One computer, four users...

Chaos reigns within/Reflect, repent, reboot/Order shall return. Suzie Wagner.




The girls & I have been telling Dearest for years that computers are the thing; he should get into them. They'd open up the world for him. Manlike he rolled his eyes at us. [Knew Ditz got that from somewhere!] See Dearest is a man's man. He worked with his hands & knows things like how to mix cement, lay a brick, do the math to build a set of stairs, lay down a trail bike & slide under a moving semi~trailer...I didn't say sane & sensible. A bloke's bloke. [Mind you, I met him in a poetry writing class so there is a whole 'nother side to Dearest.] So just for the record he wasn't doing any daft & stupid boy things when he broke his back but break his back he did & life as he knew it changed overnight for Dearest.




I don't think Dearest has ever once said, "Why me?" He counts his blessings. He can walk. He has his stamps.Very occasionally, for something extra special, he travels but travelling is difficult. He made the award ceremonies the year Liddy won the regional player of the year award; he's never seen Ditz perform.




If it had been left up to me we still wouldn't have a computer. I'm a simple old fashioned sort of a girl & a brief dalliance with the primary school computers had convinced me I was only good for blowing them up & crashing them. Dearest however became convinced our homeschooling was second rate because we did not have access to a computer. I wonder if he ever thinks on that observation & rolls his eyes? Whatever. Dearest researched & juggled the finances & eventually procured a computer that could access the internet. For school purposes, of course.




Liddy was delighted. She was the only one computer savvy & promptly acquired a hotmail account & a Facebook page while I quaked every time I had to turn the blasted thing on & all this stuff flashed at me! Yep. Every time I needed to do something I was yelling for Liddy & Liddy, not unnaturally, got rather tired of that rather fast. Liddy being a logical sequential teacher & me being a random visual our learning styles clashed & it took me a long time before I began to feel that, "hey, maybe I can do this". It took a while longer & a NaNoWriMo before I got to the, "hey, this is fun" bit. Meanwhile Ditz took to just clicking on things & progressed much faster than I did. Terror about the unknown dangers my girls might unwittingly fall into spurred me on to keep up but it slowly dawned upon Dearest that though there is always someone invariably using the computer & a lot of time is spent with it very little of that is school related. The virtual fish bemuse him ...but the cats adore them!




Dearest had the computer moved downstairs so we could use it while he had company but he invariable found himself talking to someone who was plugged in & ear~plugged. He's a stubborn man, my Dearest, but we wore him down, three on one & he has succumbed. The only problem is ~ someone has to teach Dearest all the things we now take for granted, unkindly laughing when he worries about all the odd things that pop up on his screen & the peculiar things that happen when the kittens squirm all over the keyboard. Dearest grabs whoever is closest to sort out his problem but I have found myself landed with teaching him to upload his scans.




Dealing with pictures was one of the very first things Liddy taught me & I have used it a lot so I'm pretty comfortable but I am a random visual & Dearest is a hands on sequential. I am going nutty teaching this man the multiple steps needed to get from his scanner into Photobucket & from Photobucket onto the stamp forum. Everything has to be done exactly the sane way each & every time. No deviations allowed. Worse, as I have been doing this for him everything is set up for ease of use by a really random random who tends to have several operations happening at different places at once because this is an incredibly boring process & the faster I can do it the better. I have been reduced to plodding where I am used to running.



I think we are making progress. Dearest has finally cottoned onto the fact that the computer is completely rigid & he is the one who must change his expectations!