ninme

Which admittedly sets a predisposition, but my mother’s been irritating the crap out of me. Yesterday I was watching that hour-long program on the BBC, and she was sitting in the next room, well able to see and hear, and she said, “Are you doing anything important? Or are you just ’surfing the web’?” like the news of 150,000 people is no more or less important than my other sister spending hours on end downloading Buffy pictures, because, well, it’s on the internet. And then her whole attitude on blogs is just so annoying. She was talking to this friend of hers (whom I can’t stand) who (thankfully) moved to Arizona last month on the phone, and I guess the woman asked what I was up to while home, and Mom says “Oh, this and that, she spends most of her time (not true) on the internet reading her blogs.” And when I first got here, every time I thought she’d find something interesting in a blog, she’d read it, without going through the trouble of sitting down, and all she’d do is say “that sentence doesn’t make any sense.” Then correct the man’s grammar. Because obviously bloggers are just a bunch of kids, because obviously no one is capable of knowing how to do anything on the internet without being under the age of 27, because that’s when governments started putting gene therapy for technology smarts in the water supply. And then! The other day she came up to be and said “So, do you have a blog?” Because I guess she was hitting the back button through a bunch of news sites to see what I’d be doing.

Now, this smacks of that sort of behaviour I most abhor: that need to constantly know what one is doing, always checking up and taking mental notes and maybe composing follow-up questions, combined with the sort of voodoo-dollist obsession like an seventh grader who thinks the keys to happiness lie in the ability to get near a crush’s school desk, and maybe see inside.

She’s not that bad, but as I said. Smacking noises.

Then yesterday she came up and said “Are you going to put your ‘blog’ up here (points to the bookmark bar) so everyday I can read your missives?” Yeah, that doesn’t make me feel at most ten. Christ, she grants my (other) sister, who is ten, more dignity and respect during her rambling stories about something that happened at our cousins’ house two years ago at Christmas than me.

And that’s the problem. I just know that she thinks blogs are just a bunch of stupid kids ranting and raving on non-important stuff. But that’s the point about them: They’re not! For the love of kittens, she reads Chrenkoff in the Opinion Journal when he posts his Good News from Iraqs, everyone else on the blog blinks to your right are grownups with kids, careers, and designated expertise in some field, except of course for me and Najma. Maybe she gives them the benefit of doubting they’re all in pajamas, but she certainly won’t grant them much else. Or else she’d look for more in a Diplomad posting than bad (but excusable, since he’s been quite busy in the past week) grammar!

Ergh.

Now I have to post a bunch of news items to bury this somewhere at the bottom, in case she ever does read it. And no, I’m not putting it in her bookmarks bar, not if I want to keep a single scrap of whatever dignity I have left.