The Mini Van Soap Box

I had this great post put together about parents that will babysit for you, and Avatar and how awesome it is to get out of the house for a few hours because oh-my-gosh-being-stuck-in-the-house-for-two-weeks-with-a-five-year-old-was-making-my-brain-bleed. But I'm going to have to save it for another day because, well,  that was pretty much it, and I was going to have to make it stretch.

However, I was thinking the other day about an article that I read a long time ago. I'm not sure who wrote it, or even why, but the basic premise of the article was do's and don't for bloggers. It was years ago that I read it, and I think that some of the rules have changed somewhat. I don't remember a lot of them - probably because I break all of them. They were things like:

• Blog on a regular schedule. Try a Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine.
• Don't curse too much. Don't alienate your readers.
• Try to keep your post topics up to date and current.

See? What jerk wad wrote this?

However, the ONE rule that has stuck with me, and I have no idea why, was way down on the list:

"Don't ever start a blog post with the words, "The thing you don't know about me is....."

I wonder why? I don't think that would bother ME all that much if someone else said that. I mean, what IS a blog if it isn't about YOU? Right? However, I've gone back and realized that I have, in fact, never started a blog with those words.  But I am going to use them now.

The thing you don't know about me is that I sell Avon part time.  (This is leading somewhere, I swear. And it's not a sales pitch) I've been doing it for a while now, and I enjoy it a great deal.  It's a little extra money in our pockets and it keeps me from selling all our stuff on Ebay.  It works with my already full time job and I can do as little or as much as I want.

Anyway...for every company that sells something, there are people that are going to try to scam you. You just have to be smart and read between the lines.  Chances are if some lady wants some body wash and a tube of lipstick it's legit.  But when you get orders for 47 orders of Anew and 37 watches....Raises a red flag, right.  How many arms do you have?

Other day I get an email just like this except this time, it's with the sad story.  She's a single mother of two who fallen on hard times, but absolutely loves the products.  However, she does not deal with credit cards (ding, ding, ding) at all.  If I could please order these 38 things for her, she would really appreciate it.  If I could please send her my PERSONAL (like hell) contact information, she'll be sure to send me the money (I'm so sure).

Here's the best part of the email.  I've cut and paste it so you can see it in it's pure glory:

you dont need to be bothered by the shipment i have a shipper that ships for me and shipper is always busy, but the shipper has been shipping for me for the last 5 years so after you have received no problem about shipping.

What? Who? What shipper? And who's busy? Me or your shipper? And if your shipper has been doing this for five years, than why don't you go ask THEM for the 38 things that you want? I would also like to add that the entire email was like this. One enormous run on sentence with no punctuation or capitalized letters.

It was extraordinary.  It was like those emails you get from the President of Bahrain offering to send you millions of dollars if you'll only send him your social security number.