We’re in the middle of our redesign process for Cranky. We’re working furiously behind the scenes here to give you a better, prettier, more easily navigable site.

As we work, I’m thinking about adding a Frequently Asked Questions page since I get some common comments on posts. I’d love to hear any questions you all have for me!

Check out the new and improved About Us page and if there’s anything I left out that you’d love to know about us or the blog, send me a question via Formspring! Thanks for the help friends!

Earlier this week I read about Chris Anderson & Jane Wulf’s Email Charter over at Swiss Miss, and I loooooved it! Please check it out and join me in trying to spend less time working on our inboxes!

10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral

1. Respect Recipients’ Time
This is the fundamental rule. As the message sender, the onus is on YOU to minimize the time your email will take to process. Even if it means taking more time at your end before sending.

2. Short or Slow is not Rude
Let’s mutually agree to cut each other some slack. Given the email load we’re all facing, it’s OK if replies take a while coming and if they don’t give detailed responses to all your questions. No one wants to come over as brusque, so please don’t take it personally. We just want our lives back!

3. Celebrate Clarity
Start with a subject line that clearly labels the topic, and maybe includes a status category [Info], [Action], [Time Sens] [Low Priority]. Use crisp, muddle-free sentences. If the email has to be longer than five sentences, make sure the first provides the basic reason for writing. Avoid strange fonts and colors.

4. Quash Open-Ended Questions
It is asking a lot to send someone an email with four long paragraphs of turgid text followed by “Thoughts?”. Even well-intended-but-open questions like “How can I help?” may not be that helpful. Email generosity requires simplifying, easy-to-answer questions. “Can I help best by a) calling b) visiting or c) staying right out of it?!”

5. Slash Surplus cc’s
cc’s are like mating bunnies. For every recipient you add, you are dramatically multiplying total response time. Not to be done lightly! When there are multiple recipients, please don’t default to ‘Reply All’. Maybe you only need to cc a couple of people on the original thread. Or none.

6. Tighten the Thread
Some emails depend for their meaning on context. Which means it’s usually right to include the thread being responded to. But it’s rare that a thread should extend to more than 3 emails. Before sending, cut what’s not relevant. Or consider making a phone call instead.

7. Attack Attachments
Don’t use graphics files as logos or signatures that appear as attachments. Time is wasted trying to see if there’s something to open. Even worse is sending text as an attachment when it could have been included in the body of the email.

8. Give these Gifts: EOM NNTR
If your email message can be expressed in half a dozen words, just put it in the subject line, followed by EOM (= End of Message). This saves the recipient having to actually open the message. Ending a note with “No need to respond” or NNTR, is a wonderful act of generosity. Many acronyms confuse as much as help, but these two are golden and deserve wide adoption.

9. Cut Contentless Responses
You don’t need to reply to every email, especially not those that are themselves clear responses. An email saying “Thanks for your note. I’m in.” does not need you to reply “Great.” That just cost someone another 30 seconds.

10. Disconnect!
If we all agreed to spend less time doing email, we’d all get less email! Consider calendaring half-days at work where you can’t go online. Or a commitment to email-free weekends. Or an ‘auto-response’ that references this charter. And don’t forget to smell the roses.

And it was! It was filled with LA creative types, who all looked effortlessly cute. They made me want to go on a serious shopping spree. I got to talk to some interesting Angelinos, and I even got to meet one of my blogging idols, Joy Cho of Oh Joy! She was very nice and very politely listened while I tried to convince her to add more baby style posts to her blog (she is pregnant after all). I don’t think I sold her on the idea.

Erin (that’s her taking a photo of me taking a photo of her, you can see her’s HERE), who I finally got to meet in person at the Arrojo launch party earlier in the week, was my date for the evening! I had so much fun getting to know her on our long drive to Venice! Thanks for being my date Erin! I had a blast!

If you haven’t joined Pinterest, I really recommend it, check it our HERE, and follow my boards HERE!

We had the opportunity to sit and talk with Nick about his life, career, and the products.  He had an inspiring story of working his way up from a poor childhood to building a successful career and business.

taken with my iphone – sorry about the poor image quality

We each got to take home a bag of sample goodies. And I have to tell you I love the shampoo and conditioner. They smell amazing, like being in a spa, and seem to do the job (I’m no hair product expert), and they have a great price point for salon products ($12-19). And isn’t the packaging pretty?!

Thanks to Rituals and Nick for the invite!

