Author: Sheila Quirke

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Adieu, iPad, It’s Been Real

My iPad is dying a long, slow death.  I call it the iPad no number, as it is first generation.  This is a little painful for me, because the iPad is a thing of beauty.  Cue singing angels here.  Mary Tyler Dad gifted it to me for Mother’s Day, 2010 — my first Mother’s Day without Donna.  Well, you can imagine that was not an easy day for me.  I had spent each Mother’s Day since 2007 worrying what life would be like without Donna, and in 2010 I was finding that out.  Apparently, life without Donna has better tech.  Sigh.

It was wrapped nicely and I opened it up and just kind of stared at it.  I thought it extravagant and intimidating and unnecessary.  Worst.  Wife.  Ever.  I didn’t really touch it for a few weeks and it confused me.  What was the point, I wondered.  I had been one of those to make fun of the name at its release, with the almost too easy reference to sanitary napkins.  Steve Jobs walked straight into that one.

Well, some time passed and I started using it here and there.  Words like “apps” and “cushioned carrying case” entered my vocabulary without irony or sarcasm.  Apps, in fact, morphed over night from something I put in my mouth to something I used to learn more about what I wanted to put in my mouth.

This iPad, I really should have named the sucker given how much quality time I spend with it, has kept me company on many a dark day.  When I discovered streaming, all freaking bets were off.  Mary Tyler Dad became what we fondly refer to as an “iPad widow.”  More than once I have been admonished not to use his back as an iPad stand while I watch the 92nd season of SVU.  Sheesh.  Some husbands are so sensitive.

And I say that I stopped reading as much as I used to when Donna died, but sometimes I wonder.  It’s hard to read when Facebook and links and pin boards are calling my name.  I’ve tried electronic books, but I think I have developed late onset ADHD because of the damn thing.  Seriously.  That should be a thing if it isn’t already.

Problems were first noted months ago.  It would crash suddenly and bring me back to the home screen.  Then that started happening more and more.  At first, it was just on Facebook, and the streaming remained intact.  Sadly, it is now on everything that I use it for.  Facebook won’t even let me click on a link or shift pages without crashing.  What’s the point of the damn thing if it keeps crashing?

I am hoping Santa brings me a new one.  A girl can dream, right?  If so, Mary Tyler Son will be granted full custody, something he has been petitioning for for months.  I joke that he actually has custody and grants me visitation rights.  Pfffft.  Even he gets annoyed with it now, too.

I will miss you, iPad no number.  You have been very, very good to me.  You’ve made me laugh and cry and imagine very real fits of violence, wherein I throw your slim and sexy frame across the bedroom, Frisbee style, with each successive crash.  Yes, I will miss you, despite your betrayals.  I just have one question before we part, “Why you got to do me like that?”

Sick iPad

Is it odd to create a sick bed for your most treasured piece of tech?  You do that in your house, too, right?

If you liked this post, read my ode to Steve Jobs, The Apple of My Eye, written the night of his death.  And as always, hang with me on the Facebook.

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Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth – Embracing My Inner Sloth

Sloth [slawth], noun:  

1.     habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness.

2.     any of several slow moving arboreal tropical American dentates of the family Bradypodidae, having a long, course, grayish-brown coat often of a greenish cast caused by algae, and long, hookline claws used in gripping tree branches while hanging or moving in a down position.

synonyms:  shiftlessness, idleness, slackness.

I am a sloth.  I know this about myself, I embrace it, I accept it.  Most of the time I work my way around it.  Some of the time it just sucks.  Like at Christmas.  It sucks so badly to be a sloth at the holidays.  But I digress.  That is a blog post for another day.

Today is write a blog post about sloth day!  Evidence of me being a sloth is that with my son tucked away for his blessed and no longer can be counted on nap (these minutes are &%$#@! GOLDEN, sayeth our former Illinois Governor), what I really want to be doing is watching the season finale of Boardwalk Empire.  Where I really want to be is tucked under the throw, reclined in my bed, iPad on my lap and soda at my side.  Doesn’t that sound just divine?

Seven Deadly Sins: The Series
Teppi Jacobsen: Gluttony
Jenna Myers Karvunidis: Greed
Lyletta Robinson: Anger
Patrick O’Hara: Envy
Evan Moore: Pride
Sheila Quirke: Sloth
Crystal Alperin: Lust
Andy Frye: The Eighth Sin: Rebellion

But I can’t.  Because I have to write this post.  And another one I promised my editor at the Huffington Post.  Oh, yeah, and there is that other one about inspirational quotes I gotta get to, she typed, slowly,  s   l   o   w   l   y   .

I think people have this very mistaken sense of me being the gal that has it all together.  That Mary Tyler Mom — she’s really got it going on!  She cooks (Have you seen her stuffed peppers on Facebook?), she writes (That gal is on fire, lately!), she advocates on behalf of pediatric cancer (Don’t forget to donate some or all of your 2012 Illinois income tax refund for the new Illinois Childhood Cancer Research Fund!), she keeps a tidy home (Please for the love of all that is sacred, do not open my closets when you come for a visit).

Oy.  I am a sloth, folks, true story.  Ask Mary Tyler Dad and he will tell you.

