I think I’ve mentioned before that I currently live in a swamp. And by swamp I mean Florida.

My husband (Adam) and I were going out to dinner on Saturday night. Everything was going well, in fact, I had my hair down for the first time in possibly 2 months, and had on cute underwear that goes way too far up my ass to wear on a weekday. We got in the car, started driving, and suddenly Adam stopped the car and screamed as if he saw a ghost. It wasn’t a ghost, it was a big fucking frog that decided to leap into our Lexus. Adam immediately opened his door and frantically began to “shoo” this swamp creature out of our car. I will admit, it was pretty amusing watching my ‘guy’s guy’ husband have a total girly freak out. And for the rest of the night I called him Adaline which was fun. But seriously, who finds a frog in their freakin car?! People who live in a swamp. That’s who.

Now you’re probably not going to believe the next part of this story because of the timing, but even I couldn’t make this shit up. So the next morning it was early and I had to pee. I drink an inordinate amount of water therefore peeing at 5am is a common occurrence. I stumbled into the bathroom, did my business, still half asleep, grabbed the toilet paper roll (the toilet paper holder has been broken for months. I’m one of those people who just learns to deal with things when they’re broken. In one of my early NYC apartments I once sat in the dark for several months because the light switch was broken and my super had disappeared. It was strangely calming and gave me a new appreciation for the Amish) Anyway, it was still pretty dark in the bathroom when I went to grab the toilet paper. As I lifted it I quickly realized there was something sitting on it, more specifically, a lizard. WTF? Why are these swamp creatures invading my personal space? Has this lizard decided that taking a shit on the grass is too primitive for him? Am I going to find him next on my reclining chair enjoying a cold beverage? It was way too early for me to deal with swamp life, so I got back in bed, woke Adam up and told him what happened. His response was, you really have to keep the doors closed. That infuriated me because truthfully there are an insane amount of lizards outside my house and just walking in and out is an open invitation for these rugged reptiles to invade my space. So I suggested to Adam that I somehow acquire magical powers that allow me to teleport myself in and out of the house so I don’t have to open the door. His response was, just like the swamp life, it was also too early for my sarcasm. In my opinion it’s never too early for sarcasm.

Given that within a 12 hour period, I was unexpectedly faced with 2 reptiles in my natural habitat, not theirs, Florida is today’s douchebag of the day. And for the record, I get it’s sunny here, but right now I thinking it should be, Florida. The Swamp state.

So we rented our last 2 houses, and one of the perks is that the owner pays for all the maintenance on the house, including the pool, so once a week a guy would come and take care of it.  I definitely saw him here and there, but never actually had a conversation with him. It’s not that I wouldn’t, it just hadn’t happened. The truth is, being a stay at home mom right now, I seriously crave adult conversation. I find it’s getting harder and harder to act interested when Lily tells me that Elsa has to wear the purple dress because Anna is wearing her pink dress, but Elsa really wants to wear the orange and yellow dress that Cinderella is wearing.  And they all want new sparkly shoes. Sure I smile and act totally interested, but in my head I’m thinking, I just don’t give a crap what any of these bitches are wearing, and frankly, that side-braid Elsa has is on my last nerve. I don’t know why, it just is. And while I’m at it, it’s time to cut Rapunzel’s damn hair.  I’d like to modernize the story, instead of her ‘letting down her hair’ so the prince can climb up, how ’bout we send a top tier hairdresser up instead to cut off about 3 feet, and add some layers.  Hell, she might even have the face for a textured bob.  And all the excess hair can make a bunch of wigs for kids with cancer.  Boom!  Modern with a message.

So one day I was out back playing with my daughter when the pool guy happened to come.  I said hello, he said hello back and then asked me if I had gotten the note he had left me. I said no as I had not seen a note from him.  He said he had left me one asking us to fill up the pool a bit as the water was too low. I guess it can affect the motor or some shit like that. He then asked me if I had gotten any of the notes he had left me over the past couple months, again I responded no.  I asked him where he’d been leaving them and he showed me.  If I was trying to hide something from someone, I would put it where this guy was leaving these alleged notes.  It was behind this outdoor bar we have, in the corner, and the only thing there is a spiderweb due to lack of use.  My confusion over his note placement was probably obvious when I asked what these notes said. He told me that sometimes he has to treat the pool with certain chemicals and advises people not to swim for a certain amount of time after.  Well that’s just perfect, we take Lily in the pool a lot so chances are she was swimming with the chemicals, and then there’s her penchant for swallowing pool water. I bust my ass to buy organic and always made all her damn food from scratch, only to discover she’s ingesting sodium-bisulfate and muriatic acid.  Thinking about that seriously made me want to leave my pool guy a very conspicuous note telling him he’s a dick.  But wasn’t going to happen, so I just shot him passive aggressive dirty looks and today I’m making him the` douchebag of the day.

Today’s douchebag is not an entire person, just a portion of a person. You’ll understand once I delve into the story.

When I first moved to Florida we were renting a house and day 1 we pull up, granted I’m already totally freaked out about moving to a city that houses ‘the happiest place on earth,’ because frankly too much happiness gives me hives.  But there we were, getting our stuff out of the car and suddenly a woman, a very attractive woman, jogs over to us. Now, let me further explain that not only was she overall very attractive, she was wearing tiny spandex shorts and a sports bra. And her body, specifically her 6 pack abs was nothing less than perfection. Now this woman fits right in at the happiest place on earth, her abs alone give her 6 things to be happy about.

