I have a question that’s going to seem totally out of left field when I ask it, so just trust me when I tell you that there’s a method to my apparent madness.

I’m actually asking this question for someone near and dear to me, and after a week of trying to figure out how to work it into a post so it’s not quite so much of a non sequitur (LOOK, Y’ALL! LATIN!), I’m just going to throw caution to the wind and ask it.

So here we go:

Do any of you know Kate Spade or know how to get in touch with Kate Spade?

See? I told you. Seems totally random, doesn’t it? I might as well have asked if anyone out there has Oprah’s home phone number (and LORD HAVE MERCY, if you do, WHY HAVEN’T YOU SHARED THAT NUGGET-O-INFORMATION-GOLD WITH ME?).

Anyway, email me if you happen to have any Kate Spade info…because if you do know how to get in touch with her, she would probably appreciate it if you didn’t leave her contact information in a crazy blogger woman’s comments on the interweb.

And if you know someone who might know someone who knows, email me with that info, too, because I really can’t think of anything Kate Spade would enjoy more than knowing that a stranger in Alabama is requesting information about her for another stranger, and if need be both strangers will contact all manner of friends of friends and third cousins twice removed in hopes of tracking her down, NOT THAT IT MAKES US STALKERS OR ANYTHING.

That is all.

Oh! Except if you don’t know anything about how to get in touch with Kate Spade but you have had a real-life encounter with some other famous (or semi-famous) person, then please tell us all about it in the comments because I for one think that would be terribly entertaining (and yes, real-life friends, I asked this question about a year ago when y’all were the only ones reading, so feel free to repeat yourself if you so desire).

Here’s mine: I once saw Amy Grant in a grocery store in Nashville. She was wearing yellow Ray-Ban Wayfarers.

You may now commence with the “oooh”-ing and the “aaah”-ing.

Look what came in the mail today!

I guess I’ll have to leave them at home tomorrow since it’s going to be, you know, thirty degrees in the morning. And I will no doubt be donning my Easter boots to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior. Boots and a coat.

Because nothing says spring like wool!

But the shoes fit great and are super comfortable and if any of you happen to see a woman with a four year old who’s wearing these shoes this summer, then please stop me and say hey. I say that because I don’t think the shoes are going to be what you would call a widespread trend, so if you see someone wearing them, odds are it’ll be me. In fact, I imagine at some point this summer the shoes will force me to sacrifice my blogging anonymity, but that is okay because I love them and sometimes love forces you outside of your comfort zone.

And speaking of love.

I must now return to coveting his eyelashes and smooching his little pink cheeks.

Happy Easter, everybody.

Hope tomorrow finds you celebrating The One you love with the people you love most.

All of the Glory Revealed winners should be receiving their CD’s sometime early next week. There is one winner, however, who hasn’t contacted me yet; so Devera, if you’re reading this, please send me an email with your mailing address! :-)

*****

No way Gina Glocksen should have gone home on AI last night. And I am embarrassed by how much Sanjaya’s continued presence on the show frustrates me. Which leads me to believe that perhaps I take AI entirely too seriously. Maybe I should’ve given it up for Lent or something.

*****

Are y’all watching Planet Earth on The Discovery Channel? D. is hooked. And I have to admit: it’s really, really good. And it’s about nature, y’all, and I still watch it, even though wild dogs attack caribous and baby penguins poke out of eggs. And I don’t throw up or anything!

*****

This week in Wii news: Alex got his first strikes and his first spares in bowling, and OH MY WORD AT THE SCREAMING. So fun.

*****

Finally, Bloglines – at least on my end – seems to have adopted the philosophy that it may or may not show updates on blogs, and when it does show updates, it may or may not do so in a timely fashion. As best I can tell, Bloglines updates when it feels like it and not a second sooner, with the decision to update determined by 1) if it can be bothered to, like, deal with the bloggy people (GAH!) and 2) whether or not I’m in possession of its favorite brand of chocolate. Is anyone else having trouble?

*****

Okay. I believe that’s all.

All loose ends are now present and accounted for.

D. used the blower to clean off our deck Saturday.

This is what one side of our deck looks like this afternoon.

The other side looks worse.

And I am certain that I will NEVER BE ABLE TO GO OUTSIDE AGAIN.

Without the aid of an Allegra / Clarinex / Zyrtec drip, of course.

But that’s okay because Alex and I can just sit inside and eat chocolate ice cream.

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that, y’all.

