It all Began with a Simple Question....

People love to tell me things. They always have. People are very much motivated to express their word vomit all over me the way my newborn baby will eventually be spitting up his breakfast, lunch, and dinner on me. They don't even realize they are doing it, and if I were to make a big deal about the puke, they'd seem horrified that I couldn't just take it. So, I sit there, silently, and allow people (just like I will have to deal with the baby puke) vomit their words all over me. At least my son's spit-up with have some substance to it - it will either be vitamin rich breastmilk or iron fortified formula. What these other people spit up on me is not rich or fortified with anything and leaves me rather nauseous.

I work in an office at a college and people stop by all the time to chat me up. Lately it usually is sparked with a general interest in my enormous belly. Last week the college was on break. (Enough background information, I don't want to be guilty of what I'm calling people out on.)

A man, whom I assume is a professor here but I have never seen before, walks by my door. From my spy-window on my door I catch his reflection as he pauses, turns around, and whips his jolly, chubby, red face in to my room.

"How was your rest?"

At first I have no idea what he is talking about. Did he catch me napping earlier?

"Oh, the break!" I stupidly always come across as cheerful and interested in what people have to say. Let me preface by saying I had no idea the door I had just opened. "I didn't take a break, I will be on my maternity leave soon enough!"

"I can see that!" I'm still smiling at this point because he seems genuinely interested in my baby bump.

"Do you know what you're having?"

"Yes, a little boy. We are very excited!"

"Is that what you wanted?" (I hate when people ask this.)

"We were just happy to find out via the ultrasound he has ten fingers and toes!"

He smiles, thoughtfully. "After three tries I finally got what I wanted on the fourth!" He is full of glee.

"Oh, that's nice!" I'm still naively interactive with this stranger.

"Yup, a little girl. There is nothing like a little girl and her daddy. One time, in eighth grade, she was going to a semi formal and asked me to buy her some shoes. We went to Macy's and after forty-five minutes she selected a pair and then said she'd need a dress," (shouldn't the dress come before the shoes?). "Three hundred dollars later she had everything she needed!"

"Well, you are a very nice daddy. She sounds lucky!"

This, my friends, turned into an experience I have never, ever in my entire life experienced. Not even as a hairdresser, whose clients tell everything to. What follows is a brief recap of everything this man told me in a matter of thirty-seven minutes. I have never been puked on so much by a total stranger. I have tried to recount in order, but some may be out of order because there is just so much and halfway through all I could think about was blogging about this. Three-quarters of the way through I prayed that either he would get tired of standing in my doorway and pass out or that I would go into labor. I don't think either situation would have stopped him.


The Vomit
-The car he passed down to his daughter
-The college his daughter graduated from and what her degree was in, but not just that, the story of how her boyfriend tried to convince her to major in one area, but per her father's advice, she realized if they both had the same degree there could be conflicts of interests so she went on to pursue another degree.
-Where he live-in boyfriend is from and his favorite football team and what he wears during football games
-Where his daughter works, and also that her company pays for her tuition
-His wife's ancestry
-The death of his wife's mother, and the story of her older sister moving out, her father remarrying, and her younger sister calling the step-mom, "Ma"
-A trip he wanted to plan for his wife and daughter to go to the country where their ancestors are from and "Set them loose"
-The documented year his wife's family arrived in the states
-His own family ancestry, including the number of children each immigrant had and where they lived when they came to the States
-Work he has to do on his house, including: his fence and his hardwood floors, which were originally installed in 1959. This led to a discussion about his son, who has walnut hardwood floors, turns 40 this week, and will be celebrating his birthday with his two brothers and father at a local pub where they will eat peanuts
-He also needs to build a new garage to fit his wife's car and a place for his airplane. I tried to ignore the airplane comment because I was getting sick of listening and could tell it was bait. "I do have an airplane, you know." To which I responded, "I hope so if you're planning on making a garage for it!"
-His neighbor, who has never been married because after her mother died she spent her life taking care of her father, who allows him to keep his airplane in her garage for the time being.
-His dog, and the dog's name a breed. The dog's favorite place to sleep and favorite blanket, and the fact that his dog likes Dunkin Donuts coffee.
-The interior of his new car
-The amount of miles his motorcycle has on it, the color of the motorcycle, and the reason he rarely brings a passenger on it
-Why he calls his daughter a certain nickname and how she spells her name
-His wife and son used to play matchbox cars together and he could hear them when he worked in his hobby shop in his basement
-His dad's interest in electronics, his own first electronics kit
-His dad's premature death
-Inherited health problems from his dad
-Someone that he knows was once a prisoner of war and vowed to God that if he got out he would attend church everyday for his life and always did until now, because he is 92, so the priest comes to his house and gives him communion every day

