April 12, 2012 · 11:54 am

Getting Paid NOT to Write My Blog

This week I received an email from a marketing firm offering to pay me $40 if I let them guest blog on Very VERY Busy Mom. So many emotions rumbled through my body as I mulled over this request.

First of all, I’m very flattered that someone I’ve never heard of would seek me out to write for my website. It’s kind of like guest hosting for Jay Leno. Only they might end up being funny.

Secondly, I am thrilled about the prospect of free cash. Although $40 seemed like chump change when I was in my carefree and wasteful late 20’s, today $40 can mean the difference between gas in my tank or sticking out my thumb on a street corner (That was a lie. I’ve never hitchhiked before, but with the price of gas these days a free ride sounds very enticing).

However, there were three reasons why I wanted to turn them down. First, Very VERY Busy Mom is my blog, and I’m a little territorial about it. I’d feel like a hypocrite lamenting how I’ll take a little Me Time when I’m dead, then have someone guest blog about the 10 Best Spas in LA, especially since I couldn’t even afford the valet.

I also don’t do ads. I think it’s a little creepy when I’m on a website and the Google Ads are offering me products for hygiene. Am I not bathing enough? Am I choosing the wrong deodorant? How does Big Brother know?

The final and most important reason that I didn’t want the deal was because Very VERY Busy Mom is a humor blog, or at least I try to make it humorous. And I suspected that the subject matter they were proposing was not very funny.

No, it wasn’t selling cemetery plots or raising money for an orphanage in Cambodia. It was for a website advertising dentists – specifically cosmetic dentistry.

I figured that I would be a terrible choice because I would be inclined to mention the famous scene in Marathon Man with Laurence Olivier stabbing Dustin Hoffman’s cavity and asking, “Is it safe?”

That could be my tagline:

Is it safe? Only if you go to one of our dentists.

"Is it safe?"

I can just imagine the first paragraph written by the guest blogger:

Do you brush your teeth regularly? Do you floss? Is your answer an embarrassed “no?” Fear not. Make an appointment with one of our dentists and in no time you’ll have a winning smile!

Would you keep reading? Or would you close the screen window and never ever log onto my blog again?

On the other hand, if they let me write it, it might sound more like this:

Have your teeth become the color of your Starbucks’ cappuccino? Do you knock over large animals with your bad breath? Do strangers compliment you on your realistic Halloween Billy Bob teeth? Then let’s hope that you have a great personality to attract a mate. Otherwise, you’ll need to bring your fat checkbook or great credit over to our dentist if you ever want to get a date.

These are my teeth. Really.

I checked out the website they wanted me to promote. It has a lot of quick information about things like root canals, tooth decay, and gingivitis (a great vocabulary word I learned from a Listerine ad before I had a DVR and could speed through commercials). The site invites you to find a dentist in your area by entering your zip code. I tried it, but my dentist wasn’t on the list. What? I’ve been seeing him twice a year for over 20 years. Perhaps he has enough regular clients like me, so he doesn’t have to advertise online.

The home page of the website contains a photo of a hunky 50-something guy and one of those blonde natural beauties you see in ads but not so often in real life. They’re smiling at us from the beach. If this was a tv ad, they might even have some CGI sparkles emitting from their perfect teeth.

My real dentist ad would have the hunky 50-something guy lying back in a dentist chair, drooling on a bib while a dental hygienist shoves a sharp poker, a mirror, and a small hose into his mouth. She tells him he needs to floss more often. “Aaaaakaaagaaa,” he answers, as the hose sucks his gurgling spit. Suddenly he’s not so hunky.

Then there would be the ad where the blonde natural beauty is not so naturally blond or naturally beautiful. She has just finished her checkup and therefore all lipstick and foundation applied below her nose has rubbed off. She is told that she needs to have x-rays taken, and the semi-blonde bursts into tears because her co-pay just went up and insurance now only pays for 60%. She pleads that she’s got a Smartphone, so can’t she just take a picture of her teeth and email it to the dentist?

Another ad would be the hunky 50-something guy awakening from a root canal, getting a prescription for Vicodin, and relapsing after 25 years of sobriety as he chases more pain meds.

These would be my ads if I wrote them. Which is probably why the marketing gal wanted me to hand my blog over to the guest writer, who would most likely write about the virtues of whitened teeth and how crowns make you more appealing to a prospective employer.

Not my teeth. Thank God!

Should I take the $40 and run? Maybe to a beach with the hunky 50-something guy with a winning smile? Probably not, or my 40-something husband will stop writing witty replies to my blogs. He might even stop making me dinner.

I decided to take the high road, stick to my morals, and make some fun of dentists myself rather than let somebody else promote them. I emailed the marketing gal back and thanked her for the offer, but told her no.

She emailed me back and offered $90 instead. She also said I could write the blog myself, and I could even mention halitosis. All I had to do name the company and provide a link to their website.

I posted this blog around noon, naming the website and providing a link. Then an hour later I received an email from the manager of the marketing company who told me:

… we would really appreciate you not disclosing our client in the post or linking to it as this could harm our relationship with the client.

He offered to pay me if I would just take down the links and delete any mention of his client.

Should I hold out until they offer to pay for my kids’ braces?

