1. The only mind I can read is my own, and sometimes my efforts in that quest are faulty at best.
2. Sometimes problems resolve themselves with no effort on my part. For instance, if I ignore it long enough, the 501 Internal Server Error on my blog will just go away. On such occasions, I choose to feel blessed, as if some sort of spiritual being has worked a miracle just for me.
3. There are people in the world who believe that the road to happiness is paved with backbiting, vitriol, and nastiness. There is no reason for me to get worked up about such people because, in fact, they are really on the road to hell.
4. When people compliment me, they do not want to hear 10,000 reasons why I do not deserve their compliment. They want to see me smile. That is all.
5. The vast majority of people can be won over with a smile and a little kindness.
6. There is nothing that I absolutely have to ever get done.
7. The key to succeeding in life is not found in trying harder. It’s found in trying differently.
8. Failing because I was too scared to take a risk does more damage to my psyche than failing because I took a risk and it just didn’t work out.
9. I must believe in myself because no one is going to do that for me.
10. The only people who can afford to shun change are the Amish.

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At this so-called halfway point in life, I have no regrets. My life is exciting, and it is filled with opportunity and with people who love and adore me.

A woman on the verge of 40 could not ask for any more.

More important, I’ve already given myself the one thing I wanted this year. It’s a trip to Italy, and I’ll be taking it with one of my closest friends in late September. The only other thing I want—a really cute pair of shoes—my daughter and husband will be buying me.

My life is rich.

Yet, the lives of others are so poor.

So for anyone who was even thinking of buying me something this year: please don’t.

Instead, I would much prefer that you donate to one of the following causes.

Drummer Guy

Anyone who frequents the ProjectHappilyEverAfter comments area is familiar with Drummer Guy. He’s a regular. During the past couple of months, I’ve smiled I-don’t-know-how-many-times when Drummer Guy (whose real name is Ron) helped various readers with his kind words, advice, and insights. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a part of the family.

Drummer Guy is married to a woman who he always refers to as his “beloved.” She is dying from liver disease, an ailment that she probably got from dental work done many years ago. She needs to be on about 23 different expensive prescription medications. She has been hospitalized numerous times for the disease. She’s supposed to follow a special diet that requires the purchase of an array of expensive food items.

Even though the couple has health insurance, they now owe more than $200,000 in medical bills. The situation is so dire that Ron is forgoing expensive heart meds that he needs to stay healthy because he can’t afford them. His home is in foreclosure. His bank account is overdrawn.

He and his wife are hardworking people who have been devastated by disease.

He and his wife need your help. Please consider sending money orders or Wal-mart gift cards (he’ll use them to purchase his groceries) his way. I don’t want to publish his address on the Internet, so here’s what you can do.

Email me alisa (at) alisabowman (dot) com with “Yes, I want to help Drummer Guy” in the subject line. I’ll talk you through what to do from there.

Clean Water

I originally got the idea to donate my birthday from Seth Godin, who donated his 50^th to My Charity Water, an organization that digs wells for people in third world countries. If I raise just $5000, it will supply water to 250 people. You can donate at my campaign page.

Starving Writers

The Writer’s Emergency Assistance Fund offers grants to writers who have suffered a serious financial tragedy. One year, for instance, the fund paid the mortgage for a single mom who was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. This allowed her children to remain with her during her last days.

This fund is maintained by volunteers. Its only operating cost is for the accountant who files various paperwork every year. You can learn more here.

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Rather, it’s a letter-writing campaign for the lonely. Before I became a professional writer and before computers became so affordable that everyone had one (including me), I wrote letters. I probably wrote 5 or more a week, and I sent them to anyone who came to mind. I wrote letters to friends, my parents, former teachers and mentors, and even ex-boyfriends. But, when I was very young and still a child, I mostly wrote letters to my grandparents–my paternal grandparents who lived half a country away (the ones I wrote about here last week) and to Nana, my maternal grandmother who lived in the Bronx.

