Monthly Archives: March 2012

Top 10 Ways To Tell You’re Turning 40 In Two Weeks

by The Totefish Blog

Happy Almost-40 Birthday to Me!

- 10 - 

While watching “Moneyball,” you spend most of the movie cheering on Brad Pitt’s deep forehead wrinkles because if Brad can pull off his then clearly you’re pulling off yours.

- 9 -

When your children ask if you would take them swimming at the YMCA, your first thought is “Damn it, I’ll need to wax.”  Your second thought is “Where can I buy a suit with one of those skirts attached?”

- 8 -

You spend an inordinate amount of time massaging cream on the backs of your hands because you read somewhere that you can tell a woman’s real age by the look of her hands (and not her smooth-as-ice, botoxed-forehead).  Sure.  You remember your grandma’s hands.  Dry and bony and so NOT what’s going to happen to yours.

- 7 -

When you see a young mother struggling with her young children at the grocery store, you resist the urge to say, “You’ll look back on these years with such longing.  They grow up so quickly” because you thought those women were crazy.   And annoying.   And clueless.  Then, you say it.   Because it’s SO true.

- 6 –  

You’ve stopped ranting against the Kardashian sisters and Snooki because you know it’s just a matter of time before they go the way of Paris Hilton and ah, how you’ll enjoy the ensuing moments of dignified quiet.  That is, until they’re replaced by the next crop of media-whoring, sorry-excuse-for-a-role-model-to-young-women ladies scrambling to grace the cover of OK! Magazine.   And yes, I did just say whoring.  And I meant it.

- 6 1/2 -

You use inappropriate words without remorse because you’ve seen enough bullshit to last you the next forty and some days, you just want to call a clown “a clown”and a donkey “an ass.”  Even when the circus ain’t in town.

- 5 -

You panic when you enter a bookstore.  So many books.  So little time.

- 4 -

At the doctor’s office, you not only read the articles about 50+ year old actresses lamenting the loss of strong, sexy roles with a sense of dread and foreboding, but you find yourself slathering on more hand cream as you read.

- 3 -

You can’t stop using the expression, “That’s ’cause you know where your bread is buttered.”    Not sure why.  But it works.  In so many contexts.

- 2 - 

A day of skiing hurts at night.  A bottle of wine hurts in the morning.  But kisses and hugs make it all better.  And 2 tablets of extra-strength Tylenol.

- 1 -

You wish everyone would stop the pity-stare when you answer, “Nothing special.  Just hanging with my husband and kids.  Maybe go out for dinner” to their “What big plans do you have to celebrate your 40th?”  The truth is — you’re tired of planning parties for everyone and even if your husband did all the work, you know you’d nitpick about something (like how much he spent on a caterer or, if he didn’t, how the crab cakes were too bready) and you love your friends but a big party means they’ll pay through the nose for a ‘sitter and then, feel exhausted in the morning and you won’t really get any meaningful time to talk with them anyways and your family will want to fly in but you don’t have enough sofas in the house for all of them and the kids will want to stay up late but they invariably go nuclear after 9 pm and you haven’t ever bought yourself a really nice piece of jewelry and maybe that would be fun, you know, something you could give to your daughter when she’s older.  Or maybe, you’d just enjoy staying in the Canyon, ordering in pizza and blowing out a mini-blaze of candles sliding off a homemade, lopsided cake?  Or maybe, you don’t measure your life by dates on the calendar but rather by the long trajectory of accomplishments and struggles, memories and future dreams — and your life feels full without the party.  Or maybe, you want to start a new trend of overblown parties thrown in PRIME years (43!  59!)  Or maybe, you just want to spend the night lubbing up your hands, wearing a pair of those night-mitts to get the cream in good and deep, smooth and youthful.

Oh yeah.  I know what I’m doing on my 40th Birthday.  For sure.

If you like “Lord of the Flies,” you must like killing people who wear glasses: News vs. Blogs (round 7)

by The Totefish Blog

Watch out all you 4-eyed piggies... It’s official.  The total erosion of the line between News and Blogs has occurred.  Thanks to those whose fingers are broken (and thus, can’t type http://www.dictionary.com into their browser window), the two concepts have merged into one.  One mega-corporation.  One unified nation.  One weirdly symmetrical, genetically-modified baby.

