Monthly Archives: February 2016

The Bloscars (Oscars For Blogs!) Are Back! (With Giveaways!)

FullSizeRender (22)C’mon, admit it — You watched the Oscars ceremony last night while obsessing aloud, “Why can’t Little Miss Menopause do her Bloscar awards just one more time so I can win something??” This will be the 3rd year in a row I’ve featured a giveaway and you can ask the past winners if it’s worth their time to enter. But when you ask them, remind them that their Amazon gift card prize can also be used to order my book, Lullabies & Alibis just as easily as some ugly household decor item.

Now let’s walk the Red-Carpet and enter the actual Post to see the grandeur that awaits, shall we?  Beware of the Blogarazzi with their blinding camera flashes, whoops and hollers.  Smile nicely, with that odd, “looking over your shoulder at who-the-hell-knows what” type of pose.  Maybe all bloggers should keep looking over their shoulder for the next odd thing to happen to them?photo-217

 THE CEREMONY FLUFF, TIME WASTERS & A PRIZE!

Welcome! First of all – – instead of Chris Rock selling Thin Mints and other assorted Girl Scout Cookies, you’re stuck with me selling my home baked Bloatmeal, Blog Newtons, SnickerBloggle, and Tollhouse Blocolate Blip Blookies. Sorry.

photo-216Inject your Favorite Opening Dance Sequence right here to the left.  Bloggers usually have two left feet so we’ll just insert a 405 Error message over this part.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we need to talk about how it was mainly white people who got nominated for awards for the last two years and why people of color were snubbed from The Oscars. This will conveniently lead to our next contest — The People Of Collar Contest! That’s right! Collared people will never be excluded from The Bloscars! As proof of that, we’re having a separate honorary category. So to win this one you need to feature your favorite button-down shirt (sorry no tees, tanks or camisoles) and show off that gorgeous, freshly ironed, starched collar. Winner chosen for creative display of a collared shirt and will receive an Amazon gift card to buy a non-geeky shirt! Deadline and instructions are the same as the below Selfie Photo Contest.

And yes, just like when Ellen hosted the Oscars, there will be a Selfie Photo Contest, so let’s take down Twitter…Wordpress!  Not to place any WordPressure on you, but please take a photo of the front page of your Blog the way that it looks on your laptop/computer with you (the proud Blog Author!)  in the photo as well.  Shy, retiring, inhibited, insecure, and/or paranoid Bloggers (that would be me) feel free to just portray your blog alone, without any human in the pic.   Put a link to your photo (Shutterfly, Facebook, any other forum where you can post a picture) in the comments section below and the winner (based on the most eye-catching, creative photo) will receive two movie passes. (or the equivalent of such, on a $25 Amazon Gift Card)  Deadline will be March 7th to post your Selfie photos and a winner will be picked and their prize awarded on my birthday, March 12th.  Since I will have nothing better to do on that day, other than to sob about not being in my 40’s any longer.

And Now . . . The Blotion Picture Blogcademy Proudly Presents . . . THE BLOSCARS! (Imagine an orchestra of keyboard typing in unison rising in crescendo here)

During the silence that follows each category, please imagine who would deserve this particular award in your own real life world or Online World that you call your Blogosphere.  I would never be so presumptuous as to start naming Names here!  The idea is to get YOU thinking about the kinds of people (bloggers and non-bloggers alike) that you consciously surround yourself with each and every day.  It CAN make a difference.photo-218

And the Featured Categories Are ????

Best Supportive Commenter:  Who regularly leaves you lots of love?

Best Editor:  Which individual do you count on to give your posts a onceover, so you don’t have blatant errors like the spelling of “onceover” when published?

Best Original Score UnderScore: (Note: Strikeovers would also fall in this category)

Best Blog Header:  Your eye was drawn immediately!

Best Blog Background:  It compliments, rather than detracts.

