Monday
Roll the dice. Six. Not a good number. Since it’s even, I’ll go to work today. One: The dog crapped on the floor while I was in the shower. Two: The dog also has diarrhea. Three: I’m late to work from cleaning up this trail of horror leading to his hiding place under the coffee table. Four: I have 107 emails in my work inbox. I have zero in my personal inbox. Five: There’s only one restroom at work and someone’s been in there for an hour. I’m tempted to just do what my dog did, but Minnesotans are too polite to relieve themselves in front of crowds. Six: The dog went to the bathroom in his crate and slipped and fell in it, or at least I hope that’s how it happened. Seven: He then bit me when I tried to give him a bath. Off by one, dice. Not too shabby, dice.

Tuesday
Roll the dice. Four. Since it’s even AGAIN, I guess I’ll go to work. AGAIN. One: A production assistant I used to work with, and hate with a feverish passion, just got a job as a TV writer. That ups the count of professional TV writers who dislike me to 743, while the number who think I’m a swell guy remains at a steady zero. Two: Forgot to put on deodorant this morning. Since I’m broke, I’ll wait until someone notices and mocks me for it before I pay $7 at the gas station for some. Three: Boss still hasn’t done my “annual” review. It’s nearly 10 months late. I could have become impregnated, birthed the baby, and also taken it to Sears and had its portrait taken by now. I do not bring this up to him because I’m Minnesotan and we’re bred to be very polite doormats. Four: There was no four. Hmm. Usually when I’m one short, I count Blink-182 still being a band as the extra one. They probably wrote another song today.

Wednesday
Roll the dice. Two! Winner winner, chicken dinner. Since it’s once again even, I head to work. Am I seriously going to work FIVE DAYS this week? What is my employer doing, building a pyramid? One: Ran out of booze in the house. This makes it difficult to wake up properly in the morning. Two: The dog chewed through my computer’s power cord. Unfortunately, it didn’t zap him. Total cost: $75. Total entertainment value: zero.

Thursday
Roll the dice. Two again. Same as yesterday. I put the dog in his crate just in case he gets any ideas about a repeat performance. One: The woman I was talking to on Tinder didn’t respond to me, likely because I jokingly told her I have a robot leg. I am not sure why I told her that. Two: The lady who sells bacon-wrapped hot dogs on the street corner is all out of them today. Oddly, this hurts worse than any breakups I’ve had in the past. I knew the hot dog lady and I weren’t exclusive, but I didn’t figure she was serving so many dudes that she’d be done with wieners completely by 6:30 p.m. It makes me wonder how many wieners she handles in a day.

Friday
Roll the dice. Four. Are these trick dice? Everything’s even. Nothing bad really happened today. It’s Friday, so everyone at work came in hung over and didn’t bother me. My dog didn’t crap on the floor. He still gnawed on my hand for an hour and sneezed directly in my face while I was playing a particularly difficult part of “The Last of Us,” but I’ll take that trade. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is coming out in theaters soon. I guess I could count that as a bad thing. A lady on the train called her husband “hubby.” That was pretty excruciating to hear. I watched the movie “Up” again, and the lady still had a miscarriage. Also, I’m all out of conditioner, so my hair isn’t as soft as usual..

Saturday/Sunday
I’m not rolling the dice anymore. First of all, if it’s even I’ll have to go to work on a weekend, because the rules I made for this game were poorly thought out. Secondly, I’m far too drunk at this time of the morning to be playing with things I could accidentally swallow.

I was briefly tempted to be more positive and count dice numbers as the amount of good things that will happen, but then I realized waking up and not being dead would take up one of them every day. Remembering to breathe consistently would take up a second. Not drowning in a 12,000-gallon vat of wet raccoon shit would take up a third. If I were playing that way, I’d be dead from the raccoon droppings on days when I rolled less than a three. That’s a terrible way to go.