The day before yesterday I went grocery shopping.

Well — shopping was my intent.

What the outing actually turned out to be was more like grocery looting.

It was an accident! I didn’t mean to steal that package of quarter-pound Angus hamburger patties! I fully intended to pay for it, even if it was at the back of my mind that it was $4.68 I didn’t have to spend if I would just use the ground beef I’d bought for a quarter of the price at Super H-Mart a few weeks before and frozen. But A) Walmart’s pre-made Angus patties make far jucier burgers than the lean beef I use for tacos or mostaccioli and B) I make hamburger patties about as well as I make pancakes. And anyway, when you think about the fact that it’s $4.68 (plus the trifling cost of buns and condiments) for two meals for two people, that works out to be cheaper than ordering off the value menu at a fast food burger joint, with a better-than-restaurant-quality burger.

Even cheaper if you don’t pay for the meat.

Which is what I discovered I’d done as I lifted the Burt Squirt’s carseat carrier out of the shopping cart and discovered that the package of hamburger patties had slipped underneath it in the course of our shopping trip, escaping being rung up with the rest of my groceries.

Yes, I suppose I am blaming my thievery on my infant. Who might have been sound asleep at the time the incident occurred. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I needed to get him home and feed him (we’ll ignore the fact that once I got him home he continued to nap in his carseat carrier for another hour before he requested second lunch) I would have gone back in Walmart and paid for my meat.

Or I might have; whether he needed to eat or not, the Burt Squirt turns into a whiny creature if the buggy isn’t moving at all times, and we’d have been at a stand still at the customer service desk while I paid for my meat. As he’d spend a good part of our shopping trip whining before he eventually decided to take a nap, I wasn’t keen for a repeat performance.

Then there was the fact that I’d already unloaded the rest of my groceries into the trunk of the car, including milk and yogurt and cheese and chicken and other items that really shouldn’t sit out in 80 degree heat while I resolved my little shoplifting issue.

And anyway, there was always the chance they might not make me pay for it anyway, as a reward for my honesty. Right? Like the time in second grade when I noticed my teacher had failed to deduct a misspelled word from my spelling test grade, pointed out her error, and she said in reward for my honesty she’d let my 100 stand.

That character award she gave me at the end of the year for honesty should be revoked.

Because I decided that $4.68 wasn’t worth anyone’s time.

The purloined sirloin now currently resides in my refrigerator, and Mr. Burt and I are looking forward to tasty Angus burgers one night next week.

Hopefully my guilt won’t turn the taste bitter in my mouth.

And hopefully no one employed by Walmart is reading this post, as they prosecute shoplifters. How many years did Jean Valjean get in the Bagne of Toulon for stealing bread? (Only he did it on purpose. Because he was, you know, starving.)

This is what happens when you order a new TV, purchase a new TV stand from Ikea, and get a little too antsy about listing your old stuff on Craig’s List so you’ll be all ready when the new stuff arrives.  You get stuck with only a 13” TV/VCR combo in your massive entertainment center.  (That new 50” plasma is going to look like IMAX in comparison.)  You also have to reschedule the Wii night you remembered, an hour after a stranger drove off with the old TV, you were supposed to be having with your cousin and his wife this Friday.  Whoops.

The other day I was musing on the fact that this blog is titled “Inkblots in the Life of an Author,” yet I make very few posts about the authorial part of my life.  Probably most of you think I don’t actually do any authoring.  Rest assured, I do write, every day, from about 10 AM to 4 or 5 PM.  Respectable working hours, almost as if I had a real job!  (And I do generally take my meals at my desk while I work, so I think it’s okay that I don’t start at 8 or 9 like most working people.)

Anyway, all that to say, I actually have something from my writing to blog about today.

When you are a writer, you learn many fascinating things.  Usually these are nuggets of trivia gleaned from researching, but occasionally, they come from your own head.  For example, today I was tweaking the end of chapter thirteen, which I finished last week, and skimmed through to discover that Cupid doesn’t just stick to his day job.  Apparently, he also moonlights as a composer of piano music.

(Consider yourselves very fortunate to get the first ever sneak-peek of Songs for Piano and Voice, hopefully coming to a bookstore near you sometime this decade.)

“Have you ever considered that maybe I’m with a woman who’s so stunningly beautiful that I can’t think about what any other woman looks like?”

Laura blinked, twice.  “Good line,” she said, breathily.  Possibly experiencing the same fluttering sensations as John was, as if someone were using his organs as a keyboard to play Cupid’s “Minute Waltz.”

Eleven years of piano lessons, and I had no idea that anyone but Frédéric Chopin had written a Minute Waltz.  But lo, there is another one — and by Cupid, no less!

Okay, the jig’s up.  That was supposed to say Chopin’s Minute Waltz, but somehow my fingers took leave of my brain and typed Cupid’s.  This is so much worse than the time I was editing my work and found a completely made-up word.  Where did that come from?!

Really, I worry about myself sometimes, and about my future publication endeavors.  How will anyone ever be able to edit my work if they don’t know what the heck I’m trying to say?!

Does it count for anything that I know the above punctuation (?!) is properly called an interrobang?    No?  Okay then.  Back to work.  I’ve got to torture a pianist, recently struck by Cupid’s arrow, with the return of his ex-wife.