Note: I had so much to say about BlogHer I’m posting two segments. Part II will have most of my photos and will detail the funny stories. It’s titled: BlogHer ‘08 Part II: What can I say? Hot Canadian woman just keep making out with me!

(And you think I’m kidding.)

This is ass-long but you really should just read the damn thing. I will be quizzing you later, Sarah.

**

The first five minutes into my BlogHer experience, I thought about going home.

I snotted a booger on the dress of one of the best and biggest bloggers on the planet.

I had nightmares that some how, some way, I was going to electrocute Dooce when I mic wrangled the closing keynote session.

We’ll talk about all these things later, though.

I will state right now that I had one of the very best trips of my life. BlogHer ‘08 blew every expectation that I had out of the water. I loved it. I’ll write about all my squeeing, making out and funny stuff that happened in Part Two of my recap, but for today I want to talk about the challenges of attending a conference of this magnitude and craziness.

I’ve been reading BlogHer recaps for two years and there is always one common thread that pops up amongst the posts with photos of happy people and parties and hugging. Some people write that they did not have a good time. They felt awkward, ignored, or slighted or that BlogHer wasn’t what they thought it would be.

For whatever reason, their conference was lacking.

I haven’t read any posts like that yet, but I am making a preemptive strike here. I want to point out to those people who didn’t have the best time that BlogHer isn’t always a bed of roses for people who had a GREAT time.

(That would be me. In case you were wondering.)

After one of the sessions I mic wrangled (ie-ran around like a crazy person thrusting microphones at people who had questions for the panel speakers in different sessions), I was speaking with a blogger who seemed to be having a particularly unhappy experience.

She said, “It must be so easy for you here. Everyone seems to like YOU.”

Well, yes. I can see that. I am outgoing. I am bubbly. I stand out in a crowd and can be silly. I had a great time and there were a lot of people who seemed to like me just fine. Was this conference a cake walk for me, though?

HELL, NO!

I think that the end experience you have greatly depends on how you deal with the situations you are given. I have a hard time in this area in other areas of my life, but I knew there would be negative things thrown at me at this conference and I was determined to do my best to turn them around. It went really well. Here’s a list of examples:

The first encounter I had at BlogHer made me seriously consider turning the hell around to go home.

I flew in at the crack of dawn and tagged along with my roommate Scribbit on an video interview she agreed to do for 5 Minutes for Mom. I was scraggly, tired, and had managed to dump half a can of Diet Coke on myself during the plane ride. When we got there, there was a makeup/hair artist, wardrobe racks, a production crew and I was met by three gorgeous, immaculate women who were the equivalent of Vogue- pages one, two and three.

They were very polite but I just felt so damn intimidated and felt like I should have “INSIGNIFICANT HICK FROM UTAH” tattooed on my forehead. I thought, “If this is how the whole conference is going to go, I can’t do it. I can’t walk around feeling this frumpy and lame and stupid for four days.” Luckily, I met someone who knew me and was also planning on hanging out in jeans the whole trip so I was much more comfortable and could relax.

Later, I had the opportunity to meet up with Janice from 5 Minutes for Mom and I told her how intimidated I was of the whole experience. SHE WAS WONDERFUL. Janice and I were joined by Jenny of Absolutely Bananas (who I pink puffy heart) and we had great conversation for three hours.

If I hadn’t approached Janice, I would still have this intimidating image of her in my mind and she is so easy to talk to. I’m glad I took that leap. I just wish that I knew that the young 20-something blogger that was hanging around our table was attending HARVARD in the fall before going on and on about how I write about my hoo-hoo on the internet.

My volunteer duties as mic wrangler had rocky moments.

I did a LOT of mic wrangling for sessions. I was so nervous about it because I wanted to do a good job for an organization that has been so good to me. It was a hard job, but I would do it again in a heart beat. I loved it. What I did NOT LOVE was during my very first session, CONTROVERSIAL TALK RADIO STARTED BLASTING THROUGH THE SPEAKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the midst of listening to a broadcast of political people saying things like, “Obama! You don’t know what the HELL you are talking about! You are an piece of poo in the flotsam and jetsam of the world’s sewage system!” I was frantically trying to figure out what the HELL was going on.

People were looking at me like I should know what I was doing and all I could do is give them a look that said, “I DON’T KNOW NOTHUN’ ABOUT FIXIN’ NO AUDIO SYSTEM, MISS SCARLETT!” and announce, “Never fear! I have a card with a telephone number to call!! YAY!!!!’

Problem? Number was out of service.

I played with some buttons and made it all much worse before the audio people finally showed up to save the day.

While I think I was sort of known as the Vanna White of mic wranglers and was really visible for the conference, I also looked pretty damn stupid some of the time.

I did some embarrassing things pre-conference and knew I would be running into the people involved.

Nobody likes to fess up to being an asshat. It was hard to do, but I found all of the people I had internet faux pas with and spoke to them. Every single situation ended up being good in the end. I don’t mean that I was ready to join the ya-ya sisterhood with all of them, but we all left on good terms and they were all understanding once I spoke to them and explained myself face-to-face.

I was a dork, scared, anxiety-ridden, insecure and felt intimidated a lot of the time.

While talking to the lovely Jess from Drowning in Kids, I turned around and found myself face-to-face with Schmutzie the fabulous.

