So You Think You're Having a Bad Day?: Four Stories to Make You Feel Better

by Matthew Braga

Overview

Bad days are just part of life. But for the characters highlighted in Matthew Braga’s short story collection, their bad days are just a little bit worse.

A husband who wants nothing more than to reconnect with his wife after realizing their marriage is in a slump finally finishes a long-awaited backyard project, only to discover that no matter how much he thinks he knows, sometimes he is not in charge—or in control of anything. When a wife is ill in bed, her husband quietly creeps around the house hoping not to disturb her, but after they have a disastrous meeting in the bathroom, he heads outside where something unanticipated comes down—right on her prized flower garden. When a couple moves into a new house, a stray cat soon makes it known that he is smarter than humans. Finally, a little boy who struggles with his difference discovers that he can do anything he wants if he has friends—and a good dream.

So You Think You’re Having a Bad Day? is a lighthearted collection of humorous vignettes with an important message that even the worst of days are survivable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475976663
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/12/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	90
File size:	1 MB

Read an Excerpt

So You Think You're Having a Bad Day?

Four Stories to Make You Feel Better

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By Matthew Braga

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Matthew Braga
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-7665-6

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CHAPTER 1

The Best of Intentions

A couple of months ago, my wife and I were in a slump, as I suppose happens in most marriages every once in a while. We tried to work our schedules to get the same night off so we could catch up on each other's lives. My construction job would go for twelve to fourteen hours a day, so by the time I got home, she was already in bed. This went on for about a month, and then we realized we had the same Friday off.

We planned a romantic dinner for two in a nice, quiet family restaurant and hoped for a little "our time" after. We planned all of this through notes we'd been writing and leaving on the refrigerator. I had it all planned out: the flowers, the card, the wine. I even bought her favorite perfume.

Finally, Friday arrived. I had been looking forward to this for a long time. As the day progressed, I became happier and happier, to a point of almost being ecstatic. But thirty minutes before the end of the day, a main water line broke under the driveway to our construction site, along with the hopes of getting home on time. No matter how hard we worked to get things fixed, it just was not enough.

I finally got a moment to call my wife, already two hours late, and apologized. She said that she was going to get something to eat and do some thinking. Thinking? I thought. That does not sound good.

I got home about two hours after the phone call, and she was not at home. I walked into the kitchen, and on the refrigerator was a note:

Gone to Mom's for the weekend. I'll talk to you Sunday night.

My heart sank, along with the hopes of being with my wife. I took a beer from the refrigerator and sat at the dining-room table with my head in my hands. Suddenly, I thought that this would be a good time to "finish" one of my many started projects, something that we both could enjoy together. I grabbed my beer and headed for the garage. (One of the nice things about our home is that the neighbors are far enough away from us that we can make as much noise as we want without them hearing it.)

A few months before, I'd started a project that had to take a backseat: a gazebo with a hot tub. I had drawn up the plans myself and had all the wood already. I went out into the backyard with some floodlights and started digging holes for the corner poles. As I dug, I could not stop myself from smiling and feeling great anticipation for the final product.

After I got all the holes dug, I had to move all the wood out of the garage and into the backyard. I didn't think I would ever get it all out, but as I carried out the last couple of pieces, I imagined the completed project and could see people standing around, laughing and having a good time.

I shook off the daydream and started dropping posts into the holes. It was almost one in the morning when I started to mix and pour the concrete. Then I checked all the measurements one final time, shut off the lights, took a shower, and went to bed.

I got up earlier than I'd expected and headed out to a local bath-and-kitchen place, picked up the hot tub (and all that goes with it), and got back on the road. On the way home, I called a few friends, who agreed to meet me at the house to help—as long as I had the beer. One quick stop at the 7-Eleven, and I headed home with a smile and a song.

