My 40 days have come and gone . . . and I still haven't written about the fabulous surprise my husband came up with.

My life feels like one long list of things I haven't yet done. Which, I suppose, is kind of the point of living. If I ever reach the end of the list, what will I do next?

I have a wonderful post about branding floating around my head, but it will have to float for at least another day. I find it difficult to concentrate on being intelligent and witty while teaching my high school sophomore the basics of driving around an empty parking lot and attending junior high parent teacher conferences and helping my 4th-grader put handcuffs on her biography/puppet of Harry Houdini and reassuring a crying 2nd-grader that, no, his watch is not two minutes fast as a neighborhood child teased.

I love my life. But it does make intelligent and witty a state devoutly to be desired rather than my natural state of being.

But I do have one piece of advice before I dive back into my natural state of being. And the advice is for me.

"Laura--do not, under any circumstances, tell your trainer that your goal is to run in St. Stephen's Green in Dublin in May. And do not ever, no matter how happy you are, proclaim that a given weight is 'hard, but not hard enough'. If you do these things, you deserve every ounce of sweat and every quivering muscle that ensues."

I'm just saying.