Today’s douchebag is Rachael Ray. Right off the bat it irritates me that she has to put that extra ‘a’ in her first name. But I guess I should take that up with her mother since she named her. So Rachel with an extra A claims to have these 30 minute meals. She claims that each of these meals can be executed from start to finish in 30 minutes or less. She has a show on the Food Network where she demonstrates this.  Shocking as it might be, I love watching cooking shows. Shocking because my domestic abilities are severely lacking, and it was obvious from a very young age. In 6th grade, I had a home economics class and 2 of our projects were to sew sweatpants and make a meal using rice. My sweatpants ended up only having 1 leg and I asked the teacher if I could just order in Chinese takeout rather than stand over the stove.  Crap, now I’m craving moo shoo chicken from Shun Lee in NYC and I’m pretty sure they don’t deliver to Orlando.

So back to Rachael Ray and her 30 minute meals. I decided to try one of these meals out one night, and here’s what I quickly realized. On the show she’ll be like, “So now we just need to peel and cut these potatoes, chop the parsley, and slice the onion.”  Just as she starts peeling the first potato, she says, “I’ll finish all this and see ya back here in a few.”  This is when she cuts to commercial. So then about 3-4 minutes go by, and when she comes back from commercial, miraculously all her potatoes are peeled and cut, her parsley is chopped, and her onions are sliced. And if you look at her face, not a tear in her eye. I’ve cut onions a few times. After I look like just watched the movie Beaches while PMS, and if I had camera-ready makeup on, my mascara would be running so much I’d look like a zombie chef. I have a sneaking suspicion there was a non-paid intern running around looking like he or she watched Beaches, or since the intern is probably half my age and never heard of ‘Beaches,’ let’s go with ‘The Notebook.’ Who’s she kidding, most of her stuff is peeled, washed, and chopped for her.  And even if she did do some of it herself, she’s a professional, I’m not, clearly it would take me much longer. It would be like asking Lindsay Lohan to spell. It’s just not in her skill set.

I have no problem with Rachael teaching us how to make these meals, and appreciate her attempt to make them quick and easy, but don’t promise 30 minutes and make me feel inadequate when it takes me 44 minutes.  Call the show “30 minute or so meals.”  Or “30 minute-ish meals”.  She also invented something called the “spoonula” which is half spoon, half spatula that she often uses. Let’s face it, it’s a total red-headed stepchild  to the “spork” which is just plain awesome. For all these reasons, Rachael Ray, you are the douchebag of the day.

The other day I went to the gym, which I don’t do nearly enough.  And what I witnessed might deter me from ever going again.  I got onto my elliptical machine, put on my ipod, and started my workout.  It’s amazing what music can do to motivate you.  And when it comes to workout music I have no shame.  Britney Spears, J-Lo, hell, I even have an old school Debbie Gibson song on there.  Oh, now she goes by DEBRA Gibson.  It’s like, really?  So few people know who you are anymore, you’re gonna change your name and further lessen your chances at recognition?   Anyway, there I was, jamming away to “I’m a Slave For You,” when suddenly out of nowhere I hear a loud and extremely disturbing noise.  It was coming from my right side so I turned to see what it was.  Much to my dismay, it was coming from the guy on the machine next to me.  He was making this noise that I would describe as half grunt, half howl.  And the look on his face was incredibly disturbing.  Almost too disturbing to talk about.  It was as if he was in pain, but in some freaky way kind of enjoying it.  Then the most unfortunate part of the incident happened.  I started to wonder if this was that guy’s “sex face!”  And the constant grunting/howling was not helping my mental picture.  Truth is, I don’t want to see anyone’s “sex face.” I was officially repulsed, but I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it no matter how hard I tried.  I only had 6 minutes left to do on my machine, but being next to this freak show it would feel like 6 hours.  I just don’t get it, if you’re really struggling that much just lower your machine’s incline, don’t act like you’re humping it!! 

