Here goes.

This is one of those posts that has been rolling around in my head for days and days and even weeks. It's the one that has been poking at my brain matter when I think I've accomplished most of my must-do's for the day. Like laundry and the checkbook and the steady stream of end-of-the-school year paperwork.

The post that keeps creeping in when I SHOULD be writing about The Tall One's special, special, magnificent 50th birthday party and ALL that blackberry cobbler. And family and friends from all phases of our lives. And cigars. And the singing of Robert Earl Keen songs.

Or the long bike ride where me and Lizzie Lou kinda got picked up by a couple of other cycling chicks, or at least we like to think so. Does ANYONE know what it means to be a "visible girl?" Those girls did. They asked us if we WERE. And we didn't know. And I've Googled it to no avail. But, it sounds to me like some secret code for lusting after other girls in bike pants. NOT that there's anything wrong w/ that. And we drank pickle juice. Which should be banned. It's nasty. Soooo nasty. Pedal Power is a fantastic bike ride. Passed not a SINGLE double-wide on the route and the rest stops are unrivaled ... mimosas and CHEESE! They served breakfast AND lunch. Dude!!

Or the post about the first time (last week) I got up enough nerve and felt cheesy enough to text my vote for MY American Idol and then realized voting was WAY closed since I was watching it a full two hours later than "live" on my DVR w/ a big bowl of chocolate ice cream on my lap. But, I think I snuck in a vote for David Cook in the last 23 seconds. Like he needed it!

OR an eloquent retell of the out-of-this-world weekend I just spent w/ my sweet friends at a ranch/spa/bunk house a few miles down the road that felt like a billion light years from my daily life. How I FINALLY got to ask a bunch of cigarette- and tequila-soaked gals (who weren't US, by the way) the NASCAR-speak question I've been dying to ask ever since reading a Texas Monthly article about the Texas Motor Speedway ... "WHO'S your driver?" I got to ask. And someone growled out an answer. "Jeff Gordon's MY driver." Too easy. And how now I'm a big ol' bully cuz I stood giggly by while some sheets were (ahem) SHORTENED on a few beds. And the whole time those sheets were being shortened, the guilt-by-association story my mom started telling me when I was but EIGHT or so of that poor girl from my high school who got kicked off the drill team because she only WATCHED as her friends drank beer went reeling thru my head. "An empty can of beer in the back of her pickup made her as guilty as those who WERE drinking." Mom, I remember that. And even if you can't remember her name, I CAN! And I was wrong this weekend. Because I found myself at the end of a very pointy finger accusing me of nasty sheet-shortening wrong-doing. It scared me a little bit ... the intensity of this accusing and whodunit-ness and suggestions of retaliation for a "crime" that had NOTHING at all to do w/ bodily fluids or Granddaddy Long Legs or freezing of ANY undergarments. Or shaving cream.

It was a sheet. A giggle and a sheet. Please, forgive me. Whether or not I KNOW NOT what I did, goodness knows it won't happen again, lest I find myself sitting atop a potty covered in Saran Wrap! YES!! The suggestions of retaliation were this high. I didn't know.

Thing is. Truly. These friends of mine are the loveliest in the land. The kind of ladies you WANT to escape with for 48 hours to eat powdered donuts, BBQ potato chips, peanut M&Ms and cubed cheese in a 2-gallon bag. To submit to hours upon hours of talking and laughing and sunning and smiling. You ladies can shorten my sheets on MY bed ANY day ... and I WILL NOT retaliate. Ever. You have sent my week to the highest level of function. Just thinking of those sunny moments and even the times we sat and talked in the darkness of our "cave," makes me want to run w/ the fastest speed, escape the ugliest moment and live and laugh til it hurts. Thank you.

And speaking of my knee, it does still hurt. But it's better. Getting new running shoes this weekend.

And that post I'm supposed to be writing? If you're still w/ me, it's the one I mentioned in the first sentence. It's going to have to wait.

It's about the men in my life. Not my husband. Or my boys Big or Short. Three men who would move a mountain if I asked them. Or at the very least, change my flat tire, fetch me a cold beer and I CAN GUARANTEE ... short sheet my bed.

More on them next time. Promise.