March 18, 2010 · 6:49 pm

Gerber Baby Wanted

You all know how I love facebook ads. This one surely does not disappoint. It would appear our friends at Gerber are searching for a new baby to represent their brand. No, they are not a client, and no I do not feel either one way or another about their product. Honestly, since Danny is 17 (years, not months) I am embarrassed to say I don’t even know if that is the brand I bought for him.

Wait, did I even give him baby food? Oh, I guess I must have, he wasn’t born with teeth. I think with Jana I might have gone the make your own food route for a little while. I have memories of ice cube trays of pureed chicken but I think that got too gross.

Whatever, this is not about baby food. It is about babies. Now for those of you who are not familiar, this is the traditional Gerber baby. This kid is friggin’ adorable, right. I mean that little button nose, the sweet little bowtie lips, the sparkling eyes laced by long lashes, perfect shaped head… you get the picture.

Now the baby in that facebook ad? C’mon folks this little sucker is scaaaary looking. This little imp looks petrified and I hate to be cruel here but a little alien-esque. Of all the babies out there, and with all due respect to the parents of this one, could they not have found a stock photo of a better looking baby than this?

Hey, I guess it’s better than using that hairy guy they used on the moms go back to school ad.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 17, 2010 · 11:49 pm

Comment of the Month

Verbatim!

This is what I found in my spam blocker over at Leaving the Zip Code. This is some pretty serious advise.

DO SOME PETTY POINT OR GO FOR A VISIT TO POINTE CLAIRE QUEBEC. LITTLE GIRLS LIKE YOU USUALLY WEAR PONY TAILS ANG GO BY THE NAME OF SWEDISH PIPI LONGSTOCKING NOT ANE DE GREEN GABLES, THATS A DONKEY SIMILIAR TO THE ONE FROM PIXCZAR NOT THE ONE YOU ARE THINKING OF NAMED FRANK. YOU SEEM TO BE OFF THE WALL BUT I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU’D WALK THE PL-ANE-K (AS ON WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S STAR TREK) OR BE THROWN OFF SOME BRIDGE BY THESE CEMENT COMMENTS. THAT’S A PONT IN FRENCH AND THAT’S THE POINT.

IF YOU NEVER FOUND A JOB IN THE POINT DOWN BY GRIFFINTOWN AND THE 8TH WONDER OF THE WORLD, THE VICTORIA BRIDGE, YOU MIGHT BE IN FOR A PRETTY NASTY TIME.  LEAVING YOUR ZIP CODE. THAT’S ALL IN THE POST BOOBS. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD ASK ELVIS HOW HE SWUNG HIS PELVIS OR THAT OTHER GIRL WHO WAS ‘IN THE ZONE’.

I do love the reference to Pippi Longstocking. And of course the reference to William Shakespeare’s Star Trek. Do you think he meant Shatner?

The scary part is that this crazy person writes in a stream of consciousness (maybe English as a second language) sort of style that might be a tad bit reminiscent of say… me maybe?!!

But my favorite line of all is “Leaving your zip code. That’s all in the post boobs.” Would that be the post boobs as in after-boobs. Or do you think that means on the blog post boobs?

Just asking.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 16, 2010 · 6:50 pm

Keep on Truckin’ Mama…

… truck my blues away!

Have you ever found yourself on the Cross Bronx Expressway when it is at a complete standstill?

That’s a joke. If you are from NY you know that the Cross Bronx Expressway is ALWAYS at a complete standstill and you avoid it at all costs. Except when you are a completely happy-to-be-out-of-the-basement idiot listening to your ipod at 10, while you are driving on a painfully glorious 60 degree almost-spring-you-can-taste-it sort of day like today. Then you mistakenly take the Throgs Neck Bridge instead of the Triboro to the Harlem River Drive when you are going to Jersey and you find yourself smack in the middle of the worst 10 mile stretch of road in the universe! Or at least the east coast because I think all of Southern California is probably the equivalent of the Cross Bronx only with better scenery.

So there I am.

Stuck between 4 tractor trailors.

And I have to pee.

Like, so bad that it seems a waste not to have to go for a sonogram with a bladder that full. (inside joke for those who know about having to take a pelvic sono). Only I could bring the word ‘pelvic’ into a post about traffic and trucking. Yeh, I know, part of my charm.

So, to amuse myself, and to take my mind off of the fact that my bladder was very likely going to burst any moment, I pulled out my camera and started to find things to take pictures of. What? You don’t do that?

Well, lucky for me that I had that camera because somewhere around exit 5 this red truck pulls up alongside me with my last name on it!! (ok, maiden name but I use it for blogging and work so it counts). Thanks Zimmerman Truck Lines for truckin’ my blues away. (ok, painfully corny, sorry)

I took it as a sign that I was meant to be there at that moment.

