So I settle for tacking them all over my office at work. Right now I have seven hanging up, and I’d gladly add more.

Calendars are, in fact, the main reason why (after Halloween) New Year’s is my favorite holiday. I’m not crazy about the part that involves staying up ‘til midnight drinking sickeningly cheap champagne at some overpriced function, getting your eardrums blown out by those honker things.

Which is why I don’t do that any more.

But I am crazy about the part that involves buying calendars for the following year. Fellow calendar lovers know that this time of year is calendar nirvana. They’re all HALF OFF, so you don’t even have to feel guilty about buying out the place.

I know what you’re thinking. What’s the big whoop about calendars?

At the risk of sounding hokey, it’s because they’re all about possibility. When you unwrap a new 2010 wildflowers calendar, you hold in your hands 365 new, blank days, just waiting to be filled. I read somewhere recently—can’t remember where—that New Year’s Resolutions signify hope. Well so do calendars.

Of course, every year I hope all my calendars will get me organized. Which hasn’t happened yet.  But it’s never too late, right? So here’s my to-do list (so far) for 2010:

• Set things up so I don’t have to return to the house five times after leaving it every morning.
• Take my kids to see the rhododendrons and mountain laurel blooming in West Virginia in spring.
• Organize my writing clips from the past 15 years.
• Try the grasshopper tacos at Oyamel.
• Actually watch and send back my Netflix movies.
• Start a new blog on memory.
• Get my car serviced.
• Erase e-mail.
• Write right.
• Camp out at doctors’ offices until my kids get what they need.
• Decide how I really feel about pedicures.
• Stop trying to be good at things I’m not and focus on what I’m good at.
• Bellydance (this one ignores the previous one).
• Walk to work more (well, after the cold weather).
• Write stuff down in one place instead of on 80 pieces of scrap paper that I can’t find later.
• Make sure I’m wearing matching shoes before leaving the office.
• Praise my kids more and say specifically why.
• Count to 20 and take a walk.
• Laugh.
• Joke.
• Breathe.
• Let go.

In our case, there is nowhere to put it. We have officially run out of room.

It’s like that old George Carlin joke—that, basically, your house is just “a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!” And then, when you run out of room for your junk, “you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore.” Click here to see Carlin doing his “stuff” routine.

Well we’ve reached that point. Trouble is, nobody’ll want to buy our house because it’s too crammed with knick knacks. We could try to sell it on the granite counter tops but you can’t even see them anymore.

We are packrats in a tiny shotgun rowhouse with no basement, two bedrooms, two kids under five, two hyper dogs, and a lame excuse for an attic.

Open a kitchen closet, and a can of fat-free refried beans will biff you in the head while you try to steady a tower of salsa jars. Behind you, folded directors' chairs and beach seats lean against a wall, a 20-pound bag of dog food balanced precariously on top.

In the bathroom, a clothes rack doubles as towel dryer and laundry stand. In the kids’ room, a futon serves as closet, drawers, and sock sorter. And the hub of it all is the multitasking living room, struggling to be the kids' playroom, TV room, computer room, antique display area, and adults' refuge.

So it’s time to suck it up, roll up the sleeves, and sort. Not only am I off work, but the kids will be up at my mother's all next week.

This is not going to be easy. To effectively toss crap, you need a certain ruthlessness—the no-nonsense attitude of Niecy Nash, host of Style’s “Clean House” (I love that show—I need her in my house!).  

I mean, I have trouble just deleting e-mails. A colleague of mine saw that I have 11,000 emails in my inbox and freaked. Just trash them, she said. If you really need to know something you can ask. This is not life or death. (Don’t tell that to a lawyer.)

But the alternative, accumulating too much stuff, really can be deadly. Some people with hoarding disorder, an extreme inability to purge, have actually been crushed by their own stuff, like one of the famous Collyer brothers of Manhattan.

Most of us aren’t quite that bad off. But we do let the tchotchkes pile up so much that we can't clean properly, and can never find anything. And those stacks of old magazines and newspapers? They invite fire, and their weight can wear on the house.

