Havin' a day.
I remember this phrase from college. I played softball (division III, and didn't start, so don't get an image of me as some sort of Olympian, by any means). We tended to hang with the baseball players, which was not at all unpleasant, and went to each others' games as well. As far as I could tell, the northeasterly guys brought this phrase with them, and it always felt good to say. Somebody'd make a fantastic diving catch one inning, and they'd come up to bat the next and you'd call out to him while he was digging into the box...
"You're havin' a day out there, Jimmy. Keep havin' a day!"
It was such a positive thing to call out, especially given the lack of a specific adjective for The Day -there was no need to specify a "great" day, or a "fantastic" day. You were just "havin' a day". I always liked that...the implication that there was only one sort of day one could have that was worth mentioning, and it was always going to be a good one.
I got to have a day once and only once in my softball career. We were ahead by a large margin, and the second string was in for the last couple innings. I'd managed a hit the prior inning, and was in at catcher. The opposing team had nothing to lose, and tried to send someone from second to home plate on a pretty shallow drop-in to left-center. The left fielder had had to hustle, and almost collided with the shortstop, and her throw came in a yard or two up the first base side. I gloved it and dove, and even though I caught a cleat to the head and a mouthful of dirt, the baserunner never even made it to the plate. As soon as I held up my glove to show the ump I indeed had the ball, the bleachers erupted, in that typical way they do when the underdogs manage to get into the game and run the kickoff all the way back or hit the unlikely three-pointer. Even the umpire was grinning at me.
Clear as a bell, I could hear a chorus of male voices, all whooping and shouting out about how I was having a day. I didn't pay for my beer for at least a week.
That was "THEN". and the "NOW" can be vastly different (a concept all SPN fans are very familiar with). It's snowed four inches, and now it's freezing rain, and later we're supposed to get eight more. But I'm here at home, and have seven-dozen, made-from-scratch chocolate chip cookies cooling to give to my employees tomorrow for Valentine's Day. My team at work has done a fantastic job of managing the weather-related challenges (which in my biz are huge). My neighbor brought me her paper when she was done reading it, and we had coffee and tsK'd about the weather. I'm eating homemade yeast rolls that I made today with southwestern chicken corn chowder, and I'm drinking a jumbo frozen margarita. (Yes, I made a meal in deliberate denial of Winter.) I took some of the rolls over to the neighbor to thank her for the paper. I talked to my baby nephew today, and my furnace works.
I need to remember having this day, when so many others have so much less.