The Cerebral Mum

That’s right. I am out of the netherworld and the monitor is on!

After my old one blew a gasket, I spent days in purgatory. The official definition of purgatory is no access to your hard drive and the punishments are thus…

• No music - My CDs are packed but I have them all on iTunes
• No feedreader - I don’t like the online ones and use the Brief extension for Firefox.
• No email - Not entirely true, but I hate reading web-based email.
• No address book - A fairly heinous punishment when you only have a couple of weeks to organise a 1st Birthday Party
• No passwords - Not even for my blog and blog stats. I had to reset them all.
• No bookmarks - Again, I hate online services. Are you noticing a theme?
• No photos - Printing a years worth of baby photos will happen when I sell the house.
• Limited computer time - Big Sis doesn’t like me using her computer until 3am. It’s in her bedroom.
• No personal space - It’s my desk and my desktop. My room of my own. I like it there.

This is not an exhaustive list, but thanks to the kindness of strangers… Okay, not strangers. Big Sis’ BF, B, collected a monitor for me today from a friend who never uses it. There was some worry, given the great age of my computer, that it would not be compatible with my video card but it was needless worry. Like I said… Plug ‘n’ play mama! Oh, the sheer joy of seeing that screen which said Windows Loading. Who would have thought that Microsoft could ever give me joy?

It was my intention to do some major work, catching up and backing up but I was invaded this morning by other people’s children. They happily sat on stools in the kitchen while I scrubbed the oven and the cupboard doors and mopped the floor.

Yes, I am totally THAT cool.

They even stayed despite my refusal to let them watch the Grand Final on television. Australian Rules football, like Microsoft, is the spawn of Satan. Instead, I taught them how to knit and bankrupted them both playing Monopoly.

One would imagine that when I sent them home for dinner and put Cas to bed, I would be free to indulge my internet addiction. But no.

Their dinnertime marked the return of Big Sis and B from the pub. B is one of the most wonderful men on the planet. He works hard and he is a phenomenal father. He is completely down to earth, completely an Aussie bloke, yet he is as sappy as a school boy when it comes to Big Sis. He works in construction and his favourite book is the dictionary.

He loves words and when he’s had a few beers, he likes to use them. All of them. Especially the big ones. He mashes up the English language in a phenomenal way, but with such enthusiasm, you can’t help but listen to him. Listening to him is like reading Jabberwocky.

So my night up until 11:30 was not the night I’d planned. While Big Sis watched TV, B wanted to read my poetry, then he wanted me to show him a million other things on the world wide web, like his father’s artwork, which as you can see is beautiful. He also wanted me to introduce him to the wild and wonderful world of YouTube.

This particular video caught both our attention. Watch it. It’s a cack.

So this is all you guys will get tonight. I’ll be catching up tomorrow. Unless I am inundated by children again.

The Pied Piper can’t compete with my cool factor.