I am always frozen when people ask me what I do for a living. My immediate reaction is to tell them about how adept I was in procuring outrageously fun jobs during my single days. I was a professional interviewee and could sell myself to anybody. Sadly acknowledging that I must no longer live in the past, I tell them that I am CFO, Producer, Creative Director and Gestapo of three hellions and my husband, Wade. “What is it that you do”, I ask in return.

I have signed up for a lifetime of raising well rounded, honest, confident, sensitive, humble, chivalrous and charming boys. I really had not the faintest idea of what I was getting ourselves into when I convinced Wade that we needed to have three children. Nine years later we are in the throws of family life and I pray that the results of our efforts will start shining through anytime now. The feedback has been promising.

When we were growing up, my father would reprimand his three daughters for focusing on fun and not being serious enough about making money. Spoken from a true bachelor until the age of 42. Fun was his middle name. I can’t help but think that if I had actually been making money I would have lost it all to the Madoff Ponzi Scheme anyway.

My first job in New York City was at Simon & Schuster. I had just moved from Los Angeles and was traumatized by the loneliness and emptiness of living in the shallow world of film. New York City was so much more my style. Every day was an adventure and I was electrified by the magic of the city. As long as I didn’t feel an alien body rubbing itself against mine on the subway, I could manage.

I loved taking the elevator at Simon & Schuster and listening to the buzz of the Literati. Entering my little Department, I would run to my desk and answer the phone, “Hello, Pocket Books Publicity Department”. I developed good relationships with my co-workers.

Meg, a native from Manhattan, was a quick-witted, no-nonsense, fiercely devoted friend, as long as you passed her character strength test. When she would get embarrassed she would fan her face to try to decrease the blush on her creamy white skin. Next came Joanne, a homely Publicist with a childish voice who married her boss while working for a phone sex company. She loved to astonish us unexpectedly by talking dirty. Once as we all descended to lunch on the elevator, she started talking smack and shared her fantasies with us of tonguing our boss Roger. We all nervously laughed until the elevator opened and Roger got in with us. A very uncomfortable silence descended upon us.

Then there was Joy, a beautiful, highly emotional woman who wore red stilettos and short skirts to work. Her fiancé was Adam, a fellow Publicist in our department. He was a cool and sophisticated man and he was her rock. They lived together in a tiny apartment near Columbia University where they had gone to college. Dinner at their apartment was my first introduction to Bohemian life and I loved it. They would crank out home made pasta and introduce me to their shelves of vinyl records and books.

When she was not in her safe haven, Joy was fragile. Daily I would visit her in her office and find her in tears. She would talk to me about her Catholic Italian mother who was not too happy about her engagement to a Jewish intellect. We would visit the ancient press together that should have been replaced years ago. As much as the cogs and wheels were Joy’s therapy they were the bane of my existence. She had an understanding of that machine and would liken it to the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I had never read that book and struggled to follow her thought process.

I worked directly for Roger as his assistant. He was the Publicist for the romance novelist, Jackie Collins. It was no surprise that the lead men in most of her novels were based on his suave good looks and character. He was tall and lean with a tousled head of beautiful thick, silky, black hair coveted by every woman. My desk was directly outside his office and frequently he would scream out expletives ending with, “WERNICK get in here”. I loved him and became a bumbling mess in his presence. I don’t think he ever noticed it.

When the office was slow I would clunk down the hallway to visit my friend John in the editing department and listen to all of his quirky anecdotes. After work, we resided at hip bars like MK, a long narrow bar with a fish tank embedded on one whole side of the wall and stuffed Doberman Pinchers that loomed above us with sad marble eyes. Drinking the days’ pay away we would comment on all of the beautiful posers.

I left the company when I realized that the only way up was to take over the job of writing press releases for romance novels. I knew that I was not up to the task of repeatedly writing about hot bulging muscles and curvaceous femme fatales.

After I left, David Letterman spotted Meg’s long blond hair from his studio across the street in Radio City Hall. She became his muse and he would send marching bands through our office and call her often live from the Studio. I was able to keep up with their lives as I regularly watched them on The David Letterman Show.

My next job was working for Seventeen Magazine as a Merchandising Editor. I put on fashion shows across the country. My boss was a  woman who sat on crystals and wore her string bikinis and stilettos down to the cheesy pools we frequented when we traveled.

The movie, “The Devil Wears Prada”, resembled my life while working at Seventeen Magazine. My friends and I would meet in the morning and evaluate the clothes that we were all wearing. I always failed as the country bumpkin from Massachusetts with no fashion sense, Anne Hathaway I was not.

My biggest fear at the time was public speaking. Unfortunately, being the MC on fashion shows was part of the job description. At my first show in Washington D.C., I passed out under the hot lights and silence ensued as the models strutted down the runway. My co-worker had taken me out and ruined me the night before.  She abandoned me at my first debut feigning laryngitis. Upon our return she blamed the failure of the show on me and tried to get me fired. Luckily the crystals were working in my favor and I put up a good fight.

I decided to leave New York City three years later, in 1995 after a traumatizing morning. As I walked into my favorite coffee grind the people walking out got hit by a car that had lost control. As I helped the wounded that were strewn throughout the street the city lost its charm on me. I quit my job, packed up and drove to stay with my sister, Michele, in Aspen, Colorado.

In one week of living in Aspen, I got hit with three speeding tickets as I deftly maneuvered my red Honda Prelude down Main Street. It took me a long time to shed my city skin. I missed the ethnicity of the city.

Once again, I excelled at being interviewed and landed a job editing for a small group of National Geographic photographers. I immersed myself in the cultural side of Aspen and began making a life for myself there.

Fifteen years later, I am traveling down a different road. I have jumped into the insane world of writing. Hopefully in the near future, I will be able to respond to the dreaded question of what I do by stating that I am a famous writer who makes money by writing about my fabulous boys and husband.