Did anyone watch the sneak preview episodes I and II of The Tudors that’s premiering soon on Showtime? I watched them both on DirecTV Friday night and since we don’t subscribe to Showtime I may ask my officemate to record for me. I think I’m hooked. And leave it to me to get hooked on a show that’s on a channel we don’t subscribe to. Wait a minute, I’m sure the powers that be at Showtime did that by design. I’m such a sucker.

Did anyone see the season finale of Battlestar Galactica? Anne? I loved the ending.

Speaking of royalty, Working Moms Against Guilt have a hilarious take on these housekeeping tips from Martha the Great. And although I might act like I’m a Martha Stewart hater, I secretly wish I had more Martha juju. Like Mrs. M for example. She is a monogramming fool! Who knew you could monogram a fabric headboard? It boggles the mind! Any way, I keep hoping that by reading her blog, some domestic talent will rub off on me.

The University of Maryland did an interesting study showing that today’s working moms actually spend more time with their children than their own mothers spent with them.

My good friends itching and burning are back. I started taking Claritin Saturday.

And lastly, has anyone seen the new Suave advertising campaign? I love the new TV commercial. They also have a cool pledge for moms to sign online…”Today, I will say yes to “mommy you look pretty today.” Who says that being a mom means you have to be frumpy?

Apparently the media is taking note of blogging as a social vortex that sucks you away from important things such as watching TV preparing hot, nutritious meals for one’s family and peeing.

Here’s an excerpt from my work e-mail via The Media Trainers:

While traditional newspaper readership continues to suffer, newspaper blogs are growing in popularity…

In the past year, the number of people reading blogs on the top ten U.S. newspaper sites more than tripled… the blog visits accounted for a larger percentage of overall traffic to newspaper Web sites, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/).

Just a year ago, blog visits only accounted for 4 percent of overall visits to newspaper sites or 1.2…but blog pages now account for 13 percent of overall visits to newspaper sites and unique visitors to blog sites have risen to 3.8 million viewers.

Blogging is also influencing broadcast media demographics. The LA Times interviewed mommy blogger Jenny Lauck about how the major networks are losing women viewers during the primo morning news show hours.

So, do you think traditional print media will slowly die off? Here at Casa BlondeMomBlog we no longer subscribe to a print newspaper, but I am a self-confessed magazine-aholic. I love nothing better than flipping through a good magazine and when I see the latest People magazine to the breakroom at work, sometimes I drool.

Speaking of newspapers embracing blogs, my friend Dawn is blogging as part of the Diet Writers on The Tennessean’s website. She’s lost almost 15 pounds since starting Weight Watchers, even though she gave into that Southern sugary temptress…homemade banana pudding. The Houston Chronicle also has a great group of mom blogs called Mama Drama and the Grand Junction in Colorado features mom bloggers at Haute Mamas.

Updated to add, The Tennessean now has a section devoted to moms, featuring mom blogs! It’s called Music City Moms. 

I worked for my husband on Monday, or should I say with? Working for sounds very 1950s. My husband is a small business owner and found himself in one of those small business owner perfect storms that can lead to drinking scotch with a Maalox chaser at 8 a.m. One of his employees had strep throat, he had to let a relatively new employee go last week, and his front desk manager had already planned to take the holiday off to spend with her son.

It was actually, dare I say, “fun” to help out at his shop (he’s into computers, just fyi). I’m not technical at all. I don’t know a gigabyte from a mosquito bite, but I answered the phone and tried to field calls as best I could without hanging up on anyone.

Do any of you have family businesses? And do any of you work with your spouse? For various reasons, including the all important health insurance coverage through my employer, I’m still working in my own chosen career field. So far it hasn’t made sense for me to work full-time with my husband. I’d like to eventually help him out more, but more than likely I’d be wearing my marketing/PR/corporate communications hat and it would be on a part-time basis. And also there’s the possibility that we could kill each other if we worked together full time.

The most eye opening thing for me on Monday was to have more insight into my husband’s crazy day. It’s tough when kids, work, deadlines, obligations, customers, clients, and bills clamor for attention and weigh your marriage down with the heavy burden of responsibility. Instead of empathizing with your spouse you find yourself angry and recalling a simpler time when you didn’t have to be such adults. Sometimes I look at my girls and I recall that freedom of responsibility of being a child.

When my husband comes home at night and says it’s been a rough day, he really means it. Whereas a rough day for me might mean that I had to make a second trip to the copy room to pick up a document or I couldn’t get a primo parking place and it was raining and I forgot my umbrella or I had to wait my turn before firing up our gourmet coffee maker in the break room.

My parents ran a construction business together and legend has it that my mother was doing payroll from her hospital bed shortly after giving birth to her fourth child (that child would be me). Instead of bringing my mother flowers or a pair of diamond earrings, my father brought her the cumbersome company checkbook and an adding machine (remember, it was 1969.) My parents have also been divorced for 30 years.

Overheard last week at my office’s monthly birthday celebration…

A trio of female co-workers (two are blondes…I’m just sayin’) are gathered around the break room table and commenting on the birthday cake’s festive Mardi Gras theme.

“Oh, look how fun! Does the cake have a baby Jesus in it?

“No…it’s not a King Cake. And it’s not a baby Jesus in a King Cake, it’s just a plastic baby…a non-denomination baby.”

And I’ve since learned the baby trinket does represent Jesus and is not some random dime store pagan plastic baby trinket.

Speaking of all things New Orleans, the hubby and I are thinking of heading to the Big Easy for our 10th anniversary this spring. He’s never been and I’ve been twice, once for business and once for Jazz Fest. I know he would love it and I’d love to go back. Does anyone have any recommendations for a romantic inn or bed and breakfast? Maybe we could stay with Brangelina? The beignets at Cafe du Monde are calling, or maybe that’s just my stomach growling.

