When Fitz was small I made him a taggie blanket, which I loved, but he was just about growing into it when it disappeared. Where do things go? We have hunted up and down the house for it, and I know I never took it out because I was afraid of losing it, so it has simply disappeared. Other things this house has eaten include books, socks and money. Ok so maybe I spent the money, but I spent a lot of it on the house, so you see my point.

In the case of the taggie blanket the solution was just to make another one. I could have mourned the first one a lot more, but really, what’s the point in being able to sew if you can’t repair things, even when repairing means replacing?

Another thing that is disappearing is Bloglines. When I read about it last week I was sad, even though I jumped their ship a few months ago. Like many of you I jumped to Google Reader, and I’m happy enough. I guess I feel sad because of the streamlining that always happens with new internet thingys: once there were many social networks, and now there is just facebook, for example. And with the transferral of another arm of my online life into Google’s hands, and at the same time the utter mushrooming of online places I should be keeping up with, I felt a little tired as well as sad.

I am, you see, an internet dinosaur. I met Mr J because of the internet, way back when I was hand-coding a website for my boss. It’s so far back that animated gifs were the latest in technology. Yes, I’m that old. What this really means is that for me the internet is an adjunct to the real world – it is brilliant, and exciting, and it lets me talk to people I wouldn’t get to meet any other way. But I run this life parallel to my outside world life – the two can gently bump into each other but they are not enmeshed. I can best explain this using facebook: I see it as a way of connecting with people I have actually met, such as the classmates from my japanese class, or people from school that I am nosy about for ten minutes and then, curiosity satisfied, never need to think about again. Hence I do not link my twitter feed or my blog to facebook or vice versa, since I think my family could do without my wittering about fabric and wotnot, and I do not think it’s appropriate for people I haven’t met to be able to see intimate family pictures which may also include pictures of other people’s small children.

But it’s me and people like me who are disappearing. People ten years younger see facebook as just another part of their social lives and have no delineation between it and their real world life. It is just life. It’s why they have 400 friends – they add anyone they meet in a cocktail bar. It opens a gateway to social exclusion (imagine not being included in an event, or not having access to the internet for a week and missing all the invitations and gossip) as much as it opens up communication and ways of sharing life stories complete with photos. I am knocking it a little, yes, but that’s only because I’ve already had an email that asked why I hadn’t responded to an event invitation, which begged the question ‘why not email and ask me to your event instead?’ See? Dinosaur.

I don’t mind that. I’ll continue with my compartmentalised life for as long as I care to, because it feels right to me. If it ever feels wrong then I’ll mesh everything together. That’ll be a shock for everyone I should think…