Hair

It's a little sick, how much I'm looking forward to the next few days, and for what reasons.

Today I get to have my hair highlighted (which always makes my head feel like a big ball of sunshine), and Saturday I get to have it cut in the city at Vidal Sassoon (which I haven't been back to since just before I struggled through labor the first time).

I'm elated and I can't help it, and this partly makes me want to puke. Why, why, why do women spend nearly the equivalent of a months' salary (or approximately 3,000 times a months' salary in my case since I don't have one) on their hair, every two or three months? It's stupid. It's insane. I usually go to Great Clips and pay $12 for a cut that is just fine. And yet, I'm gloriously excited to fork out this cash in the next few days for a little slice of glamor. I have a lot of good reasons to throw at my husband, should he ask, for this straying from my normal budget. Here they are:

1. Holiday season is coming (parties, etc.)
2. My birthday is coming (I deserve a treat, etc.)
3. We have a large wedding-like event to attend in a few weeks (single significant event, etc.)
4. We are going to Sundance Film Festival in January and I want some style and why not start now to utilize the cut for reasons 1, 2, and 3?

After I get the cut done once by Vidal's proteges and I make it through the film festival, I figure Great Clips can give it their best shot at reproduction. Typical female spending justification.

I apologize to my audience of two

I know, I know, I've been away. The two people who read this blog have asked that I write again because they used to read this. I know this entry will be cheating, too, because I'm going to link you back to the swim blog to find an entry for today. But still, it's something.

I've got to be better, but I'm horribly busy in an away-from-blogging way. I can't wrap my day around swimming, working, taking care of the kids, writing the swim blog, cleaning the house (that I just don't do actually), drinking my glass of wine at 5PM, going to bed by 8PM, reading for a bit, AND bloggy noodling. I just haven't been able to. But I'll try. I'll try for you L and Bella, to put something fun I've found up here more often. I promise.

Now, my thoughts on prayer.

Bull Riding for Rosh Hashana

Last night I put on a little black dress, headed out to my dear friend's sophisticated birthday dinner at Evvia, and ended up splayed on some big puffy mats with my skirt over my head after being thrown from the mechanical bull at the Old Pro in Palo Alto. I sure hope someone got that on video and puts it on YouTube, because I really want my sons to be able to Google this act someday.

Ah, but if that happens, so be it. My ride last night was not simply a casual romp on the most visible place to make a fool of oneself in town. No. You see, I rode that bull in the name of religion and I gyrated around on it's back for all Jews everywhere. Yes, I went to services on Rosh Hashana (for ten minutes), and I prayed for a sweet new year. Sure, sweetness has to do with health of my family, joyous times with my children, and all those other typical things a mom of young kids would hope for. But let me be honest. For me, it also apparently has to do with mechanical bull riding and the religious-like high of a good girls night out. If I can't have this kind of fun every once in a while with my girls, well, I'm dead. Mazel Tov to me for starting the new year out right. Right?

The bull ride (and the fact that I can't turn my head to the right this morning, and have a "landing pad" burn on my hip (just above my tattoo)) was worth both the religious satisfaction (ahem) and the male attention I got. The cowboy hat the bull operator gave me to wear plus my decision to turn the ride into my own personal "I may be a mommy but I can still rock this town" performance got me some loud cheers from the packed bar and also an "I LOVE YOU!" from a (presumably) college kid at a nearby table after the skirt-over-my-head ending. This has got to beat a kiss blown to me in my Prius (which I do own and have never had happen. I think Jill is just hot hot hot. I have to do something more risque to get those blown kisses). I'm all about the minivan and can't wait to own one as soon as Toyota turns the Sienna into a hybrid (2009 I believe). Someday, I'm planning on bringing sexy back to the minivan. For now, I'll have to settle for religious celebrations at sports bars.

On to Yom Kippur.

Dabbling in Web Design

My first web design went live today. Fun to have done one for my FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVORITE place to go (every single gosh darned morning).

