So I know I must be careful not to fall into cliché newly divorced will date weirdoes category.

Last night when I was walking my little black dog down the street I reached the corner and saw a busboy who was getting off duty from the local pub. “Hello” he said. “Hi” I said back and continued on. Two blocks later he pulled up beside me on his bicycle. “You bootiful lady,” he says, “you have boyfriend?”

And for a moment time freezes and I wonder what would happen if I took Jose home? I flash forward in my mind to mornings a month from now. I am leaving for work in the morning. “Did you make the beds Jose? What are you making for dinner tonight? Don’t forget to do the dishes.” (His specialty) Sort of Brooklyn version of a pool boy. And we would never fight because he can’t understand a fucking word I say. I could make this work. Maybe I could.

But I remember my friend who brought home young boys from the Jersey Shore and looked ridiculous.

I come back to reality and hear his words in my head, “You have boyfriend?” “No,” I answer, “We broke up. I’m in mourning, I can’t talk.”

He looks at me with a confused look and drives his bicycle away. I know it was a ridiculous thing to say, but sometimes Cranky just says things to entertain herself.

And of course when I got up in the morning there was a mystery bump on my face. Mystery bumps always seem to pop out the day of an on camera audition. Why why why?

Had an appointment at Three of Us Studios. Get there and it is a morass of women of the same age range on a serpentine line just to sign in. Really? Everyone is Asian except for me and one other gal – so I know we are the token Caucasians. Just so the NAACP doesn’t come down on them. National Association of Caucasian Persons. Because the Caucasian middle age white ladies really do need help in the commercial world. Actually this one needs mental help to make it through the audition.

At sign in I am given a board with my name and a number. Then I am brought into the room with eight other women and lined up against the wall to wait my turn. The stone face clients are sitting behind a table. Nobody is saying nothing. You can hear a pin drop in the room. Really? If I am going to make an ass of myself auditioning for your commercial, at least act like you are engaged. The room is dim. The nervousness of each woman as they take their turn in front of the camera is palpable. They are rushing because they are behind. So nurturing for artists, you think?

A woman whose job description I think is “herder” keeps coming in and shoving us down the wall to make room for more victims.

Finally it is Cranky’s turn. Cranky hates reverent silence and must be irreverent at all costs to feel like a semblance of herself. The camera guy asks me to hold the board under my face while he takes my picture. I lock eyes with him and say, “You know this all feels very Nick Nolte.” At least I made him laugh and broke the horrible horrible silence. “I know,” he says, “just don’t let it show on your face.” Then I turn for the profile shot. Then a close up of my hands. OH NO! Not the hands! My nails and cuticles look like they’ve been through a blender. I had a friend who went out for a lot of commercials, and every time she had a call to go on, got a facial and a manicure the day before. Now I know why, but I’m not sure if working in commercials ended up profitable for her.

But the hands were not the worst of it. Next was the video camera. “State your name, your agency and give us your best dance moves.” Your best dance moves in a silent room with the stone face people. YOUR BEST DANCE MOVES! This, as they say in “Tropic Thunder” is FULL RETARD. But it pays pays pays. So Cranky hears the song Money, Money, Money in her head and dances to it. In retrospect, my dance moves were a bit too pole dancey for the mom in a cell phone commercial. Yeah I guess they were. But I closed my eyes and went for it. The specter of dollar bills dancing in my head.

As I was leaving, I pass a room that was auditioning kids for a commercial. The kids are all hanging out by the door to the audition room, and there is actually a girl of about eight wearing a black sequined beret. How sad. Actor kids are such freakazoids. Take your kid home and let them play after school and get dirty. The precious actor thing looks kinda unnatural on a kid, you know? It is bad enough on adults. Of which I admit I am one.

And now it is Saturday and now it is over and I think I will spring for eight bucks and get a manicure. Because us freakazoid actors always have to be ready as they say.

I had a few incidents that made me doubt my sanity. Which takes a lot because Cranky already accepts that she’s a bit crazy. But I was saved. Thank goodness for the gays and the dermatologists. And especially my beloved dermatologist! Because when you are flung “out there” again a girl needs a bit of a lift, you know?

