josetteplank.com

Spring In the Middle Class Suburbs

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:16:00 +0000

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandjill come
running from soccer practice and boy scout meetings and orchestra concerts
and band practice and musicdanceskating recitals and baseball tryouts and
hockey games and girl scout meetings and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful
and mommy is working three part-time jobs

but volunteers for

MayFairskatingtestsessionsfielddayendofyearscoutmeetingworkingconcessionstandsandchaperoningtrips

and the yard is threatening to
turn to wetlands and forest and desert
and there is a dead

fledgling sparrow on the front porch

and a discarded half-eaten bunny carcass in the back yard,

like the goat-footed balloon man

works for vito corleone

whistling "sleep is for fishes

and the un-caffeinated"

far
and
wee,

muthereffer.

(with apologies to e.e. cummings)

photo

Josette at MamaPop.com: Michelle Duggar Wears A Modest Swimsuit, Why Don’t You?
Josette at PennLive.com: My Life is a Gym fitness plan for parents who don't have time to workout

Don't Despair. It's Always Been The Worst Of Times.

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:06:00 +0000

I know it's a world gone mad.

But, really, it's always been a world gone mad.

Take the Wall Street bombing:

Killed 38, injured 143 - 300

That was September 16, 1920.

The bomb was in a horse-drawn wagon.

Or the Bath school disaster:

The Bath School disaster is the historical name of the violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan that killed 38 elementary school children and 6 adults, and injured at least 58 other people.Kehoe first killed his wife, fire-bombed his farm and set off a major explosion in the Bath Consolidated School, before committing suicide by detonating a final explosion in his truck. It is the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.

1927. The Good Ole Days.

This is a list of all the terrorism/bombings in the US from 1865. That's not including wars.

In the moment and for days, weeks - even years - it's always shocking.

But in a twisted way, it's encouraging to know that in spite of all our violent entertainment and media images, we are still shockable.

Of course, shockable things happen around the world, daily. I don't know if we can or should maintain or hold on to all the fear and pain of every tragedy if it doesn't directly affect us.

Even while we do need to hold on to our outrage.

Despair and living in worry are impractical at best. Debilitating at worst.

I wonder if people in the past were able to move on and forward because even though there were horrors - and so many additional horrors of disease and accidents that we now more confidently prevent - they weren't vicariously saturated in - marinating in -every Tweet and blog post of seemingly every person on the planet..

London Blitz, WWII

It's good that we are empathetic.

But I think it's also important to step away at times so that we can stay mentally and spiritually intact enough to play the role of caretakers and game changers when needed.

I think we need to hold on to our perspective.

In some ways, it's always been the worst of times.

We'll get through. Again.

Don't despair.

YAY! MORE JOSETTE!
How To Talk To Kids About Terrorism: Josette Plank on PennLive.com
Dove's Real Beauty Sketches FAIL: Josette Plank at MamaPop.com

A Short History Of Parenting Advice, Mommy Olympics, Fretting, and All Those Mothers Doing Everything Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 04:25:00 +0000

Let's play a game. This game is called Parents These Days.

As in, "Frank Bruni, journalist with The New York Times, thinks that Parents These Days have cornered the market on being anxiety-addled know-nothings, and that parenting experts are something that Al Gore invented along with the Internet, and let's see whether or not Frank Bruni is right."

Read the quotes below. As you're reading, see if you can spot which quote is about or directed to a Helicopter Parent, Permissive Parent, Anxious Parent, Authoritarian Parent, Authoritative Parent, Natural Parent, Tiger Parent, and every other kind of Parents These Days that any parenting author, expert, or guru has ever slapped with a moniker.

Fun part? All of these quotes are from before the year 1930.

Everything old is new again. And everybody under the sun since time immemorial has had advice for parents. Aren't you glad you didn't live next door to Aristotle? What a busybody.

(Below are direct quotes from other blog posts, books, and articles as linked in the subheadings.)

Parenting advice from Ancient Greece

Well, then if we employ all our ingenuity to keep our growing child all through these three years from the experience of distress, alarms and, so far as possible, pain itself, the growing soul is all this time being rendered more cheerful and gracious. ~ Plato

After the children have been born, the manner of rearing them may be supposed to have a great effect on their bodily strength. It would appear from the example of animals...that food which has most milk in it is best suited to human beings; but the less wine the better. ~ Aristotle

Those who are wrong who in their Laws attempt to check the loud crying and screaming of children, for these contribute toward their growth, and, in a manner, exercise their bodies. . ~Aristotle

And more Ancient Greece

Raising children is an uncertain thing; success is reached only after a life of battle and worry. ~Democritus

Parenting advice from China, 1st century B.C.

Keep babies quiet, and do not stimulate them. Only after behavior emerges from inside can proper guidance begin.

Parenting in Medieval Europe

Mummy-style swaddling bands were...intended to ensure that the limbs grew straight, a purpose based on medieval ideas of physiology, which held that a baby's body was so pliant that pulling or pushing on a body part determined how it grew.

While it was learning to walk, the child wore a padded bonnet to help protect its head against injury.

An English law of 1181 required militia service from boys beginning at age 15.

Dirty Hands, 1877

Parenting advice from the 1700s and 1800s

From the 1700s until the mid-20th century...mothers were repeatedly criticized for being "anxious, well-meaning, but ignorant," as one 1916 book put it.

A 1916 book warned parents not to bounce babies on their knees, as it would spoil babies and lead to "wrecked nerves."

Scottish physician William Buchan's 1804 book Advice to Mothers informed them that "in all cases of dwarfishness or deformity, ninety-nine out of a hundred are owing to the folly, misconduct or neglect of mothers."

In his 1877 book, Advice to a Wife, Chavasse informed mothers not to nurse for too long. Once the baby was past 9 months of age, nursing could cause "brain disease" in babies and blindness in mothers.

The Spoiled Child, by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1765

Pro-breastfeeding debate from The Maternal Physician, 1811

That there are many instances when the mother's health will not permit her to suckle her child I will allow; but I must believe those cases would less frequently occur if the attempt were persevered in.

My first child had the thrush when about a fortnight old. I had previously suffered great pain from an exuberant flow of milk, and was greatly weakened by it. Now I took the humour from his mouth, and for two months he seldom sucked without throwing up fresh blood afterwards, which he had swallowed with his milk. The torture I endured can better be conceived than described. Many of my friends with tears entreated me to wean my child, and dry away my milk, which, owing to loss of appetite and fever, occasioned by excess of suffering, might then have been done with ease ; but my own mother...exhorted me to persevere with fortitude, nor let anything I endured tempt me to tear my babe from the breast, and by improper food occasion ill health, if not endanger his life ; for amidst all my distress I had the inexpressible delight of seeing him thrive surprisingly.

And from the same text, the 1811 Mommy Olympics argument over how to best cleanse a child: with cold water or with spirits.

I have now a fine boy, scarce four months old, who was born in the winter, when the weather was most inclement; yet this did not deter me from insisting upon his being thoroughly washed with cold water before he was dressed; and the practice has never been omitted a single day since ; and now he will spring to the basin, evidently wishing to put his hands in the water, and laugh while it trickles down his neck.

Many good women have called me cruel, and protested it was unnatural thus to deluge a poor little innocent with cold water ; asserting that a little spirit of any kind was much better. Now I would ask which is the most cruel or unnatural; to lave its little limbs with the pure element, designed by a beneficent Creator for our purification, and consequent health, and beauty ; or with ardent spirits, which, when applied to the skin of a new born babe, already perhaps in many places excoriated, must occasion intolerable smarting and pain.

And When Oh When will the mothers of 1811 finally do away with the unnecessary baby gadgetry that grandmothers of the 1700s used?

For this, and other reasons above enumerated, it may be best to suffer [toddlers] to tumble about a carpet, or lead them whenever they show a great desire to walk, until they voluntarily venture alone...

Happily, those pernicious inventions the go-cart, standing stool, and walking stool, are rapidly growing obsolete, and nature begins to assert her sway in that as in many other particulars of infant management; and I sincerely hope they will ere long be consigned to complete oblivion, together with the scull caps, forehead cloths, swaddling bands, and stays, in which our great grandmammas used to imprison their hapless offspring.

I have heard my grandmother relate, that one of her sons walked down cellar in a walking stool and almost killed himself.

Parenting advice from psychologist John B. Watson who wrote child rearing advice articles for "popular press" in the 1920s. Excerpts from his parenting book Psychological Care of Infant and Child, 1928.

Let your behavior always be objective and kindly firm. Never hug and kiss [children], never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when you say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning.

The fact that our children are always whining and always crying shows the unhappy, unwholesome state they are in. Their digesting is interfered with and probably their whole glandular system is deranged.

And finally, a 1928 Bookman article "Bringing Up Mother" by Rachael O. Kallen, in which Ms. Kallen reminds us that criticizing Parents These Days was a hobby long before the Internet was around.

Why is Mother a menace? Because she is closest to her child, most intimately in contact with him during his most plastic period of life. And her contact with him is not ruled by understanding, but…by emotion (mother love is the name this usually goes by), ignorance, and a combination of laziness and selfishness….

I figure the retort which arises in the mind of the typical American mother who reads what I have just written. It has been made to me times without number by mothers who suddenly find their children difficult. “Of course I am emotional about my child. I can’t help that. And perhaps I am ignorant compared with psychologists, but I think a Mother’s instinct is truer than all the reasoning in the world. Nobody knows my child as well as I do. But I resent your saying I am selfish and lazy. Why I would give my life for my child, or work my finger to the bone!”

And then Mother proceeds to spoon-feed two year old Mary because Mary gets so dirty when she is allowed to feed herself. Mary is quite capable of using a spoon and would learn to hold a fork if given half a chance! And Mother dresses five year old Willie from head to toe because it is so much easier than teaching Willie to dress himself.

Ah well.

At least I know now that when I'm being criticized for whatever it is Parents These Days are being criticized for, I'm in good company.

I wonder if the mom living next door to Rachael O. Kallen pulled down her blinds and poured herself a cold adult beverage every night after the kids were asleep. And went to bed dreaming about the invention of blogging about her cranky neighbor.

