Even better

Well, I **had** planned to use the one-and-a-half hour window between the kids' bedtime and when **I** try to go to bed to get some recording done. But, I forgot that tonight was The Lady's online tutorial (or "quiz section", at some universities), for the "distance learning" students. So, it was up to me to wrangle the kids.

The two boys fell asleep partway through the bedtime story -- an Irish folk tale. The Girl stayed awake.

The folk tale featured a boy who kindly shared his food with a stranger, who turned out to be the king of the fairies in disguise. It reminded me of a fairy tale from my big blue book of fairy tales (My World of Fairy Tales: Stories from Grimm, Perrault and Andersen, retold by Jane Carruth) that I've had since I was a kid. I told the girl that a lot of fairy tales involve a nice person who has a meagre lunch but shares it with a stranger, and a mean person with a big lunch who doesn't share -- and the generous person gets rewarded.

Managed to find it in just a few minutes. Read The Girl the story I was thinking of. Then noted that a lot of fairy tales have two sisters: a nice one, and a mean one; the nice one does something nice, and gets rewarded with gold (or gems) falling from her mouth with every word, while the mean one gets curses with toads or snakes falling from her mouth. Found -- and read -- a similar story from the big blue fairy tale book.

Then I read Puss-in-Boots -- just 'cause it's a good story.

And then The Lady came in, and wondered why The Girl was up so late past her bed time. (No matter: she's on school holidays.)


So: I read The Girl Bedtime stories for an hour and a half, rather than recording part of a song. Okay. That works.


--GG