My mother, who is known for never throwing anything away, recently unEarthed one such letter. She scanned it in and emailed it to me. I laughed until I cried because handwritten letters could not be fed through a spell checker. What follows is that letter, spelling errors, images and all. This one went to Nana, who was, at that time, in the early stages of the diseases that eventually claimed her life. Between her rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and scleroderma, she was both depressed and a shut in. I’m glad that letters such as the following one brought a smile to her face.

Dear Nana,

I went on the zipper for my first time last night. See Susan invited me to go to the St. Joans carnalvel. I payed for my supper and some of the rides I went on.

[A hand drawn diagram of the zipper goes here with call outs that describe each of its moving parts]

What also happend was Mark’s best friend Brad Silcox hit a rock and it hit our car window and brock it. His parents paid for it and the only thing that happend to Brad was he couldn’t play base-ball for a week and couldn’t get ice cream for three days.

I feel sorry for his parents cause they had just gotten a new car.

I don’t know if you got this thunder storm but any how we got 40 mile an hour winds. The astonishing thing is that it haled when it was 76 degrees at least all day.

Yours Truly,

Alisa

Write someone a letter today. It could be for your spouse, someone who is elderly, someone who is sick, or a child. It could be for a friend. It could be a letter of forgiveness for someone who is dead. It can be a letter about anything and for anyone. You’re in charge of the meaning, the importance, and the recipient. You can hand write it or you can type it. But definitely do it. Brighten someone’s day.

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1. No matter how bad your marriage, you can do something. The something that you do might not save your marriage, but it may very well save you.
2. The only person who can judge your marriage is you. At Project: Happily Ever After, we do not judge the marriages of others. Saving our own marriages takes enough work as it is.
3. No marriage expert has a secret formula that can save your marriage, keep your spouse from ever cheating, or cause your spouse to love you again. Anyone who claims to have such a fail proof formula is a charlatan who wants your money more than he or she wants to save your marriage.
4. We do not need to share the same opinions, values or beliefs in order to be able to support one another in our quests to save our marriages.
5. Project: Happily Ever After is a safe and nurturing community of believers. We believe in trying everything to save our marriages and in sharing what we’ve tried (both successfully and unsuccessfully) with others so they may learn from our experiences. We do not believe there is a right or a wrong way to save a marriage.
6. Not everything you try will work. One failed technique, however, does not make a failed marriage.
7. We nurture whatever choices our community members make, even if we would not personally make those choices for ourselves.
8. We support the members of our community even if their marriages do not survive.
9. A bad marriage is nothing to be ashamed of. The more we talk about our marriages, the less ashamed we will feel and the less stigma others will place on bad marriages. This applies to all stigmas—from depression to sexual abuse to the sensation that one is a bad parent. This is place where you can talk openly about your shame, so you may shed it and feel whole again.
10. There is no such thing as an ideal marriage. We do not strive for ideal. We do not believe there is a magic number of times you should have sex each week or a specific number of arguments that you should try to never go over. Here, we strive for happy, whatever that means for each of us.
11. A marriage is always a work in progress. You can always do something to make your marriage better.

Note: My site has been down randomly over the past few days due to some issues with the server. Basically my site host has been doing these rolling blackouts. So if you’ve had issues getting on, I apologize. I hope to have it solved soon.

On a happier note: Hopeless Romantic won the Reader of the Month raffle at Random.org. I will be in touch with your gift code for the free gift certificate!

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Molly Page
Karen Risty
Siddhartha Herdegen
Kathryn Jennex

Congrats! Andi will be in touch and get your prizes to you!

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Download your copy of Project Happily Ever After: Relationship Rules.

In this free e-book, you’ll learn some of the strategies I used to turn my Mr. Good for Nothing into my Mr. Good for Something, including ten Relationship Rules.

Contest: Tell Us Your Eat, Pray, Love, Drink Story

The film version of the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love will hit a theater near you this August. In reverence to the goddess also known as Elizabeth Gilbert, Andi from Misadventures with Andi suggested this neat contest. I’m honored to be a part of it. More on how it works in a few lines.

First, some background. Andi, a devout foodie, represents the “Eat” part of this trilogy. Julie Roads of Writing Roads is a yogini who once lived and worked at Kripalu Yoga Center. Thus, her post is a Pray Story.

