I'd had a horrible day of work, and at its end I craved a drink. I craved a specific drink, one requiring Grand Marnier, of which I was out. Then I remembered the "flop box" in my closet. This is booze from when I owned a second place, a flop in Redmond that had a full bar. And in that box was a half-bottle of 11 year-old Grand Marnier.
I popped the cork. Snap. It broke in the stem. So I shoved the cork into the booze below, but the ancient cork disintegrated into a thousand splinters into the precious, precious liquid. I grabbed my kitchen's finest mesh strainer, which got snagged 99.9% of the flotsam. But .1% cork in my drink is .1% too much, and I strained it again. No improvement. There were still hundreds of miniscule specks of cork. I needed an even finer filter.
And thus did I come to stand in front of my master bathroom's open cabinet, studiously examining the woebegotten maxi-pad in my hand.
Self-awarenesss kicked in. "Has it really come to this?"
I paused to reflect on my life to date. This was a warning sign, surely, but of what?