It’s been such a day. The picky, anal people were out in force like spring pollen, spreading their spores. “One wants me to make the headline longer. The other wants me to add Phase I pricing to the lead. Like anybody cares what phase we’re in. They only care about the price they’ll pay.”

I’m standing in the parking lot venting and dear Julian is just listening and taking it in. He doesn’t argue with me. He doesn’t nitpick. I continue: “These people are like monkeys searching my skin for fleas. Or moms on the warpath against an outbreak of lice. They’re just looking for the littlest thing to complain about or change. What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they have enough work of their own to do instead of micromanaging mine?”

Julian took a long, thoughtful inhale as I resumed my rant. “I’m coming up with all the ideas. The layout was all mine. The frickin headlines were zingy…unless I took all their ‘suggestions’ and grammared the life out of them.”  I was blowing off clouds of steam and it wasn’t helping. I needed more than talk therapy or a sympathetic listener. I needed something to take me down a notch. I’d been gobbling Hershey’s kisses, chomping three sticks of Doublemint at a time, guzzling gallons of Fresca to cope with all the opionistas at the office. I felt like my head was going to explode. “Take the goddamned cigarette, will you?” says Julian.  So I took a puff.

And damn it was good.

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Sometimes, you need a quick dose of  literary excess to deal with the real world…or Mondays.  I feel much better now! And, no, I don’t smoke.

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