I went to college when I was seventeen and had roommates. I had a few false starts and at twenty got an apartment and lived alone. Well, I had Killer the eight pound poodle with me. Can I tell you something you may find difficult to believe?
I was never lonely.
Nope, not me. I loved living alone. I loved the solitude, and the quiet. I loved not sharing, and not being forced to speak. I loved my own messes, and my own cleaning solutions. I met my husband at 25 and we were married and living together when I was 27. I had seven years of living alone and loving it. I considered myself to be a an independent woman. I still do.
He left today for a ten day trip. My husband left around one this afternoon. At 9am I was crying into the pancake batter. It’s not so much that we can’t function without him, it’s that we don’t function well. My husband and I have reached a wonderful point in our marriage where we’re interdependent. I need him and he needs me, and some days it’s almost 50 – 50. Most days it isn’t. Most days he gives an awful lot more or I do, but every so often we’re hand in hand tackling the same amount of duties together.
I’ve got some projects to tackle, so I can make good use of my evenings. I’ll have a lot more time available as I won’t have to do his errands or iron his shirts, but I also won’t have someone to share dinner with. Someone to start the kids’ showers. I won’t have a husband who brings out the trash or carries the bins in from the curb. I don’t have him next to me right now, holding my hand loosely, and not asking me to talk. Because sometimes a really great marriage means you don’t have to talk all the time.
The kids are okay. Alexander cried twice today, and I know he wouldn’t have if my husband was here. Jane will be fine, but in three days she’ll start to fall apart. We know what to expect, we’ve done this before. I’m treading lightly with the kids, they’re extra helpful for me, and hopefully we will manage this with some amount of grace. Hopefully.
I have two cell phones. I have an iPhone and a Nexus 1 Google phone. You have the iPhone number, even my mother is unsure who is calling when I use the droid Google Phone.
I lost my iPhone at some point on Wednesday. I made a halfhearted attempt to find it because I have the droid Google Phone. By the time dinner rolled around on Wednesday I not only stopped looking, but seriously considered canceling the service.
It’s now Friday morning, and I’m happy that my iPhone is gone. I’m supposed to miss being hyper-connected.
I didn’t know I could like laundry until I tried a Kenmore Elite. Obviously I still hate the parts of laundry that we all hate, the folding, and the putting it away. But I want to show you what happens when you turn on Kenmore Elite Dryer.
Every time I turn the dryer off and on, I smile. It makes me think of the Jetsons, and that I’m living in some sort of super shiny space age house. I’m not, I’m living in Los Angeles, but please let me have a fantasy while I’m doing laundry.
Here’s the bottom line. The folks at Kenmore were incredibly generous and they’re letting me test out an Elite Washer and Dryer set for a few weeks. When they first approached me I was excited for a number of reasons. I was also a bit unenthusiastic, because I have a washer and dryer. They wanted me to review their washer and dryer when there was absolutely nothing wrong with the washer and dryer that I already owned.
Or so I thought.
Everyone knows that I love things clean. My kids know, my husband knows, my readers know, the other moms at little league know that I love clean clothing, and I’m not afraid to pull out the big guns to get it there. Well, I don’t really need the big guns anymore.
When I did the first few loads of laundry I noticed that my clothes were different. My whites were whiter, so I stopped using the laundry boosters. My whites were still whiter. What I never expected to have happen is that my towels got a new life. My bath towels are not new, they were coarse and old, with the new washer and dryer I’m noticing that my bath towels are fluffy and absorbent again. I don’t know if I can attribute this to the washer or to the dryer. I know that a full load of jeans is dry within 25 minutes. That is amazing. My old washer and dryer would have taken an hour after I’d hung the clothes out in the sun for a preliminary drying.
I used to unplug my washer and dryer after my chores were done. The older models use electricity even when they are shut off. The Kenmore Elite Washer and Dryer does not. I love that. I love it from an economical point of view, and also because it’s how appliances should be.
Someone was asking me about mildew and black mold. Right on the front of the washer is a sensor that lights up when it’s time to clean your washer. All front loading washers need to be cleaned now and again. Also, I’m told that because front loading washers have to have a very tight seal, you don’t want to be leaving wet clothes in them for extended periods of time (like days folks, not hours).
If you love the web, you’ll love this set. I know, weird right? Wrong. Take a look at all these buttons! Buttons and lights and chimes. Really? What more could you want?
It’s very intuitive and it’s smart. After you put your clothes in, there are a few little fake spins (did I mention it wiggles in different directions?) and I guess it must weigh things, because after that the little laundry cup gives you one, two or three bars. Accordingly, you add a small, medium or larger amount of laundry detergent to your machine. I suspect, though I’m not sure, that this feature is one of the reasons my clothes seem cleaner. Less residue if you’re using the right amount of detergent?
