Totally Rad: The Facebook Issue

Thanks to my dear friend Marie, I was introduced to the "Radical Life" blog. The Radical Life is thought-provoking, to say the least, and challenging. I highly recommend checking it out, it might just change your life, or at least awaken it. This all came about because my friend decided she was finally pulling the plug on her Facebook account. If you'd like to read about her thoughts on that, click here. But in the RL blog, he wrote about reasons to quit Facebook and objections to doing that. In short, it's not that Facebook is terrible, it's just that there are so many better ways to spend your time (but that really doesn't do it justice, I encourage you to just read the whole thing lol.)

This is not a completely new idea. I know that Facebook isn't a productive way to spend my time. And to some people, who haven't had FB their whole adult life or who aren't what I would call "power users", this all may seem quite obvious. Because it is, when you really think about it. But for those of us who have had Facebook all through college, and surely spent countless hours dodging our studies with it, it is still easy to get sucked in. It is so easy and so accepted to spend an hour (plus more...) scrolling through Facebook every day.

Thanks to all of those blog posts, I too have been doing a LOT of thinking and analyzing lately in regards to how I spend my time, aka life. But in addition to how much time we spend on Facebook, he also took a critical look at what we all do on FB. There were two points that really hit home for me in the original Radical Life post; they go hand in hand actually.

One was the observation of how few intimate moments we have these days. How true, yes, how true, said the Sour Kangaroo. Whether your time is interrupted by a text message or you spend more time playing with your phone than talking with your spouse or kids, that alone is a huge distraction and killer of intimate moments. But the bigger point is to think about just how much STUFF we all share online. How many times do people post photos of their babies onto Facebook practically minutes after they cut the umbilical cord? Or how often do people share photos of their spouse, because they're on a romantic dinner date and want to tell you about it? I would not consider myself an "oversharer" by any means, but the takeaway to me is that some stuff (okay, a LOT of stuff) just doesn't need to be shared. Relish in the moment, live in the now, take it all in! Don't ruin it by "Wait-hold-on-I-wanna-take-a-picture-of-you!" or thinking about how you should show this to your friends online. Some things should be left shared only by the people in the room.

The other part to this is we start crafting posts in our heads before or as things are happening; hoping our carefully crafted post will gain Likes and Comments. He called it "Life through a lens" and we are "reporting our lives instead of living them." I'd be lying if I didn't say I've fallen victim to this sometimes. And it is really great to realize it so I can work on cutting it out.

I think that part really resonated with me because my job is social media. I carefully craft posts in hopes that, as a business, we will get our posts in front of eyes. Because eyes, essentially, can equal revenue from the website. So thinking about what to post, what not to post, how to word it, what not to say is engrained in me. But I think there is a way to separate my social media obsession that I'm required to have to do my job from my personal life's social media usage. It's difficult, but I think it's possible. My husband has this incredible ability that when he walks out the door at the end of the work day, he is no longer working and it is far from his mind. I think the same thing is achievable for me. Once I'm off work, I don't need to and shouldn't think about what I should post to my Facebook.

Because the big question that this entire mess of thoughts and blog posts is: WHY DO WE DO THIS?!

I mean, seriously!? Why in the world do we feel like we have to share so much with our "friends"? I wonder if it has something to do with a longing to be appreciated, noticed, valued, etc. We want people to like us, we want people to pay attention to us once in a while, and with Facebook it's so easy. Consider telling your friend something. He/She is one person. You'll get a response from one person. But in telling Facebook, you've just told (probably) hundreds, and if ten people respond in some way, than woo hoo! I don't know, maybe that's not it, I haven't figured that one out yet. But still, that one personal response is way better than ten empty, lifeless Likes on Facebook.

Without trying to make it too complicated though, I wonder if the big reason we do this stuff is that it is just so darn easy and people are getting lazy. It's easy to "keep in touch with people" versus calling them up and actually talking to them. And I'm certainly guilty of that too.

In closing, if anyone's still reading this, all of this has made me do some reevaluation that I'm sure I will write about some more some other time. I am by no means perfect, and I am struggling. But I'm a little less quick to post things to Facebook the past couple weeks. Sometimes I even write something up then delete the whole thing because I ask myself "Why am I doing this?" I'm also working really hard not to visit Facebook on my phone very much, or on the computer. I deleted the Facebook bookmark off my browser so it's not staring me in the face all the time. I'm working on putting down the lens and just enjoying the moment. Because like the people I mentioned at the very beginning of this have said: there are SO many more awesome people and things you can spend your time with.

Cheers.

Getting Better

Today has been a better day, but my cough is still pretty gruesome in the mornings. This is typical for me, I've always coughed most in the mornings, but it is a little worse than normal.

