Author Archives: Rebecka Ratcliffe

03.06.14
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Facebook: More Like Christmas, Less Like Oxygen

I have a new Power Pose now.  I usually just go for the “Top of the Hill,” which I do…at the top of a hill, after I run up it.  It involves looking out over the horizon, hands on hips, while desperately attempting to control my breathing so I don’t die.  It is full of awesome.  Today I added “Noticing Reality” to my repertoire.  To do this Power Pose, open Facebook on your phone.  Then set the phone on the counter and turn your back on it for two minutes.  You will be filled with either a gripping panic that you might have missed something, or you will realize that the front of the refrigerator is so covered with face-shaped smudges that you’re not sure if it’s white or stainless.  You may even realize that it looks this crappy because you have been looking at funny cat pictures and haven’t cleaned the house in three weeks.

I'm really glad I Liked that comment before anyone else did. Priorities intact.

I’m really glad I Liked that comment before anyone else did. Priorities intact.

I have a Facebook problem.  I actually wear out the protective screen on my iPhone over the Facebook app before anywhere else.  It has become such a reflex that I sometimes open Facebook when I mean to open something else.  I only have 91 Facebook friends, because I sort of insist on only connecting with people I would actually meet for coffee, and how much can they really be up to since three minutes ago?  Often…nothing, despite the fact that I am checking once a day for each of them.  All I’m getting is updates from the Pages I’ve liked.  I am rubbing a hole in my phone to see that some guy I’ve never met just ran 100 miles in a tutu.  Good for him, but that floor isn’t vacuuming itself, even if I told the kids that was what I was going to do upstairs.

Why do I check it so often?  Read: Why am I so pathetic?  Well, I am an introvert and a mom who stays home.  Some days, especially if Mr. YSBH is traveling, Facebook is the bulk of my adult interaction.  There are days when it is ALL of my adult interaction.  I could go join a group of moms to drink coffee and talk about nothing but our kids.  I could get involved in something.  I could do a lot of things.  I don’t, because I don’t have the social energy right now.  An introverted person who stays at home all day with small children is borrowing social energy from the atmosphere already.  Real actual people, I think you’re great, but you exhaust me.  Facebook gives me a way to spy on keep in touch with you, without having to interact with you.

BUT THEN….there is that beautiful thing that happens in the morning.  I wake up, stretch my arms over my head, and reach for my phone to check Facebook.  NOTIFICATION TIME!  How many will I have this morning?  2? 6?  Because my phone gets in my face so much during the day, I rarely have more than a couple of notifications.  But every morning, it’s like Christmas.  Except I guess some days I was bad, because I don’t get anything, but that doesn’t really help my story along here….so….anyway…  Anytime I am able to ignore my Facebook for a few hours, I get an armload of comments to enjoy.  I keep my posts sort of light-hearted and entertaining most of the time, and I like to know that I’ve made someone laugh or think.  Having a pile of notifications to sort through is fun and gives me a chance to think about what I wrote and who was interested or amused.

OMAGHERD! LOOK AT ALL THE PRESENTS!!!

OMAGHERD! LOOK AT ALL THE PRESENTS!!!

What would happen if I started treating Facebook like this all the time?  What if I took it off my phone and checked a few times a day on the computer?  I’d miss some things.  I wouldn’t be in the middle of some conversations that I currently enjoy.  The world might miss out on some of my funny.  Rather than breathing Facebook interaction like oxygen, I would open it up like a special package.  It would take a smaller place in my life.  I might not be in the cool kids of Facebook club anymore, because timing really is everything.  The pace of my life might slow down just a little bit.

This picture, while chock-full of oxygen, does not quite have the same magic.

This picture, while chock-full of oxygen, does not quite have the same magic.

Can I do this, this “slow living” experiment?  Can I post my updates a couple of times a day, read what my friends have written, and let the rest of the world pass me by?  I tried it the other day.  I spent a Sunday doing other things, and left my phone on the charger, partly because a friend and I had agreed to do it together.  I cleaned stuff.  I finished up the macaroni thing and posted it.  I did a lot of stuff.  I didn’t feel like I missed much.  The next day, I was right back to whanging away at the Facebook app like it controls the very beating of my heart.  It’s fun to have Christmas, but not *every day*.  That would get old.

02.22.14
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Distress or Dye

Pants

my legs are corpse blue
NO! don’t sit on the white couch
in your new denim

I looked down in the shower today and noticed, somewhat alarmingly, that my legs were an oxygen-deprived shade of blue.  I immediately started thinking that I had done something terrible to myself on my run a couple of days ago, something that was cutting off the blood supply to my legs, or maybe the virus I caught from my husband was some horrible Ebola-like… oh.  New jeans.  I’m cool.

