Remember that whole murder mystery script I was writing for the community theater?
Well, I was about halfway done, maybe more, when we had auditions this past Friday and Saturday. I had been told that the park district had received all kinds of calls about this play, so I imagined this would actually be a fairly cutthroat audition.
Friday night we had 3 people audition. Saturday we had another 4, except technically two were ineligible because they were under 18. We texted another man who had acted in some other shows, and he agreed to be in this one. So, if Bill and I agree to be in it, and we allow the underage actors, and I rewrite some parts to be for women instead of men ... we are still 2 actors short. It seems like a lot of effort and scrambling just to do the play for the sake of doing it.
I think we're pulling the plug.
Obviously I have mixed feelings about this decision. To be honest, when it looked like the show might be canceled, my gut feeling was relief. I'd been struggling to write this script, and I didn't like the feeling of having it hanging over my head all the time. It would be nice to be relieved of that feeling.
On the other hand, I did put a lot of effort into writing the first half of the script, and it's a little bit disappointing to just give up like that.
I am told that there is another community theater opening up in town, and that maybe my play can find a new home with them. So obviously I didn't delete the file.
But for now, the file is closed indefinitely. And mostly it just feels kind of weird not to have it in my life. I no longer feel guilty for doing anything else besides writing the script. But also, writing the script was sort of functioning as a stop-gap measure to make me feel purposeful between freelance jobs. Now I'm just like ... what? A random lazy mom? While there's plenty of stuff I can do with Nathan or around the house, it just feels sort of boring and meaningless. I need another job.
But that's a story for another day.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Motherhood in the Media: I Don't Know How She Does It
In case anybody is wondering, 10 months is the point of burnout when one decides to write 365 posts in a year. Which is why I just didn't feel like writing a post about the movie I Don't Know How She Does It, like I promised I would back in this post. But it has been nagging at me that I never wrote this movie review. So, even though this movie is out of the theaters now and halfway to its DVD release, I am going to write about it anyway.
(NOTE: I am not implying that I think you were eagerly awaiting this movie review. Nobody tunes in to this blog for its stellar movie reviews. Although, funny side note to this side note, Professional Movie Critic was the career I aspired to when I was in sixth grade. I also wanted to have boy/girl twins named Alexander and Alexandra. I don't know how I thought I would guarantee that particular reproductive outcome. Eleven-year-old Shannon maybe didn't have a firm grasp on the logistics of human reproduction. Anyway, back here in the present time, I am not writing this review under the assumption that you were expecting it, but because I hate to promise something and not follow through on it. Except for when it comes to weight loss. Let's move on, shall we?)
Before I begin my official review (I know), let me get this nit-picky criticism out of the way. In my opinion, it's time for Sarah Jessica Parker to get a shorter hairstyle. The long, wavy locks were pretty in the 80s and maybe in the Sex and the City TV years. By the most recent Sex and the City movie, though, I really started to feel like her long hair was pulling down her already long and gaunt face. And yes, I know, I'm not really the picture of glamor myself, but I am also not a movie star. It is not my job to look beautiful, nor do I have a team of professional stylists working on me.
You're welcome for that unsolicited beauty advice, SJP.
Okay, now for some (slightly) more substantive criticism. I Don't Know How She Does It is a movie based on a book about a harried working mother. (And I know, every mother is a working mother, but can we just agree that the term working mother refers to a mom with a paying job?) I've seen the book lumped into the same category as The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada. That is, it's one of those "hilarious look inside the insanity of somebody's life" books. But I can't vouch for this description myself, because I didn't read the book. I'll get back to why I didn't read the book later.
Now, naturally, books and films in this sub-genre are going to be a little bit unrealistic because they include the most outrageous scenarios in order to get the laugh. The real trials and tribulations of a person's life aren't all that interesting to readers and movie-goers. For example, a real working mother might feel guilty that the babysitter has to take her baby to Mommy 'n Me time, even though the baby wouldn't notice and/or care. This situation is not inherently movie-fodder-hilarious. You have to up the wackiness factor for a movie, so you get situations like where SJP's character returns home from a business trip in the middle of the night and has to make something for her daughter's school bake sale, and she ends up smashing a store-bought pie into a glass pan. I can't imagine anybody would actually do this, but it makes for a funny scene in a movie.
Similarly, the dramatic factor is upped in a movie. The working mother MUST stay late for a meeting at work, or else she will LOSE HER JOB, but OH NO! NOBODY is babysitting her kids! Or she HAS TO leave on a business trip without any notice, but that's when her child ends up in the ER with a HEADWOUND while she's gone. And while working mothers do experience work-versus-family dilemmas all the time, they're usually less life-and-death scenarios like I had to miss the office Christmas party because I didn't have a babysitter.
And most working mother problems, at least in my experience, relate to a lack of time and energy. But nobody wants to watch SJP complain for two hours that she needs a nap.
