Traveling always comes with its own set of challenges. There’s packing, flight delays, screaming kids (whether it’s your own or someone else’s) just to name a few. But today I’d like to discuss one very specific thing I noticed after being on 4 flights in about 3 weeks.

Most of the time they keep the aircraft at a reasonably cool temperature. Sometimes it’s even downright cold and then you’re pissed. I was coming from Orlando where it was 9,374 degrees, so you try to be as close to naked as possible. Then you get on the plane and it’s a suddenly a comfortable temperature for a penguin. I know, just bring a sweatshirt. I find in the Orlando summer heat, the thought of even holding a sweatshirt gives me hot flashes.

So my second of the 4 flights I mentioned had the most challenges by far. We were flying from NY to Orlando, the flight was supposed to leave at 8:30PM. It left at 1:10AM. It was like an unintentional red eye with no time change to make it worth your while. And yes, our 5 year old was with us. She did shockingly well, as she thought “flying on a plane in the middle of the night was cool.” That, and I was so delirious I gave her like 7 more gummy worms than she would normally be allowed. Or it might have been 27. I didn’t care, as long as she was occupied and the number of “are we were there yets?” remained under 10. 11 and I feel the need to seek desperation refuge in the airplane bathroom made for the small minority of adults the size of Ariana Grande. You know how there are those breeds that have teeny tiny versions of their average size dogs? I think they’re called “toy,” so a Toy Maltese would be one example. Well, Ariana Grande is like a Toy Human.

Anyway, back to the pointless red-eye. The flight was relatively smooth and landed on time. When you land, you slowly taxi to the gate which I understand. But once you get there, they always shut off the air conditioning on the plane. Now given there are a lot of people all crammed into a metal cylinder, the temperature rises at an unbelievably fast rate. Like it can go from 70 to 90 degrees in like 3 minutes. I’m also someone who inevitably feels nauseous after the plane lands just from the motion. Now, I think most would agree that there are few worse feelings than being nauseous. Except being hot and nauseous. It’s like you’re already hot from being nauseous, and then someone throws you in a sauna where there are 3 screaming kids. Then you sit. And you wait. And you wait longer for people to get their luggage and GO!!! 5 minutes feels like 50 and you’re now nauseous, hot, frustrated, and it starts to smell bad…gas, BO, the tuna sandwich someone unwisely brought on the plane, their breath after. Just as you think you’re about to go postal, the line in the aisle starts to move and your sanity is saved. Until you get to baggage claim and they’ve lost your luggage. Why do people go anywhere?!?!

Anyway, I’m sure there’s a reason they can’t keep the air on while we wait to deplane, but frankly I don’t care what it is. It sucks. So whoever is responsible for me feeling as if I’m going to faint and barf at the same time, you are the douchebag of the day.

If you’re a parent, you probably have some experience with a pacifier. I know from friends that some kids can’t live without it, some are just bedtime suckers, and there’s everything in between.  My daughter, from what I hear, was one of the few that never wanted anything to do with it. And trust me, I tried. I remember one night at about 4am I was trying so desperately to shove that thing in her mouth to stop the crying. Not only would she not take it, every time she spit it out she would scream louder.  That was fun.

I know I’m lucky I didn’t have the problem some moms have where they have to wean their kids off the pacifier. I did however have another issue.  Wherever we would go, if Lily saw a kid with a pacifier, she will run up to them, grab it out of their mouth and throw it on the floor.  She literally couldn’t stand the sight of it.  It’s like she herself never embraced the idea of it, so she couldn’t for the life of her understand how anyone else would.  I guess if I really thought about it, I can relate in that when I see someone wearing a turtleneck, I just want to run up to them, rip it off and free them of the claustrophobic agony they must be enduring.  I don’t understand how people wear turtlenecks.  I know they can keep you warm in cold weather, but they would keep me warm in that I’d be sweating with anxiety as I felt myself being choked by a terribly aggressive cotton/polyester blend. In my mind turtlenecks are predators, and I steer clear of any and all kinds. Even the really expensive, soft, cashmere kind. Some might argue, material of that quality feels great on your neck, I still believe it to be an upscale chokehold.

