Category: Blather

Ten Years

December 7, 2003 was a cold, wet, dreary day — much like this one.

I know that because while my husband and daughter were occupied with other things, I decided to follow the lead of my online friend, author Andrea Buchanan, who at that time ran a website for moms in Philadelphia. Andi was the first person I knew who had set up one of these new-fangled things called “blogs,” and because she is an exceptionally prescient and thoughtful woman, I decided I wanted to set one up, too.

So I signed up for a free Typepad account and wrote:

It’s a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, and the house is a little chilly. “I’m going to make some tea,” I announce to Gareth. “Would you like some?” Silly question. He loves a spot of tea in the afternoon, even when it’s 90 degrees out. He insists that hot tea is cooling on a hot day. I’ve never found any logic in this, and although I’ve heard the same from other transplanted Brits, I think it’s just an urban myth cooked up by an ex-pat who can’t embrace American-style tumblers of tea poured over ice. Iced tea in summer is refreshing. Hot tea is a perfect drink when it’s cold – like today.

We were planning a Christmas trip to Britain to visit my husband’s family, and I thought the blog would be a cool way to share our adventures with our family and friends here in California. I never expected to continue it once we returned home. I certainly never expected that I would still be writing it ten years later.

A lot has happened to us over those ten years. We’ve had our share of ups… and downs. (And I’m not just talking about my weight.)

We traveled a lot — until we didn’t.

We said good-bye to beloved pets — and welcomed new ones.

My daughter threw herself into a sport and so we became devoted supporters — until she decided it was time to move on, and we were forced to move on, too.

In 2003, my daughter was in the second grade. Today, she’s applying to college.

Before I started my blog, I felt isolated and alone as a stay-at-home mom up here in the north San Fernando Valley.

In 2005, I attended the first-ever BlogHer conference for women who blog and that community has grown and given me more than I can say. Now, I have hundreds of friends throughout the country (and other parts of the world). I have even met some of them in real life (too many to list in this short post).

A few months ago, I despaired over the difficulty of re-entering the workforce after taking so much time off to raise my child. Today, I have a job… a job I landed because of skills and experience I developed as a blogger.

This blog — which I began as an experiment on a whim because I didn’t have anything else to do on a rainy Sunday — has changed my life, for the better.

I can’t wait to see how it goes over the NEXT ten years.

Tags blogging, socalmom

Blather

Cautiously Optimistic

I finally had that appointment with my doctor last week. And the news was good: That thing on my ovary appears to be just another fibroid. We will continue to monitor it, but for now, no surgery or other treatment is required.

Can I hear a “whew?”

Thankfully, I did not spend a great deal of time worrying about it. I have had too much to do cleaning up the new website and setting up a blog for my nearly full-time client. For the first time in years, I am cautiously optimistic about the future (like in realizing I actually HAVE a future, as this gig is made-to-order for my re-entry into the world of gainful employment).

However, I confess that while I was driving to my appointment, my mind did turn to the possibility of a morbid outcome.

Since the dawn of the great recession, I’ve limited discretionary spending on myself. The first thing to go was stuff like manicures. I bartered for a couple of years with an esthetician (waxing in exchange for managing her client newsletter). This arrangement worked until she decided to go into another business. Unfortunately, this is not something I can completely forego because my menopausal face keeps sprouting hair in all the wrong places. But I don’t go as often as I should, because it’s expensive. Thankfully, my eyesight is now so bad and the lighting in my bathroom is so dim that I rarely notice my whiskers.

Likewise, I put off getting my hair cut and colored for as long as I can. When I first became a stay-at-home mom, I tried coloring my hair myself and botched it so badly that I decided this was something that should be left to the professionals. At the start of the recession, I toyed with the idea of allowing my gray hair to come in naturally. I didn’t like the way I looked (you know – OLD). So then I experimented with getting these services done on the cheap at a beauty school – but all it took was one sloppy dye job to quit that idea. Since then, I just stretched my visits out until my hair was so limp and dull that I can’t bear it any longer.

This is where I was last week, and I remember driving off to the doctor and thinking I needed to make some salon time.

And then, I realized that there was this little, teeny chance that I might have bigger things to deal with, and that going to the salon NOW would be a waste of time and money.

I promised myself I would see a hairdresser this weekend if the news was good.

