Adventures of a Lhasa Down South

You may have noticed that my Main Person (whom you know as Karen) has not written anything for about six months. Or is it 30 years? I’m not so good with time frames. Like this one time, my Person left for what seemed like many years, but she came back wearing the same clothes and she was the exact same weight, so I knew it was probably just an hour or five minutes, because my Person’s weight changes almost every single day, depending on if it’s a Fuck It I’ll Eat What I Want day or an I’m So Fat I HATE Myself day. I hide under the bed on the I’m So Fat Days because she tends to require a lot of cuddles which gets tiresome and cuts into my naptimes.

Anyway, my Person gets depressed when she hasn’t written anything in awhile, but she says there hasn’t been time. First she said she didn’t have time because of the Wedding, a day that was pretty much the same as any other day to me because I spent it napping. The next day was fun though because all the people I had ever met came over to the house and we ate cake. Then she said she didn’t have time because of the honeymoon, a time I also enjoyed because my Grandma came and stayed with me, and she doesn’t know the rule about I’m not allowed on the bed. Then my Person said she was too busy with the holidays.

But my Person still has not written a thing. And anyway writing seems to be something she enjoys, so I don’t understand why she finds excuses not to do it. Like for example I enjoy digging a hole in the couch and take every opportunity to engage in this. I never make excuses why I don’t have time to do it. Another fun thing is to bark at three a.m. at what I’m fairly certain is the Headless Horseman coming to kill us all in our sleep. It’s always possible it might just be a leaf scuttling against the side of the house but one can never be too careful. The point is I love the sound of a nice clear, sharp bark cutting through a peaceful silence so I never make excuses not to do it. But even if she insists on using an “excuse,” there isn’t one anymore, because the holidays are over. I know this for a fact, because People are very routine-oriented, and I’ve witnessed the Holiday Cycle this year from start to finish.

Every year when it gets cold out my People bring in a bunch of boxes from the Cold Dirty Room where they keep the Giant Box with Wheels that goes very fast. The Dirty Room has a massive iron mouth that makes a bloodcurdling noise that makes my ears and tail go down, but I like the Giant Box with Wheels because sometimes it goes to Grandma’s house. Other times it goes to the vet, a person who for some reason likes to shove her finger up my ass, so I try not to think about that. Anyway, they bring in these boxes and get all excited about the things in them, none of which you can even eat. My Main person always pulls out this dusty old toy shaped like an old man with a white beard, and exclaims like she just found the pot of biscuits at the end of the rainbow, “LOOK Theo! Look! It’s your SANTA toy!” and tries to shove it in my mouth. But it smells bad, like the cold dirty room. Blech.

The best part about the holidays is the Inside Tree, which is a thing that normally lives outside and smells of other dogs’ pee, but at this time every year my People decide to bring one into the house, and put it in a bucket of special delicious water which I enjoy at nighttime while the People sleep.

Then follows a period when lots of people visit and drink stuff that makes them laugh loudly and accidentally drop food on the floor. Then they tear open the mysterious boxes that the People put under the tree like six-week-old puppies like to do with socks. This tells me we’re getting to the end. But the real sign that the holidays are over is when my People move the Inside Tree to the Cold Dirty Room. It would be my worst nightmare to have to stay in the Cold Dirty Room by myself and I can’t imagine what the Inside Tree did that was so bad, so I do my very best not to repeat whatever it was. If the Inside Tree could learn to “shake” maybe they would let it stay, because the People really like when I do that.

Then while my Main Person puts things back in boxes to store in the Dirty Room, my Other Person takes down the lights that were on the outside of our house. I decide to help my Other Person, because he’s a lot more fun, although he can be scary when he is playing with his “video game,” which is a box that is smaller than the one in the cold dirty room, and does not have wheels, but makes lots of strange, unpredictable noises. Sometimes my Other Person gets very, very angry with this box and yells very loud at it and throws things, so I have to go hide under the bed until he is happy with the box again. So anyway he climbs up a ladder to take down the lights on the roof of the house and I help by wandering off around the neighborhood and pretending I don’t hear him when he says, “Theo get BACK here,” or, “Theo do NOT crap in the neighbor’s flowers! Bad dog, bad dog!” But even though he’s a lot scarier than my Main Person, he is up on the roof and can’t reach me so I don’t pay any attention. Besides he is too busy going “dammit” a lot and losing his balance which makes my Main Person laugh very hard. The taking down the lights part is a lot of fun.