Back to the pacifiers. So anywhere I would take Lily, I’d have to be on the lookout for a kid with a pacifier. While all moms keep their eyes peeled for anything sharp or breakable, I’m also scanning for binkys.  A bunch of us used to meet at the playground pretty often, and this one little boy Shane, probably the sweetest kid ever, always fell victim to Lily’s delinquency. Luckily his mom is the coolest and she saw the humor as opposed horror I felt seeing my kid, the binky bandit. It was right before she turned two, so not quite the terrible two’s, more like the mom needs lots of wine one’s. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got for raising a kid was, everything is a phase, so try not to get too upset about whatever it is. Thankfully the binky grabbing phase passed just like the ‘I want to wear my diaper over my pants otherwise I’ll scream for 20 minutes straight’ phase did.  If that phase lasted a day longer I would’ve ended up in a padded room.  Oh, and then there was that phase when she would throw every last piece of food I gave her on the floor. That phase almost landed me in jail.

Pacifiers, and while we’re at it, turtlenecks, you are the co-douchebags of the day.

Think about how many emails you receive in one day. For me I think it’s safe to say, for every 1 email I actually read, there are about 15 I immediately delete. Here are a few  examples. For a friend’s birthday I ordered her a box of chocolates from Godiva. She loved it, all was well. Since the day I placed the order, I get at least 3 emails per day from them telling me about new deals, gift ideas, etc.  And keep in mind, I did NOT check that box that says ‘please inform me of special deals, promotions, etc. What would’ve happened if I DID check the box?  Would I be getting like 30 emails a day? How much chocolate does one person need? (when they don’t have their period) I get it Godiva, your dark chocolate caramel balls are 30% off today.  And yesterday it was the white chocolate strawberry balls. One more email and I’m gonna kick somebody in the balls. (I know they call them ‘truffles’ but they’re round and it’s fun to say balls)

So while the Godiva emails are superfluous and annoying, Godiva, you are not today’s douchebag. That honor goes to OFF Saks 5th ave. For those who aren’t familiar, it is the outlet store version of Saks 5th ave. I know I sometimes bust on Orlando, but I will say, the outlet shopping is on point.  There are tons of stores and the deals are crazy.  And this coming from a Jew who isn’t easily impressed by most matzoh balls or deals. (The balls are usually too hard and the prices are usually still too high. I swear that’s the last time I’ll say balls.)  Anyway, a few months ago I went shopping at the OFF Saks outlet and got a bunch of stuff, at a very good deal. Ever since then I’ve been getting tons of promotion emails from them, often it’s like 60-70% off the already reduced price. Now keep in mind, a lot of this stuff comes from top designers, so the original prices are very high. But after all the discounts, some of these deals are too good to pass up. And what happens then is that you see these great bargains and end up buying stuff you don’t need.  At this particular time in my life, I pretty much wear workout clothes everyday. The irony is I barely work out. But I spend most days at the playground which is simply no place for a Diane Von Furstenberg romper.  Although, a romper is shorts so you could argue it would be a better choice than the Elizabeth and James dress I saw a few days ago. See, that was too easy. In about 2.6 seconds I convinced myself that the romper is go. Clearly it doesn’t take much which is why I curse all these emails that end up in my inbox. I know what you’re thinking, don’t look, just delete them. Now depending on your sexual preference, if I told you either Giselle Bunchen or David Beckham was standing naked in your bathroom, would you look?  For those of you who said no, you’re probably also never the one who uses the last of the toilet paper and then doesn’t replace the roll.  Lies people…they start small….

Today, as I opened my bargain basement cashmere sweater I ordered, even though I live in a place where the temperature rarely dips below 75 degrees and I get dressed up to go out about as much as a recluse, I decided that OFF Saks 5th ave, you and your evil and enticing emails are the douchebags of the day.

Today’s douchebag might seem unexpected. And truthfully, while I harbor ill will towards many of the other douchebags I write about, I don’t really harbor any towards this one. I just want to kick him in the balls for being so lucky.

Today’s DB is Chris Harrison. For those of you who don’t waste portions of your life on reality tv like I do, he’s the host of one of my favorite shows, The Bachelor.  And the truth is, I actually like him. He seems to have a hidden snarky side which I really appreciate in a person. The reason I’m calling him out is that I read online that he was worth 15.5 million dollars. Now I know you can’t believe everything you read, but whatever the number actually is, I’m sure it’s a lot. A large portion of that surely comes from his Bachelor salary.  Now, let’s break down what he actually does on the show. He shows up at the beginning of each episode while all the remaining contestants are sitting around the living room. He congratulates them for being there, tells them how many dates there will be that week, how many of them will be going home at the end of the week, and finally puts a ‘date card’ on the table.  In total he’s probably there about 60 seconds.  Ok, so far on a skill and difficulty level here’s where my head’s at. Growing up a neighbor of mine had a blue parrot named Steve. They were able to teach him to talk, and frankly I’m pretty confident that Steve could’ve handled Chris Harrison’s opening monologue. You know that expression, so easy a monkey could do it? Well, in this case it’s a parrot but either way, Chris Harrison is the luckiest bitch around.

