I’m sitting here on my couch and I may stay here for the next twenty-four hours. I mean I do plan to go to bed at some point but then I think I’m going to wake up and get right back on this couch and catch up on as much DVR’ed T.V. as I possibly can.
I believe it’s important to have goals.
Honestly, last week will go down as one of the craziest, busiest, exhausting, most fun, precious weeks of my life. The response to Nobody’s Cuter Than You has blown me away and I debated just writing a blog post that said THANK YOU over and over again.
But that would probably be boring so I’ll do my best to give you a recap of the last several days.
Last week I mentioned that on Tuesday, the day the book released, I decided to go for full-on glamour and made a trip to Walmart to buy an iron and an ironing board. Then I came home and served my family leftovers for dinner, pretended like I knew how to help Caroline with her math homework while I secretly googled it on the internet, and ironed a few shirts. This is what some people mean when they refer to a “rock and roll lifestyle”.
The real fun came on Wednesday. I started the day getting some fresh highlights in my hair because I’d texted my sweet hairstylist and said,”HELP! I HAVE GRAY HAIR MULTIPLYING AROUND MY FOREHEAD!” Fortunately she was able to fit me in and even styled my hair for me. But, cue the sad trombone, I came home from the salon and when I opened the back gate, Piper and Mabel decided to sprint down the street at full speed. It also happened to be a day when the humidity hovered around 412%. This really caused a downturn in my hair volume which was sad times.
In addition to my hair drama, Jen and Jamie were texting from Dallas informing me that Jen’s white blood cell count was too low for chemo that day and they weren’t sure if they were going to be able to make the trip. However, Jen once again convinced her nurses that chemo could wait until 1 p.m. on Thursday and so they got in the car and headed this way. I would have totally understood if they hadn’t been able to come, but I was so glad I was going to get to celebrate with them.
Meanwhile, my friend Tiff was driving in from College Station. They all got in town about 4:00 p.m. and we met over at Gulley’s house before driving over to Barnes & Noble for my book signing. We had some wine, made some toasts, ate some cookies, talked and laughed non-stop and celebrated with Tiff who’d found out on the drive over that her oldest daughter had just accepted an offer to play soccer in college. And Jen showed us her boobs because it’s her favorite party trick these days since her inflammatory breast cancer has changed them significantly.
We arrived at Barnes & Noble and I was so excited to get to meet so many of you who have read the books and the blog for all these years. The best part of a book coming out is getting to put faces with names I’ve seen on the internet. It makes it all feel real in some way.
And the whole night as I signed books, I kept overhearing my friends and family laughing and talking behind me and there was a part of me that wanted to put my head down and cry with gratitude that we were all together in one place.
This is Jen, Gulley and Tiff. If you’ve read the book, then you’ll know who they are and how much I love them. I have no idea why this picture is smaller than the others. I could research it but it probably wouldn’t do any good and so I’m saving myself the time.
Here we are with our friend Jamie and I’ll give you a little friendship family tree. Jamie and Jen have been friends since middle school. Jen introduced Jamie to all of us when we were in college, but then Jamie and Gulley lived in Austin at the same time after graduation and got to know each other better. And Jamie and her husband, Trevor, lived in San Antonio while he was in med school and so we all became close friends. My smile in this picture sums up all my feelings. Nothing like showing both rows of teeth.
P brought Caroline right after soccer practice so she got to hang out for a little bit. And my friend Donna even drove her to Chick-Fil-A to get her some dinner since Caroline’s plan to eat a protein pack at the in-store Starbucks was thwarted by the fact that all they had were “weird sandwiches”.
And I loved that Mimi, Bops and my sister Amy were all there, plus P’s mom came too.
Can we discuss that Caroline is almost as tall as her grandmother?
(I’m starting to feel a little bit like this post is reading like an Academy Award’s acceptance speech or maybe just an entirely too detailed summary of events, but my brain is at less than half capacity right now. I’m doing the best I can.)
Anyway, my friend Debbi was there and made sure to take plenty of pictures and I’m so glad because it wouldn’t have occurred to me pull out my phone even one time and then I wouldn’t have any photographic evidence of this night.
Debbi is also the one who’s responsible for all the fun Instagram pics, like this gem that’s one of my personal favorites. I may get it blown up to 16 x 20 and hang it over my mantle.
Someone guessed correctly that I was hiding dog treats inside the book. I would like to think that Mabel and Piper hang on my every word, but the truth is Mabel thinks she’s the real writer in the family as evidenced by this haiku I found in her dog bed.
“Mother likes to write
puts simple words on the page
yet I bare my soul”
Whatever. Everyone’s a critic.
After the book signing was over, we went back to Gulley’s house. She’d made the cutest little party favors out of tiny mason jars with daisies and a blue ribbon with a picture of the book cover and had pictures of all of us over the years glued to copies of the book’s pages hanging from her light fixture. Plus her husband had picked up fajitas and guacamole and queso for all of us. It was sheer perfection.
We stayed at that table until midnight catching up on life and telling old stories. I think we experienced every emotion in the book as we covered as many topics as we could fit into that amount of time. And even when Tiff and I drove back to my house, she and I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. talking some more even though we could barely keep our eyes open.
It was all just a sweet reminder of how much we all love each other and pick up right where we left off, no matter how many years have gone by or how much things have changed. Our friendships were woven into our lives when we were not even twenty years old and yet they have survived time and distance. We are family.
And, honestly, I’d sit in Starbucks wanting to pull my hair out as I try to find words for seventeen more books if it meant that we all got to be together like this at least once a year. There’s just nothing like being surrounded by all the people you love the most and who love you the most.
I was going to talk about Dallas too, but it’s lightning and thundering like crazy and I’m about to lose my internet. So I’ll be back tomorrow with stories from the rest of the week.
Also, a few quick book notes in case you still need to pick up a copy. Nobody’s Cuter Than You is still in stock online Barnes & Noble for less than $10.00 and you get free shipping when your order is more than $25.
And if you happen to be in San Antonio, the Walmart at 281 & 1604 has A BUNCH of copies, including many that I signed while I was there on Saturday.
If you’ve looked for it in your local bookstore and they don’t have it, keep asking or see if they’ll order it for you. It should be in most Southern Walmarts and most Barnes & Noble stores this week for sure.
One last thing, I’ll be in Houston this Saturday, April 18th at 7:00 p.m. signing books at the River Oaks Barnes & Noble on West Gray.
Finally, THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.
A MILLION TIMES OVER.