So that’s how I know for sure the holidays are over, and that my Main Person is out of excuses. But her small box with a bright shiny white screen still sits untouched, gathering dust. So I thought maybe I’ll teach my Person a lesson by writing her column. When she sees that I have taken precious time off from my naptimes just for her, maybe she’ll start to realize that she needs to MAKE time for the things she enjoys. Maybe she’ll finally understand what we dogs have always known – that you’ve got to live for the moment. That you never know what might happen next, good or bad. If you are lying in a patch of sunlight taking a peaceful nap, you cannot worry that at any moment your Person may snatch you awake, throw you into the Giant Box with Wheels and take you to the vet. And you can’t tell yourself, “Oh, I just don’t have time to dig a hole in the couch right now – I’ve got so much to DO. I’ve got to blah blah blah…”

My point is this: it is a New Year. Make the resolution to take the time to enjoy the things that make you happy. Because you never know when someone might come along and try to shove their finger up your asshole.

The Shoe Fits

Recently I found a journal that my mother kept when I was a baby. At eighteen months my mother writes, “Karen is inordinately fond of shoes. Whenever she’s behaving like a miniature Fidel Castro, I give her a pair of my shoes to play with and she transforms into a baby angel.”

I was not at all surprised to read this. In fact, I wouldn’t have even noted the entry at all, except for the fact that I happened to read it just minutes after discovering I seemed to have lost the ability to operate my right foot. My uneducated diagnosis is that the five-inch platform heels I was wearing all day somehow caused a pinched nerve, rendering me a female Dudley Moore ala Arthur, dragging one useless foot around and disguising it as mere drunkenness.

Will this keep me from wearing high heels, or even these particular high heels? Of course not. Don’t be silly. These shoes cost $150, and Jessica Simpson was seen wearing them two weeks ago to a premiere, and they are on Oprah’s “must have” list, and they are so totally cute and make my legs look unbelievably sexy, so long as I’m standing still and leaning on something, and not trying to actually walk.

“Huh,” I said, sitting on the couch and staring at my right foot, which refused to move when I told it to and instead hung limply but beautifully adorned. “Look at that. I can’t move my foot.”

My husband was alarmed, but I was pretty sure it was temporary, and it was. When he tried to insist I stop wearing the shoes, due to the fact that mobility is an extremely handy trait to have as a human being, an argument ensued that very nearly resulted in a trial separation. You don’t get between a woman and her shoes. But men simply don’t understand the shoe thing. Men don’t understand anything having to do with fashion but I think shoes are particularly baffling, because they are the most likely to cause severe crippling. “If the shoe fits, who cares if it causes musculature damage?” is my motto.

“What’s so great about shoes?” my exasperated husband wanted to know as he vigorously rubbed my comatose foot.

So I’ll let you fellas in on the secret, which isn’t really a secret at all but just plain common sense: The great thing about shoes is that no matter how fat we get, no matter how bloated we are, no matter how many babies we’ve had we always wear the same shoe size.

Shopping for any other type of attire almost always ends in a week-long depression and crash-diet. Bathing suit shopping makes us suicidal and, incidentally, would be a very effective form of torture on female prisoners of war. (“Tell us where the plans are hidden or I will make you try on this thong in a size 6!” Shrieking: “NOT THE THONG! PLEASE NOT THE THONG!”).

But shoes always fit. There is no greater high than a pair of heels. I could be having the worst day, but if I slip on a pair of strappy silver stilettos, all is right with the world.

Also, shoes have the power to make a bland outfit fabulous. For example, if your skirt is too long for your short legs, slip on a pair of heels and oila! You are a 5’9” fashion goddess. If your jeans are outdated, throw on some jazzy suede boots and ta-da! New fashion statement.

Shoes are, quite simply, magic. Dorothy’s got her home from Oz. Cinderella would still be scrubbing stone floors if it weren’t for her glass slipper. And there’s that old lady who lives in her shoe, something I can only dream of, particularly if it was a giant Manolo Blahnik d’orsay pump.

