Four complaints sandwiched by two completely awesome things.

One of them more awesome than the other.

1. So you may know that I'm one of those people who's totally obsessed with those little hotel soaps.  Or if you didn't know that, maybe it's not so hard for you to imagine.  But, like any adorable collection, they were growing out of hand.  So I'm only using my hotel soaps until they're all gone!  Three down, a dozen to go.  The sense of accomplishment I feel about this is outrageous.
2. The radio needs to stop playing that song, "Good Life" by One Republic.  Yeah, you probably couldn't complain that much if your life is just waking up in famous tourist locations having drunkenly traipsed through Europe, making swanky British friends and forgetting about all your lame friends in various US cities.   We all got our stories, and yours is one of freely galavanting all over the world without need for employment.
3. Someone needs to tell charities that in their plethora of gifts to encourage donations, not all women want their return address labels to use Ms. as the title.  Either get it right or don't do it at all.
4. The sixth graders just got done with a social studies unit on the Harlem Renaissance.  They made collages, and they look okay, those who did them, but I still feel no connection from them -- even to this, this most engaging of eras.  No genuine interest.  Just regurgitation, no appreciation that this was real, what was it like to live this, how did it shape today, etc.  If I had found out about the project earlier, I might have made the teacher show a clip of the lindy hop.  Frankie Manning, even.  Maybe I would have explained that I have the Harlem Renaissance to thank for my favorite activity, for a good chunk of my friends, for my Monday (and also now Tuesday) nights.  Would that have sparked them?  I see all these clips and articles about these amazing students who took something and ran with it.  Wrote a crazy awesome poem that changes their own life.  Started a club.  Petitioned a congressman.  These kids, even the best of them, just don't think like that.  It doesn't occur to them to, no matter how many poems we make them write.
5. For the first time in my many three years of doing taxes, we owe money.  I used to get so excited about taxes.  Now I am so sad.  In fact, we're even a little bit in denial about it.  "WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY, TURBOTAX?  THIS CANNOT BE!  LET US TO THE H AND R BLOCK!"  I'm reminding myself it's all just mental games, the money is the same whether they took it out first and it was too much or you fixed it to take out too little so you could buy a house and then it was too little in the end.  But I guess my point is I AM NOW A JADED AMERICAN
6. EXCEPT FOR THIS.  In this, I am an ecstatic American.  I also drive more considerately so as not to be a hypocrite.  As promised, and a repeat if we're friends on facebook.  Which we probably are.  And if we're not, we should be.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone for your input.  It was heeded.  Obviously.