Journal: News & Comment

The distracted parent

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In a rush to pack the kids into the car this morning for a trip to the pumpkin patch, I left two CDs on the roof. I didn't realize that until we were well on the way, so when I got home several hours later, I found them, scraped, scratched, rained on, cases destroyed, on the street near our house. They were unplayable.

By then, I'd also discovered that, in the process of trying to restore the default settings on my digital camera while keeping half an eye on my oldest daughter, I instead erased the memory card, and all photos of the pumpkin patch. (If I'm willing to pay for it, there is software to extract the erased files. Cleverly, the demo version shows you little thumbnails of the pictures, but will neither display large ones nor save anything to disk.)

This afternoon, I nearly left my bag, with the same $500 digital camera in it, at a coffee shop, but I caught myself just in time.

The kids are now staying with their grandparents an hour's drive away, my wife and I went out for dinner, and afterwards we visited the mall. I replaced the CDs. I feel better now.

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