The Passport Catastrophe

My mother, the world's most organized human, planned this trip for a year. She arranged everything, including a small fleet of private buses in various cities to allow our entire family to see what we wanted when we wanted to see it without having to rely on excursions planned by the cruise line.

Every few days she'd ask for my input and provide updates; usually I'd zone out, secure in the knowledge that the world's most organized human takes care of everything.

Except my passport.

Three days before the trip I pulled out mine and the kids' so I could fill out online preregistration forms for the ship. I could do this easily because I'm so organized (uh huh) that I have a safe in my basement so I don't have to rely on a bank safe deposit box. Two months earlier I'd checked their passport expiration dates because kids' passports don't last as long as adults'; I hadn't bothered to check my own, however, because that would have been just too . . . sensible.

I'll give you three guesses.

Yup. Expired.

Would it be trite to say my life flashed before my eyes? I visualized my mother melting down because I'd have to skip the trip she'd labored over for a full year, and who could blame her? I'm sure I must have done dumber things in my life, but so far I haven't been able to recall any.

I saved her a lot of trouble because I immediately began beating myself up much more effectively than anyone else ever could.

So. Tune in next time for part two of "How Scatterbrained Are You?"

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WHERE HAVE I BEEN??!!

Has anyone missed me? Has anyone even noticed I've been gone? Anyone out there? Come on -- I can hear you breathing.

So did I ever mention that when my mother has a big birthday she likes to throw a big wingding party, and when my father has a big birthday he likes to take the whole family on a trip? So this year was my dad's turn and my mom spent an entire year planning a Mediterranean cruise for ten people, ranging all the way down to Cleopatra-Queen-of-the-Nile, who's seven. We flew into Rome, where we spent a couple days acclimating and touring, and then we boarded a ship for a ten-day cruise. We stopped in Monte Carlo (lovely!); Barcelona (extraordinary and surprising); Malta (a not-well-known gem); Tunisia ("Whoa! American lady! Special price just today, just for you!"); Naples (enough already with the ruins, but great pizza); and finally back to Rome and then home from Rome.

Let me tell you, there is nothing like touring European cities with kids you love and showing them all sorts of things and experiences and places they'd never dream up in their own sheltered suburban minds. Five Jewish kids aged 17 to 7 were enthralled (even the grumpy ones) by a tour of the Vatican arranged by a grandmother who had the presence of mind to call a Catholic friend to set up entry through the exit doors so as to avoid standing in the four-hour-long admission queue.

More to come, including the shocking saga of the supposed grownup who remembered to check her kids' passports but neglected to look at her own and thus learned only three days before departure that her passport was expired and had to be replaced posthaste.

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I've Been Working on the Web Site, All the Livelong Day

Every day -- EVERY DAY -- I cut and paste and edit and reedit. I changed the name of the site from PhotoGiftPlace (yawn) to FeeFiFoto, which I find oh-so-much more appealing and memorable, and I'm tickled by how darn much fun it is to make tiny changes here and there and bring this site to a funky, tongue-in-cheek point of view.

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My Midlife Crisis Fantasy Used to Include a Porsche

But now a tummy tuck seems more appealing.

Sigh. When did I become so fuddy?

My sister was complaining about having to attend her new sister-in-law's idiotic baby shower and she said: "When did I get so old and grumpy?" I pointed out that, with three kids ranging from the 17-year-old menace-behind-the-wheel drama queen, to the 11-year-old social-butterfly-never-stops-kibitzing-to-do-his-homework, she's long past the days where she has the time or inclination to oooh and aaah over the latest Diaper Genie.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Create calendars with your own special photos and personalized dates.

Secret Identity

The site I've been operating since last September offers sophisticated technology that can put digital photos on almost anything. The people who created it were among the first to offer personalized photo calendars and those huge mylar balloons you can make up for your bar mitzvah or wedding shower with photos of the honorees on them. They even included this amazing feature that allows you to design some items and then examine a digital prototype in three dimensions and from all angles. So, you can put your photo on a mug, for instance, and then grab an image of the mug with a tool and drag it around to look at the back, side, even inside (although they haven't yet included a feature that lets you put your picture inside the mug, which would be so cool).

As I also may have mentioned, while the technology was definitely futuristic, the site itself looked like it was run by a bunch of twelve-year-old boys in somebody's basement (sorry, guys, if you're reading this, but I know even you'll admit this is true). The color scheme was dull, the graphics were flat and the text was boring. Plus, there was the name: PhotoGiftPlace.com.