I know what you guys are thinking. You’re thinking, “Karen, your arguments make very sound sense. But what about that movie The Red Shoes? Didn’t the ballerina shoes kill that woman?” To which I respond: “Some women just can’t handle their shoes.” A real woman would have sucked it up, told her shoes who’s boss, and gone to the chiropractor six times a week to have her spine realigned like everybody else. There’s never any reason your shoes should be the cause of your demise. If they are, then it’s because of something you did wrong.

Many years ago, before there was the Fashion Police or Joan Rivers (we’re talking centuries here), men invented high heels and they liked them so much they kept them for themselves. And they wore satin bows on them, because men have no fashion sense, and they wore them with white tights and shiny shorty pants for the same reason. And then one day they looked at each other, and they realized they looked like complete idiots. And so they gave the heels to women, who did cry in joy, and who did paireth them with gorgeous dresses and sparkly things, and everybody lived happily ever after.

You can’t argue with historical fact, and history shows us clearly that you guys only try to dissuade us women from our beautiful shoes because you’re bitter that you couldn’t handle them. But I think understanding the origins of this issue, not to mention the shiny shorty pants embarrassment, should help you get in better touch with your latent shoe insecurities.

So, ladies, go forth and prosper, but slowly so you don’t break an ankle, and men, now that you understand the logical necessity of a pair of $200 embroidered five-inch pointed-toe stilettos, you can release your own selfish issues and there should be fewer domestic arguments everywhere. My work here is done, and now I must sign off, because the air’s getting a bit thin up here and I feel like I might just fai…..

Bathroom Personalities

After working here for awhile I've accumulated an interesting list of Bathroom Personalities. You know, co-workers who seem to have some very interesting, oh, let's call them habits, in the restroom. Here is my list. Got any Personalities to add? Send them to me!

1. The Scrubber

This is a woman who is scrubbing her... well, we'll just imagine what she's scrubbing... for at least five minutes (that's as long as I've ever had to hang around to listen). The scrubbing sound is intermittently punctuated by frantic rolling of the toilet paper holder. She must use a whole tree's worth of TP per bathroom visit. My God, she must be sore. Is she hoping to rub it completely OFF?

2. The Prayer

This woman sings hymns on the toilet, and I'm not talking under her breath, but loud and free. Every so often she pauses to say, "Oh Jesus! Oh sweet Jesus!" Maybe she's got a horrible case of constipation?

3. The Flusher

This person has OCD when it comes to flushing. She flushes before she sits on the pot, several times while she is sitting on the pot, and, thankfully, when she is done sitting on the pot. Why?

4. The Person Who Seems to be Wearing an Inordinate Amount of Clothing

This woman takes forever pulling up and fastening her clothing. She must be wearing three pairs of pantyhose (yes, they still wear pantyhose in the South). She actually grunts and pants with all the effort it takes to re-clothe herself.

5. The Hairspray Lady

The woman who absolutely cannot visit the restroom without dousing her entire head with a can of aerosal, suffocating anybody else who is unfortunate enough to be in there to actually use the toilet. She also tends to be the woman who applies her make-up with a spatula.

6. The Lady Who Doesn't Wash Her Hands

That says it all.

7. The Mumbler

This woman carries on a conversation with herself, in low tones so you can't tell what she's saying, the entire time she's on the pot.

8. The Cell Phone User

Far more prevalent than any other type I've mentioned, this is the person who can't put down her cell phone even when she is taking a shit. Co-dependant much?

9. The Woman Whose Feet Point the Wrong Way

You can see her feet under the stall door, and they are pointing TOWARD the toilet. What the fuck??

That's all I can think of at the moment. I haven't made a single one of these up. In fact, I was just in there with the hymn-singer, which was what gave me the bright idea of making a list.

A Hitch In Time

Pardon me if this column doesn’t make much sense; I am suffering from bridal-lag. Bridal-lag is similar to jetlag but without the fun of going anywhere. “Jetlag” is defined as “A temporary disruption of bodily rhythms caused by high-speed travel across several time zones typically in a jet aircraft.” But, in the case of Bridal Time Zones, all of which are located on a planet that exists on a separate but interactive plane with ours, no jet is necessary. Just a wedding date.

