I Moved My Own Cheese

I don't care for change. In fact, I dread and resist it, loudly. BUT... I do like new toys. And I have new toys to play with!!

First I got BOB for my birthday. BOB is a Nokia Internet Tablet N810. BOB rocks the world! He is a wireless eBook reader, a web browser, a GPS navigator, an audio and video player, a text editor, and lotsa other stuffs. I have been exploring his capabilities and downloading applications and books to run on him. I am downloading classics onto him since a lot of them can be obtained free. Currently I am reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. I started reading it once before but got bored. This time around I am enjoying it more. I also have Wuthering Heights ready to read. I have decided that the game "Marbles" is evil incarnate as even on the 'easy' level it took me half an hour to complete one set. Grrr. One app I downloaded is a YouTube viewer. It downloads the video and then plays it back on BOB. Trying to watch anything directly from BOB through his browser to YouTube doesn't work. BOB is built for size, not for internet speed. At any rate, anyone looking for a cool electronics gadget (that has money to burn... like I said, BOB was a gift) I strongly recommend the Nokia N810.

My other new toy is MAC. MAC is my new laptop. (MAC is not a mac, MAC is Sony Vaio.) My old laptop fell off a table while I was trying to load a DVD and broke the drive and scrambled its insides. But it was under warranty so I went and got MAC. MAC is awesome, faster and bigger capacity than my old one while still being lighter weight. We are still getting to know each other. He does things differently in some places and I am learning some of those while trying to convince him to try my ways on other things. But I am having difficulties getting my backup of my old laptop to restore files onto MAC. And if I've lost all of that stuff, I am going to be beyond devastated. All my music, my stories, my writing resources, countless irreplaceable pictures, and a whole lot more. Another thing I am missing is my bookmarks. But I shall keep trying. You shall not prevail, Foul Troll! (Enchanted)

Next on the new things list is a new web browser. I am giving Google's new browser, Chrome, a shot. IE kept crashing on me. Firefox wouldn't do some things I wanted to do so I am giving Chrome a try. So far so good, though I am having issues with bookmarks.

Another big change... on Friday we moved the boys' bedrooms. Well, the bedrooms stayed but the stuff in them changed. We managed to get the Little Boys' room completely clean. It is a shock and an accomplishment. We then managed to get Kid-1's room clean which, while not as difficult, was frustrating because he wouldn't help. But we didn't have time to mess with ultimatum's and behavior modification. So Hubby and I did it. We bought new bunkbeds on the 8th and got those set up in the boys' room. They looked good. Then we moved Kid-1's bed, a short loft, into the boys' room. Now it looks awesome as it looks like a three tiered bunk bed system. The woods match almost perfectly, the styles are the same and the loft is lower than the top bunk but about a foot and a half. Shuffled around the dressers and such and poof! One empty bedroom, and one clean, cool-looking 'Boy Zone' (as Kid-3 has declared it). We went ahead and set some new rooms rules. (I figured we were already changing things so much that it would be easier to incorporate a few more changes in with the big ones rather than waiting until they finally get settled and then dump more changes on them. It's nothing too too too huge. Everyone sleeps in their own bed. Their room is now part of Sunday Family Cleaning Day and that includes changing the sheets and bringing down all of the laundry. Didn't get any arguments about it so it must not be that big of a deal.

And last but not least, the biggest change of all and a semi-new toy... Baby and Baby-Mommy have successfully moved in. We moved them in Saturday. Poor Baby-Mommy was down for the count with a stomach bug while we were trying to move her - she was miserable. Saturday night, Baby didn't sleep for crap. New place, new sounds, lots of change, all the normal stuff. She slept better last night. I have to say that I am surprised at how well things are going so far. Baby-Mommy and Hubby have not butted heads at all yet. Baby-Mommy hasn't simply dropped in and assumed I would take over stuff with Baby but she still lets me be part of it so it's not to either extreme. Both Baby-Mommy and Hubby are making visible efforts to keep things okay between them - not just forcing themselves to refrain from killing each other, but actually feel civil. This is good. Of course, now I can't get what The Shrink said out of my head and that is causing me some grief but you can't win them all.

So my cheese has moved quite a bit. (If you haven't read the book "Who Moved My Cheese" - go read it! It is not corporate psychobabble pop-psychology BS as I assumed it was. It is very appropriate for corporate America but it is totally appropriate for anything.) But like a good little mouse, I kept my head up and was ready for the changes as they came. More are coming, that's for sure. But I'm rolling with them and watching for them and working to make sure what we get is the best possible outcome.