Best Song: (Oh!  I feel another contest coming on!)  In the comments section below, please leave the one best song (with either a Title or the well known chorus lyrics) that would best suit your blog.  In other words, you would most want to have this song blasting when someone clicks open your blog.  Give a brief explanation as to why you chose this song. One winner will be announced (same dates given for the Selfie Photo contest and People of Collar contest above) and awarded a $20 itune Gift Card.  We’re looking again for Creativity here and some Wordplay.  Here’s a not so good Example:  The song “Roar” by Katy Perry should accompany my blog because people always roar with laughter when they read it!

Best Tagger:  Who gets the best traffic from tags?

Best Muse:  Who inspires your ideas?  Which individual do you most find yourself telling to “hold that thought” for a second while you jot something down in your “Blog Notebook”  You do have one of those, right?!?

Best Brusher-Off-er:  Who (in real life) changes the subject the fastest when you bring up your Blog?

Best and Worse Dressed List

Clothing is a huge deal.  I know.  Just not here. And breasts are not going to be mentioned here at all.  If you want to know why, go here.   So alternatively,  there will be no hiring Mr.Blackwell Blogwell to ogle (blogle) and rave or conversely rant/diss any certain Blogger’s Pajamas Attire – – but the following categories will rhyme with the word “Dressed” instead.  You should nod your head right about now and see this as a perfectly “suit”able solution.

Best Jest:  Favorite Non-Serious Blog

Best Guest:  Who regularly has the most interesting Blogger Guests writing for them?

Best Blessed:  Whose Blog seems to have the most Gratitude or Grace?

Best Addressed:  Who takes a Controversial Subject and Nails it?

Best Confessed:  Who takes the opportunity of blogging to bare their soul, show their authentic truth?

Best Assessed:  Who is the Best Reviewer you know.  Books, Movies, Food, etc. Their opinion matters to you!

Best Compressed:  Who can blog in the fewest words you know and still make it work?  Really distill down their ideas so you just get the concentrated bottom line from them?

Best Distressed & Stressed:  Who is always having an issue?  Yes, this could be a Drama Blog, but maybe not?

Best Obsessed:  Who focuses on just one topic every single solitary time, but you love them anyway?

Best Cardiac Arrest:  Who shocks you the most with their outrageousness?

Best Nest:  Which Parent Blogger gets the most “oohs and ahs” because their love of family shines through?

Best Quest:  Who seems to have the loftiest goal or purpose in Blogging?

Best Teenage Blogger who is wise beyond their years:  Hey that doesn’t rhyme?  That’s right, just seeing if you are paying attention.

Best Contest:  Who regularly has Blog Giveaways that excite you?

Best Pest:  Who is that Blogger you wish you could secretly Unfollow?

Best Rest:  Their Blog is where you hang out when you want to unwind and relax.

Best Freshly Pressed:  And if they never got Freshly Pressed, then they should;ve been. But did you know it’s too late now?  They’ve changed that here on WordPress. You can nominate yourself now. Check it out!

Best Detest:  Okay, you hate their blog.  You don’t follow it at all, but you’re aware of its presence and you want them to clean up their act.

Best Intelligence Test:  Wow, are they just off the chart smart or what??  Do you even belong there as a reader?  Yep, you do!

Best Request:  They’re the Blog-Pleasers.  They will do what you ask because they want crowd approval.  But do you really know what they’re about?

Best Impressed: They are the equivalent of the  Name   Blog-Dropper who wants you to admire their Blog for the Flash, not the substance.

Best Protest:  They are never going to be happy unless they can keep blogging about how unhappy the world makes them.

Best Mae West:  “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?”  That’s right, I finally ran out of rhymes that had any connection to blogging! And besides we needed a real movie star right about now.

