I got some sad news last night -- a high school classmate had died of cancer. Photos on facebook told the story of a mother of two very young children, smiling despite the disease and fighting to be the mother she'd always wanted to be.

Our graduating class was small -- 90 of us in all -- so I certainly knew Heidi. And though I'm painfully aware of the fact all of us are getting older (I just turned 35 a couple weeks ago), we are still way too young to be dying.

I think what really hit me the most about this is how often I find myself living for the future and not living in the present. Suddenly, that doesn't make very much sense.

It seems every day we rush through daily tasks. When I get home from work, I turn into a drill sergeant. "What's the homework situation? Did you do your chores? Who's first in the shower?"
It's almost always about getting stuff done. And while the stuff does need to get done, I rarely even attempt to have any fun doing it.

So, I'm on a mission to try to find the little nuggets of joy during even the most mundane of days. We have fun here at The Saratogian most days -- we can always laugh about something as we scramble through putting out The Daily Miracle, as we've dubbed it. Collectively, we newsroom folk have developed a way of joking our way through the junk. It's the only way we know how to handle all the bad news that streams its way into our days.

At home, I'm not as good at that.

Hey, maybe stuff like rolling the garbage cans to the curb doesn't have to be a total drag. Kind of a bad example, but I just want to make a point of living in the moment a bit more.