This time next week, I will be the happiest woman alive. Why you ask? Because I will be with all my friends at Blissdom and I cannot wait.

In getting ready for this years event, I thought back to last year when I was scared to death, didn’t know a soul and my blog was only six months old.

My how times have changed.

It made me think that rather than just hearing about the conference itself, I would have really liked to have heard what to expect as a “newbie”. Things that would have made me feel a little less jittery walking through the doors of the hotel.

So if you are new to this event, or if you just don’t have anything better to read at this particular moment, here is a list of things you should know:

• Everyone is nice.   I didn’t encounter one single person who was mean to me.   If someone is mean to you, come find me and I’ll take care of it post haste.  And then I’ll probably hug you.
• You won’t be sitting alone.   People sitting at tables with extra seats will generally be very welcoming of you joining them.   If you do find yourself sitting alone, come find me and I’ll sit with you.  Or on your lap.  Your call.  Either option probably also involves hugging of some sort.
• Take layered clothes.   Doesn’t matter how fancy the hotel, they can never get the temperature just right.   You will find yourself either too cold or too hot.   If you are too cold, come find me and I’ll hug you until you warm up.   If you are too hot?   I don’t know, the only thing I can do is throw you in the pool and I don’t think you want that.
• Take a good mixture of clothes.   There will be at least one day you probably don’t change from what you wore during the day and one night you may find you want to dress up.   Take stuff that mixes and matches so that when you invariably freak out and don’t know what to wear, you have a lot of options.     If you freak out, call me.   I’ll show up with a bottle of wine in hand, hug you and tell you to get over it.
• Take business cards.   Listen to me…this one is important. Even if you have to print them up yourself, be sure to have a few hundred on hand.   You will probably be able to tuck them into your name tag and you will want to be able to refresh your supply often.   If you don’t bring business cards, I may not hug you, because my eye sight is starting to go and I won’t be able to read your name tag and I can’t just be hugging on total strangers can I?   (Well, yes I could but this is my feeble attempt to get you to do what I say.)

Above all, come with a great attitude and expect to walk away with a whole lot of new friends.  I know I did last year, and I cannot wait to see each and every one of those lovely ladies again next Thursday!

Come find me…and don’t be surprised when I give you a giant hug.

You have been warned.

Short post today, long weekend at cheer….

But guess what?  Miss G’s team won!    Check out Charlie’s Angels (unofficial name, but OMG we love our Coach) from The Pride All Stars this weekend when they took a National Championship!   Little G is back left on first stunt, back middle on second….

She’s beautiful….and I’m proud….

…and I think I’m finally a Cheer Mom. God Help Me.

So proud of these girls!

Listen, anyone who has been around her for a while knows I’m a Republican. But here’s the thing, fiscally, I am hard core right…socially, I fall a little left of center. Maybe a lot left of the center.  I am a big believer in the NoH8 movement.   It’s not my job to judge how people love eachother…it’s not yours either.

And today I was  amazed and  proud of Cindy McCain for doing this ad:

It took my breath away.

Aside from the fact that this is possibly one of the most beautiful and powerful images I’ve seen in a while (the white, the duct tape, the blue eyes), she had the nerve to stand against her husbands public policy of discrimination.

I was not a fan of John McCain in the election.  I liked her even less…

Today, I like her a whole lot more.

It’s not my business to tell people who they can spend the rest of their lives with…and to be honest, again…it’s not yours either.

We need to stop legislating hate and we need to stop it now.

Cindy McCain, you will never see this…but I am so proud of you for standing up.

NoH8!

So you know we have pets.   We have Mary Bailey, the uppity cat as well as Mr. Potter, the slovenly fat and sometimes corn chip smelling pug.

Did you know we also have fish?   We have several but recently we have one less than we did before.   Chloe the fish made her journey to the great sea on the other side (via the toilet) not too long ago.

Chloe was a good fish.  She belonged to Miss G and was a happy little beta fish that was brightly striped and appeared to have a really happy disposition.   She’d flip around whenever we walked in as opposed to Mr. C’s fish, Stripes, who basically looked at us like, “Great to see you and all but…where the hell are my food pellets?” whenever we walked in.   I swear to you, I think Chloe smiled at me one time when I walked in. And possibly blew a kiss.

Miss G loved Chloe.   She loved that she was a “girl fish” (or at least we think she was since she was sort of pinkish purple…which no boy fish would be caught with those colors, right?)    She loved that Chloe stayed in her room and she would talk and sing to her to keep her entertained in her little bowl.

We chose the beta fish because at the pet store they told us that beta fish are really hard to kill.

