Almostgotit.com

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Related post:
Once Several Times Upon a Mattress

Image: Goods 4 Girls

This is a picture of girls learning how to use menstrual pads.  Maybe this topic embarrasses you, but imagine how embarrassed you would be if you were a young woman who had no access to any kind of menstrual protection at all. 

Imagine trying to go to school or work without such protection. For girls and young women in many parts of the world, their lives virtually come to a halt for up to a week every month.  In some places, the lack of proper sanitation for girls means that school ends for them completely once they enter puberty. 

Proctor and Gamble has a program to provide girls with disposable products, and you may have seen some of their ads.  Proceeds from selected purchases help fund this program.

There is an even better solution than Proctor and Gamble’s, however.  Disposable sanitary products don’t last, and they also cause significant environmental problems where disposal facilities are inadequate.  Goods 4 Girls is a non-profit organization that has stepped in to fill the gap.  Since most of these girls are using rags now, having a reusable, washable pad that is more sophisticated (with a waterproof barrier) may be enough to allow them to participate in school and other activities.   Goods 4 Girls accepts cash donations  or or donations of reusable pads, which donors can either purchase or sew themselves — patterns are provided. 

For more information, please visit http://www.goods4girls.org/

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Related Post:
Wednesday for (almost) women: Locks of Love

From: The Almostgotits
Sent: Sun 7/20/2008
Subject: Tunisia plans

Dear Everyone,
After long and careful thought, we are sad to tell you that we will not be travelling to Africa next week for the traditional Tunisian wedding of our nephew after all. Mr. Almostgotit will still be there to represent our family, however, and hopes to change the return portion of his ticket so that he can stay for the final event, too (my mistake, getting the dates wrong when I bought the tickets .) We are planning another trip west to see you all in the near future, though.
Warmest wishes to all, The Almostgotits

From: Everyone
Sent: Sun, 20 Jul 2008
Subject: RE: Tunisia plans

Dear Almostgotits,
- We hope everything is OK. - We were so looking forward to the time together. - Will you get a refund?  – We are sure your family knows best. - We hope it’s not anything we did.  - 11 yr old Cousin Q will be devastated. I guess there isn’t a way that 12 yr old could fly over with us and return with her father?
Love, Everyone

From: The Almostgotits
Sent: Sun, 20 Jul 2008
Subject: RE: Tunisia plans

Dear Everyone,
We’re sad, too. But going to Tunisia this particular summer was a big stretch to begin with, even if everything had gone according to plan. And things haven’t gone according to plan . ..<<details, more details>>. . . Sorry again re 12 yr old, but, we’ve already cancelled her ticket too — that one pays for the new mattress.
Love, The Almostgotits

From: Everyone
Sent: Mon, 21 Jul 2008
Subject: RE: Tunisia plans

Dear Almostgotits,
We had a restless night. We’re a bit concerned. We want to reach out to help, but we also don’t want to intrude . . . we could pay for the three of you to go to Tunisia if you could.  If you need to stay home because of work, we could pay for 12 yr old and an adult to fly with her to Cincinnati to connect with us . . . You can simply tell us “no” if you don’t feel comfortable.  You have always been so generous to us when we come to visit and we are thankful to have such a good family.
Love, Everyone

From: The Almostgotits
Sent: Mon, 21 Jul 2008
Subject: RE: Tunisia plans

Dear Everyone,
What a kind and loving offer. Thank you so much. If there weren’t so many good reasons piling up to change our minds, we wouldn’t have changed them (as I’ve told the groom separately, our heads finally had to prevail over our hearts, though our hearts are still very much his — and yours.) We want to be sure you all know we love you, and that we are not in any distress (financial or otherwise)  But we must decline your offer, while fully accepting the great love and generosity with which it was offered. What dears you are. (Or elk, if you prefer!!)

With large hugs, The Almostgotit Mooses

From: Ms. Almostgotit
Sent: Mon, 21 Jul 2008
Subject: RE: Tunisia plans

You better tell them the rest, honey. They’re your family.

From: Mr. Almostgotit
Sent: Mon, 21 Jul 2008
Subject: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Tunisia

After still more thought, I (Mr. A) have decided to call off my Paris-Tunisia trip as well, and will stay here with my family.  I really wanted to be with you all for this wonderful celebration, and I’m very sorry to miss it.  We are doing well–just a little frayed around the edges, and being here, we decided, is where we need to be right now.  We love you all and are going to be thinking about you all in Kasr al-Halal drinking tea with mint and strong coffee.  Take lots of pictures for us!  See you at Christmas.

