Lynne's Place

LJ Idol Special Edition: Killing Gary

chite — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 20:47:45 GMT

The phone calls kept coming. "Four!" he'd say, "I heard you made cookies. Where are my cookies?"

Eventually I'd stop answering and then it would be text messages, all from Gary, all demanding cookies.

And so one day I headed into my kitchen. "I'll give him cookies. Paisley, rainbow-colored, HIPPIE COOKIES!"

I made up the most beautiful dough, swirled with tie-dye colors and baked to perfection. I packed them in a special box just for him and dusted them with my own special sugar mix.

To: Gary
With Love: 4

My daughter, Lillian Idol, came into the kitchen and asked to lick the bowl.

"Oh no honey. Those are special cookies for Gary, and the dough will make you sick."

Indeed.

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This very strange Idol Entry is in honor of agirlnamedluna, who tragically died this week. Her favorite type of Idol Entry to write involved killing clauderainsrm in a number of creative ways. agirlnamedluna will be sorely missed.

Hello?

chite — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:57:52 GMT

Hello is this thing on?

I have done some friends list trimming. Very light. Mostly people who don't have journals anymore, plus some people whom I would like to not read my stuff anymore.

So does anyone hang out here anymore?

I'm going to post something of substance. Soon.

Oh and this post is public. If you think I have defriended you in error, please let me know.

Just Have a Party, Part II

chite — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:19:36 GMT

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay about just having a party--forgetting about the sales parties and inviting people over to buy things, and just having a party. Drinks. Food. Celebrating being alive.

My friend Maggie decided to take me up on this idea. She had been planning a Scentsy party, and instead of holding it, she cancelled the sales party and turned it into a party for her friends. Thus was born the Homemade Pizza Party with Colin Firth movies.

I volunteered to make the pizza dough, because I am good at it. Maggie bought sauce and cheese. Maggie's friend Penny volunteered to bring toppings. Maggie invited 19 people, 9 responded "yes" and, this is huge, all 9 people who responded "yes" arrived at the party. People brought gifts for the hostess, and drinks to share. Maggie spent about $25 on the party in total.

I arrived early with my bread maker, flour, yeast, corn meal, and pizza stone. Maggie donated sugar, salt, and olive oil, as well as her breadmaker, to the cause. We started up 2 lbs of dough in each of the bread makers, and by the time the party was about to start, the dough in the first bread maker was ready. Throughout the night we made a total of four pizzas, and fed everyone including Maggie's kids (who were watching movies in the basement away from the grownups).

Friends brought alcohol and mixers, and drinks were had by all. Conversation was wonderful. And when everyone had eaten something, we moved to the living room (from the kitchen/dining room naturally) to watch Bridget Jones's Diary. We made good use of the remote control, stopping to talk, share stories, and get to know each other a little better.

And in the end, no one dropped any money on candles, or makeup, or kitchen supplies, or stamps, or scrapbooking supplies. The only money people spent was for pizza fixings, or drinks, or gifts for the hostess, and believe me, not a single person resented that kind of spending. No one feels pressured to eat pizza or to watch a movie or to have conversation. And people thanked Maggie profusely for inviting them.

And we're pretty sure we're going to make it a trend.

What Ever Happened to Just Having a Party?

chite — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 02:57:32 GMT

This is part of my continuing tirade against Mary Kay. Only, this time, it's a little different. It's pretty much about most of the home based MLM businesses out there.

When I was a consultant, I used to say that a perfect client for me was someone who loved to hold parties. Since Mary Kay was supposed to be all about parties, it seemed perfect. If you had a lot of friends, why not invite them over? We'll play with makeup. And you can get free products, too!

See, the problem happens when that is the only kind of party you have.

For me, even my holiday party became a Mary Kay event, with the main party happening in the living room and the sales going on downstairs in my basement. That's right. I missed my own holiday party selling Mary Kay stuff to my friends. WHAT must they have thought of me? It's just awful. I look back and am so entirely embarrassed that I actually did that, and treated my friends that way.

But in Mary Kay, and in a lot of other MLM businesses, that is exactly what we do. We start with our friends and get them to hold a party. Then they become our customers. And they become our team members. And then, we don't have friends anymore, not really. We have clients. Customers. Team Members. People who earn us money. And eventually they stop taking your calls, because for goodness sakes, woman, I have enough makeup.

Not a week goes by these days that I do not see someone having a party of some sort or another. One has a Pampered Chef party and another has a Stampin' up party and another has a Creative Memories party and another has a 31 Gifts party. In all of these cases, as a consultant, you are setting up your hostess to be resented by her guests. Because no one really wants to buy all that stuff. Really. We are living in a terrible economy right now, and no one wants to spend a ton of money on stuff that they got to see at a "party." Oh sure, some people get into buying. But for the most part, people are getting to resent being invited to parties to spend money.

Do yo know that the last time I tried to have a party for a home based business, I invited 75 people? Do you know how many came? 4. And one of them was my neighbor who only came so that I wouldn't have the most unattended party ever. No one wants to go anymore.

You want real girlfriend time? Invite 6 of your girlfriends over for drinks and a movie. I guarantee you'll get a better response than inviting them over to play with makeup. The best party I attended in recent memory was a girl's night around Christmas time. We had cookies and hot cocoa and watched Love Actually and exchanged gifts. And everyone who was invited came. Because would you rather sit through a sales presentation or watch Colin Firth? Yeah, I thought so.

