I’ll start by saying that I’ve said it too: “we are also a baby-obsessed culture (pick up any issue of People magazine to see that).”  It wasn’t until I was helping a friend with her book proposal that I realized that I had been overlooking a truism of the publishing industry which also holds in the general marketing world: rarely is it a good thing to say that there is nothing like your book in the stores.

That’s the instinct, right?  You tell the agent that your book fills this untapped niche.  There are people out there, just like you, and your book will help those people.  But it’s actually not usually a good thing to point out that no book like yours exists on the market.  There is usually good reason for that.  Publishing is very different from book writing.  Publishing is a business transaction.  Usually it matches up: the story is good AND there is a market.  But sometimes, you can have a great book that just doesn’t have a clear-cut audience that the publisher can market to and it doesn’t get picked up.  And sometimes you have a fairly crappy book written by a celebrity who brings with her a clear-cut market and they publish her book because they know they can move copies.

So it is better then to explain to the agent why your book is superior to the ones already on the market.  See, there is an audience for my book BUT my book is better than all the ones already catering to that audience.  Even if you have to stretch a bit to find something even remotely similar.

How does this tie into babies?  Well, I realized as I was telling her this that sure, if we only look at magazines or the way mommy bloggers are approached or sitcoms, we may walk away with a belief that our culture is obsessed with babies.  And I clearly have until this point.  But remember, marketers are not necessarily reflecting what we want or what we believe.  They are reaching out to a specific population that they can reach.

Image: Ken Hawkins via Flickr

For instance, new parents tend to focus on a certain, small amount of subjects.  They frequent the same places.  Therefore, new parents are a good target audience to appeal to for sales.  You know who isn’t a good target audience?  Parents of teenagers.  Parents of teenagers have a large, diverse set of issues.  They go off in too many directions.  There isn’t a clear place or subject matter to use as a focus.  Therefore, while parents of teenagers could probably use their own magazine, they don’t get a nice magazine such as Martha Stewart Baby because it would be too difficult to get subject matter that would appeal to the majority of the population you’re trying to reach. (If the magazine doesn’t contain enough articles that interest you, you’re going to stop reading it.)  And while they know that pediatricians and Mommy-and-Me gyms are going to toss Martha Stewart Baby on their waiting room table, there isn’t a place where parents of teens are congregating in the same way that parents of small children tend to hit the same type of establishments those first years.

In Apart at the Seams, one of the characters muse on how there are so many wedding magazines and no marriage magazines.  Any outsider looking at humans would concur that we are only interested in this single day — the wedding — and have no interest in the aftermath.  Though personal reality tells us a different story.  Yes, we talk with our friends about the wedding, but we continue to talk to our friends about the marriage, especially when there are issues in a marriage.  Yet brides are easy to market to: it’s a finite amount of time, most weddings contain the same moving parts, and there are clearly wedding vendor establishments that can carry the periodical.  Marriage… that’s too amorphous for publishers.  That’s too big a population.  What may interest me about marriage probably won’t interest you, especially if we’re at different points in our marriage time-wise.  Dating is slightly easier to market to because it’s focused on moving you toward marriage.  But marriage itself?  What can you say?  Here are some tips for… more marriage.  More of the same.

That’s what we want, isn’t it (I don’t think anyone wishes to go through divorce), but it isn’t what sells.

So we can’t really look at the media around us to tell us what matters in our society.  We have to look at society itself; human interactions, laws, studies.  We have to go to the personal.  When I look there, I see a conflicting reality.  I see us understanding that babies are a necessity if we want to continue the species and being down-right annoyed by them at the same time.  We pass out lollipops at the bank and ban kids from restaurants.  We’re like this in a lot of places; we’re touched and annoyed by the very same thing: elderly people (love grandma and hate that old people walk so slow!), differently-abled (wow, that was a touching video of someone who had their leg amputated walking again for the first time and then ask in the same breath why people should get special parking permits due to physical limitations), and yes… babies (so cute and yet I don’t want to sit anywhere near you on an airplane).

So I’m not sure we’re really baby-obsessed.  Baby-interested?  Especially because it comes from a biological drive?  But I’ll refrain from making the above statement again in a future blog post (and please remind me of this post if I do).

So I guess I ask all of you: are we as a society really baby-obsessed or is marketing baby-obsessed while we’re baby-interested?  Or are we really not any more interested in babies than we are in the next Super Bowl winner or whatever is in front of us at the moment?