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April 8, 2012 · 11:36 pm

Easter: The Religious Holiday That’s All About the Candy

Jake: My Little Bunny

The evolution of holidays can be a little comical. Who would have guessed that when the Indians (AKA politically correct Native Americans) held a welcome dinner for their new neighbors – the Pilgrims – that that nearly 400 years later it would all be about grown men screaming at their flat screens, trying to urge some college boy with a pigskin to “Run! Run! Dammit! Run!”

Two centuries after a golden child was born in a barn, we celebrate with a fat man (AKA politically correct “slightly overweight male”) stuffing Hot Wheels and iPod accessories into “stockings.” “Stockings” bear no resemblance to actual socks or pantyhose, and instead are just large bags decorated with evergreens, winged cherubs, and magnified snowflake atoms.

And just 33 years after the previous event, we celebrate the rising of a dead man (AKA very politically incorrect zombie [I am so completely kidding with this blasphemy because my God has a sense of humor]) with baby ducks, fluffy bunnies, and sending children off in search of colored hard-boiled eggs and plastic ovals filled with anything that will rot baby teeth.

When I was a child, my mom would hide Easter baskets for my siblings and me. The baskets were filled with shredded plastic hay, foiled-wrapped chocolate eggs and a large chocolate rabbit. Mom was not a very good hider. The basket would be stealthily perched behind the living room drapes, on the top of a bookshelf, or underneath a dining room chair. Within seconds of getting out of bed we’d be munching the ears off defenseless brown bunnies.

My oldest daughter Emily was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 3, so I never started this sugar-filled tradition with my children since they’d be getting their fill of candy later in the afternoon. I can justify that I saved them from the bitter disappointment of realizing that the large chocolate bunny was actually hollow and not filled with fudge or creamy nougat. Or I can think that because I’m a much better hider than my mom, that my kids would be spending all Easter Sunday searching for a basket that was melting in the attic, in the cupboard that stores the mousetraps, or resting on the top of our backyard telephone pole.

With the exception of the whole going to mass thing, Easter was always one of my favorite holidays of the year. When I was a kid, we’d get together with the rest of the Flynn aunts, uncles and cousins at my grandparents’ home and all the cousins would have an Easter egg hunt. My Aunt Helen has a super-8 film of us dressed in our Sunday best as we all ran through the bushes searching for colored eggs. My youngest sister Teri was about 3 years old and the film shows her trying to bite through the shell of a hard-boiled egg. Today Teri’s a charge nurse in Riverside and has to pump the stomachs of children like herself who digest foreign objects that are not meant to be edible. I guess it was destiny.

The Flynns are now spread out all over the western states, so today it’s just my immediate family that travels to my sister Tammie’s house in Fontana for the big Easter egg hunt. Besides my 3 kids, I have 6 nieces, 4 nephews, 2 great-nieces and 3 great-nephews (including one coming in July), 5 step-N&Ns and one nephew/Godson who can’t spend Easter with us anymore because he died in a tragic motorcycle accident last year (but like Jesus – the big Easter Man himself, I believe he’s with us in spirit). We make The Waltons look like a nuclear family.

Every Easter Tammie hauls out a bin large enough to store a Great Dane, and it’s filled with empty plastic Easter eggs. The adults spend a chunk of the afternoon filling the eggs with candy while the kids decorate more hard-boiled eggs than they will probably ever eat in a lifetime. Then we hide the hundreds of eggs around my sister’s backyard, hoping that the hiding spots are not so clever that the kids will bypass them and the candy will instead be eaten by one of Tammie’s many goat-like dogs who will literally eat anything that’s not nailed down. She used to have several pet bunnies (which were appropriate for Easter), but even though they resided in a Fort Knox-like cage, they were attacked by the seemingly sweet dogs.

There aren’t any Easter ducks in Tammie’s backyard, but she does have two chickens roaming around, and for some reason the dogs ignore them. I assume that beaks present a more dangerous weapon than an adorable twitchy nose. During today’s Easter egg hunt, one of the kids found a large pile of non-colored eggs in the bushes and realized that they were not the plastic variety, but instead a hidden stash laid by the chickens. It was a little late in the day to hard-boil and stain them with vinegar-scented coloring, but they’ll probably make a nice omelet tomorrow.

Because it was a beautiful Southern California day, the kids had been splashing in the Jacuzzi so they hunted for eggs in their bathing suits. If you’re reading this from Canada, aren’t you just a tad jealous?

I am writing this blog on my laptop as my husband drives all home on the traffic-filled 10 Freeway. There are lots of other minivans and SUVs around us, filled with people like us who just spent a fun-filled day with friends and family, good food, and a fruitful search for candy-filled eggs. My kids are exhausted, which is a good thing since tomorrow ends LAUSD’s spring vacation, and full bellies and a long car ride home are sure to mean a good night’s sleep.

Now on to the next big holiday: Memorial Day. It’s a day that we honor all our country’s soldiers with charcoal and hot dogs.

