Tidbits of Goodness

I have so many things to be happy about and thankful for right now that I walked around all day yesterday smiling. Interestingly, there seemed to be less whining and more cooperating from the kids yesterday than usual. It's a bit chicken-and-egg to ask whether my good mood influenced theirs or the reverse, but either way, it was quite lovely. Here are the other happy things on my plate lately:

* I ran a mile in under 9 minutes yesterday for the first time in years. So what if it was 8:58? I am delighted. At the beginning of the summer, I couldn’t run a mile without stopping to walk a few times, and now I can run a mile in under 9 minutes in the second half of my treadmill workout. Woot! Woot! for progress.

* My best friend in the world, who has known me since before I cut off all my hair to become a “sophisticated” eighth grader, who polkaed with me at our Senior Prom, who I can see once a year or not talk to on the phone for months and who will just pick up right where we left off…that best friend is coming to visit this weekend from Atlanta with her adorable daughter. We’re taking the kids for day trips to the beach and the woods, for ice cream cones in the downtown park, for every kind of fun summer thing you can imagine. And then we’re staying up till all hours drinking icy margaritas and catching up on each other’s lives. Bliss.

* I WON Casey and Sarah’s fabulous hairstraveganza contest, and I couldn’t be more excited!! If you missed the saga of my hair, it’s here. And, yes, oh yes, there will be photos of the before and after in all its transformational glory. Don’t you worry your pretty little heads about that. I can hardly wait for the wonder that will be my new hair come the start of fall term. Thank you thank you thank you to Casey for her generosity and to Sarah for offering the advice that will surely change my life.

* My first bloggy crush, and West Coast cause of many a late night on Google chat, LatteMommy loves me this much.

She is one of those people who makes me simultaneously bless and curse the internet, without which I could never have met her but because of which I now have a longing sadness to be closer to yet another really truly friend who does not live in my town. Yet, in waxing lyrical about the power of blogging to forge real connections, let us not forget the great good fortune that is becoming friends with people in other time zones who will still be awake when we are suffering from insomnia.

Though I jest (sort of) about the time zone thing, truly, LatteMommy is among a handful of women whom I feel incredibly lucky to have met online. I want to pass this award on to five of them who are particularly wonderful writers, all of whom I would love to get to know better, to meet in real life one day, to share a drink and a chat with, to hug for real, to laugh with, and to be able to count amongst my friends. It is women like these who make the internet such a powerful wonderful thing.

Angie, at All Adither for her bravery in putting her fiction out there for feedback
Jozet at Halushki for her incredible humor and wit
Auds at Barking Mad for her honesty, even about things painful and personal
Deb at San Diego Momma for her devotion to thinking of her commenters as writers too
Megan at Velveteen Mind for her incredible energy, gorgeous prose, and endless work creating the community at Blog Nosh

If you don't know them, each so different from the other, each so fantastic, I urge you to check them out. I suspect you will fall in love too.

And so, even though I have 18 hours of teaching in front of me in the next three days, I am a giant hug worth of happy. And you?