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Eat. Shop. Laugh.

These 3 words describe this past weekend. They aren’t the only words, more would be drink, smile, reminiscing, renew, pamper, and sleep. I had the opportunity to have a girls weekend in Chicago. My best friend from high school, Jodie (we have been friends since we were kids some 30+ years), and I flew to Chicago on Friday evening to go stay with people we reconnected with on Facebook. Yes, sounds crazy but felt so natural. In the last 6 months or so on Facebook, I have found and been found by a bunch of old high school classmates.

High school is so long ago but even so there are people from that time that time that were such an important part of my life, my growing up. Two women in particular (Dana and Robin), these were the two we went to see after having lost touch for 20 years. In high school they were funny, crazy and really warm loving people. They haven’t changed a bit. I laughed so much this weekend I thought my side was going to split. The friendship we left behind renewed itself in minutes of being with them. Actually it was renewed the moment we reconnected on Facebook. Funny, how time and distance doesn’t seem to affect some friendships. It was such a whim to take them up on the offer to visit in Chicago, but it felt right. And it was, the only regret from the weekend is that it was too short for us all. The 20 years apart, just disappeared and we took up where we left off.

Pampering breakfast from Robin - Delicious!

What made this weekend so perfect? I already said the laughter, great conversation and well, gossip (“who do you keep in touch with?” “whatever happened to so and so?’ “They really got married? No way!”). Great food was an integral part of the weekend.  I am the only one with kids, and my main request was no kid friendly restaurants. I mostly took pictures of food – isn’t that sad?

We started our weekend on Friday night with Margaritas, home-made gaucamole, & chips in Robin’s beautiful, showroom apartment over looking Chicago. We relaxed. Saturday, she made us the most perfect breakfast/brunch – frittata (honestly, I don’t know how to make this, and she did it like this was her usual weekend routine!), fresh fruit salad, & freshly baked cinnamon buns. Come on, could a girl get pampered anymore? So nice to not have to do the cooking, or cut the food or  hear “Mom, I’m firsty” just as I sit down to eat!

After lazily having breakfast, we finally got out into the city after 12pm (yes, a slow moving, lazy weekend!) and went shopping. We must have spent hours at Nordstrom, where I got a very long overdue pair of new jeans (last time I bought was 4+ years ago, trying on jeans not my favorite pastime).

All that hard work shopping (and laughing), made us hungry. So sushi was our choice. Of course delicious, and the presentation fabulous!

Sushi dragon roll that actually had a head Pretty cool.

Getting ready to go out to dinner (ya, we moved our reservations at Boka to 9pm since our sushi lunch was so late), it felt like high school again. We remembered getting ready to go out at my house. I think we almost always got ready at my house, and after our evening, everyone spent the night at my house. Mostly because my mom was super trusting and I didn’t have a curfew. Funny thing was, I had no boundaries, so I created my own, whereas all my friends had boundaries and wanted to rebel. I wonder how I will be as my kids become teenagers. Not sure if my mother’s method worked or if I was just born overly responsible. This is really something I don’t want to think about – I want my kids to stay 6 and under forever!

One of the funniest things about the weekend, is that it felt weird ordering drinks and wine. The last time we were all together we were, well, underage. Not that we didn’t drink, but this time we were legal. And very much so, 40 is just a few short months away! We have come a long way from the Bartles & James wine coolers (seriously, we drank those – uugh).

I think we are all grown up. I am not sure any of our lives have turned out as we expected in high school. Not better or worse, just different. But the people we were then, are still the core of who we are today, and the friendship we shared then has stayed with us forever.

Our weekend together was so perfect, we have decided to make it an annual girls trip with just the 4 of us. Picking a new city each year to meet, eat, shop, and laugh. I can’t wait to start planning for next year!

What is Mother’s Day without Mom?

I know I am a mom, but for me Mother’s Day is still the day I thank my mom. And it just never quite feels like Mother’s Day without being able to pick up the phone and call her. I lost that privilege in January 2005 when my mom lost her more than two year battle with pancreatic cancer.  I miss her every day, but Mother’s Day and her birthday (which if my sister or I forgot we would have been permanently disowned), her absence is really felt. Up until 6 years ago, I had celebrated every Mother’s Day as a daughter, grand-daughter or aunt. The day was never about me, but always about those around me, particularly my mom. Who had in many ways raised us alone (my parents were divorced). And there was one thing my sister and I, and anyone who know our mother, were certain, everything she did was for her daughters and all those she loved. Family (real and chosen) meant everything to her. She loved being a mother, the matriarch, and she adored being a grandmother.

One of the few pictures that my mom and Tatum "look-a-like"

Mother’s Day is one of the holidays designed to sell greeting cards and spike retail sales. I think my mom alone supported the greeting card industry. Unlike me, she always had a card ready to send someone and it was sent on time for the occasion. How befitting that I started this post the night before mother’s day and of course have missed the day all together. Ya, in this way I am not my mother’s daughter, and I sincerely consider that a bad thing (she was wonderfully thoughtful and giving).