02.09.14
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17 Ways to Ruin Macaroni and Cheese

Recently, I saw a Facebook post about someone’s otherwise accomplished eight-year-old having trouble making macaroni and cheese.  I was not surprised by this.  After 30 years of making macaroni and cheese, I have issues regularly.  The little people who crash at my house eat the stuff about once a week, and I have become the world’s foremost expert on every way to make it wrong.  There’s a trophy and complimentary tickets to the local Museum of Cat Hoarding for being “foremost.”  I suppose I would rather be “hindmost,” but there’s no consolation prize.  I would always have delicious, non-ruined macaroni and cheese…that’s something, I guess.  If you would like to join me in the quest to be the hindmost, please learn from my mistakes.

  1. Buy the wrong box of macaroni and cheese.  You think they will not know the difference if you slip a batch of store-brand in the cart, and it’s half the price.  Maybe you think that since you’re likely to end up scarfing the leftovers out of the pan as “lunch,” you’re entitled to a fancy flavor like White Cheddar® and you decide that the kids will be “fine with that.”  Maybe you think that they really should be eating more organic foods, so you buy Whole Foods Kobe Macaroni and Brie.  This is not going to go well.  Kids are very brand loyal.  They know what they like, and they don’t want to support competitors.  What if Kraft went out of business because you got all whimsical one day?  WHAT IF THAT HAPPENED?

    Oh, Kroger brand...you are many things, but "Original" isn't one of them.

    Oh, Kroger brand…you are many things, but “Original” isn’t one of them.

  2. Buy the wrong shape of macaroni.  There used to be one shape of macaroni, the tubes of pasta with no ridges.  Period.  Now they are shaped like all kinds of nonsense.  Do you sometimes wish you could bite Dora’s head right in two?  Now you can!  But what if your kids don’t like Dora?  Do you want them seasoning their nutritious meal with their tiny, sad tears?  My kids like Annie’s.  As we are about to discuss, they had a strong preference for a while toward the traditional noodle.  Nothing like making a box of the cheesy, only to have Thing One stare at it and refuse to eat it because it looks like bunnies.
  3. Have the kids contract a violent stomach virus the day of the eating of the macaroni and cheese.  This….is why we couldn’t eat the bunnies for a looooooong time.  Oh.  Wow.  It was really bad.  Cute little bunnies projectile vomited all over the house for an entire day.  I can’t really blame Thing One for not wanting back on that horse right away.  It was the worst stomach virus in many years (I know because I enjoyed it later that day).  Quite enough to put you off your feedbag entirely, let alone the whole day-glo orange bunny thing.
  4. Undercook the macaroni.  *crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch*
  5. Overcook the macaroni.  I cook the macaroni a bit longer than the directions because someone in my house has been teething for the last 4 years.  Cooking it for an extra minute is fine.  Cooking it for an extra 10 minutes because someone had a diaper emergency that was not going to wait is not recommended.  At the point where all the water in the pan has been absorbed into the noodles, you have messed up.  Start over.

    This macaroni is slightly overcooked.

    This macaroni is slightly overcooked.

  6. Dump the macaroni into the sink.  My supercool technique for draining the noodles is to hold the colander above the sinkful of dishes with one hand and pour the scalding, boiling water into the colander with the other hand.  I didn’t see this technique in the colander handbook, so I think I invented it!  Where’s my patent application file?  Anyway, when you pour the boiling water over your hand, suppress the agonized cursing and fling the colander into the sink.  Since there are dirty dishes in the sink (see above), the macaroni will no longer be sanitary.  Start over.
  7. Drain the macaroni poorly.  Yummy.  Mushy noodles swimming in a lake of diluted powdered cheese sauce.  “That cheese flavor is plenty strong.  I think I’ll put a little water in there so it goes further.”  If you had a thrifty mom, you probably drank a lot of orange juice with an extra can of water in it.  That principle works almost as well for cheese sauce.
  8. Use margarine.  Or use butter.  I grew up on mac and cheese with margarine.  My kids eat it with butter.  It tastes WEIRD.  It’s amazing how different this tastes.  If you are used to one thing, the other thing will make the macaroni and cheese taste like it is quite wrong.
  9. Put in too much milk because you didn’t measure it.  I have done this so many times.  Of course I can eyeball it.  Stand back, I’m a professional.  *GLOMP*  Crap.  That is too much milk.  OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH well.
  10. Mix the powdered “cheese” in improperly.  Want an appealing visual presentation?  Imagine if you will, a Mickey Mouse bowl with a pile of slightly overcooked macaroni, and clumps of unmixed powdered cheese product sitting atop it.  Orange, lumpy and DELICIOUS.  I can only imagine what biting into a nugget of gritty, concentrated powdered cheese flavoring is like.  I can only imagine this, because I spend 10 minutes picking out the unmixed bits.  Can’t stand the thought of it.
  11. Scald the milk while trying to melt the butter on the hot burner.  It takes such a dreadfully long time to make macaroni and cheese.  It’s really hard to stir the noodles until the butter melts.  Instead, take the empty pan, throw the butter and milk and cheese powder in, and put it back on the hot burner.  Then, turn around to provide some “gentle direction” to the darling children.  By the time someone is in timeout, the milk will be burnt, and the powdery cheese will have become an amalgam suitable for long term fluorescent dental repairs.
  12. Put things in or on it to make it taste better.  Oh dear.  You sprinkled actual cheese on the macaroni and cheese?  It is a little known fact that you cannot put actual cheese and powdered cheese (anti-cheese) together in the same bowl without dire consequences.  The reaction of cheese and anti-cheese will not only create a potentially explosive situation, but possibly creates a rift in the space-time continuum that turns your simple lunch into a 90-minute ordeal.  Don’t do it.  It ain’t broke.  Don’t fix it.

