"Can I call you Stef?"

No. No you can’t, with few exceptions which I will comment on shortly.

Stef is informal. It implies a certain level of familiarity. In the professional world, you may not call me Stef. I will correct you. And if you do it again, I will deliver a succinct, yet terse, reminder. It doesn’t matter that I’ve worked for the same company for 20+ years. It doesn’t matter how many projects we’ve been on together. It doesn’t matter if you’re my favorite barista at Starbucks. If our relationship is strictly professional, meaning we’ve never traded hat sizes over a martini, you’re not “Stef” worthy. Sorry. Don’t take it personal. I simply prefer Stefanie.

Exceptions to the Stef rule.

1. You are a blood relative. Blood. Not marriage. An in-law can acquire Stef privileges but only if you can prove you know the correct spelling of my name. Hint. There is no “ph”.
2. You are my legalized spouse.
3. I’ve known you for a ridiculous number of years, which means we’re besties or pretty good friends. (Kel, Carlson, Carol, Janet, Tam, Jacquie, Cindy, Lisa, Graz, Scott, Kev). It probably also means we have traded hat sizes, sipped a few drinks (maybe a few too many), shopped, cried, laughed until we almost peed our pants (maybe we did, I won’t say), gave honest feedback about each other’s bad fashion choices, shopped for shoes, swimsuits, lingerie, watched movies, cooked, baked, helped each other out of tough spot and know each other’s secrets.

You get the idea. If you don’t fall into one of the three categories, “Stef” is like nails on a chalkboard. I start to twitch and the hair on the back of my neck stands at attention. If you do you fall in the aforementioned categories and you call me Stef, I don’t even notice. It’s all good.

Survival and Resolutions

Hallejulah. It’s over. Done. Finished. The holidays are past me.

I survived. Barely.

My house is de-Christmastized.

Tree down. Lights put away.

All that remains in my too tight pants, a looming Macy’s bill, and a long joyless January and February.

I need to reintroduce myself to my tread mill. Apparently 10 days off work includes an unwritten but obligatory over-indulgence rule. Egg-nog, bacon wrapped dates (heaven), roasted olives (more heaven), salted caramels, bacon wrapped tenderloin, cocktail shrimp, assorted cheeses and a deep dive into the brandy slush (no life preserver needed).

Now my pants are tight.

Or maybe they just shrunk? Yeah! That’s it. The ol’ Maytag screwed up my pants. Bastards.

Stupid brandy slush.

But it wasn’t stupid. It was oh-so-tasty and fruity brandy-slushy-liciousness that provided much needed coping mechanisms at otherwise stressful family gatherings where sedation is not only required, it’s encouraged.

Now I could take the “New Year’s Resolution” way out of the too tight pants debacle, and tape a few well articulated New Year’s Resolutions to my fridge about how I will eat, drink and spend less and, of course, exercise more.

But who’s kidding who. Haven’t you been paying attention? I’m the living example of ‘on-the-wagon-off-the-wagon’ when it comes to diet and exercise. Never mind the spending. That’s the whole other litany of blog entries I haven’t even tackled yet.

The only resolutions I have a snowballs change of successfully completing include drinking more champagne and perfecting the pork chop (mmm, I just love a good pork chop! Pigs are so tasty!)

Or spa treatments.

I could resolve to go to the spa more, get a few more massages, pop for facials or change up my toenail polish color more often while talking myself out of another round of abdominal exercises.

Perhaps the best resolution includes resolving to accept my weaknesses for what they are, work with what I have, and move on to tasting more kinds of tequila. Or I could simply resolve to do what I need to do to survive the holidays each year.

Wait. I’ve perfected that one. Brandy slush and bacon wrapped dates.

Check.

There ought to be a law

In case you missed the fantabulous update about the dismal nature of the big Kohler show, you can read about it here.

The Kohler show is a hybrid of both hand made and commercial vendors. Most of the commercial vendors are nicer things, such as candy companies and better knock-off designer jewelry. There was also, however, all natural jewelry cleaner...conveniently positioned right next to me.  Who's so lucky?

Now the all natural jewelry cleaner booth consisted of a couple of tables with pepto bismal pink table coverings and 2 large signs that screamed "FREE RING CLEANING", ala QVC.

Next to the pepto pink ring cleaning lady was guy selling wooden frogs of various sizes. What's the purpose of the wooden frog you wonder? Well, the frog has a wooden pin stuck in it. If you remove the pin and stroke the wooden pin up the frogs back, it croaks. Big frogs make deep croaks. Little frogs sound like crickets.  Who's so lucky?

