diddle diddle dumpling my son Jown?

The home phone is fixed, the cell phone has no service unless I drive toward Roseburg. My guess is a tower is down around Cottage Grove, because that’s where I noticed it gone. And the internet is a little spotty, but I don’t know if that’s related.

The home phone is fixed by way of a black cable stretched through the blackberries down by the creek, and a message saying the situation is “temporized” and they’ll be back Monday to work on it. It makes me wonder what got it this time, decaying sheep, digging raccoons, general ground water, which is what usually gets the electric line. This is the tin foil and hay string phone line, which if they’d ever decide to replace might get upgraded to one that could handle two lines, or dsl (if it came to this area), or other exciting thigns like that. I think it’s the original that was put in in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s and hasn’t been touched since except when it has to be repaired.

Logan’s had two days back at school now and is enjoying herself. We’ve played on the playground as usual after school, which helps. Yesterday we ate lunch out with Sandy and her mom Sherri in celebration of starting the school year, and Logan and Sandy, being twins, ate twin lunches and giggled constantly. The two year difference in their age evidently doesn’t effect their twin status. Some things are better not questioned. They tried to plan a sleep over, but since neither is allowed to have sleep overs yet, it was a moot point. The request I heard later was for an all day play date. I’ll keep that one in mind. 9 to 5 even sounds like a lot. Maybe if all four parents took a shift.

Aside from the play time, Logan’s class seems to be shaping up well. She’s had no complaints, and many positive things to say about how it is going. The teacher uses lower case letters in their names this year. The got to choose which row their desks would be in today, although it wasn’t absolutely stuck to. Logan chose to sit closest to Mrs Marooney’s desk and appears to be very happy there. She says she’s having some trouble with drawing things but is getting help from Mrs Marooney. They had circle time and played their flutes today. She was able to share part of her snack with someone who forgot to bring one. (Anyone who has something they’re willing to share can offer it to someone who forgets theirs, I think.)

This weekend we’re going to work on planning Logan’s birthday party and put away laundry so that we’ll be able to find school clothes for next week. Big excitement there. Well, maybe on the party planning part. John turns forty a week from today. Logan is planning what happens that day.

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We heard from Phil last night that Grandma Wilma’s in the hospital again with fluid in (around?) her lungs. John hasn’t talked to her yet because it was nearly 10 Florida time last night when Phil reached us. This led to calling Ruth, John’s other sister — somehow I talk to family more when there’s a crisis than when there’s something good going on. I think I need to adjust my Sunday Calls to Family to include more than just mom. Having just visited all St Louis family, it’s fresh in my mind. Keeping in touch is trickier than it seems some how. Actually doing more than just thinking of calling takes coordination. I haven’t talked to Phil for at least a month though, and it may have been a year since I talked to Ruth. John talks to them about that often too, although I’ve always figured that has something to do with being male and using the telephone.

I haven’t posted any of my pictures from St Louis yet. I spent the weekend slowly putting things on the computer back the way they were before the computer was upgraded from old to new. Among other things my itunes program got moved. In the process it found more songs than actually fit on my ipod, and lost some that were already on my ipod, so I recreated and rearranged things by hand. Now I just have to convince it do put them where I want them to go. The new computer is much faster and snazzier than the old one was, which is exciting, and the CPU glows green, which takes a little getting used to. Its in a room by itself at night, which is good.

We also rearranged things in the house this weekend. John did house cleaning while Logan and I were gone, making things clear enough to finally move furniture around a bit. The house is now more open, and with luck will be a little warmer in the winter when sitting in direct line with the wood stove can make a difference. We shifted the buffet from one side of the dutch door to another and moved a recliner to where the buffet had been. It doesn’t mean much without pictures, but perhaps I’ll take a picture later on. It looks good now. Logan asked to have our table made small and round again, which fits well, but looks very small. It’s the same table I grew up with with a removable leaf in the center. One that Grandpa Marble and Uncle Curt worked on at some time in the past I believe.

