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Woolly Boo-Lee

2012-05-03T19:08:21Z

So, the charity for which Aubrey O’Day is playing on Celebrity Apprentice deals with the tireless fight against bullying. And I think this is unfortunate, because every time I see her on the screen I want to punch her in the face.

It’s probably not an accident, though. Because every time I encounter the word “bully” lately I want to punch something.

Mini was lecturing me a while back about “speaking up” if you see a boo-lee, or if somebody is boo-lee-ing you. Having seen one of Nickelodeon’s bullying PSAs, he considered himself a resident expert on the scourge of bullying in late capitalist America and, truth be told, he probably does have about the same understanding of the whole issue as most people who consider themselves experts. I told him that “speaking up” is all fine and good (though, frankly, I’m more of the school that advocates socking bullies in the face but I’m not convinced this is the best strategy to teach my kids), but how was he going to know if he had seen a boo-lee? How would he know when to “speak up”? And who, precisely, did he plan on “speaking up” to?

Because the thing with bullies is that everybody has a different idea about who they are and how best to deal with them. Using the “B” word has become the Godwin’s Law of 2012. Or perhaps the “mean girl” of 2012. Suddenly everybody is a bully or has a bully they are dealing with, or was bullied as a child, or is currently getting over the sting of having been bullied. I’m kind of wondering if the problem is that we have so many bullies, or if the ones we do have are just terribly busy.

Make no mistake: I’m certain that bullying happens. Like for instance, once I dealt with somebody whom I felt was “a person who deliberately intimidates or persecutes those who are weaker” (OED). “Dealt with” is probably not the right way to say it — I provoked this person. I wouldn’t say I deliberately provoked this person, but I did say things that I knew this person would not like, and I did so because I thought this person was acting like a colossal jackass, but nobody seemed to be policing it. I didn’t really want to be the person to say it, but since nobody else did, I went ahead and did it.

Now, it turns out this person wielded some power. From my perspective, this person might have been called a bully because in a certain sphere, the person possessed a great deal more power than myself, and this person was not exactly known for wielding that power responsibly. The power was what kept people silent about the person in question’s notorious jackassery, and not only that, it inspired people to make dramatic, public proclamations of support for the notorious jackassery. In these public proclamations, it was often me who was called the bully, and since I wield zero power in said sphere, I have to assume that the discrepancy in power referred to a discrepancy in the intellectual capabilities of the two of us.

So you can see, who is the bully and who is the bullied is really just a matter of where you’re sitting sometimes.

Bullying absolutely does happen, and it absolutely is something that should be eliminated, particularly when children are involved. But making dumbass PSAs is not going to do it. Critical thinking might have a shot, but it’s not going to work unless the adults in the world start seeing real bullying for what it is and talking about it openly. And since it’s hard to talk about a real bully without getting SLAPP’d in the face, I’m not sure this is going to happen anytime soon.

So for now, I’ve gone with the easiest definition for Mini: a bully is a bigger kid who is hitting, shoving, or otherwise physically intimidating somebody who is smaller than him or her. I told him to never be afraid to “speak up” to a teacher when he saw that — I’m pretty sure he will.

"Woolly Boo-Lee" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on May 03, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

LL Says Dwayne Wade Needs To Go Down, And He Needs To Go Down Hard

2012-03-14T21:04:44Z

There’s no real reason for this post except to say that LL has her first Lakers jersey.

Except, it’s really a crawler, but you don’t really refer to things like a baby’s “first Lakers crawler.”

The number is Pau Gasol’s, and this is not accidental but it’s also not what would be my first choice. (It is definitely not Mr. Right-Click’s first choice, either, since he refers to Gasol alternately as being such a “weak Euro” or “YES! OLE PAELLA!” depending on his mood and how well Gasol is playing that night.) The thing is, they only make kids and baby jerseys in a few players’ numbers, and I refuse to allow my child to wear a Kobe Bryant jersey until he/she is old enough to request it specifically. My feelings on Kobe Bryant are complex and I need not go into them at length here, suffice to say that, while I immensely respect his basketball skills I have questions about his character that preclude me from having my children wear his number without problematizing the matter a bit.

Which brings me to Mini, who is now old enough to ask for the Kobe jersey and indeed has done so. Now, I could have gone into the problems I have with this but this would involve me discussing things with Mini that he is light years away from understanding or even roughly conceptualizing. So instead I grudgingly accepted this fate as I had agreed to do so many years ago. I still wince whenever I hear him shooting baskets with his friends and saying, “I’m Kobe, you be Gasol.”

