The Sound of Silence

Just to keep my hand in, a little post to say: I am thoroughly enjoying the fact that my little cherubs, safely enfolded in their beds at Grandma & Grandpa's house, have made nary a peep since being put to bed. I do believe they may actually have fallen to sleep, in record time. God bless the long drive, good weather, swimming pool, and playground - and of course Grandma and Grandpa - for wearing them out. Sweeeeeeeeeeet silence.....

The Luckiest Woman in the World

Does your husband of seven years still send you spontaneously written love poems - good ones, I might add - just "because"? I am THE luckiest woman in the world.

Proud Mama

I'd just like to take the opportunity to let the world (all 5 of you) know that my little baby girl had her first ballet performance today. She was Cinderella (all 3 girls were Cinderella, actually), and she was brilliant. Of course, she was also 3 1/2 - she was distracted by the people in the room, she chewed on her dress, and when they were done and curtsied and the room broke into my applause, my little Elvis said, "Thank you! Thank you!" But, Daddy and I couldn't have been prouder, and yes, we captured it on video to share with the world (not via the internet of course, but in what will no doubt be relentless repeated showings in the living rooms of friends and loved ones for years to come - including future dates, natch).

My little baby is growing up. :)

My How I've Grown

Last spring (2008), my husband and I (and our kids) took a big leap: we joined a church. (Before you stop reading, this is NOT an evangelistic piece of proselytizing - just setup for a story.) We had agreed that although neither one of us is particularly devout (okay, we're not devout at all), nor feel adamantly Christian (my husband is at least decidedly Christian; I am...a firm believer in God), we want our children to be raised in a church. Better to have them grounded in something to rebel against than have no grounding at all. And I'm the first to admit that, questionably-Christian though I may consider myself, I definitely find increasing value in the general lessons I learned being raised in a church - helping others, serving the community, the importance of worship, fellowship, and stewardship (can you tell I'm Lutheran?), and even evangelism, even if my version of practicing those things is a little off the Lutheran mark. So, we found a congregation we liked, and joined.

Gradually, through the year, we've gotten a shade more involved in the church. It's still difficult to do since our kids are so little - there just isn't a lot of time, and because both kids have food allergies, many events are just off-limits to us for now because, as all good Lutherans know, where two or more of you have gathered in his name, there is food. But, we are sending our daughter to the church's preschool, I found myself joining the preschool's board, and although they're fewer and farther between than I would like, I've tried to find things I can contribute to the church as a volunteer here and there - making casseroles, weeding the grounds, managing the nursery snacks (okay, that last one is as much out of self-interest and the protection of my children as it is philanthropy, but at least I'm generous enough to provide the snacks out-of-pocket and not ask for reimbursement). I like that we're slowly but surely becoming active members of the church (even if our Sunday attendance remains a bit...irregular).

I like it so much, in fact, that I did a crazy thing. I went to a church council meeting last night. Crazier still, I am totally jazzed about the experience. I happened to drop in on a great night, when there was a really engaging discussion about our church's service structure and the various needs it's not quite addressing and how we might go about changing it over the next year. I was impressed with the discussion, the questions asked, the group's dynamic - even the subtle suggestion of dissent in some cases (and not-so-subtle, but that was more on other topics than the service structure), and here I am today, still reviewing that discussion in my head, still thinking it was a great meeting (I don't think I knew there could be "great" meetings), and being thoroughly proud of myself for finally getting up and going.

Worse yet, I actually smiled today when a council member that I happen to know from the preschool called me to say that she was so glad to see me there last night. Just that, no other reason for the call. One of those calls that, a few years ago, I would've cringed to receive, because it would have been such an obviously ploy to suck me in and make me like the place and try to get me to be more involved, and how dare they, because really, it's a church not a used car dealership. But today, I enjoyed the call, because I want to be sucked in, made to like the place, and be more involved. I felt honored that she took 5 minutes out of her busy day (I could hear her young children in the background) to call and just say "good to see you last night." I felt...well, a part of the community. Heeeey...wait a minute... (LIGHT BULB) Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he just dropped a big ol' dose of sugarplum "gotcha" on me. I have joined a church and, surprise, I like it. Go figure.