Read more Josette at PennLive.com No shortage of 'experts' to address laundry list of modern parenting foibles

Here's a great piece by Parentwin from BlogHer Yes, Frank Bruni of the NYT, Parenting Is Confusing

photo, photo, photo, photo, photo, photo, photo

John Milton's School Of Overly Suspicious Parenting

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:59:00 +0000

Kid: Do we have a copy of Paradise Lost?

Mom: Paradise Lost. The Paradise Lost by John Milton. Is it for school?

Kid: No.

Mom: So...what? You want to read it?

Kid: Yes.

Mom: You want to read it.

Kid:

Mom: Why?

Kid: Just because.

Mom: Well, I'm just wondering why. Paradise Lost by John Milton. The Paradise Lost that's written in blank verse.

Kid: Sigh

Mom: No, because I'm just...does some kid's cartoon mention it? Did Katy Perry write a song about it?

Kid: No. Never mind.

Mom: No! Wait! Here! Paradise Lost! Just read the intro.I think some of my notes from college are in the margins.

Kid: Okay. Thanks.

Mom: Yup. (Making note to self: Next time just shut up.)

Conversation With My Pre-Teen About Victoria's Secret Underwear

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:42:00 +0000

So, recently there's been some hubbub about Victoria's Secret possibly marketing to teens and younger girls.

Let's look into this a second, shall we?

Last fall, Justin Bieber was the main event at a Victoria's Secret fashion show - that is, the main event other than super-skinny women with perfectly curved and coiffed everything.

Because, you know, Justin Bieber's target audience is college-aged and twenty-something women, so it makes sense that he'd be helping to promote sexy lingerie for adults.

Heh. I'm just kidding. Justin Bieber's target audience is little girls who have only recently outgrown their My Little Pony lunch boxes, most of whom don't even have the hips to hold up pantaloons other than Hello Kitty briefs.

Victoria's Secret representatives say that, sure, girls in the 15 and 16-year-old range want to be "like the big girls" and gussy up their curvy bits in sexy, fun, self-esteem enhancing undergarments. That's my interpretation of what they said, more or less.

Victoria's Secret knows the demographics when it comes to who is shopping in their stores. No shying away from the truth there. But hey, don't even younger girls want to be like the 15 and 16-year-olds? Tweens are a huge market.

How To Look Like A Victoria's Secret Angel In Middle School

"Since you are in middle school, you might not fit in their lingerie. But, you can dress in a few of their things. On a daily basis, the models wear dark wash skinny or boot-cut jeans and short shorts, blouses with 3 buttons undone, lacy camisoles, off-the-shoulder shirts, mini skirts, short dresses, maxi dresses, etc....Get Victoria's Secret underwear as soon as you can."

I hear complaints from parents who have trouble finding clothes that aren't poorly made or don't have hems and cutaways rarely seen this side of a Vegas review. It's no surprise some moms and dads are on edge about the prospect of Victoria's Secret marketing to even younger consumers.

There's a big "so what" there. As in "So what. Just don't buy it if you don't agree with the marketing."

Well, sure...voting with our dollars sometimes feels like the most meaningful vote we have.

And right, parenting isn't easy. No one said parenting would be easy. And in a world of advertising and entertainment media that present mixed messages about what kind of girl is the right kind of girl, our job as parents is to teach, question, guide, listen, and sometimes pull back the reins on just how much of that mixed message our daughters come in contact with on a daily basis...whether that's turning off the television or sitting with our kids and talking about what they are watching or monitoring Internet use.

But, excuse me also if I fight back the Mad Men's big guns by being very clear as to the message behind my held-back dollars. Pardon my attempts to level the battlefield.

Here's one battlefield created by non-stop marketing of specific types of teenage sexuality: I've heard tell on the Internets that some middle school gym class locker rooms could be absolute hell for the 7th grade girl who wears plain white Hanes underpants. Parents are gently reprimanded for making their Plain Jane kid a target for teasing. Parents are told that this is reason enough for buying your 11-year-old something, er, a little more grown-up. Or "fun." Or "cute." Because, you see, "all the other kids are doing it." Ehem.

I'm sure you see the problem with insinuating that the kid who is comfortable in Plain Jane clothes is, essentially, the one who has to change what she's wearing to conform to the sensibilities of other 11-year-olds who want to dress like the big girls. That Plain Jane shouldn't expect her sense of well-being and self-esteem to come from, oh, how about not being teased. On the contrary...feeling good about oneself comes after giving-in to the stink-eye of classmates and dressing Just The Right Way.

Other battlefields?

I'm sure you see the problem with subjecting young girls to manufactured and ridiculous - almost science fiction kooky - stereotypes of female beauty and sexuality, e.g., "healthy sexuality all comes down to tiny underwear with come-hither slogans plastered across your butt."

I don't need to describe the body image gauntlet most young girls start running in elementary school and hopefully finish without an eating disorder or lifelong helping of self-loathing every time they look in the mirror or try on a pair of pants.

I won't go into why it's preferable to allow our daughters to take growing-up at a slower clip instead of allowing pre-teens to run headlong into a definition of feel-good adult sexuality that ignores all the physical, social, and emotional challenges and responsibilities of - as the underwear says -"Feeling Lucky."

Too much? It's all just underwear?

Anyway....

As a sort of temperature check, I had a conversation with my 11-year-old daughter recently about undergarments for young women. Just to see if I had a kid who might be sneaking to the mall behind my back to buy itchy thongs with racy slogans printed on them.

Mother: If Victoria's Secret made underwear for middle-school girls, would you want me to buy you some?

11-year-old: What? Why?

Mother: Well, you know. Because in the gym class locker room when you are getting changed, you feel bad about your plain cotton underwear.

11-year-old: I get dressed quickly. Who's even looking at each other's underwear. That's weird.

Mother: Some girls say they feel bad not having fancy underwear. They want to have cute underwear because it's fun. It makes them feel happy or grown-up.

11-year-old: I never, ever, ever, ever think about my underwear. I couldn't even tell you which ones I'm wearing right now.

Mother: So you don't feel bad about your underwear?

11-year-old:

Mother: Okay then.

How To Please A Man

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:08:00 +0000

From my husband's series of vintage instructional videos on How To Please Your Man.

Lesson One: Parking In The Garage

Take Your Child To Work Day

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 05:04:00 +0000

April 25, 2013 is Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day.

My husband sent an email to my older kids asking them if they'd like to attend at his office. I'm guessing his work place will have some activities set up for kids. Maybe a snack and some juice. And then they'd get to hang out in his cubicle for a bit, twirl around on the chairs, make some crafts with rubber bands and paper clips while he made phone calls.

Perhaps there'd be some actual lawyer-ing they could help him do. Send someone up the river or toss'em in the hoosegow.

My retail workplace doesn't participate in Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day. Liability reasons.

But frankly, I think kids would get a lot out of working a day in retail.

I think that spending seven hours on their feet while assisting customers with questions and complaints, organizing the magazine racks, dusting the shelves, ringing at the register, putting hundreds of books back where they belonged, filling paper towels in the rest room, helping wash dishes in the cafe, sweeping the floor and wiping tables, and needing to presume that everyone they talked to was "always right" and to presume so with a smile on their face -

I think that would actually be a great motivator to continue to work hard in school and get good grades so that if my kids did go into retail, they could at least enter as a lieutenant.

I think everyone should work retail at some point, if just for a few hours.

I think everyone should also know a few words in sign language and be able to drive a clutch, but generally, no one is asking me what I think.

source

Read More Josette at MamaPop.com: Papa Bear Ben Affleck Defends Daughter Against Paparazzi

josetteplank.com Redux: 10 Important Life Lessons I Need To Teach My Kids

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:00:00 +0000

1. How to make Mama's coffee in the morning.

2. How not to felt wool sweaters in the dryer.

3. "Lights on when no one is in the room" in the long run equals "we're still not going to Disney World."

4. Running on vinyl flooring in stocking feet equals three to six stitches, at least.

5. Cabbage is your friend.

6. Don't touch the hockey ice with your bare hands. That stuff is nasty.

7. Nice threat, but ultimately, I don't care if you write a tell-all book about me since I'm already writing it myself.

8. Be goofy and outrageous at times. It's fun, most people aren't watching anyway, and the ones who do and criticize are mostly just envious. Or constipated.

9. Butter is worth the fat.

10. There's something about a bound paper book, handwritten notes, and card games.

3 Lessons I've Got Covered

1. Washboard scrubbing is also an important form of social media.

2. Hobo-ing

3. Be adorable, mostly.

Read More Josette at MamaPop.com: Advice On How Not To Get “Sweetheart Scammed”: A Handy Guide From MamaPop And USA.gov

It's Not Just A Box of Thin Mints

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 05:19:00 +0000

It's a hike along a wooded trail...

to a mountain overlook.

It's a night in a tent...

and a campfire with friends.

It's learning about history...

and Girl Scout Day at the National Constitution Center...

and Girl Scout Day at Hans Herr House in Lancaster, PA.

It's daring to explore a cave...

and daring to make a (science experiment) mess.

It's making friends...

and helping friends....

and staying friends...

and more and more and more.

All that in a box of Girl Scout cookies.

Don't Mess With My Chicken Sammich

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 02:14:00 +0000

Kid: Your chicken sandwich has poison in it.

Mother:

Kid: It probably wasn't free range. That's cruel.

Mother:

Kid: It's bad for the environment.

Mother: The FDA says it's okay for that chocolate you're eating to have rat poop in it.

Kid: Ew. Really?

Mother: Your MP3 player was most likely built with components mined by slave labor.

Kid: Oh.

Mother: This car ride to your sports practice is killing three polar bears.

Kid: Alright. I got it.

Mother: One was just a little furry guy. With dewy eyes. His name was Dewey.

Kid: You can stop now. I got your point.

Mother: I'm going to finish my sandwich now, shall I?

I poop in your peanut butter, too.

This week on MamaPop.com I find excellent gifts on Etsy for all the pop cult fans in your life. Warning: The lifelike Twilight Vampire Baby Doll will freak you the hell out. Not safe viewing for people who can't sleep with their foot dangling over the side of the bed.

photo

Newspapers and Gene Kelly and YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:58:00 +0000

I just wrote an Op-Ed column for the Patriot-News about my hot and cold relationship with electronics - mostly saying how I'm luke warm about it all - and then completely overslept this morning because I cleverly set my alarm for 5:30 PM instead of 5:30 AM.

