A fairytale, sorta

Once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess named Alison. (Shut up, it's my story. Ever heard of artistic licence?) Alison lived in a small, but tasteful castle on the outskirts of Ottawa with the two mini-princesses, Leah and Rachel.

One day, a wicked sorceress put an evil spell on the princess, and things started to go wrong. First, Princess Alison came down with a sinus infection. The healers told her that it could actually be the plague instead of just a sinus infection, but they were wrong. It still felt pretty awful though. Now the Princess had been scheduled to take some important exams to see if she could read and write sufficiently fluently in the second language of the Kingdom. They wouldn't take away her princesshood if she failed, but her chances on getting promoted to Queen were nonexistent if she couldn't pass the French exams.

The sorceress's spell went into overdrive, and first mini-Princess Leah came down with pneumonia. Then mini-Princess Rachel came down with the croup. All the time that Princess Alison had hoped to devote to studying was spent caring for the sick minis. The night before the exams, Princess Alison could not sleep. Mini-Princess Rachel ended up in her bed, tossing and thrashing. When the princess managed to fall asleep, the evil spell ensured that her dreams were all about oversleeping and missing the exams, and of not being able to find pants to wear to work, and thus also missing the exams.

The next day, the princess dropped the minis off at the Royal Care-Giver's and drove her golden coach to work. She was very tired, and very stressed out. One more wave of the sorceress's wand, and Princess Alison, not paying attention to the road, ran her coach into the back of the coach in front of her on Carling Avenue, right near the Coliseum theatres. "Oh great", she thought. "Now I *will* miss the exams, waiting for the King's Guard to come and fill out a report and with all the insurance paperwork." But, a good fairy had been flying past on her way to sprinkle magic dust on Ray Emery's goalie stick, and, taking pity on the poor princess, waved her wand and it turned out there was no damage to the rear bumper of the other coach. The princess apologised profusely, and the other driver sped off, probably afraid that she would hit him again.

Still quite shaken, Princess Alison arrived at the tall dark tower where she was to take her exams. Waving the dragon smoke away from in front of her face, she passed the guardians of the elevators and ascended to the Floor of Language Training. The tests were a trial, requiring all of the princess's strength and intuition and intelligence. When they were over, she was so tired she was near to fainting while she and the other princes and princesses waited for the results of the exams.

The Testing Wizard handed the princess a piece of parchment with her test scores inscribed upon it. The princess gasped, she had scored a comfortable B on the writing exam, and an amazing C on the reading comprehension exam! (Strangely, a C is higher than a B in this scoring scenario, go figure.) The princess was very happy. She had received her happy ending because she was pure of heart and was always kind to small animals like mice and bluebirds ('cause you never know when they're going to come in handy), and oh yeah, because she'd been in language training 3 hours a week for about a year.

And she lived happily ever after.
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There. That sounds much more interesting than "Crap, I had a bad week -- I'm sick, the girls are sick, and I was so stressed about my French as a Second Language exams that I have to pass if I want any kind of promotion at work, that I slept poorly, rear-ended some guy on the way to work (fortunately no damage), and sat the tests with a sinus headache, but totally ACED them in the end, doing so much better than I had expected, so I guess the week wasn't all bad then."