Last night J set up the iCal application on my laptop so that when I opened it up this morning my week was laid before me in startling clarity. This development is a far cry from the pen-and-paper date-keeping method I’ve been utilizing for many years with a decorative datebook, which, by the way, I lose every other day. Sometimes every day. And then I have to email J and ask him, “Have you seen my datebook? I could have sworn it was on the computer desk upstairs.” I find it three days later and realize I’ve forgotten to take the dog to the vet. So I make another appointment, write it down in my datebook, lose my datebook, and forget to take her a second time. No, that really happened.

J, who tends to be a little more organized than me, even entered in A.M. runs three times a week so that he and I would both know they were coming up, and he’d be prepared to watch Nora that morning and I’d lay my exercise clothes out in advance (anticipating the fact that, while I love a long morning run, the thought of it is, at first, daunting, and having the proper attire there staring me in the face is a helpful incentive). This is exactly the level of organization I tend to avoid vehemently, saying things like, “You don’t put ‘running’ down in your datebook, you just do it.” But I’m looking forward to checking out the results of such insanity (common sense). Another plus, I’m far less likely to lose my laptop. Ok, slightly less likely.

Please excuse the changes to the site while I try and get a new header up.

The problem with this task is that I am very excited about it, but I don’t have the talent necessary to actually make it happen. So I have to rely on J, who is great at this sort of thing. See. I even have to call it “this sort of thing,” that’s how ignorant I am. What is it, anyway, this skill set? Graphics? Adobe Illustrator? Drawing? Computer drawing? Is that what it’s called? “Computer drawing?”

It’s kind of like when you decide you want a haircut, and you decide it must happen this very instant. Except that in that case I’d go to someone and pay them to do the job, and they really couldn’t say no. Also, if I didn’t like the finished product, I’d probably slink off and complain about it to somebody else. Whereas with my husband, if he designs something for me and I don’t find it perfect, I say something like, “No. No no no no no. Not that. Let’s do something else. No.”

Also, there’s the fact that doing computer drawing for me is not all J does with his life. So, like, I’m not sure how pumped he is when he gets home from work, and I’m all, “How was your day?” and he goes, “Well, my cells in the petri dish overgrew on the phosphase C model, and the Western blot I did to ascertain infection levels in the lipid wall SYSE-G looked good, but I need to check out possible contamination in my cox-A gene pool, so what I’m thinking is -” and I’m like, “Right, totally, but how about that blog header?”

I read in “Us Weekly” the other day that Jon Gosselin was at some after party for the Emmys. What? What’s he doing at any after party, Emmys-related or otherwise? Jon Gosselin! I thought you said you hated the press. Don’t you remember? Why are you suddenly big news in the gossip mags? And why do I read it so fervently?

BrickBreaker is awesome. IT IS AWESOME.

I give up. I read mysteries. I love them and I don’t want to read anything else. And you want to know why that’s ok? Because I did my time with the great works of literature. When I was a teenager I stayed up all night reading Thomas Wolfe and John Steinbeck novels like they were crack cocaine for the soul. And when I read “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” I underlined pretty much the whole book, thinking, every five seconds, “That is exactly how I feel, that’s just how I feel!!!”

I also want to read the new Dan Brown novel like you wouldn’t believe. I heard you can buy it in the grocery store.

Speaking of BrickBreaker, Nora practically had a nervous breakdown when I wouldn’t give her my BlackBerry today. It was one of those parenting situations where I tried to do the right thing in not giving it to her, thinking, “This kid has to learn that she can’t have whatever she wants whenever she wants it.” Then her little face crumpled and she let loose one of those cries that consists of a huge sucking in of breath and then “WawawawaWAAAAAAAAAAAH.” But don’t feel sorry for the little one just yet because guess what. She’s a faker. And it worked. I gave her my BlackBerry and the “crying” immediately ceased, replaced by the smug, ultra-serious look she adopts when she is emailing all her business associates or whatever she does with that thing.

Last week, after forcing this poor Verizon salesperson to go through every single possible scenario on every single phone, including the very highest bill I could expect to pay depending on this particular payment plan, and that particular added feature, I bought a BlackBerry. My rationale went something like “I have to get a new phone and I might as well get one with Internet capabilities, because the future is coming.”

I didn’t want an iPhone because I don’t know what in the world I would do with all those apps. I mean, what in the name of God do you do with all those apps?!

I like my BlackBerry a lot. One of the reasons I was so hard on email-enabled phones for so long - I mean, besides the total insanity I would receive from my father - is that I didn’t see the need to be constantly connected. But having a BlackBerry actually makes me feel quite the opposite. Because going online doesn’t now require the business of sitting down at a computer, I’m more casual about it. I’m less obsessive about checking my email because I can do it anytime I want.

J and I are kind of living in a pre-BlackBerry-esque world right now when it comes to movies, if you know what I mean. Like, we never get to go, so when we go, we think whatever we see is pretty much THE BEST MOVIE EVER even if it’s not. Parenthood, what can I say? You have this amazing child, but people are all “Hey, have you seen any good movi–” and you’re like “DON’T EVEN TAUNT ME LIKE THAT.”

The only downside is that I don’t find my BlackBerry’s technology all that intuitive. Well, for me, anyway. For people who have trouble turning their cable box on with the remote on a regular basis, and usually just give up and turn it on manually, the BlackBerry is kind of hard to figure out.

In fact, the first day I had it, it rocked my world so much (particularly when I couldn’t figure out how to manipulate the ringer volume) that I ended up turning it off and stashing it deep in a pocket of my bag. I got so flustered that I somehow buttoned my cardigan so that I attached it to my bag, and when I went to take my bag off my shoulder, I couldn’t. You know, because I’d buttoned my bag to my sweater. Smooth. But at least I have a BlackBerry now. Take that, modernity.