I’m back from my little trip to Nashville. It was a great time. It was fun, exhausting, and at times a little scary. But enough about my driving.

Kitty Yaks-A-Lot was glad to see me. Actually he has rubbed up against my leg so many times, he just finally passed out. I like him that way.

I don’t have a lot of trip details right now. Because I’m so pooped. As I write this, I’ve been home about two hours, and the couch is calling my name. My suitcase is not. It will sit there in my room for at least a week. Ignored. Abandoned. Unloved. Now just a container of unclean underwear and spilled shampoo (it never fails). And it weighs like a million pounds. I just can’t pack light. Honestly, I don’t even try anymore. Used to I’d arrive at the destination with all these excuses to my traveling buddies. “Um, I have this one pair of ten pound shoes…” “It’s not my clothes. It’s all the books.”  “I, uh, brought extra in case we ran into some homeless people…in Paris.”  But now I’m older and crabbier and just like, “Yes, I overpacked and my bag is three times the size of yours. Deal with it. Oh, and if you could just hold up one end of my Samsonite, that would be good too.”

Here’s my friend Kim and me on the country music star tour of homes. Yes, we’re those kind of tourists. The only thing missing was a fanny pack. It was actually a good time. It’s like legalized stalking. That’s my new sweater that I’ve worn like twice. On this trip I discovered it had a hole in the arm pit, and the whole time I’m thinking, “What if we run into someone famous? What if we see Tim McGraw, and he’s like, “Dude, you totally blew out your armpit.”  But no one noticed, and we did not run into any stars. I didn’t even see any lookalikes. Which is unusual. I see famous people’s twins all the time!

I am happy to report I did get to see Tim and Faith’s mailbox. I didn’t touch it though. I had a feeling if I did, a swat team would spring down out of the trees and take me out. Kinda wasn’t worth it. But you have to wonder what’s in there. Surely they use a P.O. Box. I know all the other people I’ve stalked do.

This is their house. It’s a little blah. Apparently they are building a gigantic compound on the property behind it though. I should hope so. Because this little abode is just not acceptable. You can’t tell in the pic, but it’s really dreary looking. (Hey, Tim and Faith, I painted my house a few years ago. It was a little pricey, but I think if you guys work real hard, you can swing it.)

Here we are (above) at the Bluebird Cafe. I have wanted to go there forever. It was songwriter’s night (isn’t it always, though?), and things were crazy. I mean it was sooo bad. There were a bunch of unpublished, amateur songwriters there testing out their stuff, and we stayed for quite a few songs before we had to go. Or before we got kicked out. See, you can’t talk in the Bluebird during performances. At all. They even have t-shirts with “Shhhh” on it. It’s just their thing. My friend Kim (right) bet that Leslie (left) and I couldn’t handle the no talking policy. We were like, “Oh, I’m so sure. Of course we can be quiet. What do you think we’re like six?” Well, five seconds into this one guy’s song, we were both laughing at ridiculous decibel levels. He sang in this really deep monotone voice that made him sound like Mr. T. The first sentence of his song about “real life” was, “My trailer smells like cat pee.” Except it was worded a little differently. And then he went on to sing about standing in line at the health department waiting for a VD test. And there were some other humorously WRONG words I can’t even share, but they had me nearly on the floor. I’m talking SNOT LAUGHING. My nose was dripping, and my eyes were watering, and I got dangerously close to peeing my pants. We three sang it the rest of the weekend. I can’t do the impression justice because it hurts my throat, but my friend Leslie can knock it out of the ballpark.

So to fast forward a bit, I went to see the totally awesomely cool people at Thomas Nelson, the publishers of So Not Happening. And we’re meeting for lunch, and I’m nervous, of course. So I’m asked about my weekend and we talk about the visit to the Bluebird. And I say something like, “Yeah, it was good. I had a lot of fun, but for bad reasons.” And then I laugh. And then five minutes later we’re talking about something else, and I’m all listening…until what I’d said earlier replays in my head, and I’m like, “Omigosh. OMIGOSH. That freakin’ sounded like I was dancing on the table tops at the Bluebird. I had fun in a bad sort of way? Who SAYS that?” So for the record, that came out COMPLETELY wrong. And whether it was true or not is irrelevant to the story.

I was also too stressed to get any pictures of the amazing folks at Thomas Nelson, which I totally intended to do. Well, I don’t know if you can blame that on stress. Because I had on the heels from Hades and that also consumed my brain. So then the whole time I’m like, “Who says these things? Who wears these heels? Why do I talk? Remember when Dirty Dancing came out and Keds were cool? Those were good days.” But other than that, it was a GREAT visit! I’m so excited about So Not Happening. In fact, as a few of you have already spotted, you can read the first chapter already on the website. It will be out this spring, and fun things are already in the pipe for this book.

Well, more on my trip later. Tomorrow is my semi-annual yoga speech at school (the speech I do so I can wear yoga clothes to work, which is proof that sometimes my brain DOES work), and I must go lay out my Nike sweats and practice some downward facing dogs.

JEN

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