I also regularly wake up to the imagined “bing” of a new incoming message or meeting reminder on Outlook (I have four email accounts) or formulate emails responses during my dreams that are sheer genius. I’m always running late in la la land (but that’s sorta true in real life as well.) I am also regularly chased, or chasing, being hunted, and for some reason alligators are a common character in my dreams. Sometimes they smoke cigarettes. I have no idea what that part means.
This year will be different… not because I have a date. I don’t. BUT, I have some fantastical ways to tell the significant and insignificant others in your life how you feel. Courtesy of, and EFF approved, I’m introducing a FREE line of e-cards to be shared en masse.
There are cards being added each day and I assure you there will be one for you and the one you love/don’t love/dislike a great deal/just want to make out with in the mix somewhere.
So check out the page HERE and make it an Effable Valentine’s Day!
I know I will.
Ah, remember the days when dating meant waiting anxiously by the phone waiting for it to ring? The wondering if he would call the next day or three days later when you’d been pacing furiously wondering if he really liked how your hair looked in the moon light. Now, with a fully charged smart phones the wait is over. It’s immediate feedback, immediate interaction, immediate gratification… but why does it feel so personally impersonal?
Last year I was dating someone who lived in another state. We’d been able to get together a few times and we always had a great time. Long distance relationships are tricky and he admittedly didn’t like talking on the phone. With the plethora of digital platforms, we began using Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and text to stay in communication. At first, it was fun seeing what he was up to and with mutual friends we were able to interact and text all the time when we were apart.
I’m a blogger. A creator of new content and a voice in a sea of millions. My shit is hard enough to find as it is, but the proposed SOPA legislation would make that even more real and even more lame.
I don’t know HOW to black out my blog because I can barely use my iPod, but if I could I would except that it would be like any other day with my mom and four friends reading my drivel.
Internet piracy is bad. I get that. In fact, I think something needs to be done. But if you censor the internet, the pirates still win and the joy of “Eff” will be lost to the world. I will be DAMNED if I will live in a world where Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest are no longer. Pinterest alone is hours of daily entertainment for me.
Don’t let the government stifle the independent artists ability to speak out and speak up and for God’s sake… to drop the Eff bomb. That’s right. The Eff bomb. It will become censorship-alooza. I say FUCK THAT. What do you say?
Who’s striking and why? Find out HERE.
Want to do something about it? Go HERE.
Managing a household with growing children can be a challenge. My girls are expected to help out around the house and I refuse to do things for them that they can do for themselves. They don’t always appreciate the expectation.
So, when my children ask me to do things for them that they can clearly do for themselves, I've taken to telling them, "I'll notify the household staff". I then pretend to call someone on an ear piece, conduct a sometimes lengthy imaginary conversation, and then relay to my children with feigned disappointment that I've been told, coincidentally, we don't actually HAVE household staff.
My younger one, Cate loves this game. Full of hope and naiveté that such a staff is on standby somewhere she waits patiently and listens. My older one, Taylor immediately rolls her eyes and walks away. I'll sometimes write it down for her and then stop by her room with it, and tell her someone has left her an urgent message. She dislikes that a great deal. I use lots of smiley faces and stars in the note.
I’m making my children more self-reliant… one sarcastic conversation at a time.
When my daughter Cate was born, it was after being in active labor for seven days. Yes, seven days. My pregnancy with Cate was one for the ages. I had hyperemesis gravidarum which is fancy talk for extreme morning sickness, except that it’s not just in the morning. It’s constant and debilitating. I was treated several times for dehydration and would routinely use my desk trash can when it would hit suddenly. Additionally, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and spent the greater part of that nine months eating and then throwing up really, really bland food.
“Look what I’m doing! (you’ll appreciate this). Dragging this hand over hand up my driveway! Fun!!! (see LARGE tire pic)
I received a Tweet today from @eleasebreal that said simply, “@CarrieRADams, Heya its me, I forgot to share with you this..” and then a link to a website entitled: www.get-laid-now.com. My immediate reply was, “Is it an assumption that I need to get laid now?” I also got a Tweet at roughly the same time indicating I had won a FREE grocery card. Clearly, I should have bought a lottery ticket today.
I mean, I wasn’t going to confirm or deny the necessity of getting laid immediately, and I recognize that it’s merely twitter guerilla spamming, but I couldn’t help but feel that somehow her random searching of the Twitter interwebs, and of all the people to spam, I was one of the first. I think I was the seventh actually. I’m either emitting some kind of beacon, like a a pathetic bat signal of alone-ness or I am just an unwitting recipient of LOTS of spam regarding my love life (or lack thereof.)
Also, I am a selective control freak so I compartmentalize my day into segments. There is the, “don’t fuck with me, I haven’t had coffee”segment first thing in the morning. The, “don’t fuck with me, I haven’t eaten lunch yet”, the “don’t fuck with me I’m almost done working” segment, the “don’t fuck with me I have to get to the gym” and finally the “don’t fuck with me I haven’t had a glass of wine” segment. That one is my favorite.
So, if you’ve been paying attention, love advice isn’t new on Eff… the first installment came on July 20th. Read it if you dare. Then Volume I and Volume II were written. I have enough material to write a novel so I won’t run out of things to share, but I want to hear from YOU. So, if you have a question for me in the love department, email me at carrie@effandotherwords.com. I assure you, I will keep you anonymous. Unless you are an ex-boyfriend then I will include photos, phone numbers, and last known addresses.
Consider me your personal bedazzled Hello Kitty Pez dispenser of all the love advice candy you can eat.