No more. Here’s my battle plan:

1. Toss and recycle all old magazines and newspapers.
2. Sort bric-a-brac and any items not currently in use into piles of: trash, recycle (or sell), and keep.
3. Items to be kept will be put in a storage unit.
4. Items to be recycled or sold will be put through Freecycle, Goodwill bins, or Craig's List.
5. Items to be trashed will be hauled off in a dump truck.

This article from Psychology Today’s Web site gives some good tips for letting go of your stuff when going through this process.

Just thinking about it makes me feel tired and stressed. But the vision of having it completed makes me want to dance like Snoopy.

I can't wait to go from clutterbug to clutterfree.

I looked it up and realized that, as a kid, I used to eat it every Christmas. Because in South Africa, the former British colony where I grew up, figgy pudding is still a strong holiday tradition. More commonly known as Christmas pudding, it was one of the solstice highlights for me.

(Strange, but by solstice, I mean Summer Solstice, given that we're talking Southern Hemisphere here. Yes, we had fake Christmas trees with fake snow, roast turkey and warm figgy pudding, smack in the middle of summer and often at the beach.)

In any case, for me, the excitement of figgy pudding ranked right up there with presents.

Why? Because it was dangerous.

Here's how the Christmas pudding ritual went down: My granny would emerge from the kitchen wielding the pudding like a prize ham. My grandfather would promptly douse it in what must have been 100-proof brandy. Then he'd set that thing on fire.

Spiky purple-blue flames would shoot up as my granny waved the whole shebang thrillingly close to the grandkids' hair. And things kept getting better as we kids dove into our pieces of boozy cake because my granny had buried loads of silver charms and coins in it.

One bite you'd get a horseshoe, the next you'd get a thimble, and the next you'd get a nickel. And each time you found one, you had to shout, wave it in the air, then proudly display it on your plate.

Best of all was when you swallowed one because then everyone could make lots of jokes about what would happen to it.

And here's the other thing that made figgy pudding fabulously dangerous: We didn't actually like it. It was, well, edible if you immersed each bite in custard or ice cream. But really, it was just glorified, steamed fruitcake. And what kid likes fruitcake?

Even among adults, fruitcake fans are numbered. But for those that like it, warm figgy pudding, soaked in brandy and paired with ice cream, is a real treat—if you want to try it, here's a recipe from NPR.

Just don't forget the brandy, fire, charms, and coins. Oh, and the figs.

So there was no worry about finding a vocation and no worry about our kids getting bored, misbehaving, or manifesting some behavioral disability. Like a lioness’s cubs, they ran after us when we hunted or gathered berries, and frolicked around us when we napped, getting the occasional swat when they got too irritating.

OK, I got a bit off track there, but here's the thing: I think we’ve just gotten too civilized, and in the process gone way overboard in pathologizing our kids.

Nevertheless, being a cyberchondriac, I of course have to go online and research the Autism Spectrum Disorders—there's a whole range from mild to severe, all involving social withdrawal and repetitive behaviors.

If you want to know the truth, I see more of myself than my son in this diagnosis. Since becoming a parent, my social life is down the tubes—I spend more time with my nose in a book than talking to people. Socializing is now limited to Facebook. And all day long I type on a keyboard and stare at a computer screen. If that's not a repetitive behavior, I don't know what is.

What I do know is Punk is the most affectionate kid I've ever seen. When I get home from work, he runs up, throws he arms around me and declares, "Mommee, I love you!" Not even our dogs give me that kind of greeting (one pees; the other knocks me over.) I also know he's crazy about music. Nothing gets him dancing and grinning like Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds," or "I Like to Move It," from the movie Madagascar.

Lest I be accused of being in denial, I've gone ahead and made two pediatrician appointments for him in the New Year—one with a general ped, the other with a developmental ped.

And yes, I should go ahead and have him evaluated by the school district. Because, as my mother wisely points out, if he does need special services, you can't get them without the {cough, hairball} label.

