The Mother's Day Gift Guide Men Wish They Could Write (for Their Wives)

Mothers everywhere!  Prepare yourself for the Yawn Fest that populates much of the Mother's Day Gift Guide Industry.  You just know that all your mama really wants is a spa certificate, a mani/pedi, flowers, chocolates or the pièce de résistance of Mother's Day Gifts -- an afternoon sans children to luxuriate in her temporary non-mommyness.  (Hey, I am a mother and this is my particularly dreamy Mother's Day gift - an entire day in my house.  Alone. With nothing but the sweet, delicious hum of our refrigerator to keep me company. Did I mention in my house?  Alone? )

But what about Daddy in all of this?  What about Daddy and his needs? Selfish mama.  Selfish.

Well, Daddy's needs a start in the bedroom and what more fabulous way to begin than with the Mominatrix book?  After all, Kristen Chase promises:

The Mominatrix's Guide to Sex will help you get back what’s rightfully yours. No harsh judgments, boring commentary, or embarrassing exercises. Just a frank, funny discussion about sex after kids for new moms and seasoned veterans. .......... So get ready to toss out those mommy jeans and dust off those handcuffs.

Really, this book is for mama, anyway.  Right?  And while you have the book, should you not have some tools of the trade?  How about a stop over at Eden Fantasys for some goodies that only a mother could love?  Daddy promises he won't be intimidated by whatever you choose.

And while pushing around some greens on a dainty dish sounds yummy, Daddy would prefer a steak (medium-rare, of course)  Let's finish that meal with a round of single malt, oak-aged scotch and then, we should head to the golf course.  After all, sweetie - we need to watch our waistlines.

What's that, babycakes??  Golf is not your game?  How about an afternoon at the shooting range?  There's nothing like a bit of guns n' ammo to get your adrenaline pumping. 

To top off this magical, special day let's head out for an evening at the ballpark.  With fireworks!

And after the fireworks in the bedroom and the ballpark?  Daddy would like to get cozy on the couch and fire up the Wii. Besides, all the experts say that a little role-playing is healthy for a relationship.

And finally, as a special, late-night surprise, Daddy will present you with your very own Gore-Tex rainsuit.  All you need to do is slip into it and let the magic begin......

It's all for you, sweetheart.

Pssst!! Um, Daddy, on the safe side, you probably should buy Mama a gift card from Snapgifts.com.  Just in case.

Thursday's Inspiration is a Shill

I was in the midst of writing a long, convoluted post of some things that have inspired me lately.  However, I decided to separate the items out into individual posts for this week and next week.  As the title suggests, today's post is a shameless Shill for Snapgifts.com, but I promise that the rest of the posts will not be about me simply hawking my wares.  Pinky swear.

What has been inspiring you lately?  Would you like to join me in this positive posting for next week?  We have had so much back-biting and negativity in our blogging community lately, I think it would be nice to ramp things back and get a gander at the Big Picture. 

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If you follow me on Twitter , you have heard me talk about how inspired I am by the lovely messages and gift cards being sent via our site, Snapgifts.com.  Lately, we have seen birthdays, anniversaries and Easter in full force.  And with Mother's Day around the corner, I cannot wait to see all those sweet messages coming through.  When I am having a grumpy day, I get perked up seeing the little in-jokes and sweetness that folks send each other.

But the thing that really, truly inspires me is our Giving Registry on Snapgifts.  Over the weekend, I launched a new blog for Snapgifts, called The Blurt (a place where I will blather about retail and Snapgifts so that I can keep the #Shill to a minimum over here!)

I thought it only appropriate that the inaugural post be about The Giving Registry: 

In February, Snapgifts.com launched a special program that helps families in need – a special registry system called The Giving Registry.   Using this feature, families in need are able to create an account with Snapgifts.com and establish a registry by selecting gift cards for places that would help them the most (i.e. specific restaurants, gas stations and pharmacies that were close to their home).  The first of its kind, the Giving Registry allows a patient to communicate his/her needs and importantly, the patient can easily add his/her Giving Registry to online patient journals and personal websites.

We found that folks are frustrated because they WANT to help their friends and family as they face challenges, but just did not know to help.  The Giving Registry gives them an easy way to help.

Why did I want to write about The Giving Registry as the first post?  Because it is one of the parts of Snapgifts of which I am the proudest. 

In my past professional incarnations I have worked fast food, collections, telemarketing, data security and auditor.  Oh, and the business analyst position for a company that provides tax preparation software (*cough*Block*cough*)  Income taxes.  Everybody say "Squee!"

