The penguins in my head

This morning I woke up feeling not so great. See, I had gone out to dinner on Sunday and ordered a salad, because this restaurant's house dressing was supposed to be phenomenal.

And it was. The salad was great. And by great, I mean both delicious and huge. I took half of it home with me.

Unfortunately, I let it sit in my truck -- creamy house dressing and all -- for nearly three hours before bringing it inside. That was not a mistake. The mistake was putting it in my refrigerator instead of the trash can.

Last night, without giving much thought to the potential blowback, I ate the rest of that salad, heated-and-then-cooled house dressing and all.

When I woke up, my stomach was quite angry. I'll spare you the details, but what eventually occurred was me sending an e-mail to my co-workers saying I'd be staying home this morning and going back to bed after taking some pepto.

After drifting off to sleep, I began dreaming of a trip to the zoo. But this was no ordinary trip to the zoo. This one ended with a pregnant penguin stowing away in my truck to come live with me.

Now, I realize that in real-life, penguins lay eggs. However, this is my dream, and in my dream, penguins reproduce very quickly and without any sort of birthing or hatching process whatsoever. They were doubling in numbers, over and over, until my house was filled with penguins.

They were everywhere, gentle readers. Everywhere.



I'd open my sock drawer. Penguins. Look in the microwave. Penguins. Under the sink. Penguins. In the dryer. Penguins. In the fridge. Of course there are penguins there. They love the cold. My air conditioner was running at full capacity. The water bill was sky high. I couldn't sit on the couch anymore. There were too many penguins on it. At one point, I tried putting them all in the basement, but they just crawled up through the ducts.

And they'd peck at me with their sharp little beaks because I was in their way, ignorant of the fact that this was MY house. Not theirs. You can't reason with a penguin.

I tried calling every zoo in the country -- nobody wanted the penguins. They had plenty already. Sea World didn't want them either. I thought about shipping them to Antarctica...

And then I woke up.

The moral of the story: never welcome a penguin into your home. They are nothing but trouble.