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April 2, 2012 · 6:52 pm

10 Reasons I’m Glad I Didn’t Win the $656 Million Mega Millions Jackpot

Like half of all the other desperate souls in America, I was dreaming of what I would do if I won $656 million in the Mega Millions Jackpot. I bought not one, but two lotto tickets, which is a very big deal since it meant that due to the astronomical gas prices I’d have to drive four fewer miles this week. Good timing since it’s spring break and I get a break from middle school car pool.

In my fantasy, I would pay off the house just enough to have 20% equity, then do a na-na-na-na-na-na dance to the half dozen loan officers who have turned us down for a refi this past year.

I would pay off the student loans my husband and I have accumulated to the tune of $185,000, and then have plenty left over to put our three kids through the college of their choice. What the heck… we could probably buy our own college.

We could fly first class to Florida and spend a week at Disneyworld while Emily is still young enough to enjoy it and Jake is old enough to avoid the dreaded naptime.

I could dream forever and keep going on about my fantasies, but the fact is, I didn’t win. Obviously, or my blog hit numbers would be through the roof. So since I try to be a glass half full kind of gal, I have come up with the…

10 Reasons I’m Glad I Didn’t Win the $656 Million Mega Millions Jackpot

1. Taxes. Right now I earn and pay a pittance – just enough to contribute a little something to our under-funded public schools. If I was paying millions in taxes it would all go to big ticket items like politicians’ pet projects such as funding studies on whether cockroaches prefer Cocoa Krispies or Cocoa Pebbles.

2. All the kindergartners would be knocking out their own teeth during sleepovers at our home since it would be rumored that we have a very generous Tooth Fairy.

3. My credit union building is just not big enough to deposit all those dollars

4. I really don’t want to be featured in supermarket tabloids under the headings “She’s just like us! She buys her own deodorant!” and “Lotto Winner Caught Picking Her Butt!”

5. I’d have to scrape off my “Other 99%” bumper sticker.

6. I’m afraid someone will kidnap my dogs and hold them for ransom. Then I’d have the dilemma of whether or not to pay the criminals or let the mutts just annoy them as much as they annoy me.

7. I’d probably have to start paying my kids an allowance.

8. Every third cousin in my family tree would be hightailing it to LA for a piece of the pie, and then race back again every month when their stash ran out.

9. I would have to spend all my free time rejecting new Facebook friend requests.

10. I would be invited to fancy shmancy parties that Mitt Romney is also invited to and then I’d have to keep repeating the awkward conversation that I am a Democrat and would plan to outspend his Super PAC.

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March 31, 2012 · 1:59 pm

That New Car Smell Has Left My Minivan

I have a love/hate relationship with my minivan.

It’s a Toyota Sienna XLE, and I love that I can fit six kids in the car with me – twelve if they’re small and double buckle (Just kidding. Really). I love lots of cup holders and extra pockets to store things I forget about like contact lens cases even though I got LASIK a year ago. I love the leather interior, sunroof, and captain’s chairs in the middle row so if I’m chauffeuring grownups they don’t have to feel like 5-year olds bouncing on a school bus.

And the hate part of the relationship? My minivan is a 1998, which is misleading because I actually bought it in the summer of 1997 when my daughter Emily could still ride in her infant seat. This week she starts driver’s training. According to Wikipedia, the week I purchased my Sienna, Microsoft bought “a $150 million share of financially troubled Apple Computer.”

I’m just saying – it was a really long time ago.

My car also has an antique cassette tape deck, a CD player that doesn’t recognize disks made on a laptop, no iPod plug in, no GPS, no DVD player, and I have the humiliation of dropping my kindergartner off at school and having the volunteer valet stare at my sliding door, waiting for it to magically close on its own.

The best thing about my minivan is I haven’t had a car payment in almost 10 years. It’s ok to have the kids eat in my car and I don’t get freaky hysterical if they leave crumbs because that new car smell has been gone longer than Titanic – the 1997 2D version, not next week’s 3D release. 3D glasses won’t help the fact that my son spilled a sippy cup full of milk on the carpet last summer. Now my car probably smells like it too has been at the bottom of the ocean for a century.

I got rear ended a few years ago, and the driver was overjoyed, not only because I didn’t immediately cry “whiplash,” but that when I noticed the hole in my bumper, I sympathetically patted the poor driver on the shoulder. “My daughter just got Student of the Month and I think my new bumper sticker is just the right size to hide the dent.” My insurance company must love me.

There’s one thing that irks me the most about having an old car. Little by little, my beautiful leather driver’s seat has been tearing and wearing away until it now resembles some kind of angry punk rock attire. I can wash and wax the exterior. I can vacuum the interior and hang up a mini pine tree to make the car smell like Once Upon a Time’s fairy tale forest. But that shredded driver’s seat just screams: “Donate your used vehicle!”

I started searching for seat covers. While at a red light, I would peek in at other cars and study their seats. Not too hard, mind you. People really freak out if you look at them in their cars. And if they catch you staring, you can’t justify it by saying “I wasn’t looking at you, I was just admiring your seat covers” because that sounds like a really lame excuse, and they’re liable to report you to 1-800-CUT-SMOG just because you give them the heebie jeebies.

It’s a little bit easier to snoop inside cars while they’re parked. No one’s behind the wheel to freak out, but then pedestrians think you’re trying to break into the vehicle. Either way, it looks suspicious.