But I'm skeptical. Very skeptical. Because to me, Punk is Punk. And he's perfect just the way he is.

"Ms. LAW?"

"Yes?" I prepare to hear that he's been wandering the classroom again during circle time, that his pants keep falling down, or that he didn't eat his lunch.

Instead she says, "Have you had his eyesight checked? We think he's looking funny at the TV screen."

What the??

 
Punk is only four years old. Isn't this way too young for a kid to have vision problems? I mean, I thought I was way too young when my eyesight started going at age 23.

 
I found out, after I couldn't read a giant road sign, that I was myopic, or nearsighted—meaning that I can easily see objects up close, but they're blurred when farther away.

I blamed it all on a Kafkaesque job I had writing 200-word summaries of scientific journal articles on a glaring computer screen. To meet quota, I had to write at least 10 before lunch and another 10 before quitting time. It was right out of Joe Versus the Volcano, when he's toiling away in a concrete room lit only by a single, naked bulb.

But, really, my sight decline likely had nothing to do with my job. Nearsightedness is hereditary and usually manifests during or after adolescence, when the eye is fully formed. So early 20s is right in the ballpark.

Which is part of the reason I was so surprised when Punk's teacher alerted me to a possible vision problem.

Who knows. My husband's myopia set in when he was 13, and that's fairly standard. So I suppose it's possible for it to show up before the age of five.

 
Another possibility is that Punk is far-sighted, or hypermetropic, which we usually associate with getting older—you know, bifocals and reading glasses. And yes, farsightedness does usually affect older people, as their eyes lose their ability to focus.

But farsightedness can also show up in young kids, in which case it's usually present from birth. That said, most kids outgrow it.

Yet another possibility is that Punk has astigmatism, in which the cornea—or the lens—of the eye is curved irregularly, interfering with focus. Though sometimes caused by eye injury, astigmatism is usually congenital, so it's quite possible Punk has this.

Also, both his father and I have it, upping the odds that he does too.

But really, if he had a bad case of any of these things, wouldn't he be bumping into walls and tripping down stairs? He does fall quite a bit but I think that's just because, like a puppy, his feet and head are out of whack with the rest of him.

 
If you sit him down with a book, he seems to follow along with the words and pictures just fine.

So, I'm wondering if it's worth getting his eyes tested. We've gone ahead and made the appointment, but does it make sense to put him through all that?

 
Anyone have any kid and eyesight problem experiences to share?

And tension, discord, and stress.

So how to minimize the misery and maximize the fun? I have an answer of sorts, but before I reveal it, let’s, Scrooge-style, take a tour of several holidays past:

Thanksgiving 1996
I’m not sure why, but it was decided that I and my then-boyfriend would host my sister and her new husband, my mother, his mother, and his brother and her girlfriend in our tiny Arlington, Va., apartment.

My sister and husband showed up with a surprise guest— their rambunctious lab puppy—and it immediately became clear that the dog had no use for floors. It leapt from one piece of furniture to the next, sending lamps, vases, purses, tchotchkes, whatever, flying in every direction. My boyfriend demanded that the dog be taken to my sister’s hotel (where it wasn’t allowed to be, but oh well), leaving my sister grumpy for the rest of the holiday.

My boyfriend’s mother (who I’ll now refer to as MBM) had insisted on bringing a turkey, despite the fact that my boyfriend was a vegetarian who ate seafood—"no land animals, nothing with feet!"

So for dinner, I had prepared a bean dish for me and my boyfried, while the others tucked into MBM’s turkey. She eyed me, smirking, “Well, just look at her salivating over that turkey.”

After dinner, my sister decided it was time to try bonding with MBM,  so she hauled out her wedding album. As my sister thumbed through it, MBM glanced over suspiciously, taking in the lacey dress, the long curled blonde hair.

“Well,” she said, “Weren’t WE the Southern belle!”

That was the last time I ever hosted a holiday.
 

