Weekly Wrap Up 9.15.12

What a week!  Last week I freaked out and went to Defcon 1 because of the whole scraping thing and then this week I have been plagued by shit not working and so now I'm holding at a solid Defcon 3.

First, GoDaddy got hacked or broke down or whatever their excuse is and that disrupted my service and I was offline and then once I got back on I discovered a problem with Blogger not working properly.  Even though the GoDaddy thing was resolved, lots of readers were still having trouble getting on and then the entire comments section was gone.  I'm sure you've noticed that service has been more than a little spotty and I can say we are working on it.  Well, really, the Hubs is.  I was just curled up in a ball in the corner crying mostly while he patched and fixed and finagled everything to work.  We are still in a precarious position and have no idea when (or if) the problems will be resolved, so we are in the process of making a back up plan.  At the end of the day, Blogger is a free site and I am at their mercy.  I hope they get their shit together, but I have no idea if they will.  There are a lot of other bloggers out there right now who can't do anything to their Blogger site, so I'm one of the lucky ones even with all of my outages.  Thanks for your patience this week.  Hopefully next week will be a better one!

Parents Who Hire Rush Week Consultants

I swear, I'm going to start a business where I consult people on how to stop spending their money on stupid shit for their spoiled and pampered kids.

Today I saw the newest one:  a $300 an hour consultant who advises your daughter about sorority rush week and helps her get into the sorority of her choice.  This consultant offers your daughter sage advice on what to wear and what to say.  I would guess "Be yourself" is not part of her repertoire.

I had really hoped that young women were past all of this bullshit by now.  Instead, it looks like they're raising the bar.  How degrading rush week must be if you feel the need to hire a consultant to tell you how to behave and how to look.  Why would anyone encourage their daughter to participate in that kind of cattle call?  Why would anyone pay for someone to poke holes in their daughter's confidence by telling her you're not good enough, but I can try and make you good enough?

We work so hard on making our daughters confident, independent, free thinkers who people should want to be around (not because they dress a certain way or say the right things) and then we turn around and say "Not so fast, no one is going to like you and accept you into their club unless you have the right accessories with your Lily Pulitzer dress"??  That just doesn't make sense to me.  I don't know if it's just another example of a helicopter parent or an over achiever who wants her daughter to be perfect or a passive parent who can't bear to see precious Arabella not succeed at everything she tries or what.  

I spent $300 an hour and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

It just makes me sick to know that people are spending $300 an hour to get through fucking rush week.  How about telling your daughter to be herself when she rushes and donate $300 to the charity of your choice?  

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I was never in a sorority.  Shocking, I know.  I attended a small, private liberal arts college where we didn't have sororities or fraternities.  I had many friends at other colleges and universities who rushed and had various outcomes.  I know that not one of them paid $300 an hour for a consultant.  Some of them rushed and made it in and loved every minute and still consider those women to be some of their best friends, others made it in and were miserable, a few others rushed and then were told no one wanted them and a few chose not to rush at all.