Okay – so this was the Big Festive Deal. And if you’re interested in pictures of celebrities, the end of that article would be the place to look, because I didn’t take a single picture of a celebrity, oh no ma’am I didn’t, because you know that gene that enables a person to say, “Hey, So-And-So, would you mind if we took a picture together?”

I totally didn’t get that gene. It swam right past me in the gene pool.

So really, all I have to offer you are some pictures of some normal people. With “normal,” of course, being a completely relative term.

After I got dressed in my fayn-cee clothes I thought I’d take a few pictures for the internets, and you would be embarrassed for me if you knew how many times I took my own picture before I realized that MAYBE I WOULD GET BETTER RESULTS WITHOUT THE FLASH.

First of all, you wouldn’t believe how many pictures I have of myself looking at the little screen on the back of the camera. Because it’s like TV, y’all! It’s like TV!

Second of all, my roots are hideous.

Then I went out into the room to take a picture, and this time I did better in terms of actually looking away from the camera screen, but unfortunately I chopped off the top of my head.

I’m telling y’all: I have some mad photography skillz.

It’s just a matter of time before people start to hire me for weddings and other special events.

By the way, I didn’t get even a single picture of my sassy pants, and that is a shame because they were oh-so-comfortable. However, I cannot say the same for my shoes. Though I can tell you that the pointy-toed kitten heel slingback is dead to me forever.

This is where my sassy pants and I spent the evening with two very lovely laydees.

That’s Carrie and Sister. Carrie used to work with Sister back in the day, and she is a doll. She’s also one of Sister’s favorite people in the world, so as far as I’m concerned, she’s golden. Carrie and I got to stand backstage all night doing whatever the people in charge needed for us to do, and we had a blast except for the fact that our feet nearly exploded.

This is the floor right at the edge of backstage at the Ryman, and I took a picture because I couldn’t help but think of Loretta Lynn or Patsy Cline tapping their feet in that very spot while they waited to go on stage. All you “Coal Miner’s Daughter” fans would have done exactly the same thing.

I also stared at a very similar spot a whole bunch Monday night when I didn’t know whether or not it was okay to speak to the people who were performing. So instead I just looked at the floor. Which is absolutely charming behavior, don’t you think?

Maybe I need a life coach or something.

No. I take that back. I already have a life coach. Her name is Emma Kate, and she would love nothing more than to spend the rest of her days hitting me on the arm and saying, “GO SPEAK TO SO-AND-SO! RIGHT NOW! GO OVER THERE!”

And then I could respond by making some sort of “EHHHHHHH” noise followed immediately by nervous laughter.

After the awards were over, there was swanky shindig across the street, and I could write paragraphs about the chocolate fountain alone, mainly because there was a huge tray of apricots just waiting to be dunked in the delicious chocolate, and I have quite a fondness for apricots, and when you dip a piece of apricot into delicious chocolate, about forty eight different kinds of magic happen.

If you can’t tell, the chocolate fountain became a bit of a stumbling block for me Monday night.

And finally, there’s this: at one point I looked around our table and got very tickled when I realized how our beverage choices lined up with some definite denominational stereotypes. And then I immediately asked Sister’s hubby to capture the moment for us.

We titled this photograph “Three Baptists And An Episcopalian.”

But Keith, Carrie and I were THIRSTY, y’all. So we had us some Cokes and some smiles.

And then we threw all Baptist caution to the wind and hit the dance floor. PLEASE DON’T TELL THE DEACONS!

Oh, I kid.

It was such a neat night, y’all. Great music, great food, great people.

Bad shoes.

But big fun.

This past weekend I helped with Alex’s Sunday School class, and while I would love to tell you that it was a tender mother/son time filled with the joy of Jesus, the fact of the matter is that it was a very, um, CHALLENGING time. In fact, when we were on the way home from church, Alex said, “Mama, I do not want you to be my teacher at church EVER AGAIN because it makes me VERY SAD when you are there.”

I was especially frustrated with Alex during Sunday School because he wasn’t even acting like himself. He is normally very talkative and outgoing and HAPPY! TO SEE! ALL THE PEOPLE!, but this past Sunday he was whiny and clingy to the extreme. And while you might think that four-plus years of being A.’s mother would enable me to recognize his atypical behavior as a sign of, oh, I don’t know, ILLNESS, you would be so wrong to even think about giving me that much credit.

Because it never crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, the Sunday morning neediness was a result of the fact that Alex didn’t feel well.

Until about eight hours later when the child let loose with a burp that made it exceedingly clear that Something Was Terribly Awry with his digestive tract.

I believe that’s what the literary folk refer to as foreshadowing.

Sleep was very scarce Sunday night, and when the little man finally quit throwing up about 4:30 Monday morning, I crawled under the covers and slept for a few hours. I was going to forego the Nashville trip altogether, but D assured me that he could hold down the fort. I left our house around 11, just as filled to the brim with mama guilt as I could be.

And also, I was a little sleepy.

But thanks to my dear friend Mr. Starbucks, I actually had a great trip up I-65. The Big Festive Deal was tons of fun (more details on the way), and I am really glad I kept the commitment to be there. I LURVE me some live music and some creative people, and Monday night provided an abundance of both. We had such a good time.

