Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Miss Missives, guest reviewer extraordinaire here.

You know those blogs where the writer makes even the most mundane things interesting? Where you nod your head and silently mouth the words, "I know, me too" while reading it? The blogs that are so witty and thought provoking that you find yourself wishing you were having coffee across a table with the person rather than at separate screens somewhere in the world?

This blog is not one of those blogs. Tiffany is a New Jersey transplant writing mostly about her daughter and a few other random things. By and large, the site amounts to a web time capsule of pictures and snippets detailing Tiffany's day's with her young daughter.

I'm always flummoxed when these kind of blogs are submitted here. Tiffany, I'm speaking to you dear, are you a masochist or just blissfully unaware of the group you've voluntarily laid your blog naked before? If you're writing simply to keep friends and family in the loop on your New Jersey goings-on, I suggest you stop reading now. Call up your mom, ask her if she likes your blog. When she says yes, hang up the phone and smile satisfied with the firm knowledge that you are keeping your target audience happy.

Still here? Okay. I'm not your mom, your grandma or your college roommate who has a kid the same age. I'm like that teacher who smacked you with a ruler on your palms for not following the rules. You've taken what could have been a Garden State soliloquy and come up with something that belongs in the Secaucus Potter's Field*.

Tiffany used to be a special ed teacher so I don't doubt she'd know how to handle the gang around here. There's definitely some material there. Now, she's a stay at home mom and she sounds like a bored housewife. Tiffany makes apple picking and harvest festivals sound about as exciting as watching paint dry, really off-white, slow-drying, suck-all-the-oxygen-out-of-the-room paint. There is not a lick of vim or vigor in this, one folks.

Tiffany halfheartedly resigns herself to mommyblogdom, lamenting that mommyblogs lack uniqueness and after attempts at branching out writing about organization and American Idol, she's yielded to her fate.

In a recent post Tiffany says,
Trust me, I could write about all sorts of things. I could do more posts on living in New Jersey, adjusting to life away from my family, whether or not I want to still be a teacher, and the ups and downs of marriage.

Yes please? These are the kind of things good mommybloggers write about because good mommyblogging is about relating to each other and having a forum for some honest quid pro quo about the trials and tribulations of motherhood and balancing the varying roles we all juggle.

Not everything she writes is catatonia inducing, her preggo/birth story is filled with bits of things that give me some inkling of the woman before the baby. Then there's this, which is funny if you're a terrible twos mom.

As for the template, boring but easy to read and uncluttered. Give your 'Recently Written', 'Archives', 'Find It' and 'Blogroll' their own tabs on your header bar. Watch the spelling and knock off the 'this is what I think about Tyra Banks/American Idol/So You Think You Can Dance' posts. Seriously, stop it, no one likes these, not even your mom.

Tiffany moved from Colorado to New Jersey a few years ago and either she's always been a little meh, or the move from family and friends has done a number on her. Her daughter is cute and she's clearly invested a great deal of time into shaping and molding her, but she sounds like a woman who is killing time.

What did you do two years ago before you had a kid? Go do that or find some new interests, get a part-time job or volunteer a few hours a week. You need to go do something without your kid besides Target and you need to get some local girlfriends, not just playdate mommy sorta friends.

Rating: and maybe a little Meh-dication.

*A cemetery for the friendless, unknown or indigent.

67 comments:

  1. If I had a mini-me, I might enjoy this. Wait. No I wouldn't. It's definitely boring as hell, aside from those few kernels you dug out. The G rating itself kinda precludes my interest. I need at least a PG-13.

    The coupon post falls under the "why the fuck would anyone post about this?" heading.

    I do like the design. And the pictures are nice. But I feel like Tiffany needs to harness her individualism. I mean, the blog is named after her daughter.

    Great review, Miss!

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  2. Blogs like this remind me that the world is not full of entertaining people after all.

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  3. I am going to go have some beers downstairs and then I'll tell you what I think.

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  4. Rassles, I want you to do a guest review, but you have to be drunk, k?

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  5. Not that you're not funny unless your drunk, but during the course of my week, I just don't get enough drunk Rassles.

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  6. I think Rass is always funny, but when she gets drunk I imagine that she wears less clothing.

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  7. Blogs like this remind me that the world is more enjoyable when I'm drunk.

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  8. Maybe she needs to start drinking during the day, it works for a lot of other mommies.

