Strange But True

• Tonight, something weird happened.
  Something so bizarre that I don't imagine it will ever be repeated.
  I'm still scratching my head in puzzlement.
  Tonight was bad.
  ONLY bad. Not awful, not horrendous, not epic... (at least, not yet). Weird, huh? It's crazy.
  It has been about a month since the needle only moved as high as "bad" on the miserometer.
  It started when we got home from school/work, and the rooster's voice seemed to shift from his tirade tone into distantly familiar, somewhat likeable intonations. Sure, there was still combat to do, screamfests with his sister over TV, toys, touching, and turns. But some reason mixed in, too. The Peaches seemed less two, too. And her cough subsided to where she doesn't seem like you need to wear a mask to be around her. But she ought to quit smoking, that's for sure.
  Now, I tell you this in FULL cognition that have I invoked the hex of the spirits who despise me, but I also know that I wasn't going to get two days in a row of just plain bad, anyways, so I figured, as Kia would say, whatevs, people.
  I tell you the facts: It's an hour past bedtime and they are stretching out their dramas, but I just walked away to let my husband handle it, because he's a nicer human being than I am, and he won't likely threaten them with bodily harm just in time to give them nightmares as I might. But the sound of the Peaches shrilly screaming for Daddy to COME BACK and tuck her in a fourteenth time doesn't bring me to my psychological knees this time. Why? Because we had merely a bad night. Remember, for us, read "bad" like this: good. On our scale, bad is okay. On our scale, bad is what you shoot for a lot of the time. Our scale goes like this:
  
  epic warfare
  horrible, awful, like that kid's book about the "no good, very bad day"
  bad
  sort of fine
  
  So, on a day in which we had additional lab work to look into possible lead poisoning, had to pull the car over multiple times in traffic to stop the children for harming each other on the commute, talked to the school psychologist about the difficult recent days in class, worked hard at two busy jobs, handed down multiple time-outs, bribed our rooster to take his medicine with an hour-long and messy smoothie making session, still haven't managed the final tuck ins, and found out we'll be sleeping on the floor for another 5 nights, I say we have landed only one step away from our highest pinnacle of familial positivity -- we are bad, and within spitting range of sort of fine.
  
  This too shall pass.
  
  (* Please keep sending good thoughts about the worrisome problem I'm trying not to focus on, would you? *)