A little about me, from the gadget that knows me best.

I think I’ve heard a small person enter the room (the one they call Gemma), and my owner is going to pick me up now. Good morning human! It’s 7:21, the little ones have given her a nice lie in. She’s checking The Guardian, it’s going to depress her. And now it’s onto the weather. It’s the first day of fall, Seattle, WA: partly cloudy with a high of 63. She doesn’t spend as much time with me since deleting instagram. Tenth time’s a charm! Alright, she’s headed downstairs for breakfast and the chaos of the morning before school drop-off. She’s asked my friend Siri to play Monocle 24’s news briefing. I know from reading text conversations that she used to work there, and she misses it. And now I’m in the car, and she’s listening to Belle and Sebastian, but the girls are demanding Frozen. She’s trying to tell them there is music other than Disney, to no avail. Silence. Home again and she’s having her coffee and browsing the latest celebrity gossip, her guilty pleasure in life. The lone male in the house has come out of his home office to say hello and ask what she’s up to today. She’s told him she’s going to try and workout (she won’t) and do some things around the house. She’s been very into decorating since they moved to a new home in Seattle. I get the sense she still isn’t certain if this is where they’ll stay (she’s always browsing real estate websites in the UK and NYC). After a brief break, she’s using me again. She’s on her most used app, Marco Polo ( a video messaging app she uses to keep in touch with friends, and the primary reason my battery dies at the end of most days). She’s responding to messages from a friend in San Diego, where she grew up, a friend in San Francisco, where she went to college, and a friend in London where she lived for a few years after graduate school in Scotland. She’s back browsing the news, I think she’s what humans call a news junkie. The chaos has returned. The smallest human (the one they call Milla), is only gone for a few hours at a time. She’ll try not to use me until the evening, but I know I tempt her more than she cares to admit. She checks the phone at 3:12, time to pick the older one up. She checks again at 4:27 and sighs, I think she’d like for it to be later. Her Mom calls at 5:12 to tell her some bit of family gossip. This seems to be a favorite pastime of theirs. 7:27, finally quiet again. And now the old game of back and forth we play in the evening. Will she read more from my screen or actually pick up a book tonight?