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m love. Go figure.

And then we added this bonus “drink” post because we also have a friend named Anne Fitten, and we couldn’t leave her out. Plus she has this really cool site called Brewgasm that every woman ought to know about.

Today, the four of us bring you posts about what the words Eat, Pray, Love and Drink mean to us.

Now for the cool contest part. If you read and comment on all four posts, you will be entered in the contest. The prizes are four two-book sets of Eat Pray Love and Committed.

Leave a comment here about your Love Story. Then, travel over to Julie’s post and share your Pray Story. And then head over to Andi for an Eat Story. And finally to Anne Fitten for a drink story. Once you’ve left comments on all four posts, input your name, email address and URL (if applicable) into this form and you will be entered into the drawing to win.

We will use Random.org to select four winners.  The contest closes at midnight May 31 PST. We’ll announce the winners on June 1.

Good luck and enjoy the journey!

My Journey to Love

Elizabeth Gilbert discovered love by traveling to another country.

I discovered it by traveling through time.

Elizabeth Gilbert found love in Indonesia. Her love came in the form of a hot Brazilian guy.

I found love in a bar in Emmaus, PA. My love came in the form of a tall, blond guy. I dated that tall, blond guy for three years, and then I married him.

Those were our Las Vegas years. In Las Vegas, nothing is what it seems and everything is a copy of something else. During the Vegas years, I only displayed my best qualities, and I copied whatever the tall blond guy liked. Case in point: I vividly remember Tracy Chapman’s Give Me One Reason coming on the car radio. I said, “I like this song.” I didn’t like the song, mind you. I didn’t dislike it, either. But the songs I really liked then and to this day are songs that only seriously uncool dorks like me tend to like—songs like Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart.

So I feigned interest in artists like Tracy Chapman and Alanis Morissette.

My husband, then my boyfriend, said, “I like this song, too.”

In reality, he liked seriously loud and raucous music by groups like Korn and Limp Bizkit.

After the Vegas years came the Vegas and Philadelphia years. In Philadelphia, people are known for their authenticity. For instance, in this city, people generally do not hesitate to tell other people to have intercourse with themselves. During these years, my husband did not hesitate to be himself, but I still hesitated to be me. If he knew the real me, he’d surely be disappointed, right? So I pretended to be the perfect wife instead, even though he did not pretend to be the perfect husband.

In 2004 we had a baby and birthed a bike shop. That’s when we entered the Chechnya years. This journey spanned three years and it involved me giving the idea of being a perfect wife the big fat postpartum finger. It also involved me planning my husband’s funeral with exquisite detail.

After the Chechnya years came the Mount Everest months. Thankfully, we took some sherpas (also known as marital improvement books) with us for that journey.

We reached the summit, and we renewed our vows. It was on that day that I thought our marriage had reached its peak.

I was wrong. We traveled to a lot of places after that, some of them memorable, some of them not so much.

Lately, however, we’ve been in a Canary Islands phase. It was during this phase that my husband held me as I cried big snotty tears. I’d recently made a decision to end a toxic relationship. I was still feeling hurt and bruised over the incident that had brought me to my decisive moment. I was also mired with obsessive thoughts about all of the possible horrific consequences that might take place once I put my plan into effect. During our Las Vegas years I would have kept such obsessive thoughts to myself, for fear they would scare my husband away. During our Chechnya years, I would have found a way to blame those thoughts on him.

But, here, in the Canary Islands, I just cried and bared my soul—in all of its imperfect glory.

“I’m so sorry,” I told my husband over and over and over again. “Thank you,” I said over and over again.

He told me that I had nothing to be sorry about. He told me that I’d already thanked him. He said that everything was going to be okay, that we would get through this together.

He listened. He supported. He cared. He loved.

If one soul can ever merge with another, then it happened during that moment of crisis, when I turned myself inside out and my husband loved me anyway.

Will Tahiti Be Next?

After 11 years of marriage, we’ve experienced so much, and not all of it has been good. I’m sure, after 11 more years of marriage, we’ll have traveled to many more locations, and some of them might look and feel a lot like Chechnya.

