Bad Day or Bad Decisions......

I have been wondering lately whether we really just have bad days or if sometimes we CREATE bad days. Obviously some things can't be helped, but I think there are times when we compound things by the way we respond/react to them.

One thing that is certain to create a bad day (or afternoon) for me is to get out of my routine. We only had a half-day with students today, so we spent the afternoon scheduling. By 3:45 we were quite punchy -- and not finished with scheduling. And I forgot to go pick up the sullen teenager who is my husband's granddaughter.*

Luckily we only live a mile from her school, so hubby was more than willing to go pick her up. And I was able to text her and let her know he was on his way.

Then my car went all retarded, which it isn't really allowed to do since it isn't PAID FOR YET. Where the odometer SHOULD show, it had this weird message about isobars and Apgar scores. Not really, it said "TEST." Okay, do I need a #2 pencil or what? When I pushed the "Reset" button, it scrolled through about a gazillion things that might have been written in Swahili, and at one point it gave me a part number. And it wouldn't stop scrolling through all those things.

So now I'm not only leaving school later than usual, I have to stop at the Ford place to have them check on my car.

Which would be a lovely time to run down to the Y, which is adjacent to the dealership, and get my exercise in. Only I didn't plan ahead and bring my clothes. I know, I know, you can't plan car trouble, but I had sort of thought about stopping by the Y anyway. So I have to just sit and watch the coverage of the plane that went down in the Hudson River today and listen to the news anchors speculate on how bad it COULD HAVE BEEN if a gazillion things had been different. They seemed disappointed that there was no carnage to report. They rank right up there with Mr. Weatherman in my book. Except for Robin Meade, who is the Queen of television news. But I digress.

Not too many things drive me madder than having to sit somewhere and wait. If I go to get my oil changed, I take a book. Or my crocheting. Or my laptop. But not having planned this particular trip to the dealership, I had nothing with which to pass the time. I can only play so many games of Brickbreaker on my Blackberry and consider it time well spent.

I won't bore you with ALL the details of my afternoon/evening, because when I started this blog I swore to myself it would not turn into a this-is-what-I-did-today blog.

I decided to prepare dinner first (black bean soup and cornbread - yum) and then go BACK to the Y (where I had practically just come from, remember), during which the following occurred:

• I dropped the food processor blade down the front of my off-white blouse as I was removing the BLACK BEANS from the processor. Today was the first time I'd worn that blouse.
• I put a bowl in the sink to run water in it and turned around to stir the soup, not noticing that the bowl was A) sitting above the rim of the sink; and B) tilted backward toward the faucet. If you're wondering just how far water can chase itself, the answer is the full length of the kitchen cabinets. BEHIND everything.
  
• I put on my sneakers in preparation for my treadmill session to come, not noticing that they were still bearing several pounds of dirt/sand from my walk in the park yesterday. I only noticed it after several laps around my kitchen. Which has a white tile floor. If you're wondering just how many square feet of kitchen floor you can get dirt on while preparing dinner, the answer is every single one.

I'll be the first to admit that none of these incidents is life-threatening or horrible or even really worth blogging about.

I caught myself wanting to throw up my hands and say, "Oh GREAT! This day just SUCKS!"

But I stopped myself.

Because the whole day didn't suck. Besides, some of these things happened because I was trying to hurry and adjust my day after the routine had been disrupted. And I was too stubborn to, say, pick up a Subway sandwich on the way home from the Y and forget about the black bean soup.

Hence my theory that sometimes we create our own bad days.

Tomorrow I plan to create a good one.

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*She's not really that sullen, compared to a lot of other teenagers. But she is 14, so everyone and everything is "stupid." At least they're not "stewpid." And it's not that I don't consider her my granddaughter too. But my step-daughter is only 8 years younger than I am, so it's hard for me to feel like a real grandparent.