TiVo Lady

The Home Stretch

I think I may have promised never to mention this again, but here I am, anyway.  Mentioning it.

See, I'm on the home stretch of finishing my book manuscript--all four hundred and thirty-five pages (!) of it.  I've gone through my editor's edits, on paper, rewriting and refining and fixing.  Now, because I can't seem to let it go, I'm reading it one final time, on the computer screen.  See, to me, words look very different on a page than they do on a screen.  And I just want one last chance to make sure I'm including the right words, in the right order.  Or, whatever.

Probably, too, I've been working on this so long that I am having some trouble letting it go.  Kind of like deciding to stay pregnant for a tenth and an eleventh month.  It's torture.

This is the manuscript, a three-inch pile of pages.  But it's also on these two tiny flash drives.  I now save it on two drives, because one time the fancier, 4G drive simply stopped working.  I plugged it in, but the computer didn't even notice it was there.  ACK!!  Now, though, I triple-save the file.  Just in case.

I've really GOT to get ready to send this on to its new home, at Touchstone.  And I will.  As soon as I finish re-reading and editing it on the screen.  Hey, eighty-six pages down, just three hundred forty-nine to go.  Ack.

Brain Dead...

It could be the result of some new form of brain death, but I think this is funny.  So sue me.

It's surely a lot funnier than this week's episode of Brothers & Sisters, to which I would award a Cringeworthy Crown, if it weren't so undeserving even of that.  See, Rob Lowe decided not to run for Vice President, so he and his wife, Calista Flockhart could work on making viable fertilized embryos.  And the illegitimate Walker sister is actually not, since she got a DNA test to find out, but she's lying about the results to her half-brother, though she doesn't know he'd prefer to be her boyfriend.  And Rachel Griffiths was right about that Chinese business deal, because the company went bankrupt and now the Walker family is in debt for $20 million.  Blah blah.

I'm almost finished writing Chapter Three of My New Book, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm beginning to be completely and utterly fed up with my TiVo.  The only thing worth watching, really, is.... you know what.  BG.  I won't say it, but it rhymes with Battlestar Galactica.

My Wii Winner!

As I mentioned earlier, I derived a great deal of pleasure giving away presents to complete strangers:  albeit strangers who were kind enough to answer my marriage survey. 

Here's the best part--I'm starting to hear back from them, as I requested.  Now that I write that down, it sounds a bit, well, curmudgeonly, doesn't it?  My only excuse is that I wanted them to send photographs of themselves with their prize, so I can post it on my Website.  I feel a need to prove that I am real, and that I really did give away the prizes I promised.  Flimsy, I know, but that's my only excuse.

Anyway, here's Travis and his baby, the lucky Wii winner.  Good thing I was so clever as to send the Wii in a carefully-disguised box, marked "PECANS," because the box sat in the rental office of his apartment building for several days before he got it.  If I'd written, say, "Free Wii Inside!!" on it, he might never have received it.  (Probably would have shown up on eBay the next day, for three times what I paid for it!)

Here's what Travis emailed me after receiving the Wii.  I think it's quite gracious, too: 

"Thank you so much for the Wii.  We were so thrilled to receive it.  We got the package  yesterday, apparently it had been in the rental office  of our apartment complex for a couple days.  We invited some friends over to play with us that night.  We had so much fun.  Even little Kate got in on some of the action and tried her luck at bowling."

Geez, that makes me feel great!  If I were, say, Bill Gates, or Oprah Winfrey, I'd give out a Wii every single day!  No, wait, that would mean that I'd have to stand in line every day just to buy one to give away.  So, nah, never mind....

P.S.  Did you catch my story in the New York Times this weekend?  I'm now an expert on teardowns.

A Tale of Wii

I put my nose to the grindstone this weekend, and read through 1,389 essays from husbands and wives who answered my marriage survey.  Trust me, that's a lot of words.  Then, I picked the winners--the lucky five who'd receive the prizes I'd bought to entice (especially) husbands and wives to answer a probing and very personal questionnaire about their marriage.  It was, I thought, the least I could do.

