Hipmama’s Neighborhood

One of the sponsored blog companies I occasionally do posts for is PayPerPost 4.0 Alpha. Their setup is a little different than PayPerPost. With v4, bloggers set a price per word and per link. The platform spits out recommended amounts based on your blog (PageRank, Alexa rating, traffic, content, topic(s), etc.), but you're free to set your own price. By setting your own price, you ultimately decide how much you're paid for writing a sponsored post for an advertiser.
Another difference with v4 is that you don't have to worry about refreshing the dashboard looking for opportunities -- they come to you. Advertisers are able to sift through the various bloggers and send personal invitations inviting targeted bloggers to write about their products, services or whatever else it is they're wanting to promote.

Now, you'd think this is a good thing, right? For once you get to be paid per word and per link. Gone are the days of being paid $5 for a 300 word post with three links (not that I'd accept such a measly amount for such high requirements; by the way, that's what this blog entry is about -- I'll get to that in a paragraph or two). On the flip side, gone are the days of scoring the awesome $10, $15 and even $20 and $25 opps that only required 100-200 words and just one, sometimes two links.

The bad thing about v4 is that advertisers can supply their own requirements for written content. Typically advertisers use this area to request that a blogger writes the entire blog entry around a certain subject. In other instances the advertiser may ask the blogger to simply include the link. An advertiser may also use this section to request that a blogger include an image, or a certain keyword, or a certain blurb about the product/service/whatever.
Unfortunately, there are also advertisers that will use this requirements section to require a blogger to include extra links. And because the advertiser has the ability to ultimately approve or reject the submitted blog entry, they can essentially get extra links for free if they decide to be underhanded and do this.

On no less than five occasions I have outright refused to do a sponsored post because an advertiser would essentially pay me for 100 words and one link, but then specify in the requirements that I include 1-2 additional links. In another outrageous instance, an advertiser privately emailed me a long-ass Word document that outlined the 500+ word post I had to publish, along with three links and two images. Mind you, the invitation in v4.0 outlined and offered payment for 200 words and one link.

I really, REALLY fucking hate and loathe advertisers who try and do this shit. I can't fucking stand it. It's sneaky. It's underhanded. It completely disrespects ME as a blogger, and basically says that I am not worth being paid for X, Y and Z. I'm sorry, but my time, my creative energy and the space on my blog IS worth being paid for, which is why time and time again I have outright rejected $8 and $10 opportunities, because I'm not throwing in freebies. Bastards.

Ah Target, my favorite store. I was able to get one of Dan's Christmas presents from them this week, thanks to an awesome sale. And by awesome I mean a savings of $50. I had to take Dan to work this morning (tl;dr: forgotten, unpaid parking ticket from last spring turned into a suspended license that Dan found out about last night when he was pulled over. We went to the DMV today to find out the details, and will be paying the ticket and restoring his license tomorrow.), but since he was working a short shift it didn't make sense to go home, even though that's all I wanted to do -- go home and crash. So I ran over to Target, kept my coughing to a minimum and coughed in my sleeve when I couldn't hold back, used sanitizer to kill off germs before I spread them, and picked up said sale item. Last one on the shelf, too. I'm glad I didn't wait!

I'm so unhappy about being sick. I have a concert to attend with my mom on Saturday, and I wanted to see my dad while we're in Philadelphia. I also have some stuff going on next week that I'd rather not be sick for. Here's to hoping I can shake this crap by Saturday, and if nothing else by Monday or Tuesday!

I have the flu, and I am not happy about it. I went to my physician today, who took down my symptoms, took my temperature (100.8 at 2:00pm, ouch) and listened to my chest, then proclaimed that I have mild strain of the flu. He's not sure if it's swine or regular, but since the swine flu seems to be accompanied by vomiting, diarrhea, body aches (my chest, back and ribs hurt like a bitch, but that's from all of the violent coughing spasms), it's probably the regular flu. Since I didn't get checked out when symptoms initially set in -- last weekend, when I was running a fever and my throat felt weird -- it's too late for Tamiflu. So I get a morphine-containing cough syrup instead. Spiffy!