I introduce you to world of BLOGEWS.  

Or NEWOGS.  (The choice is yours.  The influence is… well, I can’t reveal my sponsors but you can be sure their links are invisibly embedded in this sentence and once you accidentally hover over it, their cookies will be secretly entrenched in your computer for 164 days and they’ll ping you with many innocent pitches until you learn that you can’t live without their product.  But I so digress.)

BLOGEWS (my favorite because it has a certain onomatopoeia to it… as in “Gazuntite”) is how you get all your facts & opinions rolled up into one delicious, confusing, “Fact or Crap” collection of paragraphs tracking all the world’s order, activities and movements and integrating them seamlessly with any-and-all passing, emotionally-riddled half-thoughts that run through anyone’s head while waiting at a red light.

And yes, BLOGEWS are re-tweetable, forwardable to 250+ other BLOGEWS in 1.2 seconds and automatically convert into funny-thus-viral youtube videos with high-production values, rap soundtracks and not-so-subtle product placements.  And they’re free to everyone who has a unique (and thus traceable) IP address and a whiff of nostalgia for Walter Conkrite.  Actually, nostalgia not required.

What?!  I sound sarcastic?  

Well, thank you for noticing.

If you outreach to www.dictionary.com, you’ll find the following:

__________________________________________

news  [nooz, nyooz]  Usually used with a singular verb

A report of a recent event; intelligence;  information

__________________________________________

blog [blawg, blog]  Noun, verb, blogged, blog·ging

A Web site containing the writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Websites.
___________________________________________

And if you dig a little further, you’ll find in the digital media handbook, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR,” David Scott writes:

“It is better to think of the web as a huge city teeming with individuals, and blogs as the sound of independent voices, just like those of the street-corner soap-box preacher or that friend of yours who always recommends the best books.”

Conversely, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (a consistent leader in Top 10 Schools of Journalism lists) writes in their website:

“The school prepares [journalism students] to perform a vital and challenging function in free societies: finding out the truth of complicated situations, usually under a time constraint, and communicating it in a clear, engaging fashion to the public.”

This means:

Blogs = Computer conversations akin to those you have in grocery lines, over the neighbor’s hedge or with that very knowledgeable (or not so much) mom in the school pick-up line.  Expertise, Professionalism & Facts not required.  Actually, not even really encouraged.

News = Presentation of facts in a fun way to read.  In-touch with Reality, Responsibility and Thoroughness assumed.  But what’s that expression about ass-uming??

News is news.  Blogs are blogs.

Not any more, baby!

They went out and got drunk and we’re sharing their hangover.

Today’s current vodka-soaked pain comes in the form of Virginia Heffernan’s “Why did Ann Romney put ‘Anna Karenina on her Pinterest board“ news article in Yahoo! News.  Hefferman’s byline says she “is the national correspondent for Yahoo! News, covering culture and politics from a digital perspective,” which doesn’t bode well for culture as we know it.  Ms. Heffernan has written an incredibly probbing piece of journalistic something-or-other about Ann Romney’s choice of reading material.

My favorite line is:

“Still, Ann Romney’s move was a little stunning.  Mitt Romney’s devoted wife—Mormon convert, mother of five, would-be first lady of the United States—champions a chronicle of … an open marriage?”

Now, I’m certainly not in the business of supporting the Romneys (I’m a staunch Democrat, among other things) but wrong is wrong, regardless of one’s political affiliation (um… yeah, except if you’re FOX BLOGEWS, of course).  Heffernan, if born into a different time, would have made a wonderful leader in the Book-Burning movement.   I’m just so glad we’re lucky she’s in our time, with our culture.  ’Cause she’s proven all that I always suspected:

People who like books about dogs, hate cats.

People who like the “The Twilight Series” (and who doesn’t love Edward?!!) spend hours trolling bestiality and necrophilia sites.

People who like the Bible can’t handle working with nails or rose bushes.

People who read “A Cat In the Hat” like to organize bakesale fundraisers for child molestors.

Yes.  I’m being sarcastic.  

But I’m writing a blog.  Not a news article.

