Refresh!

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Daphne

So, what do you think? It looks different right?

Coolmom.com has had a face lift. In many ways it’s a make under. I wanted a cleaner look and I needed to upgrade what I was working with as the site was built in early ’08 so it was like trying to keep a ’65 Fiat running.

Thanks to Steve Tsai for doing the work. Here he is with his lovely wife Candice. I took them to dinner at Campanile as a thank you.

A few things still need to be tweaked. He still needs to import my vast video library. It’s coming. Notice the feature video on the right and we are refining the “best of” part as well. I love that the blogs scroll from one to the next. I like this on others site and long wanted for here.

So, I started coolmom.com with Deca.tv. It was their first foray into the mom blog world. I did not want to be a blogger I just wanted to make funny videos for moms. Short ones. In a few short years Deca evolved into a well known place for creating online video content for moms and I became a reluctant blogger. Momversation was an off shoot of cool mom. It began as we saw that advertisers wanted many voices to sponsor, not just one. I used to own part of it, but then sold my part in it a few years ago, but stayed on as a contributor. Now, Deca is building bigger concepts and they kindly have handed me all the keys to coolmom.com.

Now, like a lot of mom bloggers, I’m doing this all on my own.

I will probably make mistakes. I still have to figure out how to monetize this better.

I want to keep making funny videos for parents. However, do to my new solo status they may have a lower production value, be simpler, have my clunky editing. Please hang in there! I will be writing more and want to maintain my original goal of being of giving moms ( and dads) a chuckle when they get a minute to themselves. Short attention span theater!

Please feel free to give me advice, feedback, whatever. I can’t do this without you! I am also going to do some give aways to thank the core group who have hung on and tolerated my bumpy 2012.

Angry room parent: c’mon help me out!

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Daphne

Here is a Momversation that I started. One of my pet peeves: parents who don’t help in their public schools. Do you judge the non involved like I do? Loved getting the input of Janice from 5 Minutes for mom ( who I met at BlogHer, Hi Janice! Let’s do “5 minutes for room parents”) and “Mr. Lady” ( love that moniker) of Whisky in my sippy cup (also met at Blogher, sassy, fun gal).

Since I can’t respond to the videos since I went first I will put them here: I don’t find a difference between single or married parents. In fact, my co room parent is a widower and he is very involved ( bless his heart). Also, there are parents who don’t communicate with me, but go to the teacher. That’s fine. I check in with her so I know who to lay the heat on and who to leave alone. Yes, the amount of communication you can get from a kids school is daunting. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to be the room parent to help streamline it and make it more clear. I hate the amorphous “come help” email. People need specifics and they need to know why? Example: This past weekend we kept hearing “come to a rally to support charter schools” on a Saturday morning when I –as a blogger– was given free passes for my family to go to Knott’s berry Farm. My husband was all for ditching the social action and hitting the rides. Since I grew up going to everything from Libertarian “victory” parties to marches for the the ERA this was causing me some pang. But, frankly the whole event seemed to vague. So I delved deeper into it and then I composed this email:

So, do any of us want to get up early and hustle somewhere Saturday

morning? I know I don’t. But, I’m going to suck it up tomorrow and

do just that. We need to have a good showing to show the LAUSD and

the State they can’t pick the pockets of the Charter schools. They’ve

done it and they will do it again if we don’t rise up against them.

It’s like when the ants face down the grasshoppers in A Bug’s life,

our collective numbers can send those who would underfund ( even more

than we are) into the mouth of a bird.

Okay, not a perfect analogy. Look, drive downtown, wear a green

shirt, yelp and clap for an hour and go home.

Guess what? It worked. Our class had showed up in better numbers than most others ( along with the 15 parents who do most everything).

My family didn’t get on the bus with the crowd. We put on our green shirts, found a meter, stayed for an hour clapping and yelping, then hoped on the freeway and a great time at Knott’s ( short lines, Camp Snoopy, good for little ones). Btw, all having matching color shirts not a bad idea at an amusement park. I could find them easily.

But, don’t tell me your busy. We all have a lot going on. I’m watching…

Mom who smells like pee

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Daphne

Following hot on the heels of showing you all my gut I’m baring another embarassing aspect of motherhood. For Momversation I am talking about one of those “no one told me THIS was going to happen.” The dirty parts of motherhood. If you want the clinical talk about pee and mom’s you can find it here. I’m about the experience.

Don’t hang me out to dry! C’mon, you know it has happened to you.

Do You Judge Big Families? (Momversation…Sort Of)

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Daphne

This was a Momversation experiment I had long wanted to do — get to talk to the moms in PERSON. Blogging and vlogging can be a lonely business so I had asked Rebecca Woolf, my blogging friend, who lives nearby, to come over and do a Cool Mom with me. Alas, the day she was supposed to come over was also the last few months of her carrying twins, so she was understandably not feeling top dog. Cut to Kelly, the producer of Momversation, writing me to ask if I would be up for a shoot with Jessica and Rebecca in the flesh. Would I!? Jessica is on the other side of the hill from me, but another mom blogger I enjoy conversing with. Not only does she have a great dry wit, but my husband knows her dad from the Spago days and LOVES him.

