service

In recent weeks we've had horrid mac problems at home. My laptop keeps crashing, husbands had died, been reborn, died mended, and finally died, deed, capoot. I've spared the gory details of his laptop from this blog - too painful and tedious to relive in word form. But finally, three weeks ago, we gave up on it.

NOW, this means he has to use my laptop. And of course, bleets and whines every time it crashes, a problem excaberated by his constantly downloading crap video clips from his mates, shareware- ing music and storing gazillions of pics of him and his beloved motorcycle - at the side of the road, on a desert road, by a roadsign, on a twisty road, on a tree lined road, etc etc etc. Anyhow, we decide my laptop's problem, unlike his, (which by now has been certified dead and disected accordingly by an overpaid third party), could be fixed by simply replacing the battery. Great. I also have a $100 apple credit burning a hole in my handbag since the iPhone price reduction debacle, so decide this is as good a use as any. We traipse off to the apple store in Palo Alto.

The apple store is usually a family favorite. Kids get to sit and play games. He gets to press buttons and ooh and aah at shiny things, I get to buy some overpriced gadget/accessory/cable under the guise of 'I need it for work'. Not so today. No kids table, loaded with imacs for them to play games on. What? Husband is too depressed to press buttons because he hates apple because his laptop died and it's their fault (according to the 'we hate apple' site). Son then has a meltdown when I tell him he cant have a new $80 game just because he thinks he should. Daughter gets iPod envy because she 'only' has a shuffle and blue isnt her favourite color now anyway so cashes in on her post sleepover grumpiness to the max. Needless to say it gets ugly.

Then, when we do eventually leave we happen to be clutching a gigantic shiny new imac, a battery, an iPhone recharger and some overpriced insurance/extended warranty thing. I can't help but acknowledge its no big surprise my kids are consumer nasty little brats at times, when their parents cant go shopping for a $120 batter without spending 15 times that on a whim.

When we left the UK I was pissed off with the commercialism of everything and how my then 7year-old cared about what label was on her trainers. I knew we were partly to blame, and I did hope we'd change that by coming to Northern California. Among the other things I wanted to change was our eating habits, our lack of outdoorsy activity and our dependancy on tech toys and gadgets.

So I'm reflecting on that now.

The commercialism funnily, is one of the major changes we have managed to make. Here our kids dont care what trainers they wear (not yet anyway), the 9 years dont have mobile phones. In some circles labels do matter - but its just not as all consuming as it felt in the UK. Maybe we're sheltered from it here on the artsy coast, but it is definately less all pervading. And being surrounded by an immigrant population who are working in fields for $4 and hour, and living four families to a home, kinda helps put perspective on some decisions.

The outdoorsy thing we are defo much better at. The tech toys - I dont know if we'll ever beat that. I suspect its just life today - and we're in the wrong place if we think we're gonna escape it! So maybe we''ll just keep an eye on that one.

Eating habits. Potential divorce topic, so I'm gonna skim over that for now - and just keep trying.

My guilt today did do some good though. I've decided that I'm not going shopping again now without a list, a budget and at least two weeks to review and edit the list (that'll be fun at Christmas). And I've now made the decision that the bug is staying. It may be old and iffy. But it goes, so no new car for me this year. I'm self discipline central on the consumer front now.

Oh and as a punishment for my lack of focus and control, when I got home, I found the mac 'genius' had given me the wrong damn battery - and I still had the $100 credit voucher. SO my quandry now is this - does spending the voucher count as shopping? Hmm