This one's for you!

God love my friends, they are an adventurous group of people.



A good friend of mine sent me a text at about midnight on Saturday, saying, "I just spent the entire day snowmobiling and now I'm being hit on by a 60 year old woman. It's come down to this, Erica, get me my gun. I'm done!" I didn't receive the text until around 3am, at which time I couldn't stop myself from sending him what I felt was a friendly and appropriately supportive response saying, "Well, did you ask her to take out her dentures?"



This of course led to an immediate phone call from him, full of disgusted protestations about the potential horrors of kissing someone with no teeth. I responded that it might behoove him to find a new place to hang out, if he doesn't like the attention he's receiving. And on my own end, perhaps I should know better than to answer late-night text messages? ;) j/k, Ry.



I was toying with the idea of posting an, "Erica's top 5 worst dates ever" blog, but I think maybe that might be unfair to some of the people I went out with. After all, there could be a perfectly good (medical?) reason why someone would spit into their hand a dozen times during dinner while steadfastly refusing to use a napkin (Where did the spit disappear to? I have no idea.). Or maybe it's not nearly so entertaining as I think to go on a Valentine's date and have your date tell you *after* you order that he has only $10 with him, and then offer to cook you a breakfast burrito at his house instead. Or who could forget my personal favorite, which involved being invited over to watch a movie at a boyfriend's dorm room, only to arrive and find him sitting with a group of dorm buddies, snuggled up to another girl?



But no worries- in typical "Erica" fashion, I stuck around to watch the entire movie anyway, just to piss him off. And in the end the other girl ended up dating his best friend, so I guess you just can't fight karma, can you? Poor guy.... he wasn't very smart. This is the same guy who asked me if "Romeo and Juliet" was written by Shakespeare. But damn, was he cute!



It's tempting in the face of adversity to concentrate on all the bad experiences and forget about the astonishingly good ones. If you can manage to let go of the slights of the past and immerse yourself in the memories that make you smile, the journey is much sweeter. You get much more satisfaction from the memory of meeting the handsome blue-eyed stranger who asked you to dance and then whirled your heart away, or the amazing company of a true gentleman at a formal event. Or the smile of anticipation on someone's face before a first kiss, followed by the smile of triumph afterwards.



Such are the memories that keep you going when you've spent two years making mistake after mistake. If you're lucky, you'll recognize your true opportunity when it presents itself and you won't let it go to waste.

On this very day, I hope that I have finished making mistakes and will be forgiven for those I've already made.

So let me make a toast.... To the end of squandered opportunities, to the end of bad choices, and to the beginning of recognizing a good thing when you find it.