Hello to my friends at BzzAgent and VocalPoint, thanks for the goodies!

Here’s a little story about when I used to clerk for a newspaper. (It was this one. Yeah, it was weird, thanks for asking.) We used to get so much swag, you would not even have believed it.

Also, performers! They’d send by bagpipers to woo us out to the Highland Scottish Games, and a mariachi band would stop by every May for Cinco de Mayo. Kooky in the lobby!

One time they sent us about a dozen Cabbage Patch dolls. That was creepy, but the manufacturer was real excited because they were hoping Cabbage Patch dolls (and the dance! maybe the dance, too!) would become “hep” again.

Uh, yeah.

So one day, around Cabbage Patch Redux Time, I was cursing my existence and tearing into a pile of mail that was about as tall as I am (that means: tall). Wasn’t even happy about that, but it kept me busy and off the crack cocaine. I got fed up and said, There had better be a chocolate bar in here for me somewhere.

Har!

I tore open two more press kits (I remember it like it was yesterday, it was such cosmic timing) and the very next one I opened had (that’s right) not one, but two candy bars inside! Haha! Seriously, this is a true story. It was from Tavern on the Green, in Manhattan. Tavern on the Green used to be cool any time of year, but was especially pretty and festive during the holiday season. So I think they were sending the chocolate to try to lure me to NYC for the holidays, who knows.

Another time a belly dancer brought by an enormous block of chocolate, maybe 5 pounds of chocolate or so, but that’s a tale for another day.

Now, however, Tavern on the Green appears to have been taken over by… food trucks? Where the hell do they think they are, podunk Portland, Oregon?

My 9-year-old says to that, People are stupid. And I must say, I concur. I never go to New York anymore, cuz I don’t fly. Tell me, those of you who would know… is this true? Say it ain’t so, Joe. Please?

My point is, we used to get so much free stuff at The O. Meanie that I was (am), I used to gather as much of it as I could, after the reviews ran (or didn’t). Then I would either:

1) take it home
2) sell it at Powell’s books (grocery money)
3) give it to the shelter for women and children (domestic violence)

(That 3rd one is the one reporters and editors considered “mean.”) Although you know I ate those candy bars and didn’t share, I didn’t actually take much home. Not because I’m better than you or anything — I was a Lowly Clerk and didn’t score much stuff. Reporters and editors? Yeah. They scored, baby. They ferreted away as much as they could. One of the snootier ones once told me not to send any more goodies to the women & children’s shelter.

“You know how much free stuff they’ve got over there? They’re loaded!” (my response: “R u yankin’ my chain?”) Seriously. I used to call our courier service and have them deliver the boxes for me. Ha. Take that, you over-privileged victims of domestic violence and drug abuse!

Wait. Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. Swag. Here is my disclaimer, plz give it a read, thank you.

I think it is ridiculous that newspapers and news channels can get all kinds of goodies from every-damn-body, and be in bed with whoever, whenever, and do all kinds of product endorsements without owning up to, Oh yeah, the belly dancer stopped by…

That sentence is too long I’ll start over. This whole dang post is too long. for that matter, but this has been bugging me for awhile. Meanwhile, for us lowly bloggers — no one’s rolling in the cash, let’s just say that. Not unless they get a TV deal, yeah, I’m looking at you, sexy Ree ;) (as if I could resent anything the Pioneer Woman does, I love that gal.) So why do I feel like I’m selling my soul, because I run ads? Thanks, BlogHer. Kisses. I am going to continue to hold myself to much, much higher standards than those of USA Today and Fox News. Please make a note of it.

Most of the products/books/restaurants/toys and other products that I review, I pay for out of my own pocket. This week: bonanza. The books, CDS and DVDs the kids and I ordered showed up all at once. A publishing house sent me a load of little kids’ books (which I will pass along to my girlfriends’ who have littles). And BzzAgent? Oh, BzzAgent. Today, my kid had not the best day at school. Why? It was picture day, that’s why. And someone else’s mom tried to comb his hair and hello? Have you met me, Other Mom? I don’t even let my own mom comb my hair, back off, honk honk.

He probably thought it was like “Coraline” and she was going to sew buttons onto his eyes next.

But when he got home, it wasn’t just books galore, oh no. We got a brand-new Tonka XT Richochet Tricksters R/C “remote control stunt vehicle.” That one? It’s staying right here. He likes it, and invited his buddies over tomorrow so they can all test-drive it together.

My favorite feature so far: You can run it around all over the house and it doesn’t wreck the furniture. It flips and isn’t super-loud. A mom’s dream come true. Thank you, Tonka, and thank you, BzzAgent for sending it. (Free, so we could try it out.) (It’s a hit.)

Yes, we’ll be posting reviews all week, stay tuned.

(Maybe they’ll send Cabbage Patch dolls next week?)

— wm

“I really didn’t realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. They are subversive. You think they’re just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They’re like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn’t mess with them. You know, they’ve had their budgets cut. They’re paid nothing. Books are falling apart. The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?” Michael Moore

“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.” — Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)

He is gone now. — wm

proofing all week.

i could drink the hell out of a pot of coffee.

best,

wm

“How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.” — Coco Chanel

updated at 3:45 p.m. on Wednesday to say, DONE with first 142 pages of edit; 229 pages more to go. Why did I write such a cussin’ long book, anyway? It started as a short story. Also, I could use some encouragement at this point, FYI.

“The Sad Children’s Song”
by Grace Paley

This world is a wreck said the children
When they came home with their children
There are bombs all over the place
There’s no water The fields are all poisoned
Why did you leave things like this?
Where can we go said the children
What can we say to our children?

A.A. Thoughts For The Day:

c. 1952AAWS, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 91

…when I told her I did not get the full-time job I interviewed for (adding that I have not been offered full-time work since 1998):

“I think you forgot that you have been working more than full time since 1999. Yes it’s unpaid and undervalued but you have been doing the essential and invisible work of mothering since you got pregnant. After the revolution, mothers and elders will be revered properly, but until then we have each other to remind us that making breakfast, feeling warm foreheads, remembering the asthma meds, folding laundry, etc. is THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK ON EARTH.”

So those of you who need to hear this today? Yes, it is the most important work on Earth.

Thanks, my friend. I needed to hear that.

“Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.” — D.H. Lawrence

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’” -Anne Lamott

“She flies with her own wings.”