Tammy Morris of Tantra Fitness is teaching five year old girls to pole dance, and group lessons are available for girls ages nine and older. I know you’re worried that your nine year old doesn’t yet know how to pole dance, but based on the names of the classes I think they’ll catch your daughter up pretty quickly.
Sexy Flexy
Pussycat Dolls (no trademark issues?)
Promiscuous Girls
Bellylicious
It used to be that in order to be the proud parent of a featured dancer you had to be a raging feminist, drug addicted or the child needed to be abused. Now, you can shortcut all of that, and maybe when she’s 15 you can work on a fake ID so that she can dance in the cage.
Apparently diagnosing Rheumatoid Arthritis is a detailed process. The rheumatologist has ticked the box off that says I have it, but he’s ordered quite a few more tests. In the next two weeks I’ll have X-Rays of my wrists, ankles, hips and shoulders. He would like me to have MRI’s instead, but he had mentioned that MRIs are expensive. In addition to this I’ll need a baseline retinal exam and some liver tests. Eight vials of blood were collected from me earlier this week, and I’m not wise enough to know which results to hope for.
Today my husband mentioned that he thought I was handling all of this very well. That’s because I only cry after he’s gone to work.
This morning when I got on the phone with United Healthcare to talk about the authorization process for the MRIs the woman on the other end was so kind that I just started to cry. I felt terrible for her, because I’m certain that folks are on the phone with her all the time that have wretched, life threatening diseases and disorders. I was just so touched by her kindness and her willingness to help that I wept. I was (and am) so incredibly grateful that we have the sort of insurance coverage where money doesn’t really enter into the equation when determining treatment plans.
In the middle of a truly awful week there are some bright spots, and I managed to cry right through them.
I’m headed for a second opinion, and if they aren’t identical diagnoses, a third. I have a husband who can see the details in everything, but somehow doesn’t see my swollen joints or my puffy eyes. I have kids who I can still beat the snot out of in a foot race, and the rest of my family is just incredible.
If Mr. G. can keep looking at me without seeing the puffiness, I’m pretty sure we can beat the crap out of this thing.
Last night was the soccer draft. It was a live draft with 14 teams. 12 dads and two moms drafted their teams. Teams made up of ten and eleven year old girls.
It’s going to be a nice season. The teams are mostly fair and balanced. Jane gave me a list of girls she wanted to play with, and I didn’t get her top pick. It’s a bummer, but the girls will still have fun.
Two of the coaches are new to the region, so the group decided to share information with them, that way they could field the best possible teams. When someone asked about one of the girls the input was, “she’d be okay if she wasn’t so fat.”Which may have been accurate, but clearly wasn’t the kindest way of stating the facts. It wasn’t helped any when the other dads jumped in and started making jokes about Weight Watchers. There was 45 minutes of joking about the fat kid. Who, incidentally, is not particularly fat.
All of this from a group of short, fat, balding, hair dying, men sitting in the back room of a crappy diner in a middle class suburb of Los Angeles.
I wanted to punch them in the face.
I sat biting my tongue thinking, if this girl’s father was here right now there would be bloodshed, and I’d be rooting for him.
The guy next to me asked, “So are you going to blog about this?” And I said no.
I don’t feel any worse today than I did yesterday. I’m no sicker, and my immune system’s no weaker. I’m just sadder, and more worried.
In the past months my tennis has dropped from four times a week to one. My hand aches nearly constantly, and I can no longer open a jar. I’ve been to my doctor, to the hand specialist and, now, to the rheumatologist. It looks like rheumatoid arthritis. Apparently three of seven markers are needed to make a diagnosis, and I have four of them, with three tests still waiting to be done.
I am devastated. I hate the thought of a lifetime of medication, I am terrified by the notion of gnarled digits, and I am sad at the prospect that this might get worse.
I know I’m no worse off now than I was when I got out of bed this morning, but I feel different. Worried, anxious, sad, scared, and a tiny bit hopeful too, because now that we’ve named it, maybe we can get about the business of fixing it.
Mom bloggers, watch out, our reign is over. It’s no secret that I left a lucrative career as an eBay seller to become a mom blogger. People asked me why I closed up shop, and I have been frank, “the recession killed it”. I went from selling high end items to selling gaylords of socks at 19 cents a piece. It wasn’t fun, and the profit margin wasn’t particularly high. Plus, the first time you get stuck with a gaylord of socks and hosiery you want to kill someone.
Fast forward to blogging. Blogging, mom blogging in particular, is fantastic in a recession because the only folks who still have budgets are the soap makers and discount stores. We saw them all jump right into “sponsorships” with moms and deals were cut. Unfortunately, in a crappy economy shops like Neimans and Barneys weren’t looking for Brand Ambassadors (though I’d still make myself available for either one).
When people have asked me how long I think Mom Blogging will last, I say, “it will last as long as the economy stinks”. The sad reality is that once the economy is better no one will care what I buy anymore. When the economy picks up the brands will go back to focusing on 18-35 year old men, and teenage girls. Teenage girls will go back to spending more on clothes, makeup and accessories than moms. Young men will have good jobs again and their tech will be better than the moms (not mine, but better than other moms).
The consumer market will return to being driven by youth, and not by experience or by seasoned shoppers. This is okay with me. There’s a great likelihood that I’ll return to being their vendor. I’m flexible.
Bethany started hauling about a year ago and now has more than 48,000 YouTube subscribers who tune in to watch her show off her favorite back-to-school outfits (“you don’t want to wear heels and stuff, obviously”), big-volume mascara (“this is like my new obsession”) and perfumes (“summer in a bottle right here!”).
The reality is that this makes more sense. Some of these “kids” are represented by agents right here in Beverly Hills, and others will simply enjoy shopping a little more freely. Some of them will work cheap, some will make good money. Some will disclose, others will not. I’m pretty sure the FTC won’t be picking on 14 year old girls any time soon, and if their community implodes it’s unlikely that it will be covered by mainstream press.
I’ve seen some moms doing haul videos and they seemed pitiful and staged. My reaction was either, “wow, I wonder how much TJ Maxx paid her to do this crappy video” or “why is she doing this? Her husband is going to be livid.” Haul videos are only cute when it’s your mom’s money, not when you’re the mom.
Now, I’m not saying that Mom Blogging is going to up and die because a few kids made a few videos, I’m just saying that the tides are turning. Brands won’t have to reach out to poor and struggling women any more. Because the kids have a few bucks, and I’m pretty sure they’d rather have the kids.