Along with leaving a comment, Please don’t forget to enter one of the contests above (Selfie, Song or People Of Collar!) and we’ll see you next year at the BLOSCARS! Also if you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Barbie Became Jewish (besides having her Barb-Mitzvah) or you just enjoy my bizarre humor, please go RIGHT HERE and leave me a comment. But if you do leave a remark, pretend you don’t know me and that I’m not offering prizes on my blog so the editors will think I have lots of legit fans.  😉

Panties . . . Inciting an Uproar? Or Just Uproarious Laughter?

images (10)Sometimes a mere word can conjure up an image so intense that people become highly distraught. ‘Panties’ is one of those words. The Atlantic magazine is just one of several publications that ran an article going into depth about the controversy that’s ensued over the use of this term. And I’ve actually just spent an hour reading more research on the topic of ‘Panties’ than I think there might be out there for the subject of ‘Insomnia.’ But it didn’t help me fall asleep.

First of all, nevermind that people have such an incredible curiosity about this noun that they actually go onto the Yahoo Answers website (numerous times!) posing the question “Is ‘panties’ singular or plural?” but many psychologists and researchers are actually also making the leap that calling women’s’ underwear ‘panties’ has a direct link to the amount of pedophiles in our country.

But most of the research I came across was official surveys being administered to find out if the population now really detests the use of this word or maybe they’re just lukewarm about it?  Is that a job that someone can seriously be hired to do?  “Yes, I’m here to fill out an application to be a Word Wonderer. Aside from ‘panties,’ I wonder how the public perceives the word ‘spatula?’ And I’d like to put to rest once and for all where we all stand on ‘balderdash’ and ‘flummoxed’ as well. Thank you, and yes minimum wage is acceptable because this is my passion.”

Personally, I used to date a man who told me he thought ‘panty’ was the sexiest word in our language. I just think he was in a college fraternity that conducted one too many panty raids. But interestingly, he couldn’t stand to hear the word combined with ‘hose.’  In fact, if I so much as uttered under my breath, “gosh, it’s too hot today to wear pantyhose,” he went ballistic and insisted they were called nylons or stockings.

Speaking of covering women’s legs with nylons, stockings, or (gasp) the dreaded pantyhose, are you aware that topic in and of itself has hundreds of google searches not only on whether it’s coming back in style to wear (thanks to Kate Middleton) but also whether it’s still a sin to wear them with open-toe shoes.  And folks, brace yourself . . . . but it may NOT be a fashion faux pas any longer.  Now please ignore this entire paragraph but I had to include it because I plan to tag this post with all these words so that the thousands of google searches will actually land on my blog, for once!

Another word that women apparently cannot tolerate is the word, ‘moist.’ You can see the other five cringe-worthy vocabulary words right here, but rest assured that ‘panties’ made it onto this list. Yes indeedy. Clearly the two words strung together in the same sentence could possibly incite a war.

But before anyone thinks they’re gonna be clever in the comments section and tell me to just “put my big girl panties on” and blog about something more significant, I want to defend myself by claiming that words ARE important to me. I often spend twenty minutes just mulling over my choices (eww, mulling? That doesn’t sound too appetizing) in a thesaurus so I can be satisfied that I exhausted all my options for the best and most precise meaning.

And before I enter into a relationship with anyone, I will play word association games with them as a sort of test. Also my favorite oldies song from the 80’s was by Missing Persons, “What Are Words For?” So I feel perfectly justified to “get my panties all in a snit” (Really, snit?? That’s so close to snot! I can’t believe ‘snit’ didn’t make it on the top 6 worst words list!) if someone sings, “You say to-may-toes and I say to-mah-toes, let’s call the whole thing off.”

Call it off? No way! I want to debate about it with you for hours. Let’s call it ‘foreplay.’

Dear Readers — If you’ve ever seen the movie HER, (guy falls in love with his computer operating system) I’ve just written a parody for the fitness company I work for about that time I almost tied the knot with an activity monitor, the little rogue! You can read it HERE and please know that comments left there really help me with my boss – – My Word Slavemaster! Thank you if you can take a moment of your time.

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For Valentine’s Day I Shoved Love Down Everyone’s Throat!

photo-72And it tasted like chalky Pepto Bismo. For a change of pace this Valentine’s Day, I decided to catch my children off-guard with being festive. All it took was sending everyone an “adorable” Valentine’s app and a lot of Splenda packets to conjure up the sweetness in our lives for a day. At least that’s what I thought.  Guess they don’t call them Conversation Candy for nothing! Have a look . . .

