Monthly Archives: October 2011

Yesterday I spent the day purging my office of unneeded papers. Yesterday was also the day I filed my 2010 taxes. If you look up “Procrastinator” in the dictionary you will see this.

My office is amazing. I had boxes from 1998 and the purchase of our first home. Shredding those papers was a fabulous way to spend the day.

Naturally I like to be totally out of control of my time so when I got  a midday phone call asking me if I could go on air with HLN at 3.30 I was all yeah.

The reality is that if CNN calls I’ll show up for three reasons: CNN, Judy and Michelle. CNN is CNN and they’re amazing so of course you want to say you’ve been on air with them, Judy is the hair stylist at CNN in Hollywood, and Michelle is the makeup artist. Those women are magicians and I’d follow them anywhere.

Here I am the day after the purge. My office is clear. I can see table tops and I’m in heaven. There is no dust, papers don’t need shredding, everything might be on time for 2012.

The thing is that even though the weight of all that crap has been lifted, I’m still feeling strange in my office, like something is missing. Maybe I miss the chaos? 

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks I don’t care if I never….

Oh… whatever, y’all know you LOVE baseball too.

Sometimes people ask me when I learned to use computers. I sort of shrug, because I consider myself to be a digital native.

In the mid 80′s my brother was doing things with computers and telephones. I didn’t quite understand at the time, and right now I still don’t quite understand the advanced networking that he does, but I am comfortable and competent in my own way. 

I can’t really remember a lifetime before computers. I remember typewriters but I hardly used one after I was 10. I remember my brother’s middle school English teacher freaking out that he used a word processor to write an essay, she thought the word processor wrote the essay for him.

This machine did not write essays but it did launch careers.

I love that October 16th is Steve Jobs day because October 16th is also my brother’s birthday. Both are kind men who look amazing in black, both are brilliant but my brother… well, everything about him makes me smile.

This morning I read a post about how to get more traffic. It’s a good post, and like any blog post it’s a good beginning. Because blogs are short… they’re so short that blog isn’t even the word, they were Web Logs but bloggers can’t even be bothered to have seven letters and a space involved.

I digress. Everyone wants to know how to get more traffic to their site.

I don’t know with great authority, no one does. I know that if you try to do what someone else is doing it won’t work.

I can’t be like Ciaran because only one person can be Momfluential. I can’t be like Debbie because if I said Throat Punch it would be weird. I don’t disagree with Helen Jane, but she’s a vague about how to create that train wreck.

I might have hyperlinked back to those women because they have significant audiences and my hope is that my link baiting them they’ll share this post with their audiences.

I can help you avoid pitfalls that I’ve personally experienced.

Giveaways are incredibly time consuming and will not bring you a community or readers. You’ll get passers by who are unlikely to read you again.

Images are a great way for people to find you and should be well named. I do not use images because I’m slow to learn.

Do not automate twitter to share every post. The only person who can break this rule is Guy Kawasaki. I don’t know why Guy can overshare and no one else can, I just know that’s how it works.

Don’t join a StumbleUpon group. Those kids at StumbleUpon are smarter than any blogger, their algorithm will start ignoring you and StumbleUpon traffic is so delightful you wouldn’t want to lose that.

Don’t reprint a press release. It doesn’t count as quality content and I’m not visiting your site to get the same content that 2,000 other bloggers are publishing.

The things that you can do to get readers:

Tell people you’re a blogger. Add a signature to your emails.

Generously share other people’s content on your social channels like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Share different stuff on each channel.

Say something outrageous, memorable or poignant. Make your audience love your community.

Write every day, or as close as you can.

Respect your audience and don’t bullshit them about loving a product that no one in their right mind could love.

Above all else every blogger should know that they’re incredibly privileged that anyone wants to read anything they’ve written. Assume your audience is smarter than you are and never pander to them or to advertisers. People want, and deserve, honest writing that you can’t get from a glossy sell out space.

Don’t be an asshole. People will read.

This summer we took a different sort of vacation. Typically we find ourselves in New York City visiting family. Last year we were supposed to go to Mexico but I was newly diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and couldn’t make the trip. We took a quick last minute trip to San Diego and realized that as a family we love vacations that we can drive to. Not like, but love.

Driving to San Diego in one of our two mid size sedans is okay. It’s a bit rough getting everything in the trunk but for a two to three hour drive it’s fine.

This year we drove for 1,200 miles. First we left Los Angeles and went to Mammoth. We stayed and played in Mammoth for five days, then we took a day to explore Yosemite. After Yosemite we headed to San Francisco and then after San Francisco we drove back to Los Angeles. Had we done this sort of trip in anything other than a luxury SUV I think I might have died.

As soon as I knew we were going to take a driving trip I called the folks at GM and I asked them if they had an SUV I could borrow. They kindly offered me either a Chevy Tahoe or a GMC Yukon. “What’s the difference?” I asked. “One of them is red and the other one is black. Other than that they’re essentially the same vehicle with the same trim level.” I took the red truck. Red is pretty.

