My favorite things:

I'm all about balance, so I thought I should quickly post a happy/carefree riff so that I don't get a reputation as a ranter...or worse yet, a whiner.

The photo below was taken on a perfect day:

1. The first day of a getaway weekend celebrating my husband's 40th birthday
2. Driving up the rugged Northern California coast
3. In a convertible
4. Top down (of course)
5. Enroute to Anderson Valley
6. To experience the Boonville Beer Festival,
7. Roederer Estate, Navarro, and Husch Vineyards
8. Before passing through a mystical grove of coastal redwoods
9. One the way to the remarkably beautiful, fun, funky town of Mendocino.
10. This may have taken more than one day...I lost track after the Beer Festival (I'm kidding).

I left out a bunch of other stuff, but you get the idea. The memory of this kind of day gets me through "that kind of day."