In my head the introduction was supposed to go like this: “Well, hello, Schmutzie! My name is Loralee. Thank you for graciously featuring one of my posts on Five Star Friday. I am a fan of your wonderful website and that amazing birdie masthead that you designed.”

What came out of my mouth was garbled, high-pitched squeeing and “Oh! Oh!! Oh!!!-ing” that was accompanied by me pointing and jumping up and down while waving my name tag in her face.

Dorkish, indeed.

However, she was lovely and relating the experience to Some of us are clowns put her at ease because she felt HER introduction to ME didn’t go “as planned”, either!

I was scared to start talking to people I didn’t know. I made myself and it was great. Striking up a conversation about blogging platforms makes waiting in line to pee so much more enjoyable.

I was anxiety-ridden about my blog. I often had thoughts that my blog was “just a personal website”. One morning my roommates and I were at breakfast with a bunch of people from a global PR marketing firm. My roommates are an impressive lot of people. Plus, they are all gorgeous. Just look at them:

Besides being hotties, they are also quite accomplished in the bloggity world. Introductions went like this:

“My website is Scribbit, a one-author site that functions like a web magazine. I run my own advertising and am looking different ways to expand my business opportunities.”

“Hello, I am Amber. Aside from my personal website, I am the creator and editor of Mile High Mamas, a blog magazine that is sponsored by the Denver Post.”

“I’m Jill of Glossy Veneer. I have been blogging since 2001 and also have a website that chonicals my participation in a marathon to help lukemia research.”

Then it was my turn.

“HI! I’m Loralee! I write about my ta-ta’s on the internet!”

I am super awesome.

However, it made people laugh, which makes me happy, so I was good. I just embraced my blog and realized that I love it even if it doesn’t look as good on paper as some. I LOVE my roommates. We had the best time together.

I didn’t let my anxiety stop me from showing of my ‘Stellar’ dancing skillz. Even though there were only about 5 of us busting a move to sucky music on the dance floor. we had fun. If I had been drinking it would have made the situation a little bit less painful but I got to get a photo with Moosh In Indy, V Dog and BOSSY, and I had a great time, so it’s all good.

Intimidation was probably the biggest issue I had that was getting in my way. In a way it led to one of the most embarrassing but WONDERFUL moments of the whole trip:

I found myself in a puddle of tears surrounded by a semi-circle of some of the most amazing and well-known bloggers out there (who also intimidated the living hell out of me before BlogHer) and I also managed to snot a booger on the dress of a blogging goddess of the internet.

This moment sort of saved me and my blogging life. My favorite session of the whole conference was about “Taking back Naked Blogging”

The reason I went is that it was led by Sweetney and I had a question for her. I knew if anyone knew the answer it would be her, but I am the type that is way too gun shy to send her an email. So, I went to the session.

It was amazing.

It was one of those “What happens in this session STAYS IN THIS SESSION” so I will not go into detail, but I asked a question and found myself breaking down and sobbing. I am the most overly dramatic person on the planet but it takes a whole lot to actually make me cry.

And cry I did.

Big, fat, mascara-ridden tears kept coming and coming and coming. Thankfully, Jen and Tonica and Ink thinker had tissue and LeahPeah gave me chocolate. Backpacking Dad and Mr. Lady were wonderful as was the blogger wearing black whose business card I lost.

Before this conference I was down right SCARED to talk to a short list of specific bloggers. I was scared because while I know that I have talent and intelligence and excel in a lot of areas, the face and public side of me is very silly.

While being extremely theatrical, silly, and extroverted can be a plus a lot of the time, it can also make you look like a big dork to people of a more serious nature.

These are such strong, wise, blunt women who write damn well and really know their stuff and I was worried that they would see me as this dorky, flighty, silly person who well…worries and is insecure about coming off as dorky, flighty and silly. (If that makes sense.)

I even made a list of six women and made a goal that at some point I would try and introduce myself to them. Because I don’t want to feel intimidated. They certainly don’t make me feel that way, it is MY problem and my problem to resolve. I really wanted to tackle my fear because well…that is what I do with fear. I tackle it. Why the hell do you think I jumped out of a plane?

After the session, I looked up to see Sarcastic Journalist, Sweetney and Her Bad Mother standing in front of me with kind looks on their beautiful faces. Without dripping sap all over you…damn. These women were so kind. Generous. Helpful. HUMAN. Especially Tracey and Catherine. I just can’t even illustrate in words how much they helped me and how kind they were.

It helped to know I wasn’t alone and that all of them knew exactly what I was talking about and they didn’t see me as silly or flighty or spineless, just as another human out there that was looking for help, advice and understanding.

It made me smile and cry harder at the same time.

Someone I was crying too hard to notice before squeezed my right arm and said, “My mom always said, “Amy, when you have tough situations you just pull yourself up by your big girl panties and keep going!” and then she handed me her card.

I laughed, squeeked out a “Thank you”, asked if I could blog that her mother told me to pull myself up by my big girl panties and watched in horror as a small piece of booger flew from my nose onto her striped maternity sun dress.

No one seemed to notice and I was relieved that this fabulous blogger named Amy would never know that the snotting blogger she was so kind to left a genetic piece of the action on her dress.