Life is complicated once they become too big for Trumpette socks with bows on them.

"LL Says Dwayne Wade Needs To Go Down, And He Needs To Go Down Hard" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on March 14, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Direction

2012-03-08T18:00:50Z

Having a baby in the house makes purpose seem that much more important. The second kid also seems to bring with it a new impatience for dealing with things that don’t fit. I think it might be something to do with having less time and wanting to be more productive with the time you do have.

There was a time where figuring out how the mechanics of social media monetization worked was an endlessly interesting puzzle for me. That was how I started writing about the topic of mommyblogging as a business: it was curiosity that drove me more than anything. A few years ago, there was not much information available on how much money mommybloggers were making, or how they were making it. Even now, much of the information that is available is incorrect, incomplete, or misleading. There is still a need for honest reporting of this information. The problem is that it is not a job that will win you friends, and the weight of that can beat you down after a while.

Some time has passed since I first started writing about this stuff. I have seen behind the curtain now, and it’s not as interesting to me anymore. Despite the dubious quality of portions of the business writing available on the mommyblog space, it does give me some measure of solace that there is some type of conversation happening. Even if it’s about the wrong thing and with the wrong numbers, it is more than was happening three years ago.

All that said, I have grown weary of some of the practices, the smoke and mirrors, the straight up hustling that is part of professional mommyblogging. It is no different from any other commercial venture, but for this crucial point: we are supposed to act like it is different. We are supposed to act like it is all about community and the empowerment of women, and this sticks in my craw a bit. It is not about community and the empowerment of women — today it it is about Levi’s Curve ID and tomorrow it will be about Hillshire Farms. Which is completely fine. Just cop to it.

"Direction" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on March 08, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Some Thoughts In Between Diaper Changes

2012-02-27T21:26:00Z

Both the best and the worst part about writing every day is that it takes away your self-consciousness.
Girl babies allow you to put lotion on them after their baths. Or at least mine does. This is novel.
While we are on the topic of babies, here’s an observation: the default assumption seems to be that any given baby one encounters in the world is a boy. Perhaps this is due to a general lack of hair on babies, but that is not really my concern. Anyway, I find that unless I dress LL in pink, people tend to assume she is a boy and so ask, “How old is he?” (And before you ask, LL has a pretty feminine face so I’m not worried that it’s because she actually looks like a boy.) This is obviously not a big deal because LL cannot understand yet, but it strikes me as one of those instances in which you can see the default sexism that serves as a foundation for this society, e.g. a child is assumed to be male until somehow modified, and then it is female (kind of like the English language). I don’t expect this to change any time soon, but still it bugs, particularly when you consider that the way children develop into adult sexual beings is much more of an ebb and flow kind of a thing, with younger children sharing a certain element of androgyny that I’m not sure we need to banish so quickly. And also when you consider that I don’t really like pink all that much.
That said, I find myself dressing LL in pink an awful lot.
Because here’s the thing: I can get all idealistic about how things should be, but I still want my daughter to be recognized as a girl. Kind of the same theory is at work as when I complain about the fact that the snacks parents hand out after Mini’s basketball games are full of junk, but then when it’s my turn to bring snacks I get junk too. Because I’m not going to be the one mom who doesn’t bring junk: that mom sucks.
Yes, Mini is playing basketball now, and it is about as hilarious as you are imagining, though he is actually quite talented as an outside shooter.
FYI, Kids who play basketball in the 4-6 age range do not pass to each other as a rule.
So, say you teach your kid to pass. And every time he brings the ball down the court, he passes, just like the starting point guard he will no doubt one day be. Only thing is, that pass is the last time he touches the ball for the whole quarter. So then you are faced with a moral dilemma: do I teach my kid to do the right thing, or do I teach him to adapt to the situation at hand, viz. to hog the ball when he gets it because that is what everyone else does, and does he not deserve to shoot the ball as well?
It seems like character gets formed in these little moments of shoulds versus dids.
I have some projects I am going to be giving more time to in the coming months. Blogging will definitely be a part of these projects but I’m not sure how that will play out just yet.
The best blogs, in my experience, focus on people’s most passionate interests. Sometimes these interests change. I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m in the midst of a change. I’m not really sure where that’s going to take me, but I hope some people will stick around and find out.

"Some Thoughts In Between Diaper Changes" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on February 27, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

A fountain increases the happiness by 50 of all who live nearby.

2012-02-20T17:29:40Z

Most online depictions of depression differ greatly from my own experience of major clinical depression. Because of this, reading them often makes me irrationally angry.

