You know why it’s been two months since I posted? Because I keep thinking I want to redo this site and I should wait to post until I have energy for an overhaul. Ha.

Also, I have been spending a lot of my free time on freaking Facebook. I never wanted to be a Facebook person. I thought they were all college kids and people looking for relationships or something. But I signed up for some work-related thing, and then my entire high school found me. Plus all my relatives. And all my current friends and coworkers.

So now I have a huge bizarre network of people I see all day at work—one of them sits three feet from me and several others are within shouting distance—people I see on birthdays or holidays only, people I know pretty well in person, people I know pretty well only online, and people I haven’t seen or talked to in 20 years.

For those not familiar with Facebook, there’s this little status thing where people can post updates on what they’re doing all day. It’s got your name and then “is,” and you fill in the rest. A lot of people use that to crack wise. Last week while guys were at my house replacing the sliding door with french doors, one of my status lines said “Amy is getting her back door replaced, my friends (and that’s not a euphemism).”

That had a butt joke AND a jab at McCain and his endless “my friends” in the second debate.

When people aren’t using their status lines for jokes or for incredibly boring updates like “Amy is hungry” or some crap like that, they are using them to have a little dialogue with their Facebook friends. And lately, that dialogue is all politics, all the time. (One of my Facebook friends started a little group on there called I Use My Status Line to Make Passive-Aggressive Jabs at People. I joined that group.)

All your Facebook friends get little updates on what you’re doing on Facebook, whether you fill in your status line or not. So when I joined a pro-Obama Facebook group, all my Facebook friends knew about it. And when they join groups, I know about it.

A few paragraphs ago, I divided my Facebook friends into groups—coworkers, relatives, friends of various kinds, etc. But really I should have divided them into political/religious affiliations.

All my high school friends keep joining pro-Palin groups and putting religious comments or anti-Obama comments in their status lines. My relatives are doing that, too. My coworkers and friends are mostly slamming McCain and joining a bunch of liberal-leaning groups.

I am getting closer lately to some of my more Republican cousins, because some of them have moved to Austin. But in general, I seem to have left all the right-wing and/or religious stuff behind me when I moved away from home. When I’m hanging out with the different groups of people in my life, I can change my expectations about what’s going to be said, and what it’s acceptable for me to say.

But on Facebook, I get one page with line after line of reports on everyone, with no filters or organizing or anything. It’s just . . . it messes me up, with the mix of liberal and conservative, hilarious and banal. Here’s a sampling just from the past 24 hours, with names excised:

[old high school acquaintance] is looking forward to hanging out with friends this weekend!

[grad school acquaintance] Is eating a big bowl of New Mexican chile and is falling in love with it.

[old elementary school best friend] is giving it all up to God!

[current friend] is wondering who, exactly, is in the “pro-abortion movement”.

[current friend] is kind of baffled by the institutionalized football fervor in my workplace.

[old high school friend] please say a prayer for my dad.

[grad school acquaintance] just wrote a column about the use of “professorial” as an insult/criticism in political discourse.

[online acquaintance] Hee. Women for McCain.

[online acquaintance] (posted during the debate last night) For real, Obama! Health care is the one issue that would make me riot. (Oh, hi there, FBI!) McCain’s plan scares the shit out of me.

[old high school friend] (posted during debate) is watching that closet muslim guy skirt around and not answer a single question!

[old high school friend] is wondering if I’m pinky or the brain?

So, see, it’s a mess. It’s an entertaining mess. But the biggest problem I have is deciding what to put in my own status line. Last night I mentioned that McCain is a big goober. That was in direct response to the old high school friend, who wrote the thing about the “closet muslim.” But my current friends, who can’t see what my high school friends are posting, are probably thinking, “Yeah, duh, Amy. We know he’s a goober. How original.”

And my old elementary school friend wrote today that she’s giving it all up to God. I know she means that in a way that is so sincere that I can’t even begin to understand it. But if I wrote that, she would think I was sincere, while all my current friends would bust out laughing, knowing that I was being an asshole.

The Facebook status line thing is a conversation, but I don’t know who it’s a conversation with. The context is so muddled that I can’t figure out who I’m talking to. For all the random people who see only the status line as a communication from me to them . . . what is one message that speaks to all of them? There’s not one, other than, “Hey, I’m bored at work, derrrrrr.” “Sure am glad it’s Friday!” “Oh, look! It’s raining!”

I can’t come to any conclusions about this, other than that perhaps I care too much about my Facebook status line.

Today is our 16th wedding anniversary. Yay for us!

Chris and I decided to sort of take it easy this weekend. It’s been a rough week, for me, at least. I have several big projects going on at work, all with tight deadlines, and I took on an emergency freelance project that I received on Monday and had to have edited by Friday. It was 90 single-spaced pages. Eeesh. But I got it done.

I also have done a lot of biking lately. I am still having trouble with sesamoiditis in my left foot, so I haven’t been able to run much. I’ve never been crazy about biking for a couple of reasons, such as the difficulty of finding long routes that are fairly safe, the potential for getting ten miles from home and getting a stupid flat tire, and the necessity of fiddling with the bike all the time.

But I’m tired of still being overweight, so I decided I needed to ride. And because of my general reluctance to ride much, I decided I also needed a goal and a plan. So I found a century-training plan online and Chris, who was ecstatic that I wanted to ride, joined me.

This is our second week. Last week our long ride was 20 miles. Tomorrow we’ll be going 25. We’ve been riding about 12 miles several other days in the week, but the mileage builds pretty fast. Supposedly, we’ll be ready to go 100 miles in three months or so.

Anyway, so today, on our anniversary, I got up early and went to yoga. Then I went back home and picked up Chris and we went to a bike shop so I could get some shorts with better padding. After the 20 miles last week, I was a little sore. That 20 miles took us an hour and a half, by the way. I think we don’t go very fast. I have no idea, really, how that measures up. I’m not nearly as aware of professional-level cycling speeds as I am of running.

(And speaking of running, I’m watching the women’s Olympic marathon right now. SPOILERS AHEAD: Holy shit. Deena Kastor out. Paula Radcliffe dropping back. And Dita is just about to start flying, I think.)

After buying some totally embarrassing tight biking shorts and some new gloves (I seem to have lost my old ones), we went to Olive Garden. It’s our anniversary tradition. When we first got married, we lived in a tiny rural town of 5,000 people. If we wanted to eat somewhere fancy, we had to drive 45 miles and go to Olive Garden.

We spent the afternoon doing bike maintenance and washing our filthy bikes (see! all this time we had to spend! I never have to wash and oil my running shoes!).

Now we’re watching the marathon and I’m trying not to feel jealous. I am getting weepy, though. Women didn’t used to be able to do the marathon in the Olympics! And look at how fucking awesome they are!

And I don’t have a lot of exciting news or anything.

Chris and I needed some comedy, so we went to see Step Brothers last night. It was funny, but I think I laughed more during the Pineapple Express trailer than I did during the whole Step Brothers movie.

Right before the movie started, Chris said, “Bet you five bucks we see some cock.”

I felt it was a sucker bet, but I took it anyway.

And then about 15 minutes in, Will Ferrell wiped his testicles all over a drum set, and Chris leaned over and whispered, “Pay up.”

To which I replied, “That ain’t cock, baby. That’s balls.”

Thus, I won five dollars from my husband.