Parent Company

Surrendering to Google

All previous attempts and systems to keep our family organized have failed. So now we've looked at cloud computing from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow have decided to let Google rule our lives.

Our family schedule is now fully integrated on Google calendar, and it's handy, I must say, to quote Ed Grimley.

Our school prompted this move to cloud computing by publishing all events via Google Calendar, and now they magically appear on our schedule. Then Greg loaded in the Bills calendar and U.S. holidays, and I threw in Canadian holidays, too. Don't want to drive to Ikea again only to find stores closed for some random provincial holiday like we did earlier this year.

So here's the concept. You create a Google account, give everyone in the family the login and password, and tell them to put any and all games, parties, events, meetings, dinners, doctor's appointments on Google calendar. Our plan is to have a family meeting every Sunday to go over it. Anything not put on the calendar is not recognized as an officially sanctioned event by parents.

This Sunday was family meeting No. 1, which revealed we had a conflict or two and we sorted it out civilly. Since kids love computers, they are much more reliable about entering events on Google than on our lame paper calendar. So far so good.

There are all kinds of calendars you can import. Since I am in my honeymoon planning phase, I am over-adopting this technology and have just added rather useless applications such as Phases of the Moon and Star Dates to our calendar. Not sure my life will be improved by knowing whether it's Waxing or Waning Gibbous time, but what the heck.

I hope this cloud has a silver lining for this family.

---Allison

Blueberry picking

 We’ve been lax in the pick-your-own produce department this year, but squeezed in a trip to Greg’s U-Pick It in Clarence this week to pick blueberries. They are such a rewarding pick, falling into your hands without the need to reach up or stoop. Great product placement, in grocery parlance.

Another reason, in addition to anti-oxidants, why blueberries are the perfect food. Some blueberries are sweet, others not so much. Just like where we are in life -- at that bittersweet point in our family where we split up and do things in smaller groups instead of piling into the minivan to go on family outings.

We’ve gone from Together We Stand to Divide and Conquer. Now, we sub-divide, optimize, this one goes here, this one there. The good news is that we get fewer complaints.

Past fruit-picking experiences have generated many more grievances from those who would rather not dedicate an afternoon to understanding the food chain. This time, it was just me and my daughter, and she willingly came along, vs. being forced into family fruit picking.

This time of life is taking some getting used to, but has its own rewards. We’re getting to know our kids more as individuals than as a herd. But the speed at which we went from the togetherness of The Waltons to the individualism of Walden caught me by surprise.

Last night I suggested that we all do something as a family and asked the kids to check out Gusto to see what was going on. When I came home from work, they had suggested, “How about if we go out for pizza and you and dad go next door to the Indian restaurant?” We agreed, we much prefer a change of culinary pace to the usual pizza, which is one of the few foods everyone eats in our family.

So I guess it has come to this – separate restaurants!

Subconsciously that’s why we got a dog last summer, sensing the pack was beginning to disperse. At least we have someone who greets us at the door with a wagging tail and will go with us anywhere, any time – probably even for Indian food. And today when I accidentally dropped our newly picked fruit on the floor, we discovered the dog likes blueberries. Who wants to bet that he will be accompanying me next picking season when everyone else has something better to do?

---Allison

Garage sale

This weekend we had a garage sale to help underwrite the cost of a new computer for our family room upgrade. We made it a family project, which portends a certain amount of chaos and doom.

Various cast-offs were tossed in a room and we shuttled them out to the curb Saturday morning. Unbeknownst to us, neighbors had advertised a block sale for the same date and time so we benefited from some extra traffic early in the morning. Unfortunately, these neighbors didn't actually conduct a block sale, so many of our customers, in search of a bazaar, stopped at our house, took in our paltry wares, and asked in an accusatory tone "where's the block sale?" After more than a few of these encounters, I became less customer-focused and barked "this is our sale, we're not part of the block sale."

