{slight detour}

For those of you who don't know, one of my two spectacular roommates is a teacher (read: underpaid saint).  While her classroom stories typically revolve around her three-year-olds biting and/or kissing each other, a most recent school-related drama shared at home involved her 35-year-old principal and a little something called a "happiness challenge."  

In short, said principal decided that as a self-declared middle-aged woman, her life needed a new balance, and that she would get this balance, indirectly, from 52 of her closest friends.  You can remove the seesaw/tightrope images from your brains now-this this "balance" is a little less literal and a little more fun than an amateur gymnastics class.  Essentially, Ms. Balance handed one playing card from a deck to 52 to friends/family members/employees/whatevers and simply asked them to write down on the card a challenge for her to complete during her thirty-fifth year of life.  Each week, she plans to pull a card (no peeking beforehand!) and do her very best to actualize whatever is written on it.  The ideas is to try/do/eat something new and, in turn, feel happier and more like this woman:

      

Well, maybe like this woman if she were looking at the camera, smiling, and not supporting a naked man.

Where am I going with this, you ask?  I've got a point, I swear.  And that point is that teacher roomie, other roomie and yours truly were all smiling after we read Ms. B's email to her 52 friends.  And we figured that if just reading about the Happiness Challenge second-hand could make us happy, we could do the challenge ourselves and maybe even (gasp!) make ourselves a little cheerier throughout the year.

Well, cards have been distributed. We've even gotten some back already. As someone who hasn't really ever been a fan of surprises, it's taking an enormous amount of strength (please reference the above woman again) not to sneak into the off-limits envelope and read what all my friends have in store for us).

The plan is to start Monday.  It's like a bucket list.  For three people.  But we're not making it.  And we're not dying (knock on wood).

Three girls. 52 cards. One year.  Here goes.