    No one will appreciate this addition to the plate, coming or going.

    No one will appreciate this addition to the plate, coming or going.

  13. Put things in to make it healthy and/or a “complete” meal.  Did you know tuna can add a kick of nutritious protein to an easy macaroni and cheese meal?  Or that broccoli can give it a vitamin-packed punch?  The kids don’t.  They have no idea.  They don’t care.  No amount of discussion will convince them that a bowl of macaroni and cheese with some sort of strange debris in it is “better” than the original formula.

    Now part of this complete breakfast!

    Now part of this complete breakfast!

  14. Don’t cool it off enough.  “Hey kids!  Here’s a bowl of steaming hot lava ready to sear your tongue to the roof of your mouth!”  This is never a good way to start off lunch.  My kids do this adorable double-take grimace when I burn them with hot, hot food.  Bonus points for metal utensils in order to get both top and bottom of the mouth.  Because of the nastiness of added water, an ice cube is not an option.  I end up either putting it into the refrigerator or blowing on it.  A lot.  I have great lung capacity.  I have sat next to my son and cooled every single spoonful after an initial burning mouthful more than once.
  15. Serve it with the wrong utensil or in the wrong bowl.  The bowl is the bowl is the bowl.  No Mickey bowl?  Make something else, Mom. AND, we eat this with a spoon.  Not with a fork.  We did that yesterday.  We are DONE with that.
    Appropriate Presentation

    Appropriate Presentation

    Inappropriate Presentation

    Inappropriate Presentation

  16. Serve it cold.  At the point where the savages have been satisfied, there may be a scrim of saucy noodles left in the pan.  DO NOT be tempted to eat them at this point, unless you will not have any chance to eat anything else for several hours.  Cold macaroni and cheese is like the undead, zombie version of the stuff.  It still sort of looks like the original, but the life has gone out of it.  The only thing it can remember to do is kill.  Just don’t.
  17. Make it from a recipe, and not from a box.  This is going to be really great, kids.  I am going to spend all afternoon making macaroni and cheese for dinner.  I am going to use four different kinds of cheese.  I am going to make a loaf of bread, and then make bread crumbs out of HOMEMADE bread.  I am going to use corkscrew pasta in order to pick up as much of the delicious cheese sauce as possible.  I am going to bake it in the oven for an hour, then broil those magical bread crumbs and a sprinkle of cheese on top until it looks like it belongs in a magazine.  And you are going to refuse to eat it.  In fact, you probably won’t even try it, because the noodles are the wrong shape, there is cheese on it, and there is no box in sight.
02.07.14
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A Nice Idea

Romance

the flameless candles

were a nice idea, I guess

until she ate them

Thing Two (who is no more than two) is the one person in our family who will pop something into her mouth and then ask, “What am I eating?”  CANDLES, honey.  You are eating Mommy’s expensive flameless candles.

PS.  I would love to have you participate with your own bad poetry about my inspiring topic.  I mean, such a moving photo that I took in my house with my iPhone, right?  You can’t resist!

01.19.14
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Being Uniquely Like 90% of Bloggers

So… where’ve I been?  What happened?  Did I think that last awesome post about socks was the penultimate piece of writing I was ever going to do, and retire to the seclusion of my private island?  Well, no.  My private island is currently caught up in some red tape over “somebody can’t own an iceberg” and “polar bears don’t even use money” and “we don’t believe that you bought this from a polar bear.”   If you are still here, I owe you an explanation, and an apology, but it’s not going to be the explanation you expect, and the apology isn’t for not being here writing something funny exactly.

First, I haven’t been writing.  At least, I haven’t been finishing.  That’s pretty much the explanation.  I haven’t finished anything because I have been trying to get more sleep.  It turns out that getting five hours of sleep every night sort of does in a person’s ability to be a full-time parent and general purpose human being.  In a bid to improve everything, I’ve been trying to be in bed by 11:00PM every night.  Yes, “trying to be in bed by 11:00PM.”  And still failing part of the time.  Let me walk you through our “routine.”

