Morning Routine

Every morning, before I go to work, I go through the contents of the refrigerator to see what I can scrounge up to take to work for lunch. I'm leftover kinda guy, which means every little thing from dinner the previous night is saved up for future meals. A slice of meatloaf, two broccoli florets or my boyfriend's past infidelities; nothing is too trivial to be brought up again, rehashed and reheated. Sometimes this results in odd combinations: sardines and mashed potatoes; hamburger patties and rice; chocolate syrup and pubic lice--I knew that the chocolate syrup was too gritty when I was going down on my boyfriend's cock. This morning's lunch is bits of roast chicken and the last slice of bologna slapped between mayo-slathered multi-grain bread. I put the sandwich in a grocery bag, which I save and re-use (Save-The-Earth and all the crap).

Every morning, my cats make an enormous ruckus digging a hole to China via the litter box or trying to cover up their poop, I don't know. They are usually not very successful, because the litter ends up everywhere around the litter box and not on the poop. The poop sits right in the middle of the box, like a jewel surrounded by hardened clumps of pee. Sometimes I imagine that in an aeon, all the pet shit buried in landfills around the world will transmute into semi-precious stones. It amuses me to think that one morning, long ago, some brontosaurus took a huge dump in a hole, and millions of years later, it's now sitting on Jessica Simpson's finger. I think about these things as I hold my breath trying to shovel the cat poop into another grocery bag.

Every morning, I linger too long in front of the TV. I keep thinking that in five minutes I will get up and brush my teeth. Five minutes later, I think that I have another ten minutes before I absolutely have to leave the house in order to make it to work on time. I think about this as I fantasize about local WGN weatherman Paul Konrad, naked under his raincoat. I wonder if anybody else has fantasies about naked weathermen, besides my mother who used to masturbate to the nine p.m. newscast? Of course, she doesn't do that anymore; she masturbates to TRL now.

This morning, I realize that I will be late yet again. In a rush, I grabbed my lunch bag and the bag of cat poop, throwing one down the garbage chute on my way to the elevator and to my car. When I get to work, I drop off the other bag in the breakroom refrigerator before I settle in to work.

At lunch time today, I realized my error when I opened the plastic bag. Guess which bag I brought to work?