CAMPAIGN DESK

Once upon a time I bought a beautiful house and claimed a room in it as my office. This room was not large, and the dumb old antique glass doorknobs always fell off when I slammed the door shut and yelled, "Be quiet! I'M WORKING!!!" Sometimes they fell off on the outside, which meant eventually someone had to come and let me out. This still happens in the master bath, and so, if you haven't seen me in a while, please check there first.





But it was my room. OK, so I shared it with the ironing board (taunting me always) , a guest sofa, several friendly guitars, and enough amplifiers to recreate the Who's WALL OF SOUND. Yet, when I said the words, "I'll be in the office," I wasn't referring to a blanket fort under the dining room table. You didn't have to follow the extension cord until it ended at me, sitting on the floor in the stair landing, typing furiously. It was a room with a door, and it was mine. Occasionally my family was even kind enough to leave a pen or half-chewed pencil there for me to use.





Fast forward a few phases of child development, and it became necessary to give our sons their own rooms. Among other things, the top bunk was being used to investigate certain laws of physics. Growing up in a house full of girls, it had never occurred to me to see if I could pee on ANYONE'S head from the top bunk. There is simply no way to prepare for certain things about parenting.





There followed a whole year where my "office" was an old desk three feet from the blissful marriage bed, from which my husband would lovingly glare at me, turn over, sigh loudly, and bury his head in three pillows. I felt great about it. I was also able to conserve nearly all my calories, since my commute for the day was: roll out of bed onto rolling chair, push self off wall over to desk. Never had gaining weight been so easy, so automatic!





I decided to rejoin the living by sharing the family computer upstairs. Commence six months of wondering, was it just me or did everyone in my family chew food/breathe so loud that I could not focus on what I was doing? (It was me)


This is my long, I'm-sick-in-bed-so-I'm-going-to-tell-you-my-life-story, way of saying we are turning the garage into an office and I painted an old campaign desk Kelly green. Behr's "Mint Sprig" green to be exact. The rug and the chair look a little awful with it, but nothing says "These would be perfect for mom" like random things dug out of the basement. I know...my selfish materialism knows no bounds.





SO, come visit me in the new office. We can hold important meetings and try and ignore that the garage door was just sprayed by a skunk. I hope you like centipedes and mice as much as I do! Of course, if you don't find me there, it's possible that another family need has forced a relocation of my office. Look for an extension cord. Follow it. There are a few spots we haven't yet tried as my office. There's a crotch in the tree out back I may be able to use...

The World Without Blogger

In an uncharacteristically stupid move, the government temporarily disabled Blogger recently to test the effects on society.

And by society of course I mean women.

Men are just changing the oil and shuffling papers around desks to look busy. The government already knows this. They invented it (during Prohibition there was indeed a rise in oil changes and paper-shuffling rates among men. But nothing else changed. Nada. End of social experiment).

Some questions they are trying to answer:

Would workplace productivity go up?
Would houses be cleaner and school bake-sale participation increase (it's a little known fact that bake sales account for 10% of our national GDP--no wonder they are concerned!)
With a few extra minutes on their hands, would the women help the dudes fix the recession/national debt/oil prices?
Can they really trace the decline in school test scores, job creation, and spending at SEARS to the rise in popularity of "A Cup of Jo"?

All these things needed answering, and there was only one way to find out: cripple Blogger and watch what happened.

Only instead, this little experiment has led to epic lifestyle chaos.

How do we make choices if the guiding lights of our socity are suddently shut off?

It's like if in the Olde Days someone took away the Bible, the Farmer's Almanac, insect plagues, and moonshine. No moral compass! No way to determine who is evil! No more spontaneous fiddle dances!

Why, just this morning I saw a poor, bewildered woman walking down the street wearing equal parts Benetton and Esprit. With jelly shoes. She had apparently reverted back to the last time she made a style choice on her own without the help of blogs...1989.

Kiosks selling hair scrunchies have sprouted up at malls seemingly overnight!

And somewhere a once-stylish and confident woman is at Home Depot choosing Navajo White paint and buying fleur de lis drapes at JC Penney. Before this cruel experiment? She would have chosen a color called "Soot" from Fine Paints of Europe's "Places Bombed in WWII" historical collection. And curtains handblocked in India by the slaves/artisan community run be a famous textile designer. And maybe, if she read the edgier blogs, some invisible chairs from Philip Starck's new "Practical Joke" line of furniture.

