Sending Mixed Signals as Moms

This blog post might hit a few nerves so I apologize in advance if you get offended by this. It is not my intention to offend, its just my intention to say what I feel.

I get annoyed when I come across twitter handles and blog names and emails that are soandsos'smom. It drives me insanely crazy. I don't really know why this is bothers me but it does. I guess I've always thought of it like, Yes, my daughter IS my biggest accomplishment but she is NOT the only thing in my life that I've accomplished. I'm a mother but I have an identity outside of a mom. I wear more than one hat, don't you?

Growing up I hated being called "Alex's little sister". Along with correcting them that I'm the "younger" sister NOT the little sister I'd be sure to throw my name in there. I'm "Jenny, Alex's younger sister," or if you prefer  "Alex's younger sister, Jenny."  Now that I'm older I still get ticked off by those types of labels. I dropped Demi off at daycare the other day and a parent goes to me, "Are you Demi's mom" "Yes, I'm Jenny, Demi's mom." 

Now my post isn't about the lack of using my name and only referring to me as a mom but its about the message we send to our children, mainly our daughters. From the moment we give birth nowadays we are freaked out by trying to remain gender neutral and not push a sex on a kid. We try not to give dolls to girls and trucks to boys. We try not to use terms like "sweet girl" and  "strong boy". We don't stress boy toys or girl toys and boy colors and girl colors. We teach both our sons and daughters that they can be anything they want to be. We love and support them in anything they do. We teach them about doing what they want and finding themselves. We allow our children to form their own identities and we support them in that. When we notice that our children are out of line we discipline them, when we notice they are too shy we try to coax them out of their shell. But we always support their identity. The kid is girlie, a tomboy, tough, a bit weak, in touch with this/her feelings, emotional...we work with our kids and figure out how to approach them. How to talk to them, how to discipline them depending on their personalities. 

Then a funny thing happens, our daughter's grow up and become moms and even we stop calling them by their names. We'll ask our grandchildren "Where is your mommy? What did your mommy say? Did mommy make you breakfast today?" We stop talking to our children about how their day was an instead ask how THEIR child's day was. We spent all this time teaching our children to become their own person and then we let them lose it and just focus on their being a mom. We tell our daughters to never fall into a man's shadow. To stand on their own and be their own person. Don't rely on a man for money, emotional support, or anything. Be equals. Be partners. Then somehow we end up allowing our children to go from "Jenny" to "Demismom.blogspot.com" We say nothing of this we think this is completely normal. It's NOT.

It gets under my skin. Maybe my mom raised me different, maybe I'm too hard headed? I don't want to just be known as a mom. There is so much more to me than what I popped out of my vagina. Now I don't mind being a mom, in fact I love it but its not everything that encompasses me. If that makes me a bad mom then I guess I'm a horrible mom. I guess I'm just urging more moms to step out of their children's shadows and be your own person. Don't be just a mom.

Does this get under your skin or are you one of the offenders!?

Show Me Your Rings

Show Me Your Rings

There is a cute Meme happening on the blogosphere these past few days and I decided to jump in on it. 

Did you look at rings together?

Nope. I had mentioned from the get go that I can not stand solitaire settings. I am a very social person and I believe that my diamond should be as well. George asked me email him some pictures of engagement rings I just loved and he had one of them made for me!

Do you like your ring? Did you from the beginning?…and be honest!

I LOVED my ring. I adored it. It was perfect and exactly what I always wanted.

How often do you wear your rings?

Every single day. I think I only took it off when we went on our honeymoon and I went in the ocean with it for the first time. I thought I was going to lose it so I ran back to the hotel and put it in the safe.

Do you clean your rings?

You'd be very surprised at how well a salt water pool can clean your ring. 

What went through your mind the very first time you saw your ring?

It's about freaking time!!! I was in shock at how George proposed to me and I couldn't take my eyes off of my stunning ring. It completely floored me that it was exactly what I wanted.

I had seen our wedding bands because we picked them out together.

Thank you to Cheryl for an amazing photograph of the rings that she took at my daughter's baptism.

More bad food - Seriously

It seems I have a knack for choosing crappy places to eat. A few months ago I wrote about a dining experience gone way way wrong.. A little update to that: My sister and I went back with our husbands and parents a few months ago. AMAZING food and amazing service. We were more than pleased.

But....There is a restaurant in my city called Tripoli, its a Greek place with amazing food. The food has NEVER been bad but the service, OMG, the service is horrible. Every single time we go we complain about the service. If you are drinking beer you need to order 3 at a time just to ensure you'll have enough to get you through the meal.