When I called my doctors Monday, I requested to try some steroids to open up my airways before we resort to antibiotics. So that's what we're trying. I've gotten two full nights of sleep the past two nights, and let me tell you how wonderful that's been; to wake up with my alarm and then realize "Hey! I didn't wake up overnight to cough!" It's been really nice.

The other night when I was going to bed early, I opened my nightstand drawer like I usually do, and pulled out my prayer books. I have three in there. One is a leather-bound, gold flake on the edges of the pages, written in the 1980s kind, another is a freebie I picked up at St. Joseph's in Wentzville, and the other is my favorite childhood prayer book from Precious Moments. It's a tiny 2"x3" book with prayers directed towards children, and I still like to look through it sometimes because it's so darn cute and, well, sometimes simple prayers still apply. I also found a little prayer card my mom made me with a prayer asking for sleep, which was oh so appropriate. She made it for me back when I was in college, I think, and most likely going through a similar time as I am right now with the night coughs. As I was paging through my leather prayer book, a Prayer in Time of Suffering hit home and I took solace in it. I thought I would share it in case anyone else is suffering this week, because it is really quite nice.

The prayer goes like this:

Behold me, my beloved Jesus, weighed down under the burden of my trials and sufferings, I cast myself at Your feet, that You may renew my strength and my courage, while I rest here in Your Presence. Permit me to lay down my cross in Your Sacred Heart, for only Your infinite goodness can sustain me; only Your love can help me bear my cross; only Your powerful hand can lighten its weight. O Divine King, Jesus, whose heart is so compassionate to the afflicted, I wish to live in You; suffer and die in You. During my life be to me my model and my support; At the hour of my death, be my hope and my refuge. Amen.

Lazy Sunday

Well, I didn't bake my bread yesterday. We ended up helping some friends with some stuff, so I didn't have enough time to devote to it. Not to mention, not a whole lot of energy because...

I've been coughing a lot lately. It is incredibly frustrating and hard to stay positive, since just less than a month ago I was doing so well and I had just finished antibiotics. I'm calling my doctors tomorrow about it, I have a theory as to what's going on... I'll share some other time. But the other part of all this is I haven't been sleeping much, because the cough is waking me up at night for long periods of time. I was pure exhausted on Thursday and I'm feeling pretty exhausted today. After a four-hour coughing fit at 4am, I then slept in until 10:30 but I'm still really tired. So I'm lazing around the house for today. And most definitely not making bread, haha.

Adventures in Homemade: Part Two

You can file this under "semi-homemade" more than "homemade" but I'm still very proud of my small achievement in the kitchen.

Last night I made my very first pizza. And I say it's "semi-homemade" simply because I didn't make the crust from scratch. I've been dying to make a margherita pizza at home for quite some time; it's becoming a pizza flavor I really like. And I figured it would be super simple to make, and it was.

I bought some roma tomatoes (Schnucks has a whole display of organic and heirloom tomatoes, who knew?), the pizza crust, and black olives. Jarrod and I agreed on a half tomato/basil, half olive/basil pizza since he doesn't like sliced tomatoes. The rest of the ingredients I had at home, plus a bunch of fresh basil leaves from his brother (apparently he has basil out the wazzoo.)

I sprayed olive oil over all of the crust, spread a light layer of marinara sauce, then started piling on the cheese, tomatoes, olives, and basil. I baked it for 7 minutes and the result was a light, delicious pizza. It was sooooo good, and I didn't feel gross afterwards like sometimes you do with pizza (you know, because it's so loaded with stuff.) Bonus with making your own: you can control the amount of sauce you have on there. Jarrod said he liked it partially because "it doesn't have an ungodly amount of sauce on it!"

So it was a successful dinner! Not cost effective, versus a store bought frozen pizza, but worth the small effort.

Man, I am on a roll this week. Still planning on the bread Saturday.

Adventures in Homemade: Part One

I got a spurt of inspiration yesterday. I decided to bake a cake from scratch!

I'd never done that before, and I needed to strike while the iron was hot. So I went and got some sugar, since Jarrod used up the last of it yesterday making simple syrup, and baked a yellow cake at 9 p.m. The cake was still too warm before I went to bed, so I had to wait to ice it and try it today.

Jarrod and I just had a piece and the verdict is in: not bad! Pretty good, actually. It's a little dense, but that is probably because it didn't rise much.

Why didn't it rise? Well, my new best friend Betty Crocker says that it could be because of too much liquid, too much fat, or the oven was too cool (unlikely). I'm going with too much liquid, that's my guess.

