you win some, you lose some, and some you win and then lose.

yesterday i was talking to a friend about winning and losing. he says right now, he thinks he's winning...but only slightly. i say right now, i think i'm actually winning, but i feel like i'm losing. like when you are running the mile (which i know about, thank you every thursday of seventh-grade gym class) and you're behind everyone else, and then you reach the finish line, and realize you were behind because you'd actually lapped everyone. (which i don't know about, as it never actually happened to me. but i can imagine okay.)

and then today happened and it proved that you have to be careful, because somedays you feel like you're losing, but actually you're winning, but then actually you lose. the end.

porrrr ejemplo:

• i began the day with a little of this: (okay, it was actually a lot of this. thank you to my beautiful new friend tessa for introducing him to me):

• i planned a stellar lesson for the kiddos, all before 11:00am!
• i ran into my old friend macsen.
• the cute boy who always says hi to me on the ramp up to campus said hi to me again today. he was wearing argyle and he had a handsome part and i think red shoes.
• i walked from the jsb to the brimhall, and whilst i passed a girl on a bench, she said, "you look really pretty. just so you know." thank you, complete stranger, for being nice! because i need to look pretty today because...
• my supervisor came to observe the class i teach. when we chatted after the class, he used the words "exemplary", "exceptional", and "zesty" to describe my teaching. i'm a little thrown by the last one, but the other two are nice. ka-ching.
• i read the first chapter of extremely loud & incredibly close, my favorite book, on the way home from campus.
• and then as if the day hadn't been lovely enough already, i heard panda was giving out free shrimp. so me & courtney went and it was orange-y and honey-y and shrimp-y and oh so delicious.
• after that it was off to the flagpole to take a picture of the lowering of the flag...had to be there by 5:30. i had 20 minutes to get there. perfect timing.

and then i realized...

(cue: the shriek my mother makes when she has forgotten something important.)

i totally forgot about my prep-for-london class. it started last week, and i couldn't go because i was in california. as if it wasn't bad enough to miss the first week of a class for which you are the TA, i missed the second class too. i have never unintentionally missed class. EVER.

maybe it's pathetic that i feel so bad about missing.

but this is the girl who got her name written on the board one time in elementary school (a minor infraction, one which i was not actually responsible for), and went home and prayed for hours (crying, on my knees) that when i went back to school the next day my name would miraculously not be on the board anymore. this is the little girl who, when her parents asked what one thing she'd take if she had to leave tonight and never return, her biggest concern was how the library would get their books back. i'm all about school and classes and books and being on time to such things and shining in a studently kind of way.

(hanging head in shame)

and then, after the missed-class fiasco of '11, i said the wrong thing to the boy i only want to say the right things to.

and that's probably the greatest loss of the day.

so i'm ending it like it began, but this time with the live version:

and hoping that somehow it's that i've lapped everyone by the time i cross the finish line at midnight.