Pink Tree

My pinkberry camera doesn't take accurate pictures of red and pink things. This Japanese magnolia in front of my house isn't purple, it's fairly light pink. But I had to get a closeup of it anyway. When OoA#1 was small, and so often sick in the spring, she was electively mute much of her childhood, from about age 13 months to nearly six years old. One way to get her to talk was to plop her in the carseat if she was sick and drive all around town and play "Pink Tree!!!"; as in, whoever spots it first gets to yell in the car,"Pink Tree!" She wasn't much on yelling but she was born competitive. So I would spot some and call them first to aggravate her, and then pretend not to see one, and pretty soon the backseat would be chirping, or croaking if that was what she was doing that week, "Pink Tree! Pink Tree!" Our part of town has one in about every fifth yard, and she would be delighted if she got one she knew for sure I hadn't seen first.  Even sleepy or cranky, she would rouse herself to point one out I'd missed, and still does it sometimes. 

She's been really upset lately. She sent out eight graduate school applications and got cut immediately from the first, super-competitive ones. But she made it into final consideration at four others, apparently; they sent her rejection letters only this last week. Another place sent her something to our house inviting an application, so she has two apps still to hear from and the one new one to apply for. Her professor called around; her GPA, which was in the toilet her freshman year due to pretty much abysmal advising by her faculty advisor at the time, and which she has been slaving to bring up, put her behind some candidates who had not wanted to go to grad school until the economy tanked their jobs. Once they were out of work, their easy A's from state schools gave them the leg up. Depressing. I wish I could put her in the back seat again and we could drive around and let her beat me at Pink Tree, and that would make it better.