Very few things in life go the way you plan; and this was one of them. It went like clockwork. If it were an Olympic event, we would have taken the gold with no problems. The backyard was like a beehive, with the people buzzing all around. When I took my first break after six hours, I watched for a moment. It really made me feel good to see my friends come together to help me out. People were working together, laughing, and actually having a good time. No one was fighting over something trivial. No one was complaining about anything. Everyone was working together like a well-oiled machine. And most important, no one got hurt.

Twelve hours and a bunch of hot dogs, burgers, and a couple of cases of beer later, I was putting the hose in the tub to fill it. We even made a trapdoor in the floor to cover the tub when it wasn't being used. It rose to the ceiling of the gazebo and back down again on a pulley system. You could not wipe the smile off my face, even if you had a bucket of elbow grease and Comet. It was 12:30 at night when I turned on the spigot and went into the house to go to bed.

Sunday came, and I got up and cleaned the house, washed the dog, washed the car, and even cleaned the bathrooms. I was cooking dinner when I heard the key in the front door. I tried to suppress my excitement as I turned around. I heard my wife say, "You've been busy, huh?"

I noticed that she was wearing a very nice, new summer dress, had her hair done, and was looking very beautiful. "Yeah, I did a couple of things this weekend," I said with half a smile.

"Oh really? Like what?" she asked, almost in a song. She was obviously in a good mood.

"You know how you always say that I never finish anything?"

"Yes ..." she said, with a grin starting to grow on her face.

"Have I got a surprise for yoou. C'mere," I said like a guy in some old movie. I had her close her eyes, and we walked hand in hand out the back door. I noticed there was water on the ground as we walked up to the gazebo.

She said, "Let me guess. You watered the backyard, right?"

"Well, kind of," I said as we stopped at the bottom of the four steps to the tub. "Okay, open your eyes," I said with a little bit of excitement in my voice.

You know that look on kids' faces at Christmas when they get exactly what they've always wanted? Times that by ten, and you will have the look on my wife's face. She didn't say anything for about five minutes. Then I turned the lights on. She just kept her mouth open and wanted to touch everything.

Finally, I said, "And that's not all." I pushed a switch, and the trapdoor in the middle started to come up, revealing the hot tub. I didn't think anyone's eyes could get so big. She was just about to say something when the pulley motor quit. The trapdoor had gotten only about six feet off the tub; it should have gone up eight feet.

She closed her mouth and said, "I am very impressed. How long before it fills up?"

I thought, Fills up? I've had the hose in there since last night. I said, "I'll be right back." I walked over to the spigot and saw that an animal had chewed through the hose on the back side, and half the water was coming out there and only half was in the tub. I shut it off and started back over to my wife, who was now bent over at the waist, looking into the tub.

As I walked up the stairs, I said, "Be careful. You have on your high heels—" and I missed the next step. To keep me from falling flat on my face, my hands went out in front of me. One hand hit the down switch to the trapdoor; the other landed smack dab in the middle of my wife's backside, forcing her forward. It was like Alfred Hitchcock meets National Lampoon.

I fell forward, smashing my shins on the top step and falling only halfway into the tub, ripping the buttons off my shirt. The tub was only a little less than halfway filled, and my wife had fallen into it.

Now, if that weren't enough, the trapdoor was still coming down. I could not move because my pant leg was stuck on a screwhead that didn't make it all the way in. If you really wanted to win the ten-thousand-dollar prize on America's Funniest Home Videos, this would have been your chance. Just as I got my pant leg unstuck, the trapdoor hit me in the middle of the back, pinning me down.

My wife, who had only twisted her ankle, later told me that she wished she had the camera when the trapdoor closed in on us. She said that as the trapdoor hit me in the back, it was like watching a scene from The Incredible Hulk. My face changed color, and I let out a yell that came from somewhere deep in my body. I stood straight up, still yelling, picked up the trapdoor in both hands, and held it over my head. She later told me she had been afraid that I would hurt myself, but then admitted that she was kind of impressed by the whole thing.