But I digress.

Last week. Had a meeting with my boss and an important luncheon. And the running question all day that my boss had was; “Where is my manila envelope with the information I need to write the proposal?” “Ah, I don’t know. I haven’t seen it,” answered Cranky. “Are you sure?” asked my boss. “Never saw it,” I say. This goes on all day. We search the car. We search my partner’s car. At the end of the day the boss puts me in a car and has her assistant drive me all the way to the Westchester office to see if she left it there. It is 7:00 at night. It’s an empty warehouse building. I unlock three doors, turn on lights in the pitch-black building and turn off the alarm system. The “envelope” is not there. The assistant drops me at the train and one minute before my train to Grand Central arrives I get a text from my boss: “Are you SURE you don’t have it?” I give out an exasperated sigh and open my briefcase. There it is. It is a folder, not an envelope, which is what I was looking for all day. I text my boss back: The fucking folder is in my fucking briefcase.” She calls me,” Get in a cab and bring it to me.” So I get in brand X car service car and go from one Westchester town to another to find the restaurant she is in now. My boss talks really really fast and I cannot understand the name of the restaurant or the address. And I can’t keep saying, “What what what?” because even if the other person is completely unintelligible, if you keep saying “what what what?” they think you are the stupid one. So I end up doing multiple U-turns on a dark suburban street while the Hispanic driver looks at me like I’m a complete idiot. By the third phone call I ascertain that she had given me the wrong street name. It was Envelope. Just kidding.

The next day I go to work to find out that I had entered the wrong code into the alarm and the police came and we are being charged one hundred and fifty bucks for the unnecessary visit. The landlord is happy because he hates me and has the whole thing on tape from the security camera. “She was in the building for six minutes!” I can hear him yelling up and down the hall.

How dare my ex-husband make me this way.

Then I did background work on “Damages” on my day off and left my wallet on the roof when I went up there to take pictures of the view. My wallet. On the roof. A crew member by some miracle found it and gave it to me. I was completely unaware that I had lost it.

I guess I had lost it in more ways than one.

But then I got to watch “The Grammy’s” with the gays. They set Cranky straight. “It’s all about moving past it,” they tell me. “We have to find you a song.” They were SO FUN. And Cranky found some perfect songs. That darling Taylor Swift really hit the nail on the head with that “Mean” song. And Adele gave me chills with her “Rolling in the Deep” performance. They are on my IPod now and I play them every morning when I get ready for work where I am making believe I am a businesswoman. With a briefcase. My latest role.

I was feeling better already. But then I went to see my beloved dermatologist Dr. David Colbert who really helped me back to being my old self. Because if you at least look good you can feel a bit better about life. One session with him and I am a new woman.The stress of losing my partner of twenty years no longer shows. And thankfully I have been eating well ever since he suggested his book; “The High School Reunion Diet.” (see post: “Cranky Tries a Diet”.) And I have been wearing clothes I haven’t worn in years. And there is actually room in them. And it is not a diet. Because I cannot diet. I think this eating plan might actually be the true “Hollywood Diet Secret” that you read about in the fashion mags. The book is endorsed by Michelle Williams, the star of “My Week With Marilyn,” and Sienna Miller, Rachel Weisz and Adriana Lima, who calls it the “successful model’s secret to glowing skin and a lean, healthy body.” And I am sure they all go to him to get their amazing complexions. That dewy dewy look in “My Week With Marilyn” may not be just good genes. (see post “Behind Every Great Actress is a Great Dermatologist.”)

The book is the perfect thing because you have to make sure you look great in case you run into your ex because they have to see you and feel sorry that they left. Or something.

So the gays and the brilliant dermatologist/diet book author saved the day. “WE COULD’VE HAD IT ALL…….”

Exactly what is the world coming to? I ask you. Why why why would they change the etiquette of the theater to accommodate what teenagers are doing walking up and down the sidewalk?

People need to learn the proper etiquette of theater going, and adapt themselves to that. Not the other way around.