So, I get it that a movie isn't going to be realistic. I'm willing to suspend reality a little for the sake of comedy or drama. And I did think the movie was realistic in the whole portrayal of the I need my work, but I need my family more, but that doesn't mean I'm going to quit my job issue. And the ending (spoiler alert, but not really) was pretty realistic, in that there wasn't some magical solution, but just a slight shift in attitudes and behaviors. That kind of ending is realistic, because when it comes to work-life balance, there are no perfect solutions, just better situations and slow societal shifts.
To sum up, I thought I Don't Know How She Does It was funny and yet relatable. I also appreciate an entry into the chick-flick genre that isn't a stupid romantic comedy. Plus, there are some good-looking men in it. If you didn't see the movie in the theater, it's definitely a great DVD film.
So, that's my movie review. Now I'd like to discuss why I didn't read the book, and also a trend I've observed recently among moms.
This is very hard to admit, but I didn't read the book because I thought it would make me feel bad about myself. Like a lot of women, I have extreme guilt and insecurity about the fact that I don't think I do enough. And I kind of worried that reading about the woman in the story, all hectic and harried and overwhelmed, would make me feel bad about what little I personally do. I have one kid and no job. I feel like everybody looks at me and says I totally know how she does it.
Now, let me pause here and say that I know nobody takes that much time to think about and/or judge me. They're all too busy with their own lives. My insecurity about other people's opinions is just projection. I feel insecure about myself. This isn't other people's opinion about me, it's my opinion about myself.
Still, based on what I hear and observe around me, I don't think I'm alone in my insecurity. I don't want to quote anybody directly or tell a story that includes too many identifying details, but all the time I hear women make statements that suggest that they don't think they do enough or they don't think they're good enough. Or else they belittle your accomplishments because they're insecure about their own lack of accomplishments. It's as though we feel like we need to be able to say we work full-time, have six kids, run a business on the side, and clean our own houses. And even the mom with that particular bio probably feels like she needs to have a seventh kid or run a marathon or something.
Maybe this insecurity comes from our Puritan work ethic or from the belief that hard work and suffering builds character, or maybe it's just our inherent female tendency to compare ourselves to others. Maybe we have some sort of white, middle-class guilt about all that was handed to us, and we need to make ourselves feel better by saying that we, too, work hard and make sacrifices. Or maybe we just want to feel more important.
Either way, I think insecurity about our own personal choices is a huge problem for women. And I wish I had something profound to say that would change everybody's attitude, but I don't. I just wish it would all stop.
But maybe, like in the movie, the resolution comes slowly in subtle changes in attitudes and behaviors. Maybe, today, just for this day or this hour or this minute, I can say that whatever I do is enough. And maybe all the other insecure women out there can say that they're doing enough today, too.
So, there you go. Problem solved.
And I guess the preceding paragraphs probably didn't do that much to sell you on I Don't Know How She Does It as a fun diversion from reality. But, I promise, it is still funny and enjoyable. I recommend it.
(NOTE: I am not implying that I think you were eagerly awaiting this movie review. Nobody tunes in to this blog for its stellar movie reviews. Although, funny side note to this side note, Professional Movie Critic was the career I aspired to when I was in sixth grade. I also wanted to have boy/girl twins named Alexander and Alexandra. I don't know how I thought I would guarantee that particular reproductive outcome. Eleven-year-old Shannon maybe didn't have a firm grasp on the logistics of human reproduction. Anyway, back here in the present time, I am not writing this review under the assumption that you were expecting it, but because I hate to promise something and not follow through on it. Except for when it comes to weight loss. Let's move on, shall we?)
Before I begin my official review (I know), let me get this nit-picky criticism out of the way. In my opinion, it's time for Sarah Jessica Parker to get a shorter hairstyle. The long, wavy locks were pretty in the 80s and maybe in the Sex and the City TV years. By the most recent Sex and the City movie, though, I really started to feel like her long hair was pulling down her already long and gaunt face. And yes, I know, I'm not really the picture of glamor myself, but I am also not a movie star. It is not my job to look beautiful, nor do I have a team of professional stylists working on me.
You're welcome for that unsolicited beauty advice, SJP.
Okay, now for some (slightly) more substantive criticism. I Don't Know How She Does It is a movie based on a book about a harried working mother. (And I know, every mother is a working mother, but can we just agree that the term working mother refers to a mom with a paying job?) I've seen the book lumped into the same category as The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada. That is, it's one of those "hilarious look inside the insanity of somebody's life" books. But I can't vouch for this description myself, because I didn't read the book. I'll get back to why I didn't read the book later.
Now, naturally, books and films in this sub-genre are going to be a little bit unrealistic because they include the most outrageous scenarios in order to get the laugh. The real trials and tribulations of a person's life aren't all that interesting to readers and movie-goers. For example, a real working mother might feel guilty that the babysitter has to take her baby to Mommy 'n Me time, even though the baby wouldn't notice and/or care. This situation is not inherently movie-fodder-hilarious. You have to up the wackiness factor for a movie, so you get situations like where SJP's character returns home from a business trip in the middle of the night and has to make something for her daughter's school bake sale, and she ends up smashing a store-bought pie into a glass pan. I can't imagine anybody would actually do this, but it makes for a funny scene in a movie.
