She'll let you in her car, to go drivin' 'round.

At 7:28 tonight, I had a realization. In religious terms, had this particular realization been heralded by chubby children with wings and silken mops of golden curls, I might just want to call it an epiphany.

It was that powerful.

Brace yourselves, folks, it'll be a blog for the ages. What I'm going to say is short and sweet (or it could be, had I not the deep-seated desire to draw every word out of every situation). You will sit and think that it should be true all the time, but before you judge me as some crazy person, sit and think about whether or not you can say the same.

If you can, awesome. Sincerely, I think that it is fantastic in every way. I wish that I could say this all day, every day, but I think it's encouraging to say it and mean it any day, at any time. If you can't say this, I am sorry that you're stuck reading the blog of somebody who is saying it, because I know that's just like salt in the wound.

And with much (unnecessary) ado, I get to that little kernel which has kept you waiting with bated breath on the tips of your toes:

I'm happy. Really happy. And not some of the time, not on a day to day basis, not just when things are going right.

Yesterday morning, I walked into my house happy. And when I got there, the Waring brothers brought pancake mix and we let the puppies out in the yard and we hung out and it was really good. Just... simple. And still happy.

Then, probably one of the scariest things I have ever experienced. Charlie hobbled into the house, blood marking every part of the ground that her right paw touched. As she stood in our kitchen, it was literally spurting out, the type of bleeding you only see on Grey's Anatomy or in a Quentin Tarantino film. Bawling, and with Laurie in the back of the car also bawling, we drove to an emergency vet in Mount Pleasant.

Now, I know I've never really talked about the dogs on the blog except to say that they most likely think that we are all crazy. To sum up my relationship with the dogs, I love them. They are both La's and they both show her the highest degree of love and loyalty. But I adore them more than I realized. Charlie is, I would venture, exactly how I would be as a dog. She goes outside and runs around for twenty minutes like a bat out of hell and spends the rest of her day being lazy and a little bit weird.

So, we arrive at the vet, me cradling Charlie, La holding a (now horribly soiled) towel around her paw. A kind man who happened to be outside opens the door for us. We walk into the lobby and just stand there. Bawling, holding Charlie. If you've ever seen Michelangelo's Pietà right up close, you will understand the utter agony and depth of emotion. Granted our dog is not the crucified Jesus Christ and we are not Virgin Marys, the potential for loss was astounding to us.

Long story short, Charlie is now fine and has a pretty purple bandage on each paw and is learning to hobble on three legs and is laying at the edge of my bed as we speak.

I remarked to Laurie as we sat in the doctor's office that I was surprised by how quickly things could go wrong. We were having the perfect morning and suddenly found ourselves on the brink of what would be, for us, a tragedy. (That said, I should probably never have children. I would probably have a heart attack each time they fell from a swing.)

It wasn't until tonight, as I sat in class making a playlist instead of taking notes, that I realized how quickly things can go right. Despite our mishap yesterday, everything is going to be fine. Everything is still so, so good. And I thought about the past week. I had moments where I was upset, an entire hour-long phone call with my dad can attest to that, but on the whole, I came out of everything okay.

And not only okay, not merely surviving. But happy. I don't know exactly why, because I'm not one necessarily prone to unabashed joy (unless I am watching Chuck Bass on tv or dancing to no music).

It kind of feels good.


In other news, we have no water in our house. Kind of ironic, since Anna and Emily were just talking today about how we needed to change the bill to our name and start paying it...