Confessions

Listen up, Gentle Readers (ha!), it's confession time.  I feel compelled to come clean on a few fronts.

First of all, I have sinned against my husband.  Well, not in the Carnal Sense...but if you ask him, he will surely fill your ears with tales of all of my transgressions.

The first and most egregious of my unforgivable actions is The Sin of Facebooking.  Circus Dad belongs to a (not entirely small nor unfounded) group of stalwart social networking holdouts.  When Facebook first hit our radar, we both wrinkled our noses in distaste and declared "Creepy!" and "Why!?" and "But how do you know anybody is actually REAL?".  At the time, my younger siblings had accounts and it seemed to be about keeping in touch with high school and college friends.  And then about hooking up.  Sort of.  I remember thinking, "Not For Me".  Fast Forward 24 months and I shut down the website I had kept to post photos and info about our kids, and insisted that everybody that wanted to keep up with the Circus/Broccoli Fam had to get on the Facebook Wagon and come play.  Initially, I did just that.  Then I found games (NO, I never had a farm or a Mafia.  But I was briefly a Vampire and I confess to having intensely focused phases of addiction over one silly game or another).  On two occasions I have taken the time to clean out my Friends list...just taking a hatchet to the people that I can't remember or who asked me to be their Friend and then never said "Boo".  I don't need stalkers...and frankly, a lot of the people I knew 30 years ago...I don't really want to know anymore.  Still, I somehow have close to 600 Friends.

This makes Circus Dad loony. He HATES Facebook.  I can't really blame him, because I do have multiple periods of high activity each day.  IMs, Messages, guffawing at statuses....and it definitely does take time away from things I should be doing.  Like reading The Financial Times and worrying about our childrens' educations.  But, in all seriousness...I might do those things occasionally, but what it's probably keeping me from doing is playing another round of Old Maid or painting toenails.  And when I'm honest with myself I feel a little bit bad about stealing that time from the girls.  Circus Dad thinks Facebook is just the Devil's Playground.  It's a "safe" place to connect with old friends...but it's also a place to hook up with old flames.  It's temptation overload.  We're Old Married People.  We aren't jealous and we know each other well.  Nonetheless, he is not a fan of me having Friends that I was previously romantically linked to.  And I get that.  Only, it seems kind of ridiculous. Because while I do know a number of real life people who have had affairs and/or caught their partner in an affair that was Made Possible by Facebook...at the end of the day, you have to want to do it.  And I don't.  So, it's basically an impasse.  He curses it and I giggle along with it.

My second sin is that my gift of self deprecation also tends to occasionally become non-self deprecation and it's really fun to kid a kidder.  I've become Much better about my tendency to skewer my husband in public social situations.  But what you should know about Circus Dad is that he is an infamous Pot Stirrer.  He is a born Contrarian and there is nothing he loves more than getting a serious person All Spun Up by taking a hard line position (that he actually doesn't really believe 90% of the time) in opposition to them.  So, it's hard not to want to see if you can get him Spun Up.  But he's unflappable....and when he is ticked, he's got a Slow Burn.  He'll just make you pay later. 

My third transgression is linked specifically to this blog but also slightly to my second sin.  My darling is NOT at all happy about my Blogging.  He admits (begrudgingly) that I'm "kinda" funny.  But he does not want our personal business to be public and he is entirely displeased with being labeled Circus Dad.  He says it makes him sound like a Clown.  Which, anyone who has met the man will confirm, he most definitely is Not.  Red hair aside, my husband is a rather serious guy.  He is logical and even-handed.  He is calm, if sharp-tongued.  He is, without question, the only person I have ever met who really and truly seems to have been born without an ounce of insecurity.  He just plain does not care what anybody thinks.  And I, on the other hand, am a little bit like a puppy dog.  I Need everybody to Like me.  It's a disease.  And it makes him crazy.  He used to beg me not to talk to the checkout ladies at the grocery store.  "Why must you be so friendly?"  Which is funny.  Because my Mother In Law is the kindest, happiest and friendliest person you will ever meet.  I am still hopeful that in his old age, Circus Dad will mellow into a craggy version of my darling Mother In Law.

Why am I airing my sins?  Firstly, because I think that being honest about this will make me more careful in choosing my words and which stories I tell.  I also think I owe the man a nicer epithet than Circus Dad (not that I'm changing the name of the blog, because I maintain that is Who we are).  So I introduce to you The Husband.  He will occasionally appear in these pages...but if he seems to be missing, just know that I'm self-editing.  I can actually hear the guffaws of my dearest friends at that one.  While I'm on a Confession Bent I suppose I should go ahead and admit that I seem to be without a Filter.  I have issues saying too much, putting my foot in my mouth, and otherwise causing social distress.  Know This: I Mean Well.  Always.  But I'm the child of a Hopeless Sarcastic and a Chatty Cathy....I'm come about it honestly.

So, I make no excuses for the Sins.  And I am not necessarily saying I will quit them (particularly the first one)...but I will commit myself to being kind.  Not that he's reading this....