First, we came up with recipes for the meals we were going to cook, package and freeze. Clint, as usual, “knew everything” and had a recipe that he did not allow to be changed. Once again he butted heads with Herschel. The head chef,  with whom we were working, thought Clint’s recipe was far too salty and Clint took to sulking in the corner and not helping out when he didn’t get his way. Typical Clint.

Herschel and I hunkered down and chopped what needed to be chopped and mixed what needed to be mixed. What I did enjoy was designing our place settings and arranging the napkins, dishes, flatware and centerpiece in order to pull together an exquisite-looking table.  It was gorgeous, but the funniest part was when Melissa came into the restaurant, saw how I had set the table and said, “I forgot to order a centerpiece!” As a mother, the first thing I said was, “That’s ok…you can use ours.” I quickly remembered we’re on opposite teams and withdrew my offer. Get your own flowers, sweetheart!

I thought our overall presentation was better than the other team’s, but apparently their food was outstanding. In the boardroom, Donald was shocked to find out that Herschel, as successful as he is in the food industry, doesn’t eat chicken!  Once again, I’m very sad to see one of my teammates go, and I’m particularly upset that Herschel was fired. He is a lovely, bright, polite, and caring gentleman. I very much hope that he and I stay in touch after the show has ended!

Our second task this week was all about cooking…something I could never do well, and believe me, I’ve tried. In my house, “cook” is the worst four-letter word you can say, second only to “iron” and “wash.”

For this task we were charged with creating a full dinner menu for Schwan’s, a company that specializes in frozen meals delivered to your home. Schwan’s makes everything from heart-healthy and low-fat meals to delicious ice creams and pizzas. Not only did we have to cook, but we also had to present to the Schwan’s executives a reheated meal that they would judge on appearance, taste and nutritional value. We had to plate and serve our prepared meal in an actual restaurant, and every calorie had to be accounted for and every gram of fat tabulated. It was TOUGH!!!

Thank God Herschel was our project manager for this task.  Most people know Herschel because he is an all-star athlete of the highest caliber who won the Heisman Trophy in 1982. What you may not know is that he is also a very successful businessman who runs not one but two food companies: Herschel’s Famous 34 Chicken and H. Walker Foods.

It wasn’t until we were all in the boardroom that Donald told me Ivanka was very disappointed and embarrassed that some of her pieces weren’t bid on.  I was shocked, and said so, and added that it had nothing to do with her jewelry, which was all very pretty. It was about getting the biggest amount of money for the charities and causes that are near and dear to our hearts. Since I was the project manager for this task, if we had won, my charity God’s Love We Deliver would have gotten all of the money raised by both teams!

In the end, we lost to Annie’s team (because of $$$$$). We stood no chance against a juggernaut that can pick up a phone and without an ounce of charm and sophistication get someone to give her tens-of-thousands of dollars. The world of competitive poker seems to be the only business not suffering during this horrible recession. Maybe we ought to ask President Obama to replace the current Secretary of the Treasury  with some of Annie’s Vegas cohorts: guys with names like “Tony No-Neck” and “Frankie Five Aces.”

Natalie was fired, which kills me, but I know that we all worked incredibly hard doing something we loved and we did it creatively and with integrity. The whole thing though is really starting to rankle me—especially the bitchiness and high-school-girl gossiping going on between Annie and Brandeeee about Melissa.  After seeing more and more how Annie and Brandeeee operate, the word “bitch” comes more and more easily to mind.

This week’s episode of Celebrity Apprentice featured two tasks instead of one. The first picked up from last week’s episode where we had to put together an auction featuring Ivanka Trump’s jewelry. Natalie chose the jewelry for the show, and then she and I went to Lord & Taylor to pick out clothing for our runway models. Natalie made me laugh by saying that not too many women in the LPGA care about fashion. The only question they ask themselves when they look in the mirror is, “Do my spikes match my golf bag?”

As this week’s project manager, I thought that our team’s strategy should be to choose the least expensive piece of Ivanka’s jewelry in order to get the most amount of money for it.  As our profits were calculated by taking the amount bid on the item and subtracting the retail price from it, I figured the cheapest item would equal the biggest profit.

The really daunting aspect of the task this week was soliciting humongous bids for the auction. It’s never easy to approach people with your hand outstretched, but Clint, Natalie, Herschel and I all did our very best and some of the people we called were EXTRODINARILY GENEROUS. We all knew, however, that Annie, with her poker connections, would be so far ahead of the game.

Backstage at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where the charity fashion show and auction was held, it was a total zoo.  Our gorgeous models, all of whom haven’t eaten lunch since New York Fashion Week ended last September, were being zipped up, sewn in, teased out and bedecked in Ivanka’s jewelry. In my next life I wouldn’t mind being a fashion designer. I could call myself Oscar De La Yenta.