....and THAT about sums it up. Finally, just when I thought I was going to fake passing out or going in to labor, another colleague came by to ask me a question. I seriously think he mistook my expression of shock over how long this was lasting and how much useless information he was telling me as one of genuine interest.

As I typed this, he walked past my office again and I cringed. What is up with people puking on me? Also worth noting is the fact that so many people are worried about putting stuff on the internet, yet have no problem telling a complete stranger all the intimate and personal details of their life.

Friend Me for Real

For a long time I have been very vocal about my pursuits against ever opening a Facebook account. It's not that I am against social networking, I blog, I tweet, I wiki, I Glog. I can definitely appreciate social media and the power it has to drive creativity, motivation, education, and connect like-minded people for purposeful reasons. Facebook, on the other hand, is totally intrusive in my opinion and often the root of evil for most people...whether they have an account or not.

Michelle Obama seems to agree and recently spoke out against her daughters signing up for FB, saying, "It's not something they need." They don't. No child or even adult for that matter does. Humans have been capable of making friends, sharing memories and photo albums, and connecting for thousands of years (well, photos are more of a last hundred years or so thing). In the Good Morning America video report on FB they report that most people find the age of fifteen to be appropriate for a user to sign up on FB. I know people who are in their forties that aren't responsible enough for an account, yet there they are, broadcasting their news and the lives of others, everyday, ruining relationships and often their own image.

GMA also includes an interview with a mother and daughter. The daughter pouts, "I am the only kid out of all of my friends that doesn't have facebook," and then looks completely defeated before the clip cuts to something else. Guess what? I too am the only one out of all of my friends (and most of my family) that doesn't have Facebook. I am still able to maintain meaningful relationships with everyone I care about, despite not being updated on what they did last night and their current state of mood every two minutes.

Here are a list of reasons I personally find FB to be annoying, unproductive, and damaging:

1. I don't have a Facebook account yet pictures of me are all over the accounts of my friends and family. This is particularly annoying because I have repeatedly asked each one to please not post pictures of me, yet whether it is out of pure defiance, irresponsibility, carelessness, lack of self control, lack of respect, or what, I am still being posted on the site. I have even been in heated discussions over who owns the pictures - me, because I am in them, or the person who is posting them, because they took them.

2. I have seen FB ruin many friendships and intimate relationships, especially among the thirty-to-forty somethings. It always starts the same. "Oh, I will just sign up for FB. It's not like I am going to go on it everyday. I just want to do it to watch over my kids." Before you know it they have connected with too many damaging people from their past and are sneaking away from the dinner table to check the status of their ex-boyfriend from twenty years ago. Partners get upset (rightfully so), and often this behavior leads to an emotional and sometimes physical affair. Of course this is possible without FB, but I hardly doubt the chances of someone running in to a lover from their past in the grocery store are as likely to finding them, stalking them, befriending them, and flirting with them on FB.

3. Things get misinterpreted on FB. Friends and families get torn apart my something someone posted on some one's wall. (Please note I have never been on FB and my terminology is based on what I hear other people say and a brief Internet search).

4. People feel the need to further ruin their relationships by posting every little, possibly incriminating, detail about their partners and friends.

5. Those of us who do not have FB accounts have no control over what gets posted, which is very annoying (I know I basically mentioned this when I wrote about the pictures, but it really fries my pancakes). I hate nothing more than when someone says, "Oh, looks like you had fun last weekend! I saw your pictures on so-and-so's account!" usually so-and-so is someone I have asked to stop posting pictures. Go ahead, post the night, just have the decency to post pictures that I'm not in. Thanks.

