Almost one month ago, I met some friends for dinner.  There was Amy, Christina, Wendy…oh, and ho-hum, Ree Drummond.

Yes, it has taken me nearly a month to tell you that I went to dinner with The Pioneer Woman; the N.Y. Times best-selling author and one of Forbes’ top 25 Web Celebs.  You’re lucky I’m telling you at all, because I am wildly popular and busy.  Okay, just busy.

Ree was in town for a book signing and joined us for a fabulous dinner where we had a lot of wine and I drank Ree under the table.

Or, maybe she was just looking for the lens cap I dropped.

There were also cookies as big as your face.

And, then we went for ice cream.  Splendid ice cream.

We talked, laughed and took a bundle of pictures.  Like more than I took when my kids were born.

This is the one where I told everyone to make a funny face and the only person who heard me, was me.

One of the best things about blogging is how special it is to hang out with the friends you meet online.

But, the wine and cookies as big as your face aren’t so bad either.

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You know how you have a day off, but your kids still have to go to school and you scream, “This is going to be GLORIOUS!”, and it immediately goes downhill when you shovel the driveway for the fifth time in a week, and drop off the kids at school (which is not the same as dropping them off at the pool) and they argue the whole time, then you go to the ob/gyn and get a pap smear, and after that you go to the grocery store for the first time since December 23rd and trudge through the snow with a very full cart, then go to the pharmacy and find out they don’t have your medicine in stock, and after you take your boatload of food home and put it away you go to your mom’s house to shovel her driveway, and you’re sweating, and coughing, and it’s heavy, and your coffee is cold, and then a man comes across the street with his snowblower and finishes the job for you, and that man is 90 years old, and he smiles at you, and having crossed his (snowblown) path makes your heart happy and the day ends up being glorious after all?

Yeah, me too.

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My eyes are burning. My cheeks stained with tears of exhaustion. I can’t remember the last time I got a good night’s sleep. I have to wait for our new insurance to kick in before I can talk to my doctor about my insomnia. Again.

My legs are cramped from standing on a hard floor for the past five hours, my hands are dry and cracked. My heart, heavy. I worry about my kids, my husband, our health, our finances, my parents.

Looking around the house makes me anxious. There are dishes, laundry, dog hair. Piles of papers, kids’ projects, things needing my signature or my response, volunteer work, writing assignments, insurance nightmares. I feel buried.

I need to work on math with my son. I need to take my daughter to practice. I need to find babysitters for upcoming events. I need to buy birthday presents, a sweater for my daughter’s choir performance and I need to send in her camp forms. I have to find a new therapist for my son. I need to change the sheets.

I want to set up piano lessons and swim lessons. I want to take the kids out to play catch. I have to call the pediatrician’s office. Maybe I can get to that after I start making dinner.

I need a minute. I collapse on the couch and let out a sigh. My head flops back against the olive-green chenille. I close my eyes and rub my forehead. I have had a headache for three days.

I rest my hand on my thigh and feel my young son’s fingers grab mine. He reaches up and brushes my hair from my cheeks. He tells me I am “so, so, so, so pretty”.

I muster half a smile and say, “I love you, buddy.”

He says, “I love you too.”

Then he hugs me.

And just like that, the dread is gone.

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1. If you once had a dog who ate a dead bat and you had to pull a string of wet, possibly-rabid bat out of her throat, you may think, “I have never seen anything so disgusting in my life.”

2. When that same dog gets older and decides she likes to roll in other dog’s poop and you find yourself giving her a bath and she does the wet dog shake and soaped-up poop goes flying all over your bathroom, you will realize you were wrong about the bat being disgusting.

3. And, 15 years later when you get a new puppy and see that she likes to roll in dead animals you may find yourself thinking, “If that’s the worst thing she rolls in, things will be okay, because remember that one dog…who liked to roll in dog poop…”

4. Then on a day much like this past Saturday, your new puppy may roll around in horse poop and you’ll think, “Well, it certainly can’t get any worse than this.”

5. But, it’s possible that on the same day, after she’s been bathed and sanitized, that puppy might suddenly decide she likes Mexican food and eat an entire bowl of salsa.

6. Which means you might stay up all night waiting for the explosive salsa-diarrhea you know will come.

7. But, it doesn’t.

8. And you’ll realize you stayed up all night for nothing.

9. Until the puppy throws up and it smells exactly like…horse poop.

10. And you may find yourself thinking, “Seriously? Why couldn’t it smell like salsa?”

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