Anyway, snooping inside other vehicles proved to not be very productive. Frankly, there’s not a single seat cover I liked.

Do I really want a cheetah print? It would match my daughter’s bedspread, but it’s not like I’ll be parking my minivan in her bedroom to coordinate patterns.

A two-toned Neosupreme cover that is supposed to give my minivan a “sporty” look when it would more likely resemble a costume for some disco-era Superhero?

Camouflage? My “Republicans for Voldemort” bumper sticker should be a clear indication that I’m probably not a big NRA fan.

One of those Hawaiian slipcovers that looks like it belongs on a dune buggy?

Sheepskin? That one seems itchy and sweaty, and even if it is fake sheep skin, I would still keep imagining Mary’s Little Lamb following her to school one day and ending up in the slaughter house because it was against the rules.

My kids fondling my future seat covers

The only cover I really wanted was what I already had, but without the rips. A professional upholstery job would cost too much, so I started looking online for a half-assed substitute that didn’t look like a half-assed substitute.

I ended up finding a faux leather seat cover that could be custom made for my 1998 Toyota Sienna XLE. The package included covers for the two front seats, backs with built-in pockets, arm rests and head rests. But what I really needed was exactly that – just the but, or rather, butt. The rest of the seat parts were perfectly fine. Unfortunately, my special request couldn’t be accommodated. Apparently it would be like trying to order a Happy Meal when all you really want is the toy. Which is why every parent in America has a toy box full of plastic Scooby Doos and American landfills are full of uneaten Chicken McNuggets.

So now my butt sits on a non-torn imitation leather seat cover that is only about three shades lighter than the rest of the seat. I am content. And I am saving the passenger side seat cover for 15 years from now when my new current seat is torn to shreds from extra poundage, and Titanic is being re-released in 4D. That is, 4D Smell-O-Vision. After all, like my minivan, the ship will smell like it has been rotting at the bottom of the ocean for over a century.

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March 25, 2012 · 12:46 pm

Baseball: America’s Favorite Pastime or Just a Mound of Dirt?

There are two things my husband is passionate about.

You might think I would say that they were his wife and his children.

You’d be wrong.

Although I know he loves us, he is enthusiastically, obsessively, and maniacally passionate about westerns and baseball (and of course football, as you may have read in my previous blog Why My Husband Scares the Crap Out of Our Kids).

When I got pregnant and received confirmation from the ultrasound that we were going to have a boy, I was absolutely thrilled. I’m not usually one to make sexist assumptions about gender roles, but I couldn’t wait to see our little Jake dressed up in a cowboy costume like Woody. But more importantly, and more lasting, I couldn’t wait to see him play baseball.

I got my wish a couple of weeks ago when I signed Jake up for Toluca Baseball. He was to join a group of 11 other 4 to 6-year old boys by participating in our nation’s favorite pastime.

I envisioned Tom coaching the team, helping the boys perfect their throw, giving them tips on how to hit a ball that would sail over the shortstop’s head, and Jake’s gleaming smile as he rounded the bases and stepped on home plate.

I did not get my dream come true.

We have two boys on our team who have played in a league before. The rest are novices who had to be told the definitions of mitt and 1st base. They look forward to their snack more than a chance to bat, and they’d rather play in the dirt than play ball.

Jake’s no exception.

He throws the ball as if he’s aiming for a gopher two feet in front of him.

He swings the bat slowly and gently as if he is Miss America waving in a parade.

He doesn’t run after the ball. He waits for it to roll by him, then he strolls over to where it stops and pounces on it. We have to remind him to throw the ball back to us.

He runs like he’s the Six Million Dollar Man speeding 60 mph in slow motion. I honestly don’t know how he defies the laws of gravity as he floats effortlessly through the air.

Our baseball team is all this – times 10. I’ve signed up to be the team parent, which means that I’m the good cop who gets to cheer them on when they hit the ball and the bad cop who has to wrangle them when they’re off in La La Land. As such, I have compiled a list of common commands:

Don’t play in the dirt.

Quit climbing the fence.

The bat is not a weapon.

Quit chewing your mitt.

Take your finger out of his nose.

No, it’s not snack time yet.

I told you, don’t play in the dirt.

Hey! Get out of their field! Our team is over here!

Run! Run! Run like you’re chasing after the ice cream truck!

 “Baseball stance” does not mean sitting on your butt.

Your mitt belongs on your hand – not your foot.

Your penis is supposed to stay inside your pants.

Don’t throw dirt!

Turn around and face the pitcher. The rest of you – face the batter.

Great hit!… No! Don’t chase after the ball! Run to 1st!

You’re bored? You can come to my house and clean my toilet if you want something to do.

Is that your phone? Where did you get it? Is that your purse?

Tag him! Tag him! Touch him with the ball! No – don’t throw the ball at him!

Hey! What’s that in your hand? Drop the dirt. Drop it. Drop it now!

It’s a bat. Not a golf club.

Quit picking the grass.

Get out of that tree!

Don’t push the runner off the base. He belongs there. You don’t.

You already had a turn. Yeah? Well, life’s not fair. You should learn that now when you’re 5 (no, I didn’t really say this. I thought of saying it though).

If I see you in the dirt again I’m going to move you.