PRINCESS BUSINESS WOMAN: A FairyTale with Photos

by The Totefish Blog

PRINCESS BUSINESS-WOMAN

Once Upon a Time, there was a young girl who graduated from college with only a filofax, leather briefcase, pair of navy pumps and a smart navy suit with shiny gold buttons as her most prized possessions.   This young girl wanted nothing more than to be a “Business Woman.”   Just like Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl” and that blond lawyer-woman on “L.A. Law.”

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But when she moved to Los Angeles, the only job this young woman got was that of a secretary, fetching poppy-seed muffins for and fielding profanity-laced emails from her psychotic boss at NBC.  In the castle of primetime, she toiled late nights running calls from the car and slaved early mornings prepping “Must Review Today” folders for the crazy, evil boss-lady until she ran out screaming one morning and never came back.

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For a few weeks, she drank a lot of $2 Chilean wine.  She chased her sexy sailing instructor down to Santiago.  She came home alone.  She read a lot of Ayn Rand.  She worked a few more jobs.  Got a few more promotions.  She even got an Associate Producer credit on a real television show. One year later, she left the Industry to raise her children.   But she never got her own business cards.   She never really got to be the “Business Woman” she’d always envisioned herself to be.  

–

Until yesterday.

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For the simple price of a Southwest plane ticket, that little girl grew into a Princess.  She packed her navy suit, picked up her freshly-minted business cards from Uprinting.com and made her way to San Francisco for her first business trip.  To a conference, no less.  This is the fairy-tale story of her glamorous rise to the top.   This is proof that dreams do come true.  Kind of. 

Chauffeur drives Princess to airport. Chauffeur looks strangely like Princess.  (See “The Prince & The Pauper”)

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Since flight was cancelled and Princess was re-routed, she arrives late to hotel.  Her King-room has been given away.  Princess gets upgraded to VIP floor. Princess learns that her Queen-room is a handicap room with double peep-holes.  (See “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs”)

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Princess takes a shower in her handicap bathroom but realizes too late that the water doesn’t stay in the wheelchair accessible shower pan (”cause it’s a handicap pan).  She mops up 3 inches of water flooding the bathroom. With no dry towels left, she air-dries her body with the blow-dryer.  (See “Cinderella”)

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Princess orders Gourmet Dinner on silver-tray from a servant who charges $15 for his delivery services. She eats her steamed ‘green vegetables’ and mashed potatoes while watching a rerun of “The Office” in her lower-than-normal-to-floor Queen bed.  She falls asleep shortly after the potatoes re-congeal in her stomach but the room is too hot, then it is too cold, the comforter falls to the floor and doors slam noisily in the hall all night.   REM sleep is elusive.  (See “The Princess and the Pea”)

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Princess wakes early and hits snooze 3x’s until she’s (almost) late for Registration & Opening Keynote. She makes coffee in her room (using 4 creamers to make it palatable).  She dons her navy pantsuit and runs to the Ballroom.  (See “Cinderella” again)

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Priceless Jewels and Treasures are bestowed upon the Princess, justifying the $1000+ Registration fee, for sure.

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Horns blare. Criers hark. Music Soars. The Metropolitan Ballroom I doors open. Wait.  Oops. The Princess is registered for Track II.  That’s in the other Ballroom, isn’t it?  Excuse me. Pardon me.  Oh.  Where is everyone?  Oh, I’m early.  There are 7 sessions today?  That’s a lot of sessions.  We’re in this room all day?  But there’s no windows. (See “Rapunzel”)

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Princess is exhausted… I mean, EXHILARATED by the 7 hours of speaking sessions.  Eager for the sight of real light, she heads out into the streets of San Francisco and stumbles upon a fine culinary experience.  She takes it “To Go” back to her hotel room and tears the dinner to shreds.  (See “Little Red Riding Hood”)

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With her hunger satiated, the Princess realizes she’s too tired to shower.  Her feet ache.  Although she has a ton of email to catch up on, she just wants to watch 30 Rock on tv.   She tells herself she’ll do her work in the morning.  (See “Pinocchio”)

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The Princess treats herself to a $45 can of not-quite-cold beer out of the mini-fridge. It’s a special occasion, after all.  She just lost her Business-Trip virginity.  She’s a real Business Woman now, damn it.  She’s a Business Princess! The Princess finishes her beer, then falls asleep until her I-phone alarm kisses her awake in time for Day II of the Affiliate Marketing Conference S.F. 2012.  (See “Sleeping Beauty”)

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And Princess Business Woman worked happily ever after.