(Edited to add: I do love everything pollen does to nature – I just don’t love what it does to my sinuses. And my eyes. But the end is near…and in the end, it’s a small price to pay for a glorious spring and summer. THINKING. HAPPY. THOUGHTS. See?)

For the six springs before this one, D. and I lived in a big subdivision where almost every single tree had been mowed down unless it was part of a natural buffer between streets. We had about four trees in our backyard, none of which were much taller than I am.

And as a result of those conditions, the pollen was minimal.

But in our new-to-us house, we’re nestled under a canopy of trees. The pine trees are so high that I have to wrench my neck to see the tops of them, and we have oaks, dogwoods, plus blooming shrubs.

And as a result of these conditions, the pollen is killing me.

Exhibit A – My Nemesis

For the last two mornings, my left eye has been swollen shut, and it’s only after several rounds with a warm washcloth that I can coax it to open. Without going into overly gross detail, I will just tell you that there is some gunk. And it is nasty. And I feel like before I engage in conversation with anyone I must give them permission to LOOK AWAY if necessary BECAUSE I AM HIDEOUS.

But I won’t be quite so hideous (well, at least not to some of you) in about a week because guess what I ordered from what my mother-in-law calls “Amazon dot cee-zero-em”?

THE SHOES!

Exhibit B – 70% of Blawg Readers’ Nemesis

Don’t worry, y’all. I really think my toes can handle them. They’re one part of my body about which I’m not self-conscious in the least. But now if I had to wear the shoes on my, you know, stomach, they’d have never made it into my “Amazon dot cee-zero-em” shopping cart. Trust me.

Emma Kate is usually my shoe-buying conscience, and when we see each other we automatically take off the shoes we’re wearing and swap. We don’t even have to announce it anymore (e.g., “I think I want to try on those shoes. Do you mind?”) because at this point it’s pure reflex.

And ultimately I made my decision to buy the shoes because I realized that if I were to see Emma Kate and she were wearing them and we swapped shoes as we always do, I would run away far, far away from her and keep the shoes forever because I would love them deeply at first sight and have to have them for my very own.

Which seemed to be a pretty good indicator that I was not motivated solely by the sales price.

And yes, I know that they are a bit quirky. But so am I. For this I have no defense.

I do, however, have another story about Emma Kate. As if the whole hypothetical thievery of her hypothetical footwear weren’t enough.

Last Monday night we were on the phone for the last five minutes of the Mississippi State / West Virginia basketball game. Since I have cable (THAT I LOATHE) and EK has DirectTV, she had a five-second broadcast delay that I was not experiencing. She quickly became frustrated with hearing me yell at something related to the game and then having no idea what I was yelling about until she saw the action five seconds later, so I finally told her that I would be quiet so that we could continue to watch the game together on the phone without me spoiling her fun because we are grown women and all.

You simply cannot imagine how difficult it was for me to maintain my composure during the last two minutes of the game without giving away critical information before EK saw it happen on her television. But I did it. Being able to discuss the game with Emma Kate was more important than fulfilling my near-constant impulses to scream my head off, and so I suffered in silence, down to the very last play when West Virginia beat us at the buzzer.

Since I was five seconds ahead of EK broadcast-wise, I knew about the tragic outcome before she did. And when it happened, I put my head down on my kitchen counter and shook it back and forth, wishing I could somehow roll back the clock and devise a different strategy for our last defensive series. About the time I was starting to re-structure the play in my head, my dear friend Emma Kate – who was just then seeing the end of the game – let loose with what could only be described as a wail. The wail of a wounded animal, in fact.

Y’all, I shot up from that countertop like a cannonball and nearly threw the phone across the room because what in the name of Cletus was all that noise?

“That noise” was Emma Kate. And she wasn’t just disappointed. She wasn’t just yelling. She was grieving.

As I told my friend Daph earlier today, the only way I knew to respond was to remain very very quiet and speak very very softly in very very soothing tones.

Exhibit C – Emma Kate’s Nemesis

Finally, I almost forgot to tell you that Wednesday night I chipped a tooth in my sleep.

And I have no idea how it happened.

Unless I was dreaming of eating peanut brittle.

You can click on the picture and get a bigger view.

The shoes are a brand that I normally can’t afford, but they’re on sale (over 60% off!), and I am tempted.

But I’m going back and forth…one minute I think about how cute they would be with a knee-length summer skirt, and the next minute I think that people would point at me and laugh if I wore them.

As always, I’m bringing the deeply important issues to the forefront for impassioned political debate.

Somebody has to tackle the tough topics, people.