Motherhood Uncensored

Check up.

Every now and then the bouts of anxiety can be a good thing, like when it sends you straight to the dermatologist for a skin check. 

I could have sworn that the freckle on my arm was growing and raised and after Googling images and crying my eyes out, I just made an appointment. 

Turns out that wasn't the one I should have been worried about. The one on my leg was questionable, but turned out to be fine after they removed it (and the one that was bugging me on my arm). 

The exam was free. The removals were $100. The peace of mind was priceless. 

I'm thankful for folks like Heather and Megan, who both openly shared their experiences with skin cancer on their blogs. There's my dear college friend Kara, who had skin cancer and then fought it again another two times. 

And then Dawn.

I don't really have any words. 

We can all agree that cancer's an asshole. A big fucking asshole.

But when it comes to skin cancer, you can actually beat much of it to the punch, which I admit to not being as vigilant as I should be. The kids get slathered up in sunscreen and I just spray and go, doing my best to barely smudge it on my face and shoulders. 

Remember the oxygen mask analogy? It applies here to. 

Heather is donating a dollar to March of Dimes and Melanoma Research Foundation for each comment left on her post through Wednesday. Please go and show your support.

It was about that time

Since I seem to pop out babies every couple of years, it probably wasn't a surprise when my oldest asked me when the next baby would be arriving. 

I think I may have permanently scarred her with the look of horror on my face. 

But apparently she wasn't the only one in the house with the baby bug, which isn't exactly how my husband started out his email about why he really wanted a dog. 

This was after a whole "Hey surprise I bought a dog!" followed by my rage then a "just kidding but I really do want one and I found one look!" then my couple of "Are you fucking kidding mes?" 

We're just now getting to the point when we get a full night's sleep, and life is getting somewhat manageable and I just wanted to enjoy the chaos that is four kids and not four kids and a puppy. 

But then he sent me an email with bullet points (OH GOD THE BULLET POINTS) about how he was denied a dog growing up and how he always wanted a dog that could catch a frisbee and suddenly I was asking when we could get the puppy, the housebroken, crate-trained puppy right?, at our house RIGHT NOW. 

Then he peed on my floor, screeched in the crate, and I had a total 100% anxiety freak out complete with closed closet doors and headphones and perhaps some rocking back and forth. 

But now it's fine because he's smart (mostly) and a quick learner (mostly) and well, I'm not getting up in the middle of the night or doing more than I should. 

It didn't hurt that I suddenly had to take a trip to Austin for SXSW and New York for work. 

But hey, the kids are happy. My husband is happy. And the dog seems to know he has to prove himself with me so I get lots of snuggles and cuddles and pottying outside on command (mostly). 

And damn he's cute. 

Meet Disco.

Sugar made me an asshole

I've been off pretty much all refined sugar and grains of any kind since I tried and subsequently ditched Wellbutrin a few months ago. 

{Photo of crack. I mean, sugar. Same difference?}

Yes, I needed to lose some pounds, but really I wanted to lose the "I'm an extraordinary asshole" couple of weeks that would occur in relation to PMS and Ovulation or just being a 30-something woman apparently.  

I ain't gonna lie. The first few days were hard. As in "rabid animal about to tear shit up for some fucking cookies" hard.

It didn't help that I wasn't eating fruit either.

But it got better pretty quickly, and now save the fruit that I added back in (some raw, some dried), a bit of dark chocolate, and dark chocolate peanut butter because I'm not completely insane people (and OMG have you tasted that shit?), I survive mostly on nuts, vegetables, meat, fish, and a little cheese.

Oh, and gigantic 5 Guys hamburgers with no rolls every now and then. 

I still drink coffee. And booze (but maybe once a week at most, no beer).

And I need to drink more water. 

But I lost about 10 pounds. And generally speaking, I'm no longer an asshole. A little weepy. A lot of anxious still during my PMS week. But not nearly as bad as I was.

Like waaaaaaaaaaay not as bad. 

This all happened when I got the Paragard IUD and I started taking B-12 supplements, so I don't know if that has anything to do with anything (scientific terms there), but it's been absolutely 100% worth it. 

And the weirdest, coolest, and not so surprising part: I don't crave the carbs or the sugar at all. 

None. Nada. 

I have no plan or method or fancy-named diet or dramatic reasoning like TOXIC SUGAR! which Mark Bittman addressed in his recent New York Times column. 

Just no sugar. Mostly.

No grains.

A whole lot of will power.

{photo via}

Who's responsible for Seth MacFarlane's Oscar performance? We are.

I have a strict no-cartoon adult show personal policy, which is why I'd suck at The Simpsons trivia. It's also why I had no idea who Seth MacFarlane was last night other than a dead ringer for Peter Brady.

The Family Guy! Ted! 

I admit I was uncomfortable after the first joke he made about Ben Affleck's Best Director nomination snub, but then came the Boob Song and the "Aren't you glad you got the flu so you could fit in those dresses?" "jokes" and all I wanted was for the Jaws music to start playing for him any time he opened his mouth. 

Then it turns out The Onion called 9-year old Best Actress nominee a cunt on Twitter, which they later deleted and apologized for, but not until the Tweet became widely circulated and had most of us wondering what the fuck is going on with this world. 

As much ire as there is about The Onion's tweet, there's as much defense for Seth MacFarlane's performance, even though NPR, The Atlantic, USA Today, and Salon (just to name a bunch) pretty much tore him to pieces. 

