Spring Forward, land on your ass. Fall Backward, land on your ass.

Daylight Savings Time has kicked in, or has it stopped? I’m never sure. And all week long people on the radio and in person have been complaining about losing the hour of sleep this weekend.

But I say, if you can sleep as long as you want on that day, how is it that you’re losing anything? Don’t you just change your clocks AFTER you get up? Theoretically, you’re losing an hour of your morning, not your night.

Certainly, if you have somewhere you have to be or you have small children, you will most definitely lose an hour of sleep. And if you have a child who’s going through a phase where she needs to be in Mommy and Daddy’s bed every freaking night from midnight to wake up, you’re going to lose an hour of kicky, squirmy, bed-hogged sleep.

But I’m not bitter.

I actually embrace the hour, because I love the fact that it stays light later. It makes my intention to go running or run an errand after supper more feasible, albeit not always a reality. When it’s dark by 5 pm, I just want to go to sleep. My circadian rhythm rejoices at the extra hour of daylight. Plus, if the kids are wired after supper, you can send them out into the backyard. You don’t do that in the winter when it’s cold and dark, it seems somehow wrong. (Refer to “The Simpsons” in the episode where Marge says, “I worry about Bart. There’s something unwholesome about a boy flying a kite at night.” And then you see Bart, in the dark, with his kite, saying a la Norman Bates, “Hello, Mother.”)

It’s now 7:36 pm, or is it 6:36 pm? Are we now back to “normal” so it really and truly is 7:36? Are we starting or finishing something? Does it even matter? At least our clock switch doesn’t cause headaches and nosebleeds like it does in Lost. If you ever feel ripped off or cranky about losing an hour of sleep, watch the show. They have WAY more problems than you or I. They wouldn’t even blink at a one hour time shift.

Question: Bumper Sticker Elitism?

“Am I Liberal or just well-educated?”

That’s what I read on the bumper sticker of the car parked in front of me while driving around today. At first, being somewhat left-leaning myself, I thought I was supposed to agree with the sentiment. But when I thought about it? Not so much.

Because even though I tilt to the left, I know and respect people who tilt (at least a little) to the right. And they’ve been to college, and graduate school.

Yes, I get the point of the sticker; it’s saying, if you’re conservative, maybe you don’t have all the facts. But the conservatives can say the same thing to the so-called liberals. We can all finger point all we want, and I see that our President is already getting in hot water with pretty much everybody, but he’s just trying to actually do his job, which is uniting people for causes and issues that affect everybody.

What I don’t like about the sticker is the implication that conservatives are red-necked, possibly only GED-diploma-carrying troglodytes. That’s not very nice.

So the snarky stab at elitism just doesn’t sit well with me. I mean, I’m well-educated and many would say liberal, but I’m not denying the existence of well-educated people who believe in less government or lower taxes. I don’t have to agree with everyone, and I don’t, but I don’t need to be insulting.

To me, this sticker gives the liberals a dodgy name. And frankly, the word liberal doesn’t need to be besmirched any more than it already is here in the USA.

To be called liberal in this country is a tricky thing. Where I’m from (Canada) we have a freakin’ Liberal Party. It’s not a swear word or a slur when it’s used in Canada. But here, what with hateheads like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh spewing their vitriol multimedia-style, “liberal” can be a real epithet.

And why do people put bumper stickers on their cars anyway? Your car is not your dorm room. Save your sentiments for the wine bar, or the pub, or the barbeque, or the Raiders game; I don’t care, just don’t stick your snark so close to my car. Please.

Comment: Suddenly superfluous.

My little babies are growing up. We had a “drop off playdate” today with a friend of my son’s. The two boys went into the living room and my daughter followed them. They played and interacted and they didn’t need me.

It’s amazing to reach the point where you realize your kids don’t need your (usually unnecessary) social engineering skills anymore.

I’m not saying there’s never going to be an intervention of some kind in a social challenge with my kids. That stuff never stops, even when you’re grown. But I sat in the kitchen today and listened to my son and his friend talk nicely to each other, listen, share, and all the stuff we hope we are teaching our children. And my daughter, ever the social butterfly, is happy playing with or alongside any friend who comes into our house, no matter whose actual friend it is.

I’m not needed in there. Should I be baking cookies or something? Stirring Tang and making Rice Krispie ™ treats? I need to do something. But what? I’m quite sure there should be some bustling involved. Should I just sit here and revel in the evolution of my children’s social skills? Probably.

It’s a bit lonely without a mom to talk to, but I’ll survive. I’m getting the opportunity to listen to the kids when they don’t think anyone is paying attention. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot this way.

And in the meantime, I think I have some muffin mix somewhere.

Comment: The Princess/President Paradox

"Mommy, you look like the President!"

"Mommy, you look like a princess!"

My son’s is the first quote, my daughter's the second.

This speaks volumes about what’s on their minds.

