Unplugged

See that...?
<----- Yeah, that... my computer... It stopped working night before last. Oh it worked, in the non-internet related capacity for sure - but otherwise it was a paperweight! Ya'll - we lost our internet in the storms!!! It was horrible! I woke up yesterday morning to find our cable line dangling from a tree precariously close to our car - and yes I was too danged upset to take pictures - also my batteries were dead because I took about 150 million pictures of flowers on the batteries on Saturday - so there was no juice left, and when you're busy trying to keep from being killed while fixing your internet, you just don't have the 15 minutes to spare to charge batteries... so there is no photo of our problem.
But to me it was a HUGE problem... I have two teenagers - who were totally disconnected for two days! Now, don't get me wrong, I feel real bad for all those folks in Mississippi and Alabama, I really do! I mean, I totally do not know what I'd do if I was faced witht he total devastation they have been dealt... it would be mind-blowing for sure.
For me, the storms took on a whole different meaning... they forced me to spend time with my kids... seriously! Since we're a very connected family - three laptops, two desktops, two wireless routers, cable interent, internet telephone, three Xbox game systems and the list goes on - we're techno-advanced around here... unfortunately that makes us totally incapable of interacting without our computers!
We spend hours with our kids playing games on the internet or across the xbox. We have role-play games we play with them via e-mail... and we spend countless amounts of time watching videos, movies or television via the computer and an HDMI cable. We are totally and completely integrated with our computers.
So Sunday was an interesting day around our house... After putting in a call to the cable company about our downed line, we had no clue what else to do.
We played poker, we had a live version of our role-play game, we cooked together, baked a cake, and discussed a lot of stuff. We spent the day listening to "Mom, Dad, What if?" Instead of Mom, Dad "I'm Bored". Not once did we hear the word "bored" and we were even told that they needed a break at one point - too much human interaction!
I love it - we spent the weekend reconnecting with our family and it was nice for a change... I'm thinking of "unplugging" more often!