This was an original post for LA Moms Blog in March, 2010.  I publish my archives on the occasional Friday, and since money is on my mind, I picked this one for today.

“I knew I was dumb, everyone I knew thought I was dumb.” –Suze Orman, Women and Money

When Suze Orman was a child, she had a speech impediment, which made people think she couldn’t read or score well on tests. She grew up not expecting much of herself, yet had a core of self esteem that blossomed and took over during her young adulthood. Working as a waitress, she was saving to start her own restaurant when she discovered that a shady broker had taken advantage of her, recommending risky investments that caused her to lose all of her money. By reading up on investing and studying the markets closely, Suze figured it all out on her own, and marched into Merrill Lynch to apply for a job.

And here we are today, when I cannot imagine a world without the Suze Smackdown. If you’re not familiar with her work, Suze Orman is a noted author, television personality, and public speaker whose specialty is personal finance. More specifically, women’s personal finance. Decades ago, as a successful financial advisor, she never imagined that she’d become the industry she is today.

Last month Suze was in town to shoot a set of videos that help explain her Save
Yourself Retirement Program with TD Ameritrade. The latest product in her Save Yourself line, the retirement program is designed to coach the average investor into choosing the right retirement account and funding options for him or her. The program promises to be a simple and effective way to get you off your butt and into the market, because by God, as she often lectures callers on The Suze Orman Show about saving for retirement, if you don’t prepare for the future you are in big trouble.

Liz Peterson and I visited the set of Suze’s shoot to watch a bit of the filming and ask those burning questions we’ve always shouted out loud to the television but never had the patience or guts to call in to the show and ask. (That last part is probably just me.) I’ve been reading and watching Suze’s work for years, deferring to her website and her weekly MSNBC advice show to glean hints about what decisions I should make. Lately I’ve also been communicating with her on Twitter, which she uses with surprising regularity and actually replies to people (she DM’ed me a few times to tell me she loves my cowboy hat).

I’ve often thought of Suze as a role model for grown-ups: not just for women, although she is very motherly and protective of women and champions the idea that women should and must take control of their financial lives. Suze’s work applies to all people, and you often hear men calling into her show to ask serious questions. She’s genuinely interested in people and also protective – when Liz and I introduced ourselves as the visiting “mommy bloggers” she instantly said “And are you making any money with your blogging?” and gave us that all-knowing look with her piercing blue eyes.

As a woman, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an employee, and a philanthropist, I look up to Suze’s “People first, then money, then things” approach to life. I was eager and fascinated to hear what she had to say. Luckily, I caught most of it on camera, and since my editing tools and my free time are short, I present more of the interview in simple Q&A fashion:

Should married women, especially stay-at-home moms, focus on saving in their husbands’ 401(k)s if they have them, or set aside money in their own IRAs?

Married women have retirement savings options from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

What special advice do you have for Los Angeles moms?

CA Moms Must Get Will and Trust! from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

Your knowledge of the financial industry is encyclopedic! How do you keep up with it?

Suze fascinated by financial news and info from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

Back when you were a financial advisor, did you ever imagine this incredible success for yourself?

Suze never planned this career for herself from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

Your success really took off later in your career. What advice do you have for women who still have their success in front of them?

Women Come Into Their Own In Their 40′s from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

You keep a tireless schedule. Why is it so important to you to work so hard to help people?

People First! from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

I’m giving away chocolate on Agoura Hills Mom.  I tested it first, so you can effectively say that I “will work for chocolate.”

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment and make sure your email address is connected to it.

I also posted on MomsLA.com this week:

8 Reasons Why I Want My Son To Grow Up To Be Sheldon Cooper

2.   He loves his mother.  Although he often quotes his mother’s backwoods fundamentalist Christian idioms, Cooper clearly loves his mother.  I’ll take all the adoration and none of the dysfunction, please.

Little by little and bit by bit, I come back to myself again. I share it elsewhere, not just here. It’s good to be given an assignment, and to give them to myself every now and then. Go see.

Confessions Friday at Sarcastic, Funny, and Brutally Honest:

I’ve shared my little secret with people here and there, but for the most part I’ve kept it to myself. I was never willing to be judged because of it or get into an argument…

Paramount Ranch at Agoura Hills Mom

The most wonderful things are right here in my own backyard.

by Jessica Nagy (click image)

I’m not sure why, but I’ve spent a lot of time in this desk chair recently, clicking aimlessly through the internet universe.  Oh yeah, I know why – it’s a combination of not wanting to go out and spend money, plus not wanting to drive far, plus declining or ignoring almost every invitation that came my way since November 3, plus good old laziness.