So with 4 ½ minutes still left on my machine, I got my stuff together and got the hell out of there.  But I will tell you, it took a good couple hours for me to get that horrendous visual out of my head.  “Sex faces” should be kept in the privacy of your own home. They have no place out in public.  Oh, and I noticed the guy was wearing a wedding band.  I wonder if his significant other knows he’s having sex face with everyone at the gym.  Takes nerve.

And so today’s Douchebag of the Day….well, you know, please don’t make me relive it.

This one writes itself.

So the other night I went into the bedroom after my daughter went to bed only to find my husband doing something he’s been doing far too often lately. Watching The Martian. I’ve still never watched the entire thing, but have seen bits and pieces. I’m not saying it’s not a good movie, I just don’t get why Adam feels the need to have it on so often. First of all, why are the cable channels playing it so much to begin with? Are there other weirdos like my husband that like to watch Matt Damon improvise a farm with Martian soil fertilized with human waste upwards of 3 times a week? It’s like that movie Cast Away. Again, good movie, but by the second hour of watching a freakishly hairy Tom Hanks make small talk with a volleyball you’re like, ok, someone please come rescue us all. Big props to Matt, or I guess I should say Mark, his character in the movie, for making it work on Mars, but frankly I’m sick of looking at that damn space suit. I could never have been an astronaut for a variety of reasons. My motion sickness and the inordinate amount of times I have to pee in a short time frame make even a road trip to south Florida challenging. A space mission to Mars? No thanks. Not to mention, those helmets would make me insanely claustrophobic and I think gravity is underrated. You know what else is underrated? Sauerkraut. The probiotic bacterias in sauerkraut are very useful to digestion and it’s a great accompaniment to a plethora of meats. But as usual, I digress.

Back to fake space missions. I guess I can relate in that I went through a phase many moons ago where I was watching the movie Pretty Woman WAY too often when it was on TV constantly. Not only did I know every word of dialogue, there’s one scene when Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts to the opera (she’s wearing that fab red dress) and I could even “sing” along to the damn opera. Side note, I will go see a quality musical, play, or ballet any day of the week. But opera, not so much. While I appreciate the talent, the thought of listening to that high pitch vibrato ringing in my ears for upwards of four hours straight is well…horrifying. No disrespect to the Scottish, but another thing that makes my ears hurt are the bagpipes. Now that I’m thinking about it, if given the choice, would I sit through 4 hours of opera or bagpipes? Honestly, I might choose death.

Anyway, I’m seeing Matt, Mark, whatever you want to call him make his way around Mars way too much these days. I need some space from this particular space mission. So since I want to save making Adam the DB of the day for the times he REALLY earns it, today, cable executives, it’s all you. You run The Martian that much, you’re going to be the douchebags of the day.

Before you start reading, make sure you’ve taken a close look at the accompanying visual. And I’m not talking about the fact that the actual visual is on it’s side. That’s only because I’m a technological moron and I don’t know how to make it right side up. Lean your head sideways and you’ll see what I guess you’d call an enormous potted plant in my backyard. Given it’s positional likeness to a certain tower in Pisa, my husband and I named it the Leaning Plant of Orlando. Now here’s the deal, this plant has been leaning this way for quite some time now, exactly how long I couldn’t tell you. I noticed it a few weeks prior, but there’s a solid chance it had been like that for a while before I noticed. My mom once came over to an apartment I was living at in NYC, and immediately said, Hope, haven’t you noticed that half your ceiling in the kitchen is cracking, probably from a leak above you? The truth is no, I hadn’t noticed, and my reasoning was, why while in the kitchen would I ever look up? If something doesn’t affect my everyday life I pay very little attention to it, and I’m not a neat freak where everything has to look perfect. It’s quite the opposite, frankly I’m a hot mess. If neat freaks are type A, I’m innately type Z, but having a kid I’ve tried to up myself to like a solid M with the ultimate goal being like an, I or J.

