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the bottle of toilet cleaner, which was hard to grip with those oversized rubber gloves I was wearing, and squirted it into the water. How hard was it to pee inside the toilet, people? Disgusting. Standing over the stinking mess, I used a bristled brush to scrub it until it shined. What was I thinking coming there? I must have lost my mind. I sighed as the brush came out of my grasp and dropped with a splash into the nasty toilet water. Now I got to fish it out, fantastic. I had definitely lost my mind.
    By lunch time, I smelled like a potent mixture of bodily fluids and cleaning supplies. Attractive, I know. I hadn’t brought anything with me to eat, figuring I would just snag something from the bakery like always. My choices were now to either go into a shop, looking and smelling like I did and buy something or just skip a meal. I was leaning towards the latter. The day’s work hadn’t left me much of an appetite anyway. I spent the full half hour sitting on a bench in the park breathing in some fresh air and trying to alleviate the burning sensation deep in my lungs.
    The rest of the day was no better than the beginning. Maybe even worse, if that was at all possible. The last rest room of the day was on the first floor of the town hall building and by far the worst. It took me two hours to get it to an acceptable level of not-so-bad.
    At least I was already at town hall. As soon as I tossed the last trash bag in the dumpster around back, I ran upstairs to the local office of the Employment Department. One look at me, heck one whiff, and they’d have to reverse the transfer. Just for pity’s sake alone.
    When I reached the office on the third floor, the door was already shut. I knew it was after five, but come on ! I pounded on the oak door for a solid minute before a woman opened it looking utterly perturbed.
    “We’re closed for the day,” she said stiffly, attempting to shut the door in my face.
    I managed to wedge my foot in the space between the door and the frame and refused to remove it until she heard me out. If she thought for one second that I was going through another day from hell like that before I got to talk to someone, she had another thing coming. I explained about the mix up and informed her that I would be returning to my position at the bakery the following day and that I could come by afterwards if they need me to help fix any paper work or anything. She only half listened to my tirade, before forcibly removing my foot from the doorway with her own. She did, however, find the time to assure me that my reassignment was both authorized and legit before slamming the door in my face. Like I was about to take her word for it. Peter. I needed to find Peter. He worked in the archives. He had to have some sort of idea what happened . . . and how I could fix all of this.
    I raced toward the archives building as fast as my legs would carry me , which, granted, wasn’t all that fast. Understandably, I was met with more than a few strange looks when I pushed through the crowd into the building. Peter’s department manager informed me that he had already left, and I headed for his house next. I really should ha ve gone home and showered first, especially considering I’ d managed to avoid ever meeting his parents before. Not e xactly the first impression I’ d been going for, but oh well, so what. I had bigger problems at the moment.
    By the time I reached his front gate, I was panting hard. I seriously needed to get in shape. Giving myself about thirty seconds to get it together, I knocked on the door and waited. Peter answered. Thank goodness.
    “ Leigh? What the heck happened to you?” So help me, if he’d laughed at me right then, I would not have been held responsible for my actions.
    “Don’t start, Peter.”
    He joined me out on the front steps, wrinkling his nose slightly as he sat beside me. I could only imagine what I looked like right about then. I explained — not ranted, no matter what