There are only three things you can truly rely on in this post-truth world: The Chinese straw hat, oxen, and the rain.

Donna Porcellino was pissed and then some. If she were a cartoon character, a steady flow of steam would spew from her ears, causing her hair to rise three to five inches above her scalp. Alas, she was just a mortal composed of flesh and blood, so she was merely drenched to the bone, her shoulders hunched, her nerves tightly wound and knotted, barely containing the angst from within. Her facial expression clearly said, leave me alone or I will chew your head off.

On top of the pouring rain, a passing truck splashed a pond-sized puddle all up on her. She set down the soaked dripping groceries contained in the cheapest plastic bags. In fact, one broke outside. She let it go, but deep down hoped it wasn’t the bag with the allergy meds. Sad, but true, it was.

She was three days constipated. She had to work late, again! She was hungry. Each movement she made was accompanied by an unsettling squish. She could feel a pimple gestating just beneath her cheek, and it was a big one. Her new job sucked.

She half sighed in relief to be home, and half groaned out of the displeasure of having to do this all over again tomorrow. It was only Monday. She pushed the door open. Her rancor subsided only to be replaced with her nose crinkling in disgust.

“Oh my God, it smells like a dozen Russian teen-age boys in here!”

Her eyes darted around the room half suspecting she may have been right. There was her husband, Lester, on the couch, as usual, passed out, half-naked and worthless.

For the first time, she considered suicide, but not the traditional one you commit on yourself, but the one you inflict on your lazy good-for-nothing husband out of “alleged” self-defense. She stared at the cast-iron pan as if she had found God.