Chunneling Through Forty — Anne McAneny

A woman's 40th birthday comes on like a tsunami, especially when life's biggest excitement means finding a wad of fudge in a half gallon of ice cream. For Susanna Greyson, the day prompts her to set five goals. They don't include the invention of personal jet packs or finding the cure for cancer, but for a bored mother, they might as well. As she takes a stab at each goal, she encounters hilarious and heartening complications that reap unexpected results, including an attraction to her daughter's history teacher. An unpredictable cast of characters buoys her along the way, and in the end, her goal list remains incomplete but at least attempted. She has faced the tsunami head-on and emerged on the other side ready to chunnel through the next forty years with gusto.