So: My hair is now dark and shiny… and it occurred to me that I no longer HAVE to go two or three months between salon visits. I can now afford to go every 4-6 weeks, as I did from the time I turned 18 and had my first regular paycheck.

This is going to take some getting used to. And even though I am now benefiting from a regular paycheck and have received a clean bill of health, I am having trouble letting go of the blanket of dread I’ve been living with for the last five years. I can’t allow myself to feel happy for very long, because I’m afraid of getting blindsided again by events I cannot control.

This is no way to live. I know that. I have felt insecure for a very long time and I think it’s going to take me at least as long to shake it off and feel like myself again.

Blather

A Tale of Two Facebook Accounts

Post author By Donna Schwartz Mills
Post date November 8, 2013
3 Comments on A Tale of Two Facebook Accounts

One of the tasks I’m doing for my new business client is managing their social media. This is a piece of cake, since I’ve been active on Facebook, Twitter, et al for years — especially for the MOMocrats.

And there’s my dilemma. Partisan politics has no place when conducting business. And while I have a right to express my political views (and have no intention of stopping), I think it’s only appropriate in my personal space. My clients and their customers don’t want to know what I think of Obamacare, and frankly, I don’t feel the need to tell them.

I am also wary of those instances where corporate tweeters got in trouble for controversial updates that offended half their stream.

This isn’t a problem with Twitter, where my tweets go out under the company account. It’s not really a problem with LinkedIn, which only gets limited feeds from SoCal Mom. But Facebook is another matter. I am now administering the company page there and it occurred to me that I did not want any of my MOMocrats posts to bleed over to the news feeds of the people I’m now working with. Yes, I can set privacy settings that would limit my status updates just to my friends — but I am likely to begin adding new business colleagues and clients to my friend list.

Besides, we all know how much Facebook respects your privacy. They change their terms all the time and your settings along with them (and rarely notify you). Right now, I go into my privacy settings monthly to see how they are set and regularly discover that they’ve changed without my knowledge. It’s a pain.

So over the weekend, I decided to create myself a second Facebook profile under my company email address. And then I friended some of the people from the company.

And then I realized that “Donna Mills,” with her whopping TWO friends, looked fake. And a little bit creepy. So I sent friend requests to about a dozen family members and close friends and posted a status update explaining why I had created the second account.

The following day, I received a text from another good friend (not one of the original dozen) asking me why Facebook was suggesting she friend me when we were already friends? After I explained the situation to her, I checked my email and discovered that about 20 people who are on my “real” Facebook friends list had also asked to friend my other account.

As of now, “Donna Mills” has 46 friends and the requests keep on coming.

I don’t think any of them are going to see a lot going on with “Donna Mills.” For one thing, she’s a lot less vocal than “Donna Schwartz Mills.” She posts links to general interest articles that may be funny and status updates that don’t say a whole lot. And I have a feeling she’ll be calling attention to a number of videos she’s making touting the joys of Microsoft products (Did I mention that the client is an IT company? “Donna Mills” is about to become an expert on everything coming out of Redmond. “Donna Schwartz Mills” is still in love with her iPad and iPhone.)

How long can I keep up maintaining two separate Facebook identities? For a long, long time, I hope. In the meantime, if you are already a Facebook friend of “Donna Schwartz Mills,” you don’t need to prove your love by friending “Donna Mills,” too. But if you do, maybe you want to show the company Facebook page a little love while you’re at it? I’d truly appreciate it. 🙂

Tags Facebook, linkedin, social media, twitter

Blather

NoBloPo Huh?

It has been a long time since I participated in one of the November writing challenges like NaNoWriMo and NoBloPoMo.

The one time I attempted the novel writing challenge, the resulting manuscript was such a pile of dreck that continuing on to another draft seemed absolutely pointless.

And I think it is silly to join the daily blog posting activity because posting daily should always be my blogging goal. The fact that month after month I fail at it only makes me less determined to join in the fun.

But now that 20-30 of my weekly hours are being spent in the service of a paying client, finding time for my personal blog is proving to be more difficult than ever. So last week, I found myself once again toying with the idea of signing up for NaBloPoMo, if only to force myself to find a sliver of time.

And then it was November 5. So that train has passed.