The point is, I’ve had a lot of quality time with the internets these days, and I have a few observations to share:

1.  Pinterest is reaching its tipping point

Just as blogging and Twitter and Facebook reached their tipping points long ago, so now has Pinterest, that kicky little app that allows you to click on something kewl you see on the internet and “pin it” to a virtual pinboard on your Pinterest page as long as there is an image involved.  Like Facebook, it has a social component in that you can follow people and they can follow you back.  Also like Facebook and a little bit more like Twitter, you can browse through other people’s pinboards and waste a lot of time looking at pretty, pretty pictures.

Originally I used it to bookmark things I came across that I wanted to save for later:  like ideas for accessories for my to-be-remodeled living room, or pictures of celebrity blondes who have dark eyebrows and matching dark roots.  Strangely, people started following me there before I even realized you could follow people.

Over the last week or so, the Pinterest-following activity has just gotten ridiculous, and I’ve read no less than 5 articles about the app and how you can leverage it to get more traffic to your blog.  For design, craft, fashion, and food blogs, that makes a lot of sense.  You can look for recipes or craft projects on Pinterest, and you will find things that other people found and shared there, and clicking on those photos will take you back to those blogs, thus generating more traffic for the blogger.

I am not going to add to that, since it’s obvious that after 7+ years of blogging, nothing I have ever done has markedly increased traffic to my blog in any lasting way, and I don’t believe I have even one inbound click from Pinterest yet.  I almost didn’t write about Pinterest at all, because as my pal Julie tweeted, “The whole world knows about Pinterest.”  Which may be true for the whole internet world, but I bet some of you guys are sitting there thinking “What the heck is she talking about?”  Right?  Show of hands?

Note that I am saying “tipping point” which is a positive thing, meaning that Pinterest is starting to reach the relevant masses.  I am not saying “jumping the shark,” which would mean that that least tech-savvy of your non-tech-savvy mommy group friends will come up to you and say “Have you heard about this website called Pinterest?”  And that’s when you will want to punch her in the face.  But you won’t because you love her and you are a refined individual who does not allow mere apps to drive to you to violence.

My abandonment of illusions that I can increase the overall traffic to this site has not stopped me from adding a “follow me on Pinterest” button to my sidebar (to the right.  Right there.  See it?  Also please note the absence of any advertising.  I’m done with that, but we’ll talk about that in another post.)  And this action of adding its plugin to my site, dear friends, is why I have declared that Pinterest is getting to its tipping point.  I mean, when you have an easily-installed plugin for WordPress, everybody and their mother is going to get all up in the boards.  Why, I’ll bet there is a widget for Blogger in the works too!

I also incorporated a “Pin It” button into the share button bar below – you can see it at the bottom of this post.  If you click it, the Pinterest app will pop up and allow you to “pin” a link to this post, accompanied by this photo:

You must be a Pinterest member to do this.  Go ahead, sign up and pin this.  I dare you.

2.  Bloggers are turning to Tumblr and Posterous for short outbursts and/or crowdsourced microblogging

In the last several weeks (months?  I am no longer good at keeping track of time) I have witnessed a strong handful of bloggers – well-respected, accomplished, prolific bloggers – starting posterous and tumblr sites.  Those two apps, which have been around for a while, are bare-bones blogging apps that make it easy for you to start a little site.  You can publish a full-on blog there without all the bells and whistles of a more traditional blogging platform.  Setting one up takes very little time, and if you have a wild hair like I did last year, you might just whip one up.  I was realizing that every day,  I used a different and perfectly awesome pencil to take my notes or write in my editorial calendar, and I decided to chronicle them using a posterous site.  The updates started to become more about Wonderful Cocktails I Have Imbibed, but that’s just the way I roll.  I like the original title, and every now and then I still post a photo of a phat pencil, so I kept it.

Anywho.  The newest uses of posterous/tumblr – I group them together because I honestly don’t know what the differences between them are besides the branding – are coming from people who have been blogging for a long time in lots of different places.  They had ideas that didn’t fit with their current sites, or they wanted readers to be able to submit their own ideas a la Damn You Autocorrect or Shit My Kids Ruined and so they turned to posterous/tumblr to quickly create new ones.

Here are the ones that come instantly to mind:

My Effing Name Is – a place where the masses can go to bitch about how people get their names messed up and always have.  Here is my post, because, duh.

Have Snark, Will Travel – my dear friend Melanie who has turned out an amazing tome of a blog over the past few years about traveling the globe as a couple realized that she had quite a collection of pictures from her adventures that were just…a little off.  She shares her collection here and invites the world to submit their own photos. (This just in. This is a real live blog, not a posterous or tumblr. But the conceit is the same, so check it out. She is an overachiever, that Melanie.)