Similarly, the dramatic factor is upped in a movie. The working mother MUST stay late for a meeting at work, or else she will LOSE HER JOB, but OH NO! NOBODY is babysitting her kids! Or she HAS TO leave on a business trip without any notice, but that's when her child ends up in the ER with a HEADWOUND while she's gone. And while working mothers do experience work-versus-family dilemmas all the time, they're usually less life-and-death scenarios like I had to miss the office Christmas party because I didn't have a babysitter.
And most working mother problems, at least in my experience, relate to a lack of time and energy. But nobody wants to watch SJP complain for two hours that she needs a nap.
So, I get it that a movie isn't going to be realistic. I'm willing to suspend reality a little for the sake of comedy or drama. And I did think the movie was realistic in the whole portrayal of the I need my work, but I need my family more, but that doesn't mean I'm going to quit my job issue. And the ending (spoiler alert, but not really) was pretty realistic, in that there wasn't some magical solution, but just a slight shift in attitudes and behaviors. That kind of ending is realistic, because when it comes to work-life balance, there are no perfect solutions, just better situations and slow societal shifts.
To sum up, I thought I Don't Know How She Does It was funny and yet relatable. I also appreciate an entry into the chick-flick genre that isn't a stupid romantic comedy. Plus, there are some good-looking men in it. If you didn't see the movie in the theater, it's definitely a great DVD film.
So, that's my movie review. Now I'd like to discuss why I didn't read the book, and also a trend I've observed recently among moms.
This is very hard to admit, but I didn't read the book because I thought it would make me feel bad about myself. Like a lot of women, I have extreme guilt and insecurity about the fact that I don't think I do enough. And I kind of worried that reading about the woman in the story, all hectic and harried and overwhelmed, would make me feel bad about what little I personally do. I have one kid and no job. I feel like everybody looks at me and says I totally know how she does it.
Now, let me pause here and say that I know nobody takes that much time to think about and/or judge me. They're all too busy with their own lives. My insecurity about other people's opinions is just projection. I feel insecure about myself. This isn't other people's opinion about me, it's my opinion about myself.
Still, based on what I hear and observe around me, I don't think I'm alone in my insecurity. I don't want to quote anybody directly or tell a story that includes too many identifying details, but all the time I hear women make statements that suggest that they don't think they do enough or they don't think they're good enough. Or else they belittle your accomplishments because they're insecure about their own lack of accomplishments. It's as though we feel like we need to be able to say we work full-time, have six kids, run a business on the side, and clean our own houses. And even the mom with that particular bio probably feels like she needs to have a seventh kid or run a marathon or something.
Maybe this insecurity comes from our Puritan work ethic or from the belief that hard work and suffering builds character, or maybe it's just our inherent female tendency to compare ourselves to others. Maybe we have some sort of white, middle-class guilt about all that was handed to us, and we need to make ourselves feel better by saying that we, too, work hard and make sacrifices. Or maybe we just want to feel more important.
Either way, I think insecurity about our own personal choices is a huge problem for women. And I wish I had something profound to say that would change everybody's attitude, but I don't. I just wish it would all stop.
But maybe, like in the movie, the resolution comes slowly in subtle changes in attitudes and behaviors. Maybe, today, just for this day or this hour or this minute, I can say that whatever I do is enough. And maybe all the other insecure women out there can say that they're doing enough today, too.
So, there you go. Problem solved.
And I guess the preceding paragraphs probably didn't do that much to sell you on I Don't Know How She Does It as a fun diversion from reality. But, I promise, it is still funny and enjoyable. I recommend it.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
UNSUBSCRIBE
This month as I up my efforts toward saving money, I have rekindled my desire for simplicity. An odd consequence of this desire is a sudden need to de-clutter my email inbox.
The de-cluttering isn't really about saving money, except maybe tangentially in that occasionally an offer comes in via email that I deem too good to pass up. And I'm talking about offers along the lines of "Buy 2, get 7 free at Bath & Body Works," not, "I am a Nigerian prince who will give you half my fortune if you send me $1,000." The latter tends to go to my spam box along with offers for enlargement of organs I don't possess, which means I don't ever look at those messages. But the solicitations of great offers from companies I have previously ordered from online, those show up front and center in my regular inbox.
So I'm going about my day, driving in my car or something, when I hear the exciting beep of my phone, indicating a new email. Ooh, email!, I think, It must be something exciting, like that offer from a huge media outlet that wants to syndicate my blog and pay me lots of money! And then I'm chomping at the bit to check my phone at the next opportunity that it is legal to do so, and ... Aww, it's about a BOGO sale at Toys 'R Us.