The other night I promised Mary Tyler Son pudding in a cloud for dessert.  I thought he would love the idea.  Nah.  All he wanted was another piece of Halloween candy.  Later that night tucked under previously mentioned throw with iPad firmly ensconced in my lap, I pined for that pudding in a cloud.  I did.  I could almost taste the rich, creamy spoons of deliciousness on my tongue.  But everything I needed was in the kitchen.  I was in the bedroom.  There’s probably, like, nineteen steps between the refrigerator and my bed.  (I may be a sloth, but I am also obsessive, so I know these things.)  That was nineteen steps too many.  I called it a night and fell asleep.

I don’t want to be a sloth, I don’t.  I wish I were more like my Type A mom friends that somehow seem to manage and organize and shine and produce all the time.  All the damn time.  How do they do it?  Seriously, I want to know, cause that energy mystifies me.

I have one friend I will call the Martha Stewart of Iowa.  She amazes me.  She is a great mom.  She is a gifted artist.  She is a domestic goddess.  She keeps a calendar.  A calendar!

But I fear that I am giving you the wrong impression here.  You know what I hate?  I hate writers that wax poetic about things they don’t have or qualities that they aspire to in a different life.  In my book, you are who you are.  I am a sloth.  It’s just sort of in my DNA.  I’m Irish, nearsighted, and a sloth.  It is what it is.  Be the change you want to be, you know, and all that mumbo jumbo kind of stuff, but don’t whine about it.  If you want to change, change.

If I wanted to be anything other than a sloth, I could be.  I could.  I could work really, really hard at it and I could be more like the moms I admire — the ones that I imagine have it all together.  I could exercise every morning after dropping Mary Tyler Son off at school.  I could have dinner ready *ping* at precisely 6:30 every evening.  I could go to the grocery store once a week, not four times.  I could actually mail the birthday party invites for Mary Tyler Son rather than distribute them over the Christmas dinner table, as I have done the past three years.  I could move that laundry right along, rather than letting it linger a few hours longer than it should, the faintest waft of mildew greeting me as I open the washer door.

I could do all those things and 476 more that I won’t bore you with.  But the truth is, the deadly sin that I embrace as my own is that I am a sloth.  It’s true.  And that is okay with me, as it is a part of me.  I don’t envy the other moms that do it with more efficiency, I marvel at them, I salute them.  There is a difference.

Embrace those things that are you, even if they are flaws.  Know your limitations well enough that they won’t trip you up, but instead, guide your decisions, e.g., I will never be able to volunteer as room parent for my kid as it would be utter disaster.  Papers would get lost and sign-up sheets would go unsigned.  Catastrophe.  Best to know my strengths and stick to them. Yep, I am a sloth.  And look how cute a sloth can be . . .

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‘Parenthood’ and Cancer

I love parenthood.  And I love ‘Parenthood,’ the NBC slice of privileged Northern California life drama.  I never miss an episode.  Really.  And when I see a new episode pop up on Hulu, well, I know just what Imma curl up with as soon as the boy is asleep.  Every episode makes me cry.  Every damn episode.  I love it.  Capital “L” Love it.

I pine for the closeness of the four siblings.  Four kids each crazy different in qualities and temperment attached to four spouses/significant others also equally different in qualities and temperment, but impossibly, making all those relationships work.  And the parents?  Love those two, too.  I can’t quite get a read on the Mom Camille, but the Dad?  Zeek?  Bam.  Great character, great acting.

I have no idea how they make it work without familial bloodshed.  Really.

This season, its fourth, is like crack for me because so many of the story lines mirror my own life:  Adoption?  Check.  Stepping away from employment to focus on family?  Check.  Cancer?  Check and check.  Sadly.

It is commonly understood amongst the cancer circles I find myself in that it is hard to portray cancer and living in Cancerville accurately.  My Sister’s Keeper?  I hated it.  Really, really hated it.  50/50?  Better and so full of potential, but missed so many marks.  I am both hoping and dreading the inevitable sale of the film rights to “The Fault in Our Stars,” a newish and wildly popular YA book that is next on my list of books to read, but is getting tremendous press.

This season, Kristina Braverman (great and intentional surname, no doubt) is diagnosed with breast cancer that has metasticized in her lymph nodes.  Not great.  Especially not great for Kristina, who is a fairly high-strung, though incredibly loving, mom.  Ugh.  I feel for her.  I do.  And, yes, as a sometimes high-strung, though incredibly loving, mom myself, yeah, I relate.

Hats off to the writers, man.  They are nailing it.  Capital “N” Nailing it.  The nuances of Cancerville, though the Braverman family has just moved in, are spot on.  I see the fear in their eyes.  The complete lack of control you have within the medical system, as you become just a cog in the cancer wheel industry.  The almost unbearable beauty of life that you become aware of that at times feels oppressive as you have to recognize and appreciate all of it.

The sacred moment when you watch the poison that you hope/pray will heal you snakes its way through yards of plastic tubing.  The quiet in the room at that moment, despite whatever noise may be present.  The helplessness of the person you love most staring at you, close in inches, but miles apart in so many other ways.  The awkwardness of needing help and feeling immense gratitude when that help presents itself, but it is paired with equally immense annoyance that you can’t find the damn jar of peanut butter.

I watch every week and I am dumbfounded at the writers’ precision, the actors’ gifts in bringing Cancerville to life.  Seeing that reality so deftly portrayed on screen is bringing truth to life.  And there is comfort seeing your truth on a screen, whatever that screen may be.

Parenthood Cast

Cast of NBC drama ‘Parenthood’ — aren’t they all just impossibly beautiful?