The terrible no good day.

Have you ever read this book?  Well I feel like I lived it yesterday.

I woke up feeling kind of bleh.  Or meh.  I had no real commitments but a house that looked like a bomb went off and I had started a new book so I debated skipping the gym and coming home and going back to bed with it instead.  But no, I have committed my self to go to the gym so I got dressed in my workout clothes.

Then I couldn't find my running shoes and was almost late to school. And Olivia was irritating me with her whining over not wanting to wear what I picked out for her for PICTURE DAY (honestly, I don't really care what she wears and you can sometimes tell, but picture day is the one day I go ballistic on).

Shoes found and kids dropped off I stop for my Diet Pepsi and look up the valley to see glorious sunshine.  It is way too nice of day so I decide to head out to the trails in the woods.  And heck it is Friday!  I should do a little jig for making it through another week.  One that felt like it should have ended on Tuesday...

So I stop at home, grab some snacks, bear spray, my dog Champ, and my new camera and head out.

Oh it was glorious. I was right to come out here. All the trees are golden and the shining sun was just the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was so quiet.  Champ was even being good and listening to me and not pulling on the leash.  I took a trail I hadn't been on before and was so happy with my Road Less Traveled choice.  My heart was singing.

My new camera was awesome. It fit in my pocket and took great pictures.  I stopped at a  little stream and was taking shots of water rushing over rocks and of Champ on the leaf covered trail.  Then I thought, "No makeup be darned, I am going to take a picture of myself out here on this awesome day!"

So I take off the wrist strap to transfer the camera from my right to my left hands, stretch out my left arm to get the angle I wanted and snapped the shot.  Then in making the short commute back to my right hand and into the right pocket of my jacket: disaster.

The camera slips from my fingers and in slow motion hits the bank of the stream and slides over the edge. For a second I think it is going to stop on the slight outcropping of dirt about a foot above the stream, but no. Its momentum carries it forward and -Plop.  It lands in the stream, tumbles once with the flow of the water and stops against a rock maybe 4 inches from its near perfect dive.

Slow motion breaks as I jump into ankle deep water and retrieve the camera. In one motion I open the battery door and take out both the battery and the SD card. I am so upset I know my hike is over and I take 2 steps down the trail when I stop and turn around to see my keys back at the bank of the stream. I count that as nothing short of a miracle that when I stoop to get my keys I just sit and start to cry.

Oh and there is Champ right on me licking my face to help me feel better.  He is seriously in my lap at this point and I am trying to push him off and I am yelling at him to leave me alone, but then I am glad he is there and I sit for a while and negotiate life.

I make it home (during a thankfully uneventful walk out and a phone call to JaDee on the way home in the car where I tell him, "At least I wasn't eaten by a bear." and he says, "Yeah, but I would still have the camera and chances are you would have had some great bear pictures on it..." thanks hon). and do what I call "Poll the Audience," from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and post my dilemma on facebook.  I look up a few websites, and put my camera in a bowl of rice in a warm spot above the mantle in my living room.

I got nothing done.  All day. I was so depressed!

Oh and when I got home Buckwheat had gotten in the garbage while I was gone and had it laid out across the kitchen and into the living room. (He is another funny story and had been earning time in Solitary Confinement, aka the Kennel, while we were out of the house but he recently was getting time off for good behavior- yeah he messed that parole board up).

Then I got a bobbi pin stuck in the agitator of the washing machine and for the life of me cannot get it out and I am afraid it will snag something and ruin it.

Then I got some bad news in the mail, in the box we don't use for the general population and often go for weeks without checking. In fact, my own mother doesn't have this address.

Then the kids come home and I have not done a darn thing and the house is still a mess.

Then JaDee tells me he found another $200 snow machine and he is on his way to get it. Of course it doesn't run yet, but he has high hopes. And of course it looks like something we dragged home off the side of the road (oh because we did) and parked it in our driveway as some kind of white trash art deco piece. (Don't worry, neighbors, it will up on blocks in my garage as soon as the motorcycle finds it home for the winter under a big attractive blue tarp).

But then we went out with friends and had a great time. I was still dressed in my hiking clothes (they had dried out by then:) and I still hadn't showered or put any makeup on. And the nice thing about Alaska is that there really isn't a dress code and  last night, I was for sure the one in the room you could look at and say, Well, at least I look better than that poor thing.

And it ended on a good note.