The Power of Women United Giveaway (Closed)

The Power of Women United

by Tina Dezsi & Lia Bandola

Published August 2009

First, we are cast by society in roles for which we are unprepared and perhaps ill-suited. We play by rules we didn't write. Then we are chastised for not succeeding in those roles or for failing to follow 'the rules'. The unrealistic expectations imposed by those roles and rules steal our confidence, damage our self-esteem, and mask our true identity. The Power of Women United explores the triumphs and tragedies of 22 amazing women who each forged their own path to success. They starred in roles they sought, and wrote their own rules.

Once upon a lifetime, I was a bank executive. During that time I attended what felt like every seminar every created that dealt with success and how to achieve it, time management and how to maximize it, efficiency in the workplace and how to increase it. You get the picture. So when I picked up the book The Power of Women United, I was expecting to read through pages filled with words I'd already heard before with somebody else's opinion on how I could become flushed with my own success. I typically cringe at self-help, can you tell?

Fortunately, this book is not written as an instruction manual or from the perspective of one person. On the contrary, authors Tina Dezsi and Lia Bandola have compiled 22 essays by 22 different women. These women have vastly different backgrounds and have found success in professions that are just as diverse. The book confronts the unique challenges women face in their professional and personal lives and offers advise on everything from public speaking to of course, networking (the authors are founders of the Power of Women Exchange).

This is a great book for entrepreneurial-minded women and those looking for a source of inspiration, motivation and encouragement to capitalize on your own value.

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Thanks to Author Marketing Experts, Inc., I am giving away one copy of The Power of Women United to one lucky reader.

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Vaginas, Mummies and 19 Pound Newborns

Every mother has a birthing story and for some reason many of them desperately want to share that experience with friends, relatives and total strangers. They have some kind of primitive need to give the play-by-play, discuss the narcotics they screamed for or didn't scream for. They want to get all chatty about weight and length and shoulder width and cranial circumferences. They want to talk about feelings and how the heavens sang and ice caps melted and Jupiter aligned with Mars when little Emma Isabella or Jacob Michael finally graced the world with their presence.

Whatever. 

Unless some senile doctor high on Oxycontin used medieval forceps to suck Precious from your uterus (and let's see the temporal dents and learning disabilities to prove it) or you accomplished a four-way tear through your clitoris, urethra, labia and anal muscle, then I don't want to hear about it.

And I don't want to see pictures. 

And I don't care how much Precious weighed unless it's this sideshow act bundle of love and butterflies and sunshine:

HolyBankruptedByBabies! This newborn tips the freight scales at almost 20 pounds. Kinda makes bragging about your little 8 pounder seem rather lame now, doesn't it? Too bad it was a C-section (cheater!). I did a bit o'research though and discovered that once upon a time in a vagina far, far away... a woman did deliver a 15 pound baby vaginally. Today her Goodness looks a little like this:

But 20 pounds is nothing to shrug at. Know what else weighs 20 pounds? Meet Sylvia:

Isn't she pretty? Sylvia is a desiccated mummy who was found in a cave in Central America but now resides in Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Also weighing in at 20 pounds --  an $8 watermelon, about 4,000 quarters, an adult giraffe's heart (gratuitous useless fact) and your average marching band snare drum.

Yeah, try hauling that around while it's clutched on to your nipple like a ravenous mountain gorilla and tell me if it hurts.

Now Playing: Santa Barbara & the Dick Beaters

"I'm squeezing it as tight as I can!"

Those are the words I usually (a) love to say and (b) love to hear. But those aren't exactly the words I want to hear from my son as we try to make our way over Donner Pass after being in a car for eight hours. You see, during our four-day trip from Nevada to Half Moon Bay to Sunnyvale to Santa Barbara to San Francisco and back ... The Boy who normally does not eat, consumed actual food. Food and tootsie pops. And now with the closest rest stop two miles away, The Boy's body has decided to say AhhHellNo. This is after one previous stop where I had to toss his briefs into the women's tampon disposal. Sorry 'bout that Marie Callender's employees but Miss Spoken doesn't like to hold shitty underpants in her purse while sipping on your godawful house Chardonnay. Actually, Miss Spoken can't think of a time when she likes to hold on to crappy underpants.

