Monthly Archives: February 2011

A few years ago in a mansion in Los Angeles a Greek Socialite decided to empower her rich and influential friends by letting them write content for her and she would spread their words all over the internet. The socialite worked from her beautiful home and turned her blog into a business of sorts.

The socialite then started to allow citizen journalists to give her more free content, and though there were ads on the site, and sometimes they even used media that they may or may not have been entitled to use (see the image below) the socialite continued to pay her citizen journalists with pats on the head and exposure.

You see writers don’t need to be paid. What they need is exposure. Everyone lives in a mansion, this is just a hobby.

This weekend Arianna Huffington sold the Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million. Today, my heroes at Adbusters have launched a camgaign to Huff and Puff it to the ground. You see with a tiny deal like $315,000 there is no money left to pay the writers. Naturally Ms. Huffington will stay on as Editor In Chief and I’m sure she can afford several red pens so that she can teach the good folks at AOL how to get incredibly talented people to write content for free.

I’m going to lean back and enjoy the show. Hopefully the writers at Huffington Post will follow the advice offered at AdBusters and AOL will have bought themselves just a domain with limited content:

We’ll stop going to her site. And we’ll stop blogging for her too. Then we’ll give birth to an alternative to AOL’s HuffPo by using the #huffpuff hash tag to tell the world about our favorite counter-culture websites and indie blogs.

I’ll start here. If you’re looking for green parenting check out EcoChildsPlay.com.

Monday night the kids slept at my Dad’s house, like I said Mr. G. and I got up at 4.30 am for his surgery. We arrived back home at 1ish, and I kept busy until about 4 when it was time to get the kids.

I should have napped.

By 5pm I was shivering and everyone needed me. Mr. G. is ridiculously self sufficient, but he shouldn’t be so there was a lot of “Honey, let me help you please.” And then the kids had homework and wanted to chat, and generally wanted to be part of a normal family.

Last night for dinner I cut up a cucumber, and four red peppers. I put them on a big plate in the middle of the table and called it salad. Then I popped two CPK thin crust pepperoni pizzas in the oven, and set the table with paper plates and paper napkins. We do not use paper napkins for meals. Ever.

I called the kids down for dinner and Alexander stood slackjawed at the head of the table.

There’s been a revolution in the Gottlieb home. He declared. And I like it.

My husband is in the room next to me recovering from shoulder surgery. We got up at 4.30, showered and left for the hospital at 5am. By 6.45 they were wheeling him into surgery.

Walking into the hospital was just like any other day in our marriage. We were both a little nervous, and certainly overtired, but there was no change in our dynamic. Signing the paperwork was the same as it always is, we looked at it together.

And then I was left in a waiting room, shivery cold and tired. Since the waiting room was effectively two large rooms divided by a kitchenette I retreated to the back half away from the elderly spouses and the crackly morning shows. I pushed four chairs together, put ear buds in and laid down for a nap.

I vaguely heard a shrill nurse yell, “Jessica!” And as I was rubbing the sleep from my eyes and standing up I saw my husband disappear around the corner on a gurney and into the operating room. He’s going to think I don’t love him. I spent the next three hours waiting and hoping that my husband would know how much I love him, and that he didn’t get wheeled into surgery feeling alone. It was easier to worry about that than the possibility of an error either surgical or with anethesia.

And then the surgeon came into the room with a spring in his step. I found his smile to be the best of all guarantees, he explained what he found, showed me pictures of the procedure and explained that there was a very real cause of the pain Mr G had been having, and that he’d cut it out. It was all very routine. I was happy.

The nurses followed a half hour later, and I followed my husband on a gurney into a recovery room that was too bright, too loud and too crowded. Paramedics were bringing in newly injured patients and others were waking up. Both sets of patients groaned a lot and I wanted them all to leave so that my husband could be more comfortable.

Watching my husband emerge from the fog of anethesia was an incredible moment. Though it’s a feeling completely without merit, I’ve never felt like I’m the one who takes care of anyone here. I’ve always felt like my husband takes care of me, the kids, and the house. There’s never been a day, not even when he’s been ill or traveling, that I’ve felt like I was really on my own.

