Well, we can’t all be winners all the time.

In general, I prefer winning to not winning. Or losing. Unless we are talking about losing weight, and then I would certainly like it. Not winning makes me sad. Until the next contest, and then I will probably find hope again and enter. But today, I’m a loser. And I’m grumpy. My daughter asked, “Mom, when’s the next trip you are going to win?” and I snapped back at her, “You mean LOSE? Probably today. I’ll probably NOT WIN a trip even today. But please don’t ask me when I’m going to WIN something.”

I think I’ll stick with radio contests where the announcer can tell me “Sorry, you’re caller #9” when if only I were #10 I would win the U2 concert tickets. Then I can growl to myself and be done with it. I should avoid contests where I have to get people to vote for me. Because then I put a lot of time and energy into asking people to vote. Then they get annoyed with me because I’m just schmoozing them because I want something from them, and then, even after all my hard work, I can’t get enough votes. Then it’s a public loss. Everyone KNOWS I was trying to win something, because I had to ask them all to vote, and then they all KNOW that I didn’t win.

But what kind of an example am I setting for my kids if I am grumpy every time I lose? It’s baseball/softball season starting up now, and we have about 30 more games to get through before the season is over. If my kids got all grumpy and felt bad every time they lost a game, that would be a whole lot of grumpy people living in our house, wouldn’t it? Part of playing the game is learning how to be a good winner AND a good loser. Heck, even Jimmer lost some games, right?

So, no, I didn’t win the makeover contest. I didn’t even make it into the 15 finalists. I don’t always get what I want. Big deal. Would you like to come over and help me paint? I need to take my own advice, and “suck it up.” And I’ll go on to lose some more. Oh, hey….I think they’re asking for caller 10. Gotta go….it’s time to try to win something.