Logan’s first day of school is today. I’ve woken up horridly early, but that should make getting her up on time a little easier. John sewed her a tote bag for the things she has to have at school according to the color theme mentioned in the teacher (red, white, or yellow) only to find when we got there that the teacher had put in a theme because she thought people would ask more than because she was attached to the idea. However I think that the LL Bean Backpack from last year (from some long ago purchase that Logan unearthed for last year) wasn’t what the teacher had in mind. And the white and yellow tote bag is pretty and works well. After having had it requested to be there by a week ago yesterday, and getting it there late because we didn’t go (that was the day we came home from St Louis), it was a little disappointing to get to the Parent Evening on Tuesday and not see other bags already on their hooks. I had been in a panic that they’d all been due and ours wasn’t ready yet. The idea is that everything is there already when the kids start school, and I’ve always gone with that. We get Logan’s stuff there ahead of time as requested. John took off work extra early on Tuesday so he could sew the bag because it got missed on the weekend. I figured the others, or the majority of them would already be there. Ha.

Logan’s wearing her white and pink dress from the last day of school again for the first day. We’ve cut up a small man’s t-shirt to use as a slip under it, because the fabric is transparent, and then she’s also adding a regular t-shirt to protect her arms from the scratchy sequins. She loves the sparkly fabric that Wilma chooses, even though it prickles her skin. Shopping for a girls slip has failed twice now, and I should have just made one over the summer, but some how, I missed that idea during summer. Evidently little girls slips aren’t needed much any more. Neither J C Penney’s nor Macy’s carried them in the store. The mall specialty stores didn’t have them. Some did refer me to the expensive specialty store, but the last I checked it stopped a couple sizes smaller than Logan. Some suggested Target, but I’ve never seen slips there. Logan’s taking a change of clothes for later in the day, which I always endorse with a white dress, so I’ll get pictures early, I hope, and leave it at that. Today is the assembly and then everything ends at 12:30 with pizza time, because it’s Thursday. That means lots of play time before we go eat lunch, but I’ll pack snacks.

If anyone’s tried to phone us, our home phone is out of order, I started to call it in last night and realized we hadn’t actually physically checked each of the land lines to make sure they were hung up properly. So this morning we’ll check the last one and then call it in. Call my cell or John’s work if you need us. It is possible to check the voice mail when the phone is out, we just don’t know to do it, because the phone never rings here.

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The crew of us who went to the Botanical Garden included Erin’s whole family, Peg’s whole family, Aunt Jane, me and Logan. Logan took Aunt Jane with her to quit a few activities, leaving me to move more slowly and actually see the plants and statues. The kids found water features to splash in, not all of which were actually intended to be kid friendly, and many statues and crevices to explore.

The Botanical Garden also had an indoor kids area with a big tree sort of thing to climb in, and a section where kids could dress up and see themselves on a tv screen acting out a skit. We stopped there on the way to the big children’s area and played for half an hour or an hour.

The big children’s area was huge. There was a rope to walk down with nets on either side, or a board walk, similarly netted which I could manage next to it. A large boardwalk climbing area, logs stacked log cabin fashion, and most importantly once we got there, a water fountain area to play in with swim suits.

Jane left us a that point, and after sufficient soaking of children we rounded them up to go and eat lunch and head our separate directions to rest. I took a lot of pictures, which I’ll post some of once I’m home. The statues at the garden were amazing. I have pictures of all of the kids and some of the kids in groups, but they are tiny on my camera at the moment, so I’m just believing that they are good.

Yesterday Logan and I spent the day with Erin and family, visiting Jean and David and then going in to the city in the afternoon, but that will have to wait for later to write about.

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Logan and I are on Vacation! I’m not sure I’ve ever been on a trip that wasn’t to visit family in ill health (Alfred) or since Logan’s been born one that involved doing things she and I wanted to on our own time frame. But this year it occurred to me that if I wanted her to grow up knowing her cousins and nearly-cousins out here in the mid west, where they’ve conveniently congregated, I needed to do something about it.

