jennsylvania

This Month's Humor Hotel Column - Losing the Battle of the Sexes

I married a man who isn't afraid to wash a dish, scrub a toilet or have his unibrow waxed into submission by a licensed professional.

That's not because my husband, Fletcher, is so in touch with his feminine side, spending inordinate amounts of time sharing his feeeeelings over pints of Ben & Jerry's. Rather, we're fairly egalitarian with household duties and don't always subscribe to traditional gender roles. For example, I'm the primary breadwinner and he rarely watches televised sports or scratches himself inappropriately.

So, when the time came to paint the old dresser I've been storing in a damp basement for the past decade, I decided to do it myself.

Until I saw the spider.

Correction: spiders.

That's when I turned into a prototypical '50s sitcom wife, tottering around helplessly as though deeply encumbered by heels, a frilly apron and the right to vote. I outsourced the job to my husband, who seemed rather pleased to have a project that didn't entail fabric softener or a bottle of Mr. Clean.

"This will take, what two or three days?" I asked. "We've got leftover paint from the cabinets and a couple of brushes, so we should be all set."

Oh, if it were only that easy.

What I didn't realize at the time was that in tasking my husband with "man's work," I awoke a sleeping giant.

Before he could even begin to envision slapping a few coats on the dresser, he had to ready his workshop. Clearly the basement was too dusty for paint to properly adhere, which necessitated the purchase of an enormous, expensive shop vac.

After his workspace was sterile enough to perform your garden-variety tracheotomy, he realized he didn't have enough places to set things down. I suggested perhaps he use the now-immaculate floor. He laughed, yet I wasn't joking.

Instead, he invested in a hammer drill to hang studs on the concrete basement walls. Then he mounted pegboards on the studs and loaded them up with tools artfully displayed by make, size, and shape. Dissatisfied with his handiwork, he took all the tools down to paint the pegboards. My suggestion of, "Why not hit the dresser while you've got the brushes out?" fell on deaf ears.

Workshop complete, Fletch disassembled the dresser and began to sand. He didn't care for the job the orbital sander did, declaring the need for a disc sander.

"How much does that cost?" I asked.

"You can't put a price on a job well done," he said.

"Um, when it's a $50 dresser you can."

But the disc sander worked well. In fact, it worked so well that Fletch smoothed out some parts meant to stay pointy, which required the purchase of a table saw.

"You need a saw? To paint?" I demanded.

"All part of the process," he assured me, while lovingly assembling a machine costing roughly the same amount as my first year of college.

"Wait a minute," I said, recalling the dismemberment stories he'd shared about his father, uncles, and maternal and paternal grandfathers. "Don't you come from a long line of nine-fingered Fletchers?"

"Everyone gets 10. That way you have some extras," he replied.

To date, he's forked out more than $2,000 on this project and that's without factoring in the cost of three weeks' labor. For a dresser that's still in a dozen pieces and has yet to see a single drop of primer.

I suspect this has all been an elaborate ruse to get out of doing laundry.

Next time? I'm just going to paint over the spiders myself.

COPYRIGHT ©2011 JEN LANCASTER DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

UPDATE FROM WHEN I WROTE THIS ON 2/18:

The dresser isn't done but the good news is we now own a jigsaw and some kind of industrial hairdryer that removes veneer and makes the house smell like a campfire. 

At this point, the project has morphed into absurdist performance art and the finished dresser is Godot. 

And Godot is never coming. 

But Fletch did fold some laundry last night.  So there's that.

The Next Company That Blindly Pitches Me Gets This

An Open Letter to Marketers

Dear Sir or Madam,

I'm not a mommyblogger.

There's nothing wrong with mommyblogging; it's just that I don't have kids.

Which means I never post about diapers.

I don't write about toys, save for the occasional Barbie head I might accidentally order while high on Ambien.

Your flavorings to make medicine administration easier aren't of use because I take my Ambien just fine.  Oh, wait - do you make one that tastes like Chardonnay.  No?  Then no thanks. 

I'm not interested in "spreading the word" about your interactive learning tools or educational initiatives.

Unless Morrissey recorded your children's song album, I don't care to hear it.

I have as much desire to write about about healthy snack alternatives as I do to eat healthy snack alternatives, which is to say none.

I'm not concerned about shaking off that last bit of baby weight because there is no baby.  To be more clear, there will never be a baby.  And yes, that's by choice, so I've no inclination to chat up infertility options.

