• Previous posts

  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
  • More short cuts
  • Smol Ketchups
  • What’s the opposite of green juice and deep breathing
  • Living through it all online
  • The Change
  • 18
  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

I was surprised that yesterday’s post solved a months-long mystery for me, so maybe I need to be paging the Internet oracle more often. Did my 5th grade crush Dave Gryder ever see past my coke-bottle glasses and horrific orthodontic situation to the the potential girlfriend material that was underneath? Whatever happened to my awesome, comfy black-and-white striped Gap shirt that seemingly disappeared into thin air a couple years ago? How could Adam Sandler make a movie like Punch Drunk Love, then go on to systematically churn out an endless stream of cinematic diarrhea ever since?

Actually, here’s a real question for you: what can I be doing to help my kid stay dry through the night? I’m, ah, talking about the older child, and I’m sorry to potentially embarrass him here but my need for assistance is currently trumping my concern for his someday-privacy. I’ve tried restricting what he drinks in the evening, and we’ve tried waking him up before we go to bed, but the problem is that he sleeps like a log. I mean, it’s nearly impossible to get him up, and when we do, he sleep-walks to the bathroom and bangs into walls and is terribly confused and disoriented and the whole thing is pretty inefficient, if you know what I mean, and I’m also convinced that’s what’s causing the issue. His body isn’t waking him up because his brain is like SNNNZZZZZZZZZ: 404 FILE NOT FOUND.

Anyway, if you’ve dealt with a heavy sleeper, I’d love to hear any thoughts on how to keep them from peacefully whizzing throughout the night.

In other news, Dylan looks like this:

We were picking Riley up from school and like he always does, Dylan went running full-speed to give Riley a huge bear hug (this is ridiculously cute, by the way), and something happened where his feet were all HEY LET’S ALL GO IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS and blam. Face, meet cement. Oh, this kid.

A few months ago I met a woman for coffee. She’d contacted me by email, saying that she was a fan of my online writing and that she had a potential freelance opportunity to discuss. I looked up her company—a promising startup here in Seattle that’s received a truly impressive amount of funding to date—and said sure. Why not, right?

In person, she was friendly and engaging and seemed sincerely excited about her new high-level marketing gig with Promising Startup. The company had all sorts of plans for expansion, and they needed lots and lots and lots of copy. She was looking for an accessible, fun voice that would span the entirety of their communications, from product descriptions to error messages and automated emails. I liked the idea of contributing to such a project, and we left on great terms. She was fine with my hourly rate, I knew what she was looking for, I followed up with a detailed email confirming my interest and putting some estimates together. She’d told me she was hoping to get started as soon as possible, so I fully expected to hear back from her that evening.

I waited a week, then sent another email. You know, one of those awkward “Oh hiiiiii, just making sure this didn’t disappear into the ether” messages. Another week or so went by, and lacking her phone number, I reached out to her on Twitter. She was super apologetic, said she’d been swamped and was traveling, but I’d hear back from her that night for sure.

Needless to say, I never heard from her again.

So, you tell me: what was that all about? I mean, really, if you have any ideas I’d love to hear them, because it was one of those things that just about drove me crazy for a solid month. I went from feeling like Queen Shit of Turd Mountain—that this marketing exec would be so into my writing she was practically ready to hire me for a lucrative contract on the spot!—to being convinced I was utterly talentless, a low-rent hack not even worthy of an explanation email.

Obviously, I shouldn’t have taken it so personally, but it was just so weird. Like a blind date that I thought was going fantastically … while all the while, the guy was plotting how to ditch me in the bathroom. Why the meeting in the first place? Why the total lack of communication afterwards? What happened, and how much of it was my fault?

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