I had a scary mommy morning. It may have been me it may have been the toddler. It may have been us both, feeding off one another’s bad mood, negative vibes, wrong side of the bed attitude. Either way it was rough. One of the roughest. We’ve all been there haven’t we? Please say you have. The kind of morning where the whining seems excessive, the patience isn’t long enough, and time is extensive. Like never ending, going to stay this way for the rest of eternity, kind of extensive. And no matter what you try the funk can’t be broke. It won’t be broke. So the cloud hangs.

I said things I didn’t mean. The toddler did things she doesn’t normally do. I chose to wallow in the mood and the little girl chose to do the same but in a much louder, fairly irritating, and sometimes unconventional way. I was in such a spot that warming the leftovers for lunch wasn’t even on my radar. After all I was way to busy having a terrible, awful, no good day. Woe is me. I don’t have bad days often but when I do they are a doosey.

And after my sweet husband came home for lunch and saw that not even the left overs were warmed, he silently warmed things up which made me more grumpy and guilty all at the same time. “How can he be so kind and gentle all the freaking time? What’s wrong with HIM? What’s wrong with ME?” Then he decided to wade into the deep water and spoke words to me. He’s so brave. “So what’s going on?” Gulp. I wasn’t sure. I’d tried to place the blame all morning. Only not able to put a finger on it. So I unloaded. All of it. Us women have a way with words. Making them like vomit. Gross analogy I know, but at the end of it all my husband looked at me like the mysterious, illusive, freak of nature creature I felt like and said “Well I’m sorry. I’ll come home early.”

That’s when the phrase, “Salvage the Day” flashed in my head. I think the Lord put it there and I had to figure out what that exactly meant. Salvage the day. What do I do with that? Something that’s what. Salvage a chair, I can do that. Scraps of fabric, no problem. But a day? That was a new idea for me. I’d much rather have a guilty party to place blame on and deal with but that wasn’t happening. So I kissed the man who promised to put up with my stuff forever and tried to salvage what was left of the day.

My girl and I made mediocre cookies. Folded a hodgepodge load of laundry. We took a so-so nap. We danced to melancholy music. I made a good enough supper and took a sufficient shower. And at the end of the day as we were all snuggled up on the couch watching Netflix I could safely say and I sincerely felt I had managed to salvage the day. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t without flaws-no day is. It wasn’t without a few more fits – from both of us, but it was done. We had something to show for it and something to learn from. We didn’t have to go back and do it over, we got to start fresh. Some days it’s seize the day and others, it’s just salvage it. Get through it, learn from it, and work at it to make it good enough.

 Salvage the day. I don’t think I’ll be forgetting that tagline anytime soon.