Life as a celebrity

- - - Recently I was lucky enough to get a taste of the life celebrities live. okay so it was a tiny tiny taste, maybe even just a lick. It was a situation where my life was posted for everyone to read. well, now that I think about it, probably only a hand full of people saw it. The point is: I felt the sensation of seeing something very personal put into a story, twisted, and then regurgitated for the world to see.

- - - Now you are asking me, Mary did someone write about your fabulous weekend spent in San Antonio? no, but it was a weekend to remember. Mary did someone write about the amazing plastic bag holder that you bought at Wal-mart? wrong again, but it is my best purchase this week.

- - - Instead of all those good topics, someone decided instead to write about my dog.... to be blunt, my dead dog... my dead dog that I had to watch slowly die... My dog died of distemper less than two weeks from when we adopted her from a local shelter, a shelter that has gotten a lot of publicity (not the good kind) lately for possible inhumane issues. A shelter that many people are trying to discredit in an effort to get new management.

- - - Let's take a walk though the day... At this point, it has been a week since Lucy passed away, and I've finally stopped crying about it. Imagine my surprise when a close friend calls me apologizing profusely for an article written about me without permission. to be honest, I didn't see the big deal at first. I went to the website and read my very personal and private e-mail that I had sent to my good friend detailing the ailments and sufferings of my dog before she died.

- - - It was my e-mail, but slightly re-worded and added on. The blog author, wanting to discredit the shelter more, added words like "supposedly". I've never meet this woman in my entire life, I never gave her permission to use my story for her own purposes, and my friend that told her the story made sure she knew that I chose not to go public with it. but still, those personal, painful, and plagiarized words were glowing on my computer screen.

- - - Not only was my life plastered for the world to see like some entertaining news story, she had apparently been trying to contact my vet for more information. this broke the straw on the camels back. Let me just say our vet is amazing. She let me call 5 times a day to ask her the stupidest questions about Lucy and she was supportive every time. If this stupid blogger woman was going to cause me to loose my vet due to the trouble we were causing her... well ... I'm a Christian woman, but there was going to have to be blood shed...

- - - Of course I got the name and number of the author and called her to remove the story immediately, and of course she conveniently did not answer her cell phone or home phone. Praise God, later that day the blog post had be reduced to a few sentences, and she wrote that she would stop trying to contact our vet.

So I wasn't really a celebrity (the woman didn't even use my name in the post) but I did feel how personally it can hit you when the media tries to manipulate something you say or do. Next time that I'm blowing off time in the Wal-mart check out line, I will not pick up the latest tabloid, but instead reach for the Martha Stewart cooking magazine. I might also buy that huge box of matches that are always in the impulse buy section. who really buys matches that way! Okay, I'll save that rant for the next post..........bye!