Thursday, May 25, 2017

FB: IRL

A couple weeks ago I made a pilgrimage of sorts.

I went to visit my longtime friend (favorite ex-college roommate) at her workplace - Facebook Headquarters, Menlo Park, the most expensive real estate perhaps in the entire nation.

I primarily went to reconnect with my friend, but part of me was also curious about the world I left behind when I decided to be a stay-at-home mom for the last four years. I always worked in SF, so a foray down to the tech capital would be novel, I thought.

What greeted me was a mishmash of elite college vibes, a lot of money, and a modern art museum.


Across their giant campus were many parking lots (filled to the gills with Maseratis, noticed the mom driving a Hyundai with a GIANT bird dropping on it, ugh) with valet parking and a premiere shuttle service linking each one. On top of each building was a rooftop garden perfectly landscaped to make you feel like you're walking through an Architectural Digest magazine spread, with an outdoor bistro on each, of course.

And parked in front of each building was my favorite feature, a set of shiny, light blue beach cruisers that employees used to bike to and fro on campus.

Inside each building was a giant open office plan and floor-to-ceiling glass walled conference rooms. There would be no jerking off in this place, you could be sure. I commented to my friend how, as a non-assertive introvert, this would be my workplace version of hell.

And hoodies. Lots of hipster hoodies with the white zipper flocking that you could buy for $19.99 at H&M.

My friend took me to eat at their gourmet cafeteria and bid me adieu at the end with snacks from their "snack room" chock full of organic, gluten-free goodness and drinks of every possible variety (it was seriously insane, think 7-11 for millionaires).

All this.

All this for what?

To prop up a social media empire.

But what is at the heart of this industry? What product is it selling? What service is it providing?

Connection. Connection? With "friends"?

And yet I couldn't help thinking of the article I read just a few days prior to my visit - about the link between social media use and depression. Not surprisingly, the longer a person is on social media, the more depressed that person gets. And it's CAUSATIVE, not correlative.

And we all know it to be true. Because lies.

Lies of omission.

A million status updates about baby births.
Only a handful about miscarriages.

A million status updates about weddings.
Only one that I've ever seen announcing a divorce.

A million pictures/videos of smiling kids.
None of a MULTI-HOUR meltdown.

A million beautiful vacation shots.
None of mundane office life or shopping at Walmart in elastic gray sweatpants with glasses and greasy hair (shut up, don't judge).

I could go on, but there's no need.

If you're marketing a substance that causes users to get sick, the FDA would pull you off the shelf. Is mental illness not as legitimate as physical harm?

At the very least, FB should come with a warning label: Being on this site for more than 10 minutes a day has been shown to cause mild to severe depression. Use responsibly.

Either way, being on the real FB campus was like being in an uneasy paradise. Like when a movie shows a happy scene with discordant strings in the background (think: Jaws). Something's off...but the grilled portobello mushroom steaks with balsamic dressing is amazing!

And in the end, the scene that stays with me is the wall of Latino and Black laborers in the dish-washing room being handed trays of dirty plates by White and Asian employees. A literal stainless steel half-wall dividing the races clear down the middle.

Now that's keepin' it real.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Story of My Life

I got the sweetest kid-made gifts for Mother's Day, but this "story" written by Judah was by far the most amusing. The kid gets an A+ for getting right to the point!

The Wonderful Mom

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young lady named Christina. A couple years later, she met a handsome man named Michael Chung. After they dated, they...


...got married. Then after some years they had a baby. Christina did all the work. When she had another baby, she did the same. The End.


Pretty darn accurate, I'd say - especially about the childcare work distribution!

Friday, May 12, 2017

In which something really hit me...

Yesterday, as always, I braced myself for 3:30 pm, the time when both my kids would be home from school.

That's when I turn everything off so I can be totally "on" for them.

Need cuddles? Want to talk about your day? Want a story? A snack? A trip to the park?

I'm your woman.

I'm mentally prepared to handle anything they might dish at me - grumpiness, meltdowns, whining, boredom...

Or so I thought.

Yesterday really caught me off guard. Yesterday, they came home and...and...and...

...didn't need me.


They ran upstairs to play with each other. They traded Pokemon cards. They played a made-up game with our Uno card deck. The 6 year old read books to the 4 year old.

They played and they played and they played without any conflict for two hours.


At first, I stood around bewildered.

What is this weird feeling? Not being needed/summoned/demanded to do something while both my kids are around?

I think it's called freedom?

For someone who has spent the last 6 years of her life lurching from one loud "Mooooooooooommmmyyyyyyyyy!" call to the other, the silence was...deafening.

Disorienting.

Are we really moving on here? Are my kids really growing up? Is this how it feels to watch your kids grow in independence and healthy detachment?

If I've yearned for this day for the last 6 years, why does my heart feel so hollow?

Why does victory feel like loss?

Triumph, like emptiness?

But on the plus side, my kitchen never looked so clean on a Thursday afternoon.

Friday, May 05, 2017

In which my hackles rise

Here's a post you never see on my blog - the rant post.

But what good is a blog if you don't ever rant on it?!?!

The blog and it's anonymous voyeurs are the PERFECT catharsis for airing your totally bursting irritation at some horrible thing in the world so if you'll allow me...

People who run these kind of phishing scams should be publicly executed in the most torturous and humiliating way possible. Crucifixion is a good option.


There is just NO moral justification for this kind of evil. No "Robin Hood" balancing of thievery with social justice. The kind of people that it may be justified to steal from - the rich and sophisticated - would never fall for this kind of dumbass scheme.

It's the poor elderly people, the less sophisticated immigrants, the widow, the orphan, the sojourner, that may be tricked.

I wish, just once, just once, JUST ONCE, the faces of these hacking cowards would be exposed in public in a journalistic piece and we could all spit on them...and then wipe off our computer screens.

May you burn in hell, you disgusting excuse for a shell of existence, bottom-feeding scum sucker sludge. You are worse than pedophiles who at least have the excuse of a predisposition that is inborn in them. You, however, are just an ass-hole. A pre-meditating, code-writing, sociopathic ass-hole.

End rant.

Tuesday, May 02, 2017

An eyeful, an armful, a heartful

This morning it was already 70 degrees by 8:00 am.

I took a jog through a gentle trail around a grand lake.

The surface of the lake was as still as a mirror. Even the ripples were like hand-drawn lines in a graphic novel.

I saw a doe stop right in front of me, and then proceed up the mountain, followed by two fawns. Me and my two kids, I thought.

I saw a bird stop right by me for the briefest fraction of a second, just enough time to see her beak filled with nesting straw. Time to build a home.

I saw wildflowers in bright pink and yellow scattered carelessly, abundantly.

And occasional breaks in the dense foliage that revealed EVERYTHING perfectly - sky, water, mountains, trees, bushes, grass, near and far.

And a little speck of a bird, a sparrow, I like to think, myself.