I am all about the bribery and/or threats

Today's bargain:

• If I finish this blog post before my daughter finishes her homework, tomorrow I get to send her vegetables instead of a few pieces of Halloween candy in her lunch.
• If she finishes her homework first, she gets ice cream for dessert (and Halloween candy in her lunch tomorrow).

I would feel bad about making this sort of deal - after all, isn't motivation and perseverance part of what homework is supposed to be teaching her?  But let's be honest.  My kid's homework isn't exactly thrilling, and she's easily distracted by pretty much everything.  Too much noise, too little noise, people nearby, no people nearby, needing a sharp pencil, admiring how sharp her pencil is now, having to go to the bathroom, having to hide in the bathroom to use the iPad she's not supposed to have until after homework is done, needing a snack, needing a different snack, needing even more snacks because meals are something other people eat ... all of those things derail her from the "let's finish your science notes in less than two hours" train.

It's handy to have something I can say in place of the usual, "Are you actually working on your homework?"  I already hate the sound of my voice asking that question, and it's only November.  One of us is going to explode if I have to keep that up until June.  But not keeping on her back just leads to procrastination, bedtime meltdowns when she panics about what she didn't accomplish, and bad grades that give her headaches and stomach aches and a bad case of "I don't want to go to school."

For some reason, it's less annoying to both of us for me to say, "Wow, you really don't want ice cream tonight, do you?" every time I see her staring at a wall.  She bolts back to the table and gets back to work when ice cream is involved, let me tell you.  "Which kind of veggies should I send tomorrow?" is a little more passive-aggressive, but I'm willing to go there if it gets the assignment done.  And as a side benefit, trying to keep her motivated means I actually have to write a post, which I probably would have blown off otherwise.

Homework isn't the only area where I'm using a carrot-and-stick approach.  Another fun motivator I instituted this year: If I have to drive her the 30 minutes to school (because she dawdled and left home too late for the 5 minute drive to the bus stop) I will spend the entire drive to school lecturing her about all the human sexuality stuff her school doesn't cover in health class.  If we leave the house in time to make the bus, I keep my mouth shut and we listen to the radio.

I made it through female anatomy, male anatomy, consent, and non-heterosexual relationships before she realized I was serious and I wasn't going to run out of material any time soon.  I even had a video all loaded up on my phone to supplement one of the discussions - it was epic.

I have also offered to send pictures of her (very obviously uncleaned) bathroom to the mother of the boy she liked, and threatened to send photos of her carelessly discarded clothing to her grandmother so she knows not to buy Liza any more nice outfits.  I'm kind of a bitch sometimes.
 
But hey, if it works, I can play the Evil Mom card occasionally.  I certainly wasn't getting anywhere with my other approaches.  Maybe eventually I'll figure out some way to motivate my child that doesn't involve threats of embarrassment and/or withholding treats.  In the meantime, I'm hoping she gets lazy in the mornings again.  I don't want to have all those pictures of STD symptoms saved on my browser for nothing.

You didn't think I'd skip the fundraising message here, did you?

My apologies to those of you who got my e-mail and have to read this twice ... but since most of you haven't donated yet, I don't feel toooooo bad about the duplication.