The auction was all about making money, and as we’ve seen, Annie is no slouch when it comes to raising a lot of cash. Herschel and Clint started working the phones to hit up their biggest donors. Natalie and I did the same, but the biggest tragedy is that I can’t find a rich man in New York who’ll take me out to dinner, let alone give me $25,000 for a bangle bracelet. It kills me that Annie dials four phone numbers and immediately has ten men with big, fat pinky rings pounding on her door to hand over the big bucks. So, if we lose, it will be not for lack of working hard but just a lack of cash.

The most fun was picking the models and pairing them with the jewelry. Fifty years ago, right after college, I started as a window dresser/fashion coordinator for the department store Lord and Taylor, so dressing these gorgeous, young, chic women and bedecking them in real jewelry was like riding a bicycle.

Since things have gotten so dramatic, and tempers are flaring and so out of control, it’s no wonder this HUGE task is going to be continued next week. Tune in…the blood bath continues.

P.S. I have gotten several emails asking me how, after my gigantic fight with Clint Black, could I work again with him. I am the kind of person who says what they think to someone’s face and then moves forward. I was furious with Clint, told him so, and then, as we are on the same team and must work together, put it behind me.

Can you even believe what happened last week on Celebrity Apprentice? As if it wasn’t enough that we had to sit through the rollercoaster ride of emotions while watching Annie stab Melissa in the back  and then tell Brandeeeee how she loved her after telling me just the opposite, both teams had to go right into our next task as soon as the LifeLock challenge was over!

Very few things upset me as much as people who are duplicitous, and so to watch Annie lie, cheat and speak out of both sides of her mouth got me crazy. I think all this two-faced behavior shows that Annie is truly worried that Melissa is competition and Brandeeeee poses no threats. She plays this game like it’s poker.

Even though I, like everyone, was exhausted and sleep-deprived, I took over as the project manager (for the second time) to organize a charity fashion-show fundraiser to sell Ivanka Trump’s jewelry.  If there’s one thing I adore and know a lot about after 20 years, it’s designing and selling (and wearing!) fabulous jewelry on QVC.

First, I sent Natalie out to select the pieces of jewelry that we were going to auction off. I chose Natalie to do this as she is a woman with an eye for classic looks. What she forgot was that the task was to auction the jewelry from the runway and so she should have picked big, showy pieces the way Melissa did for her team.

We made a safe out of paper and inside it we “locked away” our valuables. We also designed magnets, key chains and other little gifties to let “customers” know about the company.

Being a writer, I immediately went to work on the brochure and described how LifeLock has a seven-tiered process to keep its clients safe from identity theft.  I did the best I could but I didn’t feel very turned on by the subject. It was all a bit too butch for me—and I miss Melissa and Khloe a lot.

When we hit the board room, I was shocked to learn that we won the challenge! I thought that with Jesse and Brian, the other team’s materials would look fabulous and there would be a slick theme song to accompany their presentation, but that was not the case. Brian, the other team’s project manager, was fired.  This made me sad as I had never gotten to work with him, and Melissa said he’s the sweetest, most decent man.

It’s getting smaller and meaner and it pains me to watch how Annie, who did nothing but badmouth Brandeeee before—how stupid and worthless she is, etc, etc…—now allying herself with her. At first I couldn’t figure out Annie’s motive, but I can now see she’s trying to get rid of her real competition. If just Annie and Brandeeee are left in the end, there will be no question as to which one will win.

Smart! Conniving, but SMART game playing.

It’s the seventh week and seven people have been fired. I can’t believe how exhausting this whole thing is. I thought of Celebrity Apprentice as a game at first, but I realize I was totally wrong. It’s a competition! And what a competition it is! We are up every day at 5:30 in the morning, in the makeup chair by six and ready to rock and roll with our teams from eight until midnight, six days a week.

Our task this time was to come up with a marketing campaign for a company called LifeLock, which protects its clients against identity theft. The CEO of LifeLock, Todd Davis, is so confident in his company’s ability to protect against identity theft that he puts his actual social security number on billboards and trucks for all to see.  I figure either his company truly does what it says, or else he has nothing of any value that anybody would want to steal.

Identity theft is a very real problem, I found out. People’s credit can be ruined because of it, and it takes years to get your good name back. Before I heard about LifeLock, I was protecting my identity the only way I knew how…by going to the plastic surgeon every six months to have something changed. I figured, if a thief couldn’t recognize me, how could he steal my identity?

Our team, which consisted of Herschel, Clint, and Natalie, with Natalie as our project manager, tried to learn all we could about LifeLock in a short amount of time. We hunkered down to design some great marketing paraphernalia for them. I’ll admit, we came up with some obvious and very dull packaging. 

Melissa and I are on Access Hollywood tonight talking about our All Small & Mighty viral videos. Check your local listings and tune in!!

Click here to visit Access Hollywood’s Web site.

We’re now at the halfway point with the Celebrity Apprentice and things are going to get even crazier! I’m thrilled it’s such a hit and I hope you’ll all keep tuning in to watch Melissa and I battle it out.

