Low Tech Granny in a High Tech World

I admit it. I am pretty much an idiot when it comes to electronics. 

I don't have a smart phone. Mine is a dumb phone that I don't even know how to take pictures on. And I just barely learned how to text a couple of months ago. That was only because I was coaching  a group of teenage girls in volleyball and I quickly learned that they wouldn't even answer their cell phone if they didn't know who was calling, and the only way they knew who was calling was if they had my number in their "contacts". Like that's gonna happen! When I texted them I had to make sure to say who it was first so they would understand what the heck I was talking about. Seems crazy to me, but whatever!

                               

I still use a normal little digital camera, and we even have a big old video camera that we can't find a place that sells the cassettes to use it. I can barely work it and the thoughts of taking a video with a smart phone is beyond me. I loved taking pictures of family activities because my grandkids were always doing something cute. Now they live so far away, even the old fashioned digital camera only gets pulled out occasionally. I think I have taken ten pictures since the kids visited last summer, and I have about a billion from then.

Returning to college full time a year ago to finish my Bachelors Degree has been an adventure. I tried to take a computer class to learn to make friends with the computer. However, turned out that the class was learning the latest and greatest version and it still had a lot of bugs in it. The teacher was even struggling with the new program, but we were told not to quit because we could put on our resumes that we were beta testers for it.

I DON'T WANT TO BE A BETA TESTER! I WANT TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH COMPUTERS!

Yea, I dropped that class in a hurry.

My laptop is only a couple of years old, but apparently it is already a dinosaur. I know how to type and can do a few things I learned at jobs I have had in the past. But learning new things on the computer just doesn't stick unless I do it over and over and over again. So annoying! (to me AND the younger folks I worked with!) In one of my classes we have to do a huge group project, and as usual I am the oldest member of the group. The other kids thought it would be easiest to do it all in Google docs. Google What!?!

I am barely used to using "google" as a verb, and now it has docs!!

                       

They told me it would be so easy to learn and that I would not have any problems with it. Ri-i-i-ight...just baby me along and I'll be fine. Oh, and please give me all of the writing assignments because I am great at that.

My eight-year-old grandson just started a youtube account and his three-year-old brother knows how to do more with a smart phone than I do. Five year old sister is a whiz at the phone's games. I can't even figure out how to make a simple phone call on those things, but my grandkids can!

My theory is that kids today are "native speakers" of all things electronic. I, on the other hand, am a traveler in a foreign land. Hopefully the longer I visit, the more fluent I will become. It may take awhile though, and by then google will have had other babies that I am supposed to know how to use. But I will keep plugging along a little at a time, and maybe even remember how to do a few things along the way. Let's hope so because I am now entering "The Land of Blogging". Wish me luck!

Groovy Grandma Goes On Strike

I have been planning to go on strike all day, and then I saw this! Perfect!

That's right...this Groovy Grandma is going on strike!

My darling husband and I have been empty nesters for a couple of years now. I always told people it was good we still like each other so much after 33 years. Then our youngest daughter and her husband asked if they could move in with us for a few months so they could save money for a down payment on a house. Sure...no problem! We agreed that they would clean the house in exchange for rent and we would share the cooking and dish duties. That arrangement lasted all of four months, after which time she had mopped the kitchen once and vacuumed the living room and entry once. Cooking and dishes...well...enough said.

So when our oldest daughter asked if she could move back home for her last year of college, I was skeptical but wanted to help her out too. She has put herself through school by working full time and going to school full time.She has worked HARD! She always SWORE that she would never move back home again, but she is just finishing her Masters Degree in Social Work and didn't want to take out anymore student loans. So she humbled herself and asked. Of course...move home...no problem!

I figured I had learned some lessons from our first experience, so I decided to go into this one with no expectations.