I remember  having to go through my moms things after she died, and finding a drawer filled with greeting cards for every occasion. Also in that drawer was her address book that she must have had for at least 30 years. I looked up my name and saw each time she had scratched out an old address for a new one since first going off to college! She always sent me a birthday card, Christmas card, and when I became a mother, she made sure I got a lovely Mother’s Day card.

I can’t say I was always so good to her, always so thoughtful. I could barely remember to buy a card, let alone get it in the mail on time for her to receive it on Mother’s Day. Around Mother’s Day I just remember feeling stressed about what we should do this year. This was the thing, my mom always said, I don’t care if you forget any holidays, just don’t forget my birthday, but truth was, she loved being the center of attention of her family. She loved when my sister and I went all out to make her feel special. The problem was, we never knew what would actually make her happy. Our mom never needed anything. If she wanted something, she just bought it for herself, making it extremely difficult to find a good gift, much less the perfect gift. Any gift was mostly just more of something she had already had. Weeks, sometimes months before, my sister and I would talk and say “oh jeez, what are we going to do this year?” I could feel myself tense. I didn’t want to disappoint her, but I am not that creative and not a planner! It took the last few years of her life for my sister and I to finally realize what for our mom the perfect gift was — it was just our attention and being together. Don’t miss understand, my mom loved nice things like diamond jewelery but if you couldn’t get the most dazzling, you could give her a rock from the street and get the same reaction!

My fondest Mother’s Day memory is long before I had become a mom. It was 10 years ago, and I was working at a high tech startup, getting my MBA at night, single and living the high life. My sister was living out in Sacramento with my brother-in-law and my nephew (2 years old at the time). Our mom had planned to be out there visiting during Mother’s Day. I had found out I needed to be in San Jose for a tradeshow right around Mother’s Day. We didn’t tell our mom, we made a plan. My sister knew my arrival time, I called from my mobile. I knocked on the door. My sister asked our mom to answer the door. She opened it and her jaw dropped. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it”, she said it with her accent (my mom was Indonesian and if you ever meet me in person, I can do her accent in a heartbeat). She blushed and smiled. We had succeeded in giving her the best Mother’s Day – Both of her daughters together.

Kicking & Screaming

Unfortunately, I think there is a better late than never theme for me when it comes to the hottest trend. You know you are late to jump on the bandwagon when every magazine is writing about it (I mean magazines have waaaaaaay early deadlines) and ever time you turn the TV on there is a news segment on it.  This has been my experience with Twitter (and well all the other social media or Web 2.0 that came before it for that matter). On February 5th, 2009, I took the plunge and set up my Twitter account (which I had signed up for in December 2008, still not really sure how I did it, but just left it).  For goodness sake, I had just figured out 6 months before how to reconnect with old friends (or people I went to high school with that I don’t remember) on Facebook. I had comfortably lived with ignorance is bliss, but enough was enough. And even though I had to go kicking and screaming, it was time for me to enter another new world.

Keeping my head down, and sometimes ignoring the world around is unfortunately, another theme in my life (I blame that on the fact that I think I am ADD and tend to hyper-focus). Anyway, so the last few years I have had my head comfortably buried in the world of product design and production. An area I had no experience and no friends or family that knew anything about it. It is an absolutely non-tech world but the most crucial part of the business I had decided to start. Funny thing is my former life was in the high tech industry in marketing and communications. I used to know about telecommunications infrastructure, IP routers and networking.  Being out of it for 4 years now, all those terms just sound foreign to me. Considering, I have never taken the time to learn to sew (I know, hard to believe – why on earth would I start a sewn products business?!), I have been able to bring my design drawings to fruition and have built beautiful products (patting myself on the back .

Everything I know about product design, fabric sourcing, pattern making, production, etc. I have learned through trial and error (some of the missteps warrant an entire post or many posts), like finding a good pattern maker is easier said than done and sewing contractors in the US are a dying breed (even if you want to make it in the US and can find decent production most Americans do not want to pay the extra price of what it costs to produce it domestically – a reality that still makes me very sad!). Anyway the point is I learned by doing, asking and making mistakes (that’s how we learn right?).

So here I am again, learning, which is a good thing. I had an objective with tweeting to get followers and well make my business and to eventually benefit from some social media magic. So begrudgingly and with much trepidation (how could these be addictive?) I started following, being followed and tweeting. I felt like the new kid at school trying to get with the cool kids, the in crowd. Gosh I really don’t like the way that feels. The worst part about Twitter is you really can’t get more followers or get involved unless you chime in on other people’s tweets. Chiming in is like butting in on a conversation where you may not be invited. With twitter you can’t see people’s reactions to your tweets. It’s like a comedian trying out a new joke and nothing, just silence. So you may respond to someone, and they don’t actually acknowledge that you said something. Or you tweet something, maybe ask a question and are met with silence. Not a single @reply from ANYONE. But more times than not, someone will respond. Like about a month ago my Outlook crashed, I was devastated and tweeted about it. I got a response and advice from someone who I was not follow and was not following me. The advice he gave me was priceless. I couldn’t have found answers that fast even searching on Google. So I thought, oh I am liking Twitter even more now.