Just a regular, non-preschool day:

8:00AM Get out of bed after checking Facebook, put coffee in self and self in shower

8:30AM Wake up Thing One (four-year-old boy) and Thing Two (two-year-old girl)

8:30 AM-6:30PM  All hell breaks loose and nothing gets done that is not immediately undone, or offset by something else

6:30PM-9:30PM Dinner and running and maybe some time to start the cleaning while Daddy entertains, then the LONGEST BEDTIME ROUTINE EVER

9:30PM-11:00PM (or 12:00AM, really) Dishes, laundry, cleaning, ice cream, prepare to do it all over again

Writing would happen after that last part.  I thank my lucky stars that the kids are not early risers.  It would have made my life an unbearable tragedy.  If you have children without the curiousity of 1,000 experimental scientists and the energy of supernovas, good for you.  I’m sure you have a nice routine that works for you.  My kids?  Not so much.  They are bright, and fun, and enthusiastic, and generally pretty happy…and as messy as a pair of cyclones.  There is currently a mural all over the basement done in sidewalk chalk.  There are Duplo blocks in a drift across the floor.  Thing One was reading some books today, so there’s a pile of books in the living room.  Thing Two was playing with the play kitchen, so there are fake bananas and plastic cans of peas on all three levels of the house.  All of her stuffed animals are out because they each needed a cuddle in her Big Girl Bed.  Etc… etc…

And the point of that ramble was… ummmm…  oh.  Right.  I can’t get that picked up until they are asleep.  No, they don’t take naps.  Naps are the devil.  Naps make them stay up all hours of the night (demonstrating that they don’t actually need one).  I would happily take a nap myself, except I would wake up from a 15 minute nap to a child on the roof and a mess that takes six or seven hours to deal with.

This only took an hour or so to clean up

This only took an hour or so to clean up.  Score!!

And the point of that ramble was… ummmm… oh.  Right.  In order to get more sleep, I have to go to bed earlier than I was, which means no writing time.  I also sleep very poorly a lot of the time, so my 7 hour night is often less.  More sleep.  It’s a worthy goal.  Still just a goal, but I will keep working on it, and probably writing less.  I have some things I need to write, though, so if you’ll stick with me, there will be content.  I will be that friend who never remembers your birthday, but shows up at the hospital with a handmade needlework get-well card.  ‘Cause that’s pretty much who I am.

The apology.  I’m sorry.  I should have told you.  I should have set a more realistic expectation, and I should have posted a note that said, “Hey, I’m not writing anything right now because I’m exhausted.”  Now that I’ve said something, I am actually writing again, so it doesn’t really make sense.  It’s like I’ve come to explain my prodigality at the moment I want to come in and have a seat on the couch, and that is lame.  Bloggers stop blogging every day.  It’s not a special circumstance when a blog peters off into nothing…but I don’t like to think that I created a link with a reader only to flake out like all the little starry-eyed bloggers out there with big hopes and small work ethics.

All that said, I don’t have a resolution to “get back on schedule.”  I am still too exhausted to commit to that.  I will, however, say that I am still here.  I am working.  I promise not to clutter up your reader with a bunch of posts just to have posts.  I will have some new work out here soon, though, and it will be lighter than the things I started and didn’t finish.  You should be happy.

09.03.13
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Our Socks Have Had a Rough Summer

I was clearing the lunch dishes the other day (so it was about 4PM), and the sliding glass door off the main floor deck opened. Thing One, a left-handed four-year-old boy with a rather eccentric take on life, poked his pointy head in.

“Mommy. Follow me and I will show you how to wash my socks.”

He was holding in one hand: A filthy, dripping wet sock.

I was instantly intrigued. I have tried many things. His socks are never clean, unless they have not been worn. This is because he likes to take his shoes off, but not his socks. He doesn’t want to get his feet dirty, after all. They would get VERY dirty without socks. This summer, we have decided that socks are just going to be semi-disposable.

This pair is trying to escape

This pair is trying to escape

I followed Thing One and his dripping sock down the stairs to the patio. There he had this:

Nothing works better for scrubbing socks than a bucket full of mud!

Nothing works better for scrubbing socks than a bucket full of mud!

And this:

Daddy's wine decanter brush, because we want to give the filthy sock the best gentle care

Daddy’s wine decanter brush, because we want to give the filthy sock the best gentle care

He then proceeded to dip the filthy sock in the water and scrub at it with the decanter brush. All very reasonable, and completely devoid of soap, but points for trying, right? Next, he handed ME the filthy, muddy sock.

“Use teamwork to wash my socks.”

