You've Got A Friend In Me

It has been a weird kind of week.  I've been kind of down and depressed and not my normal snarky, sarcastic self at all.  I supposedly "got" the writing gig that I went out for last month, but it is an "as needed" kind of thing, and apparently I have not been needed yet.  Add to that the back-to-school madness, the fund raising insanity, the job hunt to get back closer to Alabama and my funk from a few weeks ago has not dissipated.  It has more like fermented into a grand funk. I've blamed everything from the weather to the absence of the beloved nicotine, but the truth is that whatever the root cause is, I've been off my game.

Last night, I made a Starbucks run around 9:00 because my mother-in-law is here and she love Starbucks and is willing to buy me one too as long as I go and get her one.  While I was there in line, in walks this girl? Woman?  I couldn't really tell which would be appropriate since it appeared that she was wearing the entire Walgreen's cosmetic department on her face, but I could definitely tell that she was female.  Her hair made her appear a good 6 inches taller than her thigh-high black leather pirate boots could on their own, and she was wearing a corset and a very short mini skirt.  Keep in mind, this was Tuesday night, and we were no where near a club of any kind -- we were in the corner shop of a Kroger strip mall.  I looked at her, paid for my coffees and left.  I didn't even raise my eyebrows at her or make any snarky comments in my head like I normally would have like "Excuse me, but your dignity seems to have fallen off somewhere; did you perhaps leave it at home with your self respect?"  Nothing.  So after I got in the car, it struck me that I had not so much shown restraint, as I had just not really had any 'snark' to restrain.  So in an attempt to rectify my apathy, I pulled up Facebook on my phone and typed out a status about her outfit:  "If you're wearing a ton of makeup, a corset top, a mini-skirt, and thigh-high pirate boots at 9:00 on a Tuesday, in Starbucks, I'm just gonna go ahead and assume you're a hooker."

I felt a little better.  So I decided to come home and work on blog stuff.  Let's face it, I have been a major slacker when it comes to my blog lately.  I'm posting once a week or so, and usually its because something has effected me so deeply on an emotional level that I just need to talk about it (ie; 9/11, my friend's son battling cancer, etc.).  When I checked email for the blog I half expected there to be another email from that Tara person from last Spring chastising me for not being funny enough.  There wasn't by the way, just a bunch of "Wow you have a great blog!  Let us advertise on it and we'll pay you 0.0005% of the money we make!" emails, a couple of "Hey could you tell your readers to follow MY blog?" emails, and a request from the awesome ladies at The Third Boob wanting to repost my "Fundraisers SUCK" post.  (Which I gladly agreed to -- I'll let y'all know when that's gonna happen as soon as I know!) 

I also got several emails from people asking me to promote their books, websites, or products. Some of these are things that I think that at least some of you may be interested in, and I may pass them along. Others....not so much.  I have no problem pimping out other blogs, sites, products, etc. if I think that they are worth my time and yours -- either because they are useful, informative, funny or all of the above -- but I will not promote someone just because they are following me.  This isn't middle school. 

So let's establish some guidelines:

Some random person who creeps up on me and says "Hey, I'm following your blog now, so will you tell your readers to come read my blog???!"  Yeah, it probably ain't gonna happen.  Not to mention that these people have usually written 2 posts and the first one was all about how they are going to start blogging.  I will, however, make fun of them.....keep that in mind before you ask me to pimp your blog. 

I do not promote political agendas on my blog unless they are of my own design, so don't ask me to add a link to the Tea Party, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or any other party unless it is an ACTUAL party and not a political group.  I am a registered voter -- I am registered as INDEPENDENT -- not as a member of the Independent Party. 

Also, if you are a marketer of products for babies, children, mothers, or families that believes in the whole "Donna Reed" image of what family life is all about, you probably should have read my blog before you asked me to promote your website/blog/book/magazine/product.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the whole "Leave it to Beaver" IDEAL -- but truth is, most families are less "Norman Rockwell" and more "Malcolm in the Middle."  (I channel Lois on a daily basis and am proud to say that I have even been compared to her.)

After checking all those emails, I decided that often times the best way to get out of a funk is to do something nice for someone else.  So today (and possibly tomorrow), my task is going to be to sift through all of these requests and figure out if any of them have merit.  Barring some freak thing that my children may do (and we all know that this is a real possibility) my next post will be all about these other blogs, products, books, and websites that I think you guys might be interested in. 

So if you WANTED to ask me to pimp for you but haven't gotten up the nerve yet, DO IT.  Do it today. Do it RIGHT NOW.  If it goes well, I may do this type of thing once a month, or once a quarter, or once a year -- whatever works.

“We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them” -- Thucydides