Right after I floss the dog’s teeth with this C-note

Jul 24, 2008 in Money, Moses

I’ve never worked in marketing, so my grasp of direct mail optimization is, at best, layperson: somewhere, my name and address have been coded into a database indicating that I purchased X or contributed to Y, thereby indicating I might want to throw money at Z. While mailing list sellers and database analysts rake in the cash, I rake in piles of credit card offers, loads of baby-product spam, and earlier this year, and despite repeated requests to the contrary, a daily phone call from Kucinich for President. (Had Dennis himself called even once and explained to me how a batshit midget congressman snags a bangin’ flame-haired goddess like Elizabeth, I’d've stopped ear-raping his volunteers and started tithing to his campaign.)

And then there are the CATALOGS. Because honestly, you’re just one monogrammed Pottery Barn Kids Anywhere Chair away from being sized up as a Saab-driving, arugula-inhaling hoarder with a troubling flatware jones. And a hankering for an Atlantic Monthly subscription. And an outdoor kitchen textiled in last year’s color palette THIS WILL NOT STAND.

Also? Your dog eats Sevruga and sleeps on a bed of hand-stitched Wagyu hides.

Continue reading…


Babies, balloons, BIRTHDAY CAAAAAAKE!

Jul 21, 2008 in Family, Friends, Holidays, Nola, Parenting

Inexplicably, an entire year has passed since Michael raced me to Swedish Medical Center for the delivery of Nola Faye Glisson Ortlieb. The final weeks of labor had been made excruciating by a pinched sciatic nerve — weeks in which even taking a few steps would draw stinging tears, and in which a waiting room filled with pregnant women witnessed me sobbing to an obstetric nurse, “GET THIS BABY OUTTA ME!!!!!” Fortunately, they were spared the pained exhortations to my refusing-to-contract belly: “You better be worth all this! You better be the BEST BABY EVER!!” So by the time Swedish cleared a spot for induction, I’d been looking forward to leaping into that hospital bed and squeezing seven-odd pounds of baby through my vadge like. . . well, like a kid looks forward to birthdays.

(She was worth all of it, and it turns out she is the best baby ever.)

Happy birthday, my Itty Bitty Kitty.

Party slideshow after the jump. Continue reading…


Amazon, still rockin’ out with it’s stock out

Jul 20, 2008 in Stuff I like, Technical

Just when you think Amazon has nothing new to add to the online shopping experience, they roll out a feature that allows you to add merchandise from ANY web site to your Amazon Wish List with a mere button-click from your toolbar. FINALLY, a birthday with the guaranteed gifts of premium vodka and bottomless potato chips.


“He was too cool for the room.”

Jun 23, 2008 in Ballard

That was one of George Carlin’s planned epitaphs, and it’s heartening to see all of Ballard is in mourning:

His was the rare mind clever and adept enough to make even atheism funny. Thanks for this, George, and R.I.P.:


Ortliebs, meet my friend RALPH.

Jun 22, 2008 in Eliot, Family, Health, Michael, Nola, Travel

Just look at this face:

Precious, right? So trusting, so innocent, yes?

Because that’s the face that over the course of a single week laid waste to four generations of relations, a week that will heretofore live in infamy as Ortlieb Annual Family Reunion: VomitCon ‘08.

Continue reading…


My own private Guadalcanal

Jun 11, 2008 in Parenting, Travel

This Friday, we leave for the annual Ortlieb family reunion, scheduled this year for the North Carolina coast. The extended Ortliebs are smart, funny, easy-going and damned good looking, and I expect nothing less than an amazing, relaxing week.

Because after the past two weeks, I damn well deserve it. By default, I’m in charge of packing for the girls. In theory, this would entail tossing a couple swimsuits and sundresses in a diaper bag and heading to Sea-Tac. But the reality is a mite more involved. It began two weeks ago with the lists, then the purchases, shifting into Phase Three, the population of itemized piles throughout the house, and there are a hundred more items on my multiple checklists and WE LEAVE IN TWO DAYS.

As it turns out, ensuring this well-oiled machine makes it across the continent and back is a mammoth undertaking: rigorously detailed, painstakingly researched and vetted, anticipatory of any potential surprise or snag, and executed with precision. In short, major military campaigns have been launched with less effort.

Since I’ve already done the work — and a friend traveling cross-country soon with two wee ones asked for some tips — I’ll share the strategies of Vacation Air Travel With Niblets after the jump.

Continue reading…


Misjudging: it’s complicated

Jun 09, 2008 in TiVoing

More often than not, “celebreality” programming elicits little more than my schadenfreude: the vapidity, the shallowness, the disconnect from the real world by opportunity-rich adults never fails to delight and depress me. And Paris? Nick and Jessica? Britney and Kevin? Dina Lohan? I AM LOOKING AT YOU. (You too, Anna Nicole, but grave-dancing is just tacky.)

And yet, these are people you already expect the worst from. More surprising are the reality-show celebs who not only surpass your low expectations, but actually ENDEAR themselves to you.