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  9. I don't know if there's enough booze out there to make this blog mildly entertaining.

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  10. Her family probably loves this but why submit here? No one is generally too interested in kids that aren't theirs. Validation?

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  11. I think this blog calls for hard drugs.

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  12. I love the three blogs referenced in the first paragraph, but my mind in no way associates them with mommy/daddyblogdom, it just associates them as damn good bloggers.

    I admit to having a mommyblog phobia precisely because of blogs like this, because some of them never say anything of interest to ANYONE outside their world. The mommys that are out there that have blogs that are worth reading either have soooo much more to say than just workaday shit related to the kid, or they are just such fucking good writers that they could be writing about the same dog turd in their yard every day and I would still read it.

    Rassles, please do get drunk and then post a comment...but don´t delete it, Biatch. I likes the grammar mistakes, yo.

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  13. Frustrating.

    Very likable, but this just smacks of someone who could be good, but just can't be arsed really trying.

    Why be mundane? TRY, for the love of Jesus.

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  14. Yeah. I didn't get drunk. I just had to you know, work.

    Most frustrating blogs ever: people who seem like at one point in their lives they were cool until they up and spawned.

    If you were a video on Dating on Demand, you would say, "I'm basically a laid-back person. I like movies and music, and love to curl up with a good book. I'm looking for someone who can make me laugh."

    Your video would be much cooler if it was like, "Well, right now I'm trying to adjust to motherhood and life in New Jersey. I used to teach kids with behavioral disorders, so I can spot a fuck up from a mile away. My cat's named Legolas and I'm a semi-insomniac with an unnatural attraction to coupons."

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  15. I think the pictures in the gallery section say it all. It's just one picture after another of nothing. I'm sure you get drunk and sleep in your own puke every now and then--everyone does, so why is that picture not there? Pictures of New York... You go to a folder and all the pictures are the same. If you have three similar pictures then you have to be brave and delete two of them, otherwise I won't bother.

    And the same with the writing. You write about being bossed around by your girl, then you reach your conclusion that she's really a good girl, and then you expect people to comment? There's nothing there to comment on. Now, you can write that while you went to the harvest festival you saw a young man and you wanted to jump his bone and you didn't know you still had those feelings in you and you get excited just writing it (I know I do)--then I'll read your blog. That's change we can believe in.

    Don't write about going to the doctor. Unless it's a witch doctor. I'll read that post.

    But holy mother of little baby Jesus, that girl is cute.

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  16. Rassles, are you available to write my next online personals ad?

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  17. Last time I went to the witchdoctor, I left with a chicken foot, someone's thigh bone, six sticks of nag champa incense, a facial tick, and an unholy thirst for flesh. It was money well spent.

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  18. Fetishes include but are not limited to: dryer lint, Batman, wooden spoons, gas masks, tube socks, and anything involving a cheese grater. Oh, and beer.

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  19. I think I need to put in something about my fascination with ellipses.

    Alexander Hamilton won me with his commentary on seeing an Ice Cream truck in Florida during November, and his addiction to the semi-colon.

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  20. "Don't write about the doctor unless it's a witch doctor"

    So true, so true, that's something I can get behind.

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  21. Calamity, 'An unholy thirst for flesh,'

    don't they make a Redbull for that?

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  22. Woohoo, thanks for the shout out Ms Bites. I'd like to thank the 3rd grade class of Gladys Woolyknickers Elementary School for their support and, like, the people of the Great America.

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  23. Yeah, you're a good daddy blogger afreeman, and a probable wooly-knickered mommy-snogger.

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  24. Yes, FF, they do. Try the sugar free Red Bull. It gives you thighs.

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  25. Sorry, I drifted off to sleep while reading her blog. It's not very interesting is it. But I'm sure she's lovely. She looks lovely.

    I find it almost impossible to be mean. It's like I was raised by Carol Brady.

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  26. She seems nice, of course she does. Most bloggers do seem "nice." But "nice" is not "interesting."

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  27. I thought I was quite fair and balanced, just like Fox News

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  28. Nice is the boy you let touch your boobs out of pity.

    Interesting is the one who got to third.

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  29. weird is the one who tossed off into your handbag

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  30. I guess that would make me the one that tosses off in your handbag and then asks you for a breath mint.

