All hail Janice, who while on the phone with me today for a different reason, prompted me to work out that I’d dropped an entire week from my deadline countdown. I know how it happened, too: on my miniature office calendar, the 24th and 31st are sharing the last Monday calendar square with no diagonal line dividing them. So it looks like I come back from Toronto on the 31st, not the 24th, which would have meant the next day was delivery day.

I have — you have no idea how it thrills me to say this — four extra days before my original deadline. That makes eight work days. Plus the three extra days my editor granted me.

That makes a grand total of eleven work days.

I am positively drunk with the possibilities.

It’s as if someone actually handed me all that extra time people have been saying they wish they could find for me. Thank you, universe. And no love, mini office calendar. I’m going to go through you right now and draw dividing lines on all the split days so I don’t make this mistake again.