Like yesterday, for instance.

I managed to dress myself and leave the house unscathed, but things headed south almost from the get-go.

I managed, within the first hour of my working day, to sit in something unsightly, necessitating an awkward trip to a public bathroom.

Mid-morning coffee got tipped down my t-shirt, meaning I was forced (forced, I tell you) to buy a new shirt (on sale, I promise).

Then at lunchtime, sheltering from the heat under the bountiful shade of a group of plane trees, I was surprised with a generous, warm slop of something on the nape of my neck as I bent over my pasta salad.

After my initial “what the?”, I looked up.

Yep. To my horror, a large black crow perched high above.

The woman sitting near me told me it’s considered good luck, but she wasn’t the one with semi-liquid bird faeces on her neck, which was now sliding gently onto the collar of my brand new (white) shirt.

I suppose I should be grateful that it hadn’t landed square on my head, or in my lunch for that matter. Small mercies.

The afternoon brought the news that someone had driven into our car (my son, who was driving, was fine – big mercies), but the car is potentially a write off.

That night I had a meltdown about the housework and yelled at the kids. I blame the heat.

There really are some days when everything little thing goes wrong. Their cumulative effect can be overwhelming.

But I guess the keyword there is “little”. I’m reminded – post-meltdown – of all the things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, of all the things that in fact went right and I failed to notice.

So much of what affects us emotionally is really a choice: what story do we want to tell ourselves about our day? Our life? Ourselves? Because how you frame it becomes how you feel about it.

Bird poo could be the final straw or a funny story. We decide.