Podcasting for idiots

My friend and I are working on a podcast.
Who knew it was so much, like, work.
You can't just wing this sh*t.

At first, there was much watching and rewatching and re-REWATCHING of YouTube videos on how to use GarageBand.
(These young'uns go so fast on the technology and whatnot.)

We've been figuring out music and logos and openers.

It has been really fun.

The best part is that she and I are talking about books and book clubs and reading.

We're going to have a Facebook page so that we can ask questions and use comments as springboards for discussions.

It is a nice reminder that even old(ish) dogs can learn new tricks.

We've learned that even though quality podcasting sounds non-rehearsed, you really have to do some practice and preparing to make it sound that way.

We've dragged a friend into the closet with us. (Yes, we are literally in my friend's closet recording, which is kind of our schtick. Or mine, anyway).

At first, we hoped to have our first one out by mid-April, but we're now thinking June because we need help in the sound editing department. When we contacted and met with a podcaster before jumping into this, he said it took him about 6 months to get up and running, and so June sounds about right.

I really feel like this is not only fun but a good fit for my teaching/blogging/freelancing life of doing interesting stuff. 

Don't send nudie pictures and other advice I'd give

Once upon a time, I put mothers on a pedestal, which means I put myself on a pedestal of perfection when I had N.

I could not stay on that pedestal.
Having a first baby after 6+ years of marriage and leaving behind my career and being a perfectionist with extraordinarily high expectations of motherhood was a recipe for emotional disaster.
I am not perfect, and I cannot achieve the extremely high expectations I put on myself.
Every day, I am still learning how to live with not always being able to live up to the goals I put on myself.

So my expectations have modulated, but I still think parents should walk the walk.
If they expect their children to behave in certain ways, they should model that.

If you don't want your children to drink to excess, YOU do not drink to excess.
If you want your children to take their education seriously, YOU take your and their education seriously.
If you don't want your children to be chronic complainers, YOU should not be a chronic complainer.
If you don't want your kids to be slobs, YOU should not be a slob.

I hold these same expectations for church ministers and teachers because their entire existence is working with others to strive for betterment.

Perhaps that is unfair; they are human after all.

I had a bit of an embarrassing situation this semester during my grad class when a teacher inadvertently showed me a picture of herself in a bra when she was swiping on her phone to show me something that was not herself in a bra. This would have been weird enough but she then told me it was a picture she'd texted her boyfriend.

Now, I am not much of a selfie taker ever, and I'm definitely not a nudie or half-nudie selfie taker. If D ever took such a picture of me, he'd have to dig his testicles from his esophagus.
But that's me.
Consenting adults can do as they want.
(I'd just prefer not to accidentally be a part of what other consenting adults do.)

What I would recommend, though, is the following:
1. delete these pictures so you don't unintentionally share them with more-or-less strangers.
2. be very careful of the advice you give young people or children about what to do because you could, like the pictures, unintentionally give them advice that you yourself do not follow. And if they find out, they will lose all respect for you (if they haven't already because kids are exceptionally good at deciphering bullshit and/or hypocrisy).

On the plus side of this weird situation, it did provide me an opening to discuss nudie photos and the aftermath with my teenage daughter.
It was nice to have an anecdote to tell her before I launched into a lecture.

Update: the app is in / auto correct and voice / The Mamas and Papas / John Green / immigration

The app is in

I took N's high school application to the school on Monday.

On Tuesday morning, when I was trying to get her out the door early so I could get to my subbing job, I threatened to go back over to the high school and ask for it back because I am tired as hell of driving her butt to school, and the idea of doing this for another four years makes me want to cry.

So now we wait.

Autocorrect and voice

I both love and hate autocorrect.
I hate typing on my phone, so anything that reduces fingers pressing on buttons is great.
Except when the phone thinks it knows more than me, which it doesn't.
At least not in the way of spelling most words.
And don't even get me started on voice dictation.
Yesterday I ran into an accident on Finchley (a street near the school), so I dictated a text to send to N. Instead of Finchley, it said something about "sensually."
I cannot send my teenager a text about anything sensually.
I hate technology, especially in my car.

