Siri

I don’t know about you, but Siri is the bane of my existence. I have tried to like the bitch, but she taunts me to no end.

I have been driving in my car and found myself screaming at her that she sucks. Yes, I scream at the phone.

Me: Siri, YOU SUCK!

Siri: That doesn’t sound good.

You’re damn straight it doesn’t sound good! I am convinced she is both deaf and slightly brain damaged. And a little passive aggressive, now that I think about it.

So I say it again (I swear this is for real)

Me: Siri, you SUCK!

and her response?

Siri: I would rather you didn’t.

Apparently she never got the ‘a little head would be nice’ memo.

Gary just got an iPhone and I was showing him how to voice text. He was pouring syrup into a pitcher for breakfast and I saw we were running low, so I voice texted him:

Me: Siri, message Gary “We need more syrup”

Siri (to Gary): Gary we need more Siri.

He looked at me and I said, “See, I told you she was self-involved.”

A Tip for LIPA: Knowledge is Power

Let me start this post with the fact that today marks the 11th day that I have been without power in my home, where I also have my office. But, post Sandy reality for me has been more of a major inconvenience than a major hardship.

I say this because I have still have a home; one that is whole, dry and undamaged. And I have dear friends who are housing us AND our dog! My parents home is also in perfect shape and they sit in the middle of a community that has been highly compromised. I was fortunate enough to help them get out of town to warmth and safety, since we had no idea when their town would be ‘reenergized’. (Good Lord, I am getting tired of THAT word)

I consider myself truly blessed.

This post is not about demanding accountability or judging the job LIPA is doing on the ground. I will assume they are doing the best they can. I do not have the knowledge of what their plan IS to make any judgement. THAT is exactly the problem.

I am writing this post in desperation for myself and my community; for those throughout LI who are sucking it up and dealing with their new normal the best they can. I am not saying, ‘plug me in first’, I am  only asking to be informed. If the news is grim, we are grown ups, we will deal with it.

Instead, we are left in the virtual dark; the communication to individual communities is non-existent. There are more rumors and speculation than facts. That is way more dangerous than serving up the truth.

How do we explain to Long Island Power Authority – LIPA that they are in the midst of one of the biggest social media fails of the century. Forget the tens of thousands of tree trimmers and linesman. Stop posting those ridiculous charts with number of customers and outage maps that mean nothing to us. Give us a solid line of two-way communication.

Respect us.

Where is their crisis management comm team? There is absolutely no managing of expectations where I live. I have seen @LIPAnews answer questions on twitter, but I have not received a single response to over a dozen tweets and Facebook posts. That poor soul manning their twitter account must be having a nervous collapse trying to keep up. I don’t blame them either.

What they need is a social media STAFF. Call a staffing agency that specialized in trained SM experts including a crisis strategist; I will be happy to give you some names. Set up an individual twitter and facebook account for each set of effected communities. Staff them. Team each group with a field manager who knows the daily updates and give them a direct line of communication to enable them to answer individual questions in realtime. This is not brain surgery, this is crisis management.

I have not seen a single truck in my ‘hood. So therefore people assume we are the forgotten and become angry. I get that there must be a plan. Tell me 3 weeks and I will cope. Tell me Long Beach needs power first to pump out their flooded homes and I will donate a week of juice to help them. (if you know me, I would… just don’t share that with my neighbors). I will even be your evangelist. But tell me nothing and ignore my tweets and you only inflame me.

Sending out an SOS. (fyi, it could be the 12 day sinus infection that is making me crankier)

Photo credit: Amy Zimmerman. Model Release: my deceased apple tree leaning on my neighbor’s house. If you know of a tree guy with some free time, give me a shout.

NOVEMBER 9TH UPDATE:

I will take back my comment about judging whether they were doing the job well or not… it is apparent this is, as Rep. Steve Israel said, ‘a disaster managing a disaster.

In a press conference today, local officials called for the Federal Government to take over the recovery effort from LIPA. Lack of communication with the public was one of the major complaints. A request was made to have a federal plan implemented immediately. Watch the press conference here. 

Snob Nails?

 

I passed this place the other day in Long Island City. If you are not from the area you would not realize how funny that is. LIC is just across the river from Manhattan; but a short while ago there was nothing about the area that would make you think that an upscale, slightly-affected nail salon (understatement) called Snob would crop up. It is amazing how one minute a neighborhood can be all industrial and sketchy and before you know it you can get a mani pedi at a place called Snob.

I sort of wanted to hang around and see what type of person was OK with frequenting a place called Snob. Do you think they have shopping bags with their logo on it. I would SO love to have one of those.

A quick little hop over to Yelp yielded a slew of 4 and 5 star ratings and a nice sound byte: For a place called “Snob”, they have a very friendly staff! But there was one patron who was very unhappy with her brazilian wax and got way more graphic with TMI review.

