I bought the blanket around 3 a.m. one morning from the Walgreens next to the hospital.  I can’t remember which girl I was staying there with that time; just one of many, many overnight stays at the hospital during my years with Starlite.  I have a bag I usually take with me, but I didn’t have it with me that night — I must have just gone straight to the hospital from the office.  The blanket was $5; I grabbed it, along with some caffeine-filled drinks, and headed back to the hospital.

After all these years, it’s still the most comfortable blanket I’ve ever owned, all $5 of it.

Riddle me this: why, on a regular basis, do I find myself accidentally walking into men’s restrooms in various businesses, churches and schools?

I mean, I’m all amount meeting new guys, but I prefer to do it on a more casual basis unlike this morning’s misadventure in a nearby men’s restroom.

And yes, that’s all I have to say about it.

Believe it or not, we’ve still got more questions from last week to go through!

Scribbles asked: “You may have answered this in another place on your blog (I’m a new reader), but I’d love to know more about Starlite, it’s vision and mission, etc.”

I get this question quite a bit, actually! To get full details on Starlite, you’ll want to visit our website. If y’all have never visited our website, you should just so you can admire the cuteness of it. And, you know, the pinkness of it.

Melody asked: “Do you like chocolate? What three things in nature do you find beautiful and why? Do you remember your favorite grade school teacher? What was special about her/him? What do you miss the most from childhood? What was your favorite thing to do in your grade school music class (if applicable)?”

Whoa! Let’s see here: I’m not a huge fan of chocolate, believe it or not; three things in nature I love include creeks, rivers and the ocean (notice a theme?) and my favorite grade school teacher was Mrs. James, from kindergarten — she took us on a scavenger hunt for the gingerbread man! The biggest thing I miss from childhood is playing with baby dolls; if I thought I could get away with it at age 24, I would have a miniature crib for them at the foot of my bed. I don’t remember much about music class, but I do remember honestly thinking I could sing well. I miss being that naive.

Kate asked: “If you could invite 3 people to dinner who would they be and why?”

I’m going to skip picking Jesus, only because I think I would be devastated when it was time for Him to leave after dessert was served. I think I would pick three random underprivileged children and serve fun-shaped pancakes. Every child should have someone make pancakes for them while they’re little.

Ellen asked: “Do you have any desire or vision of taking Starlite beyond your local area, maybe to other cities or even other states?”

Someone beat you to that question! I answered it in the first round; check out my answer here.

Jen asked: “You mentioned that you got your bathing suit at Target that that everyone was admiring you, saying you looked like a ballerina! I would love to know which one you got at Target and if they still have them.”

First of all, the story Jen is referring to is here if you want to read it for yourself. To this day, I still get comments about this bathing suit almost every single week while I’m in the pool, usually from little girls (I bought two of this particular suit since I swim at least five days a week). I don’t think they sell it anymore (seeing as I bought it two years ago and can’t find it on their website), but here’s a picture of it:

See? Nothing really that special about it… except for when you get in the water. The skirt just kind of twirls around you and almost dances by itself. I love it.

Samantha and Kelly both asked: “Do you ever get to see Roomie’s baby? How are they doing?”

I don’t see her or the baby at all, so I have no idea how they’re doing these days. The baby would be about three months old by now, so I bet he’s starting to do all kinds of fun new things.

Samantha also asked: “What’s your favorite Dolly Parton song? After a particularly emotional day, how do you take care of YOU? Would you ever date a guy who wasn’t a Christian?”

I have never, ever listened to Dolly’s music so I honestly couldn’t tell you my favorite song, much less any song of hers (I know this is almost unbelievable given my love for her theme park).

As far as taking care of myself after a tough day of Starlite, I’m honestly not that good at it which is unfortunate given the fact that most days with Starlite are tough especially right now. I’ve noticed that working out helps some. One of the things I miss most about being in a relationship is having someone to ask you about your day, every day. I don’t have that kind of relationship with my family, so I miss having someone who wanted to hear how I’m doing personally, tell me when I need to take a break, etc. The positive side of not having someone to fill that role in my life is that it makes it even more important for me to continue working on my relationship with God.