Pushing buttons is hard.

Touchscreen buttons are worse. I'm a person with fairly lithe fingertips, but trying to type or navigate little squares on a touchscreen makes me feel like I have hams for fists. Stylus, you say? Okay. Can you put your hands on your stylus is right this second? I mean, without fishing through the sofa cushions or digging under your car seat? Exactly.

And I know, I know...I'm a blogger. I've reached at least the third circle of electronic media geekdom, and my Twitter account puts me somewhere in the deeper, darker depths of online megalomania.

But that's where I draw the line.

Usually. I do honestly adore my eReader. People are always talking about how they like a real book, the feel and smell of a real book. Most of my books are boxed in the basement and now smell like mold. And not the flowery castle library kind of mold. More like bleu cheese and mice dropping. So yeah...eReader. Love it.

Here's the Gene Kelly video I mentioned in the column. It's from the 1950 movie Summer Stock. It's pretty darn good.

I adore YouTube. Possibly more than any other cyber tool after email, I use YouTube as a direct extension of my parenting.

(I deliver a lot of unpopular news and instructions to my children via email: "Get your laundry done, or else. Your teacher spoke to me about a project you never handed it - DO IT NOW. Dishes aren't done; I've confiscated your iPod." This way, I'm out of earshot for the whinging.)

But YouTube is sort of a home school picture window into the culture and history of days gone by. Days when people were tiny and danced on gigantic type-writers because there was no television and what else were you supposed to do with your time?

As I was looking up Gene Kelly videos for the Patriot piece, my three kids and I were instantly able to watch Kelly’s legendary dances from An American In Paris, Singin’ In The Rain, and the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue ballet – prompting questions about whether the French really cavort on fountains and why there aren’t more thugs and violent shooting deaths in The Nutcracker.
The other morning, one of my kids came downstairs wearing a shirt with the price tag still hanging from the armpit. I noted, "You look like Minnie Pearl."

To which the child responded, "Minnie WHO? Oh...wait...Mom, no, never mind. Is this some crazy person from back when you were a kid? No...Mom...it's okay. You don't have to show me on YouTube!"
Too late.

My kids pretend to not be interested in life before Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. And yet, a video like the one above can prompt a half-hour discussion about Dolly Parton's hair ornament alone. Is it a flower? A dead octopus? A flattened bird?
And when my six year old wanted to hear some "real Rock and Roll", I did him one better.

When one of my children was in elementary school music class and the teacher asked if anyone knew who Elvis Presley was, she said she was the only one who raised her hand.
Elvis!
It's like not knowing who George Washington was. Well...okay...maybe Ben Franklin, inventor of everything, including the Bo Diddley beat.
And yes, we use YouTube for science lessons and geography look-sees and trips around the globe. We also watch videos of cats falling off counters and people launching themselves off human slingshots in their back yards - as a cautionary tale, don't you know.
But it's the questions like, "What the heck is Saturday Night Fever?" that I enjoy the most. Welcome to my childhood, kids. Not as many buttons. Kids entertainment programming didn't run 24/7. And the Bee Gees were the original Gangnam Style.
I love those kinds of questions.

At MamaPop.com Kids Love Creepy Dolls and Alien Autopsies For Christmas!

Black Friday, Mannheim Steamroller, and Elbowing Other Humans for Boyfriend Blazers

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 16:50:00 +0000

The turkey is devoured. The football games are won. And in a cross-generational coup that shushed all arguments at the dinner table, Macy's launched floats with both The Wanted and Mannheim Steamroller at the helms. (Did I ever mention how much I detest Mannheim Steamroller? Sort of a mash-up of prog rock and a bunch of Windham Hill drop-outs drenched in chardonnay and dressed like Polyphonic Spree. I just don't go for that kind of thing.)

What's left to do but drink, belch, and nap?

Oh right...and shop.

Why did the damn Pilgrims sail all the way over here on the Lusitania
and fight the Indians to preserve the Union and free the Boston Tea Party
if it wasn't to protect my God-given right to trample
other Americans for 50% off a flat screen television? I ASK YOU!

I braved the Black Friday crowds just one time in my life. And only because an ex-friend convinced me that I had to experience it - kind of like running a marathon or eating deep fried sheep butt or dropping acid before a Depeche Mode planetarium laser show.

In much the same way, Black Friday was frightening and confusing and I wanted to puke.

Finally, thanks to the Internet, I don't feel so alone in my horror.

Some Wal-Mart employees are co-opting the grand holiday of consumerism to stage protests against their employer. What do they want? A living wage, better benefits, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. When do they want it? As thousands of shoppers begin beating down the doors for dollars off a bunch of crap toys and superfluous electronics that will be broken just in time for the Presidents' Day sales.

I've got mixed feelings on this.

On one hand, I'm aware of the chains of events by which hard-working people find themselves depending on low-paying, full-time retail work to get by. All the while, the Walton family is making hecka chunka cash. So, yeah, if we have to have Wal-Mart and people have to work there, then is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath, Mr. Potter? I mean, Mr. Walton?

On the other hand, I know that ceaseless shopping for more and more stuff is the greased chute that lands souls in the circle of hell filled with people who mine dry the earth's bounty all over a coupon for ten dollars off a piece of pre-landfill trash.

And no, I'm not much fun at cocktail parties.

"Here, too, I saw a nation of lost souls...they strained their chests against enormous weights and with mad howls rolled them at each other...one party shouting out: 'Why do you hoard?' and the other: 'Why do you waste?' "

That's what Dante had to say about storming the doors at Urban Outfitters for a bargain on cardigans and boyfriend blazers.

Retail employees are on the front line of madness today.
It is appropriate to offer them a hug. But be okay if they
politely decline.

Me? I stayed home again and knitted everyone iPads from last year's discarded Kindles.

And finished digesting turkey.

source, photo, photo

Open Letter To Shoppers From A Retail Employee

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 22:00:00 +0000

This is a repost from last year. But it's become my own holiday tradition.

I am a low-level, store-floor retail employee.

I am paid somewhere between $7.00 - $9.00 per hour to offer helpful customer service.

I am paid to be knowledgeable regarding our store's products. If I do not have the answer to your particular question, it is my job to find another employee who can answer your question, or to research your question myself and get back to you in a timely manner.

I am paid to find solutions to potential problems regarding the products you've purchased in our store, whether those solutions come from me, or whether I need to contact a manager or other customer service help.

I am paid to be friendly, courteous, efficient, and non-judgmental in my service to you.

I am paid to help keep the store neat and organized so that you have an enjoyable shopping experience.

Sometimes, I may engage in brief, cordial conversations of a personal nature as initiated by you, the customer. Retail employees are generally “people persons”, and my manager does encourage some on-the-clock, non-business conversations so that employees can build good relationships with customers and offer better personalized service.

If I fail in any of these duties, you have every right to speak to my manager about my poor job performance.

I should shape up.

However, please remember there are many services that are not part of my job description.

At one time or another, I have been asked to do all of the following:

- watch your child while you shop

- hold your child while you shop

- solve problems with products you bought from other vendors who subsequently offered poor or no customer service

- act as a substitute punching bag for your overall frustrations with your boss/spouse/kids/in-laws

- act as a substitute punching bag for your overall frustration with the corporate decisions of our company which you personally disagree with. I am willing to sympathetically listen to your agitation over a specific product or even regarding the Overall Way We Do Business. I will try to offer a satisfactory fix and hopefully some catharsis for your currently unpleasant state of mind. However, if you begin frothing, yelling, or jabbing a finger at me, please understand that at this point I’m going to my Happy Place and thinking about chocolate fudge sundaes and winning the lottery. You’d be better off venting at someone higher up the pay scale. Like a manager. Or majority stockholder.

- engage in argumentative conversations about anything, but especially religion, politics, and sex

- listen to sales pitches for your philosophy of life, the universe, or anything contained within

- confirm rumors and conspiracy theories about our company, store, or products

- allow you to follow me around for the afternoon while I work because you’re lonely.

- be your therapist

- be your confessor

- be your girlfriend

- be your mom

- be your captive audience for some new jokes you’re working on

- offer medical advice regarding your condition

- listen to opinions which are hateful or offensive according to a reasonable standard. If in the course of our customer-employee interaction, you say something like, “Presbyterians are all a bunch of jerk-off, low-lifes and should all go to hell” our interaction is over. The cue that you’ve crossed a line is my vanishing smile and me abruptly saying, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?” Please do not assume that this is how I would react when off the clock.

- listen to insults and profound creepiness, whether intentional or un-intentional. Ex: “Hi, Sweetie. Listen, Hon, can I get porn on this eReader thing? I mean, the good stuff, Darling. For free. Maybe with animals?” The cue that you’ve crossed the line is me abruptly saying, “This conversation is making me uncomfortable. I’ll contact my manager and you can continue your shopping experience with him.”

- clean your wound

- flush the toilet for you and clean up your bodily fluids/solids (I may have to do this. But do not be surprised if an old Lithuanian curse descends upon you in the following week.)

- offer delivery service in my spare time

- do something illegal, Ex: “Could you photocopy a chapter of this book for me? I don’t need the whole book.”

- allow you or your children to act in unsafe way in our store, no matter how skilled you/they are at rock climbing/bungee jumping/gymnastics/parkour/juggling/roller blading/fire breathing

- turn a blind eye when you bug other customers beyond a reasonable standard of behavior expected in public places

- allow you to wander around drunk

- solve consumer problems that result from your own procrastination and poor organization. I can try to help with your Hail Mary shopping. But if you don’t have the book by tomorrow of the gift for tonight and this is the first I’ve heard about it, you can start the litany of blame by addressing the person in the mirror.

I am a low-level, store-floor retail employee.

I am paid somewhere between $7.00 - $9.00 per hour to offer helpful customer service.

When the store closes, I go home from my (probably) part-time job, the job I work to make ends meet. I do laundry and take care of little kids. Or I study for upcoming college and high school exams. Or I watch a little television and then go to sleep so I can get up in time for the full-time job I work during the day.