Anyfeces.....

We made it home without The Boy blowing up Johnny Boy's car and having to ride into Reno as a hood ornament. That's almost never fun when it happens to you.  Almost.

The trip was worth every mile spent twisting my 5'10 frame around to rip toys from one offspring to another, push batteries back where they belong, create makeshift pillows from blankets using one hand and threatening bodily injury to my Brat Pack.

And for those taking a trip to Santa Barbara, you have to stay at the Lemon Tree Inn. Salt water pool, balconies for every room and Bloody Marys on site. Leadbetter Beach is also a great spot to barbecue, roll down hills and fall in the ocean. If you get there early enough, as Kick Ass Corrina did, you might even get the chance to ear-hustle on a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Stay late enough and you can watch the homeless, twackers, my dad nonconformists create spatulas out of beer cans because they don't want to use their "dick beaters."

This will probably be my last trip of the year. Miss Spoken is tired of road trips even if she's not the one doing the driving. She is the one doing the drinking and cursing and that my friends can be done in Babbleville.

P.S. Corrina ..... The Boy sends hearts and love and kisses and sexual harassment.

Silverstein & me: A Memoir (Closed)

Silverstein & me: A Memoir

by Marv Gold

Published June 2009

Is this the Silverstein so many have come to know and love? Yes, because it presents his human and humorous side, and goes beyond, into the many hurdles he confronted. Told as a fast-paced narrative, it unveils a spectrum of characters. As a memoir filled with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and insights, it is the first and only close look at the legend and the person.

In this memoir, written by his childhood friend Marv Gold, readers get the chance to look beyond the infamous beard and witty humor of this exceptional talent. Shel Silverstein was an author, poet, cartoonist and songwriter most noted for his work with Playboy and childhood classics like, The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Not quite the tell-all book that some fans must certainly crave, it does deliver on it's promise to fill-in-the-blanks for an artist who was loved by many but refused public appearances and press interviews.

The book is funny, sometimes campy and nearly every page includes a drawing from his vast body or work. There is a great deal of candor with respect to the writer's observations of Silverstein, from his childhood through his Playboy era and his death in 1999. 

Wild times. Timeless art. A lifetime of ink.

Whether you're a fan of his Playboy cartoons, read A Light In the Attic a hundred times or like to sip whiskey while singing along to A Boy Named Sue, you're sure to be entertained by this memoir.

"Listen to the mustn'ts child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the wont's. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me ... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."

-- Shel Silverstein

WIN IT!

Thanks to Author Marketing Experts, Inc., I have one copy of Silverstein & me: A Memoir to give away to one lucky reader.

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Destination: Santa Barbara!

So we're out of here. All except Legal. I'm going to try not to freak out over the fact that she's here alone, if alone means under surveillance. Miss Perceived lives next door and has been given authorization to kick ass when necessary or at least when fun. And Grandma is five minutes away and will be doing the Drop-In-And-See-If-You're-Drunk-Or-Having-Sex thing. Grandpa can remove his belt with one mighty tug and has also been given authorization to impose corporal punishment.

She'll be fine, right? 

Gigantic Fuckup - Part Dos

Remember my Gigantic Fuckup when I booked two rooms at the Days Inn for September 11 instead of September 18 because I'm an idiot who makes lots of organizing checklists, can scramble eggs with her toes while doing the dishes and simultaneously spreading joy throughout the land but can't seem to read a calendar?  

Yeah.

Well, to my relief they waived that pesky 48 hour cancellation requirement and put the cash back in my account.  Wheeeeewww. Close one.

Then came Part Two of the previously mentioned Gigantic Fuckup. It appeared as though the entire hamlet known as Santa Barbara was booked solid. Ass face! I'm pretty sure there isn't a holiday that weekend but then again, how the hell would I know since I can't read a calendar. Just as I was giving in to despair, I found not one, but TWO rooms available at the Sandyland Reef Inn in Carpinteria which sounds like a warehouse full of area rugs made by Middle Eastern orphans with bloody carpet weaving fingers but is really a town just 9 miles from Santa Barbara. Perfect! I book the rooms and decide to find some more photos of this slice of Eden because with a name like Sandyland ... it has to be good. I'm picturing sand and surf and daiquiris and coconut oil and Frankie Avalon making time with Annette Funicello

Instead, what I find is this:

Oooohhhh, and some of this:

Along with a stream of warnings like Don't Stay Here! What a Dump! Got Infected Here! Don't Forget Your Crack Pipe! So ... I promptly cancel yet another reservation, pull out two thirds of my hair, throw something solid across the room and declare this trip O-V-E-R.

