Monday, January 28, 2019

Housebound


  
Cold as we’ve never known, the weather service says. Two thirds of the population will be affected. I think of my lovely niece in Georgia, who moved away from Ohio thirty years ago, to avoid winter. The high Wednesday will be zero. Thursday, no better. Come the weekend and next week, fifties. That pesky Global Warming!

I just chuckled, remembering this past weekend and telling Laura we would stop on the way home and top up our half empty tank, because the weather would be turning cold. That depression era precaution I learned from my parents. It’s still taught, I’m sure, but under a different brand than “better safe than sorry.”


The loom has been “topped up” with a new warp, and the next batch of towels is “cayenne”.  The last thread on the shelf is “pumpkin”, then I will begin again.  The last warp of 120 turns yielded 82 towels, so I went for the max this time, 150 turns. I think I’ll get 120 towels, minimum. Perhaps 125. I think that should quench my Tibetan flag pole odyssey.  Especially since I know what I will do next, come spring.


Will I be weaving tonight, Laura wanted to know, and I said to go ahead with whatever she wants to do in there. I went to look, the incessant clicking had me curious. She has reduced her collection of jeans to shorts (short shorts, I’m sure), and now is reducing the scraps to six inch squares and then a quilt. “Aren’t you lucky to have a quilter in the family?”, I asked, and she grinned, broadly.

I took to heart my weekend warning of the potential of apps to abuse. I read even more than the cursory bit I began with.  There is nothing innocuous to be found. 


When Emily and Hamilton arrived seven years ago, they were as far into porn as they could be without a credit card. They were 13 and 16, leading completely unsupervised lives. Any self-respecting parent would have been on top of that like, well, a parent. Jan and I rolled out the parental controls, and even when he left here at 18, Ham’s computer shut down at nine in the evening.

What I’m heading toward, is, if any current parents are reading this, please know there is nothing innocuous about SnapChat or WhatsApp or any other thing on your child’s smart phone. I used to be in control, when the phone lived in my room from six in the evening to six in the morning. But this past year took the stuffing out of me in more ways than one.


I spent the last six months in a hospital or skilled nursing facility, and gave Laura total access to her phone, to keep in touch. And as I said, she’s a good person, but currently swept up by bad decisions. I told her tonight of my flip phone decision which will happen this weekend. She asked at once if I still would permit her mother to buy the smart phone. My instant decision was No.

Cards tomorrow! Then I expect to be housebound until the snow begins melting, come this weekend.

43 comments:

  1. We Brits should never complain about our temperate weather...

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  2. The NO decision on the smart phone is a good idea, as long as her mother keeps her end of that bargain.
    I quite like the idea of a denim quilt.

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    1. I was stunned at the speed of her comeback about the phone being in her mother's control in four short months.

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    2. That was my first thought. Good for you, though, for maintaining your standards while you're still in control.

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  3. This weather is for the birds... penguins that is. You two stay safe and warm. Love the cayenne color by the way.

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    1. That first one does appear to be watching the beginning of the end.

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  5. Laura's quilt idea sounds fun. Smart phones in the hands of a screwy, teenaged me would have been something, I can say that.

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  6. Hari OM
    I love my flipfone. The quilt sounds like a good idea - but I wonder about creating shorty shorts when you're up to thighs in snow!!! Purrrrssssss Toby-cat. YAM xx

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  7. Excellent move on the phone.
    Stay warm, stay safe. And happy weaving.

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  8. I've seen those denim quilts. They can be really neat! I would say you are probably more aware of what your granddaughter is doing in her life and on her phone than many parents are.
    We are getting walloped right now with snow. It's a polar vortex, maybe the same as you. Take care. -Jenn

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    1. Yes, it is the polar vortex. A couple of years ago we had it, for the first time I remembered in seventy odd years of winters!

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  9. No smartphone..good. keep phones for calling and texting.
    You're well schooled in being prepared, and climate change...it is global warming but affects us all differently..apart from giving us all extremes...here in NZ we are following in Australia's footsteps in having a heatwave and drought.. hopefully we won't reach the high 40s centigrade liked them...31 today is plenty

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  10. Your tea towels arrived today...the workmanship was balm to the soul after a lousy day and they will go into action tomoorow-
    Kids watching porn? Whatever was going on in their lives at that time?

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  11. I wonder if eventually smart phones will require a user's license, not unlike a car. No one thinks sending an underage driver out on the road with a ton of metal and a powerful motor is a good idea. Smart phones and computers and anything that can hook into the internet and access apps is a potentially dangerous tool just like a car is, albeit in different ways, and should require training to use.

    Rant done :)

    How are all your bones and joints feeling these days, Joanne? I hope the healing process is coming along well.

