This afternoon, at approximately 2:30 central time, my two inch-long roots and I are going to be crowned with some of the finest chemicals and color processes known to man. Because we have an appointment with The Hair Wizard.

Alex and I are going to head to my hometown around lunchtime, and even though it’s going to be a very quick trip, the little man is thrilled to death because he is bound and determined that my daddy is going to take him to McDonald’s and THAT! IS SUCH! A TREAT!

I know. We really need to get out more.

However, last night we did eat at Jason’s Deli, mainly because Alex’s school had a fall extravaganza yesterday afternoon, and no way was I cooking after spending a chunk of my afternoon running a cupcake walk and trying to stay out of the path of the older kids who seemed to all have these containers of inky liquid that they delighted in squirting on one another, and of course I had to just smile at them and laugh off their inky liquid-related antics because, after all, it’s a fall extravaganza! It’s big fun! We’re all happy!

But don’t think for a second that I wasn’t screaming “THE SHOES! WATCH OUT FOR MY SHOES! THEY’RE IMITATION SUEDE! IMITATION SUEDE! THEY ARE NOT DURABLE! THEY CANNOT BE CLEANED!” on the inside.

Alex thought the whole fall carnival-type thing was just delightful, and my friend NK got a huge kick out of watching him see his friends and then scream something along the lines of, “KATIE! KAAAAAAAAAAAAA-TIE! HEY! KATIE!” before he enveloped a startled Katie in a bear hug that nearly knocked her over right there in front of the inflatables.

My favorite Alex moment was when he saw a little boy and said, “JOHN! JOOOOOOOOO-OHN! HEY! JOHN!” and then threw his arms around John’s shoulders, only guess what, it wasn’t John after all, oh no, it was a complete stranger who, once freed from Alex’s embrace, looked up at his mother and whispered, “Mama? Mama? I don’t even know that boy who just hugged me.”

I was so proud.

Anyway, a little hair therapy is going to be just the thing to wrap up this crazy week. I am going to sit in that salon and I am going to drink massive quantities of coffee and I am going to read me an Us magazine and maybe enlist the aid of a magnifying device to determine just how pregnant J.Lo is and whether or not she might be expecting twins.

It’s going to be an afternoon filled with Deeply Meaningful Activities.

Also: I really need to figure out how I can lose 35-40 pounds before Shannon and Melanie get here next week. So if you have any tips on that, I’d love to hear them.

Obviously, I am all about some realistic weight loss goals.

Over the last couple of months I’ve gotten several emails from people who have wanted to know if another Tour of Homes is in the works.

And my answer has been something along the lines of “Well, actually, now that you mention it, no.”

But a couple of days ago I got another email about it from Lisa, and she made the point that there are probably some new readers hanging around these parts since we did the first Tour-o-Homes. Plus, there may be some people who wanted to do the Christmas Tour last year but didn’t get a chance.

And then Lisa suggested that maybe I could take a poll or something.

Y’all, I’m telling you: Lisa is overflowing with good ideas.

So at the bottom of this post you’ll see a little poll, and it would help me a bunch if you’d take five seconds to answer. I would love to host another home tour if anyone, you know, cares, but if it’s too much trouble for everybody I’m fine with that, too.

As Big Mama and I like to say (via “Friends,” NOT “Seinfeld,” please forgive me, I made a huge TV trivia foul): I’m breezy.

And thanks in advance for your help in addressing this issue of critical international importance. No pressure or anything – it’s just that THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD HINGES ON YOUR ANSWERS.

But other than that, it’s no biggie.

See this? I heart it to infinity and beyond.

And there’s lots more where that came from.

Coming up Monday….

I’ve received several questions about the Big Festive Deal, and since my greatest goal in life is to make the blog a model of efficiency (ahem. sorry. I seem to have something caught in my throat.), I thought I’d answer the questions in a post as opposed to answering a bunch of individual emails and comments.

And I’m just going to paraphrase the questions, by the way. Because I’m far too lazy to do all that copying and pasting.