I love working here as much as I need to work here.

I should do my job well. And you should demand that I do my job well.

But just be clear on what my job is. And is not.

And during the big consumer holidays, let’s agree to go easy on each other.

I’m willing to go above and beyond in offering some services not included on my official retail resume, as long as customers refrain from getting miffed when I don’t. Or can’t.

I like going above and beyond.

I enjoy surprising customers with random acts of retail - and even personal - kindness. It makes me feel good to do so.

Except for flushing your toilet.

That’s nasty.

RIP Jersey Mike

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 20:40:00 +0000

I woke up today wanting to write something for people who may be visiting my blog for the first time.

But today is a day I don't have many words.

Jersey Mike had words.

And work.

"Live music can make a city. The thing that keeps me going every day is when you get a group of people together watching a band, and they are so enraptured by what that performer is doing that they drop everything - they're not looking at anything else, they're not on their cell phones or talking to the person next to them. It's a different buzz, a different high than watching a football game or reading a book or going to church. One thing I think we can all agree upon as human beings is that everyone has a favorite band, a favorite song, and everyone has seen a live musical performance that has shaken them to their core. It seems that cities that embrace that, concerts, clubs and coffeehouses have a leg up on other communities. Even from an economical standpoint, it brings in young people and hip way of thinking. Live music in any city is a determining factor for many people in choosing where they want to live or spend their money...

"Harrisburg is home to me, yes. I mean, my heart is always in New Jersey, but yes, I've been here for 10 years, I've let the grass grow under my feet, I own a house, this is home." ~ Mike Van Jura

One of his last posts on the social media site Twitter was a request for Toys For Tots donations.

He will be deeply missed.

Rock and roll promoter. Social commentator. Rabble rouser. Connector. Instigator. Peace keeper. Left handed. Putting square pegs into round holes since 1976.

Harrisburg, PA, USA

Thank you, New Jersey, for sharing him with us.

Today proceeds from a 4:00 show at Abbey Bar in Harrisburg will go to his family.

Figure Skating, The Olympics, and Not Knowing Anything Anymore

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 06:50:00 +0000

This is long, but it's going to ultimately explain everything you need to know about getting your kid to the Olympics. Or not - which is what I actually have the authority to write about - and why not is also a very happy place to be.

So, I'm one of those insufferable sports parents who shows off her kids doing sporty things. For instance, here is my Skater Grrrl competing this summer near Washington, DC.

She practices most mornings before school. She practices every afternoon after school. She gets up Saturday morning before even the coffee is awake and skates some more. On Sunday, she goes to the gym or works out with a trainer named "Sarge" who possesses some magical power to motivate middle school kids to run and jump and lunge up and down a soccer field for an hour straight, helping them to learn how to turn, pivot, and sprint in safe ways so they don't tear up their bodies during soccer, football, or basketball games.

Sometimes - under duress - my skater takes a ballet class.

Not your average Ice Princess

Even with all this work and discipline and time and sacrifice, she's still not one of the top skaters in her level in our region (which stretches along the East Coast from Pennsylvania to Florida.) And even her United States Figure Skating Association level - Intermediate - isn't the highest competitive bracket. Above her are hundreds of Novice skaters. And Junior skaters. And Senior. Only Senior level skaters really get a chance to go to the World Championship.
Or the Olympics.

My daughter gets asked a lot if she's planning to go to the Olympics.

She usually smiles politely and says, "Well...we'll see."

I understand why people ask. Before I started getting involved in the sport as a Skate Mom, the only time I really paid attention to figure skating was once every four years during the Olympics, and maybe during the media coverage of the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerigan Cage Match. If someone would have asked me to describe how a skater was chosen to participate, I'd have guessed, well...something like Lana Turner at the soda fountain counter, just waiting around until someone made her a star. Except a star on super-sharp 9-inch blades.
The reality of how skaters get to the Olympics is less romantic and a bit more time consuming.
First of all, when it comes to female skaters, you have to keep in mind that the peak training years strongly correspond to the years girls are most potentially stark raving mad.

Okay, maybe not mad.

But seriously. Think of yourself at 13 years old. 16 years old. Even your early twenties. Was schoolwork getting more difficult and were adults beginning to ask you OMG! what you wanted TO DO with THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? Were you starting to think of the opposite sex without also thinking smelly or weird? Remember wanting to stay up late and then sleep all weekend? How about rebelling from grown-ups who wanted to tell you what to do, where to go, getting in your business, asking you Are you okay? What's gotten in to you? Did you hear a word I said?

Was your body starting to change? Getting taller? Suddenly stumbling over your feet and bumping into walls? Were you getting rounder or curvy or lanky or knob-kneed?

Okay. Now put all that together, dress it in a body-hugging, shape-revealing practice outfit, trundle it out onto the ice at 6:00 AM before school every day. Tell friends you can't go to a sleep-over or football game on Friday night because you have a lesson early the next morning. Spend hours - sometimes months - jumping into the air and falling until you finally nail the next difficult jump. Then, spend weeks practicing and perfecting two competitive programs, compete the programs over the course of six to nine months, know that everyone who does well at your level is at least as talented as you are and works just as hard, skate the two-and-a-half-minute program of your life against up to 24 other skaters in your qualifying group, know that judging has a lot of gray areas when to comes to art versus technical skills, not get a medal, cry, cry some more, stop crying, wake up the next day, shake it off, and start all over again.

Now, do this for seven to fifteen years. Or more.

Oh yeah! Also! Don't have a career-ending injury at 17 years old. Come up with the approximately $50,000-$100,000 a year it takes to train as a top competitive Senior. Possibly move yourself and your family across the country to a city with a high-end training facility. Peak at the right time before Regional, then Sectional, then National Championships. Win first, second, or third against the the best athletes in the country. Make sure it all happens during an Olympic year. If you place third, cross fingers that your country has three berths this year for the Olympics, not just two (how many spots your country has depends upon how other skaters in your country placed at the previous year's World Championships.)
Hope. Wish. Pray.
In the meantime, practice.

In the beginning, kids say, Yup! Sure! I'm gonna go to the Olympics.
Who doesn't want to dream big?

As kids move up the ranks - not in just skating, but in any sport - the dream gets a little more...quiet. Winning swim meets becomes a matter of shaving seconds off your time over kids who are gunning hard and doing the same. Growth spurts in gymnastics can mean relearning skills every time two or three inches of height give you an entirely new body to figure out. You start the season and some kid who was a no name last year is suddenly posting scores that make everyone look his way, not yours. Losing weeks or months or an entire season of training to an injury is something you start to see happening to your competitors, and you accept it's just a matter of when - not if - it's going to happen to you.
Sometimes, hearing chatter that you're the next best thing and heading for the Olympics is like uttering "MacBeth" backstage.

Shhhhhh...no jinxes. Top athletes call it "the Grecian Competition." (Or not. I just made that up.)
Sometimes, the closer you get, the fact of just how far away it all is becomes crystal clear.

I think this dream of a dream within a dream is lovely.
What I find ever more miraculous is witnessing kids who persevere and build high-level skills in their sport knowing that the common understanding of "success" means getting their face on the Wheaties box or bringing home international gold medals or netting a seven-figure contract...and knowing that they may never attain that definition of success.

Knowing that most of their friends or family won't truly understand what they are doing...or why...if The Big Time isn't in the cards, but they are still training like Big Time athletes.
And honestly, as I hit the snooze button one more time this morning, I'm not always sure I understand that reason myself.

After a particularly difficult season with a few bright spots, but a lot more false starts and being reminded the hard way that ice is very, very slippery, my daughter said with finality, "I don't want to skate anymore." What do you do when a kid who has achieved so much suddenly wants to quit in a tough moment?

You listen. And you talk. And you talk some more. And you say "now is the time to keep on, if you're going to keep on". And you say "you've put so much into this, are you sure?" And you get sad. And you get philosophical. And you try tactics. And you say "maybe just try something else for a while." And maybe you even get angry because what you wouldn't have given when you were her age to have had this opportunity...this ability?

But after all the drama, you say what you knew you were going to say to your teenage daughter all along.

You say "Okay. This is your sport, not mine. It's your decision. I love you."

"If you are not a skater, you probably can't imagine what I mean. I could try to tell you by saying it's a feeling of ice miles running under your blades, the wind splitting open to let you through, the earth whirling around you....It's a sense of power, of command over distance and gravity, and an illusion of no longer having to move because movement is carrying you." - Sonja Henie.

A few weeks later, the same child walks into the kitchen and says, hey, do you think you could take me to the rink today?
You can't help yourself, you shout, "What!" And, God forgive you, you ask, "Why?"

And the child looks at you as if you'd just been hit on the head.

"Why what?" she says with genuine bewilderment. "I love to skate. What did you think?"

Last month, I attended a Learn To Skate session at a local ice rink. My 6-year-old son was taking a lesson, and some of his friends were joining him. There was a lot of teetering. A lot of tottering. Many falls. A few tears.
One little girl looked especially hesitant about getting on the ice. She needed two hands to keep her standing, and the club teen skaters helped the little girl through the lesson, marching forward to a red hockey line, turning, marching back. For a half-hour they held her hands and marched and marched across the ice.

Finally, she let go one hand. Then the other. She marched. She fell. She got back up again.

By the end of the lesson, the little girl began skating, tentatively, across the rink. Her mom called after her, it was time to go home. But the newest skater had discovered the wonderful possibility of being a different person than she had been a few moments ago. And of controlling that possibility. I can only guess this is part - or much - of why my teen child keeps putting on her skates. Why she practices and pursues her sport. The possibility of creating and re-creating herself is so clear. Of course, that's grown-up fancy-pants talk trying to deconstruct what, honestly, I'm not sure I'll ever understand.
The 5-year-old my daughter once was would tell you, "I'm having fun."

The 13-year-old would say the same thing.
Anyway...I find it a blessing to be a part of her journey. As she gets older, each year, I become less a part, more an onlooker.
I share so much about my kids - and sincerely adore hearing about other people's kids - because I think it's so...hopeful...when we see young people working hard and following their bliss, ultimately, only answering to themselves. And competing against themselves.
And winning.