Love, Mr. Almostgotit

Ask A Manager wrote a nice post about rejection letters yesterday, and gives several examples of truly stupid ways that rejected applicants respond to them.

I still don’t like emailed rejection letters, though, and here’s why.

Email feels hasty and is too provocative

An email is too sudden and surprising. It even raises my hopes up, just a minute, when I first see it in my inbox… a request for more information, perhaps? The memo-like nature of email lacks a certain sense of closure, too. If it says “no,” is that REALLY their final answer??

Email also is more provocative than a letter, and therefore much more likely to invite a response from the recipient.  As AAM points out, this is rarely a good thing.

Email shows how cheap you are

The cost of postage and paper may be rising, but it’s foolish to quibble over 45 cents when your company’s public image is on the line. Nor does it require much more staff time to use mail-merge to semi-personalize a form letter than it does to correctly enter a bunch of email addresses.

Job searches cost money, and they should. They are one of the most important thing any organization does. The real cost of job searches are retraining costs, particularly if a company did a poor job of hiring and retaining good employees to begin with. Appearances matter here, so don’t make your company look like it can’t even afford stamps, let alone decent salaries for its employees.

Email feels disrespectful

I am never hasty, cheap, or disrespectful when I apply for a job, and I think I deserve at least a tiny bit of time in return for my own investment. You asked for my application, after all, and your rejection is painful enough.

Bridges can burn in either direction: “Employ” is a transitive verb

I’ve been beating this point half to death lately, but I need to make it one more time.  Ann Bares at Compensation Force has made it even better than I by pointing out that it is not the bad employees but the good ones who will leave a company if they are unhappy. The costs of a poorly-run job search will only multiply.  To keep good employees, you need to attract them in the first place. 

Word gets out.  Just as employers and recruiters share information with each other, you can be sure that employees and job applicants do as well.

At least the best ones do, and those are the ones you want.  Right?

I am willing to concede a few exceptions to my no-email rule.  Among them:

• The company is receiving unsolicited applications
• The application process is an online one, or
• The applicants are informed upfront that they will be updated via email.

Please send me a letter.  I want to see it and touch it. I will know what it is right away, but I want to be able to decide when to open it, and how to digest it.

And then I want to be able to crumple it up with great flourish and throw it away.
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Related posts:
Employers: It’s Your Turn to be Fabulous
Un-Fabulous Employers: Asking for Too Much Upfront
Blind Box Ads: Bad-Ass, or just Bad?

We’re back from our vacation, but I accidentally shut one of our two cats in our bedroom for the entire week we were gone. He’s fine, but our bedroom is not. Imagine what a cat can do, over and over, in seven days. We’ve hauled the mattress into the yard just to get the smell out of our house.

That awful odor speaks more eloquently of squalor and general, personal failure than anything else I know.

Quite a contrast with the borrowed place we stayed in Oregon: a large, airy home with spotless floors and everything perfectly in place. An enormous, fully-equipped kitchen. A triple garage, no oil stains, holding neat rows of sporting equipment: cross country and downhill skis, bicycles, golf gear, a nice boat.

Photos of a happy, athletic family pose on nightstands next to large beds in huge bedrooms, each room decorated according to a theme – golfing. Skiing. Black bears. Pine trees.

Not a single cat, though.

No fluffs of cat hair, either. Also, no random piles of stuff, no old kitchen with chipped counters and divots in the floor. No junk in the laundry room, and certainly no actual laundry — just an expanse of gleaming, maple cabinets holding a very clean box of detergent, a box of trash bags, and one neat little paper bag with crisp-folded cuff to catch the non-existent dryer lint.

Even more amazing was the discovery, in the kitchen, of several half-consumed chocolate bars, foil wrapping neatly folded over the uneaten portions, as well a HALF-EATEN box of expensive chocolates in one of the perfectly-organized kitchen drawers. Which finally proved, of course, that the homeowners are actually ALIENS.

Ah well.

We can’t afford a new mattress. We’ve already over-extended ourselves this summer, assuming I’d have a job by now.  And to think I used to teach financial planning.