I once witnessed a family of five try to bring five full Happy Meals complete with humongous beverages into the theater to see “Spiderman.” They didn’t know. The door guy told them they couldn’t bring them in. Next time they will know. It was their first time at the theater, and contrary to what happens in a movie theater, there are actually live people on the stage who need to be heard and can hear you. There is a first time for everyone. I know a guy who saw his first Broadway show at three years old-but he is city people and we all know they are not the norm. I saw my first Broadway show as a teenager when a friend brought me to see her father in a play. Of course Cranky was immediately entranced – hence a life of suffering in the theater.

Tweeting at the theater is wrong on so many levels. What’s next? A sleeping section complete with reclining seats for recalcitrant husbands who didn’t want to go to the theater in the first place? “This is more like it,” says the husband as he kicks back and pulls the lever on his Lazy boy theater seat and reclines away his evening of theater.

Or sections in restaurants for people who want to chew with their mouth open? “This is great!” says the customer as bits of food fly out of his mouth hitting the other open mouth eaters beside him.

I’m sad to say The Public Theater was one of the theaters with Tweet seats.

I wonder who was the first one to tell the actors about this? Were they in the dressing room about to go onstage? I just love when someone drops a bomb right before you go onstage. “SO AND SO IS IN THE AUDIENCE!” Great. Thanks. Now I will be completely self-conscious and not be able to think about anything else throughout the entire show.

I can just see it. “Oh, guys, ah, hey,” says the assistant director. (Poor AD’s always have to do these things.) “Um, ah, we have Tweet Seats in the theater now, so if you see something glowing in the audience, just ignore it.”

Does anyone besides actors realize the depths of an actor’s paranoia? You know that that night onstage every time an actor caught a hint of a glimmer in the audience they were thinking; “Are they tweeting about me? Are they making fun of me? Maybe if I was more interesting they would stop tweeting.”

Hello Public Theater! Actors spend years developing their craft and they have to put up with this crap? How about some “Respect for The Theater” as Uta Hagen says?

Is this a technological return to pre-Wagnerian theater? Are we technologically recreating audiences more interested in talking to each other than watching and listening to the show? Wagner was the one who insisted that the house lights be turned off so the audience had to focus on his music. He felt his music was important and the audience needed to listen to it instead of talking to each other and visiting each other’s box seats. You go Wagner dude. I’m with you.

So off I go on my first assignment on the Upper East Side, natch.

I get there at 9 a.m. and it seems no one is home. 9:05 no one there. 9:10-nope, nobody. The uniform doorman shrugs his shoulders. 9:15-nothin’. Then the doorman asks another building employee about her. “Oh her?” he says, ‘She’s in the gym.” Doorman calls the gym. “She says to wait,” he says. Thanks, got that. Would I ever in my life do that to someone? No. But I have never in my life had a personal assistant.

So to sum up the day. The client spent the entire day trying to decide whether she should go to Rancho La Puerta or the mental hospital. Cranky could not make this up. RANCHO LA PUERTA SPA OR THE MENTAL HOSPITAL.

The plan was for me to organize her office. What actually happened was doctors kept calling to tell her to check herself in to the psych ward.

The phone rings. “Hello?” she says, “A locked ward? I don’t know. I don’t know. Well, I have a tennis game on Tuesday, I’m not sure if I can find a sub.” She turns to me. “He hung up on me. He’s not very nurturing.” Then she stops and brings her face close to mine and while gently moving her face back and forth asks, “Do I look crazy to you?”

Why the universe puts Cranky in these situations I will never know. Maybe it’s because Cranky has a sense of humor and the universe knows Cranky will appreciate it. Anyway, Cranky answers tentatively, “Not really,”

“I don’t?” she says.

“Well,” I say, “ I’ve been around depressed people and usually they can’t do anything. You play tennis and go to the gym. You don’t seem very high on the depression scale to me.”

The phone rings again.

She answers. “Hello? Yes I am thinking about it. I don’t know. Well maybe. If I check myself in can you guarantee I’ll be out by Friday afternoon? I have a big dinner that night.”

So the day is spent with the client sitting with her hands on my knee asking me what she should do. “I think I should just go to Rancho La Puerta instead. I mean, they have a structured environment there. Maybe I just need a rest. But I don’t know if I should go alone.” A pause. A long stare at Cranky. “It might be better to have someone with me.”