For thirty minutes today I felt like it was just me and it was a horrible feeling. For thirty short minutes I was my husband’s caretaker and I remain convinced that it’s a job I cannot do well.

I’ve loved my husband for fifteen years. I’ve loved his strengths, I’ve loved him in spite of his weaknesses. I’ve loved him for giving me children that look like him and share his unending generosity of spirit. I’ve loved him because he’s taken care of me, and I’ve loved doting on him because that’s the marriage we both wanted.

And now we’re going to experiment with some new roles, and I’ll be tying his shoes for a few days, and I’ll be the driver not the passenger. He’s going to have trouble letting me help him, that much is easy to see, and it’s also quite encouraging.

I knew when I married him that we’d grow old together but I didn’t realize that we’d have a little practice run in the middle of our lives.

In the past eighteen months I’ve accompanied my children on VIP tours of four theme parks. Disneyland in Anaheim, Universal Studios Orlando, Universal Hollywood, and Legoland in San Diego. If you can swing it I highly recommend a VIP tour at any amusement park you go to. It is quite often more than double the price of admission, but the experience is more than four times as pleasant. You can see a park, sometimes two, in a day, and the likelihood of your child (or of you) melting down is significantly reduced. If you’re in the habit of taking a trip to a theme park every year I’d even suggest cutting the visits down to once every two years and making them VIP trips instead of the traditional trip.
Disneyland:
Surprisingly this was the least impressive of all VIP tours. We were a large group of 30 with three guides between us, so there is clearly more risk. The morning was lovely, the kids were able to get in a half dozen rides before lunch, and then we had lunch at Goofy’s Kitchen. The food here is absolutely revolting. It’s a sugary fatty buffet where everything is overcooked and oversalted. The service was excellent, but the salad bar was an afterthought. I hear that the mac and cheese was good as was the mac and cheese pizza… which to me is a delicacy that should only exist in a college dorm after a night of binge drinking. I do love that there are stands with fresh fruit all around the park, I picked up a few bananas for some quick energy, and bless Disneyland for keeping the water fountains peppering the park so you don’t have to walk around with water bottles.

Our guides were good until one of them got tired, and there was some eye rolling at our children. Sadly this coincided with a horrendous bartender at California Adventure who refused to provide us with proper wine glasses (as opposed to plastic) because the people in the dining room were the priority. This was said in between loud sighs. Explaining to her that we’d just purchased four bottles of wine at $60 a piece as well as a dozen appetizers did little to appease her. An apologetic and embarrassed server brought us water glasses that had been hanging in the rack right over the bartender’s head, and assured us that she would explain the situation to the manager.

It was all very good, and certainly much better than Disneyland would have been without the VIP experience, but still it was Disneyland and they could learn a thing or two from the folks at Legoland and Universal.

Universal Studios Orlando: I’ve documented my experience with Universal Orlando here. I was lucky enough to take my kids there on a press tour, and to date I’ve never seen anything so impressive. I recognize that we (as press) were likely given the best two guides in the park, and treated to the best food that a theme park can offer. It is with that information that I offer you a highly skewed rave review of Universal Orlando (though I do include pictures of our guides so you can have the same fabulous experience).

Universal Studios Hollywood: ($249 per person) The kids loved Universal Orlando so much that we ended up having a similar day at Universal California. The tour was worth every penny, the guide was attentive, efficient, and like our guides at the Orlando location she had a plan that would take us through the park in a way that wouldn’t exhaust everyone and would also give the kids (and I) the theme park experience (the good part of the experience).

Universal Studios is a little more adult than the other parks, so as evening approaches it’s still family friendly, but you’ll get the boozy twenty somethings. In the last few years they’ve done a good job of cleaning up the City Walk at night, but there’s still a skeeze factor at night that persists.