So have a party. Invite your friends over and open a bottle of wine. Watch a movie together. Play board games. Cook something together. Just don't ask your friends to buy anything. Your friendships will be better that way.

Self-deprecation theater

chite — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:18:17 GMT

Today in Self deprecation theater, I present:

Yes, that is me, and the inspiration for the subtitle to a book: "How does an intelligent woman end up walking around the Dallas Convention Center looking like a deranged South American General?"

Aah well, if you can't laugh about it, you'll just cry about it. This picture was actually taken in my hotel room at the Adolphus, where Ann and I got to stay during Seminar 2005. It was the Seminar right before I went into DIQ, and it was supposedly an accident that we got a suite. Who knows? Doesn't the look on my face say, "OK Ann, you can take the picture, but I don't have to like it!"

Wear the Shift!

chite — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:00:09 GMT

I have a friend from college who first did a Kickstarter and is now completely open for business. She makes custom shift dresses that are to your exact measurements, using vintage and/or eco-friendly fabrics. Best of all, she has you do a ton of measurements so it is sure to fit you!

I can't wait to get mine! GO look!

www.weartheshift.com

Tax Lies from Mary Kay

chite — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:41:36 GMT

Current Mary Kay consultants, take heed: it's tax time! It's that time of year when you are going to prove to the world that you're making money! If you're making a living at Mary Kay, then on April 16th, I invite you to post your schedule C right here. Blank out your identifying information (name, social, etc) but post it or a link to it right here.

Or perhaps, you'll do your taxes and say, "Oh my God, what am I doing with my life?"

Maybe this year, you'll be surprised. You'll do your taxes and will actually have made money for the year. Don't forget to take into account how much inventory is still on your shelves. Have you finished paying for it? Or are you making giant interest-only payments on it every month? If you made money, how much? Did you net $1000? $5000? even $10,000? If you're working full-time or even working only 20 hours per week, is $10,000 a full or even half-time salary?

When you hear the Mary Kay business plan for the first time, one of the things you'll hear is all about the "tax advantages." Write off your computer, your printer, your office supplies, your office space. Write off the cost of traveling to Seminar and Leadership conference and Career Conference and your Fall Advance/Retreat/Summit. Write off the cost of your weekly meeting. Write off the interest on your credit card that you're going to use for all of your Mary Kay inventory and expenses. Write it off, write it off, write it off! Many directors will even tell bald-faced lies, telling you that you can write off the cost of your clothes, your manicures, and your pantyhose. (If you have been told this, or if you are telling it, you need to stop because it's not true.)

How many people know what a write-off is? I had one top director tell me that if you used a credit card for inventory and didn't use it for anything but Mary Kay, you could write off all of the interest, and that would make it just like an interest-free loan from a relative! Now, I am a generally smart person, and I not only didn't question it, but I repeated it!

But the thing is, it's completely wrong! A write off or deduction is NOT the same as a tax credit! A tax credit is something that takes money off of what you owe in taxes. For instance, people who qualified for the first-time homebuyer tax credit last year were able to take $8000 off of what they owed in taxes for the year. If they would have had an $8000 tax bill, that would be reduced to $0. A deduction or write-off only reduces your amount of taxable income. So if you spent $1000 on Seminar fees, airfare, and food, all that does is reduce your amount of income by $1000. So if you miraculously made $5000 in Mary Kay, that $1000 would reduce that amount to $4000, and only the $4000 is then taxed. If you paid $500 in interest on your credit card, you don't get that $500 back; you only reduce that $4000 that you netted to $3500. You'll pay fewer taxes, sure. But you still SPENT that $1500 on Seminar and interest payments, and you're NOT getting that money back.

Put another way, Mary Kay will try to convince you that spending money is good because you can "write it off." They make you think that you're going to get all of that money back. The fact is, you'll spend the money, and you'll see that your bottom line has gone down. So you might not have to pay taxes on your MK business. That means YOU DIDN'T MAKE MONEY.

If you've done your taxes and seen that you've once again lost money, or made so little money that you would have been better off working part-time at McDonalds, it is time to seriously consider quitting. You can return any inventory that you purchased in the last 12 months for a 90% buy-back. You will never be able to do Mary Kay again, but hey, that's not such a bad thing.

Oh and by the way, I write this about Mary Kay, but it goes for any multi-level/dual-marketing/network marketing business. Are you doing one? And are you being honest with yourself when you do your taxes? Is the effort you put into your business being reflected in your pay? Be honest with yourself, and save your finances before it's too late.

Wow, new journal style

chite — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 17:37:22 GMT

It's been a few years in one style, and although I loved my cherry blossoms, it reminded me way too much of being in the Pink Haze. I have switched to another of my favorite things: coffee! Haha.

Anyway, working on another Mary Kay post. Hoping to have it done sometime this week.

In MK, Profit Versus Cash Flow (it's not profit!), Plus, Inventory Woes

chite — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:45:42 GMT

I meant to come back here and continue my information about Mary Kay and how it manages to ruin so many people. Then I got busy with my actual job that earns me actual money, so my writing went by the wayside for a while. I actually wrote this one for Pink Truth last week, so apologies if it references anything strictly from PT or appears to be self-referential to my LJ. I tried to edit but I'm also trying to get to a real estate closing on Friday.

--

How is it that a Mary Kay consultant ends up with thousands upon thousands of dollars in unsold, outdated inventory? You would think that there must be some smart women in Mary Kay, so how can it be that so many of us ended up with ridiculous amounts of products?