When I got engaged, little did I know that I crossed over to a parallel plane of existence in which the planet Planwed resides. In retrospect, this explains why those few minutes it took for my boyfriend to propose and for me to watch myself accept seemed to take one nanosecond. That’s how time works on planet Planwed.

Planwed actually has two incongruous time zones which exist simultaneously: Romance Time (RT) and Bridal Magazine Time (BMT). While you are visiting, it will seem time is crawling along at an excruciatingly slow pace, and then without warning it will suddenly speed up, resulting in panic attacks about finding an elbow-length two-tiered bridal veil with a one-quarter inch pencil edge immediately. Here is an example of how the complex physical properties involved can play out: I am not getting married for another five months, which, in Romance Time, is the equivalent of one decade. But I am having a wedding in five months, which is the equivalent of 3.024 seconds in Bridal Magazine Time. By their calculations I am teetering on catastrophic failure because I have not yet ordered the groomsmen’s boutonnieres.

Visitors to planet Planwed should be aware that while they are required to adhere to the two time zones simultaneously, residents of the planet are not. Each resident belongs to only one of the time zones, regardless of their geographical location (e.g. Wedding Cake Lake or Sparkly Ringland) and they expect you to adjust accordingly in your dealings with them.

When I approached the D.J. (who is from a very laid-back, mostly farmland area of Planwed) with a dog-eared list of carefully selected songs, he waved me away with a lackadaisical hand and scoffed, “Oh, you’ve got time!” But when I went shopping for a wedding dress the sales women nearly collapsed at the thought that I was just starting my search with a mere six months (BMT translation: 3.386 seconds) to go.

The BMT populace will have you believe that if you have not booked your honeymoon before anybody actually proposes to you, then clearly you are so unorganized and irresponsible you shouldn’t be allowed to marry, much less procreate. However, those dwelling in RT zones believe that if you dare to presume you will ever go on a honeymoon, time will expand exponentially until, despite all laws of physics, you will live for 350 years and spend them all dating scrawny guys with pocket-protectors who have a habit of spitting when they talk.

BMT was created and is monitored by a fairly sizable and wealthy country on planet Planwed similar to France in that its citizens all feel they are far more interesting and sophisticated than anyone else on the planet, but have very little evidence to back themselves up other than a snotty accent. The country is almost entirely populated by extremely thin women with blond highlights, sprinkled with a few effeminate men who wear a lot of hair product and say “fabulous” ad nauseum but have no literal translation in their language of “please” or “thank you.”

Wedding Dress Salespeople make up the largest population of BMT residents. These are the thinnest of the thin women and they are very high-strung and quite excitable. If they were animals, they would be hamsters – whiskers quivering, running like mad on their tulle-adorned wheels. Their tiny frames belie their immense strength, particularly in their upper arms, which are regularly exercised by pulling mercilessly at the corset ribbons of brides-to-be. Rewards are given to those capable of cinching a bride’s waist so tight that her back fat (which she formerly was not aware she had) splooges out the top of the dress, giving the effect of two extra breasts located in her armpits. Any means of causing a bride to faint is considered a sign of proficiency among this tribe; if the fainting is a result of successfully accentuating heretofore unknown back fat, you are likely to get a fabulous two-week vacation to Wedding

Cake Lake and an Employee of the Month plaque.

Caterers are a nomadic people who wander in and out of BMT and RT countries without regard. But mostly they are just a group of people whose accents – none of which are the same – are very difficult to understand. Often this results in having a dish at your wedding you did not know you ordered, and are loathe to eat, like Brussels sprouts in maple walnut syrup garnished with pepper-stuffed olives and rosemary. You thought he said, “roast beef.”

In addition to D.J.s, Florists and Bakers also live in temperate climes on the RT side of the planet. Florists live in a country where plants flower into picture-perfect blossoms no matter what the season, but if you try to pick any of them you are charged $150. Don’t even ask about the trees.

