Dan wrote a great post commenting on the recent post at dooce where she relayed some of the hate mail/comments she receives on a regular basis about her blog. I encourage you to read Dan’s whole post, but here’s a snippit from it.

Finally, there is that certain subset of humanity who can neither fathom nor accept that others might not agree with them on every single issue. They believe that the only correct opinion is their opinion; the only way of doing things is their way; the only acceptable path in life is the very path that they have chosen (or been forced into) for themselves. These are the people (and many of them tend to be hypocrites) who will insult you because you don’t share their religious or moral beliefs, because you don’t engage in the same activities, because you don’t wear the same fashions, and because you don’t idolize (or vilify) the same individuals or groups.

<<--snip--->>

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: “Just because we disagree doesn’t mean one of us is wrong.” Unfortunately, that’s beyond some people’s comprehension.

We all blog for different reasons. Some blog to keep a record of their family’s lives or to share their day to day happenings with friends, family and those who drop in. Others blog to spread a message, to share their opinions. Many people find blogging therapeutic, or a way to connect with somewhere outside of their local town. We attempt as well as we can to bring across our emotions in our blogs, our sarcasm, our sardonic humour, our anguish, anger, whatever emotion we’re writing about at the time. There’s no guarantee that those who read will interpret as we intend, but at the same time it is perplexing, some of the items that some people take literally. Dan touches home on that with;

There’s another subset which faithfully takes everyone at face-value, failing to see any irony, sarcasm or humour in other people’s words and/or deeds. For instance, when Dooce writes that the only thing her toddler will eat is M & M’s and Gummi Bears, and that she is considering making them the staple ingredient of her daughter’s three daily meals, some people actually believe her. And then they attack her because of it. But as a parent who is raising two very fussy children, I can understand where she is coming from and have experienced those very same meal-time frustrations myself. After all, at some point, we get tired of the constant parent-child battles and wish we could indeed resort to such extreme measures if only they’ll eat, if only they’ll give us a few minutes of peace and tranquility at the supper table. But no parent in their right mind would feed their children M & M’s and Gummi Bears three times a day, and that includes Dooce. Yet some people still take her comments seriously.

I enjoy reading Dooce as do many other readers. It’s true that I find sometimes her post are less humerous than other times. Sometimes I get tired of reading about poop, but at the same time, *I’m* the one who keeps reading it. No one is making me, and for the most part I know I’ll have a laugh with many of her posts. We are merely looking through a window at someone’s life, it’s only one view of it, flat, non-dimensional, stay and look, or pass on till you find a view that suits your style more. Why some people feel they need to be judgemental personally to her is beyond me. I’ve read many a blog that I completely didn’t agree with their views, and I just kept on going, nary to return. Like Dan mentioned, he’s had an unpleasant comment left before and I did too and I know for me, there was a moment of disbelief. I had a person state anonymously of course, that I was whining when I posted once that I was tired, that I had the kids all the time and needed a break. I followed up with a post and I wish I still had the comment (all my old comments were nuked in the server change).

So enough rambling, bottom line, I blog because I can because I enjoy it. And I hope that some of you have some enjoyment out of it as I often have while reading other’s blogs.

I’ll be honest, my typical political ramblings tend to be on a global/federal perspective. I’ve certainly been accused of being a Bush/Harper basher. I love Jon Stewart’s political satire and I regularly read alternet. Having said that, I find it’s easy to be a Bush basher, easier to jump on those political bandwagons, than discussing what is happening in our local scene. That’s because at this level, the lines are a lot blurrier, the issues more personal perhaps. So with that in mind, I’m more of a blank slate with this upcoming NB election. My opinions less formed.

So I’m finally going to write a post about the upcoming NB election. I think it’s important to clarify that I’m just a regular potential voter. I’m not a political expert, I only semi follow it in the news and mostly when issues that are important to me pop up and as I’ve said before, for the most part, I feel that trying to figure out who to vote for is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. What I do have are my observations of the election in a peripheral sense. In other words, Mr. Lord, Mr. Graham and Ms. Brewer, I’m your regular every day voter that your marketing campaign needs to appeal to. Here’s your demographic info:

single 37 year old Mother of two young children, one in school, one in preschool
Fredericton
Employed
income range (hey this is a public blog, c’mon;))
Post Secondary Education
Home Owner

What I’m curious to know and I know I could search and find it, but maybe a reader will have the info for me. What percentage of women vote in NB? How much of the female vote influences the polls here?

The reason I ask is that I’m going to blog about my perceptions of their marketing campaign. After all, they’re trying to gain my vote. I’m the one they need to sway. I read both the gleaner and the TJ yesterday and saw the full page campaign ads. With my new job, I’ve spent the last year investing a lot of time looking at marketing to women (I highly recommend. Marketing to Women and Don’t Think Pink) I saw both ads from a different perspective.