I am addicted to caffeine.  The smallest amount I can consume and still feel okay is 16 ounces of coffee.  That’s the amount needed to stave off headaches.  On days when I need to drive in the afternoon, I’ll give myself anywhere from 8 ounces to 16 ounces of coffee as a booster.  This is down from the very high levels of caffeine that I was consuming right after the twins were born, when we were piecing together a few hours of sleep each night.  I felt okay about it then because we were truly in a you-need-to-do-what-you-need-to-do sort of place trying to feed, change, stimulate, and nap two premature infants on heart monitors.  But once they started truly sleeping through the night at 15 months (yes, I’m aware that’s late in the game.  But we had to do night feeds until then for weight issues), I was able to bring my caffeine consumption down to my current 16 – 32 ounces per day.

Earlier in the week, the New York Times had an article about how caffeine may boost memory.  I was already dragging, getting no sleep from the back pain and working on the book, so I let myself have a few extra cups of coffee here and there, rationalizing that it’s good for my memory.  I mean, the tacit permission is there in the freakin’ New York Times.  Have another cup, Melissa.

The Atlantic didn’t even hedge their bets covering the same study.  In their world caffeine = better memory, and they recommend half a Starbucks Venti.  Thank you, I think I will.

And then Elle put out their own article on caffeine on Friday, beginning with the word “scary” in the title.  Scary?  How can memory enhancement be scary unless we’re talking about remembering things you don’t want to remember?  The “disgusting” (their word) problems that caffeine is making for my body while it helps me remember where I placed my car keys: depression, osteoporosis, and INFERTILITY!

Nevermind that I was entirely off caffeine while we were trying to conceive.  I only drank decaf tea and coffee for over two straight years.

Still, Elle points out that “While not every study has found that caffeine reduces female fertility, most doctors of natural medicine recommend that women trying to get pregnant avoid caffeine.”  I guess the solution for me is to not visit doctors of natural medicine but to go with the hacks who are going to tell me to take 480 ccs, STAT.

Image: Ben Schumin via Flickr

I am constantly amused that if we believe the media and scientific studies, pretty much everything we consume or come in contact with is killing us while helping us live longer/better, all at the same time.

My caffeine product of choice: Iced coffee with half-and-half and Equal.  Second place: Iced tea without lemon.  Third place: Diet Coke.

What is your daily caffeine consumption like?

Three months ago, a child died in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  A memorial was placed near the park, and a woman went there on Thursday and started dismantling it, saying that the neighbourhood had mourned “enough.”  It was her right to do so, she told the person who confronted her, because she also lived in the neighbourhood.  Police came to speak to the woman, and the person who confronted her left, leaving the situation in the hands of law enforcement.

The story is obviously sad in and of itself, and who knows how that act affected that family’s mourning process.  Or his friends.

But it also spoke to this larger question, one that many people who have grappled with loss have confronted at some point in their process: who gets to determine what is “enough” grieving time?

Humans love to quantify things, which is why the Pirahã fascinate us: this culture that quantifies nothing.  Whereas we have an obsession with numbers: price tags, speed limits, time, paid leave.  It doesn’t surprise me that we try to extend it to grief.  Though examining how ridiculous it is when applying a time limit to grief, you see how ridiculous it is to apply numbers to anything.  Why is our maternity leave 12 weeks?  Who ever thought that you could really straighten out your life and your heart in 12 weeks?  And for others, 12 weeks isn’t necessary at all.  The speed limit near the park was deemed safe until a car collided with Sammy Eckstein as he chased his ball.  Now some people want it lower.  Other people drive as if it’s higher.  The truth seems to be different for each individual.

I would caution anyone in determining anyone else’s mourning time; not just when it comes to cutting down memorials, but stepping in for someone’s “own good” and telling them they need to move along.  You never know when your actions are like a fingernail, scratching off a scab, bringing forth fresh blood.

I had big plans to take two days to relax after turning in the manuscript, but — of course — I had to clean up life a little bit first.  Sort of like giving my life an eyebrow waxing; just taking care of all those little stray hairs that had popped up while I was head down, trying to meet my deadline.  So I woke up on Thursday and started making what I like to call liquid gold.  I am more than a little disturbed that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese has started using this phrase to describe their product because macaroni and cheese horrifies me and my liquid gold is like… liquid gold.  It’s a vegetable stock that I use in place of water.  I boil rice in it, I make soup with it, I’ve even boiled noodles in it.  It imparts this rich flavour that is the “how the hell did you make this?” in most of my recipes.

It takes about three hours to make four small containers of liquid gold, so I usually make it an all day activity, keeping the pot continuously running until our freezer is full of containers.