VMA Awards in Vegas

So I went to Vegas for a baby products trade show. All the stars were there for the Video Music Video Awards and who did I see but Perez Hilton. I was hoping for Justin or Brittany (who, I read, was hanging with Puffy at Tao where I nearly sat and ate on Saturday night (but decided last minute it was "too loud" (I'm officially old and crotchedy)). In my past life I ate there before whoring it up in a leather halter at a Madonna concert. In this life I opted for a nice table in the outdoor "palazzo" of Postrio in the heart of the Venetian mall.

Still, I've perused www.perezhilton.com so many times to see these stars pinned up on his site...it's fun to have him up on mine :).

Oh, and if you didn't catch the VMA's, wow. I always said Sarah Silverman was funny.

Darn good stuff

I discovered some yummy body oil, butter and lip balm. Organic and shit, too.

Botched Train Ride (with a happy donut ending)

Yesterday at 4:45 PM my beautiful Bella friend and I decided to take our four boys on a train ride to San Mateo for pizza. Train ride are always a hit, and the two little ones hadn't napped and were not doing well just "playing nicely" in the home. Also, I love those rare chances we get to be spontaneous with our adventuring kids. So off we went to the train station.

We got on the wrong train. The express train does not stop in San Mateo. It goes nearly directly to San Francisco. Oddly, this ride was the time all four kids decided to be self-sufficiently interested in what they were doing, leaving Bella and I alone to discuss all the recent bottle excitement. She got carried away asking me about design, manufacturing, fulfillment and sales and I got full of the pleasure of talking about myself and what I was excited about with no interruption. Thus, when the conductor asked us where we were going and we said "San Mateo" and he said "you're going the wrong way" we shrugged him off. Not until a hip twenty something woman nearby said "seriously, you're in San Francisco" (which still prompted a defensive response from me ("Yah, um, we got it thanks") because I never think I'm wrong), did we look outside and see The Ballpark.

We jumped off the train at 22nd street (which requires more walking and climbing and overpasses to get back to the other direction tracks than any other station) and were lucky enough to catch a train headed back home five minutes later.

This time, now that the kids were thoroughly starving, we jumped on a train that was definitely not express. It stopped at Bayshore for ten minutes, and then at every other stop along the way. We calculated it would be 6:30 before we hit Menlo Park, and the littlest of the boys was screaming "food! food!" so we made a last minute decision and jumped off in Burlingame. Once off, we didn't think to check the train schedule so we'd know when to get back on. Or rather, we thought to but didn't. The boys were rather amenable to being dragged around town to look for a dinner spot and finally we settled on Il Fornaio for pizza plus WINE. Long story short we enjoyed our meal then missed the train after that meal, necessitating another hour long wait, which we spent in the Donut shop at the train station.

I got an apple fritter, quite possibly my favorite food in the world, and the kids got high on sugar, chocolate, and an old pinball machine in the corner. We arrived back home four hours after we started out on this little jaunt. Life with boys and trains and donuts is certainly a great adventure I wouldn't trade for anything (except maybe a nap once in a while).

Duh. Too many Baby Einstein videos make kids dumb.

Time Magazine reports that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos (Baby Einstein type videos), infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos.

Two things to say here:
1. If you thought that putting your kid in front of any kind of television would actually make them smarter than interacting with them in person during those 30 minutes...all I can say is "Duh."
2. If you think that babies who watch these videos now and then (and my kids did) are actually going to be dumber than babies who don't...all I can say is "pah-leeeeeease." 30 minutes a day of calming, non-educational stimulation isn't going to dumb down anyone.

I just don't buy that this study really measured the effect of these videos on normal kids who watched these in moderation. I mean, there ain't much talking going on in the videos, so I buy that they aren't learning anything speech related from them. Duh, again. These videos are just "breaks" for moms and dads to plop their kids in front of so they can hit the toilet on their own or get a bit of work done or just freaking eat dinner. They are calming and non-violent and 30 minutes long. There ain't nothing wrong with watching some of them and no one is going to tell me otherwise. But if you are actually using these as some kind of educational aid? Well, reality check: just play and talk to your kid for that kind of thing.

My Neighbor's Private Jet

No, I don't know which of my neighbors owns a Cessna, but this article was entertaining and definitely home-hitting to read. While I have never felt compelled to keep up with the Joneses (I credit my mom and dad for never applauding money or things it could buy over real honest-to-goodness happiness), it can definitely hit me like a solid wooden bat once in a while that I really, honestly don't have enough cash to survive here much longer.

