No invoice, no cry.

Exactly what do I look like to you? A fool? Wrong, not just a fool—a broke fool. A penny-less pawn in the high-stakes game of frozen snack treats and premium ice cream. Ben & Jerry would be absolutely disgusted, not to mention Haägen & Dazs.

Yes, a fool. A big fat fool, because I have just finished another project for the ice cream gurus and they seem to think I am a volunteer for their ice cream brigade. Do they honestly believe that I live to spread their ice cream propaganda? That it is my passion to work day and night selling their creamy-good deliciousness? They must believe that I love it, because they won’t pay me!

I have asked, I have begged, I have pleaded, I have compromised, I have believed the hype, I have drank the Kool-Aid and at the end of the day on the walk to the mailbox at the end of the cul-de-sac, I am met once again with an empty gray metal-box of disappointment and disgust.

How can they not pay me? I have to pay my bills. The phone company does not think that they should volunteer the lines to me and comp my dial tone. Even though, I truly do love their product (well, not the acutal product—that annoys the beejesus out of me. So, more accurately, I love what it facilitates), I love to talk and I love to dial and I even love to listen. And like clockwork, every month they send a bill and every month, and like a good citizen with a functioning conscience, I write a check.

Did they lose their checkbook? There will be no sympathy from me on that front. I live in a house where I had to dig up three wardrobe boxes and rummage through two Tupperware containers to find my body-sculpting black girdle to wear to a so-cal-deviant-soft-porn-party-slash-book-club. SO DIG FOR IT!!! You lazy, cheap, ice cream moguls! I have sweat through a t-shirt for less important things—hell, I have pulled a muscle for a stuffed carrot named "Thunder". I deserve it!

And just to add insult to injury, I have to see their damn trucks everywhere! And it is getting dangerous, because I am feeling border-line justified in hi-jacking one of those babies. Mama needs a new pair of shoes! (Well, actually baby needs an expensive preschool education, which requires a hefty college-sized tuition—but six in one, half-dozen in the other.) I am about to go postal on some poor popsicle peddler!

If I don’t get a check tomorrow, I am seriously calling The Mold Lady and teaming her up with MaryEllen to fill a tank-sized, carnival, stuffed donkey with mold spores and unleash it on their free-loading butts! (Not that I think a heavy dose of dementia is going to help my cause or expediting detailed paperwork, but at least they would realize that I am serious!)

Okay, deep breathe. And yes, duly noted that money is the root of all evil—I will be sure to mention that to the judge in my defense.