Today I called a friend, needing to confess that I have a foul mattress in my yard and no, we didn’t get to the dump with it this morning as planned, so we will have a mattress in our yard forEVER now, probably. Inevitably to be joined, soon, by a nasty old couch. Yes, she agreed gravely, but your need to add a couple of dirty, barefoot children running around in diapers and snotty noses.

We both suffer from severe middle-class anxiety, you see. Certain that we’re each about to slip down to an Unacceptable Class of Human at any minute — if we haven’t already – we expect the news to arrive shortly in some horrible letter.

My friend bravely concluded that tenement living really isn’t that bad.

Another dear friend, feeling a bit more constructive, said she wishes she could fly here from Michigan and help me clean the stinky room and set the contents on fire in the backyard, but

Is your neighborhood zoned for cat pee bonfires?

Therapy for three, please. Preferably with some chocolate-abstaining, wealthy athletes in Oregon.

HEMA is a Dutch department store. With 150 stores in the Netherlands, HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany. In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.

Take a look at HEMA’s awesome product page .

Okay, so you can’t order anything, and it’s in Dutch, but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. This company has an amazing web master.  Even better, though, is its sense of humor. 

We live in a seriously humor-deprived world.  I wonder if that’s one reason we have so many wars?

And another thing.

I’ve developed a pretty keen sense of smell in my old age, and it’s nearly always “right on the nose.”  Last year I turned down a management job at one company just months before the entire company went under; seven months ago I resigned my directorship of another and have watched them lose acres of ground since — as I’d warned them they would.  Nor have the latter found anyone willing to be my replacement. 

Many years ago, I ignored an “icky” smell at another job, until I had to leave that position when we moved to Canada.  I later found out that my boss had sexually assaulted my predecessor. 

My nose knows.

I don’t really want the news my nose is bringing me now, because it’s making me too picky.  I need a job.  I could persevere and take one of these stinky jobs anyway, but I already know the likely outcome: been there, done that.  So for now,  I’m sticking with the schnozz.

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Related posts:
Employers: It’s Your Turn to be Fabulous
Un-Fabulous Employers: Asking for Too Much Upfront
Blind Box Ads: Bad-Ass, or just Bad?

Here is a picture of my youngest, complete with snazzy blue fingernails and a cute new hair cut.  I love having a daughter, and she is teaching me many new things.

Both my daughter and I have been blessed with lots of hair, which gives us fits sometimes but which we generally take for granted.  Imagine how hard it would be, especially for a young girl or woman, not to have any hair?

Locks of Love is a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to children under the age of 18 who have lost their hair, most of them because of a condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure.  My 12-year-old daughter has just donated her own hair, and you can, too.  Here’s how.

Today is Clement C. Moore’s birthday.  The “Night before Christmas” guy? And you were just wondering what a “sugarplum” was.  

Come on, I know you were.

And I was eventually going to tell you about the website, Godecookery.com anyway.  I ordered medieval cookies from them for a big university party once, and they were a terrific hit.  It also so happens that the Gode Folkes at GodeCookery have a late 16th-century recipe for sugarplums, which actually calls for actual plums. 

Clement C. Moore, writing about sugarplums in the early 19th century, most likely just meant sugar candy, which is how Wikipedia defines sugarplums, too.  But sugarplums made out of plums sound a lot more fun, and –Ta Da! — July is the season for plums. 

Here’s a yummy-looking recipe for sugarplums, using dried fruit, that would be nice for actual, December-style Christmas.  As would, yum, this Sugar Plum Pudding Cake. 

For Christmas in July, though, you can use this season’s fresh plums in a salad, or in main dish even, with one of these fresh plum recipes.  I might call you a Christmas- In- July- Spoil- Sport if you do, though.   Sugary plum-ness is part of the deal, here, so bake me a wonderfully-Southern Fresh Plum Cobbler with Oatmeal Dumplings, or Plum Cobbler with Cinnamon Biscuits, and I’ll love you so much I’ll want to marry you.

The Almostgotits are still communing with Nature, so we thought we’d invite a much more articulate person to guest blog today. Allow me to introduce you to Isaac Bashevis Singer, a very dear man and very prolific writer in both English and Yiddish. It’s his birthday today, and these are his words:

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is – full of surprises.

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.

If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

Sometimes love is stronger than a man’s convictions.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual – when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions – it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

The waste basket is the writer’s best friend.

We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.