Home from Charlotte, it will of course take me about a week to process through She Speaks in my head. I will say there was graciousness and loveliness exuding from the pores of the women in my session for which I am eternally grateful.

I took exactly 9 photos the entire weekend and one of them was of me with these two sweet things. Emily is on the left and Brittany, the right. Emily has already been able to process some of what she’s been learning and it is worth a click over to check her out. These two are both super cute and I almost believed I was their age for at least one meal.

My editor Andrea Doering spoke in my session as well, and she had great things to say about what editors are looking for when they listen to authors pitch their books. I think her perspective was really helpful and I would love to share some of the things she and I shared in our session. Just not today. Today is re-entry day.

And let me tell you, I need a re-entry day because conferences? They suck the smart right out of me. Do you ever find that when you get around people, you do really weird things that you would never do in a normal situation? Take this for example:

This is me and Mary DeMuth. You know, the one I want to be when I grow up? Well. There I am with Mary and what do I have in my hand? A book Mary wrote? No. A book someone else* wrote. But inches from the book someone else wrote is the book that Mary wrote. Not just any book, her memoir book. Her beautiful, redemptive, difficult-but-worth-it read, Thin Places. Now, I already have a copy, so I’m thinking Oh, I’ll leave that for someone else. But hello? There is Mary. WITH A PEN IN HER HAND. Ready to sign a copy of her memoir. And I could have been all Hey Mary, I’d love to have a signed copy of your memoir because that is all kinds of awesome. But no. Instead I have to put me and my big self and someone else’s big book right next to her and get a photo. And not get a book. Because I was under the influence of conference brain-suck. In my defense, I had just finished teaching my session and I had no common sense left up there. But still.

So if you ever go to a conference and you get the chance to have one of your favorite writers sign their memoir, don’t sit next to them with someone else’s signed book in your hands and get a photo without getting a signed copy of their book. Especially when the books are free. Did I mention that?

Thank you all for your words of support and encouragement. I was blessed to be a part of such a great conference and now I’m also feeling blessed to be home. So come back tomorrow for Tuesdays Unwrapped, my favorite day of the week. After being away, I’m seeing those moment-gifts more clearly. It’s true what they say about absence and the heart.

*Christa Allan‘s book is the one I’m holding (Walking on Broken Glass) and I look forward to reading it!

The blog has been down for nearly 48 hours. I know. It was something about a server and a host and a gobleneckyhohaha. I don’t know. Translated that means uh, oh. I hope it’s not gone forever. It isn’t. Yay. But because it was down, I had no access to it at all. Not the dashboard, the drafts, my cpanel. Nothing. So I’m playing catch up this morning, and it’s Tuesday. I plan to have Tuesdays Unwrapped up today, hopefully by 10 am EST. Come back and link up then!

“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.” -Irene Peter

Remember that post I did on change a few weeks ago? This might be a good time to read it again. {wink}. It was simply time for a change. What you saw on the former design was lovely (I thought) but what it lacked were things that you could not see.

If you miss the old design, I at least hope you will be able to appreciate the searchable archives and the ease of use of this new one. Darcy has worked her little fingers down to the bone while I have asked for minutia with fonts and sizes and coloring. She is a gem wrapped up in gold topped with a cherry and sprinkled with magical fairy dust. And? Look what she made.

And for Tuesdays.

And for when you need reminding.

It’s not all the way finished, so check back when you can. I am so happy to have something that both looks pretty and works well. And to have Darcy. She is every bit as helpful as everyone says. And then, a little bit more.

title quote from Price Pritchett.

Thanks to everyone who joined up on the Glimpses of Home linky. That was fun, no? I’m not sure I can ever go back to non-image linkies now. So tomorrow for Tuesdays Unwrapped? Image linkies. See you then? Notice all my questions? They aren’t really questions.

Except this one. If you don’t mind taking 2 seconds to answer, that would be fantastic. If you are reading in a reader, you will have to click over. It is only one question, so it won’t take any time. Promise.

Here on the east coast we are preparing for snow. As long as we don’t get ice instead, we hope to have a weekend filled with lots of this:

In random news, you can now subscribe to Chatting at the Sky through email, which means you will receive new posts in your inbox. Simply click subscribe at the top of the page and it will give you this screen:

For all this time, I’ve had that option turned off and didn’t realize it. Ooops. (Thanks, Dawn, for letting me know that!)

Speaking of BlissDom (weren’t we?), I’m going. As I’m busy not packing, I’m thinking about how I keep my clothes for 37 years and I still have shoes from college and I don’t know how to shop for the right stuff and I’m a terrible accesorizer. So I’m just gonna go with it. Sound good?

I look forward to helping lead two sessions, one on photography and one on writing -  my two favorite subjects. Mostly, I look forward to finally meeting some of my favorite writer girls. I’m going to try to make a concerted effort to lean to the left of my Meyers Briggs results and embody the part of me that is an extrovert. She doesn’t come out often, but she really is in there.