The family that techs together

What picture comes to your mind if I told you that I'm in the kitchen at the table on my laptop, hubby is in the living room on his smartphone & watching TV, youngest son is in the addition on the family desk top watching anime  and eldest son is in his room on his desk top reading manga and listening to music? You'd probably picture everyone in a separate room with doors closed and no interaction between them. In many households that might be true, but not in this one.

We live in a small, one-floor, open plan house. Hubby would be in eyesight if he wasn't on the other side of the pantry cupboard. Youngest son is on the other side of the halfwall between the kitchen and the addition and is in line-of-sight of his dad. Eldest son keeps his door open so he can yell at me to come see something or ask questions. All of us can hear the TV show dad is watching, so you'll hear the occasional question or someone will drift in to watch if it sounds good. As we move around we check out what each other is doing, sharing and asking questions as we go. Someone is playing a video game? Come over and watch or better yet join in.

Technology is just a part of our lives but we have made the conscious decision to not allow it to isolate us from each other. I'm hoping that when the boys are out on their own that this same technology will be keeping us connected.

Making it work

Hubby and I went out for lunch today. We try to go out for breakfast or lunch every 2 weeks or so. It gives us some alone time without the continuous interruptions that seem to occur at home. As always we ran into someone we haven't seen in a while and did a quick catch-up.
The number of people we know on their second or third marriage, moving back with their parents (in their 40's!), giving up on their kids because they're too much work, is astounding. Makes me feel like a dinosaur for being happy to remain with my first husband, in our own house with our late-teen kids. Apparently it isn't fashionable to be family oriented or to work through problems rather than bail on them. If it weren't for the fact that I'm joined at the hip with technology, I'd think I was several generations out of step.

Lazy Saturday

Puttered around this morning getting some of the basics done, feeding the pets, starting laundry, starting the shopping list etc. I've caught up with youngest son's homeschool courses and mucked around with next week's schedule to accommodate some things that have come up. I've answered emails and caught up with some of my podcasts, RSS feeds and twitter. I've just had lunch and I'm ready for a nap. I should make a cup of tea, finish a few things for work, make the changes to this blog that I've been planning since I started, contact a friend about her upcoming Second Life project that she has asked me to help with, and do some tweeting about a few upcoming events. Of course I should finish laundry so eldest son has something to wear for work tonight too.

Naah - I think Tiger and I will go have a nap. The rest of it will wait.

Smoke

The air here is so smoky. All day I've had people ask if there was a fire nearby. To the best of our knowledge all of the smoke is coming from BC. With over 400 fires and the prevailing winds coming from that direction there is a lot of smoke to move. We ended up closing all of the windows at the library it keep the smoke out. Unfortunately that meant the library got hot.
One day, some day in the future, we WILL have a new library with air conditioning. I can't wait :-)

Back to Work

So after 5 days at home sick (over a long weekend with nice weather no less) I went back to work today. I never noticed how much talking I do at work until today. Every time I talked too long, I'd have a coughing fit. That didn't bode well for the summer reading program this afternoon so I had Cassidy do the story reading.
We didn't have a regular crowd, too much competition from the various sports camps etc., but the group that was there was wired! I don't think I've every had to speak so often about appropriate behaviour. Here's hoping I'm completely recovered for next week, or I'm in trouble.

Parting the Mental Clouds

After a week of progressively getting sicker, I may have turned the corner. Woohoo! My head is almost clear & my voice is coming back. Best of all I can string 2 thoughts together without tripping over them. Unfortunately I'm coughing more. :-/ So more liquids, and more reading are on the agenda for today.
It also looks like I'll be closing the windows again. There has been a fair amount of smoke coming from BC, which is probably responsible for some of the additional coughing. Hubby says the smoke around Kamloops is BAD. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the source of our smoke (prevailing winds etc.)
Maybe I'll get ambitious and make cookies since I'm stuck indoors.

Irritating

Sitting, enjoying the breeze from your fan, and hearing the scritch, scritich, scritch sound the curtain beside your head makes as the tag drags across the wall in time to the air flow.
Scissors.
And the sounds of silence