Tagline Shmagline (and French techo-rap!)

With all the super fabulous posts I've been reading about BlogHer this year (which, OMG, I totally want to be there next year) I have found myself thinking a lot about things I don't normally spend my time thinking about. Like creating my brand and thinking about what sort of content (it sounds so smarmy in my head) I should be creating to get my target audience involved and engaged and what my tag line should be.

Especially my tag line. It's not that I don't like adventures of the world's oddest super hero, except that I have never claimed to be a super hero and nothing in any post I have ever written has referenced the fact that I may or may not be a superhero and therefor, it seems that it is a tag line that totally doesn't work.

I told you I've been thinking about it a lot.

But today I read something that really made me stop and think about why I'm blogging. Leah, over at A Girl and a Boy, wrote a post called My Brand that totally sums up why I started blogging. To share my feelings and to tell stories. A place to come and write words every day (or once a month) in the hopes that maybe something I say will make someone else laugh or resonate with them.

Some of my favorite blogs are the ones that are about nothing at all. I've noticed that the blogs I tend to skim are those that are about one thing only. Personal finance, cooking, photography. The blogs I check my reader for the most often are written by people my age who are dealing with the same things I am (sometimes almost exactly) and can tell their stories with humor and courage. Those are the blogs that I want to be like and I'm pretty sure they don't sit around wondering what people think of their tag line.

I hope that's not the case, anyway, because I really don't think I can dedicate any more time thinking this without people starting to worry about me.

Now for the French techno-rap. Hilda sent me the link to this and I literally cannot stop listening to it. I've already listed to it 4 times since I started writing this post. It's playing right now. It's like crack for my ears.

Anyway, it's awesome. Also, don't blame me when the next time you go out dancing all you want to do is shake your shoulders (I already know that I am doomed to this. Someday I will tell you the story of how I know that). Enjoy:

My Life has Completely Jumped the Shark

As of last night I am pretty sure that I have suddenly found myself in an alternate universe where nothing goes like I plan and I am the laziest human being in the world.

Well, I guess most of that sentence would be true no matter what dimension I'm living in (getting up before 10 should be a crime, people.) but the part about my plans going so far off track that they end up in another state is totally true.

In the interest of keeping my family issues family issues and not "SuperCareo likes to air the family laundry on the internet, she's out of the will" issues I am going to give you a bulleted list of how my effort to get my boyfriend and my parents in the same room backfired so spectacularly well that I don't know that they will ever be in the same room ever again:

• Armini wants to go to dinner, I suggest a mexican place over by my parent's house and throw out the suggestion that he come over there after to hang out
• We eat, have a lovely meal and come home to discover that my mother has flown the coop
• We head to the basement to watch a movie, Dad comes down with beers (odd) and then pulls up a chair and asks us to stop the movie because "we need to talk" (cue the blood chilling panic)
• Dad proceeds to inform Armini that my mother is more or less blaming him for me leaving, unfairly, and that both he and my mother agree that he is "unworthy of our daughter"
• Dad leaves, Armini and I look at each other in silence (because there are no. words.)
• Armini leaves I go and watch the movie on my laptop in bed. Alone. Thanks, Dad.

I mean, how does this happen? How do you react to that? I am so at a loss for what to do at this point that I'm thinking I'm just going to pretend that last night ever happened and hope that someday everyone will forget about it.

Except now that I wrote about it on the internet, I suppose that plan's already not going to work.

THANKS INTERNET.

PS - you can learn about the whole jumping the shark thing here. Don't worry, I had to look it up the first time I heard someone say it, too.

PPS - all of my suitcases are, for the most part, packed and ready to go. 5 days before I leave. I am starting to get pretty excited ...

Orphaned Post: My Inner Demon is a Hippie

NOTE: I am what you might call a chronic post starter. I get an idea for a blog post and I start writing it and then when I get out the main part of what I want to say I lose my ability to string words together in a decent sentence or I just can't find the place where the post is supposed to end (which totally drives me bananas insane). Since the posting around here has been a little broken record-ish (OMG I'M LEAVING THE COUNTRY IN 8 DAYS), and I don't feel like coming up with something totally unique, I decided that I would take one of these orphaned posts, polish it and publish it. TA DA.

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People often like to identify their vices as "inner demons". You can read about them on any number of blogs ... there are tons of self help books or life coaches to help you deal with said demons.

I think it's safe to say that everyone has one or two of them. I know I do (he's my Sad Little Ghost) but in addition to my Sad Little Ghost, I have another little someone following me around. Except that she isn't really a demon. She's more of a ... hippie.