I looked down at the card.

It was cute.

It was pink.

It was from…AMALAH.

Oh. THAT Amy.

Dear God above. I JUST SNOTTED A BOOGER ON THE DRESS OF AMALAH! ONE OF THE MOST AWESOME BLOGGERS ON THE PLANET!

Way to go, Loralee.

It made me cringe. Then I got over it. She was so nice, I’m sure she’ll forgive me. They were all so wonderful and in one fell swoop I saw all the crap and perception of big bloggers and smaller bloggers fall away. We’re all just people who blog. Or better yet? We’re all just PEOPLE.

It was such a great moment. I’ll never forget it.

And finally…

Crazy Blogging Canuck made me eat bacon mints.

They SUCKED. At least I wasn’t alone. Velveteen Mind had to eat them too.

In conclusion, I went into BlogHer DETERMINED to have a good time. I tried as hard as I could to walk away feeling positive. If I felt like an ass, I went and talked to the person I was an asshat in front of. If I was scared of someone I went and talked to them and tried to get that feeling to go away. If I was an idiot and forgot someone’s name I tried to tell them it wasn’t because they weren’t great, it was the limitation of my brain. If I felt neglected or if I didn’t connect with a blogger I was hoping to meet, I tried my best to remember that it was a crazy trip, people are human and sometimes things don’t work out.

I know that this doesn’t always work. Sometimes the “Oops!” is too big or the person you are dealing with just isn’t going to change their mind about the situation, but my point is…TRY. Then try AGAIN.

Oh, and get your ass to BlogHer ‘09. I WILL SO BE THERE.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The crappy “P” word that most bloggers get hit with from time to time. You know, that word that means that content you have thought about, slaved over, and typity, typity, typed until your typer was sore was taken and put forth as someone else’s work and glory.

Yup.

PLAGIARISM.

I woke up today to information that my post on blogging jealousy had been copied, cut, tweaked slightly and pasted on the site of Miss Maria Francesca Ditas Chantal Cristina Molina. (You can all call her, Mia. Or “Coffee Girl”. )

See a staggering similarity?

Some people are of the mind, “I am not going to send you to their site because I don’t want to give them traffic.” Which is a fine attitude to have, but frankly, I could care less about that. Go if you want. Don’t send death threats or anything, and if you do chastise her, your comments won’t see the light of day as they are all moderated. I would hurry, though. I fired off a comment demanding that she take it down.

If she doesn’t?

Lorelle has EXCELLENT ideas for going after someones ass when they steal content. And girlfriend left plenty of information (which I have copied and saved) to find her. Dude, don’t piss me off, people. I am the most loveable person on the planet until you cross THAT line. Then? I turn into a monster of rage and storming death that flings her unteathered bosoms and wrath at lame gas station attendants while wearing pajamas and a fugly hairdo. (For the record on this post? Judy still sucks. Just in case you were wondering.)

The immature part of me wants to egg her car and toilet paper her house. Hopefully, I will calm down and realize I am 33 instead of 12 and refrain from doing so. Heh.

Seriously though, it makes me feel more than a little upset that this person has a lecture and a Creative Commons button right at the tip top of her page chastising people about stealing content!

And apparently, she is going to be a lawyer.

Balls of brass, this one has.

Let me get something straight: I NEVER MIND PEOPLE WHO REPUBLISH MY WORK WITH PERMISSION, CREDIT AND LINKS ATTACHED. I also never mind people who “Copy” an idea. I have a post and they want to take the ball and run with it, too. That is beyond flattering.

Also? When I first started blogging and was clueless about the internet I didn’t understand intellectual property in regards to photos and art clips. I was stealing without meaning to. Once I learned? I try damn hard to never, ever do it. However, I have known since the age of 5 that copying other peoples written work and passing it off as your own is wrong, wrong, wrogity wrong.

THIS?

Is theft.

Pure and simple.

No if’s and’s or but’s about it.

I hate that my words have been taken and bastardized.

I almost feel like I have caught someone trying on my underwear.

It’s an icky feeling, people.

ICKY.

Tell them that you have tickets for the earliest matinée of Wall-E on opening day.

(I actually think I’m more excited than they are.)

**Edit**

I FREAKING LOVED IT.

Any robot that is enamored with Hello, Dolly! is totally awesome in my book. Go see it! (And, NO. There is no cool thing at the end, so don’t wait around for the neverending credits unless you just dig stuff like that.)

If I had read this fabulous article on how to taste cheese, before going to a very pricey Tapas bar in downtown Minneapolis, my brother probably wouldn’t have shelled out $50 smackers for us to eat Spanish cheese that tasted EXACTLY like the giraffe cage at the zoo.

(To be more accurate, it would be a giraffe cage in the zoo that is right next to one of those machines that burn plastic into the shape of a hippopotomus or zebra or some other zoo-like animal.)

Actually, ALL the plates we had tasted like giraffe cages to some degree or the other. We spent another $40 bucks buying pizza and junk food to get the taste out of our mouths. ICK.

And? Do not go hungry to a Tapas bar because it will cost you big bucks to fill up. Tapas basically translates to “Little plates of food” and they are NOT KIDDING at the “Little” part. We were basically eating portion sizes of an elf on diet. at $10-13 bucks a teeny plate, that can get pricey.

