#4: Day from HELL, day FROM hell, DAY from hell.

I realize everyone has their crabby days where nothing seems to go right. It's just a little creepy that my afore-mentioned DAY FROM HELL happened on Halloween.

When I woke up on Oct. 31, I felt like someone had shoved twenty cotton balls up each of my nostrils. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign that Someone thought it wasn't such a great idea for me to get out of bed. But no, I took some medicine, spit in the Universe's face and shouted a resounding "Screw you" to fate. Not literally of course. That would be weird.

I love Halloween and, not being sure if my office was the kind of place where people dressed in costume or not, (though I don't usually don't mind being the person in the bunny suit amid tied and cufflinked co-workers) I wore my one and only orange shirt and nice black pants. I pulled off the Halloweeny-Business-Casual-look pretty well.

Unfortunately a certain co-worker of mine (henceforth referred to as J.A. - short for a seven letter word starting with jack and ending with ass) had it in for me. J.A. is in charge of a large, week-long meeting that will be held in our office and has been doing his best to pawn off all responsibility on me and another one of my co-workers. On Halloween, he was told to clean up the conference room. Since he is the master of "deligating," he headed straight for my office and told me that I needed to clean up the room.

"I disagree. I do not NEED to clean up anything," I said. "I refuse to do your work because you will take credit for my effort if I do a good job or use me as a scapegoat if something goes wrong."

Well, actually I didn't say that. The conversation went more like this:

J.A.: "You need to help me set and clean up the conference room."

Me: "Okay."

I swear that I have a backbone in here somewhere, but unfortunately I can never find it until after it is needed.

So I spent most of my Halloween morning Windexing the glass table tops, laying out materials for the meeting and crawling around on my hand and knees picking lint out of the carpet. Yes, that's right, picking lint out of the carpet - while still wearing my nice, expensive, black dress pants.

"Don't we have machines with suction power meant to suck up small particles into a large bag or container so people don't have to get down on their hands and knees and pick them off the floor?" Why, yes we do you smart reader you. They are called vacuum cleaners. But according to J.A., their performance is sub-par and we could not have any Meeting Bigwig discovering (gasp) a minute piece of lint!

Lovely person that J.A. is, he helpfully stood about watching me clean, pointing out spots I had missed. I think that was the closest I have ever come to actually growling at someone.

Luckily, I had other things to do that day - you know, like, my job. Unfortunately my assigned responsibilities did not go well either. I was yelled at because The Bossman's sister did not come in to arrange her flights to Vancouver. Because you all know that I possess Jedi-like mind bending powers and have no problem making others succumb to my will. So of course I should have known to command The Bossman's sister, whom I have never met, to come into the office.

Just like I should have known that it was my fault when The Bossman missed a conference call that he had set up and that he had put on his calendar but had not told me about.

Duh! Stupid girl.

I was itching to get out of the office at this point and left a little early for lunch. Of course, I didn't get to eat lunch. That is a luxury reserved for days when I don't have to drive to four different stores looking for a long slip to wear under a basically see-through Halloween costume. (Not that I am complaining. My mom made it for me and it was beautiful - everyone loved it. Hi Mom!) After finally finding what I was looking for I had just enough time to dash to the gas station to fill 'er up.

I stuck the hose in my car and, because the wind was piercingly cold, took refuge in my front seat. I was watching people go into the car wash when a man walked from the main building of the gas station to the car wash maintenance door.

He stared at me the whole way there and the whole way back. And not with the flattering "Hey, how you doin' " stare, but the "I know where you live and I see where you sleep" Crazy-Psycho-murderer stare. I tried not to make eye contact, as crazies will often stop and try to talk to you, but every time I looked up he was watching me. I hurried back to the office, trying to tell myself it was nothing. But I think it is safe to say that I will not be frequenting that gas station any more.

Things actually got better from then on out. I managed to hide from J.A. for the rest of the day, successfully avoiding any further cleaning. I set up The Bossman's sister's flight and did not hear anything else about the missed conference call. And though I was dead tired (get it? "Dead tired" on Halloween? Oh, whatever. I crack myself up.) from my morning, I went to a Halloween party that night with some friends and had a great time making fun of slasher films.

When we were piling back into my car after the party at about 3 AM, the sky was pitch black and besides my three friends the neighborhood was silent. I shivered as the gas station guy's intense stare popped into my head. And I made sure to lock to house doors that night.

Not that anything happened. No rattling doorknobs or scratching at the window panes. Just drunken neighbors falling down and breaking their table on the front deck. I just wanted to end this Column on a spooky note as it is mostly about Halloween. Sheesh. Give me a break.

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