Tag, I'm it

So Hotch Potchery gave me an award -- my first ever:


But I have to earn it. So here's the meme I have to answer for this award. I gotta tell ya, part of the reason I haven't posted in a couple of days is that the questions stumped me.

After being tagged for this meme, you must:

1. Say one nice thing about a man in your life.

Erm. First roadblock. What man?

I guess I can write about my father. I'm always impressed by how much he knows and can do. He fixes most things that break in the house all by himself (and unlike Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor of Home Improvement, we don't have to call in repairmen after). He and mom are finishing their house all by themselves, with occasional help from local Amishmen when it's a job my Dad can't do alone. Mom says so far the only thing he hasn't done is masonry, but that was before they put together a stone wall to cover the chimney box for the wood and coal stove they just installed.

2. List at least 6 ways that you measure (get it?) success in your life (or your blog):

And again, stuck. I really don't know how to answer this question, because I don't consciously think about success much. I'm more interested in happiness. Because you can be successful and still be unhappy (the head of the department where I used to work comes to mind. I suppose she's successful -- tenured, published, nationally respected, locally feared. She's also bad-tempered, sharp-tongued, and miserable), and that's really a yes-no question as opposed to a measurement.

So I spent a couple of days trying to figure out how I measure success. It's usually small things:

• Did I finish a project, and am I pleased with the result (my latest scarf, for example)?
  
• I have a whiteboard on the side of the fridge where I list to-do items related to the house. Are they getting done, or is the list just growing?
• I used to beat myself up about my housekeeping, but I don't any more. I'm messy. Deal with it. So there's a former measure of success that I've abandoned because it makes me unhappy.
  
• Except for the kitchen counter. By Sunday night, I need to have the counter completely clear and clean and ready to get messed up again the next week. I don't know why that is. It started when I moved in.
• And I suppose last month I measured success by posting a blog entry at least once a day.
  

That's five. I can't think of a sixth. And I kinda cheated, cause one of them is a measurement I no longer use.

3. Assign this award to 6 other bloggers, and leave them a comment telling the blogger you've assigned them this award.

Hmm. All-righty. I'm not going to inflict this on six people, though, just two: JustMe of Peanut Butter and Bacon Sandwiches, and Strings of the String Section (she made the mistake of writing that she likes these things). Anyone else who wants to do this, consider yourself tagged. To get the award, right-click on the image at the top, save to your desktop (or wherever), and then upload it to your blog.