And the emails range from being minor annoyances to legitimately making me feel bad about myself. I mean, I know I overthink things, but every time that daily email offer comes in from Victoria's Secret, I feel bad that I have such ugly underwear.
Also, when did I sign up for all these daily deal sites? You know, Groupon and its ilk? I have never, ever bought from one of these sites. I realize there are some great deals to be found on there, but I sort of tend to think that Groupon, like coupons in general, leads to spending money on things you wouldn't otherwise have bought. So unless you were absolutely going to go to that venue anyway, Groupon is costing you money.
As for non-commercial email annoyances, I happen to be on the writers' list for this one particular site that somehow ends up sending no fewer than 12 lengthy newsletter emails every single day. I am not exaggerating. I read none of them.
So it was time to scroll down to the bottom of every email, commercial and non-commercial alike, find the tiny print that says "UNSUBSCRIBE," and click away.
The dumb thing is, unsubscribing is so easy that I should have done it a long time ago. Most of the sites just require the click of a few boxes, and you're unsubscribed. A couple of sites made it a little bit harder by sending an unsubscribe email that I had to respond to, but that really only added about 30 seconds to the process.
I don't know why the influx of unwanted emails suddenly started to bug me. I fully understand that it makes sense for companies to advertise promotions to people who have shown interest in their products before. But I think it's something about the sheer volume of the email offers that bothered me. I mean, you can't possibly have the Best Deal Ever at your online retailer every single day.
I also think that now that many of us have the capability to get emails on our phones, it's annoying to have stupid offers interrupting our every daily action. And I know there's some curmudgeon out there who will say that either I should turn my phone off, or else get a simpler, not-so-smartphone that doesn't have the ability to bombard me with pointless emails when I'm out in public. However, for various reasons stemming from the fact that there are actually emails/calls/texts I want to get while I'm out in public, I have a smartphone and I keep it turned on.
And in some ways, I like the ability to read and delete a pointless email on the spot, rather than come home to 25 pointless emails. But it would be even better not to get those emails at all. The ease and convenience of online shopping shouldn't have the consequence of a bunch of annoying solicitation emails for the rest of your life.
So since I did all this unsubscribing, I now have 3 emails in my inbox first thing in the morning instead of 20. Sadly, not one of those 3 has been from that important media conglomerate. Yet.
The de-cluttering isn't really about saving money, except maybe tangentially in that occasionally an offer comes in via email that I deem too good to pass up. And I'm talking about offers along the lines of "Buy 2, get 7 free at Bath & Body Works," not, "I am a Nigerian prince who will give you half my fortune if you send me $1,000." The latter tends to go to my spam box along with offers for enlargement of organs I don't possess, which means I don't ever look at those messages. But the solicitations of great offers from companies I have previously ordered from online, those show up front and center in my regular inbox.
So I'm going about my day, driving in my car or something, when I hear the exciting beep of my phone, indicating a new email. Ooh, email!, I think, It must be something exciting, like that offer from a huge media outlet that wants to syndicate my blog and pay me lots of money! And then I'm chomping at the bit to check my phone at the next opportunity that it is legal to do so, and ... Aww, it's about a BOGO sale at Toys 'R Us.
And the emails range from being minor annoyances to legitimately making me feel bad about myself. I mean, I know I overthink things, but every time that daily email offer comes in from Victoria's Secret, I feel bad that I have such ugly underwear.
Also, when did I sign up for all these daily deal sites? You know, Groupon and its ilk? I have never, ever bought from one of these sites. I realize there are some great deals to be found on there, but I sort of tend to think that Groupon, like coupons in general, leads to spending money on things you wouldn't otherwise have bought. So unless you were absolutely going to go to that venue anyway, Groupon is costing you money.
As for non-commercial email annoyances, I happen to be on the writers' list for this one particular site that somehow ends up sending no fewer than 12 lengthy newsletter emails every single day. I am not exaggerating. I read none of them.
So it was time to scroll down to the bottom of every email, commercial and non-commercial alike, find the tiny print that says "UNSUBSCRIBE," and click away.
The dumb thing is, unsubscribing is so easy that I should have done it a long time ago. Most of the sites just require the click of a few boxes, and you're unsubscribed. A couple of sites made it a little bit harder by sending an unsubscribe email that I had to respond to, but that really only added about 30 seconds to the process.
I don't know why the influx of unwanted emails suddenly started to bug me. I fully understand that it makes sense for companies to advertise promotions to people who have shown interest in their products before. But I think it's something about the sheer volume of the email offers that bothered me. I mean, you can't possibly have the Best Deal Ever at your online retailer every single day.
I also think that now that many of us have the capability to get emails on our phones, it's annoying to have stupid offers interrupting our every daily action. And I know there's some curmudgeon out there who will say that either I should turn my phone off, or else get a simpler, not-so-smartphone that doesn't have the ability to bombard me with pointless emails when I'm out in public. However, for various reasons stemming from the fact that there are actually emails/calls/texts I want to get while I'm out in public, I have a smartphone and I keep it turned on.
