by C L Smith

Created on: June 18, 2009   Last Updated: June 19, 2009

I began this morning as I do every other morning. I step into my kitchen. And then, fully prepared to employ the many problem solving skills that I learned in business school, I initiate a food identification and consumption project. I optimistically begin to follow a mental food treasure map as I work from the east corner of the kitchen to the west and from the north level of the cabinetry to the south and open each and every cabinet door looking for food with which to fill my empty belly.

I begin this search for rations in the northeast quadrant of the food preparation facility in that one presumes that the pantry is the most obvious of all places to locate and then latch onto any edibles. During this process, I open and close each door prior to progressing to the next one. as I enact this most basic of foraging procedures. This desperate search for victuals is fully reflective of both my Cro-Magnon origins and of my internalization during graduate school Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of human needs: I CAN DO NOTHING UNTIL MY STOMACH IS FULL!

I repeat the door opening and closing ritual multiple times and with only small deviations in style. Only then do I reach what can be described as the geographical midpoint of the kitchen cabinetry. On many occasions, it is at this point, that due to my lack of success in locating even one set of items that together can form some semblance of a nourishing meal that I can actually sense my blood pressure rising . In fact, on the majority of mornings, it becomes readily apparent that regardless of the number of times that I have made my presence known in the local Walmart, my food collection consists or cereal but not milk, bread without jelly, bacon without eggs. My kitchen is consistently in sorry shape.

Few mornings go by that I don't initiate enhanced measures to alter what seems to be the inevitable outcome of the search for food. If I have rummaged through three quarters of my cabinetry to no avail I begin, without hesitation, efforts to conjure up something delicious and enticing. Unfortunately, perhaps as a reflection that some things are indeed the responsibility of a higher power, I have found this food summoning ploy has never actually enhanced the outcome of the food identification project. Perhaps I am simply meditatively enept and incapable of conducting the spiritual processes necessary to eventually reach the devine food conjuring zone . Or perhaps I do not correctly enunciate my mantra and as a result,

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