Today's DailyBooth. Appropriate, no?

I am beyond miserable, and I just don't know what to do with myself. I have spent the day in bed, in the living room recliner, on the couch, back in bed again, back to the recliner, and now in the bedroom at my desk. I can't wait to shake this crap. I hate being sick. :(

Earlier today I tweeted a poorly worded message that gave probably half of my followers the wrong impression (note to self: including the word past probably would have made all the difference in the world). For the record: I am not pregnant. I have no desire or plan to be! And with everything that's going on, I think I'd shoot myself if a pee stick turned up positive.

But I am sick. I guess I forgot to knock on wood, because I woke up last Friday morning with an itchy throat. I ran fevers off and on all weekend, and what was an occasional throat-clearing has blossomed into a serious 24/7 cough fest. My abdominal muscles ache, my throat is raw, and I can't stop coughing. I'm sucking on cough drops like they're oxygen, and downing Dayquil every four to six hours. I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow afternoon, and I'm taking Alyssa in on Thursday morning since she is still sick. Ryan sees the doctor right after her for his continuing bowel issues.

I've got some pretty cool product reviews to do. One is for Respiratory Guard, which if I may be perfectly honest, tastes like berry-flavored ass (yes, I plan on including that lovely description in the actual review. After all, I was asked by the company and the organizer of the review to be honest!). I also received a Disney Tabletop Christmas Tree. I know. Kick-ass, right? It's worth $199. When I showed it to Dan his response was, "Are you sure you didn't really buy that?" No, I really didn't buy it. It's pretty, and I'm sure well worth two hundred bucks, but it's not my kind of purchase to make. It is beautiful, however, and I can't wait to put it out when we decorate for Christmas!

I'm looking forward to Thursday: not the 8:00am and 8:15am appointments for the kids, but the midnight showing of 2012 that Jason, my mom and I are going to. Friday is payday, which means a grocery store and Target run to replenish on food and household goods. Saturday will be spent with my mom in Philadelphia. She wants to stop and visit with a woman she knows from a Yorkshire Terrier message board, I want to see my dad (I haven't seen him since last February!), and then we're going to see Mannheim Steam Roller at 8:00pm.

What are your plans for the week?

I kind of fell off the face of the blogging world for a few days there. Sucks, because I fully intended on participating in National Blog Posting Month -- on November 2nd, when I remembered about it. Sucks, but there's always next year, right?

I've been rather preoccupied with television lately. I'm usually not a TV person. I'll set our DVR to record shows or the occasional movie that catches my interest, but I won't get around to watching anything until weeks or months (yes, months) later. Case and point: this morning I finally got around to watching The Notebook. The DVR recorded it in August.
I really liked the movie, even though it was poignantly sweet and sad. I started tearing up towards the end, when Allie and Noah were having dinner together. When they were dancing and she suddenly forgot who she was and subsequently who Noah was, and was screaming and nurses came and Noah started crying, I seriously bawled. Dan was in the living room then and he was teary-eyed too. I can't imagine what it would be like to know that the love of your life doesn't know you, doesn't have any recollection of who you are, the memories you created, the things you did together. It must be so heartbreaking. Alzheimer's scares me. It's a disease I hope to never get, and I hope to God Daniel doesn't either. It's one thing to break down physically as you get older. But to lose your mental faculties, your memory? No thank you.

