My mother is just not with it technology-wise. The main problem this causes is that she doesn't check her e-mail regularly. First, she has AOL, which as we all know sucks. Second, she belongs to several list-serves and hasn't figured out to get the messages in digest forms as opposed to plain old e-mail form so as a result she gets bombarded with e-mails. Throw in a really bad dial-up connection (since corrected) and so she finds herself drowning in e-mail. With all that e-mail backing up, she gets anxious to check her e-mail and so rarely does.

For those of us who check e-mail every five minutes and go into heart palpitations whenever we can't, this is craziness. It's not just a matter of not being able to understand the lack of desire to check e-mail (there are people out there who are just that way), but it's how hard it is to communicate. Send e-mails about the latest news and it takes her weeks to get it. Can't make plans because it'll be too late for her to get to them. The rest of my family will have entire conversations about stuff she's involved in and she won't get any of it.

How are we supposed to function as a family if she won't keep up with what's going on? How are we supposed to do anything? What am I supposed to do, call her?