You know those mornings where you wake up not-quite right and in the shower you look down and realize that you’ve gained like ten pounds then you get out and your eyes are all puffy from the soap so you use those “sensitive eye” wipes your dad gave you but then the eye wipes make the puffiness worse? So then you’re walking around looking like some kind of freakshow with your fat and the eye and you put on the chic white blazer that always makes you feel better, and you check yourself in the mirror and the blazer has all this dirt and crap all over the back? This might bother you, ok, but you know that you’re grumpy in the morning so you’re not gonna let it get you down.

Then you somehow get wrinkle creme INSIDE your eyelid, and now your eyes are stinging and burning. Which means you’ll have to put on mascara in the car. And your face is all broken out in one area and all cracked and dry in another, so when you smear on foundation you can tell, even though you can’t really see, that your skin looks more like the back of a gila monster than a beautiful dewy rose. You’re out of Shower to Shower and out of the CVS generic for Johnson’s baby powder, and even out of that weird medicated powder your fiancee likes to splash on his balls, so it looks like you’re going to work sticky. Legitimiately frustrated, now, you reach for your leave-in conditioner only to find that, oops, you RAN OUT LAST WEEK, so you go a little heavy on the Potion #9 and hope for the best.

You give the boy a kiss on the forehead as you run out the door, noting that your shoes are badly in need of an upgrade, but at least you’re wearing your BCBG shirt so things could be worse, and you hop in the car and wrestle with the gearshift to get the car into reverse. On the road. Not too much later than usual. Ok. Things are looking up.

Stop at coffeeshop en route, craving hazelnut. Will not buy scone. Will not buy scone.

Coffeeshop has no hazelnut and somehow, when you walk out the door, you have a blueberry scone in your hand. Somehow you wind up eating it. Somehow you wind up loathing yourself.

Fight traffic through medical area to get to work, almost hit annoying-looking pedestrian, finally make it into lot 5 minutes early. Nearly bust a tie rod going over the potholes in lot. Forget to lock car. As you walk around to the front of the building, you notice an old man urinating directly in your path. Discreetly avert your eyes and try to imagine you are in New York City, where you’re sure this sort of thing is commonplace.

The nice maintenance man of questionably Asian descent is Windex-ing the doors to the entrance of your building – you smile at him as you step into the elevator. Then you almost throw up. The elevator smells like the worst dump anyone has ever taken, worse than the bathroom at the barbecue shack after all-you-can-eat chicken wings. The smell is so bad you could almost chew on it. You hold your breath as the lift makes its interminable ascent to the second floor. Once there, you take several relieved inhalations and stagger, gasping, down the hall, as a bespectacled old man takes your place in the elevator. You think about warning him, but miss the opportunity.

In the women’s room, you note that the #9 did not work like the miracle cure-all it purports to be, as your hair bears a strong resemblance to this kid’s drawing of Tina Turner as an alien, but are thankful to discover that your eyelids have ceased their revolt against your face. As you begin to work some magic with the good old L’oreal you’re again assaulted with public defecation as a woman loudly relieves herself in a nearby stall. You run headlong for the sanctity of your office, as this day is already just about the most disgusting mess of indignities you could ever imagine.

You sit down, log into your Outlook and check the missed calls on your cellphone. Three of them are from your sister, who doesn’t just call for casual conversation. And there’s a voicemail too. With news. As you listen, your heart starts pounding and your stomach drops into your knees. It’s very clear, suddenly, that either one or both of you is seriously fucked, and now you have to spend the rest of the day figuring out how to deal with the maelstrom.

We were so fucking close to getting away with it, and I don’t mean to be one of those people who posts these vague non-statements, but jesus christ, we were so motherfucking close.