Well, turns out she was our new neighbor. PERFECT.  So every time I saw her jogging with her six pack, it reminded me that not only did I have a ‘no pack,’ at the time, I couldn’t even show off my abs if I wanted to. After I had my daughter, for a while I had a bad back and had to wear a hideous support belt. Picture a girdle from 1946 worn by an older woman who ate way too much cheese. So now picture me and my back girdle standing next to Patty Perfection and her six pack abs. Tragic. It turns out she was very nice, and the next day she brought us over these delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies. So Patty Perfection was also Martha Stewart minus the jail time. Yay. Secretly I wanted to make her eat the entire tray of cookies plus 10 more in hopes that her 6 pack would diminish to maybe a 4 pack. At least that would give me 2 things to be happy about here at the ‘happiest place on earth.”  Maybe I should get a job playing Snow White or Cinderella. Those bitches are always so happy. I want whatever they’re smoking.

Anyway, like I said, my neighbor was actually very nice, so just her abs are today’s douchebag of the day. They still taunt me. All 6 of them.

Today’s douchebag’s feelings won’t be hurt, because she has no feelings. She’s the voice of the GPS in a rental car.  Quick backstory, my husband and a bunch of his college friends go on a golf trip every year. Each year they pick a different city that has noteworthy golf courses and spend time as they say eating, drinking, bonding, and golfing. Now clearly that’s a bunch of bullshit, they do it to get away from their wives and kids for a few days. And that’s fine, us girls need that sometimes too, we just don’t get to do it once a year like our asshole husbands.

I kid, they’re actually a great group of guys.  For their 40th birthday blowout they chose Pebble Beach in California, and decided to invite the wives.  I was excited because all the wives are incredibly cool, those Ivy League nerds did very well for themselves. The wives all came with different ideas of how they wanted to spend the days. Some wanted to bike, hike, take tours and learn new things. I learned one thing about myself a long time ago, while as humans, our closest relative is supposedly the ape, I think in my case it’s not. It’s the sloth.  Innately, I like to sit on my ass whenever possible, especially while on vacation. Just give me a lounge chair by the pool and/or beach and I won’t get up unless I really have to pee.  Ladies, you know that feeling when you’re holding your pee for so long and finally it’s like, you feel that first drop desperately trying to escape your vagina it almost becomes painful?  That’s when I’ll get up to pee.

Anyway, one thing a bunch of us girls have in common is we like to shop. So one day we headed out to Carmel, a quaint local town with great shopping that was about 10-15 minutes away.  One of the girls said she would drive so we all hopped in her car.  There were 3 of us in the car, the girl driving requested the person who sat in the passenger seat help navigate. Here’s the deal, Helen Keller had a better sense of direction than me so I quickly went to the backseat. We plugged an address into the GPS and took off. It started out ok, but quickly went awry. We realized we’d been driving for 20-25 minutes and still no sign of the town. We continued on, attempting to follow this woman’s directions as she sounded so full of herself with her British accent and all. It’s like, you’re telling me when to turn left, you’re not the Duchess of York so get off your fucking high horse. Anyway, another 10 minutes passed and we quickly realized we had just made a complete circle and were pretty much back where we started.  Suddenly we hear the Duchess of York wannabe say, “You have reached your destination. Please pull over and exit the car.”  We looked around, clearly we weren’t at our destination, there was no town, shops, or restaurants in sight.  This bitch literally gave up on us. Like, listen you idiots, I could drone on for another 2 hours and you morons still won’t get there so just cut your losses get the hell out of the car.  We were so pissed, I wanted to fight her. I quickly realized her being computer generated meant fighting wasn’t an option. I would’ve kicked her ass.

Shout out to my girls Sam and Alexis for actually getting us there. Had it been up to me we might’ve ended up in Compton instead of Carmel. GPS lady, you are without question, the douchebag of the day.

Today’s douchebag, or potentially douchebags, are the people that make the rice cakes I buy at Whole Foods. The name of the brand is escaping me, but my anger isn’t. I’ve recently gone gluten free for health reasons. And I can assure you it’s not because Gwyneth Paltrow told me to on her website, Goop. She also recently told people that if they’re in LA, they should go to this place where they can steam clean their vagina. Sorry Gwyneth, if I’m getting something steam cleaned it’s going to be an area rug, not my vagina.  I know she and her ex-husband Chris Martin said they ‘consciously uncoupled,’ but my guess is that he consciously ran the fuck away from that crazy bitch.

But back to the rice cakes. The reason I’m so annoyed (besides the fact that most things annoy me) is that this is the 3rd time this happened. I go to open the rice cakes which have become a staple in my gluten free diet.  I know some people say after a few weeks of cutting out gluten they don’t even miss it.  I’m not one of those people.  If a basket of hot, fresh bread comes to the table at a restaurant, I still want to stick my face in it and motorboat the hell out of those warm rolls.  Anyway, I go to open the rice cakes, and much to my dismay, the plastic seal around the cakes was already broken.  I’m a child of the 80’s, and I remember all too well a Halloween or 2 where the fear of God was instilled in me. My mom must have said about a million times, ‘only eat the candy that’s properly wrapped!!’  There was this scare going around that there were razors in some of the candy. It was so frightening, even more frightening than my neighbor who every year dressed up as a slutty nun. Let’s just say the size of her habit, was better suited for a hobbit. I managed to live through “razor-gate,” but every time I buy a food item that looks like it could’ve been tampered with, I fear the end is near.

The only thing saving me from thinking I might get poisoned is that the rice cakes have another plastic wrap over the broken plastic seal. Granted the outside plastic is just tied up, and any lunatic could easily open it and tie it back up, but I choose to ignore that fact. The bottom line is, people risk their lives all the time.  Some climb the highest mountains, others jump out of planes, some race cars up to 200 mph. Me…I eat partially opened packages of rice cakes.  This gluten free thing has really brought out my dangerous side. Before you know it I might even start trying those free samples they leave out at Whole Foods for any serial killer to tamper with.

Rice cake people, you and your pitiful packaging are the douchebags of the day.