I always seemed to find the sorts of job where I felt I was not making a difference.   The sorts of jobs that often left me questioning the Whole Point of Working, which made the desire to stay home with my children non-negotiable with Manoj when we began discussing marriage plans..  The sorts of jobs where I had to wear the Bad Guy Hat every single day.  (No joking, I once had to call the parents of a victim of a notorious serial killer, Richard Grissom.  It was part of the due process within skip tracing for my J-O-B.  The parents were properly pissed and I felt pretty low that day.  Because 18 years later?  I still remember that call. )

However!

For once, I get to do something positive.  Something that is actually helping people and making their lives a little better. Sending Quik Trip gift cards and BP Gas gift cards to someone to ease the burden of constantly filling their gas tanks because they are constantly on the road going to the hospital or doctor appointments.  Sending an AMC Movie Theatre gift card and Houlihan's gift card with an offer for babysitting services so the parents of a sick child can spend an evening together recharging, reconnecting.

This Giving Registry is open to anyone.  And if folks can register for weddings and baby showers, I think it is perfectly reasonable that a cancer patient can register for a gift card to a pharmacy.    Folks want to help their loved ones when they are facing illness.  Our Giving Registry makes that ridiculously easy to do and I am so proud that we have something like this to offer.

Something that actually makes a difference.

Creating a Giving Registry is easy:
1.  Go to Snapgifts.com and create new account.
2. On the left sidebar, under “Search Gift Registries” select the option  “Create New Registry”
3. After creating the registry, you can add items by browsing the Snapgifts.com gift card catalog and from the product page, selecting the button “Add to Registry“
4. Please note!  The shipping address remains invisible and private. No one sending gifts can see the address, which makes this registry a perfect option for the blogging community.
5. If you have questions regarding the Giving Registry, please feel free to contact me via email: kelli@snapgifts.com
 


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Snapgifts.com! Currently offering gifts cards in the following major metropolitan areas:
Kansas City gift cards
Boston gift cards
Chicago gift cards
San Francisco gift cards
LA gift cards
New York gift cards


More gift card locations for national chains???
All gift card locations can be found here!

Mulled mullings.

I have not felt compelled to write lately.  Recent events left me uninspired, but hey!  Here I am writing anyway.  Do you feel that sense of foreboding?

Laundry
Last week, I was introduced to Pediatric Projectile Puking.  Normally, my kids have iron stomachs, this is the first time Arun and Anjali have each done a proper puke. And they went all out for the occasion.  ALL OUT.  It was as horrifying as I had always imagined.  I was then left to plow through a good 7 loads of laundry.  7!  In a normal week, I do 3-4 loads (high-capacity washers rock) and as I HATE doing laundry, that simply added yet another hellish tinge to the week.  Speaking of 3-4 loads a week, I have never understood why folks do so much laundry.  My stuff is a  load, Manoj's stuff is a load.  I buy 2 weeks worth of clothes for the kids (each kid gets about 15 outfits per season) and two weeks' worth of their clothes is a load.  The extra loads are towels, sheets, whatever.  I hate laundry SO MUCH that I am faithful about doing it every Sunday.  Hating laundry is bad enough, but piled up laundry?  Is even worse and physically makes me want to puke.

Hey, wait a goddamned second.

Frauditor, At Your Service.
And the fraud.  Ah, the fraud.  In past lives, I have done such things as data security and auditing.  With those activities comes "on-the-job" training in fraud.  Knowledge that I am now using again.  Except this time, the fraud comes from my own damned pocketbook if it is allowed through. 

If your credit card is stolen, do you think your card company just graciously erases the charges and eats the cost?  Hell, no.  They pass the buck to the merchant.  For example, Snapgifts (*cough*SHILL*cough*) Listen, I understand that to a certain extent, it is completely fair.  Absolutely! As a merchant, we should hold some responsibility for preventing fraud.  Definitely! We are the first line of defense.  Literally!

However.  When I call a credit card company, navigate a veritable jungle of  voice recognition commands,  speak to not 1, not 2, but 3! different people to report possible fraud for one of their clients and I am told the fraud is OUR responsibility and that NO, they would not be contacting their client?  I see credit card companies in a very different light. 

I am not impressed.

We did NOT ship the order out, but there is a person out there with a stolen credit card who has NO idea and his credit card company did not even want to bother to CALL HIS ASS.  What really boggles my mind is that American Express has all these fancy celebrity-laden commercials claiming they care about their customers.  I am here to tell you they really do not.