Last time I was there was October 2010. We went for a friend's birthday. We started our dinner at 7pm and ended at 11pm. It wasn't because we were drinking and enjoying ourselves, it was because the service was soooooooo slow. I said I wouldn't go back because I just don't enjoy myself. I don't enjoy waiting 45 minutes for our EMPTY plates to be taken away in order to bring us our next course. I don't enjoy waiting 45 minutes for you to bring me a glass of water. It just isn't enjoyable and no matter how good the food is, its not worth it to me. I swore I wouldn't go back. I did pretty good, nearly a year.

Today I get home from work and this is the conversation we had:

DH: Hey did George call or text you?
Me: No, why? What's up?
DH: Where is your phone?
Me: In my back pocket. Why George, what is up? Is something wrong.
DH: Can you look at your phone?
(I pull my phone out of my pocket and see that I do NOT have a missed call or text)
DH: Well he's going to call or text you soon to see if you want to go out for dinner tonight...............to Tripoli.
Me: Man really? Okay fine since its George.

A few minutes later the house phone rings and we confirm that we are going to meet there at 7pm. I change D's clothes and get dressed pack the diaper bag and walk to the car.

We get to Tripoli where we are greeted by the owners wife. She asks if we are only 2 plus the baby. I said no, 6 plus the baby. We get seated and we are now waiting for the rest of our party to arrive.

3 minutes later the owners wife comes up to just George, myself, and the baby and says, "Would you like to place your order now or are you waiting on the rest of your party?" Uhhhh what the freak do you think? If we wanted to order ourselves, without the rest of our table we might as well stayed home.

So now our entire table is seated, we are waiting....and waiting....and waiting.....for someone to come see us to ask if we'd like to order our food or maybe even a drink. We place the entire order TOGETHER. We ordered drinks, apps, and main meal at the same time to save the waitress the trouble of coming back to our table to keep taking orders. George orders 2 beers in one shot. Do you know how long we sat at a table with no food, no drinks, and no explanation as to why we had none? FORTY-FIVE minutes. Yes 45 minutes with an empty table.

Our appetizers get to the table before our drinks do. As the waitress is handing out the appetizers she says, "Your drinks are on their way." FROM WHERE? Freaking Mexico? Shouldn't they have arrived FIRST? A few more minutes pass and she comes by our table again and says," Your drinks will be right out." FINALLY our drinks come, George orders another beer just for good measure and my husband points out to the waitress that she forgot to bring one of plates from the kitchen. She rushes back and brings it to us.

Now we finish our apps, we are waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the meal courses to be brought out. Heck, we are waiting for them to even come and pick up our app dishes. Nope, no luck. Another 45 minutes passes and the waitress tells us at this point, "Everything will be smooth sailing from this point on." The table behinds us gets up before their food arrives, complains to someone and walks out. I felt like doing the same thing but somehow George knows the guy and it would be rude. Really? It's rude making people wait that long for food and water...and did you notice notice the 17 month old with us who was getting very tired and VERY impatient?

Nothing was smooth sailing, we waited another 10 minutes for our food. While we are waiting for our food the restaurant begins to fill with smoke. Something was burning and of course they couldn't admit that by opening a door or window right? Oh and at this point we are debating just asking them to cancel our main meals. As we flag the waitress over she is bringing our salad/main course. The fries that our plates came with were so over cooked that they were actually chips...expect they weren't thin enough to be chips. Look, if I wanted chips I would have opened a bag of Lays and called it a night. This is insane. Everyone just shuts their mouths and eats the edible portions of their food.

We ask for the bill which does NOT get brought to us. My husband had to get up and go find the waitress in order to pay the bill. One of the waiters actually commented "I've worked in worse places" and "Yeah its really bad eh" and started laughing when I asked him if he wanted me to crush my fries and make confetti out of it.

When your staff starts to laugh at where he works its time for a change. It's time to either hire more wait staff or more kitchen staff. It's not like it was an off night. This has happened every single time we go there regardless of the day of the week.

Tomorrow I will call Tripoli and let the owner know what I think of their establishment and their service as well as leaving negative reviews on any and all food forums I can find. This is ridiculous. 

Mark my words, Tripoli will never get a dollar off of me. If you see me in there I give you the right to spit on me.

Paid Not to Wear Clothes?

