Why Buying Birthday Cards Officially Sucks

September is a bum month for me. My mom, brother, grandmother and sister-in-law all celebrate their b-days within days of each other. That means a mammoth trip to Hallmark to pick up the requisite greeting cards.

What should really be a 10-15 minute shopping excursion now takes 30-35 minutes. Why? Cos some a-hole decided that we need to have more categories of birthday greetings, which means more rows of cards now flood the already overstuffed racks. Happy b-day to my step-sister. Happy birthday to my son-in-law. Happy birthday to my mother (religious version). Happy birthday to my cousin's half-uncle. WTF? Where are the nicely designed, decently scripted cards that can be used for any person's b-day, whether they are a relative or not? Or, for that matter, where are the blank ones so I can write the greeting myself? I had to comb through every goddamn rack before I found four cards I could tolerate. And don't get me started on the cards that play music. Who wants to open a card and be blasted in the face with the Macarena song?

If progress is supposed to be making life easier (ie, GPS navigation to get you where you need to go), why are the already simple things getting more complex?

Shit, that HURTS!

Many years ago I had a small, barely noticeable mole on the side of my neck. When I was pregnant with Magnus it started to darken. About a year ago it started to grow in size. Now eighteen months later, I have a big chocolate chip hanging off my neck.

I went to the dermatologist today to get it examined. He came into the room and I said, "I have this mole here-"

"That's not a mole - that's a SKIN TAG!" he boomed.

I had being corrected, even by a medical expert. "Well, it STARTED as a mole and what I was telling you is that I was pregnant and it was small and then - "

"You want it removed?" he asked and then started scribbling in my chart.

He walked outside and came back with a small tank. "This is liquid nitrogen. I'll spray some, the tag will start to degrade and it will take about a week to fall off."

"Great," I said.

"And it really hurts," he added as he depressed the button and a sensation like burning ice coarsed through me. The jackass, giving me no time to prepare! I gulped as he continued firing away for what seemed like six months.

P.S. It looks WORSE now!!

I never understood the phrase

"Stir of echoes."

The Most Amazing Feeling in the World

Is Magnus running towards me and shrieking "Mamma!"

My Latest Trick

I'll do anything I can to avoid crowds (and people too). For years I've ridden the elevator in my downtown LA office building in total agony. There are six banks of elevators but at quitting time, only one seems to work. So you find youself stuck in a hot car with dozens of people who are either sweaty, pissed off or total weirdos. Once you get on the car, it inevitably stops on every floor as it makes its way to the lobby. This causes people to sweat more and grow even more irate. (It doesn't seem to affect the weirdos as much, natch.)

I think I've figured out a way to dupe the system and ride solo. Instead of pressing the button to go down, I press the button for up. The car comes roaring up to the 11th floor, so thrilled to meet me! I step on and then wait 30 seconds. This causes the car to realign, so when I push the down button instead of up, it accepts it without missing a beat. I tried this four times last week and the strangest thing, the car didn't stop once at any of the floors below me.

I've probably jinxed myself by writing this post and today my trick won't work. However, I think I have a back-up plan: the freight elevator. It's old and crickety but anything to save me from riding with a group of people is just fine by me.

Leave Your Guns at Home, A- Holes

I am alternately amused and angered by the recent spat of protestors who are turning up to President Obama's healthcare reform events carrying guns. I am uncertain of what their message is. Do you expect a horde of buffalo to come charging through the audience? Are you hoping to squeeze in some target practice before the President takes the stage? Or are you trying to intimidate the other side by carrying weapons in full view? If Obama were discussing gun control I could better understand your point. At one of the events last week, a conservative guy asked the President a question and felt the need to add that he was a "proud member of the National Rife Association." What the hell does that have to do with insurance premiums?

Also, are we at such a stage in the national debate that armed resistance is required?

Some news media have reported that many protestors feel they are exercising their 1st and 2nd amendment rights. Okay. But I don't get the relationship between guns (2nd amendment) and health care reform (I guess 1st amendment right to speech?)

Then again, I'm not a gun-loving moron.

I'm Another Year Older

And only six months wiser! J threw me an amazing surprise b-day party over the weekend with my family and some of my bestest friends. I was truly shocked and instantly remorseful, as I chided him on Friday for what I thought were weak birthday plans. It was so great to see everyone and I was reminded how bad I am at seeing all my friends. I need 20 more hours added to my week, at least!

Future Career: Shampoo Marketing?