Huh? Whatever, just humor me.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 15, 2010 · 9:17 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – Little Shirt

When you have lived in a house as long as we have, things have a habit of lodging themselves in the back of places and you never know they are there.

Until, you have to move your massive armoire over six inches and you have to empty the entire thing out. There, on the top shelf, behind the long underwear and old sweaters that have that funky stripe of dust on them because they haven’t been unfolded in countless years, was the t-shirt above.

Size 24 month.

That belonged to the girl who will turn 21 YEARS next month.

Freaky!

How it got there I will never know. It was not a particularly favorite shirt, although it does say Delray on it and Mom, I am sure we bought it at that little place we loved on Atlantic Avenue. So although the shirt itself does not hold any particular memories of little Jana, the days we spent in Florida when she was young surely do.

I held up that little shirt and a rush of memories came flooding in. The smell of suntan lotion mixed with Desitin (she used to eat so much sand it was rough going on the way out). The way she could sit in a hole that Gary dug for her on the beach for hours. Standing at the shoreline with each of us holding one of her chubby little hands and lifting her up as the waves crashed on her feet, her squealing with delight each time as if it were the first. The cry of ‘five more minutes’ when we told her it was time to get out of the water. My kids adored the beach. Nature or nurture? Both, I am sure. Salt air and sand are something ingrained in their lives and a symbol of their childhoods.

That little Jana was one handful. Loads of fun but always giving me a run for my money. She could out-stubborn me any day of the week. Those toddler years were trying as hell but damn what I would not give for just one more day of that curly-headed little whirling dervish.

And now she is halfway across the globe navigating the world as if she were riding her bike around the corner, “It’s fine mom, I’ll figure it out, don’t worry.”

Don’t worry?! Isn’t that my job?

Janny-girl, I am thinking that I just might have to save that little shirt a while longer. And no, you cannot still wear it even though I know you love tiny T’s.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 14, 2010 · 10:17 pm

Fill in the blank

Fortunately this blog post is not intentionally blank. In fact it is filled with the nonsense inside my head and a big fat question for the brand guys at Samsung.

We just bought this super cool flat screen TV for bedroom because, well because it was Gary’s birthday and I could not bear another life cycle event with him looking longingly at the TVs everywhere we went. If you read yesterday, it was a bit of an ordeal to buy and make room for this item. It continued to be an ordeal when our main man Carlos came to install this baby and he could not find the stud. Yeh, I know, it was a present for ‘the stud’ but I can’t hang a TV off of him so we needed to find the one in the wall. Built in 1939, this house has its charms, but finding studs in plaster walls is not one of them.

I digress. While Carlos was making countless holes in my wall looking for the stud, doing a great job installing the TV, I decided to look through the QuickStart manual and familiarize myself with the TV.

Ok, that is a lie. Actually, I did not even consider looking at the manual until I was checking out the nifty swing mount on the TV that will actually allow me to get into the back of my underwear drawer in the armoire by moving out of the way (the old stationary tv blocked it) and in turn touched… SOMETHING, that knocked out the reception on the TV. Did you follow that last stream of consciousness insane sentence? Anyone out there distracted by my underwear drawer? No matter, point is we needed to figure out how to get the TV back on again so I looked at the manual. Gary, on the other hand, called Carlos and he told us how to do it.

Never mind. None of this has anything to do with what the point of this pointless post is. Looking through the guide I came upon 3 pages that said ‘This page is intentionally left blank”. Really? WTF. Why would three pages be left blank. Intentionally no less. Ok all you printer and designer types out there, we all know that a saddle stitched (fancy name for stapled) brochure has to have a multiple of 4 pages because the sheets are printed in spreads and folded in half creating 4 pages per signature. Enough of the print layout lesson. My question to the brand manager at Samsung would be:

YOU COULDN’T THINK OF ANYTHING TO PUT ON THOSE EXTRA 3 PAGES OTHER THAN “THIS PAGE WAS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK”?

I mean seriously, guys, a little marketing opp here maybe. Perhaps some more troubleshooting, I am sure you did not cover all the problems that I will encounter on that one page. But three blank pages? And your solution to them was to let us know that it was intentional? Yikes, I have been in the biz for a long time. I have never had a client say, “Hey, let’s intentionally leave these pages blank and then state it so we don’t look like we made a mistake. Ok, our work is done here, drinks anyone?”

Yeh, well, the TV is real nice, even if the brand guys are kind of lame.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 14, 2010 · 12:02 am

Problem/Solution

Problem: Husband pining for a flat screen for the bedroom.

Solution: Best Buy cards for his birthday present.

Problem: They don’t have the one he wants.

Solution: Buy it at PC Richards. (retaining the Best Buy cards for more toys – good present becomes excellent present).