I was a consultant for about six years and a director for two, and my own inventory story ran the gamut of lessons learned.

When I started my business, I had very little room on a credit card. I did a $1200 order because that is what I could afford. After visiting my director's house and seeing how much she had on her shelves, along with hearing her explanation that you have to have it to sell it, I managed to find another $600 to bring my inventory level up to $1800. It seemed reasonable for a part-timer.

Six months after I started my business, the foundations changed. Of course, I tried to continue selling the ones I had, but when all of the company materials have the new products listed, when the old products are no longer available on the web site, everyone figures out pretty quickly that you're selling them the old stuff. So a few hundred dollars in foundations went into a box while I spent a few hundred more dollars on new foundations.

But then there always seemed to be a reason to order. Order limited edition stuff because it's going to sell out! Order this stuff that's being discontinued because you won't be able to get it anymore! Order new lipsticks in new colors! Order new lipsticks in new packages!

For me, probably the most awful moment (outside of my directorship woes that I have already written about) came when they decided to change to mineral colors. There I was sitting on $600 in eyeshadows and probably another $400 in blushes, and they were no longer going to fit in the compacts. I actually bought extra compacts in hopes that I could sell off what I had before the changeover. I held color parties constantly! I offered colors for listening to the business plan. I offered a discount on colors. The more popular colors--Orchid, Sunny Spice, and the like, I could sell with the "Going going gone forever" line, but try selling an Eggplant blush that way. Not so much.

A few months after the mineral colors came out, I could no longer get away with selling old colors to new customers, so yet again, I was stuck.

Stuck stuck stuck, with color after color that I would never be able to sell.

So until this point, I had bought inventory for a number of reasons: new consultant, building a store, products coming, products going, and limited edition. You see, you can say all you want that you are just going to replenish what you sell. But if you have to add new products all the time, you're not doing that. You still have to replenish what you sell, see? You can't sit there with no cleanser on your shelves. But you need the limited stuff (no you don't), and you need the new stuff (no you don't) and you have to have enough to cover demand, or your customers will go to someone who can (no they won't).

Well, then I became a director. And there is the number one biggest way that people end up with thousands of dollars of extra inventory that they will never sell. Because as a director, you can take all of the above and multiply it by 4 or more times. I was not a "successful" director by MK standards. I was constantly struggling to make my unit's $4000/month production, because after all of the inventory insanity that I went through myself, I could not bring myself to ask anyone else to front load inventory. It just made no sense to me! How could I be an honest person and say that someone really needed all of that on their shelves?

So I didn't, and I ate the difference. Between $1000 and $2000 every two months just to keep up my directorship, and all of that product went unsold. And you'd think I'd have learned my lesson and spent it all on Timewise cleansers and moisturizers! Instead I took the opportunity to stock up on the things I'd never had much of in the past, like perfumes and spa products. Of course if you sell one perfume, that's a nice profit, only, not really. A $40 perfume, as we know, is $20 in profit, but there is no profit when you're sitting on a mountain of product and debt.

A couple of years ago, I started off the year having a giant 50% off sale, just to get all of the discontinued stuff off of my shelves (it didn't work very well, but I brought in a couple thousand dollars to go toward the debt). At the end of the year, when we did our taxes, I was sure that I had made money that year. I was SURE of it! But there it came back... I had once again lost money in Mary Kay. HOW? I asked my husband, when I didn't spend anything on inventory that year and only sold what I had on the shelves?

Well, of course, I was selling it at a discount, and I was still sending out Look Books and I went to a couple of conferences. It's the great Profit Myth. I fooled myself with Cash Flow. I saw cash coming in and assumed I was making money, when, in fact, I was so far behind that there was no way I could ever show a real profit. Plus, by selling product at my cost (just to recoup my lost money), but by continuing to do all of the advertising and conferences, I was yet again spending money I wasn't earning. But that year, I was still truly surprised when the taxes were done and it showed that I had lost so much, yet again.

I've often said that I take all of the blame for what I did to my finances. I'm not a dumb person. But the culture of Mary Kay, the constant product line changes, and the rules for directorship is one where more and more people find themselves in the same situation I was in. That is why the system is broken. Recognition is always based on Retail, which puts you in the mindset of believing you have made more money than you have. And not just at Seminar. At your unit meeting, you are recognized for sales numbers, and even when they tell consultants to split 60/40, they tell all of the guests that it's 50% profit. They Remind you that it's 50% profit. When you have a large inventory, they tell you that you are operating at a "profit level," only no one reminds you that you're not actually making a profit if you have not yet paid for that inventory. You begin to think in terms of cash flow and not profit, and it is not until you see those numbers out in front of you on your Schedule C that you realize what you have done to your finances.

As I said, it is broken, and it is insidious.

(Final note: I have been posting these to my facebook and I assume some MK people will come over here to tell me what a Negative Nelly I am, and how I just didn't try hard enough. I would ask them to please post their Schedule C for us to look at. They are all welcome to black out name and Social Security number, but if they really want to argue with this, they need to pony up the Schedule C to prove it)

Some Truth

chite — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:15:00 GMT

A few years ago, I wrote an entry for LJ Idol writing about giving up my Mary Kay directorship. I really did feel like a failure, and my friends were all so wonderfully supportive that it really made me feel better. I had not yet announced my intention to go into real estate training. It's hard to believe it's been three years since then.

