Last week’s column was about a nice day. A really lucky day. Then life happened.

Back in my middle years, I made a promise to myself. If I’m going to work throughout my life, then I’m going to make sure I play a little in my retirement.

My original plans were for some tennis, lottsa reading, and some bridge playing. Tennis was the earliest casualty, the victim of rampant arthritis and three replaced knees. OK – so now I’m an armchair devotee of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. With a glass of iced coffee in hand.

Retirement reading means the luxury of daytime reading – without guilt. I haven’t mastered it yet – I’m still only reading the few pages nightly before I fall asleep. Someday maybe. With my iced coffee, I hope.

But the bridge game has, just this year, become a reality. I’m managing to play a couple times a month, sometimes more. I do look forward to those afternoons and that’s why last Thursday was such a kerfuffle.

As usual, I was squeezing a lot into my day. I was running on time, but barely. I was heading barefoot toward the kitchen to make my iced coffee to-go. In my path was a large, fresh puddle of cat yak on the carpet. Ohhhh rats. Well, I figured, I can’t clean it up now. Then, as I was assembling the iced coffee in the large thermal go-cup, I heard the rare animal screech that accompanies a particularly large cat barf. Worried that Finian was alright, I ran to the front hall. He looked up at me “innocently” from vomiting in – both my shoes. The ones I was planning to wear.

Is there no end to his upchucking misdemeanors? His timing and placement were highly suspect. OK, I obviously couldn’t wear those shoes. But then again, I couldn’t leave them in that disgusting condition unless I wanted to throw them away. And I didn’t. So, back to the kitchen and the frustrating, time-consuming cleanup.

Ten minutes later, I finally gathered up fresh shoes, my purse, my portable oxygen machine, and iced coffee. Then, to give myself a free hand on the railing, I laid the travel mug horizontally inside my open purse, got in the car, and raced to the bridge game. Whew.

Because I was late, I was a sit-out for the first round. I never mind that because I can get some reading done. I reached for my purse to grab my big, cold iced coffee, and the container was light. Very light. EMPTY. OMG. NO. But the hard fact was YES.

Somehow, I had managed to screw the top on without checking the drink hole cover. Between the cup’s horizontal position in my purse and the swinging as I carried it, it managed to empty itself. Completely. All 16 ounces. In the bottom third of my handbag.

OH NO! My phone! Thankfully, I usually carry it in the outside pocket and only a little coffee had oozed through from the beige reservoir inside. The wallet came out next, dripping coffee. And I knew then that the clean-up project had to take place at a sink. I pulled every sopping wet item out before I could upend the purse.

The pens, the hand creams, the lipsticks, reading glasses, hairbrush, comb, and the pill bottle needed only rinsing and wiping dry. The checkbook. Yuk. My business card holder – ruined, including contents. Two notebooks were history after I tore off the top pages of information and lay them to dry. I wrung out the dollar bills in paper towels. Whadda mess.

Finally, I dealt with the sodden purse itself. I squeezed as much as I could out of the lining then stuffed it with paper towels. All the contents went into a plastic bag for the trip home. And I returned to the card room just in time to join the second-round game.

One of the reasons I like to play bridge is that I have to empty my mind in order to concentrate on the game. It is relaxation from reality. Only the game counts – no worries or concerns. Problems like cat yak and coffee-saturated handbags are relegated to the back burner for a few hours. Mind you, they don’t disappear, but they are somehow easier to manage because of a time-out from frustration.

The moral of this story, of course, is never leave the house without battening down all the hatches … including the locking lid on the travel mug. It turns out that even at my stage of advanced senioritis, there is still plenty to learn. Silly me, I thought retirement would be easy.

By the way, there was one silver lining – the color of the now-fragrant purse is brown. Coffee brown. Just lucky, I guess.

Marcy O’Brien writes from her home in Warren.