I did this because the kids have endured way too many dinners courtesy of Morningstar Farms the last few weeks, and I felt like I needed to provide something homemade on this first day back in reality.

They did not appreciate the liquid gold.  They would have been fine having another faux chicken patty.  I’m glad I used those hours wisely.

I also needed to start cleaning the house and making some muffins and returning emails and clearing out the piles of post-it notes that have built up over the last few months while I worked on this rewrite.

And I had to farm.

My farm on Hay Day is a wonder to behold.  Bagmomma warned me that it would take forever to level up after Level 20, but she doubted my craziness.  I am on Level 30 and I’ve been playing under three weeks.  I know this because I wrote about Hay Day for the first time in the 474th Roundup.  I have the boat orders, the fishing boat, the mine, the smelter, the cake oven, the pie oven, the juicer, and all the other common items that a person can amass in the game.  I have 10 pigs, 5 cows, 12 chickens, and 5 sheep.  My farm is a freakin’ machine.

Josh calls my arrangement with the kids the Electronic Giving Tree.  I make not only all of my boat order items, but I make most of the Wolvog’s.  I make him 4 cheesecakes to sell daily for money in his stand.  I give the ChickieNob butter for her buttered popcorn.  I sell them everything for one coin per transaction so they don’t have to use any of their money to get the stuff.  I buy and use all the items they can’t afford such as the smelter or the fishing boat, and then pass them the finished items so they can fill their orders.  It is a beautiful system.

I’ve found that using my virtual money on Hay Day is just as satisfying as actual retail therapy.  It’s akin to the trips to the library that I take when I’m trying to conserve cash, and I walk out with 10 new books.  It feels as if I’ve acquired 10 new books (they are certainly taking up space in my house), and by the time that acquiring high wears off, it’s time to return the books anyway and do it all over again.  I love amassing coins in Hay Day and then buying a new item.  I especially love that I have spent no actual money to do so.

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Best money spent this week was the Frozen soundtrack for the ChickieNob.  She is not much of a performer and prefers to never be on stage, but she is so deeply in love with Frozen that she immediately went into the living room and started belting out the songs with the album.  She even sang a bit of one song over the phone for my brother — a major step for her — and allowed me to make a few recordings for posterity.  She whispered to me that when she sings these songs, she isn’t just playing a part.  She feels as if she is Elsa.  That’s a pretty powerful story when it touches a kid that way.  I am willing to bet that there are thousands of other kids (and probably more than a few adults) out there right now who have finally found their hero — someone to emulate — in Elsa and Anna.  Well done, Disney.

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Just want to draw your attention to the annual March 9th Random Act of Kindness Day for Thomas.  328 people have already signed up and it’s still months away.  Msfitzita is one of our own, and I love participating every year.  It is especially great when I tell the person that I did it for Thomas.  If you don’t know what you want to do as your random act of kindness (and I’m still trying to come up with mine this year), Msfitzita linked to a list of 101 ideas.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “What I Lost” (The Second Bedroom)
• “Adoption on the Internet” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Northern Star!
• “Sticking it in a Bag, and Worrying about it Later” (Hapa Hopes)
• “My Books are Your Books” (Stumbling Gracefully)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I Won’t Fear Love has a post about the 86 times the moon has gone through its phases since the death of her son.  It’s a beautiful post about measuring time by the lunar calendar, and she writes, “The moon’s been full eighty six more times since I rested my boy’s head on that one spot above my heart, since I willed my body to remember the feeling of his head there. So many things are hazy now, but if I bid it, that one spot, it still responds.”  As she says, time is a strange thing.

No Kidding in NZ writes the post she wishes another writer had written thanking child-free women.  Whereas the other writer came from a space where child-free women choose not to build families, she points out how this ignores a percentage of the population who do try to build families and need to stop before they have the family they want (or, adding to that, women who want to be a mother but logistics in life get in the way).  I love Mali’s list, and there are many more thank yous that could go on it.  I’d also like to thank child-free men.

Lastly, a non-IF, mainstream article but one that touches so deeply on things that we often talk about in our community — where our story ends and another person’s story begins; such as when we write about adoption or donor gametes, and our story overlaps with another person who may not be able to give you consent to write (especially if you don’t know what you’re going to write before you sit down).  Jay Neugeboren (my former advisor) writes in Opinionator about writing about his brother, Robert.  And I love the end.  My gut tells me that if you follow that and come from a place of trust that it will guide the story as it comes onto the screen.