This summer I'll be participating in a very special event called the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. I'll walk 60 miles over the course of three days with thousands of other women and men. But as crazy as that sounds, that's not the end of it ... or rather, that's not the beginning. Because in order to survive walking 20 miles a day for three days, I have to train, and train hard. I'll be walking four times a week, every week, in every kind of weather, from now until the end of July. I'll be averaging more than 30 miles every week, for a total of more than 600 miles by the time I'm done. I'll be rearranging my schedule, fighting blisters and chafing and boredom, and dragging my 5-year-old "training partner" behind me in a wagon for part of it. Why on earth would I do this to myself? Because net proceeds from the Komen 3-Day for the Cure walk are invested in breast cancer research and community programs. I've been lucky so far - while breast cancer has touched the lives of my family and friends, so far it hasn't taken anyone I know. But unless something changes, it's only a matter of time. Consider these chilling facts: - Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and is the leading cause of death among women worldwide. - One person is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes in the United States. - A woman dies from breast cancer every 68 seconds. That's why I'm walking so far. To do something bold about breast cancer. With every step I take, I'll be helping to stomp out breast cancer. I hope that you'll share this incredible adventure with me - by supporting me in my fundraising efforts. I've agreed to raise at least $2,300 in donations. So I need your help. Would you please consider making a donation of $60? Keep in mind how far I'm walking - and how hard I'll have to train. I'm hoping to complete my fundraising by June 1, 2010, so that I can more fully concentrate on training as the event approaches. You can give online at The3Day.org. Just follow the link below to visit my personal fundraising Web page and make a donation. You can also call 800-996-3DAY to donate over the phone. Thank you in advance for your generosity! Sincerely, Gretchen P.S. Ask your employer if they will double your donation through a matching gift program! Click here to visit my personal page. If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address: http://www.the3day.org/site/TR/2010/ClevelandEvent2010?px=5018396&pg=personal&fr_id=1464&et=Py5QUNZdp2wZculbOglr5w..&s_tafId=415331

For more information about the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure or Susan G. Komen for the Cure, visit The3Day.org or call 800-996-3DAY.

I hate being confused

Damn, I hate shopping for electronics. There are approximate 473 choices to make on the spot, and I always have the sneaking suspicion that 470 of them will perform virtually identically when I use them. Add to that the need configure new equipment with new service plans, and it's enough to make my head explode.

For example ... I hate my computer. It's a desktop, and it's as slow as molasses in January. It can literally take 10 or 15 minutes to get from pushing the "on" button to the point where my internet browser is open and functioning. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? I've left a permanent forehead-shaped dent in my desk, if that's any indication of my level of patience with this paperweight of a computer.

Okay, so it's time to replace the computer. Right now I've got a crap computer and a 10-year-old printer and a DSL connection through AT&T that I'm not even sure how much I'm paying for it because it's lumped in with my phone service charges. I'd like to replace this whole shebang with a laptop with mobile internet access. And I'd like to keep the old crappy one around and be able to connect it to the internet occasionally, just as a backup for when the 4-year-old ruins the laptop and I have to send it in for service. Can you say, extended warranty that covers everything except acts of God?

There are about 100 different models of laptops at Best Buy, all with different combinations of processors, memory, screen size, and battery life. I can pay anywhere from $200 to $2000 for a laptop, and any of them would probably work better than what I have. Whatever I get is going to require a $100 wi-fi thingus to convince my current modem to be all wireless and shit, and getting the whole mess set up so that it works with both computers will probably involve a visit from the Geek Squad. Basic Wi-Fi is included in my current DSL package, but that pretty much only works at McDonalds and Starbucks, so if I want to work at the library, that's $20 a month more to get the premiere wi-fi access on my account.

So, for an average computer ($600) and a wi-fi thingus ($100) and premiere wi-fi access ($20/mo plus I'm probably paying $30 a month for the internet itself) plus Geek Squad setup for the home network ($150 ish, I think he said), we're talking about $2050 to buy the sucker and operate it for 2 years.

On the other hand, I could go with mobile broadband access instead of wi-fi. That's about $60 a month and includes the little USB broadband hardware dingus for free (I think it's built into the computer). That lets you connect anywhere you can get a cell phone signal, and it can't be hijacked by freeloaders (ahem, MATT) the way that a wi-fi signal can. It can also just be unplugged from the laptop and plugged into the desktop when I want to use the internet on the old computer (or there's a $100 device I can buy if I want to have the broadband on both computers all the time, but I wouldn't get that right away). As far as I know, I don't need any help to get the broadband set up, although without the home network, I would be stuck plugging in my old printer with a cord when I wanted to print something (or buying a new printer with wireless printing capability).