Now Cranky loves a spa as much as anyone. The people in the white robes and the new age music remind Cranky of the afterlife, but all the shiatsu in the world could not reverse the psychic cloud surrounding this woman, so I swivel in my chair and look down.

She invites me to lunch. As we are entering, she says; “We’ll split something.” I am on the Upper East Side. The bastion of rich women who eat nothing and are cheap cheap cheap. So she orders a lunch special and we pick at it. I keep asking for refills of the teapot to fill myself up.

When we return, I do my one task of the day. I make out a check for a kid having his Bar Mitzvah and write a card. As I am writing, I realize that I have been out socially with the Mom. It is a classic reversal of fortune moment. A few months ago I was a happy wife. Now there I sat, poor, alone, listening quietly to a crazy rich woman who has all the material things anyone could ever want, who can’t decide whether to go to the nuthouse or to Rancho La Puerta, and I see, in spite of everything I am still lucky.

Then the last day was pushed up by five days. Nothing was ready. There was stuff to be built. Wardrobe to pull. I got an email from the wardrobe person that used the word HAVOC. I had been scheduled to work that day and since money trumps webisodes, I had to go to work. So the whole day had to be shifted for a later call time – 5pm. Oh oh. We know what that means, an all-nighter. Cranky becomes non compos mentis after 1am. That’s it. I’m done. I’m either laughing or sleeping. Speaking of sleeping, one day on the set I was doing a scene that takes place in a spa bed. And Cranky actually fell asleep between takes. I swear. I woke up to hear the word “ACTION!” It was very surreal. And Cranky remembered her lines! Another webisode miracle.

So I show up on set and set pieces are in the process of being built on the sidewalk. The makeup and hair people have total pusses on. When my hair is being done it is completely fried by the hair lady who keeps it in the curling iron like FOREVER. But the puss makes Cranky afraid to say anything. Curl, fry, smoke, curl, fry, smoke, curl, fry, smoke, over and over to my poor hair. Which means I will have to get an extra, unscheduled haircut to undo the damage.

We have about three days worth of work to do in one day, or night I should say. But it is webisode world, and the producer got the space for free, and this is the day we got it, so it is do or die. The space is a regular sound stage and we needed a place to shoot scenes that take place on the set of a soap opera. Cranky is playing a soap star. They actually made a mock magazine cover with my face on it. I know it’s stupid, but it is still on my coffee table. Like maybe it is true and not just a prop.

All my first scenes of the day take place in a hospital bed. Hospitals are big on soap operas where there is always a crisis or a shooting. Or a coma. One of the crew lends me his Soduku book so I have something to do for the hours in the hospital bed. Of course, as an actress, I hate the fact that I have practically no makeup on because I am in a hospital. I was in a hospital once. I put on makeup EVERDAY. And earrings. And a velvet robe. I told them that, but they said that it was not normal. Really? Cranky is not normal? So I got no makeup.

Then around 1am it was time to get ready for the wedding scene. Cranky is the fucking bride. I kid you not. I am sure that by this hour Cranky looks like Miss Havisham in a white veil. And both dress choices are strapless and I have to figure out a way to keep my breasts from getting out of control and spilling out everywhere. And Cranky has always said no one over forty should wear a strapless dress. And here I am being FILMED in one. But the wardrobe person tells me we are lucky to have ANYTHING. FOR NO MONEY.
So in the words of Tim Gunn I have to make it work. I keep trying to get the veil to cover my armpits. At this point a Burka/veil would be much appreciated.

I go downstairs to the room that they have been furiously decorating for the wedding scene. There are like forty extras in the scene. The first time we run the scene I am walked down the aisle by a man and all the extras stand. And I can’t believe this faux wedding brings tears to Cranky’s eyes. Seriously, how lame. Cranky is crying at her own fake soap opera wedding. Because Cranky never had a wedding and right now Cranky thinks her husband hates her. So I am thinking, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You stupid idiot! Don’t Cry!” I try thinking about the latest episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” It takes three takes to stop the tears from happening on the walk down the aisle.

