It’s not surprising that some of this would rub off on our children. Both kids have figured out (around the age of 18-24 months) how to work the Apple remote for the TV. Nathan loves perusing the iTunes store always searching for the latest app to suit his needs and knows they have to be free for him to get us to approve it. I made the fatal mistake a couple weeks ago of being too lazy to enter our password for iTunes and just spelling it for him to type in. Big Mistake. He knows how to open safari and type things into the Google bar. I can always tell when he’s been on the computer because I’ll find searches such as: “Trsfrmrs amuzon”, or “arplan toys”, or “trsfrmr game.” I also found a word document open last week that said: “nly kids can com to my pardy.” I asked him how he was going to GET to said party and he told me, “you can take me and just drop me off and leave.” Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you were turning FIFTEEN. My mistake. He later amended his word document to read: “nly kids can com to my pardy and my dad.” Wow, I guess Im the odd man out.

The other day, after PC got the new iPhone, Nathan sort of took that to mean that the old one now belonged to him. While we’re ok with him playing with it, we’d prefer our 5 yr old doesn’t think he has “his own” iPhone. While playing with the old one I told him to get ready to leave and he tells me, “let me get my iPhone…now we all have iPhones, right mom?” Wrong. And then there was the day this week where he thought his dad broke his arm playing a game on the iPhone. And then today while chatting I told him, “you know, when I was 5 they didn’t have computers.”

Blank stare: “So……you mean……..you didn’t have one at your house?”

“No, I mean there just weren’t computers at all when I was five. No one had them in their house or at school.”

Completely bewildered, flaberghasted even: “sooo……..what did you do when you were a kid?”

“Well, we played kick the can with all the neighborhood kids and rode our bikes and walked to the gas station to buy Jolly Ranchers ( the stick kind of course) and Lemonheads and Alexander the Grapes. We played flashlight tag and caught lightening bugs in peanut butter jars and when catching them wasn’t fun anymore we’d smash them on the pavement to see their glowy innards.”

And its funny, it got me to thinking about how different our/my generation is from my kids vice mine and my parents’. I can’t think of any huge technological advances, as profound as what we have today, that separated our generation from theirs. They all had TV’s, cars, refrigerators, telephones, record players and eventually VCRs and cassette players. Cameras were film in the 50’s just as they were in the 80’s and 90’s and even in 2001 when I got married. Were there changes and improvements? Obviously. But the world our kids is growing up in is just mind bogglingly different.

In elementary school our library we had maybe 10 Apple II computers. We got to use a few times a year and  they didn’t really “do” anything. You could play a game by inserting a 5 1/4 floppy (the real floppy disk). It was barely anything more than a large clunky monitor attached to a large clunky keyboard. In jr. high I had to take typing class in 7th grade. I don’t think at that point anyone even saw it as a necessary ‘life skill’. In typing class we typed on typewriters- this was 1991. There were two computers that we all got to rotate using. Two. In high school there was an actual computer lab and this abstract concept of “the internet” was being thrown around. I was floored when we got an encyclopedia on a CD at home. Up until that point I had to use my parents olive green, musty encyclopedias from the 60’s. Even when I started college the ‘computer lab’ was a bunch of Mac Classics (incidentally, this was the same computer my parents sent me to school with- and if that isn’t sad enough, I was the only person in my hallway that even had a computer). They had just begun doling out email addresses but no one really knew what they were or what to do with them. By the time I graduated classes were offered online, syllabuses could be printed, notes downloaded. I even heard that there were websites where you could, get this, buy papers to turn in as your own. Imagine that.

I often wonder what someone living a few hundred years ago would do if we showed them an iPhone….how could you even describe it? “Its a phone, you talk on it, can call anyone in the world. Or you can text on it. And it takes pictures and takes videos and you can post that to your FB page. If you want to see someone while you talk to them, thats called Facetime. You can play games on it and order pizza. If you’re lost it will give you directions. You can send email. You can send money. You can even send flowers. You can buy things and see things and have question’s answered and anything you could possibly think up? There’s probably an app for that.” Crap, maybe someday there will be an app for world peace. And yet- nothing that I just said is even remotely awing to Nathan. He’ll non-chalantly ask me “who’re ya texting mom?” when he hears the click clack of the keys on the iPhone. He knows how to call PC on my phone. He’ll ask me to look for something on Ebay or to send an email to someone about something. If I’m looking for something at the store that I can’t find, he’ll suggest I just look on the internet for it. He’ll come peer over my shoulder and be all, “oh, you’re doing Facebook?” Today, from the bathroom, he requested I find pictures of adenoid surgery on the internet for him. He’ll never know what an encyclopedia is but surely will use Wikipedia. He’ll never know what a card catalog is or a VCR or what a roll of film looks like.