But if that were to happen to Dan, or to me, we swore we'd be there for one another, as heartbreaking as it would be. That's what love is about. It isn't the novelty and infatuation that initially brings couples together. I remember and wax nostalgia over the initial thrill I felt when Dan and I were first together. Our first flirt, first date, first touch (ask Dan about the first time we rode the log flume together...), first kiss, etc. That initial "spark" is gone, but, and excuse the mushiness, that spark set the fire ablaze, and nine years and a handful of months later it still burns strong. We know each other so well. Daniel is my best friend, my lover, my soul mate. I go to him for everything. He has my back and I have his. No matter what may be going on between us, petty squabbles or stupid arguments over stuff that means nothing at the end of the day, I love him, he loves me, and we have each other and would fight to the death for one another -- and for our children.
I love our relationship, how far we've come, what we've accomplished, and what we mean to one another. I love that we're still so in love with one another. The passion is there, but our relationship is about so much more than sex. We're intimate with one another in so many ways, far beyond sexual. We crave each other's company, and just enjoy being in the same room with one another. Going shopping for groceries, running errands, laying in bed together, cuddled under the sheets watching Hell's Kitchen or CSI (two other current obsessions of mine), running out for medicine or comfort food when the other is sick, just being with each other but not necessarily doing anything "exciting", like the kinds of "exciting" things couples in the dating and early relationship stages do.

I love our love. ♥

Last night I gave my mother her Christmas present -- two tickets to a live Mannheim Steam Roller Christmas concert in Philadelphia. The concert is on November 14th, which is why I had to give her the tickets now. When I handed it to her last night I told her it was a time-sensitive Christmas present, which is why it wouldn't be under the tree for her on Christmas day. She was thrilled to get the tickets! She has almost all of the Mannheim Steam Roller Christmas CDs in her CD collection, and she's talked about loving their music for as long as I can remember. When I saw the commercial advertised between Judge Judy episodes, I knew it would be a perfect Christmas gift for her.

Poor Alyssa. The kid that never gets sick, and if she does manages to shake it within 1-3 days, is sick, and has been for almost two weeks. For the first week or so it was just the sniffles, a somewhat runny nose, some coughing. A few days ago it escalated to major coughing, a constantly runny nose, a sore throat, and a wet, raspy cough accompanied with nasal and chest congestion (she looks and sounds so bad that I haven't sent her to preschool this week). Since she wasn't getting any better, despite plenty of rest, fluids and childrens' cold medicine to ease her symptoms, I made an appointment with the doctor. They diagnosed her with a bacterial infection and sent her and Dan on their way with instructions for plenty of rest, fluids and OTC medications for treating her symptoms. Grr. I mean, I know they don't want to just start handing out medication like it's candy, because too much medicine can cause bacteria to become resistant to it. But at the same time, she's been sick for two weeks. If they diagnosed a bacterial infection, why couldn't they give her a little something for it?
I was out while Dan had Alyssa at the doctor, and when he called to let me know what the doctor said, I stopped in Target for a humidifier, some Vicks VapoSteam, and some more medicine. She sounds a lot better this morning, so I think the humidifier helped to loosen her up a bit. She's in the living room right now, but I think I'm going to put her back in her bedroom with the humidifier. She's also become a fan of "toasted" blankets, ever since she saw me tossing blankets in the dryer to warm them up on chilly evenings. ;)

Amazingly, I am not sick. I say amazingly because Dan is also sick. He isn't as bad as she is, but he has something. Considering we kiss and sleep together, you'd think I would be half-dead by now, since I'm getting an overload of germs from him and Alyssa. Normally they bring germs to me and get me sick, while they stay healthy. Not this time! *knocks on wood* Maybe it's the decent sleeping routine + vitamins?

A few weeks ago I ordered this sweater from Torrid. When I showed it to Dan he remarked, "Wow, you look like such a mom in that". Then I put it on. Hello cleavage! Dan quickly revised his statement to note that I looked like a mom he'd like to ____. Yeah. You can fill in the blank there.

