Well, I’m on my way home to Tennessee… waiting for my flight out of Phoenix right now.  Since I have a few minutes, I thought I’d give you a brief overview of the weekend.  And, you know, an introduction to my Imaginary Boyfriend. 

You’re welcome, in advance.

As I’ve already mentioned, we began the weekend with the news that we were going to a Suns game.  Before the game, however, we went to dinner with Kimberly’s family.  When Kimberly was 10 years old, her parents began adopting children and now Kimberly has four of the cutest siblings you can imagine. 

The youngest, Jaelynn, is seven and totally into gymnastics.  Over dinner, she found out that we had an extra ticket to the game and began begging Kimberly to let her go with us to the game.  Kimberly told her that she couldn’t go with us because she was wearing her leotard from her earlier gymnastics practice and Jaelynn immediately said “That’s cruel, Kimberly.  That’s really cruel.”

So, guess who accompanied us to the game?

On Saturday, Kimberly introduced me to all kinds of things I had never experienced before and yet have somehow made it this far through life without.  An example?  Why, a very fancy restaurant:

We had a lovely lunch and then headed out for pedis and shopping.  We were pretty darn excited, if I do say so myself.

I can’t believe I don’t have pictures for you of one of the places we went to as it has definitely changed my life forever.  You might know it as Ikea.  I’ve decided to call it “The Store that Caused Me to Wish I Could Redecorate the Entire Starlite Office as Well as My Bedroom.”

I had never been to an Ikea before.  Seriously.  How did this store exist and I never partake of it’s goodness?  As I walked through the store, I actually repeatedly said “Why?  Why did no one tell me about this store before now? Whhhhhhhy?“

Ahem.  Moving on.

After enjoying a delicious dinner of Mexican Food That Is Way Better In Arizona Than Tennessee, we returned to Kimberly’s house to spend a few hours with my best friend, Dwight from The Office.

We invited our other new BFF to join us as well:

And so, I’m still waiting for my flight… we’ve just been informed that we won’t be leaving until the “Mechanical Technician” checks some things out.  This is fantastic news as I originally had 18 minutes to catch my connecting flight out of Charlotte to Chattanooga.  Glory.

And, breaking news, they have just told me that I will now be definitely missing my connecting flight.  But NO WORRIES, they don’t have another flight until tomorrow morning.  I mean, it isn’t like I have anything special to do tomorrow morning like, I don’t know, WORK. 

And so, let us discuss something MUCH happier.  Namely, my Imaginary Boyfriend.

As much as I like airports (other than this particular moment in time), I’m not all that fond of arriving at one after my flight has landed.  I’m kind of embarrassed about the reason behind this, but oh well:

When I was a little girl, I somehow got it in my mind that when you come out of the terminal, there will always be a boyfriend/husband/someone waiting for you to drop your bags and run straight into his arms.  I imagined that this would be the dialogue between us:

Imaginary Boyfriend: “Amy Beth, I’ve missed you so much!”

Me:  “Oh, Imaginary Boyfriend, I’ve missed you too!  Thank you ever so much for coming to the airport and waiting for my flight to land in order to help fulfill one of my childhood fantasies.”

Imaginary Boyfriend:  “Of course I wanted to be here when your flight landed.  I’ve been counting down the very seconds until you’d be here in my arms.”

Me:  “You are the best Imaginary Boyfriend ever.”

Imaginary Boyfriend:  “May I kiss you here, in this very public place, so that all will know that your Imaginary Boyfriend came to fetch you from the airport?”

Me:  [No response, because I have fainted.]

Alas, there will be no real nor imaginary boyfriend waiting for me in the airport tonight or tomorrow or whenever I finally make it home.  But there will be another man waiting as I finally come walking down the concourse just looking for someone to love.

And yet somehow I can’t imagine that the airport security guard would appreciate it if I ran into his arms.