Liberal Ad:
1/2 page black and white (except for the liberal logo in red)
3rd person copy
team imagery

PC Ad:
full page ad, full colour
1st person copy
Close up of Lord 

Graham’s ad showed he and his team walking together. You can see the same imagery on his website. It’s a bit reminiscent of The Right Stuff but it works to a point. I think the colour version works better than the b/w ad in the paper. It’s too busy and loses it’s effectiveness of it being a team or community in b/w. Women are drawn to imagery that either connotates a team or community feel or they are drawn to imagery that shows close ups of people’s faces. The PC ad with Lord is certainly noticeable, but I find it’s too much in your face and not an appealing photo (no offense Mr. Lord;)). They both took different approaches with their copy as well. Graham’s copy is 3rd person (from the team) is specific in relation to energy, that the “PC’s have wasted 2.2 billion on the Orimulsion fiasco.” Which by the way most women are not receptive to that form of competitive put-down marketing.  He engages in “report talk” rather than “rapport talk” The PC Ad does a better attempt with the rapport talk as he uses the first person voice, the only problem, is that it’s too vague. The PC headline “Getting results for our children, families and seniors.” catches my attention, fits my demographic. The Liberal headline “Shawn Graham will make New Brunswick an energy leader”, yes it has my attention too, as certainly energy is important and definitely one of my “causes” but as the main leading headline, not as effective as the PC ad in that the PC ad hit on children and families, my critical focus for me.

So visually overall, I think the PC ad is more effective (although I think using a different image would have been better). In fact if you took the imagery (community/team feeling works) from the Liberal ad, combined it with the feel of the copy from the PC Ad. Keep the third person “we”, but give it a more personal touch, provide some facts and stay away from the competitive put-downs. Then I think it would have been a very effective ad. And yes colour ads are more effective, although more costly as well.

So what does this mean bottom line. I think it means that more people will be drawn visually to the PC ad then the Liberal ad regardless of where their loyalties lie.

And maybe I missed it (and if I did, that says something too about it’s effectiveness of reach), but was there an NDP ad?

So how much of a difference does an ad make? How much of a difference overall to their campaign will it matter which ad or marketing campaign, I prefer more? Will their signage that is just starting to be distributed all over town make a difference? How much do I trust the print media in NB which is essentially Irving owned? (another issue altogether). How does the every day person find out the election facts or will old engrained, pre-conceived and yes quite possibly false and ill informed info be my deciding factor. How much does my vote count? Who’s going to win my vote?

I started to respond as a comment to Scott’s comment but I quickly realized it was too long so decided to turn it into a post instead.

Yes, I remember the NB Games very well from the old days. And as to pedometer. Well I have a bias on this as it’s related to our new business. But suffice it to say there’s a huge difference between free McDonald’s type pedometers and high quality, technologically advanced pedometers. And there are lots of opportunties for it to be fun and interactive for kids. Oh god, did I just sound like I was making a sales pitch? lol. I’ve been using a pedometer for a while and yes it can make a difference, and with kids today who are so used to being connected it can motivate them. While in an ideal world, kids would just play outside to get exercise, the reality is that it’s not happening and we need to address how to relate health and fitness to kids in a technologically, media changing world. There’s a whole new area of kid’s fitness called exergaming that is being implemented in areas, like a gym in NS. For our generation, it seems hard to imagine that this is needed, when they’ve got a basketball court down the street, but the end result is that kids are getting fit whereas before they were glued to an X-Box.

It’s only part of the picture though as healthy eating needs to be addressed too in our world of fast food, (I’m guilty of it too at times, who isn’t), a rush to soccer, or Camp, no time. Or as the Gleaner addressed today, picky eaters, kids that won’t eat anything except peanut butter.

Diabetes runs rampant through my mother’s side of my family. Obesity, heart disease, all contributors. I don’t want my children growing up without the tools to make healthy food choices or not knowing about an active lifestyle. And yes I need to lead by example, I’m trying;)

I hadn’t planned for this to turn into a spiel;) But it’s a subject matter close to my heart and that’s why I was glad to see Graham address it today.

I’m organizing my clothes for my trip and NOTHING fits. I know I’ve gained weight this past year and I refused to buy new business clothes because I don’t plan on keeping the weight on, but now I’m in a bit of a bind for my trip. Sigh, I guess I’ll rummage through my closet some more and see what I can find. I started getting back into regular exercise last month, have lost some weight, but this weight gain this past year distributed everything differently. And things are just fitting differently, not as well:(

Which overall makes me feel pretty crappy and like a big fraud. You see, 3 years ago, I decided that it was time to start losing the weight I had been carrrying for a long time. So I changed my life, became more active and lost approx. 70 lbs  as of Sept. 2005 (you can check out the weight loss category in the sidebar). Fitness and health had become an important part of my life. And one day last August 2005, I had the opportunity to become involved in the research of a new wellness company. I jumped on it as it was something I believed in. And thus it started, my downward spiral. I worked full time for Goose Lane. I had a part time web/print design business. I was busy with 2 kids as a single Mom. And now suddenly I had new work to do.

