The Mom

They say the memory is the first thing to go, but my mom has a plan to combat that.

First, she has a spreadsheet that has all her passwords in it. The spreadsheet itself is not password protected. Before you freak out, I'll let you know that it doesn't have any user names or websites on it. It's just a list. For this reason, this first part of the plan is not working so well because she has no idea which user name or website goes with each password.

Second, she has a print out of security questions and their answers that she carries around in her purse. Now, the list has some pretty obscure questions such as, "What is the birthday of your favorite boss?"

I understand want to keep this information written down. It's probably a date pulled from thin air. Who knows their favorite boss's birthday? I know my boss's birthday because the VP of Finance brings in bagels to commemorate the date. Except for the promise of breakfast, I have no real reason to remember this information.

However, the second part of her plan isn't working either. Once again, she doesn't know what website these obscure security questions belong to. You would think it would stick out in her mind because of the odd questions, but alas, it didn't.

Further proof that her password memory is going to pot is evidenced right here on this blog. You will note, her comments on this post are from Anonymous, but signed "The Mom".

http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2009/04/im-such-dork.html

Then, she gets hip and signs up for a Google account so she can be "The Mom" instead of anonymous. See this post on April 24th:

http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2009/04/kindergarten.html

A mere week later, she has returned to Anonymous on this post:

http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2009/05/oh-irony.html

She couldn't remember the password to her Google account!

It's probably on the non-password-protected list somewhere. Oh well, gotta love her!

Silver Lining:

1. She still remembers where she lives, where I live, and all our names.

2. She also remembers all the words to "The Phantom of the Opera" and belts them out while driving. She just forgets to take her foot off the gas petal when the music builds (she got a ticket for this at least once - that's another funny mom story).

3. It's the little quirks like this that make me love her so much.

You Will Always Be Older Than Me

I’ll admit it. I’m getting older – not old, just older.

Cupie saw a guy with thinning hair and asked what happened to his hair. Good thing he wasn’t in ear shot – I would have been mortified. I first explained that talking about how people look is rude. Then I told her that sometimes when men get older, their hair stops growing on their heads and comes out their ears & nose instead. I told her to ask Uncle Steve (Hubby’s brother) next time we saw him if he had more hair growing out of his ears.

Hubby has nice thick hair with no evidence of thinning, but being three years older, he will always be older than me.

Recently, in an effort to convince my children that their father was old, I’ve told them the following:

You see that port-a-potty out there (we live in a construction zone)? Well, daddy is soooo old, that they had a wooden one of those in their back yard. He had to go potty in it because they didn’t have bathrooms in their house. It was called an outhouse back then and they smelled pretty bad because there wasn’t any water to flush.

You better take care of your toys. Put your toys away so no one steps on them and breaks them. You know, when daddy was little, he didn’t have cool toys like this. They had to hunt for a block of wood, then use a knife to cut a design out of the wood – it’s called whittling.

You can’t play in the kitchen when daddy is cooking dinner. The stove is hot and you could burn your self. You see that fire under the pot? Daddy gets really excited about cooking on the stove because back when he lived in a cave he had to rub two sticks together until they started a fire.

Hubby got me back though. After one of these jibes, he said, “Mommy's not as young as you think. Daddy may have been on the council to name ‘dirt’, but Mommy was in the audience.”

Good one.

Silver lining:
1. He's still older than me.
2. Well, he's still older than me.