I think the Betty Crocker cookbook is pretty much a staple in most kitchens. I've finally started really paging through mine, and let me tell you, this is a cooking & baking newbie's dream. It breaks down how to do anything you could think of, and in most cases there are little pictures and diagnostics for when things go wrong. Just like my cake not rising; there was a whole list of "What went wrong" and in the next column "Why". It's kind of awesome. In paging through it I also just got some tips on how to cut a chicken, how to know if my muffins are too done or perfect, what in the world kohlrabi is (pretty sure my grandma Watson's mentioned that one), how to poach an egg just right, and that Mesquite is actually a type of wood chip used for smoking (I always thought it was just some sort of flavoring, not an actual wood type.) Who knew? And I found a recipe for something I'll probably have to make for Jarrod's birthday next year: bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Yum.

So the next chapter in the homemade baking saga happens on Saturday: I will attempt to make bread. We're just starting with classic white bread. I don't know how I got so crazy, but I'm doing it. I bought my yeast and now I have everything I need. Jarrod is pretty stoked.

Let Betty guide the way.

PS - On the blog post yesterday, if you subscribe to the email, the YouTube video I posted at the end did not show up. Click to the blog if you want to see the clip from the Animaniacs' Schnitzelbank song :).

Das Schnitzelbank

Yesterday we went to a wedding. At the reception, we got the wonderful opportunity to join in a tradition the bride's family (an strong German family as you might guess) does at least once a year and always at weddings. One of the old men in the family, I can't remember if it was her grandpa or a great uncle, puts on his little German hat with the feather in the side and grabs a stick for the singing of the Schnitzelbank.

Thanks to my favorite childhood cartoon Animaniacs, I actually knew how this was going to go. You point at things and say "Ist das nicht ein _______?" and everyone responds "Ja, das ist ein ______" To translate, that would be "Is this not a pair of pants?" "Yes, that is a pair of pants!" And you build and build on your items until the last one, where you rename every single one of them.

So last night, the Schnitzelbankmeister was given the microphone and he hung up his old cloth banner of items that he points to with the stick. It looks something like the photo I've placed on here. The items were all the same.

The pace was a lot slower than the Animaniacs spoof, but it was fun and funny no less. Having a group of people trying to say long German words is always funny.

Privacy and ID

Yesterday, my credit card company notified me that my account was one of many that was compromised. Luckily there were no fraudulent charges to dispute, but it still means that my identity was most likely stolen. Wonderful, I am now a member of the identity theft club.

It was almost like I was in denial yesterday (I guess because there wasn't any weird activity on my card)  as I explained the issue to Jarrod and a few others. "Well, my card was compromised, which means someone might have gotten access to my information." No Jamie, they did access your information.

You can file this under "Things about being an adult that no one ever really tells you about." I called my dad to ask what steps I needed to take next, and he let me know.

I would also like to note that dealing with my credit card company was not all that pleasant. I received a message from someone asking me to call them back about my card for suspicious activity with my card.  She was clearly foreign. I called back and spoke to someone also foreign and, in my opinion, clearly new. He was not good. There was a lot of dead air, he wasn't exactly all that sure of himself at times, and I almost began questioning if I was truly dealing with my credit card company, or an impostor saying they were my credit card but indeed they were part of the schtick to steal my info.

I called back again later one last time for another question and dealt with another foreigner, who was also clearly reading from a script. "Yes mam, I would hate to have this happen to my card too." Oh it was so fake. He also had a hard time understanding what I was asking, so I finally gave up. (We have another credit card that is much better, and whenever we call it has always been an English-speaking person.)

It's scary when you start thinking about just how easy it is for someone to access your information, millions of miles away. It's easy to go down that rabbit hole of thought, and it's hard not to get paranoid.

What is obviously making things all the much easier is all of the information we put out there online too. It always blows my mind when people don't lock down their Facebook accounts. Or the fact that FourSquare even exists. Or when people post vacation photos while they're on vacation. Clearly, you're just shouting to the world that you're not home right now, you won't be for a while, it's the perfect time to do something stupid.

Now you may be wondering "Jamie, but you have this blog. You're doing the same thing." Yes, in a way you are right but I have also made my blog very hard to find. It is not listed in the Blogger database and I have also set it so it is hidden to search engines. So my blog will never be indexed by Google. I never link to it publicly on Twitter. I very rarely post it onto my Facebook too, and even when I do, it's only visible to a certain list of people I've made who know me very well.

Birds Birds Birds!

A couple blog posts ago, I mentioned my pair of cardinals.

I went out and bought a bird feeder for them and we put it up on Thursday. We are going to try moving the hummingbird feeder to the front, since that's where the flowers are. Anyways, at first I was very worried they wouldn't like it. The feeder has a relatively small perch that isn't very big for them to sit on and actually be able to eat. They seemed to confirm my suspicions when cautiously flying around the feeder, acting as though they wanted to land but just weren't quite sure the best way to do it.

I decided I was going to give it a week. If they didn't come back much, then I'd find a feeder with a larger perch.

Well, the cardinals seem to have figured it out. They will grab a seed or two, then move away from the feeder to eat them as seen here in my photo. This is the beautiful, orange-red cardinal that has been visiting for quite some time now (but the picture's color really doesn't do him justice.)