Wedding

Cake Lake is on a beautiful island and follows Romance Time rigidly. Here you are required to recline when sampling delicate cakes adorned with beautiful icing bows. The ensuing sugar high cuts off the flow of brain chemicals related to controlled spending, making the $1200 price tag for what amounts to, let’s face it, artfully arranged butter and flour, seem reasonable. Come to think of it, as lovely as the Wedding Cake People seem, they amount to no more than your average drug-pusher.

So you can see why, as I shuttle back and forth between the frenzied time zone of the Wedding Dress Salespeople and the dreamy, laid-back attitude of the D.J., I’m feeling a little deflated. My body and mind are having a difficult time understanding where or when I am anymore. But I am keenly aware that I have only 163 days left to plan, because no matter who I visit on this planet, this is considered the standard formal greeting. “Hi! Welcome to Patsy’s Floral Arrangements! Only 163 days to go! Well, there's just no chance in hell you're going to pull this off but we'll go ahead and humor you!”

Nobody told me about the existence of this planet before I became engaged. Maybe I was supposed to have been taken through special security procedures where the life of my future children was threatened should I leak any of this information to the happily oblivious women out there. Somehow I slipped through the cracks, and I feel it is my duty to warn you all. If you decide to go ahead and visit planet Planwed anyway, then all I can say is: May the Fondant Be With You.

The Cheeto Diet

While men have spent centuries beating the crap out of each other on the battlefield, women have spent centuries beating the crap out of themselves about their weight. Neither sex has the genetic disposition to understand why the other pursues their particular chosen battle. Women don’t give a damn who won what war so long as nobody they love died, and men boast a positive self-image even if they sport a belly that looks like they’re about to give birth to a keg.

It is one of life’s ironies that men, who don’t notice if they are eating filet mignon or shaving cream so long as they can do it in front of the television, can lose weight with ease, while women undergo a personality transformation and support a multi-billion dollar industry to lose two pounds in six months. As we women continue to pursue our centuries-old Battle of the Bulge, our men continue to baffle us with their irreverent attitude towards food.

My fiancé shovels upwards of 6,800 calories into his face opening at lunchtime, via Whoppers and French fries and ice cream sundaes, without paying any attention to the taste. Meanwhile I have not had a hamburger in over three years and if I ever do, I will promptly gain 5 pounds. Despite his regular diet of fried grease, my fiancé never puts on weight.

A friend of mine is trying the South

Beach diet. She carefully weighs, inspects and dissects every morsel of food before putting it to her lips. She serves her husband chocolate ice cream and sits down with a bowl of sugar-free Jello for herself. (Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think “watch it jiggle” is a particularly strong selling point for a dessert.) She has been overly generous making sure that her restricted diet does not affect her naturally slender husband in any way. And yet the other day when she proudly announced to him that she’d lost 4 pounds he responded, “Really? I lost six.”

“But you’re not even on the diet,” she managed to sputter, while mocking images of him eating potatoes, carrot cake and Cheetos flittered across her vision.

“Yes I am,” he responded, surprised. Hadn’t he gotten a single bacon cheeseburger instead of a double at lunch yesterday? Actually he’d ordered the double but was too lazy to return it. The point being that: a) he had not noticed that he consumed different foods from her at mealtimes and b) he did not notice that his meals were exactly the same as they’d always been, thinking he was automatically on a diet because she was. Just the assumption of a diet was enough to cause him to lose 6 pounds. Which proves theory x: Men lose weight just by being in close proximity to someone (usually a woman) who is on a diet.

But even if men do have to go on an actual diet, it is of little consequence to them, because they never cared that much about what they were eating in the first place. My father says things like, “I don’t think I want any breakfast. I’m still full from last night’s dinner.” What does yesterday’s food have to do with today’s? Today is a clean slate, and I’m not about to cheat myself out of a socially acceptable meal. Or he’ll say, “Hm, I’ve put on a couple pounds. I think I’ll lose some weight.” And then for the next two weeks he’ll just not eat dinner. It is inconceivable to me to skip a meal when it is all I can do to restrain myself from having extra food.