There's a deal right now on some laptops and notebook computers where they're cheaper if you sign up for mobile broadband when you buy them. So an HP with an average amount of memory but half as much hard drive space and a 14" screen (instead of the 16" screen on the one I talked about before) is only $500. That, plus $60/month for broadband, means that it would be about $2040 to buy and operate for two years.

Yeah, so price? Not so much a deciding factor here. Even if I go with the same exact computer and just compare the wi-fi vs. mobile broadband, there's only $100 difference over two years.

But wait! There's more!

Wi-fi is cheaper per month, and depending on the level of DSL I've got (who knows which one I'm paying for? Not me, at least not until I call India on Monday) it may be faster than mobile broadband. But ... it's limited to a certain range from whatever modem is powering it, so once you get far enough away from McDonalds, you lose the signal. Mobile broadband is a little more expensive per month, but it's continuous coverage - anywhere Verizon goes, so does the internet connection. And from what I can tell, the mobile broadband is more secure than wi-fi, which requires increased vigilance about SSLs and encryption and firewalls and all that. That's important, since I just spent waaaaay too much time setting up all of our bills so they can be paid online. I'd rather not share all those usernames and passwords with the world, thank you very much.

But wait! There's more!

Currently we have our phone, internet, cell phone, and television all through AT&T. I hate my cell phone model, and it would be the same price or cheaper if I had an equivalent plan on Verizon. So that's another dozen pieces of electronics I need to decide between (flip? slide? QWERTY? grrrrrrr). We hardly ever use our landline, and we've been talking about getting rid of it for months now. That would probably save us $40 a month or so (again, it's lumped with the internet on the bill, so I'll have to call to get the actual figures).

But ... if we get our DSL through AT&T without a landline, the price for the DSL goes up. Express DSL when you have a landline is $25 a month; the same speed of DSL with no landline is $35/month. So if we cancel our landline, we save $40ish and spend $10 more for DSL. And that means that DSL with premiere wi-fi is about $55 a month (plus the wireless router and whatever it costs to set the whole mess up) and mobile broadband is $60 a month with no extra costs.

Yargh.

*********************************************

Well, that was refreshing, wasn't it? I need to write down these in-depth benefit analyses more frequently, because I think I've convinced myself that mobile broadband is the way to go. Anyone who has it and hates it, speak now or forever hold your peace :)

Queen of Questionable Judgement

It sounded like such a good idea. Liza has been getting so good on her bike with training wheels, it's hard to keep up with her on foot. She's not up to the point where she can ride along with an adult next to her on a bike, so maybe I could just go along on rollerblades. But the sidewalks in our neighborhood are too bumpy to blade, so I'd have to skate in the street while she rode on the sidewalk ... and every time she needed a little push to get started, I'd have to clomp up somebody's treelawn, push her, then clomp back down to the street.

Okay, so maybe we should just go to the paved bike trail near our house. It's completely away from the street, almost completely flat, and both wide and deserted enough that we could go side-by-side most of the time. But it's out in the full sun all day long, and it's deserted enough that if something happened, it could be hours before somebody happened along to help out.

Okay, so maybe the bike trail at the Metropark (the part near the 21 on the map). Yeah, it's smooth, separate from traffic, and in the shade, there's a fair amount of bike/blade/jogging traffic, and the part near the beaver pond is mostly flat with a few gentle rises. We're set!

Things went fine for a while. She's still learning to stay on the right side on a shared path, so I had to do a fair amount of nagging about that, but otherwise, things were fine. I even managed to negotiate the copious amounts of storm debris (oops, hadn't anticipated that) without wiping out me or my daughter. She even made it up and down a few rises with only a few surprised squawks and a couple gentle pushes from me to get back up the hill.

We went one way for a while, then turned around and went back to the car. Since we hadn't been out long, I suggested we explore in the other direction. The rise that way turned out to be higher, and I had to push her the last few yards to the top. "No problem, on the way back I'll just get her to stop on her way up and we'll walk the bike down so she doesn't end up careening out of control and end up in the beaver pond."

