What I Do Now:
The Blackberry Diaries: A Review
I was a very late Blackberry bloomer. So late I'm not "telling." But now that I have one, I can recommend a new book, The Blackberry Diaries: Adventures In Modern Motherhood, by Kathy Buckworth for an entertaining and light read.
Kathy Buckworth structures her book like a blog, each chapter headed by a posting date and concluded with "Tags." Often she uses the Blackberry to draw analogies between that particular bit of technology and children. The toddler? "If they're quiet, you're constantly checking them to make sure everything is okay. If they're loud and interrupting, you just want the to shut up and go away." The sleeping toddler? "...like when you and your Blackberry are out of range and you can't do anything but gaze lovingly at it and wonder what terrific experiences it will bring when it jumps back to life."
However, Ms. Buckworth intersperses many of her Blackberry-related chapters with straight up parenting advice. And there are stand-out lines for any mother. My favorite commentary is in her "Method to My Madness" chapter where she points out that often we lose sight within the "Crime and Punishment" cycle of parenting teenagers (she has four children.) For example, "He will only wear one pair of jeans...for three weeks straight. And our issue with this is-what?Less laundry? Lower cleaning bills? Honestly, if they're a little stinky, are you the one one his is hanging out with all day long? ... Score."
It's easy to lose one's sense of humor while finding time for work, time for two children (allergies ... a "third child?") and time for uh, everything else. So it's nice to have authors like Kathy Buckworth (and currently my favorite humorists Catherine Newman, Robert Wilder and Melanie Gideon) to offset my more neurotic, mind racing, Blackberry squinting moments in life.