I know what you're thinking, but SuperCareo, wouldn't some people consider hippies demons? And to that I would say, yes there are. But I am not one of them. That being said, however, doesn't mean that I love my Inner Hippie all the time. Or even half the time.

The issue I have with Inner Hippie is pretty simple: she's a talker. As in, she talks a lot. All the time. And she's very hard to shut up. Especially because she's in my head.

When I look outside she tells me about how beautiful the sky is and how I should get a bike so that I won't pollute it with my car. When I'm cooking or cleaning she yells at me when I reach for a paper towel rather than a towel I can toss in the wash and reuse. She even talked me into washing out a plastic baggie the other day - but it's still sitting in the dish strainer, so take that Inner Hippie! Super Careo: 1 Inner Hippie: 0 (but still trying).

Now don't get me wrong, I love the Earth. I want it to be happy and clean. I want to live upon it lightly so that my kids will be able to know what trees are. BUT - there comes a point in the never ending tirade of Inner Hippie that makes me want to throw all of the contents of my recycling bins into the dumpster, or drive around just because and waste a tank of gas or use the paper towels instead of the washable towel and they're Seventh Generation towels doesn't that count for something??

In an effort to bring some harmony into my life (and to get Inner Hippie to shut her freaking mouth already) I am going to start try to incorporate one of my other blogs, Neon Green, into The Flip Side. What this means for you is that you will get to read more about how I am slowly turning into a hippie become more mindful of my behaviors and how they affect the world.

I also want you to know that I (obviously) don't feel like everyone should start turning into hippies. They are generally dirty and smell funny and before you get mad at me I can tell you that I know several hippies in real life and if you asked them they would agree that they should probably take a shower and stop burning the patchouli incense as much as they do.

So please, don't think that I'm turning into some sort of self righteous, "go green or die" sort of crazy nut-job. Mostly I am going to talk about baking (the connection to being a hippie is that I bake from scratch) and the other odd ball things that most people probably would never associate with hippies.

And on that note, I will leave you with this mosaic of cakes that I have made in past month. Yes, that's right, two cakes in a month (hello stress eating!). Don't you wish you lived near me now? (I wish you did too).

1. apt 311, 2. apt 377, 3. apt 315, 4. apt 297, 5. apt 306, 6. apt 380

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END NOTE: I actually am going to try and incorporate Neon Green into the Flip Side (same with Master of my Money) because clearly I have issues blogging anywhere but here. Also, I think I might need to bake a cake tomorrow after work.

THE END.

I'm Moving.

Well, the cat is out of the bag. Yesterday morning I marched into work and told my boss that, hey, I’m moving out of the country in two weeks.

Then I may have had a small panic attack because, OMG … two weeks. Two weeks. From today. (!!!).

Anyway. Since my last post I have been doing a lot of things. Mostly moving (which is an event because I have more stuff than anyone should be allowed to have) and trying to sell my car and being OVERWHELMED and fighting with my apartment complex about the tiny flood that happened in my kitchen on Memorial Day, which I just remembered I didn’t tell you about.

THE QUICK AND DIRTY VERSION: There was a clog in the laundry room pipes that caused the laundry water to come out of my sink. They didn’t believe me when I told them that the laundry room was probably responsible, and as a result my apartment was flooded on at least one other occasion later on in the week. Then I had to fight with them to pro-rate my rent for the week I didn’t live there because the carpet was all ripped up, and then I had to prove to them that having my AC turned down to 65 degrees for a week would have a more dramatic impact on my bill than the “pennies a day” the office assured me it would be. And then there was the nonsense about how the cleaning service they hired to come in and clean my kitchen did pretty much the worst cleaning job ever in the history of cleaning jobs.

And the cherry on top is that my brand new hand mixer and my grandmother’s aprons sat in water for a week and got moldy and gross. But not beyond repair, thank goodness.

THE MORAL: Do not ever rent from Price Brothers. They are cheap assholes who will take you for all you’re worth, even if the whole reason there was a problem in the first place is because they were too lazy to take the months of phone calls from the other residents in building complaining about how the washer wasn’t draining properly seriously. THANKS PRICE BROTHERS.

There. Now you are up to speed.

But this past weekend I moved out of my apartment (of doom) and I am back with my parents for the next two weeks. Then I'm moving to South Korea for a year.

Now I am going to go have a small panic attack in the bathroom so that I can get back to work. Excuse me.