Tugging on the Levi’s Tags

Written by Elizabeth on August 24, 2008 – 3:15 pm -

I started a new school in a new city in the 5th grade. It was 1977. My Mom was making almost all of my clothes. For the first day of 5th grade, she made me a “special” outfit, I’ll never forget it. A red high-neck, long-sleeved blouse with little white flowers on it, with a denim blue (but not denim material, that part’s important) matching vest and pants. I cared very little what kind of clothes I was wearing then, and the town we had moved from was the same, kids wore whatever their parents gave them.

Not so much the case in Okemos, Michigan, which I was about to find out. So it’s the first day of school, and I’m standing on the blacktop of the playground with all the other kids, when a woman holding one of those bullhorn things yells out that we are to form lines by grade, indicating with big waves of her arm which grades go there. I fall into formation with the other 5th graders, there’s about five girls in a row right in front of me. I notice that unlike me, they are all wearing actual blue jeans, and short sleeve tops with folded-down collars and what looked like an alligator on the front left, and their jeans all have a little red tag on the back.

And then, in a moment I will never forget, one of the girls called out “let’s tug on each other’s tags for good luck!”. And everyone BUT ME reached out and gave a little tug to the Levi’s tag sticking out from the jeans of the person in front of me. The girl behind me might have snickered, I don’t remember.

I had dorky homemade clothes and an extremely stupid and unflattering “bowl cut” haircut, and I had just moved to a town where even the 5th graders were wearing the latest fashions. Oh, and to make it worse, my Dad had gotten the job offer at the beginning of summer, and by the time we were able to sell our house and buy the new one, it was August, and both of the 5th grade classes had already been filled up. So I had to spend 5th grade in the WORST class possible, the one that was for all of the kids for whom ENGLISH WAS NOT THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE.

I had no friends at all that year. That is not an exaggeration. None. It took me months to convince my Mom that I needed her to buy me clothes from Hudson’s like everyone else had, and to let me grow my hair out from the bowl cut. By 6th grade, when middle school started and I was in classes with kids from three other schools, I was finally able to live down the humiliation of 5th grade. And I did NOT wear homemade clothes to the first day of school.

This humiliating memory of the first day of school has been brought to you by Hanes Kids and the Parent Bloggers Network Blog Blast. Thanks for making me relive that, ladies. lol


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Posted in PBN, Personal | 11 Comments »

I’m off to Cincinnati!

Written by Elizabeth on July 26, 2008 – 11:10 pm -

Monday morning I’m headed to Cincinnati, OH for a meeting at Proctor & Gamble. They’ve invited a bunch of really great bloggers (and me!) to have a tour of the P & G archives, dinner at what looks like a very nice restaurant in Kentucky (blows my mind, having dinner in another STATE), and then a meeting at their Baby Care headquarters with reps from UNICEF and the Pampers Parenting Institute.

I’m sure I’ll have lots to tell you about the trip when I am back online Wednesday. Oh, and can I brag a bit? They are sending a Town Car to pick me up and drive me to the airport, and then to pick me up and bring me home! I wish the airport wasn’t literally six minutes from my house so I could enjoy more of the ride, but isn’t that thoughtful of P & G? Especially since my plane lands late on Tuesday night and having a car waiting means Chris doesn’t have to wake up Kaitlyn and the boys and come pick me up. I’m so excited about this trip!


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Posted in Personal | 3 Comments »

I’m on my way to BlogHer!

Written by Elizabeth on July 17, 2008 – 9:48 am -

I’m actually writing this post from the Michigan Flyer, a Coach Bus that travels from East Lansing (one city over from where I live) to the Detroit airport and back, it has free WiFi, satellite TV and radio, an outlet for my laptop, and it only cost $25 bucks each way! I’m never driving to the Detroit airport again!

