The Office.

I’ve often said that my child came out with a briefcase and a Blackberry in her hand.  She has an obsession with laptops, cell phones, pens, paper and basically anything else that can be used to run an office or work in an office.  When we go to Best Buy, she salivates over the Mac computer displays.  Then again, so does my husband.  I guess she gets her “all things techie” obsession from her parents.  Let’s hope she didn’t inherit my inability to do basic third grade math.  I’m already worried about future math homework. 

Anyway, one of the biggest problems I have with my little child is that she likes to climb on my office chair and mess up my laptop settings while I’m doing something in another room.  When I come back in the office, my laptop screen is turned upside down, and my mouse is nowhere to be found.  That’s because she klepto’d it and moved it to an undisclosed location that I eventually locate hours later.  You can imagine my frustration. 

So, to appease Anna’s inner-techie-beast, I finally had a lightbulb moment.  Many years ago when I graduated from college, my dear parents bought me a laptop.  As with any computer, it eventually became obsolete, so I put it in the attic with the rest of the stuff I can’t part with yet.  My bright idea was to get the laptop for Anna – maybe then she would stop trying to destroy mine!  A-HA! 

I plugged it in.  Heck yes, it still works!  Anna’s eyes lit up.  She started clapping.  The old yet familiar start-up music chimed, and my old wallpaper – The Trady Bunch (all of the designers on Trading Spaces arranged like the Brady Bunch grid) – quickly popped up on the screen.  Groovy! 

It all started out great. Anna was happy. I was happy. Life was good. Then, she closed the screen. Hell ensued. This is a photo stream of how it went down.

Yay!  My very own laptop.  I’m a spoiled little girl!

Now I can type like mom!  (Goodness, that child’s hair – well, there are no words.)

Go away, mom, I am busy. 

Hmm, I wonder what will happen if I put this down. 

Um, mom, it’s no longer making noises and showing pretty pictures.  

HELLO!  Can you help me here?!

I’m really about to lose it, mom. 

I warned you!

How cool of a mom am I that I actually let it reach that point?  Pretty pathetic, right?  Oh well, it makes for a good photo.  I’ll have you know that I opened the laptop for her after this picture, and all was well in Anna land.  At least for 1.2 seconds until she closed the laptop again.  Then I got a genius idea on how to keep this from happening again. 

TAPE!  Yes, this is how trashy, poor people like myself fix things – we just tape ‘em. 

So, now Anna and I can spend more quality time together on our laptops.  Ain’t life grand?

Oh, P.S. -
If you happened to notice that my office looks like a tornado hit it, take a look at this photo:
Anna also likes shredders and shredded paper.  She doesn’t like cleaning it up, though – she leaves that task to me.  Joy.