At the time, I believed that I would take a break and then aim for directorship again when I had more time and both kids were in school.

Three years later, I have finally made the decision to quit Mary Kay entirely. As of the end of this month, I will begin "T" status with the company, which stands for "terminating." I'm going to give up what remained of my personal team (all 5 of them), and in another 6 months I will be completely terminated. I might actually decide to just call the company and have them terminate my consultant number completely before that time; for now I need to be able to log into the system to do my taxes.

I am going to write some things about Mary Kay. Some of them are unsavory. If you've ever seen my old LJ page, it said, "Living in the Pink Bubble," but in reality it was more of a Pink Haze or a Pink Fog. I know that there will be MK people on here who will defriend me, perhaps over on Facebook, too, for being negative. I assure you that this is not being negative; it is being truthful. That is something that most people deep in the Pink Haze cannot do.

Here is my truth: I came out of my Mary Kay directorship with more than $15,000 in debt. I never made money. I will repeat, I never made money. I had cash flow, but that is not the same thing. Let's talk about this.

When you start in MK, you are told that there are no quotas. This is not, strictly speaking, true. In order to be a consultant, you must place a $200 order once per year. If you have a team, you must maintain Active or Inactive status to keep your team, and that means placing an order approximately every 6 months. If you want to be able to order any amount of products, you must order approximately once every three months (You are active the month you place an order and the 2 months following, so depending on the time of month you order, it could be only every 2 months.)

When you become a director, you and your unit must maintain a $4000 per month minimum wholesale production. If you miss this quota one month, you have the following month to reach it, otherwise you are terminated as a director.

The first time you are about to miss for the 2nd month in a row, I nearly guarantee you that someone above you in the hierarchy is going to say to you "don't worry about it; just buy it and you'll be able to sell it. Have a great month next month and you'll make it all back in commissions anyway." And thus, you get on the hamster wheel.

As a director, there are two ways that you can get up to your $4000 per month unit wholesale quota. The first is to have a huge team of people who sell like crazy and order like crazy. Only, most people don't do that. The company will tell you that it's all a numbers game. One third of your unit is coming in, one third is working, and one third is on its way out. So the other way to meet your wholesale quota is to recruit a ton of people and have them place very large initial orders of $1800 or higher. When as a director you go to your training sessions held by the company, a huge amount of time is spent teaching you to "pull inventory." $1800 is chicken feed. They're teaching you to get people to place $3600 or higher initial orders. I could not do this. Even three years ago, we were living in a recession. The one time I convinced someone to place an $1800 order, she pretty much disappeared nearly immediately, and I personally felt like I had done her a huge disservice. The one time someone placed a $3600 (I was still a consultant at the time and my director had done the inventory talk), that person returned the product a few months later, and I experienced my first charge-back. Oh yes, if you get a commission check and the person returns product, you have to pay the commission back. Big surprise that was.

So, because I could not bring myself to ask anyone to place these huge orders, I was left with what people would order based on their sales. And I taught selling. I was a great seller. But I was an unusual person. When you listen to your recruiting interview, they will tell you that they don't want people who are good at sales (because most people will say they are not good at sales) but in the end, it takes a good sales person to sell the stuff. Most of my team and unit had other jobs, and were selling a lipstick here or there to make some extra cash. There was only one in my unit, not a personal recruit, who consistently sold products and placed orders to support them. One. And not a personal recruit, which meant that if I lost my directorship I would lose her.

In all, you are made to believe that if you just stick it out and work harder, your biggest month is just around the corner. Just work harder. Sell more product, recruit more people, frontload inventory. Get lots of other women into big debt so that you don't have to. And once you are sitting on all of that inventory of your own, you feel that you can't quit, because your next big month is just around the corner, and you'll get a huge commission check and be out of debt. You're in a pink haze, and you can't see that you're just digging a giant hole. Every other month you are supplementing your own production in order to keep that directorship, to have the next big month.

In addition to the inventory insanity, there's more debt to be incurred when you are a director. For instance, you are highly discouraged from holding your unit meetings in your own home, so you need to rent a space. There goes $50 per week. You are encouraged to have a huge debut to announce your directorship, so there goes about $300. There are prizes to be bought for consultants. As a director, you must buy the Director Suit, which, depending on your options, is approximately $300. Because of the timing of when I became a director, I bought three of them over 2 years. Seminar officially costs $175 but you have to get there ($250+), get a hotel room ($300), eat ($200+) and pay for transportation ($50) so in the end it's $1000 to go. Rinse and repeat for Leadership conference. Rinse and repeat for your Fall Retreat and Career Conference. And when you first become a director, you get to go to "free" training in Dallas, where you still have to pay for airfare, hotel, and some of your food. You BLEED money as a director.

And by the way, if you happen to be very successful at recruiting and front-loading inventory, and you happen to earn a car, your monthly quota goes up. For Cadillac drivers, the monthly quota goes up to $16,000. If you miss it, you have to make a payment on the car. Up to $900 per month. Ever wonder why I never even tried for a car? If I couldn't meet $4000, I sure as hell wasn't reaching $16,000.

As I said three years ago, when you start MK they tell you that it's part time work at full time pay. It's not true. If you become a director, which is really the only way to make full-time pay, you absolutely have to work full-time to make it work. Oh and I don't mean 40 hours per week. The women who actually make the money will tell you that they eat, sleep, and breathe Mary Kay. They will tell you that you absolutely must have child care to be a top director. They will tell you that there is no such thing as taking a break. And there is not. There are no breaks. Because if you have a $16,000 month one month, you still have a $4000 quota the next.

