Every so often my phone alerts me I’m out of storage space. I find this rather annoying because I’ve downloaded apps to aid me in these efforts, where I can upload my photos to the cloud (don’t ask me the details on the cloud, it sounds dark) and then delete them off my device.
In theory, this should work. I should have plenty of space. But I also have a six-year-old.
Receiving the alert that I’m out of space triggers to me to check
out my media album to see what kind of gems I may discover:
Exhibit A: Cat breeding video, Total time: 8 min. 12 sec.
At some point, the children got ahold of my phone and
discovered some interesting action out the south windows. The shaky video
camera finally focused long enough to spot two cats in a predicament.
The scene pans around the backyard, stopping sharply out by
the cattle corral system.
“Cyrus! Come look at this!” Caroline yells. You can hear the
patter of his feet come to the window.
“What they doing?” Cyrus asks, perplexed.
“Piggyback rides,” she matter-of-factly explained. “Cats
play too.”
The scene keeps rolling and the cat racket can be heard on
the film. Both kids giggle.
Gasp!
“Gary Gray Tail (probably should have named her Greta) does
not like that!” After a few minutes, the children lost interest and left
my phone on the dining room floor.
Minutes later you can hear me asking where my phone is. Both
children deny knowing. Recorder shuts off.
Exhibit B: Teeth Brushing Tutorial, Total Time: 9 min. 2
sec.
At some point, Caroline got ahold of my phone and decided to
put on a tooth brushing tutorial which included a whole lot of spit. She
covered basic principles such as getting the tops and the bottoms, counting to
one hundred while brushing (she got distracted at 24), and how – if you’ve made
too much of a mess – it’s best to use 400 Kleenexes to clean up the counter
rather than the washcloth mom has provided for such events. That tutorial was followed
by an abbreviated synopsis of her morning routine, which included brief, but
not rare, footage of Cyrus eating breakfast without using any silverware. The
video was only brought to a screeching halt when you hear me yell “KIDS. FOR
THE THIRD TIME. GET YOUR BOOTS ON, NOW!”
Not my finest work.
Exhibit C: Walk Through Home Demolition, Total Time: 6 min.
48 sec.
This Academy-worthy piece took place last summer, when we
were in the trenches of the home renovation. I, again, set my phone down
somewhere and tiny hands with the swift ability to get to the video function found
it before I did. Caroline recorded a walk-through of the current progress of
the home. It was a disaster zone, full of insulation, tarps, plastic wraps,
lumber, sawhorses and wiring. Every so often Cyrus would move across the
screen, hauling plaster and lath on a trailer across the wooden floors. He’d
dump it down the in cracks within walls, which had been exposed by the demolition.
Caroline talked of what used to be where.
“So…this is a bedroom. Or, it was. Grampie and Grammie used
to sleep in this room when they come stay. But now it’s just this bad
area….so……...,” she’d find herself questioning just what kind of dusty,
disorderly mess we’d found ourselves in.
Weren’t we all?
Today, I sit on the couch and delete photos and videos off my phone, in awe of how our home turned out, keeping us warm on this February day with a wind advisory. Not too long ago we’d feel a draft move through the living room on days like this!
But now we know the rest of the story.
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