For three, long, painful, sales-free days my Kohler show experience was a cacophony of piped in Christmas music, the "FREE RING CLEANING" sales pitch and frog croaks.  I couldn't make this up if I tried.

"Ladies would you like a free ring cleaning"

"Croaaaaak"

"Once a week take this cream and rub it into your diamond. It's safe for all gemstones including pearls and opals"

"Jolly Old St Nicholas"

"Croaaaaaak"

"What the cream is doing is removing the sticky oxidation."

"Croaaaaaak"

"Silver Bells"

"It's all natural, with banana oil, coconut oil and grapeseed oil"

"Croaaaaak"

"Then rinse and dip in the brightener"


I wish I had blow dart gun to put us all out of our collective misery. Pfffffft.

Now, to be fair, I will say that the jewelry lady has a good pitch. I'm sure she could sell ice to Eskimos; however I am a jewelers daughter and I can tell you with 110% certainly that "oil" is about the worst thing you can put on your jewelry. What's sticks to oil? Everything.  Which is the reason we all clean our kitchens with amonia or another like product to cut through the grease.

Never let it be said the buying public had the sense God gave a lemon. Women lapped up "all natural jewelry cleaner"  for the "special show price" of $24.95.

Editors snark note: Clearly these are the same women who fall for the Arbonne skin care sales pitch because it's "naturally and botanically based". You can pick em out of a crowd as they have lines in their forhead that could hold a dime and could really benefit from a little Botox. Chemicals have their place people; both in skincare and diamond cleaning.

The frog guy sold 1/2 his inventory. Apparently Northern Wisconsin has an affinity for frog dust collectors that make a frog noise. What do you do with this thing once you get home? Seriously?

Meanwhile,  I couldn't give it away but every other lady bought an oil based product to rub into her wedding ring or a wooden frog.

Croaaaak! Cue the dart gun. Pfffft.

I can hear you

This is an honest to god true story from the Good Neighbor Festival Art Show. You can read recap about that show here.

Me: Sitting in my booth watching and listening to a couple outside my booth discussing one of my tye dye one-piece rompers (you know, onesies, except I can’t call them onesies because it honks off the legal team at Gerber).

The guy: (Loudly with disgust and finger wagging): “$14.50 for a onesie! It’s not like there is that much material. $14.50! Ridiculous.” (Guys continued to rant for another 30 seconds)

Me: “I can hear you”.

Guy: Hearing me, hearing him, moves along to taunt some other poor artist.

Me: Hopping up on soapbox inside my head.

Dude. It’s a novelty item. You aren’t going to dress your baby in 20 tye dyes. But if you want to I’m your gal. And hey, the price of cotton went up like, 60-80% for wholesalers in the last year. And it’s hand-dyed. Which means one color at a time. One piece at time.

Me: Hopping off the soapbox inside my head.

Buy unique. Buy handmade. You might pay a bit more but isn’t it refreshing to know you’d be buying something that isn’t all “made in China homogenized sameness?”

Dumb things managers say

Perhaps it’s my age, but I have less and less tolerance for managers that are promoted to a level beyond their incompetence and inflict their idiocy on the working cogs of the world.

This installment of dumb things managers say includes an exchange between myself and one of the managers in our sister location. This occurred at our painful “teambuilding” torture session recently:

Manger: “How long have you been in our department”

 Me: “2 years. Prior to that I spent 10 years in Marketing, and was in Operations before that.”

 Manager: “That’s interesting. What role did you like better?”

 Me: “That’s hard to answer. They are so different.”

 Manager “This would be an opportunity for you to do some sucking up.”


Me: Dumbfounded but recovered nicely with a very diplomatic take the high-road-kind of answer.


Needless to say, the manager in question does a lot of sucking up.

As if you hadn’t guessed.

This is yet another blog entry about Corporate America trying to do the right thing, but falling flat on its face.

Thud.

Teambuilding is one of those corporate buzzwords that invariably make its way into every employee survey and/or managers annual performance goals.

1. Build your team.
2. Create inclusion.
3. Make sure that when people come to work every day it’s a great big warm fuzzy.

First off: There is a reason they call it work and they pay you to do it. I only have to moderately tolerate the people I work with. We don’t have to be besties.

Second: Teambuilding can't be forced.  Yet, misguided managers across the land think that you can toss a bunch of people from two different locations who share like jobs into the same room for a few hours, feed them pizza and expect them all to “friend” each other on facebook. Sorry, not happening.

I was recently a victim of the forced teambuilding pizza lunch experiment.

P-A-I-N-F-U-L.

From the 3 hour long car ride down to the neutral location to the teambuilding exercise, to the pizza lunch, to the 3 hour long car ride back home.

