Potluck and Karaoke and White Elephant Book Exchange.

That’s how the Between the Covers Book Club rocks Christmas!

Photo Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

Post from: Blisstree

Rock the Book Club

I would probably use far more expletives around my children if my husband didn’t crap his pants every freaking time and correct me as if I am the “naughty” child and he the parent.

Susie-Do lets her kid say “oh shit,” my husband would flip his wig. Somehow her kid knows not to say it in public. Some people are very touchy about cussing or potty mouth.

Sometimes an expletive is just plain called for.

I’ve discovered that my self-censorship in my everyday life has resulted in my behaving as though I have curse-word turrets syndrome at my book club.

Because I can.

It’s like I hold it in all month and every curse word I’ve held back comes gushing forward during that singular evening with my adult girlfriends. They just laugh hysterically (and probably wonder what I’m like at home).

It’s an indescribable pleasure to let the F-Word fly freely.

Post from: Blisstree

Curse-Word Turrets

My blogging mentor and my Channel Editor at b5media, Gayla McCord, just struck it “rich” selling one of her blogs for $95,000.

Over at momgadget.com she writes a compelling story about learning how to do from reading Problogger, the book.

Problogger , Darren Rowse, featured her story on his website too – cause really is there better advertising than having the advice in it propel a blogger to fantastic success?

I’ve read Problogger, the book. And recommended it to several bloggy friends. It’s one of those books with so much valuable information in it that you take baby steps or get overwhelmed. Then go back and read it for more baby steps.

Salute to Gayla – who relied on her prayers during a tough time and then used her business savvy to not just recover from a natural disaster, but reinvented herself as an entrepreneur.

Instead of relaxing after her big sale, she launched two new businesses and hired 5 family members to work for her.

She’s some empowered woman. I’ve been marveling at how she even turns out the plethora of content she does and manages an entire team of writers and teenage children. That’s before I knew about two new businesses and negotiating a big blog deal. AWE. (No, I’m normally not a kiss up).

Read her incredible story in When You Don’t Know What To Do, Say a Prayer And Buy The Book.

Image Source: Amazon.com

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Holy Crapinola Gayla Strikes It Rich!

Hey Ya’ll – Don’t miss Suze Orman, author of Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny on Oprah today.

The way people have been handling their money has been a hot topic around Blog Fabulous since I got here.

The reason is because my family got in some hot water about 4-5 years ago now and it took a long time for us to dig ourselves out of the hole and learn about money and develop a healthy relationship with it.

Women MUST learn about money. Must. Must. Must.

Else you shall have no power in your own life, Sister. That’s a fact.

Watch Suze today and we can talk about what she says in the comments section.

I must point out that Suze saw this bank crash coming. She told ya’ll to stop whipping out your credit card for every little thing you desired.

If you didn’t listen, know that there is a secret recipe to digging yourself out of your money mistakes: LEARN and Change Your Thinking.

Take Financial Peace University at a location near your home and learn to change the way you think about money. It’s hard, but at the end of the road there’s peace.

Buy Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny and learn about women’s relationship with it and how you can develop a healthier bond.

Read my Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny detailed review and critiques here:

Image Source: Oprah.com

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Suze Orman on Oprah Today

This article from The Caucus Blog – NY Times says Oprah has refused to interview Sarah Palin and that John McCain isn’t letting anyone interview her.

“The item in today’s Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates. I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over.”

Of course, there are also rumors that John McCain is deliberately refusing to allow the woman to speak in interviews.

“Why would we want to throw Sarah Palin into a cycle of piranhas called the news media that have nothing better to ask questions about than her personal life and her children? So until at which point in time we feel like the news media is going to treat her with some level of respect and deference, I think it would be foolhardy to put her out into that kind of environment.”

Uh, cause you’re proposing her to be the Vice President of the United States and we have a right to know exactly who she is and what she thinks and where she stands before she takes any power over our lives and our laws.