Don’t cry. When we say “Run! Run!” we’re not yelling at you.

You’re playing right field. You don’t need a helmet.

Don’t fight over the ball!

Drop the bat. Don’t carry it to 1st.

You found it on the ground? Take it out of your mouth.

All of you! Stay out of the dirt!

We’ve got two more months before the closing ceremony.  I think the Toluca Baseball commissioners are going to need to order one thing for the big occasion to make these kids happy:

More dirt.

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March 17, 2012 · 2:38 pm

($ ÷ Gallon) x (Miles ÷ Gallon) = LA Gasoline Anxiety

Here's the gas prices at the station closest to my home. Aaaahhhh!!!

With the astronomical price of gas these days, I start to have an anxiety attack each moment my odometer clicks another tenth of a digit. I quickly do the math in my head: if my 15-year old minivan gets 16 miles per gallon of gas and I pay $4.50 for each gallon, I am coughing up over 28 cents for every tenth of a mile. It now costs twice as much in gas to deliver my daughter’s forgotten brown bag lunch than to just make her buy lunch at the school cafeteria. What a dilemma!

When I got my driver’s license in 1978, I remember paying just 64 cents for a gallon of gas. I say this and I feel like the old geezers who complain how when they were kids they used to walk to school uphill both ways. Suddenly I’m older than dirt.

Today, as I near a hundred bucks a pop, each time I fill up my tank I feel like I just lost the kids’ college fund – that is if I was wealthy enough to actually have a decent kids’ college fund. My head pounds, I feel emotionally sick, and I am suddenly terrified of the future of both my family and America as a whole.

With such an adverse reaction, you would think that my work commute must be an enormous trek and I am suddenly spending a fortune in gas.

Wrong.

Actually, my commute distance is exactly 13-1/2 inches and takes about a nanosecond, so it costs exactly no dollars and zero cents in gas to drive to work.

Jealous? I don’t blame you.

My editing system sits on a desk near the foot of my bed and I am able to upload and download my session via the Internet. I work a 48.6 hour week (blame my union for this obscure number) and I can do it all in my pajamas.

I can’t image how I’d afford gas if I still commuted from the home in Chino I sold in 1992. It’s a 90 mile round trip to Burbank, so at 16 miles per gallon I’d be spending over $550 in gas each month. Plus I’d be wasting about 15-20 hours each week staring at lame bumper stickers and the rear ends of all those SUVs that have stick figure drawings with family member names underneath, all the while sucking up thousands of Verizon minutes yacking with people who’d certainly be tired of talking to me after the first ten minutes.

Thank you God for telecommuting.

I do have to drive a mile and a half each way every week (84¢) to drop off and pick up my external hard drive from my assistant/right hand man Eddie. I also travel four miles ($2.25 round trip) to the Disney lot and swing by the dub stage, mostly to keep my chops primed in having three-minute conversations with actual adults who work in post-production sound. In real life, the majority of my conversations consist of telling my 5-year old to stop squirming and keep his finger out of his nose, so the last thing I want to do is instinctively bark these orders at the dedicated mixers of Once Upon a Time.

So if I’m not paying up the wazoo in my work commute, where does all the gas money go?

Jake’s school is three blocks away, and since he’s a pokey walker, we drive. I figure the trip there and back costs a little less than 20 cents a day. In a week I spend less than the price the ice cream man charges for a SpongeBob on a stick. Such a bargain!

I’m the afternoon carpool mom for Mary’s school which is three miles away, and I drive about six miles on the way home dropping off the other middle school kids. That gas bill adds up to about $2.53 each day. In a week, I spend more in gas than I would in buying a half dozen Red Bulls – which I recently cut out of my budget because they’re now a luxury I can’t afford. Please don’t tell my insurance agent this if I happen to fall asleep at the wheel.

Emily attends Cleveland Humanities Magnet which is a 28-mile round trip and would cost nearly $40 a week in gas. I have all you Los Angeles property owners to thank for generously donating your tax dollars. So far LAUSD has not completely cut funding for Magnet School buses, so for me, Emily is a freebie.

I don’t have the luxury of time on my hands, yet I will still drive six miles and wait for 20 minutes in line to fill up at the Costco gas station to save a few cents.  Actually, it’s more than a few cents. Yesterday Costco gas was $4.21 a gallon, but the closest gas station to my home was $4.75. They have the audacity to charge $4.99 for premium, and at that price “premium” should mean “with complimentary foot rub.” Don’t even get me started on the three-millimeter sized “9/10” at the end of every gas price. Is there any other product that charges an extra nine-tenths of a cent?

Even with my Costco membership, it now costs more time and money to buy a gallon of gasoline than it does to get a Starbucks Venti Frappuccino. It’s too bad my minivan doesn’t run on iced coffee. Especially since I make my own cup a Joe. After all the money we spend on gas these days, who can afford to buy anything from Starbucks?

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March 6, 2012 · 12:44 am

8 Reasons Why I’m Happy That Valley Village Will Not Be Split Into Two Congressional Districts

For the past ten years, Valley Village has been split into two congressional districts. The boundary was split down Laurel Canyon Boulevard rather

Current Council District map

than the Tujunga Wash, which is the natural boundary for both Neighborhood Council Valley Village and the Valley Village Homeowners Association. But with the new census comes new maps that need to be redrawn, and there have been many loud and persistent voices in the community urging the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission to make Valley Village whole.