They will tell you that one in four people whom you share the business plan with will recruit, and that you need to recruit five per month to maintain a unit, and ten per month to grow. They also tell you that only one in three selling appointments will hold. Assuming that everyone you meet books an appointment (which does not happen, because by now everyone can see the Crazy Mary Kay Lady coming), and you share the business with everyone you make an appointment with, you have to MEET 60 people per month just to maintain a unit (Meet 60, 1/3 will hold, which is 20, and 1/4 will recruit, which is 5).

Are there successful directors? Sure! They march across the Seminar stage every year in their unit clubs. They become National Sales Directors. Many of them, in my opinion, lose their sense of right and wrong in the process. When I started in Mary Kay, we used to show the Applause magazine to get people to see how much money you could make if you made it to the top in Mary Kay. It was a great recruiting tool, back when those Nationals who were in from the very beginning of the company, were still on the books. Nancy Tietjen making $75,000 per month was a big thing to sell. Only now, those checks are not quite so big, and MK does not publish the commission checks of those Nationals making less than $10,000 per month anymore. Prior to that change, some of the Nationals were shown as making less than $5000 per month. Not such a great recruiting tool anymore if the top of the top are not clearing $60,000 per year.

Perhaps the most telling is this. I did a quick search to see where many of the local Directors were who were Directors when I became one. I looked up around 10 of them. Of the 10 I looked up, two are completely missing from the roster, so we know they quit completely. Two lost their directorships and then did DIQ again. One, who was an Executive Senior Sales Director (which meant she had 5 offspring directors) is now a Senior sales director, which means she has 2 or 3 offspring. We were sure she'd make National in just a few years. The rest are Consultants.

And then there is me. I take full responsibility for what I did to myself and my own finances, and we have, for the last three years, been climbing out of the hole I dug. But what I have come to find is that the system was broken. I have met a lot of other women now, some in person and some online, who had the exact same thing happen to them. When the system is broken, and when you are told to keep your blinders on, just look toward the goal, just do what you have to do, short-term pain for long-term gain, it is hard to see what everyone around you sees. It really is. That is why I am hoping that someone else will relate to this, and I might save someone else from the mess that I got myself into.

In another article, I will write all about how Mary Kay is really a Multi-Level or Pyramid, even if they will swear up, down, and sideways that they are not. If anyone wants you to join a Multi-level, I highly suggest you use this phrase: "Show me your Schedule C." The tax man knows the truth. This past year, I did my taxes late for various reasons, and it is no coincidence that it was October when I figured out that I was going to quit for good. I did my taxes, lost money yet again, and looked at the $10k+ of wholesale inventory on my shelves that I would never sell. Even if the company does not require inventory or even suggest it, ask to see the tax forms. Because someone who is truly making money will show it to you, and someone who is not will continue to brag about her biggest check, her National's salary, or the fabulous Girlfriend TIme you'll get.

Thanks for reading.

May, apparently, cause triggers

chite — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:49:12 GMT

I never really appreciated the whole trigger warning thing on LJ entries. I understand why they are there. We live in a world where some people have been through horrible things, and reading about similar horrors can cause anxiety. Flashbacks. Upset.

But although there was a period in my life when things were pretty bad, there has never been anything that I've read on the internet that caused such feelings in me.

Until this week.

You see, I don't like being touched. We don't need to go into all of the reasons, and I don't even know what all of them are. And I'm not talking about a hug or a handshake. Anyone who knows me knows I am the hugging queen. "We're huggers, not handshakers" I tell people. In our house, we have different names for hugs, like "big front hug" or "snuggly back hug" or, everyone's favorite, "portable hug." So that's not the kind of touching I'm talking about. I'm talking about intimate touching. Touching that goes beyond the hug. I feel really bad sometimes because, in terms of "love languages," I know that my husband and son are all about physical touch, and I am not (for the record, I am more of a "quality time" person). Perhaps that is why I am big on hugs in our house; a bunch of hugs is great, but an evening being in constant physical contact is mentally excruciating.

You could put it this way: if you're not my husband or my daughter (who still breast feeds), you're not going to get your hands anywhere beyond where they go for a hug.

So all of this TSA insanity, as it turns out, is extremely triggery for me. I have been sitting here reading stories of the TSA and their gropings, and I have been in a near-constant state of anxiety about it for two days. And I'm not even planning on flying anywhere any time soon. I have this horrible thought that I will be groped by a TSA agent and that I will haul off and punch her and then get arrested.

Now you may ask, why would I submit to it and not do the backscatter x-ray machine. It has nothing to do with being seen naked.

Ten years ago, I had my first CT scan. Apparently, my right ovary gives off follicular cysts, and, more recently, other kinds of cysts as well. They send me doubled over in pain about once a year, sometimes more often. Because they are on the right side, to your average ER doctor, the pain is indistinguishable from appendicitis. So, I get to go in for a CT scan. The first time, I knew nothing about radiation from CT scans, and was being treated so terribly by the hospital I was in, that I didn't even ask for any information about it and just wanted to get it over with.

But over the lat ten years, I have had ten such CT scans. Of those ten, five have been in the past four years. Of those five, three were within one year, the most recent having happened right after my daughter was born (and one of them was for a potential lung problem and not done on my abdomen).