As for your last question, I don’t think I’d end up dating someone who wasn’t a Christian, but that’s okay seeing as I don’t think someone who wasn’t a Christian would want to date me anyway.

Kristin asked: “I’d like to donate monetarily to Starlite. What’s the best way to do that?”

That’s very sweet of you! We’ve sent you an email from the office, but just in case, we ask that all donations be mailed to our office (contact information here). Unfortunately, we don’t have a way for you to donate online, so snail mail it is!

Honour asked: “If you had gotten Snuggles and Cuddles’ sibling, what would her name have been?”

For those of you who don’t know, I adopted my puppy Snuggles when he was itty bitty. Three weeks later, I went back and got his brother, too. There was one other puppy from the litter, a girl, but she had already been adopted. So, if I had of been able to get her, I would have named her Giggles.

Also, just for the heck of it, let’s see a picture of Snuggles from when he was a baby:

And, of course, Cuddles:

Those two pictures represent their personalities more than words could ever describe.

Donna asked: “What is the air speed velocity of an un-laden swallow? In reference to brownies — nuts or no nuts?”

Um, I don’t know what an un-laden swallow is but just the name scares me.

Definitely no nuts on the brownies thing. Also: am I the only person who prefers to cook brownies only halfway and then call ‘em done? I really don’t like fully made brownies. Ick.

Heather asked: “Do you Twitter? What happened to the guy you knew on American Idol and the questions he was going to answer? Also: what do you think about scarves?”

I do Twitter! Follow me here.

Trey, our American Idol wannabe, still hasn’t written our post of AI insider secrets for us. He did, however, post this picture on Facebook the other day:

I’m just going to make y’all wait for him to explain. I couldn’t do it justice.

I think scarves are nice, I suppose. But only if they match your umbrella and wellies, of course.

Thanks for playing along, y’all!

I have never and likely will never make hot tea.  Or maybe I will one day.  Either way, my pink teapot will be ready and waiting, a sweet little gift that greets me each and every morning I walk into my kitchen.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a group of girls in their late teens and early twenties who found themselves single on Valentine’s Day. “Whatever shall we do?” they cried, frantic with worry. “We can’t just sit around the castle on this most special of holidays!”

And so, the fair maidens decided to take themselves on a date since all the young princes were, um, missing. They began their evening with a feast at the fanciest restaurant in town, Cafe Le McD’s where they dined on such delicacies as le nugget de chicken and fries a la French:

After this scrumptious banquet, they headed to the nearest large kingdom where they arrived at an old Catholic school now converted into a dance hall. Two of the maidens — Princess Cate and Princess Sarah — were so excited about dancing they couldn’t even wait for a prince to lead them onto the dance floor!

For three hours they danced, all seven girls finding partner after partner to twirl them around the room. “This may be the best night of my life!” they said with glee, passing each other as they perfected the waltz. They danced and danced and danced until they simply could not dance anymore, mainly because they stayed until the last song was played.

“We shall go for dessert,” they exclaimed, heading to a sweet little coffee shop in the nearby art district. And there they enjoyed éclairs and chocolate mousse and a slice of cheesecake or two!

There was even a bowl of fruit for the princess who is attempting to fit into a particular bridesmaid gown for a most royal of weddings happening in approximately 117 days, but really, who’s counting?

And furthermore, it’s not like that same princess would drink ice water out of a coffee cup just so she could look like the other princesses enjoying their cappuccinos and lattes?

No, I can’t imagine a girl that silly, either. Can you?

One of the things I love most about my college girls is their honesty.  I went to lunch with two of them — Joy and The New Anna (we have two, hence the nickname) — after church today and, as we were pulling out cash to pay our checks, one of them reminded the other one that she owed her for a few naughty words said from the night before.

