contradiction in terms

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy Explained

Dean says it’s okay for me to talk about this, so I will try to recount the events that occurred in a sober, adult fashion.

Holy fucking shit, I fucking won a fucking Palanca award!

Ahem. Okay. Now on with our tale...

So I was on the phone with Marc, who is my number one copywriting client (in terms of both quantity and quality--if you ever have the chance to work with/for Marc, do). The doorbell rang and I went to get it. It was an LBC guy (like a UPS guy--only, y'know, not cute) and, since I was still on the phone, I just thanked him and signed for the pair of envelopes without really looking at them.

I was actually in the process of opening the envelope addressed to me before I noticed the Palanca Foundation seal in the upper left corner. I experienced a moment of ludicrous paranoia: They wouldn’t write me just to say, “As if, loser!”, would they?

Thankfully, they did not. Instead, the letter told me that my story Menggay’s Magical Chicken (previously published in this blog) had won in the Short Story for Children category.

I then proceeded to scream in my poor client’s ear. Incoherently, I’m sure; nevertheless, Marc got the gist of it and laughingly congratulated me, opting to discuss business at a later time (no doubt with the prescient realization that my thought processes had been reduced to: “Letter good! Judges nice! Nikki happy!”).

So I hung up, opened the envelope addressed to Dean (I will let him have the pleasure of telling you about it, so hop over to his blog if you want to know... but you more or less know, right?), and commenced jumping up and down. (And yes, those of you reading this who happen to be male and prurient may now take a moment to reflect on the image of a woman with 40D breasts attempting to defy the law of gravity.) Sage jumped jubilantly along with me for some time before asking, “Mommy, why are we jumping?”

I tried to call Dean and bliss out in concert with him, but he was in the middle of a business presentation and had to curb his enthusiasm to the best of his capacity. Thus I went on to emote over the phone at Vin, Jen, and Kate--who fortunately informed me that she was negotiating a flight of stairs, so I was able to warn her before I screamed in her ear and sent her to a premature-but-nonetheless-congratulatory doom.

By the time Dean finally came home, I was marginally calmer. We ran into each other's arms as, with pride, he said to me, “Wow, look, I’m married to a Palanca award winner!”

“Enhhh,” I responded, blasé. “I been married to one ten years. It’s not so big.”

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