Today was my day off.  The children were also off from school.  And, it was My Honey’s and Roscoe the Idiot Dog’s birthdays.  I should never have woken up.

I tried desperately to sleep in.  No dice.  I was awakened by The Bandit jumping on me.  Literally.  And Sassy complaining that she was huuuuuungryyyyyyy.  So we got up and headed off to get Daddy’s presents.  First, I had to stop off a a book store to pick up my friend’s new book.  It just came out today.  YIPPEE for her.  Check it out – Sherrill Quinn – Taming the Moon.  My children, specifically the boy, acted so horribly that I had to drag them out of the store without making my purchase.

Then we went to the mall and got My Honey’s presents and his cards.

After that I made my first of several trips to the grocery store to get the stuff to make his cake.

We went home and I made the cake with “assistance” of Sassy and The Bandit.  I sent them into the living room to watch a Disney movie while I got the cake batter off the ceiling.  We left the cake to cool so we could frost it and ate some popcorn and watched the movie.

And then the dog at the cake.

click to enlarge

Deep sigh.

So I made another trip to the grocery store for more cake mix.

I got home and got started on cake #2.  Only there weren’t anymore eggs.

So I made another trip to the grocery store.  If you’re keeping score at home, that’s trip number three.

While I was there, I got the email from my editor for the 1st of approximately 58,376 edits she wants me to make on the story I sold.  So I had a nervous breakdown in Fry’s Grocery store and immediately called my sisters.  Ava talked me off the ledge right there in the produce department.  The gentleman buying bananas thought me strange indeed.  I spoke with Isabella immediately after and she finished where Ava left off.  I’ll be fine.  Really.  But, I’m certainly going to start drinking.  What hard liquor goes best with cupcakes?

So it’s getting late.  Let me show you what I found when I went into The Bandit’s bedroom:

I’m going to clean his room with a front loader and a dumpster tomorrow.

And this is why it takes me forever to get any writing finished.  You wonder why I’m up all hours of the night?  Because after I make 2 birthday cakes, do the laundry, defend the chicken parmesan from the dog and clean up this sty…….it’s freaking midnight.

Chocolate cake and my friend Jose Cuervo.

If you have a blister or a cut upon your person, don’t come to my house.  I will have to send you away without first aid.  Last night I was undressing The Bandit to get him in his pajamas and, when I pulled off his shirt, I found approximately 32 band-aids scattering his torso and legs.  There was Batman and Scooby Doo, a random Hannah Montana here and there, a couple of Cars and Nemo, and one or two regular grown up band-aids for good measure.  Every single freckle had a bandage.  Every blemish.  Every imperfection of his skin.  Every imagined boo-boo.  If you were smart, you’d invest your money in Johnson and Johnson.

My Honey and I were faithfully watching the Olympics like we have since they started earlier this month and ice dancing came on.  My Honey couldn’t understand the difference between that discipline and pairs skating.  I tried to explain the nuances to him, but he didn’t really want to listen.  Instead, he suggested that they combine ice dancing with curling.  Perhaps they could set the curling stone thingy on fire and maybe put razor blades on the little brooms to add even more danger.  He thought they could change the name to Peril Skating.  He may have something there.  I’d like to hear Bob Costas announce that.

My Honey and I are working on a “trailer” for the story that I sold.  That’s the newest fad – a 20 or 30 second video commercial if you will.  I have a very clear idea of what I want it to be.  I can’t tell you any more of this story because he very clearly, and in an unusually stern voice, informed me that he would divorce me without a second thought if I did.  But I want you to know that there is a story out there in the ether somewhere that had me laughing so hard that I may have wet my pants just a little and certainly wheezed for the rest of the night.  If he does something that REALLY pisses me off someday……

Shoebox blog:

I LOVE Google.  I look stuff up on my phone all the time.  For example, not that long ago, My Honey and I were at a restaurant – alone, and the waiter babbled off the specials.  When he got to langoustine I had to pause.  I refused to admit to the waiter that I had no idea what that was.  I’d heard the word before but I couldn’t bring to mind the definition or a picture in my head.  I asked him to tell us how it was cooked hoping that would spark a recollection.  Nope.  The minute he left the table, My Honey and I said in unison, “What’s a langoustine?”  Quickly I Googled it and consequently ordered it.  YUM!

For those of you who don’t know either:  

: a small edible lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) of European seas having long slender claws —called also Dublin Bay prawn, Norway lobster

“ooooh, put me in butter and I’ll make your taste buds sing!”

(They’re kind of creepy, no?  I can eat them, but I can’t look at them.  Regular lobsters either.  They get my arachnophobia all in an uproar.)

Did any of the rest of you hear that really loud boom around 5:30 MST?  It originated in mid-town Tucson so you of all in other states may not have heard and, those of you that are local, probably thought it had something to do with the Air Force base.

It wasn’t though.  It was my brain.  It exploded and it wasn’t pretty.

I came home from work and found huge sections, entire shelves actually, of my bookshelves that had been emptied entirely of books and thrown unceremoniously on the floor.  The spine on my 2,232 page Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language  is broken.  Of course no one knows who did it.

