think, it isn't that bad. at least it is something i wanted and not the small brown house which would be totally useless to me. and a blight on my landscape. ok, i think, this is salvageable. i'll just have to plow and plant each square at the same time so that i don't end up with empty plowed fields and not have enough money to plant. ok, i think, it will be ok.

so i start looking for a place to put the house. it is pretty big, and as i said, my crops are all squished together. there just isn't any space for it! well maybe i can put it on top of some of my crops, even if it kills them. but the house won't stay if the ground isn't clear. now i am starting to worry that i have lost my money and if i can't get the house to stay, i will lose it as well. i keep moving it around, looking for an answer. i decide to text diandra and ask her to come harvest joshua's strawberries. it is the only crop ready for harvest, and if she does that then maybe the house will sit in that spot. and then i glance up at my bank account.

and guess what? it still says 425,000 coins. huh? and then i remember that when you buy seeds from the store, it doesn't actually charge you for them until you use them. is it possible that it will be the same with the other items for sale? i decide to try to "return" the house. i don't really have a lot of options, because there is no room for it yet. so i go to the toolbar, click on another random icon, and the house disappears.

it disappears, and the money is still in my account. my breathing becomes more normal. my posture relaxes. i smile, and joshua relaxes.

crisis averted. blood pressure back to normal. lesson learned (don't click the mouse until ms. julie says it's ok.) original plan back in effect.

the earth is back on it's axis and all is right in farm town . . .

why do i even make a plan?!?

so today . . . did not go according to my plan AT ALL!!!

my plan was get up early, start working on cleaning up the sewing room (soon to be a guest room--well, not soon NOW, because as i said, my plan was thwarted . . . ) harvest my facebook farm early in the afternoon so i wouldn't have to stay up until midnight, do laundry, go to old navy (sale ended today,) and a few other assorted tasks as well.

my list is always longer than i will ever possibly be able to finish, but at least it gives me some direction.

it started off badly when i woke up feeling punky. so i went back to sleep. i stayed in bed until 11:00, and even then, i only got up because i knew i had things i had to get done today. so i fought my way past dogs and down comforters and got dressed. i thought about starting the laundry, but first thought i should go check on diandra and make sure she was still breathing . . .

no, wait a minute--i didn't check on diandra until almost 2:00--oh yeah, before i checked on diandra, i did a few errands. there was no way i was going to get through this day without m&m's, and i was out of m&m's. but when i got back from doing errands, i checked to make sure diandra was still breathing. she got home about 7:00 a.m. from the teen overnighter, and of course headed straight to bed. but by 2:00, i thought i should be hearing some sounds from her room, and it was still eerily quiet. so i peeked in, and saw she was just waking up and was HUNGRY. we struck a deal where she would get up and collect the laundry, and i would go get us lunch.

you see, rollie was gone today. he got up early, as usual (the only one who did) to play basketball, and then went to a scuba show this afternoon. that is partly why my plan for the day went awry--when he is here i seem to get up and around earlier. although today it probably wouldn't have mattered even if he had been here . . .

ANYWAY, i went to chick-fil-a for lunch. i went throught the drive-thru, as usual and ordered food for diandra and a kid's meal for myself, with a diet soda. i have done this numerous times, and never thought a thing about it. but today, when i rolled up to the take out window, the woman working the window handed me my tiny, child-sized soda and said, "the child's soda is diet?!?" and i thought, "oh no! she thinks this meal is for my child and that i am giving them a diet soda!" i was horrified. so i said, "yes, but it isn't for a child, it's for me. i would never give a child a diet soda!" she handed me the rest of my food, but i'm sure she was thinking, "yeah, right! i'm going to remember that license plate number and turn that woman in for child abuse . . . " now i feel guilty. and the truth is, i did get a diet soda for my child, but she is almost 24 years old, so does that count?! and my mom would say that i am her child, so why would i not give diet soda to a small tot, but i would pour it into myself? she thinks i am slowly killing myself with the stuff . . .

maybe i should just switch to iced tea and be rid of the guilt. i've tried to do that, but the diet soda always lures me back--"just have one with your pizza. how can you eat pizza without drinking soda? it just isn't right! they go together like salt and pepper, or bacon, lettuce, and tomato." and then it's "you haven't had a soda for such a long time. just have one as a treat!" or the ever popular, "they are out of iced tea, and you have already paid for a drink, so just have the diet soda." as i write this, i am thinking "hmmm--that diet soda sounds a lot like the devil!"

again, ANYWAY, i got home with the lunch, started the laundry, and diandra and i sat down to watch a movie. did you see "watch a movie with diandra" on my list for today? i don't think so. but it seems like we have been ships passing lately, so i toss my list away and settle in to watch a movie with my girl! as luck would have it, we watch a jessica simpson movie. this, of course, turns our thoughts to hair, and we decide to go have something done with ours. we have this flyer . . .

so we go to a new salon--well actually the salon isn't new, but this particular stylist is. she is so new, that everything she uses has to be taken out of the package before she can use it. this worries me a little bit, but there we are. so she starts highlighting diandra's hair. and after an hour and a half, i begin to think that we might have to have food delivered . . . it is taking forever!!!! when she finishes, diandra is not totally happy with the result, but i don't think it is too bad--it just isn't as good as it could have been. my haircut, on the other hand, looks pretty good i think. (don't worry--it isn't drastically different--just a bit shorter.)

by the time we get home it is 8:00 p.m., and i have done nothing, i repeat NOTHING from my list yet. so first things first, i start the laundry and then turn on my computer to farm . . . because a farmer's work is never done . . .

if we "plant" it, they will eat it . . .

so today . . . i'm tired. i'm sorry. i really want to write something tonight that will make you laugh, but i just can't.

i've been staying up late the last several nights. i sit down in the evening and start playing with my farm, and the next thing i know, it is 10:30 and i haven't even started my blog! so i race to blogspot to write, but then i don't get into bed until after midnight. and i still have to get up in the morning and go to work, because unlike SOME people--wendy--i am not off for the summer yet . . .

but i do have one quick story. this week joshua and jonathan have been helping me "farm." they each have two plots and every day after we find someone to harvest for us, i plow up their ground and then they plant. they always put a lot of thought into what they want to grow.

today for lunch we had fish sticks, rice, corn, and then watermelon for dessert. as i was dishing up their food, we started talking about it and realized that, except for the fish sticks, this was all food they had chosen to "plant" this week. so as they ate their lunch today, they kind of felt like they were eating the food that they had grown . . . it was very cute.

when we planted new crops later today, i noticed that they planted lots of strawberries. i hope they aren't thinking we will have that for lunch tomorrow . . .