Hannah has a pretty stable list of what she wants to be when she grows up: a cook / restaurant / hotel owner, president of the US, a super-model, other normal over-the-top kid ideas about careers. Recently she's added author to her list.

On Friday, her PE teacher didn't show up. After the kids farted around for the first hour of PE, a different teacher turned up and said, hey, why don't you kids each come up with an idea for a story, and then swap ideas and write a story based on what you end up with. Well, Hannah was not very thrilled about having to write a horror story, especially since the idea came from a *boy*, the horror! So she told the boy to keep his idea and she would write up hers.

She came home Friday afternoon with most of a hand-written page: The Spy Pie. She's still not sure about the title. It's a story about a kid who becomes a spy--I don't know what pie has to do with it, and I don't think she does either, because her alternate title would use "pi", as in 22/7.

She spent quite a bit of time Friday afternoon and one day this weekend writing on her story. I think she has 2 chapters so far. She read some of it to John and me, and frankly, we were impressed. She did have a few flubs with prepositions--interference from German, I'm afraid--but she really has a feel for how a story should be put together.

After finishing chapter 2, she asked John if he would be her agent and help her publish her book when she finished. Of course! he answered. Not 10 minutes later, she came to me in the living room and asked if *I* would be her agent. Didn't you just ask Dad to be your agent, I ask. Well, in case he dies. Well, in that case, yes. She's always thinking about contingency plans.

I don't know if she will get around to finishing her opus, but her spate of work over the weekend kind of made me feel ashamed of my own lameness. Hannah can be totally lazy and lack-luster about things--like studying German grammar or Latin vocabulary--but when it comes to something that she personally enjoys--like blowing stuff up in science class or writing short stories--she works hard and learns quite a bit. She's kind of my hero, except when I am trying to get her to study German grammer, Latin vocabulary, etc.