Hot on the heels of Dennis Rodman’s rather sad drunken display during the hotel challenge, there was a lot of backlash this week: Khloe was fired; Clint showed himself to be a real chauvinist (rumor has it, he doesn’t allow his wife, Lisa Hartman, to even put Equal in her coffee)  and there certainly was a mixed reaction to the involvement of little people in our viral videos and whether it was politically incorrect (P.I. for short). This surprised both Melissa and me as we adored working with our actors and everyone left the set happy. What has upset people is a total mystery to us both. Oh well…life goes on and sometimes P.I. stands for Political Insanity!

By the way, Melissa and I made two more totally delightful videos for All Small & Mighty.  Watch them here, and when you forward our videos to your friends through All’s Web site, they’ll donate 50 cents per email to our charities! Nice, huh?

Melissa and I were asked by All Small & Mighty to do more videos!!

Here’s the best part: They donated $20,000 to each of our charities as a thank you, and you can help too! Watch our videos here, and when you do, All will donate 50 cents to our charities.

Melissa’s is the Lili Claire Foundation, which gives counseling to families of terminally ill children. Mine—after God’s Love We Deliver—is Guide Dogs for the Blind. Enjoy!

The entire team felt that Clint’s video concept was stupid and had no point of view. There was a strange masturbation undertone to it, which we all objected to.

At one point over lunch, while we all were arguing so fiercely with Clint, I came up with a great (or so I thought) idea for a video that people would surely pass along. I suggested we show Clint and me fighting over how to do our viral video. Clint would then walk away and I would (pretend to) spit in his sandwich.  When he came back, we’d continue to discuss the merits of Small & Mighty while he ate the sandwich. Of course, he rejected that gross idea and we did it all his way.

Because we all hated our viral video, going to the boardroom was uncomfortable and awkward. We were all so over Clint’s “leadership.”

Melissa was project manager of her team and their video was adorable. They took the words small and mighty literally and had midgets coming out of washing machines and dancing with shopping carts. It was cute, cute, cute! But the executives from All were upset with both videos: ours because it was so stupid, and Melissa’s because they used the term “midget” (even though they asked their actors for permission first).

Because neither team won, one person from each was fired: Tionne  and Khloe , from our team. (It should have been Clint!) It hurt me very much to see both women leave. They were great workers, and I guess it goes to show that snakes and connivers get places, and good girls sometimes finish last.

As we enter the seventh week, it’s getting down to the nitty gritty, and I feel like I should put aside trying to help the other contestants and just concentrate on winning—with humor! An undercurrent of trickery and guile is starting to permeate our environment. One of my biggest assets—and flaws I guess—is I say exactly what I think. I’m not much of a plotter.

This was the worst challenge so far, and it was the most unhappy that I have been since starting the show!

Our team was separated, and Melissa and I were split up. It was no longer the women vs. the men, and I tried to form new bonds with my teammates Clint, Natalie, Herschel and Khloe. The challenge was to create a viral video for All’s laundry detergent, Small & Mighty.  (Small & Mighty, by the way, was my nickname for Tom Cruise for years—who knew he also got your clothes clean!?)

Right at the start, I learned something new. I found out what a viral video was. I had thought it was a film you watched in sex education class to warn you about promiscuity and sailors on shore leave, but a viral video is actually a funny or amazing clip that gets passed along from person to person via email. (It has to be outrageous, like David Hasselhoff eating a cheeseburger on the floor  or Christian Bale’s tirade on the set of his latest movie.) Marketers have realized that ordinary people have the power to circulate these things better than any PR firm, and so All Small & Mighty wanted to capitalize on the phenomenon.

Clint was our project manager, and from the very start he took none of the team’s suggestions for the video. As writers working in a group, you bounce and bounce and bounce ideas until you come up with one you all love (or at least all like), but Clint was having none of this. I have never in my life worked with someone so dogmatic, so rigid and so dismissive. Clint ignored all of our ideas and did the video HIS WAY. I don’t know if it was because most of his teammates were women, but then why didn’t he listen to Herschel who is a very smart and successful businessman? After many attempts, my biggest contribution of the day was ordering lunch!

If you thought Groundhog Day was a dumb “holiday,” boy were you wrong. April Fools Day has to be one of the stupidest things that Americans choose to take part in. “Hello, Mrs. Schwartz...you have cancer.” HA HA HA!!! Just kidding.

Nevertheless, I decided to play some April Fools pranks of my own yesterday:

- I called Paris Hilton and told her all her tests came back negative.

- I pretended to be Amy Winehouse’s drug dealer and told her I was retiring.

- I sent Madonna an email saying the Congo is totally out of children…try Kenya.

- I called Mel Gibson and said his application to convert to Judaism had been approved, and welcome to the tribe!

Unfortunately, I fell for Bernie Madoff’s April Fools Day joke when he called me from prison to tell me where $2 million of his stash was buried. I spent all afternoon and ruined a perfectly good manicure digging holes in Central Park.