Morbid Marketing

In honor of Halloween, I thought I'd spend several hundred words on the topic of morbid marketing.

I made up the term for all the direct marketing I still receive for my late parents. Sure, it's slowed down. The National Rifle Association's appeals to my father finally stopped altogether. They must have gotten the message that I did not inherit my father's interpretation of the 2nd amendment after I kept writing nasty things on their postage-paid return envelopes.

But the direct marketing still comes. The most recent appeal came this week, addressed as such: "Luella, Call Fast." It continued inside: "The Most Powerful Anti-Wrinkle Secret in History. No Surgery! No Syringes! No Prescription!"

Well, no luck! And might I suggest you spend a little more on your leads list? Cuz Luella's not worried about a single wrinkle, fine line or dark circle in nearly four years.

But that's an example of the lousy, lazy lists-makers of the marketing world.

It's the personal appeals from companies who did business with my parents and who knew that they no longer were customers because they are dead that really rub me. And, oh, yeah, I'm calling you out.

Allstate Insurance. Just a few months after canceling my parents' car and condo insurance, I received, addressed to my mother from her long-servicing agent, a smartly taglined letter: "Life Changes. Your Insurance Should Keep Up."

So should you, Dan the Insurance Man. Because your appeal that "every time you reach a new milestone in life, it affects everything ... including your insurance," doesn't really apply in, well, death. Unless you mean I should cancel the policies, which I did.

Another, sent to my mother about six months after she died, was from Christ Medical Center. Its appeal: "Please Help Christ Medical Center Continue to Save Lives!"

Umm, need I remind you that mom was your patient, and she died just hours after I drove the two hours home to Wisconsin because your doctors assured me "there seems to be nothing wrong with your mother ... we'll keep her overnight, but she'll get to go home tomorrow most likely"?

Yeah, she went home all right. Home to her Maker.

So, sorry, her estate is not in the mood to give you a 'special tax-deductible gift of ... ".

But my all-time favorite morbid marketing example is a note from Palos Health & Fitness Center. This is where my mom took her water aerobic classes and made new luncheon friends. Because for Luella, lunch was life.

I called to cancel her membership as soon as I realized it was an automatic debit in her checking account. When I did, the woman who took my call asked why I was canceling. I very clearly explained that my mother had died and would no long need her membership.

Apparently the message was not conveyed to the 'membership team,' because she received a note from said 'membership team' just one month later, saying: "We miss you!" ... and ... "We hope you are keeping up with your health and fitness goals. We know you had specific reasons for leaving us but hope that your situation has changed over the last few months. To help you get back on track, we are offering zero enrollment until April 30th, 2007... What a great way to come back."

And on Halloween, I just wonder if Mom's not doing some kind of special Luella haunting on the Palos Health & Fitness Club, just to spook the crack membership team.

Happy haunting!

Hairy Kari on a Monday

Sunday morning I chatted with a dad of a nearly-2-year-old girl with beautiful blond hair that has yet to be cut. We laughed about our apprehension of cutting our babies' hair.

Half jokingly, I warned him that my friends with daughters have shared that girls, before first or second grade, usually just days before school picture day, cut their own hair. Just to see if that's perhaps a career direction for them. I don't know why.

Sometimes it's just the bangs, sometimes it's more of an all-over cut. Always it takes a genius of a hair stylist to 'fix' it.

I'm remembering such a scene recently on Mad Men when the young Sally did a number on her hair, to a harrowing response from both mom and dad.

I don't recall ever doing it myself, but who knows, and who could tell me now? Plus, the pixie was the cut I was famous for during my youngest years. Not much to cut.

With three boys, I really didn't think I had anything to worry about.

But if you've read any smattering of this blog, you may be familiar with my middle son, TJ. And you already know what's coming.

Yep, the boy with the gorgeous dark brown curls walked into my bathroom this morning with a handful of hair, proudly showing me. Having recently cleaned out hair brushes, I hopefully asked, "Were you playing in the garbage?"

He answered no, bringing the scissors he had in his right hand closer to my eyes, which had yet to be reacquainted with their contacts so early on a Monday.

"No, Mommy, it's my hair," Tj boasted. And to add insult to injury, "Isn't it cool?"

Although I inherited my dad's time-bomb temper (I'm working on it), I am no Betty Francis or Donald Draper. I calmly told him to put the scissors back, throw out the hair, and get ready for breakfast.

And after he left my bathroom, I laughed.

Remembering Dad

My dad died much too young, which doesn't make me special. I know lots of folks who've lost a parent way too young, or even a spouse way too early.

It's been just over seven years since my Dad died. It was July 2003, and our oldest son, Luke, was just one. We still lived in the city, and I had just left my full time job to stay home with him.

It had been so hard for me to tell him I was quitting, or as I put it then, "taking a sabbatical." He had always been the parent who encouraged my career goals. When I quit a corporate job to return to my first love, newspaper reporting, even though it meant a serious change to my income and lifestyle, he was the parent who told me I was right to pursue my dream. When my dreams changed and I decided to return to corporate work and to pursue my MBA, it was Dad who gave me a copy of economist Diane Swonk's autobiography and told me, "You will enjoy this."