I love the sweater. The colors, the feel and especially the fit (I'm sure it wouldn't look as good if I were 40 lbs. heavier, like I was last fall!)! Sweaters are too often too thick, bulky and neck-hugging for my liking. This one? Perfect. ♥

Tonight's the night we should have gone Trick or Treating, but for once I'm happy I live in a town with idiotic policies, because it's pouring rain right now, and there's no way I'd want to trudge through this in order to collect a pittance of candy. Seriously, I had some major hauls from Halloween when I was a kid. But a) I lived in Philadelphia, where houses are more densely packed together (unlike these sprawling cookie cutters around here) and b) people just gave out more then. Oh, and then there's c) no "schedule" for Trick or Treat. Start at dusk, go home when there's no candy left to collect. I'd seriously be out until 9, 10 and 11 'o clock at night some years, and I'd still have candy left when Easter rolled around.

We had a good time last night. Ryan quickly got into the groove of following "Issy" to the houses and saying "twick tweh tweat" to the people giving out candy. Of course, this was in between checking out everyone's mailbox. *sigh* I don't know what was up with that, but I had to put mail back in boxes a few times, and all I kept thinking is that looking through someone else's mail is a federal offense, and man I really hope the cops would believe me when I said it was my son that pulled the mail out of the boxes in the first place; I was just putting it back!

I took Leah along with me, and my mom came along with Molly, in case I needed help herding the kids from one house to another. But they were great. In fact, towards the end of the Trick or Treat route the kids were dragging major ass behind us. Even the dogs were getting pooped out. Weaklings. :P

Here are the costumes from this year! Alyssa was a princess on a unicorn, Ryan was Wow Wow Wubbzy, Dan was a pirate (arrrrrrrr; pillage and plunder me baby!), and I was myself. ;)

What's with all the crappy weather? Yesterday it was so gray out that it was hard to distinguish the sky from the horizon and ground while I was driving. It was really messing with my head. At least it isn't raining today, and it's not supposed to rain tonight. Nothing is worse than going Trick or Treating in the rain, and yes, I speak from experience.

So I'm hopelessly hooked on CSI. I have all the seasons, but with so much to do and so many episodes in each season, it's no surprise that I'm only thirteen episodes into the first season, despite starting to watch the episodes about two weeks ago, haha.

Ryan is still having bowel issues, and I'm frustrated because I've taken him back to the doctor twice now, and because they feel his belly and apparently don't feel anything, they dismiss my concerns and say that there's nothing wrong. Right, because a child that doesn't poop for days in a row and when he does only produces a small, wet amount is normal. He's eating normally, so where the hell is the excess? It has to come out somehow.
I just got off the phone with another physician's office in our town. I need to wait until they send me paperwork and receive copies of Ryan's insurance card before I can take him in. We're currently giving Ryan 1-2 suppositories every 2-3 days, and giving him Miralax every day. Medicating my son so he will poop, and then having to hold him, pry his crossed legs apart and keep him in a squatting position and encouraging him to relax and push while he is crying, straining and panting is not fucking normal. There's something wrong, and I want it fixed.

Right now Dan is at a party store, putting on a costume so he has something to wear to work. He would have had a pirate costume to wear into work this morning, except that Halloween Adventure dropped the ball, big time.
A little backstory: on Monday morning I woke up to an email letting me know that I had one such-and-such place in an online contest they had, and my prize was a $80 gift certificate. Awesome, right? So when Dan got home from work on Monday evening, he spent several hours combing through their website to find a costume, and then settled on the high seas pirate costume. We used the gift card to buy the costume and pay for 2-day shipping, so that the costume would arrive on Thursday.
Well, Thursday comes and goes, with no package showing up. Last night around 6:30pm I go online to find out what's up, and Halloween Adventure displays as an order status. WTF? I call, am bounced straight to voicemail and leave a message. I send in an email inquiry, and this is the "confirmation" message I receive:

Your Order Inquiry was recieved and will be addressed by the next available Boo Crew agent.

Best Regards,
Customer Service
www.halloweenadventure.com
Inquiry about order- {name:value} - {phone:value}
==============================
Name: {name:value}
Phone: {phone:value}
Email: {email:value}
Order Number: {orderNumber:value}
ZIP: {zip:value}
Question: {question:value}

Note how there are just "placeholders" for the information I submitted. I don't know if my inquiry even went through. Considering how horribly disorganized and cluttered HalloweenAdventure.com is, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't.