Few things are worse then hearing your name paged over the airport speaker system informing, “Salt Lake City passenger, ‘Loralee Choat-ay’, please come immediately to gate E15. Your flight is holding and is ready for departure.”, when you SWEAR that you have 35 minutes until your flight leaves.

That is, there is nothing worse unless you are hearing aforementioned announcement at the asscrack of dawn after getting zero sleep the night before due to anxiety of dying while flying in a plane the size of a Diet Coke can and/or missing your flight, and you are in the ladies room simultaneously having a panic attack and peeing like a racehorse and realize seconds after the announcer hideously mispronounces your name that THERE IS NO TOILET PAPER IN YOUR STALL.

THAT is much, much worse, my friends. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

As my flabby ass jiggled and my feet thundered as I ran and panted down the concourse to my gate, I kept cursing my decision to not continue with boot-camp classes because then I might not feel like I was inhaling hydrochloric acid into my lungs. I was still confused about my departure time, so while I was running I pawed through my purse to get out my boarding pass and saw that YES, I was right about the time. I should have still had plenty of time to board my flight.

When I finally got to the gate, I couldn’t even speak to ask, “WTF, yo?!”. I just stood there gasping, sputtering and clutching my pounding chest in a manner that probably looked like I was feeling myself up.
I mean, I love my boobies, but even I have some amount of public restraint.

Sometimes.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Sputtering, gasping, turning white and purple and spewing ropes of mucous at the gate attendant.

He guessed who I was.

“Oh, we just wanted to leave early. No problem. You’re fine.”

I AM? Try telling that to the very unfortunate guy who had to endure my mucous-infested coughing and wheezing for half of the flight as I tried to get enough oxygen to not pass out on him. Heart rate induced asthma can be a real bitch sometimes. I should have brought my inhaler, dammit.

I lived through the flight and on my way back to Cache Valley, I stopped in Salt Lake and met my beautiful, sassy, blogging friend, Sarah, for lunch at a restaurant that had a dessert case so glorious I considered raping it when I passed by on my way to the ladies room.

There was a lot of peeing going on with me today.

As I said, Sarah is gorgeous. I look like a homeless person (asscrack of dawn flight, remember?) but that is ok. If you look good all the time people expect too much of you. Personally, I am fond of getting a standing ovation for bothering to comb my hair.

The funny coinkidink about having lunch with Sarah is that is pretty much how I kicked off my whirlwind trip over a week ago. And yes, you are going to be subjected to it all. I will try to be brief, but try not to stick a fork in your eye, ok? I’ll sum up into brief paragraphs, if it makes it easier. I’ll even put in pithy little titles so you don’t get board.

“Who the hell knew that Diet Coke isn’t organic???”

As I was saying, I had lunch with Sarah and two fabulous bloggity friends, Jon Deal (Ransom Note Typography) and Brad (That One Guy). I didn’t have my stupid camera charged, so I don’t have a photo of the four of us, but I loved that lunch. We all got along like peas and carrots.I could lunch, talk, laugh and just be totally myself with this group of people until the end of time.

Indeed, the only drawback was when the waitress at the very tasty organic restaurant we dined at informed me that they only served “Organic” drinks and Diet Coke DOES NOT QUALIFY?!

WTF?

I plan on petitioning an organic hippie compound in Berkley to change that. Email me if you want to join in my quest.

“Fat cat in a little coat”

After lunch, I met Mandi and Jen for Jen’s baby shower. I heart them both. Mandi flew in from Georgia to throw the shower and Jen just looked radiant and adorable.

Plus, she has the fattest, most adorable, luscious, fatty fattakins cat on the planet. He is bigger than a huge watermelon and HIS name is “Abby”. Considering my female cat’s name is “Wilbur”, this just makes him rock even more.

The next morning I flew to Minneapolis to be with my brother. I already talked about some of the fun things we did in the previous post and I am going to add photos now that I have access to my photos.

The trip was a blast, even though we had no furniture in the house and I forgot my blowdryer. I guess the trip could have been titled “In which Loralee’s hair perpetually looks like a frizzy crap sandwich”, but I was just so happy to be in Minnesota that I didn’t care. (Too much).

“Loralee was here”

One of my favoritest things about this trip was hanging out with bloggity friends, both new and old. First off, I met Gretchen, who was so fun, vibrant and talented. She mainly blogs about her crafting, which she is ridiculously talented at, but she has the most fabulous personality as well.

We hit it off so well that we set up a second bloggity date where she braved my bad baking gene by teaching me to make rolls. I will post the whole recipe and photos plus directions at a later time, but these are the VERY BEST ROLLS I HAVE EVER SCARFED DOWN.

I want marry them and have little roll babies. Of course, this might be awkward as it would mean that I would totally fall into that category of “Those that eat their young”

I loved them and so did my brother, Brad. He has now commanded that I am in charge of roll making at all family gatherings (even if we’re not eating anything else. I still have to make the rolls.). They were soooo yummy.

And? To illustrate her personality, she posted this blog post with this photo after I left our “Roll Afternoon”. It is simply titled, “Loralee was here”.

You can see WHY I laughed my ass off. I so love the empty Diet Coke cups. HEE!

