Genie In a Bottle

“Mom, if we each got three wishes, what would you wish for?” asked Jake at the dinner table, over his bowl of homemade cheeseburger macaroni.
“Um, I don’t know,” I answered.
Luke piped up, excitedly, “I know! I would wish for my own DS, and for Thrillville (an amusement park-building game), and that I’m on the fourth level!” We all broke into laughter at that quick, but determined response. He was very cute, indeed.
“MY first wish would be that I would go to heaven, and second, that there would be cake there, and third, that it would be cheesecake,” Levi added. I assured him that he had made a good choice. “If I had FIVE wishes, I would choose no school, and that we worshipped all the time.”
Finally, Jake listed his own choices. “First, I would wish that I knew right and wrong like the back of my hand, then that I had complete knowledge of the Bible. With my third wish, I’d just wish for more wishes.”
Apparently, Luke now sensed the glaring shallowness of his own requests, so he changed his mind and said, “Well, my first wish would be all-timey worship, all-timey go to heaven, and all-timey love God and Jesus.”
“What is all-timey?” I asked, eager to receive a quotable response. Jake answered and explained that they had heard their cousin declare himself the “all-time quarterback,” and they had derived their own version from there. It was a pretty good conversation, and I was proud of Levi for setting the example of having good goals. You might think that only his first wish was a truly virtuous one, but I will have to say that cheesecake in heaven sounds like a perfectly righteous hope to me! I still wonder what Jake would have said if Levi hadn’t blazed that path right before him. Maybe it would have been the same, but I have a feeling he changed his a little after hearing Levi’s. Craig and I never gave ours, as I told him it would require a little more thought for me. After hearing those, I’m pretty sure there was nothing more important with which we could have followed! As for the all-timey word, I will add that to Levi and Luke’s list of original vocabulary, which already includes yoatmeal (Levi’s term for oatmeal as a tiny boy), ignoying (annoying), and fravorite (favorite).

Today was a good day. Although it’s Tuesday, it was officially Monday here, since all of yesterday was wasted on phone calls to Dell tech support. I was transferred across many oceans, for over FIVE HOURS in order to get technical support, speaking to a ‘customer service professional’ in a different country every time. Isn’t it interesting that the man in India is named Carlos, the one in the Philippines is named George, and the one in whatever country I got last and was too frustrated to care, was named Ian? Surely their parents were very intuitive when they gave them typical American names. Perhaps they foresaw the future, wherein an American company outsources all of its phone support to countries overseas instead of hiring their own countrymen, and tries to dupe their customers into thinking they are speaking to a person in America. Go figure. They did speak good English, though, for which I am very thankful. They were able to tell me what was wrong with my machine in only 4 short hours, then spent the remaining hour trying to get my order correct on a NEW machine. While I complain about their phone service, I must say, they make good machines, and that’s why I will put up with it. And THAT’s why Michael Dell is once again on the list of the richest people in the country!

With all of that time on the phone, school was a bust. I barely got to speak to the kids, let alone teach them, and by the time I got OFF the phone, I was in such a sour mood, they didn’t want to be anywhere near me, anyway. We did okay, though, and just condensed the week into three days, instead of four. (Thursdays are our in-town days for piano and errands, so we only have HOME school the other four days.) We did manage to get the knobs on the cabinets that are FINALLY painted and finished, after a year of being half-complete. There is nothing more self defeating than an unfinished project lingering around, constantly tapping you on the shoulder, whispering, “You never finish anything. You’re as fickle as the wind. Are you EVER going to get that done?” It’s really unhealthy. That particular project involved a lot of loathing, however, and every time I thought about it, I cringed. Painting cabinets is not fun, anyway, especially when they’re falling apart and hang crooked. And since I ended up not liking the color we chose, the whole thing had to be started from the beginning. When we first painted them, last year, I removed all the doors and hinges, painted, sealed, and lightly sanded for a silky-smooth finish. This time, we left all the doors intact on their hinges, and just painted right over them, no sealing or sanding. That’s how it goes, I guess, when you decide that, while you must finish something, you just don’t care anymore how well it gets done. They look much better, don’t get me wrong, and some people would have done it that way, anyway, but I know better. It sure isn’t the first project I’ve finished that way. I repainted the kitchen in our first house about four times, and the cabinets twice, trying to get a color I liked. The first time, you spend a couple hours taping and removing outlet covers, carefully pull the trim from the corners, then paint it immaculately and put it all back together. The second time, you remove the outlet covers and do some taping. The third time, you paint around the outlets and try not to get any on the trim. By the fourth time, you decide that the outlets really should blend in with the wall, and it might as well go for the trim as well. And so it goes. I think Craig is finally realizing that this problem occurs with most women, though, and not just with his overly-picky, perfectionist wife. Women need to change their nests regularly, especially if they spend most of their time at home. I say, if you want the wifey to stay in the home and out of the constantly-changing world outside it, then you should let her constantly change the home! Fortunately, Craig learned this valuable lesson two houses ago, and I’m grateful for that… and for his help with the cabinets.

