When I started dating my hubby, I owned the following electronics:

• A cheap, 3-disc changer stereo that was roughly the size of a large breadbox
• A CD walkman that ran on AA batteries (rechargeable)
• A Sony Dream Machine clock radio
• A laptop
• A small point-and-shoot film camera
• A cordless phone
• One cellphone and one charger
• One TV
• One satellite box and its dish.

This was when I was in my early 30s, the height of my earning power as a single woman. I had EVERYTHING I desired and more! My satellite box even had a DVR in it!

Sigh… then things started to change.

I met and fell in love with a man whose paycheck relies on our ability, as consumers, to plan ourselves all the way to obsolescence. Thus slowly began what I call the ACQUISITION phase of my life.

We now have many more of ALL of the items listed– some of which have gotten smaller (from CD players to MP3 players) and some of which have gotten MUCH larger (from 21″ screen to 50″ screen LCD).

Things have multiplied, though. Especially the chargers. I have owned roughly 10 differently cell phones since then (a conservative guess) and they have all come with their chargers and car chargers. I am NOT counting Colin’s phones in that number.

Vampires in  Our Midst

Today at church I ran into Marilyn, who was working on a quilt.

“You know what I want to know?” she said, apropos of nothing. “How much is it costing me a DAY for my son to run his computer non-stop?? He NEVER turns it off.”

“Not even to hibernate it?” I asked. What a lazy bonehead, I was thinking. You should kick him out.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she grumbled. “I’ve never owned a computer because I’ve never met a person with one who was the better for it.”

This, of course, where my thoughts on counting electronics started from.

In a 2007 New York Times article, Larry Magid estimated that his PC was “continuously drawing 134 watts all night.” His TiVo was “sucking 30 watts” when it wasn’t doing ANYTHING– not playing or recording.

Sigh. I have BOTH of those devices.  And So. Many. More.

I see money seeping out of our house all over the place– from chargers, and toy batteries, and cable boxes and ever-crunching computers (why are they DOING that???). And everytime it twinges inside me. What is the point? Too Much. Stuff.

There are lots of suggestions for reducing “vampire” waste from electronics, but it seems to me the best solution is still to just have less.

Do we really NEED three TVs?

Six cellphones?

Four computers?

Isn’t it weird how even looking at those numbers make them seem outrageous.

But when we start to count what we have, the numbers are often MUCH higher.

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I’ve been reading the article “All Joy and No Fun” from the New York Times Magazine with interest.

I’m in a position to speak about the “joys” (or otherwise) of parenthood now that I’ve been in the thick of it for 16 months.

Anyone who knows me can attest that I haven’t always been a happy girl. I inherited mild chronic depression from my dad’s side of the family. I’m also somewhat of a complainer, like him.

The flip side of that is I acquired my artful mind from him, and the ability to look back with rose-colored glasses. The deep, sweet places that my mind travels are intricately woven with the threads of loneliness and occasional discontent that cling to me like a stray dog.

I worried about these qualities in the lead up to our choice to foster kids. Would I spiral down, and take them with me?

From the article: “When you pause to think what children mean to you, of course they make you feel good,” says Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. “The problem is, 95 percent of the time, you’re not thinking about what they mean to you. You’re thinking that you have to take them to piano lessons. So you have to think about which kind of happiness you’ll be consuming most often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience almost all the time”—moment-to-moment happiness—“or the one you experience rarely?”

So the distinct ability to look at the kids for what they represent — beauty, truth, innocence, family — allows us as parents to have the “joy” of parenting and achieve happiness. But a large portion of the time we are living in the function of parenting: the logistics of making life-with-kids happen, from laundry to school to birds and bees.

The curious notions put forth in this long article (please read it because it is very interesting) is that American parents are less happy because we want MORE for our kids. The more details of our kids’ lives we have to worry about, the less our kids make us happy.

What I Mean
Yesterday, I was sitting in a lawn chair watching the kids jump around in the kiddie pool. I had a book on my lap that I wasn’t really reading. The kids weren’t paying any attention to me. I was just sitting there, hanging out.

For a moment, I heard myself worrying: “I should have invited some other kids over. I should have organized a playdate. They are always playing by themselves at home. They aren’t socializing.”

Then I caught myself. My train of thought was interrupted by two things: the ever-pragmatic voice of my mom in my head repeating over and over: KIDS ARE HAPPIEST AT HOME. That, and the tumbling peals of their laughter in the pool.

They were happy. But where are Mom and Dad happiest?

One of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson, wrote the book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a funny memoir of his childhood in Iowa in the 50s. Actually it is funny, but it’s also quite bitter. Bryson clings desperately to his memories, and bemoans the loss of the simpler life that children had “back then.” Reading it, I felt an uncontrollable regret. I grew up with a similar childhood in the 70s, riding my bike to the library, walking to school, unencumbered by playdates. But every parent today seems to cling to the notion that we are NOT safe anymore. That children must be sheltered, protected, coddled. The parents lose their own time (they have LESS free time now than they did back in the 70s) and the children learn to cling, to be afraid.

What Memories May Come
My mom, who raised 6 kids before she went back to work teaching, doesn’t commemorate my childhood the same way. She was GLAD when Dad got home so she could thrust a baby in his arms. They argued the same way Colin and I do about who carried the biggest burden of “work.”

Yet, in the same way, my mom oozes with joy over her family. She tells me she would “never trade it, not a day of it.” Her sister, Mary Ann, recently deceased, had 13 children. Mom always said Mary Ann would have had more if she could.

For me, the year past has been the happiest of my life: but also the most complex and wearying. Every morning, we go through boring/grueling routines of reminders, repetition, and a great deal of talking about pee. But I see living examples of what we achieve as we have stuck to our beliefs, values and goals.

They smile at us, say thank you, and give us the very best hugs.

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Or, On How to Avoid Becoming a Lesbian at College

My friend, Frances, and I have married the same man.

Frances: Alex is bobsledding in Lillehammer. He’s a bit nervous.

Me: Why? He’s loves to ski black diamonds in brightly colored one-piece snowsuits.

Frances: The first time they go down in a big bathtub thing with five or six people, but the second run is on an actual bobsled. By the end of the slope, you are actually pulling 5 gs.

Me: Colin would like that. He’d be grinning like an idiot by the end. (I demonstrate)

Frances: Look. (Shows me a photo  on her Blackberry). He just sent this. “This is my lunch.”

Me: Is that lime pizza?

Frances: (texting) “mmmmm lime pizza.”

In a previous post, I mentioned how I felt that marrying IT guys is the new black, and I stand by that conviction.

Especially after reading a recent article from the New York Times website about the dire state of dating on college campuses. Based on the percentage of women in college, it appears that if you are a lady who attends a college that DOESN’T have an engineering school, you will be forced to be a lesbian to get a date.

Well, of course the key there is the geek factor. When choosing a school to attend, ladies, find the best engineering schools. Engineering schools are heaving with men like Colin and Alex (well, not all as handsome, I’ll grant) whose job prospects are far better than the hot dude with a six pack, scrabbling for a “communications” degree.

And even if your nerd seems a bit unpolished when you meet him, note that more than any man I have met, IT guys are very malleable in the social and fashion departments. That is, they have little to no skills in those departments and they aren’t embarrassed to say so. So if you love a project, they will sit very still for you.

As long as you let them have their computer/Crackberry while you work.

Frances: I am really Alex’s second wife. After the Toshiba.
Me: Colin gets mad at me if I talk to him when he’s building his iTunes playlist.
Frances: We married the same man.

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