Here's a piece of advice for keeping fate on your side, for keeping your karma well oiled: Never joke about being hit in the head. Don't even use it as a metaphor for shock, i.e. "When he told me he was leaving me for a troupe of extremely limber circus performers, I felt as if I'd been struck in the face." I know why hit-in-the-head/smacked-upside-the-head/punched-in-the-face metaphors are so tempting to use: they're evocative. They work. Being hit on the head really, really, really hurts.
Here is another piece of advice, not so much for keeping your karma well oiled but because it's a nice thing to do for your fellow humans: If you ride any form of mass transit to work, especially one that packs all y'all in like sardines, and you carry your stuff in a backpack, please, dear friends, please be careful with that backpack.
You can probably ascertain where this is going. The plan was to come home tonight, rig up the jelly bags to cook the last bag of apples and the last pound of cranberries, start cooking onions in olive oil and marsala and eventually turn them into whole wheat pasta with anchovy and onion sauce, make some phone calls and send out some overdue letters to friends who are much better than I deserve, hunker down with my sweetheart and watch our new Ren and Stimpy DVD. I contemplated all of this as I had my nose buried in the latest issue of the Art of Eating, and thus I didn't notice the young man exiting at 30th Avenue, whirling around, losing his balance and landing a blow squarely on my right ear. I don't know what was in his bag, but I'm guessing it was either a quantity of cast-iron skillets or a dead body. Whatever it was, it made my head ring and my bile rise. Four hours later, I'm feeling a bit better, but my ear still hurts like a son of a bitch and my neck is stiff and sore. On the plus side, I don't seem to have suffered any neurological damage, but then, as my friends and spouse would undoubtedly say, "gee, Jen, how can you tell?"
So there will be no jelly tonight, either in the making or the photographing. No lemon curd for Kimberly, who has been waiting patiently for it. No stirring of onions for half an hour. There is only gratitude that when I found myself running into Manhattan yesterday for an emergency cranberry run, I suddenly developed a craving for cheese grits, and thus did I find myself with cheese grits fixings on hand. I've been reading about a farmer who makes stone-ground grits, both the corn and hominy versions, and I know one day I will buy these lovely grits to serve at home. In general, I turn my nose up at quick-cooking corn products; to me, it's not polenta until I've been stirring it for half an hour (or throwing it into the oven for 45 minutes, giving it a nice stir and putting it back in for 15 more), but tonight I was glad for my cooks-in-seven-minutes! white grits. Four cups of water boiled on the stove; a pinch of salt went in, followed by a cup of grits, which were stirred, covered and left to burble for 7 minutes while I grated 1/4 pound of Asiago cheese and a smaller quantity of raw-milk Gruyere and cut a tablespoon of butter into four dots. When the 7 minutes were up, I threw the cheeses and butter into the pot, stirred like mad until the cheese was melted, and then let the grits sit until they were slightly less liquid but not quite solid. (Grits lovers out there will know what I mean.) Dear friends, I try not to tread the well-worn path of glorifying comfort food, as it's been done by so many who have come before me; some who have done it beautifully, others who have not, to put it plainly. Tonight, though, I raise the banner for cheese grits as a bowl fulla just what I needed. It is dark at 5, the day was unsatisfying and I am still in a bit of a stupor, but I have cheese grits to fortify me, pull me through the night and encourage me to think of grits and polenta, close cousins but never used in the same way in my kitchen. Depending on how long it takes me to fall asleep, I could have the whole thing written by breakfast. 
Edit: From our Funny How Life Works Department: On Sunday morning I was on a tear because I couldn't find any fresh cranberries in my neighborhood. They are a fixture from November to March, but I spent two days looking for them and couldn't find them. Lloyd said he would look in our local evil supermarket, where he does weekly milk & paper products runs, but even Evilmarket didn't have them. So into Manhattan I go, bitching all the way, muttering to myself about going to Whole Foods on a Sunday -- New York City Marathon Sunday, at that -- and paying extra money for the yuppie Giant Cranberries (Best for Salsa and Muffins!). But if I hadn't made that trip, I wouldn't have walked by the grains aisle; I wouldn't have been seized by the urge for cheese grits, and I wouldn't have had all the ingredients waiting nicely for me last night. So this pain-in-the-neck trip was a good thing.
I have to remind myself of this over and over, because on Sunday night I went out to pick up some coriander for the soup I was making for dinner, and what did I see at my local fruit & veg emporium? I saw two guys unpacking case after case of bagged whole cranberries. They are everywhere now. Have you ever seen the Barney Bear cartoon where he is duck hunting, and in the seconds before duck season starts, all the ducks are in a conga line around his rowboat and over his head? And then the season starts, and the ducks all vanish, only to resurface long enough to torture poor Barney? And then the instant the season ends, all the ducks come back and resume the conga line over Barney's head? That's how I feel every time I see another goddamn bag of goddamn cranberries.
Not that I take any of this too seriously. Heavens, no. (/wracking sobs)