Christmas  1997
My parents had rented a place right on the beach at North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Cape Hatteras. The evening I arrived with my ex (we were newly married), everything was going swimmingly – tree-decorating, cake-eating, drinks before bed – and then my sister and her husband arrived.

My ex, never a fan of my sister, refused to get out of bed to greet them.

“I’m not dealing with your West Virginia diva sister and her brain-damaged, spasmodic dog. This is ridiculous. I’m staying HERE.”

Things progressed from there: My ex commented that my brother-in-law’s peanut soup vaguely resembled puke and ended up having cake for dinner.

And then, to top everything off, my sister announced that she was knocked up—by way of a positive-pregnancy test placed on the tree. My ex stormed out the room, raging that "This is just a typical drama-queen move on the part of your sister!" Reflecting back, I could have noted that his response was a typical drama-king move. Ah, hindsight.

Thanksgiving 1999
My parents were planning to spend the holiday with my sister’s in-laws four hours away, and my mother was obsessing over what to bring. Then, scanning the paper one day, she saw it: German chocolate sauerkraut cake! Perfect.

Only problem was, she somehow quadrupled the amount of sauerkraut called for in the recipe—putting in something like four cups of it instead of ¾ cups.

When it came time to cut the cake, the knife got stuck. The way my father tells it, they had to put the cake down on the floor and have someone step on it while another person sawed it into pieces.

Christmas 2008
My mother had gathered together my husband and me, our three-year-old  twins, my sister and her husband and their seven- and eleven-year-olds—at the West Virginia homestead for a tranquil Christmas Eve.

She was hell-bent on getting us all to sing carols by the tree before Christmas dinner, but the plan kept going awry.  For example, Punk, not yet potty-trained, peed on the floor. T-Rex slammed his fingers in the sliding door. And my nephew hit his sister on the head during a wrestling match.

Meanwhile four dogs—my mother’s Yorkshire terrier, my sister’s golden retriever, our miniature dachshund and our pound mutt—chased each other around the house, leaving their own deposits throughout. My father it seemed, was always the one to step in these deposits, yelling, “For God’s sake! Not another bloody pile of dog[expletive]!?”

Throughout all this, the adults took generous hits from the punchbowl. And then the doorbell rang.

Assuming it was the kids’ pizza, my mother ran for the door, and shoved a couple of $20s at the man standing there.

“I’m sorry, m’am….I don’t think you think I’m….”

“You’re not the pizza guy?”

“No. Uh. Sorry, but my mother just backed into your car.”

Yep. The neighbor's 90-year-old mother, after one too many eggnogs, had wrecked my sister’s car. That definitely put the kibosh on the Christmas carols.

Later that evening—I guess we hadn’t yet had enough—it was decided we would open some presents. It was the usual mayhem, with the kids shrieking, shredding wrapping paper, grabbing, and throwing presents. And then my sister and I were handed two identical gifts from my mother.

Simultaneously, we unwrapped nondescript brown boxes, stuffed with foam. I pulled out a long metal thing. Then another longer metal thing. And then a rounded black rubber hose thing.

“Good God,” said my father. “What have you given them? They’ve both got husbands you know!”

Turned out that they were self-standing hairdryers—they were attached to a movable stalk so that you could blow-dry your hair without having to hold the dryer.

“I saw it on an infomercial,” explained my mother, somewhat defensively. “I thought it looked, well, useful.”

I burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I had finally discovered the one and only true key to de-stressing the holidays—realize that it’s all theater of the absurd and laugh ’til it hurts.

And it doesn’t bode well that we’re greeted with at least half a trunk’s worth of dead tree. (Can’t they just Xerox what I filled out last time? It’s exactly the same.)

When I’m finally done furiously writing what I’m sure nobody will ever read—I’m reminded of those college blue-book tests—I plunk it down on the front desk.

A nurse looks up, calls out, “You know, there are four people in front of you. Gonna be a while.”

“WHAT? Why so many in front of me? How did this happen?” As it is, it’s a bad day to be missing work. We’re in the middle of 18 health care-reform-related emergencies, I’ve taken on a huge new project, and then there are the usual Web fires.