I’ve heard that most couples experience the Chechnya years—as we did—after 7 years of marriage or around age 40, whichever comes first. It’s then that they compare their spouse to other available options, and it’s then when the other options seem a lot more interesting.

Yet, I’ve also heard that few couples question their marriages after 50 or 60 years. Even if they had a Chechnya phase, few golden years couples regret staying married. This might be because the Chechnya years kill off all of the truly horrific marriages. It might also be that, after 50 or 60 years of marriage, most of the other options either don’t look all that interesting any more or have simply keeled over and died.

Or, it might be that after journeying together for this long, couples share a common language and history that binds them together in a deep and meaningful way. They’ve learned how to listen, how to support one another, how to forgive, and how to love. And, heck, they’ve already seen the Chechnya years. After that, even a cornfield in Kansas seems like paradise.

What’s your Love Story? Comment here.

Visit Julie’s version of “Pray” at Writing Roads.

Visit Andi’s story of “Eat” at Misadventures with Andi.

Visit Anne Fitten’s version of Drink at Brewgasm.

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In this free e-book, you’ll learn some of the strategies I used to turn my Mr. Good for Nothing into my Mr. Good for Something, including ten Relationship Rules.

My blogathon homework involves writing a post about “10 blogs I can’t live without.” This sort of thing is hard for me because, as an empathetic soul, I worry that such a post will make someone sad.

I worry about this because my feelings get hurt all the time whenever I encounter a Top Anything list on the Internet. They do because whenever I see such a list, I don’t notice which blogs got mentioned. I notice, instead, the one that did not: Mine. I feel this way every time I see a list of the Top People to Follow on Twitter or the Top Blogs that Make You Laugh or the Top Movers and Shakers on the Internet. I see these lists and I think, “I’m not at the top.”

I can only assume that there are at least a few other bloggers out there who are as sensitive as I am. More important, there are a billion or so blogs on the Internet, and I’m only supposed to mention 10?! That means that I could possibly hurt the feelings of 9 hundred and ninety million, nine hundred ninety nine thousand, and nine hundred and ninety bloggers. (Or maybe it’s even more than that? The task of writing out that number made me think of one word and it was this: chocolate.)

At any rate, today also happens to be Marriage Improvement Monday. So what I’ve decided to do is this: list other marriage blogs that I read. These are the blogs that I subscribe to and read regularly:

1. The Marry Blogger
2. Simple Marriage
3. Life Gems
4. ONE Extraordinary Marriage Blog (Note: this blog is running a 7 day sex challenge in June; I’ve linked to it. More important, there’s another marriage blogger named Alisa.)
5. Project M
6. The Hubby Dairies
7. Whispered Between Women
8. Confessions of a Loving Wife
9. Engaged Marriage
10. Your Tango

This is not an exhaustive list. I read many more blogs. If I left you out, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you and it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be listed. More important, I’m sure there are plenty of great blogs out there that I don’t even know about. Let’s share our blog reading lists. What blogs do you read and why? More important, if you are a blogger and I’ve left you off the list, tells us about your blog and why we should all be reading it.

Note: By Your Request starts tomorrow.

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This Better Marriage Blanket reminds me of those little alarms one can stick on the bottom of a toilet seat to train a mindless husband into keeping the dang thing in the down position. And then I got to thinking that it was Sunday and it’s the blogathon, which means I need to write something. And that got me thinking that it would be fun for all of us to try to invent products that could save marriages. Here are three that I came up with:

1. A “You look beautiful in those pants, but not as beautiful as you look out of those pants!” recording that plays automatically whenever a woman asks, “Do I look fat in these pants?” It plays in her husband’s voice and is thrown, ventriloquist style, in his direction so it sounds as if he really said those very words. It comes pre-loaded with other great responses such as, “Honey, you couldn’t look fat if you just won a pie eating contest” and “Turn around. Come a little closer. Let me see. I need to inspect your butt a little more closely. Can you take the pants off?” A premium version of this invention includes recordings for the kitchen (“MMM, this chicken taste so good I think I just had an orgasm!”) and even for the bedroom (“Where has your hot naked body been all my life?”)

