A bit of catching up to do

(This is just one of dozens of lilacs on the bush outside my kitchen window. Their scent reminds me of my mom. Can't believe she will have been gone 37 years. I wish the boys could have known their grandma Tony...what a gal!)


What’s it been? By my count, it looks like 10 months and two weeks since we last got together.

One can pack a lot of experiences into that time frame. Along with the usual and sometimes unusual behaviors associated with a now four-and-a-half-year-old Lab, hubby and I have had family members and friends diagnosed with cancer, we lost a wonderful friend in January (the same month a cousin had a stroke), and I fell through our front steps on Ash Wednesday evening while on my way to church services.

I have to stop here and tell you about that. We live across from city hall and this incident happened around 5:45 and there were still some folks parked across the street. I was running late when I put a foot on the second step and Poof! As I sat down hard, the world went gray and I heard a voice: “Margi, are you OK?” I could see what looked like a head floating in the distance and the first thought that came to mind was, “Why would God ask if I was OK? Doesn’t He know?”

But it wasn’t God; the voice had come from a city hall employee who saw me fall and was trying to be helpful. After getting my bearings I called hubby from my cell phone to ask if he’d come outside, pull me out of the hole and get me to the car. I got no sympathy from a colleague at work the next day. “Did you know the step was rotten when you stood on it?” she asked. When I said yes, she smiled, shook her head and walked away.

I won’t go into the rest of the fun and not-so-fun times from the last few months, but I will tell you that the girls and I went shopping the other day and it was a hoot and a half. We had the usual laugh fest on the way to Peoria, an unforgettable breakfast (though we all wish we could forget it), time spent at a favorite bookstore and a stop at a favorite restaurant on the way home.

Waitress Liz at the Steak ‘n Shake by the Shoppes at Grand Prairie is one heck of a young woman. I remember her from when we pulled into the parking lot a couple of years ago. Another customer was letting their yellow Lab out for some exercise and I was attracted like a magnet. I petted the pooch and headed inside. Liz was our waitress then, for the first of many times, and she politely asked if we could wait a minute so she could run out and pet the doggy. Well, duh. That’s the kind of person we firmly approve of, so out the door Liz went. She was one happy camper when she returned to take our orders.

Fast forward two years and after Liz took our orders Monday afternoon, she told us about Bear, her yellow Lab, and Coal, her black Lab, both two years old. She showed us pictures and told us tales and we had a wonderful time.

In fact, it almost made us forget about the oatmeal fiasco from breakfast. Almost. But that’s for another time. Besides, maybe I’ll soon have some good news on that front for my shopping buddies. I just have one favor to ask for the next time we go out for breakfast: Please, ladies, order the eggs. Thank you.

Finally, Facebook fatigue

I had time this week to take photos of a sweet squirrel who tried like mad to get inside our front porch. Time away from Facebook equals time to do something else. Glad I did.



Too much time spent on Facebook drove me a bit batty, so I offer this message. My solution won’t suit everyone, and it may need re-visiting but it’s working. For now, anyway.

It finally hit me.

Last week I was slumped in the chair, chin in hand, eyes half-closed as I read Facebook updates. Lots of folks had posted their latest levels in whatever games they were playing, others wrote about the weather and some had uploaded new photos.

Games, weather and photo postings—I can handle those just fine. What was causing the creeping depression within my heart was what I found on a “friend’s” wall. In an effort to explain what a trio of numbers meant to someone who had asked, this guy wrote: “It means arey coad.”

Sigh.

I know this person very well. And I make mistakes too, but I was under the (apparently false) impression that anyone over the age of 8 could spell “area code.”

But there’s more to the story. This person is not one of my “friends”; I was able to find out what was going on in his life simply by clicking here and there and before I knew it, there I was, reading an awful lot from someone who wasn’t even connected to me in the normal Facebook way.

Which, I realized with a dawning horror meant that some folks could be seeing my messages, etc. to my FB friends. Suddenly I was alert.

More clicks and more time passed and I found that friends of my friends had several people on FB who, for lack of a better word, hate me. I’m not trying to tell anyone that everyone has to love everyone else. I’m just saying that I don’t feel comfortable knowing that people who haven’t been my friend for going on a decade don’t need to be reading up on my FB writings.

It’s just a quirk of mine.

I’ve been telling anyone who would listen what a cool place Facebook is. One of those people asked me to come over one day and sign them up. The night before our appointment is when I came to the conclusion that FB wasn’t such a happy place for me after all.

It wasn’t just that I knew “they” could see me; worse, I could see “them.” I found out too much and it was keeping me up at night. I was becoming moody and withdrawn as I agonized over things that were said and done, things that were none of my business. Something was going to have to give.

I decided it was time to take a break from FB. It was easier than I thought it would be (why revisit anything that gives you grief?) and the thought of dropping the site altogether started to sound good.

My friend and I kept our appointment to get her up and running on FB, but before we began I told her what had happened. She, too, was having second thoughts and so we laughed, headed for the kitchen for cookies and coffee and talked. Face to face, not FB-style.

The suggestion was made that I drop FB altogether but I nixed that idea. “No,” I told her, “this time I’m going to think and pray about it. Maybe there’s something else I can do, but in the meantime I’ll put up a note that I’m taking a break for a while.”

During the few days I’ve been away from FB, I rediscovered time—time for reading, getting some long overdue writing started, and more.

There was this one morning, a couple of days ago. The strong breeze coming through the kitchen window was snapping the curtains. I could hear birds singing (no TV, no radio). The refrigerator motor clicked off and the quiet was perfect for reading. There were fewer than 30 pages left of a book that was close to 1200 pages long and I wanted to savor the time left with this story.

Some time later I came to the end of the book. I stood, refilled my coffee mug and stood at the kitchen window. The novel’s characters were still with me and as I sipped coffee and watched birds flitting from tree to tree, I took a second to glance at the clock above me. It was startling to see how early it was, to realize I’d had time to finish a book and could now move on to other things.

My absence from FB afforded me more time, but it also gave my mind time to clear itself out. I knew I would not be going back to the old ways and that meant decisions needed to be made.

Instead of closing my FB account, I decided to clean house. I would have to de-friend some folks and that was going to be difficult. I don’t have the right to tell people who to have as friends, but I can break the connection that brings my enemies easy access to my part of FB.

Still, it’s confusing. I know that I can still click around and find those who haven’t set their privacy settings high enough. I’ve tightened the security around my FB site, and I hope that’s enough but who knows for sure? I’ll try things this way first and see what happens.

It wouldn’t surprise me if some folks get peeved and de-friend me. (I de-friended my sister and she was fine with it.) That’s OK. It’s a free country (thank God) and I won’t hold a grudge. That would be hypocritical, and time-consuming.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. Instead of flitting around on FB, I’ll be joining hubby and the dog for some quality time in the real world. It’ll be fun later to catch up with friends who are too far away to visit in person, but there needs to be balance in our lives. Hopefully I’ve taken the first step in that direction.

Time, as they say, will tell.