For all you need to know regarding maintaining your sanity as a skate parent, check out the blog of skate coach extraordinaire Xanboni.

To find out first hand what it feels like to parent an Olympian figure skater - before, during, and after - check out Allison Scott's blog Life On The Edge.

If you want to see where else I write, it's here.

Today's Book: Meth 101

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 03:11:00 +0000

Okay, today's Book Found Lying Around My House is not really a meth cookbook.

It's about science. And conversations.

But I'm completely immersed in Breaking Bad right now, and damn if it isn't one of the best things I've watched on television in forever.

Well...not television. We don't have real cable, so The Mister and I just watched all four seasons on Netflix. Like this:

"GET TO SLEEP, YOU KIDS, PAPA AND I WANT TO WATCH OUR ULTRA-VIOLENT SUBURBAN METH COOKING STORY ON THE INTERWEBS!"

Breaking Bad, if you don't know, is about a high school chemistry teacher who gets lung cancer and begins cooking meth with a former student in order to make enough cash to set up his family after his death. At one point while meeting with a drug lord named Tuco, the chemistry teacher calls himself "Heisenberg." And then he blows up the drug lord's office with explosive fulminated mercury.

Jesse and Walter cosplay kids

There is no chapter in Physics and Beyond on fulminated mercury.

Or cooking crystal meth.

Or on how to set contracts with underworld crime bosses in order to distribute your "product" and in the process make beaucoup scratch.

I bought this book for a class at Boston University. I have no idea which class. I never read the book.

This is not a good advertisement for pricey liberal arts degrees.

I went to college, and all I got was this stupid blog post.

But I suppose I'll read the book now while I wait for season five of Breaking Bad to come out on Netflix. I hope there's no spoiler about what happened to Mike after he was shot in the cartel dude's driveway. Or whether Jesse finds out about Brock. And what ever happened to Skinny Pete?

Chapter 14 is entitled "Individual Behavior in the Face of Political Disaster." I'm sure all will be revealed there.

Why Parenting Websites Won't Hire Me, Bullies, And Breaking Berenstain

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 03:56:00 +0000

Why I'm Not A Good Fit For Most Parenting Websites

1. I routinely tell any one of my three children that they are my favorite child. Mostly, I say this when I want the child to do something for me. Like get me a hot chocolate. "You were always my favorite child. Could you get Mama a cocoa?" I also say this to them when I feel guilty for forgetting to pick them up at school or when taking them for a vaccination.

2. I have no opinion on babysitters or day care other than the more I need to get away from my kids for a while, the lower my standards fall. I think this is generally true for most people. But I would never say that out loud in a room full of parents who are taller than I am.

3. I think parents need about 3% of the stuff that is marketed as "necessary to be a good parent." In that 3% that is genuinely useful, I'd include a pair of sturdy shoes with a non-slip tread, a wicking base layer, earplugs, and a multi-vitamin.

4. I think most kids from infant on up need about 2% of the stuff that is marketed to help kids have safe, happy, productive childhoods. In that 2% that is genuinely useful, I'd include a pair of sturdy shoes with a non-slip tread, a wicking base layer, a helmet, a multi-vitamin, and a library card. If you want to get fancy, maybe a harmonica.

5. I think most typical kids can be parented well via these golden rules of dog training.

Have Fun- If you’re like many of us, the moment you see your new puppy or dog is the moment you start seeing all the pheasants he’s going to bring in, the championships she’s going win and generally the finely trained specimen you expect him/her to be. Slow down. You have a new dog, a new hunting partner and a new member of the family. This should be fun for both of you. Keep training sessions short and sweet, and have fun. A dog that’s happy to be learning will be happy in the field.

Remember Training Goes Both Ways- The term trainer implies that all your only job in this situation is to teach. This is not true. When training your dog, there are also a number of things you need to practice and require of yourself. Train yourself to stay calm, no matter how frustrating a training situation might be. Your dog will have good days and bad days, but never take your frustration out on your dog. This will greatly hinder your training. If you need to cut a training session short, or just walk away, do so. Also, train yourself to make a point to get out with your dog.

If You Can’t Reinforce It, Don’t Teach It- Remember that your dog learns more than what you intend to teach him. If you give a command when you have no way to reinforce it and he ignores you, he’s learned that when he needs to listen is conditional. Obviously, this is a revelation is difficult to unlearn, so make sure if you want your dog’s attention and adherence, you have a way to get it.

Be Consistent- Consistency is key. Remember that training is teaching you and your dog how to communicate. The expectations should be clear and concrete. If your dog has to guess what outcome you want, you are both set up for failure. Try to make sure your dog knows when it’s time to train by training at around the same time everyday, using the same equipment and follow the same basic structure.

Don’t Give Up- You are going to make mistakes. Your dog is going to make mistakes. This is the nature of training and humanity in general. Don’t throw your hands in the hair and give up just because things are going wrong. Take time to assess the missteps of both you and your dog and learn how to correct these in the future. The tough phases will pass and you and your dog will have better communication because of them.

6. I think that kids standing by and saying or doing nothing while other kids are being bullied - or kids not paying attention enough to the other kids around them to notice whether or not their peers are being harassed or shunned (i.e. the "I didn't know about it even though it was happening every day a few feet away from me" defense) - are kids who need a figurative good kick in the pants. Possibly a series of figurative kicks in the pants over the course of years. I think from preschool on up, kids need to be actively taught and expected to be stewards, protectors, and advocates for each other's good physical and mental health, as well as learn to be responsible for their own well being. That's not hippy dippy talk. That's "Don't be an ass to your classmates, pay attention to what is going on around you, and don't put up with other kids being an ass to your classmates. Or else, kid."

I think this is not a topic a lot of parents would want to read about because it's exhausting just being a squeaky wheel for your own kid, let alone everyone else's. I think some people think that as long as their kid isn't a bully or being bullied, all is golden. (I think most kids when they feel bad about themselves are capable of taking it out on other kids. Even kids who come from homes with driveways, Ikea curtains, and piano lessons.) This is a topic I would want to write about on a parenting website. That would be a problem, I think.

7. I'd refuse to take a side on any of the time-worn Mommy War debates.

8. I use run-on sentences, fake words, and too many commas.

----------------------------------------

Today's book is Bears In The Night, by Stan & Jan Berenstain

This is one of my favorite Bright and Early Suess-style books. It was always one of my kids' favorites, as well. The fact that the bears had a lit lantern in their room and used it to crawl out an open window onto a roof and down a tree sort of flip-flops the whole notion that little kids are meant to be kept safe and sound from the big, bad boogie men of night, and instead are themselves agents of shadowy deceptions and moonlit chaos.

Bears In The Night says to little kids, "You are not in danger. You ARE the danger! You are the one who knocks!"

Until Tuco the Owl shows up.

Then it's, like, whatever, yo. I'm hiding under the covers. Bitch.

New Cats and Old Witches

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 03:30:00 +0000

We have a new cat.

A friend posted on Facebook that she was helping to find a new home for another friend's cat. The cat was female. Seven years old. Declawed. The cat had spent the past few years living in an assisted living two-room apartment with just one owner.

The cat's name was Macy.

So, a few weeks ago, my middle child and I drove to the outskirts of Baltimore to pick up the cat.

The cat was very unhappy about all this. She did not want to be picked up. Not at all.

After some hissing and growling and feline indignation, the cat - Macy - was lured into a carrier via an open can of tuna. And there was more hissing and growling.

The hissing and growling did not stop on the car ride home. The hissing and growling did not stop once we got home. For four weeks, Macy - whom my daughters renamed Daisy - has been hissing and growling and exceedingly upset over being placed in a three-kid home that is kept at temperatures much lower than that of a two-room assisted living apartment.

For a while, Daisy (aka Macy) would not come out of the basement. And being in the messy, unfinished basement, she was getting more and more ornery, not less. She was becoming the weird cat who hung out alone in the basement. Basement feral. Something had to be done.

One day, I put on a double layer of long pants, protective eye wear, and welding gloves and proceeded to shwoosh Daisy out of the basement and up into the light via a broom and a carefully constructed funneling system of boxes and laundry bins. There was a lot of hissing. And growling. And, amazingly, snorting. I'd never heard a cat snort before. I wondered briefly if Daisy was rabid. Or possessed. Or just reacting very badly to drops in the barometric pressure.

Daisy would have messed up two honey badgers.

Finally, Daisy was upstairs. But now she was terrifying everyone by hiding under tables and credenzas and emitting low, gurgling growls every time someone walked by.

I felt bad. The kids just wanted a pet cat. I brought them a small, savage black-and-white fur ball.

But what to do? If we gave Daisy to the pound, she'd most likely be put down. Or eat the other cats. We couldn't put her outside because even though she had no claws, she'd be sure to start killing deer and possibly bears. Maybe even carrying off toddlers from sandboxes. A co-worker suggested a magical cat calming spray, but I was wondering whether my daughter's cough medicine with codeine or a script for Valium were in order.

I talked to the kids about what to do, and they all sort of agreed that we couldn't get rid of the cat because, well, we probably couldn't get rid of the cat. But that if we adopted a new consolation kitten, they'd put up with miserable old Daisy being miserable and that would be that.

Then I went to work last night.

And then this morning, the kids told me that while I was away at work, Daisy suddenly changed her mind about being a jerk.She presented herself for adoration. She played with a string. She allowed herself to be pet. She purred.

Later in the day, she growled and hissed at me.

Which is okay, I guess. So the cat hates me. I get it. I shwooshed her upstairs with a broom.

But she likes the kids. Good enough. She'll just have to put up with me, since I have the key to the cat food.

-------------------------------------------------

Today's book is The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk.

This book was given to me as a birthday present from a friend who, according to the inscription, didn't know whether or not I was interested in witchcraft, but that no matter how legitimate I thought the "old religion" to be, it could help with personal discovery and spiritual growth.

I think I paged through the book a few times while I was reading Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and used it as a reference for a paper I wrote on goddess symbolism in Christianity. In theory, I like the idea of getting together with groups of women outdoors at night and chanting on moonlit mountaintops. In reality, I think I acquired the recessive Pennsylvania Dutch gene that shies away from unreserved, skyclad liturgical gatherings and tends more toward restrained ecclesiastical jubilance and occasionally attending church wearing a doily on my head. Still...I enjoy drum circles and camping and drinking wine with women friends in the woods, so maybe I'm a secular kind of witch?

