Ruthie, you are such an inspiration to all who reed your posts. I admire your spirit. We continue to keep you in our prayers. Today my daughter starts her first radiation treatment for breast cancer. She is so lucky as they found the small tumor on her 1st mammogram. They were able to remove all the cancer with surgery, the radiation is to make sure that no cancer cells escaped. She is only 47, so they are being extra careful.

Well, I meant the specific cabinet maker's standard cabinets I was looking at...not in general. I was pricing at their site, and they were transparent about everything else. but they just gave "3 drawer cabinet" no info on drawer size. I went to another site and saw the same thing (which started my journey to here lol). They just need to be upfront and clear about everything. I do not mind paying more for something I want or a better quality. On the other hand, if I was looking just to cheaply do something, I wouldn't worry about the size of drawers or whether it was mdf or not-it would just be about the bottom line only. The people who wouldn't mind paying more are the ones they really need to target. Since the price can vary so much, from a few thousand to tens of thousands, I would assume shoppers would like to have a better estimate-not just "anywhere from 2k to 200k depending on what you want and room size"... I want an estimate within hundreds or 1k at most. I don't look at expensive sports cars, because I know I cannot afford them. I will look at different models in my price range. Then if I see something that is just what I want, I will sacrifice to get it, even if it's a little more than I originally wanted to pay. If money was not an obstacle, or I had to have one at whatever cost (even if I needed to get a loan), then I just stroll into any dealer's business. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that they will get more business if they are transparent with it all. Give all dimensions, price, and materials in a clear, user-friendly website for their basic lines. Get shoppers to see that they can afford it and get what they want. Then be available to talk with them when they're ready to finalize things. Then the salesmen can point out any problems and offer solutions. They could also use this opportunity to then point out how little extra it would be upgrade this or that. I do about 90% of my shopping or preliminary price-checking online. They're loosing business by not bringing in customers thru their website....in my opinion anyway...

Stephanie, I know what you mean. I want to be fun and spontaneous but sometimes it's so hard when she won't eat her vegetables, or doesn't clean her room, to give treats and not turn into the "Mommy Monster"! Finding a balance between being the enforcer and friend. I feel so guilty so much of the time, I'm not doing enough, I could be doing more. It's really hard for me. This morning I thought I got out of the house before she woke up, but just as I left, here she comes out of her room "mommy mommmy" and my heart went two directions. Irritation (that I would be late to work yet again) and absolute love. Of course I had to spend a few minutes with her, getting her out of sleepymode and into the morning. I felt like I was abandoning her! I want her to know that it's not my choice that I'm not with her every second of the day. That I love her so much and that being a Mommy doesn't come with a rulebook, we're just winging it and doing the best I can.

I would love to go to a lecture on color where the information came from real knowledge & experience, but, sadly, most of the ones that I've had the misfortune to have to sit through have been Crying-Baby-Yellow level: that is, not only was the info basic but much of it was worthlessly anecdotal. The good news about that is that it means that anything above that is a step in the right direction--even if it's a baby step. So my suggestion is not about your subject, since I'm no expert on using color--merely its historical usage--but about how to present material that your audience should know but may not know, without, of course, revealing that you know they don't know it. It gets tricky. No one gets as huffy at the subtle implication that he doesn't know what he's talking about as the guy who really doesn't know what he's talking about. The hyperventilating indignation is always the clue to the poseur. Like Shakespeare says, "The lady doth protest too much." Anyway, if you present your material not as knowledge per se aimed at them, but as an approach that they themselves can use to present it to their clients, things will go fine. That is, you talk as though they already know everything you have to say--and that you know they know (even though they may not)--and that the only thing that your audience lacks--because they're visual, not verbal experts--is the ability to explain important (and sometimes complicated) color concepts & theories in such a simple way that even non-professionals can understand them. It's the decorating version of the old "Doctor-a-friend-of-mine-has-a-problem" approach, except you'll be playing the part of the dcotor, and you'll tell them how to explain color things to their "friends." It's silly but it lets everyone keep his self-respect. I've never had to perform this little charade in regards to color, but I frequently have to do it with groups of architectural students & their professors, who, amazingly enough, often know almost nothing of architectural history. It's actually pretty shocking. Anyway, when I do, I preface the whole thing--and my spiel can be pretty heavy-duty: I once transcribed it and then annotated it with my sources and when I got done it had almost 200 footnotes for an hour talk. I don't dumb it down for anybody--with "for those of you who already know all this"--and here's where I give the profs a smile of affirmation that they are, indeed, much more knowledgeable than I am--"please be patient, since I want to make sure the first-year people have the background here, too." Then I sprinkle what I say with plenty of asides: "You already know that Chicago is built on marshland..." & "Think of the Guggenheim Museum's entry sequence..." & "Now, you probably remember know that Louis Sullivan went to school in Paris..." which, things, unfortunmately, many of them don't know, but they don't want to admit it. This way, however, I provide the information they need to understand what they're seeing, but only on the basis that they're merely being "reminded" of what they already know, not that they're being told something for the first time. And there's another benefit of verbally expressing your assurance that most of your audience already knows your material--even when they don't--it eliminates all the head-bobbing that comes when I mention something that they do know, and they want to make sure everyone in the audience KNOWS that they know it. That drives me crazy. It's like hollerin out "Amen"s in church. At any rate, if you can package your info--whatever it is, and good luck on that--into a format which makes it easy for your audience to pass it along to their clients & employees, then you know they're bound to absorb a lot of it themselves, without ever having to admit that it's the first time that they themselves understood it. Best of all, in the future, they'll look to you as an authority. Ah, the games we're forced to play to avoid damaging anyone's precious self-esteem... Regards, MAGNAVERDE.