Good Morning. I’m writing to you from my hotel room bed, instead of my comfy chair with the cat sitting on my keyboard.

I’m on the road in the eastern part of the state for the rest of the week singing for my supper. And it just happens to be gearing up to be the coldest days we’ve had all winter.

Yup, that there says it “Feels Like -32”

And I can’t wear my snow suit on stage.

I swear. That’s the hardest part about the whole music thing some days. Deciding what to wear. I mean, the pressure is just too great.

And so I bring everything…and then that creates another problem that has to do with getting myself in and out of hotel rooms in an efficient manner.

I generally have a rule with my packing when I’m traveling alone that goes something like: Only pack as many bags and shit that I can carry up to my room on my own in one trip.

I’ve spent plenty of time in my life traveling from hotel room to hotel room alone so I know how annoying lugging stuff can be.

Especially when that stuff includes a giant guitar, computer, camera, purse, and bags of clothes and coats and makeup and seventeen different giant bottles of hair care products and another three or four pair of boots, which sucks because I like need all of those boots, but they take up so much damn room.

But I can usually get it all: Three or four bags thrown over my shoulders, a purse in the crook of my arm, a pair or two of boots in my armpits, a wheelie suitcase behind me and my guitar in my left hand.

God forbid they put me on the far end of the hotel on seventh floor like they have today.

By the time I get up to my nook of the world, I’ve gone from freezing, to thawed out to sweating to panting to full blown aggravation with myself and society at the fact that we can’t just all agree on one uniform and go with it.

Would be so much easier.

Anyway, I’m looking around my room this morning before I make an attempt to put myself together for a four hour drive to the next town and am wondering how I got this all up here…because I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to give in and get one of those carts from the lobby and drag my world back downstairs and across the frozen parking lot and back into my frozen car.

Because I don’t have enough arms for this.

And then, when I get dressed tonight, I’m going to have to call my mother or my sister to reassure me that I’m not too old to wear sequins on my boots…or my skirt.

Because I feel like I might be too old it, but at the same time, I also feel like if a girl has a chance in her life to wear sequins, she might as well just wear it.

Right?

These are the conversations I have with myself on the open road, between singing along to my iPod, getting depressed about the disappearance of the Dixie Chicks, eating an unhealthy amount of Gardettos, and coming up with elaborate and unrealistic plans for music videos or writing projects or neighborhood sledding parties…

Anyway. Tonight Husband is meeting up with me for the North Dakota Music Awards, and so is the band and my parents, so I’ll have some people to help me carry my shit, and drink vodka with and talk me out of all of my plans….

In the meantime, don’t you just wish you were here right now? Singing on the back of a horse drawn wagon in the middle of summer on your way to eat a homemade meal behind a tree row in a field.

Me too.

But this weekend’s gonna be fun. It’ll be cold outside, but we’ll be warming it up with some great music and celebration inside. If you’re in the Bismarck, ND area tonight or Fargo, ND this weekend I hope to see you out and about!