I care not to promote your products that promote lactation.  If I somehow begin to lactate, I'm calling an exorcist, not your expert.

There are probably a ton more child-centric products that you, dear Marketer, are hot for me to pitch.  But I'm not going to pitch them because, if I haven't already made it crystal clear, I AM NOT A MOMMYBLOGGER.

And yet.

You keep emailing me about a bunch of crap I'd never, ever opt in to receive.  Then I get shitty and then you get offended, telling me there's no reason to be rude because you're just trying to do your job.

Oh, really?

Lemme tell you something about being successful in sales because ultimately that's what you're doing, yes?  Maybe you're hawking a product for your boss or your agency or your client but the end goal is to move goods or services.  You're attempting to piggy-back on my trust-capital by having me spread the word about your fine, fine product to my readers, with no compensation save for the opportunity to "post the kind of fresh content your readers want."

(Seriously?  Does that line ever actually work for you??)

Anyway, let's first agree that you are, indeed, in sales.

I used to be in sales.  Back in the day, we pros used this little-known trick we used to call "pre-qualifying a lead." 

Because it can't be said enough, I AM NOT A MOMMYBLOGGER.  Which would be evident if you spent ten pre-qualifying seconds on my website.  But, ah!  What if you're the kind of marketer who plays chess, not checkers, and you did look at my website, thinking, "Hey!  This woman isn't a mommyblogger, but I bet a ton of her readers have kids!"

You'd be right.

And yet.

Readers don't come here for content on car seats or baby wipes or Legos, even if they themselves are mommybloggers.  If I tried to force-feed anyone that kind of post, they wouldn't come back. 

As for me being rude, I'm rude because your feckless pitches waste my time and squander my resources.  So I guess I'm "just trying to do my job," too, and that job is to make readers happy.  I do this by putting out a book or two every year, as well as writing a monthly syndicated column, magazine articles here and there, and the occasional blog. 

But on top of that, I need to stay connected to fans, which includes reading their emails.  I want to know what they like, what they love, and what's not working for them about my writing.  I'm fascinated by their stories and I'm grateful they think enough of me to transcribe their thoughts and feelings. 

Because it's important to me to make sure no word's left unread, I've gotten desperately behind on my correspondence to the point that now I pay one of my friends to help me manage it.  When you send me a pitch cleverly disguised with an esoteric subject line and and an opening paragraph about how you read my blog, I'm sucked into reading it.  If it's me reading, that's time I'll never get back and if it's my friend who's fielding your note, then I just paid her to do it. 

Maybe you're all, "Jesus, lady!  It's one tiny email!  Get over yourself."

And yet.

Multiply your one email by a dozen or a hundred and suddenly that makes an impact on how I manage my business.  Your misguided pitches rob me of resources and steal away time from those who make my career possible in the first place. 

So one more time, so we're all on the same page, and so there's not a shadow of a doubt:

I am not a mommyblogger, so take me off your mailing list. 

Best,

Jen

P.S. If you want a mommyblogger to promote your products, THEN YOU NEED TO FUCKING PAY HER. 

 

Caveats, Conversation, And Conservatism

I lost seven Twitter followers on Friday when I posted these tweets:

If you send me an email with the subject line "I Read Your Shit and Now You're Going to Read Mine," rest assured, I will not. #delete

If you email me to say "What up, my bitch? Get yo' ass posting, you slacker!" and I don't know you, rest assured, I will not. #delete

If you use sad-face emoticons to complain about how I don't respond to all of your tweets and we've not met, rest assured, I will block.

Rest assured, I am also not Google, not Trip Advisor, not an ATM, not a literary agent, not a therapist, and not your mother. #delete

Finally, I will not meet "my number one fan" for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or drinks because I've seen the movie Misery. #anniewilkes

So if we're all cool with the rules now, I'm going to get back to the one thing I will do, which is try to write a book you guys will like.

For the seven people who unfollowed me during this morning's rant, please know that I'll miss the updates on what you had for lunch.

Did I crack myself up with these tweets?  Yes.  A lot. 

Did they express a certain level of frustration with a handful of people?  Yes.  A lot. 

Am I sorry I posted them?  Not even a little bit.

Would it have been more appropriate for me to use more than 140 characters to make a point?  Possibly, although I refer you back to the first point about making myself - and hopefully others - laugh.

The background is I've been getting some increasingly weird/intrusive mail lately.  I reference a little of this in an interview that was just posted with a conservative website.  I'm about to link to the interview, but before I do, I want to make it doubly clear that I discuss my conservative leanings and if this in any way bothers you, I suggest you don't click here.

