Technology Overload

After a six hour mental work-out of my brain, I found myself feeling a tad overwhelmed with the technology at my fingertips. As it is with most things, when everything works it is wonderful. When the dominoes start to fall and it feels like technology is taking you places you never wanted to go, it is quite another.

I wrote a little blog about it over at MyKawartha:

http://www.mykawartha.com/blogs/post/6256293-technology-overload/

Kitty Love

I am not the only one who is enjoying my new bedroom suite. I park myself on the couch within my room of great luxury and as soon as our two black felines find my door open, they come and join me.

Our king sized bed (yes, it belongs to me and our cats) is many things. One of them? A wrestling mat.

Last night, Jet parked himself in Ray's "usual" spot so Ray slept on the other side of the bed for a while then when he felt lonely or bored or simply wanted his side of the bed back, he wandered over to Jet and nudged him with his head. Jet washed and washed and washed his face and Ray just lapped it all up.

"Ahh! That feels so good. Just a little to the left ..."

I ran upstairs for a while and tended to all that needed tending before I went to bed. Usually all it takes is for me to leave my room and both of these guys follow me. Not last night. After several minutes of making noise upstairs, I came back downstairs to find them arm in arm. 

The expression on Ray's face (on the left) is priceless. Ray is our "scaredy cat" but when he feels safe and secure, his entire expression changes.

As I gazed into Jet's eyes this morning and tried to guess what he was plotting next, I had a flashback. I remember my youngest telling me that Jet reached out to her from inside his cage at the S.P.C.A. seven months ago. My youngest held him, Jet pulled out all of his best moves and adopted us.

I look at these guys and just can't imagine our lives without them. It's just like a Disney love story.

The Very Bad Thing About a Very Good Day

Yesterday morning, I sat still with my words and just basked in the afterglow of a most excellent daycare day (from the previous day). I was at one with the world, my place within it, the path I was on and life was good. Oh, so good!

Then the day happened.

It started going downhill within ten minutes of the first child walking in the door. My fully trained just-turned-three-year-old stood in the living room and peed her pants. She was so proud to tell me that she had "caught" it with the sleeve of her top and it didn't go all the way down. She was so wrong.

Twenty minutes of blotting, then cleaning the carpet and bathing said child and cleaning the bathroom after her wet clothes and soiled body went from Point A to Point B was not the best start to the day.

Then it got worse.

There was arguing and hitting. Hitting has never been an issue here. And it happened not once, but twice. Not just in the morning, but again after a good, solid afternoon nap.

There was crying. Crying over nothing, as far as my eye could see. Just crying. I don't do crying.

There were personality clashes at every turn. The oldest of the group arrived midway through the day and her habit of just taking what she wants from her younger playmates did not go over well. No one was taking any guff from anyone else and there was discontentment all around.

I had home made turkey soup simmering on the stove all morning. Lunch was easy. This soup has always been a hit in the past so I gave everyone a helping I was sure they could handle. I may as well have offered them fish eyes and frog's ears for the way they "enjoyed" their lunch. Home made turkey soup is liquid gold in our family. It was a tough blow to my already fragile ego when my generous offering was rebuffed.

Nap time would save the day. Right? Maybe not.

Right after nap time, I was scheduled to have an interview with a family who needed some short term daycare for their (turning) one year old son. The months they needed were exactly what I had available. They were referred to me by someone they trusted. It felt perfect.

I spent my quiet hour trying to clean toys without making a sound. I didn't take the quiet I needed to push through the remainder of a very challenging day.

The interview was "okay". Not awful and by no means perfect. The kids were "everywhere" and I am pretty sure if I was the mom of that little boy, I would be thinking that there is no attention left over for anyone else. let alone a precious one year old little person.

Everyone woke up from their naps and very few were 100% rested and happy. Tears and arguing continued. Throughout the interview process.