So please, Nancy Pelosi, end this madness and give us our Blogger back. Cup of Jo is getting cranky. She hasn't washed her striped boatneck French terry Petit Bateau t-shirt in days.
Purchases of fascinators and owl-themed items on Etsy are at a stand-still! Cupcakes and Cashmere is actually trying to make cupcakes! We are forgetting how to spell "lurve" and no one has said "I heart that" since Monday. These important traditions could be lost forever if you don't act quickly.

Thank you.

Lurve, Modernhaus

Things Teens Dread...the parked car conversation

(alternatively titled "I Give Up, I Can't Write a Blog About Style, Having Finally Admitted to Myself That I Have Very Little Knowledge of this Subject". Should you require style information, this blogger is the way to go. This one is not. Overplucked eyebrows, frosted lipstick, and "athletic" legs in mini-skirts and Forever 21 shoes does not a stylista make...and don't be fooled! There are NO CUPCAKES! I've looked!).

Anyhoo...

There's nothing like being locked into a tightly confined space with a frowny-faced parent to inspire the deepest sense of dread, impending doom, and the imminent loss of some privilege or freedom in a teen.

You remember how this goes, I'm sure of it...close your eyes and think back.

The car rolls up to it's destination even slower than normal, and your mom, (because this is a uniquely mom-move...dads handle the same matters by smacking child on back of head and hollering "Don't be such an idiot!"), your mom is very slowly, very carefully, so as not to alert your teen/animal senses, turning down the stereo with one hand and simultaneously reaching for the automatic door locks with her other hand.

Except your teen/animal senses recognize this maneuver immediately and send you into a deep primal panic.

You want to wail, claw at the windows, send Lassie for help. Because your mom is now turning to you and speaking the eight most terrifying words in the New Revised Teen English Dictionary: "I want to talk to you about something."

Oh. Crap. Teens have died of hunger, grown old while waiting for their moms to finish "talking to them about something"!

So, as a survivor of this kind of torture (I actually spent years 13-16 locked into a Volkswagon Vanagon while my mom "talked to me about something", surviving off of old popcorn kernels I found on the floor and eventually being rescued when an S.O.S. note I scribbled onto a page of the bible was found by a passerby!), I am nothing if not compassionately sensitive to the feelings of my teen children.

I like to think I am not only cooler, but sneakier, by not introducing the talking part with an announcement (thus by-passing the groan and eye-roll!) and just jumping right into it. I do this WHILE the car is still moving and the radio is on. They have no idea what's happening! We are just cruising down the highway when suddenly words like "private parts" and "self-discipline" start coming out of nowhere (my mouth)!

In this way, my children will always associate Arcade Fire with warm talks about perverts, and Green Day songs will always elicit memories of friendly threats of beatings if grades don't improve.

Of course, the dad-method has some value, too. So I try to follow up my sneak attack with a jaunty head-smack and, when they've jumped out of the unlocked car and run with newfound energy towards school, a loud shout out the window, "and don't be an idiot!"

Because how will they develop any character without at least a little public humiliation? It's where I got all mine from, and I'm filled to the brim with character! Thanks mom!

Mid Century Leather Safari Chairs and Monumental Danish Teak Cabinet/Dresser

Fresh cuts in the store now!
Don't even get me started on how this piece can save your marriage with its sexy storage:




or how much these want to hang out on a sheepskin flanking your fireplace...they do. Really bad.





Anyone being fantastic and glamorous this weekend?

I'm going to the opera and then for late night champagne cocktails and croque monsieur at a French restaurant downtown. No bigs.

Oh don't worry, no men were injured in the planning of this evening. Ladeez nite! Maybe I will meet a 100-year old philanthropist geezer that likes redheads. Fingers crossed! Dreams really do come true.

Handy pocket Craigslist translator

As a veteran of Craigslist, I thought I would compile a short guide to terms you might find there, along with a "real-world" translation of their meaning. Believe me, this will help you more than you know...