Maybe these emails are simply a function of my work becoming more and more mainstream and that's a good thing.  I should really make a point of expressing more thankfulness and less 'crankfulness,' but, hi, have you read me?  Not exactly my M.O. 

Also, I find the more books I sell, the more people criticize.  Comes with the territory, I guess.  What gets me is when folks are all "You're fat!"  "You're condescending!"  "You're egomaniacal!"  "You're a narcissist!" 

Wait, what? 

I am? 

Oh, if only I'd had the self-awareness to put those terms on a book cover...  

Anyway, the mail.  I'm frustrated by the lack of respect/sense of entitlement I'm seeing more and more often.  There's a whole generation of Special Snowflakes out there who've been raised on soccer and social media and cellular communication.  If you want to talk about narcissism, I refer you to the kids who've yet to accomplish anything, but have been acting as their own ad hoc publicists for years, broadcasting messages about themselves since the minute they got their first internet connection. 

These are the ones whose letters make me a little crazy.  I would never in a million years tell a stranger, "I read your shit and now you're going to read mine," let alone someone I admire or from whom I wanted to solicit advice.  Maybe this is a bad example and she was just trying to be funny, but I'll never know because I couldn't get past the obnoxious subject line.

Take the "What up, my bitch" point.  Again, this is from a real email.  Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive about some random person trying to tell me how to do what they perceive as my job, but I ask you this - would you ever say something along those lines to someone else at work, say, a waitress?  "Get yo' ass serving me more iced tea!"  Would you ever say "What up, bitch?" to a traffic cop?  (I mean, if you weren't drunk or Tucker Max.)  It's beyond the pale.  I'm not looking for anything overly solicitous, but if the basic rules of civility were followed, I'd appreciate it. 

A few requests I've gotten lately have been mind-blowing.  One person wanted me (at my own expense) to fly across country and spend the weekend in a hotel.  Not for charity or anything, but just so I could party with her book club.  The thing is, she lives an hour away from the airport, so really, it would be best if I just rented a car, too, because picking me up would be inconvenient. 

Another complete stranger sent me her schedule of when and where she'd be in Chicago and demanded I pick from a couple of times she had available for me to come down and meet with her. 

The best one was where someone wanted a loan AND help getting published - which was key because, otherwise, how would he pay me back?

Unbefreakinglievable.

So, that's the story behind those tongue-in-cheek tweets. 

Maybe some of the Twitter followers I lost never really liked my writing in the first place and they were looking for an excuse to stomp off in a huff.  And I hope publicly complaining about how awful I am as a person and an author gave them the kind fulfilment they so desperately seek.  In which case, you're welcome, champ. 

Maybe I hurt a few Special Snowflakes' feeeeeeelings, in which case, good.  Grow a thicker skin or the world is going to eat you alive once you leave your parents' house. 

And if this is all just a logical cost of doing business, then I thank the rest of you for allowing me to be in this business.  Hearing from the 99% of you who are cool makes it all worthwhile. 

Now I'm going to go back to working my ass off on the new book in the hopes that it will make you happy.

 

Fine, Fine, Fine

Let me start by saying we're fine. 

We're better than fine, actually, and I'm saying this up front to make sure I don't accidentally build a whole bunch of dramatic tension based on a wrong assumption, only to have the payoff be that we're fine. 

The dogs are fine, our stuff is fine, everybody's fine.

Fine, fine, fine.

Oh, wait, I imagine the idiots I sent to jail last night aren't fine.

But too fucking bad for them.

To recap, last night I was up in my office around midnight doing the final email check before bed.  My office is at the very front of the house on the top floor because it has the best light as well as the premiere vantage point for neighborhood patrol.

All of a sudden I heard a clang, which sounded exactly like my front gate closing.

Which... what?

I rolled my chair over to the window a couple of feet away and noticed one person standing outside my gate while another person was coming down my front steps.  In my head I was all, "Hey!  I wonder who's here!" until a split-second later I realized no one should be here, what with this being a single family property and our gate always being locked. 

Also, I'm pretty sure I don't know any meth-heads.

So I unleashed my secret weapon.

No, not that one.

My other secret weapon - yelling.

I let them know in no uncertain terms they were trespassing and that they needed to get off my property right that second.

They told me they were allowed to be there and to mind my own fucking business.