New Orleans native (and one of my favorite musical artists) Harry Connick Jr. has just released two CDS, Oh My Nola and Chanson du Vieux. A portion of the proceeds are being donated to the New Orleans Habitat Musicians’ Village, a project launched by Connick and musician Branford Marsalis to build homes for displaced musicians after the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

See if you can guess correctly who said what today at Casa Blonde Mom Blog.

Awww Bailey, it’s OK. You’re gonna die but I’ll still be your friend. (Bailey is our 9-year-old dog.)

Let’s have a taco bessert (dessert) party!

Can we drug her so she’ll go to bed at 8 tonight? I’ve got a lot of work to do.

People are naked! I saw someone’s underwear! (Quipped while watching the new Chevy HHR commercial.)

Also, would whoever has mama’s set of keys return them or tell me where you hid them? (I’m looking at you Amelia Grace.) My keys have been gone for two days. It was kind of amusing yesterday morning as I used it as an excuse to go into work late, but now it’s getting old.

Speaking of work, I have a standing marketing meeting on Mondays. It’s just us girls and typically after the official meeting wraps up, we indulge in a bit of gossip. Monday’s conversation revolved around popular brands of jeans and how most everyone had searched high and low for these particular brands of jeans….brands of jeans I have only heard of because I flip through the free copies of InStyle magazine at the hair salon while my highlights cure. Suddenly I felt like the proverbial married lady with kids at the table who wears Dockers and sweater sets and I bit my tongue to prevent myself from saying, “Some day you won’t spend hours finding the perfect pair of jeans, but you will spend hours trying to squeeze back into that perfect pair of jeans and then once you do you will wear those suckers until the zipper breaks off.”

So, I have a question for you moms who work outside the home (or work from home).

Do you ever have one of those days when you decide it would be fun to call in sick and keep your kids home for the day because one of them is a tad under the weather and then you are elated that your husband brings home McDonald’s for an early lunch because by 11 a.m. both kids have had a meltdown, you’ve somehow managed to freakishly cut the side of your bare foot on your 80-pound dog’s toenail, causing you to shout the worst of expletives in front of your children, and then after lunch, despite being 39 degrees out, you bundle your kids up so they can play outside and get their ya ya’s out and then your toddler plays a game of stop, drop and roll in dog shit before you realize what she’s doing?

And then by 5 o’clock you hate to admit it to yourself but you’re kind of looking forward to taking them to daycare the next day?

Yeah, me neither.

(Read on …)

I went to work today escaped from home for a few hours while my mother-in-law watched the girls. I needed to catch up on things since I missed last week due to Amelia’s pneumonia, which thankfully she has fully recovered from. I realized other than going to the pediatrician’s office, a trip to Walgreens, and visiting family on Christmas Eve, I haven’t left the house in about two weeks. It was kind of nice to eat my Chick-Fil-A sandwich in peace at my desk without small children tugging on me. This is the fuzzy kind of Hallmark moment when I realize I don’t think I could be a full time stay at home mom. I work four days a week and although I’d love to cut back to three days, most of the time I don’t mind working. But I’m always wondering how I could change my schedule to make the life/work balance, if there is such a thing, more attainable. When I worked from home last year after having Amelia it started getting more and more difficult to work during the day with an increasingly mobile baby and I started to get a little antsy to return to the office. Now on days when my workload is light I find myself wishing I still worked from home. I guess my “ideal” job would be part time, would allow me to come and go as I please, would offer full reimbursement for childcare (I will wholeheartedly admit I’m counting down the months until August when Caitlin starts kindergarten and we no longer have double daycare expenses), and would offer free Starbucks coffee in the break room. Surely that is not too much to ask?

So what about you? What is your “ideal” work scenario? Do you long to be a stay at home mom, work part time, or work a full 40-hour week? There are pros and cons to each and I’m trying to fully appreciate my current work scenario, as most of the time I can leave early or come in late as needed which is an absolute must with small children. Even though the other side of the fence might seem greener, at the end of the day there are still noses and bottoms to wipe, bedtime stories to tell, and kisses and hugs to administer. And that is the most important “work” of all.

We had our annual Thanksgiving pig out at work last Tuesday. There were no less than a half a dozen varieties of homemade pie, a buffet of 2-liter soft drinks, two huge serving platters of turkey with side dishes and sauces galore including dressing, gravy, several cheese-laden casseroles, sweet potatoes, those green bean wrapped in bacon and stuck with a toothpick thingys, plastic bags of store bought junk food goodness (because nothing says gratitude more than Chips Ahoy cookies), croissants, and about a thousand sausage balls from our resident sausage ball king. Just typing all of that raised my cholesterol level. Last year I was still working from home after having Amelia and I missed the lunch. One thing about working from home is the feeling that you are missing out on scintillating conversation, or at least some good gossip or weekend wrap ups from all your single co-workers.

The topics discussed at our Thanksgiving work lunch last week included such riveting topics as:

annoying magazine salespeople who stalk you in your neighborhood and grocery store parking lot
my co-worker’s circa 1985 Chia sheep he recently purchased at a yard sale and brought in to work
the offensive aroma the aforementioned Chia sheep emits whenever it is watered
the myth of the sugar high, to which I retorted “but you haven’t seen my kids on Halloween”
a new caffeinated drink called “Bawls” that is marketed toward gamers
my co-worker’s misunderstanding the last topic and thinking my other co-worker said a new caffeinated drink called “Balls” that is marketed toward gay men

Oh yes, the adult conversation is plentiful at ye old workplace.