There are days when it's not worth getting out of bed. We all know this to be a truth but the problem is that it is impossible to know until you're already out of bed. Yesterday was one of those days.

• First thing: I set my feet on the floor – one of them into a pile of cat puke.

I hop to the bathroom, sit on the side of tub, wash my foot. (Oh, god, I have to pee so bad.) Dry my foot, pee, fetch paper towels from kitchen, bottle of carpet spot cleaner from laundry room, get down on hands and knees. Clean cat puke.

Knowing that Ollie the cat never pukes only once, I check the house for more. Yep, there's a pile in the hall, another in the office.

Meanwhile, as I clean, Ollie the cat is yelling for breakfast. I haven't even started the coffee yet.

• Load up the electric tea kettle with water, flip the switch on the handle: nothin'. Zero. Fiddle with switch up and down. Nothin'. Check the electrical outlet. It's fine, the kettle is broken. And it's only two weeks old. Find saucepan to heat water. Feed the cat.

• Checking the morning news, I click on a link in email and nothing happens. Try again; maybe my clicker finger is weak from cleaning up puke as my first act of the day and trying to get a broken switch to work. Still nothing.

Spend ONE HOUR determining the problem. Spend ONE MORE HOUR finding and executing the fix which involves errors deep in the code bowels of Firefox, Thunderbird AND Windows.

• Finally get back to the morning news. Robert Samuelson at WaPo thinks old people have too much money and all our budget woes can be alleviated if we take it away from them.

Good ol' reliable Dean Baker calls out Samuelson for his stupidity and Paul Krugman notes his doublethink neither of which, unfortunately, will do any more good than my asking Ollie the cat to puke on the kitchen floor where it's easier to clean up.

• The big headline everywhere is that the leader of the International Monetary Fund – you know, one of about five people the entire world relies upon for good judgment - is accused of a sexual attack on a housekeeper in a $3,000-a-night room in a Manhattan hotel. What? He can afford the hotel but not a high-priced, discreet hooker?

• I decide the day has started so badly that I should treat myself to a swell breakfast at the lovely little French bakery. I get there and every seat is taken. Every damned one. And there is a line of about 10 people waiting.

The rest of the day wasn't much better.

Because everything – in my little world and the world at large - is so universally awful, some levity is in order.

For many years, I have subscribed to a newsletter called Direct – A Weekly Ezine for Democrats wherein Bob Jellison sends out a collection of political gaffes, outrages and humor of the past seven days for lefties.

It has been a long time now since I could stay awake for the late-night talk shows so I particularly look forward to the one-liners from Letterman, Leno, Fallon, O'Brien and the others. Here are some of the best from Jellison's most recent missive.

David Letterman:
“50 percent of Americans polled said they thought Donald Trump would make a lousy President. Wow! Half said he'd make a lousy President. Well, that never stopped us before."

David Letterman:
"Apparently, Osama bin Laden was living in a mansion with no phone and no cable for six years. He'd been waiting for six years for the Time-Warner guy to show up."

Seth Meyers:
"In the wake of President Obama's decision to not release pictures of Osama bin Laden's body, a number of new conspiracy theories are surfacing claiming that bin Laden is not really dead.

“Which means Barack Obama will go down in history as the first black person ever to have to prove that he killed someone."

Bill Maher:
"Who might be Bin Laden's successor? If they're looking for someone with a large following who's a religious zealot and hates the Jews - Mel Gibson?"

Jimmy Fallon:
"Hillary Clinton said that watching the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was '38 of the most intense minutes.' Which can only mean one thing: she's never had to assemble a chair from Ikea."

You can subscribe to this newsletter by sending an email to [email protected] with “subscribe” in the subject line.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Johna Ferguson: What Counts