In addition, it often hits me how much pity I feel for those around me that do spin their wheels competing with their peers for the best country club, car, street to live on, square footage and bling. Just let me live here, near the family I have always lived near. Let my kids have a backyard, however small. Let me not go bankrupt or loose my house. Let me and mine stay HEALTHY and let me always have my sense of humor and wonderful friends. I don't give a rats ass if I never move up to a "bigger and better" house or remodel the one I do have. So what if I haven't furnished our "living room" after five years in the house? I'm happy (and I don't even have a gardener). Ah the front (and back) yard could use some work and sure a sectional leather couch would be nice. But you know what? I'd rather spend that money on fun. Take that, Joneses!

Ella's Famous!

Right up there with Jennifer Garner's Violet and all those fun punky famous folk.
It's ELLA! And, of course, THE bottle :).

Threesome revisited

...from SV Moms Blog.

The iBreast Outburst

My two co-mommies and I are debuting a new, polycarbonate-free bottle to the world any day now. Any day. The breast shaped bottle that doesn't leach Bisphenol-A into infants' mouths is (pre)selling well. It's just not shipping. But word from Taiwan is it will be, next week. This is good, since Fit Pregnancy magazine is editorializing about it and droves of celebrities are lining up outside our headquarters in Palo Alto to get their hands on it. Okay no one is lining up. Yet.

But our own shareholders are pretty darn pumped, which feels good. We had our annual shareholders meeting, which included the head of our award-winning design firm, the other day. And according to Design Guy, people will be lining up for this bottle soon. He is so sure of the bottle's greatness and unquestionable market acceptance that he's encouraged us to start brainstorming about other products and product lines ASAP. There we sat, in a serious shareholders meeting listening to him suggest that we should "think big" when I couldn't help but blurt out "Yah, how 'bout an iBreast! You can feed your baby with it, use it as a phone and also watch DVDs down the barrel of the nipple."

This was one of my frequent inappropriate outbursts--a result of my life view that everything is pretty much a big joke. I think he had his mind on something more like a pacifier, but let's face it the world is currently obsessed with the iPhone. And it's not even shaped like a boobie or capable of holding beer. Maybe Design Guy is right: the lines will start forming soon.

Mulling it over

N and I saw Blues Traveler last night at a little mountain winery amphitheater. John Popper is one third the size he used to be and I'm one third as hip and young as I was the last time I saw him perform. This was approximately the seventh time I've seen him in concert, and the sixth time must have been back in college. This time I needed my glasses to see the stage (even though we weren't more than 75 yards from it), and I wasn't drinking heavily (instead I was checking my phone frequently to see if the sitter had called).

Just the same, when Popper got up and started wailing on his harmonica, the lights went up and the warm summer rain (rain!) began to come down, I remembered why he used to make my hiney tingle, and found that he still does. Goosebumps and the irresistible desire to sway and move to the music; the return of the concert top-of-the-world energy rush. And then back to the kids before the gig was over (it went past ten, for goodness sake)!

Swimming is Sexy

I knew there was something I wasn't quite putting my pen on when it came to the reason I am obsessed with swimming. I've said that it is beautifully solitary and silent: a thrumming sort of hypnosis or meditation. I've said that it reminds the body how golden weightlessness can be, even amid the gut wrenching push to get through a set of threshold paced 500's where you gulp in water like a six-year-old in the community pool at the height of an August heatwave. Whatever the athletic cost, the buoyancy and submersion and utter aquatic oneness I feel during the time I am swimming is a worthwhile prize.

What I have failed to describe before, is how sexual swimming can be (apparently). In a recent (wonderful) article in the New York Times, Akiko Busch says "Certainly swimming and eroticism are natural colleagues. I can think of no other sport that is so innately sensual. It is not only in the way the water caresses your skin but also in the way it is all about reaching as far as you can. Swimming is about touching the surface of the water and drawing yourself across it, it is about remove and submersion and sometimes it is also about submitting to the strength and current and direction of the water."

