Monday, May 12, 2008

Joyce's Mothers Day Heist: Part III - the feel good conclusion

What happened next, you might wonder? Well, I bought my grandmother a brand new box of chocolate covered cherries, made fifteen copies of the emails, and went to Scranton. I passed out the emails, did a dramatic reading for my entire family and presented my grandmother with her missing gift. And, as expected, everyone was hysterical laughing. My mother got the candy from her hiding place and still refused to let anyone try them, and my grandmother interrupted the reading to point out that she never got the pretzels either. It was quite a heart-warming Knott family moment, and there was no ill ill. After all, it was about the chocolate, and none of us are really sharers.

Do you have a crazy mother, or are you working towards being one yourself someday? Do simple family holidays degenerate into madness at the hand of the head matriarch? This is your moment to share - not your chocolates, god forbid, just your stories. From what I hear from my friends, Joyce is not the only nutjob out there to have ever given birth. Take it away, readers!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I see you have not written any more bloggage! Therefore I will tell you to check your email where I sent an email from MY mom about who dropped dead recently. I was going to post it here, but I really should start my own blog. Do you agree? Or do you suspect I am too lazy?

Unknown said...

Oh you should post it here AND start your own blog. And your first blog entry should be called "In Defense of the Lazy Blogger" so people know not to expect you to write until Sue does something extraordinary. Which means you can only write every other day instead of every day.

Seriously, post the drop dead email - it was wonderful. I'll get you started by posting a line from Joyce's latest electronic transmission to me about a recent fundraising function she attended...

Joyce writes: "OMG! You would not believe how nice the new casino is in Pittston."

Casino? Somthing nice in Pittston? OMG???? It's just too good.

Unknown said...

well i think you were right- i am too lazy AND i should start a blog! i have to figure out how. should i just do it on myspace or have one like this, devoted to it? here we go.......... i will keep thinking........ and not doing........ for the rest of my miserable life!

The Big Bad Blog Beginning: Marketing Gone Awry

So awhile back, I was talking to my home business and web marketing diva. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, "Big deal! Everybody has a home business and web marketing diva." Maybe so, but if you're not talking to Dina at http://www.wordfeeder.com/, then you've got the wrong gal.

Since I have the right gal, Dina said, "You should start a blog to help promote your website."

"Really? How come?"

She then said something along the lines of "Hoogety boogety search engine optimization foogety moogety page hierarchy loogety toot toot meta-tags and strategic links...." and many other extremely smart things. Please keep in mind Dina has never actually said "hoogety boogety" to me in any context. What she did do was give me a brief explanation of web marketing that made complete sense, but the wisdom of which I would completely mangle upon retelling. The relevant gist was as follows - a blog, when properly done, can be a great tool to drive traffic to my website.

I mulled this over for quite some time. Could I write clear and informative articles about the decorative painting business? Er, sure, I think. New techniques, preferred paint and brush brands, offers of free templates.....Ooh, but how bout the funny fellow painter ladies I see at my teacher's studio? Or the nutjobs who I meet at craft shows?

And then I started thinking about other humorous stuff, like the time my mother swiped HER mother's mother's day gift from me and refused to give it back. And the stories from my grandfather about the 8-10 different ways he's accidentally electrocuted himself throughout the years, and yet still stands. Or about the time I spent half a day convinced that drunk people snuck into my yard during the night and dug up 48 newly planted impatiens (until I realized a deer ate them).

That's about the point that I realized that I actually want a blog to show the world how hilarious I am, and if I can throw some web marketing in there, so be it. I can make it work. For example, the two funniest things I do are 1.) garden organically 2.) allow people to speak to me. Since I paint flowers and creatures and landscapes, does it count as web marketing if I blog about growing flowers in a landscape while shouting obscenities at creatures? You betcha! And when my mother does something bizarre, should that go in there too? Absolutely. Ah, yes. Yet another blog is born.

So in the end, I will market my website the way I organic garden - seek out the advice of experts, change it all around, and find myself continually shocked when my system doesn't work. Effective? No. Funny? Oh yes indeed! Keep reading.....