For the past few weeks I’ve been playing an iPad game called Royal Envoy wherein you are a city planner dispatched by a monarch to rebuild cities on colonial islands in increasingly elaborate scenarios with various specifications and time constraints. I’m not ordinarily much of a gamer but the truth is that I can become addicted to just about anything and now, having finally managed to achieve the gold star for level 57, it’s safe to say that I can add Royal Envoy to the list addictions, past and present: alcohol, cigarettes, candy, cupcakes, coffee, Monster Energy Drinks, and crystal methamphetamine.

Depression is a popular topic for blogs and I’ve written before about how I’m not overly fond of writing or reading about it. So let me apologize in advance for the next few paragraphs. Depression is an annoyance and if untreated it can be dangerous, but fortunately we live in a time where its treatment is drastically improved from even just a few decades ago. It is my experience that there are fantastic medicinal technologies available and I have a gifted psychiatrist. Most of the time I operate in the world as if I am not a depressed person. I am not one of those people who thinks, “Oh, I feel better now. Maybe I will try going off the meds.” I am not under any delusion that my condition is going away, and it doesn’t really bother me: I don’t consider it a disability, I don’t consider myself to be crazy, and I don’t find a need to handwring about it.

Most of all, I think it’s important to say that I don’t need my depression to explain things to people.

When I do suffer symptoms it is because there is a problem with some aspect of my therapy, such as (just a hypothetical), I have to switch medicines because I’m not able to lose the eighteen pounds of ~~pregnancy~~ breastfeeding weight I put on because of Effexor, and unfortunately there is no way to switch medicines without first weaning off one and then slowly going back up on another.

Here are the symptoms of major clinical depression, as I have it, for anyone who might be curious: I get overwhelmed by things, I become very unproductive. I crave repetitive, soothing tasks, or things that require no attention span whatsoever. Generally I read, play iPad games, watch TV shows, enjoy time with my children, and just wait out the medicine adjustments.

That’s what I’ve been doing, and that’s why I haven’t been around. I find it tough to take pictures of things and produce content when I’m in this state. Fortunately, I also know it’s not permanent. So, for now, back to building fountains.

"A fountain increases the happiness by 50 of all who live nearby." was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on February 20, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Ferber Light

2012-02-01T18:41:15Z

We are sleep training LL with Weissbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Though I’ve never read Ferber, I think of Weissbluth as being a kind of Ferber light: basically the same theory, maybe a bit more namby pamby waffling in the Weissbluth model. Both seem to feel that just letting the baby cry (Weissbluth calls it “extinction,” a word choice that I find alarming) until the baby shuts up and goes to sleep, is the best and quickest route, though Weissbluth allows for other options even if he doesn’t really recommend them.

Jeez, sleep training! What a bitch. But LL had gotten into a routine whereby she would successfully avoid sleeping nearly the whole day (minus a few fifteen-minute-long quick hitter naps), and then by about 5:00 pm she was so overtired and unreasonable that I’d have no choice but to put her down for the night several hours early. After a few night wakings, she would wake up for the day at 4:00 am and we would begin the whole nightmare over again — and this after her establishing expectations by sleeping in two six-to-seven hour stretches by 8 weeks old! Four month sleep regression — it’s not a myth.

Anyway, whereas Mini would scream his head off for a half hour, LL generally will only do it a few minutes. But, then she will wake up after only sleeping for a half hour or so, and start screaming, even while she is rubbing her eyes and clearly still tired. I fight going in there for as long as I can, hoping that she will go back to sleep. Usually this doesn’t last very long, and I crack and go in there, where I am greeted by LL’s exaggerated sigh of relief coupled with a single tear running her cheek (which Mr. Right-Click likened to the old commercial with the American Indian crying over the state of pollution.)

[Insert joke about girls being more dramatic than boys here.]

In short: I hate it. But she’s getting better with her naps, and I’m hoping to have her sleeping past 5 am any day now! [Yawn.]

"Ferber Light" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on February 01, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

We Need To Talk About People On The Internet

2012-01-26T04:20:15Z

Last week for date night I suggested that we go see We Need To Talk About Kevin, the movie about the mother of a young sociopath which stars Tilda Swinton. It was a long shot because Mr. Right-Click struggles with watching movies that have negative themes and children — whether the children are the victims or the victimizers does not seem to matter — so I wasn’t surprised when he said he would rather not. We went to see A Dangerous Method instead, because I like Freud and everyone said it was good. (It was not, though I rather enjoyed the absurdity of Kiera Knightley’s version of a hysteric, and the fact that Freud’s office was full of kitsch, because this level of historical detail was not something I expected.)

