Kneeling by my bed, fishing underneath it for my alarm clock, which had fallen to the floor because my night stand is so full of shit, I was filled with the desire to live a life where a chicken wakes me, not a clock.

By “chicken wakes me,” I mean, like, a rooster crowing, not a hen jumping on to my bed and clucking, as the cats do now.

Yes, my cats cluck.

This fucking alarm clock, I thought. I get up extra early for a few minutes of peace before rushing in my car with the cracked windshield (again! for no reason this time! simple stress fracture because the guy installed it wrong! but try to get him to admit that!) to an office where little of value is accomplished (other than I am now a level 51 wizard, dude) so I can afford the gas to go to the office to work. And insurance.

Or something.

The alarm clock or the chicken.

It’s a lost Poe title.

Night before last we watched a little hedgehog walk from the front flower bed along the driveway through the hydrangeas into the back yard.

Oh, and yesterday, I almost forgot: my wife called me at work with specific instructions. In your lunch break, drive here, park here, go into this store. A man will be waiting for you.

It felt like Mission Impossible: everything went like clockwork. No traffic, there in 15 minutes. My wife told me to come in for a phone, I told the guy. Oh I talked to her on the phone, he said. You the guy with the pool? he said. We both had a laugh at that. I bought a phone and drove back to the office, even had time to get a bite to eat somewhere. Got a kebab sandwich. I was tempted to tell the guy selling it to me how sorry I was that the Turks had not beaten Michael Ballack, but then I worried, what if he’s not Turkish? I’ll sound like a moron. Maybe I’d have sounded like a moron anyway.