Why yes Oxford, you may include these words in your dictionary

This week I made up two words.

Words that I think should easily slip into our vernacular with nary a thought.

Once I reveal these words to you, dear reader, I'm confident you will feel the same way.

You'll say to yourself - Of course! Those words exactly capture the essence of the things to which they refer! And now we have a name for them!

And then these words will enter into popular usage and no one will remember who coined them first. Do we know who first coined the term "selfie"? or "hangry"? or "mic drop"? or "awesomesauce"? or most important to everyone's life "beer o'clock"?

But maybe, just maybe, some young millennial researcher will do some googling and realize, the origins of these words came from here. This humble little blog from a humble little suburb and cement my everlasting legacy thenceforth.

So without further ado, my contributions to the American language are:

(1) Pre-partum depression. Sure everyone's heard of postpartum depression, but what about the depression that you get BEFORE the baby comes out? The news of pregnancy is often greeted with excitement and joy, but not always.

For example, I knew a family that had a pair of twins. They were EXHAUSTED running after them and when the twins were toddlers, the family found out they were (accidentally) pregnant again. The ultrasound showed they were having twins yet again! The news was greeted by them and by their friends and family with great somberness. They described the reaction as "funeral-like". And then, though they didn't say this because the word had not yet been invented, I'm pretty sure PRE-PARTUM depression set in.

If I had found out I was pregnant when this pic was taken, I would DEFINITELY have had pre-partum depression.

Or, a more common example. A couple is already overwhelmed with their two kids all under the age of 3 and then finds out they got "accidentally" pregnant with a third. The couple shares the news of the impending birth in drooping tones of defeat and dread. They definitely have pre-partum depression.

(2) Fakebook. Yes, everyone is on Facebook (even you really hipster people who like to pretend you're not because Facebook is OVER), but it should more properly be called Fakebook.

When I took journalism class in 7th grade, my teacher taught us that overemphasizing a small aspect of an event was called bad journalism, aka, lying. Also, omitting the majority of true things in a report is also called lying.

I can think of nowhere that "lying" is more rampant than on FAKEBOOK.

If your entire week has been horrible and you felt like absolute poop and wore sweatpants every day, BUT, you had one morning in which the light hit you just right and you felt like smiling sweetly, that's the picture you post on Fakebook with the caption - Life. Love. Sunshine. Lollipops.

If your toddler has been a holy hell the entire week, re-decorating your walls with crayon scribbles and leaving little turd droppings everywhere while having screaming tantrums every 13 minutes, BUT you had one half-second when he smiled sweetly with you after you bribed him with gummy bears, that's the picture you post on Fakebook with the caption - Kids. Love. Sunshine. Lollipops.

Kids. Love. Life. Sunshine. Lollipops. ALWAYS. *wink wink*

It may seem humorous, but I do think the Surgeon General (of mental health - well, first we should appoint one) should slap a warning label on Facebook (after making it change its name to Fakebook):

Prolonged usage of this medium will result in depression by comparison, delusion, and strong beliefs in the lie that everyone else's life is much much MUCH better than YOURS. No one's life is just "life, love, sunshine, and lollipops" and even the tamer captions do not come close to capturing the reality of despair, emptiness, and just total messed up crap that is the human condition. If you must be on Fakebook for more than 5 minutes a day, make sure you purge those delusions with a commensurate amount of time reading a Russian novel.