Whereabouts and Goings-On and Pants

1. Our road trip to Sky Lake is featured on UpTake, and the Ford Flex review is at Car and Caboodle. More pictures like the one above can be found there. Come on, you know you want to see them.

So, here’s the thing about the Ford Flex. Among mommybloggers, a popular recent topic is the review vs. storytelling nature of our blogs. Personally, I am not engaged by “blogs” that consist of a full screen of flashing pink and blue ads and one tiny square of content in the corner that turns out to be a “story” about how the mom fed a certain brand of soup to her family. On the other hand, I like reading blogs that are well written and draw me into the life the writer describes, and if there’s a product review or giveaway every so often, it doesn’t bother me. In similar fashion, I’m not a fan of seeing 10,000 ads on a blog, but the sites I like that do have advertising? Well, the advertising is a reality that is not going away, so I continue to read the blogs I like if their content isn’t drowned out by a flashing sidebar.

I get approached by PR reps with cool opportunities, but not every day, certainly not even enough to call it “often.” I fly below the radar of most marketers, and I get noticed mostly because I drive Jessica Gottlieb around to events that have free alcohol. But I’ll take the attention where I can, I don’t care, I’m like Kathy Griffin, a D-lister of the blogosphere. When I see an opportunity or a product that I think would be cool to feature here, I actually pitch the PR reps. Yes! I’m a blogger pitching the reps the chance to be featured on my blog.

That eagerness paid off when Ford agreed to loan me a Ford Flex to drive to Yosemite. I immediately worried about how it would look to do such a cool review here when the mommybloggers were all up in arms about marketing/reviews/ads vs. storytelling – and being on the side of the storytellers, I didn’t want to seem like a hypocrite. You might think I am anyway, but so be it. Odds are that kind of person is not a reader of mine anyway, since all 50 of you have shown that you love me despite my obnoxious foibles. I was kvetching about my quandary at dinner with a bevy of really influential and popular bloggers, and one of them said “Well, you can review the Flex at Car and Caboodle!” I had no idea what she was talking about so I said “Okay!”

…and later I realized I had agreed to something incredibly cool. Car and Caboodle is a site that reviews cars and, well, the caboodle – equipment or services that help you travel with kids. (Incidentally, I totally had a Caboodle in my tweens. With a personalized nameplate. Does anybody know what that is? If you do, I will give you a prize. An even cooler prize if you send me a PICTURE of one.) The site is doing a promo during the summer months in which mom bloggers write about their vacations. We have cars, hotels, shoes, sippy cups, and all kinds of products to feature, and companies are jumping on board left and right. The best thing is that there is no compromise of the main topic, the reviews are the main topic. And once again, somehow I’m up there with the big girls of the internet.

All of that being said, this blog, which in case you haven’t noticed has moved to kimtracyprince.com if you want to update your bookmark or site feed (the old URL will still work too, though) is the one I love best, and the one where I don’t have to alter my voice to suit the publication. So I will talk about products sometimes, whether or not they were given to me or they were just laying around the house pissing me off or making me so happy that I had to shout it from the rooftops.

2. Not to be outdone by marketing and such, my random musings about motherhood continue and a new one appears at Los Angeles Moms Blog.

3. At Being Savvy San Fernando, I’m hosting a giveaway to a lucky commenter: one will win a preschooler-friendly belt to hold up his or her pants. Because pants are necessary sometimes. This one was inspired by, who else, another mommyblogger, one of my original friends inside the computer, Kate Waterhouse.

4. By way of explanation: I know this woman who knows this guy who decided, at almost the very last minute, to make a short film to enter into a competition and the deadline is tomorrow, or today for some of you (Friday). The subject is “the character of Los Angeles” and the top 9 entries will be shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The filmmaker is profiling three women of Los Angeles who are achieving success using the internet as a tool: there is one who is just starting out as a blogger, myself who represents moderate success, and Melissa Joan Hart. Yes.

The reason I am involved is because the filmmaker didn’t know any bloggers, and the woman I know who knows him thought of me, and I happened to be available on Wednesday, and before you could say “let me check my calendar” he was setting up his equipment in my backyard.
Let’s hope we win, because then someone besides the four of us will see his little film. However, it was shot on what I call the Fancy Cam, which shoots bad-ass HD and shows in great detail one’s every line and gray hair. Instead of the camera adding ten pounds, I believe it adds ten years. At the very least, there’s nothing like “I’ll be at your house in an hour with a camera” to get me to vacuum.

(Update: here is the film, titled “Purpose: it’s what we all look for.”)

5. And P.S. on top of all that I’m looking for a new job, but going back to work part time at my old OLD job (sweet!) in the meantime, and still actually parenting, not just writing about it. Stewart and Kyle are in Louisiana visiting Grandma Bettie, where it is 92 degrees with 80% humidity, which means Kyle stays inside in the air conditioning watching DVD’s and drawing pictures of the solar system instead of chasing lizards. I can’t say I blame him. Meanwhile, Brady and I are hanging out enjoying each other and having adventures. Tomorrow, Baby’s First Bus Ride!

(Yes, S@L, that is the selfsame box of Goldfish. Thank you.)