The roundup to the Roundup: Life post turning in manuscript.  ChickieNob sings Frozen.  Do a random act of kindness.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between January 10th and January 17th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Image: Marit and Toomas Hinnosaur via Flickr

Girl Scout cookie orders are due today with our troop.  ChickieNob has sold exactly zero boxes.  This is partly because we only got our order forms a few days ago due to a snowstorm cancelling our pre-winter break meeting.  Plus my back issues and the book deadline has gotten in the way of me even reminding her to sell some cookies.  The rest of it is because I won’t do much to help my daughter with sales.  I won’t post it to my Facebook timeline, I won’t put it on the town listserv, I won’t ask my co-workers to purchase a box, and I’ll only sit there during booth sales (those times when you see Girl Scouts selling cookies outside a store).  The most I will do is casually remind people within the confines of conversation that my daughter is selling cookies*.  If she wants to sell cookies, she needs to pick up the phone and call family members or ask me to walk with her door-to-door.

It’s not because I’m lazy, or I feel badly asking friends to help out my daughter’s troop.  It’s because it defeats the whole purpose of the cookie sale if I become too involved in the process.  Does her troop use the money?  Yes.  But you don’t have to sell that many cookies to earn enough money to hold weekly meetings plus have a little leftover for a special activity to celebrate the sale.  The point of cookie sales isn’t to make as much money as possible; at least, it isn’t when you’re only a Brownie and your troop isn’t saving for an enormous goal like a trip.

The whole point of cookie sales is to teach girls financial literacy with the hope that they can manage money later in life.

Sure, Girl Scouts hopes that your daughter will go on to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company so they can claim her for their statistics (by the way, only 12 Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs), but regardless of whether or not these girls run a business in their future, they will need to balance a personal budget and operate within the world of commerce, even if it’s just at the local grocery store.  The same skills are necessary on a small scale to run a life as they are on a large scale to run a business.  And the Girl Scouts cookie sales are the “largest girl-led business in the world.”

Girls are supposed to learn 5 skills: goal setting, decision making, money management, communication skills, and business ethics.  It’s part of Girl Scout’s larger financial empowerment program.

When adults sell the cookies for the girls, it’s like doing their math homework for them.  There’s a big difference between sitting with your child as she does her homework so she can ask you questions and doing her homework for her while she goes off to play on her iPod.

Listen, cookie sales are hard.  Sometimes a parent’s schedule or a child’s schedule or logistics of a living space make sales nearly impossible.  And I think it’s okay to sell only two or three boxes of cookies if that’s the child’s best effort.  I think it’s okay to sell no cookies when there’s a perfectly good reason for why there are no customers.  I just don’t think it’s okay for me to do the work for her.

It means that the ChickieNob is always one of the lowest sellers in her troop.

It’s a bit of an embarrassment for her when the other girls are talking about their numbers, and she participates in as many booth sales as she can, since those sales count towards a girl’s personal sales figures.  But she can’t compete with girls who have parents who do the work for them, bringing the form to their work place or putting up a link to the online order form on their social media account.  She doesn’t have a parent who is willing to do that.

And I would go so far as to wish aloud that other parents would step back and allow their child to lead their sales.  For a Daisy, that may mean selling 10 boxes to family and a few close neighbours.  For a Brownie, it may mean selling 20 boxes as they expand to running their own booth sales.  They may not get the joy of selling 1000+ boxes and earning the iPod shuffle incentive. (Please, my feelings about the incentives are a whole other post.)  But that’s okay.  They figured out that it’s hard work to make money.  And maybe it will give them a clue that we should think twice before we spend money because it is so hard to make.

I would love to hear your memories of Girl Scout cookie sales as a kid, because I don’t remember it being any more intense than the lemonade stand we set up at the end of the driveway in summer.  In the same way that my dad didn’t take our pitcher of lemonade to work and ask his colleagues to purchase a glass, we sold our Girl Scout cookies like we sold our lemonade: to a few family members and neighbours.  Back then, selling any amount of boxes was cool.

Please: Oh… and a side note since we’re entering the official cookie selling season: when you see girls selling boxes — especially when the adults with them are allowing them to take center stage — swing by the table and purchase a box. (You can donate it; you don’t have to eat them yourself.)  When you do, you’re helping a girl learn about financial literacy.  And that’s an important skill for every woman to know.

* I’ll even go so far as to tell a group that if they’re looking for Girl Scout cookies, my daughter is selling and they can contact her.  To me, this is akin to letting my neighbour know that I noticed that a new restaurant opened in town.  Which is very different from doing the publicity work for the restaurant such as handing out flyers and walking around town, trying to drum up business.  Or even worse, going into the restaurant and running it for them — from ordering ingredients to cooking the meals to balancing the books.  That’s not my role.