Just the thought of having to go on a diet will send me into a depression so severe that I start to lose my eyesight and hearing. I spend several weeks being so depressed that I eat even more, until I finally hit rock bottom when the scale no longer has the scope to accurately determine my weight. Then I will drag myself out of bed and with a heavy heart pull the much-used portion control measurements out of the cupboard. Normally portion control, to me, means I am done eating when the item is gone. This applies to a bowl of cereal, a chicken breast, or a one-pound bag of M&Ms. Then I start writing up a grocery list of things like “low-fat cottage cheese” and “fat-free sugar-free ice cream” and “low-carb whole-grain bread with extra fiber.” The list will be fuzzy from my tears, like a much-read letter from a loved one killed in war.

Then I embark on a battle that lasts approximately three weeks, which is how long it takes for my snail-like metabolism to catch on that I am on a diet, put the word out to the rest of my body, and start thinking about using some of those extra stores of fat it has socked away in various places, namely my ass, for a rainy day. For those first three weeks getting on the scale is a dangerous business. Both my fiancé and the dog have learned to keep their distance because it is very likely the scale will come hurtling through the air after my morning weigh-in. For those first three weeks I eat nothing but things that taste like sand, and I don’t see any results.

But right around the beginning of week four the scale will start to play with the idea of inching toward the left. It will toy with me for a few days. You lost 1 pound! No, two pounds! No, I changed my mind – you haven’t lost a damn thing! No, wait, just kidding – you really did lose two pounds. I mean four! Four pounds!

“Four pounds!” I will shout jubilantly to my fiancé and the dog, who are hiding under the bed. “I lost four pounds!” I will scream and cry, running around the house like a character from Chariots of Fire after the big race.

“This deserves a reward!” I will tell myself. Positive reinforcement is the best way to maintain a diet! “Everybody in the car! We’re going to Krispy Kreme!”

I may have won the battle, but the war has just begun.

Slip Bridin' Away

An unmarried woman over the age of twenty-one is such a rare circumstance in Alabama that it could be an X-Files episode on the Turner South Network. One of those really disturbing ones because the premise is almost realistic enough that you could imagine such a thing actually happening. As a thirty-something single woman, I have received a lot of unwanted attention from overly concerned, well-intentioned strangers. To avoid inappropriately lashing out at them, I’ve had to come up with a few creative ways to amuse myself when confronted with their distress.

For example there’s this fun little game that I play with the guy in my office who delivers our mail. It’s called “Why Aren’t You Married Yet?” The way the game is played is, every day he asks me a question, which he thinks is subtle enough that I will not understand its origin. He has narrowed his focus down to two possibilities: either I am not really as old as I say I am, or I have an indiscernible communicable disease. “How is it you’re not married yet?” is the main question, of which there are many variations, to which I respond depending on my mood: “Haven’t found the right guy!” or “Oh, just lucky I guess!” (that one really stumps him) and I’d been saving, “Because lesbians aren’t permitted to marry in Alabama!” for a particularly dull day.

My favorite question so far is, “Have you always looked like this?” No, I want to say. The reason nobody has married me is because up until just last year I weighed 350 pounds and had a problem with facial warts.

But alas my amusing little game is going to come to an end. I’ve got a surprise for the mail guy that will probably save him a lot of sleepless nights: I got engaged.

While my being engaged has caused the better part of

Alabama to let out their breath in a collective sigh of relief, it hasn’t really saved me any grief. Because now I get to be humiliated by an entirely new set of people: wedding vendors. For example, in the middle of a telephone conversation with a potential disc jockey the man asked, “Wait - are you the bride?” “Yes,” I replied, for some reason feeling as if I had done something wrong, and he clarified, “Oh, I wasn’t sure, since you sound so… mature.”

As if at the ripe age of thirty-two I will require a walker to assist me down the aisle.

To avoid this latest type of unwanted attention, I have developed a new game in which I adopt the personality of what I imagine to be the typical 19-year-old bride planning her wedding:

“Um? Hello? Is this, like, the caterer? Okay, like, I want only pink foods? So they’ll match my colors? Blush and roseate?”

Wedding vendors seem much more comfortable taking unreasonable demands from a girl just barely out of braces than discussing rational expectations with a mature, practical thirty-two-year-old. But that’s okay, because I can really have some fun with this.

“Do you know, like, the slip n’ slide? Okay because what I want is, like, a slip n’ slide down the aisle, and then, like, the bridesmaids will slide down it on their stomachs? Holding up the bouquets? Oh! And the slip n’ slide HAS to be pink or I will totally freak.”