Despite the fact that this made me want to die laughing, being the Mommy required that I hold the ruined footwear still while he scrubbed at it with the decanter brush, “Like this.” I told him that teamwork is a really good way to get something done, proving that I am taking all of this very seriously. (I want Mommy points for that.)

At this point, the sock looked something like this:

The proof is in the results!

The proof is in the results!

Thing One looked at the sock with no small amount of consternation, handed me the decanter brush, and ran off to do something else. I believe he has a bright future in management consulting.

See you later, sock golems

See you later, sock golems

08.15.13
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I’m Going Out for a Rog

I participated in a 5K race in May that was for women. In fact, it was targeted at women with children, and children of the women with the children, or something like that.  One of the race bulletins had an editorial defense of the racers.  It hinged on whether or not you could call yourself a “runner.”  Apparently, some troll decided that if you don’t run a consistent eight minute mile, you are “just a jogger.”  Troll/Trollina felt so strongly about it that he/she (there are female troglodytes, too) posted it the discussion board for a race for mothers, where it is a given that many (really, most) of the participants will not meet that standard, being of a certain age/weight/time constraint for training.

I brought it up with my brother, who was a college level distance runner in the late eighties.  The eighties were really the high point for the sport, when people like Alberto Salazar were household names and still competing, and book after book was being published on why everyone should be out pounding the pavement.  I said, spreading my hands out as far apart as I could, palms facing outward, “When you were running back in the day, it was running over here (waggle left hand), and jogging over there (waggle right hand).”  My brother started laughing and said, “Yeah, you didn’t even do those on the same day.”

Seems legit, because, SCIENCE.

Seems legit, because, SCIENCE.

The dictionary definitions are pretty clear.  Jogging, you are in contact with the ground with at least one foot at all times.  This came from something HORSES DO.  Running, you have both feet off the ground for an instant during your stride.  (As an aside, why aren’t we calling it galloping, or cantering?  I digress.)  That clears it up!  Just get a slow-motion film of yourself on the run/jog, and see if you are indeed leaving the surface of the earth for an instant.  When the Running Police ask to see your Runner Cred, you can flash a frame that shows you off the ground.  I tested this on my last long run, which I can tell you was nowhere near eight minute miles.  I felt like I left the ground.  According to the dictionary, I was running.  But it is never so simple, is it?

How many sports are there that have a whole different name for people who do it worse than other people?  The only one I could think of was golf, where someone who does it badly is called a “duffer.”  I guess this means that they don’t take it seriously enough.  Even then, it’s not really ok to call someone else a duffer, unless they admit to it first, because they may be taking it very seriously.  A slow swimmer isn’t called a “bobber” or somesuch nonsense.  An amateur hockey player isn’t called an “ice monkey,” though that is kind of funny, and if you start saying that I want royalties.  Why does a large chunk of the running population feel like they are not qualified to call themselves runners?

This is one of the hills I am sure not to take too seriously.

This is one of the hills I am sure not to take too seriously.

People seem to invent thresholds to cross before they call themselves runners.  One way that people say they “knew” is an injury.  The best of these is the Lost Toenail.  If you run around the county playing Hansel and Gretel with shed toenails, then you are qualified as a runner.  I will probably never pass this test.  I ran over six miles on Sunday,  and my toenails are just fine.  Sadly, not one is turning black or falling off.  As an extension of the injury theory, if you have an injury and run anyway, then you are a runner. Most people would say that is courageous, even if it is stupid, but it’s not some sort of game of chicken to see who has the biggest bruises or tornest ACL.  If you want to compete with the other 12-year-old adults with injury stories, you go ahead, but stop using that measuring stick on the rest of us.  If you are in it FOR the pain, they have another name for that too.  It starts with “m” and ends with “asochist.”

Mileage? Do you have to run a certain distance before you are a runner?  Do you have to run it all at once?  How about your shoes?  Maybe if I buy a really expensive pair of shoes, people will recognize that I am a runner.  And a cute little running skirt thingy.  And a Garmin.  Where does the jogging stop, and the running begin—when your credit card is maxed out, or when you are so loaded down with gear that you can’t actually run anymore anyway?

Oh, give me that dirty shoe porn...

Oh, give me that dirty shoe porn…

As a last problematic touch, I usually walk part of my training runs, and my races, since I am telling the truth here.  Jeff Galloway, author of many fine books about running, walks during marathons.  My primary goal, as someone with a couple of weak mechanical points, is to live to run another day.  Some days, this means walking through the potholey patch, or down a steep hill.  Did I go for a run if I walked at all?  It is super fantastic to be proud that you ran a 10K without walking or resting.  That speaks to your conditioning, mental fortitude, biomechanics, etc…  It is just as cool to plan to rest along the way, but does that make you “just a jogger?”

I confess, sometimes I don't sprint all the way up this one.

I confess, sometimes I don’t sprint all the way up this one.