So of course when I told him I was leaving my job to mother Luke full time, he was genuinely thrilled and told me I'd accomplish great things in life, that I didn't need a six-figure income to do that.

It took me a long time to figure out it didn't matter what I did in life, my Dad would encourage me and be proud of me.

So I'll never forget what one friend wrote in a note to me after he'd suddenly left us all behind, wondering what exactly his dreams had been. She'd written, "You made your father very proud."

I hadn't known until that moment that making him proud mattered so much to me.

My dad was not a perfect father. I was not a perfect daughter. But his love for me, my brothers, my cousins, his God and his country (82nd Airborne!), was perfect.

Today, Sunday, October 17th, would have been his 76th birthday. I thought I'd share this photo of four of my seven cousins, my brothers and me (that's me in the red top and green shorts, always a fashion icon), at my aunt & uncle's home one Memorial Day weekend, where we all gathered yearly for the Indianapolis 500.

Your family, and many others, miss you, Dad. Happy birthday.

The Girl With the Angel Wings Tattoo

I'm not a big fan of tattoos. A few of my family members and a minority of my friends sport one or more.

Of course, more friends may have tats that I just don't know about, and if that's the case, I probably want to keep it that way.

Not being a fan of tattoos in no way reflects a judgment on my part about people with tattoos.

Tattoos can be meaningful. Tattoos can be clever, cute, beautiful, artistic, tasteful.

Kevin and our good friend Paul almost got "Packers" and "Bears" tattoos, respectively, many years ago. I'm thankful that Paul, who by then had an infant daughter, came to the conclusion that maybe he didn't want to have to explain to his daughter, 18 years down the road, why it was ok that he got one but she shouldn't.

I've thought about it. Something small and cute on my ankle maybe. But, frankly, I'd rather avoid needles unless medically necessary.

Disturbingly, I have seen a few tattoos on women at my gym ... women who are great grandmothers ... women who I'm sure thought the tattoo was meaningful and a good idea, at the time. Fifty or 60 years ago.

I see a lot of tattoos on women in my yoga classes. The other day I was mesmerized by a tattoo on the young woman holding a perfect tree pose in front of me. Tattooed on her back were angel wings. Not too large, but large enough. And, I'll say it, quite beautiful. Through my exhaustion and sweat, for a moment I thought an actual angel was standing just two feet from me.

But I know she's not an angel. Real angels are too busy saving Chilean miners and doing that sort of amazing work to be doing yoga on a Monday morning.

Thanks, all you Angels out there.

Boy, Crazy

In what used to be a guest room in my home, I have a dresser drawer labeled "Spy Gear," and another marked "Weaponry."

No, I haven't joined some paramilitary group nor am I a secret double agent Angelina-Jolie-type-movie-character spy disguised as an ordinary suburban mom.

The dresser is in our guest room-turned play room, and I am just an ordinary mom of three young, active boys. In fact, I remember long before becoming a mother I said I wouldn't allow toy guns in my home.

And just yesterday I told my oldest son that walking by his and his brothers' bathroom makes me want to barf. He asked me what 'barf' meant, and I said I was shocked he didn't yet know all the synonyms for throwing up. At that point, his visiting friend and I came up with about eight different ways to say 'puke.'

And I laughed at the fact I just initiated a conversation about vomiting, and wondered, "How did I get here?"

This certainly wasn't my plan, being married 13 years (to the same man) with three boys, a house in the suburbs, volunteering at my kids' Sunday School.

Nope. I vividly remember an essay I wrote in 6th grade. I don't remember the assignment exactly, but it must have had something to do with 'what I wanted to be when I grew up.'

I wrote that I was going to be foreign correspondent for a major newspaper (c'mon, this was the late 70s when newspapers were relevant), get married and have twin girls (always was interested in efficiency and figured two kids, one pregnancy = smart) but have a nanny or a husband who stayed home with the girls while I trotted across the globe covering war and uncovering scandal, exposing scoundrels.

My teacher, Miss Wall, gave me a decent grade but commented in the margins that I shouldn't try to be so specific, that we don't necessarily have control over everything in our lives. She warned that thinking we had such control would only lead to disappointment.

Then there was college. I could have earned a minor in Women's Studies given the number of classes I took in that department. All the literature I read and lectures I listened to about changing the world, about not settling for the status quo, about not doing the things society expected of me, just because society expected it.

Those lessons, along with other life lessons, created a person who, when I met my husband, was not going to get married. I certainly was not going to have children. (He likes to remind me of this every once in a while; he thinks it is very funny.)

But I did marry him, and after many years filled with foreign travel and rat racing, we did have a child. Liked him so much we adopted another. Then had another after him.

I haven't given up on changing the world, however. I have three smart and talented boys to raise into status quo-bucking, rule-breaking, society-influencing men -- three men who will know how to clean their own bathroom.