Chris’ exit is followed by about an hour and a half of gratuitous hot tub scenes, cheesy helicopter rides, and pathetic admissions of love after dating for approximately 7 minutes. All of which in my opinion make it must see tv.  But I do think more people need to have sex in the ocean. The slutty girl from Ben Flajnik’s season did it, as did the emotional train wreck from Juan Pablo’s season.  Ocean sex equals drama. Drama equals ratings.  Ratings equals even more money for Chris Harrison.  My anger rages on…

Anyway, with about 20-30 minutes left in the show, Chris once again comes into the living room before the cocktail party starts. He points out the contestants with roses and acknowledges that they are safe at the upcoming rose ceremony. He reiterates how many people will be going home that night and wishes everybody luck. Once again, I believe this is something Steve could handle. I mean, he would’ve already had the ‘how many people are going home this week’ bit down pat from earlier.  I’m telling you, the bird would nail it.

Then comes the cocktail party which is always best when someone gets really drunk and makes a complete ass of themselves.  I particularly love when it’s a female contestant.  The drunk guy always ends up in the pool which is just not as fun as a sloppy drunk chick ugly crying uncontrollably behind a bush.  And more often than not her name is Ashley.

At some point Chris Harrison comes back out holding a glass of champaign and a spoon. He bangs the spoon on the glass indicating that the party is over and it’s time for the rose ceremony. Now I don’t know if I’ve ever banged a spoon on a champaign glass, but it doesn’t seem hard. He does create a pleasant sound and it’s pretty consistent from week to week. Maybe that’s why he’s worth millions.

Finally, he comes out at the rose ceremony and introduces the bachelor or bachelorette. He always gets his or her name right. I guess that’s something. And here’s where he really must earn his paycheck.  When there’s one more rose to hand out, Chris Harrison comes out again and says, ‘there’s one more rose to hand out.’  The man’s a genius. He gets paid an exorbitant amount of money to state the obvious. For that reason I am violently jealous, which is why I’ve named him the DB of the day.

You know who gets to share today’s DB title?  Vanna White. That robot/Barbie Doll still gets paid a lot of money to smile, clap, and illuminate vowels. Although having to fake laugh at Pat Sajak’s tragically corny jokes every night is at least worth a few grand. That said, she’s still a douchebag.

So here’s what happened. One night around 9:00 PM my entire house started to smell like we had set fire to 25 tires. The smell of burnt rubber was more overwhelming than the smell of nail polish in one of those cheap nail salons that has no ventilation and doesn’t clean their cuticle cutters.  Something similar had happened once before, just not as strong, and it turned out to be one of the motors in the air conditioning.  So we turned off the air conditioning in the house which was a problem because it was summer in central Florida and it’s so hot everyone’s lightheaded and a has pitt stains. Between the unbearable heat and the pungent smell that seemed to get worse even after we turned off the air conditioning, we had to get the hell out of our house and go to a hotel.

By the time we got out it was about 10 PM and the local hotel had no rooms, so we had to go to one 25 minutes away.  But first we had to wake my daughter out of a dead sleep. Now if someone wakes me out of a dead sleep before it’s time to get up, I will cut them.  I’m not one of those people that can fall asleep in like 30 seconds. I hate those people as much as I hate people who always look like they showered.  Anyway, we got to the hotel and went right to the front desk.  The guy gave us our room key and we headed up to the 11th floor. My husband was carrying Lily as he opened the room, we’re about to walk in when suddenly we hear a man’s voice scream so loudly the guy at the front desk probably heard, ‘What the fuck?!?!  What the fuck?!’  He must have said it like 4-5 times, with the volume increasing each time.  Now, it was totally dark in the room, I’m assuming the guy who was already was occupying this room was sleeping.  But whatever he was doing (or whoever he was doing) it was in the privacy of what he thought was his own room, and we had just busted in. Now this scared the shit out of me, and of course my daughter who is still asking me about the ‘scary dinosaur’ that yelled at her from that dark room.  My luck that ‘scary dinosaur’ will rear its prehistoric head and land her in therapy one day.  Now in case you’re assuming that the screaming guy is the douchebag of the day, he is not.  I would’ve reacted the same way, but probably would’ve also thrown a bedside lamp at the door, or something equally violent.  But I’ll tell you who IS the douchebag, the guy at the front desk who gave us the key to a room that was already being occupied by the ‘scary dinosaur.’ Now let me tell you something about my husband, he is a caring, extremely generous person, and in general pretty even tempered, as long as you don’t really piss him off.  If you do, he will fuck you up, verbally.  He’s Jewish, and from a young age Jewish boys usually arm themselves with fighting words in order to avoid physical fighting.  This is usually a result of the NJM (Neurotic Jewish Mother, myself being one of them) who often won’t even let their sons play football, let alone condone fighting, even in self defense. (It’s no coincidence that lots of Jews play tennis and golf). The wrath of an NJM would be 10 times worse than that any middle school bully. We went back to the front desk, my daughter was still really freaked out which upset us both so my husband let the verbal violence fly. Within 2 minutes we had a manager personally escorting us to a new room, but this time it was a large suite. Verbal violence victory for sure. However, the night in general was a loss since my daughter was up most of the night wondering what had just happened. One day when she’s actually old enough to hear word fuck, I will tell her the story of this particular douchebag of the day.

