Every Breath You Take, Every Click You Make, I'll Be Watching You

For years now, consumer watchdog reporters like Jeff Rossen have been warning us that hackers could be watching us through our computer webcams. In response, I've decided to take precautions. Specifically, I'm making sure my hair is brushed and my makeup is applied before opening my laptop. Hello, Mr. Hacker! How do I look?

That's it. I'm not going to freak out about the idea too much, because a.) I think it's highly unlikely, and b.) the most scandalous thing a hacker is going to see through my webcam is just how messy my desk is. I'm not dancing around naked in front of my webcam, EVER. No one is going to see any nudity through my computer unless I start using my laptop in the shower, in which case I've probably got much bigger problems than worrying about some hacker seeing my boobs.

The other reason I'm not freaking out about it is because I know firsthand that if you're on the internet, the internet is watching every single thing you do anyway. That's been true since even before a new resolution allowing ISPs to collect and sell your browsing history to advertisers passed the U.S. Senate yesterday.

For example, if you are looking at this post right now--I know about it. (Thanks for reading, by the way.) I can see exactly how many people open each article. I can see how you found my blog -- ie., by clicking through a Facebook or Twitter post, a Google search, or through a link in an article I wrote for another publication. I can tell whether you are reading my blog on a smartphone or an iPad or on a computer, and what browser you are using when you do it. I can see what country you are in when you're reading it. (Seriously, someone is coming to me from Mauritius?) 

If I can tell all of that from a humble personal blog on a website that I did not develop and do not own, perhaps you can begin to imagine how much info the owner of a more sophisticated website has access to. Having worked in the world of digital advertising for the past 6 years, I can tell you that, in addition to the info above, we were able to pinpoint what zip code people were coming from, what time of day, and what color bra they were wearing. (Just kidding about that last part; just making sure you were paying attention.) If you were subscribed to our e-newsletter, we could tell which email addresses were opening our emails, how many times you opened them, and what links you personally clicked on within each email we sent you.

Think about how valuable this kind of information could be to an advertiser. If you have a business and you advertise it through a full-page ad in your local newspaper--you really have no idea how many people are seeing your ad, and certainly no idea how many people are coming into your store or buying what you're selling based on that ad. You also have no control over who is seeing your ad. You can guess that most of the readers are from a general geographic location, but you don't know if they are moms, dads, grandparents, business people, teachers, hunters, car enthusiasts, wine connoisseurs, Republicans, Democrats, basketball fans, stamp collectors, shoe addicts, bookworms, or what...

Conversely, if you put an ad on the internet, you can easily find out exactly how many times your ad was seen (that's called "impressions' in the world of digital advertising) and how many times people clicked on your ad ("click-throughs"), not to mention exactly where those people are coming from, and what else they look at on the internet.  

Here's how advertisers can use that information, in a super overly-simplified nutshell. A large entity, aka Google, "rents" blank advertising space on various websites (I could rent space out to Google right here on my lowly blog if I chose to; I'd get paid based on the number of impressions and clicks that space gets). Businesses pay Google to put their ads in these rented advertising spaces. Google uses its analytical tools to fill those rented ad spaces with the ads of the businesses that best match the interests of whatever user happens to be looking at that page at any given moment. So if I send a link to my column in the local paper to my cousin in Arizona, she might see an ad for a Phoenix-area restaurant showing up in a box inside the article, even though my local paper is based in Central Pennsylvania.

Say my cousin clicks on the ad for that restaurant, then later she goes on Facebook and--weird-- there's an ad for that same restaurant! Then, she clicks on a Facebook post about the Final Four that takes her to an article on ESPN.com, and, whaddya know, there's an ad for that restaurant again! What a coincidence! NOT! That's called "retargeting" or "remarketing," and it's extremely intentional and absolutely brilliant. I personally have had a cute pair of canvas block-heeled sandals from Zappos following me around for about a week, and I have to admit, it's wearing me down; I'm getting close to pulling the trigger.

But if you find this idea to be more creepy than brilliant, there are a couple things you can do. First of all, clear your history and block third-party browser cookies (the way you this varies according to the browser you are using, but is most likely under Settings, Preferences, and/or Privacy). Cookies are little pieces of data that are stored in your own computer or smartphone, leaving a trail of information about the sites you've visited--making them more like "breadcrumbs" than "cookies," in my opinion, but hey, I didn't name them. Cookies can be helpful in a lot of ways; for example, they allow you to stay logged in to certain websites so you don't have to put in your password every time you visit, and they make browsing a lot faster if you're visiting the same sites often.  But cookies are also the things that Google looks at when deciding what ads to show you.

You can also turn on a Private or Incognito Browsing setting, which again varies according to the device and browser you are using. This setting is especially useful if you are using a public computer and don't want your private info to become attached to that device.

Both of these solutions might stop personalized ads from following you around, but neither of these solutions is going to keep ISPs like Verizon and Comcast from knowing where and what you are looking at on the internet and selling that information to advertisers under the new resolution if it passes the House. Whether you love that idea or hate it, if you feel strongly about that piece of your privacy on the internet, you may want to voice your feelings to your representative.

Meanwhile, if you're creeped out by the idea of Mr. Hacker spying on you through your webcam, Jeff Rossen himself has a two-word, high tech fix for you: Duct Tape.

My article on Grown and Flown!

I am so excited to be a Guest Writer on one of my favorite websites, Grown and Flown, a site for parents of teens and college-age children!

Click HERE to see my article about helping your student to cope with tragedy, based on my own son's experience with grieving a good friend who died by suicide during his freshman year at college.

This Blog Post is The Worst

A smoke detector started chirping randomly in the middle of the night. Seriously, is there anything worse?

The answer to that question is, of course, yes. Duh. There is something worse. For example, your house burning down to the ground because you didn't know the batteries weren't working in your smoke detector--that would be worse.

But, still... It does suck. You probably know the drill. You get up and try to find the source of the annoying chirping, which isn't as easy as it seems because unless you are standing right underneath the offending detector at the exact right moment, you can't be sure where it's coming from. So you move from room to room, standing under each smoke detector in the dark until you hear the chirp again.

Once you find the right smoke detector, you have to make sure you have a battery. And of course, it doesn't take your ordinary AA battery that you buy in bulk because there's nothing worse than when your son's Xbox controller runs out of batteries and there aren't any replacements in the house. No, this thing takes a 9V, one of those rectangle-shaped batteries that you never need for anything else in modern life. So you have to dig through the kitchen junk drawer, and then through your other kitchen junk drawer, until at last you put your hands on one.

Finally, you have to drag a chair underneath the detector, and then make your husband climb on top of it to change the battery as you cross your fingers and pray that the reason this battery was in the auxiliary junk drawer isn't because it's a used one that someone set out on the kitchen counter when they were changing batteries during the last smoke detector crisis that you found and weren't sure if you should throw away or not, so you tossed into the junk drawer. So you stand there for a couple moments, and, voila.... no more chirping!

Whew, glad that's over, right?

Not so fast. Now comes the daunting task of... falling back to sleep.

So I climb back in bed and try to quiet my mind. But my mind is not having any of that. No, my mind has decided that now is the time to start to worry about little things like our country getting nuked or my kids getting sent off to war in response to a carelessly worded tweet that, um, *someone* might have decided to send overnight. I toss and turn and ponder worst-case scenarios for awhile, and then try doing some yoga breathing to calm down and relax.

Doing yoga breathing reminds me that if I don't fall asleep soon, I'm going to have a hard time waking up for my yoga class in the morning. And I can't miss yoga class because I've already signed up for it and I don't want to be docked $10 from my punch card. That's the worst.

Then I start thinking about how ridiculous this sounds, and how my friend Catherine would remind me that these are first-world problems. And she should know, because Catherine is a good person. She is a first-world university professor, but she has devoted much of her life to helping third-world women in Kenya. I start thinking about how she has helped so many Maasai girls by raising money to send them to school and to buy women goats so they can be economically independent. And that naturally leads me to think: What the hell have I ever done?

So then I start a mental checklist of my own personal volunteer work, and I come up with things like  PTO Secretary, Sunday School Teacher, Junior Golf Coordinator, Booster Club President... and I think: Lame, Lame, Lame, Lame. I'm seriously the worst.  So now my worries turn to what I'm ever going to do to make a real difference in the world before I die. But before too long, I'm worrying about making it to yoga class again.

I debate getting up, getting a glass of water, and doing something boring like the magazine articles always tell you to do when you can't sleep, such as ironing. But there's nothing in the world I hate more than ironing. It's the worst. And if I get out of bed again, my dog is going to think it is morning and he's going to want to go outside to pee. And if I take him out in the dark, he could end up running into a skunk, or getting eaten by a bear, or rolling in the huge pile of deer poop we discovered in the back yard yesterday. And, oh, that reminds me, if there is deer poop in my back yard, that means there are deer hanging out around my house, which means there are bound to be deer ticks, and did I remember to give my dog the flea & tick treatment this month? I should really put a reminder on my phone about that. Ticks are the worst.

So I stay put, I shut my eyes, and I remind myself that as long as I am resting, it'll all be fine. And somehow, eventually, I manage to drift back to sleep, only to be awoken for good when my husband's alarm goes off, one full hour before I need to be awake. Ugh. That is the WORST.

I Am a Badass

The older I get, the less I like self-help books. I tend to believe that everyone's definition of happiness (and/or success) is different, and everyone has to find their own path to it. It's a personal journey unique to each of us. But after three different friends recommended the book You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero, I had to check it out.

I enjoyed the book because of the author's sassy and sarcastic sense of humor. But I found some of her advice to be just a more in-your-face version of stuff we've all heard before. She is big on the Law of Attraction, sans The Secret vision board, and I am not a huge fan of that concept. If you are not familiar with it, the basic idea is that if you believe hard enough and send enough positive vibes out to the universe, you will attract the positive life changes you are seeking. I'm an optimistic person and I believe a positive attitude goes a long way, BUT... I don't believe that putting sticky notes all over my house that say "I am a supermodel" is really going to land me on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition.

I did appreciate the author's theory that our subconscious brain may be sabotaging us based on something that probably happened to us way back in our childhood. In my case, it's apparently possible that not being able to afford the Gloria Vanderbilt jeans I thought I needed to make my life complete in the 7th grade may have led to a subconscious belief that I don't really deserve nice things, which in turn led to feelings of self-doubt and some stupid mistakes I made as an adult. Pretty deep, huh?

I also appreciated the author's motivating message to get over yourself, stop dwelling on the "what ifs," and Just Do It. (Sorry, Nike, I don't know how else to phrase it.)  If you need a push to get outside of your comfort zone and take the first step toward a dream your subconscious self once believed you were not worthy of--this book might be for you.

Probably my biggest takeaway from reading this book is this: my perimenopausal badass self has learned a lot over the past forty-something years (I can't say "forty-something" for much longer, so please indulge me while I can). I have come a long way in overcoming the self-doubt that used to plague my younger subconscious mind, even without the help of a self-help guru. How did I do this? I'm not really sure, but I think it's just a matter of living life and eventually reaching the age of not giving a crap about the things that used to hold you back. In the course of living my life, I may actually have gathered some life lessons that are worthy of sharing. In fact, I'm thinking I should write my own self-help book. I don't have a title yet, but I do have a Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: 

Smile, Smile, Smile: How to Fool People Into Thinking You're a Nice Person

Chapter 2: 

Seven Habits of Highly Annoying People

Chapter 3: 

How To Win Facebook Friends and Influence Your Twitter Feed

Chapter 4:

Excuses are for Introverts: 10 Lies to Tell to Avoid Social Interaction

Chapter 5: 

The Bigger the Bed, the Better the Marriage

Chapter 6: 

Moms Shouldn't Snapchat: Why You Probably Aren't The Cool Parent You Think You Are

Chapter 7:

Lessons from the Liquor Cabinet: That Might not be H2O in Your Teen's Deer Park Bottle

Chapter 8:

 Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: It's Probably Just a Hot Flash

This is the point where Jen Sincero would want me to envision this future book on the bestseller list while buckling down to "Just Write It." I'm not quite there yet. Maybe I just need 40-something more years to get over those Gloria Vanderbilts.

Oprah, take your bread and shove it...

"Maybe it's the gluten allergy talking, but if I hear Oprah gloating one more time about how she gets

to eat bread every single day, I am going to track her down and smack her in the face with a baguette!"

I posted this as my Facebook status back when Oprah was just kicking off her "I love bread" Weight Watchers campaign, at a time when I was just coming to terms with a self-diagnosed gluten sensitivity.  It's been 18 months since I stopped eating wheat, and I'm a lot less angry about it now. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, not being able to eat gluten is a pretty small issue. But, damn... I miss bread.

***

It all started with a cough. A persistent, annoying cough that wouldn't go away, sometimes accompanied by sinus congestion & pressure. After about a month of coughing, the doctor put me on a Z-Pak and the cough seemed to go away; then inexplicably it came back. The doctor put me on something else, the cough seemed to go away. Then I went to a wedding where I drank beer and ate wedding cake, and the cough was back before the reception was over.

I started to think there was something seriously wrong with me. Lung cancer; pneumonia; COPD-- all the things that pop up when you try to diagnose yourself via Google search. But, determined not to let my new terminal condition keep me down, I continued to live life as fully as I could... One evening while out with my girlfriends, I noticed my friend Jill turning down a slice of pizza, and I asked her why. She told me that when she ate anything with gluten in it, she felt congested. And, not to bring Oprah back into this, but... that was my "Aha!" moment.

I decided to experiment with cutting gluten out of my diet, just to see what would happen. And, voila, the cough went away! Yay! Happy ending, right?  Well.... kinda. But in many ways it was just a beginning. Going gluten-free is not easy. Especially not for someone like me, who never met a baked good she didn't love.

For one thing -- unless you have been formally diagnosed with celiac disease (which is an autoimmune disorder that is far more serious than what I have), people think you are just jumping onto the latest dietary fad when you tell them you can't eat gluten. When I first explained to my good friend that I wasn't eating gluten anymore, she said, incredulously, "Oh, come on. Why is gluten suddenly a 'thing'?" Turns out, researchers believe there is a reason for that. Apparently, wheat has been genetically modified so that it is not the same as wheat from 20 years ago. It contains a lot more gluten now, and our bodies have not adapted to it.

My friend is hardly the only person to question my new diet. When I mentioned my new sensitivity to my general practitioner at my annual physical, he seemed skeptical-- but he had me set up an appointment with an allergist. The allergist turned out to be more than skeptical... He downright didn't believe me. His solution was to prescribe me an inhaler and to have me start eating gluten again while keeping a diary of everything else I was eating at the same time, and to come back in a month.

I started to question myself. I went straight from the allergist's office to the McDonald's drive-thru and got myself a cheeseburger WITH A BUN for the first time in a year. (Damn, it tasted good!) But 30 minutes later: *Cough cough cough.*  So, I went back to my gluten-free diet and I cancelled my follow-up allergist appointment.

It really was not as hard to cut out gluten as I imagined it would be. I just had to stop eating bread. And pasta. And pizza. And cookies. And cake. And really good beer. Although, it turns out there are a lot more decent gluten-free alternatives to most of those things than I ever realized! Bread being the biggest exception. I have not been able to find a really good gluten-free bread. Cutting out gluten has actually been really good for me because I'm no longer the carbohydrate junky I used to be. As long as I can eat fish, meat, cheese, potatoes, rice, vegetables, salad, and fruit-- I'm good! I just hate that I've turned into the annoying person at the party or the dinner table who is always having to explain that I can't have a certain appetizer or dessert because I can't eat gluten. I can almost hear people's eyes roll when I say it.


I am lucky. I don't have celiac disease and I'm not so dreadfully gluten intolerant that my health is in danger when I do accidentally or on purpose eat something made with wheat flour.  But now that I am used to eating this way, I feel so much better. Aside from losing the chronic cough, my seasonal allergies this year were much less severe than they usually are. And I am sure now that if I hadn't cut out the processed food I've always loved, I would weigh at least 20 pounds more than I do.  So I avoid eating gluten whenever I possibly can. (The one exception I will always make is for my mother's Thanksgiving stuffing!)

The reason I am writing about this in my blog is I am hoping to help someone else. If you are experiencing any inexplicable symptoms like my persistent cough, it could be the gluten! It is worth a try to cut it out for a week and see if it makes a difference. (Important: If your symptoms include digestive issues or other signs of celiac disease, you should definitely seek a professional diagnosis because celiac disease can really be dangerous.)

Testing, testing... Is this thing on?

Whiishhhh....

That's the sound of me blowing the dust off of my keyboard and getting ready to start writing again.

Not that I ever really stopped. For the past 6 years I was a partner and content manager for a family of websites, FamilyFuninPA.com and FamilyFuninNJ.com. I wrote and/or edited content and social media posts every day. I recently resigned from that position, which was a hard decision, but I do believe it was the right one for me, and especially for my family. It had become all-consuming and I was burned out -- but that is a topic for a future post.

I've actually been itching to write again. I love the process. I love sculpting a paragraph out of a mass of jumbled thoughts. I love finding the right words to communicate ideas clearly. I love making people laugh through carefully worded observations. Up until now, though, I feel like I have been lacking 3 things necessary for actually being an effective writer: Inspiration, Knowledge, and Time.

Inspiration -- I have friends who have been inspired to write novels. This is really not something that I can imagine myself doing. My inspiration comes in small, disjointed waves; I can't imagine being inspired enough to stick with a story line for much more than 140 characters, really.

