turning grumpy into gladness

Dan got his new laptop on Friday and there has been much upheaval in our computer status quo around here. He likened it to moving into a new house -- there's a lot of packing up and unpacking and rearranging and organizing going on. Then people (Garrison) get to move into the house you vacated (his old computer), so they have to pack up and unpack and rearrange their things, too. There are countless files to be downloaded, files to be copied and saved and stored and shared on the network and things to learn and just all kinds of wonderful computery goings-on.

And somehow MY computer was caught in the cross-fire. Which made it darned near impossible for me to read my e-mails or my required daily allowance of blogness -- let alone to post anything of my own.

I was forced into the living room to work on cross-stitching the baby sampler for James.

The living room was the site of media stress, too, because we are in the middle of getting a DVR. I think we might be the last family in America to get one. That's what my kids said, anyway. But for a couple days there we had no satellite TV, until the new system was up and running. (Now all I need is for a kid to show me how to use it. I wonder if Lily is busy this week.)

I felt like such a Little House on the Prairie woman, though. No computer, no satellite TV! Thank heavens my cell phone was safe and secure.

In other news, I got a crown today. Not the princess kind, unfortunately -- the tooth kind. Uck. Actually it's just a temporary one, and it's not much fun. I took my iPod to the dentist with me (just like Ma would have done) in the hope that I could put on my "mellow" playlist, crank it up, and drift off to my happy place, never even noticing that I had seventeen instruments and four hands in my mouth, drilling and grinding and poking and squeeching and suctioning and gouging and pinching my lip.

It might have worked if the dentist hadn't had to talk to me every 37 seconds, which necessitated me pausing the music so I could hear him.

I hate going to the dentist so much that I usually have to come home and curl up into a ball of self-pity for the rest of the afternoon. But today I had this to lift my spirits:



Prov. 17:6 Children's children are a crown to the aged.....

Now that's a crown that will last.