As I ended up going in for more and more CT scans as the years have passed, I would ask how dangerous this was getting. Over and over again, I was told that the radiation levels were safe, that it was more important to rule out appendicitis. Then, having gone into the hospital a mere 4 months after my last scan, I put my foot down. I told the ER doc that I had had THREE scans in that one year, and was I putting myself in danger by doing another one. Apparently, yes. Radiation damage is cumulative. In 2009, a study was released that showed that people who had multiple CT scans had a higher risk of cancer. I was already beyond the number of scans people had had that put them in this risk group.

So, when they tell me that backscatter x-ray radiation is safe, I don't believe it for a minute. For years I was told that there was no danger to the multiple CT scans I had gone through, until a new study showed that, actually, there was a danger. I have no intention of letting someone add to the radiation load that I am already carrying because, for so long, too little was known about the problems that could be caused by CT scans. I absolutely foresee that, should these backscatter x-ray machines be in use for long enough, we will start seeing an increase in cancer in frequent travelers. That is not a risk I am willing to take just for the privilege of flying.

And I won't be groped by a stranger.

And, by the way, my children will not be sent through the imaging machines, and will not be groped either. Radiation does affect children differently. And I will not allow anyone to touch my children.

So for the time being, we won't fly. And as triggery as having read all of those stories over the last few days has been, actually writing this down has been the best thing so far for alleviating my anxiety.

Aah, 4 year olds.

chite — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 20:31:26 GMT

Yesterday, when I picked up Micah from school, he got in the car and said "Can we go to Starbucks?"

"Starbucks?" I asked, thinking I must have heard wrong. Usually he asks to go to Chik-Fil-A.

"Yeah! Starbucks!" he answered.

"What does Starbucks have that you want?"

"They have fruit!" he said.

Now, this was a very strange thing to me, because while it is true that you can get fruit at Starbucks, we had not done so in quite a while, and, more importantly, we have plenty of fruit at home.

"Micah, we have fruit at home. We're going home and you can have fruit there."

That is when the waterworks got turned on. "But (sob!) I wanna (sob!) go to (sob!) STAAARBUUUUCKS!!!"

"That's it!" I said. "I'm driving you around until you fall asleep!"

Which I did. But he was still awake as we passed Hunter's Woods, which has a Starbucks in the Safeway, and he yelled "IN THERE! GO IN THERE!!!"

As it turned out, Micah had gone to that very Safeway the day before with his dad. And there's a Starbucks in that Safeway. Apparently his 4-year-old brain saw the Starbucks sign and assumed that the Safeway was just ONE GIANT CAFE with a whole lot of other stuff in it, and, of course, LOTS and lots of fruit.

Food Blog Cross Post

chite — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 00:45:20 GMT

In an effort to get the word out as much as possible, here is my very angry food blog post:

Restaurants to which we will not return: Ariake in Reston

I never intended to post bad reviews here. This was supposed to be a place of love and sharing of food. But it is actually because of a food love affair gone sour that I am posting this today.

Ariake is a sushi restaurant in Reston, on Colt's Neck Road and Glade Drive. We started going there when it opened. This was well before Micah was born, and in fact, it was there that I went for my hush-hush pregnancy sushi. We have been going there for so long that we remember the things that used to be on the menu, that are not anymore, and that the waitresses will always bring for us because they remember us. Our children have always been welcome. We have always been welcome. Until tonight.

Here's a hint to restaurant owners out there: If you don't want children in your restaurant, don't provide high chairs. If a restaurant provides a high chair, I always make the assumption that we are welcome with our kids. In fact, when we entered today, there were two other tables with small children.

We ordered our food: a sushi/sashimi platter for two for Adam and me, another special roll, a cucumber roll for Micah, and agedashi tofu for Lillian. Drinks (beer for the adults and lemonade for Micah) were also ordered. We had, in fact, had a pretty rough week and wanted a nice dinner and a beer to try to make up for it.

Everything was generally fine. Lillian ate through most of her tofu and was working on some sushi. Micah was doing his dawdling thing that he does. Adam and I were gushing over the wonderfulness of the sushi. Lillian didn't get everything to her mouth; she's 14 months old. Too old to be feeding baby food (which we never did anyway), too old to be spoon or fork feeding her (which we also never did). She's a voracious eater who does, in fact, sometimes drop food on the floor. Just about all kids do. In most restaurants, we make an apology and leave a big tip. I usually try to do some cleaning up before we go.

Tonight, she was getting antsy, so I picked her up out of the high chair, and the owner's son came over to our table. As soon as I had her out of the chair, he moved the chair out of the way and started cleaning the dropped food. If that had been the end of it, I would have just assumed he was trying to be nice so I didn't step in tofu. Instead, he said, "I'm going to clean this up because it's grossing out the other customers."

"Excuse me?" I said

"It's grossing out the customers to see food on the floor."

"I see. Which customers are grossed out?" I said. "Is there a specific customer or do you mean to say that you are grossed out?

"um, um"

"I see. So you're grossed out because a BABY dropped food on the floor. And you couldn't keep it to yourself."

"It's gross to have food on the floor."

Then I turned to Adam and told him I was going to take Lillian for a walk outside. When I came back in he had brought the check to the table (we were no where near done with either the food or the drinks). I said that I wanted to talk to him and he told me that he didn't want to discuss it with me. We went back and forth a couple of times and he said we should go. He also, somewhere in there, commented that it was a family place. I'm sure.

