Reading: You'll Never Nanny in this Town Again

I have such shameful, guilty pleasures. I'm not proud of them, but I do have them and I surrender to them frequently. I LONG for Friday afternoons when I can purchase the new US Weekly and quickly turn to the "Stars: They're Just Like Us" section to see Reese Witherspoon spoon Splenda into her Tall Extra Hot Triple Shot Half-Caff Vanilla Soy Latte. I TIVO "The Real Housewives of Orange County". I j'adore America's Next Top Model.

Which is why I picked up "You'll Never Nanny in this Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny" last week when it was cold and rainy and I had the flu and I needed some celebrity scandal to keep me warm.

First off, this book is DISHY and I read it in about 8 hours. And I'm not going to lie when I say I enjoyed every single page of it. The author, Suzanne Hansen, graduated from Nanny University in The Middle of Nowhere, Oregon before landing a job as a live-in Nanny to Michael Ovitz, agent to stars such as Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise.

Hansen pulls no punches describing the year she spend in the Ovitz' household. Case in point: Mrs. Ovitz apparently had no desire or ability to care for her 7-month old infant and Hansen was responsible for morning, noon and midnight feedings for the baby. Mr. Ovitz called from a trip overseas and instead of asking about his children, repeatedly inquired about his art. Mrs. Ovitz spent thousands of dollars on manicures but refused to replace an iron which was a fire hazard to her housecleaning staff.

I won't go into much detail about the plot of the book because you get this gist: Hansen works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She quits. Ovitz gets pissed and blackballs her in the Hollywood nanny community. She ends up getting a job with Debra Winger, who refuses to be intimidated by Ovitz.

I won't lie to you: This book is great dish, but it is by no means well-written. It is also very dated; Hansen worked in Hollywood in the late 80s and is now a mother herself in Oregon. What I think bothers me the most about this book Suzanne dredged up gossip that is almost 20 years and she never provided any grand insight about Hollywood and power, or delivered any kind of message about parenting methodology.

But, it is flu season, and if you have 8 hours to kill ... this book will deliver.

Good Food, Good Booze and Good Music

As I mentioned in my previous post, a lot of my life has been consumed of late with work and wedding. Work is really boring, so I won’t go into that, but for those of you who are interested, wedding planning is coming along quite well.

As most of my friends know, I was not at ALL interested in having a wedding. I have never been a girl who dreams about my wedding day. I HAVE always dreamed about my honeymoon….which is going to be awesome, by the way…..but not my wedding day. Eloping sounded like the perfect option to me, but Fiancé’s and Family’s desires trumped mine. And that is ok, because Fiancé and I are going to have a really beautiful and fun wedding in the wine country. Good food, good music and good booze have been our motto, and so far it has worked for us.

For any bride-to-be out there, I can offer you three pieces of advice: 1) a beautiful wedding CAN be planned in less than a year (although it feels a bit rushed) and 2) DON’T buy into the bridal industry, and 3) decide what you part of the wedding is most important to you and spend your money on that.

Let me explain.

Point 1: A beautiful wedding can be planned in less than a year: There is simply NO need to devote 12-18 months of your life to plan a wedding (sorry Erica, if you are reading this!). Life is too short to worry about mundane details such as table assignments and RSVP cards. If you can devote one evening a week and one weekend day to meeting with caterers and florists and DJs, you should not have a problem booking vendors 6-8 months out.

Point 2: Don’t buy into the wedding industry: I cannot stress this enough. All the wedding books and websites offer all sorts of needless advice on how much to spend on flowers, how much to spend on your dress, when do send out your invitations, what sort of favors to give your guests, etc., and all I can say is…..make up your own rules. Plan your own budget and don’t exceed it. Don’t let vendors pressure you. I cannot tell you how many vendors TURNED US DOWN because they “couldn’t possibly” take on such a small and inexpensive wedding. Don’t let brochures and websites fool you into thinking that you are meeting with the BEST vendor and THEY make the rules. Meet with vendors, decide how much money you want to spend, and if their proposal goes over that amount, keep looking.

Fiancé and I talked to A LOT of vendors and we ended up choosing those who aren’t “fancy” and who aren’t “platinum wedding” vendors, but they all have a lot of integrity. We are receiving great customer service and no one is exceeding our budget. In fact, some of them are coming in under our budget.

Point 3: Decide what part of your wedding is most important to you and spend your money on that: Good Food, Good Music and Good Booze. Those were our top three priorities. Which is why I’m only having one bridesmaid and she is choosing her own dress. Which is also why we decided not to hire a professional photographer or videographer. Which is also why we are not giving favors. I really only want people drunk, well fed and dancing and I couldn't care less about anything else.

Just to plug our vendors…..for anyone who lives in the Bay Area and would like to plan a party or wedding in the wine country, give a quick call to our caterer, our florist, our rehearsal dinner location and our wedding venue.

Reading: A LOT

Yes, I have been gone for a while. I have been planning a wedding, working insane, crazy hours and watching far too much bad TV. HOWEVER, I have been reading a lot lately.

First up, let's start with March, by Geraldine Brooks. This book follows the journey of Mr. March, the father in the story Little Women, as he leaves Concord, Massachusetts, and ministers to the soldiers in the Civil War For fans of Little Women, you will remember the girl's blind adoration of their father, which most daughters (myself included) can certainly relate to.

Mr. March makes a brief appearance at the end of Little Women, but his letters home are eagerly awaited throughout much of the book. However, this story takes the mystery out of the man. Brooks tells the story of an idealistic and slightly inept minister who foolishly loses the family money before volunteering for the Civil War, where his liberal views are not accepted by the soldiers. March is released from him duties after a semi-romantic friendship with a slave, Grace. Instead of going home to his children and wife and very disillusioned by the horrors of wartime, he becomes a teacher to a plantation of "freed slaves" before being shot trying to defend them in a raid by Confederate soldiers.

The second half of the book is told by his wife Marmee, when March himself lies in a hospital too injured to tell his own story. Again, Brooks provides a deeper look at Alcott's seemingly perfect and generous Marmee. In this story, Marmee is a frustrated, harried mother of four who doesn't understand how and why her husband could willingly leave his home during war time. She is understandably angry and jealous to find her delirious husband being nursed lovingly, in a strange twist of fate, by Grace, the now-freed slave for whom he developed feelings.

This book was probably one of the best books I have read in a long time. I couldn't put it down during Christmas, which I'm not sure my new in-laws appreciated. March is beautifully written, told in first person letters from Mr. March his family at home.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, or books about the Civil War, or fans of Little Women.

More book reviews to come later this week.