Anyway, I’m glad we didn’t see We Need To Talk About Kevin because I decided to read the Lionel Shriver book upon which the movie was based instead. If you haven’t figured it out already, this is all an elaborate means of explaining why there haven’t been as many new posts here lately. I love a good book about a sociopath, and between that, schlepping Mini to preschool, taking LL for shots, and obsessing over the fact that the backs of my hands suddenly look like those of a sixty year old, I’ve been fresh out of time to write (this is a lie).

The truth is that I’ve been struggling with posts here for reasons I’m still trying to figure out. On a practical level, I have less time to write now that I have two children. I feel bad even saying that given that I have help with my children. Also: I now feel bad admitting that I have help with my children, but it would be absurd to pretend that I don’t because the bald fact is that I am a better mother if I am not exclusively responsible for the caring and feeding of my children at all hours of the day. My strengths and weaknesses on this point are things I had to accept about myself back when Mini was under a year old, but I have always been a little cagey about it on this blog, because it’s kind of a touchy subject and I’d rather not get involved.

[Aside: Everything I sit down to write lately seems to go exactly like this post is going: one issue brings up another one, and then another one (that I don't really want to write about because there will be too much explaining), and then another tangentially related one, and before you know it I'm 1500 words into something I didn't intend to write in the first place.]

Here’s what I have been worrying about lately:

that while I do technically have a few free hours in the middle of the day, I never actually feel like writing or doing any kind of work during that time, preferring instead to check out by watching episodes of Downton Abbey or reading about fictional sociopaths;
that really I should be sleeping, if anything, during those few hours because I know I will regret not sleeping when I’m on the second nighttime feeding with the baby;
that the morning hours before the nanny comes and the evening hours after the nanny leaves are really exhausting for me, because I haven’t figured out the rhythm of dealing with two kids instead of one yet, and that I always feel like one of them is being neglected, which stresses me out and makes the whole endeavor more difficult than it really needs to be;
how troubling it is to me that I find these hours so challenging, because I feel like I am defective somehow, as if the balancing of the demands of multiple children gene has somehow passed me by; and, oh by the way,
what is it that I’m planning to do with my life, anyway?

One of the things about the blogging phenomenon that is interesting to me is that, howevermuch people try to present themselves to the world as they want to be seen, bits of their real, unidealized self always seems to creep into view. In the background of a picture, or in the offhanded remark, or even a word choice or omission, the real self is there even in cases where the editor is working overtime to let you see only the best of everything. People present a mask but if you are paying attention you can see through it.

Does everybody see through it? All I know is we are not supposed to talk about it.

In We Need To Talk About Kevin, one of the central conflicts concerns the mother’s perception of her son and how that differs from how other people — most notably her husband and her other child — perceive him. She always believes the worst of him, and in retrospect, is nearly always correct in her take. Is she the only one who can see him clearly? Or would everyone else just rather not get involved?

I’m tired, internet. And I am not sure of my place in this discursive space anymore. Or perhaps I am still figuring out what I want it to be. I’m not sure. While I figure it out, I present to you this picture of LL, which Mr Right-Click says looks like George W. Bush:

Cute, but definitely hiding something.

"We Need To Talk About People On The Internet" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on January 25, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Weanie

2012-01-13T14:30:27Z

Sitting here with cabbage stuffed in my bra, it’s tough not to get philosophical . . .

I’m kidding: I would never actually stuff cabbage in my bra (lie), but I wanted that to be the first sentence of my weaning post. Because I’m weaning, yes I am. I made it to roughly 16 weeks, which is actually better than I expected to do. And although you are ~~supposed to~~ encouraged to do it longer by the breastfeeding pundits, 3 to 4 months was my goal when starting this whole thing, and I’m ready now. Past ready.

Weaning is not the correct term, really, for what I am doing. What I am doing is just stopping. I had decided that I’d let LL decide the pace of this weaning effort, ultimately, by seeing how she reacted over the first 24 hours when I gave her formula bottles exclusively. If she went for the boob or got upset, then I figured I could stretch it out a bit. But LL doesn’t seem to really care about the boob all that much, provided you’ve got some kind of milk, some kind of device for feeding it to her, and that it is heated to the correct temperature. So, I’m sitting here with boobs that look like they might explode any second but I don’t care! I don’t care! Because I’m free. I’m finally free. For the first time in about 13 months my body is my own again, and I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.