As I am thinking this, Liza is coasting down the back of the rise, which is gradual but rather long, and she's picking up speed and hollering louder and louder as she goes. She's not strong enough to use the hand brake on her bike yet, so the only way she has to slow down is to either coast to a stop, or drag her feet. I'm yelling at her to put her feet down to slow down, she's yelling that she can't, I'm telling her that of course she can, she's not paying attention to where she's going, and she drifts off the right side of the path. In slow motion she's careening through the greenery, legs cartwheeling wildly in the air on either side of her bike, and when she finally coasts to a stop, she falls over ... into a patch of poison ivy.

Meanwhile, I'm simultaneously avoiding sticks, trying to slow down on damp pavement, shouting directions, and kicking myself for coming to this path, so I don't see where a tree root has popped up the asphalt into a 6" tall speedbump all the way across the path. I hit that going at a good clip, and I manage to remember to throw myself forward onto the pads (as if I really had a choice when my feet got knocked out from under me that way). I skid a yard or two on knees, wrists, a couple fingers, and I think the fastener on my jeans shorts, judging by the bruise I have on my stomach.

Now I'm checking myself for major injuries, Liza is crying and wandering around in the poison ivy, and I swear, the bike is on it's side, the back wheel spinning like a scene in a bad movie. I wipe the blood off my fingers, wade into the greenery and pull out the kid and the bike, and we start the slow trek back to the car. I give up on trying to skate and push the bike, and I put on my backup sandals that I had stuffed in the basket on the front of Liza's bike. Except, of course, those sandals had landed in the poison ivy, so I had to leave my socks on to prevent spreading the oils to parts of my body that hadn't been exposed yet.

That's when the high school cross country team ran by.

Bet they'll be talking about us for a while ... muddy kid who is dawdling along, picking one of every type of leaf she can find near the path, being drug along by one arm by her muddy, bleeding mother who has a pair of muddy rollerblades under her arm and a pair of white athletic socks on under her expensive leather sandals.

After explaining to her 14,000 times that we need to hurry so we can go try to wash off the poison ivy oils, I finally get her back to the house and hose us both down with liberal amounts of hot water and soap. Our clothes are in the washer on HOT right now, which means my jeans shorts will probably shrink so much they'll fit Liza. And I get to spend part of my weekend wearing rubber gloves and washing down Liza's bike and my rollerblades with hot, soapy water.

All because I wanted to go for a bike ride this morning.

******

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the sum total of our injuries from this little exercise: I have a 1/8" long cut on one finger, and Liza has a non-bleeding scratch on one leg.

Excisions R Us

Tomorrow morning we will all trundle out of bed early to go find out whether that crusty lump on Zach's lip is, indeed, the return of The Cancer.  If it is, well, he's already past the median survival time for cats who have even one bout with mast cell tumors, so I guess we should count ourselves as lucky.  But the recurrence of The Cancer would be a Bad Sign.  Not to mention what surgery and/or radiation therapy will do to his modeling career ...  So let's all just hope it's an abscess or something, right?

Right.

ETA:  Doctor says it's not The Cancer, it's The Figment of Your Imagination.  Couldn't find a thing wrong with him.  Oh, well, at least now Zach has had a good experience at the vet, as opposed to most of his "knock him out before he gnaws your face off" visits in the recent past.

Quick pricing question

Okay, Internetz, I need help with an etsy decision. I'm trying to get some ideas and supply built up before the weather turns cold ;)

How much would you be willing to pay for a hand-knit hat that looked like this (in an adult size, or in a kid size - give two prices if you'd like):

How much extra would you be willing to pay to get one that is a custom size and color combination? And how much for a matching hat/mittens set that had a similar design?

Thanks for your input!

Won't you be my neighbor?

The foreclosure house next to ours is for sale. For $50K less than we paid for our mirror-image house a little over a year ago.

