A Little Face-Time for Facebook …

Another weekend, another couple hours on Facebook … yes?

 

Actually, I wasn’t able to spend much time on Facebook this week or this weekend, and I was surprised at how much guilt I felt. I received an “out of office” pingback from a girlfriend, in fact, and when I hurriedly sent a different e-mail to her home to ask about her absence (her pingback mentioned surgery), she said “Check out my Facebook page for details. …” Gulp. (As in “You obviously haven’t been reading my Facebook page.”) More guilt. Am I supposed to be reading it every night? I got on Facebook to have a little fun, but now I’m wondering if signing up is sort of like signing a contract to spend at least a half an hour on it per day. Or else you might get Superpoked.

 

If Twitter is the great big networking cocktail party (where you stand around swirling your Manhattan, looking for someone to introduce yourself to), surely Facebook is the raucous Christmas party in your family’s home basement, no? It’s the casual-sweater-wearing crowd, where everyone is sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, passing photos up and down the line.

 

At first, I really liked this casualness. I loved getting in touch with old friends, and I loved looking at everyone’s pictures. Continue reading

Be-yoo-ti-ful

“Wow,” says my little guy as I come downstairs, “you look be-yoo-ti-ful, Mom.”

I clonk down the last few steps in my high heels. Adjust my work blouse. Blush. “Thank you,” I tell him. And then I go in the kitchen and calmly revel.

My son just turned nine, although he’s very small and I think of him as younger. Plus he’s the youngest child, which sticks him with a certain “baby-state” status, I suppose.

I listen as he goes back to his morning program – Full House or something – and stir my oatmeal. I add the blueberries in. Put down my spoon. Revel again.

“Be-yoo-ti-ful.”

Deep sigh. …

I figure I have another five or six months of such gushing. Maybe eight, maybe nine. I recall fifth grade as being a huge turning point with my older son, so I’ve got about eight months until then.

My oldest son used to think I looked like the Columbia Pictures icon. When he was about three, we’d all be sitting on the couch, watching City Slickers or some such thing, and the Columbia music would come on. The iconic goddess would fall into her place – looking a little like the Statue of Liberty, or something, only with redder hair. Now I guess this would be a good place to mention that I – under no circumstances whatsoever – look like any kind of goddess, red hair or otherwise. I don’t have stature. I don’t wear robes. I don’t carry a torch. And yet, to a 3-year-old who loved me, I guess I did. “It’s Mommy,” he would say, pointing to the screen, looking to his father for verification. My husband always had the decency not to laugh.

So this morning I make oatmeal, stirring the blueberries in. And I think about my boys, and how I get to be a goddess for a few short years – maybe eight, maybe nine. …

You spend all of your teens, and even some of your 20s, hoping a handsome man will tell you that you look beautiful. But no one tells you that the comment you’ll hang onto forever – the one you’ll start to mourn – is the unsolicited one coming from your little guys, four feet tall, when they’re missing eyeteeth and have cowlicks in their hair. …

The 2008 Acardemy Awards

img_2248Yes, it’s that time of year: That time when the Christmas cards come down off my little wall-holder wreath and get filed away for the year. But I always take one more (long) look at each one – rereading each, as it were (because maybe a 9-year-old was tugging on my jacket the first time I tried to read it as we walked back from the mailbox). And each year (at least in my head) I give out annual awards.

 

So here we go. May I have the envelope please?

 

This year’s award for First Card Out goes to Bookclub Barbara (I’ll use first names only). Barbara, I believe, has won this honor more than one year — she’s always on top of things. (Unlike me, who is running to the post office on Christmas Eve, dropping envelopes in the rain, locking my stamps in the car. …) She always sends a beautiful and thoughtful (never rain-soaked) card.

 

This year’s award for Most Adorable Photo … ooh, this is hard because so many were so cute, but I’d have to give this one to Aunt Betty. Continue reading

Post-Holiday Checklist

  • The Stockings Not Hung ...Wrapping strewn on the floor; mom not caring … check.
  • Stockings no longer hung by the chimney with care (instead, strewn on the ground with the wrapping) … check.
  • Crumbs from cookies, eaten for breakfast; mom not caring … check.
  • Evidence of candy, also eaten for breakfast; mom not caring … check.
  • Children looking wonderfully satiated (might be a candy coma) … check.
  • Husband giddily playing with some sort of techno-gizmo … check.
  • Lights still lit on the tree; will remain lit until well after New Year’s; mom so thrilled with lights she doesn’t care that it could very well stay up until close to Super Bowl… check.
  • Teenagers still asking if we can have a “family sleepover” and watch movies all night … check.
  • All kinds of goodies not normally eaten at this time of year (some not even consumed yet – might even make it to the freezer) … check.
  • Three happy kids, one happy husband, very happy mom … check.
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