confounded

Noodle over this for a while: Is it possible to be extremely happy with everything, and yet keep having bad day after bad day?

(Ahhh...finally achieving my personal challenge to start a sentence with the word 'noodle')

Things are good. Luke is great. Dave is a wonder. Job is even OK for now. But Luke screamed bloody murder when I left this morning. Then my all-day meeting was actually pretty good, until I got into a war of words with part of the team, and no one else backed me up, and it just ended on a crummy note. Then I got home, everything was fine, and then Luke threw a mega-tantrum when we turned off the Wiggles. The kind of soul-searing tantrum that there is absolutely nothing you can do about except let him work it through. Then he didn't want to eat dinner and insisted on "cake" (store-bought mini blueberry muffins). So I gave them to him and while he scarfed down the muffins with big fresh tears still resting on his cheeks, I held my head in my hands wondering how we could all be so happy and so frustrated at the same time. How do people do it who don't have someone like Dave to back them up?

Upstairs I hear Luke and Dave laughing it up while they go through the bedtime routine and as I hear Luke saying "Mas, mas, mas" I am reminded of my favorite "mas" moment: We were looking at the Wiggles computer game, and whenever I pushed the button where you make all of the instruments play at one time, Luke would say "mas" and I'd do it again (mas) and again (mas) and again (mas) and again (mas)...until I finally told Dave, "I think I found his 'mas' button." Hahahahahahaha. Makes me smile just thinking about it.

What kind of perfection am I looking for, exactly?