Squeee!

In the world of blogging, there may be no one more famous than The Pioneer Woman.

She was one of the early adapters of this new medium, and I stumbled onto her blog not long after she began writing in 2006. Then the entire world stumbled onto her blog. I could make up a lot of numbers about how many page views she gets every day (Gabillions! Contradillions!) but suffice it to say that in the blogging world she's a rock star--and yesterday I met her!.

My friend R and I are long-time P-Dub groupies. (We call her P-Dub, like that, because we're not only fans, we're cool.) When we found out she was doing a book signing just 45 miles from home, we were all Oooooh! Pioneer Woman! Squeeee! We have to go!

Or maybe that was just me and R was rolling her eyes a little bit, but R is not only smart and beautiful, she's the kindest woman I know and she refrained from slapping me in the face and telling me to snap out of it. 

So we both took an afternoon off work (What? It was like the Beatles were coming to supper!) and were at the bookstore a full hour before the signing was to start, only to find that tickets had been available since 9 a.m. We were 116 and 117 in line.

And because we're like THIS with P-Dub, even though she doesn't know it, we knew what could get us a better spot in line: A baby. The Pioneer Women loves babies, and the store was awash in teeny-tiny jeans-wearing infants. And toddlers. And a few babies not even old enough to wear jeans.

Awwww. Okay, I can live with this cutie getting some preferential treatment. But babies, R and I decided, would be known by a new name: CHEATERS. As would the women who brought their husbands wearing white cowboy hats, or pulled out their adorable purses, because who wouldn't move up a few places in line by having her keys tucked away in this:

So we waited, and giggled, and waited some more, and giggled some more, and had the best time I could imagine, and after four hours, were standing in front of THE PIONEER WOMAN. She was beautiful and poised and warm, and I had a million questions I wanted to ask (What would she have done differently when she started blogging? Are her children ever embarrassed by what she writes? Does she care if they are?) so I said the first thing that popped into my mind:

"Gosh, I feel like I'm meeting Justin Bieber."

To her credit, she didn't call security. Instead, she looked up, laughed, and said, in her soft Oklahoma accent, "My daughter would not agree with you."

The Pioneer Woman and me!

Then she signed my book, and added the page numbers of the recipes I've used most (for mashed potatoes, cinnamon rolls, and guacamole, if that explains anything about my life) and was on to the next book.

The Pioneer Woman and R

We waited four hours, and the actual signing was over in two minutes. It was kind of like giving birth, except with a delicious smell of fresh-brewed coffee in the background.

Of course, if one of us had just given birth we would have had our own cheater baby, but...naw. This was perfect.