My last full post was written while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. I suppose it should come as no surprise that this one is also coming to you from a waiting room. It seems that is the only place right now where I am able to empty my mind of work-related tasks, enabling me to focus long enough to write.

In other words, I am bored. And desperate enough to blog from my iPhone.

My last post referred to my fear of the other show dropping in the form of some kind of medical disaster. The fact that my doctor has ordered additional tests means that I am still watching for that shoe to maybe drop… But for right now, all is well.

But I did have a bit of a thud last week, when my car underwent some unscheduled and expensive repairs… Followed by a plumbing event that cost me about a week’s pay.

Thank goodness I am being paid now, right? And no wonder I am so silent here.

Here’s hoping I find the time to write again soon… In the comfort and accessibility of my home office.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Blather

The Other Shoe

I have a good reason for neglecting this space for the last two weeks:

I got a job. A real, honest-to-goodness, employment situation with a boss and meetings — and a paycheck, too. And I have been putting all of my energy into showing them that taking a chance on me was not a mistake.

So far, I think they are happy with the work I am doing for them, and it feels good. It feels really good. It feels so good that I’ve been a little bit afraid to talk about it, lest I tempt fate and force the other shoe to drop.

You see, for the last several years, whenever I’ve had a lick of good fortune, something dire hits me on the head with a great big thump. And I so don’t want to have that happen now. I need this job. I needed it three years ago. And I am terrified of screwing it up.

Right now, I am looking at something that might be that other shoe: Do you remember that doctor’s appointment I had over the summer, where they discovered I had developed a new uterine fibroid (after the onset of menopause, when that is not supposed to happen)?

I was advised to come back in two months so they could check the progress. The two months have now passed, and I wrote the bulk of this post while sitting in my doctor’s waiting room with a full bladder, waiting to be called in for another ultrasound. And while it was easy to put it out of my mind for eight weeks, once I was there — I was scared.

Because it would be just my luck to finally see the light at the end of the financial tunnel only to learn that I had problems with my health.

Unfortunately for me, my OB/GYN was called to the hospital on Wednesday when I had my appointment, so she was not there to interpret the results of the scan. It’s now Saturday morning, and I still have not heard from her. I am thinking that’s a good sign — but I will call her on Monday, just to make sure.

I hope that shoe stays right where it is.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Tags life, work

Blather

Sexy Beast

Yesterday was one of those days. I had to dash to a meeting immediately after a conference call (which meant I needed to wear grown-up clothes, make-up and — UGH! proper women’s shoes). On top of that, my daughter needed me to pick her up an hour early and then went to school without her phone — which meant that I would have no way to communicate with her if I was running late.

And to add some icing to my very busy cake: I suspected that my site had been hacked.

I subscribe to my own RSS feed so I can see how it looks in Feedblitz. Over the weekend, I started receiving emails addressed to “Sexy Beast”… from “Sexy Beast.” This had been going on for three days and it was finally starting to bug me.

So I took an hour off from what I was supposed to be doing yesterday to see what I could learn about viruses that affect RSS feeds and Feedblitz. (I could not find anything).

I searched on the term “Sexy Beast.” (I got a lot of hits on that, just nothing relevant).

I visited Sucuri and scanned the site for malware (there are none — knock on wood).

If I hadn’t needed to leave the house I probably would have spent the entire day looking for the source of my weird “Sexy Beast” emails, because I get a little bit obsessive when something’s not right. And these emails did not feel right.

My afternoon meeting ended just in time to get to the school at 4:00. My daughter climbed in the car, and since she did not have her phone, she decided to play with mine.

Remember that as a T-Mobile customer, I was locked out of iPhone ownership until about six months ago. And ever since I got one, my daughter’s favorite thing has been conversing with Siri in an effort to make her say something silly.

“Hello, Siri,” she said.

“Hello, Sexy Beast.”

Ohhhhhhhhh. I forgot that Megan had instructed Siri to call me that. This reminded me of my hacking problem and put me in a foul mood.

“Tell her to just call me Donna,” I said sharply.

“Just call me Donna,” Megan instructed Siri.

“You would like me to call you Donna Just Call Me Donna,” Siri replied.

“Nooooooo. Call me Donna,” Megan said.

“OK Donna Just Call Me Donna. I will call Donna,” Siri replied.

“No! Stop! Don’t Call! Just Stop!”