The only information I’m getting about Sarah Palin is from people who think she’s either God (pro-life groups, hunters, people who don’t equate drilling for oil to the end of the world, the very religious, some Republicans) or The Devil (pro-choice groups, people who do equate the drilling of oil to the end of the world, atheists afraid of anyone who professes a belief in God and thinks it’s an acceptable criteria for having an opinion, some Democrats) .

I’m betting she’s neither.

I want to hear this woman speak about what she REALLY thinks and Oprah is the perfect person to ask the right questions and get the real answers to things I care about.

Please interview Sarah Palin, Oprah.

Image Source: www.johnmccain.com

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Oprah Please Interview Sarah Palin

I’m anxiously waiting for Barack Obama to sent me a text message declaring his pick for Vice President.

Last night I was reading his The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage) and realized that I DEEPLY care who he picks as VP.

I realized I am pretty attached to the idea of being represented and I want him to pick a woman.

So I sent him a drunken email.

Today we’ll find out if enough women like me sent such emails or if we stood passively by and waited for him to pick yet another bald white male politician.

Did you sign up for the text message announcement?

Did you send him a email declaring your wishes?

Will you be upset if he doesn’t choose a woman?

Black Grandmothers

Photo Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

His Reply:

Dear Friend,

Well, we’ll see how much you do want the women’s vote in this country. Anxiously anticipating his text message. . .

Post from: Blisstree

Barack Obama Chooses VP Today

The Battle Ground of Feminism is the Home.

Because I don’t necessarily want to have that battle in my home today, I’ll stick with citing examples from FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?, by Leslie Bennetts.

“This opt-out thing is about false choices,” says sociologist Barbara Risman. “If you’ve been raised thinking you can do everything, and your husband works eighty hours a week, and you work eighty hours a week, and he’s not willing to budge an inch, and you never see your chilren, so you opt-out – that’s not really opting out; that’s being pushed out.”

” If you hate your job, you’re overwhelmed with work, the workplace is family-unfriendly, you want to have another child, and your husband won’t share the workload, then do you begin to convince yourself that quitting your job is a reasonable choice because you can depend on your spouse. . . But thesse women are not exploring other options . . .like ‘How can I get my husband to share more of the workload?’”

“From a female point of view, the problem with the self-sacrifice model of marriage is that it’s usually the woman who’s being asked to sacrifice.”

“Here’s a newsflash for you: Jeremy (not Tracee’s Jeremy) may be wonderful, but it’s not as if I’m sitting around with my feet up. He performs a reasonable share of the labor generated by our home and children, which I would argue are as much his responsibility as mine. But I have almost always done more. The sainted Jeremy may look like Husband of the Year in comparison with a lot of other guys, but that just goes to show how low we set the bar for men in this society.”

Maintaining some semblance of equity in your marraige can force you to deploy all those nasty tactics you swore you would never stoop to as a parent. . .Bribery and punishment work; so do yelling and complaining. Threats are also effective, as long as everyone knows you mean business. . . These strategies admittedly take a lot of energy, but not as much as performing all the functions necessary to maintain home and family by yourself.”

“In one revealing study, the found that male managers blood pressure and stress-hormone levels dropped dramatically at five p.m., but the women managers’ levels actually jacked up as they turned their attention from their “first shift’ jobs to their ’second shift’ responsibilities as wives and mothers.”

The question is: Are you winning or losing the battle?

Post from: Blisstree

Battle Ground of Feminism: The Home

Ginny, of Getting Free from Debt and Mom of 2 Dancers is the winner of last week’s Bloggy Giveaway.

Ginny has won my copy of Mama Gena’s Owner’s and Operator’s Guide to Men. Put it to good use Ginny.

Because I love the rest of you I’ll tell you the best piece of advice I got out of Mama Gena’s book.

It was to buy another book. Not just any book, but a really, really useful book that gets hidden in an underwear drawer or on the top closet shelf once your kid learns to read.

