too many buttons....

Have you noticed how many buttons it takes to run our lives?  I never realized I was dependant on so many, until last night, when  I went to put in a dvd of a movie a friend loaned me.  Let me say, usually, Kelly runs all remotes and electrical equipment in our house (something about a man thing) and he happens to be out of town this week.  But as I am a college graduate and an intelligent and intuitive woman, I was not worried in the least about accomplishing my task. I ought to be able to figure out how to change the input from cable to dvd and play my movie!

I thought our cable remote worked all devices (isn't that what a smart remote is supposed to do?)  Apparently our remote needs to return to school because aside from turning on the tv, volume control and cable control, it was absolutely useless! I dug into the remote control drawer, yes we do have an entire drawer dedicated to remotes, and was able to finally find the remote that matched up to my tv.  Success!

 Upon pushing several buttons and gaining no response, I flipped the remote over only to discover that the children had raided the batteries in the remotes to replenish their wii controllers.  Good grief, here I am at ten at night searching through odd places to find batteries as the battery drawer was empty.  I finally broke into the wii, stole back what was mine and proudly returned to my room.  I was a woman on a mission now and I wasn't giving up. 

After successfully getting the tv remote to work I studied all the various buttons and started pushing different ones to find the correct input.  I then had to find the dvd remote to actually power and control the thing.  Once again the batteries were a victim of the world of video games and I again went in search of new ones.  By now I was totally exasperated but would not be deterred.  After mumbling under my breath about children and our reliance on batteries, I finally was successful and returned once again to my room. 

Finally, forty-five minutes later I had navigated the many remotes, pushed an excess of buttons and started my movie.  Although I was proud of my accomplishments, I was too tired to return to the kitchen to make popcorn and decided a bubble bath and a book were in order. 

That is what's wrong with the world today, or at least the Christensen household.  There are too many complicating, time consuming, battery depleting, button pushing devices and not enough page turning, imagination building, intellect developing, quiet reflecting activities.  So everyone needs to put down the buttons and open a book.  It might not be the solution for world peace, but it sure would make a more well rounded society, and in my case family.