Oversharing Much?

This has been a topic that has irked me for a while. Seriously, when did social media take over our lives? Gone are the days when Facebook was only college students asking what bar / party was going on that night, complaining about how hungover one was in class or discussing what cute outfit one was going to wear to that evening's social.  Now it seems that nothing is sacred on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc anymore.

First of all parents on social media: I understand that you have the most amazing, smartest, cutest, all around best (and only) child in the entire universe, but is it really necessary to post 1,231,000 photos of said child (or children) every single day?  I understand that some milestones are important to share, like his/her's first day of VPK or how cute he/she looks on Halloween,  but honestly 99.9% of us do not care that your sweet baby ate peas for dinner and made 3 poopies.   What you leave yourself with is absolutely zero material to embarrass your child with 20 years down the line when he/she brings their significant other home for the first time.

Also dear mothers, please stop bitching about your child, how little sleep you have gotten in the past 48 hours, and how every time you prepare a bottle for baby, you want to drink a whole bottle of wine. Seriously one day that kid (or even worse, prepubescent teenager) will go online and see all of these rants about them and exclaim "I always knew you hated me!" 

I'm sure you're all thinking "Well you don't know, you don't have a child yet!"  Yes I know I'm not a mother yet, but there's another topic that really grinds my gears that I can relate to... COUPLES on Social Media.. 

First of all, to those couples who profess their love to each other's Facebook walls, come on, there are other options: Facebook Messenger, text messaging, a phone call, or hell even walking into the other room.  If you think that your profession of love showing up on my newsfeed is going to convince me that you love or even like your significant other, you are sadly mistaken.  

Hell even engagements and weddings are fair game.  These are two of the happiest moments of your life which should be shared with family and friends.  However nowadays, its "I've had this ring on my finger for 39.23254 seconds, screw calling my parents, siblings, friends etc, I'm putting this on Facebook so everyone, including the guy I had a one night stand with in college, can know that I'M GETTING MARRIED!!!!!"  IMO give at least 24 hours after said event before posting anything on social media so you can let all the important people know via in person, phone call, text, email, facebook messenger before sharing with the world.  The rest of us will be just as happy to find out about your great news 24 hours later as 2 minutes later.  

And brides, I know a lot of you are guilty of, "I'm about to walk into my grand entrance for my wedding reception but before I do that I have to change my relationship status, my name, state how HAPPY I am today and post 2,842 selfies in your wedding dress"  OMFG put the phone down! You're getting married and hopefully that only happens once in your life. You have friends tagging you in pics and you paid that professional photographer thousands of dollars. That should be enough!  #imabouttocutmyweddingcake...  how about #imabouttopunchababy

Political / Religious views.  Just keep them to yourself.  Your 5000 posts for or against aborting your 8 year old child (don't get mad, its a South Park reference) or praising the flying spaghetti monster will not make me change my mind or all of a sudden have me speaking in tongues.

I know it would be easy to just deactivate all my social media accounts, but for every annoying post there is one that I really want to read.  So go on, keep posting your funny posts, news articles or even the one of your child on its 1st birthday (babies and cakes are adorable) but I really don't need to know about your nasty infected ingrown toenail.  

T.T. also stands for Tummy Troubles

One of the worst parts about getting older is no longer having an iron stomach.  Growing up with my dad's cooking and eating all the greasy pre-packaged goodness while living in my sorority house and chugging a keg's worth of beer meant you had to have a stomach of steel.  However, after graduating college and moving out of my parents house,  my tummy has decided to become one of my worst enemies.    I've gone from eating every last morsel of yummy fried goodness to having to watch what I eat in fear my estomago will scream out "Viva la Revolution" in public.

Bridesmaids

Lets be honest for a minute, everyone has had a moment similar to that wonderful scene in the movie Bridesmaids where Maya Rudolf's character is running down a busy street in a full on wedding dress.  This may be TMI but mine always happens after I eat at Pei Wei.  UGH I just want some spicy noodles in my life!  Having these problems and being female is the WORST.  When men hit the shitter, there's no surprise whats going to happen there and they let it rip.  Heck, at work you see men walking into the restrooms with reading material in hand.  Women on the other hand are very poop shy. While my husband has no problem walking in the bathroom and taking a dump while I'm getting ready, even the idea of him walking in on me pooping makes me more uncomfortable than a wool sweater in the summer.

I miss working in my old office in Tampa.  We had one bathroom per sex, so no one really knew what you were doing in there besides the fine aroma of Febreeze that followed.  However, when I moved to Richmond, I had go back in my mental file to remember my pile of tricks dealing with pooping in public.  Living in a sorority house is a wonderful place of knowledge when it comes to this stuff.  So here ladies is my list of how to *discretely* do it:

1.  Try to train your body to go at times when the restroom is normally empty.  At my office its between 8:30 and 10 and at lunchtime.

