Woman Crush Wednesday.

When we were dating, I remember walking in to the den one day and finding Jeremy watching an episode of one of Giada De Laurentiis's many cooking shows. He said to me, "Sweetie, before I met you, I thought she was the perfect woman." I can still see the way he wagged his whole hand back and forth as he said it.

Now, that sure was nice of him to say, but let's be honest: Giada's worth a gabillion dollars, can cook like a son of a gun, and the whole of her skinny self could comfortably fit into my left leg. If we're looking for "perfect," she's a lot more on target than I'll EVER be.  Still, I joked with him about his celebrity crush and have continued to tease him about it in the almost five years since then. Then, just before his birthday, I read that Giada was coming to Atlanta. I called Mom, who instantly said she wanted to buy Jeremy tickets as his gift, and that's how Jeremy came to be with his Woman Crush on a blustery November Wednesday.  

We had an absolutely awesome date that lasted almost all day. We left the boys in Greenville and headed to Atlanta a little after 1 p.m. On the way, we stopped near Gainesville to meet up with another Allstate agent, a guy named Matt Pruitt that Jeremy became buddies with during their ten days of training in Chicago. Then, we got to the Fox. We waited for about an hour before Giada showed up for our "meet and greet" with her ... and about 400 other people. Our one-on-one time was about six seconds long (literally), but she was perfectly pleasant. Then we took our seats in the ballroom and waited for the main event. 

As we did, Jeremy started talking to the couple next to us. I'd say they were in their mid-60s or so and in Atlanta from Raleigh. The wife said, "We're here to celebrate his birthday." I said, "We're doing the same!" And then her husband said about Giada, "I just found out she can COOK a few weeks ago!" The takeaway from the fact that we were sitting beside another couple who came for the HUSBAND is evidence to me that Giada's got that "thing."             

She also has a LOT of teeth. There have to be a THOUSAND of them. I actually blew our picture up on my phone and tried to count them. Or maybe her smile looks so gigantic, because everything else on her is so much smaller. If Giada had a face as round and full as the lovely Ina Garten, say, maybe her enormous smile would look NORMAL.

Or maybe not. 

The point remains, she was great; the event was great, and the nite got even greater when Jeremy surprised me with a late dinner at my favorite restaurant in the entire world. Bone's is where I celebrated every big event of my early and mid-20s. Its steak and signature salad were well worth breaking the Weight Watch-ing "bank" before we hit the highway home last nite. If I told him once during dinner, I told him a thousand times - "Thank you so much for being so thoughtful." 

Poor skinny, talented, rich Giada doesn't know what she's missing.