Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Facebook: Friend or Foe?

That all depends on who you ask around here.



There was a time when I would have never dreamed of having a Facebook account. In fact I even blogged about it here . But then I ate my words and ended up getting an account which I blogged about here. So now I am a dyed-in-the-wool Facebook fan. My initial aversion to this particular form of social networking was in part due to the few times I would check out what my daughters were doing on Facebook and from my vantage point all I could see were senseless bits of drivel such as "OMG Sushi is so good!" or "I want a cute puppy". No thanks! I have enough senseless drivel in my everyday life, I don't want to log onto some website to get more. However after delving into Facebook ( and learning how to block useless drivel) I have found that I love being able to reconnect with people, keep up with friends, and communicate with my children.



That is where Facebook becomes a foe, at least to one of my children.



For the most part the girls have no issues with me being their friend on Facebook or commenting on their walls. At least they have never voiced the fact that they have a problem with it. Trey on the other hand - well let's just say he has a big problem with it.



Trey only recently obtained a Facebook account as he was an avid My Space user, but apparently there is a mass exodus from My Space to Facebook, and he eventually followed the trend. I of course immediately friend requested him because I just knew he couldn't wait to be my online friend! I thought it was odd that I had to remind him a few times that he never accepted my friend request, but eventually he did and I was able to view and comment on his posts. For the record I only commented on two of his posts, but in his book that was two too many and after a very short period of time he un-friended me. What???? When I mentioned to him that it is a violation of Facebook rules to un-friend your own mother ( no he didn't buy that) he said "Mom! You keep commenting on my stuff". Oh how silly of me! So I told him he would make me his friend again or I would never do his laundry or cook him another meal and he begrudgingly told me he would next time he logged on.



Sure you will dude!



I actually didn't have to wait to see if he would be true to his word, because he inadvertently left his account logged in on my computer so I took it upon my self to re-friend me for him.



I like being helpful like that.



So for the most part I have kept my comments to myself as not to put our fragile online friendship in jeopardy. I did make him remove a comment from one of his sisters posts that I thought could be perceived as derogatory. But other than that I have been the perfect silent friend. Until last night when I logged onto my home page and saw that Trey had commented on someones post and he used an acronym that made me cringe. Oh I suppose he could have meant Where's The Fun? or Want To Fish? But I'm pretty sure he didn't mean either of those things. So I played dumb and casually asked "Hey Trey, What does WTF mean"? He said "Huh?" I guess he was playing dumb as well but when he saw that I was logged on to the computer my question suddenly made sense to him and the best he could come up with was "Oh".


Now I don't think my son makes it a regular practice to go around spewing foul language when he is not in my presence. I would like to think he used that acronym to try and add some street creds to a cool guy reputation he is trying to cultivate, but nonetheless he used it, so he immediately had to remove it and listen to my sermon on how cursing is really just lazy speech, makes a person appear uneducated, yada, yada, yada. When I was finished his response was "see mom this is why I un-friended you in the first place". To which my response was "no, this is why you will never un-friend me again or all of our computers will be password protected and you will have to communicate with your friends via smoke signals and carrier pigeon".

With that we came to an agreement.... or at least I feel we did.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Motherly Advice

Waiting in the car for Trey the other night, I tuned into the radio long enough to hear something about "the best advice your mother ever gave you". That started the wheels in my brain turning.

I know my mother must have given me a lot of advice. But I also know the type of child/teenager I was so that good advice was purged from my mind shortly after it was given to me. I do remember her telling me that if I read at the table I would marry a drunk, but I believe that really couldn't be classified as advice and would be more of an old wives tale because I read all the time at the table and other than the occasional margarita at a Mexican restaurant, P is not much of a drinker at all. Needless to say, I didn't pass that useless tidbit down to my family.

Seeing as I could not immediately remember any sage advice that I had received from my own mother I decided to text my daughters and ask them what the best advice I had ever given them was. While I was waiting to hear back from them I mentally made a list of the things that I thought I had effectively harped on counseled them about:

* Be who God made you to be. Don't pretend to be something you are not to try to impress someone or fit into a certain group. You are wonderful just the way you are.