On the one hand I do wonder- how did we ever live without it, this wonderful internet thing. On the other hand, I wonder if we had it better, growing up without all this ’stuff’? I wonder how the technology my 5 year old has at his fingertips will shape him as a person, for better or for worse? I wonder how much scarier and worrisome the turbulent teen years will be for PC and I than it was for our parents? I mean, what if Mackenzie meets someone online and wants to meet him and marry him? So what if thats how PC and I met, that was the mid-90’s before the internet got all skeevy and creepy and porny and pedophile-ish.

Whats the consensus folks….when will you let your kids have FB accounts? Will you require them to add you as a friend? Will they have their own cell phones? Will you make them do their internetting in plain view? Will you read their email? Or am I the only parent with a five year old that is worried about this already? Today more than ever the world is their oyster and Im not sure if this is a good thing, a bad thing, or probably just a little bit of both.

I mean its the soybeans, its the oil spill, its the bottled water documentary, its this other documentary I came across (c’mon JAPAN- WTH?) that today, I just, gah, I just loose so much faith in humanity. The question that is resonating with me right now, is what are we doing right? ARE WE DOING ANYTHING RIGHT? Is anyone making positive improvements? Is there a documentary out there about that? Or are we still, just greedy self serving people? I am critical of myself always wondering what more can *I* be doing? Where else can I make cuts/improvements? But whatever this one family does, its not offsetting all the [negative] things others are doing. Tell me something good. Please. Or else I might need to find a different planet to live on.

I know none of us are perfect, I mean, I still get plastic bags some of the time *on purpose* because where am I supposed to put the poop [diaper]? (and don’t think I don’t beat myself up about how that precious package is going to be around for like another 1000 years) but if any of you are in some sort of denial about all that is going on with our precious planet, our food supply, our water, our fish, our air, the polar bears, the honeybees, global warming, or the great pacific garbage patch please, please (puh-leze) wake up.

PS- I need a category tag for all of this, because I don’t think it should be filed under: “is it strep? Yep.” And I need it to be witty or snarky….submissions?

When you write something like this: “This freakin muslim implant! The terrorist within! Government control thanks to the dems.The only beneficiaries are the illigals and welfare recipients, so why change anything they already got it all for free-America has now stooped down to the level of the other countries.Which happened the day he got voted in.” It shows you are uneducated, uninformed, and ignorant. You don’t persuade anyone with that.

***Update

GAH- I just can’t HELP myself. I need to stay off FB because all these updates are making my blood pressure go up. Its ok though if something happens to me -I HAVE FREE HEALTHCARE.

I understand the argument that everyone will be required to purchase insurance and that the gov’t shouldn’t be able to FORCE you to buy health insurance. I totally understand people’s objection. And I know its kind of like if you drive a car you have to have car insurance but, well, not everyone follows that rule for one, and you, of course, have the option to not drive a car at all. But if you just kind of lump it in with your taxes whats the big deal? We are considered residents of Colorado and therefore pay taxes to the state of Colorado. Do we use the roads in Colorado? Nope. The Schools? Nope. The police? Not often. We don’t use one single thing in the state of Colorado and yet we pay them a few thousand bucks every year. Thats just the way it is.

Right now a hospital has to treat you if you go into an emergency room. Right now any shmoe who has no money and no health insurance can go in and get treated. We ALL pay for these individuals (lets say it again- we ALL pay for these individuals, how about one more time because people are really having a tough time remembering this, we ALL pay for these individuals) through our insurance premiums or taxes already. If we make everyone get health insurance then we fix the glitch. Alternatively, what I’d really like to see instead because everyone is WHINING about it so much is to make it perfectly LEGAL to throw someone out on their ass if they are hurt or sick because they choose to not get their health insurance. Well that will never happen because we’re nothing if not a society of I’ll Sue You. So, what other choice is there than requiring everyone to get it?

Lets talk about this- can we talk about this puh-leze. What am I missing?

Anyway, our time is winding down here and on the one hand I feel like there’s no where to go and on the other hand there are still so many places to go! And Im going to be honest with you– PC offered up the Maldives. (free tip-Its mahl-dEEves not Mal-dives) This, in my book would be the #1 place on Earth to go. I have a friend from high school who went there and he told me I should NOT miss it. This friend lives in Japan and gets to travel all the time for work (and is married with kids) and is my go-to guy for all questions Japan, lest you think Im drumming up some kind of romance over here! Anyway- he said that you literally feel like you are at the end of the Earth. The problem is with two small people, Im fairly certain the last place I’d want to be with them is at the end of the earth. Its like the adage- if you were on a deserted island- what would you take with you? Hmmm NOT my kids. Not to a place where there are no Targets for extra diapers and tylenol. And Mackenzie can’t swim. And aside from laying in the sun and swimming there isn’t much else to do. Which, of course, is the point. That and the place I’d really really like to stay is $1200/night and, pfft. Im not sure how rich I’d have to be before I felt that was an acceptable amount of money to spend on a hotel, but I know its not on Captains pay. And the tickets are more than we’d like to spend so. Plus my friend assured me that no place will ever measure up after this- so, might as well save it for later right?

