sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion

My little cousin's dance recital was surprisingly fun. She goes to a serious dance school, and all of the classes did a short routine for us. Some of them were amazing, but boring to watch. Some of them--the small children--were completely adorable, just because they were trying so hard, and you could see most of the girls watch the instructor or the most advanced student and do their steps a second behind. My cousin was actually very good for a seven-year-old, which was particularly cool because the routine her class was doing was very slow and graceful, and she is a most rambunctious child.

I babysat her for an hour or so while the adults caught up, and we talked of dinosaurs eating people, dinosaurs exploding, and how she wanted to be Peter Pan. Then we played the Alphabet Game. We got to "P my name is Polly and I live in Pittsville, and I sell pits!" before she burst out laughing. "What kind of pits do you sell?" I prompted. "Armpits!" she yelled! (My grandmother came over and said, "That story is the pits!" several times before either of us noticed her clever pun.)

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Tomorrow I am going to a Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child book signing in Ann Arbor. I only found out about this today. I AM SO EXCITED (and I really, really want to ask them about whether they deliberately coded their main character as queer, but I am aware that this might make me sound like a weirdo and I don't want sound like a weirdo. I do think it's a legit question, I just have no way to word it that makes it sound like academic interest instead of prurient interest. Not that it isn't prurient, but it is also genuinely academic).