It was my new toy for about 20 hours

I have a confession to make: I am typing this entry (on Sunday) from a new laptop computer purchased with a portion of my income tax refund. A small portion, even. And it's a nice laptop, too. It's pretty, and it is fast and powerful enough to play the roleplaying and strategy games that I gave up when I moved out last year, and it even has a webcam and a little microphone built in.

I wasn't sure what use I would get out of the latter, if any, until I mentioned the purchase and the camera/microphone combo to Erik as he was dropping Frances off on Saturday.

"Do you have skype?" he asked. "If you did, Frances and I could talk on the computer sometimes. Would you like that, Frances? You could show me things you were working on at school!"

Frances was very, very, very excited about this idea, and for the next hour asked me when she could talk to her Daddy on the computer, and could she talk to her Daddy on the computer? and she wanted to talk to her Daddy on the computer, please; while I signed up for skype and tried to figure out how the webcam worked. Then couldn't find Erik so sent him a quick email.

Not two seconds later the computer chimed and it was Erik calling to talk to Frances, and it turns out I just have to click a button to make the webcam work when skype is running, so Frances and her Daddy talked on the computer. She giggled and grinned and waved her feet at him and they blew each other kisses and she showed him some of the pictures she was making, and her happiness filled the room.

She can talk on the phone and they do have a scheduled phonecall every day but she doesn't truly get it yet. She doesn't understand that people can't see her when she's on the phone, so she'll hold something up to the receiver and say, "See?" Or point to something and say, "It's over there." She will roll around and wriggle and kick her feet and Erik won't know what's going on except that she's not speaking. I interpret as much as I can but it's not always easy.

But this was different. Right away she got that she had to point things at the monitor for Daddy to see them. And she could smile and wriggle and kick her feet in the air and her Daddy could actually see it and laugh, instead of wondering where his daughter had gone to.

It's funny how I bought this new laptop for me as a completely self-indulgent luxury--to play computer games* meant for teenaged boys, no less**--and yet now it feels actually worth it because of the nuclear smile on my little girl's face. The two least-seeming practical things turned out to be the two with the greatest potential for family quality-of-life.

So now to the insulin pump and the dishwasher add the webcam. Thank god for modern technology.

Do you remember--people actually used to have penpals? Conduct entire romantic relationships by letter post? Doesn't it just seem so unlikely?

~~~~~

* OK, not just to play computer games. First, there is the case of the stolen button on the old laptop--Frances pried off the windows button and it can't be reattached. Second, programs were getting glitchy. Word, for some reason, would get stuck half off the screen and I couldn't reposition it. Files were getting corrupted. And the cd/dvd drive was not working--either it would read backup dvds as system files, or it wouldn't read them at all. In addition to the new laptop I also got a small external hard drive to back everything up on before the whole thing just explodes in my face; and in the meantime, Frances can use it for playing Dora games.

** This was quite an object of interest to the salesfolk, entirely men, who would say things like. "So, who is that game for? Is it for you? Are you really going to play Oblivion? Wow!" I guess I'm not the typical market.

Posted by Andrea at April 21, 2008 8:19 AM under Single Momming

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