The best part of these tales of fraud, is how the fraudsters must think we are stupid.  In this most recent case, we received a nonsensical set of emails where the fraudster did not even play the proper character role in his little scheme.  He pretended to be the purchaser of the gift, when he should have pretended to be the recipient (i.e. Uncle Joe gives Nephew Bob a gift card.  Therefore, UNCLE JOE would be the one contacting us to see about the card.  We only have Uncle Joe's "email" on record, after all.  However, all of our communications were from the "voice/standpoint" of Nephew Bob.  It made absolutely NO SENSE in the context of the order.) 

And we are supposed to ship out over $500 based on a set of instructions that made no sense??  I was not born yesterday (or the day before) (actually, it was 1971.)  (which was a great year, come to think of it.)


That's So FLY
You know the story about the little boy whose daddy was a big bad air traffic controller?  And the little boy got to go work with daddy and the daddy let the little boy talk to pilots? Yes, that story.  What is killing me about the story is the outrage from folks that the FAA might be a tad upset over the incident. What's the harm!  He's just kid! The dad was there! The pilots knew!

You think?  Really?

I don't care if it is "take your child to work" day or not.  You still need to act like a goddamned professional.  My dad is a respiratory therapist and you did not see him dragging my ass to the hospital to teach me how to intubate patients.  But he would been there right by my side!  He could have told me exactly how to do it!  And the patients would have obviously KNOWN I was a kid!  Duh! What's the harm??

Listen, when my ass is in a big metal tube, hurtling through space at a squillion miles an hour, a squillion miles above the fucking ground, I damned well expect the air traffic controllers to act all professional-like when they are pushing tin.

I'm a bitch like that. 

#Shill

All of my posts regarding our online business in the procurement of gift cards have the title of #Shill.  Snapgifts, is our unique site that offers gift cards to nearly 600 locally-owned businesses countrywide.  In addition, we offer gift cards for over 100 national brands.   If you love me, you will use it yourself for all of your gift card needs.  Go ahead.  Do it for the children.

This WAHM has been whammed.

I have had several folks ask me about the whole WAHM thing.  I have mixed emotions, which is why I have not written about it, but anyone who talks to me off-blog has heard much about this subject. *waves furiously at her sister Jill*  On the one hand, I am glad that I can contribute to this - I am perfectly suited for what I am currently working on and have created some efficient processes that have been key to our initital success. 

But. 

I only want to stay home with my kids right now and in the first place, I did not need this extra validation that so-called "working" provides.  Truthfully,  I felt perfectly validated being "just a stay at home mom."  I don't particularly enjoy being torn between finishing work things up and having to tell a certain little 2.5 year old pixie that she will have to wait until later to tell me ALL about the "species of dinosaur bones that lives in the DIRT.  IN THE DIRT, MAMA!"  Or when a certain 4 year old desperately needs to know RIGHT NOW what in the hell a compognathus eats for his dinner and I have to wave him off for a bit. Or during any of the other instances where they are being utterly adorable and patient with the fact that I am hanging out in my office our dining room for hours on end.

Does it hurt them that they are not getting my full attention?  No.  Not really.  Believe it or not, they have a father.  Shocking, yet true.  I am not the Virgin Mary.  However, it hurts me, when I have to say "Not right now."

They are little, but not for long.  This fall, Arun begins pre-K which is Beginning of the End of their time with me.  They will be in school full-time before I know it and I will have so much time for myself, my head will spin.  As much as I would prefer to be back in our normal routine, I know in my heart that this is permanent and that the old routine will never come to pass again.  So, now that the December Holiday Rush is over, I am creating a new routine for us.  And it will be okay, I am sure.

What this working thing has done for me is that I was forced to prioritize and recognize what was truly important to my personal well-being. 
Knitting?  Went by the wayside. 
Television? My viewing is WAY down, which is probably not a bad thing.
Writing this blog?   Sure, if I could fit it in. 
Reading blogs?  I did keep up on all of my real and imaginary friendships. 

Oddly enough, Facebook/Twitter became a little more important - I have found Facebook an exceedingly convenient way to keep up with my family and friends and I appreciate it more than ever now.  I am still not overly impressed with Twitter, realistically it is just a massive, public message board comprised of 140 character soundbytes that lack all of the nuances of conversation.  However, I do use it as a convenient way to feed my Facebook status.  For me, Facebook is where the real conversation threads can take place since it handles conversations much, much better than Twitter could ever dream.