“Dunno. Just the schedule today.” The nurse just looks at me, impassive. All she’s missing is the bubble gum to snap. “You wanna reschedule?”

“No!  I had to upend my schedule for this as it is! I just hope it goes fast!” I stride back to my seat, fuming.

For the next two hours—yes, two hours!—we wait. While I frantically try to schedule meetings on my BlackBerry—thinking, there has to be a better way than finger-punching these microscopic keys—the kids throw stuff around the waiting room and periodically dive-bomb me.

When we're finally shown to an examining room, a nurse takes some readings, scribbles on a chart, and leaves. And then….you guessed it, we wait some more. At least another half hour more.

It’s past the boys’ lunch time, well into their nap time, and they’re getting VERY CRANKY. And now I'm supposed to undress them and get them into those freezing-cold paper things. They don't comply.

Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt! My BlackBerry starts going bananas:  “EMERGENCY: Link going to porn site—FIX IMMEDIATELY!”

Well this is perfect timing. My eyelid twitches as I watch the responses pop: “Where’s the link? WTF?? What porn site?? Can Bridget fix it?”

No! Bridget can’t fix it. She’s stuck in prison, AKA the doctor’s office, trying to convince her distraught four-year-old to don a paper dress. And, unfortunately, the worst is yet to come.

In walks the doctor. She’s perfectly nice. Just two hours and 45 minutes late. She does a quick exam of both boys, signs off on their shots, and hands me referrals for an allergist (for T-Rex) and an ophthalmologist (for both of them). Done!  Well, until somebody has to haul them to all those appointments.

Today, all we have left is the big event: the shots. But still. We. Have. To. Wait.

By the time the nurse arrives with her tray of doom, the kids are pelting each other with tongue depressors. I’ve long since given up.

Next is the part every parent dreads:  I have to hold down each of my children while a stranger sticks ginormous needles into their legs. In this case, five needles a kid. When she’s done, both boys are crying boulder-size tears.

“Can we go now?” I ask, head pounding, angry at the whole situation.

“No,” says the nurse. “I still gotta do your paperwork.”

The door slams shut, and I’m left with my howling, half-dressed kids. Perfect time for my ShackleBerry to start spazzing again. “Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt! BZZZZZZZZZT! Contract finalization meeting: 15 minutes.” Uh. No way. Not gonna make it. And no, I'm not going to call in from the doctor's office.

I turn to my hungry, tired, sniffling, needle-struck kids.

“Guys,” I say. “You know what we’re going to do? We’re not going to wait any more. We’re going to go get you some stickers. Right now!” The wailing stops for a second. “Stick-owz?” asks Punk hopefully.  I take them by the hands and march them off to find a nurse. Or tech. Or someone with access to stickers. I don’t give a continental hoot who.

It takes a while—everyone’s at lunch or something— but we finally track down our shots nurse. “We need some stickers please. NOW!!”

“Well, OK,” she says grudgingly.

“And may I also have those papers? We’ve been here over four hours.”

She hands them over, somewhat sheepishly, I think (I later find out some are missing), and we bolt. Enough is enough.

Driving the kids to school, feeding them chicken sandwiches and cupcakes I scrounged from a food cart, I make an executive decision: I am going to switch us to more expensive health insurance. Immediately if not sooner.

There is no reason to wait four and a half hours to get five lousy shots. That’s almost an hour a shot.

He’s staked his position, and he’s not budging: “I don’t like playschool. I’m staying here!”

I’m glaring back at him, BlackBerry in my backpack buzzing work requests it seems I will never get to.

We had an episode like this not so long ago, involving both T-Rex and his twin brother, Punk. They pretty much staged a mutiny against school, and I devised what I thought was a brilliant solution. I told them we were going on safari. Punk’s favorite stuffed animal, “Elephant,” had gone missing, so I suggested we go find him. The search would just happen, you know, during the walk to school.