That is until I asked her to do the dishes occasionally (like three times in the almost five months she has been here) and vacuum the stairs. It's been two weeks since I asked her to do the stairs, and nothing. Yesterday she did the dishes...except four pans. Yup, just four. I reminded her that she needed to do them, but nope. There they sit. My husband is the good cop in our family, and thus I get the bad cop job, but to avoid further confrontation I told him that HE got to be the one to talk to her. Has that happened??? Nope again. So today I am going on STRIKE! I refuse to wash a single dish until my daughter has done all of them. (That was the dish rule around here when the kids were growing up. They weren't done until every dirty dish in the house was clean all at once.) Or if he wants, the good cop can do them. Either is great with me.

I think I will go cook dinner now, and I might just use every pot and utensil in the house.

A Grateful Groovy Grandma!

Pretty sure my grandkids are the cutest, smartest, best behaved, and generally most perfect children in the entire world. Only problem is that they live 1600 miles away. I was very fortunate to have them close by until two years ago, when their Daddy (my oldest son) felt like he was supposed to join the Army. "WHAT!!!??? With three kids, a wonderful wife, and a nice home you want to do what!!??" His wife and I were certain this was just a "phase" he was going through, but then he challenged her to pray about it, and once she got the same answer they were gone. It is pretty hard to argue with "It is what the Lord wants us to do", but I don't have to like it, right?! :-) I guess it is only fair, since my husband and I moved out of state with our little family...darn it.

I always thought with four children we would have at least a dozen grandbabies, but life hasn't gone exactly as planned for any of our kids.

Our oldest daughter, Jen, is a gorgeous, wonderful, and talented woman that hasn't found her sweetheart yet. In fact, right now she is living back at home (something she SWORE she would NEVER do!) while she is completing her last semester getting her Master's Degree in social work. Amazing what we will stoop to when life happens and we don't want to take out any more student loans! Parenting adult children is a topic for another post...especially ones that live under your roof.

Landon and Haley never planned on joining the military, but after a very successful business teaching real estate investing, the downturn in the nation's economy hit their family very hard. After a couple of years of financial challenges, he got the impression to join the Army. I was blessed to have lots of time with their three adorable kids before they moved and I miss them all terribly. They just announced that they are expecting baby number four in July. I am excited, but it will be so hard not to be there for this baby's birth!

Michelle is our youngest daughter and was so thrilled to marry her best friend a year and a half ago. I actually introduced her to her husband, so when they got engaged after just two weeks I couldn't say much. In fact, I say that I fell in love with Dallin first. Michelle was 27 when she got married and waited a long time to find the right one. Since she had been single for longer than planned, she felt certain that the Lord would bless her with children right away, but so far no babies. In fact, both of them have been diagnosed with some fertility issues. It is hard to watch your kids struggle and feel so unable to make it all better.

Our youngest son, Kyle, is married to his wonderful wife KaeDee. She works full time putting him through school. They have been married for over four years and have been trying to have a baby for over two. It was difficult for them to find out last year that she has a condition that will make it difficult to conceive, but they have decided to do foster care with the hopes of adopting. They have finished the required classes and just have some of the last steps to complete before they get children. They will be wonderful foster parents but realize these children will have difficult backgrounds, and that the goal with fostering is reuniting them with their parents.

So not only am I a GROOVY GRANDMA, I am becoming an expert at it from lots of different sides.

Being a Grandma is the thing I love the most! I get to be a grandmother to far away grandchildren. I get to be a grandmother to foster grandchildren. I am waiting to find out how my daughters will get their children - could be natural, could be multiples from fertility treatments, could be step children, could be in vitro babies, could be adopted. Whatever way we are able to get our grandkids, this much I know -

I will LOVE these little people with all of my heart.

And because I am so cool (just ask my kids about the things they had to endure during their teenage years with me embarrassing them in front of their friends)...

I will always be their GROOVY GRANDMA! 

PS My grandchildren also have an amazing Grandpa that I am so blessed to be married to. More about my awesome husband, Rafael, to come. I think he's pretty groovy too!