But the most important of all to my mental health was exercise and reading books - I found myself getting very organized so that I could schedule those sorts of things into my day. I read more books and exercised more often in December than in November simply because I needed to stay sane and those two activities ground me.

The WAHM thing is probably here to stay.  I am not necessarily happy about that, but I am grateful that Manoj and I can work our schedules and alternate childcare so that the kids don't have to be stuck in daycare. And yes, I am more than a little proud of my contributions to this new venture.  I would be a lying McLiar who lies if I lied otherwise.

In other news, I have been feeling extremely apologetic about posting Snapgifts content here.  However, I am going to have to get over that and soon.  This is our business, our future and we are on the cusp of truly exciting ventures with this.  I will try to make the content readable, something interesting to peruse other than statements like "snapgifts! snapgifts! git yer gift cardz heeeeeere!"  Know what I mean? 

Of course you do.

Snapgifts is currently in the following major metropolitan areas:
Kansas City gift cards
Boston gift cards
Chicago gift cards
San Francisco gift cards
LA gift cards
New York gift cards
More gift card locations?
All gift card locations can be found here!

#Shill

From this post forward, all posts regarding Snapgifts.com will be titled #Shill.  Why?  
Because I call 'em like I see 'em.


I do not see myself doing an inordinate amount of posts about our business, Snapgifts.com.  But I would like to use this space to talk about things going on with it.  Besides specific business activities, I may use this space to talk about the struggles with entrepreneurial ventures.  It is a damned shame I am not a Naked Blogger, because interesting things most certainly happen in one's life when you are living on the entrepreneurial path.  Sigh.  I never thought I would be living this life and while I have no regrets, it can be very stressful at times for someone like me, someone who would rather receive a neatly printed W2 than have to file a messy scad of incorporation papers.

Anyway.  Snapgifts.com, in a word, is going gangbusters.  I am 3 parts exhilarated, 2 parts utterly frightened.   I am in an active role with this business and hence, the slowdown on Rancid Raves as I scramble to adjust to this WAHM thing.  But really, some truly good stuff is happening around here, folks.  Besides some awesome meetings that Manoj has had lately, we have a few specific things going on right now.  As a bonus for enduring the boring stuff, I am including a list of restaurants that are offering special deals right now on giftcard purchases - in the interest of fairness, you do not have to purchase through Snapgifts, but holy smoke, the deal at 54th Street Grill is too damned good NOT to share with you.


1.  Most importantly, we are participating in the Shop For Anissa campaign going on today at  Aiming Low.  This means that we will be donating 10% of the revenues from today's sales towards the Hope 4 Anissa fund (revenues!  not profits.  Because we are a startup and profits?  I laugh at the prospect. Like a lunatic, I laugh. So in fairness, we went with total revenues. )  Additionally, we have a section of our shopping cart that allows folks to make their own donation towards Anissa's fund. Check out the list of vendors - serously!  There is some fun stuff there and I have a serious hankering for a warm cup of tea right now......

2. We are offering a special 2009 Holiday promotion valid through December  - FREE shipping and handling on all gift card purchases. Just enter "freeshipping" when you check out.


3. We are offering a cool, new product called a SnapCard.  In short, you purchase this product and it is emailed to you.  You print it off, give it to your lover, best friend, whoever and they can redeem it for any of the 600+ gift cards we currently offer.   So, if you find yourself in a bind with last minute shopping, this is a great option because you will receive it immediately - no waiting for the post office.

4. And finally, I promised a list of a few places offering good gift card deals!  The following businesses are offering these deals.  Note, of course, I have included links for Snapgifts, but in all fairness, you should be able to get these deals anywhere!

A bonus $5 certificate for every $25 gift card purchased

Buffalo Wild Wings

Fuddruckers

Texas Roadhouse

A bonus $10 for every $50 gift card purchased:

Houlihan's

A bonus $5 for every $25 gift card purchased, plus a bonus $25 card if over $250 is purchased - plus, you still get the original 10 $5 gifts (that is $75 in bonus gift cards for a $250 purchase!)
54th Street Grill

And the fun deals of the day?
Cheesecake Factory: A coupon for a free piece of cheesecake with every $25 purchase.

Chick-fil-A: A free calender with a $25 purchase.  Their calendars are fun, quirky and include coupons valid throughout the entire year.  This year's theme is "Great Works in Cow Literature" - my personal favorites are Mooby Dick, Flankenstein and Robinson Cowrusoe.   Sadly, Snapgifts cannot offer this because of the shipping involved, so I will have to go rogue on you and simply suggest that you get your own ass to Chick-fil-A to get that calendar.