I woke up this morning to trash scattered across my yard. Before I could become annoyed, I decided to pick it up.
“Today is going to be a good day,” I told myself.
I rarely set the bins out early, but last week the garbage trucks came by so early in the morning I missed them. Now I had two weeks of trash piled up, so I could not miss them again.
The trash bins spent the night on the curb. The wind blew open the lids. With the lids up, the winds scattered the trash.
It was too poetic to be anything but amused.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” I thought to myself with a smile as I picked up the trash.
With the trash problem solved, I returned to cooking breakfast.
Cooking breakfast is near the top of the list of things that bring me joy in the morning. It offers a creative outlet – a moment alone with my thoughts, my creative capacities, and my appetite.
This morning I cooked an egg scramble (which is my way of admitting I have not yet mastered the art of an omelet). I scrambled the eggs with with ham, spinach, green bell peppers, Roma tomatoes. Then devoured it.
Breakfast complete, I cleaned the kitchen. Washing dishes is not among my favorite pastimes, but cleaning up after making a meal with my own hands does offer a special kind of energy. It’s like the natural last step of a spiritual cycle.
While cleaning, I noticed a strange contour in the sole of my shoe. Perhaps I’d finally worn this set of Nikes into the ground.
Instead, I found a fresh mountain of dog poop affixed to the soles of both shoes. Shoes I’d been wearing inside the house while I marched around the kitchen cooking breakfast.
I’d picked the poop up while fetching the trash.
This time, I laughed. “Today is going to be a good day.”
I’d set this entire situation into motion a week ago when I missed the trash can. Then I doubled down on it the night before when I carelessly wheeled the bins to the curb. They were stuffed so full from two weeks of garbage the lids were simply waiting for a small gust to burst wide open.
Life is funny like that, sometimes. Almost like present day exists at the end of a continuum of past situations and decisions, stretching back to the beginning of your life.
After washing dishes, I marched around the house like I was investigating a crime scene, stopping only every so often to place another small sample of evidence into a plastic bag.
If you ever want to know how much exercise cooking requires, just step in dog poop some day before you cook breakfast.
With what felt like an endless breadcrumb trail of dog poop handled, I returned to my normal morning ritual.
I grabbed a book. Smiled. Then thought to myself.
“Today is going to be a good day.”