So here we are. I don’t have the pictures to put up yet, but we go Greta, Logan, Ryan (one every six months) then a break, then Wolf and my house fire the same night, then a shorter break, then Devlin. Dev is now two and a bit, and Greta eight and a bit. They all played at the MO Botanical Garden yesterday and had a great time. I haven’t gotten all the adults I came to see in the same place at once, but they are meeting in bits and pieces, and that works well enough.

Aunt Jane and Uncle Cary picked us up at the airport Wednesday, and helped us get through the saga of a lost carry on suitcase and booster seat. They’d turned out to not fit well on the first, very small airplane, and then, even though they were gate checked, we were never permitted to retrieve them. I’ll be checking them for the way home all the way through, or beating people with my cane along the way. Possibly both for good measure. The booster seat has never reappeared, but the suit case surfaced by Friday, after much worrying about the teddy bear in it and rough sleep at night. United sounded very helpful on the phone, but was very slow. I’ll be writing them a letter when I’m home. Logan is happy with her new booster — United didn’t replace it. We did. They told me they’d send $50 travel vouchers, but those haven’t come either. (they said they’d send them by email.)

Jane and Cary facilitated all that at any rate, and got us fed, before taking us to their place to decompress a little, and then out to Alan and Pegs where we’re staying. I slept two or three hours the night before, and a little on the plane, so I was in a daze, and seem to have lost my time sense completely for the trip. It actually makes it a nice trip. Things happen and I go along with them The schedule isn’t too important.

Logan took a day to settle in, and we were both tired Thursday, so we stayed closer to home for that day. Friday we met Erin and went to a Children’s Museum in St Louis called the Magic House. Greta had school that day, but the other four kids ran wild and had a ball. The museum has three floors with different activities and things aimed at different interest and abilitiy levels at each. We probably spent the longest on the first floor, where there was an interactive play area. Logan spent a while checking out purchases in a grocery store. Everyone dropped fish in the water and followed them along a stream covered by a glass sidewalk, in order to fish them out at the other end. There was a mail box, constantly being filled with plastic ice cream cones — I didn’t figure that one out. I sat on a bench and called United about the suitcase in that area. There were also big climb in, up, and around areas. Some were aimed at smaller children, but signs said siblings were permitted, so with Dev and Wolf, Ryan and Logan passed. Three mom’s and four kids worked fairly well, and we just kept counting heads.

It’s time for me to wake Logan up, so I’ll have to write more about other things in another post. Vacations should be longer than this. I’m coasting along doing nothing but fun stuff, and not driving! And seeing all the folks I haven’t seen in five or ten years to boot. Having visited out her in 1990, give or take, it’s like being back home again, except this time there are even more familiar faces. And kids too.

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I’ve been looking to replace my old Electronic Brain for a while now. It’s the second version of a Palm Pilot I’ve owned — a Palm TX this time. It’s done it’s job, but it’s also had a lot of trouble between where it thinks I’ve pushed a button and where I think I have. This may be nature of primitive touch screens, or just of some of them. Sometimes, typing with the stylus on the tiny keypad a name like “John” would end up as “Kajj” because both the up and down and the left and right orientation kept getting skew. The closer one got to the bottom of the screen, the worse it was. And unfortunately the bottom of the screen was the place where on changed from capitals to lower case, or to number pad. It was also where the space bar was, so sometimes in place of a space there would be a letter. My appointments have looked a little interesting as I’ve entered them for the last few months. Some that are on a list that I can scroll down also turn in to other listed items like “take out trash”. Always handy to have that as a reminder, but not so handy when I’m wondering where I was supposed to be at 10:00 on Tuesday and the alarm says “Take out Trash!”

I’ve spent a lot of time grumbling and waiting for Palm to come out with an upgrade or even a price reduction if I have to buy the same thing over. I finally asked a few months ago — evidently they aren’t really changing them any more. EVeryone’s switching to things like the iphone. Not me, then. But the palm continued to get worse.

This month Donald the Computer Guy got an iphone. (Donald Barrows Computer Solutions www.computersolutionsmc.com ) Donald is who keeps our computer nudged along happy enough to not crash despite the fact that we run it overloaded and in way too hot and dusty a room most of the time. While John was there working out what has to be done to our computer this time around (we gave up it’s being rebuilt and replaced — but it will be cool and fast again, for a month at least!), he got to see Donald’s iphone and even tried it out.