So while getting engaged may have only increased the spotlight on my graying bridal head, it has at least provided me with a couple of interesting new hobbies. Another one is staring at my engagement ring, although that can be dangerous, particularly in heavy traffic. But the sunlight coming through my dirty windshield creates some really eye-catching effects that you’d have to be dead – or male – not to appreciate.

Any place we frequently visit has now been categorized as having “good sparkly lights” or “bad sparkly lights” and this can weigh heavily on decisions, such as where we will go for dinner. “Look!” I stage-whispered the other night in a tightly packed restaurant while flailing my left hand around over my head, “I’m making rainbows on that guy’s shirt!”

The combination of engagement giddiness, frustration with vendors, my resulting adaptation of an obnoxious nineteen-year-old’s persona, and the distracting sparkly of my ring has rendered me pretty much insufferable to most people. But ask me if I care. I’m engaged! I’m engaged! Like, totally!

The Martha Doctrine

Poor Martha. Our modern-day icon for the Superwoman Business Executive has been quietly ruminating behind bars for the past five months. Quietly – right. We still heard about or from her on a more regular basis than I hear from my brother. Then she emerged from prison to a new television deal, soaring stock prices and the possibility of a book about her cellular experience to the tune of five mil. I bet she sure learned her lesson!

I had about three degrees of separation from Martha, who is well known to be somewhat of a tyrant, when I worked for her PR firm in New York. Personally I can neither confirm nor deny said rumor, because she has an intimidating staff of attorneys who could reduce my life to rubble with one well-placed phone call. But I will say that the few times I had the pleasure of meeting Martha she scared the bejeezus out of me. She has this way of looking at you as if, like the Terminator, a stream of information detracted from your most private thoughts is running across her vision in green, squared-off computer language. I felt completely dissected in the few seconds it took to shake her hand and remained trembling in place after she had quickly dismissed my existence and moved on to more interesting prey.

You’ve heard about Martha’s menacing management practices because she’s a celebrity, but from my experience Martha’s style may simply be a learned byproduct of the female executive’s struggle to the top. I myself had more than my fair share of fanatical bosses. What I wonder is, are crazy people naturally more successful, or does being successful make you crazy? I am a terrible manager; does this mean I can safely consider myself stable? Is this just a New York phenomenon or is it a worldwide epidemic?

For example, my last New York boss was a Class A lunatic. Many of us completely unqualified to do so diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, and just generally being a nasty person – an extremely unpleasant mix of shortcomings. Her modus operandi was to treat you like a gift from God for the first couple months you were in her employ, thus luring you into a false sense of security before startling you out of reticence by turning into a red-eyed, boil-covered, nostril-flaring, spiked-tail-whipping, fire-breathing monster of a bitch. You would then spend the rest of your inevitably short service doing your best, which was never good enough, to dodge her easily incurred wrath. One instinctively tries to do a better job in order to avoid criticism; however, attempting to do the right thing is the fastest way to piss off a crazy person.

This particular boss was fond of reassigning, at random, various responsibilities within the organization to people who were not even remotely qualified for the job. “But I was hired as a mailroom clerk,” one might protest, when given the new title of Vice President of IT Operations after the former Vice President, in an effort to find an acceptable excuse for missing a few days of work had, during lunch, leapt out his 32^nd floor window. “The IT department receives quite a bit of mail,” she would rationalize in such a way that you felt foolish for having said anything. And then when the server blew up as a result of your incompetence, she would sue you for maliciously and intentionally misrepresenting your skills, thus putting her business in jeopardy.

Perhaps this particular boss is an exception and just needs to be heavily medicated or, preferably, strangled in her sleep. Maybe in most cases crazy bosses learned management skills from their crazy bosses and that’s how, due to the Domino Effect, New York psychologists can demand $250 an hour. At least Martha had the sense to become a billionaire. Because everyone knows that once you’ve made that much money, nobody would have the balls to call you crazy.

I know I wouldn’t.

Note to my current boss: This column refers to past bosses only. You are not at all crazy. In fact, you are the nicest, most reasonable boss I have ever had, and I love your hair.