The Social WWW (Web We Weave)

It’s finally getting interesting. The first boyfriend (TF), who was perfect and fantastic last December, was around when I started (after Match and Plentyoffish had popped my cherry) to join social networking sites.

So, I asked him to link to me on LinkedIn. I think it was after we slept together, but I can’t remember exactly. Yes, it was clear to me it was a career site, but we had some professional overlap and we had sworn already that we would stay friends, no matter what happened romantically.

Now he’s my only Netflix “friend.” I can find out what he’s watching and how much he likes it. I don’t need this. (Yes, I don’t have to look, but I did once and I didn’t need that). I get updates on who he is meeting from LinkedIn.

See, I didn’t know the web would get this tangled. Not quite true – I knew things would begin to reach a certain density and then I would have to revisit things. But when I lightly changed my “relationship status” to “engaged.” I didn’t quite expect 13 congratulations e-mails almost immediately. There’s a big church contingent on FB and there were another 10 references in person on Sunday (“I hear congratulations are in order…?”) based on what I started to call “my Facebook engagement.”

TF wasn’t on Facebook, or just barely, when we were dating. Now he has a photo and everything, and he can see my basics, including relationship status, even without asking to friend me. He knows I'm still using the pic that helped me net him. I know it’s not my problem, but it is the world that I now live in. Do I ask to be his “friend” so we can at least be open? No, many of my peeps will say, "That's the guy who...?" He might not want that. And should I ask him to get off my LinkedIn? (That seems fine to me, I only have about 80 connections whereas I have more than 150 FB friends. We could still overlap. And we're nominally friendly if not "friends" in that "not dating" sense.).

But I would really like to unlink his Netflix. Wait, new implication: he’s checking what I rent? He knows about “Barbie and the Diamond Castle”?

Yes, we had torrid sex, and yes, he had young kids and was still living at home, and yes, I broke his heart. But if this gets out under my real name, I’m fucking ruined.

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I Guess I Do Vote With my Bush

When I started dating, I told myself I didn't care much about politics (on Match, I picked "prefer not to say") but after the date with a guy who said TWO real howlers, I knew I felt differently.

This is what my date said:
(1) "Reagan started out okay, but...."
and
(2) "The first time I voted for Bush...."

I wasn't sure if it was the politics or that he was dumb enough to say those things on an early date. I fooled myself into thinking that given the public's rage about the war, even a Republican girl might have been turned off.

I had more than enough other evidence that this date was not bright. It was the politics.

And so after that I only took positions with others who shared my positions.

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My personal leading economic indicators

I knew something was happening:

• summer 2007 -- fountain cokes at several lunch joints are flat or improperly syrup'ed.
• fall 2007 -- increased incidence of food poisoning.
• winter 2007 -- deli meat has been frozen, texture ruined.
• nov 1, 2007 -- no one brings leftover Halloween candy in to the office.
• fall 2008 -- lots of broken windows in neighborhood, with handwritten "we're open" signs.
  
• september 2008 -- half of restaurants with flat cokes close.
• october 2008 -- dumpster divers in Harpers Ferry, W.V., report that grocery stores are no longer throwing out food.
• november 2008 -- windows still broken, signs still handwritten.
• nov 1, 2008 -- a little bit of candy makes it in, but you have to ask.
  

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Better late than never

It's bad enough that it takes me until the first week in October to look at the harvest. I find a ton of deliciousness that's gone to seed or squirrels. Among the asters, there are leftovers for us anyway and I'm grateful to have them:

World of difference

I've done the exact opposite of what my mother did for me:
1. I purchased.
2. A Disney.
3. Branded.
4. Character (Belle) Costume for my daughter for Halloween.
5. From a major chain store.
6. At retail.

If only the costume were pink, it would be perfect -- a giant "F.U." to Grandma ER (although I did it to make SS happy, and to avoid any kind of fight, or extra labor, and not as any kind of secret message that bears on my therapy. No, definitely not that.).

Two truths and a lie.

1) I hate Barney the big purple dinosaur. 2) I have developed a plan that could save American businesses a million bucks, but I haven't figured out how to make money from it. 3) I think a goldfish is a perfectly fun pet for a 4-year-old and I am not lying.