Keep in mind that while John is completely immersed in computers and electronics in more than one of his jobs, he’d really prefer to have nothing to do with these gadgets. He doesn’t want or like cell phones. He came to the email age very reluctantly, he’d rather take the stuff apart than use it most days. But he was impressed. It was something that looked like it did what my current Electronic Brain is supposed to, only perhaps without the constant snags. So he came home and told me not only that, but that, also via Donald, there was a deal going on. Our cell phone company had been bought out by ATT (they did send us a letter, but being without TV and newspaper, we miss the ad campaigns) - and if I wanted to switch now before all deals were final I could get the iphone for less than the cost of a new Palm, with no charges for a cell phone (because it is one) or charges for changing my cell contract. So after my eyes stopped bugging out that John was endorsing a new electronic toy for me, I went on line and started checking to see if my data would convert.

The next day I tried driving again for the first time and took all four of us in to the wireless store to see if I could get an iphone. Jazzmin and I dropped John and Logan at While Away and went on our own, and it actually wasn’t busy. It still took two hours. Changing everything went fairly quickly, there were just a lot of details to do. The cheapest and most efficient way to do it was to change my entire contract, which covers phones for the family — although Jazzmin and I are the primary users-of-cellphones. Andrea who we rarely see is also on our contract, and before I did anything to hers I had to track her down, because I didn’t want to leave her with no service while I was holding an integral piece of a new phone for her. With me buying an iphone they said we qualified for four free phones (fortunately Logan wasn’t with us to try to claim one, so we just didn’t take four free phones!) We ordered the iphone for me (Tuesday I hope it will be in!), changed out Jazzmin’s to one thats ATT compatible and a better quality than what she had before. In addition due to the way ATT is structured she was able to get internet access and more text messaging because I was getting it and it worked in to a family plan. Nearly heaven for a teenager on the go. Phones have changed a lot in the year or so since I got my razor phone, and it’s been decent and acceptable but nothing exciting. Jazzmin’s looks like a lot of fun. Andrea got the same one a couple days later. I am left with my same old phone with an ATT sim card in it until the iphone arrives, then everything changes.

The everything changes is why I started writing today. In order to get the palm date to the iphone, the easiest method appears to convert it to MS Outlook. But there’s no direct conduit. Same as there’s no palm to iphone conduit. So after finding many pay-to-convert options I found a reference on line to using Yahoo Calendar to convert a Palm calendar over. My calendar minds all my appointments through things like the six month tooth cleaning. I’d rather not have to copy those over by hand if I can avoid it. So I tried their instructions, and it worked. Mostly. There was my first notice for today “Pay the Damn Bills” at 4pm. It should show at 9am. I checked settings — the my time zone for yahoo was set to 0, GMT I think. So erased that calendar against all warnings, and uploaded my exported file again. Wa La. Pay Bills at 9. Call Mom at 10. Tomorrow there are two doctors, a play group and Logan’s swimming lessons. It’s all there.

I can look it up on line, without the notes that tell me who each apointment is for (I might be able to put htem in, but I’ll do that later on the iphone, so I think I’ll skp it here) if I want to. I don’t know that I want to, but it’s something new. Now I’ve put the file from Yahoo back on to my computer in a format that MS Outlook can handle.  And there it sits, because Outlook says it’s missing a file to install it, and the Outlook disks are already with Donald ready to go on the new computer.

My iphone shipping information says that it will be at the wireless store Tuesday.  My hope is to go sit on their doorstep and pick it up before Logan and I go to Medford on our way to the airport and St Louis.  Then I’ll stop in Myrtle Creek, where, with luck, Donald will already be changing out our old computer for new, and beg him to make the palm data go to the iphone.  And I’ll continue on toward St Louis with a brand new shiny electronic brain that plays music and lets me talk on the phone too.  And I’ll spend all my time on the airplane that I’m not reading to Logan trying to figure out how to use it, when it’s allowed to be turned on.

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