The Mamas and the Papas

Sometimes I remember things that I've forgotten.
But I don't mean the important stuff, like where I put the safe deposit box key which I hid somewhere in the house.
I remember stuff like how I read Michelle Phillips' autobiography about 60 times when I was a kid, which then led me to listen to The Mamas and the Papas music.
Sometimes I think that seems like a pretty weird thing for a kid to do. Read a book like 60 times, but I did. I read Judy Blume books like that too. Over and over and over.
Everytime I ate a snack, I'd sit down with one of my most read books and just open it anywhere, picking up wherever, because I'd read it so many times it didn't matter where I started. I knew everything by heart.

John Green

Speaking of books, I'm both liking and disliking Green's latest book, Turtles All the Way Down. It resonates with me because the main character has OCD, and the way her thoughts spiral is completely accurate. I like her confusion as to who is the captain of her ship, which is language I've heard Green himself use in interviews. We all like to think we're the captains, but the brain is a wacky thing, and we really aren't.

I've been looking at school and church and different places where people congregate as versions of pods of bacteria. Humans do the same things as bacteria---live, eat, produce waste, reproduce and try to survive. This book has made me consider just how much we are not the higher/greater species. We aren't nearly as adaptable as bacteria.

Immigration

I listened to this interview today, and I realized, once again, that even though I think of myself as being pretty left-leaning, I don't disagree with this senator's proposal about not giving DACA residents automatic citizenship. I'm a person who tends to be a rule-follower, who tends to go about things the "right" way. I'm the type of person who pays attention to the flight attendant every time I get on a plane when they go over the safety rules. Yes, I'm that person on the plane who rolls my eyes at the people who don't pay attention and will be the first ones to f*ck everything up when a crisis ensues because they don't know what to do because they didn't pay attention.

I mean, I work in middle schools. I see how this goes down every.day.

And if I was going to think about this scenario in a grocery store, then I would have to admit that I get pissed off at the people who don't read and follow the 15 Items or Less sign. The people who drop 35 items on the conveyor belt. The people who don't do things the "right" way, the way that everyone else who has groceries is supposed to follow. And maybe it is a teenager, who watched his or her parents drop 35 items on the conveyor belt and so that is all he or she knows. I can understand it, but I would still get pissed off if I (and when I), in the grocery store, followed the instructions to the letter.

I can understand why someone who follows the "right" process for citizenship would be miffed by the prospect of people who came illegally just getting a pass.

And I know that this doesn't account for the fact that it takes so long to get citizenship (which maybe is too long), and maybe costs a ton of money (I don't know because I've never actually researched it, and maybe those people came because they were desperate and in dire straight (which makes me think of Jesus and do unto others and then things get super complicated in my heart), and maybe those things need to be addressed.

What I'm saying is that I can see both sides of the coin.

Opportunities to learn right from wrong

Let me be the first to say that I don't know what the hell I'm doing as a parent.

Like everyone else who has children, I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I read as much as I can, use my experience as a teacher, and listen to my own feelings to guide me.

I am a firm believer in letting kids fail on the small scale so that they learn how to "police" themselves.
My kids are going to make stupid decisions. All kids, including their mother, make stupid decisions, especially as teenagers.
But I'm hoping that they learn to listen to the little voice inside their heads that says, "This isn't right," and get out of situations on their own because they've had practice in developing good sense.

I know there are all sorts of technologies out there that will monitor my kids online, but at this point in time, we do not use them.

We talk about what is and is not appropriate for kids online.
We talk about not giving any kind of personal information about themselves online.
We talk about child predators.
We pop in and check to see what our kids are doing online. The boys do all of their internet stuff in the living room where I can see them. N is up in her room most of the time, but gets occasional "mom interruptions" where I ask what she is watching.

The other night, while I was at my class, D told me that G was watching a YouTube video on the couch. All of a sudden, D heard "F*ck yah! F*ck yah!" and G scrambled to get out of the video. G said, "I didn't know it was going to do that."

Did he get out of it because he knew his dad would hear it and question him? Yes.
Would he have learned the lesson if we had everything inappropriate blocked? I'm not sure.

I distinctly remember doing things as a teenager and hearing my mother's voice inside my head telling me not to do something. In some cases, I ignored the voice, but it was there, and it tried it's best to get me to do the right thing.

