Actually Poor vs. Nouveau Poor

The life of the Nouveau Poor is not about deprivation, it’s about choosing wisely. I travel to New York quite frequently. On a trip last month I was invited to stay with either of my daughters and opted for Samantha’s apartment (the one without a new puppy to whom I am allergic in it). We inflated her air bed and I collapsed in exhaustion the first night but during the night had the strange sensation that I was sharing the bed with someone else and kept unconsciously trying to push them over to their side of the bed. In the morning we realized the bed had popped a gusset and there was a body sized blump running head to toe right down the middle. We had already decided that we were spending the “hotel” money on hair maintenance for both daughters, so the next night I snuggled up to the blump and slept soundly.

Last week brought another business trip to New York, this time with my husband, who offered the option of combining a long weekend with the business days we needed there. The economics of several nights’ stay would have put us at a second-rate hotel, eating cereal out of a box in the lobby for breakfast. Instead, I opted to fly in early Monday morning and out again on Tuesday evening, so we had only one full night in a hotel, with two full days in the city. Well, good things come to NP girls who aren’t too demanding, and the next thing I knew, we were at early-check in at the Gramercy Park Hotel, on our way to enjoying complimentary lunch for two in the private 18th floor rooftop garden. (An NP note- always check with Amex when booking your travel. Early check-in, late check-out, and complimentary meals or drinks often come with booking through them.) Next, we settled into our upgraded suite, and then met our lovely daughters in the aforementioned garden terrace. The next morning brought the perfect egg-white omelet with spinach and freshly squeezed orange juice, and a perambulation around the last remaining private park in Manhattan, Gramercy Park, made possible via the magic gate key posessed by the hotel concierge.

We squeezed in a few business meetings and our late check-out enabled us to fully enjoy an exquisite Manhattan spring day and return home feeling as though we had been on vacation. We had definitely lived the high-heel lifestyle on our shoestring budget, courtesy of my clever husband’s planning, and by using our platinum Amex to it’s fullest advantage!

Life is too short not to spend your nights on the highest possible thread count.  When you consider the amortization of initial expenditure on a set of delicious Pratesi linens, they are an extreme value. Believe it or not, I am still enjoying a set of Pratesi sheets I’ve had for twelve years!

The ultimate in bed linens is true linen. Pratesi produces incredible linen sheets that actually last for generations.  This is the stuff of which dreams are made- truly I dream of them. Have you ever slipped between the cool, crisp finish of linen?  There is nothing like it.  You absolutely must sleep naked on such sheets.  Not to do so would be to deprive your senses unjustly. Every time they are lovingly laundered, they soften.

I had an incredible honeymoon. I never wanted an engagement ring.  My husband was not brought up to understand this, and his mother was truly puzzled.  They kept insisting I should rethink this. I never have. When my husband finally realized I meant it, he said that we would just have to blow what would have been the ring budget on our honeymoon.  And we did.  We shopped all over Europe, lazed on sunbathed beaches, ate at the same restaurant three nights in a row- just because we could- and we slept on linen sheets.  In a room that had a hidden door, so once you were in the bedchamber, not to be confused with His Bath Chamber, or Her Bath Chamber, you couldn’t find your way out and were forced to spend days on end in your delicious neighborhood sized bed covered in linen sheets.  And the duvets….   Did I mention the naked part?

(For those who are not yet in a Pratesi position, here is a more NP thought on sheets)

I have found that if I loosen my notion that sheets come in sets, I can find some great values on parts and pieces on closeout.  For some reason there always seem to be more flat sheets than fitted sheets.  Most patterns incorporate white, so I keep a few white fitted sheets on hand to combine with some luxurious patterned flat sheets, pillow cases and shams I’ve picked up on white sales.  There’s something very fresh about the combination, since it’s ever-changing and always stylish.