Now, PhotoGiftPlace.com certainly is descriptive: "Where are you going?" "Oh, I'm off to PhotoGiftPlace.com to buy some photo gifts!" But, as a probably-much-too-savvy internet shopper, I know that you might find PhotoGiftPlace.com through Google one year and then the next year, when you can't quite recall the name, you might end up at PhotoGifts.com and think it's the same place you visited last holiday season. Just ask me about my attempts to locate the site where I bought my kids a couple of gifts a few years ago: "Let's see -- was it 'Menorah.com', or 'Menorahs.com', or 'BuyMenorah.com', or 'Jewishstuff.com'...?"

So the first thing I needed to do when I started running the site was find a new name, something funky, memorable, easy to say -- something that would take on a life of its own, become part of the vernacular, catch the imagination, make sense in any language or culture. Unfortunately, Google, Amazon, Kodak and Zappos were all taken. So were PhotoSchmoto, PhotoToto, Photopia, Photokomodo (that one was a bit esoteric, I admit), Photophoria, and just about everything I came up with. And some of these names were only reserved and not even being used!

Finally, I hit pay dirt with FeeFiFoto.com, which I reserved under about a dozen different spellings (did you know that you'll get to Google even if you accidentally type "Foofle"?) It's easy to say, easy to remember, and easy to type. Try it -- all those 'f's just roll off your fingers. The name change will be completed in a few weeks, probably right after Mother's Day; I may be impatient but I'm not dumb enough to change the site's name in the middle of a busy season.

And certainly, as soon as I do it, I'll be seized with self-doubt for as long as I run the site.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Put favorite photos on porcelain Christmas ornaments.

My Dog Ate My...

brown shoe; kitchen sponge; pink shoe; sweater button; flip flop; spatula; son's clarinet stand; door trim; paint brush; telephone headset; remote; son's baseball cap (he hasn't discovered it yet); emergency brake handle; garden hose; practice golf ball; ivy; Japanese maple tree; brother's CD (uh oh); Mastercard bill (had to pay it anyway); crossword puzzle; pens; pencils; leather coat button; shampoo bottle; doorstop (which I bought to keep her in the kitchen so she wouldn't prospect for stuff to chew); chair; daughter's shoe; Palm charger; winter coat; daughter's car seat strap; Girl Scout cookies (Thin Mints, which I had to make her throw up); mouse connection (promoted myself to a wireless mouse); breakfast, lunch and dinner

sigh

She's lucky she's so cute

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Put your dog's or cat's picture on a calendar, mug or handbag.

Running a website is the only exercise I get

In 2006 my father referred me to me a personalized gift web site called PhotoGiftPlace.com that puts your photos on almost anything, like mugs, purses, plates, clothing, mouse pads, balloons. The site was created by a group of web designers to show off software that displayed a mockup of the finished item in three dimensions, but since these guys are technical engineering dudes, the site looked like it was put together by a bunch of twelve-year-old boys in somebody's basement. The web designers wanted to sell PhotoGiftPlace so they could focus on their core business, so my dad suggested he and I buy it and whip it into shape.

I thought: "Yeeha! I get to play online without having to make up some lame and transparent excuse, I can use my valuable shopping background for good instead of evil, and I get to redecorate something!" Write a few customer service emails, add some new products, send marketing email campaigns once in a while, lounge on the couch and snack on bon bons, rake in a few mil by 2009, sell to Google, buy a racehorse, a Porsche and a big honkin' sapphire, and everybody's happy.

Uh huh.

So I learned about Google advertising on the fly (Want to know what I learned? That Google cost more than it generated because there is so much competition.) I researched new products and worked with designers to bring the site a new look and feel. I created marketing and mass email campaigns; what I know about marketing I really don't know, but I guess I'm as qualified as anybody since I do most of my shopping and research online these days. I hired Cleopatra-Queen-Of-The-Nile and Robespierre as subcontractors to help choose graphics, clip art and color schemes. I issued coupons, rewrote product descriptions, flogged the site to all my friends and blogged the site to everyone else. I also learned (as if I hadn't known already) that the laptop has some distinct and not-so-pleasant similarities to a slot machine, as it entices me to press those buttons just one more time because I'm certain to hit the jackpot.

What was supposed to be a no-brainer turned into a very-much-of-a-brainer, and while I'm not exactly complaining (okay, I am complaining), what I thought would be a joyride on the superhighway to riches and stardom has turned into more of a wagon train trip up the Oregon Trail, and I'm still in Independence, Missouri.

Still, I love it and my kids love having a family business, especially since I pay them for their consultations.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Design personalized photo calendars and holiday cards.