The problem with having all sorts of technology do the monitoring is that it can give parents a false sense of security. "Technology is taking care of it, therefore I have nothing to worry about it."
Technology can and does fail.
Technology isn't going to teach children how to monitor themselves.
Experience does that.

This is part of the reason I don't censor my children's reading.
I mean, if they walked into the house with Fifty Shades of Grey I would draw a line, but I don't research what they read.
When I was a kid, I read Judy Blume's books all the time and loved them. I read about masturbation in Then Again Maybe I Won't. I read about menstruation in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." I read about teenage sex in Forever. And I would say now, as an adult, that isn't the worst way to learn about those things. Better than learning about them from other goofy teenagers.

With my GAD, it would be very easy for me to put a bubble around my children and protect them from everything, but I see what happens when parents do that. I see how unsuccessful it is when parents deny their kids opportunities to fail or shelter them too much.  I have known parents who read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath to their high schooler to censor out things that they deem inappropriate. (The parent who did this had a child who explored pornography, which tells me that sheltering them too much doesn't actually work.)

(There is a happy medium, though, because giving kids complete free reign isn't successful either. Children need guidance.)

As soon as you deny kids something, forbid them from something, that is exactly what they want to do or see or learn about unless they are unusually obedient kids. I say this as an adult who is hell-bent on doing whatever it is someone tells me I can't do, and I have a fully formed pre-frontal cortex that helps me be pretty darn rational.

So for now, we're doing our best to help our kids develop the skills to self-monitor so they don't have to have big-brother do it for them.

Giving them opportunities to use their judgment

I have two basic rules that I would like for my children to live by:
1. Do not kill anyone.
2. Do not do drugs.

Beyond this, I don't care who they marry (gay or straight), what job they have, whether they go to college, whether they get tattoos or piercings, whether they have a child out of wedlock, or whether they are Republican or Democrat or Independent. Whatever it is that I suspect other parents might make a big deal out of, I intend to not make a big deal of.

I just feel that a person can come back from most anything else but killing someone or doing drugs has the potential to completely ruin your life without any chance of returning to the life you had before.

We are pretty open with our children and try to discuss with them what is appropriate and not and when and why.

I do not monitor them every second on their electronic devices, but I find they regularly tell on themselves by letting it be known what they are doing. I don't think they think they need to be sneaky.

A part of me wonders if this is the right parenting tract, but I tell myself that I am giving them opportunities to use their judgment. I cannot parent the entire Internet.

As much as I would like to toss every device we own out a window after bashing them with mallets first and all of us learn the dulcimer, that is not likely to happen.

When I was 13 and younger, I was sleeping over at friend's houses and sneaking out to meet boys. I was too busy doing whatever it was I knew would drive my parents insane and get me into a world of trouble. I knew what was taboo, and I made a beeline for it.

Of course, there is a limit to what I will tolerate.  I would never (and will never) be a parent who buys my kids drugs or booze or or smokes or allows them to have boyfriends/girlfriends sleep over when they are of a certain age and in a romantic relationship with said boyfriend/girlfriend.

But I feel like I could actually drive myself insane if I try to police the wide web of the electronic world.

Smartphone update (from the Luddite)

One of the reasons I didn't want a smartphone is because I didn't want to become one of those moms who ignores her children because she is dorking around on her phone.

I am glad to say I do not ignore my children as a result of my phone.  It occurred to me, even before I got my smartphone in April, that I ignore my children all the time by reading a printed book, a newspaper, a magazine, a cereal box.  I always have my nose in something so I was doing plenty of child-ignoring.  I didn't need to worry that a smartphone would make me do it because I'm already quite successful in this task already!  Sweet relief!

Like my brain, I'm not using my phone to its greatest capacity, but I have found it a time-saver.

When I need to send someone a quick photo, like to get an estimate on having a cat urine-smelling couch reupholstered, I can take it with my phone and send it via email.  Prior to my phone, I'd take a picture with the camera, upload it to iPhoto, export it to an email and send.

Not having to type the number 4 seventeen times and then the number 8 six times in order to send a text is miraculous.  I don't send any more texts than I did before because I don't really text all that many people.  But when I do, I can get it done in a hurry.