Life has been hectic, as usual. I always feel it important to write that, like it’s some new and astonishing truth each time, but it is just the fact of our life. I think it’s the truth of most lives now, sadly, though I can’t think of anything we could possibly remove. I don’t spend much time on ‘social networking’ (just a little), don’t have any time-consuming hobbies (unless you include several unfinished projects that Craig feels are unnecessary, so HE would count them as hobbies), and we don’t even watch t.v. We watch a movie a week, or so, when we have a free night, and especially when I need to iron, but I cannot imagine how people have time to watch t.v. every evening. We barely have time to eat dinner, clean up, get the kids in bed, and still have time to talk before going to sleep. Last night we were in bed by 9:30 (gasp!) and still didn’t go to sleep until after 11, just because we enjoyed being able to talk and enjoy one another’s company without interruption. Where, pray tell, would we ever fit in television? I guess, in a few years, when the kids are grown and gone, we’ll have plenty of time for it. But, I hope not. Besides, I’d be watching the home improvement or cooking channels, getting ideas for projects that I’d never finish. It’s a vicious cycle.
One new time-consumer that we’ve recently added to our lives is crossword puzzles. I have never had an interest in crosswords: I’m more of a word-search kind of woman. Craig and I, being the uber-competitive couple that we are, would buy identical word search books and have races in bed at night. However, I picked up the Blanco paper, which I’m sure has a top-rate crossword, and began. I threw it down after about five minutes, frustrated with the impossibility of filling in all those tiny squares with such ambiguous clues. I kept going back and picking it up, though, and even though I ended up throwing it down several more times, it finally caught. I downloaded a crossword application on my phone that shows letters in red when they are wrong, which is really cheating, but I like to think of it more as a tutorial version of a real puzzle. Craig and I have been doing one or two of those easy ones a night, and having a lot of fun. It has taught us to read the clues in different ways and really think about what they are. I picked up the Blanco puzzle today, which is much larger than the ones on the phone, and I was determined to finish it… with the help of a crossword dictionary. You may thing that is cheating, too, but, really. WHO could have gotten ‘outre’ from ‘unconventional, plus’. If you really had to get all those on your own, only etymologists and vocabulary geniuses could do them. I know for certain that the cruciverbalists who design those puzzles don’t use all those words. (If you’re wondering about that word, it just means crossword-puzzlist. We learned that in a recently released Sandra Bullock movie, “All About Steve,” that was really funny. We recommend it.) In any case, we are having a good time, and learning a lot of new words. I’m also learning that I know words that I didn’t know I knew. I’ll read a clue and the answer will come out of my mouth, even if it’s a word I never use. Craig asks me how I knew that, or what that word means, and I often don’t even know. Alternately, he’ll do the same. Usually his are based on actual knowledge of the clue, though, and not crazy, often obsolete vocabulary that’s tucked away in some hidden pocket of his brain. We’re a good team. I enjoyed getting Jake involved today, too, as it’s a great opportunity for him to learn new words. Hmmm…. I think I see a new vocabulary curriculum taking shape.

My apologies for such a long entry, but it seems like forever since I’ve been able to pour out onto the page, and my fingers have been happily flying!