Of marketing, loving and losing

Last night the kids and I made valentines for thier classmates. My daughter has 18 in her first grade class and my son has 22 in his 4 year old preschool class. Oh my, a grand total of.... 40. Not elaborate valentines, but the usual printed card that you tape a lollipop to.

Daughter wants girlie High School Musical valentines and Son wants Kung Fu Panda valentines. Ofcourse Disney only makes boxes of 16 count valentines. VERRRRRRRY ANNOYING. Heck, Disney with its elaborate market surveying strategies knows approximately how many kids there are in an average class. But clever marketing Disney elves somewhere in the swamps of Orlando or wherever decide to license only 16 count boxes of thier most popular cards. So now guess what! We buy more boxes and have a ton of cards to waste. Ofcourse next year we will go through this excercise all over again because there will be atleast two more Disney movies with new characters that must be merchandised. Clever fellas those elves!

Oh and in other Disney elf marketing thuggery... three days ago my son saw an ad on the Disney channel for EGGS! What is an egg commercial doing on a kids channel? Apparantly they dont take thier ... you must be 18 or older to order (or whine to mom about)... very seriously.

Pristine white eggs each emblazoned with the Disney mickeymouse ears. The commercial showed a happy family at a breakfast table, waiting for eggs made by a happy smiling mom. Mom ofcourse was cooking perfect Mickey Mouse shaped eggs. Now my kids want those eggs. Yeah, even my egg allergic daughter! So we will go to the grocery store looking for these eggs which are sold at a premium price. Thankgoodness there is a candy free aisle that we can be checked out through. Oh look, I forgot, the candy free aisle has the mickey mouse balloons flying at full mast, and look below the balloons... the disney character tattoos too, for my kids to whine over!

And you thought that spending 5000 bucks for a week at Orlando for a family of four was enough contribution to the Disney Corporation! All that nonsense about 1600 for a family of four that disney advertises is not realistic at all. Ofcourse you will spend 5000.

Thats it, we are not going back to Orlando until the kids are teens! They liked the rides and all but seriously all they really wanted to do was go back to the hotel and swim in the pool. For that I could have booked into the local comfort inn for $100 and had the kids swim in hotel pool! Its not even like the kids are pool deprived during the winter. We swim every weekend at the local Y!

What will we do on Valentine's day? Not much really. The husband will probably give me the regulation box of candy, which will be eaten by the kids. Dad and Mom will give kids a prettily wrapped up Globe.... yes very educational and practical. Meet up with another family with kids and we will all eat dinner at a local Italian restaurant where the kids can make a little noise. Then we will come home, put the kids to bed and watch the rest of JOHN ADAMS dvd's... a must see HBO miniseries. More about John Adams in a future post.

That my friends is how people who have been quite happily married 20 years and have young kids celebrate Valentines day. Family, hugs and kisses and political drama.

About Losing...

Two friends are in the process of losing marriages. The marriages are almost gone, lost but not over. One couple is desi and one is not desi. Both have similar issues of emotional neglect and the miseries and retaliatory issues that arise from neglect. Very painful. Most painful is that both families will probably just have to continue to live together and torture and be tortured. Money is a powerful detterent to making a clean break. It is hard to face a future without when you have had enough. It takes a lot of courage, help and desperation especially when you have kids to support in an "acceptable" upwardly mobile manner. I want to help and make it all go away magically and have everyone live happily ever after. I know I cannot do that. all I can do now, is listen.

Of losing some more...

I have been good, about eating before I get really hungry and not eating fast and greedily. I have been working out, but it hurts! Really, it hurts. Used the elliptical trainer at home for an hour every night and I had a couple of boot camp style workouts with a Marine type of hard body fella with an extreme crew cut. He barked very loudly at us and called us pussies for stopping to catch our breath. I learnt to box away at a weighted bag and managed to swing it about half an inch. Okay half an inch is better than the bag knocking me over... right? Havent stepped on the scale yet. I am afraid to be dissapointed.