2. A “Say It Right” Electronic Translator. Couples wear these mouthpieces during a confrontation and it translates insults into beautiful, yet assertive sentences. “You are such as selfish pig” turns into “I’m feeling lonely and hurt because today is my birthday and I didn’t get a card.”

3. Arousal tea that actually works.

What are your better marriage inventions?

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Yet Another Post That Has No Point

AKA

An Unusual Tribute to One of My Favorite People

For those of you who are nervous about the fact that I’ve just written two pointless posts in a row, let me soothe your stress. A really helpful marriage improvement post is coming up next.

But, first, let me tell you about the stress dream I had last night.

In this dream, my good friend Rachel Weingarten — who happens to be a brilliant style, image and marketing consultant – called me and said, “I found the perfect job for you. I told them all about you and they want you. You’d be perfect for it and they’d be fools not to hire you. You need to be there 9 a.m. tomorrow. It’s in the City. Come to my place and we’ll take the train in together.”

Never mind that I am happy freelancing and am not looking for a fulltime job. Never mind that Rachel lives in the City and not anywhere near me. Never mind that there is no train service from where I live to New York City.

Folks: it was a dream, okay?

Here are two important points to know in order to best understand this dream:

1. This job was going to be the solution to all of my problems. Rachel hadn’t said it in those precise words, but I absorbed that gist as only a person can in a dream. This job was going to pay that mortgage bill that is due next week and that I’m not quite sure at the moment how I am going to pay. It was going to give me instant respect, admiration, and downright iconic status. The people at this company were going to worship me in a way I have never been worshipped before—not even by my husband before we had sex for the first time. It was going to give me self-confidence, money, respect, a personal shopper, a closet full of new shoes—everything a woman could want.
2. Rachel, oh Rachel. How do I explain her presence in my dream and in my life? You know when you are really sad and distressed and you think something along the lines of “I just want my mommy,” but you know you can’t just go running to your mommy because grownups don’t do that sort of thing? Rachel is like a stand-in mommy for me. She’s that friend who sees me in the same way all mothers see their children. She only sees my good. Therefore, whenever I’m around her, I feel good—even in the middle of a stress dream.

I told Rachel I’d be at her place bright and early. This is what happened next:

• I wake the next day. I look at my watch. I say to myself, “What time am I supposed to meet Rachel? 7 am? 9 a.m.? 11 a.m.? And am I supposed to meet her at her place or in the City?” I look all over the house for a written note that will tell me what time I should go to Rachel’s. I ask my husband what time I am supposed to meet Rachel. He asks, “Who’s Rachel?” So I gather up a bunch of stuff—clothes, makeup, shoes—and I run to her place. I don’t know why I don’t drive. I suppose, in my dream, Rachel lives around the corner. I also don’t know why I don’t change out of my jammies.
• I arrive sweaty, panting and on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. Rachel’s sister Kiki soothes me as only Kiki can. She says, “Oh honey, you have plenty of time. Not to worry!” Then she shows me to the bathroom so I can apply makeup. Note: I do not believe that Kiki and Rachel live together or commute together in real life, but they did in my dream.
• I cannot find the switch to turn on the bathroom light. I feel around the walls. I just can’t find the dang thing. So I attempt to do without the light. No matter how close I get to the mirror, I cannot see my eyelid. I smear eyeliner all over my eyelid. I know I’ve smeared it all over my eyelid, but I can’t seem to get it off. It’s as if I’ve accidentally used a Sharpie for eyeliner.
• My dad steps out of the shower. Even though it is too dark for me to see my eyelid, it is not too dark for me to see my father’s manliness. I look away, but he keeps making conversation with me and for some reason it doesn’t occur to him to wrap a towel around himself. Important Note: I feel the need to state that my father would never do this in real life. I also feel the need to state that he does not know Rachel and would not be taking a shower in her bathroom.
• I try to get dressed, but I cannot find my clothes. So I stay in my pajamas.
• I find Rachel. She tells me that I look stunning. I think her exact words are, “You are so beautiful I could eat you.” I decide that my PJs must be more fashionable than I realize and that eyeliner all over one’s face is the new look for 2010.
• We get on the train. There are a bazillion other people on the train. For some reason the train has no sides and there are people running beside it, and these people are trying to grab hold of me and pull me off the train.
• Rachel tells me that I am stronger than I think and that no one can overcome my strength and pull me off the train.
• I ask Rachel, “Should I have a ticket?”
• She looks at her sister Kiki. Kiki says, “A ticket might have been a good idea.”
• Rachel says, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure out something.”
• I can’t tell you what happens during the job interview because I don’t remember this part of the dream. I think my dream skipped over this scene.
• I get the job, though. I’m not sure how I get it, but I do. Rachel was right. These people adore me.
• I visit my literary agent to tell him the good news. Keep in mind that me getting a fulltime job would not be good news to him in real life because that would mean that I would be giving up my ghostwriting career, which would mean that he would be out of a chunk of change in commission. But in my dream he is happy for me. He is also back together with his girlfriend and they are living together again. This getting back together and moving in together has all transpired within the past 48 hours. He tells me that she showed up at his place two nights ago and they both instantly realized that they really were made for one another. She smiles as he tells me this story, beaming with womanly pride. Note 1: Only my literary agent is going to understand the bizarre nature of this detail, but that’s okay. Note 2: I’ve never met his girlfriend in real life, but in my dream she was exceptionally beautiful, kind and downright funny. Note 3: I have not asked my literary agent about his love life in at least a year. For all I know he and said girlfriend are engaged and have been for months. Note 4: I’ve never been to my lit agent’s home and don’t know what it looks like in real life. In my dream it was quite a palace by New York City standards.
• I ask my lit agent and his girlfriend if I can use their bathroom before heading home. They take me down 6 million hallways that eventually lead to a bathroom that has no walls. I mean the toilet is there right in the open for everyone to see! Who has such a bathroom? I really need to use the bathroom. My need is quite urgent. But I tell them that the urge to go has passed and I must be heading along now.

Then I wake up and I realize that I really need to use the bathroom.

I adore dreams like that for many reasons. One, they confirm for me that I really am a creative human being. Two, they allow me to address my fears and insecurities in a safe way. It was so lovely to have Rachel and Kiki there with me! Too bad they can’t be with me during every stressful moment! Three, they give me something to blog about.

What are your stress dreams like? What’s the oddest dream you ever had? Leave a comment.

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Everything You Didn’t Want to Know About My Dirty Underpants

I’m an introvert, and I’m particularly uncomfortable being the center of attention. Seriously, if three people turn and look me simultaneously? My face turns red.

Which is why I’m the last person you’d ever expect to launch a television and speaking career. But I have a book coming out in January. If I want someone other than my mother to read it, I need to do TV.

Walking onto the set of Good Morning America on the day of my book release would be Me Making a Fool of Myself in Front of Millions of People Just Waiting to Happen.

So I’ve been practicing pre-release in smaller, regional markets—places where no one I know will see me on TV. If I accidently say “blowjob” instead of “baloney” on camera and none of my friends see it? It didn’t really happen as far as I’m concerned.

This week I ended up on New York’s FOX 5. The segment was about celebrity infidelity.

In the event you don’t see how that topic could present a ginormous problem for me, let me fill you in on something. I have this learning disability that prevents me from being able to tell one celebrity from another. Case in point: until about two days ago, I thought Jesse James was someone who killed a bunch of people during the 1800s.

Did you know that there’s another Jesse James, and that he’s married to Sandra Bullock?

I certainly didn’t.

To prepare for the segment, I Googled Jesse. I learned that he’d recently dipped his pen in the ink of a tattoo-covered woman. I also learned that he was a motorcycle tycoon. Google refused to tell me what “motorcycle tycoon” actually meant. Did he own a bazillion motorcycles? What?