Hey, do you think they sell t-shirts?

 

The Famous Graduation Post 1 – This is Not a Dress Rehearal

I have decided to make this an annual post at graduation time of year. I wrote this before I was a blogger. It was an email I sent to those who had been parenting with me since preschool. It was written on the morning of my daughter’s HS graduation. It still makes me cry. Funny how she is now a COLLEGE grad, one year out and has been living home, soon to move on to her own apartment. THAT will be some post… the final launch.

This is not a dress rehearsal…

or watch the temp when you decide to iron the graduation gown.

6AM on the day that my first child graduates high school.

how can this be, she was just a curly-headed little whirling dervish whose door i had to hold shut as she was throwing her ever famous brand of temper tantrums. that same door with the loose latch from all the times she slammed it for effect when she stormed into her room in her tweens. you know the one, who at five years old marched into nuerosurgery to ‘get her neck fixed’ and never once asked ‘why me?’.

who was that radiant young woman that walked out of the house wednesday morning with her car packed and her keys in hand saying, “don’t worry mom, i have the garmin GPS, i don’t need a map!”

well i think, perhaps, i need a map today. someone tell me how to navigate this road. we surely have had enough practice. we graduate them ad nauseum – from the 4′s, kindergarten, 5th grade, 8th grade – the most graduated generation of all times. you would think we would get used to it. but this year’s cap does not have flourescent orange and green finger paint decorating it. this kid has actually grown up! how dare she. does she not know that my bravado this year has all been an act. of course i could not be ready for her to be the competant, independent, grab-the-world-by-the-balls person i worked so hard to raise. does she not know i was only kidding!! wisconsin?!! that is halfway across the country!

i digress – back to the gown and the iron. being a working mom i always look for ways to overcompensate and make sure that i am doing the mom thing as well as the work thing. so, of course, they both are never really quite up to the standard i expect. somewhere in the 4-page green directions for graduation (you know the one, where the assistant principal gives them a 10 bullet list for how to enjoy graduation and prom, 9 of which stress not drinking or doing drugs) there was mention of taking the gown out of the bag and ironing it. at midnight i was the mom who would just hang it up. at 6AM i decided no daughter of mine will graduate with a wrinkled gown!

so why is it, exactly, that they make these things out of the same material as basketball shimmer shorts?!

no, you will not be able to notice my daughter by the big brown iron mark on the back of her white gown. but if you look close, you may notice that on the front left shoulder the fabric is, how should i put it, a tad ‘melted’.

as jana would say, ‘it’s FINE’. as my parents would say, i did it ‘the Amy way’.

a huge thank you to the jana who has become one of my favorite people on earth to spend time with. surely the one that knows me the best, and loves me anyway. sometimes it seems that she is raising me. i think her humor and radiant smile will get me through this one. levity has always been her strong point.

love and congrats to all of you who have been in the parenting trenches with me the past 18 years. for some of you it is your first, others, your last. it is never easy to watch them go. but then again, we could all use a rest. and as my mommy mentors tell me, they come home, stay out all night, sleep late and bring lots of laundry.

let the games begin!

Time to Cry Tuesday – Laugh and Cry

Life is hard. Whoever forgot to tell us that when we were young… thanks a lot.

I try to make it a point to remind my kids that feeling like crap gives happiness context. I am sure I have written that here before.

Someone once told me that it is good to laugh and cry at least once every day.

They might have been bi-polar so I try to adhere to that loosely. But I agree. I love to laugh. There are days when I have the expectation of misery and something will make me laugh so hard I cannot breathe. And there are times when out of nowhere I can here a song, smell something, see something… and burst into tears with a memory.

Yeh, so no I am NOT bi-polar. But I am a good crier. And a GREAT laugher.

The key is to find the right balance between the two.

Friday the 13th

I love when this happens. People get all crazy and nervous and spend all sorts of energy trying to avoid bad luck; the intervention usually causes the accident.This is one of my strict playground theories and it carries over to real life quite well.

So, my Friday the 13th thing is that in 10th grade, my Social Studies teacher – Mr. Hansen – bless his sense of humor, thought it would be funny to put me in row 13, seat 13 for the Regents exam. You know, because although I had good grades I was sort of a wiseass. I know, that shocks most of you. Well, wouldn’t you know it… I aced the exam with a 98. From then on I felt I had broken the Friday the 13th curse.

I love to be a contrarian whenever possible. Again, a big surprise, I am sure.

Yesterday Mashable posted about Zombie Apocalypse preparedness with this lovely little map of the dead. Zombie fans, like Gary, will love this.

For the rest of you kiddies that are not Zombie predisposed, go out there and Carpe the friggin’ hell out of the Diem. Find a black cat and let it cross your path, walk under a ladder… do whatever the hell people freak out about when they are superstitous and prove this day to be lucky for you.

