I Went To Sleep With Gum in My Mouth*

Yesterday was not a grand day.  I won't go so far to say that it was Truly Bad.  There was no Big Awful Thing, but it was just a day I was glad to see the back of.

It was death by a thousand pin pricks.  All the tiny things, starting with the inability to fall asleep until 2am when I needed to be up by 6 so that I could get a jump start on the school day.  Only I kept hitting snooze until 7:15 and between that and losing my phone for the umpteenthousandthtime, this time for 20 minutes** I was late to work instead of being 45 minutes early.

It was a day of little annoyances.  Of small slights, little digs and petty disrespect from multiple corners.  Whiny, crabby children and irritable adults.   It was a day of lights that turned red as I drove up and rude drivers, things dropped, many bumps, trips and near-falls***  I missed my Holidalies post.  I didn't exercise.  My pants are getting tight.  I stepped where the cat threw up and my shoulder aches and the kitchen floor feels like it's made of adhesive.  I forgot something I left at work, couldn't find a FedEx store and had to run errands at rush hour.  I hate running errands at rush hour.

Lots of it, like dear Alexander, I suspect I brought upon myself by being unprepared or absent-minded, or just plain stubborn and none of this is the universe's fault, and I had no one to blame but me. Some days are like that, Viorist says, even in Australia.

When I got home, I asked on FB for my friends to cheer me up, and they did it.  In spades.  And, amazingly, the day was better.  Not just because I was laughing or cringing**** but because it meant there were many people out there who thought it was worth their time to make me smile.

I went to bed early, but before I fell asleep I was texted a joke about two snowmen.

There is something right in the universe when you know someone who will text you a clean joke about snowmen at 10pm at night.

So it started out a pretty crappy day and ended up not so bad.  Some days are like that, too.

Even in Australia.*****


*I didn't, really.  It's one of the best first lines in any children's book ever, The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by the marvelous Judith Viorist.  If you don't have a copy, get one.  It doesn't matter if you have children or not.

**It was in my bathrobe pocket.  I almost never wear my bathrobe and for reasons not worth going into here I wore it the night before and put my phone in the pocket of this thick, terrycloth bathrobe.  Which I then put into the back of my closet, behind lots and lots of other clothes.  Guess how easy it is to hear a phone ringing through that?†

***I had a physical therapist tell me once that she suspected I have a slight disability in proprioception, and thus I bang into things with great frequency.  It's worse some days than others.  This was one of the worse days.

****a photo involving a dad, an axe and his bikini clad daughter.  You don't want to know.

*****Not that I actually know this.  I suspect, though.

†not very