They don’t know my daughter.

So like I said, Chloe seemed to like everything and she lived happily in her little bowl for several months before we found the one thing Chloe did not like.

A bubble bath.

Much to our shock, one day The Man walked in and found her looking like this….only with bubbles on top.

**Note: Not real Chloe fish, this is a google fish. Also, you may not want to search dead fish floating as the results can be somewhat…um…gnarly.**

L

(…and no, I don’t know what this L is in the middle of the page other than a special gift you can’t get rid of from Word Press…ugh…)

From what we could gather based upon our post mortem interrogation of Miss G, Chloe looked like she needed a bath.   She had been in that same water for quite a while after all.   Miss G decided that since she loves nothing more than a good bubble bath, perhaps Chloe would enjoy that as well.  (I’m not sure but I think the crowning touch here in this little unintentional fish-icide may have been the fact that disinfectant watermelon scented hand soap was the weapon of choice, though without a coroners report, we can never be sure.)

Needless to say, we won’t be buying another fish for Miss G for a while and currently are investigating how a couple of the tiny frogs in the larger fish tank have come to find themselves without all of their limbs.    Yet another mystery in the making and one that we suspect involves the cat.

RIP Chloe, you were a fine fish indeed.

There are several groups of people that bother me.    In order of bothersomeness:   Toothsuckers, Close Talkers, Name Droppers and most importantly Mmm Hmmers.

What is a Mmm Hmmer you ask?  It’s one of those people in movies that at a moment where the theater is silent offers her agreement with the movie plot by murmuring “Mmm Hmm”.    It’s the person who talks back to the TV as if the person can hear her when the question is asked, “Do you know what I mean?”   “Mmmm Hmmm”

You get where I’m going with this.    These people make me not only jumpy but stabby and angry.   So it was with great disdain I found myself sitting next to such a person the other night when I had the fantastic opportunity to go hear the creator of my favorite show, Mad Men, speak about his creative process, the thought behind the characters and most importantly where he gets his ideas.   He was fascinating.

She?  Almost landed me with a stint in prison.

Matthew Weiner spoke for over an hour and half.   I have to tell you, he is one of the most engaging speakers I’ve ever heard.     He was funny, genuine and seemed like a guy who probably wouldn’t call security or tase you if you were to profess your undying love for him in a public forum and possibly offer to sell your soul to the devil to spend one day on the set to sit  in on the writing sessions.

Or maybe getting to play dress up in Betty Draper’s clothes.

Or possibly the chance to give one tiny kiss to Don.

Or maybe play his mistress.

In a semi nude scene.

Yesssssss……..

Wait.  Where was I?

Oh yes, the story.  Don’t worry, I didn’t make it to the mic.      But instead of absorbing it all, this is what I heard.

MW:    “Bobby Barrett, one of Don Draper’s earliest mistresses character came from a conversation I had with a woman on a plane who said to me…”

Her:   “Hmmm”

MW:   “The scene where Betty Draper goes out and starts shooting pidgeons came from a story a writing assistant shared with me from her own youth.    She was the daughter of a single mother who…”

Her:  “Huh. Mmmm  Hmmm…”

MW:   “We got the idea to do the Kodak Carousel scene because someone once told me that nostalgia is when your heart hurts remembering a time that you were loved that you wish you could revisit.   The actual shoot for the pictures was difficult because we had to demand imperfection from professional photographers to make it actually perfect for the show and…”

Her:   “MMMMM.    MMMMM HMMMMM.”

At first I was willing to put up with it.   She’s a fan too, right?    But after an hour of this, I started flinching every time she started to even approach the letter M.   I began clinging to my friend April sitting next to me.   I noticed my friend Renee was starting to give me the side eye.   Wait.  Did she think I was the one doing this? And my friend James?   Well he was too immersed in the entire speech to hear any of it and thankfully far enough removed.   Lucky man.

So I clung to poor April and we both started laughing. But April…she can’t leave well enough alone. She looks over and notices the other thing I’ve been horrified about the entire time but dare not speak of for fear of losing my shit entirely. This woman, this annoying annoying woman, is sitting there with her legs wide open. In a dress. No leggings, no hose, bare legs…splayed open.

“Honey, this is not a gynocological visit…” she said at which point I gave up and pretty much just collapsed on her shoulder laughing myself to tears.

So much for listening to my idol.

But we aren’t done yet. After I recovered from the fit of giggles and continued to grab April every time another Mmmm Hmmm came out, Matthew Weiner said something really funny and the girl next to me with her legs spread wide open?

She laughed too…and then?

She farted.

THE END.