I’m having a bad, bad day.

I’m having a bad, bad day

You might know the kind of day I’m talking about. It starts with bad traffic which makes you late, or a flat tyre, or a flat car battery. It progresses to work, where a document you’ve been working on for days suddenly won’t open, or didn’t save properly, or is somehow corrupted. It continues to lunch, where you forgot yours at home, or your eftpos card decides to stop working when there are 10 people behind you at the local sushi joint. Then mid-afternoon your mobile phone dies. Then your laptop charger craps itself when you’re right in the middle of a deadline. I could go on. I won’t. You get it, right?

I had that day yesterday. Just about everything that could go wrong, did. Also, I stepped on a Lego before I got into bed and I swear somebody left it there on purpose. Somebody who’s four years old and into Lego…

And then today, the universe seemed to make up for everything that went wrong yesterday. When I got to work, there was a chocolate bar waiting on my desk. A colleague gave me a bag of clothes for one of my kids. I found the missing hot pink sticky note pad that went missing a month ago. I forgot I’d ordered from Eat My Lunch and when it arrived I was surprised and thrilled (hey, I love food, and I also love that organisation – check it out!). I was on time to all of my afternoon meetings. I got my favourite parking spot in the school carpark for pickup. The kids were in a great mood and didn’t fight over ridiculous things. My husband made dinner and cleaned up. I got to use the bathroom in peace. I didn’t step on a single Lego at any time during the entire day.

Life is like that. Some days you’re up, some days you’re down, and some days you’re just in-between somewhere, hanging on, taking a moment to breathe. This is parenthood. For me, as a working parent, it can sometimes seem like the chaos reigns far more often than the calm. But when the calm days come, I think I appreciate them more.

What I’m reading this week: The City of Mirrors, by Justin Cronin (Orion $37.99)

The City of Mirrors

This is the third book in The Passage trilogy, and man, has it been a long time coming. I love post-apocalyptic/dystopian future tales and this one has the added bonus of a plague which turns humans into vampires. Sort of. It’s hard to explain, but I remember very clearly after I read the first book in the trilogy, The Passage, I was furious because it just seemed to end without explaining so many things – and then someone told me it was going to be a trilogy, and it all made sense. With this third volume, we’re finally getting somewhere. It’s been three years since any “virals” (what they call the vampires) have been spotted, civilisation is starting to reform itself, and people are hopeful. But are the virals really dead? I don’t know what’s going to happen yet, but I love reading about characters I grew very invested in through the previous books, and I have a feeling I’m going to be sad when I’m finally finished with this long and meandering tale. Do yourself a favour and get through The Passage and The Twelve first – so you can really savour this one.

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