The Importance of Being Eldest). The characters are based on those of Peter Pan and his friends. Romeo and Juliet, based on Romeo and Juliet (Juliet is a fairy girl who is a little over nine years old and she is very pretty). The Wizard of Oz and The Land of Oz (Glinda the Good Witch). The Wizard is in a crazier story where Dorothy is an angel and the Tin Woodman has lost his heart, but they eventually meet up with Ozma (or Oz as I call her) and she sends them home to get some rest. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to include Nanny in this story. If not, the Tin Woodman is still in an asylum after doing something very bad to someone who is also very bad to him. Beauty and the Beast. This story is coming out as two parts, like Sleeping Beauty. There is a girl who has been raised with a lot of love and care, and her father (or perhaps it was her mother, I haven't decided yet) doesn't let her out of the house a lot because she would become weak and tired. This all has a lot to do with magic. Alice in Wonderland, based on Alice in Wonderland (not exactly, but that would make it into a very long story and not very original). So many people have written that story out that there is probably a lot of overlap with the original. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Huck, Jim, and their friends). This is another one of those overlapping stories. But there are a lot of adventures and crazy things happening. One good part to it is that Huck is a nice guy and doesn't always act like the other people in his part of town do. And he tries to be helpful to everyone. Heidi, A Book About a Girl, which is a book about a little girl who discovers she has magical powers and runs away from home with the man that she loves. Pirates of the Caribbean and Treasure Island (with Pirates of the Caribbean I changed the stories a bit by making them more like the ones in the books, and the character names as well). The pirates have been captured by the treasure island and are being held prisoner by the evil king. The Princess and the Goblin and the Princess and the Pea. They are from the children's book series, and it is the princess that is turned into a mouse because she didn't listen. I haven't decided which of them I'm going to use. Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Pippi Longstocking, a Wizard of Oz story (that has nothing to do with either the one in Kansas or Oz) and Heidi. Harry Potter (Harry and his friends) and Narnia (Tumnus and the Wooden Giants). I'm still debating about whether the boys can just be regular friends, and how to write it so it's interesting for boys as well as girls. This is just a list of some of my favorites to use or to check out. And to see if there are any new ones you have never heard of. Some of them are very fun to read, and you will be able to use them for any of the years of a young adult. Monday, January 2, 2012 This was the scene last night. I had spent the evening with some friends and ended up leaving them to go to bed early. Just as I was reading something to my youngest, her ears rang with the clanking sound of some kind of magic alarm clock. It turned out that she had been woken up by it. It happened a number of times during the night. I knew it was time to get her to sleep, so we both drifted back into sleep. It was a little harder to get her back to sleep the next morning. I was trying to avoid using my usual tricks of singing, and talking, and reading. I thought that she would drift off on her own if I just went to the bathroom, so that's where I went. She slept in another room, in another bed, in her own house, under her own rules. But I could hear her trying to get to sleep. That's a good sign. As I was putting on my shoes to go get her up to eat breakfast, the phone rang. I was going to ignore it since I knew it would be another request for help with more children. I looked around the bedroom for anything that might need to be put away for our visitors for the next hour and found the phone. As I picked it up, I saw the number on the caller ID: *67. So I figured it was my husband calling with one of those work questions that just won't go away. I answered it and heard him say, "Who?" It was the school calling. "Good morning, Mrs. W! Mrs. W has been absent today, but she did sign her note to go to school." I almost dropped the phone, but there are a lot of things that I have to do every day. So I said, "I'll talk to her about it. Thank you," and put the phone back in its place. That was a pretty cool trick. But of course, my mind began to wander a little bit. I was thinking about the kids and what they had been doing, and wondering if they had been talking about me while I was in bed asleep. I have been pretty sick with the flu a couple of times this year, so I'm sure that they have talked about me some. I hope it hasn't been in any kind of "bad" way. I guess that if it did happen, they would probably get that phone call at some point. So maybe, I thought, I had gotten those phone calls from school. I'm pretty sure my kids have been told about me talking to them during the day while I was asleep. After I dropped off my two younger kids at school, I called my husband to see if he had any idea what that was all about. He hadn't heard from school either. So it seems that the only person who had answered the phone was me. Later, while I was driving to work, a text from a friend came through my phone. I don't have Facebook Messenger, but apparently my friend got it sent to him instead. It said, "Are you talking in your sleep? It sounds like a telemarketer or someone calling from prison." (That's actually the kind of joke my husband likes to make, so I was thinking he had sent it to me.) I have told a few of my friends that I like my husband's sense of humor, but sometimes I wish he wouldn't use his "good" sense of humor in public. I texted him and said that I didn't know anything about it. He texted back and said that it wasn't funny, and that I needed to figure out how to "take that stuff on the chin." He is such a good husband. I wish I could say that was the end of it. But it wasn't. I called my husband right after work and said, "I'm really worried that school may be calling the police on me." He wanted me to tell him all the details. But I really don't want to worry him with all this. Instead, I told him to look through my purse and see if there was anything in there. There were a few things from school, so he went through them and put them away and put the rest of them in a folder that he put on the counter. Then he opened the door to let in the mail. And there were the letters that he was waiting for, but they were from his mother. The mail wasn't supposed to be here until tomorrow, and there was no note. The mailman must have put them through the door. When I realized what had happened, I called my husband back to tell him. He wanted to hear all the details. He even told me that he thinks I need to start talking to a few parents to let them know that I am dealing with something. I'm going to try to do that. It's going to be really hard because the thought of not being able to get those calls to stop really bothers me. But at the same time, I'm worried that someone might need me, and I don't want to give them any reason to think I'm going crazy. (Although maybe if they knew, it would be a lot easier for me to get help.) Sometimes I can't believe that I didn't fall into a river and drown in college. At that time, I didn't know my husband, and he didn't know me. I had no one to tell me that it was really important to get help. I can hardly believe that I am putting myself in situations where this is going to happen. I feel like there is no turning back. So far, it seems that everything has been manageable. But the problem is that everything seems to happen in order to prove how strong I am. Sunday, January 1, 2012 This year I have found a good way to keep kids busy and have fun. They are spending some time together, and having fun with the magic of a new year. It's a little bit like the New Year's party that my grandmother used to make for my brother and me. There was always a box full of crayons, and I don't know where she had gotten them all