"You can light candles for me at church, but you can't set me up with any more sons of people you meet on cruises."

"You're not open minded!"

"Stop yelling."

"I'm not yelling!"

"You have a yelling tone."

"Well, a 'yelling tone' is not yelling...."

"I appreciate the candles."

"My friends are lighting candles, too."

"There are probably more worthy causes of a candle vigil than my single status."

This lighting candles stuff is no joke. It works. My grandmother started it. I think she might have belonged to some Secret Candle Powers Society that disguised their practice as Catholic faith. Seriously, if everyone lit candles for the middle class we might have public health care, keep union workers' rights, and heal the spiritual corruption on Wall Street.

At this point in time she could burn down a barn with the amount of candles she's lit for me.

Just for today, I love my mom.

In a twisted sort of Holly Hunter in "Broadcast News" way, I love what I do, producing Creative Digital Things, working with talented people, and being the advocate of Getting Shit Done. And, most importantly, I really love Getting Paid. But Project Managing/Producing/Whatever You Want To Call It, is the kind of work that is antithetical to my deeper passion, writing. Writing thrives on large chunks of unstructured time and unstructured brain waves. The creative butterflies only like to visit me after I've been sitting for hours on end thinking about I would say if I met Mark Ruffalo (I'm yours?), and ways to blow my sugar-free, wheat-free diet (which is neither).

In high school I was the Editor-In-Chief of Yearbook (we never said "The Yearbook"). The staff was a mixture of self-proclaimed "cool people" (like myself), skateboard/comic book nerds, and adorable geeks, and some plain straight-up, served with a side of coke-bottle glasses, Geeks. We spent afternoons eating fried rice or Panda Express while working on Computers that looked like ATM machines. Once I spent the entire night at the Yearbook Office. I was 17 and I was trying to make up for the fact that I a) shamelessly plastered pictures of myself and my friends on every other page (who wouldn't?...people with integrity), and b) allowed my friends to write secret messages all over the 400 page opus (newsflash: 8 pt upside down text is not really that big of a secret). The Faculty Advisor caught it (who knew he did anything?), and yelled at me. I yelled at him back. He cowered. And that was then I knew my calling. Tell people How It's Supposed To Be Done. And, if you don't know, ask them how they would do it, and then say, "Good job!"

Little did I know that the smell of fried rice and Panda Express would follow me to a multitude of agencies filled with just such people, only grown graduates from art school, and well-paid web developers. After college, I discovered this weird thing called "the Internet." It wasn't exactly publishing, but there was plenty of alcohol around and, yes, that smell of fried rice.

Project managers tend to be women, I'm not sure why. It's a hopelessly codependent type of gig, you have to carry the weight of everything and maybe women are used to that. But, in the end, it's like giving birth (which I've never done). You have a baby. A thing. A project.

And then you go into a coma.

Just for today, I'm taking a Coma Day.

Today a guy at work yelled out, "She's just like her mother....really hard on the eyes!" We all just looked at each other like, "We could get really offended...or keep our jobs."

Advertising = White Heterosexual Males

Deal. But what creative, economically advantageous industry doesn't?

The longer I work in advertising, the less ironic Mad Men becomes.

Just for today, I can live in reality.

I feel deeply for working mothers. Especially, single working mothers. Here I have no children, no husband and I can't see through the back window of my car because of the encrusted level of dirt. Without rain, the dirt refuses to un-encrust itself from my windshield. Last weekend my car looked like it had participated in a mud wrestling contest. This week it could have been an extra in The Road Warrior. That is, if Mad Max drove a Honda Civic. (Look, if the world ran out of oil, which it will very soon, I'd stick with my sick shift EX...yes that's right, I said stick shift.) But it's not just the car. Up until tonight, I hadn't eaten a vegetable in a week, washed my coffee mug, and have been going to work wearing the Overwarshed (no, that's not a typo) Jeans because the Indigo Blue Work Jean pile of laundry refuses to wash itself. I come home everyday and think, "Why are papers still on the coffee table? Why is that dish still not washed?" And then it dawns on me...

I need a wife.

As soon as I hit the next income bracket milestone (it's a couple zeros away), I'm going to hire a full-time Wife. It'll be awesome. I'll pay her well because, shit, wives do REAL work. None of this "Oh, I wrote fifty emails and sat in meetings all day." I'll give her health insurance, pay for her kids ballet and SAT prep classes, set aside a college fund, and she/he (I'm open to a male wife) can sleep with whomever she/he wants. (I don't think it's ethical to sleep with a wife...even a male wife.) Ok, fine, they're called "assistants." But I've seen one too many marriages where you couldn't tell the difference. What? Did I hear an eyeball hit the cerebral cortex? (sorry, I didn't take anatomy). Fine, then, I'll bust out some research...

"...it is still true that when women marry they typically did more housework than they did before marriage. When men marry, they do less. Marriage decreases free time for women, but not for men."

- Stephanie Coontz (she rocks).

Sure, I've had my girlish moments when imagine a lovely spiritual bond between two people who share the burden of life. And then I talk to a married woman. I realize now that all those healthy meals I ate as a kid were cooked by my mom during her off hours. It's a lot of work to live.

Just for today, I appreciate the value of domestic work.

My friend/neighbor and I like to walk her dog on the beach after 10:00 pm. Except for the stray drunk person puking it's kind of peaceful and starry, and helps me forget that I live in a city with eight million cars and people who think eating a vegan diet is more important than making eye contact. Her dog likes to find stray balls and other things to put in her mouth. Last night she was running around with what looked like a leaf in her mouth.

"Awww, how cute, she likes her leaf," I said.

Twenty minutes later we realized that it was a dead bird.

"I swore it was a leaf..."

It's hard to see reality clearly. Who wants to?

My future step-mother is four years younger than myself. And I'll stop right here....I try to inappropriately over-share only about myself in this blog. (And, I have to say, I do a damn good job). But a comedienne friend, Jackie Kashian has a joke about how she's officially to old for her father to molest. And it would be funnier if it were only about her. It's sort of like the dead bird. You really hope it's a leaf.

But it's not.

Just for today, I am trying to see clearly.

Salt. Coke. In n' Out. More Salt. Tears. Emotional reaction to This Video of Gonzo. Email. More Emails. They grow. Deadline? Oh, yeah. Stuff. To. Do. Did I forget...? Panic. No, it's all Ok...I'm...just...moving...in...slow...motion...like...acting ...class...molasses...no...aunt jemima syrup...no....chocolate gelato....damn...it's the PMS!!

Seriously?! How am I supposed to function as an Alpha Woman with PMS?! [NOTE: I really just now wanted to write "PMS n' shit." (SUB-NOTE: I once worked with a guy who finished every sentence with "n' shit." As in, "We was eatin' tacos n' shit." Except, he pronounced it "n' 'sit." So, one day I told a co-worker at another job about this guy, and immediately he and I started adding "n' sit" to everything we said...in eight months of working together it never failed to produce gales of laughter. The trick was the pregnant pause after making a declamatory statement. Someone would say something like, "I gotta do my taxes..." and then we'd look at each other, and five seconds later, someone would casually whisper, "n' sit." To this day, when I say anything mundane like, "I'm going to run some errands..." I alway finish it in my head with "n' sit.")]

But "PMS n' shit" sounds so un-feminist. Un-feminist? Dang. First the Republicans rape the word "rape" and I forget the meaning of the word "sexist." But it's OK, 2011 is The Year of Self-Acceptance. I'm a flawed, imperfect babbling blogging fool, on PMS, and caffeine, but am still worthy of love, acceptance...

...n' sit.

Just for today, I have no idea what I just wrote.