May 21, 2005~~6:35 p.m.
A good day...

Yesterday, essentially on a whim, I bought a laptop. In the previous 24 hours I had both developed and talked myself into believing several very good reasons for needing a laptop of our own. Of course the clincher was the *free money* that the husband discovered sitting in a checking account I opened a few years ago when I thought we were going to keep my school spending seperate from our regular budget. Ha.

They're good reasons, all quite valid actually. First of all, there was the fact that I worked very hard to put together the slideshow for Shoe's graduation ceremony only to discover that my old laptop (which actually belongs to my school district) does not have enough memory/speed to run it properly. So here I have this great show that the teacher is expecting me to arrive and set up to show on the screen with the LCD projector, and nothing functioning to run it on. Then there was the typing Shoe did for school on Wednesday night... the two VERY short paragraphs that took nearly an hour to type. Now, Shoe doesn't accomplish anything without direct supervision and I was starting to panic about all the typing that is necessary in seventh grade. Hours and hours of sitting in the office watching him hunt down each letter. A task that could very well lead me to slip a noose around my neck. Finally, there was the whole issue of the internet. We don't have any computers that are located in places that are easy to supervise and have thus given our kids pretty limited access to the internet. A laptop they can use, in the kitchen/family room where it would be a rare occasion that we would not be present to supervise, makes a lot of sense.

And so I looked online Thursday night, just to see what I could get with the *free money*. I found something I thought would work and was much more affordable than I expected. That lasted for a reletively short time before I found something that was just a bit more expensive and even better.

Of course there wasn't one in stock at the Be$t Buy closest to my house, so I made the 38 mile trek to the location that had one in stock.... and then ended up buying an entirely different machine.

For the record... I love this machine. I mean, my husband is the greatest guy on the planet, but if I had to choose between him and this cute little toy... well, lets just say that I hope it never comes to that.

Since I was passing right by it anyway, I stopped at Old Navy on the way home. Why is it that I never notice when I'm in the dressing room that so much of what I buy is entirely inappropriate to wear to work? Oh well... it's almost summer.

It was nice to have a day that wasn't about ADHD. It felt good to be out shopping and thinking about nothing else other than the excitement of bringing home the new machine and getting it out of the box.

And so I'm posting from my backyard while I watch my husband and his brother barbecue and listen to the kids playing in the pool. Life is good.

~Alice