Now I'm sure we all know that celebrities and television personalities are paid large sums of money to endorse, wear, and promote clothes, shoes, drinks, cereals and whatnot but have you ever heard of a company paying someone NOT to wear their clothes?

If you haven't heard the news Abercrombie & Fitch offered to pay Jersey Shore cast members NOT to wear their clothes. Well, that plan backfired big time with A&F's stock falling a HUGE 9% when this news broke. Abercrombie asked Mike Sorrentino better known as "the Situation" and the rest of the cast to not wear their clothes while filming their MTV hit "Jersey Shore".

I, for one, have never been a big fan of Abercrombie & Fitch. It's not readily available in Quebec but I was raised in Texas for a large portion of my life and guess what, I never bought their clothes, in fact I wouldn't even walk in their stores. I was just never attracted to it but I can guarantee you one thing though, if I WAS a fan of A&F this latest douchebag move of one of their executives would make me stop wearing it...Especially when he apparently didn't do his research. Guess what? Abercrombie & Fitch used to sell Jersey Shore t-shirts with their catch phrase G.T.L on it as well as other well known Jersey Shore sayings.

The head honcho's over at A&F thought that by the cast of the Jersey Shore wearing their brand that it was "causing significant damage to their brand" and  that the show was "contrary to the aspirational nature of the brand". Hmmmm looks like being a douchebag bigwig caused more damage to the brand than the Situation, Sammi Sweetheart, Snooki or others could have ever caused it.

I think I might have understood their outrage if it was a huge expensive company that associated itself with class. Imagine Snooki going out to a guido bar all decked out in head to toe vintage Chanel? I could understand Chanel being upset and their reputation hurt by that. Chanel is NOT cheap, it is NOT found in your local mall next to the Gap. But even then, I'm sure that Chanel has enough class not to pay someone not to wear their clothes.

Later in the day MTV released a statement thinking that maybe this was just a publicity stunt to get A&F's name out there...looks like that failed badly. Do you know how huge a 9% fall is in one day? After the market and stock was already falling to shit?

So I guess I'll keep in line with not buying A&F clothes and just stick to my Michael Kors, Prada, Miss Sixty etc. Oh, don't forget tomorrow is Jersday!! Do you have your GTL shirt? I'll be sporting this t-shirt tomorrow.

How NOT to do Business Part II

In my last blog I wrote about how I had a bad experience with a business. When I hung up the phone on Friday I thought that was the end of that bad experience. I wrote in my blog about it and called it a day. I basically filed it away and figured nothing else would come of it.

I was wrong. I'm very rarely wrong but when I am I can admit it. This afternoon around 4:30pm my office phone rings. I pick up the phone without even glancing at the phone and give my usual greeting. I'm shocked to hear the voice on the other end, "Jenny, this is "stupid guy" from "stupid company" and I'm calling because..." His because would leave you floored.

This guy decided that he wanted money for doing mock ups for me. I'm sorry but what?! Yep. He explained to me that his company only provides free art work IF they get the job and that since we chose not to go with them we owe him $300.00. Excuse me? He didn't even do any art work. My graphic designer (God bless her, always working on last minute projects for me) created all the art work, all his team did was place it on a t-shirts DIGITALLY. Drag an already made logo to an already made t-shirt and arrange the logo on the shirt. Simple. Point and click. Okay, so maybe its not THAT simple but it most certainly is not 3 hours worth of work like he claimed.

I explained to him that i felt he was just doing this because he is angry that he did not get the job. When a company calls you to ask for a quote it is your job to give them an accurate description of what they will be getting. It is your job to give them what they ask for and if you don't "win" the bid you suck it up and consider the work you did to be a cost of business. It isn't like this guy designed an entire suite of products from scratch. I provided ALL the art work, it was all done for him!! I think what gets my goat the most is the fact that the ONLY reason he wants the money for pretend artwork is because we turned him down.

Not only that but during the phone conversation he mentions that he has our credit card information on file since we worked with them last year. What? Are you threatening me? Are you basically saying that you'll run our card number with or without my consent? At that point I told him that I was disappointed with his behaviour and that I do NOT authorize him to charge our card. That I have to speak to my boss about it and then I will call him back to let him know if he can charge the card or not. He goes on to say that he would rather speak with my boss directly since he is not pleased with the way that things turned out and doesn't think that my boss made a good decision as an executive and he feels as if I'm caught in the middle.

I'm not sure what I think is more insulting, the fact that he thinks I'm slow and don't understand how business works, the the president of a multi-million dollar company is stupid and makes bad decisions as an executive, or the fact that he thinks all of us are just going to sit there and take it. I mean seriously?