Anyway...my daughters haven't yet stumbled upon this book on the shelves. I imagine paging though The Spiral Dance and finding the "Spell To Be Friends With Your Womb" will bring up more questions than reading Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. And if they suddenly ask where they can find incense of Saturn, I'll know they are trying the Spell To Blind An Enemy, and that, I can tell you, will initiate an extremely long lecture on the topic of messing with things you shouldn't be messing with to the point that they'll be looking up the Spell To Shut Up Your Mother.

"...the 'price of freedom,' is, first of all, discipline and responsibility...those who would be free must also be willing to stand slightly aside from the mainstream of society, if need be. In modern Western culture, artists, poets, and visionaries, let alone Witches, mystics, shamans, are often somewhat alienated from their culture, which tends to devalue intangibles in favor of the solid, monetary fruits of success.

"But the final price of freedom is the willingness to face that most frightening of all beings, one's own self...The depths of our own beings are not all sunlit; to see clearly, we must be willing to dive into the dark, inner abyss and acknowledge the creatures we may find there."

~ from The Spiral Dance

True dat.

It's a book I re-find every few years, page through, reminisce on the first time it occurred to me that The Marys may have been underwritten characters in the Bible, and then have a giggle over The Da Vinci Code.

John Lennon and Speaking In The Tuvan Super-Conscious Chore Exclusion Frequency

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Whenever I say anything, I must speak at two frequencies: a normal speech frequency and some super-conscious range usually only heard by poodles and angels.

Maybe I'm like those Tibetan monks who sing two interlaced notes at the same time, one lower and one higher. Harmonic overtones.

And I say this because at least once a day - using a normal speaking voice, although sometimes with volume - I remind all able-bodied persons in my household to wash their freaking dishes right after they are done using them.

If people in this house washed each bowl, fork, spook, cup immediately after they were done eating and drinking, then at the end of the day the sink would not be filled with a towering Mad Hatter's Party-worth of dirty dishes. That I would come home to. And then wake up to. And I wouldn't have to corral people to stand with me at the sink for a half-hour at a time to wash and dry all the dishes at once.

What I say out loud - what I think I hear myself saying out loud- is this:

FOR CRIPE'S SAKE, AS SOON AS YOU ARE FINISHED USING A DISH, SPOON, PLATE, BOWL, KNIFE, FORK, CUP, MUG, OR GLASS, PLEASE WASH, DRY AND PUT AWAY YOUR DISH, SPOON, PLATE, BOWL, KNIFE, FORK, CUP, MUG, OR GLASS.

That is what I say.

But - like the throat-singing monks - I must be also be inadvertently creating some counter-coded whistle-pitch message that is heard via direct stimulation of the parts of the brain which bother with such things.

And that other unheard but silently registered message must sound something like this:

I love you most of all, my Darling, and any instruction to wash dishes of course excludes you.

That is what I think is happening. I can't find another explanation.

Tuvan Super-Conscious Chore Exclusion Frequency. You head it here first.

So, our book of the day is this:

Re-published after John Lennon's death, I'm guessing I bought this around 1981 while a freshman in high school.

I did read this entire book, even though much of it is tough to get through in the same way the writing of your childhood friend Derrick - who penned his own versions of Jabberwocky while stoned and listening to T. Rex - was tough to get through.

Still...turning through the crunchy yellow paperback, I feel nostalgic. And grateful. There's more of "The Fat Growth on Eric Hearble" and "A Surprise For Little Bobby" threading through my writing than, say, Jane Eyre.

There were no flies on Frank that morning - after all why not? He was a responsible citizen with a wife and child, wasn't he? It was a typical Frank morning and with an agility that defies description he leapt into the bathroom onto the scales. To his great harold he discovered he was twelve inches more tall heavy! He couldn't believe it and his blood raised to his head, causing a mighty red colouring.

'I carn't not believe this incredible fact of truth about my very body which has not gained fat since mother begat me at childburn. Yea, though I wart through the valet of thy shadowy hut I will feed no norman. What grate qualmsy hath taken me thus into such a fatty hardbuckle.' Again Frank looked down at the awful vision which clouded his eyes with fearful weight. 'Twelve inches more heavy, Lo!, but am I not more fatty than my brother Geoffery whise father Alec came from Kenneth -- through Leslies, who begat Arthur, son of Eric, by the house of Ronald and April -- keepers of James of Newcastle who ran Madeline at 2-1 by Silver Flower, (10-2) past Wot-ro-Wot at 4/3d a pound?'

from "No Flies On Frank"

Reading these books during my formative word smithing years was something, let me tell you. After ten years of memorizing the litany of prepositions and dissecting clauses and not beginning sentences with "and" or "but" under threat of mortal syntax which is a grievous offense against the law of grammar, John Lennon's writing was the inspiration and the okay, finally, to break the rules with honed precision. To have fun, dammit. To take language, bust it up, twist it around, and make it boogie.

It's good stuff.

Required reading for kids who get hives at the thought of straying too afar Strunk and White.

Photo source

NaBloPoMo. Again.

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 03:58:00 +0000

Me. And my 11yo parasite twin.

Every November I try this.

Most years I don't write every day.

It's okay. It's not like anyone is giving out prizes.

And I don't need any challenges to feel good about, well, taking on a challenge. To prove something to myself. Or to onlookers. Or the paparazzi.

I've passed several traditional mid-life crisis time stamps now without running a gauntlet or taking down the king stag at dawn or having my hair highlighted, and I've come out on the other side just fine. Also, dandy. Even my knees and hips feel good.

I'm okay with leaving the house with an unplucked unibrow. I feel confident, more or less, with my hair parted on either side, in flats or in heels, glasses or contacts, four hours sleep or ten, driving a minivan or riding a bike that needs a bit of oiling and new tires.

I'm all kinds of full of self esteem.

In fact, some people would say I need to be taken down a peg or two.

I am going to write on my blog every day, again, because it's what I do in November. Evidently.

However, this time with a twist. Because, after a few chapters of meandering on about one's precious meanderings, even Augusten Burroughs gets a little "Oh, c'mon now....please. And really."

So, I think that this go around I'll talk about books.

Not necessarily my favorite books. Or books I think you should read.

How about just the books I find in my way around my house. Like, this book:

This book is from Junior year in college. The year I was allowed to pick higher level literature classes on my own, but under the guidance of some bluestocking counselor who evidently thought it was a fine joke to send young women into job interviews dressed as lunatic nymphs and armed with resumes that smelled of laudanum.

In college in 1986, the Pre-Raphaelites were to me, I suppose, what the paranormal romance fad is to young women today. Mysterious. Ethereal. Romantic. Not a little self-absorbed. And a whole lot of bat shit crazy. Damsels in distress and distressing damsels.

As Jan Marsh contends in The Pre-Raphaeilte Sisterhood, the romance and attention surrounding these women tended "both to glorify them, raising them like Hollywood film stars above the level of ordinary mortals into a mythic realm of tragic heroines and fatal sirens, and paradoxically to diminish them, reducing their real, complex, contradictory personalities and lives to flat figures in a fantasy landscape and taking away from them all sense of active life."

I took a few Women's Studies classes about the same time. And I dyed my hair red. I wrote a lot of very un-rhyming poetry, smoked clove cigarettes, and was generally impossible to date. I used the word "mundane" to excess and with great meaning.

I may have memorized entire stanzas of Christina Georgiana Rossetti's Goblin Market.

You know...as a monologue. For theater class.

To which a person could justifiably say "Oh, c'mon now....please. And really."

But this was all way before confessional blogs and online personality projects.

And aren't you glad?

Good lord...I know I am.

Top 100 Reasons I'm Not Fleeing Midstate Pennsylvania

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Read more about why I lurve PA at Penn Live.

In no particular order.

Shakespeare In The Park

Greenbelt Events

Thrift shops
Monkey Lion Music Festivals

The bend on the Conodoguinet Creek at Acri Meadow Park

Sunoco Theater

Midtown Scholar
Midtown Cinema

Cupboard Maker Books

Indoor rock climbing

Skating at Twin Ponds

The Historic Hersheypark Arena

Gettysburg
Fossil hunting at Swatara Park
Rose Lehrman Theater

Tuesday night neighborhood get-togethers
YMCA
Green spaces
Ground coffee at One Good Woman
City Island

Our schools

Spiral Path Farm
Lemoyne Farmers Market
Consignment shops
Girl Scouts
Boy Scouts
Harrisburg Astronomical Society

Carlisle Truck Nationals

Bombay Market

Thai Palace

Punk Rock Gardens
Hershey Sweet Lights
The Soup Spot
Hiking the the Appalachian Trail

Toys On The Square
Vickie's Angel Walk
Fall festivals
Susquehanna Folk Music Society
Greek Festival
Art Fest
Apple orchards

Navy Base fireworks

Public pools
Abbey Bar
Cafe Bruges
Autumn leaves and cool weather
Winter snows
Trick-or-treating in our neighborhood
Farm Show

Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel

Harrisburg Drumming Circle
Bass Pro Shop
Boiling Springs Children's Lake
North Museum
Westy's Beer Distributor

Parades

Gabriel Brothers discount everything
WITF's Radio Smart Talk
Classical music with Cary Burkett
Central Pennsylvania Animal Alliance
CVSD Chinese Festival

Yellow Breeches Youth Sojourn
The hike to Flatrock overlook
Camp YoliJwa
Spoutwood Fairy Festival

Skate parks

State parks

Old Sled Works
Knoebel's Grove Amusement Park
Volksmarch clubs
Floyd Stokes, Super Reader
Roxbury News
Shoo-fly Pie
Edgar Allen Poe Evermore theater reading at Mount Hope Estate and Winery
Fort Hunter Native American Festival

Our PA Dutch

Abandoned Turnpike Bike Path
Gary Rider Plumbing
Floyd's Garage

The toy train at Wegman's
State Museum
The family of rabbits and cardinals in my backyard

Giant Center
Soccer
The walking path through the woods off Sears Run Road
Basehore Farm's lovely old barn filled with autumn gourds and goodies
Adventure Zone playground
The view at sunset from Reservoir Park
Community theater

Diners

The meat department at Karns
Neato Burrito
Harrisburg Area Community College
Flamenco classes
Sophia's On Market
The spring near Orrs Bridge

Special occasions at the Circular Dining Room

Riverfront Park
The Fredricksen Library
Christmas Eve Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral
My friends

My family

Of course.