Please baby Jesus – let it be over.

And then the pain was followed up with….wait for it….a survey to share our feelings.

Please kill me now.

Pass me a gun so I can shoot myself. And if you don’t have a gun, hurl a few bullets at me. Maybe one of the bullets will break the skin and I’ll die from a nasty infection.

A few bits of advice from an experienced “team member”; the following team building tactics don’t work:

1. The team lunch. I think I’ve sufficiently beaten this one into the ground.
2. “Guess who I am” surveys; participants answer questions about themselves and we all have to guess who it is. Because – gee, when 30 of the 35 people on our cross-location team list “Christmas” as their favorite holiday…that’s a dead giveaway to the identities of people I’ve never talked laid eyes on.  This also includes the ever popular “two truths and a lie” and let’s not forget the sugary sweet “guess the baby picture.”
3. Anything via conference call where the audio is crappy at best and the video shows a wide angle of a conference room. You can’t feel the teambuilding love when one can only hear every third word and the people on the other end look like ants.
4. Team Goals. These are made up initiatives usually at the department level to address some problem that really isn’t a problem, like lack of teambuilding. I’m not kidding here. There was an actual committee, which used real work hours to brainstorm solutions for turning two units into best friends forever. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

I appreciate the concept of trying to get these two team to mesh and gel. I do. This is not lost on me. I am not that heartless. But honest-to-pete; people have to get to know each other a little more organically. They need to be on projects together. Working together through a real project not a pretend project manufactured by the kumbaya fairy is how it should be done.

For the record, the team building committee did suggest that one team building option was to pair folks from different units on the same project. Management responded with how that was not "cost effective", but we can spend all kinds of time driving employees hither and yon for some forced teambuilding.

Head slap.

I guess I should be grateful there wasn’t a ropes course involved.

I might have been left swinging.

The Pain of Teambuilding

I work in corporate America. “Teaming” or “team building” is an important part of the corporate culture. It is a subject that I find exhausting.

The people in my work group are all nice people, but we are not best friends. I don’t think we will ever be hitting the weekly happy hour. I don’t think that level of intimacy is required to function as a team. From my point of view it’s all about the common goal; the project or task that the team is working towards to further fatten the wallets of our shareholders. It’s not about lunches and outings and spending more time with people I probably see too much of already.

There are of course exceptions. I do, of course, have friends both in and outside of my current team that I “do lunch with” or share a happy hour. That is to be expected.

There are those on the team who feel like everyone needs to be best friends and has a right to know all the personal details of everyone’s life in the name of “teaming”. These folks feel that personal camaraderie is equivalent to working efficiently on a team together. Ironically these are also the most annoying people on my team. I can barely grit my teeth through an hour long meeting. Anything on a social level including hallway water cooler chit chat would be tantamount to a red hot poker through the retina and is generally best avoided.

Over the past 2 weeks our department has endured three, yes count ‘em, three, separate sessions where we “share our feelings” on a wide variety of subjects…including teaming. Sharing is exhausting and it generally produces no real outcome.

In our most recent kumbaya session our team had a mandatory visioning exercise wherein each team member looked into our crystal ball to envision how the team would “look” in the next in two years. Then we had to share with a partner, rotate partners, share some more, rotate for the third time and share again. I am not making this up! And there wasn’t even alcohol to dull the pain of this exercise. Then….wait for it….we had to share as a group and brainstorm. URGH! Stop the insanity!

One of the comments shared was we needed to do more teambuilding because and I quote “someone one aisle over was having a personal major life event and we all didn’t know about it” . Ummmm. It’s personal and therefore not required fodder for corporate consumption.

This is the kind of thinking that keeps me in SuperCash tickets each week while simultaneously counting down until retirement so I can walk away from cubicle living and never look back.

Peanuts and Monkeys

I’m preparing for my next series of winter craft shows. $85 gets me a 6x12 space in a high school gym and guarded optimism that I’ll sell enough tye dyes to offset the cost of the Oakley sunglasses my son has on his Christmas wish list, as well as the unexpected investment in a new washing machine. As a matter of background, I sell children’s tye dye wearables that include one piece rompers, (I can’t call them onesies™ because the Gerber people don’t like that and their lawyers send me love notes), dresses, hats, sweatshirts – stuff like that. It’s a pocket money type of product at $10 - $25; although sweatshirts are a bit more (dye hogs, trust me on this).


There are two kinds of shoppers at craft fairs.

1. Those who appreciate the time and energy it takes to actually dye something by hand.
2. Those who think they appreciate the time and energy it take to dye something by hand, but want a Wal-Mart price point.

