Wednesday, September 29, 2010

fancy new things

I've been complaining to my husband for weeks, months, possibly even over a year about the condition of my laptop. It's not even that old! I got it in 2006 as a birthday gift from Paul. 4 years is not old. Well, I guess in computer years it kind of is, but anyway. It doesn't stay connected to the internet and the screen is so dim, even plugged in, that I had a hard time reading it. He kept telling me I should just get a new one. Just get a new one, Sam. You need a new one, Sam.

Well, I had a rough day at work one day and came home and bought myself a shiny new laptop with a big screen and lots and lots of memory. Did I mention that my old one couldn't even hold all my itunes stuff? I had to stop adding long ago. Anyway. It arrived today. Shiny, black, slick, beautiful. I quickly added my favorite websites and haven't spent a moment away from it. I have a really hard time parting with money. When I was pregnant, we were diligently saving up for my maternity leave and birthin' costs, so we lived like paupers. I am exaggerating. Not quite like paupers because of course we still had the essentials, you know, cable tv and internet, but we did limit our spending drastically. I have a hard time spending money, even if we have it, on things I don't feel I *need*. Now that I have this laptop, I remember that I do need it. My library of pictures of the last 4 months is staggering and I know it'll only grow. My point is, I needed this, dammit, and I'm so glad I got it. Its soooooo pretty.

In other news...I know I've mentioned my friend Courtney and the recent loss of her son, Noah. Her situation really hit home with me. I decided that I needed another monitor for Ryan. We ordered the Angelcare Monitor from Amazon. It's very popular among moms. Its purpose is to notify you should your baby stop breathing in their sleep. It has censors that go under the crib and those suckers are super sensitive. It detected the air from our fan in Ryan's room. We finally were able to find a setting that worked and were so excited to have it all set up. They recommend putting a piece of plywood under the mattress to prevent false alarms. Who knew a 1/4 inch thick piece of plywood would cause such chaos. Ryan somehow could feel it. He slept horribly. So we tried it without the plywood. Two false alarms at 1:30 AM later, we turned the stupid thing off and decided to get rid of it. It's so hard to wrap your head around SIDS and people will grasp onto anything to give them some peace of mind, hence the popularity of this monitor. But, I think there comes a time when you just have to let go and trust that he (or she) will be okay. So we're back down to just the video monitor and we're all sleeping better because of it. You just have to do the best you can.

Well, as much as I want to sit here glued to this shiny new, fast, amazing laptop, I'm yawning (at 8:20 PM...I'm OLD) and I really want to take my makeup off and get in bed. So away I go.

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