Opinion : A good bad day

May the worst of your days begin with tangled cords.

I had a bad day on Thursday. Or, in this era when my job as a journalist is the most fun it's ever been, it does not at all deserve to be called a Bad Day; it's only a day with a few inconveniences.

I tried to make phone call this morning, to follow up on a local connection to a story I had seen on the national news the night before. After finding the phone, I realized its battery was dead. So I went to look for the other one. I finally found it. Another dead battery. I put one phone on one charger then put the other phone on the other charger, the one next to the modem and wireless router.

No red light. The cord had come unplugged.

My investigation into this anomaly resulted in having the modem leap from its position on the top of a cabinet and lunge toward my head.

I then realized that the phone base was unplugged because its cord had joined with the electrical cords for the modem and router and the phone cord to the modem to form a black and yellow tangled basketball net. NCAA championship celebrations have taken less time than that which I spent this morning, disconnecting, unraveling and re-connecting all of those cords. I also untangled the power strip, and nailed it to the wall, in an attempt to avoid future snags.

This of course led to grumpy questions between me and my colleague/spouse about who should bear the blame for the untangled cords, or the fact that the internet stopped working while she was in the middle of emailing one of our advertisers.

The cords are fixed now; the phone and internet will function normally until the next cord incident.

But as I sat down to begin the day's updating of Vinton Today, I realized that this is what my bad days have become. I am doing the job I dreamed of doing when I moved to Vinton in 2003. I am doing what I love, and people seem to appreciate what I am doing. And I am making enough money to keep the minivan running, and the batteries in my toy helicopter charged.

My granddaughters love me and think my singing and dancing is just fine, regardless of what my older relatives seem to think. My dog loves me, too.

Life is good.

If your "bad: days include becoming exasperated while untangling cords, you have got it pretty good.

And I do.

I know people who are in the midst of losing jobs or losing parents. I have friends who hope 2012 will be boring, after all the not-so-boring things they survived in 2011.

For them -- and for all of you -- I hope that 2012 brings days like today; moments when the little things that go wrong remind you that everything that matters is all right.