home run

it's ostensibly spring, and with spring comes the beginning of baseball season. i LOVE baseball. i can't quite articulate how amazing i think baseball is. so when the man, his roommate and i lit out for our local major-league park, the air was filled with promise and hope. well, except for the fact that it was a) freezing cold, b) drizzling rain and c) the local major-league team, which is very, very bad at major-league baseball. oh, y'all, it's not even funny how bad the local team is. it's like charlie brown and his baseball team up in here. but hey, at least i got to lose feeling in my extremities while listening to drunken morons scream supposedly clever nicknames at the players.

and yet, somehow, even though the hometown boys got shut out in front of a half-full stadium on opening day, i left the ballpark with a strange sense of bounciness in my soul. interesting counterpart for the numbness in my toes. seriously, though. i was really happy. and for good reason. as the seasons change, for the first time in ages, i've got things set up pretty freaking well. i'm in basically good health, the dregs of flu-pocalypse 2011 notwithstanding. i have an amazing boyfriend, outstanding friends and an outrageously excellent family. school is ending (and there's a forthcoming post about how intensely ready i am to be shut of school). the job will start right on the heels of that. i get to go to south florida at the beginning of may and show off my professional acumen. and i have not one, but two occasions in the next two months to put on a sparkly dress and swan around town.

right now, it seems that all i do is win, no matter what. and i can actually recognize it, for once. i don't even need a reality check from the man like i have seemingly ten squillion times throughout the life of this blog (and honestly, throughout the life of our friendship/relationship). i am not meteorically happy; i am not down in the doldrums. things are humming along beautifully at a state of higher-than-average. it's a beautiful thing. and really, there's no reason to think that anything other than good will keep coming down the pike. sure, there'll be bumps in the road. i can think of two or three that just can't be avoided. six months ago - hell, six DAYS ago - that would've thrown me into a pout of biblical proportions. but now? without waves, it ain't the gulf of mexico (i know, that one is usually "without waves, it ain't the ocean," but i'm a gulf-coast kid, so i don't swim in oceans).

yeah, sounds like a home run, eh? and without getting too cocky, i think i've earned some smooth sailing these days. i've put in the work. and the start of baseball season is a great metaphor for the start of this new season of my life. it's been nothing but spring training for what seems like forever. i've been playing split-squad games, spending hours in that batting cage, swing after swing after swing. but now it's time for the regular season, and we're putting up runs, baby, all day long. i bring the pain, i hit clean-up in this life of mine. watch me swagger to that plate. tap those toes, level that killer look at the pitcher. bring it; i can take whatever you've got.

crack. boom. home run, son. and as i take my trot around those bases, i smile to myself. yeah, this will keep up all season long. all i do is win. and if i keep that in the front of my mind, this life will be cake.