So we turned our search to Thailand and then remembered, oh. My and Nathan’s passports are about to expire. And then this morning, instead of unloading the dishwasher when he woke up early, my wonderful husband spent the morning finding this gem in Vietnam. See how wonderful he is? Forget the dishwasher, lets plan trips instead. So, it won’t be a birthday trip, but its still a trip. The big sellers are the VERY affordable spa treatments (go ahead- check out the prices, of course they aren’t the price you’d find on the street in Thailand-like where I had a massage for an hour and a half for $7) but, I can still afford multiple treatments off the menu. There is a cooking school (yay! learn to cook more food I can’t find ingredients for!) AND a kids program: ITS FREE. Sold.

Im not sure if I like Vietnamese food….so, I’ll either not like it and not eat and lose weight (win) or love it and eat well (win).

On a separate but related topic….so, the Mayans predicted the world was going to end in 2012. Maybe its just the universe clashing a little bit but first Haiti, then here, then Chile, now tsunamis….maybe this is just the beginning? Today when they we’re ordering the evacuations my friend Cat was telling me the Japanese were lining up on the seawall to watch The Great Wave come in. On the one hand- how dumb. On the other hand- if you’re gonna go, you might as well have a front row ticket for the end.

In all seriousness, as much as Im making light of the situation, I am counting my blessings. The earthquake that hit Haiti was 7.0 and it created such devastation. The earthquake here was the same magnitude and aside from some burst water pipes and a few things being knocked over in the house, no one has so much as a scrape on them. Things of course, could have ended so much differently.

Honestly. (And this isn’t my usual ‘Oh HONESTLY’ sarcasm. This is genuine). Im not sure what I think of a country….of a a society that has become……THAT. I wonder: what do we stand for as a society/culture/nation? The truth of the matter is when I watch things like that, I totally get why people hate us. We have no conscience or moral compass anymore.

I can’t get the image of the poor, defenseless [still living] cow being SHOVELED by a forklift out of my head. Or the pigs being slaughtered so inhumanly. What monsters we’ve become. And for what? So we can feed ourselves another burger made with 80% “meat filler”. The word glutton comes to mind.

Harsh words I know, but Im just so disgusted by it all. Everyone needs to see this movie.

PC and I decided on that flight that if we ever made it to Singapore, having a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar was going to be at the top of the list. I don’t think at the time we thought we’d be going there with our kids….or that we’d be drinking at 10:30 in the morning….or that we’d pay $100 for four drinks, but- it was so totally worth it.

The hotel itself…its one classy joint. So classy that only “residents” (yes- you are a resident, not a ‘guest’ at the hotel) are allowed free reign-all the rest of us had to use the side door. Its very British colonial (?) style meets the tropics– its beautiful….large verandas, wicker furniture, the old school fans. I loved it.

My drink was all that I’d hoped it would be- maybe more. If you are ever here- you must do this. I realize for me there is some ‘history’ which made the anticipation of actually doing it that much greater but really– this is one of those things you just have to do in life, if for no other reason than to say you’ve done it. And they taste good.

The approach

The 'resident' entrance

I love magnolias....

Nathan loved the peanut cracking part, though he refused to eat them

Oh geez...his didn't have alcohol.

So. Good.

In case you couldn’t tell- this has been the highlight of the trip. More to come….

As I dropped Nathan off today I caught our 60-second radio news bit and heard they found the body of that girl in Florida and it gave me goosebumps. Why do things like this just continue to happen? With all the media outlets and twittering and social sites and satellites and whatever else we have to watch over us- how do we continue to LOSE people, only to find them days later in a dump?

Moving back to the United States is going to be a rough transition for me because in Japan, well, Japan is like the safest place on Earth. Being on a military base in Japan, I can pretty much let Nathan go grocery shop on his own and know he’ll be ok. For a good 6 months now we let Nathan go outside and play (with other kids) unsupervised (to clarify, he plays in our cul-de-sac at the park or in the yard with the neighbor kids while we are inside, checking on him periodically) and I never think twice about anyone taking him. He wanders a few aisles away at the 100yen store and while I dont like it,  Im not panic stricken. Hopefully Im not just being naive.

I’ve always been amazed when we have been in some of the bigger cities of Japan (ie Tokyo) that you see small children (like 5 and 6 yrs old) walking to school by themselves. On the busy streets of Tokyo.

I don’t know if this post really has a point. I have to believe that someone had to see that little girl after she was taken. Someone had to, right? When I was younger whenever we went on long trips I’d watch the cars passing us and if I ever saw one that looked “suspicious” I’d memorize the license plate because then maybe *I* would be the lucky caller on Unsolved Mysteries that had the missing clue: a license plate number. Well, I never was but I still try and be observant. I always stop if there is a child wondering around without a parent nearby. Do you think of someone was more observant she could have been found? I know there will always be bad people in the world. I just have to believe with all the technology at our disposal nowadays that it should be so much harder to pull something like this off.