Thankfully, my husband is a fan of all TV shows that involve tires. He heard me mumbling stuff about Jesse James and motorcycles and said, “He’s from that motorcycle show, but it’s not the one where the father curses out the son all the time.” I think he said Jesse is from West Coast Chopper and the father who yells at the son is from East Coast Chopper. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Anyway, after memorizing Jesse’s sexual history, I carefully packed two outfits. That’s so I would have a back up in case one of the producers happened to look at me and say, “Girlfriend, I know you are not going to wear THAT on TV.”

I also packed a hairdryer, just in case my cheap hotel did not have one in the bathroom. I even packed two hairbrushes, in case one malfunctioned or got lost. And I packed tweezers. You never know when a stray hair is going to make an appearance on your eyebrows at the wrong moment.

Oh, and pimple cream. Let me tell you, I once went on TV with a pimple the size of Manhattan on the side of my head. It was entirely too distracting.

I took enough stuff with me to fill a suitcase and a backpack. You just can’t over prepare for TV as far as I’m concerned. Preparation soothes the nerves. It’s better to bring adult diapers with you and never use them than it is to wonder, “What if I pee my pants? Then what?”

It was during the bus ride into the city that I realized I’d forgotten to pack two important essentials. They were:

1. Deodorant
2. Panties

It was then that I regretted that I’d forgone my usual power shave of the womanly nethers that day. I’d been in a hurry. It had seemed unnecessary at the time. No one was going to be getting a glimpse of my bits. My front side could withstand another day of over-forestation.

But hot dang. Now I might have to go commando and I would be wearing a short skirt.

This was not good, I tell you. It was not good at all.

What to do? What to do? Immediately, I was on Twitter asking for advice. Should I wear my soiled panties inside out? What? What?

People tweeted back. They informed me that every drug store in New York City sold panties. Someone even tweeted that New York drug stores even sell fancy lacy things.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then a migraine set in.

By the time I got to the hotel, I was feeling a little queasy and my head felt as if it was being used as a marching band bass drum.

I asked the young girl at reception to direct me to the nearest store that sold panties.

She looked at me as if I’d just asked for the nearest store that sold butt plugs.

I guess people have asked her for a lot of things—toothpaste, toothbrushes, Dial-a-Hooker—but not one guest had ever asked her for panties before.

I learned that the nearest Victoria’s Secret was closed for the night, but there was a convenience store around the corner.

At that moment, my head wanted a bed. I figured I could do a panty run in the morning if need be.

To prevent “if need be” I slept commando and I draped my somewhat worn pair of panties over a lampshade to air them out.

Come morning my headache was gone and my confidence was back.

I decided my old pair was good enough for TV. I’d only worn them for a few hours after all.

Then moments after taking a shower, my pits started to stink. You might assume that this was just my imagination or some sort of exaggeration designed to get a laugh. It was neither. They were ripe! Nerves will do that to a woman’s armpits. So I ran to the convenience store for deodorant.

I looked for panties, too.

This is what I have to say to all of those people on Twitter who told me I could find panties at any convenience store in the city: I managed to find the one convenience store that didn’t sell them.

While putting on deodorant, I got pasty white stuff all over the sleeve of my dress. Then I peed for the nine hundredth time in 3 minutes. When I stood up, I felt something wet dripping down my legs. That’s when I realized that I’d accidentally peed on the waist tie for my dress.

But at least my armpits didn’t stink anymore.

I could have changed into my back up outfit, but that outfit was a backup for a reason. It was this: I didn’t like it. It makes me look dumpy. So I wiped the deodorant off my sleeve the best I could. I toweled off my waist tie. I sniffed it. It didn’t smell like anything out of the ordinary.

So I went to FOX. No one gave me the “You Did Not Just Walk Into Our Station While Wearing Day Old Panties and a Dress with Urine On It Did You?” look. If anything, people seemed more enamored with me than usual. I also managed to talk about Jesse James as if I’d known him my entire life.

You know what? I think I’ve just discovered my lucky dress and lucky pair of panties. Here’s the clip. What do you think?

Note: To get to the right segment, press play. Then press the button that makes the video big. Then click on Tiger Wood’s head underneath. That way you can avoid listening to all of that healthcare mumbo jumbo.

Street talk on Fox 5

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