by W. A. Swan

Created on: May 15, 2008

It's 3 a.m. in the morning and the dog just woke you up. The first thing you see is the dog looking all innocent; the first thing you smell, well, you know you don't like it. So starts the bad day. You get out of bed, hoping not to put your feet down into the gift the dog laid out for you. You then spend half an hour cleaning multiple "gifts" from the dog out of the carpeting in the bedroom and near the back door; and the mess near the back door was really wet and mush. So, after all that, it's 3:30 in the morning, and you have to be up in about three hours. The next time you open your eyes, it's 7:10. Yep, overslept just a bit. So now you're running around, getting ready. You walk the dog, feed the cat, spill the milk and watch as the pets fight you for it. Then just after 8:30, you find another "gift" from the dog from the night before. And this one is under an end table; and neither you, nor the dog, can say how it got there.

You finally get to work, hoping that you don't walk into a mess left behind by the guy who opens the store you work at. And of course, he's backed up badly as you walk in the door. There are customers all over, returns and an unsorted mess on the back table and the floor around it. But this just happened within the last 30 minutes. How? He doesn't know, but he has to get to his lunch break. Today was only supposed to be a short shift for you, noon till four. And you know, the minute you walked in, it just isn't happening. So you help him clear up the front counters, and don't see him vanish into thin air. But you've got to get caught up in time for the high school kid when he comes in at 4 p.m. The customers keep coming, and before you get the chance to look at a clock, the high school kid walks in, and you're no where near caught up. Two hours later you finally get to go punch out. Happy is not a usable term here.

After coming home and doing the usual chores of feeding the pets and walking the dog again, you finally decide to get to your own dinner. It's now eight o'clock at night by the way. By now you just want something simple, and even Ramen Noodles seem hard. But you get something going. There's a pot of cooking food on the stove, and you're happy just to be near done with the day. After thinking about going to the bathroom, you find out you're out of toilet paper! And you don't get paid until tomorrow. Paper towels work wonders some days. Oh, and you need to buy more of those after today too. Anyway, dinner is cooked, but what's that smell? No, it's not the dog. Oh, you managed to turn on the back burner of the electric stove; and there's a metal pot cooking with nothing in it! So, the pot is burning away on the bottom. Quickly you turn off the burner, grab the pot and fling it into the sink nearby. The pot is black both inside and out. About an hour later, when you think about doing dishes, you discover the pot that was tossed into the sink landed on a small plastic container, melting the side of the container. By now you're wondering if Adam Sandler would like to play you in some bad comedy role someday.

For everyone reading this, this day actually happened to me back on May 5th this year. The day ended nice and quietly after the sink episode. And I'm hoping that I never see a day like this again at least for another year.

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