I strapped on their safari hats, and boy did my ploy work. They were out the door in seconds, running down the street calling “Elephant! Elephant!”

We had a few hitches. Like Elephant had recently scratched his butt (which required a band-aid), and there was some concern that he was incapacitated. Also, Punk decided we couldn’t move forward without a map. Luckily, I produced an imaginary one that he then kept checking. We looked for Elephant behind bushes, under leaf piles, and up in the trees (I know I know, elephants don’t generally climb trees, but you do what you have to do).

The whole thing went gangbusters until I steered them into their school. They immediately lay down on the floor, screaming and wailing that they thought they were on safari, not going to school. And, well, I felt like a jerk for duping them.

So now I have the same school-resistance problem with T-Rex, but obviously I’m not going to do the safari bait-and-switch again. I’ve got to plot some other response. Trouble is, dealing with T-Rex takes some serious maneuvering. A mini version of his grandfather, he’s every bit as smart—and stubborn.

I need a political strategist on this one. Where is David Axelrod when you need him?

I’ve already tried the appeal to sympathy:  {sigh} “C’mon sweetie-pie, you’re going to make mommy late for work.”

T-Rex: Glare. Pout.

And the appeal to reason. “T-Rex, you don’t have a choice here. Sometimes mommy and daddy don’t feel like going to work, but we have to. And you have to go to school.”

Frown. "I’m staying HERE!”

Tick tock, tick tock. Now I really am late for work.

I resort to coercion, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him to the door. “Look bucko! I don’t have time for this. Come ON!”

This, of course, prompts him to park himself on the floor and draw the most effective weapon in his arsenal: tears.

“I don’t.” [sniffle] “Wanna go.” [choke] “I don’t” [snort] “Liiiiiiiiike it theeeeere.”

Now, as planned, he’s got me. I can’t have tears, so I’ll have to try an extreme tactical shift. Even though it’s against my cynical nature, I opt for the pep talk.

I roll up my sleeves, sit next to him on the sofa, and ask if there's a problem at school. He shakes his head, no. Time to turn on the sunshine:

"T-Rex, sure you like it at playschool! You get to eat syrupy pancakes for breakfast. And sing songs. And play with the computer. And [I'm reaching now] and Ms. Johnson is there. She reeaaally likes T-Rex. You're her favorite!"

T-Rex considers this for a moment. Then he jumps off the sofa and gets all puffed up. "Oh yeah. I'm the best boy. I'm the strongest, big boy too. I'm Ms. Johnson's biggest boy of all. And I have really strong muscles." He flexes a bit, then puts on his jacket, all ready for school.

Touchdown! I'm dumbfounded that this tack actually worked. And I'm curious whether any of the strategies I tried are actually what experts recommend for tackling (in expert-speak) school refusal, AKA school phobia or school avoidance.

The American Academy of Pediatrics Web site confirms that yes, I was right to insist that he go to school; let a child stay home for no good reason, and the school refusal will only increase.

And, my asking him if there was a problem and playing up the positives of school are also recommended strategies of the site Phobics Awareness. Both sites also recommend speaking with a child's teachers about the problem—that's on my to-do list.

OK, I gotta admit, I was feeling pretty smug after I packed T-Rex off to school and read that I'd, for once, done all the right things. Small victories, folks. Small victories.

And I was still feeling pretty pleased when I went to pick up him up from Ms. Johnson's room after work. Unfortunately, it was not a happy scene. T-Rex was sitting in the corner, sulking, and Ms. Johnson looked, well, tense.

 
"What happened here?" I asked.

"Well, T-Rex got hold of my ink stamp pad, and stamped ALL of my report cards. I mean all of them. Stamps all over them. I'll have to get a whole new set."

Understandably, she was more than a little ticked off. We quickly made our apologies, and I hustled T-Rex out of there.

Crud. T-Rex had just single-handedly obliterated my "You're Ms. Johnson's favorite" tactic. Why am I not surprised?

