Chapter 2: The Pitch
Back to Chapter 1: The Phone Call
Ellen – So exactly 6 days after our “Ah-ha!” conversation, I go over to Erin’s to brainstorm face-to-face. I know it has been 6 days, because I had been obsessively emailing Erin every domain name, concept, and blog resource that had popped into my head or passed before my eyes. I could easily find and reference these emails, because I had been collecting them in a folder on my Gmail account in a folder creatively entitled, “Blog.” I have to go over to Erin’s house because Charlie(10) and Biddie(12) are sick and Eddie(4) is being brought home from preschool by 11:30. Don’t worry about the kids being sick. I’m an M.D., and I went upstairs to check on them before we started. Besides, Erin is a good mom and had taken them to their real doctor the day before. We were going to get the lab results later that morning.
Erin- I love that Ellen has my back on this. I figure you will all judge me eventually. Might as well start from the very beginning.
Ellen- So, Erin gives them large water bottles. . .
Erin- Do you wanna judge me now?
Ellen- . . .and we set about ignoring them and collaborating. We are trying to find a name for our blog. You really can’t start building a blog unless you find a domain name. We actually think we have a concept for our blog: it’s going to be about discussions and what we talk about, but it’s going to be funny.
Erin-There was some discussion of the Yin and Yang of Motherhood, but while we diverge some in personality, we are essentially on the same page. Then we hit on an idea. A great idea. An idea that we loved so much, we were jumping out of our seats excited to tell someone. We were going to be hot mess mommas. We thought we had nailed it. We weren’t perfect or precious or wacko. We were the moms in the middle. You know, the ones who don’t scare you on the playground.
Ellen – Okay. So, fast forward an hour and we are sitting at our respective computers, and I am crushed that Hot Mess Mom (funny blog, by the way, www.hotmessmom.com) is already taken and that it was started just three weeks ago AND that it seems to be getting a lot of traffic (I say “seems,” by the way, because at this stage I realize that I don’t know squat about the tech side of blogging). In walks Laura with Eddie(4). She is like, “What exactly are you doing?”
Erin – I try to explain. I really do, but Laura’s face is completely blank and uncomprehending. I think, “Uh-Oh, Houston, we have a problem.”
Ellen-I am freaking out yelling, “Don’t kill our dream, it is too young! It is a fragile seedling! We will need your wonderfully honest opinion when we are a little further along.” Laura is like whatever, but then shares, “This is what I think of when I think of a blog.” And then she proceeds to tell us about a segment she saw on OWN about a 50 year old woman who showed herself naked on the internet for money. Man, we are going to have to nurture this seedling a little more before it is ready for the masses or at least for Laura. So we try to explain further by going on about how we want to stay away from precious and keep it real. Erin jumps in about the nicknames she wants to give her kids—names like Worm and Monkey. Laura deadpans, “Precious just walked in.” Love her!
Erin – Laura always makes me laugh, so now we are all dissolving in laughter, but I sense that Ellen might actually be starting to lose her grip. Something is rising in her at this point that looks like panic but is starting to eek its way out as frantic energy. We then decide to call Mary—our voice of calm, cool reason, our eternal optimist in the face of disaster, our almost preternaturally honest friend. Things start to go a bit off the rails at this point. We sell Mary the pitch, and there is dead silence. Crickets. Nada. Nothing. The Big Zero. There are like 5 seconds of the most uncomfortable, LOUD, silence you have ever heard. I think I even shook the phone a little. When she does speak, Mary asks “So are you going to discuss religion and politics?”
Ellen- Noooooo!
Erin- I wish you could have heard Ellen’s no rising slowly and emphatically from the depths of disbelief and panic.
Ellen – I won’t even talk to her because I am panicking that I can’t verbalize what it is we are trying to do. I am shaking the phone off like I’m in middle school, and Erin is asking me to talk to that cute boy in homeroom. Mary keeps saying that we are not hot messes, we are much more together than that. She suggests names like “Guilt-free Mommying.”
Erin – Um, maybe we need to fine-tune this pitch.
Ellen- Soooo…three minutes later my phone pings and Mary has emailed us a link about a mother who is probably going to be charged with killing her baby! Clearly, she is not feeling the humor of hot mess.
Erin – Ellen has hit her limit at this point. She hits “Reply”: “No that is what is known as criminal negligence. You are clearly missing the allure of hot mess. Focus more on the hot, a little less on the mess.”
Ellen – Okay, this is not going well. But maybe she has a point. We are not as clueless as hot mess might imply, but we are too real and making-this-up-as-we-go-along to call ourselves gurus. We are somewhere in between. Hmmm…something to ponder. But I am forced to step away from the computer because Eddie(4) has enlisted me to walk him to the bathroom so that I can help him with the [imaginary] wolves that are blocking his way (sorry if I insulted you by clarifying that the wolves were imaginary, but I figure we don’t know each other that well yet). And just for the record, he conquered the wolves, I was just there for moral support. So I FINALLY decide to heed the wise words of Erin and Laura and walk away. Well, really it wasn’t so much heeding as I had to go pick up Coco(13) from school. I’m stubborn like that.
Erin - Among the many other wonderful qualities that Ellen is bringing to this project, there may be at times also, a slight tendency to dig her heels in or, in some cases, her teeth, like a bulldog. But no judgment.
