These little computers in our hands are specifically designed to suck you in. I remember when they first were announced I said I would never want to merge my phone with my iPod. I felt like it was putting all my eggs in one basket. What would happen if you lost it?

Yet here I am many years later using my phone to do…literally everything. If I cannot do it from my phone, I am likely not doing it.

Pay a bill?  Get my phone. 
Order food?  Open the app?
What’s the weather?  Let me check. 
Who won the game?  I have the score right here. 

Getting out my actual computer, which is literally a fraction of the size of the computers of yore, seems like a gargantuan feat. Getting out of my bed to do it is impossible. It’s just not happening. Especially if it is after 7:30 pm.

How did this one piece of glass and microchips become the single most important thing I own? This past summer I lost my phone. Somewhere between my car and my house. I was in the garage. It seems like that couldn’t happen and yet somehow it did. The phone was in airplane mode. I scoured my car. I dumped out my purse. Twice. I cried tears of frustration. It had vanished.

I had no other choice but to go buy a new phone the next day. Luckily I was rocking an 8+ while the 13 had already been released. it was time anyway. But still the need of having to do it immediately sent me into a panic. I completed my transaction and I was relieved to see my data downloading onto my new device. I went on my merry way.

About a mile from AT&T, I heard my new phone ringing a familiar yet incorrect ringtone. It was alarm tone. Yet I hadn’t set an alarm yet. Did my alarms carry over to my new phone? And why was it going off at 1:43 in the afternoon? I pulled over and pulled my new phone from my purse. It was not alarming or ringing. My purse was.

How could that be? I dumped it out twice. I checked every pocket and zipper. I dumped it again. Empty yet still ringing. I turned the lining inside out.

That’s when I saw it. A huge hole in the lining and a weighted rectangle singing it’s song in the middle. So although my 8+ was close to becoming a relic, it was still perfectly functional. I was fine to continue using it. Yet I had literally just spent $500+ to replace the handheld computer I could not live without. For even 24 hours.

I guess that will tell you how much I rely on this technology I was so hesitant to embrace not all that long ago.

I’m part of a mom’s group that started as a friend wanting to connect to and help women. We were all strangers. Unless you count some limited contact in a mom centered FB group. Melanie started a private FB group for us and shared some of her amazing resources for us to get our lives Mostly Under Control. We meet virtually monthly. Typically this is done with an expert of some sort. Lately, as we’ve gotten to know each other more, it’s been just us supporting each other and gabbing a bit.

Yesterday afternoon when I got home from work, I was WIPED. I sat on the couch and soon found myself sliding down to rest my eyes. It didn’t take long to realize that dinner needed to be started immediately or I would have a bunch of hungry gremlins on my hands.

I meal plan. When I don’t have a plan I feel all discombobulated. My entire week is thrown off. So last night’s plan was for a simple breakfast for dinner: pancakes and sausage. I started gathering my ingredients with a toddler helper in tow. You all know just how helpful that really is. The sausage started browning while I mixed up the pancake batter. While the hotcakes were doing their thing, George came over to reiterate for the millionth time that he was hungry. He saw the pancakes on the griddle and exclaimed, “I didn’t know you could make pancakes on the stove.”

Um. What?

I guess my kids are just used to the frozen pancakes I pop in the microwave. Had I really never made pancakes? I mean, I know I have. But not in recent memory. Had he really never seen me do it? Why was this so shocking to me? Likely because I grew up on pancake Sundays at our house or my Grandma’s house. This was such a regular occurrence that I have dreams about my Gram’s pancakes. If you were to ask any Ojo right now, they could tell you where to find the pancakes in that old Kedzie house.

While gobbling those pancakes, George kept going on and on about how they were so good. They were especially delicious when smeared with butter and topped with chocolate chips. Everyone ate dinner last night and not one complained. It was a simple meal that has been asked to be repeated for next week. That I can do.