Articles and Invitations

Invitations first, because I know Green is waiting with bated breath. (No, that's not a typo; baited breath, though often used, is wrong. Yes, yes I am a word geek. And proud of it.)

All was well in Party Planning Land; I'd decided to take the advice given here and just go with N's flow, and was feeling just fine about it. Until they went back to school on Wednesday. Because Wednesday afternoon, he came home and said, "I want to invite Luke to my party. He's funny."

So now we're in negotiations over who else from his class to invite. Because I'm not going to invite Luke and no other kid from the class--especially because I've never, not once, seen him and Luke even LOOK at each other, much less pal around, and also because if there is nobody else from the class here, who will Luke get to hang with? We'll see where this goes from here.

Funny thing is, as I was saying to Kristen the other day (a conversation during which we came to realize that my parents live near her, and hers live really, really near me--which is irrelevant but oh-so-cool): It hadn't occurred to me that one of the reasons he didn't want to invite the kids from his class might have been the simple fact that he hadn't seen any of them for two weeks when we had the initial invite conversation, and that the whole out-of-sight-out-of-mind thing, plus the feeling-shy-when-you-haven't-seen-someone-in-a-while thing (which he has in spades, being N) might be playing a part. I feel dumb now, actually.

As for the article: No, no word yet. I do appreciate the words of support, though I could tell you all the reasons why just being a good writer sometimes isn't enough. Oh, and to make things a little clearer...If you read my comments, you've probably realized that among the people I talked to for this piece were some of my friends (who are also some of my blog readers, obviously). It's true, and it's fine; they were perfect for it, and fabulously helpful. Not to mention that I got to interview them with a strong drink in my hand...and, OK, several in my belly, along with some truly delicious crab dip...on New Year's Eve. Yep; it's a hard-knock life for me.

[Since you guys asked for a scorecard: Paula and her hubby unfortunately didn't make it out of my first round of cuts; Ambre the Spotlight Hogger and her very interesting comments did, but are on a list of possible cuts that I gave to my editor, since the piece is still a bit long. Time will (hopefully soon) tell.]