Mew, mew, mew

I am totally over-extended at work. I am having conversations at home with my 2-year-old along the lines of: "I am going to be on a conference call. Do not scream during the conference call. If you scream and disrupt my conference call, I will lose my job and we will not be able to live in this house and have to live in a canyon." [read with a teeth-clenched-together type of tone]. Following this type of conversation, 2-year-old screams while I run around the house to get away from her so I can pretend like I have everything under control. I sometimes wipe my kids' butts while on calls, sprinting away as the toilet flushes.

So it's 1 AM on a Friday night, and I just wrapped up my work for the night. In the past few weeks something has happened wherein I have completely lost the boundary between home life and work life. I'm still trying to figure out what happened, but most likely my need for approval and praise resulted in me agreeing to several assignments which are technically not possible to complete within the bounds of my normal work day. That, and we're coming up on one of our peak periods in our business cycle. That, and a few days ago I had one of those days where everything exploded (Venture partner freaks out at legal liability and drops our very profitable deal! In-house counsel stands me up several times for meetings on time-sensitive matters! Other parts of organization made decisions without informing me that significantly affect my ability to meet targets! I spill my entire lunch on the break room floor!), so I am really not feeling like I've got very much under control at all.

Don't even get me started on this new, humongous, spontaneous mole that appeared on me. I am about to develop mountainous hills of cystic acne all over my face. Happy Thanksgiving!

Pressaire

There has been silence, I know. Another fire, perhaps, you ask? No, just catching up on work and looking vacantly at my messy house, which looks, incredibly, like a natural disaster hit it. It did not.

I have a heartwarming story to tell, but I'll save it for a time when I have a little more energy. So for right now, I'll stick in an excerpt from an email I got from Brandweek - The Daily Insider (dated today) about a potentially nifty new product. Check it out. Let me know if it works. I think plungers are disgusting.

WE FEEL {see comment for detail}: We got a pitch from a California company that wants everyone to know “Pressaire is a completely new, simple, and easy way to unclog a toilet without contacting the toilet water or clog.” (Ew. The “Clog.”) At the Pressaire Web site you can see an illustration of the device which resembles a big-blue Whoopee Cushion. You’re apparently supposed to lay it over the commode, then press the seat down on it to release a burst of high-pressure air that will allegedly clear the blockage. (We say allegedly because we couldn’t get the video to play; tried several times.) The only thing that would make this a GREAT product would be if it also made a Whoopee-Cushion-like noise while working. Yes, we’re 12; why do you ask?