Every breath you take

When I was in high school I had a green leather Franklin Day Planner.  I carried it with my everywhere.  It helped me keep track of my homework, work schedule, and even served as my wallet. I even had a Social Studies teacher (who really did like me, he just knew I could handle a little teasing) who would take my planner and pretend to read it aloud to the class.  "Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out..." or "Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot..."  Basically insinuating that I couldn't even perform basic functions without the aide of my precious day planner.

That was 20 years ago.  You don't see people carting around giant day planners anymore. You see smart phones everywhere.

I have one, and it keeps my life straight, instead of reminding me about homework and work schedules, it helps me keep the kids' schedules straight, and it's super handy for things like shopping lists, snapping a quick picture, keeping track of the kids' allowance, or helping me navigate my way to somewhere I've never been.   Amazon's shopping app gets used more than I care to admit, and I find that I can't just sit and do nothing, if I have more than a 2 second wait for anything, I use it as a boredom buster be it facebook, pinterest, instagram, twitter, kindle, netflix, or any of the half dozen or so games I have stored on it.

John loves his iphone apps too. 

 John's phone can show him how to navigate any subway, translate any phrase, and even tell him what the daily conversion rate is.  It keeps track of all flights, hotels, etc (which given how much and how quickly his travel plans change, that's HUGE)

About the only thing missing on his phone are game apps.  Except Uno, which I refuse to play because his phone cheats.  Seriously. Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.

Anyway, one day he was sitting in an airport waiting for his flight to come home and he was showing off one of his newly acquired apps to a co-worker.

It's an app for Onstar.  I drive a Suburban, which has Onstar, and I'm not sure all what the app does, John installed it on my phone, but I have yet to check it out.

HOWEVER, John likes to keep track of my fuel levels.   And he was showing the guy in the airport exactly how much gas I had in my car. (John texted me this picture so I could share it with you)

The guy's response?  "Uh, that sounds a little too 'Big Brother' for me."

Truthfully I would be a little, okay insanely annoyed, if he were using to keep tabs on me like "You drove 40 miles today.  Where did you go? Why did you need to go there?"

It's more like this "So Onstar is telling me you are really low on gas, don't forget to fill up today ok?"

And admittedly getting gas is one of those things I hate to do, so I always put it off until the last possible minute.  John usually keeps my car full, but sometimes I drive around too much, and he's gone too long, and I have to do it myself.

And although it's been a long time, I once really upset him when we were dating and my car ran out of gas in the middle of the night, and his mom got annoyed when I called after 10, so I hitch-hiked.  I don't think he's gotten over that.

Oh! Speaking of 'Big Brother' - esque apps, I just found out last night that the new program the schools are using to keep track of grades has an app!  Soon I will be able to see exactly how all of my kids are doing in school, which assignments they have or haven't turned in, how well they did on that last test, etc, any time, anywhere.  AWESOME. 

I'm just so glad my own parents didn't have access to stuff like that when I was a kid.

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"Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you."  -  The Police