And in some ways, I like the ability to read and delete a pointless email on the spot, rather than come home to 25 pointless emails. But it would be even better not to get those emails at all. The ease and convenience of online shopping shouldn't have the consequence of a bunch of annoying solicitation emails for the rest of your life.
So since I did all this unsubscribing, I now have 3 emails in my inbox first thing in the morning instead of 20. Sadly, not one of those 3 has been from that important media conglomerate. Yet.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Shannon Saves Series: ALDI
"I'd like a game show with millionaires on it, and they have to play with their own money, and they can't win money, they can only lose 'til one them goes completely broke, and the show's called 'Ha Ha, Now You're Poor.' I'd watch that show every day. 'What time is it?' 'It's Ha, Ha, Now You're Poor time'!"
--Daniel Tosh
--------------------------------------------------
We are not poor. To label ourselves as such would be an insult to people who actually are poor. Poverty is all relative, and one person's poor is another person's filthy rich, especially when we consider the plight of those in other parts of the world. But by almost every possible standard known to humankind, my family is incredibly lucky.
Still, like everyone, we are finding that our money just doesn't go as far as it used to. You just can't get as much bang for your buck when it comes to gasoline, utilities, and clothing. And you're definitely paying a lot more for food than you used to.
Which is why I recently started shopping at discount grocery store Aldi. As an explanation for those who don't live in an Aldi region, Aldi is a grocery store owned by a German parent company, and it is somehow affiliated with Trader Joe's. Rumor has it that some TJ's items are repackaged and sold under a different label for much cheaper at Aldi.
The Daniel Tosh "Ha, Ha, Now You're Poor" joke came to my mind the first time I shopped at Aldi. Like, Hi there, you no longer deserve to shop in a nice grocery store, the kind with pretty displays and employees who bag your groceries for you.
So, yeah, at Aldi you have to bag your own groceries. Which, actually, I kind of like, because the bagging always holds up the line at regular grocery stores. Oh, and if you don't bring your own grocery receptacles to Aldi, you have to pay for the bags.
Also at Aldi, you have to pay a quarter for your cart. The carts are all lined up and locked together, and then when you put in a quarter, your cart is freed from the pack. The quarter sits in the little holder on the cart until you return your cart after shopping, and then you get your quarter back. The funny thing is, you wouldn't really think a quarter would be a deterrent to leaving your shopping cart rolling around the parking lot, but somehow everybody returns their carts. It's an odd psychological phenomenon.
My friend Dana describes Aldi as "like shopping in Communist Russia." Aside from the no-frills bagging and the added cart security, the store itself has a very austere look. Grocery items are piled in neat stacks and boxes. No attempt is made to make the displays look fancy or inviting. There are no choices to be made as to which brand you might buy, because they only have one kind of everything.
But damn if it isn't the best store ever. Everything is so cheap. Canned goods are like 55 cents! Bread is a dollar! Spaghetti sauce is 99 cents!
I feel like a sucker for having ever shopped anywhere else!
Also, it's really comical at Aldi, because all the products have silly off-brand names. The product logos are designed to look like other national brands. Let's take this seasonal example:
You might have thought this frosting was made by Betty Crocker. But no:
It's Baker's Corner! But look at that! $1.29! Such a deal!
(Of course I don't need that particular item, so buying it would be a bad deal. That's a potential problem with Aldi: the "I'll buy it because it's cheap" phenomenon.)
Here are some more examples of Aldi's wannabe brands, taken from a diagram off the Aldi website:
(I'm glad the Tombstone pizza lookalike just has a generic-sounding Italian name, and not like "Gravesite" or something.)
And, you know, I kind of like the fact that you can pop in and out of Aldi so quickly. There are no outside distractions like at the grocery store, and the line moves quickly. I can say yes when Nathan begs for some random treat, because it's so cheap anyway. (Unfortunately I end up eating that treat myself, but that's probably my shortcoming and not Aldi's.)
It's not likely that you could do all your grocery shopping at Aldi, because they don't have everything, and I'm told the selection varies from visit to visit. But I figure if I can make a sizable dent in my grocery costs by buying some things at Aldi, that's better than nothing.
Oh, and am I the only one that finds "Special Meat Buy Days" incredibly awkward-sounding?
--Daniel Tosh
--------------------------------------------------
We are not poor. To label ourselves as such would be an insult to people who actually are poor. Poverty is all relative, and one person's poor is another person's filthy rich, especially when we consider the plight of those in other parts of the world. But by almost every possible standard known to humankind, my family is incredibly lucky.
Still, like everyone, we are finding that our money just doesn't go as far as it used to. You just can't get as much bang for your buck when it comes to gasoline, utilities, and clothing. And you're definitely paying a lot more for food than you used to.