My son wants to be President. We were going through the umpteeth scholastic book order pamphlets (Leaflets? Brochure-izines? Micro-catalogues?) today and he asked for a book about President Obama. My son is nearly six.

My daughter is all about princesses. It shouldn’t surprise any of you that she’s nearly four.

And I spent the past hour in Target running around in the (relative) calm of late night shopping to find loot for the damn loot bags that will need to be distributed at their low-key (I hope) and (relatively) small party.

Organizing a child’s birthday party is a lot like organizing a wedding. The guest list selection is brutal. Am I inviting the kids my kids actually play with, or the ones they talk about all the time? Am I inviting the moms I like irrespective of how our kids get along? How deep into the social circle do you go? What’s the policy on siblings? Are the dads coming too? I’ve been at parties where the whole family is there, even though the kid only marginally knows the birthday celebrant.

It’s an event now, this whole birthday party thing. People are having them at Build-a-Bear and Chuck E. Cheese and Gymboree and and Pump it Up (I swear I am not making any of these names up). It’s easy to complicate things and agonize and forget that it’s a kids’ party, FFS. All they really need is cake and a bouncy house.

But back to my kids’ comments. I was dressed up (I’m trying to walk my talk, people!) for a school meeting and I had just put on my swanky vintage car coat. I’m not sure why that made me look presidential or princess-like, but I believe it was my children’s way of saying, “You look good, Mom”; or at least, “You look presentable enough to leave the house”.

I’ll take what I can get.

Comment: On Chuck E. Cheese and Taking One Day at a Time (not the sitcom)

Do you ever look ahead at all the upcoming events in your life and think, there’s no way I can do this, every detail of every action in every moment that I am slated to do?

I’m not talking about suicidal ideation. You don’t wish you were dead. You just don’t quite see how you will summon the moxie, the oomph, the gumption, the sheer force of will to get through whatever it is you need to get through.

Because these days just getting the kids to and from school and to birthday parties feels like it’s killing me. I’m exhausted. And I look ahead at the weeks and months of heavy activity and I think, how in the world am I going to do this?

I feel like wave after wave keeps breaking over me and I’m just clinging to my position so I don’t get swept away in the tide of change and activity that is gushing over my household.

The idea of a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Two weeks ago, we were invited to TWO, within the same week. I agonized, and thought, maybe I should force myself to take my kids. They might love it; it’s for them, not for you, I reasoned. But then I thought about it some more.

I don’t believe in Chuck E. Cheese.

It’s fine if that’s your thrill, but it’s not for me. And if I don’t believe in it, why in the world would I subject my kids to it? So I didn’t bring them to either party, and they were none the wiser nor sadder. I recently took them to a Build-a-Bear party which was so over-stimulating I nearly had a seizure, but we did in fact survive it. And the party was during a long four days when Daddy was out of town. I didn’t think I’d handle it, but I did.

I remember as a kid in elementary school, I used to look at the high schoolers with awe and trepidation. I couldn’t imagine myself ever getting to that age and knowing what to do. How did they do algebra? I didn’t even know what that was! How did they know how to dress? My mom still helped me pick out my clothes! How were they smart enough to know how to write like grown-ups? It was beyond me.

I guess what I didn’t know then was it’s gradual, and what I need to remember now is the same thing. You don’t actually do or learn all the things you have to do in one moment. You do it one moment at a time.

Now would be a really good time to be really good at being a Buddhist. Seriously.

Comment: Vindication!

It’s official: there is an upper limit to the number of people you can sustain in your social circle.

It’s true.

All this 200 Facebook friends is an oxymoron.

According to an article in The Economist, there is an optimum number of people one can have and sustain in a social circle. That number is 150. In fact, it’s called the Dunbar circle, named after Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University anthropologist. He says that your brain is limited in how much social networking you can actually sustain and handle.

And according to surveys on Facebook use and the intimacy levels therein, even for people with 150 plus friends, their major usage/interaction only involves a handful of said persons. That means that I may have 89 friends, but I really only spend time with about five of them. In other words, less than ten percent of the people you “friend” are really your friends.

At least that’s this article’s (and my) interpretation. 300 friends are not sustainable, except in the loosest sense of the word.

From the article:
“People who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle.” "

Yeah, me and The Economist, we're all over it.

Comment: Facebook Withdrawal

Got the Facebook DTs. I keep looking at the tabs on my browser and wondering where my fix is.

But overall I still stand by my decision some 24 hours later.

It just seems to me that you should live as much of your life LIVE and in PERSON as possible, as opposed to virtually. Sure, there’s a place for online interaction, but it shouldn’t dominate.

I really wonder what our kids’ social skills will be like as they grow older since they will likely spend so much time online or texting. What will it mean for society at large? Will we all speak in shorter sentences? Will “GR8” become the official spelling for “great”? Will all correspondence look like the title of an 80s Prince song?

Time will tell.