Then I realize that I know the story line, and that my fellow actors the forty extras DON’T. So they don’t know that when I do the soap opera scenes I am doing kind of over the top bad acting. Oh no!! So between Takes I am on the stage by the priest and I stop everything. I say; “EXCUSE ME! I HAVE TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT! I AM NOT A BAD ACTRESS. I JUST PLAY ONE ON TV.”

I couldn’t help myself-or my ego couldn’t help itself.

So the working on the webisodes is over now. And it was a big pain in the ass. And like every actress I am so sad that it is over and I miss it like crazy.

And right now “sounds good” is about the aptest description for shooting webisodes. But as my dear friend Lisa from Chicago says, “Making the sausage is never fun but the result will be.” This is my daily mantra as I sit sweating in full makeup in August heat waiting waiting waiting for shooting to BEGIN. Every fucking day. Three hours. Four hours. Some days I am in makeup already when the crew arrives. What is wrong with this picture?

And the criminal acts I must commit to keep going. Like driving without a license. I know. I know. How crazy. But the queen of the subways doesn’t need a car.

So anyway, one day on the set they want to film me pulling into a parking space. The first time I do it I keep pumping the brake out of fear so me and the passenger actress look like two bobble heads on camera. Finally, I get the hang of it and I look at my co-star and say, “My motivation in this scene is not to get arrested.” Then after like ten takes my blood turns to ice when a cop car pulls up in front of us and a policeman gets out. “It’s happening” I think, “It’s happening.” There is nothing to do. Nowhere to go. And then the cop goes into the ATM to get cash and I realize I’m not going to jail. Whew.

The best day was the day the producer procured a Mariachi band to provide atmosphere the Mexican Restaurant scene shot in an Irish bar. Where did she meet them? Playing in the subway of course. So six guys three feet tall in cowboy hats show up on set. And as usual we are waiting waiting waiting so the Mexican Mariachi men buy Irish beers and keep buying them the entire three hours we are waiting.

It comes time to shoot. They are each directed (with a translator) to do actions involving writing on a piece of paper, carrying it across the room, reading from it and then turning it around and showing it to me. And Cranky is thinking, “Uh-huh. Good luck.”

Ok then. Everyone is ready, SLATE, Sound – SPEED. Camera- ROLLING. And the director yells, “ACTION!” And there is complete and utter silence. The only movement is the gently swaying of six cowboy hats on the heads of the three feet tall Mariachi men. It all seems so Felliniesque.

After much yelling and translating, yelling and translating, yelling and translating, their action is changed to standing still holding a piece of paper.

I could have told them that. This is why I took technique. This is why all actors study. The simplest tasks are impossible for the layman on camera or on a stage. DUH!

We get through the scene and the subway Mariachi band is wrapped. They go outside. They refuse to leave. They are demanding money because they had to wait. They are told that they were told that there was no money involved.

We continue shooting inside and one of them deliberately comes in and walks through the shot. As if to say, “I may be three feet tall but I can still make TROUBLE.”

After we finish I go outside just at the right moment. A wad of cash is being handed over to the Mariachis.

What does this mean? It means that they are being paid to leave, and that Cranky is not getting one fucking penny TO STAY!

I think I was thinking this while having my morning tea with my usual four teaspoons of sugar. (HOW did that habit happen?) Or maybe it was while having my daily angel food cake and coffee.

So when I had an appointment with my beloved dermatologist Dr. David Colbert and he asked me if I knew about his book I figured it was a hint or something. Of course I knew about his book. I’ve known about it for a year and have successfully avoided reading it, even though I love him, because of the topic- DIET.

Cranky hates anything to do with diet. Actually most diets bring out the obsessive compulsive in Cranky and that is not a good thing.

I once tried Weight Watchers years ago and ended up feeling like I worked at the post office or something because I had to weigh everything on a stupid scale. And I used to run out of points by lunch and have to eat tomato soup and a glass of water for dinner and then I felt like I was in prison in a third world country.

“Why don’t you look at it while your waiting?” the dear doctor said. So even though I dreaded it, I cracked open the book “The High School Reunion Diet” by Dr. David Colbert.

