A brilliant innovation: instead of making cookie dough and baking cookies, make cookie dough and keep it in the refrigerator all week. Then, bake only enough cookies to eat while still warm every night. This way, the cookies are always freshly baked! No stale, week-old cookies wasting away in a tin. Only warm cookies with gooey chocolate chips melting the vanilla ice cream on top of them. Oh yeah. It's so simple... And, yet, somehow I'd never thought of it before.

I decided to run the dogs through their tricks today. For Trudy, that means "sit," "lie down," and "shake (hands)." For Dale, it means "sit," "roll over," and "turn around" -- though, she can't tell the last two apart. Needless to say, they're not all that impressive.

However, it's been a long time since I've bothered quizzing them, and, apparently, Elaine doesn't remember seeing it before. From the look in her eye, you would think I had performed actual magic. With mere words, I had controlled the movements of wild beasts!

If only she could have seen Patrick...

When people -- especially other writers -- hear that my husband and mother are my main editors, they usually suggest I might be better off with... well, editors who would be more comfortable being cruel. These people, of course, have never had their work edited by Daniel.

In response to the various drafts of the story I finished earlier this week, Daniel suggested:

"Perhaps it would be more exciting with space voles?"
"The end is unsatisfying, and the characterization of the friend is superfluous."
"You could try cutting the entire second half."
"This is better... I can see potential here."

And, finally, "I can't find anything wrong with it.

Yeah. With responses like that, I probably wouldn't even let Daniel read my stories (or at least comment on them) if he wasn't a really good editor.

I've decided to start a league of lizards and small desert birds, joined together, in the full twilight of righteousness, waging an eternal battle against the evil forces of Daylight Savings Time.

Elaine will fly on an airplane for her first time today. Myself, I've avoided flying for about five years now, but this should be a pretty easy flight: Seattle to San Jose. And, thankfully, Daniel was able to change our seats around last minute, so we can all sit together. It may be a challenge keeping her happy for the full flight, but I've done what I can with packing toys. For one, she'll get a plush Ernie doll when we get to the plane.

Elaine's been extremely enamored of Ernie since my dad introduced her to youtube videos of classic Seseame Street last week. Kermit's pretty good -- but Ernie is her favorite. Yesterday, she kept trying to share her breakfast with him. She'd hold her toast out to my computer screen and say, "Eee!" and "Shaa!" Meaning, "Ernie" and "share." She also went around finding rubber ducks and offering them to the alter of my monitor.