I assured them they weren't allowed to be there and went off on an entire tangent about the notion of private property.  I explained the how my concept of ownership was influenced by the capitalist school of thought and how I didn't subscribe to their clearly more Marxist views of said concept, although, really, Marx was more about the means of production and not so much about that which is considered "social wealth" such as clothing, jewelry, designer handbags, and high end electronics.

They told me to go fuck myself.

I told them I was calling the police.

They told me if I did they'd "fuck me up."

Oh. 

Really.

I realized it was time to bring out the big guns.

No, not those.  I mean Fletch. 

He was on the other side of the second floor in the bathroom and heard me squawking, "Perimeter breach!  Perimeter breach!" the entire length of the hallway.  He assumed I was having a weird reaction to my Ambien, perhaps having mixed it with a side of crazy.   I briefed him and he took off up the street after them while I dialed 911.

While I waited for the police, I watched Fletch sneak up on the idiots who were now up and across the street.  He stopped them saying, "My wife tells me you decided to pay us a little visit."

They got very nervous and agitated, saying, "Um, who's your wife?"

To which Fletch replied, "The woman I married."

That's as far as Officer Fletcher got before the police arrived.  Many of you know I've had a number of complaints about the CPD's response time, but I have to say this - the one time it really counted, they were here in a flash.

Both of the tweakers immediately started to cry, with the female in the group claiming, "I thought my friend lived there."  When further questioned, neither of them could come up with an actual name of their mystery friend.

So let's let's look at this story with a critical eye.  These people decided to stop in and see their Friend With No Name.  And they chose to pay a visit to said nameless friend at midnight.  On a Tuesday.  In a darkened house.  And instead of, say, ringing the bell or knocking on the door, they forced their arms through the thin slats of the security gate, reaching around to unlock it before heading to the stoop to peek in the windows.

Yes.  Clearly that is the most logical explanation.

And when I questioned their being here, instead of offering a genuine reaction like, "Oh, holy shit, I'm so sorry!  I really thought Holly lived here!  Totally didn't mean to disturb you!" their first response was to swear at me before jogging away down the street while carrying bags full of bags.  Right.  Totally innocuous.

The fact that the woman had no ID and was currently on probation from having previously committed a felony didn't exactly lend a lot of credibility to her story, either.

We explained to the police how we'd noticed our house had been marked lately.  First, we got hit with tags and lately we've found items deliberately planted around here, like pennies glued to the front of our mailbox and soda bottles lined up on our fence spikes in odd patterns.  Plus, people ring our doorbell half a dozen times a day before running away, which certainly feels like they're trying to get a sense as to when we're home.  The police readily agreed and said they had no doubt our place had been targeted as it's one of three nice homes right on the periphery of a terrible neighborhood. 

In summation, the police were all, "Yeah, that wasn't a social call," and suggested we press charges. 

Which we did.

I have to appear in court next month now.  Because I didn't actually see them trying our front door, they were only charged with simple assault and trespassing.  But there's not a single doubt in my mind they tried the knob.  They wanted to enter my house.  Period. 

What really gets me is I've done so much volunteer work lately with charities that help women prisoners based on how Piper Kernan's memoir Orange Is the New Black moved me.  I've done book drives to get them their choice of reading material while serving time and taught new parolees computer skills and helped them craft their resumes.  But suddenly after seeing an ex-felon in my yard, having let herself in my locked gate and looking in my goddamned window, I'm suddenly feeling a whole lot less charitable.

Anyway, many of you wonder where the dogs were during all of this. 

They were asleep the entire time.

Someone on Twitter last night suggested that this is because poodles make terrible watch dogs. 

Agreed.

Fletch and I kept shaking our heads after the whole conflagration, saying, "This right here is why we're leaving this goddmaned city." 

Funny, but if those idiots could have just waited three weeks to try and get in then they wouldn't have been my problem. 

Yet here we are.

I guess my point is this - don't tread on me OR my lawn.

In Case There Was Any Doubt...

... this is why we're jerks.

jen @ home:  Just read on the crime blotter that two guys in the neighborhood were arguing and a third guy came up and stabbed one of them in the thigh.  And I couldn't help but wonder, 'Hey, what's Agent Jack Bauer doing in Logan Square?'

fletch @ work:  What about this part?  'One man is in critical condition after being stabbed in the chest at Illinois Masonic.'  I knew it wasn't a great hospital, but now they stab people there?

jen @ home:  Sometimes stabbing is funny.

fletch @ work:  Yeah.

