Traveling to Chicago in the winter is a bear. It’s cold and the traffic is miserable. If there’s only one thing you ever learn from me in your entire life let it be this:

There is a train station in O’Hare Airport. Use it.

I was really happy to meet so many women who I’ve followed online for years. One in particular is Bobbie who had a very serious accident on her way home. Of course I was happy to be with new and old friends but after coming home and hearing about Bobbie, her husband and her kids (just bumps for them, yay!) I sort of didn’t have energy to write about the day.

I will soon.

Baseball season is starting and it’s off to a rocky start. I watch Dance Moms with the kids (just so I can feel smug and superior) and then I realize that the Dance Moms are a little less sociopathic and a little more realistic than the Baseball Dads. The Dance Moms think that their daughters are going to dance their way to Harvard. The Baseball Dads seem to think that their sons are all going to be the next Albert Pujols. It’s possible that one of them will be great, but statistically they’ve got a better chance of being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company than a Major League Baseball pitcher.

I played tennis today and it was awful. I was winning 4 games to one and then we sat down to take a break in the shade (86 degrees today) when my partner asked me how Alexander’s eyes were. I lost set 6-4. In fact I lost some of those games without ever scoring a point.

I keep wondering if we made a terrible mistake by not forcing Alexander to have the “fine tuning” stitches like the doctor suggested. I’m not sure that his eyes are straight (they could be) but I worry that we cost him another surgery by not insisting that they leave some stitches hanging out so they could tweak the eye the second day.

I’m at a standstill today thinking about that. I might try going for a run later. I’m not sure how to get thoughts like these out of my head, but I’m absolutely unable to focus or concentrate.  

I met Braden Richter for lunch in Hollywood last week. The first thing I noticed was the laptop. In addition to being one of those radtastic titanium PCs that weigh next to nothing and can be tossed safely from an airplane, his screensaver was a picture of his son playing football that could have been a poster for Friday Night Lights.

Braden is a Los Angeles based furniture entrepreneur. As he detailed his career path for me I was slackjawed. He humbly talks about going from UCLA to making “some stuff” for someone he knew… which of course became Shabby Chic. Braden quickly left school and started a furniture manufacturing company to support Shabby Chic (literally… I think he made the stuff under under the slip covers). From there they expanded, and then they expanded again, producing furniture for every major retailer I’d pinned, googled or ogled.

Braden’s obvious talents are threefold. He knows everyone. He produces quality. He can forecast business trends.

Flash sales are awesome. I love them so much that I have a portal that brings all the flash sales to your inbox. What’s been missing has been a curated flash sale.

Enter LuxeYard. The sales are “flash” but they aren’t flash in the pan. The home furnishings are exquisite and almost without exception they are from the US. Basically you are buying from the manufacturer and skipping the retail markup.

LuxeYard is changing the landscape of flash sales in one incredible way, concierge. Let’s say I’m walking through the mall and I see the side table I must have but it’s the wrong size/price/color/finish, I snap a picture of it with my phone and upload it to the site and explain what it is about it that I need. LuxeYard’s concierge then goes about the business of sourcing that item from their vast network of furniture manufacturers and offering it to you at a wholesale price. Now, if you share that with your friends the price can go down.

LuxeYard members have the ability to push product prices down for
featured Group Buy items. Members leverage social media and social networks
to encourage others to purchase a product, which in turn drives the price down.
For example, members may purchase an item for $100; share the information on
Facebook encouraging others to buy the same product; and two days later find out
that customer demand, which they helped drive, dropped the price to $50. Everyone
who purchased the Group Buy Item will pay the final lowest price.

This week there’s a group buy for a 16 bottle wine cooler by Kalorik. It’s already below $200. I’m anxious to see how low these things can go.

There’s also a room planner which will allow you to enter images and dimensions of your room… this would have saved me about 80 bazillion returns over the years.

LuxeYard also features trendsetters. This week Nicky Hilton will share some of her favorites. Past trendsetters include Jonathan Shokrian, Amanada Rosbrook, Forbes Riley, Faye Resnick, Bobby Berk, and Daniella Clarke. If you check out the LuxeLife it’s like Pinterest went Luxe.

I’m excited about LuxeLife. I look at Braden Richter and I see a man who has a deep understanding of the furniture business and an uncanny ability to to predict it’s trends. Social shopping has always existed. I’ve shopped with friends since my adolescence, now all these years later Group Buys offer us the chance to shop with our friends and be rewarded for it. I have a feeling that I’ll be sharing group buys here. Maybe y’all can help me make this home office into a space I can enjoy a little.

