Emptying out my mother’s house brought back memories of watching WWF on television when I was a kid. Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, and Andre the Giant were deserving heroes, slicked with sweat and grunting from their unnatural strength. They were burly men who, in my Frosted Flakes fueled imagination, could do anything, from lifting a Cadillac above their heads to solving the third grade multiplication tables that were causing me migraines. The closest I’ve ever come to feeling as powerful as one of those vintage muscled masses of manhood was when I helped to unload the furniture and remaining items from the tiny single-family dwelling that my mom, and all of her stuff, called home for ten years. There’s something about lifting large pieces of wood that taps into a universal undiscovered reservoir of testosterone. And if that piece of wood happens to have a set of drawers and antique brass hinges, then it also appeals to my feminine sensibilities.

It helped that there was a team of large-and-in-charge men assisting yours truly, ’cause otherwise the new owners would walk into a house filled with furniture splinters and old high-heels.

Living in an empty house that’s not your own has its perks. For one, there’s the satisfaction of having gotten rid of so much. It’s really liberating in an Ani DiFranco-lyric sort of way: I only have a bag, some boxes, and a dog. The other cool thing is that Simon and I can pretend we’re squatters. Which really consists of little more than me going, "Heh, this is cool. We can have sex on the floor." And him agreeing in several different ways.

But living in a cavernous series of rooms with nothing in them has helped me to appreciate good interior design. While minimalists such as myself could live with little other than a mattress and a desk, in order to make a home an inviting place to rest your bones (or to just bone) you need to make sure that you’re optimally using the space available to you. And if you happen to have some spare cash in your pockets, you can pony up and have an interior designer turn your home from look-away ugly to must-stare HGTV.

Because I realize that if I continue without explicitly defining the differences between an interior designer and an interior decorator I will have a high-end protractor thrown at my head, I will say that interior designers often have graduated from a four-year college or degree program, while interior decorators, as a general rule, have obtained a certification. Designers are usually more educated in the technical aspects of planning a space, as well as having knowledge about building permits, blueprints, contractor obligations, and flammability and toxicity levels of materials, among other things. A lot of the time interior decorators focus more on lower-budget elements, such as selecting paint colors and cabinetry, while designers can handle these tasks while also managing structural and coding requirements of a project. The going rate for an interior designer is $150 an hour, with a 25% mark-up on items that are discounted to the trade.

If I were to hire an interior designer, I would have the house gutted completely (except for the kitchen) and put a half-pipe where the dining room table once was. Generally, interior designers are hired to handle the aspects of home decoration soup-to-nuts, which can mean flooring, painting, repairs, plumbing, and the selection of everything from furniture to fixtures. They probably install their fair share of vert ramps, too.

Whether it’s knocking out walls or wiring a chandelier made out of hipster skulls, an interior designer will either do it or subcontract someone who can. Designers can be employed by large companies, small firms, or they can be self-employed. Working for firms can mean anything from slaving away in an office nine-to-five, to working on a per-job basis. Self-employed designers make up 26% of the field. These are the poor visionaries who toil the longest, and have to hustle to create their client base. Because of the stress of deadlines, traveling to job sites, budgets, and calming cantankerous clients, I assume that once you enter the field of interior design, your life expectancy drops by about ten to fifteen years. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

If you’re a creative, hands-on type (like Randy Savage with a color wheel) then interior design could be your calling. Keep in mind that most designers choose to pursue a bachelors degree in interior design from a Foundation for Interior Design Education Research (FIDER) accredited college or department. After graduating, it’s useful to contact the regulatory agency of the area you live in, just to make sure you meet and understand the licensing requirements for interior designers. These can vary on a state-by-state basis, so it’s helpful to have the National Council for Interior Design Qualification‘s site bookmarked.  Of course, instead you could just watch Trading Spaces reruns and talk about painting your bathroom "one of these days."

For those who have the perspicacity and the pencils to get their degree and get to work, there’s a little bit of gold at the end of the paint chip rainbow. The average salary for interior designers is about 42K a year. Commercial projects can vary from having a per-hour fee to having a flat fee,  while self-employed designers working on residential projects often charge a per-minute fee along with a percentage of the cost of accent pieces, furniture, fixtures, and any other design components. Depending on where they live, designers can build up a solid client base, and in cities like New York, where word of mouth is king, the rise to a steady income can be quick. Or it can be never. Much like copywriting, I suppose. But urban areas, with their larger populations, create a larger demand then, say, places like Norman, Oklahoma, where you can slap an OU sticker on it and say that it’s no longer fixin’ to be decorated.

Of course, when we move into our apartment, we’ll once again be nesting in a way that’s unique to us. Fortunately, all that consists of is my Nine Inch Nails poster and a bookshelf. And if we decide that the living room would look better in a lovely shade of avocado green,  I think that we would avoid hiring anyone to wield the roller in our place. In truth, as impressive as interior designers and interior decorators are, I  think we’d be disappointed that we didn’t take the time to do something to our new home with our own four hands. And before I haul any furniture into the new pad, I’ll be sure to say my prayers and take my vitamins.

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.

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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