Valley Village section to be split

Just three weeks ago the commission presented a 2012 draft that had Valley Village again split into two districts, this time with a boundary down Whitsett Avenue.  Those loud and persistent voices grew even louder and more persistent.

The cacophony paid off. In the final draft presented last week, the commission moved the boundary west to the wash, so for the next ten years our community will be represented by just one congressman (or woman, should she choose to throw her bonnet into the ring).

So with tremendous celebratory fanfare akin to when the south rejoined the north and the United States of America was again made whole, I offer:

8 Reasons Why I’m Happy That Valley Village Will Not Be Split Into Two Congressional Districts:

1. Because there will be only one congressional field office representative reporting at the Neighborhood Council meeting, it should now wrap up before 9:00 pm in time for board members to see Modern Family.

2. There will only be one politician to blame (or butt kiss, depending on the need) which saves postage when mailing either cookies or anthrax (again, depending on the need).

3. Val Surf will be in the same district as the Tujunga Wash to make it easier for surfing to the Pacific Ocean.

4. The new boundary includes Rite Aid and Edwin’s Pharmacy for those who want a legitimate drug alternative to the half dozen pot shops.

5. Since the Valley Village area west of Whitsett will not be swallowed by the area of Sherman Oaks known as Sherman Village, it avoids the embarrassing nickname Shirley Village.

6. We gain a liquor store and three bars to help balance Valley Village’s numerous AA meetings.

7. St. Patrick’s Day is next week and now we can celebrate the big day within Valley Village by shopping at Shamrock Imports rather than venturing to neighboring communities for a McDonalds green milkshake.

8. Now we won’t have to get into a turf war with Sherman Oaks over ignoring the teeny tiny plot of land south of Riverside between Whitsett and the Tujunga Wash. It’s theirs. And it’s just the right size for another pot shop.

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February 20, 2012 · 12:26 am

Why Do I Love The Home Depot? – It’s the Muzak

My son Jake helping me pick out paint colors

For the past two weeks, we’ve been trying to spruce up our house for a possible refi, which requires an appraisal. I’ve already cleared away a good amount of clutter, but I got a bug up my butt about painting the kitchen and bathroom, as if a new color will suddenly make our home worth another 50 grand.

I’m a fairly organized person and I have all the painting supplies stored in a bin in the garage, then subdivided by brushes, tape, plastic sheets, sandpaper, patching supplies, etc. It’s a Virgo thing. I figured that all I’d need to buy is paint, so it would be a cheap and easy fix.

Yet somehow every single day – sometimes as many as three times a day – I’ve made another trip to Home Depot to pick up something.

It’s kind of a pain in the bucket. The store is only about six miles away, but when I’m literally up to my elbows in wet paint and teetering on the upper ledge of a stepladder, the last thing I want to do is stop and buy another gallon of semigloss Breakwater White Behr paint. Like trying to get blood from a turnip, I will squeeze every last drop from a bone-dry paint can before I say uncle.

I pull off my latex gloves, make sure I don’t track wet paint across the floor, and hop in my minivan. I head for the big orange sign, make a right turn into the parking lot and give an apologetic wave to the dozen day laborers who are hoping for a cash transaction, steer my over-sized shopping cart into the warehouse, and suddenly I am at peace with the world.

Why?

The Home Depot Muzak.

Their satellite radio is tuned to a retro ‘70’s station – some disco, some Nixon and Carter-era rock – but it always blares a tune that urges me to sing along.

On Monday I needed more plastic covers and blue masking tape and was greeted by Stevie Wonder’s Superstition and Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets.

On Tuesday I bought some patching compound and heard REO Speedwagon’s Roll with the Changes and the Bee Gee’s Jive Talkin’.

On Wednesday my daughter Mary told me that the Hibiscus Petal I picked out as a bathroom accent color instead looked more like a wall of cotton candy, so I returned to Home Deport for a quart of Raspberry Lemonade (the color, not the drink). Home Depot’s radio played Kiss’s Rock & Roll All Nite, and 1973’s The Ballroom Blitz, which I haven’t heard in decades.

On Thursday I decided to buy a better straight edge and was treated to Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet and The Steve Miller Band’s Jet Airliner.

On Friday I needed more primer and heard Gloria Gaynor’s megahit I Will Survive and Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4.

Some of you may be familiar with the children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in which the future butterfly eats something different every day:

On Monday he ate through one apple, but he was still hungry.

On Tuesday he ate through two pears, but he was still hungry.

On Wednesday he ate through three plums, but he was still hungry…

You get the picture. I felt like the Very Hungry Caterpillar eating up all that music. I dumped my satellite radio about a year ago and traded it for the free Pandora, but I would pay to get it back just to hear this great nostalgic music while I was working on the house. I never minded waiting in The Home Depot checkout line because I was happy killing time singing along with KC and the Sunshine Band or humming to The Hustle.

I asked the manager the name of the radio station, but he didn’t know. However he told me that the same station is not only played for callers who are put on hold, it is the same music that airs in every single Home Depot across the nation.

