Making Lemonade From Lemons

So, as any parent will attest to, Halloween has come and gone.  The build up for this event for smaller children is, in some cases, just shy of that for Christmas.  In my case, my two girls, princesses both (in real life and by virtue of their costumes), were ramped up to the max, to the point of near intolerance from my wife and I.  That said, they were promised a good go, so off went my wife to escort them, while I stayed at home handing out the candy.

Not my child, but a pros pos

Part of the tradition of Halloween is getting dressed up for school, or in the case of my youngest, daycare.  On the way to daycare, she snapped her plastic wand in two.  In the midst of traffic, I’m sure every car within throwing distance heard the commotion.  For my part, I tried consoling the child for a couple of minutes and then simply turned up the radio volume.  After about five minutes of screeching (no simple crying for this child), she suddenly stops.  I’m adjusting my rear view mirror to ensure she didn’t go and decide to try and choke herself on a piece of plastic, or some other silliness.

With the two pieces of plastic in her hands, tears still rolling down her cheeks, she’s smiling and staring wonder at the two pieces and gives me this: “Daddy, now I have TWO magic wands!”

And despite how frustrating they can be at times, it is at moments like these that you have to smile and think everything is good and right in life.

Edit:  Same child, after 90 minutes of door-to-door candy-grabbing, she enters the house, plops down and says, “Daddy, I’m tired!”

NaNoWriMo

So, I decided to take the plunge this year and registered for NaNoWriMo.  It’s two days into the month and neither my mustache for Movember nor my novel for NaNoWriMo have seen much progress.  I’ve got some sketched out chapters and outline plots to flesh out, but nothing on paper due to some fangled illness.

Given the previous anecdote of my daughter, I can’t help but realize that 4 weeks is actually a decent amount of time to get things done.  The target of 50k words is daunting enough, but something I’m going to try my damndest to complete.  Not wuite a ‘two magic wands’ kind of statement, but a commitment nonetheless.