Anyway, the gals came over to my home, renamed “the Momversation studio” for the day. Great to see Rebecca — first time since she gave birth to the twins. The thought was this might be a new way to tape Momversation, but after watching it, the senior producer nixed the idea. Was it me or my home styled hair? I don’t know, but the three of us said, “The people must see this!” Because use kvetching at my kitchen table is pretty important. It’s not on the main landing page of Momversation, but it is up there somewhere. So, think of this as the Vault.

Let me know what you think. I liked it, but I would have killed the non-stop momver music bed that runs through it.

Oh, and do you judge big families?

Making Out With Your Kid (Momversation)

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Daphne

This Momversation is personal. I picked the topic, I picked the angle of it and I drove a few miles with my son in tow to make it happen. Yes, I left my house to vlog. Doesn’t happen much.

This all started when I ran across an essay on Babble (See, I mentioned you; can you move me up from mom blogger #31? Thanks.) written by Joel Stein. It had the provocative title, “Making Out with My Son“. But I wasn’t grossed out. I knew exactly where he was going with this. Sadly, many people were dialing 911 as they read it.

Now, not only did I relate to the essay I also felt like, for years, I got Joel. He used to write op ed pieces in the LA Times during the very moment when they had interesting writers. Now, with the exception of Ronald Brownstein, it’s pretty neutered. He writes for Time as well, but unless I’m in an airport I don’t read that. I know he is a very funny writer. In fact, his piece about a man crush on Obama in ’08 was the only writing I had saved in my “inspiration” file. (The file wasn’t my idea. Back when I had money, I hired an organizer and that was one of her ideas to haul all of the crap off my desk). Joel also has his own theme song.

Then I didn’t just feel I knew Joel I did know him. I met he and his wife Cassandra Barry, who also writes for Babble, at a fundraising dinner for my daughter’s school that my husband did. The Barry Stein’s are hoping to get into our little gem of a charter school and eat well while they do it. We also ran into them at the trash fiesta we went to. Clearly, they were our food group. I didn’t tell them about the file least I appear stalkery.

So, a tad bored as I am with the same Momversation format and working alone, I wrote Joel an email asking if I could come with my tripod and include him on this. So, it’s a parentversation. Let me know what you think.

(Production note: Rex was upstairs watching cartoons and eating crackers while this was made.)

So do you make out with your kid?

Momversation: Which Role Is Harder…Wife or Mom?

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Daphne

This question was ripped from the Momversation Facebook page. Apparently women wanted to discuss which role was harder: wife or mother? There were some requests for me to address this. I hope I didn’t disappoint.

It kind of dovetails with “Advice to a Bride.” I would love to hear your opinion.

Momversation: Do you Trust Mom Strangers More than Others?

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Daphne

Well, Heather and Catherine and I were on such a roll the other day talking about nursing strangers kids that it lead to another subject, “Will I ever clean up those cluttered shelves behind me?” Okay, that’s part of my Daphversation. (Today I will finally do it, I will I will). We went into a slightly different direction.

Sidebar, it’s hard to ignore the tragedy of this weekend. I can’t stop thinking about that lovely 9 year-old girl who was shot by the total piece of S–t. My heart breaks for her parents. There’s strangers, there strangers who are parents and there are loner young men who are so screwed up they get kicked out of junior college. I know it goes against the grain of Americana, but it is not right that loons get to buy Glocks. The founding fathers said, “The right to bear arms,” which in their case was a musket. So, fine going forward we can all carry muskets. The kind you shoot, reload, put in your gun powder, shoot, etc. Not guns with 31 rounds.

Are you having another baby?

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Daphne

I tried a month without camp, wait, a week without camp. Caught between the feelings of not wanting Vivien to be overscheduled during the summer, saving money and on the other hand needing her to be a tad more occupied. Especially with this heat wave, I’ve been getting cranky.

“Put on your shoes”

Vivien, “You don’t have to get mean about it.”

“But, I asked you 3 times and I am hot and cranky!!” Slight whimper.

So this week we are trying a different camp. One that is so cheap that if she doesn’t want to go one day I won’t –as we use to say in the 70′s–have a cow.

Okay, here is a Cool Mom which I think plays more like a Momversation. Note: I’m also guilty of asking this question sometimes, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

Momversation: What’s Your Best Piece of Parenting Advice?

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Daphne

What’s the best parenting advice you ever got? I’m sure some was when I was super sleepy so I can’t remember it, but in this Momversation I did mention some gems. Some of the Momversationalists don’t like advice. I don’t mind advice, I mind a snippy know it all attitude which is not the same thing. If someone is tsk, tsking while your kid is in a meltdown and says things like “gee, maybe you should feed her” and you want to scream “Of course I feed my kid dumbass, she is 3 and this is part of being her age. Don’t judge my mothering!”

In the same situation the onlooker could say “I know this is tough mom. If you are ok with it sometimes I give my kids a c-o-o-k-i-e. I have some if you want it.”

Note on the programming: I shot in my dressing room at tv guide on a shoot day so I have pro hair and make up. Not all haggard.

Cool Mom – Funny videos on parenting and pop culture

parents don’t know what they are doing anyway, might as well laugh about it

parents don't know what they are doing anyway, might as well laugh about it

Tag Archives: momversation