Owning Up

I need to take a few lines here and fess up to something.  It’s nothing too scandalous, but I still need to admit that I was wrong.

Last summer, when one of my coworkers moved here to Bremerton, from New York, the weather was warm and sunny, and just plain pleasant.  But I warned her, saying, “Just wait until October.” And later, “Just wait until November,” and “Just wait until January.”  But alas, with every passing month I’ve been proven too much the pessimist. 

Living here for nearly 30 years has given me a jaded perspective on the weather.  I’ve guarded my heart, because every time I’d gotten my hopes up, the rains would come.  And the cold and the wind would come with them.  Even during the nice weather, I can’t help expecting that, any day now, it’ll start raining and it won’t stop for 6 or 7 weeks.  But this past fall and winter, and now spring, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the weather.  It’s mid-April now, and it’s sunny.  And over the past few weeks, we’ve had a lot of similarly nice days.  

So I guess I was wrong about the rainy, dreary weather I’d predicted for my new coworker.  I’ve been a curmudgeon.  I’m not going to get my hopes too high, but I’ll at least sit back and enjoy the sunshine.  But it’s still too cold, and I have allergies, dammit. 

Can't complain about the view from the back of my apartment complex. Not bad for WhiteTrashville, eh?

Connected Again

Lent is over, and I’m back on Facebook.  That’s good and bad.  On one hand, I can see that it’s still easy for Facebook to be a distraction and time-waster.  And for the time being, I’m doing pretty well at avoiding that outcome.  But it’s still early.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt that Facebook is the best way for me to keep in touch with my outer circle of friends.  It’s a very handy tool for maintaining an arm’s-length relationship with hundreds of people.  I have my car, which takes me to face-to-face encounters with the people I’m closest to; my phone, which connects me to the people who may be physically distant; and Facebook, which connects me to friends and acquaintances who may be distant in multiple ways, but with whom I’d hate to cut off all contact and lose touch. 

When it’s used as that type of communication tool, Facebook is great.  When it becomes a trivia-lover’s distraction, or when idly browsing the news feed becomes a way to avoid checking important items off of a weekly to-do list, it’s not.  But I can really only blame myself if I’m easily distracted.  At any rate, it’s good to be connected again. 

Ants: An Update

My apologies for leaving my readers—both of you—hanging in regards to the ant situation I wrote about last week.  Please accept this update as my way of making it up to you.

As I stated before, I left the ants to their own devices last weekend, with nothing more than a little goo-filled trap keeping them at bay.  So I was a little worried that I’d return on Monday to find my desk carried off somewhere and my hidden snacks devoured.  But alas, I was to be disappointed.  Or rather, relieved.  A few ants still crawled around here and there along the floor and walls, but the trap didn’t look like it had caught anybody new, and my desk and snacks were well intact.

I continued smooshing the wanderers who dared to venture into the open throughout the day, until I saw Jim, the elusive maintenance man.  I showed Jim the goo trap, which was spotted like a Dalmatian, with about 40 dead ants inside.  He was impressed by the number of ants my trap had ensnared, but I scoffed.  “You should have seen the first one. It was so full I had to throw it out,” I said.  “And I’ve been smooshing a bunch more along the walls and floors.”  I inquired as to whether he had an easier, more effective way of killing the bugs, and was quickly supplied with a spray bottle of poison. 

I set to work hosing down every little crack and crease along the floor, walls, and window frame.  When the fumes began to overwhelm me, I opened the window.  Soon, ants were dying and I didn’t even have to lift a finger.  Which was good, because my fingers already had a lot of ant guts on them. 

The poison continued to work its magic throughout the week (it’s supposed to be effective for up to 12 months), and I only had to get my fingers dirty a couple more times.  On Friday, I decided to do a little spring cleaning and get the poisoned and crushed ants off the walls and window sill.  By the time I left at the end of the week, nothing in my office was crawling.  But, having spent most of my life in bedrooms and apartments that sit below ground level, like my office does, I’m sure it won’t be long before we again have visitors. 

One More Week: Final Analysis

So here we are in April.  Lent isn’t over for another week, and I’ve already gone 40 days without using Facebook because I didn’t realize that Catholics are cheaters.  As I found out midway through this wonderful season of denial, there are actually 47 days between Fat Tuesday and Easter Sunday.  But Lent is only considered to be 40 days long, because, when “fasting” for Lent, one is permitted to take a break every Sunday.  Like I said, Catholics are cheaters.

But that’s understandable.  If I were fasting for real, it would be nice to have food in my belly at least once a week.  It might even prevent disagreeable side effects like malnutrition or death.  Hoewever, there’s no reason to break the fast for something silly like checking to see what my sister’s cat is up to this evening (I can just text her to find that out, after all).  So, I’ve decided to stay strong in my convictions and resist the urge to use Facebook until Lent is officially over. 

I’ll admit there have been times when I’ve wanted to check my news feed.  And while denying myself the use of one non-vital website/communication tool hasn’t been terribly difficult, it has been a tad trying at times.  I still feel like I’m missing something when I only check my email and nothing else.  “That seemed too quick,” I say.  I occasionally have the urge to simply browse my news feed and see if anybody I know has posted anything interesting.  But I can’t.  Now and again I’ve also felt disconnected from my acquaintances and, to a degree, from the world around me.  But because I know I’m going to start using Facebook again soon, I haven’t developed new channels of communication to replace it.  I haven’t started reading the newspaper again, or called old friends, or thrown myself headlong into Twitter like I could have (though I have enjoyed getting to know Twitter better). 

It’s almost like, if I really want to get something meaningful out of this whole experience, I should do those things, and I should keep my Facebook account suspended for the rest of the year.  But on the other hand, it has made me think and examine some things.  For instance, as I write about my use of Facebook now, I realize that I—and probably most other people too—value communication of information that isn’t necessarily vital to us.  Sure, we all value a one-on-one discussion with our closest friends.  But—and this has become more apparent in the “information age”—we absolutely love trivia.  We don’t need to know that our friend who we haven’t spoken to in years is having a baby.  Or that something is upsetting the Kardashian sisters.  But that sort of stuff is fun to know.  And we’ll spend all sorts of time and energy learning about those types of things because they’re entertaining.  And they keep us “in the loop” with what our friends are talking about, meaning they could come up in conversation, when we’re actually having meaningful interactions with other people.

But that’s enough about that.  In the end, this was a fun little experiment, and I’m happy with the fact that, for a little while at least, it got me away from something that was wasting my time, and gave me something to write a few blogs about, and showed me that I can in fact succeed at this whole Lent thing, without cheating.  Unless of course I give in between now and next Sunday.

PS – Recommended reading: Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman. Written for the TV Age, it applies even more so to the Internet Age.