I added a Key Ring app so my key chain doesn't weigh 47 lbs, but I can't scan my Kroger card at the gas station.  This app isn't really a time-saver, though, because I have to scroll for an hour to find the "key" on the keyring app.

I am regularly using store coupons at Michael's and Target because I can pull them up on RetailMeNot.  Prior to the smartphone, I would leave them at home or in my car or in my purse (I carried only my wallet on those occasions).

When my car battery died, the guy at the repair shop told me about the mycarfax app.  He asked how I keep track of repairs, and I said, "Uhhhhh, on paper."  I will still continue to keep a list on paper, but now I can access my repairs on my phone when I forget to bring my list with me (which I will).

I've even allowed one of those chatty women to get me to a restaurant when I wasn't sure where to go.  Fortunately, I was free and clear of my neighborhood, so she didn't need to mention how to get out of my driveway.

N and I now play Trivia Crack, which is a real ego booster.  I know a lot of useless information.  Even though I generally hate time sucks like that, I will play with my kid if for no other reason than to enable a continuation of a shared activity since it may become one of the few things she will do with me as a teen.  In a pinch, she'll play Trivia Crack with her old momma.

Being amongst the rest of the world in terms of a mobile phone hasn't been nearly as devastating as I thought it might be.

Belatedly getting into the 21st century

It is with mixed feelings that I enter the world of the smartphone.

I have only had a mobile phone in order for school to be able to reach me when I'm running errands, and up until last fall I had been happy with my archaic flip phone (which was actually my upgrade).  

D has been asking me for years, every time he upgraded his iPhone, if I wanted to use his old one, and I have politely declined for a variety of reasons:  I didn't want the distraction of the internet; I didn't want to have one because everybody has one; I didn't want to pay a monthly fee when 1000 minutes would last me 6-9 months.  

But over the past 8 months or so, I've had a series of small inconveniences that have made me decide that, perhaps, a smartphone might be helpful.

One of these inconveniences was when I texted a friend to get a mutual friend's number.  She sent me the number using her smartphone, and I couldn't open it.  I replied with "Caveman phone.  Send real #."  Since that initial event, it has happened a few other times with different people.

Then there is the issue of communicating with people via different modes.  Some people I text.  Some people I email or message through Facebook.  I have had occasions when I was expecting a message from someone via email or FB and had to drive home to check because I was unable to do so on my phone.  I was supposed to meet the person somewhere and didn't want to drive to our meeting spot only to find out they had sent me a message saying they couldn't meet.   It certainly wasn't a big deal, but considering how much time I currently spend in the car, and how much additional time I anticipate in the car when N starts middle school and M begins elementary, I really would appreciate anything that reduces time spent on the road.

I generally try to keep a book on hand at all times, but there are many occasions when I forget to run upstairs and grab my current read off my nightstand.  When I am waiting in carpool line or in the doctor's office, I have nothing to do.  Being able to check for articles for my classes in those 10 minutes of carpool time would save me 10 minutes on the backend of the day when I could be showering and going to bed.

There is also the coupon thing.  I have gotten so bad about using coupons.  Partly this is because there are 1. rarely coupons for generics and 2. rarely coupons for healthy foods, so I don't use them that much, but for household items like toilet paper and tissue, they still come in handy.  It is all I can do to remember the binder I have them in.  If I don't leave it at home, I leave it in the car.  I am hoping this forgetfulness is mostly due to having to run errands quickly during the 6 hours a week I don't have M with me, but having all of my coupons on my phone, which stays with my wallet, can only help.

I am not looking forward to having a monthly bill, but I am hoping that all of the bells & whistles of convenience (gas saved from not driving home to check email; ability to bring coupons and actually save a bit on expenses, etc) will minimize the time I spend stewing over it. 

The lost iPod, both good and bad

We lost the iPod, and it is sorta driving me crazy.
I know millions of people have lost their mobile phones or dropped them into a thousand pieces or misplaced loads of techie gear, but this is the first lost expensive item.
(Wait, there was that time I hid the bank safe deposit box key too well and had to pay $100 for them to break into it, only to find the key a few months later in the summer towels.)