“Is an Amber Alert needed??”

Speaking of amazing baking and hilarity, I also got to hang out with “The Over Thinker”. OT has such snarky, witty comments on my blog, I love her. She is a million times better in person. Let’s add to the fact that she made me a tub of vanilla cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream frosting and that she has glasses very similar to mine and that just makes her perfection in my eyes.

Because she is anonymous in her blogging I can’t tell you THE COOLEST THINGS ABOUT HER, but I will say that she is an ordained minister and is going to marry her friend this summer in the Teatons. How awesome is THAT? I could have spent DAYS with her and not gotten board. She rocks the house.

I did force her to stay in my brother’s basement and look for a photo that I had “Somewhere” in the millions of unorganized files splayed across my computer. Her husband didn’t send out a search party, but it was close.

“Deep, lovely waters”
Meeting Tasha and Amber for sushi was also lovely. I love talking to them. They are secure, intelligent, ambitious young women that are going to do some amazing things in their lives. Both of them have been reading me since the first few months of my blog and are Bemidji state alums. They are wicked smart and I love listening to them and their conversation. I am so very fond of everything about them. We had a lovely lunch and whiled away the time walking, shopping and talking. Every minute was relaxed, familiar and much needed moment for my soul.

Here are the lovelies. I would post a picture of all three of us, but I kept cutting off half of Tasha’s head in the photo.

I mentioned that I LOVED hanging out with my brother, Brad, right? He is very similar to me in his sense of humor, as illustrated here:

“The taco champion of Minnehaha*”

“Brad, I cannot eat one more taco. Two is my limit. You’ll have to eat the last one.”
“What? You can’t eat three?”
“No.”
“You’re sure???? Not EVEN if I turn it into a taco eating contest????”

We are the weirdest family I know.

Speaking of Minnehawhaw Falls, they are pretty, are they not?

I ended up seeing Jessie the day before I left.

I love Jessie so much. She is like a sister to me. She is one of my Bemidji readers and she has had the coolest, most varied life, living in India, a lean-to in the woods, hopping freight trains to Alaska and she just successfully defended her thesis. We went to lunch and coffee and talked and talked and talked. One day I hope to have half of the inner-peace that she does. She is amazing.

While I am SO GLAD to be home, I love Minnesota and the people in it. I am sad my brother moved from there, but hope, hope, HOPE that I can get there again.

As long as I don’t have to fly in a freaking tiny plane while needing to pee.

**Ok, this conversation didn’t REALLY occur in Minnehawhaw, but it is just SUCH a great name to say. And it sounds way better than “The taco champion of Apple Valley”, you know?

Let’s talk about social anxiety for a moment, shall we?

More specifically, let’s talk about MY social anxiety for a moment. Those who may think I am superfab, may want to read this whole ass-long entry and be educated in one of the realities of “Being Loralee”.

On Sunday, I was invited to participate in a blog reading with 10 other fabulous people (All of whom are funnier than I am. Seriously.) It was appropriately titled “Live Blogging Thingy ‘08″.

Here we are, from left to right:

Barnson, Sra, Carrie, Sterkworks, Jon Deal (Who I snagged these photos from. I am lame and left my camera in my purse.), Pete, Me (The anxiety-riddled Amazon), Sarah, Miss Pants and Singing Cicada

Looks fun, no?

This mic had incredibly good sound quality and pickup.

That doesn’t look so bad, right?

Wrong.

Before I begin I have to say that this reading was the HIGH point of the day and that I did have fun and a good time. (Promise!)

To understand, you need to hear about how my morning went before I even got up to the pulpit to speak. I have a hard time meeting new people. Especially when I am on my own. This was also the first “Big” thing I faced without having a can of Diet Coke in my hand. I know that sounds lame but as I’ve said, I feel like Linus sans security blanket.

I started off fighting with my spouse, which never puts me in a grand mood. I thought I left Provo in plenty of time to get to downtown Salt Lake. Not only that, but I alloted for “Down Time” to find a quiet corner and review my readings, put my notes in order and take a few deep breaths before going into the presentation.

That was before I came to the conclusion that the Universe considers me its favorite toy to eff with.

First, I got pulled over for going SIX MILES over the speed limit. I was also chastised for my gas door being broken and part of my front fog light grill missing. I was beginning to think that he wasn’t really a cop, but one of those people with fake badges and uniforms that get women to pull over because of some trifling thing and they end up ravaged and dismemebered in multiple hefty bags in a landfill somewhere.

He didn’t even give me a fix it ticket or written warning.

It was very bizarre.

When I left, I was so rilled that I got off on the wrong exit and then became totally lost. Not difficult to do when you have the directional sense of dirt. I seemed to get more and more lost, when it happened. I hit a pothole and my non-Diet Coke drink spattered all over the front of my shirt.

FRICK! FRACK!

What to do?

I finally found a gas station and asked for the location of the nearest on ramp. Turns out I was near Nordstrom Rack. I could write a whole post about how much I love this store, but that is a post for another day. Not wanting to risk the chance of getting lost again finding a lesser known mall location, I decided to try and find a shirt in there.

Bad call.

NOTHING FIT.

NOTHING.

Everything was either staggeringly expensive or too dressy or too tight or too hideous or too sheer and too dark to wear with a white bra.

