Do they go into your stories?

So this has been a terrible week. One of the worst in memory, and I have looooooooong memory. Everything from lack of sleep over the husband being out of town to a mucked up cell phone bill that I had no control over, and a lot of disasters in between that had me begging for a vat of anything ice cream. The thing is, it’s life and yeah, it sucks in glorious colors when you least expect it. And it’s also kind of normal. People can relate to getting a bill messed up, or having the mail redirected to the wrong address when someone changes something when you weren’t looking. Thus the mucked up phone bill.

Do you use these little everyday nuggets in your writing? Have you read a story and grinned or shook your head because you thought “Oh my god! I’ve had that happen!”

It’s happened a few times to me, but it seems as writers we convey a world of make believe yet don’t use some of the most common irritations or foibles to make our characters real either. What’s your experience with that? I will admit I read a majority of paranormal authors, so no, I don’t expect to be awakened at two a.m. by a werewolf, but hearing sirens at the time of the morning is very possible.