I made my daughter hand me the phone.

I dropped her off at home, ran some errands, cooked dinner and finally set about writing some notes on the conference call and meeting I had participated in hours before. I was still working when I received my nightly Feedblitz subscription.

This time, it was addressed to “Donna Just Call Me Donna.”

It dawned on me that I was only seeing the weird emails on my iPad and iPhone. It was a Siri thing, related to the iOS 7 update I had done over the weekend.

I feel better. And have decided I need to come up with a new handle for Siri to call me. Something affirmative, like “You Are a Goddess.”

Because who wouldn’t want to be addressed like that every night?

Movie Review: Jobs (glenniacampbell.typepad.com)
So Many Thoughts…So Few Complete Sentences (misszoot.com)
On respect, responsibility, and Mrs. Hall’s open letter to teenaged girls (rageagainsttheminivan.com)
The Good Mom (socalmom.net)

Blather

Musings on Friday the 13th

When I worked at the Tonight Show, I could count on Johnny doing a series of jokes about phobias every Friday the 13th. That’s how I know that the word for fear of that date is triskaidekaphobia. It’s amazing the things you remember after 25 years.

Of course, I started the day by oversleeping — which meant that my daughter also did not get up on time, because alarms aren’t enough to make it to that 7:00 AM “0” period. We need to go through a routine that consists of me turning on a light in her room and reminding her of the time every 10 minutes until she finally drags herself out of bed at 6:00.

Not today. Today began with a shout:

“IT’S TEN AFTER SIX! GET UUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPP!!!!”

It’s nice to see that we both can move pretty quickly when we are so motivated. Ten minutes later, I was ready to go (granted: all I did was put on some clean clothes and brush my hair and teeth). At 6:30, she was ready… but still needed to gather all of her things.

“I’ll meet you in the car,” she said.

Thank goodness our long, humid August heat wave ended. It’s actually been chilly this week on our drive in to school. I fired up the seat heaters for us both as she finally made it to the car, starting the motor and hitting reverse the moment she was safely strapped in to her seat.

“It will be a miracle if I get you there on time,” I told her. “Although I think everyone teenager with a 0 period should get one free tardy pass.”

I’m sorry. I think it is crazy to make teenagers be at school so early in the morning. Their circadian rhythms make them most alert late at night. The result is a lot of sleepy kids who don’t get enough sleep, which can’t help their performance in class.

On late start mornings I bypass the main drag up here and take the 118 for a couple of miles. I’m not sure if that is actually quicker, but it is tremendously satisfying to be able to go at freeway speed for a portion of our journey. I think it shaves a couple of minutes of our time. At least, it feels that way.

My daughter punched through the radio buttons to KROQ, where Kevin and Bean were yukking it up about it being Friday the 13th.

Ohhhhhhhhh. No wonder.

“If this is the worst thing that happens all day, you’ll be fine,” I tell her.

I don’t actually have a fear of Friday the 13th. In fact, when I was younger, I noticed that on that day, good things seemed to come my way.

I had a really good day yesterday. I plan on having another one today.

We made it to the school with minutes to spare.

She should have a good day, too.

Blather

Irons in the Fire

Where did the phrase “too many irons in the fire” come from?

A couple of days ago, I wrote in my status update on Facebook that I was feeling “cautiously optimistic.” That is because after years of suffering borderline depression over living in a borderline Depression (or a “jobless recovery,” or whatever you want to call it), my Inbox is buzzing with new opportunities.

None of them have actually become a reality yet. But something has changed: I look at the future and I see options. And HOPE.

I’ve been crazy busy this week, and surprisingly productive. Man, it feels GOOD.

I am reminded of the drive I took with my family over the weekend, into downtown Los Angeles. We passed no fewer than four huge construction cranes in Hollywood and another three downtown, which means there is a helluva lot of new building going on.

“You’d think this would translate into jobs,” I muttered to my husband.

Maybe it has. Maybe these new housing starts are indicative of an economy that is coming back, one that is finally trickling down to people like me. That seems to be the conclusion of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, at least as reported by local public radio station KCRW: They see our slowly recovering economy gaining steam, to the point where California’s jobless rate will eventually drop lower than the national rate. However, it won’t be enough to make up for all the job losses we have suffered these last six years — and while people with education and skills who want to work may finally be able to re-enter the job market, unskilled and semi-skilled labor will still have a hard time making a go at it.

