Just to share...

The English teacher in me has to share this! This is a poem I would have taught (back when I was teaching). I came across it today in search of something for work, and I can't believe I've never read it, much less had it taught to me in school. It has been added to my (long) list of favorite poems. I hope you enjoy your daily dose of poetry!

If—

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

12 years ago...

12 years ago today, my best friend asked me to do him the honor of being his girlfriend. We were just starting our senior year of high school. I said yes, and we've never looked back.

We had a wonderful "date" lunch to celebrate and spent the entire time talking about our favorite memories over the last 12 years. I feel so incredibly blessed that we had enough to talk and reminisce about that the conversation lasted the entire hour...and those were just the highlights!

Not many people are lucky enough to have met their mate so early in life and to have had such time together to watch them grow into the person they will be forever. I know Alex better than anyone on the planet--I know where he's come from, I know what he's been through. I've seen the forces and events that have shaped him into the man he is today. And he knows the same about me.

We are so very, very lucky.

Hells to the Yi-zah!

Alex "surprised" me with tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance tour! (That gets " " because we had talked about it for a while but decided that we should save the money. Trouble was that we decided that same thing about FOUR different fun things we were going to do, so Alex decided he had had enough and got the tickets anyway!)

I am so excited!!! #81, here I come!!

Catching up

Have you ever had a lunch date with a friend who had all kinds of exciting news about his or her life when the best you had to share was the sale on bell peppers you caught when you went grocery shopping two days before?

That's kind of how I feel now. I know I haven't updated in a while, but quite frankly there hasn't been any blog-worthy events going on in our lives. I've considered taking the route some of my blogging peers have and start making posts about my personal feelings about global events (the IOC banning the Iraq athletes from this year's games; Yao Ming and Dirk Nowitzki representing China and Germany, respectively, at the games; the So You Think You Can Dance tour tickets being $65+; etc.), but I'm trying to keep this pure for family and friends who simply want to stay updated with life here in P-ville, TX.

So I'm that friend who has nothing cool going on. The most notable event in our lives recently is my sweet bruise I got in our softball game last Wednesday. This pic. was taken 24 hours after the game. We won the game, by a lot. In fact, we've won our first 4 games of the season, a feat unprecedented since we've been on this team. We may have to throw a game or two of the second half of the season because we'll be forced to move up into the "intermediate" league if we win our league, and we don't want to do that. Those people are serious. We just play to hang out with our friends once a week and drink beer. Well, Alex is serious about it sometimes. Like that game he got kicked out for throwing down his glove, kicking the dirt, rushing at the ump (just a little bit) and cursing...in English. It was the cursing that did it. I told him there was really no excuse for that; if he's going to get so worked up, he needs to switch immediately into Russian.

I also have a nice new scar, but I'll spare you the pictures of that. On my last dermatology check-up, I had a spot taken off my back that came back as "severely abnormal" and the doctor hadn't gotten it all off. So I went back in to have the rest removed, which apparently meant he had to take a 2 mm perimeter all the way around and under it. So I have the first stitches of my life. But the wonderful news is that all the tests came back clear: no more bad stuff left in the area! Nothing more to worry about!

So, as you can see, if those are the height of excitement in our lives right now, we're living pretty smoothly. Jobs are busy. Cats are funny. House is clean. Grass is (amazingly) alive.

Life is good.