Lady Marmalade by Christina Aguilera, Li'l Kim, Mya, and P!nk

So after experiencing a moderate amount of success in my telecom sales career, back in 2000, I promptly spiraled into a deep, dark whole of depression and funk.  Once again, there is no reason why I shouldn't have been fired, but someone saw something in me and instead promoted me to National Accounts Manager.  Yep - I was rewarded with a raise and an even higher sales quota.  Gulp.  It was a complete disaster and I don't think I ever came close to landing a national account or coming close to meeting my quota.  You'll be as surprised as I was to learn I STILL managed to keep my job after that, but today's story is about not about that.

After a long recovery from a devastating breakup, I was embracing what I envisioned to be my own version of Sex and the City.  I had cultivated a nice group of girlfriends and was mostly avoiding men and dating.  My boss had put together a group that was almost all female and we all got along fairly well.  For a short time, we ended our workday by playing Lady Marmalade and having a mini dance party in our area.  All that positive girl power energy quickly lent into to Jen N's great idea of starting the Cosmo Club (as in the very popular drink of the time, natch!).  The concept is simple: each person pitches in $10 and there is a drawing.  The winner receives the pot (between $60-100!) with 2 conditions:  the money could only be spent on something frivolous, not for bills; the winner had to plan the next event and share how they spent their spoils.

The Cosmo Club was so much fun and was really important to me and helped me through some difficult times.  It was a diverse group of ladies and everyone enjoyed and looked forward to the monthly event.  We did some really cool stuff, from candlemaking to a ferry ride across the Bay for cocktails to dinner at Asia SF where drag queens dance on the bar to Cocktails and Manis at the Beauty Bar.  There was a later iteration of the Cosmo Club years later when I moved to Oakland, but it just wasn't the same as the original.