However, I do have some exciting news: I’m really not tired anymore. And I think that is remarkable, especially considering that yesterday I wondered if I would ever have energy again or if I would simply spend the rest of my life sitting on the couch under a down coverlet while Alex watched Noggin.

But today I’m all better. Of course, this large cup of caffeine from Panera doesn’t hurt one bit.

Which reminds me: one time sweet Holly emailed me to ask why I like to work on blog stuff at Panera, and the answer is because I don’t get as distracted in a coffee shop as I do at home. There are no unmade beds or laundry here, so I don’t feel like I should be doing a hundred other things besides “writing.”

Not to mention that the coffee is spectacular.

(However, today Panera is really loud. I believe that at least a quarter of our town’s population has chosen to have lunch here and simultaneously scream into their cell phones.)

(But I really don’t have any room to talk since I am in fact WEARING FULL-SIZED HEADPHONES.)

All righty. Big Festive Deal questions. Coming right up.

1. How did you get to go to the Big Festive Deal? And how did you end up backstage?

I have to be a little bit vague with this answer, though certainly y’all should be used to that since this is, as I like to say, the blog where specific details go to die.

But: Sister is the reason I got to go. Because she plans some things for some people. For a living.

And a couple of weeks ago she asked me if I could help her with some backstage stuff, and I said yes, and there you have it.

What’s so interesting to me is that Sister has worked in the same office for over twenty years, but I have never really seen the behind-the-scenes of what she does until this past Monday night. We talk about it all the time, of course, but to see it all in action was something to behold.

2. How did you get your hair so big and flippy?

Y’all, you have no idea how happy the questions about my hair made me. After all, I’m Southern, and big hair is my heritage.

The biggest help was, of course, the cut. But the second biggest help was this stuff:

And this stuff:

And some big velcro rollers.

And a lot of hair spray.

If you want more detailed instructions, I will be happy to provide them. But I’m telling y’all, that bain de terre stuff cures a world of hair hurts. It’s the best hair product I’ve ever used, and that, my friends, is saying more than you will ever know.

3. What roots?

THESE ROOTS:

I have an appointment for color at the end of the month because some sweet friends are coming to visit the first weekend of November, and I am hoping to have my hair JUST LIKE I LIKE IT.

4. Did you tell any of the famous people you saw about your blog?

Um, I still haven’t told people AT MY CHURCH about my blog, so no, no, I didn’t really, um, think to mention it to, you know, KENNY CHESNEY.

5. Why? Why didn’t you talk to the famous people? Or have your picture made with them? Why?

You know, I know this is going to sound strange, but I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries. Because the Big Festive Deal focused on songwriting, it was very relaxed and casual backstage – it almost seemed like a reunion – and I didn’t want to interfere with that. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves so much, and it just wasn’t the right time to pose for pictures and stuff.

Unless Christy Nockels had been there. In which case I would have grabbed her arm and held on for dear life while I talked incessantly until she finally agreed to have lunch with me.

Or until the authorities removed me from her immediate vicinity.

Which is probably the more likely scenario.

5. What are the dead-to-me shoes?

OH.

THESE.

OH.

My feet hurt just looking at them.

6. Tell us more about this chocolate fountain.

It would be my pleasure.

The chocolate was a rich milk chocolate – none of that bittersweet dark chocolate business – and it was surrounded by the following items, NOT THAT I PAID CLOSE ATTENTION OR ANYTHING: coconut macaroons, angel food cake, pretzel sticks, strawberries, apricots, dates, pineapple, marshmallows and bananas.

I stood there and alternated between the apricots and the pretzel sticks for more minutes than I’m comfortable admitting.

Initially I was putting the little chocolate-y treats on a plate and sitting down at the table to eat them. But by the end of the night I just stood in front of the table and grazed. I didn’t quite get to the point where I strapped on a bib and lapped up the chocolate like water from a trough, but it was close.

And if there had been any potato chips available for chocolate dunking, I probably would’ve sent Sister to the hotel for my pajamas and promptly camped out for the night.

I guess there’s always next year.

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.