"I need you. I don't know why, but every now and then in my life, for no reason at all, I need you."-Sarah "Labyrinth"

Yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  The husband's brief visit ended (his visit explains why I vanished from the Blogosphere last week).  We had to drop him off at the airport at O'Dark Thirty in the morning.

The day was then just one miserable experience after another.

Among those miserable experiences was the vehicle deciding that running was optional and it wasn't an option the van actually wanted.  Of course, the kids had Hebrew school which is nowhere near our house and therefore requires a working vehicle.

Luckily, a friend lives in my area AND is a Hebrew school teacher.  So she (G-d bless her) was able to bring the kids there and back (this bears repeating, caps, & excessive punctuation G-D BLESS HER!!!).

Later, that same friend complained that her day wasn't productive.  This was a shock to me because she really saved us.  Plus, in my awful day, she was the one bright spot.  I think contributing to the education of the children (by actually getting my kids' butts there and teaching other people's kids) AND restoring faith in humanity are both very productive.

With the husband still out of state and the vehicle still refusing to work, I thought today would be another miserable day like yesterday.   Then, I got a last minute call to babysit.  There was a death and a funeral and a 2-year-old whose mother needed to attend to the first two.  The death and funeral are beyond me, but the two-year-old needing watching, that one I've got covered.

So she came over and joined the goat rodeo for the day.  Everyone had a blast.  We built with blocks.  We read books.  We played dress up (at one point, I was wearing an Xmas tree skirt as a shawl,  a shower cap and sunglasses shaped like a bat), we read more books, we had snacks.  Her mom was very thankful.  It really wasn't a big deal for me, but it helped her out quite a bit.

Amazingly, I found all this left me with no time to wallow in another terrible day.  Being needed, being able to help and knowing that our help was very much appreciated helped completely turn my mood around.