We soon learned that most people's price point at a garage sale is $1. So books, DVDs, and little toys did well. The customer we "delighted" most bought a plastic cow for a quarter, which had been given to us by a neighbor who didn't sell it at her garage sale. Some nice grandparents strolled by with their two young grandchildren, bought some of our higher-quality books and DVDs, so I did my only cross-sell of the day and encouraged them to buy a Mr. Bean DVD because I thought they looked like Britcom-ers. Hours later our son told me that the Mr. Bean DVD didn't work, so I recoiled in horror thinking that these nice people got home and thought I deliberately scammed them.

Traffic slowed, the till was low, so Greg replaced our child-made faintly written posterboard signs with official Garage Sale signs from the hardware store, strategically placing one near Denny's down the street. Perhaps not surprisingly, steady traffic ensued. I did some segmentation of our customer base, and hereby present my findings in the interest of advancing the science of sidewalk retailing:

1) Dollar Generals come with no intention of spending more than $1, and satisfy their recessionary consumerism with the purchase of a book or toy for $1 (60% of customers).

2) Voyeurs drive by at 1 mph and look out the window to see if it's worth getting out of the car, then decide to keep going (15%).

3) Silent Lookers actually get of the car, look disapprovingly at merchandise, and drive off without a word (10%).

4) Extreme Bargainers offer an insulting fraction of marked prices (5%).

5) Smooth Salers actually look at merchandise, offer a compliment or two, and if they purchase something, happily pay price as marked (10%).

Our shoebox was stuffed with $1 bills. Clouds came, we called it a day, drove the unsold stuff to the Salvation Army and grabbed some hot dogs at Ted's, being sure to use Entertainment Book coupons. We had re-learned how hard it is to actually make a $1, putting us squarely in category #1 above. Lesson learned.

---Allison

The end of sleepovers?

An Associated Press story says that a new generation of "hyper-concerned" parents are banning their children from sleepovers, or wakeovers, as most families I know call them.

The story explains that parents are being more cautious these days before letting their children spend the night in a home with parents whom they don't know well. They cite news reports of children being victimized during sleepovers during some unauthorized visits from the father in the house.

A ban on sleepovers might sound a little extreme, but there's nothing wrong with some common sense. If you don't know the other family, why would you send your child there to spend the night?

I'd rather ban sleepovers just because of the havoc they wreak. One of our daughters has an annual sleepover for classmates on her birthday, and I've never been able to impress upon that group of wholesome young people the importance of actually GOING TO SLEEP at night.

Plus, wakeovers turn our kids into ticking time bombs. They may seem fine at about 10 a.m., when their friends go home, but then the fatigue hits them and turns them into a creature from "Night of the Living Dead."

I'll sign a petition for banning sleepovers any time.

---Greg

Suddenly, more summer

We can whine about the rainy weather if we want to. This isn't a great week for swimming in the pool or hitting the golf course. But let's call a big timeout on the other whine that I've been hearing all the time: The summer is almost over.

Come on, that hourglass is still more than half full. It's 63 percent full, to be precise.

Using the calendar from the Buffalo Public Schools, there are 75 days of summer vacation (including weekends and holidays) falling between the last day of school in June and the students' first day in September.  As of today, we are 28 days into that chunk of vacation. That's just 37 percent that we've used up. Sorry, pessimists, but there are many more days of summer to be enjoyed.

The kids haven't started their summer reading yet? There's time to catch up.

Are the unstructured days getting to be a drag for stay-at-home parents? There are still plenty of camps around with slots available.

Those 47 remaining days are enough time to learn a new language; get in shape for fall sports; paint the outside of your house; memorize a passage from Shakespeare.

I guess the necessities of adulthood force us to think ahead. We've got to make child care, camp and other arrangements now in order to have them in place for August.

Time does pass much too quickly, particularly for us rising senior citizens. But that 63 percent of summer vacation is ours to embrace. It's not over till it's over.

