[Editor's Note: In the true interest of baiting you, there is pretty huge personal news at the bottom of this post.]

Mike Bosley has signed his letters to me as Mike “the conservative white guy” Bosley.

I wrote to him while investigating businesses in Oklahoma that were interesting and different. Living in Portland has taught me to appreciate and seek out people and pursuits that stray outside of my norm, that is, things that don’t pertain to twenty-something, tattooed, foul-mouthed girls with a penchant for dirty jokes.

I’m not going to explain how I came to discover Beam’s Industries, Inc. I will place a link to the Seatbelt Color Chart, though. That is what got me to write to them in the first place.

Beam’s has been in the automotive accessories industry since the 1950s. They started out as an automotive seating cover manufacturer, but they eventually focused solely on safety shoulder straps. These days they outfit every vehicle, from Go-Karts to classic cars, school buses to military humvees. Located in a area of Oklahoma known for its rodeos, they couldn’t be more different than the only seatbelt-related thing I’ve been exposed to in Portland.

Portland-based band The Seatbelt Tragedy

When I first wrote to Beam‘s, Mike Bosley wrote me back and informed me that Oregon was recently named one of the most effective and progressive states in terms of highway safety. He also asked, “Are you sure you want to write a story about a manufacturing company run by a bunch of conservative Republican, church-goin’, gun totin’ white guys?”

Yes, Mr. Bosley. Yes, I do.

Ainsley Drew:     Did you grow up in the country?

Mike Bosley:     I grew up on a small farm in southern Oklahoma and count it as one of the highlights of my life.  We didn’t have cable TV, we had to burn our own trash because there was no trash service out where we lived, and we had to feed the cattle every single day in the winter no matter how brutally cold or icy or snowy it was.  For much of my life we only had a small black-and-white TV, and even a party line phone where we, and many of our neighbors, shared the same phone line.  We had our own unique ring when the call was for our house, and if you wanted to make a call you had to pick up the phone to see if someone was already using the line.  I’m only 36, mind you!

AD:    What did you want to be when you grew up?

MB:    First I wanted to be a farmer. I was in it for the tractors.  Then I was certain I wanted to be a truck driver, which I actually did when I was in the Army.  Eventually my obvious path turned to mechanical engineering, which had been my major in college. About six years after graduating with that degree I returned to earn a Masters in business.

AD:    What was your first job?

MB:    My first job for pay was hauling hay for my uncle and cousins.  I was an early teen at the time and made $0.05 per bale.  Hauling hay is the penultimate grimy, sweaty, nasty manual labor job.  There might be something else out there that’s worse, but this job can only be done in the hottest, driest part of the summer.  Otherwise the hay gets wet and mildews in the barn.  If the hay is not completely dry after being cut down in the field, it can get very hot in barn and spontaneously combust.

My first ‘real job’ (read: paid taxes out of my paycheck) was selling shoes at Kinney’s Shoes in the mall.  It was called “Mountain View Mall” but I can assure you there were no mountains to be viewed in my hometown. In the summer, I would haul hay until about noon then put on a suit and tie and sell shoes.  It wasn’t a bad job for $3.35 an hour.  I got to see many of my friends, which was fun.  The worst part by far were the skater dudes who wore tennis shoes but no socks all day then came in to try on new shoes.  They stink, stank, and stunk.

AD:    What’s your average day, and what are its best and worst parts?

MB:    I go through various phases of lots of meetings, then not so much.  I manage a lot more than I lead, unfortunately, but it’s getting better. This is a busy time of year, as we’re trying to finalize our business plans for 2009.  The best part is always the I work with every day.  My job is most fulfilling, as it is for anyone, when I’m getting things done and making a difference, when I’m working in my areas of greatest aptitude such as planning, encouraging, helping others get more out of themselves than they would on their own.

The toughest parts of the job generally have to do with the inevitable conflict, or when I see people treat each other poorly.

AD:    Is this your dream job? If not, what is? What are your hobbies or non-work pursuits?