I was sharing this list with some old friends of HF and I got a lot of crap from Wild Man, a burly redhead: "No way, fish are HORRIBLE pets, they die all the time. They only live like a week!"

FW: "That doesn't make them a bad pet. Many of the parents I know seem to be getting their young kids a pet in part because it's a good way to teach them about death."

WM: "So you're going to get her a goldfish and name it after her dead father?!"

Then WM's wife hit him, but HF and I laughed our tuchuses off. (For the record, I am pretty sure SS will name it "Jeffrey" or one of the phonetic girls' names -- "Leela," "Lita," "Meeta," "Loolee," etc.).

Palin: the real chatter from the playground

It’s peculiar to me that most of what I’ve heard and read in the "media" (old or new) about Sarah Palin is along the lines of, “How dare you suggest that she won’t do a good job because she has five kids. A man would never have to answer a question like that -- how offensive!” And brilliantly, defensively, of course this argument is being used by the right to make it seem as if feminists are now on the wrong side, more right-wing than the right.

Now come on. What I've heard, and what I would expect to hear as a fellow mother of a young child, has nothing to do with feminism. The line that I hear through the jungle gym, next to the stroller parking area, is more like, “How dare she consider such a demanding job when her poor kids need her.”

Her peers in motherhood and neighborhoods don’t care about her professional competence – we judge her, we question her judgment as a mom. We're perfectly fine feminists, we're just horrible people.

It's sort of like that Seinfeld where Elaine and Jerry are talking about wedgies in the locker room:
Elaine: Boys are sick.
Jerry: Well, what do girls do?
Elaine: We just tease someone ’til they develop an eating disorder.

Widows' Bedrooms Redecorating Club (Flashback)

After my first (platonic, psychotic with lust) sleepover with Mr. Perfect, I could write. It did seem that many of my friends were in a conundrum about where to have sex, with such need for comfort of home but those homes so full of memories, and kids, kids with ears and eyes. Fantasizing about my upcoming Hilton date with Mr. P, anticipating two steps ahead (at HOME?), I conjured a vision for my widow BFFs:

Subject: The Widows' Bedrooms Redecorating Club

"I can't do it on that old thing anymore," she said, sipping wearily on her Pomegranate Cosmopolitan. Her eyes turned to the shaggy gray indoor-outdoor rug, 20 years old, stained with grape juice and salted from snowstorms long gone, which lay in the foyer. It was one space in her home that didn't remind her of her late husband, Mortimer, and it was the only place she felt comfortable horsing around with Diego, the stable hand. The surface was unforgiving, chafing them alternately, adding odd scents to their discarded hosiery, and they caught drafts in both hot and cold weather, but the hall provided neutral territory, unattached, unsentimental, and that was what she needed.

Until the Widows' Bedrooms Redecorating Club came into her life. A trio of Corona-clutching cronies in sweatsuits and large diamonds solitaire, they showed up one afternoon on her doorstop, so close to the well-used gray runner, and pushed their way through. "Let us in," they cajoled, wielding measuring tapes, swatchbooks, and the latest Pottery Barn catalog. "We're going to help you get your groove back, the expensive way."

But it didn't really cost that much. They worked together, breaking nails and gulping double JavaChip ExtraWhips as they lay down swatches and pointed out sightlines. "A nice canopy here," one would say. "And this wild jungle toile for curtains!" another would chime in. New linens were ordered; the old torn up and sent to dress the horses' cannons. Baubles and doodads were weighed, purchased with hard earned coin, and lovingly placed next to old mementos and new fakes.

Before she knew it, her bedroom was her own again. Her favorite colors glowed at her from all sides. The sun shone in a new way -- had that dresser really blocked so much light all those years? Pictures of the loving first family spawned there were nicely framed and set up in the front hall to greet visitors, and stay away from the action. A young couple, just setting up home a few miles away, dreaming of late-night wakings by screaming babies, were sleeping in the Freecycled heirloom mahogany California King frame with orthopedic pillow-top.

She smelled the fresh coffee from downstairs. Diego was inside, and he'd slept well.