It was one of those days. You know, the kind where you just want to go back to bed and pull the covers over your head?

All the little things seemed to be conspiring against me. I was out of coffee. Out of tea bags. Out of my mind to even consider driving 20 minutes to "town" to get more when I had so much to do.

I sat down to work on a simple task -- printing some labels so I could mail the bookmarks I'd been planning to send to a list of about 100 romance-friendly bookstores.

But the label program I use didn't want to recognize the input file of store names and addresses I was using. So...after 45 minutes of fiddling with it, I broke down and retyped 100 names and addresses into the database it wanted to use. Of course, 10 minutes later, I found the button to make it use a different input. Wasted all that time and typing. Sigh.

Then the printer wouldn't line up right with the fancy labels I was using. 45 minutes later, I gave up on the fancy labels and went to plain, square white ones.

Then the printer jammed.

And on and on it went. Each little step, which should have been simple in itself, became a nightmare. You know the kind.

And I still didn't have any coffee or any iced tea.

So when I finally declared success, I was so stressed that I wasn't good for anything productive. Even though it's 100 degrees outside, I took my glass of water (no tea, remember) and went outside. Walked around the farm for a few minutes.

I watched the baby horses kicking up their heels in the pasture, careless of my frustration. I craned my neck to see a blue heron gliding overhead. I snacked on fresh blackberries right off the vine from the thicket at the back of my property.

The magnolia tree I planted a few months ago is doing well (thanks to lots of watering) and there was just enough of a breeze to rustle the leaves in the giant cottonwood next to the driveway.

All in all, life wasn't so bad.

Thank heaven for the little things...