I’m pretty sure that is not the attitude you are supposed to have about weaning. And I’m not going to lie — I do feel a little misty at the idea that we won’t be doing the breastfeeding anymore: breastfeeding is, after all, the one thing that LL did only with me. But only a little sentimental, because I figure that there will be lots of those kinds of things as she grows up, and that she will have special things she does with me and other, equally special things she does only with Mr. Right-Click. Life has a way of going on.

Deciding to wean seems like the biggest deal in the world until you make it, and then it’s like, “Why did I wait this long?” Today I am eighteen pounds heavier than I was four weeks after I gave birth. I have gained more weight while breastfeeding for four months than I did my entire pregnancy, despite dieting and working out the whole time since six weeks postpartum. I’m probably supposed to just accept this as part of being a mother and not let it bother me. And not let all the articles that say breastfeeding will make the pounds to drop off make me feel like a failure. But another month of breastfeeding, based on my track record, would mean another five pounds I need to lose. And I’m not at the point where I’m OK enough with myself that I can do that.

When LL is older, she and I will no doubt have a discussion about breastfeeding. I will tell her that because it’s the first big decision you make about parenting each kid, it feels like the most important thing in the world. But eventually you realize that whether you feed your baby with your boob or a bottle, breastmilk or formula, they tend to grow up, to thrive, and fall in love with you and you with them. I will also tell her that regardless of what they say about latching correctly, the first two weeks are going to hurt like a motherfucker. That’s just the way it is. But if you keep going you will get to a point where it’s not so bad, maybe even kinda good. And then someday she will figure out that this is an accurate description of most aspects of parenting, just like I did.

"Weanie" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on January 13, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Words With Friends Moves You Should Totally Not Read Into, Why Do You Always Do That?

2012-01-09T20:50:08Z

TEAT
GIGGLE
QUIET
FINE
BABY
NAP
SNACK
AGED
METABOLISM
CHEATER
SNIDE
DO
NOT
GET
SNIPPY
WITH
ME
MISTER
SNIPPY
WAS
NOT
BEING
SNIPPY
YES
YOU
WERE
SURGEON
MOTHERFUCKER
[SORRY, 'MOTHERFUCKER' IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE WORD']
VOWELS
EPEE
CONSONANTS
XIS
NEVER
EQUALLY
MIXED
RESIGN
CROOK
TO
PARDON

"Words With Friends Moves You Should Totally Not Read Into, Why Do You Always Do That?" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on January 09, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Thumbsucker

2012-01-06T22:05:37Z

When I was a girl, I sucked my thumb.

Like, for a long time, long past when I was supposed to have outgrown it. Old enough to remember doing it, and old enough to remember my mom putting up a chart on the refrigerator that held spaces for the gold stars I would get if I made it through the night without sucking my thumb.

Throughout my adult life I have comforted myself by believing that many of my neuroses can be traced back to choices my parents made. I sucked my thumb for a long time, my thinking has been, because either: 1) I was weaned too early; or 2) in an environment in which my emotional needs were not being met, I became overly reliant on an ability to self-soothe.

Another convenient explanation I’ve had for one of my “issues” is that my perfectionism stems from a need to excel in order to get enough attention. That I figured out early on that high achievements resulted in extra love, so I sought out things in which I could excel and became frustrated by and abandoned things that were difficult for me. Because if I could not do them perfectly, who would care?

In their first collaborative effort, my children are working together to debunk these theories in their own special ways.

Mini has long been showing signs of being a perfectionist, and is very concerned with determining and ranking the “best” of things or people or places. When you ask him if he likes something, he will often avoid using the word “good” and choose to say something is “perfect” instead.

In recent months, as he has learned to write, he struggles with letting himself create things that aren’t always perfect. “Only a computer can make letters that are perfect,” I tell him. But no, the line in the middle of the “A” is too long — he has to start over. When I tell him that everyone’s handwriting is slightly different, and that the main thing is that people can read it, he will nod indulgently, and then pull out another sheet of paper to start again.

Mini is not even old enough yet to understand the concept of achievement, so I don’t really see how he can associate it with more attention. Particularly since up until very recently he was the only child.

And as for the other one? Guess where she’s headed?

She hasn’t even been weaned yet. I imagine when I do wean her (and that day will be soon, oh yes, it shall be soon) it will push her over the top into full-fledged thumbsucking, instead of the half-hearted side-of-the-hand sucking she’s doing now. Meanwhile I was not weaned until eleven months, and this kid has been passed from different sets of arms continuously since birth, so much so that she doesn’t even usually cry for us to get her from her crib, she just makes one loud noise as if to say, “HEY! I’m going to need your help over here momentarily!”

