Adventuring with Karen

I feel like I could just say yes to this prompt and move on with my day. There are lots of things I need a break from.

Diet coke, chocolate, carbs, teaching….

I don’t think I want a break from the first three though.

If you ask my husband and my father in law ( and I did) what the most important invention in their life is they would say the personal computer. I mean I am typing this, using my thumbs, on the tiny personal computer that I carry around in my pocket. For both of them the computer is central to their jobs.

I suppose that is definitely high on my list as well as I used to blog frequently, edit photos, communicate with long distance family and friends, buy stuff, etc ..

*sigh* well I suppose if I don’t pick the computer it has to be the Caboodle because how else am I supposed to store my 80’s hair accessories and giant hoop earrings?

There are so many things I love it is difficult to plan just one ideal day.

One option would be with my hubs and kiddos: breakfast, a day at the beach, dinner at some place fancy followed by a delicious dessert

Option 2: a day with my fam at an amusement park with no lines and free food

Option 3: hiking all over the place all day long

I think it is important to find beautiful things every day and according to my father in law everyday is “the best day ever”!

I remember my mom always saying how fast time was going as we were growing up. I suppose I believed her but only to the extent that when you were doing something fun time seemed to speed up and that fun thing ended far too soon. Of course, waiting for the fun event took forever!

As a parent of children that have now grown up I remember hearing the phrase “the days are long but the years are short”. Too true. As a young parent, in the trenches of diapers and meltdowns, there were definitely days that didn’t seem to end. But, those years went by so fast!

My hubs and I often talk about how it feels like we haven’t been together that long but also feel like we have always been together.

To quote another quip, “time is fleeting” so I want to make the most of the time I have with the ones I love.

At the beginning of each year I make a list of things that really need to get done around the house and post it on our front door. It is a list of big projects that require quite a bit of time and money to accomplish. Some of those items have been on the list for years!

I have things like: replace the front steps, purge the attic, tear down the play structure. For years “get a new fence” was on the list and every time we thought it was the year we would have our pipes collapse or a storm take off the roof or some other crazy thing. I was pretty excited when we were able to cross new fence off the list!

One day my to-do list will be completed…maybe..

Way back in the late 80’s my family somehow attained an Apple 2gs computer. It was blocky and all I can remember doing on it was playing some sort of bug/ alien game. I’m not sure what happened to it and I don’t remember having a computer at home after that.

I took a word processor to college with me to write papers on. It had the perforated paper that fed through the back and the hole punched strips on the sides that had to be carefully torn off so the assignment didn’t get ripped in the process. My grandpa heard about my word processor at the family reunion and decided he had to have this amazing technology as well. I remember him calling me to help him set it up.

That year I also started working on the computers in the computer lab at school. You could save your assignment on the desktop but you had to print them because as soon as the computer was restarted the assignments were gone. I could also save an assignment on a floppy disk. I’m pretty sure we still have some of those floating around in the attic. This is where we learned to save early and often because a glitch 5 pages into an assignment was sure to cause headaches and tears.

During my Master’s program I did an assistantship that required a laptop. The school checked one out to me and my husband and I cracked up because it looked like a toy. We dubbed it “My First Laptop” like we had picked it up at ToyRUs.

These days I most often use the tiny computer in my pocket!