Legoland: This was another large party. Fifteen or so boys and their mothers, three guides and a very difficult day. It was raining so the guides had to maneuver us through the park in a way that made sense in the rain. Legoland was just incredible, the guides were polite and attentive, they gently suggested different areas when the rain would start, and then as sunlight peeked through they’d whip us in another direction and bring the boys to a place where they could ride something.

Even in the most uncomfortable moments, freezing winds (okay it felt freezing to this So Cal native), grey skies, rain, whiny kids, the guides at Legoland never stopped smiling, never stopped helping and they always had another plan. It’s not a great place to go on a rainy day unless you’ve got someone to help you through it and fourteen of your closest friends (the kids had a BLAST). Also, the food there was not nearly as impressive as the food at Universal Orlando (no one’s has been) but it was possible to cobble together a healthy meal.

I’m putting advertising back on the blog. I’m not sure how long it will last. As I recall my last ad network experience was way more trouble than it was worth.

I’ve had nothing but conference calls with networks today (no Federated didn’t call to insult me again) and they couldn’t be nicer. All of them. The problem is that I’m very tired from my weekend and I’m a little anxious about my husband’s pending surgery. I realized after the very last phone call that I really need to not work the rest of the day.

NICE AGENCY MAN: We would have you in our parenting vertical, and we have some great national advertisers there.

ME: Can I ask who?

NICE AGENCY MAN: ____, ____ and WalMart are all on board.

ME: [interrupting] Can you control who your advertisers are? I mean can I?

NICE AGENCY MAN: To a degree you can, but it’s not granular. We make sure there are no adult or liquor sponsorships…

ME: [interrupting again] Oh no, I like _____ and _____ and I’d totally rather have dildos and booze than WalMart. I just wanted to ask if I could be with you without WalMart?

And he was nice, charming even, because I couldn’t hear him sigh or hitting his head against the wall. There was no, “Jessica you’re a nutcase.” Just a simple explanation of how they were selling the space.

And then he said I could totally have dildos and booze on my channel but I’d have to take a little WalMart but I certainly could say anything I wanted; and I thought, Oh this poor man could not possibly have thought his MBA would bring him to this moment.  No more calls today. I’m just done. D.U.N. Done.

It’s been thirteen and a half years of marriage. We’ve had bumps in the road, but I’d say no bigger than a pebble. I’ve never really been annoyed with my husband for more than a few hours and from what I hear he looks at me and sees Snow White complete with songbirds and radiant light.

Every marriage deserves to be tested, right?

Tomorrow morning Mr. G. is having surgery on his shoulder. I love my husband and I’m really sad that he’s been in pain, and I’m anxious for him that he will be in pain, but there are other reasons for my concern.

If you’ve spent any time with me at all you’ve likely heard me utter the phrase: For better and for worse but never for lunch.

I enjoy my time alone. I’m not saying that I love Mondays when the kids go to school and my husband goes to work, because only an ungrateful terrible woman would admit to that. So I am definitely not saying that I love the solitude that a Monday offers. I’m not saying that I won’t even let the gardener come on Monday because I’m so happy to not speak to anyone for a full six hours. Only a hermit would say that. I’m not saying that I won’t schedule conference calls on a Monday because I’ve spent the past 48 hours dreaming of a house with just me and the dog, that would also be horrible. But you can surmise anything you like. There are things I simply wouldn’t say.

I love my husband, and I am truly looking forward to a few days shared with just him. I’m smiling here alone in my office just thinking about dropping the kids off to school and then having a few hours to lounge around with him. I’m already planning to cook less and relax more, and to treat this as a gift of time to spend with the man I love the most. The first week or two should be quite nice. I expect that he will be suckling pain killers and probably sleeping a lot the first few days.

The test will come when he needs to return to work with his right arm in a sling. He has a low slung sports car with a rather inconvenient gear shift (you can see it on the video below) and speaking on inconvenient, his office is not on the path to anywhere. In fact the house, school and office make a nice triangle, so I’ll be looking at spending approximately three hours a day in my car. If that won’t test a marriage I don’t know what will.