Miss Meli Mac Mac Mac!!!

Assuming there's a "you" out there reading this, you should check out my dear old friend Melissa's blog.
I am absolutely loving it and can't wait to watch her become the Pioneer Woman of Pittsburgh! (Even though she actually has quite little in common with Pioneer Woman... except that blog superstardom surely awaits! That and she could totally take on anyone in any of Pioneer Woman's photography contests.) In fact, I hope to make Rose Monkey bigger and better in the near future, and Meli is totally my inspiration for doing so. After all, none other than Melissa Ann McMasters (thank you MAM) got me writing to begin with, back around 1989, when we were next-door neighbors on Bobbitt Drive. At the age of 5. Yes, folks, that is what we did for fun. I showed up at her house one day and was zazzled (I am so sleep-deprived that I am now inventing words like "zazzled") to see that she had in fact written multiple books, and I made up my mind to do likewise. So we would get together and write, you know, in between playing Barbies and trading erasers and listening to the "Buster" soundtrack and pretending to be British royalty and all the other things typical elementary schoolers do.

I will be forever grateful to my parents for choosing to purchase the house next door to hers, because many of my fondest childhood memories -- and beyond -- have somehow wound up involving that girl. Sometimes I wonder how different things would be for me today had I grown up next door to someone less amazing, less talented, less brilliant. It would not have been a good thing, my dears.

And on that note, I am off to get some reading done for class. Au revoir!