But, now I have even more birds coming by! So far I have seen:

• cardinals
• song sparrows
• mourning doves
• a downy woodpecker
• blue jays
• robins
• house finches
• a white-crowned sparrow

Oh, and a squirrel. Of course. Those conniving things always figure out a way. He positioned himself on that corner post in the picture and stretched the gap to the feeder; hind legs on the post, front paws grabbing the food.

This morning I saw about three male cardinals duking it out for territory, so now my pair has some intruders to deal with. I also have a pair of house finches (they look like this) that I saw feeding seeds to each other last hour. They are adorable and small enough that this bird feeder fits them perfectly.

Needless to say, I'm keeping the feeder. The cardinals are happy, many more birds are happy, and I'm happy.

Fourth of July Musings

1. The day was off to a good start this morning with mass at Lourdes. Cardinal Dolan came home and since he was here, he said mass with us. It was nice, and there was quite the turnout. But my short night of sleep sure made for a lazy rest of the day. Oh well. That's what a holiday is for sometimes, right?
2. Sign of the times: I looked up and down our road today and only saw ONE house with an American flag out front. Now, I must admit, we are at fault in this too. And I don't know how many times Jarrod and I have both commented "We need to get a flag" but we still haven't bought one. When I do, I really want it to be made in the USA because, well, you know. Non-surprisingly, not all of them are made here. But anyways, isn't that sad? 50+ years ago, every single porch would have been flying a flag, or multiple! There is an old newspaper photo from 1950 I found at work one time showing all of the flags outside the businesses on Main Street for George Washington's birthday! Let alone, Independence Day. When was the last time anyone gave much emphasis to Washington's birthday?
3. I'm happy to report I'm over my fear of fireworks. I should be, right? I mean, I'm well into my 20s now. But alas, in my younger days, fireworks scared the ba-jesuses out of me. I hated the loud booms that came with them. 
4. The fireworks show was really good! It would have been even better if no one around us was smoking, but I guess clean air is too much to ask for... At least I didn't smell it the entire time, just in little spurts.
5. The only part that totally sucks about seeing the fireworks is the "everyone trying to leave at the same time" part. And jeez, why are people so selfish these days? We were stuck in a lot for about 20 minutes before our line of cars even moved. Then TEN cars passed behind me before someone finally let me back out of my spot and join the line. I'm sorry, but what ever happened to the 'every other one' rule? You let someone in, they go, you go, next person goes, on and on. It's hard not to get aggravated about it, but I was able to stay patient. Because once I was finally in line, then three other people wanted to get in front of me. I was going to let two of them in, but I didn't mind because I'm sure they were just as frustrated as I was that no one was letting anyone back out. Ugh... people!
6. I am so darn tired. It is getting close to midnight, and I have to get up at 6 a.m. for work tomorrow. Sigh... luckily my treatment is almost over. Goodnight folks and happy Independence Day!

Birds and Breathing Tests

I woke up this morning to something great: my two cardinals were sitting on the deck together, and I'd like to think they were watching the sunrise together. These two cardinals, I like to call them husband and wife, have been around for well over a month now. The male is a beautiful bright red, almost with a hint of orange, and the girl is a beautiful tan with just the tinge of red on her head. But they were both sitting on the deck railing about a foot apart from each other. I moved slowly to my phone to try and get a picture, but I was detected and they flew off. Shucks.

It was then I also decided that I will get a small bird feeder for them. I finally put my hummingbird feeder up about a month ago, but I have only seen one hummingbird stop by, and the level of nectar is not going down. I either was too late in getting it up, or we really don't have that many hummingbirds around here. That makes me a little sad, but I know I have two delightful cardinals, who stop by daily to take a drink or splash a bath in some water that collects on the lid of Jarrod's tub. So I think I will offer them some birdseed and they will like it and continue to come back!

I had my follow up appointment yesterday, which went well. My PFTs were 34%, which is pretty good for me considering where I've been hovering recently. So we could stop meds.

I got to take a shower last night and if it's not too weird, I'd like to tell you how awesome it was haha. Last week on Wednesday, when the nurse reaccessed my port, I got to take a shower at the hospital. It was 'fine', with warm water, a funky shower head that sprayed in all directions, and a very small amount of water pressure, but still a shower, for which I was thankful. But when I finish IVs, I like to give my skin "The Works", you could say, like a super duper car wash (it's funny how so much of what I do with my tune-ups can be likened back to cars.) I wash with soap twice, I condition my hair, I even went out and bought some body scrub. It was wonderful: I had brazil nut body scrub, and a walnut apricot scrub for my face. I am sparkly clean today with smoother skin than I've had in a long while. Yay!

Bring it on Tuesday!