Monday's List

1. Today is Daredevil's 9th birthday.

2. We'll be spending a chunk of it at Chuck E. Cheese.

3. This doesn't bother me because I'm adept at ignoring copious amounts of background noise (I live with boys, remember?) and because the kids will spend an hour happily playing while my hubby and I get to sit and talk.

4. I spent four days revising a chapter on SHADOWING FATE this week.

5. I don't think the dictionary definition of "frustrated" accurately conveys the depths of my jaw-clenching, head-beating-against-my-keyboard angst.

6. The solution came to me Saturday night at work while I was making an apple dumpling for a table.

7. I left the dessert sitting there, whipped out my ordering pad, and jotted plot notes to myself.

8. The book will be finished this week if it kills me.

9. In other news, I had a Murphy-In-Charge night at work last week...I won't go into all the gory details but the final straw was the moment I was frantically working to make hot fudge sundaes for my last table (after already having to go tell them we were out of the original dessert they'd ordered) and NOTHING was stocked on the prep counter.

10. I scrounged for sundae mugs, went looking for hot fudge sauce, threatening the ice cream with an immediate appointment with a sink full of hot water if it didn't just scoop already...

11. Then the whip cream container had an air bubble of some sort. I didn't know this, of course, until I pressed the nozzle and shot whip cream all over the freakin' counter.

12. People were watching the circus that was me trying to make sundaes with varying degrees of amusement and sympathy.

13. I fixed the whip cream debacle, snatched for the chopped peanuts container (one of those salad dressing containers where you slide part of the lid open and pour the contents out), and poured some into my hand so I could sprinkle them artistically over the top of the sundaes.

14. Only the nut container wasn't where it was supposed to be.

15. In its place was a container of thick, gooey vanilla flavoring.

16. I stood there, wild-eyed, whip cream covered, holding a hand now running over with rich, syrupy vanilla and dared anyone, ANYONE, to be the first to laugh.

17. I realize it might be difficult to kill with just a handful of vanilla flavoring but I was going to give it my best shot.

18. We saw Journey to the Center of the Earth this week. In 3 D.

19. The kids loved it, I was moderately entertained, and we all ate too much popcorn.

20. The real entertainment value lies in the 3D glasses we were allowed to keep (thick black square-shaped shades-yes, the shape of evil!-that remind me of the glasses worn by that crazy inventor in Honey I Shrunk The Kids).

21. Starshine and Daredevil wore them all through Walmart afterwards and I came downstairs recently to see them playing gamecube while wearing not one, but two pair of 3D glasses each.

22. Apparently wearing just one interferes with their ability to see the screen but layering their accessories solves the problem.