on social utilities

i've got writer's block. i've been thinking about this post on social utilities ever since my life turned upside down and inside out because of a blogger.

i tried this last week and it started something like this...

i've gone and dated myself. i haven't posted since last year (why does this joke never get old?) baxter & paige don't get it yet, but that didn't stop them from running to give me a hug and a kiss goodnight since they weren't going to see me till next year (which was the next day).

speaking of jokes, what do you get when you cross a white chicken with a black cow? brown chicken brown cow. say it really fast and it sounds like a bad '70s movie. bax & paige can deliver this one, but they still don't get it. what do you get when you cross a red chicken with a yellow cow? orange chicken orange cow? not quite.

so, social utilities. facebook, gchat, AIM, texting, twitter. i've been thinking about social utilities. and old people. and the way they used to do it in the old days. and about a recent frustrating conversation held between my father, his mother, and me.

me: look, dad, see, i am friends with our cousin, your aunt's grandchild. see, there's your aunt and your cousin, and their kid, and pictures of the race they ran back in september.

dad: oh, yes, i talked to muriel on the phone and heard about that.

g'ma l: wait, what? how do you have terin's computer on your computer? how are you on her computer?

oh boy.

later on my dad reads my blog outloud to my grandmother, not only like she is deaf (ok, she kind of is), but also like she is blind (he describes every picture), a 3-year old, and also an alien who has never visited our land before. well, maybe it sometimes feels that way to her. when i tried to show her how to toggle between 2 pages, she gave up and didn't understand how i was moving the little arrow. it does seem unlikely that running your finger across a flat pad would move an arrow...

this is the same grandma who was tickled to be able to purchase a cute pair of tennis sneakers over the internet. the same grandma who declared "no gifts" for her this past holiday season, which makes it a fun challenge to think of something that she'll actually deem useful and worthwhile. i still feel a personal triumph every time she mentions how much she loves the fleece blanket that i made for her. anyway, that was an aside, but thinking about it, i realize how happy i am that i still get to write "is" statements about my grandma.

someone once warned me that while a 2nd or 3rd life may be lived on the internet, the 1st one still exists. i wanted to heed the advice, i just didn't really understand what it was. i've heard from another person (not julie's ex-boyfriend, the stiff) that blogs are self-indulgent and a blogger's attempt to portray the image of herself that she wants people to see, not necessarily equal to her actual self. and i've heard from yet others that the only way they know what i'm up to is by reading my blog. i am vain enough that although i haven't written in over a month, i still check my blog counter daily. i apologize to those 15 something people who check my blog every day -- even this post is not going to really update you on what's going on with me.

anyway, my thoughts are nowhere near cogent, but what i'm trying to tell my readers is that i feel like a fake, and i've lost my voice, i've lost a friend, and facebook and blogging no longer hold the excitement that they once did.

my blogger boyfriend is now my ex-boyfriend and we aren't facebook friends anymore, nor are we allowed to comment on each other's blogs. i apologize to him and to others for going public on these so-called social utilities. perhaps they should be named social inutilities. communication is best face to face when what is real is right in front of you, not a fairy-tale dream in cyberspace.

see what i mean about writer's block?