Which is why I recently started shopping at discount grocery store Aldi. As an explanation for those who don't live in an Aldi region, Aldi is a grocery store owned by a German parent company, and it is somehow affiliated with Trader Joe's. Rumor has it that some TJ's items are repackaged and sold under a different label for much cheaper at Aldi.
The Daniel Tosh "Ha, Ha, Now You're Poor" joke came to my mind the first time I shopped at Aldi. Like, Hi there, you no longer deserve to shop in a nice grocery store, the kind with pretty displays and employees who bag your groceries for you.
So, yeah, at Aldi you have to bag your own groceries. Which, actually, I kind of like, because the bagging always holds up the line at regular grocery stores. Oh, and if you don't bring your own grocery receptacles to Aldi, you have to pay for the bags.
Also at Aldi, you have to pay a quarter for your cart. The carts are all lined up and locked together, and then when you put in a quarter, your cart is freed from the pack. The quarter sits in the little holder on the cart until you return your cart after shopping, and then you get your quarter back. The funny thing is, you wouldn't really think a quarter would be a deterrent to leaving your shopping cart rolling around the parking lot, but somehow everybody returns their carts. It's an odd psychological phenomenon.
My friend Dana describes Aldi as "like shopping in Communist Russia." Aside from the no-frills bagging and the added cart security, the store itself has a very austere look. Grocery items are piled in neat stacks and boxes. No attempt is made to make the displays look fancy or inviting. There are no choices to be made as to which brand you might buy, because they only have one kind of everything.
But damn if it isn't the best store ever. Everything is so cheap. Canned goods are like 55 cents! Bread is a dollar! Spaghetti sauce is 99 cents!
I feel like a sucker for having ever shopped anywhere else!
Also, it's really comical at Aldi, because all the products have silly off-brand names. The product logos are designed to look like other national brands. Let's take this seasonal example:
You might have thought this frosting was made by Betty Crocker. But no:
It's Baker's Corner! But look at that! $1.29! Such a deal!
(Of course I don't need that particular item, so buying it would be a bad deal. That's a potential problem with Aldi: the "I'll buy it because it's cheap" phenomenon.)
Here are some more examples of Aldi's wannabe brands, taken from a diagram off the Aldi website:
(I'm glad the Tombstone pizza lookalike just has a generic-sounding Italian name, and not like "Gravesite" or something.)
And, you know, I kind of like the fact that you can pop in and out of Aldi so quickly. There are no outside distractions like at the grocery store, and the line moves quickly. I can say yes when Nathan begs for some random treat, because it's so cheap anyway. (Unfortunately I end up eating that treat myself, but that's probably my shortcoming and not Aldi's.)
It's not likely that you could do all your grocery shopping at Aldi, because they don't have everything, and I'm told the selection varies from visit to visit. But I figure if I can make a sizable dent in my grocery costs by buying some things at Aldi, that's better than nothing.
Oh, and am I the only one that finds "Special Meat Buy Days" incredibly awkward-sounding?
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
I'm a KidGrade Ambassador
The purpose of this post is two-fold:
1. To tell you about how I am now an ambassador for the website KidGrade.
2. To show you pictures from yesterday's Kidgrade ambassador meet 'n greet at Kookaburra Play Cafe, a fun indoor play space in Chicago that you, too, can visit!
First up: KidGrade! KidGrade is a website where anybody can go and rate a venue according to its family-friendliness. It's like Yelp, but with a special niche for kid-friendliness. Restaurants and entertainment venues are rated on a 1-to-10 scale in the categories of Price, Location, Parking, and Kid-Equipped. There is also a space for comments. Let me stress that anybody can go and rate a place on KidGrade, and if your place isn't on there, you can add it. (I should note that at the moment the site is limited to Chicago-area attractions.) My job as an ambassador is just to encourage all of you to use the KidGrade site.
The founders of the site are a local couple with three kids. This family could not have been nicer. Their mission for the ambassadors is to have fun, and they are rewarding us well with (so far) an annual family membership to the museum of our choice, a gift certificate for a pumpkin spice mani/pedi from a service that comes to your house, and fun family parties!
Yesterday's party at Kookaburra Play Cafe was our first gathering. (The KidGrade people paid for our admission, just to make that clear, FTC.) Kookaburra Play Cafe is one of many indoor play spaces in the Chicago area. The admission price is comparable to other similar places I've been, although I would like to note that I think these places are a little bit expensive (no doubt because their overhead and insurance are really high), and I'm kind of glad that here in the south suburbs we slum it by taking our kids to the mall or McDonald's for indoor entertainment.
BUT, the children at the gathering had a BLAST at Kookaburra. They have a fun play structure:
They have costumes you can dress up in:
They have a play kitchen, a train table, an art area, several ride-on vehicles, and a baby area. I don't have pictures of any of those, but here's another picture of the play structure. It has a pulley, so kids are learning about physics!
