Sometimes I’m lazy and it pays off, like when I don’t feel like getting off the couch and Wes bring me a water refill and then the water tastes better because everything tastes better when someone else gets it for you.

Sometimes, however, laziness bites me right on the meatiest part of my backside. I took Aidan to run a few errands today and we made it to our last stop, Barnes & Noble, without incident (I wanted to pick up a book of crossword puzzles for our upcoming vacation. What has four letters and fits this sentence: Erika is a huge ____. Hint: The third letter is an R).

I was tired from schlepping him in and out of multiple stores, and when I saw that his stroller was way back in the third row seat, just out of reach, I decided to just carry him. It was going to be a quick stop, in and out. No need for a stroller,

Or so I thought.

I decided to make use of the restroom facilities before completing our shopping, so I set Aidan down in the handicapped stall with me and tried to do my business as quickly as I could. Fiendishly fast troublemaker he is, though, he managed to dip his hand into the toilet water of the public restroom in the .00025 seconds it took me to undo the top button on my pants.

His hand. Was in. The toilet.

Public bathroom.

UNKNOWN FECES CONTRIBUTORS.

You know that screen that comes on the television when they’re testing the emergency broadcasting signal? That’s what flashed through my brain the instant his hand touched the water. It was all I could do not to improvise a Silkwood Shower for him on the spot. My brain was screaming “Bleach his hand! Bleach it! Bleach it good!” But my common sense was there too, so I settled for good old-fashioned soap, water, and some more soap and water.

So now all I can hear in my head is George Bluth’s voice telling me, “And that’s why you always bring a stroller.”

Way back in May, when I decided on June 20 as the release date for PWNED, I thought June seemed really, very, quite far away indeed. Then June 1 rolled around and I thought June 20 still seemed really far away.

And now it’s June 13, and the release date of my first book is a week away, and I’m so excited that I’m vibrating like a toy poodle and it has nothing to do with how much coffee I’ve drunk this morning. I emailed the final version of the book to my publisher this morning, and in one week it’ll be sitting out on virtual bookshelves.

I’ll be a published author.

I feel like Neo from The Matrix. Whoa.

So what does a nearly-published author do the weekend before her book is released? Clean a whole heckuva lot of red wine off her white carpet. That’s what.

Wes’s parents came over for dinner on Saturday and I made the mistake of sitting on the floor with a glass of red wine while we were chatting. Aidan, the little monkey he is, came right up to me and, in that freakishly fast way only toddlers seem capable of, batted the glass of wine right out of my hand.

I swear I saw my life flash before my eyes as those red droplets of carpet mayhem went sailing down to the floor. I watched my abnormally large safety deposit never come back to me. I watched my landlord burst into flames of rage. But mostly I just saw Aidan, smiling at the delightful pattern he made on the floor.

Lucky for me, my mother-in-law and I are carpet-stain-removing ninjas. You can’t even tell that a bottle of wine has ever even graced our house, that’s how nice the carpet looks now. But it was a long, laborious road to get there.

We had to deforest an entire acre of pristine jungle in order to create the quantities of paper towels required to clean up a mess of that magnitude. We had to use enough carpet cleaner to remove a dalmatian’s spots, and then keep the baby from rolling around in all that chemical-y goodness.

Needless to say, when you come over to our house, we know how to show you a good time. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to clean our carpets. If you’re really lucky, we might just let you change a diaper.

So that was my glamorous weekend. Oh sure, there were steaks and burgers, I found out I lost a pound last week (huzzah!) and I baked a coffee cake so good it literally knocked Aidan’s socks off. But what sticks out is the wine.

Because if you’re going to perpetrate a party foul? Go big or go home. Don’t just interrupt the party. Put your guests to work and then send them home!

Speaking of which, does anyone want to come over for dinner? There’s some silverware that needs polishing…