the state of things

Years ago I went into a huge funk when in one horrible month, John Kerry lost (and we had donated far more than we could afford to his campaign, money that could have been spent on a vacation or on redoing the other half of our roof), I had a terrible flu, and I had a traumatic milestone birthday. I went into a deep depression which took a very long time to come out of.

This week I'm feeling great that Barack Obama won. There's another large milestone, a less depressing one than the milestone birthday one: the tenth wedding anniversary of the Sober Husband and myself. Life is looking up, all right.

In other developments, six year-old Lucy has changed her name back to "Lola." (She had rejected her legal name, "Lucy" for years, calling herself "Baby" until nearly three, when she chose the name "Lola" for herself. At five she returned to "Lucy" after the upsetting discovery that the meaning of the name "Lola" is "sorrows", while "Lucy" means "light"). She announced this at kindergarten. By the end of the day five other girls in her classroom had come forward to announce that they had also changed their names. This trend even spread to a girl in a different classroom, before the kindergarten teachers formed the policy that any name change had to be communicated in a note sent by the child's parents. Only Lola was allowed to remain under her new nomme (the school had some knowledge of this issue, Lola having been admitted under the name "Lola" but having shown up to kindergarten as a "Lucy").

And, in the general trend of positive thinking, nine year-old Iris Uber Alles and I are participating in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month program. We are seeking sponsorship to allow us to attend the Night Of Writing Dangerously, where we might write dangerously and sip vitamin waters in the company of a room of novelists. Please consider donating to sponsor us, as the proceeds go to support youth writing programs in public schools (and we all know how underfunded the schools are, sigh).