Yesterday was such a bad day.

The highlight was when the Triple A guy who came to fix my flat tire said "Dang, M'am, but you sure do look like Diane Keaton!" Actually, I look like about two Diane Keatons, but I took it as a compliment.

"Um, wow! Oh. . . well. . .God! Thanks!"

Apparently he didn't notice that I also talk like Diane Keaton. Something to do with coming of age in the Annie Hall era, I suspect.

When I told my kids, they said "Who's Diane Keaton?" Sigh.

But today is another kind of day entirely. For one thing, I'm home, recuperating from some vague unpleasant thing that probably explains yesterday's badness: I was off my game.

I got to sleep in and then indulge in my spiritual practice, walking the dog.

Someone was practicing slow scales on the clarinet across Underwood Creek from the Oak Leaf trail, and on my side, children shouted on the playground. The New England asters have popped, purple and pale blue next to the goldenrod. The air smells clean, like walnuts, even so close to the concrete creek bed where sometimes, stench is too polite a term.

Idgy and I walked down to the water. I emptied the lint from my pockets and asked whoever it is I ask to be forgiven for my forgetting.

We climbed the bank. It's a huge year for wild grapes, and I ate a handful that grew along the bank.

On the paved bike path where we emerged, someone had scrawled in large chalk letters one word: "Sweetness."

Indeed.