Under the Spell of the HEX Codes

I've been redesigning and promoting my web site, (all the livelong day...) issuing occasional marketing blasts to my ever-inert mailing list. I wrestle with mailings (could that be referred to as "Wrestlemailia"?) reworking grammar, word choice, tone, grammar, look, color scheme, grammar, atmosphere and grammar. Did I mention grammar? As an inbred nitpicker I shift words and punctuation, change font sizes and colors, rotate graphics, take everything back to square one, then tiptoe through the HTML to eliminate all the extraneous WYSIWYG notations so the font doesn't mutate three times in the same section because the code's not sure which I prefer so it throws a bunch of choices at me and hopes something sticks, or that I simply won't notice that it's using Arial, Verdana and Wingdings all in the same paragraph.

As someone who doesn't know when to quit, I putter and add details until I've crossed the line into mucking things up, then I delete some stuff, then I add more stuff, then I change all the stuff around until I can't tell any more what's stuff's just enough or what's too much stuff.

Funny -- I often dress that way too. Add a scarf, a pin, a barrette, take it all off and replace it with a necklace, a headband and a belt, hair up, hair down, look in the mirror, shrug in despair and switch to blue jeans and a tee shirt.

Anyway, as I'm tweaking and freaking, I've been fiddling with color choices for the site and the marketing emails, because I got bored with the gentle blue and yellow color scheme developed for me by a group of expensive and knowledgeable web designers. So I began experimenting with accent colors, which I overdid, and ended up changing and altering and updating until I couldn't tell what I was looking at any more, and usually gave up and reverted to the yellow and blue by default.

Then, a miracle occurred (cue angels singing).

I discovered the color scheme site.

I can enter in the HEX code I'm using and it will provide a set of complementary and contrasting colors. And it works! And it looks good! And with the authority of an outside source, I now can add a little color accent here and a little more there in confidence that it won't blast anyone's artistic sensibilities to kingdom come and repel them from my site forever.

Okay. Stop laughing. Really, cut it out. So what if everyone else has known of this type of resource for years, maybe decades for all I know? Oblivion keeps me behind the times.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Put favorite photos on tee shirts, sweat shirts and baseball caps.

My Daughter is Such a Girl, Chapter Deux

I'd promised Cleo I'd take her to the American Girl Store in Chicago and buy her one of the real dolls, not the miniatures, for her birthday. Even though her birthday came and went in January we never managed the trip because we got snowed in, and then we couldn't find an agreeable date with the friends who were planning on going with us. Then last week, while we were in San Diego for spring break, we drove to LA to sightsee for a couple days. As I was planning our visit it dawned on me that: THERE'S AN AMERICAN GIRL STORE IN LOS ANGELES!! Yay!! I could get our visit out of the way and stop feeling guilty that my precious, oppressed child would not be deprived of her seventh birthday present one moment longer. So while Robey did guy stuff with a friend we'd met for lunch (they cruised the Apple store), Cleo and I made our pilgrimage to AG, pondering the most important decision she'll have to make until it's time to select a college, and then anxiously supervising her new doll's new hairstyle. When Nicky, the Doll of the Year, was ready to go we visited the ladies' room, where each stall sports a custom-made doll rack so you don't have to part with your doll for a moment, even while using the potty, and then we carefully cradled the doll for the rest of the day, except when we locked her in the trunk so nobody would break into the car and steal her.

A few days later as we packed to return home, Cleo inquired approximately every seven minutes of anyone who'd listen how Nicky would travel, whether it was time to pack Nicky, where Nicky would be stored, how to zip Nicky into the tote, how many tee shirts ought to be stuffed in with Nicky so she wouldn't be bumped or bruised, and whether Nicky should be buckled in with her on the plane. Before packing Nicky Cleo adorned her with a shower cap from the hotel, so Nicky's coif, which was already showing significant signs of wear, would remain orderly.

And that's how Nicky remains today -- sleeping in a doll bed beside Cleo's bed, wearing a plastic shower cap that reminds me of the hairnets my grandmother used to make us wear when we grated apples for Passover charoses even though she probably should have been more concerned with the bits of skin and finger we regularly scraped off into the bowl.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Create personalized photo mugs, steins, calendars, cookie tins, clocks and lots more.

Jokes And Puns Some People Don't Get

1. When I see an adult wheeling around an infant in a grocery cart I can hardly resist asking: "Did you find that in the baby aisle?" I've tried it a few times. Nothing.
2. At the pediatrician's office I once advised obviously first-time parents (the car seat was spotless) of a week-old baby that if their baby needed some help getting to sleep, I'd always had success giving my kids a bop on the head. I got stares of disbelief. Guess they weren't ready for levity.
3. When my son fumbled a carton of eggs in the dairy aisle I warned the checker that we'd had an "eggcident." I thought it was hilarious. Robespierre got it. The checker -- not so much.
   

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything.