Birthday Discombobulation by Liz

I've always had a love/hate relationship with my birthday.  Love the anticipation, hate the possible letdown.  And even though I'm not one of those people that needs a huge celebration each year,  I still always dread the inevitable birthday discombobulation. From the L&L  dictionary:

Birthday Discombobulation(birth-day dis-come-bob-you-lay-shun) The heightened sensitivity that one's birthday won't be the best day of the year.  Usually associated with erratic behavior, tears and possible temper tantrums.  Can be intensified by "milestone" birthdays.

C'mon, admit it-you've all had this at least a few times. Especially as more birthday candles keep mysteriously appearing on your cake each year. (How am I thirty-seven already? And when did all these damn wrinkles show up?)  For me, Birthday Discombobulation (or BD as I like to call it), usually starts a few weeks before the big day.  And it's often triggered because the Type A'er in me really, really wants to be in control  what we do that night.  Which should work out fine, right?

Well it would, except for the fact that there's a super secret sensitive beyotch lurking inside me that wants my husband to:

A) Read my mind about what I'd like to do.

B) Then plan it exactly the way I would.

And most importantly:

C) Buy me a gift that I didn't ask for but have always secretly wanted (mind reading also comes in handy here...).

Should be a piece of cake, right?  Um, no.  Not really.  The reality is that many of us make it impossible for our significant others to succeed in pleasing us on our birthdays.  In fact, last year, I had a MAJUH BD meltdown over a necklace (long story!  But you can read about it here).

And the lesson learned from that fiasco?  If you want to have a fabulous birthday, you need to cut the people around you a bit of slack. Well, okay, maybe that's what I should have learned. Because, here we are, less than one week from my bday, and I can feel the BD trying to take hold of me again. And I.  Must. Fight. It. Off.

They say self-awareness is the first step.  And now that I know this sh*t is about to take over my birthday again, I've developed a four-step BD avoidance plan.

Step One: Tell the hubs where I want to go to dinner that night. You know, somewhere fun, but not too loud, but not too quiet, that is really chic, but also not too expensive.  Somewhere with enough beautiful people to make me feel cool about being there, but not  so hawt that I feel fat and old. Oh, and no, I don't have anywhere specific in mind. See? I made it easy.

Step Two: Upgrade from birthday happy hour with the girls to full night GNO.  Well, okay, maybe my super fabulous friends put this into effect.  But either way, birthday GNO is the BEST! Say it with me: G-N-O, G-N-O!

Step Three: Fly your best friend in. Well, okay, maybe Lisa is already flying in that day for something else. But I'm going to pretend it's just for me.

Step Four: Realizing what a complete ass I sound like when whining about BD. And the fact that my husband practically needs a Xanax prescription each September to get through this time?  Not cool.  (In my defense, I do RAD stuff for his birthday every year!  So at least I'm not a BD hypocrite.)

Now I'm clearly ready for birthday success, right?  The first hurdle?  This coming weekend with the hubs. And I can just feel that THIS will be the year that I conquer BD.  And if for some reason I don't, well, I'll drown it in Grey Goose.

And since it's almost my birthday, I feel like giving something away.  How about two signed copies of our debut, I'll Have Who She's Having? It just won best debut novel over at Chick Lit Plus! Leave a comment here to enter and I'll choose a name on Friday night.

And to all my fellow Libra's, here's to BD-free birthdays!

xoxo, Liz

Lit IT Girl: Debut Author Kim Wright

We think finding a new author to love is the best thing, well, EVEH.  And when we crush on a book, we crush hard.  We think about it when it's not around, we talk about it incessantly to all of our friends and we try to spend as much time with it as possible. So when our publicist suggested we read Love in Mid Air by Kim Wright, we were ecstatic to discover how beautifully written her debut was.  We were in love!  In fact, Liz's husband begged her to stop talking about it on their trip to Cabo. (We think maybe he was just jealous that she wrote Kim a love note after she finished it?)  Liz also chose it as a  hot summer beach read over at SheKnows.com!

In Love in Mid Air, Elyse Bearden’s marriage is already in trouble when she meets a handsome stranger on her flight home from Arizona. Her husband, a doting father to their young daughter but an inattentive husband, has been communicating with her via post-it note for far too long and seems content with having sex in the kiss-less "X" position once a week.

So it’s not surprising when she starts a torrid affair with the man she meets in row 29-somehow trying to recapture the excitement she feels is sorely missing from her marriage and her life in general. Love in Mid Air is honest and captivating-one of the best books we've read this year. Want to know more?  Check out the book trailer!

And we're lucky enough to have FIVE copies of Love in Mid Air to give to our fantastic readers!  Just leave a comment and we'll pick a winner by random drawing on Thursday night.

And we're so excited that Kim agreed to be a Lit IT Girl!  Because we discovered that, not only is she a genius author, she loves Grey Goose and trashy TV just like us!  And her journey to publishing should give every aspiring author hope.

CHICK LIT IS NOT DEAD PRESENTS: LIT IT GIRL KIM WRIGHT!

How many agents did you query before you found “the one”?

I lost count.  Although several of my friends had published books, I had this nutty idea I was going to make it on my own and not ask anybody for favors.  You know, “If the book is good it will make it on its own merits”  - that sort of insanity.  After thirty something agents turned me down, I called my friend Alison Smith, who had written a highly successful memoir called Name All the Animals, and was like “Um, gee, um, would you introduce me to your agent?”  And he’s turned out to be the perfect fit.  It’s funny because he was on my radar screen all the time.  It’s like traveling the world in search of the perfect man and marrying the boy next door.

What was your rock bottom moment during the process?

During that long hunt for representation I got a lot of rejection, but one of them stands out.  I’d walked to the mailbox and the envelope was thin so I figured it wasn’t good news.  But the agent hadn’t just said no, she’d gone on for a whole page scolding me for writing a book that she thought glorified affairs and divorce.  It started out with “This shameful story….”  I literally sat down in the middle of my driveway.  For a minute I thought I was going to pass out.  My therapist still has a copy of that rejection letter in my file!

How long did it take to write your book?

I never know how to answer this because I wrote a very long, very bad first draft of the book and then put it down for two years.  When I picked it back up I did a brutal revision, slicing out big sections and pretty much building it back up from scratch.  That took a couple of years and then there was the aforementioned hunt for an agent and then, once my agent sold it, the publisher held it for two more years before it was released.  So if you count the fallow periods it took ten years;  I think I actually worked on it for five.

What did you do to celebrate your book deal?

Went to New York and met everyone from the publicity team to the foreign rights team to the receptionist down in the lobby.   Then after being this complete networking fool, I went off on my own and just sat there and let it sink in.   I remember sitting at the bar of the St. Moritz thinking “I have a book.  I actually have a book.”

Knowing what you know now about publishing your first novel, what would you have done differently?

Honestly, nothing.  I made bunches of mistakes but looking back it all seems like a necessary part of the journey.  I might have swallowed my silly country pride and asked my friends for help sooner.

Who is your writer crush?

Tom Perotta!  His “Little Children” was a huge influence on “Love in Mid Air.”  I recently friended him on Facebook and am trying to decide how to stalk him without it being too obvious.

What’s your biggest distraction or vice while writing?

Sudoku.  It’s like crack cocaine for me.

GNO drink of choice?

Grey Goose vodka, very cold and straight up.  It was what I was drinking when I was sitting in the St. Moritz thinking “Holy Mother of God, my book is actually going to be published.”

Favorite trashy TV show?

I love reality TV.  Dancing With the Stars, Top Chef, Project Runway, The Biggest Loser. My latest guilty pleasure is this show called Chopped on the Food Channel.  They give chefs these mystery baskets with strange ingredients like gooseberries, chocolate, bell peppers, and calamari and they have to make an appetizer using them all.  Great stuff.

What celeb would you love to have a Twitter war with?

Elisabeth Hasselbeck makes me nauseous.  So she might not be that fun to war with, because I’d be livid the whole time.  Love in Mid Air recently came out in Australia and I heard Germaine Greer is mad at me about some things I said about feminism in an interview and that’s sort of cool.  I think in the long run, I’d like to have a Twitter war with someone I respect.

Thanks so much Kim! xoxo, L&L

To learn more about Lit IT Girl Kim Wright, head on over to her website or find her on Facebook.

The Girlfriend's Guide To Vegas By Liz & Lisa

We love Las Vegas for so many reasons. And not just because of it's lenient open-container laws and 24-hour buffets.  It's more about that Vegas feeling.  You know, that flutter in your stomach as your cab barrels down the strip, narrowly avoiding pedestrians?  It's the feeling that ANYTHING can happen.  Where else can you dance on the bar at Coyote Ugly, play blackjack with Nick Lachey and take a picture with a "little person" Elvis impersonator all in the same night?  What other city in America would be so tolerant when you throw up in a casino trashcan after your fifth kamikaze shot?  And where else can us thirty-somethings go to reclaim our youth by drinking with abandon and staying up all night? Las Vegas has a little somethin' somethin' for everyone. And not to be cocky, but we consider ourselves to be "Vegas Experts."  I guess that's what happens when you have a fake ID at eighteen and attend a college that's just a three-hour car ride away. Needless to say, we've had the best of times and the worst of times in Sin City.  Just about anything that can happen, has happened to us in Vegas.

And although we are true believers that what happens in Vegas should by all means stay there, we thought we'd provide a few pointers for your next trip.

Liz & Lisa's Girlfriend's Guide To Vegas

IT'S TIME TO DOUBLE DOWN WHEN:

1. You and your boyfriend get two different offers for three-ways in the same weekend. And you choose not to focus on the fact that one woman had the body of a prepubescent boy and the other was so hammered she could barely stand.

2. A dashingly handsome British guy named Johnny sits next to you at the blackjack table and tells you that he thinks you’re 25. (And you promise to properly thank your boyfriend later for not correcting him!)

3. You listened to your psychic and confidently bet all your money on the number three. You not only win $1,000 but the entire table is begging you for your roulette recipe for success. You haven’t felt this good since twenty minutes ago when your blackjack table companion thought you were 25 (see #2).

4. The pit boss at Wild Bill’s upgrades your player’s card to “gold status” and offers you a comped night in the “penthouse” suite (on the 4th floor). And even though you’d rather spend the night sleeping on a pool chair at Circus Circus than so much as even stick your big toe inside the free room, you still feel like a “high roller.”

5. You take your pasty white complexion outside when it’s 110 degrees, lounge in the wade pool for hours and thank the Vegas gods when you don’t end up burning like the leathery skinned, There’s Something About Mary look-a-like next to you.

6. Your cab driver tells you that you’re the most entertaining passengers he’s had all night and you’re so caught up in his praise that you don’t mind that he’s missing four teeth and smells like a combination of tequila and pine air freshener!

IT'S TIME TO CASH IN YOUR CHIPS WHEN:

1. You're starting to feel right at home with all the crazy UFC fans and consider their invitation to cruise up to their suite at Imperial Palace for an impromptu "fight club".

2.  You're shaking like a crackwhore after your tenth Red Bull and Grey Goose.

3. The drink lady at Hard Rock cut you off even after you tipped her $10 a drink. (see number #2)

4. You've smoked ten cigarettes despite the fact that you don't even know how to smoke.  That's probably why you made a rookie mistake and accidentally burned a hole in the shirt of the drunk guy next to you at the blackjack table.

5. You don't blink an eye when you open your hotel room door and discover your neighbor passed out facedown in a hamburger in the hallway.  In fact, you're so hungry that you consider taking a french fry off her plate.

6.  You literally don't have any chips to cash in!  That's when it's time to cash in your figuritive chips and say good bye to dear ol' Vegas. (Unless, of course,  you have a really great cash advance plan on your Visa!)

xoxo, Liz & Lisa

A DIRTY MARTINI WITH A SIDE OF FACEBOOK By Lisa

I guess you could say my "signature cocktail" is a slightly dirty Grey Goose martini with extra olives. Made right, it can make you swoon with delight as you savor the taste of the perfect blend of vodka and olive juice in your mouth. So, at a party over the weekend I thought to myself, "What better to pair with my favorite drink than my favorite conversation topic--Facebook?" I've obviously made no secret that I'm a total Facebook whore who's now made a hobby out of collecting friends. My latest offense was just yesterday when I was sent a friend request by someone I'd never met and with whom I had no mutual friends. An automatic "ignore" for most, but not for me. Instead of rejecting this prospective friend, I made an inquiry. Had this man from South Africa meant to friend me? It turns out, he hadn't. He was looking for another person with the same name.

You might be thinking, "Yeah, right, like there's another Lisa Steinke out there that he meant to friend?  Please. This guy probably just wanted to get in your pants!" (Well at least that's what my boyfriend would say!) Well, it turns out that there is in fact another Lisa Steinke out there. She lives in the Midwest and I happen to already be friends with her. A few weeks ago, I thought it would be funny to friend someone of the same name. Since it's always about the status report, I could see it in my mind...Lisa Steinke is now friends with Lisa Steinke.

Well apparently the other Lisa Steinke liked the idea because she swiftly accepted me and even beat me to the punch with her own status report. I was curious now that I knew we shared a name and a sense of humor. Did we have more in common? I went to her page to find out. I discovered that she belonged to a group called, "You Know You're In The Steinke Family When..."

Oh, how exciting, I thought. I wonder if other Steinke families are like mine.

But after reading the first point, "You can't leave a family reunion without hugging and kissing everyone twice", I laughed. It wasn't an LOL situation like many of you are so fond of. It was more of an outward chuckle--more of a COL, if you will. In MY Steinke family, we're lucky if we even smile at each other when we accidentally pass on the street! And we certainly would never have a,*cough*, family reunion.

But I really digress.... So, back to the man in South Africa. Even after discovering he wasn't intending to friend me, I friended him anyway. Afterall, I didn't have any friends on that continent yet.

And these are the stories I was thinking of as the conversation at the party inevitably turned to Facebook. There was an article in last week's Time Magazine about how the boomers are all over Facebook. Damn right! Although not a boomer myself, I'm certainly no spring chicken. I'm rounding the corner to 36 so of course I'm going to defend the "older" folk who want to be part of a social network. There's plenty of room for everyone- even you Mom- I'm waiting!

So, when a 49-year-old woman began to tell me a story about Facebook, my ears perked up. I took a sip of my glorious martini and gave her my undivided attention.  She explained that recently some of her high school classmates had found her. She didn't understand why, after thirty years, they now wanted to see what she was "up to"... In fact, she wrote each of them a note that said if they were REALLY interested in forming a connection with her, they could call her on the phone. What a novel concept.

I was surprised to hear that 3 out of the 4 classmates did in fact call. I stood there in shock and took a bite out of my olive. I certainly wouldn't have called had I been one of those classmates and I told this woman as much. I said, "I have to be honest, that although I respect your position, I feel the complete opposite. I enjoy getting notes from former classmates and people I haven't seen in two decades... but would NEVER want to hear their voices!"  That would just be taking it entirely too far.

I knew I sounded like an a-hole, but it was the truth. The best part of Facebook is the fact that you can keep up with people without having to write more than a sentence or two on their wall. It doesn't mean I don't give a sh** about them, it just means I give more of a sh** about my own time.

Throughout the night, I heard myself saying to the other partygoers, "I'll be sure to tag you in that photo" and "I'm going to friend you tomorrow!" Sentences I would never have put together before I lost my Facebook virginity three months ago. Sentences that are completely part of my vernacular now.

The day after the party as I was uploading the photos to Facebook, I thought about the woman who told me the stories about her high school classmates. Suddenly, I desperately wanted to be her Facebook friend. Not only because she clearly played hard to get, but because I liked her style. She wasn't going to accept just anyone. If I could get into her exclusive club of friends, I would be cool. So, I sent her a message and told her how nice it was talking with her and getting to know her and I left it at that. (Honestly, I promise you that, a-hole or not, I really did like her and meant what I wrote). A few hours later, that little red notification symbol popped up and, wah lah, a friend request!

The perfect martini coupled with a new Facebook friend.

That, my Facebook and non-Facebook friends, is what I call a successful night.