GAH!

There was one shirt that kept catching my eye. An adorable white button down with the cutest puffed sleeves. It would have looked better with a sweater vest, but it was adorable.

The only one I could see was an extra small.

NOT.

The very flustered dressing room attendant was getting rather annoyed with my back and forth changing at record-breaking speeds. Who cared if I screwed up my hair, I had to find something to clothe my naked body.

Still nothing.

I checked my phone and saw that I had 20 minutes to get to my reading and I was still blocks away.

I made my way to the front door, resigned to show up at this event even if it meant wearing a soaking wet shirt that made me look like a nursing mother in the middle of a lactating accident, when I saw it. A peek of white puffed sleeve sticking out of the jacket section of the men’s department.

It was the shirt! In a size medium!

I didn’t even try it on, just rushed to hurry up and wait to be checked out by the cashier that was being trained.

I got into my car and raced to the library. Miraculously, I found the parking complex and changed in my car. If anyone was in the library parking lot and saw a half-dressed flustered chick in a Volkswagon Passat wagon, I’m really, really sorry.

Looking in the salty reflection of my unwashed car, I noticed that the shirt was a bit too snug and see-through, which added to the overall feeling of new, discomfort and anxiety.

Then I got lost in the library (Directional sense of dirt, remember?)

The place is huge, there were no maps and no one was available at information and I rode four different elevators to try and find someone. The only person I managed to find was the homeless guy with a slush puppy that kept getting on every elevator I was in.

By the time I found it, I was well over 15 minutes late and they were already on the second speaker.

My mouth was dry, I felt nervous, sweaty and shaky and this feeling increased when I realized that the final page of one of my posts wasn’t there.

Crap.

I scrawled down as much as I could remember on the back sheet and when it was my turn to get up to the podium, I was a freaking MESS.

My choice of selections kinda sucked. I mean, I am very proud of the entry I read about the woman in the grave next to Matthew’s, but let’s talk about bringing the room DOWN.

And my second? It was the piece I wrote about Matthew McConaughey on Friday. It wasn’t my funniest piece I’ve written by far, but I truly just didn’t have time to comb through and select a piece. I was baking fattening French food, remember?

THE WORST?

I LEFT A PAGE ON THE CHAIR NEXT TO MY SEAT.

Not the one that was missing in the first place. ANOTHER ONE.

So? I had to pull out a good 3/4ths of that post out of my ass and make it sound like I was reading it. I’ve been through lots of things like that on stage. You HAVE to learn to fly by the seat of your pants or you are DOOMED. It was kind of a blur, but I lived through it despite my throat being as dry as the Salt Flats. (I obviously failed to notice the bottled water placed so kindly on the table.)

The thing is? I usually have a dressing room to have an emotional freak out by myself afterwards.

Here? I had to meet lovely, charming people while in a state of mid-level anxiety.

Dude.

What is the worst, is the aftermath. The thinking and the analyzing on the way home. Because that is what I do. I have social encounters and then I freak out and analyze what went down and then post my shame for all the world to see.

Here are a couple of examples:

One blogger (Who shall remain anon for the time because I didn’t talk to her about writing this conversation) came up to me and said, “I wanted to pipe up and say that I like Matthew McConaugheyBECAUSE he is dirty! I think it’s a turn on. When you said you wanted to scrub him down with Lysol and a loofa I turned to my friend and said, ‘I do, too!’.”

To which, I answered some total piece of crap mumbling like, “Well, I guess it’s because when I think of him I’m picturing him as a boyfriend or husband and he’s just skanky. Maybe I should step out of the box and picture him as a dirty, whorish, one night stand to find him attractive.”

Hours later (You know, during the analyzing freak out) my mind translated that statement into the following:

“I am a pure, judgmental person who would never even fantasize about anyone outside of a monogamous relationship. Since you fantasize about “Oily Boy”, you are obviously a total whory slut who has one night stands standing up by the urinal of some random airport restroom, you slutty urinal whore, you.”

GAH!!!!

I kinda want to stick my head into the earth.

I open my mouth and lame things just pour out of it.

I’m also concerned that I may have come off as being slightly homophobic because when I was flying off the seat of my pants I am fairly certain my wording sucked and could have been misunderstood.(Which, please for the love of EVERYTHING be that not the case. I would die.).

I also rambled. OH, how I rambled.

Why can’t I keep my freaking mouth shut? Or at least train it to say non-stupid things?

When I left, one of the bloggers called out after me and we rode down the elevator together. By such a huge coincidence, the same homeless guy that I shared the last four elevators with was in the same car.

My conversation with my blogging acquaintance was very random and stuttered. I have learned to at least ATTEMPT to keep my mouth shut before unleashing anxiety and words over people. However, it’s still like plugging up a leaking hole with your finger. You may succeed at holding back a torrent, but water still seeps out.

So, what came out pretty much sounded like this:

“Argument…lost…shirt…drink…ill-fitting…cleavage…see-through…no maps…No Diet Coke…Linus without blanket…elevators…homeless-guy.”

(Tip: People LOVE this. Try it some time.)

My evening wrapped up by having decaf coffee with my friend, Rachel in Ogden. It was nice to unwind, but I’m sure I wasn’t much entertainment for her after my day.

