A truck tailgates me and passes me going more than 60 in a curvy, no-pass 40 mph zone that has small businesses and homes on either side. I get on the freeway and a car zips around me and then pulls in front of me in the slow lane, goes past the car in the fast lane and then cuts in front of the car – so close he almost hits the front fender and the driver of the other car has to tap the brakes.

And I decide to just give up. I decide to have a crappy day. The world, I decide, is full of thoughtless, impatient, selfish people, and I’m suddenly too weary and worn to fight it anymore.

I exit in Mount Vernon and park in front of the CS Reading Room. Go inside and buy some “Quarterlies” and then walk down to the Skagit Valley Food Co-op at the other end of downtown. As I approach the door, this man going into the co-op opens the door wide for me – a big smile on his face – and asks, “Going this way?” I smile back and thank him.

I go to the other end of the store and pluck out some ginger chews from the candy rack. Then I see the Mother Earth News on the magazine rack. I pull it out and turn to the back page – knowing I’ll find one of my photos there. And there it is! I have to share this tiny moment of glory with someone. The cashier in the lane in front of me isn’t working with any customers at the moment and so I say, “Look! Here’s my photo!” And she grins a big grin and says, “No way! You took this picture?!” And we chat for a bit about how to get your pictures in Mother Earth News and I encourage her to submit her photos.

I go to the front of the store to pay for my ginger chews and the woman in front of me says, “You go ahead of me – you’ve just got that one thing.” What a nice thing to do!

I walk down to the Ristretto coffee shop for a mocha. The barista is really cheery and friendly. She asks me my name. And I often use that as an opportunity to make some quip about my name, but this time my pause is genuine. I really do not want to admit my name is “Karen.” But I finally choke it out and both the baristas and the customer next to me smile these kind smiles at me and assure me that my name might be “Karen” – but I am not a “Karen.” I give the barista a 30% tip – she’ll probably never know what she’s given me this morning.

As I’m sipping my mocha and writing this post on my cellphone, a thirty-something man goes up to the counter and starts regaling the baristas with a story that has everyone laughing. I find myself being pulled into his joy. As he leaves with his coffee, he glances over at me and grins – including me in his circle, and I grin back.

I leave Mount Vernon and decide to go to La Conner to pay my broadband bill. On the way I stop at Christianson’s Nursery to, literally, smell the roses. A begonia plant with pink flowers calls to me from its place on a table and I pluck it up and head for the checkout. The checkout man is so fun – his hair keeps falling into his eyes and he keeps blowing it out of his face, and pushing it back with his hands. He laughs and says, “It has a mind of its own.” I tell him I can relate – my own hair is always going rogue on me.

Now I drive into La Conner to pay my Astound bill – I’m hoping that Jolyne will be there – I always enjoy connecting with her every month. She makes me smile.

After I pay my bill and have a nice chat with Jolyne, I head for the La Conner boardwalk for a walk. On my way I come upon a young family enjoying the day together – there’s a boy of about nine, astride the mechanical horse in front of the “curiosities” shop, a young girl, a father, and a mother with gorgeous gold extensions to her black hair, braided down her back. The family is beautiful. They stop at the ice cream shop where there’s a photo stand-in of ice cream cones – it looks like the father wants to take a picture of his family there. I ask him if he’d like me to take a photo of all of them at the stand-in – and he’s happy to let me do that. The family arranges itself around the stand-in and I snap a couple of quick photos and hand the phone back to the father to see if what I took will work. He smiles and says, “We never get photos of all of us together. This is great!”

I’m so happy I got to do that for them.

I continue on my walk – enjoying the reflections in the Swinomish Channel. I wave to the person sitting at the back of a motorboat going past., and get a wave in return. I end up at the Calico Cupboard bakery, of course. This was always my plan. As I’m waiting in line to buy an apple cinnamon roll, I hear a woman talking to the hostess about the friends she hasn’t seen in twenty years, and file that away in my “interesting people” file in my head.

Cinnamon roll successfully purchased, I head for the door and see the woman who was meeting her old friends, talking to another woman – who I assume is one of these friends. Of course, I’ve got to know more. “So you haven’t seen each other in twenty years?” I ask. And the women laugh and explain that they’d met in a Bible study years ago, and one of the women had moved to Arizona and the other woman had moved, too, and this is the first time they’d seen each other in two decades! One of them lives in the Bow area now – where I live! – and I find out that one of her old friends from high school lives just down the street from me!

Isn’t life great?

I pass a man sitting on a bench, and point to my cinnamon roll box. “I bet this thing weighs five pounds,” I say. And he laughs and says, “Yeah, they make ’em big there!”

I pass the apartments where my parents used to live, and wave to the balcony where Mom always waved to me. I smile at the memory.

And then I’m back in my car and headed home with my cinnamon roll.

So much for trying to have a crappy day.