Snow!

Over the New Year's holiday David, Jackson and I flew to Pennsylvania with my Dad to visit his mom and siblings and my cousins.  It was Jackson's first flight on an airplane and he was seriously excited.  I worried he would be restless on the 3-hour leg of our flight, but he did a really good job.   Snacks and coloring supplies along with the window-seat helped keep him occupied.  And he got very excited when he could look out the window and see the city below.  "Look, we're on top of the world!" he would say.

It snowed heavily the entire three days we were there, which meant we didn't get to travel to my Uncles house as we had planned, but we luckily got to see many relatives at the New Year's Day party at my Aunt's house before the weather turned colder.

Jackson really took to the snow.  It was 15 degrees outside and the snow was up to his knees in places, but he played outside an hour at a time, several times a day.  David was a great sport and spent a lot of time playing in the snow with him.  I spent a lot of time inside reading a book and watching the picturesqe scenes of snowplay and fun in the picture window.  I did go out long enough to play a bit, get my picture taken in it and get really cold.

I enjoyed the few days in the snow, but can see how hard it would be to navigate life day after day in that mess.  It would not remain picturesque for long. 

Course it isn't easy here in August either.  So we all have our weather to deal with.

(What happend to blogger spellchecker?  Where have you gone, oh hider of my horrid spelling...)

What is this thing called blog?

So many happenings since I last blogged. My 2 year-old laptop bit it before Christmas. And I had to wait two weeks for the computer guys to diagnose it dead. Then a New Year's trip to Pennsylvania. Then computer shopping.
Geez, and you wonder why I haven't blogged. Not only have I been busy and lap-topless, every time I have sat down to blog I open with an amazingly boring-ass paragraph like the one I just wrote. I can hardly stand not deleting it for sheer mundane crappiness.

Let me tell you what killed my blog. Facebook. Facebook killed my blog. For two reasons. The first reason is laziness. Why write a six-paragraph semi-entertaining essay about what you did on your trip to PA when you can condense it into a one or two-sentence witty status update that might make your friends smile for 20 seconds as they go about their day. Facebook is the lazy-man's BlogSpot.
It is also a forum that is making me share way, way less about my life. Because every day, twice a day, (at least) I scroll down the news feed reading the one or two sentences that my 300-plus "Friends" choose to post for the pleasure of anyone they have ever met and all I can think about most of the time is how stupid it all is.

Really. I am not talking about the handful of truly witty real-life friends that I have. And if you are reading this blog, of course I am not talking about you : )

But I just want to comment all the time in ways that are really not appropriate, though I think are very much called for. Here are some generic things I would like to say on facebook.

1. If your job sucks that much, please attempt to get a new one.

2. If you join every application sent to you, fine, just don't effing invite me to join too.

3. You're a fucking conservative, really? I wish I wasn't your facebook friend so I wouldn't have to know that. I was blissfully ignorant before and happy to stay that way.

4. If you are so melancholy and depressed that every status update is a cry for help, I feel for you, but seriously wish you would get some medication and at least pretend to be happy sometimes.

5. If you don't have anything to say, please for the love of christy, don't post a status update.

I could go on and on. Which is interesting when you consider how addicted to loitering on facebook I am. I love it. I like looking at pictures of people I knew in high school and seeing how they turned out and comparing them to the way I turned out. I love how extremely funny and apt so many of my real-life friends are. They make me laugh and I am constantly reminded why my dearest friends are my dearest friends.  And I love being able to send a message to people so easily. It helps me out in my work. If I need to get a message to a Palace actor or techie and I don't have their number or email, chances are they are my friend on facebook and I can easily connect with them.

But I don't say much. My status updates are not frequent. I am inundated with so much worthless noise that I simply don't want to say anything for fear that I will add to it. Unless I truly think I have something to say or simply can't stand not posting my mundane doings - such as posting about the delicious bowl of ice cream I might be having - so I don't. Unless I am in a show and want to bug all my 330+ dear friends to come.

And at the same time, I stopped blogging.  The fear of mundane narcicism carried over to this forum in my mind.  And I have so many acquaintances reading here and I don't have a set topic. And I don't feel like writing a self-absorbed, non-offensive entertainment column. Like I am writing an endless essay entitled "What I did today"  and it must be entertaining and can't contain any swear-words or support for gays, abortions or democrats or else my readership might not like me anymore.

Sheesh. All this to tell you why I haven't been blogging.

In penance for this post, I will immediately follow up with a blog about PA, snow and how much Jackson loved it. But I simply had to break my blog silence with a rant. So there.