To my sons in the future... a revenge letter.

Dear L, H, & A2,

H & A2

L & H

I love you guys.  You have so many wonderful traits and when we are in public I am so proud to call you  my sons because of all the compliments I get and how well-behaved you are.

BUT

I want you to be prepared for something.  It will happen after you graduate from high school and you sleep in my home.  Shortly after you fall asleep, I will creep into your room very quietly.  I will set the alarm on my phone with the most annoying sound I can think of.  Then, at random intervals throughout the night I will set the alarm off and laugh to myself as you grumble and attempt to ignore it.  I will get a kick out of the fact that you seem beyond annoyed and exhausted.  Then I will stroll back to my own bed.

Why, you ask?  Because you did it to me.  There was no rhyme or reason behind it.  You weren't teething, you weren't sick, you slept in a bed in the same room with me until you were a toddler.  You would just wake up screaming for no good reason.  I would pat you and put you back to sleep, then maybe get in another hour before you woke up again.  Sometimes you would end up sleeping in bed with me because I was just too exhausted with the whole up and down thing and refused to do it anymore.

I had to wait a good three years until you were able to comprehend, "go to your room and leave me the heck alone."  That's three years of my life that I won't ever get back (the younger two will have overlapped a bit, but L had the whole three years to ruin my sleep all by himself.  I was lucky enough that with my daughter, who is the oldest, she started sleeping 10-12 hours straight through the night when she was around 6 weeks old!

And if you eventually have children of your own, I will revel in your droopy eyes, the circles underneath them and your scraggly appearance.  Because I'm that kind of person.  And I'm okay with it.

Love always,
Mom

*And for those who are pointing out the sleep I will lose by tormenting my sons with my plan, the nice thing is that once my children are older I can sleep anytime I want.  I can get a good night's sleep, I can nap, I can doze off while driving.  I'm willing to sacrifice in order to get revenge. 

My 24 hour #Facebook deactivation experiment

Now, this is not a tale of woe, but it may sound like I'm hosting a pity party and that you are invited.  This is more an eye-opening experiment that I conducted that I wanted to share the results.

How hard or easy would this be for you?

Yesterday was my birthday.  As you all know, Facebook reminds everyone daily of which of their friends is having a birthday that day.  Several months ago (maybe almost a year) I took a weed whacker to my friends list.  It wasn't because I was mad or felt slighted in any way, it was because I didn't even know 80% of the people I was "friends" with.  I was trying to build a large friend base in order to promote my social media presence for this blog.  But I started to get frustrated with the fact that I couldn't share personal details or information because I didn't want strangers to know as much of my business as I was willing to share with the people I actually know and would publicly recognize as "friends" (although we all know that not all of our Facebook "friends" are people we really want as friends.)

So, I weed whacked it from probably 1500 to 95ish.  I've since added maybe 20 and started a Facebook page for this blog so I could keep the more personal things to just my "friends."  Now, back to the birthdays.  I'll let you in on a not so secret secret that I'm "friends" with some people who I would say hi to and maybe have a short chit chat.  So I don't tell everyone happy birthday even though Facebook tells me it is their birthday.  I do tell the people who I actually like and would probably hang out with if they asked me to.

So as part of my experiment, I deactivated my account on Tuesday night and planned to reactivate it this morning.  I wanted to see how many people would remember my birthday without Facebook telling them.  Now, if someone is only really "friends" with me because of Facebook, I don't fault them for not knowing, because they wouldn't even have any way to tell me aside from Facebook.  But there are people who have my number or follow me/friend me on other social networking sites. 

And guess what... TWO PEOPLE.  Yes, TWO PEOPLE remembered my birthday (aside from the requisite cordial "happy birthday" from two of my siblings, but that doesn't count because we aren't even friends on Facebook- plus they have it easy in remembering because it's our mom's birthday too.)  So, a whole TWO PEOPLE that I consider friends remembered my birthday and texted me to tell me.  Sorry to one person who doesn't count because my husband pointed it out to her the day before and she didn't know.  I do appreciate it though because she offered to watch my kids so I could do something... but I didn't.  Instead I cried myself to sleep at 8pm and had frozen chicken nuggets for dinner.

The experiment taught me a lesson on friendship, but also taught me that although it was a task, I was able to go a day without Facebook.  The only thing I missed was during downtime when I was trying to get one of the kids to sleep or when I was waiting at an appointment, I would usually kill time seeing if anything interesting was going on with anyone or sharing memes.  Other than that, I didn't miss it at all!  I think I could easily do without my personal account, but it's a nice way to kill time.  I don't even really stalk anyone, so that is another reason it would be easy for me to do away with.

In case anyone wants to respond, here's a prompt: what do you use Facebook for the most?  How long do you think you could go without it?

What happens when you're the only one in the room who knows what a #meme is?

I just had to share this...


Friday night I was sitting in my living room along with my friend and my husband while our hoodlum children played together.  Said friend had brought McDonald's for her kids and had some cheeseburger left.  My cat snagged the bun off the top and I jumped on the opportunity to say, "She haz cheeseburger!"  

They both just stared at me blankly...

I turned to my friend and said, "you know what a meme is, right?"  

She said, "no."

I looked at my husband and he said, "I know what a meme is, but I don't know what you're talking about."

I'm sorry, Social Media, I've failed at sharing your awesomeness.