(A 4-grits post)

Facebook owns your soul.

OK, maybe not your soul, but it does have license to use anything you post to your page...forever.

I read this. And then I read these.

The first is an article that deciphers Facebook's terms of service, and the second is those terms.

To make it even easier for you, I'll quote a very special part of it.

Submissions

You acknowledge and agree that any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, feedback or other information that you provide to Facebook ("Submissions"), are non-confidential and non-proprietary. Facebook will be entitled to the unrestricted use of any such Submission for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without acknowledgment or compensation to you.

Later the terms go on to say that any "User Content" will survive any termination of your account. This means that if you read this and then immediately go and delete your account, Facebook will still have rights to use any pictures, phone numbers, websites, etc. that you posted in its archives. And the right to use those things at any time for any reason.

No need to worry about Big Brother, Facebook is watching you.

So I take the kids (almost) everywhere I go. To the grocery store, to the others' practices, to the bathroom... Anyway, I took the 2 older Things to soccer practice and luckily it's at their elem. school because then the little ones can play on the playground. And they are very happy to play after hours, because then they can do things the meanie teachers won't let them do during recess, like run UP the slide. Dirty ol' meanies. So the boys are playing and I overhear some little (approx. 6-10 yrs old) girls playing house.
Girl 1, "Well I told you about the party yesterday. I even emailed you about it!"
and a little while later,
Girl2, "You be the dad and you say I'm just going to sleep down here, but then you really just turn the music up real loud and party while everyone sleeps."

I don't know about you, but I can hear my kids whisper "shut up, butt face" at 20 yards. I know it wasn't that bad a pretend conversation, but something made me worry a little for those kids.

My little angel, the same angel who last night got one spanking for each hole he put in the wall while he was supposed to be going to sleep, was playing with a friend so new he didn't know his name yet. I overheard "if you want to be a bee, you just have to use your imagination."

I've been trying to come up with good handles for the Things, since I didn't make my blog restricted from people and my conspiracy radar goes up when I think about my kids names being online. The little one will be known as Hamster. Thing 3 will henceforth be known as Bud. Thing 2 is now dubbed Pickles. There is no significance to that nickname, it just makes me laugh. Certain words are funny to me, including corn, monkeys, cheese and pickles. Go figure. And the one who made me a mom is Sassafras. Write that down. It's very important.

Moving on...
my mom left to go back to ATL. I missed her before we dropped her off at the airport. I love that she cares so much to come visit. I love that she loves my kids as much as I do. I really believe that she does. I love that I can make her laugh. I love that she makes me laugh. I love that she will clean my kitchen without making snide comments about how messy it is. Sarcastic comments, yes, but not snide. She's snarky like that.

I will see her in Oct when I fly down to visit my grandfather. His health is declining and I hate to think it may be the last time I see him, but it truly may be. Sad, sad. What an amazing man though. WWII vet. Very successful businessman. Someone with a true photographic memory. There is no way to even sum this man up in a silly blog post, but his personality influenced mine a lot. If you love me, you'd love Granddad. So as it starts to get really cold here, I'll be an hour from Orlando, FL. Sorry for ya.

Gotta go finish beating, whoops! I mean bathing kids.