MB:    At this point in my career, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than this job.

Additionally, I enjoy most being with my family and playing with my kids, or going to special events.  I enjoy photography an awful lot, and like to buy-and-sell-and-barter-and-deal on just about anything.  I am a Christian, and thus find my deepest meaning in serving God and, as a result, other people in need or not.  I also enjoy financial counseling, and helping others manage their money more wisely, and getting the most out of their income.  Most people are happiest when they live a relatively quiet, simple life while spending below their means and paying attention to the things that matter most, none of which comes from a store.

The best parts of my job include all the great things we do to create an amazing work culture.  We genuinely value individuals and their families. We do something out-of-the-ordinary and fun at least once every month. We also have at least one big annual event. This past January we had a company-wide shopping spree where we gave everyone a $50 bill at a company meeting and the only stipulation was that you had to return a few hours later show off what you bought.  It was a great time, and we do stuff like that a lot.  We also pay 90% of insurance costs for employees and their families to help alleviate that additional stress in people’s lives.

Thanks to Mike and his work at Beam‘s, I now want a turquoise seatbelt for my bicycle.

For those of you who aren’t related to me by blood or affection, this will be my announcement that Simon and I are moving to Norman, Oklahoma before the end of this month. We made this decision because we can no longer afford to write and eat here in Portland. So yee-haw! Oklahoma here we come. Send any tips, well-wishes, or hate mail to AinsleyDrew at gmail dot calm. And thank you for everyone who donates! It will help to cover the cost of the trip cross-country.

I would like to thank Mike Bosley, not only for allowing a not-so-conservative, tattooed, big city runt to interview him, but also for being a really sweet, helpful guy. Proof that people with different opinions on so-called large issues can still completely get along.

Hire us write your press releases, web copy, bios, etc.

Yee-haw!

My parents are awesome, and since I’m opting to go to Simon’s house for Thanksgiving — which means that not only do I miss turkey with at least one half of my chromosomal makeup, but I’m also going to Oklahoma again — I decided to dedicate this post to the two people that made all my fucking up possible: mom and dad.

Working and having a family is hard. Once you hit your mid-to-late twenties your peers start to settle down and nest, which is usually followed somewhat understandably, yet always shockingly, by breeding. Since there seems to be a sort of baby boom in my age group I decided to look up some info and ponder what it‘s like to work and work. I mean work and parent.*

Now, take this from where it comes, I’m a bachlorette whose ovaries are on layaway until Obama’s second term. At least. I’m not opposed to having photographs of my dog in my wallet, and coupons for Fancy Fridge tacked on my fridge in place of macaroni art. I’m not against to the domestic life, per se, I just don’t think I’m ever going to tire of writing all the time, ogling everything that walks by, and just basically not answering to anybody but myself. And occasionally Simon.

One thing that seems pretty sensible for stay-at-home parents to do is not go crazy. One way I would try not to lose my mind when having handfuls of Cheerios tossed at me mid-keystroke would be to network with other parents who are in the same position.

“It can be difficult to stay focused when being a stay-at-home parent is such a demanding job, and the lure of relaxing in front of the TV is strong. Network with other work-at-home parents – internet forums, for example, Storknet, are a great resource for this. Swapping childcare with a friend can be a good solution even for parents of young children and babies,” I read on a popular working parent website.

I’m pretty sure that my version of “networking” would be a hysterical email asking if it was normal for me to feel that watching my child pick his or her nose was far more important than a deadline. I have no idea how stay-at-home parents do it. Scratch that, I have no idea how parents do it. To try to figure it out, I clicked on Storknet. Let me just say, it is badass. Some of the better threads that I read included tidbits like:

“Just because I work out of the house does not mean that I am a stay-at-home mom. I suppose if I was only working part time, and worked when the kids were not around, I would consider myself one, but I work full time, and run a house and manage four children. How many men do that?”