I held the trapdoor in both hands over my head for about a minute before I gently put it down. I looked down at her—me in my ripped pants and buttonless shirt, and her in her half-soaked dress and broken high-heeled shoe—and put my hand out to help her out of the tub. When she was standing there next to me, she tossed her wet hair over her shoulder and looked up at me with her makeup half washed off and said as straight faced as she could, "That was interesting. What else did you do while I was gone?" We laughed and limped back to the house to tend to our wounds.

I did finally fix the trapdoor problem and even finished some other projects. But every once in a while, when we are relaxing in the tub, my wife looks at me and says something like, "So, David Banner, what's your next project?"

And I respond, "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like it when I'm angry."

Life, once again, is good.

CHAPTER 2

One of Those Days

I've been in construction almost all of my life. My dad was in construction, his dad was in construction, and I believe even his dad was in construction. My great-great-great-grandfather came to America as a furniture maker, and I guess that's where it all started.

I was the first to join the military in my family. Being the oldest of three boys and two girls, I felt I had to set the "example." I joined the US Navy Seabees, the Navy version of the construction field. They taught me every safety program there ever was. We went through all the OSHA training, military training, and civilian safety training courses they could think of. Even though I was designated a Builder (carpenter), we were required to take all the other safety courses as well. There were the Electricians, Plumbers, Steelworkers, Mechanics, and Equipment Operators safety courses. They even threw other fields at us, like fire safety, underwater safety, aircraft safety, and even home and office safety. If it had the word safety in it, we got the training.

After twenty-two years of this training, I felt it was time to get out and try the civilian way of living. My wife and I bought our first home and have been living in one place now for over five years, something very different from our moving every two or three years. I have a good job, and my wife really likes the neighborhood and the neighbors.

This past summer, I built a fireplace for the living room. This is the first time we've had a working fireplace in our dwelling. We had dreams of a cozy, cool night of just the two of us sitting in front of one, curled up in each other's arms, sipping hot cocoa, and listening to soft music. Just the thought of it made us wish for winter to come early.

Well, it was the beginning of October, and I still hadn't cut any wood for the fireplace. So, one Saturday morning, I got up early with the thought of spending a couple of hours chopping wood and piling it up nice and neat to be the envy of the neighborhood. I grabbed a cup of coffee and a couple of donuts that we'd had for a week and a half and stepped out on the pouch to watch the sun rise over the backyard and my wife's prize-winning flowerbed. The donuts were stale, of course, but I thought that they were better than some Navy chow I'd had. And besides, the coffee helped wash them down.

When I finished, I walked into the bathroom and didn't realize that the window was open. With the window open, there is no pressure in the room, so when I closed the door, it slammed with a shock wave that raced through the house, waking everything and everybody. Out of nervousness, I opened the door as quietly as I could and in a soft, raspy voice said, "Sorry," and gently closed it again. Now, on most days, that would have been acceptable, but when your wife is not feeling well due to a cold that has lasted much longer than it should have, what I'd done was grounds for capital punishment.

As I stood there in my shorts, washing my face with a very lathery form of soap, my wife threw the door open and it slammed against the wall with a bang. For the first time in as far back as I could remember, I almost screamed out of fright. The only reason I didn't scream was because the air I inhaled for the scream sucked in almost all the soap I had on my face.

My wife, on a rampage, started with "Why are you up so early on a Saturday morning making so much noise? Knowing full well, I am not feeling all that—" She stopped only because I had turned toward her with a strange look on my face. "What, you got something smart to say?" she said, pointing at me.

There are so many things that could go through your mind at a moment like that, but all I could think of was, I shouldn't have eaten those stale donuts. Yep, soap and stale donuts don't mix. Before I could look away, up they came and splattered all over her bathrobe-covered legs.

