Monthly Archives: December 2011

We have a good number of celebrity parents roaming the neighborhood. The kids go to school and to camp with kids whose families have security plans. Some of the parents are film actors, some are TV, some are easily recognized and others just look familiar because they’re in everything. It’s fun to see my friends pop up on screens large and small but I’ve never felt intimated or star struck by any of their appearances.

Until this week.

Jane has a very good friend at school whose family we trust. When Alexander had his eye surgery I asked if Jane could stay there. It’s just a solid home with two involved parents and a Grandmother that lives nearby and lends a hand every now and then. I’d met the Grandma and I knew that she had directed Wayne’s World and some other stuff and I knew that she drove a modest car and smiled brightly when talking about her granddaughter. That’s all I knew.

I was watching TV the other night when a promo came on for Suburgatory which made me think of the Pet Shop Boys song Suburbia which then made me think of my all time favorite movie when I was a teen, Suburbia. I watched that movie dozens of times, wearing out the tape when the kid woke up with a snail on his face.

For a kid who grew up surrounded by south bay skate punks Suburbia was a film that celebrated my heroes. It spoke to me. Flea was in it, you can’t get more important than Flea in 1984 (or 1885, 86, 87 and parts of 92).

So I did what every middle aged, middle class, suburban housewife does on a Tuesday night. I flipped open my iPad2 while sitting up in bed and googled Suburbia to see if I could find a copy of it for sale.

Of course Suburbia has it’s own Wikipedia page so I started to scroll through that and I saw that the Suburbia was written and directed by Penelope Spheeris. Interesting.

Then I followed the hyperlink and saw that Penelope Spheeris had directed some other things and I looked at her picture and went Penelope Fucking Spheeris! That’s the Grandma. She’s my Steven Spielberg, she’s my Joe DiMaggio… she’s the only woman in Hollywood that I’m DYING to sit down with and ask her a million questions and she’s been to my home a half dozen times but I’ve been busy talking to her about kids. As if kids matter…

One of the most difficult tasks as it relates to time management is keeping the inbox functional. You’ll see that I don’t aspire to have a zero anywhere there, just manageable. I use my inbox as a place to store data. When I’m standing at Costco I can scroll through emails from Mr. G and be reminded that I need to buy shaving cream and gift cards. I love the ability to search keywords in my inbox and instantly come up with the email I knew I needed.

Unfortunately some marketers and publicists add bloggers like me to their email blast lists. They do it a bunch of different ways and not only do these pitches not work with me (and you can assume they won’t work with any solo blogger) but they can backfire in monumental ways that folks on the other end need to be aware of.

I am not interested in the same pitch everyone else gets. The only reason people read this site is because I am a “breath of fresh air” (which is apparently Australian for “obnoxious”). If a publicist emails me and 200 of my closest colleagues there is no good reason for me to respond. I don’t need the same information as everyone else. I need different information. I need to continue being a breath of fresh air. I’m willing to bet most other bloggers would agree.

When the salutation reads:

Hey there,
Hi,
Hi Mommy Blogger,

You’ve made it easy on me. I hit “spam” and your email disappears forever. Do I recognize that this method cuts me off from potentially great offers? Yes, but I also recognize that a good PR firm wouldn’t risk this. Your spam is my litmus test.

Advanced spammers use icontact, MailChimp, Constant Contact and other similar services. Last week I spent one morning unsubscribing to more than a dozen of these email subscriptions. I have ONE Constant Contact subscription that I’ve opted-in to, it’s for my children’s school.

It’s nice that all of these email subscription services have a one click unsubscribe available, but you still have to enter your email so I guess it’s not one click. What I’d like to do is be able to block Mail Chimp users from adding me to their lists. So I contacted Mail Chimp to ask them about this and they let me know in a form letter that it was not possible, I should use the unsubscribe button. I have a hard time believing that no one at Mail Chimp is capable of adding email addresses to a black list. If that is the truth then I’d be wary of using Mail Chimp’s service because they aren’t particularly advanced. What I suspect is the more likely scenario is that they just don’t care to spend resources on things like making people not hate them. 

This week, as a special thank you to Mail Chimp I forwarded each and every unsolicited bit of email they sent me to CustomerSupport@MailChimp.com. Some days it was five in a row, other days there were none. I received a form letter explaining that I could unsubscribe and I’d diligently respond to that form letter by explaining to them that I’d like them to block my email address from their servers. I have a feeling that I wasted someone’s time and that they felt annoyed and less productive when I sent them the same message over and over again.

The folks over at Constant Contact are terrific. Yes, their clients totally abuse my inbox but they are willing and able (as every email subscription service should be) to block my email from their servers. Alas I need Constant Contact because my children’s school sends their weekly updates this way. I’ve been forwarding all my Constant Contact emails to Abuse@ConstantContact.com and they’ve blocked my alternate emails from their servers.

