I have mentioned other members of my family in past postings - and will continue to do so in the future. Rather than always saying my wife, my daughter, my son; I feel like I should give them a persona that my readers can begin to identify with while preserving the anonymity of the real people. So here's the cast of characters:
Motivated Mom - My fantastic wife of 24 (nearly 25) years. Motivated Mom is the driving force behind our entire family. Her approach isn't always pretty - but it is generally effective.
I had a hard time deciding if it would be more appropriate for her cast member name to include Mom or Wife. Since I'll probably talk about interaction between my wife and children as much as between my wife and myself, I went with Motivated Mom. I reserve the right to deviate from this on occassion.
Determined Dad - Yours truly. When it works best to talk about myself in third person I'll use this character name. I'm a head down, determined to get through it, kind of guy - when I'm not being brilliantly creative.
College Dude - Our son who is attending the University of Pittsburgh. College Dude is majoring in electrical engineering with a minor in nuclear something or other. I have no idea why someone would willingly subject themselves to that.
Media Girl - Our daughter who is a junior in high school. Media Girl would be absolutely lost if she did not have constant access to multiple forms of communication media - cell phone, e-mail, instant messenger, land line.
Which brings me to today's observation. Media Girl has had a bad run with cell phones recently. Three weeks ago her cell phone died. I was prepared to call in the life support team, but Media Girl handled it better than I expected. She survived being phone free for a day and a half.
Wednesday morning the replacement phone went kaput. With her reserves already depleted by the previous battle with withdraw, Media Girl looked like she might go down for the count. Motivated Mom saved the day by promising the loan of her own phone during the evening hours.
As I type this, Media Girl is desperately trying to get the deceased phone to take at least enough charge to enable the local phone store to be able to transfer the extensive list of phone numbers to the next replacement phone.
In case that does not work, I have the resuscitation unit standing by.