So whether you’re buying a faucet in Florida or lumber in Louisiana or a plant in Pennsylvania, everyone hears the music that I grew up listening to.

This made me wonder about Home Depot’s listening audience. I’ve noticed that there’s a huge demographic of contractors, home fixer-uppers or employees who like me who are around 50 years old. And if we have the chance to click our heels three times and say there’s no place like Home Depot, we can be instantly transported to a time and place where the songs were memorable and the gas was only 68 cents a gallon.

So I figured if my sound editing gig ever dried up, it wouldn’t be so bad to apply for a job at The Home Depot where I could direct customers to hinges, switch plates, and PVC pipe and spend all day listening to great bands like Foreigner, Queen, Boston, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Doobie Brothers, Styx… the list is as long as those odd/even gas lines that appeared the day I got my driver’s license.

In the meantime, if I’m feeling nostalgic for Kung Fu Fighting or anything from Saturday Night Fever, I can always call The Home Depot and ask to be placed on hold.

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February 10, 2012 · 10:24 pm

Yikes! I’ve Been Hacked!

I’ve been hacked. Granted, it’s not as devastating as being hacked up by some Charles Manson-like maniac, but it still makes me fall to pieces.

Some worm of an individual slithered into my iMac and stole possibly all of the 679 email addresses in my list of contacts, including my ex-husband, doctors I no longer see, parents of the children in my 15-year old daughter’s preschool class, and even the emails of my nephew, my Godmother, and my cousin’s daughter who have passed away, but I don’t have the heart to delete them yet.

I found out that my contacts had been infiltrated when I saw that within five minutes I had apparently sent out enough emails to garner 24 failure notices. And these were just the ones that hadn’t been sent.

Apparently all my friends (and of course contacts that weren’t necessarily friends) were sent an email reputedly by me. The subject line was RE or — and greetings included Hey, thanks for your wishes!, How are you feeling today?, and hello dear friend among others with poor grammar, punctuation and spelling. Each email provided a link that started with words like green, jewelry, infotech, and the oddest one: maninamall. This variety of links all led to the same website, supposedly called Consumer Career Trends. This site features a bogus-looking news article entitled “Work at Home Mum Makes $10,397/Month Part-Time” which basically upsells a scam called the Home Cash System. I feel a little slimy even talking about it in my blog because I don’t want to promote it. Even negative advertising is still advertising.  But if you ever mistakenly land on this site, leave immediately.

Easier said than done. If by some tragic chance the recipients click on the link and try to exit, they are given an official-looking four paragraph message:

If they click the OK button, they are given a second message which asks:

I doubt you get these cryptic messages from ebay or Amazon.com. My guess is that the same slimy worm who infiltrated my list is trying to buy as much time as possible to gain access into my friends’ contact files.

The hackers are getting smarter. They used to leave the subject line blank, but now they often write a topic that’s worthy of clickage. My counterfeit email even had a little saying at the end which initially looked like words of wisdom from Mahatma Gandhi or Jesus or Homer Simpson. But it turned out to be a random sentence, which after some investigation I found was from a book entitled Radio Boys Cronies, available for free on the Internet through Project Gutenberg. Talk about random.

I feel so violated, and yet this kind of thing happens all the time these days. I receive an email like this about once a week – usually from somebody I haven’t heard from in years.  It’s a nuisance, but we tolerate it.

This got me thinking about what would happen if instead of a virtual hacker job, the perpetrators sent out a real one. This is what it might look like (Sorry for the inaccurate formatting. I can’t figure out margins in WordPress):

FADE IN.

INT. LISA’S ENTRYWAY – DAY

(The DOORBELL RINGS. Cathy’s friend LISA opens the door to a BEARDED MAN (HACKER) with a name tag that reads “CATHY FLYNN.”)

HACKER

Greetings Sir or Madam!

LISA

Actually I’m a woman.

(to herself)

I knew I should have let my hair grow out!

HACKER

I am your friend Cathy Flynn.

LISA

I’m Cathy’s friend and I would know if she had a sex change operation. And if she did, she definitely wouldn’t grow a beard.

HACKER

My name tag say Cathy Flynn. I be Cathy Flynn.

LISA

English is Cathy’s first language. It doesn’t sound like it’s yours.

HACKER

How are you?

(hands Lisa a business card)

Let us get down to business.

(Lisa reluctantly takes the business card. She SCREAMS.)

LISA

Ahhhh! It burns! I knew I shouldn’t have taken anything from you!

HACKER

You too can make over $4,000 a month with the Home Cash System!

(Lisa’s hand turns red. Red creeps up her arm and through the rest of her body. Then a HUNDRED RED STREAKS RACE out of her body and into the back doors of all the neighbors in her community. SCREAMS pour from all the homes.)

HACKER

This be my closing: “One small step for man. Oh giant limb for man’s kind.”

LISA

That sounds a little pornographic.

HACKER

This be good. Link from you to your friends be for Viagra.

(The Hacker strolls down the porch steps and heads for the next home.)

FADE OUT.

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February 5, 2012 · 11:00 pm

Too Much Poop in the Pipes

What goes down... must come up?