That is until my girl Corrina emailed the words that made me pull my thumb out of my mouth and uncurl myself from the fetal position:  

The Lemon Tree Inn

(Insert God-like light from above followed by Herald Angels singing) 

Queen beds, swimming pool, onsite restaurant and wait for it ..... wait for it ..... an onsite bar.

Trip back on!

What Do Cannibalism and Miss Spoken Have In Common?

Donner Memorial State Park

Where else would the residents of Babbleville decide to pitch tents and expose themselves to the elements? Ya'll know your history, right? Here are Miss Spoken's cliff notes for those who were smoking pot in the sixth grade:

It was the winter of 1846 when some hardboiled emigrants tried to make their way to California via the Sierra Nevada mountains. Cue blizzards, human suffering, exhaustion, starvation, frostbite and cannibalization of the dead. Forty-one deaths, forty-six survivors.

Alright. Now that that's out of the way let's cut to modern day times where Miss Spoken and Miss Perceived, along with our party of thrill-seeking campers, are making our way to the very spot where this great American tragedy occurred.

That's when all hell breaks lose in my covered wagon.

With Johnny Boy at the reins, I'm looking over our reservations when it occurs to me that our reservations are for September 11 which means today is September 11 which means that I made a Gigantic Fuck Up when I booked two rooms at the Days Inn in Santa Barbara for September 11 when they should have been for September 18! Ugh!! I could vomit, I might vomit but either way I'm certainly going to cry or punch myself in the face because those rooms cost me almost $400 and I missed the 48 hour cancellation time and I'm freaking the fuckmesideways out when Legal alerts me to the fact that The Boy has a bloody nose. I look in the backseat and there is blood everywhere. It's a hyrdrant. Legal deftly whips the cover off her pillow and stops the river that is my son's blood. One disaster averted, I make about 40 desperate calls to my mom who is always home but for some reason isn't today but needs to be so she can call the Days Inn, pretend to be me and weave some bullshit story that gets me my money back.

Once this Babbleville Party makes it to Donner, things get better. I'm able to reach my mom and The Boy isn't dead. We unload fourteen days worth of survival goods for our two night stay. This cache of riches includes things like sleeping bags, crayons, bats, Xanax, etc. The tents go up, the beer goes down and the kids already look homeless and hungry.

Always the paradox, Miss Perceived pulls out flavored vodka (girlie, right?) but then drinks it straight out of tin cup (manly, right). Legal probably takes one too many pulls from the bottle because the next morning she is dry heaving behind our tent. And because I'm a caring kind of mom, I pat her on the back before I tell her to take her ass deeper into the woods because the last thing I want is that Thug Gang of Chipmunks, that has been circling our site, to get all crazy drunk with her undigested Smirnoff Citrus Vodka. Nobody wants to see boozy chipmunks fist-fighting their brothers and having regrettable sex. Not only that, but this is Bear Country. Bears. Hence the metal bear-resistant food lockers and the warnings not to keep toothpaste in your tent. 

This second day also brought on a game of hide-and-go-seek in which Johnny Boy got caught like a three-toed sloth half way up a tree and Miss Perceived proved that she could haul ass. My gay brother kept trying to get everybody to go see the beaver dam which of course led to many a joke about beavers of the vagina kind. So much so that Legal declared us disgusting. Cause we are. And we love talking about vaginas.

I continued my trend of fucking up greatly when, as I prepared to make our traditional breakfast of french toast and sausage, I realized that I had forgotten to pack the butter, the sausage and oh yeah, the freakin' eggs. And at dinner, I realized I forgot ketchup and mustard for the hotdogs and hamburgers. Unlike the Donner Party 163 years before us, the Babbleville Party was able to remedy my clusterfuck by saddling up for the Safeway ten minutes away. Plus, we got more of this for Miss Perceived:

Miss Spoken likes her ladies liquored up.