One of our favorite waitresses was visibly upset. I commented to her that there are a lot of sushi restaurants in Reston and Herndon, and before I got to finish my statement (that we had been coming here for years now), he overheard and said "well you can go to them then."

I walked out. Adam did pay the bill (I wish he had not) and got a to go box to take the rest of the sushi home. I got in the car with Lillian and pulled up to the front door, then got out to help with Micah. Apparently the manager was also very upset (he knows us as well) because he followed Adam out, and was very insistent that the guy had no say in anything and was just the owner's son.

I said, "Yes but if he were a waiter who treated us that way, he would be fired. You do not use the words "grossed out" in front of people who are eating, especially when referring to their child."

The manager said, "yes"

I said, "But you can't fire him because he's the owner's son. And because he's the owner's son, he does speak for the business whether you say he does or not."

So, we're done with Ariake. DONE. We won't be returning there, except perhaps to drop a copy of this off to the owner.

Racheline and Me

chite — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:42:27 GMT

rm and me at the reunion:

I had a really good time :)

Decision made :)

chite — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:36:28 GMT

So, I tried on the 2 dresses again and this time I decided that I would choose the one that required the least complicated underwear.

Black dress: requires a bra that probably won't work so well for a long-term night out + spanx
Pink dress: surprisingly, regular bra + spanx (this was a surprise as in the past I have needed seriously complicated underwear but I have apparently lost more inches than I thought)
Sweater dress: Nothing special underneath. Fits great.

So, I am bringing the sweater dress and pink dress and wear the one that I decide to wear that day, probably depending on the weather. I feel ridiculously confident in the pink dress, which is awesome. But if it's cold out the pink dress will be cold.

So thanks for all of the suggestions. :-D

Reunion Bleh

chite — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:24:51 GMT

OK, so these were the 2 dresses I was torn between for my reunion:

Here I am the one in black. It's hard to tell but it has an asymmetrical hem. I also weigh about 15 lbs less now so it will fit me awesomely. It is sparkly but not as sparkly as Janice's dress so it's hard to tell. Also my hair is not red now. Neither are my eyes :)

Here is the other dress I was thinking of wearing. I'm the one in pink. I know, I should get awesome pics of myself by myself when I wear cool dresses. This dress is crocheted and beaded and is really spectacular.

So, yesterday the organizer sent out an email message that was annoying on so many levels (as rm so aptly put it). One of the incredibly stupid things that it declared was that the reunion dress code was the following:

Most important of all, what to wear? We've gotten a lot of questions on dress for the event on Saturday night at the Maritime, and can recommend what we will call "Bar Dressy", which in NYC is the following:
For the guys: jeans/pants/slacks with button down shirt or a clean nice shirt or top that isn't strewn with stains :-)
For the girls: jeans/pants with a nice top or skirt/dress, basically whatever you are comfortable in.
We don't recommend suits or very formal attire (unless that's your thing in which case you'll be looking extra sharp). We think everyone's goal
is to look presentable but also be comfortable so go with what feels best to you.

All of which means I either have to plan to dress in something else or plan to be overdressed. I did recently buy a really gorgeous sweater dress which is something I never would have contemplated before but which looks pretty awesome on me, but it looks awesome as office attire, not big giant $80/person dinner attire.

Thoughts?

food blogging

chite — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:09:34 GMT

I posted a small thing to my food blog here: http://gottoeat.blogspot.com/2010/08/csa-goodness.html

With no kitchen, the whole idea of having a CSA share is a bit different. At least we're in the part of the summer now where we don't have to cook most of the veggies we get.

So, on the kitchen front, here is how things stand:

- ceiling done, walls painted, center light in, 2 recessed lights in.
- need to do 4 recessed lights and touch up paint from tape pulls
- we discovered last night that one of the undersink wastewater pipes is outside of the cabinet area. Problem. Plumber is coming tomorrow to fix it.
- there's still one electrical outlet that needs to be moved but we are waiting until we get to the cabinet it goes to (for the oven) so that it goes in the right spot.
- Once the plumbing is finished we can put in the cabinets
- We had already purchased the granite but there is a possibility that our contractor (who does our electrical and plumbing) has a contact who can get it for us at a much lower price. We can cancel the granite order until the 28th of August so he is going to let us know if he can do it for less. That would be awesome.

I'm really excited that it all is starting to look so good. A friend was over last night and totally squee'd about the color, which made me feel so so so good about the color now. It's going to be pretty awesome.

Pictures when I find my camera cord.

Birthday

chite — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 03:12:04 GMT

It's my birthday. I'm 38. Here's a picture of me right now:

My plans for the day included going to a baseball game with my family and some girlfriends. But we woke up to RAIN RAIN RAIN and a forecast for MORE RAIN so we cancelled. ~~As it turned out they played the game but the Nats lost 9-2 so probably better that we didn't go.~~Apparently that was yesterday's score and I was looking at box scores for the wrong day. Oops.

Anyway, m y friends all suggested we go out, and together all decided that the best thing to do would be lunch and pedicures. So we mostly (me, sparkybish , and ecwoodburn ) met at my place, went off to go get spydielives as she had no car today, and had a yummy lunch at Red Lobster. Some day ask me about diving across the table for Cheddar Bay Biscuits. After lunch, we went to Fair Oaks mall for pedicures at Da-Vi, which used to be a much better place to get pedicures. They still have the amazing spa pedicure, but the place just seems sadder and more nail-factory-ish than it used to. It made me sad.