See it’s like a little note to you guys, not just a blog post, well, it’s a post and a note. Anyway, I wanted to let you all know that cranky is becoming a BlogHer Affiliate, which doesn’t effect you a whole lot, but you will see a little blue bar at the top of the page, with some buttons to share what you’re reading about via facebook and twitter and some ads, possibly some with Justin Bieber’s face on them (score!). Beginning in August you’ll see some ads in the right sidebar.

I thought I’d answer some of your questions and concerns about this change:

Wow, you’re selling out? Yup, and it’s about time! This blog has been costing rather than making us money for quite a while. And you all know that we are in a constant state of brokedom. So bring on the ads! Don’t worry, BlogHer allows us to choose what type of ads that will run, which means you won’t see any ads that run contrary to our values.

What does this mean for me, Jane Reader? Only good things I assure you. It means I actually have to post on a regular basis and I gotta make those posts worth reading. Novel concept right?

What can I do to help you? I’m so glad you asked.  As always, we love for you to tell your friends to stop in for a visit! Let them know why you like to read Cranky and why they might too!

Are you taking other ads? Yup, we will soon start taking other sponsors after our redesign is complete. They will be tile ads running in our sidebar. I’ll be putting together ad specs and pricelists soon. If you or someone you know might be interested, we’re looking for advertisers who are similar style blogs (you know, those for the young hip family) or products that the young hip family would love. If you want to get on the list to be notified when we start offering ad space, just shoot me an email at maggie@makingmecranky.com.

As always, thank you, thank you for supporting our little place on the interwebs!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming: a post about Eleanor will be up in a bit!

Thank you all for reading and sticking with me! As always, I am eternally grateful to you all for letting us share our life with you!

After brunch Josh took Eleanor out for a while so I could relax with some peace and quiet watching Friday Night Lights on Hulu and getting a little work done. And then I decided to spend the rest of my day cleaning out my closet. Seriously. I really wanted to do it, and had been meaning to for a while. So, since it was my day to do what I want, I cleaned. I know, I have a problem.

So what’s it been like living in a hotel for a week? Well, it’s been good and bad. At first it was frustrating, but after a day it started to feel like a mini vacation.

I don’t have to cook because there’s no stove, so we’re eating out almost every meal, and we rarely eat out, only a couple times a month probably. We get to watch real TV, we don’t have cable TV at home, just a roku box with Netflix and Hulu on it. Someone will come and make the beds and empty the trash cans and bring us clean towels if we want (we actually only use housekeeping every third day or so). The hotel has a breakfast bar with a variety of bad-for-me pastries that I never get to eat, like cinnamon buns! There are fresh baked cookies in the lobby every evening. All good and fun things!

BUT all that got old by day four. We don’t actually eat out because it’s expensive and reasonably priced restaurant food is just not that good. We’re so used to making our own food from fresh, unprocessed ingredients that everything we eat out tastes way over-seasoned, over-salted, over-buttered, over-sweetened. I mean it’s fine for one meal, but it just gets gross after a few days. And I’m talking about every place we’ve gone to. They are all like that.

TV was fun at first, but really, I don’t know how you guys do it with little kids at home. I can’t flip through the channels without covering Eleanor’s eyes and ears. I never noticed before how much scariness and violence there is on tv. Really, I was surprised. I don’t mind if she sees some nudity or hears some language (I promise to write a post about this) but we really don’t want her to see too much violence at this age, and it is on every single channel! So annoying. It makes me very happy we don’t have cable TV at home.

The trashcans are tiny, so they are always overfull. I’m sick of leaving tips for the housekeepers for doing what I should be doing myself at home. I’m sick of paying to do our laundry. I’m getting fat(ter) from breakfast pastry and evening cookies. I’m finding it hard to work from the hotel. Apparently, I’m very attached to my routine at home. And I JUST WANT TO GO HOME! Josh is about as frustrated as I am.

Eleanor, on the other hand, is having a great time. She thinks it’s a super fun adventure. Except for the fact that we have to get up extra early to take Josh to his commuter bus stop. He usually takes the local from home or rides his bike, but there’s no bus from the hotel and we don’t have his bike. She loves being at the hotel, the staff at the front desk know her by name and she stops to talk to them on her way in and out of the hotel. Although, we’re having to put her on time out more often because a hotel room is just not big enough for a rambunctious three-year old.

It’s Monday morning and we are not home yet. It’s Day 10 of the Mold Saga and I’m flipping out!

Head over to check out my post and stay for more posts from her other sponsors and friends!