I am thinking more and more that I will have to accept the theory that shit just happens. In life, and in parenting.

"Thumbsucker" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on January 06, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Getting To The Chair-ness Of The Chair

2012-01-03T22:23:43Z

Lately, I’ve been finding myself increasingly confused about the “real.” [Aside: I'm a little disgusted with myself for writing that sentence, because it reminds me of this awful graduate seminar I once took where we had to talk about ontology and film adaptations of literature, e.g. "What makes this Emma . . . Emma?"]. What I mean to say is: it’s becoming more difficult every day to figure out exactly what is “real” and what is just something done for attention, traffic, celebrity. Like stunts are becoming the new reality.

Mr. Right-Click and I were watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on Monday night. Or, rather, to more accurately reflect reality I should note that I was watching it, and Mr. Right-Click was sort of benevolently tolerating it whilst playing Monopoly on the iPad. Anyway, the matter of Taylor and Russell Armstrong and alleged domestic violence came up, naturally, because Bravo, in its stated determination to re-edit this season in light of Russell Armstrong’s suicide, failed to mention the fact that what they would be doing was, in fact, re-editing it to include more footage of Taylor and Russell. (Or at least it seems that way. Because all I know is that we are constantly looking at a dead guy on film and it’s creepy enough to make even me rethink whether watching this show is a good idea or not. Not enough to make me stop watching it. But enough to make me think about it.)

Anyway, Russell and Taylor are sitting there in the limo and he’s saying that Camille Grammer has made up outright lies about him abusing Taylor. Now, according to everyone else, Camille Grammer has just been repeating what Taylor has told everyone, but this is besides the point — Taylor is saying, “It was an exaggeration,” and Russell is saying, “It’s an outright lie.”

And I’m thinking, well, which is it? Because given, an abuser is unlikely to come out and admit that he abused his wife, particularly on a hit show on basic cable. But on the other hand, how can it be an outright lie, if any abuse did happen? How can somebody sit there and say, in front of a camera, that something is an outright lie if there is even a little teeny shred of truth to it — either you hit her or you didn’t, Russell. Which is it?

So I say to Mr. Right-Click, “I hate doubting any woman who is claiming abuse, but there is something about her . . . I don’t know. I don’t buy it.”

And he says, “Oh, he hit her. No doubt in my mind. 100%.”

But I object, “Then how can he say it’s an ‘outright lie.’? How can he even bring himself to do that, and to email cease and desist letters all over town, if there is any truth to this?”

And then I feel like an ass, because I’m doing what people always do with domestic violence, which is to downplay it or not believe it, or act like the woman is making a mountain out of a molehill.

Except, am I?

Because these days the stakes are much higher for fabricating something like this. Drama translates into camera time on TV, product placement in a fake televised wedding, traffic-driven ad dollars on a blog. How can we know when something is really happening or not? What version of “reality” is really real, and how willing are people to fabricate a drama about themselves in order to cash in?

I often point out to Mr. Right-Click that certain celebrity pairings are publicity driven — one or the other (or both) of them is gay, for example, and to sell themselves as leading men/women they need to maintain the appearance of heterosexuality. Or maybe two stars really are dating but they are just more appealing/attractive as a married couple, so they get married in order to boost their careers.

Mr. Right-Click thinks that: 1) I am convinced everyone in Hollywood is gay; and 2) I’m just making this stuff up. But to me it makes sense: if you start living in a world where drama translates so readily into cash, couldn’t you start looking at a relationship as just another role you can take? Wouldn’t you just see the world as another stage, and along with it a host of other means of making money?

This isn’t just about the Housewives.

"Getting To The Chair-ness Of The Chair" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on January 03, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Three Months. Let The Overidentification Begin.

2012-01-03T08:00:13Z

Hey internet: guess who is three months old?

Related: guess who looks an awful lot like me, at least so far?

The Universe has a way of making you deal with your issues, whether you like it or not. As LL gets bigger, I notice more and more of her physical features are ones that she shares with me. And things that I find repugnant in myself I find myself feeling are adorable in her. Example: my nose. I’m not a fan of it. But LL’s nose is, uh, pretty much my nose. And on her, I find it adorable.

So now, I wonder does this mean that I have no objectivity when it comes to LL? Or simply that I lack objectivity when it comes to myself? Or, is it that my opinion of the nose itself is completely detached from reality in both cases? That, in the case of the nose on myself, it is repugnant because it reflects back the hatred I hold for myself, which renders everything ugly? Whereas, with LL, I find the nose beautiful because it reflects back the love I have for her, which renders everything beautiful?