She was all whipped up. “I mean the nerve!” she fumed. “I’ve earned this. I had a dress altered. I don’t want to be stuck behind a damn camera. Not gonna do it. I want to snarf heavy hors d'oeuvres and get snockered. I want to schmooze!”

I tried talking her down, but it didn't work because I totally identified. Not on the schmoozing part. (I couldn't schmooze my way out of a wet paper bag.) I sympathized that logging the event would crimp her fun. Because that's exactly what happened to me at my twins' fourth birthday party last weekend.

It wasn't enough for me to be party planner and people herder; I also appointed myself photographer. So while everyone else was dancing with giant parrots, feeding bison, and stroking camels (the party was at a local petting zoo), I was scrambling around the "safari" wagon like I was after the money shot for National Geographic.

I kept it up the entire time.

Click. Click. Click. Distribute bottles and pellets for barnyard-feeding. Click click click. Order pizza. Click. Click. Click. Everyone on the pony rides. Click. Click. Click. All aboard the wagon. Click. Click. Click. Catch ostrich grabbing cup and chugging pellets. Click. Click. Click. Serve pizza. Click. Click. Click. Cake and candles. Click. Click. Drop dead from exhaustion.

Afterward, I realized I hadn't spent one free moment with either birthday boy. When I wasn't playing traffic cop, I was full-on recording.

In a way, I'd totally missed their freakin' birthday!

So now I'm wondering what else I've missed.  As a blogger, I am always writing, tweeting, Facebooking my observations. That means I'm not living in the current moment. I’m capturing the one that just passed.

And I'm not alone. Millions of other moms—and dads—are out there snapping, blogging, and video-logging their kids' milestones and antics. Now, as I blathered in a previous post, there's a positive side to all this. If you don't capture those first steps and words, it all gets buried in the mush of your poor, information-overloaded brain.

When you record it, you not only have a record to return to later, you also help cement your memory of it—as found by memory researchers. But there’s a price: Not only does your reality become more about the recording, but your reality may be altered by the recording.

Imagine if a bride had to videotape her own wedding. Walking down the aisle and cutting the cake would be more than a little awkward. And it would no longer be her day. It would be her guests' day. But I bet it's been done.

Just think of all the people Facebooking and tweeting their babies' births. I was one of thousands who followed Pregnant Jane (@HisBoysCanSwim) as she tweeted the birth of her son, Monkey, from the very first contraction to the big delivery. It was like my favorite show, "Birth Day," except on Twitter.

And our obsession with digital recording is only going to escalate as the technologies get smarter. As noted in a recent CNN article, Microsoft will soon be releasing a wearable digital camera, SenseCam, that auto-snaps your every action, 24/7. Think of the implications! Will we all become walking citizen journalists recording everything that we and others do? Swear, and it's on the record. Burp, and it's on the record. Everything you do and say can and will be used against you on the Web.

On the other hand, if you do want to record something, it'll be even easier. And we're all so addicted to documenting everything that I can't see us foregoing the recording equipment.

Consider my friend. She called me all gushing and aglow after her Capitol Hill event. But she had one complaint: "Nobody brought a camera," she wailed. "Not even one person. So now we've got no record of it at all."

But boy did she enjoy herself.

I had an office across the hall from one of these people once, and I swear I knew more about what was happening in her life than my own.

I'd get the blow-by-blow on troubles with her ex-boyfriend, for example.

"WHAT'S WITH THE NAKED PICTURES OF HIMSELF HE KEEPS E-MAILING ME??" she'd roar into the phone. "I MEAN REALLY, IT'D BE ONE THING IF HE WERE HOT….WAIT, HOLD ON, GOT A WORK CALL HERE."
[Click]

"YOU FINALLY GOT MY REPLACEMENT CHAIR? 'BOUT TIME. I'M ON THE SEVENTH FLOOR. ACROSS FROM THE QUIET GIRL."
[Click]

"BUT EWWW. I MEAN THERE'S ONE PHOTO WHERE HE'S POSING ON A TRACTOR, AND IT'S LIKE WHAT THE HELL?"

