Well.
All I can say is that y’all probably need to say a prayer of thanks that I didn’t blog over the last few days because it might have been full of a vast array of complaints starting with I CAN’T SLEEP and WHY ARE MY HORMONES SO CRAZY? and ending with I HAVE A COLD AND CAN’T BREATHE.
Just a ray of sunshine.
The week started off so well. I arrived in Nashville without any glitches and, though it was an hour I consider way too early for respectable society, I managed to put on my best game face and by the time I was drinking coffee with my friend Paige in a cute little Nashville coffee shop at 9:00 a.m. I was actually feeling pretty good about life.
I mean, after all, I’d packed, gotten dressed, driven to the airport, found a parking place, read all about the latest in the TomKat divorce and arrived in a whole different state before 8:45 a.m. I’d accomplished more by noon than I usually do in four days. And if you doubt the validity of that statement then clearly you haven’t been following the TomKat situation. It’s a lot of information to process.
The time in Nashville was great. Sophie and I spent most of Wednesday filming the intro video to the DotMom Conference and I think it’s going to be good. Not because of our acting skills or anything like that, but because the LifeWay Crew is brilliant and sets us up to look so much better than we are. Our director, Seth, even talks us through places in the script where he’s just written “Sophie and Melanie make funny jokes”.
Because do you know how much pressure that brings? Just retyping the phrase “Make funny jokes” is enough to make me curl up in the fetal position. Mainly because it brings me back to a time about four years ago when LifeWay asked Sophie and I to entertain the crowd with “witty banter” on the floor of the Alamodome while women were waiting to see Beth Moore and the best I could come up with for an opening line was “So. How did y’all sleep last night?”
You would have to drive a million miles out to the middle of nowhere to hear more quiet than we did in that arena. That’s why we always remind each other to “REMEMBER THE ALAMODOME”.
Anyway, after a day of filming we met some friends for dinner at a new trendy restaurant in Nashville called Urban Grub. The macaroni and cheese was delicious and I tried not to remember that I’d spent much of the filming talking about the benefits of the Paleo diet with one of the crew members. In case you’re wondering, macaroni and cheese is the polar opposite of the Paleo diet. Macaroni and cheese would have killed a caveman.
And then we went to Jeni’s ice cream shop where I ate the most perfect ice cream cone I’ve ever had. EVER. Sadly, they only have Jeni’s shops in Ohio and Tennessee which is kind of far from Texas. However, I did just search the google and discovered you can get it at a shop in Gruene which is only 45 minutes away and so I may drive there tomorrow.
Remember back in January when I was basically just eating kale?
I have fallen off the wagon.
On Thursday morning I flew back to San Antonio and that’s when I just fell apart. I hadn’t slept that great while I was away and we’d been on a non-stop schedule and I’d had allergies and I guess it all caught up to me because I collapsed in a heap on the couch and basically didn’t move again for days.
Caroline spent all last week going to day camp which kind of worked out since I was gone. I had been a little worried about missing it because she is a big fan of getting her face painted every morning to match the various themes, but fortunately P picked up the face-painting gauntlet and ran with it. In fact, he exceeded my skills.
That’s a wave. With a surfer. With a mohawk.
I would have just painted a flower and called it good.
And then he was naturally skilled at doing the camo face paint. I think her counselors actually might have lost her in the woods this day.
But I was home in time for the last day and so I pulled out my strongest face-painting game and went with the blue mask effect.
Friday night we drove up to camp for closing ceremonies and this picture totally sums up how Caroline felt.
She was wiped out. And had come down with a cold.
So Saturday we cancelled plans we’d made for dinner and spent all day on the couch watching movies in our pajamas. It might have been the best day I’ve had in forever.
Actually, scratch that. It was unequivocally the best day I’ve had in forever.
And now you’re all caught up.
Except I cut all my ailments and complaints in half.
Which I know makes you want to heave a big sigh of relief because, yes, there could have been more.