It is 4:30 am, and I would much rather be sleeping. Instead, I'm sipping some sort of witches' brew of a tea, trying to calm the cough that is challenging both my desire to be dreaming and my pelvic floor muscles. Nothing says awesome like piddling while you cough! At 4 am!

I lost my voice this last weekend, and I'm blaming Stephanie O'Dea. This isn't entirely fair, because my voice was already going by the time I met up with Steph at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco. We were both there to attend BlogHer Food, although I wasn't able to be there for both days of the event.

Last week was grueling, with pollen counts sky high, and Indian Summer in full swing. I spent hours on the phone talking about work, and all three kids were home sick on Thursday and Friday with coughs and slight fevers. The delightful combination of trying to have conference calls while kids were bickering in the background stretched my poor vocal chords in ways they were not happy to go. So naturally, a conference setting where I needed to talk over the buzz of conversation was not going to be a good thing for my voice.

Anyhoo, I'm blaming Steph, since we were long overdue to catch up on our lives, and she's just so stinking fun that we had a glass of wine and ate bar food (burger for me, with incredibly overseasoned fries - whatup Intercontinental? Why so salty? My tongue felt like sandpaper after two fries!) and stayed up talking until midnight.

The following morning, Steph showed up at my door clutching a hot coffee and beaming, while I stood around in my slip and experimentally tried out my pipes. At this point, I had a delightful, 2-packs a day for 20 years timbre going on, but was still basically understandable.

After a lovely breakfast, where I met some really wonderful food bloggers and caught up with some of my favorite BlogHers, I briefly attended the food styling session, realized I was in over my head, and with Steph at my side, wandered out to the vendor area. We had a blast monopolizing the sponsor reps on what should have been their break time. We talked to the rep at the Scharffen Berger table for a long time, and then had a hilarious conversation with the gal at the Nutella table that involved ad campaign ideas from me and Steph. Well, we thought we were hilarious. But if they come out with a campaign that involves moms swiping nutella on sprouted grain bagles for the kids at 8 am, and then shows the same moms at 4 pm, being caught in the pantry shoving down giant spoonfuls of Nutella straight out of the jar, then you know who suggested it.

After the morning sessions, we boarded a bus to the Ferry Building to wander the vendors and see the farmer's market. But it was hot and crowded and both of us grew quickly overwhelmed, so we decided to walk back to the hotel. Of course, Yank Sing was on the way, so I insisted we stop for some take-out dim sum. It was delish, as always.

Back at the hotel, we relaxed for a few minutes, and then headed up to Sean's session on old skool kitchen arts, which focused on canning and preserving foods. I've never even entertained the notion of canning before, because I'm a) lazy and b) not that sophisticated when it comes to the foods I prefer. And truthfully, it may not ever happen, but looking in my cupboards at the four jars of sundried tomatoes and the six jars of tomato sauce and the six jars of roasted peppers and I'm thinking.

I loved the point that was made during the session that you should really evaluate what you eat and use to enhance your meals. Like, don't make 700 jars of jam if you don't eat jam. (We really don't eat jams and jellies.) Don't make pickles if you don't eat pickles. (I totally eat pickles.) This made me grin a bit, thinking about when my dear friend Elise got her first Kitchen-Aid mixer and went on a bread baking frenzy. She brought every single person in her life a dense, super-complex loaf of bread at every opportunity for a while there, because she just couldn't stop baking it, but she couldn't possibly eat it all herself. I can see how canning could quickly get out of control, is what I'm saying.

The closing keynote was remarkable, and really reminded me why I love blogging so much. Shauna Ahern, Molly Wizenberg and Michael Ruhlman brought sighs and gasps and nods and tears out from the audience as they talked about their motivations, inspirations and the need to write.

I held on for a few more hours, attending the fantastic closing party hosted by Ree Drummond, Elise Bauer and Jaden Hair, but my voice, she was gone. And now, three days later, I'm up coughing and piddling in the wee dark hours of the morning. Maybe the coughing signals the return of my voice?

Or maybe I've been infected with The Strain
. Man, that is a creepy book.