If I Post This Before Midnight I'll Probably Jinx Everything

I've been called a hopeless optimist before, but I can't imagine that positive thinking alone could have strung events together as smoothly as they've fallen together over the past 24 hours.

Yesterday, Peter sold his gas-guzzling "lifted" monstrosity of a truck (disclaimer: Mom's opinion... not fact) to a 15-year-old and his dad who drove up from Portland to buy the ol' thang. This left Peter without transportation and, coincidentally, I didn't need the Honda today so I told him he could take it, but he'd need to buy a car quickly. Unbeknownst to me, Peter already had things worked out (ah, the joys of self-sufficient adult kids!): his friend was selling the exact Subaru Legacy AWD that Peter had his eye on and agreed to sell it to Peter today as soon as he bought the car he had his eye on (a Legacy wagon). Over the course of today, those transactions each went off without a hitch and Peter is now the proud owner of a much more sensible, economical, environmentally friendly car.

While I was home car-less today and not in need of one anyway, Kat texted me from school: "My license tabs expire today!" Renewing the registration on Kat's car was one of those things we'd been meaning to take care of for about a month but never got around to -- until today. We no longer had the choice to procrastinate, so I texted Kat back: "Let's go today when you get home." I knew we'd pay for our procrastination since today is the last day of the month and tomorrow it'd be illegal for Kat to drive her car. We expected long lines both at the state emissions station where we'd have the car tested to make sure it complied with environmental emissions requirements and at the state licensing office 10 miles away, where we'd renew our registration. As we left our house, I told Kat to be prepared to wait in a lot of long lines and exercise great patience before the whole registration ordeal was over.

Amazingly, there was absolutely no line at the emissions station, and the normally grumpy staff was even almost jovial, joking with us and giving us a hearty congratulations for passing. (Little did they know that I was, in fact, relieved!)

What luck, I thought -- and off we headed to the Department of Licensing office 10 miles away. Not only did I expect the two-lane road that connected the emissions office and the registration office to be bumper-to-bumper with evening rush hour commuters, I also expected long lines at the small registration office, where it isn't unusual for the line to wind out the door and around the corner.

Again, we were in luck! The road was wide open and miracle of miracles (especially for the last day of the month at 4:30!), there was no one at the licensing office! We walked right up to the window where we were asked for $74.75 in "cash-or-check-no-credit-cards-allowed."

What? 'Oh crap,' I thought as I began to rummage through my purse. 'I don't have my ch...' But there, buried at the very bottom of my purse, was the checkbook that I rarely carry with me. I vaguely remember throwing it into my purse a few weeks ago and fortunately I'd never gotten around to removing it. Phew! I wrote the check, again commenting on our amazing luck.

Taken by our good fortune, we jokingly said that we should "Jiffy Lube the car too," just to test our luck. Surely the lines at Jiffy Lube would be long and treacherous, we joked as we drove by. But wait a minute! What's this? A guy with a placard that says "Right now! $21.99!" Could we BE so lucky? 'Sure,' I thought, 'Great price, but I'll bet the line is really, really lo....'

There was no one there! We drove right into the stall and they got to work immediately, even replacing a burned out blinker light, an air filter and some weird gizmo that cost $10 that I was assured we needed. (Yes, at this point, I was beginning to blindly trust not only our luck but the people we were encountering...) We were out of JiffyLube with a freshly maintained, licensed and emissioned car within only 15 minutes of arriving there! That had never happened to me before!

From Jiffy Lube, we headed to the gym, where I had resigned myself to running on the elliptical trainer (yuuuuuuuk!) because the guys swim team occupies the entire pool every afternoon from 3:00 to 5:00. I have come to love swimming but I still dread any sort of exercise that poops me out and makes me sweat, so I wasn't looking forward to today's land work-out. Kat's friend works at the front desk of the gym, so we chatted with her briefly, which was when she told me that I'd probably be happy to hear that the guys were at a swim meet and the pool was basically empty.

Woooo-hooooo! I mean, seriously.

I LOVE swimming by myself in that Olympic-size pool! It was glorious, refreshing and rejuvenating and just all-around positive... especially on a day like today, when things are just completely falling together! I swam hard for 40 laps, lost in my own world that had, for some reason, been extraordinarily positive on this particular day.

On the way home we stopped at Safeway to get a few ingredients for the chicken tetrazzini I was planning to make (or rather, THREE of them -- one vegetarian version for Kat, a regular version, and one with mushrooms for me since no one else likes mushrooms and I adore them) and would you believe it...

The French bread had just come out of the oven and was still steaming hot and absolutely heavenly! How could we even BE so lucky? It was so delicious that... well, that we decided that it was almost as good as being in Germany again!

Why is it that some days flow like this one and some days don't? And why is it that we tend to pay closer attention and take things so personally when, unlike today, the day just goes completely wrong? I have a feeling that those days are much easier to remember -- and I know for certain that they're easier to complain about!