---Greg

The Five People I Meet at Wegmans

One of Caroline's assigned summer reading books is "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," by Mitch Albom. I'm not ready to get into a theological discussion in this forum, but the title of the book did get me thinking about this:

The Five People I Meet at Wegmans

1. The Sample Abuser: Starts with four to five "tastes" of gelato at the coffee counter, then stops by enough sample stations in the rest of the store to consume 800 calories without dropping a dime.

2. The Line Reservist: Leaves her cart right next to the belt at the checkout, then remembers 12 other things she meant to buy. Instead of admitting a temporary setback, she leaves her cart there to save her place in line, leaving the rest of us to queue behind a cart with no human operator.

3. The Express Line Flouter:  He pays no mind to the "12 or fewer items" sign, or the "12 items or less" sign, for that matter. (We won't do the grammar gotcha.) Even if he has 54 items to buy, he considers himself entitled to use whatever checkout line is convenient; the rules be darned!

4. The Loud Talker: Can be a mom or a dad, but it's the parent pushing the kid in the top seat of the cart and narrating their trip through the aisles. "Look, Sasha, mommy is buying apple sauce for you. Only the free-trade, organic, nut- and gluten-free variety, of course." The words are said loudly enough to be heard back in the dairy-frozen aisles.

5.  The Aisle Obstructor: Yes, members of my own family do this. It's the folks who absent-mindedly leave their carts spread out over the whole aisle while they stop to pick out an item, making passage for other customers all but impossible. Even worse, when they leave their cart blocking an aisle while they have a chat with the friend they just ran into. I can't say for sure that women do this more than men, but to me it's a violation of the Man Code. Men are not in the grocery store to socialize; we're there to convert our family shopping lists into tangible results, then to pay and get out. Or maybe that's just me.

---Greg

Shopping with boys

I took our son (age 10) to the mall to buy summer clothes. I wouldn’t call this shopping in the traditional sense that I, as a female, can relate to. We ripped through the store and grabbed items off the rack at lightning speed. The “try-on” stage would have been skipped entirely except for my rule that I won’t spend my money on any clothes I don’t see tried on, to make sure that they fit within reason. 

So we raced through the store to the dressing room. No one was in sight besides me -- a sign of recession? Son asked me to validate that his door was locked. I reiterated that no one was nearby; he locked the door anyway. Various thrashing sounds could be heard, then suddenly a pair of madras shorts came flying over the dressing room door accompanied by the words “too small.” Then another came flying – “too small.” Then the bathing suit came flying -- “just right.”

Out my son emerged with a new shirt on, saying “let’s go, I want to wear this home.” A clever ploy not to have to change back into his old shirt. End-to-end elapsed mall time clocked in at 11 minutes. At least boys outgrow clothes so there is an imperative to shop. With adult men, clothes aren’t replaced unless they are on fire or the men are metrosexuals. Yes, I like antiques, but I don’t expect one’s closet to qualify for an appraisal from Antiques Roadshow.

It’s no secret that most males don’t love shopping. I’ve labeled my husband Greg’s look of mall anguish as “shopping face,” a countenance that is one despair level down from Munch’s The Scream (see picture above). Girlfriends, do you know what I mean by shopping face? Which is why fathers will be disproportionately showered with golf shirts and other outfits for Father’s Day. It’s a win-win-win. We get to see them in new clothes, we don’t have to suffer through a day at the mall with them, and they avoid the same fate.

To be fair, I will follow up at some point with an entry about shopping with girls. Better yet, Greg can write that one. 

---Allison

Date night

As our First Couple hit the Big Apple for their date night, I was jealous. Why are they able to fit in a regular date night when we’re not?

Of course we don’t have a staff and a live-in mother-in-law, or a plane at our dispoal, but these are just excuses. It’s not just us, most of our friends don’t have regular date nights, either. Maybe that’s one of the reasons our generation is less happy than our parents’.

