When I arrived home from Alt Design Summit, one of the swag items was a button that reads "I am awesome."
My almost 12-year-old daughter snagged it immediately and wore it around the house for the rest of the day, and then stuck it on her backpack and has worn it back and forth to school ever since.

My son, after finally FINALLY conquering his timed math test demons, demanded Kentucky Fried Chicken's mashed potatoes.

My 8-year-old daughter has invented several trampoline maneuvers on our mini-trampoline, and has been gleefully naming them. One is called "smoke legs."

I haven't seen a single episode of American Idol this year. I don't know how or if I am going to catch up, or if I care. I hate these early episodes anyway. Too much drama.

I've been attacked by bizarre snippets of scenes and characters that want to be written down in one of my 50 "someday I'll write a novel" notebooks but always when I'm nowhere near a pen. They tend to be rather cinematic. I can see them playing out - sometimes something as simple as a reaction to an event, up to an entire storyline for a yet-to-be-written character. I get them in the shower, in the car, and in that weird twilght haze after the alarm has gone off, but before I can haul my carcass out of the bed. I assume this means I'll need to keep some sort of recording device on hand so I can blurt out my ideas for later transcribing.

This also means I'll be able to make sound effects to compliment the visuals that I haven't adequately put into words. Just the thought of capturing those random thoughts, possibly with the sounds of the shower, or traffic, or my own sleepy voice mumbling incoherently, one after another, with no connective thread, seems like high comedy waiting to happen. I'm a little afraid that my creative process will somehow backfire, and my kids will use my insane sounding ramblings as proof that they should be emancipated teens.

But then again, I'm really so not worried about it.