Their first lesson begins promptly at 7 a.m. tomorrow.

Hope It Gives You Hell!

This could have been titled "I Heart TV."

I'm just giggling over a strange technical glitch I experienced today. In the process of burning a couple dozen CDs for our Sunday School families, I found that on the first five I made, instead of starting with "Let Their Be Light," a little ditty about that first chapter in Genesis, the CD's prelude was "Hope It Gives You Hell," from last season's Glee soundtrack.

It was followed by a few other songs sent to me by my SIL Jen to resuscitate my DNR running playlist. That's the one I haven't gotten around to changing since it was my 'labor and birthing' playlist 18 months ago ... yep, a pretty sad compilation ranging from Enya to Barry Manilow to some Kid Rock (clearly to help in the final stages).

So, while I found it hilarious that what's supposed to rock out The Books of Moses to our sweet kids in Sunday School would have instead, rocked their parents in the wrong way, I am sure glad I decided to check the CDs before labeling and distributing.

Back to "I Heart TV."

I am not a big TV watcher. I have a few time limitations given my lifestage, but I've come a long way the past few years from trying to be all elitist and pretending I don't watch it at all, or boasting at a playdate "I don't let my kids watch SpongeBob."

Please, if it were not for SpongeBob, my kitchen would never get cleaned up after a meal (and with three young, growing boys, there are no fewer than eight meals a day served here) or, as was the case tonight, the lawn would have gone a second week without a mowing. C'mon, it's not like those boys don't get appropriate sensory stimulation and music, literature, athletic, etc., exposure during the other parts of their days. I'm just saying, for a half hour here or a half hour there, I heart SpongeBob, Scooby Doo, Johnny Test and anything on PBS. Love my Window To The World.

Then there are MY shows I've come to look forward to this TV season.

I really liked summer when TV was bad (or just repeats) and I would curl up with a book, instead of in front of the TV, before passing out from exhaustion at 8 p.m., but I really enjoyed those Emmy Awards a few weeks ago (Jimmy Fallon ... heart, heart, heart him and his team of writers ... and, please, do not forget the writers). And I'm really hopeful for this season.

Mad Men has not disappointed, especially with the focus on Don's desire to change the trajectory of his life and on the show's female characters, the few whose sole purpose is not about mattress testing. Glee, well, yummy! And THANK goodness I'm neither back in high school nor remember my own high school experience to be so, well, cruel.

I'd started watching DWTS last year for RESEARCH for a writing project I had, but I got hooked. I'm not so sure I'll be hooked this season, but, like a train wreck, I have a feeling I won't be able to help myself.

I like my brands: CSI, Law & Order. Mad Men and Friday Night Lights I love partly because Kevin & I like to watch them together. The Office and 30 Rock is our Thursday night date night. Sad, but realistic, again, given our lifestage, or really, the age of our children.

While I'm sure I'd be better served reading up on the latest developments in foreign policy, tonight I'm going to go see what's new on TV.

We Interrupt this Marriage

It happens every year, without fail, as summer comes to a close.

This year it began slowly, quietly. An hour here, an hour there, gone. Then there was this past weekend. Bam. Practically an entire weekend, gone.

Gone to football, that is.

Saturday: college football. Game after game after game. Sunday, 3:15 p.m., The Game. Then Sunday night, more games. And on Monday, what was this, two NFL games on a Monday night?

I didn't realize it until it was too late that we'd missed our Sunday night date night. It's just the two of us, appropriate cocktail in hand, parked in front of the TV, watching Mad Men. (Listen, with three small kids and an already-stretched-thin babysitting budget, watching a TV show together, uninterrupted and with intention, is a date night.)

Thank goodness for DVR; we should be able to get our fix of a wickedly dysfunctional family and pickled work environment later this week.

I'd made an unforgivable error in judgment Sunday, though. I'd left to run a few errands around 4 p.m.: I returned a playdating child to his parents, went to the grocery store for milk, wine, bananas (the basics), and stopped at the library for the newest John Krakauer book, the one about Pat Tillman. Tangentially about football, the book is for my football-loving husband who's about to embark on a very long overseas flight. Thought he'd like it.

But later that night I heard: "you left me with all three kids for, like, two hours in the middle of MY GAME?" Ok, I did stop for a coffee before my library visit. I could have been gone just an hour.

It's not like I didn't know life would be like this. I mean, the men in our wedding switched from the church-approved, color-coordinating vests to "Packers" and "Bears" vests for the reception.

In fact, our vows may very well have included a phrase about 'interrupting this marriage for football season."

And that's ok. As Kevin likes to point at, "at least" he isn't in a fantasy football league. And it's true. I fully accept having to plan our life around the Packers schedule. And that's all he truly cares about, football-speaking. Yes, he'd like to catch a Badgers game or a few select NFL games, but it's three, sometimes four hours, every week, from September through January.

It makes him happy (as long as the Packers win). I'm willing to interrupt this marriage for a Packers win.

Unless they're playing the Bears.