I am so anxious that I even get anxiety when thinking about calling the doctor for anxiety pills.

But you must understand, the last time I visited Doc, he cussed out the people at my insurance company while I was sitting there; told me 6 very unfunny Polack jokes, and discussed “ass goblins” amongst other medical terms.

The Publisher’s Wife, however, is the primary cause of my anxiety. There are a hundred reasons why she stresses me out (the core reason being that she is innately annoying), but her ability to cause me anxiety is another story. This has been going on for a few weeks now.

Let’s use yesterday as a case study. First off, she had lunch with two of our main clients. Two clients whom, I might add, I work with on an almost-daily basis. Two clients whom she rarely works with and with whose accounts she is completely unfamiliar. Why wouldn’t I be invited? Well, obviously I didn’t want to go, but it made me curious: Is my job in jeopardy? It’s a legitimate curiosity considering she’s been coming to look at my computer screen as of late, asking what I’m working on.

Anyway, seeing as how I had no plans for lunch, I took our paper supplier up on his offer to go to Italian near my work. Considering the idiom, there’s “no such thing as a free lunch,” I’m assuming he continually treats me to lunch because he wants to continue doing business with us. Although, I’m pretty sure he's lacking in the friends department as well.

Within five minutes of sitting down, the Publisher’s Wife called my cell phone to bitch at me about something she wanted me to do when I got back. That is my solitary hour a day to breath and not think about work and she ruined it (I rarely even take lunch, so it was even worse). I had ordered some tea, which I promptly swapped for a gin on the rocks. She is so not pleasant. I sat there tense, furrowing my brow, picking at my nails. The printer looked at me and said, “Let me be frank with you, you are not getting paid enough to be putting yourself under this pressure.”

We discussed what was going to happen when I returned to the office. I told him that if she threw one of her temper tantrums, I was out. We discussed the implications of that move and they aren’t pretty considering I basically have no money saved up and, furthermore, half of Time Inc’s editorial staff has been fired so it would be virtually impossible to get a job at an NYC publication right now. Nevertheless, he convinced me that it wasn’t worth it [to stay here] and I agreed. Given all of that… the Publisher’s Wife was oddly pleasant when I returned (probably satisfied with the thought of having ruined my lunch). Of course, today is another day ad infinitum.

(I just have to keep asking myself, “What the hell does she do here anyway??”)