I told the guy thank you for his time and I'd be back with him shortly. I hung up and sent my boss an email explaining the situation and we now have preemptively contacted MasterCard in order make sure that this particular company doesn't charge our credit card.

Again I ask, what would you do if you were caught up in this situation? Would you lose your cool in a professional environment and tell this person where to shove it? Would you ignore the situation completely?  -- I'm going to call my friend who referred me to this particular vendor and let him know that not only will I NOT do business with him but I would suggest that they stop giving him out as a recommendation. What an unprofessional person.

How NOT to do business.

Today was what I'd call a rough day at work. I spent the majority of the day shooting off emails or calling people. The calls were rough. I had to inform a few companies that they lost bids to do work for us.

Let me give you a little insight. We are fast approaching trade show season in our industry. It's going to be a rough end of August through mid-October. Along with the everyday happening at work I have to plan tradeshows, make the price list for next year, put together the binder that includes the price list and product information, oh, and don't forget we are redoing a lot of packaging and launching new products. Yeah, I'm not going to be swamped AT ALL! But hey, that isn't the point of this post. The point is that we are in the midst of planning shows and we decided that we will be giving out t-shirts at some of these shows. The t-shirt will have our company name, the website, and the icons for twitter, facebook, and youtube.com (we've just recently gone into social media and launched a new website).

I called a company in Texas that does a large part of our printing of flyers, pamphlets etc. to see if they know anyone that prints t-shirts. While I was waiting for the referral to come via email I called the company that we use here in Montreal often for a quote. At the same time my boss asked me to ask our sales reps if they had a printing person that could get a good price. Let's be honest, the economy is pretty much crappy right now and we are all looking for the best price possible. I got the first bid in from the Montreal company and while I hit the forward button to show my boss I knew we wouldn't be using them. They were extremely over priced. Seriously.  The referral from my friend in Texas came through and we discussed t-shirt brand, feel, print ideas etc. while I was waiting on his quote a quote came in from one of my sales reps contacts. I informed this guy that I was waiting for a quote from another company. He said he understood.

I felt overwhelmed but I knew one thing for sure. The Montreal company was out. The referral from Texas sent me mock ups via email but no pricing. He told me that he would stay in line with what we paid last year (I was off work for a year so I have no clue what it is). I told the company that my sales rep referred me to that although they have great prices and great mock ups I am still waiting on one more bid. He told me that he completely understood. A few minutes later I got another email from him asking for more details and he said "I'm confident that I'll be the price best and I'd like to be proactive while you wait for your final quote. Can I have the following information...."

My boss made the decision last night. He wanted to go with the company that my sales rep brought to us. He managed to get us higher quality shirts at a better price and he was located closer to come of our trade shows so the shipping price would be cheaper too.  I called the guy this morning and finalized some details and gave him the green light. BUT before I could do that I got a call from the Montreal company asking if we made a decision. Unfortunately I couldn't bring myself to let her down. What I told her instead was that we were waiting for another quote. She said, "Wow, that hurt." I don't understand why that could hurt? Are we supposed to blindly just accept your pricing without looking at another company? Are we supposed to assume that you are the best priced company? I'm really sorry but over the 4 years I've worked at this company I've quickly realized that instead of being the cheapest it really is one of the highest priced companies when doing printed materials. I think it might have hurt because my boss didn't just say "Okay" instead we decided to shop around.

I then had to call the company that was referred to me by a friend. I started off all nice and friendly and brought myself to say, "I'm really sorry but we have decided to go with another company" and then the guy went off on me. He asked what the pricing difference was and if we were willing to kill a business relationship over a couple hundred dollars and how he didn't feel his company was given a fair chance. I told him that "You were higher priced on lower quality shirts, therefore I'd assume that you are going to be higher priced on the higher quality shirts too" and he kept on going in. I mentioned that the other companies price quote included 24 Adidas polo shirts as well and then he says "Yeah Adidas is just throwing free shirts at everyone these days. He must have a rejected load" Wow. Excuse me!? Can't you just shut your face and accept that we decided to go with another company? Then he said the thing that irked me the most, "I don't understand how an executive would choose to go with a completely new company when we have worked together and proved that we price well, work on short deadlines, and always deliver on time." I basically, very politely told him, "I'm sorry but last year we did take a chance on you and it worked out for us, we are hoping that this year the same thing happens."

