Somehow in my earlier years of teaching, as happens to many a people who were once on a speech or debate team, I got roped into starting a team at the high school I was working at. As a debate coach one of the things I taught was that all of the words needed to be defined. If we are talking about a significant change, then we all have to agree on how much is significant. I left my debate-coaching days behind me the first time I got surplused, but lately this need to define some words has popped up.

As my last post explained, I have been chasing metaphorical rabbits all over Pinterest lately. Pinterest is an online pin board where you can pin images and ideas. I use it to keep track of recipes and crafts I want to try, and ideas for the girls I will probably never ever get around to. I have seen some elementary school teachers use it for ideas for their room and would like to figure out how to use it to keep track of some of my teacher stuff.

The other day I was looking for what to eat for dinner and perhaps a dessert to make for small group. So I went to Pinterest, where I found a delicious spinach and artichoke grilled cheese sandwich, and after a series of more specific dessert words, some super easy and delicious chocolate-peanutbutter-nuetella bars. I know. Yes, they were that amazing.

Here, however is the major issue I have with Pinterest. Some people on Pinterest have an extremely loose definition of the word “easy.” Super pinners, please stop lying. You are making my life difficult. When I search Pinterest for an easy manicure, I mean an easy manicure. I do not mean a manicure that includes three different colors and manipulating dots of polish with toothpicks. That manicure is awesome but it is not easy. Nor, for the record, is a manicure that consists of a base coat followed by cutting scotch tape into thirty million pieces and placing them intersecting lines across your nails, followed by a top coat in another shade. It proves for some pretty intricate patterns, but intricate and easy are actually opposites.

And crock pot pinners. Stop it. Just stop it. I have a crock pot because it is ridiculously easy to make ribs in it. You throw in the ribs, you throw in the barbecue sauce, you set the thing on low and 5 hours later your house smells delicious and your dinner is made. When I search for easy crock pot meals I don’t mean 15 steps and 37 ingredients. I will not “just” chop my own garlic and ginger and parsley and basil and 6 other things. If the prep time is more than an hour that is decidedly NOT easy. It is stinking hard, and due to the visual nature of Pinterest, I see the final product, start drooling, click-through to get the original recipe and then get disappointed that will NOT be going into my mouth tonight because there is no stinking way I am doing all that work. I searched “easy crock pot” don’t use the term easy if it isn’t.

Look, Super-pinners, I get it. You are better at this stuff than I am. That is fine! I just need you to stop lying to me. That wall art is not easy. It requires you to be able to free hand the Mona Lisa with a sharpie, that is in fact NOT so simple. So don’t lie about it and I won’t have to come across it in my search. The wall art that consists of a piece of canvas, some elmers glue and ONE shade of paint, this I can do! This is so simple, this is so easy. I am impressed that you are so far advanced that you don’t think of whatever various activity you are doing as hard. But that does not mean that they are easy. If you want to feel superior than me, by all means go ahead. I feel smarter than you, because I know what the word easy means.

(Special thanks to my friends at the team EZ wedding for putting up with the rant in its original verbal form)