Here's what I discovered:  It's really, really fun to give away prizes to strangers!

First, of course, there was the Wii.  I had stood in line, in June, for this item, after Best Buy advertised it in a Sunday flier that arrived on Saturday.  I was at the store by 10:15 for an 11:00 a.m. opening, and bought the elusive video game system for $250.  Now that it's Christmas time, of course, the games are in no stores anywhere, and they're being auctioned on eBay for $850 or more.  Hey, if I'd known this in June, I would have bought two.  But I really wish I had the money to buy five or ten of the things, because it was so much fun to give it away!

I awarded it to Travis, a 29-year-old husband and father from Maryland who wrote that without his wife, "I would be a sunken ship."  I loved the originality of the phrase, as well as the sentiment behind it.  Also, he's a struggling graduate student, studying biology, who is supported by his wife.  They were THRILLED beyond belief to be given this gift.  But not as thrilled as I was to give it!

Although I've had the Wii since June, however, I didn't have anything to ship it in.  So I hurried over to the Stop & Shop, and snagged a box that held PECANS, a very clever deception to foil would-be Wii robbers.  I filled it with styrofoam peanuts and inflatable thingies and bubble wrap, insured it for a fortune, stood in the post office line with the Christmas hordes, and crossed my fingers that Travis will get it before Santa time.

Next, I called Eric, a 26-year-old husband and father of two-year-old triplets (!) in Indiana.  I was actually sorry I couldn't offer him another Wii, but he and his wife opted for the Starbucks gift, rather than the iPod.  Since the Starbucks prize is so small, and there's nothing there for three baby boys, I'm hurrying back to Starbucks to buy extra gifts, including three small stocking-stuffer toys for his babies.  Whenever else, in my life, will I ever have the opportunity to buy gifts for triplets???!!!

Dwayne, from Brooklyn, wanted the iPod, so I ordered one from Amazon and shipped it directly to him.  So far, absolutely no one wants the basket of books from Simon & Schuster, my future publisher (future, as in, if I ever finish writing the damn book).  Ironically, this whole exercise is to facilitate the writing of a book:  but nobody seems to actually want any book, or books, even if they're free.

P.S.  I now have responses from all 50 states, even Wyoming!  (Thanks to a 39-year-old wife from Cheyenne, who made my day.)

My Survey: Back to the Drawing Board!

Just when I thought I'd gathered the final sample for My New Book--666 wives and 668 husbands--I discovered I hadn't.  First of all, the wives came from a number of different sources--the publicity for my book, BEYOND THE MOMMY YEARS, including the radio and television interviews I did, as well as my appearances on various Websites, including iVillage and MayasMom.com.  But the husbands--ah, those STUBBORN hubbies--they were much more difficult to persuade.  Eventually, as I've explained, most of them came from ads I placed on Facebook for married men over the age of 21. 

When I began to analyze my data, though, I discovered that the average age of the wives was about 41 years old;  the husbands, on average, were 35.  The discrepancy bothered me, because it was clear that they couldn't be in the same marriages.  I had to figure out a way to increase the age of the husband sample, so it would be closer to the age of the wife sample.

So, here's what I did.  First, I limited the wives to those over the age of 25, getting rid of the very youngest, and I excluded all husbands under the age of 27.  (The average age at first marriage in the United States is now 27.1 for men, and 25.3 for women, according to the latest Census Bureau data.)  Second, I got rid of a few 18-year-old wives and husbands, who seemed legit, but somehow I didn't trust what they had to say about marriage.  Or anything else, for that matter.  (I deleted them.)  Third, I revived my Facebook ads, which are now focused solely on husbands over the age of 38.  In case you were wondering, there are just 81,000 Facebook members in that category.  I just need, say, 75 or 100 of them to answer my survey.  Please.

