Recalculating

This week has been so busy I feel like I am stuck in a revolving door.  I've become my five year old daughter, Lanes', social secretary, lady in waiting and escort. Eager to combat the doldrums of summer and to distract forlorn thoughts of lost friends as kindergarten approaches, other moms and I quickly scheduled play dates interspersed with various activities at recreational centers. Meanwhile, my quite on another wavelength spouse, P, has waged war on any and every technological devise he comes across.

The past ten days has been a blur of having kids over at my place or rushing Lanes to play dates in between ballet class. Getting to and from the class is a production onto itself, because twice we were at the bus stand but not quite near the curb and we were literally left in the dust and had to wait another half hour in the heat for the next ride.

Meanwhile, I still owe play dates to some friends and I have no idea how to do it because I'm really exhausted at the end of the day.  Two days ago, I crawled into bed at 6pm after laying out dinner for Lanes and P and I didn't wake up until 1am.  Father and daughter had covert plans to accidentally on purpose wake me up but I was too out of it to be revived and they eventually figured out how to survive without me.

Any old how, while tiring, the good thing about all the play dates is that all the other moms volunteered that they feel the same way right from the anxiety to abdominal cramps. Whew. P thought it was me over reacting. Obviously he has never been a mother.

However, on Saturday, it was P who was putting on the theatrics. We were going to a birthday party at a friend's new house.  I was relieved that we had about a fifty minute drive there and that P was on duty. However, with all good intentions to be on time, we were late as usual because P had to fight with the GPS lady (by that I mean the voice on the GPS). I think they broke up.

Whenever she told him to turn he would go straight, despite me flailing my arms in the direction he was supposed to go. Then there were times when he purposefully did his own thing. I was expecting her to start swearing at him or to go on the fritz. I wonder if it would say things like 'no, your other right', or 'listen here you ding bat'. She said 'recalculating' twenty five times that day. Better her than me.

I wish that GPS lady was a real person. We could have started a support group that meets every Thursday night to discuss P's listening skills (or lack there of) over banana bread muffins. By the time we got to our friends' house, P was a sport and admitted that perhaps he should have listened to the directions. Good for the old chap.

Not so good for him though, is that he has been looking up places for us to move to on the Internet. He found one place in an ideal location and he wanted me to write back to them urgently. I was in the middle of getting Lanes ready for a play date at the pool and tried my hand at multitasking.

I couldn't find her swim wear, my flip flops were missing (I would never go barefoot), and she was having a meltdown because the folks picking us up were late. In between the 'are they here yet?', 'where are my clothes?', 'are you coming too?' questions being pelted my way in increasing decibels, I managed to fire off the e-mail.

They responded right away making several references to the Man Upstairs and wanted to rent out the place to us sight unseen. I thought that these folks might hide behind the cupboards and read passages from the Bible to us randomly, but it still didn't dawn on me that it was really fishy. I just thought they were overzealous with the religion thing.

Eventually, when I had time to look at the emails properly, at 12am I wrote back saying no way would we take a place sight unseen when it dawned on me that maybe it was really dodgy. I went to my trusted non-human sidekick, Google, and found out it was a scam. When I went to the site  that listed the ad, it was flagged by other users or the site or something, and really set off all the alarm bells (I'm daft that way).

I banned P from ever going on that website again, but I think he goes on solely to defy being banned. I was really upset over it so I think he knows better than to even suggest anything from there to me for the next week or so at least. The good news is that I'll be spared randomly running to look at apartments for a little bit. This is also good news for the GPS lady.

Meanwhile, my father got his e-mail account hacked into and he called me to fix it. I was rushing around getting ready to catch the bus for ballet class while simultaneously worrying that my arms were bleeding. Turns out Lanes had gone all creative with markers while I was trying to get online and I needn't have broken out the band aids (somewhere there is a Darwin award out there for me). 

I wanted to help him, but I was unable to log into his account as well. I knew my nutty sister often helps herself to his mail, sending messages here and deleting messages there (don't ask why, that's how she rolls), so I figured she was the best bet to solve this problem. I was hoping she was the hacker. I tracked her down in England, where she was on holiday, and I passed the problem on to her.

We love to relay race our troubles. Her husband deals with drama stemming from technical difficulties. When I got him on the phone with the good news that he was in charge of this dilemma he said he was hacked too! What's going on in this world?

I really hate camping, but I'm thinking I need a holiday away from electronic devices. I'm far safer sitting in the woods trying to pet potentially rabies carrying animals. I now change my e-mail passwords everyday in order to try to avoid getting into a jam and then I spend 45 minutes each time I want to log on because I can't remember my passwords. Life is tough. Maybe that should be my password.

On a brighter note, some good news! I got an honorable mention in an article in the 'Sunday Island' written by a very talented writer, Anton Gunasingham. The link is http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=59501 and he can be followed on Twitter @antongunasingam. He contributes to the newspaper every week.

I always thought if I made the newspaper it would be under titles like 'Local Woman Bankrupts Restaurant After Going to All You Can Eat Buffet', or 'Woman Has Wardrobe Malfunction, Witnesses Hospitalized for Mass Hysteria'. So it's nice to be mentioned for something like this. Made my year! I'd tweet thanks to Mr. Gunasingam but Twitter seems too complicated for me. What are @ and # for any old how?

With that I must sign off.  Lanes' quote of the week is 'Daddy knows a lot about gas, Mamma'. I should not have laughed because now I need to  find some antacid and then I have to call a friend to ask her address for a play date tomorrow. I'll just write down directions because if I have to hear the words 'recalculating' one more time this week, I might have to reprogram myself.   More musings from BC next week...