I really don't want to know this. But now I've got this picture stuck in my head. Eww is right.
She hangs up. Apparently, the next call is to her plumber.

"HEY!! WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE TOILET SNAKING??"

Oh for crying out loud. Now I'm covering my ears—though, really, defense is useless. Even if both our doors are shut, it's still like she's barking in my ear. And if I put my earphones on, people sneak up behind me and scare the bejesus out of me.

Turns out there's a name for my former co-worker's malady: Voice Immodulation, as portrayed by comedian Will Ferrell in his role as State Department attaché, Jacob Silj, on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. Click here to watch a clip of his SNL Voice Immodulation segment. In it, Ferrell scolds interviewer Tina Fey for her insensitivity when she complains that he's shouting:

"I SUFFER FROM VOICE IMMODULATION TINA. I'M UNABLE TO CONTROL THE PITCH OR VOLUME OF MY VOICE…." he yells. "NUMEROUS PROMINENT AMERICANS SUFFER FROM THIS DEBILITATING DISEASE, TINA, INCLUDING THE GUY WHO PLAYED RAJ ON "WHAT'S HAPPENING" AND TENNIS GREAT PETE SAMPRAS."

I'm not sure about Sampras, but the late Billy Mays, giant of infomercial screaming (OxiClean! Orange Glo!), should definitely be on that list. In fact, all actors in advertisements should be, along with Chris Matthews, Nancy Grace, and kids' show stars Dora the Explorer and all five Backyardigans.

OK, yeah, so Will Ferrell punked us. There is no such thing as Voice Immodulation.

But in all seriousness, I think Ferrell is onto something: There's a whole lot of unnecessary shouting going on. In restaurants, in the workplace, on TV, into cellphones, on the sidewalks and subway trains—and not just by teenage girls.

And what's really triggered my shout-mograph is my four-year-old son T-Rex. I'm pretty sure I'm living with a miniature version of Billy Mays. I love him to bits, but his voice is deafening.

"MOMMY/DADDY I AM THROWING THESE PILLOWS BECAUSE I….BECAUSE THEY'RE IN SPACE AND THEY'RE GOING TO HIT THE EARTH AND BLOW UP. AND. AND I'M GOING TO MAKE A SPACESHIP OUT OF THEM. THEN I WILL CRAWL IN THIS HOLE 'CAUSE I'M A POSSUM. I'M RAJA THE POSSUM. AND I…..I WANT JUICE. MOMMEEE I WANT JUICE. MOMMEEE! MOMMEEE! I WANT JUICE!"

 You can read about what happens to me after several hours of this in my post from last week.

And here's the problem, people: I can't seem to get him to quiet down. No matter how many times I say inside voice, take it down a few notches, settle down, easy tiger, whoa there Tex, and plain old sssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh, he keeps up this earsplitting delivery.

 I tried looking for advice on the Web, but there isn't much out there.

The closest thing I could find—and it isn’t close at all, really—is Pragmatic Language Disorder, in which people say the wrong thing at the wrong time with inappropriate voice modulation and body language. I’m not saying T-Rex isn’t capable of this—he’s a kid, after all, and kids do that sort of thing—but it’s not his issue.

(It’s more characteristic of the socially inept adult who says at an intimate Thanksgiving gathering, “You know there’s gelatin in that pecan pie you made, in the marshmallow. That’s animal hooves you know. I don’t EAT that!”)

No, T-Rex has a basic volume problem. And I’m wondering, was I like this as a kid? Surely I was a quiet, sweet angel. I vaguely remember my parents shushing my sister and me now and again, but it couldn’t have been often, right? I’m sure we listened and immediately dialed it down.

Hey, whatever it takes. I’d just like to nip this in the bud while T-Rex is a kid, so that he doesn’t end up with full-blown Voice Immodulation, so that he doesn’t become an office yeller. Not only do I not want him driving everyone else around him to tears, I don’t want him broadcasting intimate details of his personal life to his office-mates. He’ll have the Internet for that.