I can understand her frustration, but I actually have more friends who are dads. They balance their work and their kids, they make time to be caregivers as opposed to just looking for childcare. They are tough, enjoy vagina jokes, and yet know how to burp a baby. These men, to me, are superhuman. They also automatically seem ten years older than me, even if we are within three months of age.

Apparently it’s just as hard for the gentlemen. For single fathers, there’s the site SingleFather.org that boasts the same resources and forums, only for fathers who find themselves playing Mr. Mom. They seem to have the same sentiments as the so-called fairer sex. One forum member writes:

“How do you guys keep up with the house work?

I get up at 5:45 am, shower, shave, and otherwise get ready for work. I usually skip breakfast. 6:30 I leave for work. I will usually swap the clothes in the washer over to the dryer. I get home at 6:00 pm. Change out the clothes in the washer, start dinner, while running water into the sink to wash dishes. Check my email while I watch a little TV. Between commercials I wash and rinse the dishes and work on dinner. 7:00 pm we usually eat. Then toss the dishes into the sink and let them soak. 8:00 pm I watch a little TV with my daughter until bath/bed time. 9:00 I hit the sack and start all over.

The only “free” time I have is Saturday and Sunday. Again, most of it is spent cleaning inside and outside. Unless we venture out to the store or off for some weekend trip. Then I end up doing double time during the week. So again, I ask, How do you manage to get everything done? By the time I finish one thing its time to start on the next. I need a solid week of free time to get this place up to par.”

Simon and I are at that age where our friends from high-school find us on Facebook and within one click we see the differences between us and our peers. We have skateboards, they have SUVs. We have roommates, they have mortgages. We have blogs, they have kids. We have two-loads-of-laundry worth of passionate sex, they have…kids. There are trade-offs. But certainly we realize that parenthood is the most demanding job that there is. How human beings balance penurious offspring and professional output is a riddle I cannot begin to fathom.

My mother was a stay at home mom and my dad was a ninja. (Note: my father’s actual occupation requires the same amount of precision, focus, dedication, and a totally rad outfit.) I think that my parents did an okay job balancing what they needed to do to not go insane and to remain on top of their individual games. For my mother it was…making sure I didn’t eat paint chips, preventing complete gender confusion, and taking me to Church. But for my dad it was making sure that we lived comfortably and happily, and that he provided for the both of us. He brought home the bacon, and my interactions with him were generally limited to watching football on Sundays. (So much for avoiding gender confusion.) After my parents split up, it was kind of a free-for-all. My mom worked and I hit puberty. My dad still had his intense job, but now visitation which interrupted his thoroughly enjoyed newfound bachelorhood. These days, I write in my house for a living and I can’t imagine owning a beta fish. How the hell do you people do it?

“Get children involved from as young an age as possible so that everyone in the family helps keep the household running efficiently. Try to clean up soon after mess occurs so as to avoid a build-up of stressful clutter and large cleaning jobs,” are ways of staying glued, according to Christina Katz, in Writer Mama [Writer’s Digest Books, 2007]

Sure. Okay. I get it. All of these websites emphasize the importance of asking for help, prioritizing tasks, and understanding that chaos is the new stability. But I think the thing that I find so perplexing as I stare at my high-school track teammate’s eight month old twins, is the idea of how to balance self and life. Simon and I struggle financially. We want to write for a living, and we also want to become esteemed authors. Our shared goals are what make our wholly dysfunctional relationship fun and – hopefully – invincible. But we both really value our time to ourselves, and the stupid little things that we do to enforce our identity. When you have kids, I think that your alone time is pretty compromised. Again, this is coming from a woman whose body has only been  home to several piercings and a fair amount of tattoo ink. Both of us are only children, the first time I held an infant I was twenty-two. (Totally freaked me out. I kept thinking I would break it.)

Basically the point of this post is to say thank you. An article I read while doing some research said that mom’s aren’t really doling out compliments to one another nowadays. So this is coming from a non-mother to moms and dads alike, I look up to you. Parenting is impressive enough. And when I get tired of the single life, maybe I’ll try it out. But until then I have you to be jealous of.

Drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at the gmail one. Thank you for donating! It makes my parents proud.

If you’d like someone to take the task of writing web copy off of your To Do list, hire us.

Like It is what I do when I’m trying not to do anything. Twitter is what I do when I’m doing everything.

*Some resources for working parents:

• Family Education’s list of things working parents can do to organize their life. And their Working Mom’s portal.

• Time Management Tips for Work-At-Home Parents

• Work-At-Home Moms Magazine, whose design is dreadful, but whose content is valuable. Includes job opportunities and information on work-at-home scams.

• Robyn’s Nest: The Parenting Network
  Includes a broad array of information, including legal specifics such as the Family Medical Leave Act, and information on traveling by plane when you’re pregnant. [Note: I'm from New York, so when I read about anyone named some variant of "Robin," I immediately think of Robin Byrd. NSFW.]

• The MomLogic community is pretty incredible. It seems to be the go-to place for resources and entertainment for the parenting brigade.

Still waiting on Simon’s contribution to Jerk Ethic. I’m a woman of my word, so here’s another tidbit about Mr. Goetz, other than his undeniable baldness:

He might miss shows, but he can’t use a broken down car as an excuse. For one, because he doesn’t have a car, he has a fierce purple Landshark instead, but also because he has an extra spark plug on hand no matter where he goes.

That’s right. Simon has a tattoo of a multicolored spark plug on his right forearm.

I want my post.

Swear to God, Goetz, next time it's Moby.

++++

A lot of people believe that they are what they do. In this society, at least, there seems to be this need to identify yourself based on a title. This is better than actually having our little pulsing evolutionary mistake defined by what we actually do.

There’s Jason, the Late-Night TV Watcher.

Sarah, the Complainer And Passive-Aggressive Storyteller.

Ainsley. Man, she’s the best Sore-Loser-At-Boggle in this region.

It’s a lot simpler, cleaner, and self-aggrandizing to be a Doctor, Lawyer, Writer, Software VP, Stripper.

If Simon and I weren’t writers we’d be fighters. At risk of oversharing, I’m going to let you in on what we would not be: couples’ counselors.

After a year of romance, filled with board games, inside jokes, and comic store browsing, we’ve reached a point where everything we have done in Care-A-Lot is suddenly overshadowed by the fact that arguing has become our latest hobby.

Sure, a lot of the head-butting is petty bickering, natural for two only children left in the same room together, and for two people who are skeptical about commitment while being fairly full of themselves.

There have also been the stresses of moving, career changes, sobriety, and family strife that have churned bile inside the stomachs of a pair of already anxious individuals.

One could even speculate that our feuding stems from a need to express passion, that we’re just bad at communicating, that, really, underneath the raised voices, impulsive breakups, and mocking, sarcastic insults there is really a deep, pure love and desire to make one another happy.

Sure. Kumbayah. Peace and love. Puff puff pass. Whatever.

Trust me, I'm a doctor.

I am the product of parents who hated one another but had a child because, well, that’s what society tells a married couple to do. I was raised on schlock therapy sessions where “solutions” were presented. I remember leafing through self-help books on my mother’s bedside table, learning about transference, inner children (gross!), and “the blame game” during commercial breaks for Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. My parents finally split when I was twelve. I vividly remember my mom, waterworks going full-blast, gently grabbing my shoulders and saying, “It’s okay for you to wish daddy would stay. But we’re going to get a divorce.”

“It took you guys long enough,” I replied.

So, needless to say, when the mantle of instability settled upon the shoulders of Simon and myself, my first reaction was to cut my losses, pack my suitcase, and leave Portland behind, skinny jeans and all.