In today’s tough economic times I am lucky to experience pride of ownership, but there are days when I wish I could just call the super to fix the broken (fill in the blank) without pulling out my checkbook.

The latest fill-in-the-blank started about a month ago when I noticed remnants of the garbage disposal drain regurgitating into the adjoining kitchen sink. I assumed that my husband was forcing large pieces of vegetables down the drain rather than discarding them into the green bin. I wanted to call him lazy for not taking the 30 foot walk outside, but I really like it when he cooks, so I figured I’d keep my big eco-friendly mouth shut.

A few days later, the bathroom toilet started clogging so often that the plunger made itself a permanent home next to the royal throne. I blamed it on my son Jake who refuses to eat anything except hot dogs and chicken nuggets. I know he’s only 5 years old and I am the mommy, but I have to pick and choose my battles, and forcing him to eat his dinner vegetables is the battle he seems to be winning. At least he does his homework without a fight.

Then the tub began to clog on a regular basis, and I feared that there was a pussy cat-sized ball of hair clogging the pipe. I would love to have blamed that blockage on one of my daughters, but Mary still has her boy-length hairstyle, and although like me, Emily dyes her hair red, I suspect that the hairball was made up of long red hair with two-inch gray roots.

The final straw came last Monday when I started hearing gurgling sounds in the bathroom. The bubbling was coming from the toilet, and although it sounded like a 5-gallon Sparkletts bottle dispensing H2O, somehow I just knew that whatever liquid was making that sound was not going to be especially pure and fresh. A few seconds later the toilet flushed itself – or rather the water shot down and disappeared into the tank for a moment, then reappeared as murky grey muck. It reminded me of the redneck singing the The Beverly Hillbillies main title theme:

And up through the ground came a bubblin’ crude.

Oil, that is.

Black gold.

Texas tea.

I suspected that unlike Jed Clampett, I wasn’t about to become a millionaire, although it might be likely that this bubblin’ crude was going to cost a million dollars to fix.

That’s the moment that I should have heeded the kinfolk’s advice when they told ol’ Jed to “move away from there,” because that crude-colored feculence nearly spilled right over the toilet rim.

I started screaming for my husband, because that’s what we delicate women do when a river of excrement is about to pour on our manicured toes. Although it was already past his bedtime (he goes to work at the ungodly hour of 6:00 am), he grabbed a flashlight and trekked out to the backyard to investigate the trap. Apparently the “trap” is the lovely place where all the household drains come together, then uniformly flow toward the city sewage line. The trap is kind of like happy hour at a bar where tramps and sleaze balls meet and at closing time make a beeline to the community fleabag hotel. And like that very busy, very sleazy bar, this trap was packed solid.

The next day I checked Angie’s List and found New-Pipe Plumbing & Rooter, the same business that installed our new copper plumbing six years ago. They also donated a gift certificate to the Colfax Charter Elementary School Silent Auction that I worked on last year, so I figured it was good karma to throw a little business their way.

Benny the Plumber ran a camera through the pipe, and my husband watched as roots attacked it like the Whomping Willow tree in the Harry Potter series.  We also had a seam where roots had shifted one of the adjoining pipes halfway downward, leaving a gaping root-filled hole and half the volume available for sewage drainage. Benny gave us three options:

1. Clear the drain with gas hydro jet for $714

2. Repair the broken section of the cracked pipe for $1723

3. Install all new sewage pipes for $5,000

It would be hard to come up with $714, nearly impossible to scrape together $1723, and we would be dreaming in La La Land to think we could afford the price of a used automobile. I told the plumber we’d do the $1723 fix. He politely advised me that he would be happy to do it, but because our home and pipes are 82 years old, that we’ll eventually be calling him again for the same fix on another section of pipe.

I contemplated crying. Then he reminded me that Angie’s List gave me a 10% discount, and that I would get another 10% discount for being part of the Colfax family. If we could do the major fix it would only cost $4,000.

The cost was still impossible.

And then I looked up at our brand new roof. That was impossible too, and yet we were spending a winter without a tarp over our heads and buckets throughout the house. How did we pay for that when our savings was nil? (You can read about that little adventure in my blog “Raising (the Cash for) My Debt Ceiling”).

Cash advance credit cards.

I pulled out one of the dozen or so offers we get each month as a reward for our good credit score. I found the one that advertised 0% until May 2013 with just a 3% fee.

I wrote the check. The plumbers came minutes later with their trenchless pipe-laying equipment and hardworking shovelers who obviously don’t need to spent their off-hours at the gym. And by nightfall, we were granted a 101-year warranty and got the A-OK to drain our human pipes into the new buried pipe.

Today I can run the dishwasher or the washing machine, turn on the faucets to the tub, shower, and kitchen and bathrooms sinks, and flush a toilet filled with the aftermath of the most humongous Thanksgiving meal, and rest assured that the remnants will not be making a reappearance up another drain like some verminous whack a mole game.

As for the money… the 0% $11,700 roof bill will start charging 15.99% interest in April. We’ve managed to pay off some of the balance, but the bulk of it will come from yet another 0% interest credit card and this year’s tax refund. That refund amount is sizable due to our insanely large mortgage payment.

Just another example of pride of ownership.

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