Miller Land | Our Family's Little Blog

Lia’s journal entry for October 6, 2019:

When I was about 8 or 9, my mother decided that enough of my brains had leaked out of my head with video games. So her way of plugging the leak was to limit my video game playing to one hour a day.

My parents often struggled with the balance of keeping their active only child occupied while keeping my brain from “melting” with video games.

She made a chart of activities and their worth in game time. For instance, walking the dog earned me 5 minutes of video game play, hanging clothes on the line earned me 8 minutes, dusting got me 5 and so forth. She could award “discretionary” points for good attitude. Then, she’d rotate chores each week.

So next week, hanging clothes might not be worth a specified number of minutes, but if I did it anyway, I might get some discretionary points for being helpful and showing initiative.

I was allowed to accrue a maximum of sixty minutes of game time each day, anything beyond that was given to me in cash. The cash value of each activity was usually half of the minute value. For instance, if I got 10 minutes for playing outside for 15 minutes, I could collect 5 cents instead of using the minutes.

Since all video game playing ended at 7:00pm, any time accrued after that or leftover minutes would be given to me at the end of the day in cash. Needless to say, I didn’t earn much cash this way. Each morning the slate was wiped clean. There were no rollover minutes.

To keep the system working, I had to log my start and ending times when I played video games.

I don’t know what got into me, but I named my own punishment for exceeding my earned video game time – loss of game playing privileges for the next day. What can I say? It was a moment of weakness and I was caught up in a desire to make the system as good as it could be. Although it meant my game time would be limited, the game time system was a reminder of other activities I could do –  reading, practicing piano, caring for the dog,  and various chores around the house.  I felt it was fair and I wanted it to work.

A freshly showered Lia looked at my “rough- and- dirty-from-the-day” feet and declared that I had “rhino skin.” That was last night.

Today my parents stopped by so we could take care of a few things. One thing we confirmed was that the government is directly depositing stimulus checks into the accounts of senior citizens who have that arrangement set up for receiving their Social Security payments. Sure enough, two deposits were made into their account in May and they didn’t even know it. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to spend fruitless hours on the phone with Social Security.

They treated us to lunch at Chin’s Teriyaki BBQ on Western between Venice and Washington, the best little place for delicious and cheapish Korean, Hawaiian, and Chinese food on this side of Koreatown. My mom wanted us to taste the salmon teriyaki she had ordered, but Lia wasn’t interested. To convince her to taste it my mom said, “If you eat it, you’ll have pretty skin.” Seven year olds apparently don’t appreciate the skin healthy properties of Omega-3.

“Then you should eat A LOT of it Mommy,” was Lia’s only response.

“That’s cold,” I said reaching for her 7-Up. I felt I was entitled to a cool sip after such a cut.

She must have felt a little guilty because instead of making a fuss about involuntary sharing like she usually does, she simply said, “Then you’re about to get a little colder.”

Apparently, removing the Mona Lisa magnet from our fridge and putting it in the corner of our huge bedroom mirror wasn’t enough for Lia. Today I found La Joconde with her back to us in a very revealing pose, perhaps not so revealing as the mural  of her mooning drivers for a short while on La Brea last year. I’m sure they got a call straight from Paris France about that!

But the back of our magnet reminded us that the original is housed at the Louvre, that an alternate spelling for Mona is Monna (short for Madonna in French and Italian), and that it’s also known as “La Joconde” in French for the last name of the subject, Lisa del Giocondo. Signorina Lia finds her spooky and what can I say to that? Wine IS bitter and the portrait may be famous, but just in case you missed it, the emperor really WAS naked.

Once a year you can find candy hearts with sweet nothings written on them, also known as Conversation Hearts. As you can imagine, the conversation on them has changed over the years. For instance, saying “Text Me” back in 1866 when they first came out might have resulted in having a book thrown at you.

Necco will be releasing themed hearts throughout the year and not just mid-February as they have for the past 162 years.  According to representatives, it’s a marketing move “taking advantage of consumers’ need for inexpensive entertainment.”

Gone will be the thrill of bargain-shopping the day after, on what I like to call Light Crimson to Pale Reddish Purple Thursday.

They’re unlike Wonka SweeTarts which only sound similar, but which are more tart than sweet and delicious in their own right. As Lia noted while reading the Necco confection box, “These are sweet hearts, literally.”

Lia’s our walking, talking fun-meter. That’s how we noticed that the  word “boring” has crept into her vocabulary. I don’t remember ever saying that as a kid, but I’m sure I felt it. What’s worse?

Somehow I have it in my head that boredom is a personal problem, it’s not a parent or anybody else’s job to keep you entertained. Is that something my parents instilled in me or just something I came up with after becoming a parent myself? We were far less dependent on technology to keep us entertained and occupied every moment of the day. They say the best toys are the simplest ones, even ones that kids make themselves. You have to plan, be resourceful, imaginative, solve problems, build, all the things that are exciting about learning. My dad still has that excitement, so he invents and teaches himself new skills.

Saturday out in service, Lia wasn’t very keen on the idea of going to the La Brea Tar Pits, a museum on Miracle Mile. It didn’t matter to her that all her friends were going to be there. How odd, I thought, I would have loved the idea of doing anything with my friends when I was her age.

“Well, do you want to stay at home while all your friends are at the museum?” I asked in an effort to help her regain her perspective. It seemed to be making an impact.

“Yeah, that would be the pits,” said Karltine trying to be helpful. 

“It’s already the pits,” Lia answered.