2.  Place some toilet paper in the bowl before you start, it really helps muffle the "plopping" sound

3.  Lift your legs when pooping so no one can see your shoes and figure out who's doing what

4.  Wait until the lady next to you flushes or washes their hands.

5.  If you're in an office building, go to one of the other floors where no one knows who you are.

6.  Always keep Imodium, GasEx, and Tums in your purse.

However if its really a bad one, just let it go.  Yes its mortifying but EVERYONE has been in your shoes. We'll just run out of there as fast as we can.  

So am I Asian?!?

I am Filipino - American..  My parents moved to the States in the early 80's and I was born in New York. There was a two year stint where I lived in the Philippines, between ages 2-4, but all I have left from that is my ability to barely understand Tagalog and eat balut without cringing.  I have never really focused on my color or race except for when I'm running late and I can blame it on "CPT" or "Filipino Time".

I had never really thought about "what I am" or focused on my heritage until I hit college. I started my Freshman year at UF with my Vietnamese boyfriend (we'll call him P.E.) and alienating myself from everyone else, still one of my biggest regrets in college.  My parents became worried about me and told me I had no choice, I was going to go through sorority recruitment.   They wanted me to make friends and they thought this was the way to do it.  At the time I was completely ignorant about the whole "Greek" thing and what this was all about.  Surprisingly  I got into the one I wanted.  At the same time, P.E. was starting to join up with a group of Asians who wanted to colonize an Asian Fraternity on campus.  This is where things started getting weird.  He kept asking me why I was part of a "white" sorority and why I didn't embrace my Asian-ness.  This was never an issue before, but now it was a huge rift. First of all, my sorority was very diverse, and second umm we live in a country where the majority of the population is white.   That summer, I dropped P.E. and started really hanging out with my sorority sisters.  No one in this new group of friends every brought up my color except to say things like "Tara, sometimes I forget you're not white".  Some people would find that offensive, but it made me feel like I was accepted for my personality and not defined as "the Asian girl".  

So am I Asian or what?!?   I've been told by a few ignorant people "You're not Asian" or "I don't consider the Philippines as part of Asia because its an island and not on the main land" but these same people consider Japan as part of Asia.  Yea seriously...  So what the eff am I? Yes I understand that the Philippines is an island in the Pacific Ocean but the definition of a Pacific Islander is "a phrase to describe inhabitants of the three major sub-regions of Oceania: Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia."  So when there is a questions about race or nationality or some kind of standardized grouping I bubble in ASIAN!

I am Filipino and I am American.  I love my heritage, I love my skin color, I love my slightly slanted eyes, my really flat nose, and I love me some adobo.  But I also love everything about living in America and the opportunities here. I thank my lucky stars that my parents had the cajonas to leave everything they knew and loved in the Philippines and come to the states.  Finding that happy medium between the two and trying not to forget where your family came from can be difficult sometimes.  But I am so glad that I can embrace both. 

The next question will be, when the hubs and I procreate, will our kid be White, Asian, or Other?   

Photo Boo(b)ths

Lets be honest, photo booths at weddings are the shit.  At my own wedding in February it was a requirement.  Its the place where all your guests can let loose without the pressures of the photographer in your face. I mean seriously they provide props! Even the person normally shies away from the camera can be found in at least one photo in the booth.  Heck my own father who doesn't get the point and thought at first was a waste of his money can be found smiling and having a ball with my mom and his sisters.  I've never seen my dad enjoy taking pictures so much, and I'm totally bummed I didn't get in there with him.

HOWEVER there is one thing many wedding guests don't realize..... The bride and groom get digital copies of ALL the pictures.  It is also very common for the photo booth company to post all of the photos online for guests to view and order pictures straight from their website.

So I'm having a grand old time at my reception when a few guests come up to me giggling and state "we defiled your photo booth" thinking its their little secret. The best part is that I'm laughing my ass off like a banshee on the inside knowing that I'll get to see what the hell these people are talking about .   So we get our pics during our second day stuck in a U-Haul with a dog farting up a storm.  I'm looking though all of them thinking wow there are a ton of couples kissing, when I finally get to one of the pics I was looking for. Bwahahahaha! My husband is scared thinking that I've gone off the deep end but.... OMG these women showed BOOB! I'm not just talking side boob or a nip slip, I'm talking about full on areolas staring back at me.   Whats great is that I found a few of these scrolling through our pics... whats sad was no guys mooned the camera.

So the next time you're drunk as hell and there's a photo booth in sight just keep those sweater puppies covered.

For the sake of these individuals (and especially for their children) I will not be posting these pictures for your viewing (dis)pleasure.