Bad Mother

Our kids' school doesn't bus most of the kids who live within a mile of the school (the exception being the ones who live across a major street). I've measured it on my odometer and, although it is less than one mile from our subdivision, the school is 1.2 miles from our home. Yet... I still have to take the kids to and from school.

I really don't mind the driving. My issue is the remembering-to-pick-them-up part. I generally don't have a problem in the morning (unless I make the mistake of checking my e-mail that early) because their presence is a sufficient reminder that I need to take them to school. In the afternoon, however, I'm usually engrossed in some activity or other that causes me to lose track of time. Does this make me a bad mother? Every other parent seems to converge on the school like clockwork and I've never heard the slightest mention that it's hard for anyone else to remember to pick up their kids from school, so I feel like I'm alone in this.

Several months ago I stumbled upon a site called iwantsandy.com. I could set up tasks (e.g., "Pick up kids") and it would text me a reminder 15 minutes before I needed to pick up the kids. Unfortunately, Twitter decided to buy it and shut it down! I started using a new service (RememberTheMilk.com) that's pretty comparable for the most part. In fact, just today I learned that I can integrate it with my Google calendar, which is kind of cool. Then I also learned that I can sort of do the same thing with Google calendar (i.e. receive text reminders). However, I prefer to keep my calendar limited to actual appointments and such and not clutter it up with daily "Pick up kids"-type reminders, so I'll keep my RTM service.

Am I the only one out there who doesn't instinctively sense when the end of the school day is near without an external reminder?
And if I'm not utterly alone in this, does anyone want to share any nifty technological advances that I might find useful? :)

Laptop update

My new battery arrived today. Shortly thereafter... I did a little research online and discovered that I am not alone in my battery issues for this brand of laptop. This particular laptop apparently has a flaw wherein a DVD playing program it comes with causes the registry to become corrupted, which causes the CPU to run at full speed on battery power (instead of using the power management settings that slow it down when running off the battery). Apparently I can fix this myself with some techno geek ninja skills, but the site that will tell me how is currently down due to a hard drive malfunction.

So... at least I have my new battery for now that may (fingers crossed) function properly as long as I don't run the DVD program (then again it may not, since the registry is already corrupted). Bleh.

Laptop

I bought a laptop when I started law school. It's tiny and I love it, but I hate it when things are not charged so I was constantly plugging it in to make sure the battery never died. I ruined several cell phone batteries that way before I learned what I was doing wrong (I am now working on year #2 with the same phone battery for the first time ever!). Now, supposedly lithium-ion batteries (which my laptop has) are not supposed to do this, but mine definitely took a dive due to the constant charging. It would start out fully charged and within a very short period of time (sometimes just a few minutes) it would die.

So... I pretty much haven't used my laptop for the past year or two. I pulled it out from under the bed this past week and decided I would get a new battery (now that I know how to properly care for them). I ordered a new battery and then... decided to wait for this one to die.
After about 30 minutes of using battery power, it died. I pushed the power button and was able to use it for another 10 minutes before it died again. Then I pushed the power button again and... 15-20 minutes later it's still going!!! My battery indicator has said "0%" for quite some time now, but it's still going!

I have learned:

1. Lithium-ion batteries do suffer from the "memory effect" even though the experts claim they don't and
2. NEVER order a brand-new, non-returnable battery until you are absolutely sure that your current one is really, truly irreparably damaged.

Eighteen Weeks

I felt something on Mother's Day that I was 60% sure was the baby moving. Then I felt something two days later that I was 90% sure was the baby moving. Now I'm feeling movement daily, but every time I try to let Brian feel, it stops. It's getting more frequent, so it shouldn't be long before it's constant enough for Brian to feel it. At this point I'm still impatient for the kicking to really begin, but I know I'll regret it because I remember being miserable with Treyton kicking me in the ribs for months on end.

Maternity clothes mostly don't fit yet, but I'm getting there. I only kept one maternity outfit from Treyton (a denim jumper that I really liked) and I pulled it out last week. Brian says this baby needs to get bigger before it looks like a maternity dress; right now it just looks like a muumuu. Fortunately, my sister, Carla, gave me a few really cute maternity shirts. Also, we went to Goodwill yesterday and got a couple things. Brian wanted camping pants so as not to ruin his good jeans and I am always on the lookout for decent maternity clothing lately. Work is still pretty easy (drawstring scrubs are very maternity-friendly), but I have no idea what I'm going to wear to church tomorrow. :P