How could the day go so terribly wrong??? There was a change of dynamics among my children and it wasn't a positive thing. There is the tail end of a cold making its way through the crowd, perhaps the reason tears were so close to the surface. One little three year old is just coming down from a rather euphoric "birthday week" so I think she may have "crash landed" yesterday. And I was crashing down to reality with her.

To go from a near perfect day to one so very opposite within a twenty four hour period was hard. Very hard. Add a few extra challenges to that scenario and I was doomed.

But the opposite of that statement is almost always true. "The very good thing about a very good day ... is that it is usually a better day." Usually.

I will take what I have learned, stir gently and add it into today (and tomorrow and going forward). If this new family chooses me to take care of their child after meeting me under these circumstances I'll know one of two things. Either I held up well under pressure or they are desperate.

We'll see what today brings. One day at a time!

The Right Path

Several months ago, I was approached about an opening within my daycare. I was afraid to make a commitment because one of my families on maternity leave would be going back to work in eight months. If I said "Yes" to this new family, I could have too many children when my other family returned to work.

It was a bit of a conundrum but some wise voice from deep within my soul told me to say "Yes" to new opportunities. It was a "karma" thing. I thought if I start saying "No" and rejecting the idea of new, change and growth, the world would listen and opportunities would stop coming my way.

I surveyed my existing daycare families and got the nod of approval I hoped to get from then and thought "A lot can change in eight months". And I said "Yes", under one condition. I would not be able to start babysitting immediately. It was important to me, to get my new little one year old settled into our routines and for me to get to know her better before we added one more. So that is exactly what we did.

I was so grateful I had given all of us that extra month to welcome our new little one. I have a feeling all would have went fine without it. But the "bonus month" was one of pure enjoyment. I'm glad we didn't rush through the transition process.

Then, "life" happened. My new family gave me their month's notice that this would be their first and final month before they even started coming here. At the time, it didn't seem like the wisest choice for the child involved. To be pulled out of one daycare, go through the growing pains of transitioning into a new daycare, then leave as soon as she was starting to feel comfortable didn't seem like a good idea to me. But we forged ahead. And it has been good. It feels like it is has been a positive daycare experience all around and hearing of the discomfort they had within their last experience, it is probably better to leave this little girl's away-from-home experiences on a positive note. The mom is going to stay at home with her so their need for daycare will be nil to minimal in their immediate future.

The moment I received my "month's notice" from this family, I contacted another family who had asked if I could fill in while their daycare provider was on holidays (which just happened to fall immediately after Family #1 would be done). So I filled that spot for two more weeks. And we would just have five more months before my Maternity Leave Family would return and all five of my full-time spots would be filled.

In the mean time, I have been contacted by three different families who were very interested in my daycare and have asked to be put on my waiting list. It is not uncommon for people to start looking for daycare before their baby is even born so the pending start dates for two of these families is so far off in the future, it is possible things may change a lot by then.

I was feeling very good about my decision to say "Yes" to new opportunities because once the first "Yes" was uttered, the door stayed ajar and opportunity just kept knocking.

I received an email from a former co-worker of mine. She had given my name to someone we had both worked with because they were looking for daycare. I was very flattered to be "nominated" but disappointed at the same time. My daycare is technically "full" (not counting the handful of months before my Maternity Leave Family returns) and I have three on my waiting list. I was certain I would not be of any help.

Then I got the call. Can you imagine my surprise when I found out the months that I have open are the exact same months that they will need? It is a teacher who is returning from maternity leave, for the last four months of the school year. "September" is completely up in the air and they are uncertain where they will go from there. To further add to this incredible coincidence, the school she will be working at is not far from where I live. The last thing she added to this list of amazing little feeling of this being "meant to be" was that she was referred by someone she knew and trusted.

I will meet with this new family this afternoon.

Life has been very good to me. After several years of financial instability, I am walking on solid ground again. My daycare income sustains me, our house and my family. And the added bonus to that is that I feel good about what I am doing.