I actually did start this blog about 8 years ago, but I kept posts mostly private and used it as a personal journal. (In looking back at the posts -- most of them are crap. They're full of the angsty whining that is so common in "mom blogs" these days. I'm not going to subject anyone else to them, ever.) Writing a blog and putting your thoughts and feelings out on the internet for the world to see is a very vulnerable thing. But I've been inspired by my good friend Jillian who recently started her own blog: http://www.beingjill.com. She has had no qualms about putting herself out there, and the world is better for it!  

I've also been inspired by some editors of national publications who told me that my article submissions would be a lot more valuable to them if I had a blog with actual FOLLOWERS. It's all about the SEO in the online world. So... here I am.

Knowledge -- This goes hand in hand with inspiration, really. How can you write something that the world would be interested in reading if you don't feel like you are an expert in anything?  At one point I wrote a monthly column for our local paper; at the time, I was sort of an expert on my subject matter, because it centered on helping local parents find cool things to do with their kids -- and I was still in the thick of finding cool things to do with my kids. Plus, because of my work with my website I was very familiar with the local offerings. Two things happened, though: My kids grew older, of course, so I was not going to the places I was writing about anymore. And also, living in a small town, there aren't THAT many new & different offerings -- once I covered them all, there was not much more to write about. 

I've only recently started realizing that, perhaps through sheer AGE, I've accumulated more knowledge -- and wisdom, which is a completely different thing -- than I usually give myself credit for, and I am starting to think that maybe, just maybe, if I can find the right way to express it, something I know can actually help someone else out there.

Time -- This has been my biggest issue up to this point. When I was still co-managing a small company, I found it very hard to turn off my work. There was so much to keep up with: a lot of social media posts to write, events to post about, invoices to send, technology issues to help resolve, meetings to run, newsletters to write, etc. I am finally finding myself with some guilt-free time to focus on myself and I am determined to use that time wisely as I figure out what's next for me.

So, now I find myself making a New Year's Resolution of sorts, even though it is March. That resolution is to spend a little bit of time each day just writing down my thoughts with the goal of turning out something worth sharing. Here goes... something!

Sunrise, Sunset (Or, Why You Need to Go to the Circus, Now!)

(This is a post I originally wrote for FamilyFuninPA.com. You can find the original HERE.)

While doing a little spring cleaning over the weekend, I came across a treasure.  A treasure made of plastic, shoved to the back of a kitchen shelf, doing nothing more than collecting dust. But, dust collector or not, it is a treasure I cannot bear to part with.  At one time it held an extremely over-priced, flavorless, red, white & blue sno-cone.  But now, that orange plastic mug in the shape of Bello the Clown’s head brings back memories that make it well worth the outrageous $10 price tag.

What makes that $10 so crazy is the fact that I paid that much at a circus TEN YEARS AGO.  Not crazy because of the rate of inflation, though; no, the crazy part is the insane speed at which those ten years have flown by since that trip to the Circus.  I remember so clearly that little 5-year-old boy sitting beside me, wide-eyed and amazed by the snake man with the python wrapped around his body… The 5-year-old boy who put his hands over his ears when the daredevil motorcyclists roared on the tight rope above us… The 5-year-old boy who thought the elephants were stinky and the tigers were cool… The 5-year-old boy who BEGGED me for the $10 Bello sno-cone until I reluctantly acquiesced.

Suddenly, that same little boy is signing up for Drivers’ Ed and--gulp--shaving!  It is getting harder & harder to find family activities that he finds “acceptable.”  Gone are the days when we, Mom & Dad, were the people in the world he most wanted to spend time with… Gone are the days of Sesame Street Live, Easter Egg Hunts, petting zoos, and Breakfasts with Santa…

I am so lucky, though, because I get to re-live the memories from those kinds of events every single day, working for familyfuninpa.com.  I love knowing that we are helping parents find ways to create memories with their kids like my fond memories from that circus 10 years ago.  And right now, I would like to encourage those of you with younger children to GO to that circus!  Just GO! No, it won’t be perfect—kids will whine, kids will have to go to the bathroom at inappropriate times, kids will want to buy all of the shiny circus trinkets on display in the lobby… But I promise you that those imperfect moments are not what matter.  No, I promise you that, just like that overpriced commemorative sno-cone mug, some day the memory of that time spent together will be more precious than the cost of admission for a family of four, times a million.