the perfect life

i woke up at six a.m. today to register for classes. i am determined to graduate next winter but the school system frustrates me because they barely offer the classes that i need, and even when they do the sections are filled up immediately. which means i send emails begging to be added to classes. and then i go to the classes on the first day and beg in person to be added to classes. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but i really don't want to pay for an extra semester of college because they don't offer the credits they require me to take in order to graduate. i'm a little embarassed to admit that i have a bit of that conspiracy spirit in me and i sometimes view the whole university system as somewhat of a scam, where they are intentionally screwing lots of students over so they can keep raking in the dough ... but that's not a very good attitude for me to have, now is it? :)

so with that frustrating start to my early morning i went to a dull class, then headed to the gym and read a magazine while i biked. let me explain that i LOVE magazines. ever since the days of "american girl" and "clubhouse" i've been hooked. i used to buy magazines at the grocery store even though they were overpriced, because i was worried they'd stop publishing them if no one bought them. that was when the failing economy was freaking the nation out and journalism was supposedly going under, and of course my worst fear was: what if grocery stores stop buying magazines and you have nothing to skim over in the checkout lines?! must. help. economy.

all of that to say, i was pretty content to be reading "self" magazine and pedaling away to my music. i was even happier when i stumbled across an article about choosing to be happy. the author told a story of how her six-year-old daughter came and jumped on her bed early one morning to wake her up and said, "mom. we have the perfect life." this mom wasn't feeling that way with her piles of work to do and a rough year of a near-divorce, death of her parents, and now being woken up at 6am. "dad is an artist and i'm an artist too. you're a writer. and we have the best dog and the best two cats. and we're having waffles for breakfast this morning, remember?"

how true. and how easy to forget. i have the perfect life too.

and sometimes it's perfectly imperfect. i mean am i the only who can't stand those seemingly perfect people? they're irritating as anything. so i imagine that a perfect life would probably be just as irritating. perfectly imperfect for me is complaining about the things that go wrong and being able to laugh at them when you see the looks on your friends faces and realize how crazy you sound. perfectly imperfect is jumping on your bed you're so happy and what do you know, it breaks and you get yelled at. (well whose idea was it to buy me an antique bed in the first place mom and dad? let the record show that to this day i am the only one in my family who does not have an antique fetish.)

it's not the "perfect" memories that stick out. my favorite stories are the ridiculous ones. getting on the wrong bus with my dad and being on the road an extra half hour as we both blamed each other for the error. unintentionally chugging a milkshake on a blind date and being told - "wow, i've never had a girl finish eating before me!" missing the right train stop on the way home from new york with my friends and catching a ride with a man from borneo. getting trained at my first job by my brother and watching him drop a whole angel food cake on the floor, only to put it right back out to serve everyone, mmm. singing off-key with my friends, whether it's "frere jacques" in a driveway at midnight,or "linger" by the cranberries on a rough road trip. there is nothing perfect about those memories but somehow they always make me smile and think, how perfect ...