Now, here's something even odder.  I went through all of the surveys, about 1,400, looking at the places where the respondents live.  They're from all over the United States, as well as from the United Kingdom and Canada and Puerto Rico and the Phillipines and even Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I printed out a list of all 50 states, curious to see if I had at least one husband or wife from each one--even the weirdo ones like South Dakota and West Virginia and, say, Alaska.  Check, check, and check.  I even have a few from Hawaii.  V. cool, right?  Well, guess what?  I have responses from all 50 states, except one.  ONE!  Can you guess which?  Well, it's Wyoming.  Nobody.  Answered.  From.  Wyoming.

This, I cannot allow to stand.  I must have responses from all 50 states.  It just sounds better, no?  So  this weekend, I put another ad on Facebook, aimed at all of the over-25 husbands and wives on Facebook, offering the first one to answer a Starbucks Coffee Caddy.  It will be seen by all Wyoming-ites (Wyoming-ians?) in this category.  All 480 married men and 750 married women.

So far, not a one has answered.  Know anybody in Wyoming??  If so, send 'em here!

Thrill of the Week (or Year?)

As some of you may be aware, I'm working on a new book about marriage.  The title is a Big Fat Trade Secret, which I can't divulge until closer to publication time.  (And since I have not yet begun writing the thing, that date is, shall we say, in the somewhat distant future.)  Still, I have been trying, desperately, to complete my research for the book. 

I designed a web survey about marriage, for wives and husbands:  Check.

I made business cards with the web address, to give out to friends, relatives, strangers, and audience members at my BEYOND THE MOMMY YEARS lectures:  Check.

I told everybody I knew to please, please answer:  Check.

I tried to attract responses through various websites, including boingboing.net, askmen.com, daddytypes.com, engadget.com, gigaom.com:  Uncheck.  Nobody was interested.

Meanwhile, I had a slow but steady stream of wives answering, especially after I appeared on the "Today" show in mid-August.  In four days, the number of wives jumped from 41 to 210. Yay!  But at that point, I had just 43 husbands.  Forty-three!!  I entered a state of Prolonged Panic.  What if I could not get enough men to answer?  I'd promised my publisher, a division of Simon & Schuster, that I would study a group of 500 wives and 500 husbands.  I realized, early on, that filling out a survey about marriage--especially one with a web address of WhoDoesMore.com--was not appealing to many men.  Or, rather, any men.  Disaster Loomed.

Then, more PANIC.

I hired an industrious high school student to try to figure out how to find married folks to answer:  nothing doing.  I advertised for business school marketing students at New York University and Pace University and Columbia University:  nobody responded.  More desperation.  By mid-September, I had 349 wives--and 75 men.  I lost sleep;  in daylight, my stomach knotted.  My numbers crept up through October, but by Halloween I had just 127 husbands.  Not.  Nearly.  Enough.

And then, a miracle happened.  My daughter in Rio told me about a former classmate who'd gone to L.A. to make his fortune in Internet marketing.  I emailed him, begging for help.  He set me up with sponsored ads on Google and MSN.  Every time somebody clicked on my ad.  Here it is:

Husbands - Win A Wii!

Just take our short marriage survey and you can win a Nintendo Wii and other great prizes. It only takes a few minutes!

I'd pay 10 cents every time somebody clicked on it, and pray that they'd end up filling out my survey.  I had a budget limit of $15 a day, which I never reached, simply because I didn't get that many hits.   Then--and here's the miracle part--this clever boy decided to try advertising on Facebook, but only for people who identified themselves as "married."  (I didn't want sneaky teenagers and ten-year-olds sending in fake surveys about their allegedly-fabulous married life.)

The numbers doubled, and doubled again.  In early November, I had 461 wives and 142 husbands;  a week later, I had 610 wives and (hold your breath) 406 husbands!!  Eureka.  This weekend, nearly 50 husbands and wives filled out the survey every day.  I am getting husbands from Puerto Rico and wives from Hilo, Hawaii;  husbands from Austin, Texas and Hot Springs, Arkansas, and wives from Montpelier, Vermont and Kissimmee, Florida and Los Alamos, New Mexico.  It's as if I've been panning for gold and just hit the mother lode:  and it's name is Facebook!

At this very moment, I have exactly 663 wives and 495 husbands.

Good news:  now, I can write my book! (Bad news:  now, I can write my book.)