After her nap this afternoon, Ingy was a bit out of sorts, and wasn’t using her left arm. Since she always uses both together to pick stuff up, we figured something must be wrong. Bending her left arm would result in her crying.

Our Doctor’s nurse never picks up when we call, so after leaving a message we just googled it.

Turns out that a very common injury in infants and kids younger than 5 called “nursemaid’s elbow” was probably the issue. It’s a minor dislocation of the elbow, and a ligament gets jammed in the wrong place–easily happens if one arm is pulled to strongly, such as catching a falling kid or picking them up by their hands.

The best part is the fix–it’s super easy, and seems to me to be harmless if the problem isn’t nursemaid’s elbow. NOTE: I am NOT a doctor and this should NOT be understood to be qualified medical advice.

All we did was this: I bent Ingy’s elbow to a 90 degree angle, holding the elbow lightly in one hand. Then, I rotated her hand until her palm faced upward. VIOLA! The effects were almost instantaneous! Within a minute she was bending her left arm again, and using it to pick things up, and had stopped crying.

Thank you, Google. Thank you, KidsGrowth.com.

So Mr. MG Seigler over at TechCrunch thinks he’s avant-garde for deciding to quit emailing for a month. His reasoning has something to do with it being a waste of time. And the idea came from…wait for it…some Tweeting. Yes, Twitter, that endless fount of useless information.

I’m not here to rail on Mr. Seigler though, other than to point out that Facebook and Twitter will either a) destroy our society, or b) die, just like MySpace. Why’s this? Because both Facebook and Twitter are founded on the premise that you can easily make your thoughts, opinions, and (private?) pictures instantly available to a whole host of people who don’t really care about you.

I tried Twitter, and it was a complete waste of time, and endless roll of pointless drivel (“enjoying some jameson on the couch, sit up unable to follow along with my own timeline”) and links to articles I don’t care to read (and don’t have time to read). Mr. Seigler is annoyed at the time spent sifting through and reading endless emails, and yet he’s thrilled at the usefulness of Twitter because the President used it once? Sanity, please. (The link tries to make a point about how you, too, can be heard, by mentioning that the Pres answered a handful out of 169,395 Tweeted questions?)

Let me break it down for you: life is not about spewing your opinions to the unwashed masses (yet, how hypocritical it is for me to blog this…). It’s about relationships–with God and mankind. You don’t maintain any sort of real relationship facebook stalking someone. You don’t know others and be known by them in 140 characters or less. All you do is waste time, wishing you lived someone else’s life or trying to re-write yours by hooking up with old flames. In the process, you work less, live less, and get fatter sitting in front of your computer.

To be fair, we could say the same thing about many other popular things such as Netflix instant streaming, except Netflix lacks the narcissism of Twitter and Facebook. If you’re constantly updating your status, let me just tell it to you straight: NOBODY CARES. If they DO care at all, it’s because of how well they already know you offline, in the real world, or because your dietary habits are really the most important thing in their life (which is either really sad or really scary). Log off and pick up the phone (txting doesn’t count). Better yet, go grab a coffee with someone. Even better yet, have them over for dinner.

So here’s your choices, America: become so self-involved that society self-destructs, or realize what’s important in life and go build yourself into a self-strengthening community.

Quit wasting your life and start sharing it. Spend some time with God. Spend some time with the people He’s put in your life.

Thankfully, many of you already figured this out.