And we’re off to Mexico! See you in a week…

It doesn’t matter how far I plan ahead, how much laundry is already done or how many lists I make tonight. The fact is, in exactly 24 hours, I will be in a panicked stupor because I have to be up to leave for the airport in 4 hours and I will have just finished cleaning my house, putting away all my laundry and packing my bags… but I will not have had the chance to give myself a mani/pedicure. So I’ll be exhausted, but I’ll stay up and do my nails anyway because one cannot get on a plane to Mexico with a grimy toenails.

And the whole time my husband will be sound asleep in bed, not even having packed yet. He’ll wake up 1/2 hour before we leave, completely refreshed having just slept 10 hours, and will proceed to stuff a too-small duffel bag with questionably clean clothes until its bursting at the seams and he will then declare himself packed for Cabo.

This is the part of vacation that I really don’t like.

I spent the past two days at a health expo in downtown Detroit hocking theNonProfit’s t-shirts and website. We were also taking $1 donations for official posters for the upcoming Detroit marathon. I probably talked to 10,000 people over the past two days – most of whom were genuinely good people. But there’s always a few in a crowd – the ignorant or the just plain obnoxious – that make it so hard to maintain my composure. Today I was hit by all three of my favorites – the “your CEO is a thief,” the “you love abortions” and the “you love/hate the homos.”

Your CEO is a thief
“I haven’t donated a dime to [theNonProfit] since I found out that your CEO made over $600,000 and embezzled all that money.”

Point 1: My CEO makes nowhere near $600,000. He’s paid well, of course…. a salary I wouldn’t mind having myself. But $600,000 is laughable. His salary is public record and even at well under $600,000, I’m sure quite a few would have something to say about its size. But how much is too much or rather, how much is enough?

I didn’t get into the nonprofit game to become rich – I did it to help people. But the fact of the matter is, I can’t help anyone if I can’t pay my own damn bills.

Furthermore, why should I be paid any less than my for-profit counterparts? I’m bright, I’m talented and I have mad skills. And my stockholders – my donors, volunteers and service recipients – deserve no less than the stock holders of any other corporation. They deserve hard working, talented people working in their best interest, on their behalf. And you can’t find those type of people to serve you if you don’t pay a competitive wage. Otherwise your staff would be filled with nothing more than the independently wealthy or the poor slobs that couldn’t get a job anywhere else.

By stating that nonprofit workers make too much (market rate), the accuser might as well just say that the poor and indigent deserve less than your average stockholder.

Point 2: My CEO never embezzled a dime, mother fucker. Some ass wipe from the national office (which we financially operate from autonomosly) was accussed of embezzlement over 15 years ago – and an independent investigator found no direct evidence that he had embezzled anything. In fact, the biggest criticism of the indepedent investigator was that documentation was lacking to distinguish business expenditures from personal charges.

You love abortions
“I’m not going to donate a dollar to you to get that poster because you support Planned Parenthood and it will be used for abortions.”

Point 1:An abortion cost a hell of a lot more than $1. But, really – not the point.

Point 2: theNonProfit has many, many partners that work with us in the areas of early childhood education, dropout prevention, foreclosure assistance, financial stability and access to basic needs like food, clothing and shelter. And some of those partners receive funding from us to help in the work.

Now, personally, I love me some Planned Parenthood. They do outstanding work in my humble opinion. But when was the last time you went to a PP clinic and were counseled on how to stay in school or how to prevent your home from being foreclosed upon? Never, right? And that’s why we don’t partner with them. It’s not a statement on what they do – they just do a different kind of work. So, there you go… your dollar isn’t going to be used for an abortion.

Point 3: Abortions are performed in doctors’ offices, private clinics and hospitals all over this country. Those offices, clinics and hospitals are funded by your health insurance premiums and co-pays. So, says I, stop paying the premium on your medical insurance you smug, righteous windbag, and ask your preacher to heal you the next time you have cancer. That’ll surely save some babies.

You love/hate the homos
“I’m don’t want a [theNonProfit] t-shirt! You support/you don’t support the boy scouts!”

I have no points for this one, just a long-winded commentary because it’s a no win situation… The scouts no doubt provide some great educational programming for children. So, naturally, it would seem that they would be a good fit for us as education is one of our primary focuses. However, our partners are held to a no-discrimination standard that, obviously, most scouting organizations can’t adhere to as they openly discriminate against homosexuals.

If it was up to me, we wouldn’t fund the scouts. I find the harm caused by their discriminatory practices outweighs the good their programming does in this day and age. But there is always that dichotomy of what’s best for the community. And providing children with access to top-notch educational programming is what our volunteers decided was best. (Our volunteers decide who receives funding.) So, somehow, one local council of the boy scouts does receive funding. However, another doesn’t. It was simply a matter of who could provide the best programming. There’s only so much money to go around.

So, the scout lovers hate us because we don’t fund both and the diversity and gay communities hate us because we still fund one. Like I said, a no win situation.

So, that was my day. And I wish I could forget those people that gave me a hard time today and put me on the spot. Because for every 1 that wanted to talk about how they hated us, 1,000 others donated or signed up to volunteer or thanked us for the work that we do. I wish I could just hang on to those…

Today marks my 7 year anniversary at theNonprofit. It’s a day that will now forever be intertwined with another anniversary – Dan’s death.