I understand the need to stretch a dollar. This is not a concept lost on me especially after the recent hemorrhage my checkbook has endured; however there is a get what you pay for component to buying the cheapest made product in the marketplace. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If you want a scratchy thin t-shirt made from pre-fabricated tye dye cloth then Wal-Mart is your best bet. If you want a $5.99 price point for a hand dyed t-shirt, I am not for you.

If you want dyed local, by hand, on a nicer quality cotton fabric with professional grade dye, then I am your gal. I don’t bargain. I don’t negotiate. I am not the dollar store. My items are priced fairly. I also don’t provide instruction on how to tye dye. My knowledge is my business. I am not setup here to provide a “how to” opportunity. And I feel pretty confident that the quality and vibrancy of my tye dyes are better then what you have done as a summer project on your front lawn.

This is the part where I sound like my dad and hop up on my soapbox.

As a society we howl and complain about outsourced manufacturing and the quality of some of those products (some, not all). We say we want to buy American. We say we want local. We say we value handmade. We say we want to support our local business, artist or farmer. Only we want rock bottom, made in China, chain store prices.

Sorry folks, you can’t have it both ways.

American made products are more expensive. Handmade products are also more expensive. I will add the appropriate disclaimer that all of my blanks (the white pieces purchased before I dye them) are not made in the USA. But some are, and those are priced accordingly. Somehow it’s a-ok to spend $45 on a hoodie at the Gap made in Sri Lanka and not okay to spend $45 on an American Apparel hoodie actually made in the US and dyed in Wisconsin. I don’t get it.

So to the folks that enter my booth and say “You’re stuff is so cute, but it’s so expensive” or “$12 is a lot for a tye dye t-shirt” please skip the craft fair circuit, get in your car and go to the nearest discount store. Pay your peanuts. Get your moneys.

Hopping off soapbox.

Bad Fashion Trends

When I attempted college (for the first time) in the fall of 1985, leggings and long sweaters were all the rage. I know. I vividly remember my “Gap” black leggings and this really nifty long cobalt blue sweater that had pairs of dice all over it. It was bad ass.


A mere 25 years later, leggings or “jeggings” as they are now called/long sweater phenom is back in force. Unless you are a woman who is between the ages of 16-22, 110 lbs and 5’10 tall…this isn’t a look for you. I don’t care how cougarish and hip you think you are. You must meet all the criteria. If you are shorter than the required 5’10 you should be in fantastic shape and wearing boots with a rocking heel. There is nothing worse than 40 trying to look 20.

I made the mistake of trying on a pair of jeggings just for fun. There are those rare fashion miracles where clothing looks much better on a real person then on the hanger. It happens. It does. But this was not one of those times. Seriously. It was so bad it had the potential for the “fashion don’t” spread in any magazine across the land.

I watch “What not to wear” and I own the book. If you don’t own the book, you should. It’s worth every penny. I’ve seen the show enough times to know that in order to lengthen the leg and look thinner the pant should start at the widest part of the body and go straight down. I’ve never once heard Stacey and Clinton say – start at the widest part and taper inward. Never. Not once. And why? Because it looks like a triangle. A bad triangle.

A great looking trouser pant and a pair of killer boots can hide 25 years worth of sins. You can’t disguise that with jeggings, I don’t care what kind of sweater you put over it .And really – like we all need to pull a sweater over our ass and hips. Cause that’s a good idea. It’s the fashion equivalent of putting “juicy” on the rear of a sweat pant. You might as well prance around town with a wide load sign on your backside.

And the sad thing is – this look is everywhere. Every brand, every manufacturer from the Target house brand to Ralph Lauren has a the jegging/sweater look…because somehow the look will seem better on a 43 year old woman with tummy pooch because it has Ralph Lauren on the label.

My advice is to skip this year’s jegging/sweater fashion trend. You’ll be glad for it. If you’re itching to be trendy, opt for an ankle book with a platform and a high heel. You can wear them with your trouser jeans and your legs will look a mile long. If you can’t walk in them you can always dangle from a barstool whilst sipping a martini. Very fashion forward. Trust me on this.

The Internal Filter

Authors Note: Close friends and spouses are exempt from the filter rule. They endure all sorts of ramblings on a variety of subjects. It’s the quid pro quo factor of these relationships. You know who you are.


One of the things that is nice about being in my forty’s, is life experience. I’ve got a few years under my belt, have seen some things, done some things, grown up a lot (I hope) but most importantly I’ve learned to filter what’s in my brain before it rolls out of my mouth. Part of that filtering process includes the very important question “Is what am I about to say something the listener cares about?”