These are only five reasons, and I am sure there are many more, but for all of you who love FB I have probably already lost your interest.

Even though I don't know a lot about actually engaging with people on FB, I can appreciate this funny summary of The 9 Most Annoying Types of People on Facebook. I'd like to add one, and that is the person who flip-flops every other month about their FB account. "I'm getting rid of it! I hate FB! I am not posting anymore pictures!" The following weekend s/he has such a blast and can't wait to show everyone how many beers they drank, so low and behold finds themselves in the welcoming arms of FB once again. These nine most annoying people can be found in real-life, why also encourage their bad behavior by letting them have FB accounts?

My intent is not to offend anyone. Have your FB accounts, just keep me out of them.

A couple of videos for your virtual enjoyment:
"I can Be Your Facebook Stalker"
"Facebook Song"

Am I too far along?

When you are pregnant you get a lot of conflicting feedback and messages about your belly and body. Not so great for those with well established body image issues already. Never before, and possibly (hopefully) never again, will friends, family, and strangers feel so comfortable exercising their freedom of speech in relation to your body. Personally I have never offered a pregnant woman such statements unless they were totally positive ("Wow! I hope I look like you when I am pregnant!"), or if prompted - and then I would lie. Says pregnant girl: "I can't believe how big I am! I just look fat, not pregnant!" Me: "I am sure gaining 30 pounds in your first trimester is normal! Mother Nature knows what she is doing." And I am proud of these lies, especially if they offered comfort to the poor woman who gained all of her expected pregnancy weight in the first three months because now I know there aren't many people who hold back.

Even if people don't right out say you've gained too much weight or directly make comments about your body, often what they want to say is just beneath the surface of what they've said. Let's take today as an example. I ran in to an extended family member who had a baby several years ago. She, like everyone, asked me to show her my belly.

"Aw, you look so cute!"

"Thanks, I can't believe I have already gained twenty-five pounds and I still have two-and-a-half months to go. Sara told me she only gained thirty-four her whole pregnancy."

Believing that the person I was talking to was going to make me feel better, maybe tell me that I probably would only gain a few more pounds or that Mother Nature was doing her best work, I was annoyed when she responded with, "I only gained eighteen pounds my whole pregnancy." I swear I saw her eyes light up. I also always think women lie about how much weight they have gained, like, as time goes on they keep increasing their pre-pregnancy weight so they only "gain" as much as they hoped they would.

After she left I put myself on task to discover how much one should gain during gestation. Most websites advise 25-35 pounds, depending on your pre-pregnancy weight. Then I found a pregnancy weight gain calculator, which indicated I had met the maximum recommended weight gain. Next I searched for a breakdown of where all this weight is coming from (or being attributed to)and decided that I must be carrying a much larger baby than most women, and it is likely my breasts have grown at least two pounds a piece, and considering I always retain a lot of water even when I am not pregnant, I probably have an extra five or so pounds from that. Then I realized I was foolish. And then I redirected my thoughts to the friends I have had who gained eight-five or more pounds during pregnancy. And to the one who claims to have only gained twenty-one pounds, but who I thought was a little heavy pre-pregnancy anyway, so she didn't need to gain so much.

Fortunately, a few hours later another family friend happened to swing by my office and basically congratulated me on how great I looked and how "tiny" I was. Then I wondered if she was being serious, then I remembered she told me that she had blown up like a Greyhound bus when she was pregnant. Then I thought that her perception may be off due to her own ridiculous pregnancy weight gain. Then I started hating skinny people all over again.

Sometimes when I walk down the hall past two women I will hear them say, "Aw, she looks so cute!" Sometimes when I tell someone how far along I am they look horrified that I am the size I am. Other times they can't believe how tiny I am. I am very confused. I have no idea what to think at this point, and I am feeling beautiful and voluptuous and healthy half the time, and chunky and squishy and soft the other half.

To those of you who encounter pregnant women: Keep your comments (unless they are truths and/or lies that can only make a woman feel better) to yourself.

Now I really want some ice cream. I can't eat it without feeling guilty because I have apparently maxed out for this week in expected weight gain. Then again, I am tiny for twenty-nine weeks, right? It's less than a pound a week....