The last thing that I see in this is a question of attitude.  I think the assumption is that if you are not running as hard as you can (defined by Trollina as eight minute miles), then you are not an athlete.  Only athletes are runners.  The simple-minded majority is a pack of joggers, idiotically smiling their way through without a thought to how damned seriously they ought to be taking this.  Check the dictionary again, and it turns out that an athlete is “a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength.” [1]   Running a mile qualifies, even if you are wearing a wig and a tutu and singing the national anthem the whole time.  In my opinion, that qualifies even more.  The dictionary does not say, “and you have to be a certain amount of good at it, or buzz off.”

Since this is so confusing, and so poorly defined, I have come up with a couple of solutions.

Solution One:  Let’s just make up a new word for all the people in-between.  Enter: Rogging!  If you are running part of the time, or all of the time, but you just don’t feel like the real runners will let you in their club, you are a rogger!  Go rogging with pride.  Get a shirt that says, “I’m a rogger!”  Start a rogging club.  When people ask you what it means, just tell them that you don’t want to make the more elite amateur runners uncomfortable by including yourself in their club without permission.

Solution Two:  If you are intentionally moving faster than you walk, you are a runner[2].  You are running.  You run—and I am damn proud of you for it.  Keep on running, and running, and running…

Let’s Go Rogging!

[1] Merriam-Webster iPhone App.  How the hell do you reference that?  Ummmm…latest download?  Version number (which I can’t find, anyway).  Let’s just agree that I don’t steal stuff, even from the dictionary.

[2] You can unintentionally move faster than you can walk.  This can be accomplished by falling off a cliff, or being hit by a car, or many other things that should be avoided.

08.01.13
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Twitter Is Just As Bad As I Thought It Was

I just recently started a Twitter account. I avoided Twitter like the plague for a long time, because I thought it was a time-sucking bunch of inane drivel. Then, a few months ago, my friend Tom Racine (@talltaleradio) convinced me to start writing a blog. Then, he said, “You have to get a Twitter account to promote it.” I replied that I didn’t want to and he couldn’t make me, because he is not my Dad. For a few days, however, the thought kept nagging at me. What if he was right? What if the little push my fledgling blog needed was a few simple tweets?

It has worked just as well as my MSPaint skills would indicate.

It has worked just as well as my MSPaint skills would indicate.

I went out to Twitter and looked up a couple of variants of my blog name, You Should Be Happy. Wow…no one had chosen “@YouShouldBHappy” yet! I’m not sure what happened after that. I think it was a bit like an auction, where you end up buying that box of garbage for $500—because if that other guy is bidding, it must be awesome. I thought that I’d better snap that up, because when my blog hits the big time, someone else might take it and try to capitalize on my success. How lucky for me that it wasn’t taken! What an opportunity! Don’t let it pass me by, oh please don’t let someone else be poised with their finger above the enter key before I can make it MINE.

So, I signed up for Twitter. I felt kind of dirty and didn’t really want to tell anyone about it, sort of like that time that Carlos Danger sent me that picture online. I made a tiny mention of it. Two of my friends followed me right away. And then a Complete Stranger followed me. I thought he must have picked it up from one of my other friends, because they are both into comics (the art kind, not the onstage kind). Cool! A Complete Stranger (sort of) is interested in seeing my tweets! Yeah! I followed him back, just to be nice. You see how naïve I am? I didn’t realize about the quid pro quo out there…

Until…another Complete Stranger followed me! A COMEDIAN. For me, well, this was great news. He is a *corporate COMEDIAN, but still. He had a couple of thousand followers. This was going to be fantastic. My Twitter future was looking bright. Two days later… he unfollowed me. I guess I didn’t follow him back fast enough. I thought:

“Maybe I should follow him, and see if he refollows me. At the very least, I can unfollow him a couple of days later, and see how HE likes it.”

So I did, and he didn’t, and I did. I’m not proud of that. I should have just passed a note to my BFF during third period that said, “Kevin is a big jerk! We won’t EVER talk to HIM again!!!!!” (Please note, his real name is Kevin, with a K, just like I’ve spelled it here. Feel free to find him and give him a piece of your mind.)

Miss Craig, would you like to bring that up to the front of class and read it for everyone? - Rhetorical Teacher

Miss Craig, would you like to bring that up to the front of class and read it for everyone? – Rhetorical Question Teacher

I’ve been out there for a couple of months now. I am baffled by the behavior of what I believe to be adults, for the most part. Here are the strangest behaviors that I’ve seen:

  • Celebrity Stalkers: Dear Celebrity Person, please please please follow me, because I want to tell my friends that you are following me! Dude, none of your friends are going to believe that you have ANY RELATIONSHIP WHATSOEVER with that famous person. They are going to think that you begged and whined in a desperate and pathetic fashion to get someone to pretend to be your friend in an imaginary world where their identity often isn’t even certain. Sounds like a grand way to use your time and measure your self-worth.
  • Retweety Birds: They never met a tweet they didn’t want to instantly retweet. They retweet someone else’s thoughts and jokes and writing all day long, never adding an original character. If your job, or avocation, is promoting an art form, a cause, or whatnot…fine. I will know that when I follow @catzpicsallday, I am going to get a bunch of pictures of cats. If I follow @originalthoughts, I would like something besides a bunch of Monty Python quotes.
  • Support Stalkers: I admit, I tweeted a rather cranky comment about how Norton Antivirus keeps interrupting my writing to tell me that it has expired, like some over-friendly ghost that pops in to say, “Yep. Still dead! That’s me, all dead,” every five minutes. While I enjoy being Kittyfriended[1] to a certain extent, I don’t really want to have to get a piece of software out of my face every 15 minutes. Now I have a new friend! Norton Support! I think the Corporate Stated Goal is to ensure that every Norton user has a top-notch experience, or somesuch thing like that. This will be accomplished by publicly announcing that they heard what I said behind their back, and they don’t appreciate me talking sh&t about them, and if I’m going talk sh&t, I’d better tweet it at their faces.
Oh, I see, it's a protection racket. Pay up, or you might have a little "accident," if you know what I mean...

Oh, I see, it’s a protection racket. Pay up, or you might have a little “accident,” if you know what I mean…

  • The Perpetually Pissed Off: Wow. You have ground that axe down to a nubbin and yet you go on and on and on. I followed one person because I thought the name on the account was clever. Turns out, that one small bit of clever was spawned during the tweeter’s brief flirtation with lithium. The rest of the time, he or she is a raging psychotic, and delights in offending and berating Complete Strangers for any wrong, real or imagined. It was terrifying and extremely annoying. UNFOLLOW, dammit, why am I not unfollowing you faster?[2]
  • The Promoters: I have a thing! Look at me! I’m on a book tour! I’m signing things! I wrote a crummy thing about Twitter, which I am now going to promote on Twitter! I obviously don’t have a problem with the occasional tweet about your thing. It’s a good way to tell people about things and stuff. I do get tired of incessant tweets about your thing. I am probably not as obsessed with your thing as you are.
  • The Weirdest Person Contestants: I did not even know that these people existed, or that they knew the alphabet. Actually, some are more adept with the alphabet than others (see @jonnysun for an apparently clever person abusing the alphabet). It seems that they spend a great portion of the day coming up with the oddest things they can. Sometimes, it is really funny. Sometimes, it is just weird, and worse, they tend to build off one another. At some point, the weirdness level is going to be so high, that it will cause a black hole to form within Twitter, and everyone’s tweets will get sucked into another dimension, and we will be able to smell them. See what I did there? That is weird. I probably should put in some typos and tweet it.

    Hey! I'm here for the number pic.... oh. Hi, D. Very clever, yeah, I get it. Ummm... get out of the way.

    Hey! I’m here for the number pic…. oh. Hi, D. Very clever, yeah, I get it. Ummm… get out of the way.

The whole experience is a bit like Student Council Elections in the 8th Grade. Millions of people competing to be Class President, with homemade marker and glitter signs. The cool kids…are already the cool kids. The wanna-be crowd is unlikely to become the cool kids. There are a few stand-outs who have made reputations, and built followings, based on the quality of what they have to say, including how they condense it into as few characters as possible. That’s cool. I’m not going to cancel my Twitter account, even though I don’t much like the overall vibe or the medium. After all, I have to keep telling my six followers about updates to the blog. I’m sure it is the highlight of that Norton Support guy’s day.

Oh…and follow me at @YouShouldBHappy. There’s a little clicky button on the side of the page right there.

Postscript: I now have five followers. The guy who draws the incredibly violent comic book has unfollowed ALL of his Twitterites except the Rajneesh. The actual Rajneesh who took over Antelope, OR, with his fleet of rainbow Cadillacs. Being a Native Oregonian, I remember the news coverage of the Rajneesh and his actions, many of which were not as above-board as you might think a “spiritual leader’ would strive for, including the first act of domestic bioterrorism. The Rajneesh has been dead for 23 years, and is still annoying Oregonians from the grave. Well played, sir.

[1] Kittyfriending is the process of getting all right up into someone’s face and meowing repeatedly until they break down and pet you. Kittyfriend was a neighborhood stray at our first house; he was aggressively friendly to the point of absurdity, which was oddly charming. Long live beautiful, scraggly, big-hearted Kittyfriends.

[2] I finally got this lunatic unfollowed. Two days later, Twitter sent me an e-mail suggesting other accounts that were like “@nutzball.” I guess this was to help me find the right kind of crazy, because I obviously wanted some crazy in my feed.

