It's really okay to fail sometimes

As my dad says, "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you."

In other words, you win some...

This is a cake I made for a party several weeks ago.

And you lose some...

I hope this second picture makes you smile. It makes me chuckle every time I look at it! This is the...err...cake that we attempted to make at Okawame Jr. High yesterday. As you can see, it got a bit overdone and a bit...mutilated. Apparently, it was not quite ready to be flipped out of the baking pan! Whoops. Found that out a little too late! (As a side note, it was completely baked, so we did do something right. Notice the toothpick that we used to make sure it was done in the middle, haha.)

There was a time--not all that long ago--when I probably would have cried at the sight of that disastrous wanna-be cake.

But we had a birthday to celebrate. (Junichi's -- my student who has a learning disability and therefore a private class with Ms. Takada and me.) Making Junichi feel special on his birthday was more of a priority than making a beautiful cake. So we laughed about the situation.

It was in college that I learned to not take myself so seriously. I had been an all "A" student in high school and worked extremely hard for those "A's," stressing myself out. But in college, there was no way that I was coming out of Calculus (first semester of my first year) with anything close to an A. I felt like it was a miracle that I got a B-! I tried hard, and that's what counts. I'm not an "A" student in every subject, and I'm okay with that.

I still tend to want everything to be perfect. Life doesn't work that way though. No one is perfect. Mistakes happen. Cell phones go through washing machines and cakes don't turn out as planned. I've learned that you just have to laugh at yourself and go on.

And also, make the best of the situation. Scrape off the burnt part of the cake, decorate it with tons of icing (which is the best part anyway!) and sprinkles, get out some pretty plates, slice up an apple just for fun, sing "Happy Birthday" real loud...

...and celebrate!! Good has been done here.

And you know what, that cake was delicious!