We picked up passengers in Jackson and now we’re on our way to Ann Arbor to pick up a few more, then on to the airport! I leave at 12:17 pm Michigan time and arrive in San Francisco at 2:14 their time, so it’s 4 hours and 57 minutes in the air. I brought my MP3 player and my Sony Digital Reader to pass the time. I bought “Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer and “Are you there Vodka? It’s me Chelsea” by Chelsea Handler and downloaded them to the Sony Reader, so I don’t even have to carry books!

Excuse me for a moment, readers, I need to address any of the WONDERFUL companies and PR firms who have recently (or not so recently) sent me products to review or agreed to sponsor a giveaway:

I’M SORRY I AM SO BEHIND. I tried, I really did, I even asked a blog friend to help me get organized and she made me this nifty Google Document Spreadsheet with all the reviews and giveaways listed on it, and it was supposed to have me all caught up. But I just couldn’t keep up with the schedule AND get ready for BlogHer at the same time. I promise, PROMISE you that when I get home, I am going to write every single review and run every single giveaway, and not take on anything new until I am caught up.Thank you all SO MUCH for your patience!

And readers? Please keep reading while I’m gone! My sponsors check my stats pretty regularly, and if unique visits drop way off, they will stop sponsoring, and that will mean less giveaways, so please, stop by, read something from the archives, I would really, REALLY appreciate it!

I’ll be home from BlogHer on Monday morning (plane lands at the unholy hour of FIVE AM, Michigan Flyer bus leaves at 6:25, I’ll be home by 8:30 AM). I’ll work on uploading photos and write some reviews of all the great SWAG we are sure to be getting, and then I’ll check for giveaways that are ending or have already ended and choose those winners.

Thank you all so much, dear readers! Thanks to all of you, MomReviews is a huge hit, and I couldn’t have done it without you. It’s because of you and your support of this blog that I get to do the great giveaways and go on the awesome trips. OH! OH! I forgot to tell you! On Monday, July 27th, I’m going to Cincinnati to meet with the people from PAMPERS at Proctor and Gamble headquarters!! Pampers is the only brand of diapers that didn’t make Kaitlyn break out in a heinous rash, so I can’t wait to tell them how loyal I am to their brand. And I’ll have more great stuff to post here, too!

I should stop writing now, GEEZ. We’re almost to Ann Arbor! Big smooches to everybody, have a great weekend, I’ll try to post a bit from BlogHer!!!!


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Posted in BlogHer '08, Blogging, Personal | 18 Comments »

You know what they say about the Best Laid Plans…

Written by Elizabeth on June 26, 2008 – 10:16 pm -

Last week, I excitedly announced a whole week of giveaways, and I seriously planned to post two or even three giveaways until I had posted them all. Only my anniversary was that week and I didn’t do any posting Wednesday evening or all of Thursday, so in order to keep up, I excitedly announced that THIS week would be giveaway week too! And once again I planned to post two or even three giveaways a day until I posted them all.

Well.

My husband left yesterday morning for a business trip, and without his help around the house, I have found that I actually had to, you know, do stuff around here instead of just sitting and blogging. Which means that yep, you guessed it, I am behind AGAIN. So guess what?

You got it.

Next week? Is totally going to be ANOTHER GIVEAWAY WEEK. I’m up to TRIPLE w00t! At this rate, it might just be giveaway week EVERY WEEK!

Lest I forget, I also have PRODUCT REVIEWS to do, wonderful items that generous PR firms have sent me, which I enthusiastically agreed to try and then post my opinion about right here, and the list keeps growing and growing. Which is fantastic because I LOVE REVIEWING STUFF and I love TELLING PEOPLE WHAT I THINK even more, but it’s requiring me to stay organized in a way that requires super-human effort. I could so seriously hire an assistant or a secretary or something, and there would be plenty of work for both of us.

So there you go, dear readers, I’ll just keep posting the giveaways if you keep on entering them! Watch your feed readers this weekend and definitely by Monday morning for the new giveaway banners and badge to be entered in all the giveaways for next week. As long as PR firms keep offering to sponsor giveaways, I’ll keep having them! doubletriplequadruplequintuple WOOT!!


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Posted in Personal, giveaways | 2 Comments »