screen time

I am stickler about screen time. My kids aren't allowed to watch any T.V. on school nights and computers games (all of which are educationally based) are special treats. They don't have Gameboys, iPods  or any of that nonsense and the time they spend playing on the Xbox is strictly limited to special times with Daddy. See? Grouchy, right? I just have this thing about little kids playing outside and getting dirty and get all curmudgeonly and talk about how we never had any of that growing up and we were the better for it, blah, blah, blah.

Then, last week, my beloved iPhone developed a serious case of stripes. One moment it was sitting on the counter perfectly fine, chirping out the occasional text message from my sister with whom I was having a pithy conversation and the next the screen is all stripey and utterly useless. Oh, the horror! It was 6:30 on a Saturday afternoon. I did what any red-blooded American would do, I hopped on the computer and immediately made an appointment at my nearest Apple store for that very evening. Heaven forbid I have to wait until Monday. I know. I see you rolling your eyes. Even in that moment I realized just how ridiculous I was being. But. My Calendar (that was capitalized on purpose, it's just that important) lives in there, and since I haven't bothered to set up a home phone yet, that's where everyone calls us. I know that Ty has two (count them, two) phones and we could have easily used them for the 24 hours I would have had to wait. But my church stuff is all on there too and all my little conversations with loved ones and my crosswords and scrabble (to prevent Alzheimer's obvs) and the whole thing was terribly upsetting in my ordered and very digital little world. So, I went that evening, and they gave me a new one and everything was alright.

And I remembered, once again, what a hypocrite I am.