Not Quite Terrible, Horrible, No Good or Very Bad

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth, and now there's gum in my hair. And when I got out of bed this morning, I tripped on the skateboard, and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running. And I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day... I think I'll move to Australia.

--Judith Viorst
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Alexander and I could have gotten together and swapped stories today. I woke up with a headache, and it stayed with me like an annoying little brother all day long. Right after my first class began, my desk nearly collapsed due to the fact that it's poorly designed. I managed to catch it, but not before my mug fell over and spilled hot tea over a bunch of papers. I had an email exchange with an unreasonable parent, and kept my 3rd period class after the bell because I spent far too much time asking them to be quiet so I could explain a new Excel assignment. By the time I got home, my headache was raging, so I was more than happy to fall back into the recliner, read a little ("Benediction" by F. Scott Fitzgerald) and fall asleep for a much longer nap than I had planned.

After what I had thought would be a 30-minute nap turned into 90 minutes, I woke up, thinking for some reason of our neighbor Doug. A couple of months ago, Doug fell out of a tree stand and broke his neck. He is currently in a rehab center in Colorado. Yesterday, according to the CaringBridge blog that his daughter uses to post updates on Doug's progress, Doug brushed his own teeth, helped put his arms in his shirt, swallowed pills on his own, worked on picking up playing cards, and made sandwiches for himself and his daughter using adaptive silverware. All of these are things are amazing, considering the condition Doug was in after his fall, and they are things that most of us take completely for granted.

So here I sit, typing out a blog entry at roughly 50 words per minute with fingers that do exactly what I tell them to do. Thanks to my nap, my headache is gone. Brett and I went to the barns together to feed the animals (something I guarantee that Doug and his daughters would love to be able to do tonight), and I had homemade pizza with Barb and the girls for supper. 

It's been a wonderful, enjoyable, very good evening. And even though the day that preceded it wasn't the best ever, I was able to walk my way through it, and when put in the perspective that retrospection can give, it really wasn't that bad.

"Getting Better," The Beatles