Or neither?

I don’t know. But it’s messing with my head. But don’t worry: this is what my psychoanalysis is for — I’m hoping to figure it out before it gets a chance to mess with her head.

"Three Months. Let The Overidentification Begin." was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on January 03, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

New Year’s Resolutions For Assholes

2012-01-02T08:00:02Z

Make a priority of tagging at least ten people on Facebook each week in photos from high school.
Extra points if any of the people you tag have bad perms.
Become a regular in the comments section of Jezebel.
Related: wax philosophical on what victims of domestic violence should do when you yourself have never been in a violent situation, nor are you personally acquainted with anyone who has suffered domestic violence.
Take photos of alcoholic beverages and post them to Instagram.
Well — you know, more regularly than you already do.
Attempt to make a sponsored post about The Smurfs relate to one or more of the following: John Stuart Mill, Jacques Derrida, or Malcolm Gladwell.
[Gladwell is just a bone I'm throwing to the common folk, FYI.]
Make a list of resolutions for other people.
Invite somebody to your “white” party, and then when they get there, tell them they have to go home.
Throw a “white” party.
Sob uncontrollably when you are throwing people out of your “white” party.
Have black chandeliers at your “white” party.
Break a chandelier when you’re out scouting chandeliers for your “white” party.
Don’t offer to pay for the chandelier you broke.
Become friends with Faye Resnick.
Make an appearance on Watch What Happens Live!
Try to watch more Bravo in the New Year.

"New Year’s Resolutions For Assholes" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on January 02, 2012. Copyright ®2012 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Finally Posting Pictures of the Finished Nursery

2011-12-20T08:00:22Z

When last I mentioned LL’s nursery, it was in the context of GlideHer2011. Shortly after that clear case of online bullying and/or trolling, I went into early labor for three weeks. Then we had a baby, and almost three months have gone by and it has finally occurred to me that I never posted pictures of the finished nursery.

I forced Mr. Right-Click to go in there this morning and take pictures with his wide-angle lens because it’s a small room and I don’t know what I’m doing with photography, as we all know. I wanted to get pictures of the nursery as-is, so it’s not really styled in the fashion of typical lifestyle blog home decor porn. But I’m still reasonably happy with the results.

Can we talk about how many different colors of pink there are, though?

My original idea for the room was to just include “splashes” of pink so that the room would still look feminine but not hit you totally over the head with the girl=pink theme.

The only problem is, when you try to incorporate useful objects into your color scheme (like I have here, with the swaddling and miracle blankets, toys and other sundry items that I found in pink), you realize that there are a shit ton of different pinks out there.

This really bothered me at first, but now I’ve just kind of embraced the chaos. What color pink did I use for the splashes of color? All of them.

Yes, even the Kleenex. Even the Kleenex is pink.

I bought a few of the photographs/art from Etsy and art.com, but many of the pictures are taken by Mr. Right-Click, which is a nice way to make it more personal, I think.

The rug was designed by and manufactured by Custom Cool Rugs. I love the way it came out.

The light fixture is from Ikea and it has popped up many places in recent months. Cough. I still like it. I think it is really great in scale for this room, and adds kind of a whimsical element that I love. Also check out how cool it looks if you turn on the lights and lie down on the floor.

Plus, it costs like $50 or something, which is crazy when you compare it to the prices of some of the lighting fixtures I was considering.

We already had the crib from Mini, but I got new linens and ended up not using the bumper. Not because of the recent hysteria about crib bumpers, either — the bumper just looked stupid and did not fit this crib. Otherwise I would totally be using it.

If this were a truly styled photo, I would have removed the Tiny Love mobile because it doesn’t match, but damn if I don’t need that thing constantly, and I couldn’t be bothered. LL is way into the mobile, which is odd because I don’t remember Mini caring about it for another month or two of age.

I love the way the glider worked out with this room, and the shape of the chair is perfect for breastfeeding. I will say, though, that the fug glider I had for Mini is better at actually gliding. Fortunately, LL is a fairly mild baby and doesn’t really care about being rocked to sleep, so the advanced glider action is not really needed anyway. Funny how both the kids’ rooms kind of ended up fitting the babies in their own special ways.

