Hi Everybody!

Thank you so much for reading my blog. Really. Writing this blog is really fun for me, but it's also a privilege that I don't take lightly. In a lot of ways, blog posts are modern day messages in a bottle: you toss them into the ocean that is the Internet without knowing who will find them and where they will end up. One of the things I like best about my blog is learning about its readers and, specifically, who they are and where they live. More often than not, the answers are not at all what I expect. You are grandmothers, sorority girls, high school students, and newlyweds. You live all over the United States, as well as in India, Japan, Africa, and the Middle East. One of you walked up to me in Target last week and introduced yourself; another sent me an email asking me where I lived in Orlando. As it turned out, our kids go to the same school!

I don't say this nearly enough, but THANK YOU. I love getting your emails; they brighten my day, make me laugh, and more than once, have said things that I needed to hear at exactly that moment in my life. How do you always know?

In other news, I'm leaving later today for a research trip to Peru. I won't have Internet access while I'm away, so sadly, I won't be posting for the next few days. See y'all in a week!