what a week!

It started out as being not so great -- the Africa story I'm working on is proving to be a bear to write, and there are other personnel issues at work I'm trying to sort through -- but today was terrific. I got the news that Willamette Lawyer, the magazine I edit, got two awards -- bronze for overall presentation and silver for writing -- from CASE, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. It's the industry group to which all university communications people belong. So, I'm thrilled!

Naturally I was more than willing to tell Rachel a story tonight. Actually, it's the continuation of the story of Sam, a little boy who loves ballet but his dad disapproves; he wants him to play sports. (The character is very slightly based on Sean Savoye, the brother of a childhood acquaintance of mine named Sam. Sean played the prince in American Ballet Theatre's production of The Nutcracker -- or maybe it was City Ballet, or the Joffrey, can't quite remember).  When we last left Sam, he had seen The Nutcracker with his mommy and LOVED it. Tonight, he decided he wanted to take ballet lessons but knew his dad would disapprove, so he enlisted the help of a teacher and took ballet lessons after school and ended up auditioning for The Nutcracker. He asked the three people he was auditioning for -- one man and two women -- if he could please please perform to some music instead of just doing first position and plies, and they said yes, and he danced so beautifully that at the end the two women had tears running down their faces and the man said he could have the part if he wanted it, and Sam was very happy except...now he had to tell his dad. And that's where we ended it. Rachel was so distressed that she made me pinky promise to tell her the rest of the story sometime this weekend.

***

Next weekend we're visiting Amanda and Jenn for a hockey game (actually Rachel will go to the game; Drew and I will go out to dinner). Tonight I jokingly asked Rachel if we could come to the game and she said no, then said sure.

"Daddy, do you want to sit next to your sister?" she asked.
"Not particularly," Drew answered.
"Daddy!" Rachel yelled. "Your sister's not even boring!"
"That's OK," Drew said. "She understands that I don't like hockey."

***

I told Rachel that there's one more cookie left for her to eat this weekend of the two cookies I brought home from an event my chorus is running for the next few weeks. Unfortunately one of the cookies crumbled.

"That's OK," Rachel said, "'cause it'll feel like I'm eating MANY cookies! A hundred, a million, a jillion, a killion!"

Drew told her she had an excellent attitude. I agree!