"It's his act," a commenter replied. 

"You need to lighten up," someone told me on Twitter. 

And well, because Jennifer Lawrence thought it was funny then maybe we all just don't have a sense of humor. Because we can trust an Academy Award winner to critique the organization that just handed her a bazillion more dollars wrapped up in that coveted statue. 

No, we all just don't have a misogynist sense of humor.

I'm not surprised one bit that people are defending Seth MacFarlane, even women with boobs who somehow feel superior at their appreciation for his jokes. He's made these kind of jokes for 12 years, right? We've watched his shows and gone to his movies. We've handed over our money to support this crap. 

Well I haven't, anyway. But that's how he got the gig right? Not because no one had ever heard of him. 

Can you imagine if the tables were turned? And Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did a whole song and dance number about seeing the pensises of actors in films. Or they riffed about Christianity. Or made a black face joke.

Sounds awful, not to mention sexist and racist. 

Yeah, it's not their schtick but it never would be. We'd never allow women to be so woefully offensive without verbally casting stones at her in a public forum. 

So why does Seth MacFarlane get a "get out of jail free" card? 

Because we give it to him, willingly. 

Edited: Gawker did a montage of all the sexist and racist Seth MacFarlane jokes. 

Blogger Outreach 101. Again.

Apparently yesterday was "Something for Nothing" Day at work because I was bombarded with various emails with all the same sort of offer: 

You write X, X, and X, Tweet X, and Share Photos of X and we will give you NOT ENOUGH Xs. 

There's the offer to give a client a complimentary high-priced ad placement for a certain amount of giveaway items, which is met with "Sure, but we'd like XXXXXXXX" (translation: 20x the amount of the giveaway items we're asking for which was 20x less than the cost of that spot, by the way). 

My favorite is "WHAT WOULD YOU TAKE INSTEAD OF X?" the obvious answer being "Bradley Cooper and Ryan Gosling." 

Julie wisely decided not to send that as a reply. One of the many reasons she rocks. 

This is not an uncommon occurrence for bloggers as you may have read 4000 times over the last many years, but lately instead of product review pitches with FREE PRODUCTS sprayed at whoever will bite, it's this offer of sponsored content and "we'll obviously pay you for your time" which is a little more hopeful and forward thinking until you see what that actually means. 

And you're right, marketing people who want to work with bloggers, offering monetary compensation for work that bloggers are going to provide you is a step in the right direction, but it's not the end all, especially when you toss around the same figures to various bloggers of different influence, rank, and traffic size. 

It would be as if you were looking to hire someone and sent out an invitation to a bunch of applicants, some with a High School Diploma, some with an undergraduate degree, and some with a PhD and were like "Here's what we can pay you!" and then were surprised when most of the applicants were like "HUH? Did you see my resume'?" and you were like "But why? At least I'm offering you money!" 

You will get what you pay for in this business, which doesn't necessarily mean poor quality of writing all of you who are like HEY NOW! It could mean a smaller following, a weaker social media footprint (barf), less relevance to readers, smaller influence, which combined all together could be the traffic numbers and page views and tweets you're looking for. 

But it's not fair to send out a mass email to a bunch of "mommy bloggers" on some crappy list you bought or gathered on your own based on who knows what, and expect everyone to say "YAY MONEY WE'RE BEING PAID FINALLY!"

To use myself as an example, I would not expect to make near as much on this blog as I would on Cool Mom Picks or Cool Mom Tech, just from a pure numbers standpoint. 

This isn't to devalue smaller blogs PLEASE LET'S NOT GO THERE. Rather, it's to point out the shock and chagrin of many companies doing little to no research before reaching out to bloggers when their emails are met with "That's wonderful, here's what our sponsored posts start at..." 

To be fair, many companies have come back to say "Ah, okay, I'd love to hear more about what you would do" and it's turned into really awesome working relationships. 

I even appreciate the "I'm sorry that we can't pay that rate, but we'll revisit this in the future when we do have the budget." 

But on the flip side, these are the kind of things to be fleshed out prior to emailing a huge list of people. These are things that people get paid by large firms to do.

So bloggers: Look at your value, whether it's your traffic, your social media following, your KLOUT (ha, kidding. Sort of. Whatever), your reader engagement (which isn't just comments anymore), and reply with an acceptance (if it's what you'd make), a counteroffer (if it's a less but not too far off), or your actual rate along with a few reasons why without saying "HERE'S WHY."

Usually a "I'm happy to provide you with sponsored content which starts at XX and will reach my # readers, # follwers, # email subscribers" does well.

The "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" method rarely works and could prevent you from further work with them. Though trust me, it's tempting. 

And people reaching out to bloggers: Take a quick look at who you're pitching. Press pages, social media following, even Alexa, and consider using a sliding scale of some sort. Expect that all bloggers won't all want to be paid the same thing and make allowances. Advocate for why you would want to work with fewer bloggers or certain bloggers. 

Who knows if this will have huge impact on the emails being sent to bloggers, because I get that lots of bloggers = lots of numbers and that still makes lots of big companies light up like a Christmas tree.

But perhaps it will quell the vocal surprise when it's not overwhelming cheers for that $20 gift card and $100 for the three posts, 10 tweets and 2 Facebook updates you're asking for. 

I only wish that was an exaggeration.  

{photo via}