Alice 🌲📚🌲📚

I took my 11 year old to her checkup this morning and the nurse asked me to step out of the room for a moment. I politely declined and she said, "It's just for a moment." And I told her, "No thank you, given all the stories about children being abused my husband and I decided to never leave our children alone with anyone, even medical providers. Anything you need to do or say you can do with me in the room." She looked all miffed and just left, no idea what her plan was but she didn't feel the need to continue it with me present and that makes me even more suspicious?? When she left my daughter thanked me for not leaving, she's already shy about the doctor, her eyes got so wide when the lady asked me to leave.

I took my 11 year old to her checkup this morning and the nurse asked me to step out of the room for a moment. I politely declined and she said, "It's just for a moment." And I told her, "No thank you, given all the stories about children being abused my husband and I decided to never leave our children alone with anyone, even medical providers. Anything you need to do or say you can do with me in the room." She looked all miffed and just left, no idea what her plan was but she didn't feel the need to continue it with me present and that makes me even more suspicious?? When she left my daughter thanked me for not leaving, she's already shy about the doctor, her eyes got so wide when the lady asked me to leave.

Why is matchmaking expensive? To illustrate, here’s how I’ll lose money on a client’s $49,000 package. Client is 46, 6’2, exited tech founder. He’s looking for a woman 27-33, very specific criteria around match personality, appearance, and profession. Without diving into specifics, she: • Isn’t easily searchable online... • Isn’t likely to reply when we find her… • Isn’t likely to be single… • Often has a deal-breaker trait we can’t screen for without a phone call… • Isn’t necessarily interested in my client… I was expecting this to be a difficult search, so I quoted $49,000. I wasn’t expecting ~100 hours of labor to find each match, not including communication with the client! To date I’ve spent $45,000 on salaries for the women staffed on his search, plus $2,750 on styling and photos, and we still owe the client 2 matches... Before considering overhead (let alone opportunity cost) this will be a huge L financially. Things balance out though. Most engagements are profitable. Some engagements are quite profitable. For example, a new client in NYC paid $30,000 and paused after his first match, because he’s 99% sure we found his wife. That's still a new relationship, and engagements last 9 months (6 months of active matching + up to 3 months of pause), so we could be on the hook for more work in coming months. But you get the point 🙏

My unpopular take before the year ends is that having kids is low-key an inconvenience and society just hates admitting it.

When did we all decide sweats and pajama pants were the appropriate attire for air travel? 😐 Nobody gives af anymore. 🫠

“The baby is here and alive and that’s all that matters!” is in my eyes, a form of toxic positivity.