Time for a talk

Li turned 7 years old this past Monday, and based on something I saw Friday afternoon, it would seem that the time has come for one of those important father/daughter "talks". I was doing some volunteer computer tech support at Li's school on Friday afternoon. She had left her research paper on Argentinean pampas deer open in MS Word on one of the computers in her classroom. (She had saved it -- of which I was proud -- something not all of the students in her class have apparently learned, based on my observations.) One of her teachers found me sobbing uncontrollably under the computer table... Li's entire paper is set in ... [gasp] Comic Sans. The horror, the shame... I was so unprepared.

While MS Word probably does not deserve anything better, Comic Sans is a horrible thing to do to Argentina, pampas deer, and research papers. Yes, even 1st grade research papers.

(This entry is based on a Facebook post I started on January 10, 2014. Most of it is true, aside from the "sobbing uncontrollably under the computer table" bit.)

Here we go...

All of these are combining -- as they typically do each year -- to pile on a good case of the January blues:

• Li's birthday is tomorrow. She turns 7. How is this even remotely possible? I can't believe how fast this past year and, really, all of her life have raced past.
• Ian heads back to Norman mid-day tomorrow for the upcoming start of the spring semester of his fourth year of college. Has he really been home for three weeks already? It's never been easy on any of us when he leaves but the past couple departures have really been hard; this one will be, too.
• Li goes back to school tomorrow. She's really excited about this and about her birthday, but also really struggling with Ian's impending departure.
• I go back to work on Tuesday (the day after tomorrow), after having been off work for a full three weeks. 

One thing I know

If I have learned anything in this first half of my life, it is this: there are few things in life more satisfying than a well-constructed sand castle. And when your daughter helps you build it, the list gets even smaller.

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Rough day...

Stuff Li says

Li doesn't like licking envelopes to seal them. She says they "... taste like couscous."

A surprising highlight

Li's U-8 girls team played their first match of the fall season this morning. The end result was, in truth, pretty ugly (a 9-1 loss) but one of the real highlights came from Li. She played the third "quarter" (yes, quarters in soccer: they split the match into quarters to facilitate substitutions) as goalkeeper, and kept a clean sheet. She managed to grab a couple balls, and blocked a couple others.

This from the player who, before the season started when she found out we had a goalkeeper on the field at this level, was pretty emphatic that she did not want to play in goal.

The importance of purpose

Li started first grade this week. In her class, each of the students is assigned a job and they rotate through the jobs over the course of the school year. I love the fact that Li is so excited to have been assigned the job of "paper and pencil monitor" even though she indicates she has no idea what that job means or what she will have to do...