The Tahoe Hybrid in Los Angeles is a good car if you’re a large family or if you have some need to tow things. I think for an Angelino with a small family and an urban lifestyle it’s overkill, but I did have a Tahoe for a few years when the kids were little and I did LOVE it.

When we hopped in the truck and headed to Mammoth I felt like we were returning her to her roots. Yes, we do name most cars Sally as Sally was Jane’s imaginary friend that lived in two houses with us and Sally was also Jane’s first horse lease… which is a story for another time.

Like I said, I had a 2003 Chevy Tahoe (in 2003) and I loved it but there were things about it I did not love. I did not love that there was a TV in the car, but in that year and with that seat configuration they came with entertainment in the rear seat. In 2003 I wasn’t taking road trips, I was raising toddlers. In 2011 I was asking two kids to sit in the car for six hours. I wanted that TV so that I could hop in the back seat with them and watch a movie while Mr. G. chauffeured us around California.

Mr. G. has some odd requests and one of them was that I not get in the back seat with the kids and watch movies while he drove us all through central California. I know, crazy talk right? So I reluctantly let the kids pop in a DVD while we drove through the scorched earth of the Mojave Desert and the farmland just North of it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rear seat entertainment was on a completely separate sound system and that we were able to listen to satellite radio in the front of the car while the kids tuned out in the back. For a daily drive this is unnecessary (problematic even) but when you’re spending many hours in the car driving through farmland and desert it’s a life saver.

The Tahoe that we drove had almost 10,000 miles on it but drove like a new car. The steering was tight and the trim was beautiful. Everything was flawless and I’d like to think it’s because America is back in the business of making wonderful automobiles but I know that in part this is part of a well maintained fleet. I like knowing that I’m driving a vehicle that isn’t brand new and knowing that it still drives well.

The Tahoe is a beast in the Mountains. Driving up to Mammoth there were all these road signs that warned against using your air conditioner so the car wouldn’t overheat. We just clicked a button and monitored the engine temperature, which never went over 165 degrees, and continued our speedy climb up the mountain.

When we got to June Lake I snapped this picture with my iPhone because I felt like our Chevy was returning to the neighborhood she loved in order to spend time with her friends.

The trunk space was phenomenal. Y’all know I do NOT believe in packing light. We were gone for ten days in both rugged and semi fancy (San Francisco) clothes. We brought tons of sporting equipment and we really didn’t get to a point where our stuff blocked the view through the backglass.

I felt a little weird with a big truck in San Francisco. I wanted to say LOOK IT’S HYBRID and then I wanted to tell them that we got 23 Miles Per Gallon (MPG), the bulk of our miles were mountain miles and both my husband and I have a lead foot.

I loved this SUV. I loved my Tahoe all those years ago when it was the right car for my family. I used to put four kids in baby and toddler seats in the car and the front seat provided easy access to my Grandmother who was in a walker. If you’ve got kids and stuff to haul the Tahoe is your friend. If you can get your hands on a hybrid all the better.

It’s been a little bit challenging around here lately. Ever since the arrest of one of the local moms I’ve been given the silent treatment by a mutual friend. The feedback I get is, “you don’t need her anyhow”. But the reality is that I do and it’s a loss.

I’m not even mad at her because the Grifter Mom is such a talented con artist that I’m not sure I wouldn’t believe her if I was in another woman’s shoes. Fortunately I’m the mom that spent a hour on the phone with a police officer who gave me the details of the nine most recent felonies. I can’t unhear those things and I’m a lot less gullible than I was just a few months ago.

In addition to feeling like an asshole for believing a liar I feel a little lonely being shunned by the folks who were sucked into her world. Which is why I was so happy when Mr. G. came home from work with a giant box. I assumed he had a gift for me (shut up you might have thought so too). In reality he had something better than a gift for me.

“What’s in the box?” I asked him.

“An Emmy.” He said, sitting down to remove his shoes.

“Oh how fun, can we open it?” I asked, knowing that my husband has won several Emmys but since I never go to his office I haven’t actually seen one in real life.

“No, it’s for Loren.” He began, “Do you think you can give it to him or Anna tomorrow?” And then I danced around the house a little bit because I was going to get to deliver an Emmy.

I made a move to my iPhone so I could text Anna and make a plan and to say “OMG this is Loren’s first Emmy and I know there are going to be so many more because he’s SO INCREDIBLY TALENTED….” but I was interrupted by Mr. G. telling me that Loren didn’t know he’d won. So I texted Anna that I needed to see her in the morning and told the kids the fabulous secret, because everyone knows that kids can keep secrets, right? Anna and I would meet behind the school after dropping them off and I would bring her something.

This morning I got out of the car to bring Anna the giant box and she said, “Now I’m so curious what this is.” I told her it was something wonderful. She asked if it was from me or from Mr. G., I said it was from him. He face lit up, “Is it something from the Steelers?”

“It’s that awesome.”

Fifteen minutes later Anna texted me:

Wait. Is this real?

I swear I was so incredibly happy when Anna tweeted this.

This morning I was an Emmy Presenter. What did you do?