"funky"--"from 1979, contains cat pee"

"designer"--"Mor Furniture, but I'm hoping you won't notice"

"custom"-- "I made it myself, and my wife won't let me bring it in the house"

"stunning and unique"--"we don't know why we bought it, and we don't know what it is, and by stunning we mean hideously ugly"

"good condition"--"I won't mention it until you drive 65 miles to see it that the back is missing, the side is ripped off, and also...cat pee"

"corner sectional piece"--this one is a rare and truly special listing, and it translates roughly like this: "The rest of the sectional was destroyed in the meth lab fire, and I'm fried enough to think you will buy just the corner"

"solid wood"--"wood-esque, wood-like, but never, ever solid wood"

"modern" or "Mid-Century modern"--"IKEA"

"dog in picture not included...har-har-har"--"but his fur, stench, fleas, and recent bout of incontinence is!"

Well, I hope this is helpful to someone. If you're ever flummoxed by Craigslist terminology, a good rule of thumb is that you can assume the opposite of whatever is said. Applying this rule, the best listings are usually the ones that say, "Grandma's cheap junk, O.K. condition." When you see this, run. Quickly. Grandma's cheap junk is probably an original Eames lounge for $40...and maybe a little cat pee.

Summer's End

After the fastest-paced Summer ever, we've been slammed into school mode...hard. Ah, it's only just Opening Day and we're already resurrecting the late night, tearful, "I didn't know my homework would take so long" performance of last year. Bravo! Encore! The tears seem so real! Powerful performance, night after night!

I'm hoping the possibility of a schedule may emerge from the chaos...you (gainfully employed folks) may chafe at your regular work hours and dream about having flexibility and an all-pajama work wardrobe. But me? Lately I find myself dreaming of structured schedules, lunch hours that don't involve a fistful of pretzels and two loads of laundry, colleagues that aren't dogs or children, and downtown offices. Business calls that aren't interrupted by something burning on the stove (and the microwave and outside my office door...). I bet most of you don't have two boys in trunks and towels and snorkel masks standing next to your desk saying, "Are you done yet? Are you done yet?" in tandem, repeatedly, until you give up, shut down the computer, grab a bag of pretzels, and take them to the gosh-dang beach already. Well, maybe that part wasn't so bad.

The point is, I'm ready. Ready for school to start, and not in that "can't wait to get rid of the kids" way, but in that "I'd like to have some control over my time" way. Yes, there IS a difference.

What about y'all? Does the Fall bring changes to your pace and purpose? Even without children, it seems like a bit more of a buckle-down, get-to-work, introspective season. I know...I bragged in the early Summer that I was going to talk about sangria all the way through October, and now I'm rushing the season out the door. Here's some of our Summer color to make it up to you:

Forbidden Fruit

Under what circumstances is it acceptable to pay $400 for a pear?

An Italian, screen-printed, limited edition, Enzo Mari pear?
I hem and haw about buying new underwear, or pencils, or a new broom, but heck yeah I'm trying to add "La Pera" to the week's budget.

I was trying to find images of the print installed in a home to get a sense of the look and scale...there are hardly any and mostly in Japan for some reason. Here is a pretty cool interpretation of the original from a Japanese blog.



I thought the color and scale would be a cool contrast to my intricate Cole & Son wallpaper in the "foyer" aka place where we dump our crap and the dog goes to shed a full flokati rug of fur every night. Unfortunately this photo looks like Martha Stewart threw up near my fabulous wallpaper, but you get the idea...intricate meets graphic. Yellow meets green. Contrast.




Plus I'm totally into Enzo Mari since I scored his Animali puzzle at the thrift store last year. You could call me a collector. With a foyer.

Also appearing under "images, La Pera" on Google, this hot Italian musical duo who are obviously going unicycling after they finish the photo shoot. Fruity indeed.

Can You Sell Homemade Jokes on Etsy?

I'm tellin ya, spending long stretches of time alone in a dark studio with solvents and paint and a nerdy little dog named after a Jane Austen character hasn't done wonders for my intellectual growth. Sometimes I use all that spare mental space to come up with my own jokes. This one came to me while heating up leftovers for lunch:


What did the pirate mom say to the pirate teenager?

Stop aaaaaaargh-uing with me!

I don't think it's too bad for homemade.

And because the Google images under "Pirate Mom" were so much more awful than my joke, I went with the pirate dog instead. He's way cuter than anything human I found.

from the Craftzine blog