Tough last few days

..for a couple of reasons: Drew and I received news that our roof has only 3 to 5 years of life left in it, meaning we'll have to decide how to deal with this issue; and the Oregonian, my former employer, laid off a whole bunch of people yesterday and today. Like, a third of the newsroom. It has been three years since I left, but reading about the firings stirred up a lot of old emotions and I've had trouble concentrating at work yesterday and today.

One thing that helped was going to an annual Ladies' Night Out that my friend Deni puts together every year during Portland Dining Month (in June). You get an exquisite three-course meal at some great restaurants -- tonight it was Genoa, one of PDX's finest -- for $29. I got into a long conversation with one of the women, a real estate agent, about roofs. And I heard some horrific stories about real estate, especially rentals, since Deni and her husband have a rental house and lately they've had problems finding tenants.

Anyway, I got home and Cori, Rachel's babysitter, was telling me all about the great time she and Rachel had building a fort, and reading the latest chapter in Charlotte's Web, the one where Charlotte dies. Rachel was concerned about having to tell me the news.

"I'll have to break it to her gently," she said, "because she'll be really sad."

If that isn't incredibly sweet, I don't know what is.

Cori, who is a teacher in Rachel's class, told me a lot about how Rachel acts at school. She said she's really smart and that she and Devin, who have a really hot and cold relationship, are the "queen bees" of the Fireflies group -- everyone wants to play with them. One thing that Rachel needs to work on is to not get so frustrated when Devin puts her hands over her ears to drown out Rachel's talking. "She does that because she knows Rachel can out-talk her," Cori said. "I know she's right, but I have to tell her to calm down, do something else for 10 minutes" and then Devin usually comes around.

So today, Devin put her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of Rachel's voice, and Rachel got mad, but Teacher Cori told her to go color for 10 minutes. Pretty soon Devin walked up to Rachel, who said very sweetly, "Would you like to color with me?" And pretty soon they were best buddies again and when the other kids tried to come up to them and ask to join them they said in unison, "We need some space because we're coloring."