1. On Wednesday, the cap came off a bottle of salad dressing I had in my satchel to take to work. It left about a cup of liquid there. When I took it out of the bag, it dripped all over my desk and the papers on it. It dripped on the office rug as I put it in the trash. My office smelled like vinaigrette all day.

Wrong way to start the day.

2. That evening while Peter was hammering a nail into one side of a kitchen column to hang a small work of art (a birthday gift from a friend), a ceramic clock I treasure flew off the other side of the column and shattered on our granite counter.

Wrong way to end the day.

3. The next morning Peter and I had bickered over the following by 8:30 a.m.:

a. How much the bulletin board that had been below the shattered clock should be raised.

b. Why I dimmed the light in the kitchen

    c. What strategy we should use to park the car

Another bad start.

Then I got the following email from my daughter-in-law:

"Hi,

Grady (our two-year old grandson) is reading a cookbook—as you know, anything will do. He came across a picture of a roast chicken (which looks like a turkey) and said "Grammy makes that! Grammy makes that!"

Just to let you know that memories of Thanksgiving still linger with him.

Have a great day."

And thanks to that email, I did.