My new love

Nine times out of ten, when I get a recommendation from someone (a new product, a magazine, an article, a website), I'll check it out. When I get that same, completely unsolicited recommendation from someone else, I can't move fast enough.

And that's how I met the Pioneer Woman. "Met" is a loose term, I suppose. After all, I just know her from her website. Thanks to my friend Megan and someone-completely-different-than-Megan-though-for-the-life-of-me-I-can't-remember-who-exactly, who mentioned to me weeks ago that I should check out this site, I have become obsessed. In a good way. I think.

Long story short: This woman left a high-powered, big-city lifestyle in her mid-20's after accidentally meeting the man of her dreams, who just happens to be a cowboy, in a local bar near her hometown in Oklahoma. After falling in love, she abandoned her thoughts of going to law school in Chicago and now lives on a ranch in Oklahoma (though she's hardly "roughing" it -- I've seen pictures of her house). She home-schools her four kids, helps her husband on the farm, and documents their life on her blog. She also takes amazing photos, regularly updates a section about cooking, and gives things away. And she never takes herself too seriously. I appreciate a little dollop of humor to go along with everyday life.

Oh, and in all of her spare time, she just finished writing an online book about how she met and fell in love with her husband, whom she calls Marlboro Man. (It's kind of sick how much someone can accomplish a 24-hour period, isn't it? It's all I can do to go to the gym and go to work and walk the dog and keep my house clean.) Check her out for yourself, but don't get mad at me when you look up and three hours have passed.

So anyway, I love her. It's not that I love her like I want to marry her. It's that I love her like I want to be her. After spending the last week soaking in everything I can on her blog, and I'm nowhere close to finished, I feel like I've known her forever. For some reason, how she writes and what she accomplishes makes me feel so incredibly inspired. More than Oprah does, and that's saying something.

I want to take more pictures. I want to write. I want to move to the country, which I've said before). My three biggest challenges: I don't know anybody who wants to give me any land, I'm not sure what I'd really do there, unless the Pioneer Woman is looking for an understudy, and I don't think Chad wants to be a cowboy. (That said, I may have talked him into letting me spend a lot of money on a new camera and taking a few classes, which is something. All I had to promise is that I wouldn't make him carry it around.)

So, in lieu of cashing it all in and moving to the country, for now, I will live vicariously through the Pioneer Woman and soak in all the inspiration she gives me.