I guess I thought I’d be able to juggle it all. And I did, but at a cost. I worked all the time, except for when I had the kids. I stayed up until 2 am many nights working. I stopped playing basketball. I justified that with telling myself I was following Dr.’s orders for taking 6 months off. But then the 6 mos came and went and I still didn’t play. I stopped going to the gym. I spent all my non kid time sitting at a computer. Go to work in the morning and sit at a computer, come home, do the kid routine, get them to bed, etc. and sit at the computer working until very late. Well, the body doesn’t do well with that lifestyle. I knew I was gaining weight, but I’m like a rabbit, hoping that if I can’t see you, then you can’t see me. I didn’t step on the scale anymore. I kept telling myself, that things would calm down when I wasn’t juggling so much.

And then in July I quit my job at Goose Lane to go to work fulltime with our wellness company. And that’s when reality kicked in. One morning, I weighed myself and seeing those numbers meant I couldn’t hide from it anymore. I’d gained almost 20 lbs in the last year. I was also feeling tired, more migraines and just overall crummy. The guilt of being involved in a company that was promoting health and wellness and I wasn’t following what we believed in. Then my pedometer arrived in the mail for testing out the computer part of the program. And like the scale being a visual kick in the pants, the pedometer really hit home. 10,000 steps they say, well many days I was lucky to hit 5,000, with an average of 2-3,000/day. More guilt. Well, the only thing to do with guilt is to do something about it. So, I started wearing my pedometer every day, trying to be creative about finding more ways to step, which resulted in me being more active. I started playing basketball again. Those nights are great, I hit my 10,000 steps and more. I have a bathroom in my basement where my office is, but I run to use the upstairs bathroom, just so I can get more activity. Being aware of my steps, made me work harder. If I had hit 8,000 by the end of the night, I’d take the kids for a walk, hoping to hit that 10,000 mark. And it’s working, I feel better on those days and the weight is starting to drop off again. It’s a challenge still, as I have a lot to juggle, a new business involves a lot of time, and my kids are back in school, so there is more time involved with shuttling kids around now. Yet, now I’m not hiding from it anymore and I’m making it a priority. I want our company to be ethical and if I can’t walk the talk, then how can I expect anyone else to do the same.

And I know the difference. I know what it’s like to take that slippery road to weight gain. And I don’t feel like *me* when I’m heavy and I don’t feel well physically or emotionally when I’m heavy. So when our company launches I will be one of the members, like everyone else, struggling to find ways to fit movement in our lives. I’m going to make myself accountable to our members. I don’t want to be a fraud. How could I do otherwise, when I know the difference, have experienced the difference of a more active and fit lifestyle.

So tomorrow I head off to Texas for a marketing seminar. They say everything is big down there, so maybe these extra lbs I’m carrying will fit right in;)

When I was a kid, I didn’t know anyone with cancer. We all knew it was a deadly disease but it seemed so far removed from my everyday life. Then when I was 20, the mother of a good friend of mine died of cancer. That was the first time it touched my life in a semi-peripheral way. I remember thinking how unfair that someone at the age of 20 should lose their mother and wondering how I would feel if that was me. I called both my Mom and Dad that night to talk with them. Those fleeting moments where we realize we’re taking loved ones for granted. Then I was 28 and my mother was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer). We were told that it was aggressive, relatively rare and virtually impossible to treat. Suddenly cancer was in my own family. They gave my Mom 6 months to live. She survived for three more years. During that three year long struggle, I learned more about cancer than I had ever wanted to know. I learned that 1 in 3 people will develop cancer. Suddenly my perspective was a lot different.  Like most people, when something affects us so personally, we suddenly notice it everywhere. I heard about cancer in the news more, people I knew were diagnosed with it, people were dying from it, like my Mother did.

Then a year or so later, my Dad calls to tell me that he has a malignant growth in his neck. I can remember the blood draining from my head and the word cancer burning into my consciousness. He was going to have radiation and that everything should be fine. It was. 

Then a couple of years ago, they discover pre-cancerous cells on my Dad’s esophagus. He’s been ok though so far, no changes in those cells.

Then last year, my Aunt, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through surgeries and treatments. Always courageous and strong though and she is a survivor. She started a campaign sewing bandana’s for cancer survivors.

Shortly after, my cousin on my Dad’s side, only a few years older than me, with small children at home, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has been fighting this battle and I know that she leans on my Aunt for support, for someone who truly understands.

Yesterday, my phone rings and it’s my Dad. During the day. My Dad never calls me during the day. He’d been in the hospital over the last few weeks because he’d been having problems with his prostate. He makes small chat for a minute and then tells me he has Prostate Cancer. He tells me that it’s not aggressive and that the doctors will have a plan for him in two weeks. He tells me not to worry and that everything will be ok.

I am worried. How can I not be. And, yes, I’m scared. I lost one parent to cancer already and for some reason, it keeps trying to embed its insiduous self in my father. I always said that I was never scared of growing older. And I’m not, not for myself at least. But I’m realizing that growing older also means that those around us have a higher incidence of cancer and other illness’s and for that reason I’m afraid of growing older. Growing older means more chances of losing loved ones.

I love you Dad.