Rudi and I had planned for several weeks to spend today out on the DelMarVa Peninsula at the beach. But as the day approached, our string of beautiful days looked to be disrupted by clouds and rain.

However, when we went to bed last night our plan still was to head out to Delaware first thing this morning. But this morning went as most of my mornings do, with a slow start and procrastination. We hit snooze. We decided to go to the farmers’ market. We ate a late breakfast. We watched today’s Vuelta stage. We dawdled.

And so it was suddenly one in the afternoon and we were still at home, three hours away from the beach we wanted to go to. It was grey and drizzly and the temperatures in Bethany were only supposed to reach the low 60s. We thought about calling it a day or, at least, switching to a different, closer, less satisfying beach.

But then we just decided to go anyway.

We threw stuff in bags and headed out.

When we hit traffic en route to the highway, we switched to a different road.

When we were crossing the Bay Bridge and saw lots of traffic heading west, we congratulated ourselves on getting a late enough start that we weren’t already tired of being rained on and in that mass of people going home.

When we missed our turn and the aforementioned traffic prevented our turning around to it, we picked a different, more rural route.

As we were driving along, I turned to Rudi and said, “It’s probably better if we think of today as a lovely afternoon for a drive in the country when we’re lucky enough to get to stop at the beach.”

And, you know, it absolutely was. If we’d kept thinking of it as a day at the beach, it would have been a mess. But changing our perspective — an afternoon spent together driving along and, late in the day, spending a couple hours playing at the beach — made a world of difference. Instead of being annoyed at what we’d missed, we realized what we were getting.

I tend to get stuck in a rut and am slow to accept change, which means disappointment creeps into my life far more often than I’d like to admit. Being able to turn the picture around and getting to see the day for what it was, rather than what I thought it should be, made today a success in more ways than one.