Today is my mom's 48th birthday!!! WooHoo!!! She gave birth to me when she was 16 years old and then gave me two sisters by the time she was 18. This means that she gets to enjoy her empty nest and her grandchildren before reaching menopause. That is not something that will happen for me, so I think it's pretty darn cool. In celebration of my mom, I will shine a little light on a lesson she worked tirelessly to instill in my sisters and I: Excellence without Excuses. Now, she didn't call it that. Her language was a bit more colorful back in the day. What she called it is irrelevant to what she meant and how it's still relevant. If my mother told us to clean the kitchen, simply washing the dishes wasn't going to cut it. We had to wash dishes, clean the counter, stove, table and floor nightly. Once a week we were required to clean the inside of the refrigerator. Of course, we also had to handle the trash. Anything less meant we had failed to do what we were...