My wife, usually a pillar of strength on any other day, would have reacted differently had she not been sick. However, she was ... well ... not herself. As if to outdo me, she retaliated by throwing up on me. The only difference was that, like I said, I was in my shorts. When it was over, I looked at her as sympathetically as I could and started to ask if she was all right. As I did so, a giant soap bubble emerged from my mouth. It was like something from the Little Rascals.

My lovely, ill-feeling wife, who until this point had been plotting the murder of the century, looked at me, raised her hand, and popped the bubble with her index finger with one thrust of her hand. She took the towel off the rack very calmly and wiped her face and then her hands. She took off her robe and dropped it on the floor in the pile of mess, used the towel to wipe off her legs and feet, and then dropped it on the bathrobe. She looked up at me and said in a surprisingly soft voice, "I am going back to bed now." She turned and walked away without another sound. To this day, I don't know how I managed to keep myself from laughing out loud.

It took about half an hour, and a bottle of Mr. Clean, to get the bathroom back to normal. In spite of this setback, I was still determined to cut that firewood. I got myself dressed in my favorite blue jeans—wore in, not wore out—a T-shirt with Iron Man on it, a plaid shirt, and steel-toe boots. To top it off, I donned a ball cap with a picture of a beach and chair with an umbrella that said, "Wish you were here." Now I was ready for the great outdoors.

I went to the shed, pulled out my chainsaw, ax, and eight—pound splitting hammer wedge. Then I went to my shop and got my gloves and my hearing and eye protection—remembering all my safety training. Yep, look out trees, here I come.

It amazes me how much different things are between watching someone do something and doing it myself. I walked up to a tree with no leaves that I have been eyeing for a while to cut down, checked where it would fall, put on my hearing protection, and donned my eye protection and then my gloves. I was ready. Remembering from one of my many safety courses where to make my first cut, I started the chainsaw and got to work.

After making many cuts and very carefully taking out piece after piece, I reached the center. I walked around to the back of the tree and again checked where it would fall; I was still smiling and knowing this baby was going to land right where I planned. And I started to make my back cut.

At this point, for whatever reason, some thoughts crossed my mind. Do you remember that old saying about leading a horse to water? And the one about best-laid plans and all that? I thought of a couple more that escape me at the moment. As I stood there in all my safety gear, in all my planning for the perfect fall of the tree, it started to fall. At first it went very slowly, like time suddenly stopped working. I smiled, and a thought to yell, "Timber," just like in the movies, suddenly changed to fear and screams of "No, no, NO!"

For some reason, Murphy was hard at work on this of all days. The place where it should fall, which I had so carefully planned, was in no need of fear. Nope, for the tree that I picked, the tree that I thought was dead, still had sap running through its veins. And for whatever reason, it twisted at the last moment and made its own path. Some kind of evil force had moved it to the right—right toward the car and the house. All my safety training, all the safety lectures I'd attended, all the training I'd received and given, completely left my being. I knew I was about to become another statistic.

I jumped to the house side of the tree, and with all my might I tried to push that falling tree away from the house and car. In the moment it took for the tree to fall, I managed to push it so hard, the veins on the side of my head bulged.

I must have done something right in a past life, because in the fraction of a second that it took for the tree to fall, I was able to give it just enough persuasion to miss the house and the car—only to land in my wife's prize-winning flower garden.

Now, as I stood there, out of breath and feeling a little proud of myself that I was able to change the mind of gravity, I thought the worst was over. But who should come out to see what all the noise was about? Yep, my loving bride of over fifteen years, who should by all rights be lying in bed recovering from a touch of the flu. She emerged from our dwelling with a look of both shock and dismay. I stood there, just short of beating my chest, and said as proud as I could, "It missed the house and the car, dear."
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from So You Think You're Having a Bad Day? by Matthew Braga. Copyright © 2013 Matthew Braga. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments....................     vii     

Introduction....................     ix     

The Best of Intentions....................     1     

One of Those Days....................     10     

The Cat Came Back....................     24     

Adventures with a Worry Wardt....................     44