So when I first took notice of this leaning plant, I showed Adam, who like me, is hovering around a Type N or O, and didn’t think much of it either. It also helps that we were renting the house so didn’t take much pride or satisfaction in the landscaping in general. However, the owner did pay for the landscapers to come on a regular basis to keep everything in check. So when we noticed a week or 2 went by, clearly the landscapers had come and the plant was still leaning, we thought it was perhaps a bit odd. I know what you’re thinking, why didn’t myself or Adam just push the damn plant upright? It’s a fair question. I could say, there are better things I could be doing with the 30-45 seconds it would probably take, but that would clearly be a bunch of bullshit. The honest answer is, we just didn’t, and then it almost became a thing, like how many times would these landscapers come and not push it up themselves. Something of a stand-off, like in the old wild west, who’s gonna pull their gun first and shoot. Sure one could result in death while the other a more aesthetically pleasing visual, but you get the analogy.

The stand-off continued for weeks on end, and the leaning plant of Orlando continued to lean. It even started to look as if it was leaning on a more severe angle which is when Adam and I took bets on when it would actually fall over. It didn’t. At that point we just appreciated it for what it was. It’s like sometimes you learn to appreciate something a little off or wonky about someone. Like if they have one eye that’s bigger than the other, it becomes endearing and what makes them, them. My nose used to be a little wonky, but when I was 19 I got a nose job. So there goes that theory. Well, it’s endearing on some people. Anyway, at the end of the day, the landscaper’s job is to make the grounds look their best. I don’t think wonky was what they were going for, I think it was just laziness. So landscape dudes, you are the douchebags of the day.

I’ve mentioned before that the only thing worse than my driving skills is my sense of direction. Those combined make me a detriment to myself and frankly, anyone on the road. It’s interesting to me how much people love their cars and driving. One of the reasons I loved living in NYC is there was no need for a car. You walk, which I enjoy, take the subway which means no traffic and great people watching, or you throw your hand in the air, a cab picks you up and takes you anywhere you need to go. Sure the subway platform can get steamy, and some cabs smell like a hairy post-workout armpit, but I’d still choose either over driving everywhere. Anyway, recently my husband took our daughter Disney. I go sometimes, but it’s sort of their thing. He works and travels a lot so it’s a great bonding thing for them. He obviously goes because it makes her very happy, but he enjoys it too. I appreciate Disney for what it is, but I like it in small doses. Like once every 3-4 lifetimes would be good.

So they were driving home from Disney, and maybe 5 minutes into the drive they got a flat tire. Adam called to tell me, and my response was, did you call AA? His response back was, while there are probably many recovering alcoholics that are capable of changing a tire, he did not in fact reach out to any of them. One thing that attracted me to Adam was his biting wit and sarcasm, except when it’s directed at me. Clearly I meant AAA, but he said that since they were so close, someone from Disney was actually going to come help them. I asked if it was going to be the genie from Aladdin granting him a wish of a new tire. He said yes, once the genie finishes up at his AA meeting, he’s gonna head over. My husband’s an asshole. But I love him.

My car is leased, so the next morning I dropped it off at the dealership so they could fix/replace the tire. I had a loaner car for the day which my daughter pointed out was “so clean mommy.” My car looks as if someone’s been living in it for an extended period of time. Later that afternoon I go to pick it up, and they tell me they were able to fix the tire. I said great, but before i left I asked the guy exactly when my lease is up. He looked up my file and said while it’s not up yet, he might be able to swing getting me something new sooner than later. He took forever to find the guy I needed to talk to, finally he did but the computers were down. At that point I’d eaten one of each of the available snacks in the waiting area, so I told him we’d chat about it another time. I was about to ask where my car was when another guy came over and said, I’m sorry, but someone checked your car again, and it turns out the tire is not actually safe, we need to install a new one. OK, so had I not stayed around inquiring about a new car, I would’ve driven off with a fucked up tire. Again, I’m a below average driver with 4 good tires, 1 tire down, I don’t stand a chance. But all kidding aside, it was really dangerous and disturbing, which is what Adam thought when he called them and as he said, “went nuts.” I don’t know what he said, but when I picked up the car the next day they didn’t charge me a dime and apologized profusely.

Sorry Lexus people, you dick around when it comes to my driving, you’re definitely the douchebags of the day.