Problem: He (of course by nature of having a penis) wants a bigger one than can fit in the allotted space.

Solution: Move the armoire over 6 inches.

Seriously?! You want to move that thing. That thing with all that crap in it that will have to be folded and sorted through since we have to empty it to move it?

OK, nothing better to do on a rainy day.

Problem: Two old farts who don’t want to throw out their backs.

Solution: 3 17-year-old Baco boys in the house.

Thanks boys!

Have a problem… bring it on!

Of course we now need an installer to hang the tv, a carpet cleaner to get the marks from the armoire out of the rug, the room could use a painting and come to think of it we could use new window treaments. Or I could just go out for martinis and dim the lights.

Hey, if you give a house a cookie...

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 12, 2010 · 11:29 pm

Stone Free

Well, a Friday night in the household and one by one we lost the dogs.

And the boys.

Guest dogs have all gone to their respective families, guest boy is off to sleep in his own bed before the SATs tomorrow (good luck Mikey), and our boy is off with his campies.

That leaves me, Mel, Gary and Jimi.

Hendrix of course. Gary brought home the much awaited, newly released Valleys of Neptune and we listened to it a bit in the car on the way to dinner.

Yeh, a chick that loves Hendrix, what can I say?

Oh great, now she is a rock critic? Hey screw off, this is my blog and if I want to indulge in a little rock n roll, I damn well can. Oh sorry, feeling a little testy on a Friday.

Back to the music; it is such a clean sound, the remastering is phenomenal. The technology allows us to hear what we have missed for so long. It makes me both grateful for this new compilation to be released and so very sad that this giant died so young. Jimi could have really changed music. More so than he did in his few short years. He had IT; felt it like no other and could bend sound and minds alike in such a way that it is hard to imagine where he would have gone. And if this is not wonderful enough, our friend gave us a rare CD of acoustic recordings titled, By Himself: The Home Recordings that all you Hendrix fans will be very jealous of (and yes we share). Six tracks including my all time favorite Hendrix song, Angel. It’s like having Jimi hanging out in your living room with just his guitar and his voice. Thanks Alan, best gift ever.

Some things are never destined to go further than they have. The music of Jimi Hendrix sadly falls in that category.

At the risk of sounding like a Time to Cry Tuesday, I will turn this around and share the sheer joy I found with these new releases. It is like having someone special re-enter your life that you never expected to see again. Cool, right?

Now if you will excuse my I have a date with Jimi.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 11, 2010 · 11:02 pm

Top News Stories of the Week

These were my faves:

Botched butt surgery (they used caulk! construction grade caulk! As my FB friend Stanley would say, “Caulk Suckers!”)

Mother’s milk used to make cheese (one word… EW)

Woman arrested for shaving while driving… her bikini area. (thank goodness she was not waxing)


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March 10, 2010 · 10:29 pm

An Equidistant Moment

It’s moments like this I am absolutely certain I was born to carry a camera. And I always wonder if other people notice this kind of stuff.

Right after we saw the white dogs with orange socks, we came upon this odd little scene on the World Financial Plaza. This was one of the first warm days in NY and everyone was trying to catch some time outdoors. The odd thing was that these five seemingly unrelated people decided to do so in almost the exact same way. They were spaced perfectly (hence equidistant), legs crossed on the same side, each one reading, as if they had been set up by an art director. Of course this was not, in fact,’a shot’.

It was real life.

I mean, seriously, what kind of art director would have kept that guy in the powder blue sweater on the left side there. He is the wild card in this shot. I mean, for G-d sake, he is not even crossing his legs.

Damn rebel!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 9, 2010 · 9:09 pm

White Dogs with Orange Socks

I don’t know, I just couldn’t come up with anything clever as a title for this. Sometimes the obvious is so outrageous it just fits.

Seems like the theme this week is pets. So if you are not an animal lover check back on maybe Saturday.

I saw these little lambikin like doggies on the Esplanade in Battery Park City yesterday. If you have never been there, you should visit, it is a very cool place and it almost seems like it is a different city than NY. Full disclosure, Battery Park City Authority is a long-standing client but I genuinely love this place and have watched it grow over the past 25 years from a whole bunch of open lots into a thriving urban jewel.

Back to the white dogs in orange socks (this sounds rather Suessian, no?). I was with a friend/client and we stopped to talk to the owner of these little… scamps. I am pretty sure she suffered from a little OCD of sorts because when I asked to take their picture she was all upset about their ‘faces being dirty’. Apparently these tiny orange socks are not meant to protect their delicate itsy bitsy feeties, they are to keep them from getting soiled.

Oh my!

Do you think she was offended when I bent down to pet them and told her my dog takes bigger dumps than this? Yeh, probably was classic anti-social behavior, but it did get a laugh out of my friend.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone

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