Nate Berkus, Twitter, the Moggit Girls and Me

I am not a designer. I just play one, on a hill in Italy. That would make me a design hillbilly.

Design used to be my profession, but that was long, long ago. Yes, I have the best blogs to try to keep me current, but listen, I'm not cutting edge. I'm not proud of this, but not ashamed of it either. When you are 51 years old, and your hormones are dropping like a stone in the Grand Canyon and in front of you are mountains of sheets to wash and bread to bake, your hard drive will only accept so much new information about chevrons and checkerboards and the new possibilities of the color turquoise.

Seriously.

Still, I can't quite believe I missed this:

Ok, laugh at me. Shoot me. Sue me. Whatev'.

Most of you with a normal life will recognize this as Nate Berkus, designer to the stars, FOO, and maybe a contender for the best smile in interior design history. I had not a clue about him until yesterday, when in a hot flash moment between ironing and masking taping dog hair off the back seat of the car, I checked my Tweet Deck and saw that my friend Julieann tweeted about the Moggit Girls and some kind of blogging day using the hashtag #nateday.

I felt I should look into this. I trust Juliann's excellent taste and she's one of the designers I really rely on to help me keep my backwater bearings in all this Italian countrytude.

But Nate? Moggits?

First the Moggit Girls. Oh, just go visit their blog. You all probably know about them, too. Those two have it going on. They almost made me spit out red wine on my computer cracking up. I like designers with a sense of humor, I really do.

So, the Moggit Girls apparently had Twitter contact - DIRECT Twitter contact - from Nate Berkus and came up with the idea that Monday, June 13th, will be the day when bloggers far and wide, blog about who else.

What a fabulous idea, I thought. Except I had no clue who he was.

Now, this is where I become exceedingly grateful that I do not live in Vesime. Vesime is a town about 30 minutes from here, where my girlfriend Olivia lives. She can't even get a land line. She's had the application in with Telecom Italia for three years. She lives only with a cell phone. And she has to hold her cell phone at odd angles and stand on her tippy toes to get it to work. So she has no DSL.

You think I'm behind? Let me tell you. You don't know behind until you have to climb a tree and rip your jeans to get your credit card machine to work.

I am so happy I live where I live, because I DO have a landline, and I DO have DSL (even wi fi. I tell you, I'm smokin', baby) and this puts me at an advantage. When I find out that I have missed an entire movement, an entire ERA in a field I used to work in, I can simply Google my heart's content away and find out oodles of information about, for example,

Well, fancy that. Nate's famous.

I decided, for safety sake, to throw out a post on Facebook about Nate. Sort of a fishing expedition to make sure this guy was the real deal. Hillbilly life makes you suspicious of strangers.

When my sister commented that she loves him, I got nervous. Back in the day, I informed HER about trend. That's how it was supposed to work. Now she's a couple of car lengths out in front. Hmmm. Philly 1, Hillbilly 0.

Then my best friend Nancy commented. Nancy lives in the same town we both grew up in. Nancy knows Nate. That means knowledge of Nate has made it to Milford, Pennsyvania. Uh - oh.

But then when my friend Annika from Sweden went on about Nate and Oprah, I knew I was in deep designer doo doo. She's on the same continent as me. THE SAME CONTINENT. She obviously gets Sky up there in the Great Nordic North. With Sky comes Oprah. And clearly, Nate. I don't have Sky. What a difference a cable provider can make.

So here I am, fully exposed, humbled, yet willing to learn. And that's a good thing. Right? RIGHT?

Nate will be having his own show on the Harpo Network starting on September 13th. So we, the blogging world, including those of us who live under a rock, are honoring him by doing simultaneous posts today. You can find a complete list of the #nateday bloggers here.

Now, I would not have bothered if, in my research, I had found that I hate his designs. I happen to think his designs are good. Liveable. Warm. Inviting. And, needless to say, you all are going to enjoy his new show more than I am, since I won't be getting it at all.

I could, and would, live in this room:

So all in all, a stellar day with tons of new info. The Moggits. Nate Day on Twitter. Sis. Nancy. Annika. Now that I am feeling a little more up to date, I think I'll go put on some mascara and turquoise eye shadow.

Sniff.