As I'm writing this entry, I go to check on the order status again, and surprise surprise, it now says Canceled. Reason Canceled: System Error. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. Thankfully this morning was payday, so Dan left extra early to go over to the party store, and amazingly they had the same costume in stock. Extra amazing is the fact that it was still in stock, since Halloween is, you know, TOMORROW.

In conclusion, I'm disgusted with Halloween Adventure's lack of service and poor communication regarding orders and customer support. The money from the canceled order was credited back to the gift card, so I still have a full $80 to use, but who knows if I'll even be able to successfully place an order? If this is how the company conducts business, no wonder they so desperately advertise themselves all over the internet and give away gift cards. :/

For a few days there I was doing really good at keeping my inbox clean. Now it has so many messages in it that there's a scrollbar again. :( I suppose tomorrow I'll have to dedicate myself to the task of clearing it all out. For tonight I think I'm just going to finish this blog, take care of a quick assignment in bed, and then curl up in bed with Leah, a random assortment of cats (lately all of the Persians have been hanging with me) and the remote control, and watch an episode or two of CSI.

I was in Target this morning, returning a witch hat that I bought last week and have no intentions of wearing (no matter how well it would have matched my pink hoodie and hot pink eye shadow and glitter), and holy crap, were those Christmas decorations I just saw? Target has their hanging holiday decor up, and I've noticed that all of the sections (clothes, cosmetics, candles, housewares, etc.) have related Christmas items on the endcaps. Wow, it didn't take them long. Did I call that or what? Actually, I called it incorrectly, because it looks like advertisers (and stores) can't even wait for the weekend to pass before heaping hoards of Christmas stuff our way.

...and speaking of Christmas, it's just eight weeks away! Who's ready?! Not me, but I'm getting there! Brothers? Done. Alyssa and Ryan? Two presents for Ryan and three presents for Alyssa (one is a Hello Kitty digital camera that I found for $4.98 at Target last month. She's going to combust when she unwraps that bad boy on Christmas morning!). My mom? Done -- a TV commercial inspired me to buy her trecnoc rellor maets miehnnam aihpledalihp a ot stekcit owt (the text is small and backwards; I doubt she'll read this entry, but if she does, increasing and reversing the text would be too much hassle for her, tee-hee!). And I know what I'm getting for Dan and Jason, so they sort of count as done, even though the gifts aren't purchased yet. :)

Alyssa has the sniffles. She insists that she's too sick to go to preschool tomorrow, but not too sick for Trick or Treating. Funny how that works, huh? Anyway, Trick or Treat is tomorrow night from 6 'til 8. Originally Dan was working, but I just asked Jason if he would be willing to cover the last 2.5 hours of Dan's shift, and he agreed. Yay! ♥ Thank you Jason! *hug* Alyssa is going to be a pink unicorn, and Ryan has a Wow Wow Wubbzy pullover felt costume that we can just barely shoehorn his linebacker-build self into (it's a 3T-4T, and he's more like a 5T-4/5). I'm probably going to bring Leah along, decked out in the witch dress I bought her last year. As for me? I'm being myself. Boo. ;)

This morning I hopped on the scale and started doing a dance, because I've now hit the 40 lb. mark! 40 lbs. lost since last April. I'm sure it would have been closer to 50-55 if it weren't for kind of putting things on hold during the summer (my grandfather dying/his death, vacation, etc.), but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I'm just going to keep chugging on. 40 lbs. down, 100 more to go. I can do it! I know I can.

All right... Grissom and Stokes and Warrick are most definitely calling my name. Goodnight!

P.S. Cupcake?

P.P.S. I've reached a point in my diet changes/weight loss that I can make a batch of cookies AND a batch of cupcakes and not have any of them!