In the end, I DID have a good time, really. I had a lot of fun and laughed at the sheer wittiness of some of these bloggers. All these people were so lovely and kind and funny. It was a blast, I just wish I had been better prepared. I also wish my social anxiety would disappear. It is much better than it used to be but MAN, does it cause me needless stress.It wasn’t nearly as bad as it has been and I know a lot of it was due to external bizzarness of things out of my control.

Still…

I need to chill the hell out.Anyone else do this? The social anxiety freak out?

Does anything that isn’t in pill form help?

I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the comments and in emails wondering how abstaining from Diet Coke is going.

It freaking sucks.

However, I truly expected to say “It sucks a duck and I want to lay down every moment of the day and die from the pain”, so I guess  you can say that it is going better than anticipated.  I don’t have headaches anymore, but I am a lot more tired and unfocused and BLAH.

I’m Linus without his blanket and I miss it with the power of a thousand burning suns. In fact, I have a perpetual urge to tackle and make out with anyone carrying a Diet Coke just to leech off a tiny bit of its melodious essence for my poor, deprived taste buds.

Sigh.

As for the rest of it?  The gym and the dieting and thus?

I am not sure how I did it, but I have lost three pounds this week.

You can see my confusion when I show you a break down:

Diet Coke: 0

Caffeine: 0

Gym: 2

Calories: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND+1

As you can  see, the Diet Coke and caffeine are going well. I have not cheated even ONCE and OH, HOW I FRIGGIN’ WANTED TO!   In fact there were two moments in particular where the stress and anxiety of the moment about drove me over the edge, but I didn’t cheat. Yesterday was one of those times, but as I have another post waiting all about it, I’ll hold off. 

The rest of it is not going so spectacularly.

I have only been to the gym twice.  My neck is out and I need to go to the chiropractor. I’m not proud of it, but it’s better than nothing.

The eating has been the WORST. 

Not only have I had activity after activity that is food oriented this week, I am also dealing with how not having soda is impacting my eating.  I was a “Chain Diet Coke Drinker”.  I almost always had one one me sipping all the live long day.  My mouth is lonely without Diet Coke.  It feels like it has nothing to do. I have never felt so snacky and hungry in my life.  My husband swears this will go away in time, but I’m not so sure. 

Granted, I have tried to not snack on bad things, but I have gone over in calories a lot this week.

It didn’t help that I think I pretty much consumed an entire week of calorie alotment in one meal because of “Food Day” with my brother.  I love Food Day. We bring the whole family and cook for a crowd. Even though it usually wipes us out, the bro and I always have the best time.

For those who don’t know, I love to cook and so does my eldest brother.  We’re acutally pretty darn good at it as well. A couple of years ago we started having Food Day, which pretty much entails us picking a theme (like Thai, Italian, Japanese, and Indian) and creating really challenging dishes together. 

The theme this time was “Country French” and I have to say that it was probably one of the best we have ever done. Wanna see?

We started with Baked Brie en Croute: (A wheel of brie cheese smothered with thick raspberry compote (Jam) and buttered pecans and wrapped and baked in puff pastery and eaten with crackers.

It’s pretty much a party for your mouth, people.)

Whenever we make dishes, we often play around with the recipe and make it our own.  Usually, we end up majorly increasing the fat content which puts me in 7th heavan because, like Ina Garten, I am a firm believer in the awesomeness of cream, butter and heavy cream.

Mmm…

The main dish was my brother’s own recipe of Cassoulet. Cassoulet is a bean cassarole with a breaded stuffing top. This dish takes forever to make because you have to roast a duck before hand and soak the beans a long time. There are a lot of steps that make it complicated, but it is so worth it. 

 With this, we added roasted duck, sausage, bacon and pork to the beans and also sauteed the bread lightly in duck fat.  We then decided that the dish wasn’t heart attack worthy enough so as an added topper, we took the duck skin and crisp fried them into cracklings, which we broke up and added to the stuffing.

I think it must have had eleventyhundred calories per tablespoon, but it was sooooo yummy.

To close off the dinner we served chocolate souffles.

My brother was afraid of making them, and it was a wonderful opportunity to show him how easy they are to make.

 There are some easy tricks to making a good chocolate souflee.

Bake individual souffle’s instead of a big one. It’s much easier to tell when it’s done. Also, triple coat your ramikens. Butter them then refrigerate. Butter them again and then coat the inside with sugar.  The batter adheres to the sugar and helps it climb to puffiness perfection.

Since most of the rise of the souffle depends on egg whites, fold them in gently. Don’t beat your batter to death. It needs to be fluffy and light.

Buy the best ingredients you can get your hands on. There are few ingredients in a souffle, so it is important that they are top quality. Splurge on a vanilla bean and use high quality bittersweet chocolate. It is worth it.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN TO PEAK.  You could collapse the whole thing.

And last?

Serve right out of the oven. As in, pronto. The more time the souffles have in the open air, the more they deflate. It doesn’t make it any less tasty, though.  If it should happen, just say that you are having individual molton chocolate cakes. No one will know the difference.

I also recommend trying your hand at a Creme Anglaise sauce.  (Again, best of ingrediants! Use a vanilla bean. You will never go back.) When your soufflees are done, make a deep hole in the middle with your spoon and pour it in. I would have loved to put some fresh berries on here, too.

