All the yum you can stand

Today is Monday, October 24th and as far as I can tell I'm still alive (Dear Rachael, thanks for all the drugs. Love, Margaret). I still have the cold. Yup, the cough too. And don't forget our good friend Señor Laryngitis. But yesterday Rachael physically forced me to Target for cough medicine against my many croaked protests. I'm not a drug person and don't like putting unauthorized, non-gift-bearing stuff in my body if I can help it, but frankly I think *she* was sick and tired of listening to my sad attempts at a hoarse, sea witch voice (in case you were wondering, I can now - officially - cackle; it's all cool 'n stuff) and took me there for her own selfish purposes. She explained the whole medicine thing with a lot of big words and said that I would feel better from the active antiexperimendipeditussen. But all I heard was, "La la la la la la la la PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE FROM STARBUCKS." Foreign, body-altering stuff in my body? WHO CARES? There's pumpkin spiced lattes at Starbucks to be had!!!

So I got the syrup but in my state of complete fogginess misread the directions and took almost *5 times!* the amount I was supposed to. Five. Times. (Which I didn't find out until late last night as I was preparing to take yet another dose. Yeah. Oops.)

"Rachael? I feel kinda.... drunk or something."

"It's ok Margaret, it's just the syrup. It works really good 'n stuff."

Wooooooooo, I'd say it works good 'n stuff! But just so the dickheads that make Robitussen know - if there's no need for a 2 tbls. marker DON'T PUT ONE ON THE PLASTIC CUP! Needless to say, by 5:30 yesterday evening I was feeling prettttty darn good. I will be referring to Rachael for all my future drug needs, and so should you.

Backtracking for a moment... in case you've been living under a rock Rachael, Miss Yumjunkie herself, came up to visit me this weekend. And not only did she come visit me, she came bearing presents *gasp*. As in plural, MULTIPLE, pink presents. I know, right? This also marks the first time I've ever met an "online friend" in person. Seriously? If all you internet peeps are as cool as she is we need to be doing this whole get-together thing more often. Cuz damn.

Not only is she cute, she's sweet and funny and soooooo generous. And her laugh? My god the laugh. I swear if her blog could somehow communicate her laugh she'd be getting more readers than the NY Times.

There were all kinds of adventures this weekend, which mainly ended up revolving around the shopping variety. Oops, and the food. Shopping and food. This picture would be Raych at the Mall of America as she prepares to hunt and gather our chocolate and banana crepe lunch snack. Not so much a lunch since I took her to Big Bowl for that (where ELSE would I have taken her, honestly?), but she said crepes were worth having. Look at her in this photo.... like watching a huntress deep in her natural habitat. Eye on the prize.

More shopping. This was after Tiffany's and before Nordstrom's. Gotta love the Pottery Barn, but even more importantly gotta love the Big Bowl buzzer for telling us our food is ready before we had a chance to do any real damage at the Pottery Barn. The woman was totally in her element here. Obviously.

As an added bonus I made her go shoot some photos with me. We stopped off at Cedar Lake where I handed off my little Canon digi and let her go at it. At first she wasn't so sure what to do but within 10 minutes she was kneeling in the mud, treading through sand, and crouching in front of teeeeeeeeny tiny little purple flowers like a total pro. The clouds were fluffy, the water was blue and sparkly, the trees were red, yellow, and orange, and the sun was shining. Honestly, does it get any better?

I'm sad to see the weekend go and even sadder I didn't take off a full week of work just so recover from the past 2 weeks. But hello, it was sooooo worth it. Soooo ho ho ho worth it. If anyone needs to reach me I will be held up in bed alternating between IVs of cough syrup and pumpkin spice lattes keeping me in my happy place. Mmmmm, happy place.