The secret of coping with bad days

I’m having a bad day and I’m even wearing my favorite underpants.

My hair looks bad — half wild, half hat hair, half stringy. Since when did three halves make a whole? My blue eyes would look totally washed out if it weren’t for the red. I’m hoping for an unexpected thunder shower so I don’t have to explain anything.

I bought a new skirt. It was cuter on the rack. I should have known that cute and elastic waist is an oxymoron. The skirt accentuates my stacked-parentheses figure.

And to make matters worse, I’m a grandma with a pimple on my forehead.

I am reminded of my lame kitchen remodeler. After he tiled the kitchen counters, they sloped. Not towards the kitchen sink but to the floor.  Puddles of water on the counter dripped onto the floor. When I complained, he pulled me back about fifteen feet and said, “Looks great from here.”

Okay, so even at fifteen feet away, I still didn’t look great, but I look a heck of a lot better.

I’m already late to work. I forgot my wallet. No big deal. Until I remembered the car was on empty.

I used to think that bad days were the fault of everyone around me. Now if I were a young mom I could understand. There are so many sources for bad days. I remember one such memorable day at Greenleaf Park.

I’d taken my younger three — the daredevil eight-year-old, Hot Wheelz, with his right arm in a cast, CoCo, the six-year-old green peace tomboy, and the four-year-old cheese-colored hair wanderer — for an outing.

I heard a splash, turned, and saw the drifter after he’d maneuvered between iron stakes surrounding a stagnant lily pond. He’d fallen in with the water lilies and overgrown goldfish. I rinsed off the scum in the fountain as best I could, but the tuna smell lingered.

In the meantime, the daredevil climbed high in a large oak tree. His injured arm never hampered him. Until he dismounted. His hand slipped and the cast caught between two branches. He dangled like a pendulum — only noisier.

I placed the four-year-old with the orange hair on the merry-go-round in his white, or by then not so white, shorts. “Don’t move,” I instructed, fleeing to the son hanging as an out-of-season ornament.

While I attended to the daredevil, playmates spun Cheezy around on the playground equipment. Still damp, he fell off onto the sand. I rescued both children unharmed, but in a flash Cheezy had transformed into a smelly sand statue.

Bravely or insanely (still undetermined), I adhered to my original plans. I stopped for Cheezy’s first professional haircut. A Kodak moment for sure — NOT! More like a B-horror flick. He’d followed me into the barber shop and caught his finger in the swinging door.

An extra long day had passed by the time I pulled in my driveway. The six-year-old tomboy, who’d been relatively calm all day, hollered to the others after they crawled out of the backseat. “Shut the door. I wanna play Dukes of Hazard.” She rolled down the back window, put one leg at a time through the opening, and pulled her head out. The only part of her body still inside was her bottom. As she slid down the door, the belt loop on her jeans caught on the lock. She hung outside of the car, arms and legs flailing in the air.

Those kinds of bad days I understand. There are forces against you. All with your own last name.

Until recently, I had no idea I could so easily contribute to my own bad days. But I quickly learned the secret of coping.  You look for someone having a worse day than you.

My dad had warned, “If it weren’t for bad luck, we’d have none at all.”  So my brother, Kelly, was the logical person to phone.  Caller I.D. simplified our polling. He answered his cell with “I win,” and it was only eight in the morning. Just last night, he’d left his car unlocked in his driveway. This morning, his CD’s and coins were gone. Nothing major he said until he tried to doctor his aging Honda Civic with a boost of oil.  He opened his trunk, and you guessed it. His supply — disappeared. He stopped at the store to purchase a new case of oil with his credit card and had to produce I.D. That too was missing from his jacket pocket. He’d absent-mindedly left his driver’s license in the coat he’d thrown into the backseat the day before. Is that thief in for a shock stealing our identity from our family! I don’t know who will end up winning worse day — my brother or the thief.

There are some days that even wearing your favorite pair of underpants can’t help. You just have to let them ride. Punny, huh?

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