One of my daycare family celebrated her third birthday on the weekend and invited three of her daycare buddies to her party. The comments I heard about the way these guys enjoyed and gravitated towards each other, even among all the other adults and children at the party, made my heart sing. This little daycare family exists even outside of daycare. "This" is exactly what I dreamed of when I started (then re-started) my daycare.

Daycare 2.0 (as my son has so succinctly named my return to the daycare world) took a while to gain this sure footing. I wasn't sure it was going to happen because the dynamic is so different since I first started my daycare. But it is happening. It is really happening!!

I'm invested in this career choice. Financially, emotionally and physically. It is all coming together and starting to pay off. I found this quote on Facebook (Project Happiness) and it spoke to me:

I'm excited about my quiet, humble little world and all I am pursuing. Every now and again, I run into a blockage within my current but when I look back on it, I see it as a test of my faith in the direction I've chosen and a decision to keep myself open to improvement, criticism and growth.

I think I'm on the right path. The choice now, is to keep moving in a forward direction.

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy." 

~Rumi

Peeking Out

I am peeking my head out of this quiet, reclusive world I've built. And I think it's going to be okay. In fact, I think it already is.

I have done the hard job of sending out a few emails this past week. This never used to be hard. I always had more words in my head than I had people to tell them to. I have run out of words. But I wrote anyway.

People within my world are wonderful. I heard back from each and every person I reached out to. One cannot expect 100% success. But in my bubble wrapped little world, it tends to happen a lot. I am fortunate. I know this.

I replied to another email and invited a friend in for coffee. I was surprised how hard it was to type the words. "Would you like to come over for coffee?" was hard. "Would you like to meet for coffee?" is easy. I had to let that email rest over night and send it when I was fresh and brave this morning. I did it. And it was good.

My weekend actually revolves around meeting up with friends. And I'm looking forward to it! I must have given myself the time and space I needed because I am actually looking forward to a weekend with an agenda.

I must continue down this brave, new path. It is good. I am starting to feel like I'm waking up from a hibernation state. I still love to run to the cover of the oasis I have created within our home but it feels rather good to stick my face out into the sun again. I may need to wear sunglasses for a while to shield myself from the light, but it is important to come out and face the world again.

Attainable Goals

I am not big on setting New Year Resolutions or setting myself up for failure by setting goals that are out of my reach. But I'm all for setting "Attainable Goals" and adding onto that as I go along.

I wrote a little blog about it over at MyKawartha today: http://www.mykawartha.com/blogs/post/6244444-attainable-goals/

Cell Phone Disengagement

"New" seems to be stopping me in my tracks an awful lot lately. I've went on and on (and on) about how I hate when I must adapt to the world of change. I would give anything for Wilma Flintstone's wardrobe. Same dress, day in and day out, with the odd perfect outfit to wear on a special occasion. I like finding something that works for me. And keeping it.

This applies to every little thing within my world, which (today) brings me to my cell phone.

I have a handy dandy little phone that does all I need it to do. It even does quite a few things I want it to do. As one year unfolded into the next, I discovered I really didn't need to carry anything else with me if I had my phone. I could forward our home phone calls to my cell, I could send and receive texts and emails, I could take pictures, I could take notes, check the calendar, set a reminder, record a little anecdote if I didn't have time to write and the kids could even watch a movie on it if they were the last one at daycare, waiting the long wait for their parent to arrive.

Then I dropped it in the toilet. After a sufficient amount of drying time, it could still do all of the above but the ability to download my pictures onto the computer was thwarted when the computer didn't recognize when the phone's USB was connected.

It took a while but eventually I realized I could email the pictures on my phone to myself. It was a bit of a time consuming work around, but if it meant I didn't have to carry around my camera, that was of little concern to me.

My email program on my phone stops working from time to time. The only solution I found was deleting and reinstalling the program. I have done this many times. The last time I did it, it didn't work. I had to call the "help line" at my internet provider and they found yet another solution that worked. Except for one thing. It wouldn't let me email pictures to myself any more.

