A Momentary Lapse of Wakefulness

I was entirely too lazy to phone in sick to the office this morning, because that would have required extricating myself from this quilt and getting off the couch. No, no, an e-mail would do the trick very nicely. For that I had only to sit upright. Having woken up this morning with that blurry sense of impending doom that marks a bacterial invasion of one's respiratory tract, I took a Tylenol PM and have been floating on fluffy clouds of self-forgetfulness. Every now and then, I stir for a glass of water or a bite of food, though there's not much to be had. I decided to make myself a loaf of fresh whole wheat bread, but then discovered only enough yeast for one generously portioned dinner roll. During this, my second momentary lapse of wakefulness, I collected the sum contents of my refrigerator, a host of quailing vegetables, and sent them to their watery grave in a large steel pot. I don't suppose the resulting morass will have much nutritional content, the vegetables having the constitution of melted rubber, and it will probably taste like something foul, since, in an unholy hour, I bought an entire bag of pre-chopped kale, which is never appetizing even under the best of circumstances, but there is something primeval about the need for steaming hot liquid with salutory pretensions on such a day as today.