I thought Nathan was perhaps going to go through all the Village People costumes, but they didn't have the Indian:
I'm really excited about my year as a KidGrade Ambassador, and I hope you'll use the site, too!
1. To tell you about how I am now an ambassador for the website KidGrade.
2. To show you pictures from yesterday's Kidgrade ambassador meet 'n greet at Kookaburra Play Cafe, a fun indoor play space in Chicago that you, too, can visit!
First up: KidGrade! KidGrade is a website where anybody can go and rate a venue according to its family-friendliness. It's like Yelp, but with a special niche for kid-friendliness. Restaurants and entertainment venues are rated on a 1-to-10 scale in the categories of Price, Location, Parking, and Kid-Equipped. There is also a space for comments. Let me stress that anybody can go and rate a place on KidGrade, and if your place isn't on there, you can add it. (I should note that at the moment the site is limited to Chicago-area attractions.) My job as an ambassador is just to encourage all of you to use the KidGrade site.
The founders of the site are a local couple with three kids. This family could not have been nicer. Their mission for the ambassadors is to have fun, and they are rewarding us well with (so far) an annual family membership to the museum of our choice, a gift certificate for a pumpkin spice mani/pedi from a service that comes to your house, and fun family parties!
Yesterday's party at Kookaburra Play Cafe was our first gathering. (The KidGrade people paid for our admission, just to make that clear, FTC.) Kookaburra Play Cafe is one of many indoor play spaces in the Chicago area. The admission price is comparable to other similar places I've been, although I would like to note that I think these places are a little bit expensive (no doubt because their overhead and insurance are really high), and I'm kind of glad that here in the south suburbs we slum it by taking our kids to the mall or McDonald's for indoor entertainment.
BUT, the children at the gathering had a BLAST at Kookaburra. They have a fun play structure:
They have costumes you can dress up in:
They have a play kitchen, a train table, an art area, several ride-on vehicles, and a baby area. I don't have pictures of any of those, but here's another picture of the play structure. It has a pulley, so kids are learning about physics!
I thought Nathan was perhaps going to go through all the Village People costumes, but they didn't have the Indian:
I'm really excited about my year as a KidGrade Ambassador, and I hope you'll use the site, too!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Stop the Insanity! A(nother) Post About Work-Life Balance
Last Thursday night I applied for a job in my field. The job was listed as "contract," so it wasn't clear if it was freelance from home or working in-office.
Friday morning, a representative from the staffing company called me about the job, which turned out to be an in-office gig. It was a phone interview of sorts. It turns out the staffing company was working on behalf of a company I recently (phone) interviewed with for a different position, and to which I had made all kinds of requests about working from home or freelancing, and which subsequently sent me a rejection letter.
I went through the same set of annoying prima donna requests with Friday's phone interview. This sort of diva-ish attitude doesn't come naturally to me, and I always end up qualifying it with, I totally understand if you want somebody to come into the office, or I want to be a team player and come in whenever necessary. Because, you know, both of those statements are true. I absolutely understand why a company that doesn't know you from anyone wouldn't want to give you all kinds of special privileges right off the bat, especially if they can hire somebody else who's willing to meet the demands of the job.
But, at the moment I feel a little bit stuck. I want to work either part-time or full-time-but-part-time-from-home, and those gigs are nearly impossible to score with a company you don't have any history with.
But I just don't know if I could do the full-time, Monday through Friday, nine to five, in-office job with a long commute each way. I did it before and it honestly kind of broke me. That work arrangement means that my time with Nathan will be limited to the hectic hours of dinner-bath-bedtime in the evenings, and that the weekends will be devoted to laundry, chores, and errands.
Don't get me wrong, I like working and I'm willing to work hard, and for many hours. It's just that I can't handle a situation that's inflexible, the kind of thing where every little thing that comes up is a crisis.
Therefore, I've been scouring the Internet for random gigs I can do freelance, part-time, or from-home. I've come across about a million of these sites that promise that you can earn money in your spare time writing blog posts or content for random sites, working piecemeal and getting 5 cents a word or $20 a post or whatever. (These sites are often referred to as content farms.) And look, I have no doubt that somebody, somewhere, has made money off these sites. It's just that the applications for these gigs are often needlessly complicated, requiring you to submit writing samples, and I don't really want to waste a bunch of time crafting these samples if nothing ever comes of the job. (And, again, I'm not saying I wouldn't spend time writing something if the right job opportunity came along. I'm just saying that I'm not willing to knock myself out for a job that pays half a cent per word, if it pays at all, when I could use that time to apply for a more meaningful job or to clean my house or something.)
Then there are the gigs that don't pay you in money, but promise to drive traffic to your blog. Thanks, but I can't pay my electric bill with "traffic to my blog." Not to mention the traffic generated by these outside writing gigs is minimal. And also, I am not interested in hustling to make a few pennies each month off my blog, thank you very much, Google Adsense. Nor am I interested in making $5 for every 1,000 views, but only after I get 10,000 views per month for 3 months, Chicago Now. And don't get me started on Examiner.com.