* There is a lesson to be learned in everything that happens in life. Even in the not so good stuff that happens to us.

* Never wait in line for a guy to decide if he likes you or not. (This one comes from my disdain for shows like The Bachelor. I never wanted my girls to be just another "item" on some guys "buffet".

* Trust me, one day you will like your siblings
.

Surprisingly when I got the messages back from the girls, they were almost the same. They both said the best advice I ever gave them was "Be who God made you to be". Yay! I imparted some good advice! Savannah also remembered the advice "never wrap your BRAND NEW $150.00 retainer in a napkin because you might throw it away and then your mom will freak out and you will swear she is a creature from a horror movie" which was really not advice that I verbally gave her but it was definitely a life lesson she will never forget and is sure to pass on to her children one day.

Shortly after getting the texts back from the girls, Trey got into the car and since I was feeling pretty darn good about my motherly advice skills, I asked him what the best advice I had ever given him was. His exact words were "ummm I guess the best advice you have ever given me is be a man because girls don't like weenies". Okay then....not exactly the feather in my cap I was hoping for but it did bring to mind one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received which happens to come straight out of Proverbs - "Pride comes before the fall"

I guess the best advice isn't "motherly advice" at all but straight from The Father.


Oh and thanks for helping me keep it real Trey!

Friday, September 3, 2010

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Obviously I didn't blog on my summer vacation!

I thought about it, I really did! But for some reason I couldn't bring my self to put my thoughts down. I would call it a case of writers block but since I am not a writer, that term doesn't fit. Perhaps bloggers block? Yeah I like that!

This summer I suffered from a severe case of bloggers block.

I actually toyed with the idea of discontinuing the blog all together but then I read my last post and realized that I could not leave the blogosphere and have that last post as my swan song. I sounded a bit despondant in it don't you think?

So here I am to recap my summer so all those future generations I hope to reach one day won't think I jumped off a cliff in a desperate suicidal frenzy in June of 2010.

Our summer started with the kind of drama that you can only experience if you have a teenage girl in your house. Lots of crying and storming upstairs over an incident that now seems trivial but at the time was a source of much turmoil around here. I can say however after the storm cleared, I had the most enjoyable summer with my youngest daughter. We had the opportunity to spend a lot of time together and we shared many laughs and made some great memories that made it well worth the bit of turbulence we had to experience at the start of the summer.

In July we made a very long very fun car ride to Michigan. Unfortunately Greg was not able to join us as he broke his ankle in mid-June and was not able to make the long trek with us. We had a lovely celebration of my fathers life while we were there. I know he would have been humbled by the friends and family that came to reminisce about how he touched their lives. It was so wonderful to see family and friends that I haven't seen since I was a girl and it really made me realize that the people that are brought into our lives, even if it's only for a short time, are truly blessings to be cherished.

August found us preparing to send Ciara off to college and Trey to High School. Preparing for college i.e shopping for dorm paraphenalia took some serious time and effort in finding the perfect marriage of colors, print, and textures to make Ciara's home away from home the kind of place that will inspire much studying. Ummm Yeah.... Preparing Trey for High School required purchasing one pair of jeans. No worries about the perfect marriage of colors or patterns for him!

So here it is September. As promised, God has provided for all of our needs. He has provided a job for Paul and at this moment in life things are on an even keel. No, I'm not lulled into a false sense of security that things will be peachy from here on out. If there is one thing I have learned in my many years of living is that change is going to happen. Sometimes it's good change, and sometimes it's change that brings you to your knees. But we serve an unchanging God that helps us navigate lifes ups and downs and really that's all the reassurance we need.

Hopefully I will be inspired to blog again soon. I think prior to my self imposed hiatus, I had at least three people that read my blog. I'm sure they had given up hope that there would be another post and have since moved on. But I know my husband checks on occassion, and hopefully with this post he will stop saying "hey you haven't updated your blog in a while". I hope you enjoyed this update honey, but you were kind of there through it all so I'm afraid this might be a little anti-climactic for you.