5 Pro Mom Triggers To Try At Your Own Risk

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Oh, Pro Moms. What a special breed. A group of women so headstrong and organized, they could easily have run Fortune 500 companies, but have elected to invest said energy into the (equally important!) task that is child rearing. They read the books, they listen to the podcasts, they buy the Montessori kits, they eliminate all traces of chemicals from their households and spend nights researching preschools that are most likely to catapult their peanut-size bundles of joy to Harvard. Mommy and Me is the equivalent to their weekly industry Happy Hour, the place they go to cross-reference integral developmental milestones, such as how many inches their baby can crawls in a two-minute time period. Here are some of the things I always secretly fantasized about saying to them.

“I didn’t sleep train.” (Lie.) Nothing is more triggering to Pro Moms than sleep training, which, in recent years, has become an industry in of itself, complete with Ferber methods and feng shui nursery gurus and 500 dollar mom shrinks masquerading as “sleep therapists.” (Tip: get yourself a fellow Pro Mom friend who pays for one and bombard them with questions). And yet, no matter how much money you spend to be reassured that letting your kid cry it out for a couple of nights won’t ruin their lifelong psychological and emotional well-being, there’s always a part of you that is convinced that you will. Hearing a fellow mother tell you that she selflessly forwent said practice at the expense of her own sanity is a stage 10 trigger.

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Pregnancy 101: Lessons From the Finish Line

Pregnancy 101_Dbag Dating

Oh, pregnancy. It is the thinnest of times (ref. first trimester morning sickness), it is the heaviest of times, it is the age of excitement, it is the age of complaints, it is the epoch of cute kicks and Jacadi gifts, it is epoch of farts and hemorrhoids, it is the season of anticipation, it is the season of endless waiting. In my case, it has also been the season of amassing information and making simplistic generalization, which, at week 39.5 of this glorious endeavor, I am finally ready to share with you guys.

1. You will be scared silly. 

The job of fancy private OBGYNs, other than delivering your baby, is to test you for every single condition under the sun, measure your baby at every geometric angle, and discover a few minor discrepancies from the so-called “norm” that will have you perusing forum boards late into the night. While it’s hard to stop yourself from freaking out, just remember that almost every pregnancy has some sort of minor complication, most of which are revealed only due to our overly meticulous western pregnancy monitoring practices. In the words of my mother while listening to my woes about percentiles, “Back in the day in Russia, they didn’t measure any of this stuff, and everyone turned out okay.”

P.S. The fancier the clinic, the more tests they will perform, and the more terrified you will be. Basic math. 

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My Dating Ghosts Past, Immortalized In Print!

Marina Khorosh_Love in Translation_Dbag Dating

I remember the day I received the email from the publisher. It was early 2017 and I was working for a company I secretly despised, when it landed into my mailbox, directed to myself and my (nonexistent) agent. Based on my reaction, I might as well have been invited to star in the new Batman, alongside Robert Pattinson. Here it was, I thought, my claim to fame, my escape route from jobs I secretly despised, an opportunity to wave a middle finger at the world as I catapulted to overnight stardom. (Because, you know, authors always become world-renowned stars overnight. Especially when they release books abroad.)

I responded in the time frame that you respond to a very lucrative date offer – not too quickly, yet not delaying it long enough for them to think I’m not interested. What came next was a year of crafting a book proposal, negotiating terms, translating a French contract, signing a French contract, followed by six months of procrastinating and about eight months of fervently penning the book. Over the course of these two years, I experienced a family loss, spent months reconnecting with my old life in Russia, went through a tumultuous relationship (followed by an equally tumultuous breakup), and endured a TMJ issue that sent me straight to limbo and back.

By 2019, I had enough material to fill a separate manuscript…and yet there I was, still micro-analyzing my romantic misadventures from 2013. The format of the memoir was simple: five years of my life, relayed through 12 romantic encounters that shaped me along the way, with each one teaching me a specific life lesson. As I delved deeper into each one, with the inimitable Jordan Nadler challenging me to search for bigger meanings and truer truths, I had no choice but to explore areas of myself that I had previously veered away from. I learned to understand my past, to recognize my patterns and my issues, to take a deep look at myself the mirror, torse-nu and under aggressive LED lighting. It was the most gruesome form of self-therapy, and yet, towards the end, I could feel myself arriving at a new kind of clarity. I knew exactly who I was, and I was okay with her. 

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This is How You Answer Your Hinge Questions

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I love Hinge. Actually, that’s an immense overstatement, as I happen to despise all dating apps by definition. Because, at 32 years old, I happen to despise dating. And yet, in an arena of punitive options, Hinge is somewhat of the lesser evil. For uno, the large majority of men seem clean, educated and gainfully employed. For dos, it obligates each user to fill out a set of questions, consequently enabling one to (somewhat) filter out the biggest narcissists and dullards.

The only downfall is that you can answer only three of them, which is quite unfair because of how fun and millennial they are! And so, I decided to utilize this platform to take a swing at a few more. There is no method to the madness, just gut instinct and an inherent penchant for self-sabotage.

(Dear Hinge marketing team, this is a sponsored post. Feel free to send me on vacation to Cartagena.)

I’ll fall for you if

You are moody and ever-so-slightly narcissistic.

What I’d like to know about you

Nothing much. But my mom wants a psychiatric evaluation.

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Don’ts for Wives: Life Lessons from 1913


DONTS FOR WIVES_DBAG DATING

About three months ago I was having a lovely dinner at a fancy  hotel restaurant in Santa Barbara. The birds were trilling, the moon was glowing, it was all romance and roses and impeccably starched napkins..  and the most sexist service I have experienced in 31 years on this planet (Dubai included).

You see, throughout the entire dinner, the waiter addressed exclusively my male companion, whom we will call Mister Frenchie. I was referred to simply as “the lady.” It went somewhat like this.

“We are so happy to have Mister Frenchie and the lady dining with us tonight!” 

“Excellent question Mister Frenchie!” (I had asked the question!)

“Would Mister Frenchie and the lady like to see the dessert menu?” 

I took every ounce of cheapness the lady had not to whip out her credit card and pay for Mister Frenchie’s very fancy ribeye steak, although something tells me that he would have been the one signing the credit card receipt.

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Optimism, Lost and Found

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Once upon a time, there was a blogger who went on a million bad dates, but she was a good sport about it, and she laughed them off, and she hoped for the best. And then, one day, Prince Charming came riding along on an Uber Luxe, and the rest was history..  

Sounds like the synopsis of an unfortunate Tinderella web series that never makes it into the second season? Not exactly. This naïve spiel happens to be my own long-standing inner narrative – at least, up until this past February.

To my credit, I had always been a dreamer, someone who favors crafting colorful storylines in lieu of facing reality in its bleaker palette. When I was little, I would ease the misery of Saint-Petersburg winters by mentally beaming myself into the Southern California world of my literary idol, Sweet Valley High’s Jessica Wakefield. Jessica’s life was never short on fun and glamour and excitement, and I resolved to one day live up to it, IRL.

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