Like I Have Time For This?

Last week, RegularDad and I were sitting in the living room, flicking through the channels, when we happened upon the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics. Oooooh, let’s watch, I said. Which is weird, because I never get into the Olympics. Seriously. The last time I remember ever actually watching them is when Mary Lou Retton won all those perfect 10′s, way back when.

But, for some reason, this year, I’m hooked. I can’t stop watching the damned Olympics. And, if I may paraphrase what it says up in the banner up there, I don’t have time for this. The laundry is piling up, I haven’t exercised since the games started, I’m eating way too much junk food way too late at night, I’m missing out on some sorely-needed sleep, and it’s starting to show.

Two weeks ago, I had no idea who Michael Phelps was. Now, I hang on the edge of my sofa for every race. Two nights ago I stayed up past midnight watching the swimming races. I collapsed into bed at 1:00 am, and when RegularDad’s alarm woke me up a few hours later, the first thing I heard was the garbage truck rolling up the street:

“Oh no!” I said to him. “I forgot to put out the trash.”
“It’s okay. That’s not the trash truck,” he said. “That’s the recycling truck.”
“No,” I said. “Recycling only comes on Monday.”
He looked at me funny and said, “It IS Monday…. How late were you up last night?”

The next night, I stayed up until 1:00 in the morning to see the final outcome of men’s gymnastics. I mean, I could not go to bed until I saw if they got the medal. Seriously.

Last night, we tuned in for the women’s gymnastic finals. We ate cheesy puffs and drank grape juice in honor of all the calories they were burning on the screen. We noted the obvious young-ness of the Chinese team a half hour BEFORE the TV announcers made reference to it. I mean, two of them looked to be maybe twelve years old. Thirteen, tops. And we also noticed how the American girls looked so… TOUGH. Like some sort of modern West Side Story gang of girls. And we also noted the overall BLONDE-NESS of the group. Oh sure, they had a token brunette and a token redhead, but other than that, they were WAY BLONDE. I know it must have been the pressure they were under, but they just looked… MEAN. I’m sure in real life, they’re very nice young ladies.

A little after 11:00, RegularDad had to go to bed. He has to get up early in the mornings and go to work. Me, I’ve got to get up early because the kids get up early (My Kingdom For Children Who Sleep Later Than 6:00 AM!!!!!) but it’s not like I’ve got to operate heavy machinery or anything. So, I stayed up to watch the end. The next morning, when RegularDad’s alarm went off, I woke up with a headache that promised to linger all day long.

“So, how’d it end?” RegularDad asked me.
“We got the silver,” I said. “We could have got the gold but one of the girls fell off the balance beam, and it all went down hill from there.”
“Oh. Which one fell?”
“The blonde one.”
“Um, yeah. Which blonde one?”
“You know… that mean-looking one.”

He almost asked “WHICH mean-looking one?” but then must have realized how quickly we were succumbing to a horrible, exhausted, olympic rendition of “Who’s On First?” and he went down to the kitchen to pour some coffee without another word.

He’s a wise man.

I got the kids through their schoolwork and suffered through today’s headache until about an hour ago when I broke down and took two Advil with a cup of caffeinated coffee. I’ll pay for the coffee later on tonight. But at least I’ll be wide awake when Michael Phelps wins another one.

Go team.

YAWN. YAY!

A friend of mine recommended this month’s cover story over at the Atlantic Monthly, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid“, by Nicholas Carr, and now that I’ve read it, I’d like to recommend it to you. It’s a somewhat long article, so if you’re stopping by my blog during a tiny little hiatus in your work day, I’d say wait until lunch or until tonight when you’ve got some time to really sit down and read it.

Because that’s what it’s about really…how we simply can’t sit down and read a long article or book anymore. How the Internet is changing our brain, how constant data streams of smaller bits of information, snatched in brief moments of fleeting free time might actually have a lasting and permanent impact on our brain’s mapping and chemistry and all that shit. How today’s modern reader may no longer be able to sit down and lose themselves in War and Peace.

And you know, I’m not surprised. At all.

I haven’t been online much the past few days. Sunday was RegularNephew’s first birthday, so we drove on up to RegularSis’s house and had ourselves a little party at a nearby Chili’s.

And then yesterday, RegularDad had the day off so we spent the day cleaning out the laundry room and making yet more progress on the giant home project we like to call UNPACKING, which is really just us opening up box after box after box of utter CRAP, looking blankly at the contents, scratching our heads quizzically, and then transferring the contents of the box directly into the trash bin and hiding when the trash truck comes because these guys must think we’re nuts by now, or if not nuts, at least a family of people recovering from that weird pack rat syndrome.

And then today, it was back to a regular schedule, but the truth is, my regular schedule doesn’t exactly allow for a lot of free surfin’ time, especially when my day includes writing time. And days that include writing time are days in which I feel better about my life choices and my parenting skills, and I yell less, so we try to make those days happen a lot.

It wasn’t until almost 9:00 tonight that I was finally able to sit down and open my blog and see what I wanted to say. And the thing is: that’s okay. A few days away from the Internet was downright refreshing.

Because I’m one of those weird people who exists on the outer fringe of all this. Who still likes to read long, complicated books, who still wants to get the paper ON PAPER and flip lazily through the pages while sipping coffee and eating bagels and listening to the kids fight over the comics.

I want to use the Internet for all the good it has to offer, but not be consumed by it. I want to close my browser and go get myself a copy of something by Dickens or Tolstoy and go sit outside with a glass of iced tea with it, and curse when the condensation drips onto the pages and wipe away the water with my finger and just keep reading.

And I’m sitting here wondering if that’s just a naive little pipe dream. 

Here’s a memorable quote from the article:

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us.

Reprogramming. That’s a word to keep you up later than usual tonight. You will be have been assimilated.

And even in spite of my wants and wishes, in spite of my best efforts, I also am changed because of the Internet. I had just settled down to read this long-ish article (off my laptop — no printed copy here) and as I hit paragraph 3 in which Carr addresses how difficult it’s become to immerse oneself in a long article or a book, I found my attention had wandered from the text to things like possible blog titles for the entry I planned to write on this topic, to wondering if anyone else had already blogged on this yet, and then a quick glance at the scroll bar at the right, to check it’s length and position on the screen so as to gauge just how long this article would be and how far I’d come in it, and on and on and on. I kept having to force my brain back to the words in front of me, force myself to concentrate on the meaning behind the words, which was of course, how hard it is to make today’s brains concentrate on anything longer than news blips on Yahoo’s homepage or the latest YouTube video.

And then I think about how schools are using the Internet now, and how computers have become essential tools in the classroom, and how no one is reading books anymore, and I just want to run screaming down the street because there’s just no way to make any of it stop, but instead of doing that, I find myself once again renegotiating my stopping point, and mentally redrawing my line in the sand, lips pressed flat and determind, knowing that pretty soon something else will come up and I’ll be doing this again. And again. And again.

And then, I pick up our copy of Gilgamesh, or perhaps The Iliad, and read it to my children again. I barricade them and myself behind a great wall of printed words, because that’s all I can think of, and when they ask to go online to visit their Webkinz, I smile and say, “Maybe later.”