A Cook Book, A Cowboy & The Bishop’s Parking Spot
Do you read The Pioneer Woman? You should. Its my favorite blog/website on the world wide web! The blog details the life of Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman (aka PW). She shares her daily adventures as a ranch wife and mother to four little kiddos.
The website has something for everyone – stories of raising children, homeschooling those children, cooking for kids and cowboys and photographing the whole deal. And then there’s the best damn part of the site – Marlboro Man, her devastating delicious cowboy of a husband. She regularly posts photos of him working. In Wranglers. And Chaps. And she alternates between his ass and his face. I’m not sure which is better really. Anyway, you need The Pioneer Woman in your life. I don’t care who you are, you do. Scoot over there as soon as you’re finished here.
I became obsessed with cooking recipes from the PW site and not one has ever failed me. So when I heard she was releasing a cookbook I was through the roof. When I was opening wedding gifts and discovered my dear friend Jenny had ordered me an advanced copy of that cook book, I peed my pants. Just a little though, I don’t think anyone noticed.
And the whole deal was only sweetened with the knowledge that PW – my one true hero – was holding a book signing in good ole St. Louis! Boy was I excited.
So yesterday was the big day! And Jenny and I were ready and raring to go, cook books in hand we headed for the city.
And then we get lost. Cus that’s how we roll.
We saw lots and lots of homeless people who walked very, very close our SUV. Nothing to make you nervous like very dark roads, questionable alleys, homeless people and block after block of low-income housing. But Jenny put on a Jay-Z CD so that no one would notice we weren’t honest city folk.
Eventually, we found the cathedral where the signing was to be held. We rolled up about 10 minutes or so after it had started and whipped into the parking lot attached to the church. Only people had parked very carelessly leaving us trapped in the lot. I’m telling you we had only two choices…we could back the SUV blindly into on-coming city traffic or…. well… we could park in this spot:
“The Bishop is NOT coming to the cookbook signing!!!” I yelled.
“Do you think we’ll get a ticket?” Jenny asked. (She only asked because her mama raised her right. In reality she already knew we were parking in that damn spot.)
I agreed to pay half of the potential parking ticket.
So we did it. We stole the Bishop’s parking spot. Why does being a Bishop get you a reserved parking spot anyway???
We reasoned that this wasn’t a Catholic Bishop, so for us, it didn’t count anyway.
And into the Cathedral we went. It was packed. Like packed, packed. Christmas Eve mass packed.
And we snagged the last two seats in the whole place. See, the very last:
We listened as PW answered all sorts of questions. She was very down to earth, very human and very very pretty. She has/does all the things I aspire to have/do: she cooks rockin’ awesome food, takes rockin’ awesome photos and has a whole brood of adorable kids, a wide open piece of land and painfully hot husband. I figure I’ve got one of those and its a good place to start! (Hi honey, you’re getting Wranglers for Christmas.)
So while I listened I wandered about snapping photos. The cathedral is gorgeous!
I was standing in the vestibule (is that the right word??) when a man walked past me. I looked up from my camera thinking to myself, “now there’s an ass…” and then the strangest thing happened. I recognized his ass. This does not happen to me often, ass recognition I mean. This was no ordinary ass. It was Marlboro Man’s ass and it was wearing Wranglers. Lord have mercy. I reminded myself quickly that I was in church and ran to tell Jenny that His Sexyness had arrived.
We oogled. A lot. See I have the pictures to prove it:
Repeat after me, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s cowboy…”
Convenient that we were in church as I felt compelled to thank the Lord for Wranglers, Cowboy Boots, leather jackets and men with gray hair and blue eyes. Thank you, Jesus, thank you.
The next 4 hours (yes, 4 hours) were spent waiting. And waiting. One of PW and MM’s punks was making the rounds signing cookbooks while folks waited in line.
Some day when this handsome little dude is 20 something, some woman is going to see a picture of a 7-year-old in tiny Wranglers and cowboy boots, signing his mama’s cookbook and she’s going to die a thousand deaths and marry him on the spot.
He signed our books:
And then Marlboro Man started working the line. Countless housewives who need to get out more (or get into bed with their own husbands more) were having strokes. They were turning red, jiggling about and fanning themselves.
Jenny and I kept it together. Aside from minor amounts of drooling. Maybe its the newlywed thing. Collectively we’ve been married for 3 months, we weren’t ready to leave our husbands and snatch someone else’s. Although we could have snatched him away if we wanted. Just for the record.
Eventually we made it to the front of the line:
We were going to tell her stories. Thank her for all the cooking tips and photography tips. Tell her how blessed she is to have such gorgeous children. But by the time we got to her it was after 11 p.m. And we said, “Hi” and “Thanks” and that was the end of our much anticipated encounter with PW. But it was worth it.
And actually there was more to the conversation – including the part where the woman taking our photo says, “I think your camera battery died” and PW says, “Oh, no!” and I say, “Damn, I wore it out taking pictures of your husbands rear end. Sorry about that.” and PW said, “Good for you! I recommend that!”
Now go to the PW site and cook some awesome PW food!
Start with these! They’ll change your life, or at least your weekly dinner menu.
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