Page 28 of It's Not PMS, It's You

I told people—and myself multiple times every day—that I was trying to watch my carbs, but breakfast didn’t count. Neither did lunch or dinner, for that matter.

In fact, the only time I felt really guilty about eating carbs was when they were the in-between-meal snacks. Like those wonderful cookies I’d eaten at my parents’ house last night.

Luckily, I had trained myself to block out the guilt of carb eating with each bite of the buttery, flaky pastry by drowning myself in work up to my eyeballs. Of course, that wasn’t going to work today either, since I had decided to take the day off, so I splurged and got two croissants instead of my usual one. I also got two croissants for my petite freak of nature friend, Dee, since she ate whatever she wanted without putting on any weight.

I ate the first croissant on my walk back to the house.

After arriving back home, I pulled my chair closer to my desk with the second croissant and the first of four cups of coffee that I would be drinking that morning.

My only goal today was to officially start my search for the perfect man. Well, that, and meet my new airport friend, Judy, for a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to check my business email before I got started.

My phone vibrated before I could open the email app.

Dee: You’d better not be working right now.

I really don’t know how she did that, but it always weirded me out. It was like the woman had ESP or a hidden camera in my office.

Ruth: Me? Come on! I have the day off!

Dee: I don’t believe you. Be there in five minutes.

I sighed, knowing that I would feel too guilty checking my email now. I opened up the document that I had started working on last night with the list of qualities that I was looking for in a man.

If my potential suitor didn’t match any of them, he had zero chance of being compatible with me. Yes, I was on a mission to meet a man so I wouldn’t die alone, but I wasn’t going to settle for an inferior specimen who did nothing but annoy or bore me.

I was sure Dee was going to love my list because I had spent a lot of time thinking about what I really wanted in a man. I just needed a high-powered executive who understood how important my career was to me. Someone who understood business.

I took a sip of my coffee, analyzing the list of traits I was looking for.

1) Confident: I liked a man who walked into a room with his head held up high, a man who looked me in the eyes when he talked to me, and someone who knew what he wanted. Me. And since he wanted me so bad, I expected him to confidently grab me and kiss me until I was weak in the knees, and then make love to me on top of my desk, if that’s what he desired.

I scooted my laptop to the side and knocked on my desk with my knuckles.

Oh, boy.

It wasveryhard.

Okay, maybe I needed to forget the part about making love on the desk. That didn’t sound comfortable at all. Plus, I would probably kill him if he messed up my perfectly organized files.

Stick to the bed.

The bottom line was that as long as he was confident to know what I needed every day and knew my preferences, that should be good enough. If he were color-coordinated and could dress himself without my help, that would be a bonus.

I pulled my laptop closer and got back to my list.

2) Decisive: He should be able to make the right decision without my help. He should have the innate ability to know which night I preferred fish and which night I preferred chicken and wouldn’t bother asking if I had a preference because he’d know. He needed to be able to decide for himself, stick with his decision, and just do it. Wishy-washy men need not apply.

3) Accountable: I wanted a man who would admit when he was wrong, because everyone knew that he would be the one who was wrong 99.99999999999 percent of the time. If he could get that through his thick, preferably non-bald head, we could have a bright future together.

4) Fiscally Responsible: He should know about finances, how to manage his money well, and have an impressive portfolio of growth stocks, treasury securities, municipal bonds, plus a high-yield savings account, and multiple real estate holdings. There was no way in hell I was going to be his sugar mama. He needed to hold his own. And speaking of holding his own, the man should know how to aim while going to the bathroom instead of splashing all over the place. Okay, this shouldn’t go under fiscal responsibility, but I refused to have a separate trait just for peeing and bathroom etiquette.

5) Open-minded: I wanted a man in my life who knew that my career was most important to me and wouldn’t nag me because I was working late.

6) Not afraid to ask for directions: I knew this one would be hard to find in a man, but a woman could hope, right?

7) Kind and Generous: I wanted to meet a man who wouldn’t hesitate to do things for others without expecting anything in return.