Who needs a man when I have a dog like Chelsey? After getting little sleep, Brenda rolled out of bed too early. Usually Saturday was her favorite day of the week—a time to goof off or, more usually, to catch up with everything she’d not attended to during the week. Since her thirtieth birthday was on this particular Saturday, she’d expected the day to be extraordinary. Now she had nothing to do. Even worse, she’d been so efficient the past week that she didn’t even have a single chore. She looked at herself in the mirror and shuddered. “So you’re thirty—a reason to celebrate. Why are you shuffling around, looking like something a cat would refuse to drag in? What are you going to do today to make it special?” Brenda had a tendency not to be very nice when she talked to herself. The world was wide open to her and all she could think about was her misery. “You look all set to be the guest of honor at your very own pity party,” she told her unhappy reflection. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn her reflection looked back with a scowl.