One of the first things I read in the book was: “Food is a wonder drug.” Well that’s great because I eat a lot of it and I am glad it is good for something.

Then later: “The day when deprivation is the key to weight loss… is so over.”

Now you have my attention Dr. Colbert.

Cranky gets even crankier if she is supposed to be hungry all the time.

My favorite quote from the book is: “All we have to do is start eating.” Thanks so much Dr. Colbert, but I never stopped.

“You’ll still need to eat.” He says, “Quite a bit in fact.” This might actually be the program for me, the girl my mother described as “a good eater.”

Later he says: “Recent studies show that the French in fact eat the most, but Americans are the most obese. Maybe eating the most isn’t so bad.” A diet book that admires people who eat the most? Is Cranky dreaming?

I do remember when I was in Paris sitting in a little café watching a THIN THIN THIN French woman devour a sandwich on a baguette and then polish off a gorgeous raspberry tart. And I wondered, “What’s up with that?” I wondered if maybe the fact that everything they eat is fresh had something to do with it. But then I went home and bought angel food cake in a plastic container.

Yes, eating less is no longer relevant according to Dr. Colbert. Good thing because it is also impossible and unpleasant.

So Cranky is giving it a try. Spring is coming after all. And following that the horrors of New York City summer when everyone’s fat arms are flapping in the breeze.

Yes, Cranky is actually eating according to plan in the “High School Reunion Diet”. It is full of all the foods that make you more beautiful. And I haven’t been hungry once. And bizarrely it’s been only three days and there is less over-hang hanging over my Citizens of Humanity jeans.

I did have to lose the angel food cake though. I thought I had found the perfect dessert in a sugar free angel food cake (only 110 calories!) until after the book tells me to read the ingredients, and I realize I’ve been eating a cake made from a mound of chemicals baked in a bundt pan. So into the garbage it went. Buh bye fake cake.

If you wince at the thought of bathing suit weather like I do you gotta get the book. It’s like healthy. Not some dumb unbalanced weird way of eating like a lot of diets.  I mean it.  You know Cranky doesn’t do tacky ads on her blog.  Oh no.

PS I just heard on “The Chris Matthews Show” that the United States is behind France in social mobility – I blame it in PRESERVATIVES.

http://www.amazon.com/High-School-Reunion-Diet-Years/dp/B0048ELDPA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300202244&sr=1-1

OF COURSE NOT.

“Oh yes. We have a producer and a wardrobe person and hair and makeup,” the director said. Love that. Love when they are taking care of the actors. I had great expectations.

Until the wardrobe person actually called. Four days before the shoot. Completely unintelligible.

The phone rings.

“Ah, hello. Is this Cwankery?” says the voice on the phone.

“Um, this is CRANKY,” I say.

“Oh, yes Cwankery this is Naohagalaga. You playing housekeeper. I need to get uniform,” she says.

“I’m not playing the housekeeper”, I say.

“No director say you need a uniform,” she says, “Housekeeper?”

“But I’m not playing the housekeeper”, I say.

“Do you know who is playing the lead?” she says.

“That would be me,” I answer.

“I need to get you uniform?” she says.

“But I’m not playing the housekeeper,” I say.

“Oh. Do you know who’s playing the housekeeper?” she asks.

“No,” I say, “Why don’t you ask the director.”

“Do you have the director’s phone number?” she asks.

This is a first. The wardrobe lady is asking me for the director’s phone number. Seriously.

Then I get a call from the director. I had agreed to go and have a few pictures taken with the guy playing my husband and the guy playing my son for photos around the house so he is calling to schedule that. It was fine with me until he wants me to go an hour into New Jersey by train to take the pictures. “Why can’t we do them in the city?” I ask. “Because the guy playing your husband can’t leave Jersey,” he says. “Why? I answer, “is he under house arrest? Does he have an ankle bracelet?”

Of course not. He doesn’t WANT to leave New Jersey. He is a friend of the director’s parents who has agreed to play my DEAD husband who has no lines in the film so of course he has more power than I do because who the hell can you get to play the dead husband with no lines and one flashback scene?

