I wake up three hours later than I intended to, with the smell of cat urine wafting from the bathroom and a non-guilty-looking cat sitting on my chest, meowing at me for breakfast. Optical inspection for a video shoot in one hour. If I were still full-time, I’d be late already. The bathroom rug beside the litter box is soaked through with feline incontinence. I splash some pet odor odor neutralizer and cleanser on it. Tonight it goes back in the laundry — for practically the third day in a row. I pray to God she doesn’t have a urinary tract infection, because I don’t have money for a vet.

The camera power cables and microphone cables are hopelessly tangled, but being the obsessive compulsive person that I am, I unknot and organize them with nice, neat twisty-ties. I will thank myself for this later in the day.

Downstairs, a car alarm across the street spits a high-pitched whistling whine into the air. I briefly contemplate printing a clever little “NOTICE: STUPID CAR ALARM ANNOYING EVERYONE” ticket to stick under the offender’s windshield wiper on my way out, but there isn’t time to design it, and my printer is inkjet anyway, so the ink would bleed off the paper in the drizzle.

“Breakfast” is a fistful of vitamins and a couple of herbal supplements (green tea extract to boost metabolism and echinacea for immune response) hurriedly downed with a glass of chocolate milk. No time for a real breakfast. Lunch will be good. Maybe a burrito.

Wind advisory and severe thunderstorm watch today. That means heavy rain, but too much wind to hold an umbrella without it going all Mary Poppins on you. Hardcore. That’s how I lost my last jumbo umbrella, so all I have right now is a piddly little push-button barely big enough for one person.

I’m starting to feel just a bit like Alexander.