First came Tori Spelling. I was a few years past the “90210″ demographic, but Tori always struck me as a case of nepotism at its worst: a spoiled, plasticized Daddy’s girl who couldn’t get the gig on her own merits. But “Tori and Dean: Inn Love” revealed someone altogether different: a smart, funny young woman with mother problems, a baby on the way and a surprising work ethic. She was. . . adorable.

More recently came the debut season of E’s “Denise Richards: It’s Complicated.” Richards has been excoriated in the tabloids for her ugly divorce, her relationship with Richie Sambora, even her decision to take part in a reality show. It’s been years since she made a successful film, and her last Playboy cover made her look as dumb as a Christmas tree. Needless to say, my expectations were gutter-low. Even the girls I heart over at Go Fug Yourself got into a catty froth before a single episode had aired:

I don’t know about you, but every time I see an ad for Denise Richards: It’s Complicated, I fly into a foaming rage. It’s NOT complicated. You had a brutally wretched and acrimonious divorce during which both you and the MaSheen said incredibly disturbing things about each other, and then you hopped into the sack with your best friend’s husband before either of you were even legally single. That isn’t complicated. Physics is complicated. Brain surgery is complicated. Figuring out what color shoes to wear with a navy blue dress is complicated.  I would have accepted Denise Richards: It’s Embarrassing, or Denise Richards: It’s Awkward or even Denise Richards: I’m Disgusting, but Denise Richards: It’s Complicated I reject wholly. Don’t pretend your life is gloriously and fascinatingly complex in a way that wasn’t totally engineered by your own actions.

Youch. And still, I TiVoed the show, and now I’d like to treat Denise Richards to a bucket of Pinot Grigio and a brow retouch at Wax Bar, as exemplified by this segment:


Continue reading…


In which Nintendo calls us old AND fat

Jun 08, 2008 in Gadgets, Health, Michael

The day it came on the market in 2006, and through cravenly nepotistic means, Michael had a Wii. In the two years since, we’ve both enjoyed the novelty, silliness and challenge of the games, and if I had to describe the entire Wii system in one word, that word would be “adorable.”

But you, Wii Fit, are an ASSHOLE.

Continue reading…


Because the Patriot Act SAYS I can.

Jun 05, 2008 in Bad Parenting, Uncategorized

Nola’s living in the basement. This isn’t optimal, but her sleep schedule doesn’t yet match Eliot’s, and the basement felt less “DSHS-anonymous-tipline” than the garage. Also, we kind of got over the Preciously Detailed Nursery with the first one, because it turns out babies are tiny design- and color-wheel-oblivious ingrates, and because you get over EVERYTHING by the time the second one arrives: the nursery, the dainty dresses, the “safety.” Nola’s lucky if she leaves the house in more than a diaper and a football hold.

So until she’s ready to move in with Eliot, it’s the hypermasculine wood-paneled guest room downstairs. And finally, a reason to bust out the baby monitor we’d gotten at Ellie’s shower; with the nursery next door to our bedroom, we’d never needed it, whereas now it’s on constantly.

So the other morning, I get up to find Mike and the girls sharing some raisin bran. (Which, while I’m on it, annoys me to no end: PEACE Organic Raisin Bran, which is the only brand he likes and which features a picture of a charlatan yogi and insists on the packaging that “10% of all profits go to peace.” Seriously, could that BE more nebulous and unverifiable? That’s like me wearing a t-shirt that announces, “10% of my income goes to wind currents and good vibes.” Stupid CEREAL.)

Anyway, they’re all together, I’ve personally verified it, in the living room. But as I walk back toward the bathroom, I hear a man’s voice coming from the bedroom. Specifically, from the baby monitor receiver in the bedroom. And surely, the vodka’s finally eating holes in my brain, right? Because I could also wear a t-shirt that proclaimed, “10% of all profits go to vodka,” but that would be both verifiable and TRUE.

But I poke my head back in the living room, and they’re all definitely there. So I return to the baby monitor, where the man’s voice is getting louder, and it hits me: we’re picking up SOMEBODY ELSE’S BABY MONITOR SIGNAL. I mean, how awesome is that? Total intimate eavesdropping, right here in my bedroom! So I crank it up, because who knows what kind of juicy, filthy secrets are about to be revealed?!

Continue reading…


End Times: Sign 38

Jun 02, 2008 in Stuff I like

A high school friend of mine married a guy who gave her a vacuum for her birthday and a washer/dryer for Christmas. Whereas my response would have been to throw a load of laundry at his head while screaming that his unsentimental ass best get Hooverin’, she was thrilled with his gifts of household appliances, and for all I know is at this very moment adding a riding mower and ScumBuster Xtreme to her anniversary wish list.

Now I’m all for practicality, but there is nothing quite so unromantic as the accoutrements of housework. So imagine my surprise that I’m currently crushing on . . . a MOP.

And yet “mop” seems such an ugly, derisive mutter when it comes to the Method omop.

Continue reading…