Updates Everywhere!

After a long but too cool day -- driving, talking, laughing, eating, shopping, driving again -- I tired of playing my evening computer games and signed online to check my favorite blogs, and virtually all of them had been updated in the past twenty-four hours. How great is that?

I don't read a lot of blogs -- time away from my games? my yard? my writing? my husband? But the ones I do read, I check fairly often. Unfortunately, the ones I do read sometimes get updated about once in a blue moon. There are friends' blogs, authors I admire, people I don't admire (I need to know which curse to heap on their heads, of course), and there's one actor -- Kirsten Vangsness, who plays Garcia on Criminal Minds. You do remember that Garcia is, in my never-humble opinion, the coolest character on television these days? She's not a prolific blogger, but I like reading her stuff.

Anyway, today all but one of the usual stops had something new. The only one that hadn't been updated -- Leah's -- was okay, since I spent the day with her, so I know the latest and greatest in her life.

Back to that day . . . Leah and I met Liz halfway between our homes (actually, it was a lot less "halfway" for us than for her) and had the best time. We ate at this amazing little Italian place in Krebs, Oklahoma . . . I'm all for plugging places I like, but it's late and I'm not sure about the name of this one: Roseanne's? I'll have to check with Liz.

It's the first place I ever had gnocchi, and it's to die for. I all but licked my plate today. The last time we ate there, I came home and found a recipe for it in an old cookbook. Mine was pretty good, but theirs is better. Their salad dressing is great; their bread is damn good; even their tea is great. It's a good thing the place is nearly two hours away, or I'd be as round as the stereotypical Italian nonna, and while I will happily become nonna in October, I'll skip the round part, thank you very much.

After lunch, we hit the antique shops in McAlester. We found some great stuff, but I kept a tight hold on the purse strings until I came across these wooden bowls. They were pretty rough -- not sanded or stained -- but that was part of their appeal. (And the fact that they were cheap cheap cheap didn't hurt any.) I have some other turned bowls I love that are smooth as satin (and were pricey, too), but something about these rough bowls just grabbed me. Besides, I can call them "primitive" instead of "rough" and they automatically become "art."

I could have loaded up my truck with all the stuff I saw and wanted, but hell, with gas running $3.19-3.45 a gallon between here and there, who could afford to shop? Have I ever mentioned how offended I am at paying that kind of money for gas here in Oklahoma? I thought about it as we passed the tank farms -- storage places for oil -- on our way down and back again and as we drove through Glenpool. (During its early years, the Glen Pool -- or is it Glenn? I'll have to ask Leah -- produced more oil than any other place in the world.)

The best part of the day, though, was seeing Liz and Leah. There was a story on the news yesterday about how good laughter is for you -- lowers blood pressure, eases stress, burns calories. I must be way healthier tonight than I was this morning because we laughed our way through the day. It was a badly needed break from the usual routine of working, mowing, housekeeping, cooking, and dog-wrangling. I wasn't tempted even once to kick somebody's ass -- and that's saying a lot! Rachel11:47 PM