We Interrupt the Internet....

If there's one thing the Internet with all it's connections to everything we should eat, shouldn't miss, must have read, should never do, should always do, should teach our kids, and which might change our lives, does, it's make whatever you are doing, whatever you have done, and even what you hope to do, feel inadequate.

You remember the kid in high school in the Latin class who would argue with the teacher about the proper tense translation and cite three sources for his opinion over that of the teacher's?  Yeah. Remember that annoying person who wanted to show everyone else how stupid they were by comparison?  That's the Internet with it's ever quirky Pinterest pins lined up in your inbox to show you how whatever you're making for your kid's 4th birthday, is lame, no matter how well intentioned.

You eat your pizza wrong.  You diet wrong. You read the wrong books, watched the wrong movies, and failed to exercise the right muscles to insure you will stay healthy.  You don't save money the way the experts do.  You don't eat kale fifteen times a day.  You don't sleep properly.  You are talking to your cat wrong.  Disney gets its princesses wrong, and if you enjoyed the movie, you're cooperating with the creation of a whole new generation of oppressed people.   It's one giant scold based on what?   Of all things, math.   Who wants their tastes, preferences and opinions shaped by an equation with no answer save you're not right?

If you aren't being nagged into feeling inadequate, you're being cajoled for failing to type "Amen" to prove you love someone, to copy and paste to prove you're a friend, and told you're an ENJP instead of a ISPF or whatever because you picked the beach house instead of the tranquil field.   Buzzfeeds quizzes alone will tell you, whatever you thought you were, the algorithms say different.  

Maybe it's the result of being cooped up inside for 5 days straight with three feet of white stuff to shovel.  I've cooked food, gone outside, played cards and we've made tunnels.  But even as we go about this business of living, the radio gives us a reminder of top ten things we shouldn't do in the snow, (we did about seven of them).

So I went outside, where the internet cannot find me, I didn't bundle up properly and threw a snowball at the sky and shaped a dragon in the snow. We sledded.  They threw snowballs.  We didn't take any pictures of it on my phone. The only sound outside was the occasional snow blower, and the thawing of snow from our roof.  The outside real world is saying, be still, enjoy this quiet time with your kids.  And we did.  When we got too cold and wet to stay out, I brought them back in, brewed up some microwave popcorn and some curled up to watch a movie.  Others settled into books.  The youngest took a bath.  The world felt more real, between the baths and the books and the popcorn.  

There's probably some link that says why we should have air popped the stuff but I'm not going to look for it.