Seasons of Joy

So I recently read this book and I may be a bit of a word nerd, but it was pretty fascinating.  Among all the other bits if trivia about how English is the biggest hodgepodge of borrowings from every other language known to man was the part where English has lots more synonyms than most other languages.  And the great part about that is the part where you literally have a specific word for almost every possibility.

For instance, sometimes "happy" just doesn't cover it.  Sometimes the only word for what you're feeling is JOY.

And that definitely applies today because WE JUST PAID OFF MY STUDENT LOAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, in this case there AREN'T enough words to describe how excited Luke and I are feeling today.  So I'll have to express myself this way:  (in no particular order . . . well, alphabetical order because I just went down the list of gifs I've been saving up just for this blog post)

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . I'm assuming your computer is now running like you're using dial-up circa 1992. And I probably should apologize for that, but I'm going to be honest instead.

Because seriously.  I could go on.

But honestly, today is by far the happiest day of MY LIFE.  Better than getting married, getting engaged, even the day I graduated from college.  Because on every single one of those days I had this stupid student loan hanging over my head.  Even if it wasn't something I consciously thought about, it was always there in the background.

In fact, to go back to the last time I felt so uninhibitedly happy would have to be high school graduation . . . and we all know how long ago that was.  Because that was one of the last days when I still believed I'd get a grant instead of a loan.  Well, actually the last day for that was when Ashli applied for her financial aid.  I mean, let's be real here - in what world is it logical for a family to add a college student to their roster and then the original college student not only doesn't finally get a grant then but gets their loan amount cut?!?!?!  I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, at least my loan was still subsidized - Ashli's wasn't - but seriously.  I have yet to meet anyone to whom that makes sense.

But I shan't get into my financial aid rant today because I am just too happy.  There is such a weight off our shoulders . . . it feels like we might actually be able to make a living someday.  Assuming I ever get a full time job, which I'm thinking is not going to happen as long as we're living in this town.  But in the meantime where we can take a few things off the back burner and start actually moving forward.  And it.  Feels.  Awesome.  This is seriously exciting and the only thing keeping me from celebrating in Vegas or something is the part where I don't get paid time off.  :-)

The best part is this time a year ago we thought we still had two or three years left before we finally kicked this thing to the curb.  But along about five or six months ago the numbers started looking do-ably small.  So we crunched some numbers and it turned out that with a few financial changes and ramping up the bare bones-ness from Def-con 4 to Def-con 3 we managed to pull it off.  And now it's over.  And that still feels a little surreal.  In fact, I almost don't know what to do . . . maybe we should go buy a house . . . on the moon.

In a word -

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


P. ost  S. cript
There are not many things that could make today even better.  Underwater kitty mews are one of them.  :-)