Saturday, August 15, 2015

Turtle Time

        Netflix has proven to be a sound investment for the Jones household. Between the online stream, and the new movies that come in from our queue there are lots of options for our viewing pleasure. Recently the husband thought it would be a good idea to add animal documentaries to the queue so that our child could be entertained and educated at the same time. My first response to his grand plan was: "You realize they will showcase these animals reproducing, birthing babies, and uh, dying. So have fun explaining all of those things."   -Pretty sure he responded with some version of "Nah, it will be fine."

      The next day rolls around and our first two movies show up. We choose to watch the Loggerhead Turtle movie. I was under the impression that this was a 40 minute movie, which is a perfect amount of time to keep the attention of a 4 year old. This little ditty follows one female turtle from birth to 21ish years (really guys? that can't be the same turtle). Clearly those guys didn't start this project in the late 80's and follow it until 2009. Advancements in filming and filming technology would have made the beginning of this film look like a bad home movie that progressively improves. I am getting off subject...point is, you guys just filmed a bunch of different turtles and then tried to pass it off to us as the same one. These turtles all look the same to me. *that sounded racist, sorry turtles.

      If I hadn't dozed off in the last half of this turtle extravaganza I would have a more accurate count to report, but here is my best estimate of uncomfortable situations:
-Death of turtles: 189 instances
-Death of other sea creatures: 289 instances
-Um, intimate turtle scenes: 5 instances
-Baby turtle eggs emerging from a place I'd rather not mention: 137 instances
I'm pretty sure those are pretty sound figures. 


      Thank god our kid got bored 35 minutes into it, or maybe she psychologically shut down after the 85th creature met it's untimely demise. Major props to my husband for explaining the turtles giving eachother a "piggy back ride". She made up her own fairly accurate description for the birthing scene, the turtle was "shooting marbles out of its butt."   ...Classic

       Us girls got bored and sort of checked out at the midway point, so we made small chit chat which fairly irritated Mr. Jones. He was determined to learn all of the things about the Loggerhead Turtle, and our little bored fest was interfering with that. After whining that it was a 40 minute movie that clearly was wearing out it's welcome he informed me that it was actually 1 hour and 20 minutes long, and that I obviously pulled the 40 minutes from my imagination. After I accepted the fact that I had been hoodwinked I gave watching the movie another shot, which resulted in dozing off rapidly. The kid distracted herself in some form or fashion so she didn't have to witness anymore awkward turtle moments. I did catch the end of the movie, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but, it did involve the star of the show shooting marbles out of... oh nevermind. 

Moral of the story:
 I retained 5% of what I learned about the Loggerhead Turtle, so if you are ever in the market for factoids about turtles that you will never have a practical application for - I'm your girl. I also lost 1 hour and 20 minutes of my life, that I will never get back. So there's that.


Monday, February 9, 2015

Parental Units

Let me preface this with one important tidbit. My parents are my best friends, and that is a delicate balance of awesome and strange. They do so very much for me, and I would do anything for them. And by anything I mean attempting to offer IT help and then blogging about the debacle later. I know, kid of the year right?

While at their house earlier I logged into my facebook account to jot down an email address that had been messaged to me. I got sidetracked and failed to log out of my account before I left and went home.
 Fast forward 3 hours and I get a call from my mom. She wants to surf facebook but is still logged in as me.
I try to walk her through logging out without seeing what she is seeing so that she can sign back in as herself. 99% of my own facebooking is done via my iPhone so I was trying to envision what the screen prompts are. I keep mentioning the top right corner being the area she needs, but she clicks the X which results in exiting the window out several times, but not actually logging out, and gets put right back to my account each time.  She is getting audibly angry.
For a second I think that maybe I should just drive over there and remedy the situation without causing her (or anyone around her) further stress.

I can hear my dad in the background, so I tell her to have him use his cell phone to screen shot what she is looking at so I can tell her what to click on to log out. I hear my dad take the photo, mumble, growl, mumble some more, and say that he doesn't know how to send the newly snapped photo to my cell phone. Something along the lines of "I don't know how to get the damn thing off of here". I can imagine that my mom is then burning a hole through his soul for his lack of fixing her current problem. I get off the phone and immediately FaceTime dad so I can just look at her screen that way. Dad answers it like a regular phone call. So I am fully connected via FaceTime but am looking at this:

That, that is the inside of dad's ear/and his face.  
This is also what my brain looks like when it melts from not knowing how to help them sometimes. 

So, I am looking at ear, and I still need to see the computer screen, and preferably before my mom kills him or reaches through the phone and kills me.

Dad: "hello? helllooo?"
in between Me: "Dad! hold the phone out in front of your face! hold the, just, Dad!"
Dad:   *turns phone from ear and out to his face*    "Oh hey! Look! It's Stefanie!"
Me: "Dad, give the phone to mom so I can see the computer screen"
Dad: "Here mom, Stef called us on Instagram, take the phone"
To which my mom shows me a sideways shot of the wrong part of the computer. I crane my neck 180 degrees so I can talk her through logging out and logging back in. She is successful. I? I feel like I have done something pretty major.

God bless America. And my parents.