Whew. I'm nearly ready for a shower just reading that description. N, I'm sorry, it seems I've been cheating on you with Burgess Pool. Perhaps I should drop a few swims per week and pick up a few, er, other activities. (Yah right).

Working Out to Work Out

From SV Moms Blog...

Driving to Fremont with Edith (I love my job)

I have a fairly new friend (new enough that we are still telling our personal histories to one another whenever we get the chance). Her name is Edith. No, of course that isn't really her name. But the name Edith is grossly underused these days, and her real name is so common...why the Hell not? Edith-not-really-Edith is also one of my business partners. This morning we took a drive over to Fremont (where I once lived in a shared condo with a divorced real estate sleazeball and which I always want to pronounce as FreeMONT! while giving some sort of hip hop gangsta sign for some reason) to visit our fulfillment and distribution center. Sounds boring, yes?

No. Not when you only get out from under the kids for 9 out of 168 hours per week. And not when you're with Edith.

This morning, when I entered her crumb-encrusted station wagon (ahhh, just like home) and was whisked away from my two boys, we were both low from weeks of disappointment over product delays. The delay situation, added to the normal mommy disappointments that sound something like: "Shit, the kids are sick again. And what's that flaming rash near W's mouth? Smells like another week of play date quarantine", is frustrating. Hearing that every big name retailer wants your product but having to continually say "Uh. We need another week to get those samples to you," gets old especially when your bank account is hemorrhaging.

Still, we admitted our business optimism erosion and then moved past it to sip our Starbucks (kidless coffee sipping = instant mini-vacation) and fit the following topics into two twenty minute drives:

*Leprosy colonies
*Dating suicidal heroin addicts
*Completing the set-up of our company's shopping cart
*Pissing blood
*A nasty case of Shingles
*The insane cost of real estate in our area (this is a requisite topic for any discussion that lasts more than 10 minutes between any thirty somethings in the Bay Area)
*Orphanages and the shameful state of methadone addiction in Hawaii
*How to shirk duties at your local preschool
*Past boyfriends and odd diseases they may have had
*Postpartum depression and how it can lead to being 95% sure your husband is sleeping with someone, maybe even his sister
*How our resellers should be asked to login to our site
*Losing a bed off the back of your car on Highway 101 and how to haggle over the price of a new bed
*Eczema

I love my job. What could be more refreshing that a full week's work and conversation topics crammed into a two hour meeting and 40 minutes of driving over the Dumbarton Bridge followed by a warm welcome home by my two cuddle-studs and a subsequent six hours of indoor basketball? Okay, while rewarding and heartwarming to some degree, the six hours of basketball is not refreshing. Which is exactly why I need Edith, and my job. Thanks Edith.

This is FUN

Thanks to crazedparent for the idea. You gotta go try this. It will boost your self-image at least for a minute.

Sheep

My five-year-old is refusing to go to school because he feels "uncomfortable" with the preschool graduation celebration he is being forced to practice every single day (for the event next week). I've written about the religious nature of the preschool before, and how I'm a totally hypocritical Jew for sending him there but am generally okay with the G-d messages they are passing along there (with some exceptions). But when I got the program for the preschool graduation (funny enough that there is a ceremony at all) this week and saw that they would be walking in a processional to receive their diplomas to the tune of (and sung by each child) "I just want to be a sheep, baa baa baa, I just want to be a sheep baa baa baa, I just want to follow Jesus, ", I felt kind of sick to my stomach. It's not the Jesus part. Honest. It's the sheep part. What the ? Aren't we supposed to teach kids they just want to BE THEMSELVES, not that they just want to follow blindly along? I just have a problem with his having to repeat this as he goes up to receive his ticket on to the rest of his schooling career. A sheep is NOT what I want my son to be.

I was prepared to let this slide and just get through the next week (we have such dear friends there and it would be nice to have a closing ceremony and really I like letting things slide), until my kid started crying and saying he didn't want to go to school anymore because they've been practicing this processional along with numerous other "Jesus songs" every single day in the chapel and he was "tired" of baa'ing like a sheep. "I want to be myself," he said to me today. That was enough to get him a pass out of the graduation ceremony, and in fact, out of the next week of school. I'm not offering him up to rehearse or participate in this thing if he doesn't want to. Thus, it has become "Take My Kid to Work Week."

