Singing With Spaghetti in the Pot

My mother used to sing while she cooked. Sometimes she'd dance, too, keeping rhythm with the spatula in her hand.

Yes, every afternoon at five o'clock, she'd go to the pantry and pull out one of her homemade cooking aprons with the little kitchen towel attached at the waist. Do you remember those? Every self-respecting homemaker before 1971 had at least an apron hook on the pantry door, with several well worn every day aprons, and a couple of fancy organdy ones for serving dinner on special occasions.

Well, once the apron was securely tied in a bow at the back, Mama would pour a glass of wine into a jelly jar, and get busy cooking dinner. As she chopped the onions, she'd start to hum her favorite lullaby, Birmingham Jail. (I don't know why but she claimed that was her favorite lullabye.) Before you know it, the smell of dinner had wafted into every room of our little house. By then, Mama would be singing the words of Birmingham Jail, slightly off key, just for effect. It was very entertaining.

Those were different times, that's for sure. Moms usually stayed home doing domestic things and caring for the kids. They did wear aprons and bake cookies and bread. I always wanted to be a housewife and a mom. Not that I loved house cleaning, because I don't. (However, being home is convenient for a woman who loves to paint and write.)

I couldn't understand why any woman would ever want to leave such an idealistic lifestyle and go to work in a man's world. The Women's Liberation movement of the 1960's left me completely bewildered. It seemed more like bondage than liberation, and I had no qualms about telling people how I felt about it.

Though my mother was an RN who "had" to stay home because of us, she never managed to convey the loss of her career to a kid like me. Maybe it was because of her beautiful vegetable garden outside. Maybe it was because she was there when I was sick or to bake cookies for PTA, or to teach me to sew my own Easter dresses. I was just glad to have her home.

My cooking habits have always been a lot like Mama's. Of course, I only sing Birmingham Jail if I'm showing the kids how Mama did it. And I don't wear aprons as often as I should. But I do enjoy a jelly glass of wine while singing old songs and dancing in the kitchen. Yes, I dance in the kitchen once in a while. Of course, I like it best if Bill is dancing with me, but I'll dance alone if I have to.

So whether you are a homemaker or a career woman, a house daddy or the guy who is the family chef, I hope you are making your own music while dinner's cooking on the stove. It's a good thing to do. It's very entertaining...even when you're all alone.

What Skills?

My husband is a brilliant man. When we were first married 31 years ago, he was not afraid of anything. He was my hero in pretty much every way, and especially when it came to technology.

But during the era when the push of a little tiny ol' button could wipe out a computer's entire hard drive (or whatever...), Bill turned from being Mighty Techno Man into Don't Touch That Button Guy. It has not been easy for me, an anti-tech rebel turned computer geek-in-training, to accept this change in my hero.

Why, just morning, I was telling Bill that the problem isn't that he doesn't understand computers, because I think he does. The problem he has with computers is his fear of them. I said that the difference between him and me is that he approaches the computer with fear and trepidation while I blaze ahead knowing that nothing I do on my computer cannot be undone.Do you know how stupid it is to say something like that aloud?

Oh. My. Gosh...Yes. That stupid.
All I wanted to do was make a link from this blog to my deberklein.com website. Simple, right? I figured out how to do it a while back, and already had two links on my site. I displayed them proudly on my opening page, where you could push the "Links" button. Voila! You'd come up with my Etsy shop and my brushspace page. I could do it again. Easy stuff.But, when I went to add the link to this blog, I wanted to change the name of this blog from the name I first chose randomly, to this more humorous name which I liked better, though it was also chosen somewhat randomly.

(Big sigh...)

I give up. I failed miserably after almost three hours of working on this problem. I can't talk about it, it was so horrible. Suffice it to say that no longer do I proudly display the "Links" button on the opening page of my web site.

I know what you are saying. "Deber, just call Tech Support. They'll walk you through it!" I hate it when you people say things like that to me. If I call tech support after working on this all morning and now being completely befuddled and frustrated, I won't understand a word they say. There is no doubt in my mind that they will be talking about me in Computer Geek Seminars across the nation for years to come, saying things like, "Once I had this lady call in...she was dumber than a wiped out hard drive, I tell ya'!" Then they'll laugh and laugh and laugh.

There are several lessons to be learned from this experience.
The first is this: Never say things aloud like "I just blaze ahead knowing that nothing I do on my computer can't be undone." The undoing of your fragile computer tech confidence is surely at hand.
The next thing is: Don't just plow into things unless you want to screw them up to the point where you can't fix them without the aid of someone smarter than yourself...a very humbling experience, I assure you.
And third: Wait until the headache subsides before you call the geeks. You won't want to be known among the computer geek community as "that lady."

That's it for now, my friend. I'm done for the day! Hope tomorrow is better.