Its loss bothers me because I hate wasting money and because now I won't have any music with which to workout at the gym (although I will likely swipe N's iPod mini because she steals my sh*t all the time, and paybacks are hell).

But at the same time, its loss is almost a relief.

The kids fought over that thing constantly.
It was the kind with a screen, so they could videotape themselves and watch their silly antics over and over.  It is enough to listen to one's kids make noise, but to listen to one's kids making noise while also listening to their tape-recorded selves making noise is a little more surround sound than I can take.

They had also discovered the 3 games on there, so they would get distracted with that.
N had been swiping it to make American Girl videos in her room.
M took it everywhere (which is why it was lost....somewhere in Kroger, I think, since I've called everywhere else we went last week), and I let him because him dorking around with it allowed me to get.some.things.done.without.listening.to.whining.

The ipod had become a babysitter.
It had become one more thing the kids would screech for when we got in the car.
One more thing for me to keep up with, and it is hard enough to just keep up with my life.

I'm not sure it is worth replacing something that was only useful for the 60 minutes a week I actually make it to the gym and drove me batty the other 10,020 minutes of my week.

Technology, parenting and making more work for yourself

My MIL shared a story with me and D about her discussion with her tennis friends.  When she told them that D and I do not have cable/satellite, they were stunned.  They asked if we lived out in the boonies and couldn't get access.  When she told them that we choose not to have it, they sat speechless and aghast.

I am not a Luddite by any means.  I love, love, love my MacBook.  I like being able to text people on my cell phone rather than having to talk (because I really dislike chatting on the phone).

But I want pretty strict limits on what we own technology-wise and how often our kids use it.

Technology is expensive, both in terms of initial outlay and upkeep, especially if upkeep in your world means replacement every 2 years.  Upkeep to me just means buying more memory, more disks, more songs for the iPod because unless something is broken, I don't believe in getting the latest and greatest (although my techie-nut husband disagrees).

Technology also quickly becomes addictive, which I can attest to given my FB habit.  Technology can be a huge time suck (Where did the last 3 hours go, anyway?) and a self-limiting demon.  You forget what you did and how you did it prior to the technology becoming a part of your life.  You simply aren't as present in the present as you could be if you weren't swiping your finger across that screen.

Using technology is a constant battle of restricting and redirecting MYSELF, and it is even worse when technology is in the hands of children.  Despite our attempts to limit technology, we have a little 5-year-old boy in the house who is deeply obsessed with Disney Universe, which the kids received for Christmas.  And N is on Strike 2 of "Thou shall not enter someone's home listening to the iPod because it is rude not to say hello and be friendly," which means she will soon lose access to it.

So what am I doing to try to keep the technology monsters at bay?

*No televisions in bedrooms (for parents or children).

*No Kindle (for me or kids; D does have one but it is the plain, no "bells and whistles" one)

*I do not own a smart phone, and I will continue to have the most basic features possible without a monthly plan even when my aged phone kicks it and I have to purchase something more 21st century-like.

*No satellite/cable television.  We do stream Netflix, and we have an antenna in the attic to get local channels.

*N has an iPod Shuffle (No camera, no recording device, no games)

*We have an Xbox that is on a family timer.  The kids cannot play video games during daytime hours during the school week.  One hour limit.

*I have an iPod (It has a camera/recording device but we only listen to music on it.  There are no games on it.)

*The children do not own any portable game players (like DSs)

I sometimes hear parents lament the struggles they have with their children over technology.  Their child is posting inappropriate things on FB.  The child is spending too much time texting or texting things like answers to homework to friends.  And I can't help but think there is a relatively quick fix to this (although not painless for the parent, to be sure.)  The person who buys, maintains and pays for continuous access to the technology controls the technology.  End of discussion.

This is not to suggest children should not be allowed certain technologies, but there should be clearly defined "rules" associated with their use and consequences for failure to abide by those rules.  The hardest part for the parent when it comes to technology (or anything for that matter) is the enforcement of the rules.  Punishment of a child is always akin to punishment of the parent, but that is the nature of consistent parenting.

Parenting at its easiest is still a whole helluva lot of hard work, so why in the world make it harder on yourself, with more to monitor and fight about and, for crying out loud, spend money on.