In my seemingly endless quest to find a shampoo I can come to love, I am trying a new brand, Vital Care. The packaging piqued my attention while I was at the drugstore: sedate green bottle, a DNA strand for artwork. I was also struck by the copy: sulfate free, bio technology, extract enriched. How could I not purchase a shampoo with this much science behind it?

Today in the shower I read the rest of the bottle and the last sentence caught my eye: minimizes nanoparticles. I don't believe that is technically correct. What perhaps they really want to say is that minimizing nanoparticles might reduce your cancer risk. But that might be a big downer if you are trying to hawk shampoo to the masses.

At the end of the day the shampoo was okay - nothing miraculous. But I've been thinking about how much fun I could have trying to write copy for it. I realize once again I am in the wrong line of work.

I Loathe Publicists

How I came to have a career in PR is one of the great mysteries of my life. I'm not into people and hawking celebrities or products gives me the creeps. My saving grace has been that I can write and I took enough journalism classes to know what reporters consider news.

The worst thing about being in PR is dealing with other publicists. This generally happens in a group meeting or conference call. I can spot them a mile away - the women in super tight skirts and impossibly high heels, the men in bad suits and the 1990s-style goatee. They lodge themselves so far up your ass during initial introductions, you want to swallow a bottle of laxatives.

I was on a call today with a gaggle of publicists from a big PR firm. They talked about their proposal and used the words "strategy," "integrated," and "SM" (for social media) more times than I care to count. Plus a lot of "you knows?" They gabbed a mile a minute and sounded completely rehearsed. As the call continued I grew more depressed. Most publicists are despised by journalists, mocked in the press and generally devalued by their clients. You can see why - many haven't read the magazines they are pitching or don't know how to find the angle on a story. Or they issue statements that so distort the truth, their credibility is forever shot.

I'll ask again: how they hell did I get into this Stepford Clique?

Next time I go to a press event, I want to wear a sign that says "I won't pitch you unless I mean it."

I Still Don't Get Vanity Plates

When I got my very first car (a gorgeous 1965 Mustang) I remember that vanity plates were all the rage. It was somehow important to tell the world about yourself through your rear license plate. It always befuddled me. You don't have a lot of room to spell anything out that's substantive so you have to use kooky abbreviations, which only diminishes your message. Kids at my high school went nuts for customized plates. You'd pull into the parking lot and see "2KEWL" or "MYRIDE" or "LUV4LIFE." I'd shake my head and hope that this inane craze would soon die out.

It hasn't. Twenty years later, I find myself surrounded by more lame license plates than ever before. Somehow they have multiplied. Today on the 605, a middle aged man in an Audi cut me off. To add insult to injury, his plate read "2FAST4U." What an a-hole. I pulled behind a truck at a stoplight and had to read "TIM + LISA." Yesterday in Pasadena, I was stopped behind an Infiniti with a plate that said, "LUVMYG."

Okay, I get it. You love your spouse and you love your car. Why can't you have a regular license plate? Having a DMV issued plate doesn't mean you love your car less, or that you will leave your husband. Think about it.

I think I need to make a stronger point to the world about this. Perhaps I can order a special plate that says "PLAIN."

Hmmm...

Mad at the Nanny

M the nanny has been with us a year. She's young, energetic and simply awesome with Magnus. She speaks to him in English and Spanish and as a result, whenever he sees the beach or his bathtub, he declares, "Agua!!"

So M the Nanny just revealed that she is knocked up. She is 21 years old. She is Catholic and thus will not consider terminating the pregnancy. The father has hightailed it back to Columbia because he feels there are more opportunities there, plus he misses his mother. (That should have been her first sign.) He also wants nothing to do with the baby and believes M was sleeping around. How convenient that he didn't think that when they were dating! M is nauseous and highly emotional. Today she tells me that she is going to move to Riverside with her brother because she can live rent free and also get away from her mother, with whom she has an acrimonious relationship. But she still wants to commute the hour plus every day to work for us. I politely responded that the pregnancy was affecting her brain. There is simply no way she can deal with being pregnant and that commute for what we pay her.

I know she's pregnant but I want to smack M in the head. Not because I need to re-hire for her position but because I believed she was capable of doing a lot more with her life. She expressed an interest in finishing college and majoring in child development. Now she will be just another single mother trying to scrounge by, forever at the mercy of an employer or a kind family member to help her. Looking at her bums me out beyond words. I wish I could give her a crystal ball to show her the future and how hard life will be. But anything I say will be in vain. This is her path and all we can do is watch her set it on fire. All I can think is loca, loca, loca, loca.