Maybe it was just my turn for a bad day ...

I could so easily write some whiny blog post about how I didn't feel good when I woke up, and I didn't really want to go up in the hills today, and I would have canceled except I am all worked up about whether I'm conscientious or not (thanks, Malcolm Gladwell) so I soldiered on, right into spilling coffee all over my car and accidentally mistaking a green turn signal for a green light.

It would be easy enough to say, "You know, I KNEW I should have just stayed home."

But of course, if I had stayed home, it's not like I could have monitored what would have been that alternate reality where I'm looking through my coffee-scented car for the insurance information that just isn't there because a cop has just pulled me over for running a red light. More likely I would have been feeling lazy and guilty. And maybe I would even have had a REALLY BAD DAY at home. Who knows?

This is what I do know: I have a headache from being out in the sun, I got a ticket and I'm going to have to go to traffic school, and I'm not a happy camper. But we did have a nice hike. I saw the ocean from the mountains, I took lots of pictures of flowers, I got to hang out with Katherine who also studied graduate linguistics and whose kids have an even keel our family can barely aspire to.

I just wish my brain would not check out on me like it does from time to time, because all the tickets in the world are not going to stop that from happening again, and when it does, who knows what could happen? It's amazing I've survived as long as I have.