Then I get the shooting schedule from the previously unheard from producer. All the scenes are marked by scene numbers. But there are no scene numbers in the script, only page numbers. I can’t tell which scene is which and I am in every fucking one of them. I have a million different outfits to figure out and all Naohagalaga can do is buy a uniform. I email the producer to please send me a script using page numbers as there are no scene numbers on the script and she writes me back that she can’t change the script.

HUH?

For this I am losing quality time with my dog?

Wish me luck.

PS – Of course after all this it came out fab. It is now one of my fav roles.

Like the time I met a lovely couple I know for coffee at a Starbucks in the Village and before I even took a sip of my cappuccino they had whipped out an Arbonne bag full of products and started the schpiel. “We want you to take it home. We know you’ll love it. The products are all natural. They’re made in Switzerland!” What the hell could I do? It’s all so embarrassing. What a nuisance. If you take the kit home you then have to arrange to meet again soon to give it back. What a pain in my ass. But of course Saint Cranky of Avoid Confrontation took the fucking bag home, didn’t try anything, returned it, ordered something, and then threw it away when I got it, just to get them off my back.

This is bad.

Now every time I go to the hairdresser the front desk receptionist slips me his card while I am trying to pay and tells me about his great web page where I can buy lots of products and lots of brands and get lots of discounts.  “Everyone loves a bargain, right?”  He says it every single time.  Must  have been in the training brochure.

Then last week another formerly sane friend called me. “Could you look at my new website?” she asked. Well of course I can. I’m an actress and I have probably asked you to read my blog, look at my reel, check out my web page, blah blah blah, so I am all about quid pro quo. I go to her new website and my heart sinks when I realize it is a travel club pyramid scheme. OH NO. There is a membership fee, a monthly fee and the possibility of winning dream vacations when you get others to join. The video is complete with excerpts from the loser conventions they hold with the pyramid scheme inspirational speaker and the drank the Kool Aid audience enthusiastically applauding his every word and dreaming of quitting their jobs and making six figures DOING NOTHING.

Dear God please let her not call back. Please please! Pretty please? The phone rings. My friend has turned into an unrecognizable high on enthusiasm and hope sounding person. “What was more attractive to you? The travel or the money?” “Ah, I don’t know….”I answer. “See! I knew it! They are both so great you can’t decide!” (Not really I am thinking. Cranky is a bad traveler and an even worse salesperson.) But there is no opening for me to say ANYTHING. “Wait! Wait! There is someone I want you to talk to!” And the next thing I know she has called some guy in Arizona and he starts talking to me about how he makes six figures now and all his dreams have come true. “Wouldn’t you like more time?” he asks. Ah, right now all I want is a way to figure out how the hell to end this phone call. It goes on and on. I am pacing in my living room. “Its never gonna end,” I think. “They are never going to let me off the phone. Not until I sign up. This is torture.”

Ten torturous minutes later he is telling me about this fabulous place he got to stay in in Rome. I was in Rome. I missed my dog. Aha! Dog dog dog. Bring up the dog. “Um, ah, listen, I’m sorry, I need to take my dog out. I was supposed to take her out an hour ago. Bye.” And I hang up. I know that was lame. But I couldn’t help it. I was desperate. I was losing my mind.

I’ve gotten four messages from the friend since, and I am afraid to call back. In her last message she apologized and said she was depressed and joined it because it gave her something to be hopeful about. That’s more like it. I might be ready to call her back by next week now.

Then on Thursday I was walking home from Gristedes and ran into a lovely gal I know who has a dog who plays with my dog. Neither of us had our dogs, but she came running towards me anyway. “I HAVE A NEW BUSINESS! I HAVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT! I WAS THINKING ABOUT YOU!” A bit more intimate then our fellow dog owner relationship warranted I thought. And then she dropped he bomb. The new business? Arbonne. ARBONNE!!!

“Look at my skin! Doesn’t it look great? I can’t believe it! Right? They’re all natural. They’re made in Switzerland.”

The whole time I am listening to this I am thinking about my dog again. Saint Cranky of Avoid Confrontation is wondering where I am going to walk the dog now.