The Good and the Bad
Today I came home from kitten duty in a raring good mood. Exhausted. Covered in kitten food. Starving. But so happy that I spend my day helping abandoned kittens get strong until they can find their forever homes.

I pull into the garage and grab the mail, and instantly my mood plummets. Not just sours....it drops about 50 points on the 1-100 scale. I got a jury duty summons, a car registration renewal, and a $3000 hospital bill. In the immortal words of Husband "oy and vey." Yes, oy and vey indeed.

It's amazing how quickly a few pieces of mail can change a day, isn't it? OK, the car registration is not so bad. But jury duty, which I realize is an obligation of citizenship, is a pain in the ass. And the $3000 bill came from out of the blue. I went into the ER in January with a 3-day migraine and they kept me in for 48-hours because I was dehydrated and that affected my heart rate. Thankfully we have health insurance, which took care of the majority of the exorbitant bill....but it was months ago and I hadn't heard anything from the hospital so I thought we were OK. No, we aren't. We owe $3300 -- a huge expenditure we weren't counting on. Sigh...

Mood are funny things. Sometimes you'll get the blues for no reason at all. Sometimes you'll wake up in a gorgeous mood and have no idea why. And then there are little things that turn around a mood. A random phone call from an old friend can take the worst day and make it spectacular. And I can be running around singing a favorite tune and then hear some bad news and suddenly that favorite tune goes out of the mind.

Of course when the random things don't happen, you can always take steps to turn your mood around. For me, it's music. Music is unbeatable when it comes to either enhancing or altering a mood. There are some songs that I find it impossible to be sad to. Put them on, crank them up, and I'm dancing -- regardless of whatever trouble it is that I'm trying to forget. A glass of wine. A hot bath. A long walk by the bay or up in the foothills. And old favorite movie, a bowl of popcorn, and me and Husband snuggling on the sofa. Indulging in some chocolate or ice cream. Putting in extra time with the cats.

So the remedy for the jury duty/registration/hospital bill triumvirate of gloom? Bread and cheese. Stephen Fry cracking me up with clips from his show QI on youtube. And just now, some shortbread cookies. Yes, I'm indulging in nutritional mood enhancers but, you know what, I don't care. I feel better now.