Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

Day 242 — How Honest Is Too Honest?

I am an editor, so my job is to make writers appear more talented than they really are without wholly and completely throwing out what they’ve written and starting out all over again. I can send things back to be rewritten, or make extensive comments. The office hierarchy presents itself again, but in a somewhat perverse [...]

Day 241 — Conveyor Belt of Jobs

Every time I watch broadcast TV, it bobs to a new low. Monday, on ABC, has apparently become “‘Marry Me” day, with a line up of The Bachelor followed by the new Conveyor Belt of Love (the new low). Don’t let your imagination run away from you as the men do as they literally move down a [...]

Day 240 — Can Beauty Triumph in Job Search?

They say you can’t be too rich or too thin, but can you be too beautiful? A recent news story reported that Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm’s handlers found in their tests that people resisted saying they’d vote for her. They said she was too beautiful to be a governor. Maybe they could picture her as a [...]

Day 239 — Happy New Year

Tonight is New Year’s eve, and my ex, the bold one that he is, has already left to spend the next few days with someone he has only met online. I say, “Bad move.” But how can I begrudge him a little hanky panky. I’m also getting out of town. But I’ll be with someone I’ve known [...]

Day 238 — Just My Luck

The holiday ho hums have set in. After being a good doobie by digging my ex’s car out of the snow last weekend, I’m now in the doghouse for a couple of minor scratches I caused when I pushed a heap of snow off the trunk with the edge of a plastic shovel. I should have used [...]

Day 237 — Merry Christmas

Ann’s Note: Ann plans to take a break between Christmas and New Years and will publish two days next week—Monday and Thursday—as she enjoys the holidays with her children. Please enjoy her take on “The Night Before Christmas.” Twas the morning of Christmas, I just downed an ale; I grabbed Victoria’s Secrets to see what was on sale; Panties, [...]

Day 236 — Hoo Ha Advice for the Jobless

I got my hair cut yesterday. As usual, my hairdresser is never ready when I arrive. He’s either doing a last snip on a bob or blow drying locks. He was finishing up a short one while I browsed through a magazine I no longer buy—Cosmopolitan. Yeah, I can afford Cosmo, but why buy it when I can [...]

Day 235 — Digging Out

How do you know when you’ve hit bottom? This has recently become a pressing question for me. However bad things are, I’m always on guard for signs that life will get worse. Without succumbing to negativity, I find myself preparing to hit bottom, and then for the bottom to fall out and sink even further to some new [...]

Day 234 — News of the Times

Life never ceases to amaze me, and that’s a good thing because I’d hate to cease to exist. Take, for example, a blurb in today’s Washington Post about the discovery of 200 sewing needles in the body of a 2-year-old boy. The brief failed to reveal how the needles got there or what prompted the probe [...]

Day 233 — Pick Me for Living Proof!

Fingers crossed—again. Ann has just auditioned to become the on-air spokesperson for Living Proof, a line of no-frizz products that the company claims uses a revolutionary technology to fight the frizzies. If chosen, Living Proof promises to pay her a real salary, bonus and offer her stock options should the Boston-based company go public. Its founders are [...]