I accepted my fate and just started using the camera. Easy compromise since it isn't summer and we aren't gadding about outside with the "inconvenience" of carrying around two purely frivolous gadgets (as I wrote that sentence it dawned on me how trivial this problem really is).

Anyway ...

I was just hitting the place where I was starting to think about getting a new phone. I researched the idea a little bit, convinced myself that maybe I should and then my son told me just to hold off getting a phone because he may be getting a new one and I could have his. Done.

That was a few months ago. Last week, I dropped my phone and unbeknownst to me the battery had fallen out and skidded across the room. I replaced the back cover and proceeded to charge it. I tried turning on the phone to see how the charge was progressing and nothing. Absolutely nothing. I tried turning on the phone several times. Nothing. Oh no! Now I really did need a new phone.

Then it dawned on me to check to see if I had secured the back cover correctly. That is when I realized the battery wasn't even in there. I probably should have unplugged the phone then plugged it back in after the battery was in place. But I didn't. Suddenly there was a brand new prompt telling me the computer was installing new hardware. The computer now recognizes when the phone is plugged into the computer and I can now download pictures again. It was a miracle!!

My need for a new phone vanished in that instant. Two days later, my son dropped off his old phone. What a conundrum. I didn't need a new phone any more but I had one. Something new and foreign to me.

I looked at the phone and shut down. "I don't do new!" were the words inside my head. I don't want to mess with what works. After two and a half years, I finally feel like I have figured out most of the features on my phone. Why would I want to mess with that??

I ignored the phone for two days. "I don't need you" I told it (yes, I talk to inanimate objects as well as my cats. It is a lonely life over here in my neck of the woods).

Then I picked it up. "I will just start adding my contacts ..." and see how it goes. Well, I ended up playing with that little gadget until I had it looking and acting like the phone I know well. I took what I knew about my phone, added it to what I have discovered about using the iPad, combined the two and voila! I do believe I have the ability to learn how to use this snazzy little gadget.

I finished adding all my contacts yesterday and in the process, I learned a thing or two about using the keyboard. I still much prefer my slide out keypad with actual "keys" but after two days of playing around with the keyboard while adding my contact list, I think I can make this work.

It feels good to learn something new. Or in my case, turn something new into something I am used to working with so it feels old and familiar. I'm just about ready to make the switch official. I am going to miss my trusty little cell phone. It has taught me many things, Unfortunately, I feel like it has taught me how to manage without much face-to-face contact with the world around me.

Maybe I should toss both phones into the toilet and try to manage life without them. I think the world would look far brighter without a cell phone in the palm of my hand. Maybe I should just "lose" it within the house from time to time. The ability to be and stay "connected" at all times is draining me.

As I added all of my contacts into my new phone, I realized I have stopped contacting most of the people on that list. I miss those days. The days where I was courageous and felt interesting enough to write an email and send it off to a friend, looking forward to their response and a "virtual visit". We have evolved from face-to-face contact to long distance plans to email to texting. Texts seem to be the preferred method of communication these days. Brief and to the point. You can send/receive them without a WiFi connection. It's better than nothing. But I miss "conversation".

It is time to look up from my phone and engage with real, live, adult people again. I feel like I've been here before. I have. It was during my days of feeling fearful. These gadgets have helped me disengage again. I don't think I'm alone.

Look up from your phone today and engage with the people you see. If your day is a quiet day at home, try to find some way to feel engaged. Pick up the phone, send an email, maybe even send a text to invite adult interaction into your day. "Engage" in whatever way you can. I am talking to myself now. I have let myself become too closed off. It isn't a good thing.

I spent six years "engaging" with my dad's family as we assembled their family's memories. Then I continued to stay engaged as we planned a reunion or two. Family emergencies invited more need for engagement. Through the good, the bad and the ugly I felt like a vital part of my little world. Then it stopped. I need to restart it some way.

It is time to start inviting people back into my world. Easy to say, harder to do. But if I can figure out how to navigate a brand new cell phone, I can do anything! Right?