Also, note to the women who work at Da-Vi, if you gossip about us in Vietnamese, we can still figure out that you are gossiping about us. Seriously. I will take my money to another nail place if you are going to sit there and be bitchy.

That said, my toenails look awesome. They may gossip about you but they still do a kickass pedi.

THEN Amy suggested we go back to her place for Rock Band. I wanted to go, but also felt that I had left the kids without mom (and milk supply) for 4 hours, and maybe I should see them. So we invited banzai2326 and the kids to come along and join us for Rock Band. Because there were other people there who like my baby, I actually got to play this time (even if I did have to sit out a bunch to be milk factory for a bit).

Maggie got to the point where she had to leave and SURPRISE!! Adam had bought me an ice cream cake. WOW! Carvel too, which totally hearkened back to childhood. What an awesome thing! I also got a balloon. And a card from Micah. I got my present yesterday (a #37 Nationals jersey that I was supposed to have worn to the ballgame today).

We had to run back home because I had to get something faxed out for work, so we did that and then went out to Macaroni Grill for dinner, where I had chicken marsala and FREE CAKE! Because I told them that it was my birthday and I'm a sucker for free cake. It took seemingly forever to get the kids to bed tonight, but they are sleeping now, and we are all going to get some well-needed sleep tonight!

It was a wonderful birthday! Hooray for awesome friends!

Free Drinks! Yay!

chite — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:07:08 GMT

Yesterday I had a really really rough day. When Adam got home, I suggested Generous George's for dinner, and he was all about it. Within minutes of getting there, Lillian was tossing drinks and Micah was standing on the seat and the waitress came over with a peach daiquiri for me. She said that they made extra and she thought I might want it. BLESS HER.

Then today we went to Red Hot & Blue to redeem my birthday coupon. Adam ordered a tall Yuengling and the waiter brought a regular one! Then he said to keep the regular one while he brought the tall one, so I totally got a second free drink! Free drinks! Two days in a row!

I wonder if I'll get any free drinks tomorrow.

Woah...

chite — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:26:57 GMT

I am reading Becky Bailey's book, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline, and am on page 23. I had to stop for a moment because of this paragraph:

"Yes and no define relationships. You cannot really know who you are until you can say no to another. If you cannot say no, you will live through the other person, trying to be the person you think he or she wants you to be. Saying no defines why you are and is therefore a positive force, not a negative one. Saying no strengthens character. It is a shield against manipulation, and it can educate other people about you. Saying no literally teaches others how to treat you."

I really really really wish I had read that 20 years ago.

This book is about changing yourself in order to change your children, and I just had a giant lightbulb go on.

Quote of the Da

chite — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:17:38 GMT

Context: We have no kitchen and no table yadda yadda yadda. We use giant cardboard moving boxes in the living room to eat on right now.

Micah wants to play a game. But we have no table.

Micah: I want to play my new game
Adam: We can't play it; we have no table to play it on
Micah: We have a BOX to play it on!
Me: (Uncontrollable laughter)

Minor friends purge

chite — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:28:02 GMT

You probably won't even notice it, but I purged people who had defriended me over the last couple of years whom I never got around to mutually defriending. If you got defriended and don't know why, uh, just leave a note here and I'll add you back (mistakes happen; I just removed anyone who was not a mutual friend)

Cloth Diapering Fail

chite — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 01:40:58 GMT

I am feeling like a cloth diapering failure.

Ever since we switched to the larger sized diapers, Lillian has been suffering from diaper rash. Really really bad diaper rash.

I have done everything I know of to get the diapers clean/sanitized/free of residue. Nothing is working.

The diapers have a horrible ammonia smell, especially after she wakes up. From what I can tell, the ammonia smell is urine mixing with some kind of bacteria that is in the diapers. OR it is urine mixing with detergent residue. The ammonia in turn causes the diaper rash.

My current cleaning method is:

wash on cold with no detergent
wash on hot with detergent (Allan's Naturally) and a vinegar rinse
wash on hot with no detergent
dry

So, are there any other cloth diaperers out there who have experienced this? I have a HE washer, which I KNOW contributes to the problem, but that is why I am doing the extra wash. Is there anything I can use on the diapers to kill whatever bacteria is staying in them, if that is the case?

For now I am using disposables until the rash clears up. If I have to go to disposables full time, I'll do it, but I would prefer not to. But it's not fair to the baby to have her in pain just so I can save money and be a little greener.

Pampered Chef Party Closing Tomorrow! Order Now!

chite — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:31:43 GMT

Hi everyone,

I had an awesome Pampered Chef party in my backyard this weekend! My consultant said she had never done a grilling party before, but it was SUCH a great idea and she's totally going to advertise it in the future.

A few people said they needed stuff, so if you do, go to my consultant's site here: http://pamperedchef.biz/breannadoyle and order under my party (Host is Lynne Powell)

She is closing out tomorrow BECAUSE the Deep Covered Baker is only available through the end of June!! If you have ever wanted one, this is the time to get it. After June 30 it becomes a Host only product! This is my favorite product in the whole line because you can cook a chicken in the freakin' microwave in 30 minutes. It's absolutely amazing, and everyone should have one :)

So go buy stuff. I'll be ordering lots of barbeque equipment since I have no kitchen for the next 3-4 weeks!!

(Oh and if you do not live really close to me, like within 1/2 hour drive, please have stuff shipped directly to you. If you live near me or see me often or can wait, you can ship it to me)

Thanks for ordering from my party!!