This past weekend I ventured to Chicago for the Young House Love book signing (if you are not familiar with YHL, they are an amazing DIY duo that blog full time and just published a fantastic book)  and each time I thought about writing this post, I couldn’t help but think of one of my favorite humor bloggers, Lauren from Filing Jointly…Finally and wanted to write this post with her voice and style in mind.  You may or may not (may…definitely may) want to read a few of her posts, laugh a bunch, and then come back to hear my story…

Hey Blogstalkers!  This past weekend, I drove three hours to attend the Chicago Young House Love book tour.  Alone.  I know what you’re thinking…”Where the heck is your typically amazing husband, Mr. Lemon?!  The man who spray paints, carries party props all over town and cooks your meals ditched out on a trip to Chicago?”  Mr. Lemon’s work decided he should take a trip this particular weekend (#fail) and since it was fairly last minute, none of my friends could accompany me, either (#failagain).  So I ventured on alone, because I am nothing if not an adventurous gal crazily bound and determined to get something once I set my mind to it.

For anyone not from the Midwest, Chicago is in the Central Time Zone while my little corner of West Michigan is in the Eastern Time Zone (cue foreshadowing music…).  At a previous job, I scheduled phone interviews with physicians and had a doctor argue with me about which time zone I was currently located in.  He very much insisted that I was in CST because Chicago was.  Needless to say, he did not get hired.  #faultylogic

So, I started early Saturday morning with an alarm clock at 7 am.  Which is tres early for me.  I left the house around 8:30am for a three hour drive, plus one hour for the time difference, getting me to the book signing at 12:30pm, a half an hour before they would begin signing.  Right?  Ummm…totally wrong.  About an hour into the drive I thought that maybe I had done my time difference math backwards…but I’ll be honest, I wasn’t totally sure until I actually crossed the time zone line and my cell phone clock updated.  Hey, I was an English major, cut me some slack.  Around this same time I realized that my phone GPS app was sucking the life blood out of the phone battery and the car charger that is always in the car was nowhere to be found.  Mr. Lemon had already snaked the Garmin GPS from me (“But Rebecca, you don’t even like this GPS!”  “That’s not the point, MR. LEMON.”) and I left him a voicemail accusing him of stealing the phone charger as well.  Turns out, I had never returned it to the car from taking it out last weekend.    I still can’t find the darned thing but ended up buying one at Best Buy after the book signing just in case I was involved in a car crash on the way home (spoiler alert:  I was not).

So when I arrived at West Elm at 10:30am and miraculously found a parking spot directly in front of the store, I thought I might have some time to kill.  But I decided to venture in and see if there was already a line forming.  Oh yes, there definitely was.  To the tune of about 100 people that were rumored to have started gathering at 5 am.  Who’s crazy now?  So I scooted into line just in time – about 15 minutes later they ushered people to stand outside.  I was right behind the cute couple, Sarah and B, from Tudors Down and Meg from Radical Possibility (all three were awesome).  Coming in behind me were my three new best line friends.  When we all got into line I realized that I hadn’t used the bathroom in over three hours and I could now potentially lose my spot in the ever growing line, so I’m all, “Hey, I just met you and this is crazy…but we’re in line together now and could you hold my spot while I run to the restroom?”  (sorry, I’m no Carly Rae Jepson)  They obliged.  And obliged again when I ran to purchase a (second) book.  And obliged yet again so I could walk around the store and pet some of the ceramic animals.  So yeah, you could say that B, Robin, Kristy and I were quick pals.  And then we discussed children’s dinner parties with stuffed animals, bobblehead dining room decor, teenage car accidents involving bird’s nests, Facebook stalking, and halloween costumes, you could say that we were besties.  Line besties, at the least.

About an hour and a half into our line wait, a lovely thing happened.  We were served mugs of de-li-cious hot cocoa and ginormous cookies.  And then it started to thunderstorm.  Quite intensely.  As we munched on our cookies and drank our warm beverages we tried not to make eye contact with the people in line outside, directly on the other side of the very large glass windows, who were huddling under large plastic West Elm bags to stay dry.  We were the line elite, people.  Our elitist status moved up an hour later when I saw John and Sherry emerge from the back room.  I think B was telling a story and I theatre whispered “They’re here…”  When she kept talking I said it again, louder, and then I waved to John.  Yes, as though we were long lost friends and he’d be all “Oh hey, there’s Rebecca!”  He was kind enough to wave back nonetheless.  I think this is when my perma-grin kicked.

Then they both stopped at a table RIGHT IN FRONT OF US (Line Elite!) and talked about some cute DIY gift projects. My favorite was the gold paint mason jars as bookends – would be so cute in a kitchen for cookbooks!

After the DIY gift how-to presentation, John and Sherry were escorted to their book signing table and we waited another hour while the die hards who arrived at 5 am had their books signed.  Sarah from Tudors Down thought she might cry when she had her booked signed, but she was totally professional and composed and adult-like.  And then I walked up.  John opened my book and asked who to write it out to.  I said I’d be doing a giveaway on my blog (yup, that means YOU, Blogstalkers) and Sherry asked the name of my blog and I told her “This Nest is Best.”  And she said “Oh!  I know that blog!”  And I’m pretty sure the clouds parted, angels sang from heaven and I turned into a giggly fourteen year old version of myself as I said in a high-pitched voice “OH!  REALLY?!?!  Um, thank you!”  (insert nervous laughter and hand flapping )  I seriously was in shock.  I mean, you can only post a link to your blog in their comments so many times before another blogger is bound to check you out, but holy amazeballs, she remembered it.
I got my photo taken with John and Sherry (see all those unfortunate souls outside who probably know how to do time zone change math?  yeah, there were hundreds of them).  See that smile?  I’m totally giddy and on cloud nine because Sherry Petersik remembered.my.blog. 

And a photo with my line besties Robin, B and Kristy.  Hope you ladies had a great time at the Container Store and a safe trip back to Milwaukee!

After the signing I ventured to Ikea to pick up some items for a bedroom update and a December 20/20 Tablescape.  So posts coming on those.  And a giveaway post.  And I owe you all a post on my armoire makeover.  Frick.  I’ve got some work to do.

-Rebecca