True, the sale house has a couple inches of water in the basement, plus kitchen and bathrooms from the dark ages, but still. Gah.

Good thing we're not planning to move anytime soon.

Insomnia strikes again

I finally got around to signing the blog up with Feedburner, which is handy for all of you regular readers - now you don't have to keep checking back to see if there's new content, you can subscribe and it will tell you whenever there's an update.

Best of all for the only-barely-computer-handy: you can skip all this "feed" crap and easily set it up so a message is sent directly to your e-mail whenever I post something new.

Convenient for you, but since a lot of my views seem to be "nope, nothing new yet" visits from regular readers, I suspect my number of hits per day is going to tank. Oh, well - I'm willing to suffer for you guys, so I'll take the hit ;)

Just click on one of the Feedburner widgets on the lefthand side of the screen if you want to subscribe - it would make my day, and possibly my week, too, if I get a lot of subscriptions right away :)

Tonight

This, people, is what we're dealing with. Anytime she's the least bit tired, this is what we get to deal with.
*******

"Okay, Liza, are you ready to go stand under the waterfall for a while?"
"Yaaaaaaaaay!"
(bathtub starts running)
"Time to come get in the bathtub and take a shower, Liza."
"I don't wanna take a bath! I don't wanna take my band-aid off! Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"
"Who said anything about band-aids? You can leave it on, I don't care."
"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"



(two minutes later)
"I wanna watch a video."
"You want to watch a video? You can watch this one on the camera of you screaming."
(watches video, giggling occasionally)
"Was that fun to watch? Or did it hurt your ears?"
"That was funny! Now I wanna watch Barney."
(Liza turns on DVD player and settles in)
"It's not time to watch a video, it's time to take a bath. Turn off the DVD player and come to the bathroom."
"No!"
(Jason turns off DVD player)
"I wanna watch a video! Aaaaahhhhhhhh!"



(two minutes later)
"I think I know what this is about. You think we're going to take off your band-aid, and it's going to hurt. Is that right?"
"Yeah."
"You can leave the band-aid on if you want to. How about we make a deal - you go take a bath, and we won't touch your band-aid. Deal?"
"Deal."
(Liza and Gretchen shake hands solemnly; Jason fetches swimsuit and grass skirt)
(Liza giggles maniacally and strips naked as fast as Superman)

Because I had nothing better to do while driving in a raging snowstorm in the Wal-Mart parking lot

"Mommy, are you still sick?"

"What? I don't remember telling you I was sick. Why do you think I am sick?"

"Because ... because ... because yesterday you had blood in your panties."

sigh. "Oh, sweetie, that doesn't mean Mommy is sick."

****

Ever try to explain menstruation to a 2-year-old? While driving? In a snowstorm? On a day when you're short on both sleep and caffeine?

Yeah, let's not do that again.

Craft show

"So, how'd your craft show go?"
"It sucked big donkey balls, Mom."
"Oh, that's a shame."

My excellent show setup before the customers arrived:


Same table at the end of the day:

See the change? Yeah, me neither.

I sold a total of four patterns and one tummy time play quilt, all of which had duplicates hiding under the table and were restocked. Subtracting out the booth fee, I earned $3 for seven hours of standing around listening to the person next to me mention God, Jesus, or "feeling blessed" approximately every 12 minutes. Blessed or not, she didn't even earn her booth fee back.

And then today I sold one of the Christmas ornaments on etsy while I was cooking dinner. I am now up $10 (subtracting out etsy fees and paypal fees) without even trying. Oh, etsy, how I love you!

Remember, lurkers - today's your day to shine!

Today is the day of Schmutzie's great delurk, when all lurkers are encouraged to step up and say something in the comments section. Encouraged - that's the right word for "forced against their will, with threats of really boring future posts if you don't", right?

