… and our first glamp-mobile is ready for viewing! Let’s begin with THE pink chair for sitting …

with a whole lot of adorable kiddos! (Sweetest, most polite kids we’ve met in a long time.)

A bloomin’ pair of bloomers for wind checks.

And glamporific book signings. Since my mother was celebrating her 60th b-day, she treated herself to a surprise, well, actually, she WAS the surprise … guest. No one but chapter leader, April Choate, knew she was going to show up. Who doesn’t like a birthday surprise?!

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 5,091 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—6,887 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ

For this week’s Stitching and Crafting/Ink Slinger Merit Badge, I finished the last page of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, with a satisfied sound and prepared to … wait for it …

Write the Great American Novel.

Well, eventually.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 5,091 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—6,887 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ

For this week’s Cleaning Up/Recycling Merit Badge, I got back to basics. You see, I’ve been a half-hearted recycler, a part-time recycler, and a salvager, but I’ve never really focused, learned, and applied recycling practices in my home.

I know, I know. I hang my head in shame. I’m even wringing my hands, for crying out loud, so you know I’m contrite.

Being a very visionary-type person, one thing that held me back was not having appropriate containers in my house near the trash in order to properly commit to this recycling business. I mean, yes, I have my big ol’ county-owned recycling can outside, and that’s used occasionally for the big things … the flattened boxes from my over-abundant eBay purchases, large milk jugs, and my organic root beer bottles, to name a few. But when it comes to every last scrap of paper, or each and every tissue, or discarded envelope, or soup can, well, I must admit to tossing them willy-nilly in the regular trash under my kitchen sink.

But no more. I am repenting, girls.

First things first: I educated myself on what exactly could be recycled in my area and found out a few things I’d been doing wrong when I did get a wild hair (hare?) and tossed the wrong things in my recycling bin. Turns out I was tossing things like caps to my laundry detergent and ketchup bottles, broken glass, and mirrors (I was distracted at the time by fretting about my seven years’ bad luck), lightbulbs, and those heavier-type plastic containers (you know, like the ones lettuce sometimes come packaged in, or other produce). I feel very knowledgeable now, and also feel like I may owe my recycling man an apology. I’m surprised he hasn’t been leaving me warning notes. I decided to leave a full root beer bottle as penance for my sins.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 4,945 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—6,765 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ

For this week’s Each Other/I Should Have Been in the Movies! Merit Badge, I had to conquer a lifelong fear. A phobia. Not spiders, those misunderstood little gentlemen of the buggy world. Not heights, which give me a delicious, butterflies-in-the-ol’-tummy kind of thrill. Not deep water, which only makes me practice my mermaid kicks and hair tossing. Not even the dark, which just makes me crave warm milk and a nap. No, no, my fear is of … public speaking.

I know. You’re shocked, right? I kinda am, too. I mean, I’m an exuberant personality! A talkative gal! If I were to write my autobiography, it’d be chock full of exclamation points!!!!!!!!

!!

But there’s something about putting me on stage, or *gulp* focusing a camera on Yours Truly, and I freeze.

Just ask my third grade teacher, Miss Trunchbull, who demoted me from Pretty Princess to Rock #4 faster than you could say, Speak up, Miss Jane, I can’t hear a word you’re saying over all that melodramatic knee knocking.

Memories. Some light the corners of your mind and some just need to be buried under a mountain of chocolate pudding.

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