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When I say my meeting is about to start, it means I’m late for tennis

by The Totefish Blog

Off to the… office

Yes, I’ve been lying.  That conference call wasn’t about to start, my meeting didn’t run long and I wasn’t on a deadline to get that spreadsheet over to the engineers by noon.  I was zipping up my tennis skirt, lacing up my shoes and running off to hit balls with the ladies for my weekly Monday Morning Tennis Clinic.  I admit it…  I’m a mid-day Exerciser.  And I feel guilty as sin about it.

Since mid-day tennis is a totally new thing for my lifestyle, I’m working out the kinks.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m hooked —  but if you saw how I obsessively I wipe the clay dust tracks off the kitchen floor each week, you’d begin to suspect that I was a hiding a body or two in the neighbor’s yard.  I can’t shake the feeling that I’m betraying someone, somewhere.  It feels so… illegal.

You see, although I live in on the west coast, I’m a east-coaster by training.  I like to read books under an afghan, I keep pantyhose in an open-drawer in my closet just in case there’s an opportunity to done a pair of jet black control-tops, and on nights when my husband is out-of-town, I surf Burberry.com and fantasize about the woman I could be inside one of those trench coats (red pumps optional).  Ever since I can remember, I’ve known that responsible adults take sweaty runs before breakfast or join 7 pm aerobics classes after work.  But the hours between 9 – 5 are for the office, baby.

Or are they?

Sure, old rich white men, Sales Reps and famous actors skip out of the office for a golf game in the middle of the day and sure, they wear it as a badge of accomplishment but that’s because they own the Club (or the Hedge Fund or the Super PAC or the family crest lapel pin), they have a huge expensive account (we all know how many deals get closed over drinks ‘on the green) or they just got paid $250k to sport that new pair of Persols in the sun.  What I’m trying to say is that women like me don’t do that kind of thing.

Multi-tasking: Working the phone & a nicotine-habit (20th Century Fox)

Sure, I enjoy a long “business lunch” as much as the next guy in the corner office but skirting away from my desk to play a quick round of Queen-of-the-Court?  I saw “Working Girl” (okay, fine, full disclosure, I’ve seen it 13.75 times if you count last month’s TBS’s 11 pm showing) and there is no way Tess McGill would sacrifice her hard-earned promotion by choosing a 30-minute volley-drill over conferencing with China about a new radio station acquisition.  Getting ahead means staying focused!  Working long hours!  Being the last one to leave the office!  Throw in the demands of parenting (and the guilt of hiring babysitters to oversee homework-hour while you crunch numbers) and there’s NO good reason a working mom should leave her desk in the middle of the day to run around a large rectangle wearing a cute skirt.

Or is there?

Tess, Tess, Tess.  We’ve learned so much since those awesome late ’80s (and I’m not only talking about shoulder-pad fashion).  I’m talking science and the brain and creativity and work productivity.  Turns out, I’m NOT getting ahead if I don’t work out during the day.  ”Body & Brain Fitness” is real:

You don’t need more bullet points, do you?!  This isn’t rocket science.  Exercise is like breathing.  Turns out, you’re an idiot if you don’t do it.  I know, I know.  That sounds harsh coming from a woman who still negotiates with herself when fitting in a 30-minute power walk, 3-days a week, during her lunch break.  I mean, I usually eat lunch at my desk, in front of my computer under the guise of “Advanced Productivity.”  Even I have to re-read these articles regularly to remind myself I’m not just procrastinating and putting off that Investor Deck.  (You knew those bullet points were links, right?).

Now, you’re asking “But When, Deb?”  My life is so busy already.  I haven’t got time to lunch at the table, let alone run along the street for 30 minutes.  I’m trying to build a company.  I’m trying to feed my family healthy food.  I’m trying to keep a (relative) tamp-down on the clutter of our house.  Where the hell am I going to slot in a 30 minute game of tennis?

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY!

Ignore that typo-ridden email from your boss.  Don’t write another boring sentence in that power-point presentation.  Stop checking the webstats on your blog.  Get some exercise.  And then, come back and do your work in half-the-time, at twice-the-quality, with a smile on your face and a pun in your step.  Everyone will be happier for it.

I could go on for hours about the benefits of day-time exercise but my meeting is about to start…