I know that my friends at Sears don’t want to hear this, but the Kenmore Elite Washer and dryer is Home Economics for geeks. The washer moves in a million different directions, or seven… I can’t recall which. There is no vampire electrical use, it weighs your clothes and it greets you, and I smile like Pavlov’s dog because it reminds of the startup sound of a 14k modem.
Mostly though, my clothes are cleaner and my gas bill has dropped significantly. I’m happy, and you can be too.
This set is not inexpensive, but the way I see it, you extend the life of your clothes and drop your power bills. The set is near $2,500 and I think it’s worth every cent.
Tomorrow I’ll upload a video about all the features of the Kenmore Elite washer and dryer, but in the interim I want you to know that you can win them. Go to KenmoreEliteSweeps.com and enter to win your own set. I promise you, you’re going to love it. This isn’t just another washer and dryer.
*This post is part of a relationship I have with Kenmore. The relationship will never influence the content.
This morning Jane was in tears. She couldn’t get her hair into a high ponytail. My eleven year old daughter was crying because she is having a bad hair day.
I get it.
Finally! Something about parenting that I can understand and that I can fix. Jane has hair like mine. If you see me taping Momversation you’ll see that my hair does not grow longer, it somehow manages to grow wider. I realize that you are going to try and interject logic and reason to this discussion, however you are not a Jewish woman. Trust me, we’ve got hair. We’ve got big, fluffy, thick, coarse, ethnic hair. Girls like me who grew up in lily white suburbs spent our childhoods looking longingly as the blondes who complained that their hair was too straight.
My daughter’s hair is much straighter than mine, but it’s thick. It’s too thick for a single pony holder from Goody, so she uses two at a time.
Survey.com asked 2,000 women on behalf of Pantene if they would give up 10 IQ points for a lifetime of great hair, 57% said yes. Holy crap. I asked Jane if she would give up one IQ point for great hair, she and I both smiled, because we’re smart enough to feel conflicted about our answers either way. I couldn’t bring myself to ask if she’d be willing to give up 10, that’s not an answer I want to hear.
I’m mostly happy with my hair, but I’m 39 and I know my way around a blow dryer. I also know that great products give you great hair. I’m also giving up my hair color and shampoos as both are L’oreal. Since L’oreal is owned by Nestle, I can’t buy their products any longer. My friend Lisa calls it my “Joan of Arc moment”.
Everyone should have a friend like Lisa. Someone who understands that giving up your hair color is much more difficult than giving up Pellegrino or Perrier (which will also hurt).
I feel bad about some of my parenting, we all do. I’m not sure I’m sending my daughter the right message, but I’m going to take her for a Keratin treatment. I’ve had it done twice, it’s not affordable and I don’t care. I know that I can buy Jane some good mornings, and that’s what I’m setting out to do.
As for me? I’m back to my Ole Henriksen products, and I’m experimenting with hair colors. Let’s hope no one notices.
Would you take your eleven year old daughter for a chemical process on her hair?
Linkbait is when you post to your site, link to someone else, and hope and pray that you get their attention (and even better, their traffic).
Bloggers (and many webmasters) try and keep track of their statistics. In the year and a half that I’ve had this blog, I’ve gotten comfortable with my statistics and I can sort of feel the trends. My traffic comes from search and returning readers. A tiny piece of my traffic (less than 3%) comes from links from other sites. Now, you can interpret that in a few ways. One way might be to say that this site is not really part of the community, and that my readership suffers for it. Another way to interpret this would be to assume that my readers are sending more readers, and the search results are helpful. I know the answer to this, and it falls somewhere in the middle, perhaps about an 80/20 split.
I want to point you to a perfect piece of linkbait. The opening sentence of this article makes it so I must respond.
To be clear, I don’t have to leave a comment, but I do have to keep reading. I want to know what it is Debbie is about to say. How did I know that Debbie was talking about me? I had a google alert set up, and I can see it my blog’s statistics. I highly recommend using Statcounter, the code is easy to install and the information it provides can be very helpful.
If you’re going to really use linkbait, may I suggest linking to a specific post? Debbie, of course, is bright enough to do just that. See this paragraph?
By creating a link to a single blog post, my site automatically issues a trackback, sometimes referred to as a pingback.
Again, when you linkbait someone, you can be critical. I wouldn’t say Debbie was trying to be my BFF, but it was honest, kind and effective. I’ve had a rash of not-so-kind things written lately. You know what? I’m not into helping them out, so the pingbacks? They get deleted. Everyone else does the same thing, they just haven’t told you yet.
Be critical, that’s fine, be mean and it won’t work.
Just you wait and see. I’ll talk about my friend Nina, her fabulous dog and super sweet husband. I betcha one of the three of them will show up here and ask you to donate to WFMU.
