Recently in Advice Category

A while back I was contacted by a marketing firm asking me to do a link exchange with a culinary chef cooking school. The deal being offered was they would get full front page billing and endorsement here and on the front page of my recipe journal and I would get an obscure little text link somewhere in the deep bowels of their links page for student.

The request offended me. I politely replied with a "No, thank you."

About two weeks later I get another request from this same gal at this marketing firm who lets it be known this is their second attempt to contact me and that I am being offered a premium chance to support a world renown school for up and coming chefs blah blah blah ...

This request not only offended me but it also pissed me off.

This is my response in the full light of day right here on the front page of my journal. I won't even bother to reply by email. I am sure there are other women who feel similar.

I pay for my webspace. I manage all aspects of my own website. The content here is original and it is mine. I am not a corporation and I am not for sale for the price of a tiny little link on a page most people will never see.

Praying on 'housewives' and doing them the 'favor' of linking to them is just a piss poor way of trying to protect your pocket book and get free advertising. You are no better than a vulture circling to see what you can get for free. You disgust me with your cheap pettiness and your high and mighty attitude. Like a give a flying rip about your cooking school client. I know how to cook. I don't need you or them to offer me crumbs.

So take note -

If you want front page billing on bigredcouch.com you better be prepared to offer front page billing in exchange.

My ad rate stands as following for corporate entities: $75 per month, 3 month minimum, payable in advance, months must run consecutively. No, I won't sign up for an advertising program. If you want space here contact me with a business offer otherwise please don't waste my time. I will rent you a tiny space in the sidebar but the main content is not for rent nor is it for sale.

And furthermore, how dare you pray on 'housewives' and 'mommy blogs' and make them feel as if it is you who would be doing them a favor. We have bills to pay, kids to feed, cloth and educate. If you have the time and money to hire a marketing agency to advertise for you then you have the time and money to pay for my services and space on my website as well that of other women with online journals.

You people out there in the advertising buisness stop acting like peeping toms. You make my skin crawl.

I'll end my rant now.

I now return you to our previously schedule discussion of chocolate cake and red wine.

I was going to tell you about my trip to Walton's Mountain. Instead I have to tell you about my chimney. I scheduled an appointment with a local chimney sweep for our annual cleaning of the chimneys so that we can safely heat and enjoy our winter evenings by the fireside. Wednesday the sweep was scheduled to be here at 4pm. He showed up at nearly 6:30pm. I plainly asked him if he could properly clean our chimney at night. He answered that it was no problem whatsoever. His assistant got out the ladders and brushes and climbed his way up 27 feet to the top of my chimney. The sweep, a retired fireman, came inside and set up his vacuum and dropclothes and other things he needed. The pair spent the better part of an hour brushing and vacumming. They cleaned up the mess, loaded the van and wrote out an invoice. I paid them $109 for about 45 minutes work. Not a bad hourly wage, huh? Saturday evening we laid a fire. Two things happened. One, the chimney would not draw. Two, the fire would smother out when we closed the stove door. What could be the problem?! The chimney sweep just cleaned the chimney so there couldn't be an obstruction. With smoke backing up into the house and with burning eyes we smothered the fire and gave up on it. Sunday morning, early before the sun came up, I set about to see if I could get a fire built. I opened a window just in case there was a negative draw in the chimney. Once the fire started it would burn clean and bright as long as the door was open. Close the door and it smothered out and set about smoking. We checked outside and smoke was rising from the chimney. Exasperated I closed up the fireplace and let it smother out. I planned to call the chimney sweep, you know the ex-fireman, and have him come out here and show me how to start a damn fire because for the first time in my life I can't start a damn fire! Grrrr! We heard a sudden wooomfff from the fireplace and thought well, that had to be the change in draw. Sure enough the smoke was now rising at it should up the chimney and not back into my livingroom. Defeated and pissed off I closed it back up and gave up on it until this week when I could clean it out and call the manufacturer to find out what they had to say about their noncatalytic combustion and lifetime warranty. Steve went outside to check his work on the roof. I went to the kitchen and began making the kids a late lunch. About 20 minutes later Steve came in and says, "What did you do? Smoke is pouring out of the chimney. Is the fireplace overburning?" I looked him and told him to open it up but first open the windows in case smoke started backing up. Holy Smokes!! He opens the stove door and up in the very top where the chimney pipe is was a blazing fire. We had a chimney fire in a chimney that was supposed to be clean as a whistle. A chimney fire has a roar to it that sounds like a train traveling down the tracks at a fast speed. I have heard many things describe as a sound of a train, including a chimeny fire, but this is the first time I have expereinced it and I can say that indeed it does sound like a train. Steve began raking out the burning coals. I got on the phone and called the chimney sweep and had to leave a message that I had an emergency. The sweep called me back immediately. I told him Steven was raking buckets of burning material out of the stove that was falling from the chimney. He seemed to not believe me. He promised he would have someone come out here and check the chimney about this week. Tuesday was as early as he could fit me in. I was angry but held my tongue and explained I paid him for a clean chimney and did not get a clean chimney and I want what I paid for. He agreed and was apologetic to the max. Steven kept sweeping out burning bits and pieces and eventually the fire up the stove pipe was out. We closed the fireplace and let everything die out. The chimney will be cleaned again tomorrow but I imagine after the burn it is clean as a whistle now. Again today I will clean out the firebox, vaccuum the brick liners and clean the smoked door and windows. Maybe tomorrow we will manage a warming fire in our fireplace to put all of this behind us. We are fortunate that we did not sustain any damage. We had our chimney lined last year with a stainless steel liner and the stove vent pipe. The fire did not cause any harm. I urge you that if you have a fireplace and use it at any time have it cleaned and inspected every year by a licensed chimney sweep IN THE DAYTIME when they can look down it and see the inside more clearly. A chimney fire in a normally constructed chimney can burn your house down. Don't wait. Call a sweep today and take care of your chimney. Give your family a safe warm winter. I am still a bit nervous about it all. And my house still smells of lingering wood smoke.

