Um...Hi!

You know, a lot of us bloggers figure that no one except close friends and family members ever look at or read our blogs; at least, that is definitely how I always felt. I know now that there are a few people that have been regularly reading my blog, and some of you have left me comments, which I cannot tell you how much I appreciate! So, I am pretty sure most of you can imagine my sincere surprise when I logged into my blog and found that my counter had gone from 247 to 11,905!! Holy crap!!! Well, I just wanted to say…uh…welcome…to all the people that are now stopping by to check out my blog. It’s very humbling, to say the least!

I think that my sudden rise in popularity must come from something that I did back on the 3rd; I didn’t write about it yet because I wasn’t sure how it would pan out, and then I went back to Sissy’s for another week on the 5th and so didn’t have time to write about it before I left. Sorry. Here’s the scoop:

I was checking my email one morning before I left for work (something I never do) and found an email from someone I didn’t know, and the subject line was the name of my blog. Uh, OK. I wonder what this is about. Imagine my surprise when I read this:

I work for the company that is producing Mutual of Omaha’s official sponsor of the aha moment campaign – visit www.ahamoment.com <http://www.ahamoment.com/> to see what an aha moment is and the great real stories we have collected so far. Associated to that, we have a 34-foot Airstream mobile film studio that is traveling the US on a 25-city tour to capture the country’s aha moments. We are headed to Billings this Wednesday, September 2nd & Thursday, September 3rd, and would love to invite you to share a defining moment in your life – large or small. I came across your blog and thought you would have a great story to share! You would just have to step into the Airstream studio for a few minutes and tell your story on film, which would be posted to www.ahamoment.com. We would love to have you if you are interested! We will be parked at the Yellowstone Art Museum (401 N 27th Street) Wednesday, September 2nd (Noon to 8pm) and Thursday, September 3rd (10am to 8pm). Let me know as soon as possible and I can reserve some time for you, thanks!

Uh, please excuse me a moment while I pick myself up off the floor. Seriously? ME? I was sure that this came to me in error somehow, that there was another blog out there with the same name as mine, and they really meant this email to go that THAT person. I don’t have anything that interesting to say, do I? That would be Harriet shooting off her stupid mouth (see blog entry below). I didn’t respond to the email right away, mostly because I was in shock, but also because I only had seven minutes to make the 20+ minute drive to work and I still didn’t have my shoes or pants on yet. I wanted to talk to Sissy about it, but with the hour time difference (earlier where she is) I didn’t want to call and wake her up. She seriously deserves her sleep. So I sent her an email from work that just said “CALL ME” repeatedly; I figured she wouldn’t be able to resist that! I was right! She called me by 10am, by which time I figure I had lost at least 15 lbs by fidgeting and sweating. I told her about the email and she was really excited for me. I had pretty much made up my mind to do it (why wouldn’t I?) and she agreed and was super encouraging (“be sure to put makeup on and wear that blue shirt you wore to the luau!!” Very sage advice indeed). I emailed M of O back and set up an appointment for that Thursday after work.

I went down to the Art Museum and did my thing. Everyone was super nice and made me feel as at ease as they could; when you are hyper-conscious about your weight, usually the last thing you want to do is to go ON CAMERA AND TALK ABOUT IT! But I did. I actually had a nice time too. I had Friday and all of the rest of the following week off; Sissy called me in a tax panic and begged me to come back out to her place, so I left on Saturday (I’ll blog about that fun trip later). On Thursday, I checked my email from her house because they said that they would send me a link to my “aha moment” on their website when they had it finished. Nothing. I checked the website for my “aha moment”. Nothing. There were other things posted about their stop in Billings, but my moment wasn’t there. Harriet raised her ugly head, telling me that I wasn’t good enough; they had hated me, hated my blog, I screwed it all up, they were disappointed in me, they made a mistake. For a few minutes I was profoundly depressed, buying into the crap spewing forth from Harriet’s mouth, accepting it as gospel as usual. Then I took a deep breath and told Harriet, “My life is not any different than it was before this. If they didn’t like it, oh well. It is what it is. Only Sissy knew about it anyway, so no real harm done.” She didn’t know how to react to that (HA!) and shut up. I pulled myself up from the computer chair and went about my business of living my life. If I had checked back a few hours later, I would have seen the email that they sent with the link to my story. I saw it on Sunday after I got home and was checking my email; I suddenly was very happy. Insert mental image of me flipping the bird to Harriet with both hands and feet (which is really hard to do – you try to see if you can get your middle toe to stick up on its own!). I still have not been able to watch my video or anything; I don’t have the right version of Flash loaded and am still working on that. I will post a link to it as soon as I figure out how to do that as well.

So, welcome to all of you; and thank you for checking me out. Please drop me a comment if you wish; I would love to hear from you. My deepest hope is that someone out there that is going through this same journey on a parallel path that needs to know they are not alone finds this blog. I hope that we can share a laugh, a tear, or an aha moment. And even if you aren’t on a similar journey, I still hope you enjoy my ramblings and pictures, etc.

TTFN.