Destressification

As some of you may know, I have a rather unfortunate job situation where for the last few months I've been forced to do nearly daily battle, again and again, with the Anti-Christ, otherwise known as Dragon Lady, Evil Incarnate, or FBH ("Fucking Bitch From Hell"). This week, the war raged on, but I added something new to my rejuvenation arsenal.

On Tuesday, I had to sit in expert meetings for nine continuous excrutiatingly agonizing hours with Dragon Lady and a male partner. As I mentioned, I was incredibly grateful that the meetings were going to be chaperoned by the male partner, because I knew that Dragon Lady would at least try to play nice in front of him. I've seen her in action; she tries to soften her voice and forces her lips to curve up into a twisted mockery of a smile. Sometimes she even tries to force a laugh. The awkwardness is painfull to watch and makes me uncomfortable whenever it happens, but it's preferable to verbal abuse.

The Dragon Lady was in rare form; not even the presence of the other partner kept her in check entirely. Throughout the meetings, she kept breathing heavily, muttering "fuck" and "shit" in angry bursts, twitching her body, and bulging her eyes out at whoever she was interrogating, whether it was me or the expert. I'm sure the expert thought she had Tourettes.

At one point she started flaring up about documents that had not yet been sent to our expert as I was handing him the documents not 4 feet away from where Dragon Lady was sitting. I was standing at the end of the conference room table bent over a bunch of legal boxes, had just given the expert two of the documents Dragon Lady had wanted him to have, and was in the process of handing him the third when she started raising her voice, saying angrily, "Well, what about all the documents I told you to give to him? He needs to have them NOW. Fuck." I turned to her and said in an icy tone, "Dragon Lady, I've just given him two of the documents, and am about to give him the third one." The other partner did not say anything critical of Dragon Lady, not even when she was swearing in front of our expert. Unprofessional, anyone?

The meeting was not as awful as it could have been. But even so, by the time I got back down to my office, I felt like crying because I was so stressed out by all the tension and negativity. The woman is flat out toxic, and not the pre-Kfed, Britney kind of toxic, but rather the slimy, fluorescent, disturbingly radioactive, found in the sewers underneath chemical treatment plants kind of toxic.

I also wanted to cry because the meeting had run late and, in addition to being forcibly subjected to the Dragon Lady's presence, I had also been forced to miss acupuncture just at a time when I knew I desperately needed some serious stress relief. As I was feeling sorry for myself and filled with passionate hate for Dragon Lady, Raj called and asked me to grab a cup of coffee with him. He had been working like crazy too, and we happened to catch each other at a break. I agreed to meet him and set out for the Starbuck's located midway between our offices.

When I got there, I still felt stressed, and even though I still had a ton of work to do later that night, I felt in the mood for something stronger than coffee, so I asked Raj if I could talk him into a glass of wine. I can be very persuasive, and Raj really is not that hard to persuade into doing something he wants to do, so it was no surprise that ten minutes later we found ourselves sitting at the bar in a little French restaurant sipping glasses of wine.

A few sips through my first glass, sitting next to Raj as he rubbed my shoulder, I was feeling immeasurably better. Memories of the evil witch were being washed away. In their absence, I felt something else. Shall we call it a flutter of desire? In truth, I had thought about sex a few times during the afternoon meeting, and at one point had blackberried Raj saying, "we need to have sex," and received quite a reaction from him. Something along the lines of "Now? When I have all this work to do and have to be here 'til late? Woman, you're killing me." Sitting at the bar, I mentioned it again, only this time I told him that he should take me home. Twenty minutes later, we were in a taxi on our way home. As I said, I can be very persuasive.

Here's the amazing thing I learned from that experience: Wine, great sex, and a really nice orgasm work just as well as acupuncture or yoga at relieving stress! It's amazing. Granted, the wine took a little time to shake off which impinged on my productivity a bit later in the evening, and yoga and acupuncture are obviously more healthy. However, the wine did destress me enough to allow me to contemplate sex, and thus was essential to my stress relief efforts, so it was unquestionably worth it. I'm pretty sure Raj agrees.

I've decided to try to have more sex during the week, even when I'm tired and stressed out (which is Monday through Friday), because wonders of wonders, it actually helps.

Dragon Lady can kiss my eff-ing ass. She can also kiss my ass because I have TWO, count 'em, just TWO more days left until Raj and I are off for Houston! I can't wait. We leave tomorrow at 8:30 pm, right after my hearing at Immigration Court for my Tibetan client. Wish me luck.