P-Dub comes to PA

It was a cold and rainy Sunday. There were rumors of icy roads and treacherous driving conditions. But nothing could stop me from taking the journey to meet Ree Drummond AKA Pioneer Woman.

Ok, it wasn't that cold, and the roads were only icy in the morning when I was tucked up nice and warm in my house, the journey was only 30 minutes and meet...well, meet is pretty relative in this case, but yes, I did meet Pioneer Woman.

I met my friend Teri and we drove down to West Chester, where Ree was doing her signing, together. While there was no icing on the roads, it was raining pretty hard, perfect time for the one broken windshield wiper (passenger side of course) on our ancient Honda to decide to start working, completely out of rhythm with the other one. I left a message for Matt saying "the windshield wipers are fighting." There was no other way to describe it.

Thankfully we arrived at The Chester County Book and Music Company safely and quickly got inside out of the rain. I was looking extra cool sporting my Dora the Explorer umbrella! We got a ticket for our place in line and were happy to be 133. Not too bad, only an hour early and we were able to get decent seats.

I was sitting right next to this display.

It's a miracle I didn't buy anything.

Here's Teri looking excited!

And here comes the woman of the hour (day, week, month,
I mean her book is on the NY Times best seller list)

I love the look she's giving that iced coffee. Even though it's blurry
I think you can see the love!

Ree did about 3o minutes of Q&A which was fun. She was relaxed and comfortable up there, not that I was expecting anything differently! I loved hearing her charming answers and listen to her say that not all homeschooling moms wear denim jumpers....followed quickly by "not that there's anything wrong with that!" Too funny!

This was her last out of town book signing, so Ree kept on taking "just a few more" questions. That came back to bite her in the butt when the very last question was a request for Ethel Merman! So glad we got to see it and hear it in person - Teri was smart enough to catch it on video, hopefully she can post it on her blog!

After the Q&A Ree got busy signing books. We knew they were going to call us up in groups by our numbers and were pleasantly surprised that they were in groups of 20. That meant that we had to wait awhile to actually get in line, which wasn't too bad since we were in a huge bookstore with an amazing kids section and tons of cool gifts and fun stuff to check out. Once our number group was called we didn't have to wait long at all.

Here's the line...

Here's me (why am I finally off "align center" mode? finally!) all excited to be a few feet away from P-Dub!

Here she is! Signing my book!

Of course as soon as it was my turn I got all star struck and really didn't know what to say. What I did do was ask if I could look under the table and check out her boots. Yes I did! They were, in her words, "sassy!" Then when I went to get my picture taken I had to check to make sure I wasn't flashy anyone. Thankfully Ree totally understood.

Here's my picture with her.

Could I look any more awkward? Is it obvious that I am not a natural in front of a camera? Why did I put my right arm on hip like that? No my arm pits were not sweaty, but since Ree has been so open about her own issues with sweat I would definitley have to claim it if they were! Doesn't Ree have lovely hair? Don't you love her jacket? Aren't you glad that I edited this picture so you couldn't tell that my shirt was teensy tiny bit sheer? And here I was worried about flashing someone!

Teri and I had a great time, I was so thankful she came with me and I had someone to talk to you (not sure I how I would have passed the time in a store surrounded by thousands of books). I feel pretty lucky that it worked out to get to see Ree, I know some people drove hours and then waited for hours for the opportunity and I had a quick 3o minute drive and a two hour line wait.

Thanks P-Dub for making the journey to PA!