You see, they’ve taken it upon themselves to “charge” each other for anything that comes out of their mouths that they don’t think God would approve of; at the end of the semester, they’re going to donate the money to an orphanage we’re collecting supplies for through Starlite.

The funniest part of the afternoon?  Listening to their discussion about exactly which words should be added to the naughty list as I drove them back to their dorm.

It was, in a word, perfect.

I celebrated this Valentine’s Eve differently than any other one in the past: I fixed dinner for one of my college girls, Lizy, and her boyfriend, Caleb, who came in town to celebrate the holiday with her.  They’ll spend time together alone tomorrow night, but as for tonight, there’s nothing more romantic that dinner with your girlfriend’s ministry leader, right Caleb?

HAPPY VALENTINE’S EVE!!!

I’m sorry, I just had to go ahead and get that out. I’ve been waiting all week to say it to y’all.

Valentine’s Day is my third favorite holiday ever. Actually, it’s really my second — right after the front-runner known as Thanksgiving — but I felt like I should put Christmas ahead of it seeing as, you know, that is the day our Saviour was born.

Also: I think He would appreciate the fact I just gave Him the British spelling of Saviour. It’s the little things in life, you know?

Now I’m very aware that there may be one person out there who doesn’t like Valentine’s Day, but here is what I would like to ask that person: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, FOOL?

This, after all, is the holiday that involved pinks and reds and candy and flowers and cards and various heart-shaped things! What ISN’T there to love? In fact, if I one day got to design a theme park, I would make an area of it solely dedicated to a Valentine’s Day theme, complete with a headliner attraction called The Roller Coaster Of Love.

Basically you’d go up, up, up, then plummet to the ground before repeating this process five more times. Eventually you’d pull back into the unloading dock which would, of course, be decorated like a wedding chapel. Naturally, a lot of people would probably be throwing up as they stepped out of the ride, but hey, it wouldn’t be the first time love has been responsible for a little regurgitation.

Since no such ride exists (YET!), Cousin Cate and I had to find a more creative way to celebrate Valentine’s Eve-Eve last night. We began with a viewing of The Office in her parent’s living room, whilst enjoying a little bottled water (her) and orange Jello (me). During last night’s episode, a birthday cake was featured several times which prompted Cousin Cate to declare we were heading to the grocery store as soon as the episode ended.

Around the time we got there, I realized I was wearing pajamas. Like, full on pajamas. They were pink, however, so I decided to go forth and conquer the grocery store all whilst praying that I wouldn’t see anyone I knew, specifically Imaginary Boyfriend because there is nothing like pajamas at the grocery store to kill the mystery in a relationship.

We spent quite a bit of time in the bakery section waiting for Cousin Cate to find just the right cake seeing as she MUST have whipped icing, not regular icing and this obviously required picking up each and every cake to check to see what type of icing it had AND CAN WE PLEASE HURRY IT UP SEEING AS I AM IN MY PAJAMAS?

Ahem.

We then headed to the frozen food section because I wanted some sherbet but then I realized that I really don’t even like sherbet much less know how to actually pronounce the word so I settled on some frozen lemonade which actually took me a few minutes to pick out. Which, of course, properly shamed me for my impatience in the bakery section a few minutes before.

So there we stood, just a couple of single girls in line at the grocery store to buy their birthday cake and frozen lemonade whilst one was wearing her darling pink pajamas, the perfect picture of the celebration of Valentine’s Day Eve-Eve. And that’s about when Cousin Cate started singing “Happy Valentine’s Day to me” to the tune of “Happy Birthday” whilst waiting for our turn at the register.

Y’all, I really just can’t understand why we’re still single for cryin’ out loud.

It took about three months and 30 lies uncovered to get me here, but it finally occurred to me today that, quite frankly, I should be on my knees thanking God that boy actually didn’t like it enough to attempt to put a ring on it.  ‘Cause sometimes you just don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.

And then you couldn’t be more thankful He didn’t let you keep it after all.