Here it is: the comprehensive guide to having an amazingly bad day.  Begin the night before by making a series of modest plans, like going to the post office on your way to work and eating well-balanced meals.  Go to sleep.  Wake up to the sound of your telephone and learn from the voice on the other end that apparently the sound of jungle drums in your dreams is actually the maintenence guy pounding at the door.  Throw on the first available item of clothing, a caftan from the Smithsonian collection, and admit him.  Realize this maintenence guy is a new maintenence guy and is quite handsome.  Realize you are wearing a caftan from the Smithsonian collection and a Max Headroom hairstyle.  Sigh.  Brew herbal tea in a Taco Bell cup while the handsome man considers the water running down your bathroom walls.  Realize you've failed to remove the dregs of the diet Pepsi that previously occupied said Taco Bell cup.  Make arrangements to drive across town to your sister's for a shower.  Shower.  Drive home.  Dress.  Realize there's no time at all for a trip to the post office.  Drive to work.

Develop a searing headache.  Endure three hours of the work day while shading your eyes with your cupped hands.  Realilze you look like a ninny but you no longer care.  Have a diet Coke and some raisins, just in case caffeine and sugar are the solution. Hang up on a customer in order to run to the ladies and throw up your herbal tea, diet Coke, and raisins.  Declare yourself too sickly for work, and spend ten minutes trying to find your car in the parking lot.  Drive home.  Discover four strange men are standing in your bathroom.  The bathroom's pretty small, so maybe that's the reason one of the men is standing on the toilet. Greet them.  Have some juice.  Go to bed with cat.  Awake to someone knocking on the bedroom door.  Have a conversation with a plumber only one detail of which you will later recall: he likes the panties he saw on the bathroom floor.  Return to bedroom and lock door.  Realize you have to pee.  Call sister re: using her apartment for this purpose.  Have nonsensical fight with sister.  Hang up on her after delivering a really lame and only mildly accurate insult.  Go to sleep with cat.  Wake up and throw up in a WalMart bag you found conveniently near your bed.  Consider what to do with that WalMart bag, considering there are four strange men in the bathroom and the water's off in your building.  Chew some gum.  Go back to sleep. 

Awake and discover the men are gone.  Pee and ponder the unspeakable joy of a man-free bathroom and running water.  Discover you've missed something like five phone calls.  Elect to return something like zero phone calls, even though one of them seems to be from your sister who may or may not be calling to apologize for being such a only mildly accurate insult.  Or may or may not be calling to tell you off for hanging up on her.  Remove pants and go back to sleep.  Wake up.  Discover it's the next day already.  Go into the bathroom and find fists full of plaster dust covering every available surface, including your toothbrush and your bathtub.  Realize there are large squares of ceiling everywhere.  Realize the bathroom must be extensively cleaned before you can have a bath or, even, a shower.  Realize you must buy a new toothbrush.  Eat a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup and a piece of string cheese, and drink a glass of milk to celebrate your survival.  Then wrap the WalMart bag of vomit and the polluted toothbrush in a garbage bag.  Put that garbage bag waaay down in another garbage bag.  Swish agressively with Listerine.  Ponder whether your hair's growing out and into a mullet. Then, go back to bed.