One of Those Days

So, the other day I was just having one of THOSE days.

It started off with my H1N1 vaccination shot, which lead to me feeling sort of crappy towards the end of the work day so I took off a little early and promptly fell asleep on the bus ride home. I didn't even THINK about picking up the gift card I was supposed to buy that evening on my way home from work (I remembered in an "OH CRAP" moment about four hours later.

:::aaahhhh!:::

I finally got home, I cleaned the house up and then went up to the store to buy ingredients for scones that I was going to make for a birthday party at work the next day. I proceeded to make the scone recipe TWICE and both times they didn't rise and were doughy disgusting messes (I'm blaming out of date cream of tartar on this one). Of course, two batches of baking requires two batches of kitchen clean up, which....yay! And somehow one of the dishes slipped out of my hand and shattered in the sink.

:::sigh:::

In the mean time we were trying to get our family photo taken for our Christmas card. We set up the self-timer on the camera, we smiled and squished together, and in the end.....we had no really good photo to show for it. Tootsie-pop thought it was HYSTERICAL this year to make faces and ruin the photos, or to smile manically which also ruined the photo.

:::grrrr:::

Fuck it. I thought, I 'll see if I can crop out the flowers that magically appeared in the corner of the first photo we took. Except Ritz Camera's website was not jiving with iPhoto and wouldn't search the photo library.

:::unbelievable:::

I was hoping that going to bed would put an end to my bad day run, but it turns out I was in the midst of a bad day hangover. Tootsie-pop was running late, although it turns out it was ACTUALLY a late start day for school that morning and we were actually supposed to be dropping her off with her mom....in downtown. Not North Portland where we were actually at.

:::aaaaahhhhh!:::

So, I call Ken, and we coordinate for me to pick him up, get him and Tootsie-pop together and I'll drive them into work. So, I turn the car around and start heading to the bus stop Ken got off at.

And this is when the dog ran across the street.

It ran in front of the car in front of me and we both slammed on our brakes and didn't hit the dog, but it then turned around and ran back into traffic where it was hit by a car in the other lane going awfully fast.

I closed my eyes.

Tires squealing, dog yelping, and everyone just froze.

Two women across the street (the owners?) are crying in each others arms, the dog appears from under the car, ALIVE and bewildered, but clearly with a hurt leg. Another woman is gently trying to coax the dog out of the street.

The car in front of me slowly drives off and I follow. We see Ken about a half mile up the road, and pull over to pick him up.

I promptly burst into tears.

The whole thing has been weighing really heavily on my mind the last couple of days.

We all have those days where things just aren't clicking, everything is slowly grating on your last nerve, and you just can't seem to sigh deeply or enough to get that weight off of your chest. The To-Do list keeps growing even as you are working your ass off, trying to get everything done, and then...POW...you get a knocked right in the face with the REAL things to worry about.

All those things don't matter. The ruined scones? I bought some pastries and they were delicious. The forgotten gift card? Turns out you can buy virtual gift cards online and have them emailed out. The broken dish? The garbage can is right under the sink. The piles of dishes? That is what the "Kitchen Cleaning Music" play list is for. The late start day at school? We all got downtown in time.

The looking out for your loved ones, two or four legged?

Give them all a hug right now, because that one isn't always so easy to fix.