We are now overflowing with seats. Seats for a baby. Seats and seat covers for a baby. Just to warn you this post is mostly about baby products and if you are not interested I suggest you scroll down and enjoy the pictures of the baby. I own all of these seats. I chose the Profile Travel System (Tahoe Print) by Baby Trend as our infant seat stroller of choice. I chose color based on what matched my Excursion. Steven chose the brand and model due to safety. Every other brand of stroller with baby seat if you grasp the front with baby seat attached the babyseat would tilt and the stroller would slam to the ground. Not this one. This stroller is heavy. It has rubber tires not plastic formed wheels. It is not as easy to fold and stow as it takes 2 hands and you can pinch your fingers if you arenot careful. I wouldn't trade it for any other stroller. It has served us very well. The baby seat also has the car seat base with latches that hook to the frame of your vehicle. This thing isn't going anywhere once you have it installed. I have never felt better about having my baby in a car. Roomy undercarriage for lots of shopping bags. Steven is now over 20lbs and 29 inches long. He is too big for the baby seat. We now have had to buy a bigger infant/toddler car seat that can be rear or forward facing. In Virginia a baby has to be 20 lbs AND 1 year old to ride forward facing. I have a Brittany Spears problem because my baby is too big for an infant seat and too small for the regular carseat. He is already too big for a rear facing seat at 6 months old. His feet push against the back seat. Time for a new seat. I have purchased the Triumph DLX Convertible Car Seat in Marimba Print by Evenflo as the new car seat for the next stage of growth of my baby boy. It has a cup holder! He will eventually out grow this seat and I will have to purchase yet another car seat to accomodate him but no expense is too much when you are talking about the safety and life of your child. I do not have a review of this carseat as we have not used it to be able to base our opinions an every day experiences. This seat was chosen for comfort, Consumer Reports rating (as good as ifnot better in some cases than the far more expensive Britax) and the fact that is it rear and forward facing and should contain my son safely for the next year or more. Next in our musiucal chairs line up is the Bumbo Seat. Who invented this thing? It is fabulous! NEVER WALK AWAY AND LEAVE YOUR BABY UNATTENDED!!!! DO YOU HEAR ME????!!!!! Once your baby is old enough to hold his head up without wobbling you can put him in this foam support seat and the baby will be able to sit upright keeping your hands free. It is perfect for those times when you really need to do a few things but the baby is crying to be held or to be near you. Folding laundry is easy as pie when you put this on the table top right beside you and put the baby in it. NEVER WALK AWAY AND LEAVE YOUR BABY UNATTENDED!!!! DO YOU HEAR ME????!!!!! The baby can sit on the countertop or tabletop or on the floor while you are doing immediate chores. NEVER WALK AWAY AND LEAVE YOUR BABY UNATTENDED!!!! DO YOU HEAR ME????!!!!! If you have a new baby or will be having a new baby put this on your list of items to have. You will be glad you did. We also have a floppy seat. Oh, the floppy seat! No more germy shopping carts! I get so grossed out when we go places and see the nasty shopping carts. I refuse to let Steven anywhere near one. Now that he is able to sit up on his own I purchased a floppy seat so I won't have to gag and cringe at the thought of putting my baby in a filthy shopping cart seat. Steven loves his Johnny Jump Up. The first few months of his life the Carter's Bouncy Seat was heaven sent. Nice soothing colors. As he got older and before he could sit up we used the bouncy seat in the upright position to feed him and to let him play. One thing about this seat though is the vibration does nothing to sooth a baby and the music makes you want to scream. They should continue to make this seat without those things. I chose this seat because I hate loud garish colors for baby things. Primary colors are great for toddlers but they overstimulate babies and no one needs an overstimulated baby. We have lots of other seats. The high chair is used from when J. was a baby and the grandparents had the seat at their house to use and they gave it to us. It is not attractive but perfectly functional. Steven sits in it just fine at meal times. The walker he is using to scoot all around the house is from when Gracie was a baby. It works just fine. No need to buy a new one. The bathtub ring is awesome! It is also from when Gracie was a baby. It is the FisherPrice stay n' play. I don't think they make these any longer. Hence why I saved mine. I was always hoping to have one more baby. Maybe one could be found on ebay if you want the retro baby goodies. (Yes, I am a saver of things. I even have Gracie's pack n' play. The original portable play pen. It is still in excellent condition.) Tapioca at bath time - yummmmm! There are things I wish I had never wasted money on. The biggest being the Circle of OverStimulation and Frustration. After about 10 minutes he is completely over wired by this thing. It is for ages 4 months and up. At 4 months he hated it -and still does. Two other seats we have ordered have not come yet. We chose a very inexpensive (yet safe!) standard rear bike seat for Steve's bike and for myself I got the european Bobike Mini seat so Steven can ride up front and I can keep an eye on him. Plus he can see where we are going and not my big old butt. Do we need this many seats? Heck no! But they sure make life a whole lot simpler and easy. BTW, my baby is not in a seat all of the time. Many days we use only 1 seat and maybe even no seats. Over time we have collected these things. The bouncy seat is now put away and not used. The bathtub ring will soon be retired as he can now sit on his own. Steven plays in the floor with his toys and he rolls over and flips on his tummy and gets mad when he can't sit back up but does a good job of struggling to try to sit up. Any day now I suspect he will be sitting up from his laying down position all on his own. When he sits up if he can get a grasp of a solid object he tries to pull himself up. I do wonder if he will be like Colby and walk at 7 months or more like Gracie and walking at 8 1/2 months. P.S. A baby bathtub is a big waste of money and does nothing but take up space. I learned that with Colby, tested it again with Gracie, and proved myself right with Steven. All my kids hated the exersaucer type things.

