The Decorating Diaries - Drama

God help us, we've decided to give it another go. Decorating our bedroom that is. For those longtime fans of the Dena & Blair bedroom decorating diaries, you'll recall that our awesome duo have been trying to create a snug, restful sleeping abode for the past 9 years. And yet, they haven't quite made it yet. Let's stop here to review some of the highlights of their journey.

Airsick China Man Look
After reviewing photos in Architectural Digest and a color wheel at Sherwin Williams, Dena feels she has a grip on the whole color scheme and decides to decorate the bedroom in a palate of reds and golds. She paints the walls a Grand Canyon yellow, convinces Blair red carpeting is the way to go and calls it a day. The result? It looks like a China man threw up on their walls and flooring. With a little tweaking, the color combo would also be effective in a whorehouse.

Neutral Nights
Deciding color was a bad, bad idea, the duo run to Home Depot, grab the first 5 cans of off-white paint they see and throw it on the walls. Now we have white walls, cream trim, and pinkish-red carpet (the many tears cried over it for the sheer ugliness of it faded it out a bit). They live with this for almost a year.

Green Getaway
Agreeing they need help, our duo consult a decorator and allow themselves to be convinced green is the color for them, ignoring the fact that most shades of green make Dena want to puke. So they surround themselves with pale green walls, deep green floral bedspread with matching bedskirt, and a purple and green chair. However, ever the cheapskate, Dena refuses to spend money on new furniture and goes with the "garage sale/parent's basement/great find on the side of the street" look. The end result? Even the cats are scared to enter the room.

Orange Oasis
Yes, orange. Frankly, it's the best of the looks so far and the one currently on the walls. Blair was on a 5-day trip and Dena decided the green had to go so she brought home 3 shades of orange, discarded the Salmon and the Pumpkin, stuck with the deep coral, and surprised Blair when he came home. Pluses: the warm tone makes skin look alive and vibrant vs. the chalky death mask look of living in the green. Minuses: It's an orange room, for God's sake.

Can This Couple Be Saved?... We think so. Our hearty duo is working with yet another decorator, returning to their first love of reds and yellows but in muted tones and done with elegance and understatement...we hope.

Stay tuned for the ongoing woes found in DECORATING DRAMA.

Successful Speech

My speech was a success. I didn't include everything I meant to but that's the beauty of public speaking - no one knows that but me. I'm happy to have it behind me though. I have so much work to do my head is spinning and I don't know which way is up. 5 articles coming due (4 of which still need researched), a new class I'm teaching in July on Magazine Writing that I still have to pull the syllabus and materials together for, marketing follow-up, I'm looking to move my blogs to a new forum (squarespace.com) and need to investigate how that might work, I've ignored my public speaking book--supposedly a priority--for close to a month now, and I've got a towering pile of memos and scraps of paper and "to be read" material teetering on the edge of my desk that threatens to topple over and smother the cats.

I've got ideas for 2 new articles which is a joke at the moment as I can't handle what's on my plate. I had to tell my best friend not to come for a visit this weekend just b/c I'm so behind.

It's difficult to judge how drastic the situation is though. I'm not happy unless I'm operating 2 weeks ahead of schedule. I like lots of leeway in case something goes horribly awry. It almost never does, but I like the cushion. So I'm not really behind at this point. I'm more on schedule which to me feels way behind. (Except for not having anything ready for that class. Yeah, I'm screwing myself on that).

Lots more to talk about. I'll use a separate post to start the decorating drama theme.

Ship me outta here

I'm behind on posting for this blog. As I go through my day I make mental notes about stuff to blog about. "Oh look, I go to all the trouble to open all the downstairs windows for the cats so they can get fresh air and they both go to the air-conditioned upstairs to sleep the day away."

Or, "How is it possible I spend 2 hours researching payment options for my website and feel at the end like I'm in the exact same place where I started, with absolutely no increase in my knowledge?"

Or (and this one is quite frequent): "Should I cut my hair or continue to let it grow out." The great debate continues. But then I never get around to posting and by the time I do, I'm thinking, "Eh, that's old news."