I’ve also set up filters for my email accounts. Kardashian and Oprah have their own filters as well as a few other celebrity names. I mean if you’ve already got the endorsement of a retired talk show host and an amateur porn star what more can I do for a brand?

In 2012 my inbox won’t be an out of control beast. I’m not sure how I’ll make that happen. I might switch email addresses again next week as I find that buys me a few months of manageability.

What do you suggest?

I’m uncomfortable with this in every way. This month brought us Boardwalk Emprire and some Oedipal Action and now from Rosemount High School in Minnesota we have this.

Selected high school sports captains were blindfolded and kissed… by their parents. There was ass grabbing and talk of “luscious lips”. I’m unclear on how the administration thought this was a good idea, what the parents were thinking and how many years of therapy each child will require.

Sunday morning and Jane has volleyball at 9am. I’m pretty sure that volleyball exists only to torture me as weekday practices are often from 7.30 to 9.30 keeping me dressed and awake later than I’d like and weekend practices begin at 9am waking me earlier than necessary.

After picking Jane up at 11 we swing through the grocery store so that I can pick up my Oracea prescription and some sushi for Jane. I stop at the pharmacy and they still haven’t been able to apply the coupon so my Oracea copay is $143 instead of $25. Rather than getting angry I’ll go to another pharmacy. I’m learning from my husband to keep my expectations in line with reality.

Jane and I dash through the produce section, it’s pitiful on a Sunday and she veers off to find some sushi. She is ravenous after two hours of exercise. We meet at the back of the store where I’m looking over the organic beef offerings and I ask her if she got a cucumber roll for her brother. “They aren’t done.” She replies. I ask her how she got the tofu spring roll as I wanted to make sure it wasn’t yesterday’s food.

“Oh, there’s a big stack of sushi so I know it’s fresh, there just wasn’t anyone there.”

I thought Jane was mistaken so before checking out we walked over to the sushi counter and I did see a pyramid of uncut sushi rolls about six wide on the base. Behind the counter were three people working the service deli and one was in front standing next to me.

“Excuse me.” I said, “Can someone get the sushi chef?”

Three employees looked to the ground. The lady next to me who was restocking the break chimed in.

“He’s on lunch break.” She said.

“But all that sushi is just sitting there.”

“He doesn’t work for us, they work for another company and he’s at lunch. I think he’s out front.” She was getting agitated.

“But you sell the sushi, right? It’s pretty gross to leave raw fish just sitting on a counter.”

“They don’t work for Ralphs, they work for some other company you have to come back after his lunch.” Now she’s yelling at me and don’t I understand that they are two different companies?

“But you’re selling sushi that’s just laying on a countertop. People will get sick.” As I’m saying this she turns on her heel and walks away.

I double check Jane’s tofu spring roll to confirm that it has no fish in it and we decide that it’s probably fine to eat. We walk past a harried manager at the self checkout and I explain to the her that I can’t buy sushi, or groceries here, because the fish isn’t safe and I was yelled at. She is exasperated but not surprised.

Jane and I get to the express lane where a short angry lady is unloading a massive cart of groceries. I point to the 15 items or less sign and she puts her hands on her hips and says, “Too damn late now.” And proceeds to unload her cart at a snails pace.

When it’s my turn to check out I ask the cashier why she didn’t say anything and she told me that lady complains to the manager every time and they just let her go. It’s her thing. I mutter something about the fact that I’d never be able to work in a grocery store because I’d just tell her to fuck off, and then I realize I’d just complained to a manger.

Jane enjoyed the tofu roll, my prescription is being filled elsewhere and all Gottliebs are forbidden from eating grocery store sushi ever again.

Big day.

Earlier this week Babble named a list of the 100 top mom blogs. Just a few moments after it went live twitter was bubbling over with congratulations for the winners (most often from the winners to others). A lot of the noise around the Babble list from those not listed is how much lists don’t matter, how they are divisive and never showcase anyone with talent and they’re rigged because the people deciding have a horse in the race.  

All those things might be true to a very limited extent but the reality is that lists do matter.

If you suspect that I’m bitter about not making the Babble list this year, you’d be wrong. Am I disappointed? Absolutely. Do I need to up my game? Yes. If you didn’t make that list and you think you belong there then I have one recommendation for you. Write better. 

Would I say that there are fundamental flaws in how a list of 100 top mom bloggers is determined? I could try to make that argument, but I won’t. It wouldn’t be an honest discussion.

The women listed on the top 100 list are good quality bloggers. They’ve worked hard and shared their year with their audiences. 

Blogging has landed me on plenty of lists. Nielson and Babble put me on lists and then RedTri and MomDot got in on the action. If I want to say that Babble’s 2011 list is irrelevant then I’d best be prepared to say that those previous accolades were all garbage and I’m simply not prepared to say that.