Me:

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       College Son:

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 Me:

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 College Son:

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 Me:

photo 3-10Then my two younger kids chime in.

Daughter 14:

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 Son 12:

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 College Son:

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Me:

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 College Son:

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Me:

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College Son:

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Me:

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College Son:

photo 4-9Sick of this son’s smart retorts, I send a heart to his twin brother with a love greeting. It was very flowery and lovey-dovey sentimental.

Twin Brother:

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Me:

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Twin Brother:

photo 3-18Finally my 17 year old daughter (who btw takes 45 minutes to decide what she’s gonna wear in the morning) decides to join in . . .

Daughter 17

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 College Son:

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 Me

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 College Son:

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Me:

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College Son:

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Me:

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College Son:

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Me:

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College Son:

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Son 12

photo 3-8photo 2-13photo 5-11

Daughter 17

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Me:

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Daughter 17:

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Me:

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College Son:

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photo 1-17

Me:

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Frustrated, I decide to send the Valentine app to my boyfriend….

Boyfriend:

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Me:

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Boyfriend:

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Me:

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Boyfriend:

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Me:

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Boyfriend:

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Desserts backwards = Stressed.  Of course!  And look — this time playing Scramble was HIS idea. At least this confirms I’m with the right guy.

Hope your Valentine’s Day will be a little more on task than ours! And now excuse me while I eat my own words…

AND IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE HOW I ADVISE OTHERS TO HANDLE VALENTINE EXPECTATIONS AND PRESSURE JUST CLICK HERE!

How To Be “SUPER” Popular At a Super Bowl Sunday Party! (even if you don’t know football)

super-bowl-food-stadiums-stadiums-made-out-of-food-4

HOPE FOR THE IGNORED GUEST!  DON’T BE LEFT OUT ON THE SIDELINES!

1. Don’t make any kind of sandwich stadium, especially not as elaborate as this photo. There will never be enough kudos to compensate you for those tomatoes. Instead, make Guacamole. Just do this. Trust me. Even if you’re out of “Avocados From Mexico.” Use kiwis. These people won’t notice – – they’ll just keep dipping and dipping while hollering at that TV . . . The Big Dips. (Note: Underripe green bananas may also be substituted.)

2. Never say this – – “I don’t know why you folks don’t just record this stuff and watch it later so you can fast forward through all these silly commercials.” Never. Ever. (See #3 below)

3. Football fans are an exuberant bunch. And worse, they know their terminology. Before you attempt to chime in during an actual live play of the ball game, experiment with a silly commercial. Try the following options: A) Boo loudly at the creepy “PuppyMonkeybaby.” B) Shout, “Hold ’em! That’s the way!” to the crane lifting Jeff Goldblum up an apartment building as he sings The Jefferson’s theme song. (yes, seriously!) C) Throw a chip at the television in disgust and say, “Really? You’re eating Doritos at her ultrasound?”

4. Casually introduce conversation with, “So how about that Joe Namath?” If this doesn’t get the reaction you are looking for, tell them you were a cheerleader for your brother in Pop Warner leagues. Note: This will only be effective if you can produce a photo. Still nothing? Remind them you brought the guacamole.

5. Don’t ruin the halftime (that’s fancy for intermission) surprise by announcing in the first two quarters, “Women are from Venus, but men are from Mars….BRUNO MARS. Oh boy. Did you hear he’s joining Coldplay?” However, it’s perfectly okay to speak about the singer 75 cents or a $1.00 into the game. Just not during the first two quarters.

6. If you are tired, don’t be offensive and yawn. Play defensively! Simply look at the clock (lower right hand side of the television screen) and if it says (only!) 2 minutes and thirty seconds are left until the end, you will now have time to play an entire game of Monopoly.