The Crazies Come Out of Every Corner

So I get a new Facebook friend request today, and I had to read the name three times because the first time I thought, "who?"; the second time, I thought, "No way...it can't be who I'm thinking it is..."; and the third time finally brought, "NO $#!%. It really is who I think it is."

Now, I'll admit to spending several minutes being completely petty and childish, ranting about how I hated this woman when I worked with her, because she was totally insane and made our collective lives miserable (she was the client, we were The Evil Contract Staff). I even e-mailed the mutual friend through whose Facebook profile she located me to commisserate. He agreed that the request was absurd, and explained that he had been offered up by another mutual former coworker (who was also a client, and technically sort of still is), who later had the gall to make a point of specifically asking my friend to accept Loony Lady's request. No way in Hades, I said; I'll be racing to the "Ignore" button first chance I get.

And I did hit "ignore," but not because I'm still being childish and petty (tempting though that is, because let's face it, it's fun to occasionally have someone in your life you feel free to hate, and therefore harmlessly take out all your immaturity on). I just truly don't like the woman. I truly believe she is either legitimately mentally unbalanced or simply delights in making other people crazy, and either way, I want no part of her. More specifically, and this is the part of Facebook that bugs me that a lot of other folks don't seem to understand: I don't want her to have a part of ME.

I don't want to invite her into my world, where I post pictures of my weird hairdos and give status updates about the A/C unit being on the fritz. I don't want her to know how I'm doing or what my family's up to. I am quite happy to have moved on from the misery that was that particular work engagement - because let me be perfectly clear: that job was MISERABLE for me - and would be perfectly content to never hear her name again.

I truly cannot say that about most people. There are plenty of folks from, say, high school that I would not care one way or the other about - if I never saw them, heard from them, or heard of them again, oh well, but if I ran into them at the mall, I wouldn't walk the other way either. But there are a handful, just a few special folks, that I truly would go out of my way to avoid like so much plague infestation, and she is one of them. And Facebook, folks, make no mistake, lets people into your LIFE. I don't fill out quizzes or download applets, because that not only let's the world know which Harry Potter character I'm most like or what color represents my mood, but it also gives the Information Miners plenty of datapoints about my demographics.

Don't believe me? Think I'm being paranoid? Aside from the half dozen or so articles (from legitimate news sites, not conspiracy theorists) that I can point you to that explain how it works, I'll give you a concrete example: my friend Steve regularly complains about the daily ads on his Facebook home page to "Meet Senior Women." I do not get those ads. Steve gets them because he fills stuff out, and somewhere down the line, he gave some piece of information that suggested those ads might be of interest to him. I get nothing but generic Facebook advertising, because I have NEVER accepted an applet. I turn down Lil' Greenhouse requests and Super Smiles and all that other nonsense, not because I'm no fun (and believe me, I was REALLY tempted by the Typing Test Game today, given my 120 wpm average), but because I want to keep some pieces of me for ME (and my family). I don't post pictures of my kids, because I don't want to end up like the family whose annual Christmas photo ended up on a billboard in a foreign country (I am not making this up - Google it.) because somebody somewhere snatched it from the distributed e-mail (a friend passed it to a friend who passed it to a friend with an eye for marketing material...) and decided to make use of it.

I'm not saying Big Brother has arrived, but I am saying that neither legislation nor security has been able to keep up with the lightning-fast evolution of internet capabilities - nor the insidious minds of child molesters, porn distributors, or plain ol' ID hackers - and until it does, I see no reason to let a crazy woman be my friend. I've got plenty of crazy women friends in my life already.

And that, my friends, covers just a few topics on my mind today...