Today is James’ half birthday— 47 and a half. I’m all about celebrating half birthdays. Any excuse for cupcakes is my motto, so I made little pecan tarts. And I love traditions. Last night I decided on the Fucillo family tradition of hors d’oeuvres for dinner. I made meatballs and deviled eggs and a beautiful salad. I even hit upon a new creative breakthrough in deviled eggdom— replace the sprinkling of paprika with Tajín. Chef’s kiss.
Last night Nate and I watched Home Alone and then we all hit the sack. This morning we had a cozy time opening presents, drinking warm drinks, and listening to Christmas music. I was notably impressed with myself when I got Pandora to play carols through the Sonos speakers from James’ phone with just a few clicks. Electronics have always been James’ realm. He generally accuses me of randomly hitting all the buttons. And yes, I do descend from people that put black electrical tape over their blinking digital clocks.
The boys were over the moon this morning when they opened up the box for a new VR headset. It literally looked like some kind of covert suitcase Will Smith brought back with him from space. The boys played their new Pokémon Violet game as the VR software loaded on the PC Jacob built with his dad.
When it’s ready, Jake starts connecting all the cables. Something’s not right. He gets on YouTube. Everyone on earth says it doesn’t work with adapters. It’s hopeless. The only way it will work is if he gets an integrated graphics card. Or a new PC with more display ports. Or “Mom, the only possible way it will work is if I get an entirely new motherboard.”
Christmas cannot crash and burn this quickly. I tell him he needs to eat something and take a shower and come back to this problem. IT issues cannot be tackled on an empty stomach. And there’s always more than one solution to a problem.
He mopes and groans and takes a break. While he’s gone I channel my inner James and get the instructions. James is an insanely good follower of directions. When it comes to electronics, I’m more of a click-on-everything-till-I-see-how-it-works-gal. I feel a little panicky. I used to sell multimillion dollar servers for goodness sake. I configured quotes and tromped through data centers.
Deep breath— what would James do?
I start to follow the instructions methodically. Jacob comes back and I ask him trial and error questions. We talk about where the graphics card is and the monitor issue we solved ourselves earlier this week. He notices some gray plastic rectangles on the back of the tower. We get the little screwdriver and I try to pry one out. They’re tough little effers, but I finally get one loose and we pop it out. Hot damn it’s the exact HDMI port we need to connect the headset directly into the graphics card. Christmas is saved. Jacob high-fives me and we feel unbelievably accomplished.
Yet another mini Christmas miracle? Thanks my sweetest half-birthday boy. You’d be so proud. I didn’t even push any buttons.