Either that or start drinking heavily at an early hour.

Mannequin Malfunction

Only in South Beach! For a moment it seemed that this was perhaps a practical joke by a passerby until we thought about it and realized the store probably did this on purpose. I have never seen so many mannequins with over-sized boobs and nipples in my life. I mean nipples? Isn’t the best part of mannequins their vague anatomical construction? (like the male ones with the penis-less bulges) And correct me if I am wrong but does her arm look like it is on wrong?

Coming up Ocean Drive after a magnificent beach path walk and a wonderful breakfast at the News Cafe, this was a sharp reminder of the other side of South Beach. The one that dresses like hookers day and night and everyone is someone in their own mind. Or wardrobe.

I, on the other hand, am no one and every one. And I am happiest on the beach side of Ocean Drive, far enough away from this silliness. Although I am not immune to the humor in it all.

Hey, do you think that suit looks as good with both boobs in?

Time to Cry Tuesday – Halloween cupcakes

Yesterday I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t sleep. I would like to say it was because I love halloween and I was so excited, but really folks, women of a certain age just don’t sleep all that regularly.

Usually I would lie in bed and just chill, but yesterday I decided to get up and bake the Funfetti Halloween cupcakes instead, because… well, because if I did not bake them then I would have to wait a whole year. (Funfetti is sort of a religion in these parts)

As I was making coffee and taking on this ridiculous task for no apparent reason, I realized that was the whole point. I was baking Halloween Funfetti cupcakes at 5AM… because I didn’t HAVE to. For so very many years – as a working mom – I found myself baking some ridiculous confection in the wee hours of the morning (the cowboy hat cupcakes at 2AM when Jana was in 4th grade come to mind. btw, these are cool, involving a cookie, an upside down cupcake and string licorice). But now, I was doing it because I wanted to, not to prove that I could do it all.

As I waited for the timer to go off, I sat drinking a cup of coffee while the sun came up and the household began to stir and got more than a little nostalgic about Halloween with younger kids. I have never been one to pine away for the past stages of parenting; but yesterday morning, in the quite of my kitchen I could not help but remember the sweet chaos of those days. Did I fully appreciate them wile they were happening? I like to think so. But in reality I am sure they were tempered with the rushed obsession to make it all the perfect halloween for the kids and maybe I did not savor it as much as I should have.

I have this thing about the seasons; I wish we could have just one day of beautiful summer beach weather in the middle of the winter and one crisp snowy day in the middle of a heatwave in the summer. Just one day. That’s not asking too much. I feel the same way about parenting now. Yesterday morning, as I was sprinkling the ‘fetti’ on the top of those cupcakes, I wished for just one day with ‘Little Danny‘ and ‘Little Jana‘, as they like to refer to their childhood selves.

Even the year when the little guy insisted on being a cowboy and I stayed up all night making his costume for him to wake up on Halloween and tell me ‘I want to be a Ninja like Dougie’.

I suppose the imperfections of raising kids are what makes parenting so perfect.

(BTW, ‘Big Danny’, since I tortured your dad that we did not have enough candy, you and the boys will be the happy recipients of a big box of candy… watch the package room for it.)

Steve Jobs Tributes

It would appear this is a Time to Cry Wednesday. The world grieves the loss of one of the true geniuses of our time. One does not need to be a technophile. Or a Mac User. Or a lover of all things innovative to feel the loss of this great man who died way before his time.

As he was for many, Steve Jobs was my hero. He changed the way I worked as a graphic designer. He made me want to learn… all the time. Even when it hurt (and still does sometimes). In my own little corner of the world, he pushed me to be better. Every day.

This man who forced the world to Think Different, inspired so many.

A few favorite Jobs quotes:

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter anything to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

“Design is not just what it looks like, design is how it works.”

It has been a few short hours since the announcement of his passing, yet the web has already exploded with tributes, both simple and clever… reflecting the man they remember. Even Google – a fierce competitor – posted an understated, extremely classy gesture tonight – a single line of text with a link to Apple’s home page.

Here is a roundup of what I have seen so far:

cultofmac.com

I was already in love with you by then…

This could be my favorite graffiti ever! The guy behind me on Prince Street was none to happy about me stopping a little too long as the light turned so I could get this shot, but it was worth it.

I kept trying to think of what the next line should be:

I was already in love with you by then…

… so it was not necessary for you to try to impress me.

… but it was fun to watch you still working it.

… so the fact that you made the effort was even more endearing.

Ok, a little too romance novel for you. How about these:

… so it was no wonder I did not care that you had just puked on my shoes.

… so  I overlooked the fact that you were wearing that shirt.

… but I am not all that sure I was into you leaving the bathroom door open just yet.

Ok, time to open this one up in the comments. Don’t be shy, you know you want to throw one in here.