I’ve been home for over two months and blogging less than ever, not that there’s nothing to blog about but because blogging was in part stress relief for me, and right now even with all the work-related projects I’m trying to finish over the summer I have little to be stressed about. Plus I’ve been doing a lot of introspection, which by its very nature is more intimate dinner conversation and less “Hello Internet!”

Maybe that’s why I don’t get Twitter right now. On the other hand, I’ve been trying to get Twitter ever since Evan Williams announced his new venture and opened it up to beta testers. I immediately grasped the conversational aspect of the party badge, which displays tweets from you and all your friends - and which I used to document conversations between me and the kids for public amusement - and I loved the update-via-IM feature. But both the party badge and IM updates have been broken for a long time now, and I have no desire to share my cell phone number with Twitter in order to update via SMS. I have updated a couple of times via the Pageflakes Twitter plug-in, but those tweets were never conversational. They were more like mini blog entries in that they linked to whatever I found amusing on the Internet at that moment.

One thing I do know is that the 21st century man of mystery does NOT use Twitter. Imagine James Bond broadcasting his martini preferences to the world… hahaha, so not happening. Even more damning is the fact that everybody I know in real life who uses Twitter has locked up their account. Nobody needs that much transparency.

With all three kids home with me for the summer, simple things like feeding and grooming can easily take up much of the day. I consider myself having gone beyond the call of duty if I manage to get the lunch dishes into the dishwasher before Kevin gets home in the evening. On top of that I’ve been giving Alex and Ana Chinese homework everyday. So far they’ve learned numbers (一, 二, 三 … 十, etc.) and family members (爸爸, 妈妈, 哥哥, 姐姐, etc.) as well as have/don’t have and do you have (有没有弟弟? 没有! 有没有妹妹? 有!).

Kevin has been busy too. When he isn’t at work, he’s going to the store for groceries or doing chores around the house. On weekends he takes Alex to karate and both Alex and Ana to swim at Grandma’s house. He’s also in charge of taking Alex to percussion lessons. It’s just for the summer, a break from piano and possibly early preparation for 4th grade band.

In between all that I’ve found time to make the most of our Netflix subscription:

Tags: busy
Categories: chinese, kids and parenting, memes, movies
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