Tuesday, March 2, 2010

A Good Day

No computer. My husband took it with him. It was a good day. The boys weren't asking to play PBS kids games or watch Chilly Willy. I wasn't tempted to make blog posts or status updates. Those things on my to-do list that involved e-mail, didn't happen, and it was good. I actually kept my house in better order than usual. I got all my garbage cans emptied, cleaned my washroom and back bath, and took three hours to deep clean my van. (It not longer smells like gut bomb.) I was feeling quite efficient until my dishwasher died.

Still, I felt accomplished! (I washed all my dishes by hand with a smile on my face unfortunetely hands were extra dry the rest of the day.) I think I need to try and establish No Computer Mondays! Mondays is a day when the chaos from the weekend always makes me feel like there is a heavy cloud of to-do's that will never get done.

Sometimes I do long for the days when there was one computer per school and they wheeled it around from classroom to classroom. Remember when the phone rang and rang and that just meant no one was home; it was your job to call them back, not there's. People drove in their cars and played the alphabet game with their kids instead of asking them if they wanted to watch Nemo or Cars. Kids got to watch Sesame at 10, and that was it. They didn't ask for more because there wasn't.

I read that nostalgia is up since the Great Recession. (Is that its official name?) The economic downturn isn't causing my longing for older times. I've always been this way. Recently I found some old letters written between my mom and my grandma between 1975 and 1979. I could almost feel the era. I was quickly surrounded by that ugly rage rug and heavy curtains displaying putrid green hues. (I thought it was quite classic that the letters were full of anticipation of my sister and then later her sleeping and waking habits, but the only mention of me was the hope of baby brother and then something about me opening my birthday presents with my teeth....on my 2nd birthday. Oh the plight of subsequent children.

Well, this very focused post has turned in to a ramble, but all this to say....there was a time when appliances/technology saved housewives time, but now I think the new ones are sucking it all up.

Maybe I should take the time today to write a letter and stick an overpriced stamp on it.

4 comments:

Emily said...

Boy can I relate! I often think the frustrations I feel with my computer, PBS games and what not is a problem of my own creation. My best days are consistently those when I am present and not stealing a quick glance Facebook updates. Yet, here I am bemoaning my compulsion to stay connected while typing away on the computer. I long for simpler times too and I think that it is possible to create our own versions of simple, but it requites self restraint and discipline which I seem to lack these days.

Rachel said...

And isn't it nice that you found those letters and could read them? Our children will never be able to discover the correspondence of our emails and text messages. What a shame.

Rebekah said...

So true Rachel. My dad found boxes of letters to and from my grandma from about 1938 until 1945 and he learned a ton...about how it was common for people to rent out rooms to make a bit of extra money...about their flowers and farming practices. I know that I copy and pasted some e-mails between my mother and I when she had cancer. I put all my columns in a notebook for my kids and keep copies of all our x-mas letters, but a lot gets missed with all this technology writing.

Rebekah said...

So true Rachel. My dad found boxes of letters to and from my grandma from about 1938 until 1945 and he learned a ton...about how it was common for people to rent out rooms to make a bit of extra money...about their flowers and farming practices. I know that I copy and pasted some e-mails between my mother and I when she had cancer. I put all my columns in a notebook for my kids and keep copies of all our x-mas letters, but a lot gets missed with all this technology writing.