Lindsay has a fabulous post about Colourlovers and why she is boycotting them. To be perfectly fair I’ve only heard of Colourlovers in passing so if I joined a boycott that would be like me boycotting a prostate exam.

Earlier today the Creative director at Colourlovers tweeted the following:

The issue isn’t that some random guy tried to punish women who might already be close to jumping off a cliff. The issue is that this incredibly provocative post came from the creative director of a rather large website.

The whole story is over at Linday’s blog and it’s a good read.

The takeaway here is multilayered. Colourlovers has had Mr. Moynihan remove their @COLOURlovers from his twitter bio (which might have been a good preemptive move) but will it be too late?

I understand that Shaun Moynihan feels strongly about Jesus and the afterlife. What he might not understand is that many of us feel very strongly about this life. Not everyone is Xtian… in fact a shocking number of us still “need saving” and the Rabbis always put the mother before the fetus. All of this is absolutely besides the point but I did want to mention to the folks at ColourLovers that some folks are tired of evangelists.

Tell me what ColourLovers has to do with my uterus? Explain to me, someone make it clear to me why work and pregnancy are intertwined. Part of me feels badly for Shaun Moynihan because maybe he didn’t understand that his twitter stream is public, but most of me feels badly for the women who loved using ColourLovers and now feel like it’s a place that hates women.

I love that @bubs responded like this.

But I want to know from you. Is this too little too late? Will other brands pay attention to this when they create guidelines for social media usage? Is the design community going to let this pass?

My stepbrother texted me last night to let me know that he’d sent Alexander a text saying “keep it clean”. I was out buying the perfect silk blouse so I couldn’t exactly be bothered with parenting at the time.

When I got home I asked Alexander for his cell phone. He looked sheepish handing it to me and we went through the text messages together. Most of the text messages were fine, funny even. There were links to chicken butt pictures.

And then there was a note to his cousin saying, “This is you”. Along with this picture.

There was also a WTF. Potty mouth… I wonder where my child would pick that up?

I sat down with my boy to talk to him about media use. I reminded him that Daddy and I would always be checking his texts, computer and emails. I told him that anything you write is public and you should want it so that even your mom could read it. Blah blah blah it was the same talk I’ve been giving Jane for years. Even I was bored listening to me.

I asked Alexander if he knew what WTF meant. He nodded his head and looked embarrassed. I told him that I knew it was funny and that it was a word I’d like him to not use but that I know everyone slips up. I also told him to NEVER write it so that people wouldn’t think he was a bad kid.

Take my advice, son, I won’t be needing it.

Then I asked him about the picture. Why would you send that to your cousin?

“Because it’s an ugly guy.” He said.

Is there anything else about it that’s bad? I asked him this in a thousand different ways. Finally I pointed to the chin. Is there anything about his chin that is bad?

“It’s long.” He said, and looked genuinely curious.

I didn’t punish him. I’m out of the business of punishment, being embarrassed with your mom is lesson enough.

Later in the evening I showed Mr G the image. “He sent this to his cousin.” I said. Mr G shrugged nonchalantly.

Apparently I’m the only one in the house able to identify a scrotum.

I hated twitter parties. The term still makes me cringe.

Twitter has changed. I loved celebrating 20k with y’all and I’m pretty sure you’ll see more hashtagged events from me.

I’m willing to say I was wrong.

Jane is invited to a birthday party at Sephora. Well, we think she’s invited, I don’t have the evite, but the host child assures her I need to RSVP. The girls will be getting makeovers and whatnot. It’s a very nice but fairly typical birthday party so I was going to buy my fairly typical birthday gift which puts us close to $40 with card and gift wrap.

Since I’m off to Chicago tomorrow morning I need to buy the gift today and Jane has instructed me to purchase about $75 worth of cosmetics for the 13 year old birthday girl. I started to say no, but since we were on the way to school I didn’t want her going to class upset. I figure she’ll just have to be upset at home.

I want to explain to her that every birthday party is pricey. We spent a fortune on her 13th but the gifts were in line with what I’m prepared to spend. I thought about telling her to spend her own money, but I don’t want her feeling like she has to overspend.

We’ve done a miserable job showing restraint for our own kids. Birthdays and Hanukkah always seem to creep up to a thousand. After 13 years of excessive gifts for my own kids how do I turn around and tell Jane that it’s just not like that?

I guess I just do. I’m not shelling out $75 for a birthday party and I’m not prepared to let my daughter use her money.

What would you do… besides turn back time?