She Likes Me! She Really Likes Me!

I feel like Meryl Streep has just handed me an Oscar. Or Cesar Millan has just given me a puppy. Or Rod Blagojevich has just appointed me to a Senate seat, no charge.

Because today, my dear friends, Grammar Girl has bestowed up on me a thesaurus.

If you don't know Grammar Girl, you should. Her real name is Mignon Fogarty, and she's written books like The Grammar Devotional. She also offers "quick and dirty tips" on her website and Twitter, and does podcasts about grammar questions. She's knowledgeable and interesting, and she makes grammar make sense. I consult her site quite often when I'm writing and really admire the way she's brought good grammar to the masses.

She's pretty much my hero.

So here's how the thesaurus thing happened. Last night, Grammar Girl announced that she would give away one book every hour today, in honor of National Grammar Day. All you had to do to enter is tweet about National Grammar Day. So I did.

I'm not sure which entry won me the book, because I posted two. The first one said: "I am glad our language is English, not Math, because I would not then be a fan of National Grammar Day." It's true. It actually occurred to me today that I am lucky the one subject I know a lot about is the one thing everybody uses every day -- language. If we spoke in mathematical calculations, or math was something people had to do in public every day, I would be constantly ridiculed for my lack of skills. (It is no coincidence that Count Von Count has always been my least favorite Sesame Street character.)

The other tweet occurred to me about a minute after I posted the first, so I went ahead and posted it, too. It said: "Tonight, Grammar Girl will rise out of the most sincere pumpkin patch and take books to good children." For some reason, posting my little tweets and hoping Grammar Girl picked me made me feel like Linus Van Pelt, awaiting the Great Pumpkin on Halloween night.

A few minutes later, I received a message from Grammar Girl that I had won.

I know it's just a small thing, and kind of silly. But in a world where disappointments are constant, and victories are rare, it feels pretty cool to win one.