After very little sleep Monday night (thank you, Exterminator Man, for calling me on my cell phone early Tuesday morning), I got up and headed to not one but two blog-related meetings (and! I can now talk about! some of the stuff! related! to some of the things!), and after finishing up with all of that (by the way, I also have a big stack-o-CD’s I’m going to give away very soon), I filled up the car, got me a diet Coke and some peanuts (OHHHHH, HOLLA), and hit 65 once again.

(I just feel the need to throw in another parenthetical expression here.)

(Because look at that last big paragraph. FOUR parenthetical expressions. I feel this might be a record.)

And I don’t mean to keep harping on this whole “I was really tired” bit, but I had to SLAP MY FACE to stay awake for the last 30 or 40 miles, what with the sound of the tires against the pavement hypnotizing me and all.

I got home just in time to give Alex a bath, check his temperature, pour him some Tylenol and tuck him into bed. After we said prayers I thought it might be fun to just stretch out beside him for a minute since we hadn’t seen each other for a whole day, and I’ll just go ahead and tell you that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up – still in his bed – at 5:40 this morning.

At which point I got in my own bed. Because have I mentioned that I was tired?

Alex still wasn’t quite well enough for school today, so he hung out with me this morning while I worked. We did manage to make a quick trip to the grocery store, but afterwards we came straight home and took a nap. Because we are pitiful.

And believe you me: if I can find a way to nap again before I go to bed, I totally will.

I wonder if D and Alex would mind if I served sleep for supper?

But never fear, all you sweet things who have emailed me today to see if I’m okay? Because the blog? Hasn’t been updated? In a couple of days? And that’s not like me? I’ll be back later tonight with some pictures.

Because I did a great job with the photography.

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be underwhelmed.

This is one of those times where I don’t even know where to start. Because with Mama here this last week I didn’t really chronicle what was going on with us like I normally would have, and as a result of my bloglag I have all this junk in my brain that I just need to pour out onto the computer, but where to start, oh where to start, hey I think I’ll start with Wednesday.

So Wednesday morning I was beginning the whole get-ready-for-the-day process after I jumped out of the shower, and I noticed something, um, weird.

And if you are a man who is reading this, you might want to run for the hills right about now.

Now I’m going to use a little bit of vaguery here because there are certain Google searches that I just don’t want to come my way, but I think you’ll know what I mean when I tell you that when I looked in the mirror as I was getting ready I couldn’t help but notice that there was some abnormal activity going on in the left chestage region.

I promptly broke out in a cold sweat and had to lie down.

I’m not kidding.

I told Mama about it, and she said that she had experienced the same issue before, which made me feel a little bit better. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something could be wrong, so I called my doctor and left a message for the nurse.

Feel free to pat me on the back about the calling the doctor part. Because there was a time in my life when I would have avoided the doctor at all costs and instead tried to diagnose myself using only the internet and a well-worn copy of The Merck Manual of Medical Information.

I finally talked to the nurse around lunchtime, and she said that while they weren’t overly concerned, they felt like it would be better to err on the side of caution – so they’d like to see me. On Friday.

THIS WAS ON WEDNESDAY.

THAT’S A TWO DAY WAIT, PEOPLE.

So now maybe you understand why last week I mostly wrote about the dress! And the necklace! And the shoes! I mean, since I was sort of preoccupied with the aforementioned abnormalage, ALL THE SPARKLY THINGS were a pretty good distraction.

Anyway, Friday finally got here and I went to the doctor and I am so happy to tell you that everything is perfectly fine. I’m far too embarrassed to tell you what the abnormalage was all about, but suffice it to say that it was something very, very normal. And in the end I’m so glad I kept my appointment because I have total peace of mind about that particular issue, and my doctor (who I LOVE) was oh-so-kind about my concerns and didn’t even call me crazy.

See? All’s well that ends well.

Friday afternoon D and Alex took Mama back to Mississippi, so I was actually home alone Friday night and most of yesterday. I wanted to tell y’all that I was ALONE, GLORIOUSLY ALONE when I posted about the granola Friday night, but I was feeling like a bit of a scaredy cat and didn’t want to give the Ring of Thieves^TM a heads-up about my isolation.

I had a perfectly lovely time catching up on all the episodes of “Survivor” and “The Bachelor” that I haven’t seen, and I also ate a great deal of granola. And read way too many pre-season basketball stories on the internet. And maybe ate some more granola.

Saturday morning (BORED YET?) I decided to head to the Steinmart(s) 12 Hour Sale, and I’ll just go ahead and confess that I have been in Steinmart(s) so frequently in the last week that the salesclerks get a little tickled when they see me walking through the front door, like OH HEY, IT’S YOU, THE CRAZY WOMAN WHO CAN’T DECIDE ON EARRINGS, and I just smile and wave and think OH MY WORD, I’VE TURNED INTO MARTHA.

It was really just a matter of time.

Anyway, I ended up finding a whole new outfit for the the Big Festive Deal (which is tomorrow night, by the way), and it is actually less expensive than the dress I found earlier in the week. I got some great chiffon wide-legged pants and a kind of asymmetrical shimmery top. The best thing is that both pieces are completely comfortable, and the more I have come to understand about the nature of my duties at Big Festive Deal, the more I have realized that the comfort factor is going to be huge.

However, the sassy / kicky shoes are history, I’m afraid.

I know. It is heartbreaking. I know.

Sometimes we have to make tough choices, y’all.

And I’m off to Nashville tomorrow.