Also, there will continue to be a geographic divide – not between north and south, but between the coastal, high population counties and the more rural inland areas where there isn’t enough investment to fire the economy back up.

I hope the forecast is wrong on that count. I want to see everyone back to work.

In the meantime, I’m just going to bask in the heat from those irons.

Tags california, job growth, recession, the economy

Blather

My Moment on the Million Second Quiz

Post author By Donna Schwartz Mills
Post date September 5, 2013
No Comments on My Moment on the Million Second Quiz

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Fun things happened this week. A couple of days ago, a fan on the MOMocrats Facebook page sent us this screenshot, from the app associated with that Million Second Quiz game show that NBC is promoting:

As someone who enjoys playing trivia games, this just tickles me to no end. I also play with this app because the questions are so easy I had no trouble qualifying to be a contestant on the show. But if I had gotten this one, I probably would have failed to answer in the allotted five seconds, because I would have been so flabbergasted by it. Frankly, I’m surprised the person who sent this to me had the time to take the screenshot!

I’m hoping it’s a good omen. A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a job that seemed absolutely perfect for me. Last night, I received word that I did not get the job. It truly was the nicest rejection letter I had ever received. It was a long shot and I knew it, but just finding that particular opening gave me hope that I can find something that is a good fit.

So I keep looking. And who knows? Maybe I’ll get selected for the show and my penchant for remembering useless facts will finally come in handy.

Tags million second quiz, momocrats, trivia

Blather

Dreams

My dreams are as fanciful and weird as they’ve always been – except they no longer feature me in a starring role. Instead, I am a spectator, watching (and occasionally abetting) the adventures of other people. People I do not actually know, or recognize in real life.

I don’t know if this means that I watch too much TV… Or that my life has now progressed to the point where I no longer have anything of my own worth dreaming about.

Or maybe it’s a sign that I should be writing fiction.

I have always been a writer. Whether a good one or not is debatable: Last week, my parents were in town and my dad let me know that he has started reading this space.

“You’re a very good writer,” he said.

I think I’m a pretty good writer. I’m not an excellent writer.

I’m a slow writer. It takes me a very long time to churn out a little 500-word post, and I never seem to be quite finished when I realize my time is up and I have to stop — at which point, I can either hit “publish” or try to pick up where I left off tomorrow… and I usually choose to hit “publish,” because I learned a long time ago that perfection isn’t possible, so you have to let go and move on.

But as practical as that decision is, it means I don’t spend the time I should shaping my work: writing, re-writing, polishing.

My favorite literary quote is: “All drafts are shit,” purportedly said by Ernest Hemingway. And basically, everything I post here is a first draft.

My words do not soar, my thoughts do not inspire, and the cyberworld has expanded to the point where I need to look outward to be part of the blogging community, where a few years ago, the community came to me. I used to field comments. My writing on this blog was my calling card, opening doors to friendships I still enjoy.

It’s all changed.

I’ve changed. What makes me think I should still be doing all the same things?

Writing is what I’ve always done.

We did not have yearbooks in elementary school fifty years ago, but I had an autograph book, and I gave it to my teachers to sign. All of them mentioned the fact that I was always writing. My second grade teacher had some pretty lofty ambitions for me: “I hope to see your plays on Broadway some day.” Apparently, I used to exhibit some imagination.

I liked plays enough to read them for fun. I was a theater kid in high school and majored in it as a freshman in college. But by then, my real ambition was to work in movies and television. I somehow managed to do that. I sold two episodic sitcom scripts, despite the fact that the Tonight Show writers I worked with told me I wasn’t funny. Maybe they were right. Neither script was produced, which has not helped my confidence in my abilities.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt funny or seen the comedy in situations, or wanted to write anything but personal essays and non-fiction.

And yet, I keep having these wild and crazy dreams that have nothing to do with me.

Yesterday, for the first time in something like 20 years, I had an idea for a sitcom — and I sat down and started fleshing it out, even though there isn’t a chance in hell that I could sell the thing and there are a zillion other things I should be working on.

I started fleshing it out just to see if it was something I could still do.

Because I think it’s weird that I’m not even the star of my own dreams. I need to do something about that.

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