Disclaimer: I am by no means perfect at verbal filtering. Really. Especially if I have had wine. Or worse. Tequila. Then everything seems really important and you can just sit back and listen to the verbal diarrhea. Trust me; I still manage to wedge my size 8 foot in my mouth more often than I would like to admit.

I am referring mostly about the casual friend, acquaintance or co-worker. You know – someone you see every so often. Someone you’re friendly with but you’re not exactly BFFs. This could be the spouse of one of your friends – the tag-along to the casual friendship. It’s nice, pleasant and cordial but you’re never going to go shoe shopping together. You see where I am going with this, yes?

Some of my good friends (the ones exempt from the pre-emptive filtering rule) and some casual friends get together every few months at a local eatery to indulge in classic over-eating and a little smart talk. This will come across as snarky as all get-out for which I am really not terribly apologetic. Why am I not apologetic? Because, if you had to endure the unfiltered conversation I endured recently, you wouldn’t be apologetic either. Like me, you would be only too happy to have walked away from the whole experience without resorting to jabbing a fork in your eye. Trust me; the fork would have been less painful.

Let me state, the offender in questions is a nice woman. Very young and a little pretentious, which I am sure is a quality she is unaware that is being projected to the whole of the world. Despite being an educated woman (a trait I’ve learned means pretty much nothing in regards to filtering) her internal filter has not matured. She fails to filter on a wide variety of subjects, but mostly on the subject of her dog. She loves her dog. I get it. I am all about pets. I love my pets too. I am the first one to admit I coddle and spoil and treat my pets like children. But I do said coddling in the privacy of my own home. And I really don’t tell people about it because of the “does the listener care” rule. More often than not, I am firmly convinced the listener does not care about my cats. Nor do they care how cute they are, if they like their tummy’s rubbed, the hairball they just gaked up or cuddle time on Sunday mornings. I’m fairly confident that if I waltzed into work each day and began spewing tales about my cats, I would quickly obtain crazy cat lady status and no one would want to have lunch with me ever again.

Oh it can’t be that bad you say? Oh yes. It can. The following is actually unfiltered dog dialogue. Only the name of the dog has been changed to protect the innocent.

Her: “Duke likes it when I change his food. Duke’s eating fish flavored food now. Duke likes fish. He’s a dog.”

Me: Blankly staring

Her: “Duke is 30% dog, 30% cat and 60% rabbit, because Duke likes to jump.”

Me: Eyes glazing over

Her: “Duke weighs 7 ½ pounds. Duke is big for his breed.”

Me: Searching for a length of rope.

Now string all of the unbridled Duke wonderfulness over two hours and you can now appreciate how very torturous it is to endure non-stop unfiltered monologues on Duke, the most amazing pet that ever lived. And while I desperately want to say “Please shut up because even though I think your dog is cute, I don’t really care”, my matured filtering system already knows that yes, the listener in question doesn’t care.

Write Courageously

I blame my friend K. for planting the seed that I could and should blog again. This is really all her fault and any failure real or implied will be squarely heaped on her shoulders. I am not above tossing her under the bus if needed.


You blogged before, say you? Yeah. For a few fleeting months. I stopped due to time constraints. And fear. I have fear. Fear of blogging mediocrity. Fear of failure. Fear of self-editing. Will I be as sharp tongued and witty on paper as I think I am inside my own noggin? I fear I do not have the appropriate amount of snarkiness and pith to mass a following. Could there be anything more pathetic then the unread, unloved blog?

Time will tell I guess. I look at my attempt to blog, as an experiment to write courageously, to just say it and try not to self edit too much. Or as I tell girlfriends who are unsure about wearing the shiny black boots with the pointy toe; just own it. I can tell you it is significantly easier to dispense the “just own it” advice then follow it.

That said I will apply all the appropriate disclaimers to my blog. I will also add the disclaimer that I am free to edit my disclaimers at any time. My blog. My disclaimers. I am a girl. I can change my mind. So there (insert foot stomping here).

Everything is fair target. For example: if I blog about the putrid wrongful fashion sense of the holiday sweater and you are a lover of holiday sweaters, you are of course free to:

1. Hate the holiday sweater blog entry and keep on blindly wearing your holiday sweaters even though this is really nothing fashionable about them.
   
   OR
2. Experience a life-changing moment of fashion clarity that holiday sweaters are truly a bad idea, purge your closet of said sweaters and bestow oodles of gratitude upon me for helping you see the light.

The choice is yours.

For my part, this will be a self discovery opportunity to be brave and write courageously (with the appropriate amount of snarkiness of course). Yikes.