In a Perfect Universe ...

In a perfect universe:

1) The shopping cart I pushed at the grocery store today wouldn’t have had chunks of hair stuck in the wheels. Yes, chunks. Of hair. Because I didn’t notice until I was on the far side of the store, and once I did notice, I spent the better half of the morning mentally cataloguing the ways HAIR could get stuck in the wheels of my SHOPPING CART. Needless to say, that is a nasty way to start your day.

2) Intolerant mouthbreathers would not scratch, dent, ding, or key my car just because I have an innocuous little magnet with a presidential candidate’s name on it.

3) The chunks of hair in my shopping cart’s wheels would have come from my repeatedly running over the mouthbreather who scratched the snot out of my car this weekend.

4) Every bookseller I met would be able to recommend a book I’d adore and glom and want to talk incessantly about just as much as Katherine Neville’s The Eight, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, that last Harry Potter book, or Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Because searching for my next glom fix is getting expensive, people.

5) The words “I don’t like to read” would never cross anyone’s lips. Because yes, I get judgmental. That's probably not fair to you non-readers out there, but there it is. (You know you're a dork when ...)

6) My characters would stop smiling, breathing, and blinking and do something interesting for a change.

7) My energy level would be directly proportionate to my youngest daughters’, no vats of Diet Coke required.

8) I would wake up every morning with a bluebird on my shoulder and chirp, “I can’t wait to outline my new plot!”

9) Publishers wouldn’t publish bad books with great covers, which ultimately cause me to waste gobs of cash to read 25 pages, drop said bad book in my driveway, and run it over. “He touched her hand, and electricity zinged up her arm?” Really? Seriously? That’s the best you could come up with?

10) I would be better about blogging.

11) I would, of course, be queen.