Today has sucked.

I would go so far as to say that today has been Fucking Bad. It’s been a Fucking Bad Day.

I won’t go into the details of why today’s been a Fucking Bad Day because I’m a professional and shall simply Get Over It (capitalization is my new conscience. It not only gives me direction but makes me feel empowered. Bear with me. Or maybe you should try it – it may just be Your Kind of Thing.) Fucking Bad Days happen and I know they do, it’s just sometimes they can be so relentless that you want to look at karma/Buddha/God/your lucky pet starfish and with raised eyebrows say “Really? I mean…really?”

Yes. Today was a Fucking Bad Day. I couldn’t shake it either. It stayed with me like the stench of death, or at least of hastily hidden tunafish in the air vents of an enemy’s car (which may actually stink worse than death, I dunno). It kept rolling at me too, in multitudes of ways – health, work, an unexpected financial hit during December (which I really, really Did Not Need, as December does have a few other expenses to be dealing with, ‘Tis the Season and all), house, car…it just went on.

I went to the twins’ nursery tonight to help decorate it. Every year the parents get together and deck the place out for Christmas in an evening, so when all the kids turn up tomorrow they can see that Christmas has thrown up on their building, like a drunken 99cent store attack. I decorated the lunch room, and am thankful that children at this age lack any sense of style or I’d be the embarrassing parent. And much as I love Christmas and as much as I love the twins’ nursery, even with the Christmas music and all the wonderful nursery teachers there decorating too, I was still suffering from a Fucking Bad Day.

While there I got a text from Alastair (once of us had to be home with the sleeping twins, else we face the Blue Car (does anyone remember Sims2, or do I need to ditch that joke?)), which indicated that his day had taken a Fucking Bad Day turn of its own. I wrapped up my Christmas decorating so that I could head home and we could commiserate about our Fucking Bad Days.

When I got in, he was finishing off a work presentation, so I opened the washing machine to hang up the clothes I’d washed. I felt so cross and depressed, it was like a heavy curtain over me (I’m thinking damask, possibly from a 1980′s Sears catalog, so that you get my drift). And as I hung the clothes on the overhead line we have in the utility room, a most amazing thing happened.

Leaves started to fall on me.

Great hand-sized maple and oak leaves.

With each piece of clothing I hung, more leaves drifted to the ground around me. I couldn’t figure it out – was this magic? Had The Night Circus moved into my washing machine? Did the Christmas elves start their work on me even though my first Christmas blog post isn’t up yet?

As I took Nick and Nora’s jeans out of the washing machine I saw that I had failed my motherly duties in checking their pockets (previously hiding such goodies as crayons, rocks, and Weeble Wobbles) and that my little people had filled their pockets with leaves, which were now spilling out amongst the other clothes I had washed.

I hung the clothes up, smiling, as leaves rained down on me like a perfect Autumn morning.

And suddenly, my Fucking Bad Day disappeared*.

-S.

* Or at least it’s been most gorgeously side-tracked. I still have to wake up in the morning and face it all again, because That’s What Grown Ups Do (that just doesn’t get old, that capitalization thing).