That's 101.

Maybe 102.

I could keep going....

Indeed.

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 18:23:00 +0000

You can also find me promoting peace, rock and roll and gay parenting at MamaPop.com.

Sister School: Girls, STEM, and Flunking Physics

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 17:14:00 +0000

This post is going to be about math and science.

If you have your own math anxieties, please 1) friend my friend Laura Laing on Facebook at Math For Grownups, and then 2) head to Math For Grownups for a pep talk and a cyber hug. I'll wait....

Back?

Ready? Okay! (Feel free to keep a brown paper bag close by in case you start hyperventilating.)

It wasn’t Sister Thomas Joseph’s fault that I was flunking Physics.

Sister Thomas was brilliant, passionate about science, and in 11^th grade Chemistry class she let us play with Sterno and acids and all sorts of glass beakers that I still recognize today when watching Breaking Bad. In Physics class that Senior year, we threw Slinkies from the third floor windows to prove something or other to do with corresponding numbers and equations. Her science class was definitely hand’s on, slightly dangerous, and nothing if not engaging. Sort of the X Games/James Bond part of the school day.

Sister Thomas was one of those gifted minds that make some people wonder, “What the hell are you doing teaching in a small, backwater Catholic school?” And most likely left more cynical types thinking, “How on earth did a mind devoted to scientific inquiry end up wrapped in a habit?”

But we students didn’t wonder.

Tall and lanky, Sister Thomas Joseph ruled the third floor chemistry lab and coached the girls’ softball team after school. Sister Anne de Beaupre – Sister Thomas Josephs’ exact size/shape opposite - took us through health and biology class, overseeing the dissection of worms and frogs, as well clarifying any of our nonsensical whisperings about just what our newly curving and sprouting human bodies were and were not capable of.

And then there was Sister Ann Martin.

I just told my mom the other day that of all my teachers throughout high school and college, it was Sister Ann Martin who was possibly most fiercely devoted to her subject: World Cultures. One time she took all her students on a two-hour road trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Manifestations of Shiva exhibit and guided us through the rooms full of artifacts the way kids move through toy stores before Christmas –gasping and pointing to an exhibit piece, barely containing her own excitement over being so physically close to something she’d studied backward and forward but up until now only dreamed of possessing (even if only with her eyes), explaining to us the significance of the object in detail far beyond what even an AP class would consider “a bit too fancy pants with the knowing stuff.”

I wonder what other patrons thought of this gaggle of Catholic school kids not daring to crack a smile as a highly-animated young nun detailed to them the significance of the Shiva linga statue? These days, you just don’t get that kind of on-the-spot, differentiation and disambiguation among the thousands-year-old meanings of a word, including discussion of the phallic misnomers. Not without a note from your parents and a background check.

But back in Physics class that day the sunlight was starting to bend through the open double hung windows, a spring breeze was blowing down off the mountains, and Sister Thomas was marking the blackboard with equations that, who knows, could have held the secrets to time space, or could also have been some trajectory for the eraser she wanted to throw at my head.

By final semester that Senior year, there were a few things set in my head that weren’t going to change: I was heading to Boston University in the fall; I was going to get up the nerve to ask the boy who sat in front of me to the prom; and I was never, ever, ever going to have to take another science or math class again. Or at least until that September.

My first year in college, I ended up acing my Geology and Computer Science classes.

________________________________________

I recently got in touch with my friend Jeanne Garbarino – postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University and biology editor at Double X Science (that’s double X as in female chromosomes, not double X as in Fifty Shades of Pheromones) to talk to her about her experiences as a female math/science student. And also what she thought were ways to keep more girls interested in STEM subjects as students, as careers, and as lifelong learners.

Are the stereotypes of “girls good at language arts/boys good at math science” still around today? Did those stereotypes affect you during your education and career?

Old habits die hard, and this is still apparent when it comes to smarts and gender. While most teachers are fully aware of the non-difference when it comes to gender and academic ability, many parents and caregivers, raised in an era when girls did one thing and boys did another, still keep the stereotype alive. And this is especially apparent in first generation American kids. For instance, I have a few female friends whose parents immigrated to the states when they were babies. These women were discouraged from taking courses like math and science because “being smart will not get you a husband.” They actually had to hide their math textbooks from their parents!

For me, I didn’t experience too much (noticeable) gender-based stereotypes as a kid – except I was a little angry in 7^th grade when the ability to skip 8^th grade was only offered to 2 boys in our class (both of whom were my intellectual equals). OK, it was so they could enter an all boys high school a year early, but still – I was angry because the same opportunity was not offered to girls. However, by the time I got to high school, my confidence was shot, and I questioned if I was smart enough to roll in the honors classes with the rest of them. I actually aced all of my math classes, but despite having a track record of good grades, I always felt that I wasn’t going to score as high as the more nerdpopular boys in my class (nerdpopular is my term to describe someone who is known for being smart).

And, there was one incident in my 10^th grade chemistry class when I (reluctantly) raised my hand to answer a question, and used the word “hydrodynamic” in my answer. Then, Jeff – the resident perfect SAT scorer and arrogant classmate – makes an underhanded comment about how he was impressed at my usage of such a big word. The class laughed and I felt even dumber, even though I just gave the right answer and then some! I don’t know if this had anything to do with my being a girl, or if I was just being teased. Nonetheless, it ripped any last bits of confidence I had to shreds.

The major reduction in confidence many girls experience as they enter the formidable teenage years is largely responsible for the drop in test scores in subjects relating to STEM, and also seems to be the culprit behind the small number of girls going into STEM fields (check out this cool infographic: http://www.engineeringdegree.net/girls-in-stem/). Unfortunately, this just sets the stage for a girl's future career. Because girls don’t feel like they are “smart enough” for science, math, engineering, etc., they just forgo taking any of those courses in the first place. I was lucky because even though I felt like I didn’t belong in the sciences (at first), I powered through and emerged as the go-to for class help – even at 4 AM when students, unawares of other peoples’ schedules/desires to sleep, would knock on my dorm door for help. By that time, my mind was set on going into basic science research, and it was pretty much a straight shot from there.

Who or what are some of the important influences battling any of the leftover stereotypes about girls and math?

When kids are in preschool, their viewpoints about math and science are largely unshaped. They probably think that a scientist is “cool” and that this profession can be included in the super awesome repertoire of pretend play. However, this momentum is slowed as the kids become more exposed to societal norms, which are chock-full of gender claims.

I truly believe that we need to work hard at keeping the momentum going, identifying and removing roadblocks along the way. This takes positive reinforcement and positive STEM role models – from both genders! While there are superstars like Neil deGrasse Tyson doing a fabulous job at this, we have to consider that parents, teachers, friends, family can all play a small or large part.

For instance, I spent last year face-timing with my daughter’s preschool class on a weekly basis. I fielded questions about science, showed them my lab, and introduced other scientists (men and women) along the way. Each session was only about 10 minutes, but it was enough to make an impact. These tiny efforts are super important and I think having role models as early as possible is ideal.

If a middle school girl told you, “I hate science/math. I’m just not good at it. It’s boring,” what would you tell her?

First, I’d probably ask her why she thought that in the first place. Then, I’d give my version of math and science - maybe talk about freezing point depression while making ice cream, or acids and bases while tie-dying t-shirts (yes, these are admittedly cheap but incredibly powerful tricks to rope those kids in). I’d probably talk to her about how we need more strong women in STEM and how I believe that she can be one of them. Basically, I’d try to encourage her to try without being all lecture-y, and show her the awesome applications of science and math in the real world.

What about the kid- boy or girl - who says, “I just don’t see why I need this stuff. I’m going to be a writer/artist/athlete, etc.”

I guess I would start by providing examples of applications and why knowing science/math is important even for everyday living. It is important to be an educated consumer, and I believe science and math training is poised to develop critical thinking abilities, which, in turn, helps one to more easily identify when you are being fleeced. We get a lot of our information from the internet, and sometimes we can get roped into believing something that is completely untrue or even dangerous, especially when it comes to health. Knowing the basics can help one to identify false health claims and even save you money.

Plus, you look cool being able to calculate the tip and how much everyone owes when going out to dinner with friends.

_________________________________________________________

I don’t blame Sister Thomas Joseph for my F in Physics.

That was me not "hitting the books" and a touch of Senior year doldrums.

Never once did I think, “I can’t do this,” and I doubt that anyone in Cardinal Brennan High School would consider the stereotype of "women just don't have the same brain power as men" a weight on any scale.

The sisters were all pretty much fantastic teachers and role models, and I constantly surprise myself with the facts and theories I do remember.

And somewhere along the way, they taught me how to keep asking questions and to keep learning. There's always so much more to learn.

Which, maybe, is one of the most important lessons.

When Josette is not writing about incredibly important stuff, you can find her immersed in fluffiness up to her eyeballs at MamaPop.com.

For more on girls in math and science-y stuff check out these links!

Girl Scouts in STEM
Science: It's A Girl Thing!
Brain Cake
Cool Girls Science and Arts

BlogHer 2012 - Josette Style

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:10:00 +0000

How Most People Go To A Blogging Conference

1. Buy a ticket to BlogHer 2012.

2. Make a hotel and flight reservation.

3. Worry about what to wear, whether you'll fit in, whether you'll fit in with what you're wearing.

4. Make pre-arrangements with a few friends to meet-up for dinner, for coffee, to hang out.

5. Go to conference, look perfectly tidy and lovely, mix and mingle, attend sessions, go to a few parties, have a few drinks, discuss the conference, get some SWAG from the sponsor exhibition hall, say your good-byes, pack your bags, head home.

6. Write a blog post.

How I Went To A Blogging Conference

1. Buy a ticket for one day (instead of the whole conference) and then decide you don't want to go to BlogHer 2012. Try unsuccessfully to sell ticket, then forget about it.