I did speak with the staff this morning. They respectfully heard my concerns and said they may make some changes. I appreciate that, but am also happy to obstain (it is absolutely their perogative as a christian preschool to do what they will on this issue but...), and my son and I very well may reassess our boycott of the proceedings if things turn around.

Baa.

Bringing Sexy Back (to the baby bottle industry?)

As a Silicon Valley engineering/marketing geek I attended numerous high tech, male dominated trade shows in the 1990’s; male dominated, that is, but for a few of us female product managers and the scores of hired “booth babes” spilling out of cheerleading outfits who hovered between products, drawing in men who were typically more intimately familiar with their keyboards than they were with women. Ah, Vegas. Put a bunch of tech geeks, scantily clad women and the ever present access to alcohol and gambling all in one large complex and you’ve got potential trouble. However, the most forward thing any attendee ever did to me while I was working one of these things was ask me out for a drink.

So, imagine my surprise when just yesterday, at a baby products show in Disney’s sunshiny world of Orlando, Florida, a (hot and French) booth boy leaned over into my company’s booth and felt my breast.

Okay, he felt my breast-shaped bottle, and I blatantly invited him to (and of course got permission to use his photo). Still, here he is, touching the soft breast-like material on our new Natural Nurser™ (the product all three of us SV moms who run the company are depending on to succeed to keep us out of the corporate tech world forever). As you can see, he is fondling the bottle whilst on a cell phone. This is not an insignificant detail. He is listening to the message one gets when calling the phone number we handed out to countless potential customers and partners; a message that turns out to be (due to a very unfortunate typo on the letterhead we’ve been using for nearly a year but only discovered yesterday, mid-show) an invitation to join a sex chat line.

That’s right. It appears that folks who would otherwise have been placing an order for our baby bottle after hearing “Welcome. If you are a retailer, press one,” have been met with the unfortunate greeting: “Hey sexy guy. Ready for some excitement?”

Classy, no?

The error was small, which as all moms know, does not mean the potential repercussions weren’t huge. (I don’t know about you but all I need to do is simply forget to bring a tiny piece of plastic known as a pacifier on a trip and all hell breaks loose in my world). Our company’s Toll Free line is a 1-888 number. Our letterhead has been promoting a 1-800 number. Thus, the resulting sex chat experience.

But, as we geeks have always known, it seems that even here in the baby products world, sex sells—or at least doesn’t deter. The very same two southern, cute-as-a-button baby boutique owners from Georgia who informed us of the typo’s existence placed our first order for the bottle yesterday at the show. Polite as could be, they didn’t even mention the sex line fiasco until after we’d written up their order. As we stared at them with absolute horror (and frankly, an oncoming case of the giggles), they simply took their receipt, waved, and walked away with a smile.

After recovering from the shock, my partners and I are smiling too. We seem to have skated through without any or many others (at least that we know about) making a foray into phone porn by our unfortunate invitation. Instead of the somewhat expected attack from show officiates claiming we had somehow purposefully turned a wholesome exhibition into a Smut Fest, we had a fantastic show. (Thank G-d our business cards had the correct number, and that most of these folks are huge distributors who will work personally through us to craft a bigger deal. No need for a Toll Free number).

As a new kid on the block with a product no one had ever seen before, we got an exceptionally positive reaction. We’re happy to say that our hip new design was wowing babyworld celebrities left and right. It seems that the baby industry was looking for someone to bring sexy back in the bottle world. We’re up to the challenge, but we hope to stick to more conservative ordering processes in the future.

A Mother's Worst Nightmare

You come to this country for "a better life" for yourself and your children. You work yourself to the bone at a dry cleaning facility so that you can send your son to college. Before he graduates from that college, he is dead and gone and responsible for 32 other deaths (and the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history). I cannot imagine a more crisp and fiery hell than this for myself, as a mother. My heart goes out, as many of ours do I am sure, not only to the mothers of the victims, but to the mother of the shooter. Read this great post titled "A Letter to Mrs. Cho" at Silicon Valley Moms Blog.