I completely understand that a company can be disappointed when they were expecting to land a $6000 job but I did inform them that I was waiting on other bids. I told all the companies that we were waiting on other bids (except the Montreal company who came in right around $10,000). I was honest and remained professional. I don't see how the owner of a company can just bitch and moan to me about us not choosing them. I would even understand him making a comment like, "I'm really sorry/disappointed that this didn't work out, I was looking forward to working with you." I can understand him telling a business partner how he's disappointed or how he was banking on getting the job. I just don't find it was very professional of him to complain directly to a company that MIGHT have used him again in the future. I can promise you one thing though, as long as I am at the company we will NOT work with that particular company again.

So, would you ever complain directly to a customer or potential customer?

Hey. Hey you. Get over yourself!

Have you ever met people that just can't get over themselves? They are so obsessed with thinking that you are obsessed with them meanwhile they haven't crossed your mind in ummmm ages? No this isn't a blog post about an ex-boyfriend that thinks I'm obsessed or hung up on him. This is about a person I barely know and barely cared for when I knew them.

Let me tell you a little story that goes way back. This goes back quite a few years but let's skip all the boring stuff and just get to the "good" part. My husband used to be friends with a guy we'll call B. B is married to someone we'll call G. G and I had a falling out of sorts. Basically, one day about 3 years ago I had gone out with friends and noticed a group of girls. This group was made up of  5 people, 4 of them were what I'd consider pretty. The 5th girl is what I would consider ugly, or if we are trying to be politically correct, she was not pretty. The pretty girls were all wearing jeans or leggings with a long sweater or tunic. The not so pretty girl was dressed like a whore. She was wearing a skin tight tiny dress with no leggings and "fuck me boots". I came home from being out and posted a status on Facebook about how in a group of girls there will always be the ugly girl who tries harder to "out sexy" the rest of the girls. Apparently G thought that my status was about her. I didn't know this around the same time I had posted my status G was "tagged" in a picture that was sort of the same. A group of girls, most pretty, one not, and the not pretty one lookin' like a ho. Let it be known that I AM NOT friends with any of G's friends on Facebook since I don't really like them. I didn't SEE this picture. Anyway, G was upset and thought that my post was about her. It wasn't. I said so. She didn't believe me and then told her husband and some mutual friends. Our friends were like, "I don't think it was about you, I mean, its a known thing, like every group has the token black friend they also have the token whore". She still choose to believe what she wanted to believe. 

She sent me an email asking me about it and we exchanged a few emails back and forth and her husband even called me to tell me his opinion. We basically ended it as we can't be friends. There was a lot of "he said/she said" crap and if we are being honest, which I am, I never really liked G in the first place. I just tolerated her because my friend (at the time) was dating her then married to her. 

Over the past three years we have crossed paths due to being invited to the same functions but I never spoke to them. I didn't even give them so much as a hi. My husband on the other hand would speak to B & G when he'd see them out and about. That is great. I told him I didn't care if eh even hung out with them my own rule was that they couldn't come into my house. 

Well now, 3 whole years later somehow my name gets brought up into a mess that G has found herself in. Unfortunately the details of what happened won't be written here because its NOT my story to tell. The basic jist of it was that G received an anonymous email telling her stuff. When she got the email she was very upset and decided to call a friend to talk to them about it. During that conversation with her friend she said, "the only person who hates me enough to do this to me is Jenny." I'm very happy to know that the friend defended me and said, "She hasn't shown you a sign of life in 3 years, why would she pop out of the woodwork and send you an email after all this time." Let me explain something to you, what the email said, was something I already knew. I knew 3 years ago. I said nothing 3 years ago. Why would I pop so many years later and say something I didn't say when I actually SPOKE to you?

I had decided not to address the issue any further. I was going to let sleeping dogs lie. Even if I wanted to there was nothing I could do. I don't have her phone number, her email address, or any contact information. When I decide to cut someone out of my life, I completely delete them from my life.  Then I got on my blog yesterday and checked some statistics. I saw that someone from her work was logged onto my blog for 2 hours. There were like 30 page views. I don't know if she was scanning my blog to see if there was any reference of her on it or if maybe she trying to compare my writing to her anonymous email or whatever.  But the point is that she was on my blog for 2 freaking hours because she believes that after 3 years, I decided to email her.  Well here is me putting it out, on my blog, for all to see.

Hey Georgia, I didn't email you okay? You can stop stalking my blog, you can stop thinking you are on my mind. Have a nice life okay?