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    1. The first time I knew she was consumed by her phone, we both agreed, and she had no problem with it living in my room all evening and night. This time she simply came in when I was asleep, say ten, and was up all night with it. This happened on weekends, too. I'd find her with it under the covers on Saturday morning.

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  12. You're a good grandma...keep up the good work for as long as you can. Some day she'll thank you for it.

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  13. You reminded me...I forgot to stop and fill up my half empty tank. Fortunately, I don't have much driving to do the next couple of days.

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  14. I absolutely do not like cold weather, just our brief few days earlier with morning temps in the 30s and afternoon ones in the high 50s had me shivering. Absolutely hard to stay warm in the temps you will be having, but do try to. We were watching the grand kids the other day. Granddaughter got a telephone call, she went into another room here and closed the door. I heard lots of giggling going on. She was on the phone for about 2-1/2 hours. Her mom was flying home from some place so when she had landed and was waiting for her next connection, I text her and said granddaughter was on phone for at that time about an hour and a half and was that okay? She said yes because she was chatting with her friends on SnapChat. Maybe I'll have to have a talk with DIL not in granddaughter's presence to make sure she's keeping track of what she's doing on her phone.

    betty

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    1. Start by googling "apps bad for teenagers". You probably won't want to go on.

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  15. as you probably know we are getting this arctic air before you. You can get a preview by checking out Chicago.

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    1. I look at Chicago in the weather map. Bluer than us, as if more degrees below zero count.

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  16. Good luck! Stay as warm as possible and be safe. My daughter in Chicago is nervous and says she’ll be staying housebound until Friday. I sure hope they close school on Wednesday.

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  17. Cats the world over like to make sure their humans are doing it right.

    As to the rest - she doesn't know how lucky she is.

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  18. You make the right decisions, one day she will understand it too.

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  19. Hope you are warm and safe and passing the time well, bring on spring.

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  20. Snapchat, Instagram and Face Book are beginning to cause serious problems for children and adolescents here now. A recent Deputy Prime Minister is now Vice Chairman of Facebook UK. They are deliberately encouraging dopamine addiction.

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  21. Our kids love the phone but I am surprised that when I check they are often looking at useful or at least fun things. Of course, that may be abut to change.

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  22. I'm about to visit my adolescent grandchildren in Colorado. Curious to see what's going on phone-wise with them. Parents despair of the phone addiction, but few seize them overnight as you have. Excellent idea.

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  23. I wIll worry about you, will you be ok on your own.

    Love, love, love the towels, they,'re wonderful.

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  24. I am so glad that my kids grew up before the whole phone thing. That would have added an entire other layer of problems which I am not sure I could have handled.
    Stay warm, stay safe, dear Joanne.

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  25. I started a quilt out of our old discarded bluejeans decades ago. I was going to do the state of Texas with all it's 254 counties pieced together in shades of faded denim with the palest for dry desert West Texas and bluest for the East Texas piney woods. I think I got most of the state done, maybe lacked 6 pieces and then put it aside and never picked it up again. it was one of the many things abandoned when we moved out of the city.

    I had a flip phone up until about two years ago when Marc bought me the iPhone. you should have put Laura's phone under your pillow!

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  26. Dear Joanne, there's a feistiness to you that's inspiring. What a blessing you are being in the lives of your grandchildren. Peace.

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  27. Keep really warm the next two days! You are a super grandmother. One day Laura will understand this more.

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  28. Same storm is headed my way. I am already dreading it, since I am already bored to distraction. I got the towels, thank you so much! HeWho was impressed at your talent. He thought I had purchased them from Zulily. I buy, he pays. Having raised a grandchild until he was 11, I can say that it was one of the hardest tasks I ever took on.

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  29. Snow forecast for here too Joanne. I keep telling myself that it is winter = but I still wish it was Spring.

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  30. Good on you for restricting app use! I have zero apps on my phone. They're all spy ware. I would like a trails app to perhaps see where we are, but so far we've not gotten lost and I just hate the whole spying thing. They all want to read your email, delete some files and do whatever. Nope!

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  31. Flip phones are getting rarer and rarer these days.

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  32. The news for the US this evening had the alert about the danger of gas lines freezing. You can bet there will be such problems in the coming days.

    Our grandkids are too young yet to have smart phones but those days are on the horizon!

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  33. About the phones. A friend of mine has a grandson who was two in November.
    She was telling us about how fun it is to watch him use the phone by himself to go to Netflix, choose a show, swipe it away if he didn't like it, and choose another!
    What kind of people will these be, when they start the tech stuff so young???
    A completely foreign world from the one we grew up in!!!

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  34. The quilt sounds like a good idea. And so does the flip phone.

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