2. Day of conference, make the last minute decision to jump on a train to New York City. Throw on some jeans and a t-shirt. Stuff a backpack with a change of t-shirt, some deodorant, a pair of high heels, and a toothbrush. Tell no one outside of your family.

3. Get off train at Penn Station in NYC. Walk 20 blocks in the heat. Drink two bottles of sports drink that you bought at a street vendor.

4. Show up at conference dripping sweat and your hair in a fried-out ponytail. Register and run upstairs where the hotel waiters are clearing up the lunch buffet. Grab a turkey sandwich out of a waiter's hand, snarl back at the waiter, and jump into a session as the doors are closing.

5. Sit behind a well-known, well-respected blogger who you've only ever met online and who you'd love to meet For Real and talk to and fawn over if you didn't smell like a Times Square subway stop and look like you'd possibly just been in a brawl with a hobo. When well-known blogger turns around and says, "Hey, it's you!", almost fall off your chair, babble something that sounds like drunken Farsi, then remember the time you both agreed to disagree during some Twitter debate and wonder if she really meant the truce, or if as soon as the session is done she's going to push you over onto your butt and call you a ninny. (She didn't. She's actually one of those rare people who walk their kindness talk. And thank goodness. Because she was two feet taller than shrimpy me.)

6. When session is over, instead of looking at schedule of events to decide which speakers might discuss information from a POV that would most closely reaffirm your own beliefs, just lazily walk into the next open door. Sit through an hour-long discussion on what it's like to be a blogger who is an unmarried, non-parent. Think "Hmm" and "Huh" quite a few times during the presentation. Consider raising your fist in solidarity because, frankly, you've really needed this weekend away from your spouse and kids, but then decide that, no, that's probably not what they're talking about.

7. Since you can't get your electronic device to hook-up to Wifi, you can't Tweet/Facebook/Email any people you know so you can, you know, hook-up and pretend to be popular. Wonder what the hell you're going to do with the rest of your day since lugging your backpack around New York City in 99% humidity feels like hell.

8. Get a text from a friend to meet her at registration! Wander around exhibitors hall and pick up some SWAG. Later decide that lugging around a backpack and SWAG bag containing a full bottle of bathroom cleaner, a mini fan, and two mirror compacts is like hiking the Appalachian Trail with a 25 lb. frozen turkey. Keep the mini fan, dump the bathroom cleaner. Gawk at Uber Famous Celebrity Blogger from across a sea of high-heeled hairdos. Decide that waiting in long line to register for an expensive kitchen mixer giveaway means that The Man has won. Leave exhibitors hall.

9. Bypass crowded elevator and walk up eight flights of stairs to sponsor suite on the 42nd floor. Know that even though your friend has cleaned up well, she's a crunchy, outdoorsy type who will hopefully appreciate your flagrant sweating and frazzly hair as thumbing your nose at conventional archetypes of blogger beauty. Further hope she doesn't Instagram your Grizzly Adams ass.

10. Visit the toy car sponsors. Listen to their pitch on why you should buy more complicated plastic accessory gadgets to enhance your child's enjoyment of simply playing with cars. Pee pants laughing when friend accidentally breaks a display toy two seconds after the toy car representative reiterates the "kid tough" construction of the toys.

11. Get shut out of Starbucks coffee tasting suite because you didn't make a reservation. Write "Free Maxwell House in Lobby" on suite door and book out of there.

12. Part ways with friend for time being. Feel hungry, but you don't have dinner plans and don't want to third wheel anyone else's plans. Wander around second exhibition hall as they are closing up. Know that the Muller Yogurt lady isn't going to want to take all that yogurt home with her. Pretend to be really interested in her product and ask a lot of questions about protein content and whether or not the milk used contains pink slime or whether her company hates gays until she finally gives you a few yogurts just to go away. Feel bad because the yogurt is actually really good. Make a mental note to mention Muller Yogurt by name if you write a blog post.

13. Wander to lobby and grab some granola bars. Sit alone and try to get Wifi to hook up again.

14. See a woman sitting across from you, all by herself. Note that she looks like a mirror image of a cleaned-up you with nicer earrings.

15. Feel delighted (and relieved) when woman strikes up conversation with you. Find out that she is a social media professional (like, "I get paid to consult with businesses on this stuff" as opposed to "I just hang out on Twitter in my underwear all day") and has never been to this particular blogging conference. Talk with her for two hours exchanging mutual overall impressions from the point-of-view of people who can say whatever they want without fear that Starbucks is going to withdraw sponsorship from their blogs. Solve all the world's problems and then talk about your kids.

16. Switch your sneakers for heels, adjust your ponytail, and apply some makeup. Head to Big Party. Meet a newly crowned A-list blogger in the hallway. When blogger asks where you are staying for the night, act real cool like and say "Who knows, man. It's NYC. I'm just gonna wander around all night, hit some beat bars, write some poetry, greet the dawn somewhere down near Battery Park." Listen to celebrated blogger tell you that you're going to get mugged, drugged, and shipped off on a boat to Morocco. Take up blogger's offer to sleep on their hotel room floor.

17. Dance. Have a Budweiser. Dance. Say hellos to a few people you know and run into. Dance. Have a cola. Dance. Get approached by some social media marketing dude. Don't tell him exactly who you are when he asks you. Act a little cagey - which causes marketing dude to perhaps think you're someone important who doesn't want to talk to him, which causes him to pursue you more. Find out somehow that he has family in Schuylkill County. Engage marketing dude in conversation about keg parties on pole lines. Know that this isn't really what he wants to talk to you about, but he will, because he still thinks you might be Ree Drummond.

18. Dance.

19. Get approached by a young dude who wants to tell you about the new app he's created for Android. Pretend you work for Apple. Watch him squirm. Buy him a drink and tell him no hard feelings.

20. Sloppily introduce yourself to a few people you think you might already know. Give up and go back to dancing.

21. Make way to cab and pass out (tired, not drunk) on hotel room floor.

22. Wake in morning and rub the caterpillars off your teeth with the back of your t-shirt. Listen to the soft snorfling of the still-sleeping celebrated blogger. Pretend briefly that you are in a boxcar traveling across Missouri. Decide to introduce yourself as Woody Guthrie's great-grandniece for the rest of the day. See if that gets you a free cup of coffee.

23. Chat with blogger and blogger's other roommate about Life, The Universe, and Everything to do with the decline and rebirth of blogging.

24. Scrub up in the sink, readjust your ponytail, and head out into sweltering morning heat. Hug your hosts good-bye, leaving them with a DNA sweat impression should you still end up on a ship to Morocco.

25. Grab an almond croissant and tangerine juice from a supermodel barista who looks like she might have just flown in from an all-nighter in Rio.

26. Hang out in Bryant Park. Feel good about yourself being alone in New York City and not being conned into becoming an unwilling participant in a black market human trafficking ring.

27. Hang out in your favorite Japanese bookstore and call teen daughter to find out what mangas she wants. Feel all cosmopolitan and stuff.

28. Hang out in Penn Station and strike up conversation with young man carrying a tall stick and a huge, heavy-laden backpack. Find out he's a thru-hiker on the Appalachian Trail. Tell him you're Woody Guthrie's great-grandniece and tell about the time you had to ditch a bottle of bathroom cleaner from your backpack at a blogging conference. Know that the backpacker will now have a great story about a crazy New Yorker lady he met at Penn Station.

29. Get on train home.

30. Write a blog post.

Photo by Not Like A Cat

For more excellent Josette at MamaPop.com, check out When Did You Realize You Wouldn't Be A Rock Star? and an entire post about why people shouldn't be posting about Gabby Douglas' Hair.

This Blog Post Is Not SEO Optimized

noreply@blogger.com (josetteplank.com) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:12:00 +0000

And I bet you think I'm now going to write about Search Engine Optimization and how it's for chumps.

Well...maybe it is and maybe it isn't. That's a debate that's been raging since the beginning of time, right up there with The Great Debates. Would the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have survived longer if management had incorporated water rides and a steel roller coaster? Was Bob Dylan correct in his opinion of non-exclusionary policy when it comes to just who should and shouldn't get stoned? Am I, like, the only human being alive and everyone else is just a robot?

Okay, so just a quick post to let you all know that my Toyota finally has a new timing belt. This is not something I've ever mentioned before on this blog, so don't waste your time looking for some hilarious tale about me in my Toyota and the timing belt breaking while I was driving through the desert and I had to pull into a roadhouse where I got in a fight with an obnoxious biker after he insinuated the Odyssey minivan handled better than the Sienna. That would have been a great story. And maybe I'll write it someday and sell the movie rights.

But, no. Right now I only have a workaday story of how my minivan hit 100,000 miles and it cost me $735 to have the timing belt replaced. Which I then scheduled, and then I arranged to have someone drive with me to the shop, all in a very adult-like manner.

I guess it would have been more entertaining if on the way to the shop I had hit a deer.

Or a clown.

Or a clown riding a deer.

Once, I hit a television with my 1966 Mustang and ripped apart the bottom of the car. I vaguely remember my dad mutter-cursing about "how the hell the tie rod would just break for no good reason", and luckily, he didn't find a cathode ray tube shoved up under the car. That would have given me away.

I hit the television driving out the pole line, up the mountain, to a keg party.

I suppose you could say it served me right to hit a television. Or, maybe it served my dad right. He was the one always telling us to get out of the house and go outside.

Dum-di-dum.

Oh! My hot water heater in the house broke, too!

But I don't want to use up all my good stories at once. I can't optimize for "timing belt", "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" and "power vent hot water heater" all in the same post. Or rather, I shouldn't.

Look. Here's a picture of my middle child taking a break during a soccer tournament. So young. So carefree and full of hope for the future.

Mostly, I think she's just tired from kicking butt all morning.

Anyway, I did write something super excellent over at MamaPop.

All about Carly Rae Jepsen and Gotye and ear worms and how I can ascertain the configurations of your personality based upon how you answer a series of five questions on topics such as Star Wars, the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, hula-hoops, and Justin Bieber.

It's a peer reviewed study, so you can feel good about participating.

Also, there is some goofiness.

You won't get that here.