3 posts tagged “family”
My mom has been trying to learn to internet for a while now. She is improving... she can load her own ipod now and use google, sure. She figured out Skype while I was in Spain last time and called me rather regularly with it.
Anyway, I am glad she is improving but she still makes me crazy. Today, we were talking about browsers and she kept saying Godzilla instead of Firefox, which was hilarious. She also finally called to cancel the dial-up (FINALLY because I installed DSL at her house months ago) and they managed to convince her to pay $20 a year to keep her MSN email address. I pointed out that most sites have free email and she goes, "but theirs has spam-blocker stuff."
This was followed by her showing me some website that is basically a pyramind scheme to get your friends to sign up for accounts, for which you receive a micropayment for referring them. I again pointed out that this does NOT qualify as 'working online' as they claim and steered her towards zooomr or flickr instead. "But these guys say they have backups stored in granite vaults in the rocky mountains and also they have a digital developer that you can get if you work hard enough." Digital developer, for the record, is a $20 card reader from best buy.
Oi. It's no WONDER our parents can't trust the internet. Everyone out there sees them as a target. It will be like our grandmothers with telephone solicitation scams.
Bitches.
That's dad on the left, me on the right. The photos could be better, but there is no denying I'm his daughter. I have his face on my mom's body. Seriously. When I find one to illustrate how much I look like my mom, you will see. I have dad's cheeks, though, and his round head and blonde hair.
Even more scary than that is how much we THINK alike. We are both so freaking stubborn! It's the Danish in us, I think. They always say, "You can tell a Dane, but you can't tell him much." We're both so logical in our thinking, and we're both big subscribers to "it's not form, it's function." Dad is a mechanical engineer. He spent decades working on airplanes and doing cool things like fixing radar and installing data centers for major airlines. He can also fix ANYTHING. I mean ANYTHING: cuckoo clocks, engines, laptops... He even re-wired the yamaha keyboard pedal I had to work on a Casio keyboard.
I spent hours holding the flashlight for him in his garage. When I got my first car, he made me change the tire in the driveway several times before letting me drive it. And he has always been there when I needed him - anytime something broke, or I needed somewhere to stay, or I just wanted lunch. We're not so good at telling each other, but I really love my dad.
Dad and I have had some problems in the past, but I think he's getting soft in his old age (ha ha). He called me last week to tell me that he found an old album of us kids at his mom's house, and he had spent the last five hours looking through them and, "just wanted to call and say hello." My baby sister got married recently and he was crying more than she was. It was so cute, from this tough guy like him who NEVER does things like that. And then he kissed me on the lips and said, "You know I just love you so much, right?"
I know, Dad. I love you, too. Thanks for everything.
Happy Father's Day.
Amiee: You should have people from work over more often.
Mom: Why?
Amiee: Well, maybe one of them knows how to hang drywall and will finish your bathroom for you.
Mom: They are all twenty!
Amiee: So?
Mom: Amiee, twenty year old boys only know how to drink and screw.
Amiee: good point.
