I’m home! Home at a last. Of course I’m completely overwhelmed with all the catching up I have to do. If I thought I had a lot of blogs to read before, now I am steamrolled! I met so many people that I desperately want to keep in touch with. It’s going to be impossible. Not to mention my real life is going to steamroll me too.

Right now as I type this (and the munchkin is sleeping blessedly), the mail is cascading off the edge of the dining room table and onto the floor, dishes are stacked a mile high in the sink (thank you Toby), the floor is vacuumed (also thank you Toby but this time not sarcastically), my motley crew of bulging tote bags and stuffed suitcases are sitting in the other room plotting a riot. The cats are noisy and begging for more food. The refrigerator is bare and the milk is going bad. I think my laptop is dying from over-use and too many photos. So I need to spend about a thousand hours processing photos, uploading them and then putting them somewhere else so my laptop can breath again.

I think I’ve been gone too long.

Was it worth it? YESSSSSSS! Toby says I need to write a long debriefing post linking everyone I met and be done with it. I don’t know about all that linking, I’ve probably lost half the cards I collected, but he is right. I do. I know I’ve already been searching the internet over to see what people have been saying about me and they’ve been saying nice stuff. (Everyone is SO NICE!!!) So I need to make an effort to do the same. It’s just going to take a while because I need to peel myself up off the floor and walk around like Flat Stanley getting stuff done.

You know what? I DID have a really great birthday. Thank you! I somehow talked Toby into letting me take a weekend away and it was the best present ever. Don’t worry, I am not being ignored by my workaholic husband. He’s got a present up his sleeve and I am pretty much spoiled rotten but that is another post for another day.

Even re-capping my super fun weekend with the Gronbergs is a post for another day because this birthday girl is tuckered out and she is going to roll her big fat caking-eating-self off to bed!

I’m so tempted to type, “I got nuthin’” and end it at that. But then I’d have to clock myself over the head with this big cardboard box I keep my laptop in because I’m the girl who proclaims loudly that she NEVER ever gets writer’s block. Oh no, not me!

That would be like the time I took a car truck ride with that really cute boy I was sort of dating during college and we drove the whole way to Costco (which was in the next town over) and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say the entire hour it took to get there. That was so terrible. How could I not think of a single thing to talk about?!!! I always have something to talk about. I’m the queen of making lively conversation. I’m a journalism major. I’m trained to ask the hard questions. What was my problem!!! I don’t know. It was something about being obsessed about having bad breath. Even after all these years I don’t like to think about that guy.

Today is not quite that bad. It’s not that I can’t think of something to type. I could ramble on for days… it’s that I’m thinking about my audience. Who reads this? What can I type that I won’t regret when some long distant relative googles their last name and this post comes up because we happen to share the same six letters in our name.

Isn’t it funny how you always think of one person or another when you’re typing a blog post? Don’t you? I do. I often think about my father-in-law. (Hi George!) I don’t know if he reads this blog every day or not but I know he does sometimes and that sort of keeps me on my toes and quiet on some things.

Not that I have secrets but I just don’t want to blab about stupid things. He comes here to read about his grand-daughter. I want to show him that I’m a good daughter-in-law and show off all the crafts we do together or whatever… I just sort of feel like I have this reputation I have to uphold. Which is really silly since of all people, my father-in-law would probably love a rollicking good story about how this one artist (who I found out later is really famous) once asked me to pose nude for him.

Yeah, I never wrote about that before. But then I start thinking about my Aunt Kathy, who I adore, but would probably NOT want to read about her niece posing nude. Well, rest assured, Aunt Kathy. I never did pose nude. I guess I had some sense in me back then. But sometimes now, when I see this famous artist’s work, I sort of wish I did. Because how cool would that be to see yourself in some gallery and know that you were part of something historical. Plus, I sort of wish I had documented the body I had back then that is now falling down around my hips like bread dough.

Ugh! Shudder! Shudder! Shake that thought!!! See! This is why I don’t let myself type willy nilly regularly. There is always something there to write about, it’s just not always something best to be read.

So anyway! What’s new pussycat? Want to hear about our latest potty-training endeavors? Do you ever find yourself dumping the pee water from the small baby toilet into the big toilet and then washing said baby toilet in the sink and wonder what has become of your life? Washing pee? I’m not really complaining. I’m so proud of my “Big Girl” it’s just that I never really realized that my days would be filled with chores like this. I guess I thought there would be more martini drinking and wearing of frilly aprons or something.

Speaking of aprons! I cannot end this post without a shout out to my sister-in-law and her shop! Check her out! She is single-handedly supporting herself and her addiction to the dollar-bin at Target! Wooo Hoo! You go girl! (Psssssssst! She’s giving away an apron on her site and she may or may not forget to close the comments before you get there.)

While we’re on the subject of supporting habits, I wanted to let you all know that my sister-in-law and my mom and my nieces and Baby Bug are all planning a trip to Blogher in July! ROAD TRIP!!!! Of course we are all broke so we need to drum up some funds so we can afford to stay at fancy princess hotels while we trudge our way up there with six people in one gas-guzzler car. That means you can stay tuned for some kind of crazy self-promotion fund raiser stunt going on here at this site as soon as I think something brilliant up. Or we could just stay at Motel 6. Which might happen, depending on my slacker-dom.