yum! my first paycheck...

At the midpoint of my spring break, which I've also designated a writing-free break, I took the family out to our favorite brew pub for dinner to celebrate depositing my very first advance check into our (previously nonexistant) savings account.  Monkey was simply thrilled to have his "vewy own KNIFE!"







Strangely, my wild rice burger had a sad face made up of chipotle sauce.  Maybe because I ordered it without the pile of fried onions?  The sadface was a bit counter to our purpose there, but we said a toast and clanked glasses of "Daddy Pop" (and draft orange cream soda--yum!) and celebrated being a "real" writer.

I said, "Thank you, family, for being flexible with me so that I had a chance to write this book," and Jabber looked up from his new copy of the second Diary of a Wimpy Kid to say, "Whaaaat?  You wrote a book???"  I guess he thought I was just playing tetris all this time at the computer?

Monkey gleefully requested the slice of lemon that balanced on the rim of Jabber's glass, and then he took huge bites of the sour fruit like he has since he was just a tiny baby, pausing in between each bite to shudder comically, his little mouth twisting up into a pucker.

We made a stop at our favorite bookstore (The Bookstore at Fitger's) for some new picture books (and to feed Jabber's Wimpy Kid addiction), and we read the wonderfully onomatopoetic and alliterative Utterly Otterly Day, by Mary Casanova, while we waited for our food to arrive. 

(Yes. I am making a very strange face there.  Not to spoil the book, but there is a rather frightening scene involving a cougar!)

Now I'm going to go back to reading (Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon and Invincible Summer, by Hannah Moskowitz), playing guitar (mainly two Brandi Carlile songs about seven times slower than she plays them), and watching old movies I've somehow never seen (last night was Poltergeist--great fun!)

I'll start on the schoolwork on Sunday night, as usual, and next week will be back to business in the home stretch to summer.