Let’s face it, lists matter. People who want to work with bloggers don’t necessarily know the mom blogging community. The people who want to hire bloggers don’t want to read our blogs. Not only is that okay, but it’s good. Bloggers need infusions of outside dollars, we can’t spend our days paying one another.

I don’t think it’s lazy publicists who will target these 100 women for the next calendar year. I think it will be smart publicists. Well, one of my friends totally disagrees, she only wants to work with “second tier bloggers” because they’re easier to deal with (and no, I’ll never tell you who she is).

Erin will tell you that the lists don’t matter because Erin is on the list this year and it’s the polite thing to say when the rest of your community clearly didn’t make “the list”.

Let me be the friend who tells you when you’ve got toilet tissue stuck to your shoe. Don’t be the blogger that complains about being overlooked. The lists all matter. Someone’s got to be the best. This year it wasn’t me, and I’m not going to pretend like someone made a mistake. I’m just going to work harder and I challenge you to do the same.

First off, there’s a little business to take care of. I was thrilled to be able to send out this screenshot to Josh over at Dad Street.

I seldom do giveaways because I’m lazy and it makes me very happy that a parenting blogger has won.

That was sort of the end of the joy today. Alexander had surgery at 10am, which is quite late in the world of general anesthesia. I’m happy that the time got pushed up so late because Mr. G wisely canceled his 2pm meeting in Las Vegas. Had he not been there it would have been disastrous.

When we checked in at 10 there were a handful of other patients there. One was a teenage girl who they quickly moved to a private room. She was sobbing and saying, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want them to cut my eyes.” A handful of nurses tended to her, an anesthesiologist joined them, her surgery was canceled, and then her surgery was uncanceled. She was the surgery before Alexander. It set us back an hour.

If you ask me who the person is that I could relate to the most today, that teenage girl is the one. I would have had the same fears and meltdown. My heart ached for her as it did for my son.

The nurses in the pre op room were amazing. If you aren’t in a hospital setting it’s easy to forget that nurses go into their profession because they really want to help people. They had a teddy bear for every kid as well as a coloring book and if they weren’t smiling when they were 10 feet away they got a smile on their faces before approaching any patient. Watching these women was inspiring. They make people’s lives better with every smile and they know it.

Alexander wasn’t nervous. I don’t know why, that child has nerves of steel. He’s been involved with every decision along the way and at ten is far more mature than I at 41.

It wasn’t until noon (or perhaps later) that the youngest anesthesiologist known to man came to prep Alexander. Getting yes’ed with Sharpie was a highlight of the day. Does this look like a child who is worried about an operation? 

Mr. G looked confused about the Sharpie and then he and the anesthesiologist were horrified when I said, “Uh yeah, how do you think we went to private school? … doctors sometimes remove the wrong kidney.” Mr. G kicked me and the child anesthesiologist took Alexander’s vitals. We were introduced to the anesthesiologist who supervised and Mr. G and I sighed in relief. He was a full on grown up.

Once they wheeled Alexander to the back I dashed to pick up some food for myself. I hadn’t eaten since the night before as I didn’t want to eat or drink in front of my son who wasn’t allowed to. I grabbed some chili, ate a few bites and fell asleep in the family room.

I woke up to Dr. Velez and big smile. We’ve known Dr. Velez for ten years, he trained under Dr. Rosenbaum and has watched my son grow up in those eye exam chairs. I wanted to cry when I saw a friendly face, but instead I threw up. Repeatedly.

Mercifully I was quick enough to vomit in private. If there is one thing you learn from me it is this:

Never eat chili in the hospital cafeteria.

Mr. G did an amazing job of caring for both Alexander and for me. The wakeup was difficult. Even though this is the third time for us it’s very difficult to wipe bloody tears from your child’s face. I was woozy. I’m not sure if it was nerves or of it was the chili but my head throbbed, my stomach churned and I had periodic chills.

It took about an hour for the anesthesia to wear off and for my boy to fully wake up. There was no moaning, no whining, no complaining. It was the opposite of how I would have behaved. He was anxious to get the IV out and opening his eyes was a challenge. He murmured a few things and repeatedly asked when he would get to see his sister.

The post op room was initially understaffed and had me worried. Though everyone was nice I saw an attendant push waste into a trashcan and then grab a wheelchair with no hand washing in between. I saw the same lady come toward my son as he was waking up and I shooed her away. She wasn’t a nurse and I grew up in a home where medical malpractice was dinner table conversation. I know enough about how infections are transmitted and some of the most dire consequences. I’m certain that I’m overreacting, but better safe than sorry. At every turn I was asking, “is that a pediatric dose? Do you see his drug allergies?” It was exhausting, and I’m sure I exhausted them.

Somehow we made it home and it felt appropriate that the sun had set. Alexander and I watched TV and napped for a few hours and he ate clear liquids while I fought off waves of nausea.

We’re still waiting for Jane to come home. We both miss her and we won’t be a family until she walks through the door and sees her brother.