Of course, it isn’t that easy. It never is. Not only are we business partners, impassioned editors, and best friends, we’re also kind of in love. I mean, fighting or no fighting, at the end of the day, he’s the one I want to talk to, the one who understands my jokes about impalin’ Sarah Palin, who never makes me feel like I’m too weird, and who reassures me when I have nightmares about zombies and fucking John Mayer (no joke) that everything will be all right. That sort of connection isn’t worth giving up on, even if I’m tired of having to convince him that thirty isn’t old, settling down doesn’t mean giving up The McLaughlin Group and three day long stretches without a shower, that there are no rules.

Also, I’m five feet tall, he’s five foot seven. We’re sort of, er, built for dancing together. If you know what I mean.

So, in the face of relationship ruin, what did this mentally unstable, histrionic bisexual do? She began to research couples’ counseling, that’s what. Because no matter how hard my buttons have been pushed, I truly believe that what makes a happy union is the ability to mercilessly make fun of other people in a conspiratorial whisper.

To become an MFT (Marriage and Family Therapist) you have to go to school for it, duh. Now, wherein I imagine that this school would have a dissertation that includes getting confronted by your insanely jealous ex-girlfriend in a room where a panel of doctors watches how you react, it instead is capped off by a certificate or degree, either a Masters or Doctorate, in marriage and family therapy.

If you’ve already obtained a degree in a mental health related field (no, art history doesn’t count, nor does women’s studies) you can get a post-graduate degree with a certification and training program. You are required to complete a certain number of training hours yearly to hold accreditation from groups such as the National Board of Certified Counselors, the American Counseling Association, or (shudder) the Women’s Therapy Project Northwest.

I learned about all of this through a Google search for How to become a couples’ counselor.

What I learned by Google searching for couples’ therapy Portland, Oregon was this:

• Some people still believe that Comic Sans and Brushstroke create a level of lighthearted intimacy on their websites. In truth, these fonts just make me want to wretch.

• Quotes from Rumi and Joni Mitchell do not make me feel like trusting you, no matter how many cats your bio says that you have.

• Pointing out that the word real is in relationship proves that you can’t help me sort out my mental state, but makes me soundly convinced that I can beat you in hangman.

• The people who write Hallmark cards are also the ones who do site copy for Pacific Northwest relationship counselors. The words “loving,” “love,” “intimacy,” “passion,” “embrace,” and “create” are all featured prominently, as are pastel colors and abstract clip art from the 1990s.

Nothing makes me want to fix my relationship solo more than the threat of sitting face-to-face with a counselor who looks like she might actually use the term “womyn,” or go to a drum circle that celebrates the moon and menstrual cycles.

Nothing makes me realize how petty and insecure I seem by getting angry at Simon for texting a Twitter post as I seduced him with a blowjob more than the idea of “finding a sense of belonging in this crazy, confusing, and painful world by connecting with others in heartfelt ways.”

And don’t even try to stop my blood from turning into antifreeze after reading these two words strung together: Movement Therapy.

Where I might never get my degree as a social worker or therapist, I do know a few key things that I can apply as “tools” towards “building a loving bond” with my “partner.” (Fire sale on quotation marks.)

I know that most of the time I would really benefit from shutting the fuck up for a moment.

I know that becoming self-righteously angry isn’t going to convince Simon that I, in fact, am right. Even when I am right. Which is, you know, always.

I know that most problems can be solved by a half-hour long time out where I go and listen to Tool, read web comics, and call one of my female friends to talk about how much better off pussy is than penis.

I know that when it comes down to it, I’m a writer, but I’m also a pretty big asshole. One of those things I want to succeed, the other I need to keep in check. No degree, certification, or graduate degree is going to make me treat someone the way I want to be treated. Common sense is. Well, that and a little patience if I apply it to playing Boggle.

Thank you so much for donating, commenting, linking, whatever. Attention is my Gatorade, only tastier, and less sexy when dripping down Kevin Garnett’s body.

Drop me a line, I’ll dribble it and pass it back. AinsleyDrew at the gmail one.

Give us something to agree on: work.

Watch us in real time. Instant foreplay!

homonym
n homonym [homənim]
A word having the same sound as another word, but a different meaning.

