Dear Peggy,

I saw a “facebook-friend” tonight at a party. Okay, let’s stop right here, right now, and address the term “facebook-friend.” What the hell does that mean? I can tell you what it means in this particular instance (and probably in a lot more). A facebook friend is someone you may have met casually, realized you were both on facebook, sent each other a “friend request,” accepted the “friend request,” and then began to learn things about each other from daily posts that you wouldn’t otherwise have ever dreamed. So in essence, some “facebook friends” know more about you than your “real friends.”

The “facebook friend” (scratch that), the friend I saw at a party tonight thanked me, as I was leaving the soiree, for my blog. She told me she read it and said something about how I could really open up and put things “out there.” I can’t remember her exact words because I had several glasses of wine at the party. I told her I would send her a private facebook message and explain how I began my blog, thinking she might enjoy seeing how far I have come and how I ended up in this place where I feel so free to “put it all out there.” But, in the ten minutes it took me to drive home from the party I knew what I wanted to say to her privately would become my blog for all the world to read (or at least the three people who might actually read this blog post).

I began this blog on a lark, as a way to write while simultaneously purging my home (read – clean my house) of the crap I have accumulated over an almost thirty year period. I tentatively posted my intention in 2008 and it was 2009 before I had the guts to follow up that first post. Originally I just wrote about cleaning out cabinets and drawers and closets, but then a funny thing happened – I began writing about my life beyond my clutter. I began writing about my passion, my family. My own small family of one husband, two daughters, one son-in-law, and two dogs and that grew into tales about my extended family; my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It grew into a way for me to practice writing down my family lore.

What I really want to tell my “facebook friend” – I mean my real friend, my friend Peggy, is how embarrassed I was when someone first discovered I had begun a blog. I must have let it slip to Daughter #2 and Daughter #2 let it slip to Daughter #1 and Daughter #1 called me out on it. I was humiliated. I was speechless. I turned every shade of red (thank God I was on the phone and Daughter #1 couldn’t see her Technicolor mother). I was flustered, I hemmed and hawed. Daughter #1 actually laughed at me! Finally I drew every bit of courage I could dredge up from the far recesses of my bravery locker and fessed up. “Yes,” I said, “I am a blogger.” Followed immediately by, “But I didn’t want anyone to know, that’s why I put it on the internet.”

Daughter #1 spent a few minutes trying to explain the insanity of my rationale and then gave up. So, a blogger was born. From what I read about bloggers we are an egomaniacal bunch. How dare I presume that anyone cares about the contents of my closet or how my little brother died? But that is just it – it goes back to my point about putting this on the internet as a kind of anonymous post. There is so much out there (out there being the internet) so few people read it, so few people really care, it becomes just a personal writing exercise. So when I have a friend (notice I am no longer calling her a “facebook friend”) tell me she read my blog I have to stop and realize that someone is reading this – that this is more than casting out my jewels upon the ocean to be carried away with the tide. People really read personal stuff about my family, my friends, about me!

Does this mean I will quit opening up? Does this mean I will cease blogging? Hell no, it just means I damn well better pay more attention to grammar and spelling! Thanks, Peggy for commenting on my blog and thanks for being my friend.