So, for the tongue-tied among us, I'll give you an optional topic. Since I had SOOOOOO much fun at the BMV this morning, let's all discuss our worst BMV or driving horror stories, shall we? Like the time you got pulled over on your way to a date, opened the glove compartment to get your registration, and a big box of condoms fell out on the floor ... or the time you rolled your car into a ditch and looked over to see your prom date hanging by her seatbelt ... or the time you ran over a cat while taking your driving test ... or the really bad breath the lady at the BMV counter has, you know, that sort of thing.

Best story will win something I haven't gotten around to posting in my etsy shop - all comments will be judged first thing tomorrow morning, so start typing, crew!

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

I'm putting all the new readers on notice ...

I'm participating in Schmutzie's great delurk on Wednesday, October 3rd. So start limbering up your fingers ... I get an average of 33 hits a day, so I'd better see at least 25 comments on Wednesday's post! Or else ... I don't know what, maybe I'll write another 14-page essay on my mental health and force you to read it out loud or something.

And no, MLF, it doesn't count if you just post 25 separate comments. As lovely as that would be, it wouldn't help me beat the lurkers out of the bushes.

Show me some love

Okay, I've finally got the etsy store back up and running. Which means that, should you want to throw a little cash my way (and get cool stuff in return), you've now got a way to do it.

I'm gradually adding the stuff I made during the sweatshop-a-thon I had when my mother visited last time, and hopefully I'll be finishing some additional merchandise over the next few weeks. I'm planning on participating in a local craft show the first week of December, so I'm doubly motivated to sew, sew, sew! So use the widget on the sidebar to check out the stock - you never know when you're going to see something you simply have to have!

And here's a secret bonus for my Mind Flush regulars - if you place an order and contact me through etsy to tell me that you learned about the store from this blog, I'll give you Priority shipping for the price of First Class. I know, it's not much, but my profit margin is razor-thin to begin with, and it's better than nothing.

File backup

I've had computers crash and burn on me a few times in my life, and each time I'm repentant and stay current with my file backups for about a month and a half, then it peters out. After I found out about my unknown published article, I realized that the files I would need to show I had or had not received payment for this article were probably lost in The Great Sweet Tea Laptop Gumming Up of 2005. Crap.

So that same evening I was continuing to give up sleep so that I could fart around in cyberspace, and after a trail of seemingly unrelated links that I will never be able to recreate, I ended up at Carbonite, a site that offers automatic online file backups, with the ability to retrieve the entire contents of your computer when said piece of junk inevitably tanks on you.

I signed up for the free 15-day trial, and while I haven't had to use the recovery feature yet (thank god), the whole updating process is simple and truly automatic. Basically, you tell it which types of files you want to back up (they recommend everything on your desktop, and everything in your My Documents folder), hit the start button, and it does its thing in the background, gradually sending encrypted copies of all of those files to its storage facility. If you lose your internet connection or turn off the computer, it pauses the download and picks up at the same place next time you're online. It nibbles away at the documents over the course of however long it takes to finish them (you can request that it back up certain files right away, if you're particularly worried about your thesis, for example).

I turned it on that night, and I just noticed now that it's finished backing up all my files. That's a whole bunch, folks, given how many cute kid photos I have on here, and all the Lazy Mama stuff, and what have you. Of course, I've had it connected to the internet on a high-speed connection the whole time, but still - not bad progress, and I didn't have to do a darn thing. And now that the initial files are in place, it checks my computer every time I connect to the internet to see which files need to be updated in my backups. So far I haven't noticed any change in the speed of my other internet work, which can continue while all this backing up is going on in the background.

Once the trial is over, I think the upkeep is $5 a month. I think $60 a year is cheap enough to have piece of mind that the next time I knock over my drink, the crashing computer won't be taking half of our family photos with it.

If any of my readers are interested in trying Carbonite, let me know - if I refer you and you sign up, I can earn free months of service. Just drop me a line at the Lazy Mama email address (lazymamadesigns [ at ] yahoo [ dot ] com) with your real name and your email address, and I'll refer you.