I am soooo lucky to be broke

I am cracking right the heck up over an article I found in the New York Times about parents and their high-design decor clashing with babyproofing and children in general.

The article highlights several parents who have either given up on their fancy decor or made a compromise. One parent was "distraught" over putting tape around a high-end table, saying, "It transformed this beautiful modernist piece of furniture into a piece you'd find in a '70s rec room." Can't you just hear the tears in his voice? Another parent said she thought she would die when her child carved her name in a cherry dining table just arrived from France. Cha-ching! Still another parent said, "Looking at what the room used to be was the visual equivalent of listening to Bach or Mozart. Now it's the visual equivalent of listening to Barney." Uh, wait -- maybe you are listening to Barney, wafting in from the next room?

Lucky me, I have no idea what it's like to "have a room finally done" or to have a table shipped from France or to put an 18th-century "piece" in storage until the children are older. In my house, there's nothing made with handmade silk or teak. I have no idea what Noguchi is. So I will never experience the distress these parents have.

Heck, when my husband and I bought a sofa from Carl's, we thought we were hot stuff. We thought buying a $300 Pottery Barn chandelier made our room so important. When we had real stone delivered for a patio redo, boy, we were really living it up then.

After reading this article, though, I am just humbled.

But at least you'll never hear me say, as one of the parents in the article did of child-safety gear, "That stuff is just gross. . . . We couldn't bear it. It was too ugly."

Welcome to my world, friend!