We are constantly chasing after kids, working, trying to make ends meet, and at the end of the day we just want to crash instead of putting on a dress and heels (that would be me, not Greg) and head to the theater. If you go to any theater or cultural performance around here, the predominant hair color is gray.

Camp David doesn’t cut it as a weekend getaway for the Obamas; I doubt the cooking there is as pure and precious as the Blue Hill’s, where they enjoyed their Manhattan meal and could have easily strived for five just on appetizers. I’m a vegetarian, but this place is even over the top for my taste. The grilled asparagus comes with “cured immature eggs.” I, for one, like my eggs to be mature.

I’m all for local produce, but these farmers are a little too rhapsodic about their rhubarb.  I’d like to think that our Commander in Chief eats something more substantial than fiddlehead ferns -– like the occasional pizza and wings -– but I digress.

Back to the topic at hand: How many of you pencil each other in; or rather, type “Date Night” into your Blackberries? Or is your date night just texting each other from different rooms?

Let’s take a poll:

poll by twiigs.com

---Allison

The laundry disconnect

I hate doing laundry. We have yet to come up with a workable system in our house to get laundry washed, dried and put away for five family members plus an exchange student. Sometimes we get to the washing and drying, but then we end up with 10 baskets of clothes that need to be folded and put away. That part doesn’t usually happen. Soon, dirty clothes get comingled with clean, and we start the cycle all over.

I was irritated on Mother’s Day when, in addition to having two soccer games scheduled in two distant locales, I had to keep the laundry process going. It never ends. At least at one soccer game, some of the mothers rebelled by bringing “beverages” and by that I don’t mean Tim Horton's coffee. Which made coming home and doing laundry a bit less unpleasant.

Why is it that mothers  are the only ones who know which clothes belong to whom? To stop enabling our families’ lack of laundry ownership,  I am planning on imposing a Garanimals labeling system, whereby I put embarrassing Sharpie labels with each person’s name and a ridiculous animal figure on each piece of clothing so that everyone can help sort, fold, and put away.

If that doesn’t work, I am looking into washer/dryer combo units that are popular in apartments, ships, and RVs – you throw your clothes in, and hours later they come out both cleaned and dried. Sort of the crockpot version of clothing care. I can throw a load in, come home and it will be done. Maybe that’s what I’ll ask for next Mother’s Day. Along with a promise that everyone does his/her own laundry and puts it away. Now that would be a gift that keeps on giving.

---Allison

Sounds like a backup plan

We just averted a family disaster. The hard drive on our family PC crashed over the weekend. That is the machine on which we had stored all of our digital pictures, dating back more than 10 years. All of those photos would like be gone forever, but ....

I had installed a backup system. I believe I first read about JungleDisk.com on Lifehacker. Jungle Disk is something you install on your PC, you register for an account and you pay $2 per month, plus a very small charge for data uploading and storage (15 cents each month per gigabyte of storage used, and 10 cents per GB of data uploaded, 17 cents per GB of data downloaded). Then you set your Jungle Disk to back up all of your data (photos, documents, music, whatever else you choose) at a scheduled time and it takes care of the rest.

When the inevitable hard drive crash happens -- and it's a question of when, not if -- it provides great peace of mind to have one's data backed up.  When our technical guru, Mark, helped us tap into Jungle Disk to retrieve our photos, I told him that this not only saved my pictures, but also my marriage. If 10 years of family photos had vaporized, well, let's just say things wouldn't have been pretty around here.

There are other backup products out there. (See Lifehacker's suggestions.)  And some people do their own backing up, copying their data to an external hard drive, or to DVDs, compact disks, or anything else that stores data. But I knew that I wouldn't have the discipline to stay on top of a weekly or monthly backup schedule, which is why I went the automated route.

I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here. I just want everyone to get a backup plan for their data before it's too late. (Cue Karl Malden saying "Don't let this happen to you!")

---Greg