Similarly, I love the whole freelance thing, or at least I love the whole idea of freelance, but I'm not established enough to have any steady gigs.
Bottom line, and this is where this post's title comes from, I'm tired of scrambling. I've always been the kind of person who feels more comfortable with a steady day job. I'm not scrappy enough to go out and hustle and make my money off freelance writing or running my own business. So, what I'm asking is, is it time for me to give in and look for a full-time job?
Friday morning, a representative from the staffing company called me about the job, which turned out to be an in-office gig. It was a phone interview of sorts. It turns out the staffing company was working on behalf of a company I recently (phone) interviewed with for a different position, and to which I had made all kinds of requests about working from home or freelancing, and which subsequently sent me a rejection letter.
I went through the same set of annoying prima donna requests with Friday's phone interview. This sort of diva-ish attitude doesn't come naturally to me, and I always end up qualifying it with, I totally understand if you want somebody to come into the office, or I want to be a team player and come in whenever necessary. Because, you know, both of those statements are true. I absolutely understand why a company that doesn't know you from anyone wouldn't want to give you all kinds of special privileges right off the bat, especially if they can hire somebody else who's willing to meet the demands of the job.
But, at the moment I feel a little bit stuck. I want to work either part-time or full-time-but-part-time-from-home, and those gigs are nearly impossible to score with a company you don't have any history with.
But I just don't know if I could do the full-time, Monday through Friday, nine to five, in-office job with a long commute each way. I did it before and it honestly kind of broke me. That work arrangement means that my time with Nathan will be limited to the hectic hours of dinner-bath-bedtime in the evenings, and that the weekends will be devoted to laundry, chores, and errands.
Don't get me wrong, I like working and I'm willing to work hard, and for many hours. It's just that I can't handle a situation that's inflexible, the kind of thing where every little thing that comes up is a crisis.
Therefore, I've been scouring the Internet for random gigs I can do freelance, part-time, or from-home. I've come across about a million of these sites that promise that you can earn money in your spare time writing blog posts or content for random sites, working piecemeal and getting 5 cents a word or $20 a post or whatever. (These sites are often referred to as content farms.) And look, I have no doubt that somebody, somewhere, has made money off these sites. It's just that the applications for these gigs are often needlessly complicated, requiring you to submit writing samples, and I don't really want to waste a bunch of time crafting these samples if nothing ever comes of the job. (And, again, I'm not saying I wouldn't spend time writing something if the right job opportunity came along. I'm just saying that I'm not willing to knock myself out for a job that pays half a cent per word, if it pays at all, when I could use that time to apply for a more meaningful job or to clean my house or something.)
Then there are the gigs that don't pay you in money, but promise to drive traffic to your blog. Thanks, but I can't pay my electric bill with "traffic to my blog." Not to mention the traffic generated by these outside writing gigs is minimal. And also, I am not interested in hustling to make a few pennies each month off my blog, thank you very much, Google Adsense. Nor am I interested in making $5 for every 1,000 views, but only after I get 10,000 views per month for 3 months, Chicago Now. And don't get me started on Examiner.com.
Similarly, I love the whole freelance thing, or at least I love the whole idea of freelance, but I'm not established enough to have any steady gigs.
Bottom line, and this is where this post's title comes from, I'm tired of scrambling. I've always been the kind of person who feels more comfortable with a steady day job. I'm not scrappy enough to go out and hustle and make my money off freelance writing or running my own business. So, what I'm asking is, is it time for me to give in and look for a full-time job?
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Fire Department Open House
After we finished the Walk of Hope, we headed over to the local fire department's annual open house. The fire department open house gives kids a chance to go inside the emergency vehicles and to learn about fire safety, and it gives parents an opportunity to take advantage of family entertainment that we already paid for with our huge recent property tax checks.
Note that the very first booth was giving out free suckers, so every single picture features Nathan with a sucker in his mouth.
I like that last one because I think his scrawny little legs, oversized shirt, and vaguely dazed look are adorable!
Also at the fair I learned that you can cool a burn with peanut butter or vegetable oil, which would have come in handy recently when I got a super nasty-looking burn from the oven (not pictured).
Nathan practiced his stop, drop, and roll. I got a 9V battery for the smoke detector. We got stickers from the poison control center for our phones, and a kit to take Nathan's fingerprints.
Yay fire department!
Note that the very first booth was giving out free suckers, so every single picture features Nathan with a sucker in his mouth.
I like that last one because I think his scrawny little legs, oversized shirt, and vaguely dazed look are adorable!
Also at the fair I learned that you can cool a burn with peanut butter or vegetable oil, which would have come in handy recently when I got a super nasty-looking burn from the oven (not pictured).
Nathan practiced his stop, drop, and roll. I got a 9V battery for the smoke detector. We got stickers from the poison control center for our phones, and a kit to take Nathan's fingerprints.
Yay fire department!
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