I’m writing this from New York, where I’m staying for a few days to collect my thoughts and reconnect with what I refer to as womb service, and most people refer to as my mom and dad.

I’ve only been here a handful of hours and I’ve already successfully accomplished all that I wanted to do (eat sushi, watch an absurdly large amount of televised music videos, get a haircut) and now have about ninety-six more hours where I will try my best not to become annoyed when my mother asks me for the umpteenth time if I would like to wear a skirt, or when her seventeen year old blind and deaf dog snarls at me, or when local parents automatically grab their children and gape when I go grocery shopping. Yes. I’m scary, tattooed, androgynous, and need dental floss. Waxed dental floss. Oh, and your kid’s blood and innocence.

Anyway, as I’m paraded around the streets of this adorable town and my mother inevitably runs into one of her chums, I’m forced to go through the rigmarole. There are a few variations but usually it goes something like this:

Me: (vigorously shaking hands) Ainsley. Nice to meet you.

Them: Ashley?

Me: Ainsley.

Them: Right! Right. You’re in film!

Me: No. Nope. Went to school for it, but no.

Them: Oh. What do you do?

Me: I’m a copywriter.

Them: Copywriter? Lovely/Wonderful/How nice. Is that copyright law or…

Me: (trying to keep my jaw unclenched and my eyes from rolling like pinballs) No. Not exactly.

I have thought of a list of answers that I would rather use when I’m asked what I do for a living. They include:

Internet beggar.

Marmoset breeder.

Republican lobbyist.

The gay agenda.

I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.

and the simple, but effective,

Vagina mime. (Or vagina MIME.)

There’s something about copy writing that is inherently confusing to those who are not Mensa-level smart or exposed to it at a young age. The average person seems to know that fiction is when somebody writes a story in manuscript form and if the resulting book is deemed “good enough” by a list or two it will be stolen by Hollywood and turned into a movie. They know that poetry is for goths, girls, and high-school students. They know that David Sedaris and Augesten Burroughs write this other weird genre called “nonfiction” or “memoir.” And they know that David Foster Wallace writes too damn much.

But copy writing is baffling. They ask if it’s like tech writing (answer: it can be) or they ask if it’s like catalog descriptions (answer: sometimes.) Some ask if it’s porn. Those are the ones we take home with us.

Copyrights can be considered the right to copy something. (Duh.) It pertains to exclusive ownership of work or works, and it was created a helluva long time ago. There’s some government involved, and suits of both law and cloth, money, and a bunch of jargon like statutory license, trade dress, and statutorily-determined term that mean nothing to me. Sites like Muxtape, Pandora, and other peer-to-peer filesharing portals find temporary ways around this legalese. Take a look at the history of Napster. Please don’t come to me for any other information on this subject, though, ’cause I am not into copyrighting. I’m into copywriting. See the difference?

Copywriting, according to Wiki, is using words to promote a person, business, opinion, or idea. It is often associated with advertising, website development, or branding. We have found that it’s not an exact science, just like sorcery, vomiting, and making a fruit salad. Some of our examples of “true” copywriting in our portfolio is the label and text on a bottle of vodka, press releases for automotive accessory websites, company and artist bios, and whimsical histories of brilliant people.

It has nothing to do with ownership and very little money involved (so far.) There’s no law school or skirt suit involved (yet.) To be a copywriter is to be creative, or a creative, or, often, to be a part of a creative agency.

We are a team, not an agency. We’re also flexible, we’re not solely focusing on advertising, although perhaps we should. We’ve done technical writing and feel that, in the long run, that sort of work, along with copy for websites, will be the most lucrative and sustainable.

So, in response to the next old biddy who asks what I’m up to in Portland, “Or-eh-gone” — it’s pronounced Or-ih-gen, dammit! – I’m just going to respond with the obvious:

trying not to starve, writing every day,  making-out occasionally, and having a pretty good time.

Say hi to your son, the cardiologist, for me!

Send me what you’d like it to say on your high-school alumni news blurb. AinsleyDrew at the gmail one.

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