I Choo-Choo-Choose You!

I find myself in a quiet house with everyone sleeping but me so I am using my time, perhaps unwisely, to write this. As opposed to doing something actually useful, for instance, like housework.

At least twice recently, I have had the same conversation, which I open up with some version of this: “You choose your spouse, you do not choose your kids.”

Think about this. You pick the person you marry, Lord help you because you will need it, so when they start bothering you, you have no one to blame but yourself. You got yourself into this mess and now only you, God, and your spouse can deal with it. Your kids choose you, in a way, but you still have to live with them. God gives you those little bundles of joy. Eventually, those bundles become annoying 3 year olds.

Now, you all know I adore my sons, but Gideon is at times a loud, demanding, bossy, argumentative boy who Never. Shuts. Up. In a word, annoying. What is worse is that he is my personality trapped in a little three-year-old-boy body so I am really just getting irritated with a tiny version of ME.

Fortunately, I know how to deal with me, trapped in a little body, and I handle it well about 70%of the time. About 30% of the time, I am crazy mom lady, but he has to have something to tell his future psychologist.

The thing I like and hate most about this age is that he is so rational and has this huge imagination at the same time. He is amazing, like a sponge. Sometimes, he just stops what he is doing and says, “I love you, Mom.” After that I am a puddle on the floor and I know without qualification that I have the best life filled with three boys, one big and two small, that I adore.

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Comcast – Doing something for me?

If you follow this blog (and I am not sure why you would, must be following my wife or kid) then you probably know that I, like most of you out there, have a hate-hate relationship with Comcast.  Really, it is cable companies and not specifically Comcast.  I generally don’t trust anything they do, because their only motivation is to put money in their pockets right now with no concern over the consumers desires or the direction that technology is pulling the world.  I will stop my rant now, before I gain steam.

So, on Friday, I got a call from Comcast telling me that my 6 Mb/s (download) internet service that I pay ~$60 for could be upgraded to a new plan that they were rolling out that would give me 16 Mb/s for $64.  For $4 more to get more than twice the bandwidth, how could I resist?  So I agreed to upgrade my service.  Especially since, Michelle has been complaining about the internet acting funny recently.  After agreeing to this, the customer service rep also notified me that basic cable also comes free with the service.  Great, now the cable I was getting in my study because they removed the filter would now be completely guilt free.

This has to be too good to be true, right?  Like I said, I don’t trust Comcast.  I went to their website.  They make it hard to find the details on their website.  They don’t want to make it easy for you to determine where they are holding the knife to you.  But from what I can tell, it seems that they are upgrading all their internet services.  The plan I was on, will now go to 12 Mb/s and be a little cheaper.  It looks like they didn’t want me to get something for nothing so they convinced me to go up to the higher tier service, which was also getting upgraded, to the now 16 Mb/s speeds.  To top it off, since Tuesday, when the new speeds were activated, I have not been able to achieve download speeds faster than 9 Mb/s.  Better than before but not what the service claims.  Nor is it even as much as the lower tier plan claims.

I also have an old modem, which my lease fee has easily paid for twice over.  I asked if I needed to turn it in for a new one, but they claim it handles the speeds of all their services.  I suppose so, if none of their services provide what they claim.  I am pretty sure I am going to exchange it anyways.  If I am leasing, I at least want the best one that they will provide.

Believe it or not, I’m not actually mad about this.  I still may do something about it but I am surprisingly calm about.  I guess the lowered expectations created by years of dissappointing service and customer relations has created this type of attitude.  Good job Comcast!

-Ries, turning into a cynic.

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Monkey See, Monkey Boss Me Around When I Deviate From the System

Gideon thinks he is the boss of everyone.

In the morning, I usually do my Bible study while Gideon and I eat breakfast. I have experimented with different times for my quiet time, but there is not another consistent time that I can spend studying. Getting up before Gideon is not an option because he already gets up at 5:15 or 5:30 and that is early enough for me.

Sometimes, Gideon finishes his breakfast before I finish my study. When this happens, he gets to watch Animal Atlas. That gives me time to finish up.

This evening, I told Gideon that he could watch Animal Atlas if he wanted. I turned on the TV and sat down beside him on the couch. He pointed to the table and said “Bible.” I was not sure I heard right. “Bible?” I said. He shook his head yes. Then it dawned on me.

“You want me to do my Bible study?”

Yes, Gideon answered.

I guess he really is watching everything I do. He is too smart for his own good. I explained to him that I already did my study today. He obviously did not want my company for Animal Atlas, so I got out my laptop instead.

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They Do Not Appear In Nature

Every day, I think Gideon learns 5 new words. He is constantly saying things I did not know he knew. This morning he busted out with the word “eggs.” As I was scooping dog food, he counted the scoops before I did, “One. Two. Three. Fhdjsfh.” He just makes this noise for four and if we count above three or four, he just starts over at two or three.

I was going to let him watch Sesame Street this morning, instead of more Animal Atlas, and all went well for a couple minutes… Until Cookie Monster showed up to eat all the oatmeal cookies. Gideon did not like him! Then Elmo and some other puppet thing showed up. Gideon kept shaking his head saying, “No. No.” with a worried look on his face. Even after the “monsters” were gone, he did not want to watch Sesame Street anymore.

It was funny. Ries said it was because he knows those things do not appear in nature and are thus not natural.

We went back to Animal Atlas.

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