Surrender, Dorothy

Letting Go of the Old Ways

My work laptop died a week ago. While the help desk has tried to convince me it's fine even though it doesn't boot, I've been using a loaner computer, which restricts me to the network and ensures I can't really save anything or find anything. I'm an e-mail filer, and the sight of so much in my webmail inbox is killing me slowly.

Some other extreme news came along at work yesterday, and the combination of that, the dead laptop, my in-laws' move, getting temporarily suspended from Twitter and attempting to move 10 years of Hotmail over to Gmail all in the same week has left me feeling a little disconnected, a little confused. Where is all my stuff? I do not know.

I'm not necessarily upset about all these changes, all this sifting through old messages and receipts, trying to decide what's important and what's not. I'm not even that upset at the prospect of losing my old laptop with all of my filed e-mail, if that's what happens. It seems I lose all my work e-mail every few years for some reason or another, and I've also noticed it almost never matters, which is a little disconcerting. At work we're like sharks -- we have to move forward or we die.

So if you've tried to contact me and I'm a little slow, it's because I'm staring out the window trying to remember how I got to work. It'll pass.

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I did manage to hammer out some book reviews in the car. Check out Dr. Drew's latest on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews! And stay tuned, I'll have a bunch over at Cool Mom Picks in July. Monday's post at BlogHer was on moving your parents.

Remembering Iowan Lives

American Gothic statue on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

We left last Thursday to head up to the northern reaches of the great state of Iowa to help my in-laws pack up the house they've lived in for the past 47 years.

Imagine doing that.

They raised eight children and invited 16 grandchildren into that four-bedroom house. It contained more stuff than I could've thought imaginable, and it took seven families two full days to even make sense of the place, to plane out and start emptying instead of sorting.

It's hard to empty a home.

This dumpster is entirely full of washers.

I sat downstairs with my sisters-in-law, sorting through three generations worth of glassware. I took things I will actually use, things my mother-in-law pointed out were from this or that person, had been received as a Christmas gift or a wedding gift. I suspect she thinks we secretly took this stuff home and threw it away, so I want to honor it here, washed and ready to be put away, put to good use for my daughter to grow up seeing.

This dish now sits on the top shelf of my bookcase.

The little angel is thrilled with the fanciness of these salt and pepper shakers.

These have become salad bowls.

The smallest vase now belongs to the little angel. The other two are mine, to go in the downstairs half-bath once it looks less like it belonged to John Travolta circa 1977.

I don't have china; I have white Pottery Barn stoneware. This dish goes with it perfectly.

Let there be cocktail pickles!

Beloved's oldest sister A saved him these awesome beer glasses. They await his Man Cave.

More salvaged glassware.

Old-school, leather-bound dictionaries.  Yeah, baby!

Beloved brought home his own totally cool tray. This one is metal. How much do I love the combo of farmland and lobsters?

I'm very excited for my in-laws to move to a larger city, a closer city, a city that will enable us to see them more in their golden years. That said, I'm sure this weekend was bittersweet for every member of my husband's family, and I applaud my in-laws for having the strength and foresight to make these decisions now, when moving them is their choice and not their necessity. American gothic, indeed.

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Catching up:  I have a video response to caffeinated kids on BlogHer Backtalk and posts on paying kids for chores, vaccinations, funny kids on the Internet and Mommy, It's Not Fair.

WTF, Twitter?

Looks like @ritaarens has been suspended on Twitter. I'm trying to figure it out. Can anyone tell me what I've supposedly been tweeting the past few days?