It’s to die for.

As you can tell, Saturday was a load of delicious fun. 

Sunday ended up being a big, fat headache. 

THAT is a story for another day.

I got pulled over last night.

It wasn’t too bad because I was coming back from an AWESOME concert. I went with my friend, Mary Ellen, to see Air Supply in concert.

I drove a total of 6 hours to Nevada and sat next to a guy that reeked of Marlboro Reds and Jack Daniels to do so.

Hey, we have already CLEARLY established my Dork Status in the “About Me”segment of this blog AND and it is also CLEARLY stated in“The Rules” section that I heart Air Supply, so any of you who are feeling betrayed or are in a state of nauseating horror can just bite me.

Well…OK…given the circumstances and the fact that I am well aware that this is a band made entirely out of Velveeta, you can probably still feel nauseating horror. You have that right. However, I see no reason for feelings of betrayal. You were warned.

It pretty much rocked the house. The venue was small, these guys still sound amazing and I had the.best.time.ever.

AND!!!

I TOUCHED AIR SUPPLY!!!!!!!

Although, we figure that the one I touched is really the “Supply” segment because he is the lyricist and the only one of the two that plays an instrument. The other guy that resembles Bilbo Baggins is probably the “Air” part, since he has a higher voice than Mickey Mouse. So…I guess this means that I actually touched “Supply”.

I won’t drone on and on about the concert, but I will say that the cover of Celine Dion’s “You’re my lady” was pretty sweet.

Hee.

The drive back was a bitch because I was tired. The concert got over at 10:30 and we had 3.5 hours of driving on some of the flattest, most boring stretch of highway ahead of us. (Ever heard of The Bonneville Salt Flats? Yah. We were there.)

UG.

Other than being tired and driving too fast through lots of flat, foggy surface, not much happened on the trip aside from wondering if the very creepy guy in line at the truck stop soda fountain we refuled at was really a serial killer. He whistled incessantly and loitered around me a really long time. It was not too difficult to imagine him calmly whistling as he strangled and dismembered someone, but I’ve probably just been watching too much TV lately. (You think?)

Things did pick up in the suburbs of Salt Lake.

I got pulled over by one of Utah’s finest.

Crap.

A speeding ticket was sooooooooo not on my agenda for the evening.

The cop came to the passenger side window. I could tell right away that he was a good humored fellow with twinkly eyes. Even though he was lovely and nice, I still get terribly nervous around cops and pressure of speech and Nervous Donkey Laughter* kicks in.

You know what Nervous Donkey Laughter is. It’s, well…nervous and donkey-like.

In other words, it’s annoying as hell.

“Hello, officer! You’re on the wrong side of the car!”

(Nervous Donkey Laughter)

“I’m on the safe side of the car, Ma’am”

“OH! OF COURSE, Officer”

(Nervous Donkey Laughter)

“You’re going 83 in a 65, are you in a hurry for something?”

“I TOUCHED AIR SUPPLY!”

(Nervous Donkey Laughter)

“What?”

“We just came back from seeing Air Supply in Wendover and it was the best concert, well, it WAS kind of annoying that they wouldn’t let us inside the doors until 8:00 and it was freezing and we were all just standing around waiting and waiting, although, I suppose it was fine because we did have heaters to stand around and the concert was great, but Wendover is really far out in the middle of NOWHERE and it was really easy to drive too fast probably because, you know, the salt flats are there and they have speed racing out there for Pete’s Sake, and we’ve been driving FOREVER except for that little stop off we had to get gas in Tooele, and by the way, you may want to investigate a creepily incessant whistler that is hanging around the Flying J because while I don’t think that there have been any reported murders in that area of The Great Salt Lake, you can never be too careful in such a desolate area, which is also why I was probably speeding just now, you know, because the area WAS so desolate, I am just a little checked out on my speed and then my friend was telling me this story about how a friend of hers just moved from her hometown to live with her kids and decided that they were not very nice to her and so she ended up moving across the country with her other three girls and got remarried a former classmate of hers from high school a month after his wife died and it turns out that he’s a Baptist Preacher and apparently they have horses and she’s found Jesus and..and…and…I TOUCHED AIR SUPPLY. ”

(Nervous Donkey Laughter!)

(Nervous Donkey Laughter!!)

(Nervous Donkey Laugher!!! )

“Sounds like you really like Air Supply”

“I TOUCHED AIR SUPPLY!!!”

(Nervous Donkey Laughter )

“How far do you have left to go?

“Logan!”

(Nervous Donkey Laughter)

“That is pretty far. It seems like you had a good time tonight, it would be a shame to ruin it with a ticket. Make sure you slow down.”

“I TOUCHED AIR SUPPLY!!!!!”

(Yup. You guessed it. More Nervous Donkey Laughter.)

I am totally shocked that he didn’t make me do a field sobriety test. My friend, Mary Ellen was shocked that I didn’t get ticketed.

“I can’t believe you got out of a ticket talking about Air Supply”

“Never underestimate the power of Air Supply and Nervous Donkey Laughter, my friend.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

It was one of the best concerts, ever.

Now, I just have to find tickets to see Neil Diamond…

*Thanks to Jessica for the completely accurate description.