7. Look around for other wives and girlfriends that have that “I’m so bored, I could throw-up” green pallor on their face. Look closely. This could just be the guacamole. Engage them in a fashion review of the game. Tell them you think shoulder pads and tight ankle pants are so 80’s. Or entertain them with something more thrilling … like reading War & Peace aloud. If all else fails, casually remark, “Hey, I know what!! Let’s go in the other room and compose a Match.com ad for ourselves.”

8. You will eventually need to choose a side and root for them. Lemme help you. If you liked the Peter Sellers’ movie series, I’d go with the (Pink) Panthers. If you drive a Ford pickup, then the Broncos are your men. Just don’t cheer for the team wearing the black and white vertical pinstripes — they usually just stand around botching coin tosses and tossing out colored flags.

9. Right about now, you’re probably ready to show off your knowledge and throw out some authentic, sporty vocabulary during the actual game. Wait until the room is in some sort of an uproar over a bad call, then holler, “A noose, a tree . . . let’s hang the referee!” It’s always safe to pick on a man that doesn’t weigh 285 lbs, who carries a whistle, and always speaks in pantomime.

10. If none of this is working for you, continue nodding and being polite, offering all the uptight, nervous pacing men (and other guests who come in late) your spot on the sofa. Do this until every seat in the house is taken and you have to sit on the toilet in the bathroom. Bring guacamole.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

PS.  If you’re still bored watching the game, (and you happen to be Jewish) you can read my monthly humor article  RIGHT HERE. This one is on keeping the Yiddish language alive.  Did you know it’s dying?

10 Thoughts Going Through My Head When You Kiss On The Lips

Kissing-Or-Hugging-For-Social-GreetingWe’re not talking about playing ‘Spin The Bottle’ here. First off, I’m not a huggy type of individual. Therefore those clumsy moments I experience when initially greeting people I haven’t seen in a while (or when I part ways after running into an old friend in the grocery store) rank right up there with the awkwardness of mistakenly walking into a public men’s bathroom.

That’s right, hugging is enough of a conundrum for me. But social kissing on the lips? Just no. And here’s exactly what I’m thinking . . .

  1. You’re a guy and you’re farewell kissing every female in sight at a dinner party whilst your wife stands around obtaining the recipe for Monterey Chicken (just slap some cheese and BBQ sauce on the bird!) from the hostess. I notice you don’t give the menfolk even a cheek peck (something to do with hen-pecked?) so clearly you’re capable of discriminating lip-locking appropriateness. Therefore I ask, “Is your wife happy with you, Sir? Is she really?”
  2. Is this whole thing gonna escalate? Like going to 1st, 2nd and 3rd base? I’m worried next time you’ll sidle up to me from behind, fondle my breasts and whisper “Guess Who?” in my ear.
  3. Was that a tad of tongue or are you just chewing pink bubblegum? Either way….ewwwww.
  4. You’re a woman and we’re just meeting for coffee. Go home and Google ‘People’s Personal Circle of Space.’ Or spin around with your arms outstretched. Get it now? That’s the boundary zone. Violators will be towed.
  5. What? You’re kissing your kids on the lips too?! I dunno. Seriously. I. Just. Don’t. Know. I suppose that’s your own business.
  6. Wait, no it’s not! You’re raising a whole new batch of gratuitous lip-smackers who will show up at future dinner parties, making elderly people like me uncomfortable.
  7. You’re an eligible bachelor so C’mon! I mean it — is this a Come-On?
  8. A man is kissing my husband (if I had one) hello at a Superbowl party. Is He Gay or European? Okay, that’s just my favorite song from the musical, Legally Blonde.
  9. Yes, I know — cultural differences make it okay. But let’s put it to a fair test, shall we? You’re not in your country and I’m not in mine. We’re on another planet. I betcha a bag of Hershey’s chocolate kisses that the handshake wins (hands down!) every time with the Martians.
  10. You may have gotten away with that stealth lip graze when you greeted me hello, (you future Family Feud gameshow host, you!) but rest assured I will sooo vanish when it’s time for goodbyes. Even if I have to duck into a public men’s bathroom.