A Year of Billy Joel – I almost can’t even type this…my friend Will Stegemann has never liked Billy Joel’s music.  Le sigh.  He’s such an awesome guy, though, that he can still be my friend, and actually, his daily Billy Joel updates are already educating me, because I didn’t start my love affair with The Piano Man’s tunes until Glass Houses.

Pinterest, You Are Drunk – I just found this today and OMG.  LMAOROFL etc. etc.  These kids today.  Tipping point, indeed.

Fun Size Slackmistress – She’s had this site for a while but I just discovered it so since it’s new to me, it gets to be included.  Since she doesn’t blog as much on her blog blog, her tumblr allows fans to get updates and see what she is reading and enjoying in the meantime.

From Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising (tumblr - click image)

3.  The Internet is on TV and TV is on the Internet and you can follow each other 

Because, in conclusion, it seems that the trend is that everything you do on the internet must have some sort of “following” capability built into it.  Enter GetGlue.  I have never even seen GetGlue’s site but from the inane updates I see on Twitter and Facebook I bet you $100 that it’s just like Goodreads but with TV shows instead of books.  Since all I watch now is The Big Bang Theory, I don’t even care.  But you might like it.

This week’s grief post brought to you by Will Stegemann, who told me that after his father died he ate cake every day. He went to a bakery and got a piece of cake and ate it. He did this every. Day.

That is one tasty ritual. He doesn’t do that anymore. Now he runs, all healthy-like, and he and his wife Nina ran in a race to honor Lisa after she passed. I just sat around and drank too much wine and got maudlin on Facebook.

I don’t have a grief ritual, exactly. When I go to sleep every night I do glance at a prayer card my mother gave me in the days after Lisa died. I also make a point to visit her parents regularly. I still have a key to her house, so sometimes I think about going there just to be at a place she loved so much, but let’s be honest. It’s all the way across town. It’s Los Angeles and I am a busy mother. I don’t have time to visit an empty house just to brood.

Get Your Pain Off the Internet

Last weekend I visited her “new hilltop residence,” as her friends and I have decided to call it, to “celebrate” Lisa’s birthday, which was last Wednesday. She would have been 41. We sat in the pretty grass and we ate crackers and cheese and drank wine and talked about her.

I didn’t want to go at first. See above about not wanting to drive across town. It was in the middle of my Saturday. I missed Kyle’s first flag football touchdown (and his second, and his disputed third). I had a ton of stuff to do. Still, I went. I learned how to find a grave at an enormous cemetery. I read the inscriptions on many headstones, and I located a bathroom nearby Lisa’s spot. Lots of unwelcome education.

What I realized in talking with Lisa’s friends and my own is that oh yeah, I’m in a lot of pain, and I really took it out on Facebook last week on Lisa’s birthday. I was mad to see that there were people who didn’t know that she is dead. They wished her the blithe Facebook happy birthday and moved on with their day. They can still be ignorant and blissful. I got so angry at them for that. I’m still angry. Oh, how I wish I could go back to the moment before I got that horrible phone call, when everything was okay. These “friends” of Lisa’s who did not bother to click through to her Facebook page? They are still in that belief that everything is okay.

Screw them and screw Facebook.

Sigh. I know that is not fair. Facebook is just another tool that enables people to feel connected without actually picking up the phone or buying a birthday card and putting it in the mail. I know that I just wanted those people to hurt because I am hurting. When it was brought to my attention, I felt sorry.

I realize that sharing our innermost feelings on the internet can get pretty awkward. I open myself up to criticism and ridicule, and that is okay for me because I don’t actually care about those things. Especially now. But when I hurt someone’s feelings, I do care. For the past six weeks I have cared less, but I’m still me, so I do care.

I also realize that after a while these posts are going to make my blog less popular. And guess what – I stopped caring about that a long time ago. People with their blinky little cute blogs that get a lot of traffic would probably keep their grief thoughts off the internet.  But this blog has never been about getting more traffic or even keeping the traffic level steady.  It’s about what’s in my heart whether that is interesting to anyone or not.

You, and you? You’re still here. I am grateful for you. Thanks for reading, but I totally get it if you click away until you see me posting about poop and boogers again. I suppose I will keep writing here even when the statcounter says “0″ but that probably won’t happen because I have a post about Suze Orman that gets daily hits from Google and Bing.

And I am grateful to Lisa’s friend Kathryn for bringing cupcakes to our little “celebration.” Grief Cupcakes totally hit the spot.