Growing up all I ever wanted to be was a mother. In high school I went through all the career goal stuff and picked journalism and law as directions I might someday seek. My love of history came much later. Deep down I just wanted to be a momma. Secretly I had this dream. A most perfect and rose colored image of what my life would be. I would marry a great guy with a simple yet beautiful wedding. He would work and I would stay home and raise my babies. We would get through life together and in the end we would find a away to be financially stable. Our children would grow up to be intelligent people who traveled and saw all the things in the world to see and would come home to tell me about their lives. I would sit on the front porch and rock my grandbabies. Life would be perfect in an imperfect world. I was 18, young and dumb. I had this image of motherhood that was live and in technicolor. I would be a most loving and gentle earth mother. I would grow vegetables and herbs. I would tend my flock of children, teaching them all the things I knew. We would do homework at the family table. We would take summer vacations. Life would be grand. Then I got pregnant at age 20. I still had the ideals and dreams of this life that was to come. Dear heaven, someone should have told me in advance what was to come. I might not have believed them but someone should have bellied up to the bar and shed some light on real life! Being pregnant was not easy. I was so god awful sick. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. ALL. DAY. LONG. No one warns you about being sick! I was so sick I could hardly hold my head up. It took most of the day to motivate myself to do anything. Laundry piled up. Dishes didn't get washed everyday. I was drowning. The least little thing would set off my gag reflex. I dreaded brushing my teeth. I knew it would make me physically sick. I had to brace myself and plan for teeth brushing. I had to prepare myself for the sickness to come after and then brush my teeth again. It was a grueling ordeal to wade through. Then one day I wasn't sick anymore and everything was almost normal again. The morning and all day long sickness is a filthy trick Mother Nature plays on a woman. The next six months was spent making baby clothes and blankets, pulling together a nursery and planning for this beautiful little creature that was coming into my life. People were generous with showers and gifts. It was indeed a lovely time. I read all the books. I understood exactly what was happening to my body and the complete development of my baby. The earth mother thing kicked in again and I was determined to do it the old fashioned way - no drugs. Just learning to breathe to control the pain. Natural childbirth was my choice and I was determined to carry it through to the end. Did I tell you I was young and dumb? The night I went into labor I realized what a big damn mistake I had made. Natural childbirth is not pleasant. Holy hell I would have killed someone for drugs to make the pain stop. At one point I remember begging for just a little something because I knew I was going to die and I didn't want to die screaming and writhing in pain. I did not scream. Not one time. I clench my teeth together to the point I broke one and later ended up having a crown put on it. Mother Nature might be a bitch but there is a God in heaven. He saw my misery and delivered me from the pit of hell that childbirth pain is. In no less than two hours and fifteen minutes what had started had come to a full end. I held my new baby in my arms and then AND THEN the doctor gave me something for pain! He also explained to me that at a certain point there is no turning back and pain medication shouldn't be given. I think they tried to tell me while I was begging but it did not register at the time. Within hours I had lost my mind again. I went home 36 hours after Colby's birth with all of these glorious plans of the perfection of motherhood I would carry out. Somebody should have taken my rose colored glasses and stomped on those damn things until they were nothing but crushed metal and shards of glass. Hours after going home I was in a rocking chair crying my eyes out while this red faced baby screamed and nursed. The image in my mind is likened to huddling in a corner with red eyes and rocking back and forth mumbling mindless babble. I kid you not! No one told me about stitches. No one told me about constipation. No one told me about blisters from letting a baby nurse at will. What was I supposed to do? A baby that is nursing is a baby that is not screaming. To top it off I was scared to death! I was scared I would break her! I was scared I would do something so wrong she would be scarred for life. No one tells you anything! Babies do not come with instructions! How is a young woman to know what to do? Thank God for my mother who came to my rescue. Every evening after work she came to my house. She did chores. She helped me take care of Colby. She taught me how to bathe her and burp her and she brought me cream for the blistered nipples that were an ungodly sight. Now there is more to this than just telling you a story. I have been following a couple of blogs written by soon-to-be first time mothers. God save these young women. They know NOTHING! They think they know what to expect. Oh no, they don't know jack and are in for a rude awakening. I actually feel sorry for them. There is no class that will ever prepare them for motherhood. There is no book that will tell them that lettuce and broccoli and onions will give their breastfed babies so much gas that they will screaming for hours. There is nothing that gives them an acurate picture of things to come. No one has told them that $300 diaper bags are a waste of money. No one told them that a $700 stroller is throwing money at foolishness. No one has told them they would be better off using that money to hire help to come in for at least a couple weeks to wash dishes and clothes and floors. I see the obsession with skinny bodies and fear of stretch marks. No one has told them that in a few months they will be more concerned with using a tucks pad and A&D ointment. No one has told them the fear of peeing for the first time knowing there is a string of stitches in the area. No one has told them about cramping until you think you will go blind. No one has told them about the weeks after when there is bleeding like no period they have known before. Some have been warned about a babies need to breast feed every two hours. They have no idea how extremely tired they will be trying to recover from birth and then getting no sleep because a baby needs to feed. They don't seem to understand you better catch some sleep while the baby is sleeping. Even more so they don't realize how assinine they look dressing their pets up in baby clothes pretending how it might be. Every birth story is unique. We women share them like battles fought. The basics are all the same, no matter who you are. Childbirth is hard on your body, mentally and physically. You do not go back to work after a week. You don't pick up where you left off. Everything changes. Unless maybe you are independently wealthy. You know what the saddest part of it all is? You can tell them EVERYTHING and they think you are kidding or exaggerating. Some even reply with "Ewwww." Even sadder are the ones who are giving advice about birthing and motherhood. How can you give advice about something you don't know anything about? Thank God we do not stay young and dumb forever. One more thing. To all the soon-to-be mother's who might read this. No one wants to see photos of shit covered babies. No one wants to read about the shit and the puke. Stop now before it starts. You will suffer a major loss of respect. Plastering the internet with those types of things makes you look like ghetto trash. It is not pretty and it is not funny. It is the MOST disrespectful thing you can do to your new little family. Thank you in advance for not doing this.

