I do believe in karma, or whatever you want to call it when things come back to bite you in the butt.
For instance, I just planned to take a few minutes after Kendall and I came home from shopping and I finished my fruit salad, and before I "moved the laundry around" some more and cleaned off my desk, balanced my checkbook, etc...just a few minutes, mind you, to glance at Facebook and see what my friends had been up to. Just a glance. Just a few minutes.
That was almost an hour ago. I think.
Where does karma fit in to this scenario? Well, I have vivid memories of nagging the backs of my kids' heads (faces glued to the computer screen) about wasting so much time on Facebook - didn't they have homework? Didn't Daniel need to feed the dogs? Had Kendall unloaded the dishwasher yet? What about their laundry that was piled up and falling off of their dressers...shouldn't they be putting that away instead of WASTING time on Facebook?
I was asking for it, that's for sure.
But I never realized back then how much FUN Facebook could be! For instance, I've been glancing over all the groups that my 'friends' have joined recently - there's one for my old high school, my old junior high, my town. There are religious ones, philosophical ones, political ones...it was fun looking at them, finding the ones I wanted to join, seeing what my friends had joined. Kind of like high school.
The biggest surprise was seeing that my sister-in-law had joined one sporting an image of Homer Simpson lifting a beer mug with "To Alcohol" screaming across the top of the logo. TOTALLY not Cathy! I'm PRETTY sure Cathy doesn't even drink - maybe a glass of wine here and there - so it really caught me off guard! Until I noticed the name of the group..."You'd probably have better luck with a beer...Shallue Worldwide Ltd. (a global group)"
Of course, I had to join, too, even though I don't drink beer anymore. There were only 13 members...3 of them were my own kids! But another 3 were from Australia so it qualifies as a global group (well, I'm guessing about one because he didn't look familiar, but then, I haven't been to Wisconsin where the main concentration of Shallue's still lives in a long, long time.)
Apparently back in the 1850's, when the Shallue's decided it was time to get the heck out of Ireland, two of the brothers got on the wrong boat and went to Australia. At least, that's how the story has been passed down on this continent. I just sent messages to all of them, requesting their 'friendship'...we'll see if they accept me, and if they do, I'll see if their version of the story matches ours.
On Facebook, anyone can be a Shallue, though. The group is open to everyone!
I wonder how many Shallue's there are in Australia now. I'm not sure how many are here in the states, but one thing is for sure - if they're a Shallue, we're related...well, me by marriage, but you know what I mean. There are way more than thirteen, I know that for sure. Heck, in the summer of 2007 I had close to 40 of them living in my house for a few days - all descended from Tom's parents - to help celebrate Tom's 50th birthday and our 25th wedding anniversary. (The first photo is of Tom's parents and all the boys. The next one is ALL of us - parents, brothers, wives, kids - at least those who attended. Some of the wives and kids couldn't come. Both photos courtesy of the oldest brother, Kenny, and his daughter, Carol.)