ESO: How You and Your Lover Can Give Each Other Hours of Extended Sexual Orgasm

And because I really, really do love my readers and my ambition is to empower you, in every way possible, I’ll give you the most surprising piece of advice I’ve gotten out of ESO: How You and Your Lover Can Give Each Other Hours of Extended Sexual Orgasm.

.

Albolene Concentrate Moisturizing Cleanser Cream, Unscented – 3.25 oz is hands-down the BEST lubricant in the entire world. This from the extended orgasm experts. Who knew? Isn’t that a total surprise?

Support Blog Fabulous, and all my painstaking research by order any and all of these fabulous things through my links. Let’s face it, aside from the double-duty make-up remover some of these empowering tools are embarrassing to buy in public.

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Is It HOT in Here? Winners and Winners

In honor of this season’s Bloggy Giveaways I’m giving away my copy of Mama Gena’s Owner’s and Operator’s Guide to Men.

I went to this Life Coach Shrink in Atlanta to learn about Tapping to get rid of some of my hang-ups about sex and money and marriage (before my Law of Attraction mentor Jeff Howard told me to just go online and learn about it for FREE) and paid $150. One of the things I walked away with was a recommendation for THIS book. When I was cleaning out my office I found it and thought, for $150 I should really get the book and see how amazing it is.

It’s not your Gloria Steinham’s feminist theory or the church lady’s “God says to submit to your man” submission theory. Mama Gena begins with this warning,

This book is by a woman, for women only. This book is simply not for men. . . If you are a man, shut this book instantly.

To win this book leave a comment about men. Maybe you love them, maybe you hate them, maybe you think it’s not about them. Whatever.

This contest runs through Sunday August 3 at midnight. I will announce the winner Monday morning.

Readers warning: Gena uses the word Pussy a lot.

Post from: Blisstree

Free Mama Gena’s Owner’s and Operator’s Guide to Men

I find very few flaws in the logic of Leslie Bennetts in her book FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?

Her logic is such that I find myself saying, She’s right. Why did I make such a self-defeating choice to quit my fulltime professional newspaper job?

Until the chapter where she reminds me why, exactly, I did just that as she advises women that Yes, working fulltime with little babies is a hell on earth where everyone loses – but take the “long view,” it’s only for 15 YEARS!

15 YEARS! Is that all?

Seriously, I lasted less than one year of dropping my kid off at daycare and not seeing her at all until I dropped her off the next morning. And during that year I was popping Xanex like crazy to quell the ever increasing and intense feelings of, “I don’t want to do this. This is not necessary. I don’t give a shit about that pothole – I haven’t seen my kid all day.”

It wasn’t the working that got to me. It was the lack of flexibility insisted upon by my newspaper’s management. The rigidity about being in the office while writing at 11 pm. after a city council meeting. Why, exactly, can’t I do this at home?

The part that really got to me was how unnecessary the rigidity and inflexibility was.

With the invention of email and the cell phone many parents time away from home really can be minimized with little company sacrifice. But, corporations HATE change.

The bottom line is you need a wife if you’re going to make it in many professional environments. When you ARE the wife, and you don’t want to take on the role of “absent daddy,” it’s a bit of a problem.

Leslie Bennetts, a New York Times Reporter, says as much in her book.

Leslie Bennett’s is also right to say that professional women aren’t truly “opting out” – they are being pushed out by rigidity and hostility towards mothers who aren’t willing to make unnecessary sacrifices.

Her solution to this eat shit (work 60 hrs week) or suck ass (drop out of professions completely) dilemma mothers face? Don’t let them push you out – it’s only 15 years.

Compared to the 50 years of your career 15 years really isn’t that long, she says.

I agree 15 years out of the 50 years of a career doesn’t seem like that long.

But 15 years is your kid’s ENTIRE childhood. 15 years is also one’s ENTIRE motherhood experience.

Looked at that way it’s a bit more of a freaking sacrifice, isn’t it?

I’m taking the detour in Bennett’s “long view.”

Post from: Blisstree

15 Years – Suck It Up