Okay, positive things on the marketing side. I checked out Amazon tonight and for a mere $30 (and 55% discount they take from me!) they will post my book on their site. Yea! Even though it means less money for me for every book sold through their site vs. mine, there's a level of validity that comes with having your book marketed on Amazon. Plus, I won't have to deal with shipping which frankly is just about worth giving the book away for free.

I was wigging out the other night about shipping. "How will we handle this?" I demanded of Blair who had literally just walked in the door.

"Don't worry honey, we'll get through it," he said, having no idea what I was referring to. It's a pretty safe stock answer of his.

"I mean it!" I said. "If we use PayPal does that mean we have to open every e-mail, copy and paste the shipping address into Word, print a label, print a shipping label, wrap it up and get it out the door? What sort of tracking system will we have to guarantee we don't overlook an order? We'll have to pack and ship every night to stay on top of it."

"Whoa," he said. "That's a bit much. Why don't we accumulate orders and spend one night a week shipping?"

"One night??" I screeched. "The book can already take a week to deliver! What if our shipping day is on a Friday and someone orders on Saturday? We're going to make them wait 2 weeks for their book? No way!" I'm in a lather.

"Amazon sometimes has a 4 week window for shipping," Blair pointed out.

I stopped foaming at the mouth and considered. "Hmmm...that's true."

"And it's not like we're expecting to get 500 orders a day," he said. "We'll stay on top of it. We'll handle it."

"Well," I grumped. "I guess that would be okay."

"We'll have shipping night 2 nights a week," he offered. I beamed.

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And I make fun of my friends for being drama queens. Lord, I must be stopped.

Okay, I have a list of things to blog about and I'm afraid of forgetting so I'll just list here to refer to later:

- Ghost Cat
- PayPal vs. bizhosting.com vs. Netfirms merchants accounts
- Squarespace.com (with a shoutout to Melody and Rachel)
- Gift Store Marketing
- How annoying Bogger.com can be with their slow download times
- cute picture I took of Lucy with my flowers
- Lucy getting ticked off that Olivia joined our game and her stalking off and refusing to speak to us
- Spooning a Cat
- Workshop and speech ideas (related to cat book)
- Why I don't really need a new laptop but have almost managed to convince myself otherwise
- Methods to my madness - staying organized
- And much more! (it's the marketing person in me. Had to add it).

I know Rachel and Melody are looking at this thinking, "She should use tada list!" It's a cool enough way to keep track of things, but I could never desert my beloved post-it-notes.

I'm giving a speech tomorrow in front of 30 Toastmasters on the topic of "Establishing Yourself As A Professional Speaker." Everyone think good thoughts for me tomorrow at 9am.

Last Minute Speech

Question: How do you know when it's time to update your blog?

Answer: When your mother sends you and e-mail that she's tired of looking at your "stupid flowers."

Can I help it if I think it's important that you all experience happiness and contentment vicariously through me? (Please don't send hate mail...)

Okay, the reason I haven't written lately is because I've been burning the candle pulling together a 45-minute speech to deliver to 30 people tomorrow at the District 37 Toastmaster's Leadership Institute Training Session (sounds impressive, eh?)

I got a call from our Area Governer late Sunday night, asking for a "huge favor" and could I please fill in a 9am workshop slot with a 45-minute speech?

"On what?" I asked.

"I don't care."

All-righty. I love free reign. Unfortunately, I couldn't give my standard "Scared Speechless" workshop because the toastmasters attending this session are the officers of the area groups. They're experienced speakers.

I decided to speak on "Establishing Yourself As A Professional Speaker." Great. I loved the topic, wrote it up, then said it aloud.

One rule I teach in my class is that if you're bored giving your speech, you will absolutely bore your audience. I found myself falling asleep 10 minutes in so back to the drawing board.

I gave the speech in front of Blair last night (I never rehearse my speeches with him) and it was extremely helpful. We came up with an intro that was much more on target and let the audience know exactly what I would be covering. So I printed out some handouts a few minutes ago, gathered my business cards, and I'm good to go.

All that's left is to pray to the humidity gods for a good hair day.