How did you start your August Long Weekend?

The official party line around the house is that we spent the night hanging out at Chapters. To maintain my street cred, that's all I'm going to say. But here in bloggerland, no one care how cool I am, so I will risk ridicule and explain that I was doing my baby girl a prop.

For those of you "not Cool enough" to be in the know, last night at 12:01 am, the last book of the "Twilight" series was released. This is a wildly popular series of books about uber-cool teen vampires and werewolves, and all the teens are hooked, our darling Miss M. included. She's been dancing about our apartment for a month now, keeping a faithful countdown on our whiteboard, and frantically pacing from the computer to her bed and back in anticipation of this last book. So it was a foregone conclusion that she would spend her night at Chapters, at the masquarade book party.

We hit a big snag early on when it turns out two store staffers misdirected us in our pre-ordering. It turns out the book was being shipped to our house, even though we asked TWO staffers, and said we wanted it shipped to the store for pick up at 12:01. Morgan was to go to the party and hang out, and Rod and I were to bugger off and come back at midnight to pick her up. Well, after discovering the SNAFU and the clerk telling us it was so odd, we went to stand in the Purchasing line, which was already manned girled by about 25 girls and 1 guy. For a minute, it looked like Miss M. wasn't going to get her book, and I could see the tears welling up in her eyes, until we found out about the Purchasing line (hey, how do I know this stuff? I don't have kids who've been to these parties before, and Miss M.'s preorders have always been in Yellowknife, handled by her mum). Okay, so, we're in line, and now out of nowhere, the clerk tracked us down and gave us a $10 gift card for all the inconvenience. So Chapters is in our good books again (pun entirely intended).

Because of the SNAFU, we couldn't just leave Miss M. alone in a line all night, not because of the social aspect of her being there alone, but because we weren't prepared for this (in the pre-order line, you're already guaranteed your book, so being first is just a bonus. No need to wait in line all night). The Purchasing line is first come, first serve, so she wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom or get food or whatever.

You see where this is going?

The things we do for the kids we love. We spent all night in the Chapters, at times standing in for her, so she could do whatever. We went to get McD's for her, bathroom breaks, etc. She settled in with a group of girls who rivalled her love of the series, and she had a great time! At midnight, she was in the third group to purchase her book, and she came home blissfully happy.

What did we do? We found various corners to hide in (easy when most of the teens are swarming around two lines, leaving the rest of the store for us adults), we sat, chatted, read books, and just watched the girlchaos unfold. Just before midnight, at the 15 minute countdown, the entire store erupted into screams worthy of an Avril Lavigne concert (I know from experience), and Rod told me he had the overwhelming urge to jump up and spastically run over the line where Morgan was, shouting "Omigod! Omigod" over and over. This is how we amused ourselves...making mirth about the situation we were unexpectedly put in. For my part, I told Rod, with 2 minutes to go, that I wished I could get a copy and just throw it into the Purchasing line like a grenade...the ensuing chaos would have been devilishly delicious.