The Strategy of a Reader...

Chips

Homemade Salsa

3 Jars of Babyfood

Garden Veggie Sticks (sounds healthier that it really is...kind of chip-like things, similar to the veggie rainbow pasta...can you really count that as veggie?)

Ice Cream

This was essential ammunition for me this evening.  I had a mission...I HAD to finish my book.  Not HAD to in a "this-book-is-way-overdue-and-at-this-rate-I-may-as-well-buy-a-brick-with-my-name-engraved-as-a-high-library-donor-if-I don't-turn-it-in-today" kind of way but in the "let's-face-it-I'm-addicted-so-let's-rush-to-the-end-to-get-back-to-life" kind of way.  Fess up.  You've been there too.  With Twilight.  Anyway, so there I was, at the end.  The climax.  I couldn't put it down.   Kids wanted me.  What was I to do?  I said, "You want a snack?"  Which was probably intended more as a declaration than a question.  So out came the chips and salsa.  It occupied them (even Alana could pick up the chunky parts by herself).  What?  You're making a sound?  Here, have this...enter the next thing.  And then the next.  Then the next.  Anything to keep them occupied!  And when they want to go play again, I bring out the big guns.  Ice cream.  Seconds on ice cream.  Sure, kids.  We're having ice cream for dinner.  Oh, the shame.  But oh, the joy of finishing the book! I guess we'll get our lives back tomorrow.

My book group meets every 2 months or so...and it's necessarily that far apart because the way I read, I can't put a book down for about 5 days--I zoom through it, serve ice cream to my kids for dinner, don't clean, barely entertain the kids, for the sake of reading the book...can you picture it now?  So, the books HAVE to be spread out that much for the sake of the happiness of my family!