I went back to the cardiologist this week for the results of my 24 hour heart test. Turns out that my heart beat is about as erratic as my ability to keep this blog updated. Technically I have been diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia which is nowhere near as ominous and scary as it sounds. The cardiologist prescribed a higher dosage beta blocker and started to send me on my way until I stopped him and asked him what actually caused the rapid heart beats.

“It’s usually stress related. Have you been under a lot of stress lately?” he asked.

“No, not really,” I responded. However, driving home I started to think about what could have stressed me out so bad over the past few months and I almost started laughing. No stress? Puh-leez! Let’s review the last year, shall we?

Beginning in February… my husband lost his job, then severed his Achilles tendon, then an inept surgeon killed my grandfather, a dear friend had a schizonphrenic break and is now fixated on how I (and a few others) “caused” it, I work for a woman that makes Meryl Streep in the Devil Wears Prada look like a pandy ass and I just launched the biggest project of my career – the nonProfit’s social network. Stress?! Who has stress.

Shit, it’s like a Lifetime movie up in this mug.

Funny thing is, Bryan is working again and his foot is nearly completely healed, my Grandfather is still dead – but the sting is gone, I’ve had months to adapt to the friend I knew being gone and being replaced by the friend with schizophrenia, and the social network is a smashing success to everyone except, of course, Ms. Devil Wears Prada the Sequel. So, honestly, the stress is back to a completely manageable level… my body has yet, however, to catch up to this news.

My assignment from the cardiologist is to find ways to destress over the next two months. I’m thinking there’s a lot of the mary jane in my near future. I mean, that shit’s good enough for Montel after all… Or, maybe not so much. I’m thinking that I’m going to give Yoga the ol’ college try.

I think only my Detroit peeps will understand why this brings tears to my eyes… but, for what it’s worth, here’s Kid Rock’s latest video. It’s my city!

Say what you will about the man or his music, but he made it big and, yet, he stays close to Detroit. I find that very admirable.

Are you listening, you fucker Jack White?

I’ve been listening to 1st Wave on Sirius all day today as I clean the kitchen and putz around the house.  Every song is better than the last. In the 5+ hours I’ve been listening there’s only been one song I didn’t recognize and it’s on right now.

The music has me thinking a lot about high school. My 20 year reunion is coming up in two weeks and I just can’t decided if I want to go or not. I can name the people I’d like to see on one hand – Chris, Pete, Shannon, Dave… guess that’s about it. Every other close friend I had went to a different school or was in a different grade.

That’s the “fun” of switching schools in the middle of high school – everyone else had a history far before I came along. It wasn’t very easy to break in to a clicque. Especially in Milan where most folks had gone to school together since preschool.

I try not to ever think of what life would have been like had we just stayed in Texas. After all, I am who I am today because of the move to Michigan. I wouldn’t be married to Bryan or wouldn’t be stepmom to Aleah. Jack wouldn’t be my stepdad. I wouldn’t be doing the work I’m doing. I wouldn’t have the friends I have.

But, let’s face it… as good as it is today, moving to Michigan sucked in so many ways early on. I left a great group of many close friends, the parents divorced, my brother died and everything that had ever been good was just gone. It took a long, long time to rebound from all of that.

I love my life. I love Detroit. I actually really love being a Yankee and the progressiveness that generally comes with living where I do. It’s not often that I long for my old life.

But this music is making me nostalgic. For all its faults, living in the South was just easier sometimes. People are friendlier, people stay closer and family just seems to be a bigger deal. Or maybe it was just the people I knew.

It’s no fluke that the only high school friends I stay in touch with, on any sort of regular basis, are the ladies from Texas – Stacy, Shelly, Stephanie and Lorri. They were friends during the prime of my adolescence – the golden part – and remind me of everything that was good about my life before moving to Michigan.

I’m so lonely for them today. I think it’s about time to hop on a plane and get my butt back to Texas. I miss my people.

When WaMu failed and was seized by government regulators, CEO Alan Fishman had been on the job for just 17 days. However, he was contractually guaranteed $11.6 million in cash severance on top of the $7.5 million signing bonus he got for taking the job.

Basically, Fishman netted just under $20 million for 17 days of work, which is a pretty nice setup for the head of a collapsing corporation.

More on fat paychecks here.

Oh joy of joys, our computer had a meltdown on Tuesday. A Microsoft service pack killed the whole thing. Thankyouverymuch you fuckers at Microsoft. My next computer is, hands down, going to be a Mac. But, until we can spare $1800, the PC is in the shop getting a new hard drive.

Prior to the great computer meltdown of 2008, I went to the doctor for an EKG. As suspected, my Mitral valve isn’t working exactly right. However, the cardiologist deemed it “nothing dangerous.” It’s just a bit leaky. As Christine said the other night… it has now been medically confirmed that I am a bleedging heart. 

Now I’m on a heart monitor for the next 24 hours. I have to keep a diary of all activity while on the monitor. In the past five hours I have smoked a cigarette, taken a four hour nap, eaten an apple and had a bowel movement… and I don’t see a whole lot more happening in the next 20 hours. This, folks, is a lack of activity so embarrassing that I am damned near tempted to make something up before returning it to the cardiologist. 80 year old women see more action than this.

At least the VP debates are on tonight. That’s sure to get my blood rain pumping. We just found out today that McCain has conceeded Michigan and his campaign is leaving the state. Thank g to the o d. I hope he takes his stupid commercials with him.