Whenever I’m sick with a sinus infection, like I have been this week, I judge how sick I am by the color of the junk I cough up when I first get out of bed. It’s gross I know. (Don’t worry, I won’t get too descriptive.) But take yesterday for example, I hacked up this stuff that was dark and bloody. I thought, Oh yeah, I’m sick. But this morning I hacked up this stuff that was like, light yellow. So I thought, Okay, all right. Go team. This is progress. We’re on the mend.

As has been the case for the last year and a half, I credit my sinus improvements to probiotics. Not the kind you swallow, but the kind you either swish around in your mouth or sniff up your nose. I get it, it’s weird. But the idea is that sinus infections are caused by “bad” bacteria (I put bad in quotes because I’m sure the bacteria’s mothers don’t think of them as bad), and the probiotics contain “good” bacteria that crawl around in your sinuses, find those critters that are causing your nasty infection (I imagine they have to use teeny-tiny flashlights), and eat them for breakfast (with little forks). It’s sad to think about, I know. All those grieving bacteria mothers. But hey–circle of life and all that.

Assuming the probiotics I bought and started yesterday are the reason for my less colorful mucus, I’ve continued using them today. And whereas my health hasn’t miraculously turned around, I have felt better, more energetic. I’ve been coughing less. This morning I took it easy (I watched a documentary about Pixar, the computer-animated film company, on Netflix), but this afternoon I rallied and did some odd job work for a friend of mine–hauling trash to the dump(ster) and taking donation items to Savers. This evening I got out to teach a dance lesson, but when they canceled at the last minute I ran some personal errands instead. Returned non-used items to Lowe’s and Walmart, that sort of thing.

At one point in time I really flipped shit whenever a dance lesson canceled. Not because I didn’t understand that things come up, but because I get paid by the hour. In a very real sense, I count on that money. Still, these last several years have taught me that things always work out and something else always comes along. So rather than launching into my worry-wart routine this evening when my lesson canceled, I shrugged my shoulders and thought, Whatever. What-the-hell-ever. Now I can run those errands. And whereas running my errands wasn’t as lucrative as teaching a lesson would have been, it was perhaps just as fun.

I’ll explain.

Immediately upon leaving my teaching space, I saw three deer. No kidding. They’d just crossed the street and actually turned around to look at me. Stopping my car, I pulled out my camera. At this point the deer ran off. But then I looked out my other window and saw another deer, and this one let me take its picture. (How polite.) Talk about a magical moment. For this brief instant I wan’t thinking about sinus infections, lost wages, or anything stressful. I was just right there, right then. We were there together.

After my moment with the deer, I went to Lowe’s. There I told the ladies at the customer service desk that I’d like to return an item (a package of nuts and bolts). Well, one of the ladies said, “Oh, I’m sorry, it’s No-Returns Thursday.”

“Oh, no,” I laughed. “Not No-Returns Thursday!”

Then the other lady said, “Don’t worry. We’ll make an exception for you because you have great hair.”

Phew, I thought, my great hair saves the day again.

(For the record, my hair has never saved the day before today.)

I can’t tell you how much this interaction thrilled me. Earlier today I stopped by the bank to reorder checks (which I also did last week, but the checks came back with a spelling error on them–the orderer typed NPRTH instead of NORTH), and whereas the teller was pleasant and helpful, she wasn’t playful. Maybe that wouldn’t be appropriate at a bank, but my point is that we often take ourselves and what we’re doing so seriously that we miss the living, breathing people standing in front of us. We forget that we can make of any moment what we want to. We forget that regardless of our life circumstances we can have fun.

We can be right here, right now together.