Schedule for The Hollywood Mom

6:30 a.m. Wake up. Think about world peace. Go on Facebook.

7:00 a.m. Wake up kids. Update Twitter status. Think about Linked In.

7:30 a.m. Schedule conference (w/ husband).

7:45 a.m. Personal car - middle school. 

8:15 a.m. Personal car - elementary school.

8:50 a.m. Von's is open; The Hollywood Mom may stop by for cat food and to say hello, and all staff will appear very happy to see her.

9:15 a.m. Return home. Think about world financial markets. Go on Facebook.

9:30 a.m. Play Bejeweled Blitz while reading through other people's tweets and status updates.

10:00 a.m. Do the dishes. Think about filing lots of papers piled up on filing cabinet.

10:15 a.m. Meeting with New Jersey branch (sister) (on phone)

11:00 a.m. High level negotiations with Wells Fargo (on phone)

11:15 a.m. Higher level negotiations with J. Crew (on phone)

11:30 a.m. Receive text message from daughter. Results of history test are in: 90%. Prepare press release for husband.

11:35 a.m. Unscheduled event: Discover son's lunch under bed where dog is trying to open and consume. Personal car to Hollywood for delivery. Son appears simultaneously relieved and nonplussed. Crisis averted.

noon Run into ____________ at school office. Lunch on Larchmont. Published agenda: School Fundraiser coming up next month. Actual topic of meeting: people we know in common and hold wide-ranging opinions of.

1:00 p.m. Monetary Policy meeting with husband, on phone, as in, Did you pay the car insurance? No, I thought you paid the car insurance. And then, but you always pay the car insurance - you have a relationship with them. No, I only pay when you forget. Transcript available through the Freedom of Information Act.

2:50 p.m. Personal car arrives at elementary school. No idea what I've done or where I've been since 1:00 p.m., but I have fewer overdue library books than I did when I left, which feels like an accomplishment.

3:15 p.m. Personal car arrives at middle school. Debriefing commences. Most days it feels like 5 miles is 4 miles too far for this hungry, angry, tired constituency to travel. Possible bailout to Village Pizza or Sam's Bagels.

4:15 p.m. Personal car arrives home. Think about dinner. Go on Facebook.

4:30 p.m. Strategic objectives meeting: how will two children faced with limited electronic resources watch what they want to watch, play the games they want to play, and visit the websites they want to visit without killing each other? Oh, and do homework.

4:40 p.m. Ice cream man!!! (shuttle diplomacy, East Side)

6:15 p.m. Husband/father arrives home. No idea what's been going on all afternoon but dinner is not only not ready, it hasn't even been started. 

6:20 p.m. Personal car to Boot Camp class, accompanied by son, who has been bribed into going with the promise of a grilled cheese sandwich at snack bar. Pressure on the domestic monetary supply relieves pressure on the sibling rivalry quotient. And hunger.

8:30 p.m. Personal car returns home. Sit down to watch something on DVR. 

8:40 p.m.  Schedule change: Emergency communication from daughter. Poster project demonstrating seismic activity of tectonic plates due in morning has not only not been finished, it hasn't even been started. Ten minutes are wasted being mad.

11:00 p.m. All family participants are asleep - except cat who's just beginning his day. Head for bed but first check Facebook. Daughter is online in another room! Want to reprimand her but end up online chatting instead.

11:15 p.m. Now I'm mad. Take away computer. Ignore the unpublishable look on her face. Get in bed. Think about getting a job. Might not have time for it. 'Night.

The new Facebook: Charmless, boring, banal

Why did Facebook change again after it changed not so long ago? That redesign was hard enough to endure, but everyone I know adjusted. Now, it's all different again and for what purpose? Even the chronic complainers seem particularly irritated.

What do we get and what did we lose? The box along the right hand of the homepage seems permanently programmed to show me things I completely do not want to see: groups I don't want to join, a ho-hum mobile upload of a friend at SxSW (I'm jealous), and a picture from a party I didn't go to (I checked "maybe" and should have had the courage to check "no"). I've seen these same items about 900 times this week - they are deadlocked.

Next, unless you sit and manually change all the "default" settings of every application you use or might use, everything you do, everything you touch on Facebook will be shared with your entire community. The Facebook designers must get paid by the post - sort of like Dickens was paid by the word. They tricked us into sharing more than we ever intended to share. I am addicted to Bejeweled Blitz, but I do not wish to share the frequency of my attempts to hit a new high score with everyone on my list. It makes me seem frivolous and I am not frivolous.

Some people claim Facebook is trying to keep up with Twitter, and the new home page does feel a little tweety. Others say the Facebook redesign is a conspiracy to distract us from what really matters in life, like the war in Iraq or the bonuses paid to AIG execs.

I worry that this redesign undermines the foundational principle of the Internet: anonymity. It's intimidating to think that everything I'm looking at, reading, "accepting," and writing is posted for all to see. I love to lurk and the new Facebook is like those motion sensor lights to keep out burglars. I'm just your neighbor - a friend stopping by when you're asleep. I wasn't actually going to ring the bell and wake you. It just makes me feel better to know you're home.