"Finally Posting Pictures of the Finished Nursery" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on December 20, 2011. Copyright ®2011 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

#IKnowYou’reADouchebagBecause

2011-12-19T08:00:15Z

You retweet other people’s superficial praise of you, your actions, or something you said.
You think that the cream and sugar station at Starbucks is a perfectly acceptable place to blow your nose.
You’re really into American Idol.
You list your last month’s pageviews on your homepage, without a link to any kind of credible outside statistical gathering entity.
Your break from Twitter includes a 50% increase in your tweet per day average.
You get worked up over the Elf on the Shelf.
(Either pro or con, it doesn’t matter.)
You get all worked up about Santa, for that matter.
(Again, either pro or con, it doesn’t matter, but you earn extra douchebag points for becoming extra worked up about people “lying to their kids” about Santa.)
You attempt to use illness or other misfortune as a means of increasing your web traffic.
You find the Kardashians fascinating.
You had something to do with the Alvin and the Chipmunks Chipwrecked movie.
You are Jason Lee.
You are Jim Carrey.
You’ve ever spent time at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.
You want to spend time at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.
You’ve ever written a post about blogging that discusses “bullies” and what to do about them.

"#IKnowYou’reADouchebagBecause" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on December 19, 2011. Copyright ®2011 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Insult To Injury

2011-12-15T08:00:40Z

"Insult To Injury" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on December 15, 2011. Copyright ®2011 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Awkward Family Christmas Letters

2011-12-14T08:00:50Z

Lieutenant Literal‘s annual Christmas letter is just too good not to share. Rather than transcribing it, I’ve included pictures of the unevenly cut mimeographed sheets because, like a true Foucauldian, I feel you are robbed of the full experience if you lose sight of the letter as a historical artifact.

Now, before you get on my case for publishing this, bear in mind that the letter is sent out by Lieutenant Literal himself to everyone with whom he has come into contact for the past forty five years. Posting it on the internet is really just a more full realization of his vision. My only regret is not keeping past years letters, in which discussions of erectile dysfunction, my parents’ divorce, and my brother’s career averages as a high school quarterback were added to the encyclopedic recitation of obscure home furnishings and average nursing salaries in Southern California.

Family . . . it explains some things.

"Awkward Family Christmas Letters" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on December 14, 2011. Copyright ®2011 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Strolling The Yard At Corcoran Redux

2011-12-13T16:40:55Z

LL spent the morning with Mr. Right-Click, as she often does, while I slept in.

Apparently, yard strolling runs in the family.

Don’t let the pink jumpsuit fool you: that baby will shank your ass.

"Strolling The Yard At Corcoran Redux" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on December 13, 2011. Copyright ®2011 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

How Much Will That Sponsored Post Cost You?

2011-12-08T16:38:15Z

The hypothesis of this post is not radical — that publishing sponsored posts would lead to a loss in blog readership — still, I wanted to gather some data over time before I published anything. So, after a year of looking at subscriber numbers, growth patterns, and total pageview numbers on blogs that have shown a dramatic increase in sponsored posts, I have the following to say:

I entered into this with the theory that highly successful blogs that dramatically increased their use of sponsored posts might reduce their traffic by as much as 25%. Let’s see if I was right.

Now, it’s impossible for me to show that sponsored posts are the only reason for a loss in readership/total pageviews per month because, as we know, there are a ton of factors that go into increasing or decreasing blog traffic. And not all sponsored posts are created equal, and not all niches deal with sponsored posts in equal ways.

However, I have been watching blogs that had heretofore maintained relatively stable traffic levels for months, if not years, at a time. The size of the blogs and the traffic of the blogs vary, but what they share in common is their niche (parenting) and the fact that they have gone from a very low level of sponsored posts (or, in some cases, zero sponsored posts) to clusters of sponsored posts, particularly at busy times of the year (the beginning of fiscal quarters, the holiday season).

Traffic over one million pageviews per month.

For example, take the case of a successful blog that averaged approximately 3.5 million pageviews per month as of this time last year. Over the course of the past year, this blog has gone from hosting no sponsored posts to presenting several clusters of them spread out throughout the year, beginning with the last holiday season, picking up again in the summer of 2010, and continuing on through the present. As of the time of the publication of this post, the blog had dropped to between 2.4 and 2.6 million pageviews per month — still a considerable traffic level to be sure, but nevertheless suggesting a 31% drop in traffic from this time last year. If we look at this loss in traffic in terms of reported gross display advertising dollars lost, this could represent as much as $12,000 less per month, or $148,000 less per year.

The next post in this series will look at the effect of sponsored posts on blogs with traffic of less than 500,000 pageviews per month.

"How Much Will That Sponsored Post Cost You?" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on December 08, 2011. Copyright ®2011 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.