Yesterday's post was in response to questions asked from this post. Thank you all for the lovely comments. This is not an advice column but today I am going to give some advice. I firmly believe life is what you make. I built the life I want to live. 1. If you don't like your life: Change it. 2. Stop giving other people permission to take away your joy. No one can take anything away from you unless you give them the power to control you. Those who choose to live life depressed, sharing sadsack tales with the 'oh woe is me' attitude, blaming everything and everyone for what they think is wrong with themselves has given permission to another person to take their joy. No one can take anything from you unless you let them. 3. For those who are married: You owe it yourself and your spouse to get your shit together. No one wants to carry your load all the time. Marriage is a shared relationship of responsibility. Sometimes it is your turn to carry the burden. Don't wait to be asked. Get in there and do your part and don't gripe and complain about it. Good marriages do not just happen and are not pulled out of thin air. They are built day by day. You have to work to have a good marriage. It does not come naturally. A marriage and each person in that marriage needs to be nurtured and cared for daily. 4. For those who have children: You owe it to your children to break the cycle. So you didn't have the perfect childhood. Get off your ass and give your children the idylic childhood you missed out on. 5. If you can't get your act together on your own, seek help. If you need therapy - get it. If you need medical intervention - get it. A nervous breakdown is not a pretty sight. Get help. Stick with the treatment and work through it to accomplish a happy healthy outcome. Thank you.