Have you ever wanted something so badly that the "wanting" gets in the way of the "having" and the entire situation becomes nothing more than an exercise in frustration?

Maybe that's what happened today. In rough order of mind-farts, here is how my flying (and I use that description of what I did advisedly) went today:

• Keys to 785 were missing
  
• Preflighted 15Mike. Ordered gas.
  
• Keys to 785 located. Scratch 15Mike. Wait for keys to arrive for 785.
  
• Gas up 785. Tie down 15Mike. Untie 785.
  
• Announce to GC: "Easterwood Ground Cessna 4-niner-785." and then decide to shut up while my brain decides not to communicate with my mouth. GC responds with "proceed to one-six and bravo" as though reading my mind, which at this point is blank.
  
• Taxi through winds gusting to 19 kts while trying to configure ailerons and elevators like this:
  
  
• "Easterwood Tower Cessna 4-niner-785 ready for takeoff" (Hey, I did something right! that's one.)
  
• Takeoff OK, except for forgetting which way the tower instructed me to turn once in the air
  
• Assume heading of 315 to Hearne Airport for practicing approaches. Kept 2300 AGL and around 100 KIAS there, with the wind (which made GS about 15kt faster)
  
• Let's see...among other things I couldn't seem to reach stabilized approach on 2 of 3 approaches, I banged the runway on the first one, was too slow on the throttle during the abort of the second one, and felt like I was coming up short (I wasn't, said Andy later) so prematurely throttled the third. Beautiful. Oh yeah. I overshot the final approach twice out of three. Lost track of my altitude twice. Made crummy crabs into the wind and sloppy turns to final and base seems like every time.
  
• Lost my headset for what seemed like half the time we were at Hearne.
  
• Back to Easterwood, to once again make mincemeat of my communications with tower, who relayed back to us that our signal was "weak"?
  

Other than that it went fine...

Performed three mile final approach to 16 and it actually went pretty well. (!)

Oh, and I landed relatively unassisted at Easterwood. whoopie.

Now, I'm going home to hug my kids, kiss the wife, maybe get a Hastings movie and enjoy an evening away from planes. There's only one sentiment to express after such a f$%#@$#-up day in the air today.

I can't wait to get back up tomorrow.