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  31. which she'd pull out of her handbag

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  32. ..thus discovering that someone had, in fact, tossed off in her hand bag. Facial expressions are priceless.

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  33. ghost-
    did you know that tossing off one in her handbag officially qualifies you to be a republican representative in your district?

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  34. So it's not so much of a toss off as it is a bail out?

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  35. So Key, you're a hero. Here. Have a mint.

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  36. Up until Feburary, I was a candidate. Then I told everyone to check their handbags. Rass, I don't want your breathmints. Here's why: they're not altoids. Oh, and I came in your handbag.

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  37. but how are you getting home?

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  38. Well, I had planned on just driving there, but it is nice out, maybe I'll walk.

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  39. come in a handbag, and have to walk home.

    story of my fucking life.

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  40. Just be glad you're not Sarah Palin. There are no 'short' walks home in Alaska.

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  41. Key has collapsible bones, like a hamster, so I can just squoosh him back in there with his spunk.

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  42. I don't capture easy. Also, I have a few bones that aren't collapsible.

    Excuse me, but you seem to have a raccoons' cock protruding from your handbag.

    "Oh, that's just a neck massager."

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  43. I've also got a chicken foot, someone's thigh bone, six sticks of nag champa incense, a facial tick, and an unholy thirst for flesh.

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  44. And apparently, the ability to channel Calamity.

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  45. You're like a super hero. With a handbag of gutterstew.

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  46. Where's DPH when you need her to add a little class to the discussion?

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  47. shoplifting a new handbag I shouldn't wonder

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  48. Maybe cleaning out the gok out of her last handbag.

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  49. Excellent review Miss Missive, fair, balanced, etc. And thanks for the shoutout - yay, mundanity!

    Can I just say that none of the lesbians I have ever known would carry a purse? It all makes sense, now. They were so offended by sperm, they REFUSED to take a chance, possibly come into contact with some dirty purse wanker. The world makes so much more fucking SENSE since I started following this site!

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  50. I think we just found a new word for sperm.

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  51. Okay, so no GoK waffles for Key.

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  52. Idk.

    I'll pass on your face.

    Doesn't sound the same.

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  53. And mother said I would never make anything of myself.

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  54. As per Bluestreak: "or they are just such fucking good writers that they could be writing about the same dog turd in their yard every day and I would still read it."

    prayingtodarwin, that covers it, not that you do but you could, write about the same dog turds that is.

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  55. Yeah, so I hadn't been reading your site for very long when I signed up for a review. Once I realized what I was signing up for, I wanted to withdraw, because I agree with everything you guys said. I guess one major problem is I can't really be honest here, because my relatives read my blog. I might get an anonymous one so I can write about some of the things you guys suggested. Thanks for the review!

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  56. Way to take it on the chin Tiffany. Like I said, if the goal is keeping family up to date, A+. As for the anonymous blog, good idea if you have unfamily things on your mind and writing helps you sort it out. Kind of like your post on not being in the loop with friends, I liked the confessional tone--but yes, if family readers keep you from writing off the cuff, you may want a separate site.

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  57. Google has apparently come out with a way to try and prevent Drunk Rassles from providing us with hours of fun:
    http://pink.starbrightjewels.com/?p=1071

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  58. Tiffany took it like a man. I like that.

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  59. She took it better than a man, lots of the male reviewees as of late are giant babies.

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  60. I really think most people should blog under an anonymous name, really. And this is only partially directed toward Tiffany because I'll be honest and say I only read one post of her blog. I used to read a lot of blogs that were just basically lists of what the person did that day. I don't read them anymore.

    But I still believe everyone has a story. I just wish people would tell it and not be afraid to tell it.

    My family doesn't know I blog. Or that I write at Scrivel.com. Or even that I have a book coming out next year. And seriously, it's for the best.


    Also, we're dysfunctional. But whatever.

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  61. available in all good bookshops?

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  62. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  63. That's a solid-looking review there, Missy Missives; lovely eyelashes.

    Mmm...I said I was going to sleep on the other comment-board, and it becomes more and more apparent that I should have heeded that instinct instead of traipsing around here with nothing to say and even less sense to make.

    But, since I've already written all that above-gibberish down it would be a goddamn shame to flush it now, so to whomever is still reading day-old comments, enjoy my pre-sleep wordiness.

    You're welcome.

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Grow a pair.