Although my motives were more for business than for personal to delve into social media, I am actually finding the experience, pardon the choice of word – social. Working at home can be lonely at times. Starting a business is hard. I don’t have colleagues to complain to!  And even though I don’t always get an @reply from what I tweet, I still feel like I am talking to someone and I read other tweets (and hear conversations). It is amazing how much personality can actually be felt through 140 characters. And I have started to feel connected to certain tweeps. There are people just by the choice of their avatar/picture or their profile name, who make me smile when I “see” them. Ya, so now I get it, it’s social and a community. Duh.

So as corny as it sounds, I feel the virtual Twitter community. I don’t think I am addicted, but I do look forward to reading tweets. And most of all I no longer feel like I am working alone. And whenever I need to I can start a conversation and be heard.

Chic Mama, what?

I am going to talk about the choice of the title for this new fantastic blog – “Chic Mama – mother, woman, diva?” Joke, right? Well, ya!  I founded Chic Tots, inspired by the birth our first daughter, Tatum, who we affectionately called Baby Diva, cause she wanted everything right away and I believe from time I was in labor with her, she believed we were her entourage.

To serve my demanding little diva, I started coming up with product ideas. I also imagined, if I had my own business, I’d be a glamorous, jet-setting entrepreneur – a Chic Mama. But the reality of life and raising a family, and setting priorities, glamour is just in my head and love is in my everyday.

My everyday life feels (and is) far from chic. A chic mama, I am, in my own dreams – where I AM absolutely fabulous & glamorous. But there is more to the word chic (pronounced sheek or scheque NOT chick – you have no idea how many people say chick!). If we take one of the definitions of chic according to m-w.com it means “cleverly stylish.” So think style with a practical purpose. I like to solve problems. If you even mention a problem or I hear a problem in something you have said (you may not see the problem, let me show you the way…), I am on it like white on rice. Hubby doesn’t find it a very appealing quality, and I do try to keep it underwraps when he is telling me a story to share not to solve.  Anyway finding a solution to a problem stylishly – ya, I am all about that. Moms in general have to creatively solve problems. We have to work smarter, be clever to keep our sanity.

So a cleverly stylish mama, that can make a little sense. I can still imagine as I day dream (in all my free time), that I am fabulous. At least for right now, my kids think I am and that is enough for me.

Better late than…

Starting this blog should have happened a few years ago. Thought about it many times, like I thought about starting a journal, but never did it. I buy a journal for myself, have received several as gifts, and they remain new (except for one pretty one I got in which I started writing down baby product ideas as therapy when breastfeeding was so difficult which led to me actually starting my company, Chic Tots).

Blogging is actually more logical for me than keeping a journal. I never write. I can’t even hold a pen for long without getting a cramp. As a lefty, I never really learned how to properly hold a pen and I do the whole upside down writing thing, bending my wrist in a way that is just unnatural. I type. I happily type. I remember getting a computer in college and all of a sudden my papers dramatically improved. Writing on paper, to do it well, means re-writing and more re-writing. Something holding a pen upside down with an unnatural bend in my wrist made me not so inclined to do. Also procrastination plays a major theme in my life, and well if you wait too long to write a paper, there is no time for rewrites. Enter the computer – cutting and pasting – MAGIC. Revise by typing. No more sore hands or finger calluses (ya, I really hold a pen way too tight). Typing on a computer, brilliant.

So blogging is logical if someone wants to read the ramblings in my head. Seriously, my head rambles and I don’t even know what is going on in there. Maybe writing a blog is therapy for me (like writing down my wishes for products as a sleep-deprived struggling new mom was) and if someone wants to read it that’s cool. If I can share some of my experiences about my business journey or life in general (I am not an expert, but I am opinionated), and someone else finds it useful great. I do like talking and once people get to know me they realize I am not always sure of what I like but I know exactly what I don’t like. I freely give my opinion, sometimes to another’s disliking and sometimes I speak too quickly before thinking about the impact of what I am saying.  Ya have to know me to love me (well at least tolerate .

As far as my writing, I am sure that whatever I post, if I go back and read it, I will want to re-write and re-write, and tweak until well I’ll wish I had never written it at all – delete. I will vow now to not over think and just let it be. I will purge the thoughts out of my head, and just won’t read it (maybe years later)!

Welcome to my bloggy journey as a typer (yay computers), mother, woman, and diva (more on the title of this blog another time). I am all these things and many more. I approach all aspects with a mix of trepidation, joy, confusion and love. See rambling chaos – fun!

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