07.27.13
by

So Much Depends Upon A Red Popsicle Stick

20130610-144206.jpg

red Popsicle stick
you disappeared during lunch
where the hell are you?

Background: This is the very first time we have used this ice pop thingy. We lost one of the sticks, IN THE HOUSE, before it ever made it to the freezer. Of course, I still filled that slot up with orange juice, because it’s a perfectly good slot. Not sure what I am going to do with a frozen chunk of orange juice….maybe put it in my orange juice?

Give yourself bonus internet points if you can guess the title reference.

 

07.20.13
by

Sauron Forged My iPhone In the Fires of Mordor

My husband grabbed my iPhone out of my hand last night without warning. He wanted to make sure that I didn’t manage to get a picture of him in his Tommy Hilfiger blue-checked dress shirt, bicycle shorts, argyle socks, and clippie shoes. Believe me, I tried, but he rode away too quickly for my phone to power back up, the bastard. The grabbing…was NOT COOL WITH ME. A mild wrestling match/fistfight ensued. If it had persisted, I might have bitten off some of his fingers to get it back. Now you know why we call it “The Precious” in our house. As I sit here at my computer, The Precious is right next to me, in case I need to touch it for reassurance.

"A most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm." (Tolkien, The Hobbit)

“A most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm.” (Tolkien, The Hobbit)

It’s sort of unhealthy, I know. I did an experiment this morning, and left it plugged into the charger, Smaug, in the kitchen. ALL MORNING. That does not mean I didn’t look at anything, I just had to be in the kitchen to do it. I found out that I get a lot more done around here when my phone isn’t in my face. I also found out that there is a tiny buzzing anxiety when it’s not in my pocket, or my hand, or otherwise right next to me. It made me think about what other transformations might be happening that I don’t realize are happening. Am I going to be biting the bellies out of live fish next?

Taking inventory, I realized my circle of experience is now limited to things that show up on my phone. Clearly, a dramatic change from when I used to get input from the TV and other valuable sources. If I don’t have an app for it, it effectively does not exist. Since I have very few apps, this means I am current with what’s happening on FaceBook, Twitter, WordPress, Audible and Heiny the Weasel’s Dirty Verse Pile. Otherwise…I find out about major news when it blows up on Twitter, which is pretty surreal and weird. Honestly, I don’t have time to care right now. Maybe in a couple of years. In the meantime, if something really big happens, would you mind posting in on your Facebook timeline for me? That would really help at all the cocktail parties and diplomatic events I go to.

Catching up on my reading. It's so important to stay in touch with the finer works of the English language.

Catching up on my reading. It’s so important to stay in touch with the finer works of the English language.

I am conditioning my children to despise handheld technology. My children are not part of the clamoring horde of toddlers chanting, “iPad! Me want iPad!” They give me dirty looks when the phone comes out. They come up with all kinds of fun things we could do together instead. “Mommy! Can you come and watch me wash the windows?” The baby actually came up with this at about eighteen months: “Mommy, all done phone.” They are small Luddites for the moment. I know that they will eventually have texting calluses of their own, but maybe they will first learn how to interact with the outside world. “Remember, we don’t want to end up like Mom.”

I really love playing with the kids! Little...ummmm...little guy! Hey!

I really love playing with the kids! Little…ummmm…little guy! Hey!

Physically, this obsession with my little friend is not a great thing. My neck hurts. My thumb hurts, and the LOLs are turning into OWs. I am a few apps away from hunching over and galumphing along on all fours like Gollum. This is why I do not have any games on my phone. My repetitive motion mess is bad enough from obsessively checking Facebook, let alone adding a game where the point is to mindlessly touch the screen over and over again.

This is a normal hand-shaped hand, right?

This is a normal hand-shaped hand, right?

I spend so much time doing everything on my phone, that I am forgetting how to use a real computer. I sat for a few minutes the other day wondering how to work on two things at the same time…on the computer. In the wayback (read: five years ago), I used to run two monitors. I finally remembered that you can have more than one thing open on a real, big-boy computer. I have also actually TOUCHED MY LAPTOP SCREEN and expected something to happen besides a dusty fingertip. I could argue that this was because my desktop IS a touchscreen, but I never remember to use that feature on it. Never.

I am creating a hard-wired connection in my brain that says, “Are you close to experiencing one moment of boredom or reflection? QUICK, grab your phone!” This is accompanied by an autonomic reflexive action of my hand, reaching for the phone. If the phone is not in the expected pocket, the hand frisks me until it finds it. The fun of self-frisking aside, this is a little bit too much like a certain amphibious object of pathos. Is my fate to be intertwined with the iPhone? Will I give my life to keep it within my grasp? I don’t know, and I am nearly beyond caring…as long as I have The Preciiiiooouuuusssss…the one Phone to rule them all.

Maybe I should get out and enjoy nature.

Maybe I should get out and enjoy nature.