I’ve come to realize there are 2 things all babies pretty much love. Boobs and bubbles. The boob thing obviously kicks in right away with the breastfeeding.  I did it for 6 months, I’m glad I did it, but was very happy to be done with it. And it was very clear the day it was time to be done.  One morning I got up, started to to breastfeed, and there it was, my daughter’s first tooth.  If nipples could talk mine would’ve said, ‘And…..that’s a wrap.’  Later in the day I was at work (I had gone back full time at that point) and was in the lactation room pumping while on a conference call. Now mind you, I worked with probably 75-80% men. So there were 6 of us already on the call and my male boss was about to dial in the client.  But first he said, ‘Hope, um, I’m sorry, but is there any way you can put us on mute?  We can hear that machine making noise and it might be sort of awkward if the client hears it.’  I thought, you mean more awkward than I feel right now that you’re calling attention to ‘that machine’ that’s aggressively sucking the milk out of my engorged breasts so I can feed my child?  Sure, no problem.  Looking back, I probably should’ve put them all on mute from the beginning, but I’m convinced that along with the milk, somehow my brain cells got sucked out as well. My pregnancy brain wasn’t all that bad.  My breastfeeding brain was horrible. Think of the dumbest person you know. I was even dumber.

Now onto the bubbles where today’s douchebag comes in. I went to multiple mommy and me classes, and no matter what the theme of the class, it always ended with the teacher filling the room with bubbles. And without fail, every kid loves it.  When you think about it, it’s amazing that soapy water can make kids so happy. You want to be like, shit, enjoy it now. Life is full disappointment, at some point bubbles just aren’t gonna do it unless you’re looking at them while you’re high out of your mind.  Sure, I want my daughter to have a positive outlook on life, but I also want her to be realistic. Like my issue with some of these Disney princesses. Listen, if you’re gonna sit around and wait for prince charming to show up on a white horse you’re gonna be waiting a long time.  If you can find a guy who doesn’t fart too much, has something to say other than ‘nice ass,’ and shows up in a white Honda from this decade, you’re doing ok.

But back to the bubbles.  Adam and I were taking Lily to the park, and on the way we stopped at Walgreens to get toothpaste. Is anyone else always out of toothpaste like we are?  It’s like there’s a great white shark living in my house and he too brushes his 300 teeth twice a day.  Anyway, while in Walgreens I saw they had bubbles, so I bought them and brought them to the park.  When I pulled them out, Lily immediately had a huge smile on her face.  I dipped the wand into the liquid and started to blow. Nothing. I tried it again. Still nothing. (I’ve found in most cases, if you’re blowing on something and nothing happens, something is very wrong) Anyway, the look of disappointment on Lily’s face was enough to fire me up. And they have the nerve to call these things, ‘Super Miracle Bubbles.’  The real miracle is they’re still in business. Granted they cost 99 cents so I didn’t expect a bubble-palooza, but I did expect some semblance of a bubble. I looked to see where they were made, and it said, made in China. Now I don’t want to stereotype, because I’m sure there are some things that are made very well in China. I for one am a huge fan of the dumpling and their idea to take rice and fry it is just genius. But whoever is responsible for making these ‘bubbles,’ please stop and maybe try your hand at a pork bun. Whoever you are, you are the douchebag of the day.