I suspect the bad karma we generate is exactly why we haven't found house to buy outside of this stabby neighborhood.

(But it's still a little bit funny.)

And I Thought I Was Mad Last Night - UPDATED WITH 100% MORE JUSTICE

First, I'll post the link to my column as soon as I get it.  I guess I misunderstood how the whole syndication thing works - the column hits the AP wire today and then gets distributed to papers so the earliest it will go to print is tomorrow.  Some papers will have the electronic version up today and as soon as I get one of those links, consider it posted.  (I'll get this right eventually, promise.)

Anyway, I'm particularly cranky today because I was up most of the night due to a car alarm.  For more than three hours beginning at midnight, a minivan's alarm went off in front of my house.  Let's just say I called 911 more than once.  Considering the car was parking in a tow zone, I understand this isn't priority, but come on, illegally parked and incessantly bleating?  Shit, I've gotten tickets for legally parking in this city.  I figured a car alarm in a tow zone would merit a SWAT Team.

Now, I realize the police department isn't my own personal cabana boy at the Four Seasons, which is precisely why I ordered a squad car and not a pina colada.  My main goal in asking for police assistance was that I wasn't sure I had the self control not to beat the minivan with a shovel.  Fortunately, my exhaustion was slightly more powerful than my aggravation and I fell asleep instead of heading to the garage to grab a spade.

So, given my mood, today was not the best day to learn that there's a blogger out there passing off my content as her own.  Okay, not to be all arrogant here, but if you're going to steal writing, maybe you should target someone who hasn't been on the New York Times best selling list.  An alert reader tipped me off to the plagiarism and I went to her site where I found pages and pages of my own words.

In an Alanis Morrisette-level of irony, this asshole's tag line is "I Can Write It Better Than You Ever Felt It."

No, you can't write it better, bitch. 

You can only copy it better.

And by the way, some of the shit she swiped is in the next book.  I'm willing to wager my publisher has even less of a sense of humor about plagiarism than I do.

Last night I kept myself from administering street justice.  I'm not feeling quite so magnanimous today.

Here's her URL:

Peace, Love and Kelsey

Shovels welcome.

UPDATE:  Kelsey's entire blog has been taken down.  I imagine it took too much work to remove all those individual entries. 

An apology has been received and I'm pretty sure a lesson has been learned.

Well played, shovels.  Well played.

The 40 Year Old Property Virgin

Remember that scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin with Catherine Keener and Jonah Hill?  Jonah Hill's character goes into Keener's eBay store and wants to buy a pair of spangly silver platform boots with goldfish in the lucite heels.  It goes down like this:

"Yeah, these are wonderful.  I'll take these."

"Thanks, they are.  They're great.  The goldfish just crack me up."

"Funny."

"Yeah, they are.  Yeah."

"Yeah.  They're cute."

"I don't actually sell anything here.  I just sell them on eBay."

"I don't get it."

"Okay."

"So I guess I'll just give you some money and you can give me these shoes and..."

"You know, I know it seems so strange..."

"Yes.  I'd just rather buy them from you straight up."

"Yeah, I know.  I wish it could be that easy, but..."

"I wish, too, but you're making it extremely difficult for me.  I'm just trying to get these shoes back to my house so I can wear them."

And then the scene ends and Jonah Hill does not get the shoes that Catherine Keener is specifically tasked with selling even though A) that's her whole business and B) he's right there, ready, willing and able to purchase them. 

This is pretty much my life right now, if you substitute "spangly silver platform boots with goldfish in the lucite heels" with "a house" and "Catherine Keener's eBay store" with "every fucking bank in Lake County."

Seriously, I thought we were in a buyer's market right now.  I'm a buyer!  I have money!  I have financing!  I have a very official-looking letter from my bank stating specifically that I am not a chump.  I would like to exchange the aforementioned for your house, even with its mauve paint and gold faucets.  (Seriously, who was your decorator?  Prince?)  Let's make a deal before my current lease ends and I have to live outside! 

And yet every home that's right for us (despite the hideous wallpaper and Liberace-esque bathrooms and MAUVE! MAUVE! MAUVE!) is a short sale and even when we offer full asking price (in this market!), we can't get what we want because we aren't paying cash (who are these people in Lake County?) or our close date is later than other bidders.

I guess the one bright spot is that my car's finally back from its three and a half week vacation in the dealership's service department.  The car feels all refreshed and happy and relaxed with its new starter, suspension system, and differential, which will make it nice for when I have to move into it.

At least it's not mauve.