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Even bad days come to an end...

This has been a day of damns. I woke, stretched and watched in disbelief as my toes curled one way, my heel twisted the other, and the muscle in my calf turned to a pillar of stone before my very eyes. I sprang out of bed shouting, "Damn! Ow! Ow! Ow! Damn!" The day went downhill from there.

The first pancake, not quite cooked through, tore as I flipped it. (Damn.) The container of raspberries stubbornly refused to open and then when it did it flipped over, spilling berries all over the floor. (Damn!) I had some data entry work to do at the home of a former boss and when I finished and got into my car to return home, I realized I'd forgotten my special chair cushion. I went back in the house and up the stairs to fetch it, apologizing on the way only to get back to the car and realize I'd left my tea mug in the office. I went back in, apologized once more, went up the stairs and fetched the mug. Half way down I remembered the calendars she'd given me that were still sitting on the edge of the desk. I trudged back up and back down again, feeling very disorganized and foolish. (Not exactly the way one wants to appear before an employer. Damn!)

Back home I collected my book and my outdoor swing cushions, thinking to enjoy an hour's worth of reading in the bright sunshine before lunch when I found the note I'd scribbled to myself about getting my flu shot and a pertussis booster. I called the doctor's office. "Come now if you can," said the nurse (damn) so I got back in the car and drove into town. The nurse was waiting for me with two hypodermics but the new receptionist could not figure out how to enter my Medicare information into the computer. She whisked my card out of my hand, told me to go on through and she'd have it figured out by the time I was done. "I'll have to give one shot in each arm," chirped the nurse. (Damn!) Back at the reception window the new woman was still struggling with my information. She searched for my card and couldn't find it. "Oh dear," she sighed, pawing through a slew of papers strewn across her desk. (Damn!) Finally another woman behind the counter located it in the copy machine. I took it and fled.

I opened the cottage door to the drool-inducing scent of pork cooking slowly in pomegranate juice and orange slices. Every week I try to take a ready cooked meal to my daughter's, saving her a day of thinking about, preparing and cooking dinner. I lifted the lid and inhaled. I took a fork and poked one of the sweet potato chunks swimming in the delectable juice. It fell apart before I could lift it to my mouth. (Damn.) The crockpot had been on low for a mere three hours. The recipe called for 6 hours of cooking. Nothing should have been fork tender yet. (Damn!) I took a slotted spoon and scooped the potato chunks out, mashing a few in the process. (Damn!)

I toasted English muffins with cheese and tomato for lunch. One tomato slice slid off the toast and spattered on my clean shirt. (Damn.) And my clean jeans. (Damn!) I'd already done two loads of laundry which were flapping on the line so I hand washed and wrung out the shirt and jeans and hung them on the line. No way were they going to dry before sundown. (Damn!)

The sewing project I'd put off for days sat waiting for me. I am making slipcovers for cushions that will make seating out of a long, low bench in my daughter's dining room. All that was left was to put a long zipper on one end of each cushion cover. To save money I'd cut two zippers from some old cushions. I set my sewing machine up on the kitchen table. I needed a magnifying glass to help me see the infinitesimally small hole in the needle. It took several minutes to thread the machine. More time was spent ironing seam allowances and pinning the edges to the zipper. A special presser foot had to be installed. Finally I was ready to sew. The fabric was thick and refused to be moved along by the ridges on the feeder plate. The thread gathered and bunched and broke. (Damn.) It took several tries to re-thread the machine. (Damn!) Half an hour later the first zipper was finally stitched in. I pulled the zipper closed and whoosh! The pull flew up the teeth and right off them, flung itself from my hand and came to a clanking stop under the refrigerator. (Damn!)

I did what any country girl does when things go wrong inside. I grabbed my sweater and went outside, stood in my fading summer-green-turning-to-autumn-brown yard and looked up into the huge blue sky. Great, gray-white, puffy clouds drifted before a high wind. The sun was setting in a welter of pinky gold. One wispy cloud looked like a small witch on a tattered broom. Chasing behind her was a dragon-shaped behemoth, gray-black along the edges where ten foot incisors loomed. I wondered if that poor witch was saying, "Damn!"