Oi for Monday

It was a lovely weekend. My birthday was Saturday and I really had a wonderful day. Very calm, very relaxing, but that isn't the point of this post.

You see, I've been re-reading the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. I LOVE these books. Even though I've read the series start to finish at least twice before now, when I pick them up after a while, I still crack up laughing at the monkey on Lulu's back, Grandma shooting the roast chicken, and any other of Stephanie's crazy life. What got me to thinking was, if you're a fan of the series, you know how Stephanie ranks birthday cake up there before sex. Morelli thinks sex comes first, but she thinks birthday cake should come first.

Well, as a result of reading this entire series over the last week, when my birthday rolled around, I didn't have a 'real' birthday cake. I went to dinner with my immediate family and left the restaurant with a slice of the most sinful chocolate cheesecake with fudge and caramel sauce topped with pecans. It was so good, I can't lie: I drooled a little bit. Mm, that cheesecake was divine!

However, yesterday morning, I finished reading Ten Big Ones and of course, Stephanie was going on about birthday cake. I put the book away and decided I needed to do my weekly shopping. I headed to town (down here, you're either going down the bayou, up the bayou, or 'going to town' even if you live in town) to get some food for this week. I'm wandering around the grocery store, picking up things and somehow I found myself in front of the bakery. There, sitting on a shelf, was a beautiful white icing birthday cake with a red border and huge red roses. Even better, it was a chocolate cake. So what does a Stephanie do when she's confronted with this temptation? You bet! I made room in my basket for the cake. It's now sitting on the counter at home looking like it was butchered. No, I didn't eat it by myself, I had a lot of help.

So I just wonder how often it is that we get 'inspired' or 'persuaded' to do things from the books we read. The birthday cake isn't the first time I've found myself thinking 'oh man, that sounds REALLY good right now', whether it's swimming, or having a few drinks, or buying a birthday cake I really don't need.