Once upon a time, long, long ago there was a princess that lived in a lovely castle.  It was clean.  When the princess wanted to read a book, she would go to her library where there were rows and rows of books, some three deep, and select exactly the tome she was looking for because it would be exactly where she left it.  Every book was lovingly cared for, they were all where she left them, and they were as neatly ordered as the Library of Congress.

And then she had kids and everything went to shit.

This post is sooooo not as exciting as the previous post.  Go read it again.  I’ll wait.

I finished book 10 of the 11 today.  That puts me at 3,104 pages and 15 days to read the last book.

Go read the previous post one more time.  It’ll make you feel good.

I can’t stop giggling and My Honey has asked me to please stop hitting him.

I SOLD A STORY TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I received the news today on my Blackberry.  I get my emails all through the day that way.  Sometimes I think that it’s not good for my sanity.  I checked my email approximately 16,354,808,676 since I submitted my story on Valentines Day. 

Side note: how fitting is that?  A romance on Valentines Day! 

I work with Isabella’s husband (and Isabella, too, but she wasn’t in today) and he was standing right next to me when I read the email.  He was a little alarmed when I shrieked and starting jumping around.  I thrust the phone at him so he could read it.  I am quite sure that he is bruised from my over exuberance. 

So I called Isabella.  No answer.  I called Ava.  No answer.  I called My Honey.  NO FRIGGIN ANSWER!  Seriously people.  AAARRRRGGGG!  I called my mom and thank God (the God of call waiting) she answered the phone.    I called another very good friend at my old job and she didn’t answer.  It was agony. 

I’m going to institue a new policy.  When I call ANSWER THE FREAKING PHONE.

Anywho – I finally talked to all the important people so …..Yea for me! 

Now I get to think of all kinds of exciting things like COVER ART  (giggle giggle).  Isabella, Ava and I are going to celebrate with cake as soon as the three of us can get into the same room together.

Rest assured, I’ll be keeping you posted with all the details and how to buy it as soon as that information is available.

I realize that there is a lot of examples of ALL CAPS here but be patient with me.  I’m sure My Honey would be happy for you to come over and get hit for a while.

I think our blog might be haunted.  Every once in a while it changes it’s own settings.  The one that drives me the most crazy is that every so often, it decides all on its own that it no longer wants to accept comments.

ANYWAY – Isabella has fixed it yet again.

Comment away, people, so I’ll know you’re out there.

I’ve told you these pages before that My Honey is a musician.  He’s very serious about it, too.

Here he is at some gig or another playing his bass and grinning. 

Well the kids across the street have formed a “band”. 

There are two things I’d like to bring to your attention about that sentence: “the kids across the street have formed a “band”.

1) I am appalled that I have called them kids.  Good lord, when did I get this old?  But they are kids – all of them 16 or 17.  I sincerely hope I’m not “that old lady” that lives across the street.

2) I have also referred to them as a “band”.  This is using the term “band” and that they play “music” in the loosest possible interpretation of those words.  It’s not for a lack of trying that their music is bad, nay terrible.  Those boys are out there every damn night but there has been no improvement.  God help us all – the God of earplugs and sound ordinances.

We were sitting down for dinner tonight and I opened the blind over the dining table because I like to watch the neighborhood while we eat.  The weirdos from my neighborhood are a far sight less disturbing than watching my children eat.  So as I ate the delicious orange chicken that my husband prepared, I begin to see the band members start to arrive.  About the time the garage door opened across the street, I notice that My Honey has a very surly expression on his face.

“What’s with you?” I ask

“I just don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to put up with that,” he replies.

I look at the children.  I assume that it’s some new obnoxious behavior from Sassy and The Bandit to which he is referring.    It was true that neither child was sitting in their chair.  It was also true that they were both singing with half masticated food in their mouths.  I suspect that Sassy wasn’t using a fork either, but I couldn’t understand why all of a sudden this appalling behavior was too much to bear.

“What?” I ask.

He gestures out the window.  “That.  I can’t take it.”  His face is deadly serious.  He means it.

So I shifted my attention back to the growing crowd across the street.  “Do you mean them?”

“YES!”

“Why?  Is it because there is so many of them over there?  They’re not doing anything bad.”  He just glares at me and all of a sudden it dawns on me.  “Oh! It’s because they’re so awful isn’t it?”

“OH MY GOD!  They’re horrible.”  He is startlingly serious.

“Oh come on.  At least they’re not coming over here to ask you for advice.  And really, it wasn’t that long ago when you were in awful teenage band.”

He’s not moving from his implacable opinion.  I myself, the admitted hater of other people, surprisingly don’t have a problem with the band.

What I will have a problem with is the teenage groupies, the girls with too much makeup on and too tight pants, that will inevitably show up.

At that point, I’ll grab the garden hose.

I realize that the boy has been lampooned because of it, but seriously, if I could knock down Shaun White and take away his gorgeous auburn hair, I would do it without a thought.  He even has a beautiful hair cut.

Look at that gorgeous layering. 

I was so gypped.

Finished book 9.  It was my day off today and since Ava stood me up for lunch (entirely not her fault by the way) I got a lot of reading done.  So I’ll start book 10 tonight or tomorrow.  That’s 2,831 pages read.

ALSO, just to keep you from worrying too much, I also tell you that I wrote 7 new pages yesterday.  That pleases me immensely.  I hate to be in a rut.