Do you Google your friends?

Google is a powerful thing. It's borderline omnipresent. I've Googled old friends from grade school, estranged friends and even my husband... just-to-see-what-comes-up. Come on, we've all done it, haven't we? Googling our own name to see what we get? And in some ways, we feel like a little internet *star* if we actually come up with some hits... right?! (Apparently, there are individuals with the same name as me living in Texas and California. One with a grandma that recently passed away, another an alumni of a well-known college.)

So Ladybug has a friend in her class that she's gotten pretty chummy with. The parents are fun and cool, and we just had our second playdate yesterday. At Ladybug's birthday party, someone actually recognized Ladybug's friend's father as someone from a reality show. Wow! I was mesmerized. In a way, I knew someone famous.

So, of course, what did I do? I went home and immediately sat down and Googled them. And to my surprise, there was so much information on them it was scary. I'm not going to give away any details but the most interesting thing I found was that Ladybug's friend's mom had a blog that told some of her key stories -- about her first marriage, her pregnancy, how she got together with said reality show star, their enormous wedding, and more. Her blog seems inactive now, it was written about 2 years ago. But I had to read the whole thing from beginning to end. I was enthralled, spellbound, entranced (I get slightly obsessive sometimes).

And then I felt guilty. I felt the way you would after eating an entire chocolate cake, like that was so good but I really should not have done that. I knew too much about her before she even told me. I was about to go call her and say, "I know everything. Tell me more!" But I decided to play it cool and let her tell me these stories when she's ready.

It's fun making new friends. But sometimes it's more fun getting to know each other in a more traditional way. I mean really, I would be horrified if she was reading my blog and all my deep dark secrets! Yikes! ;-)