Let me just paint my nails first.

Out of the kindness of my heart, I would like to share some well-lived and learned travel tips:

1. Never, ever paint your nails in someone else’s living room, no matter how good you think you are. When you do–I’m telling you the truth–it will inevitably be the first time in 25 years you have ever dropped an entire bottle of red nail polish, never mind that it was cream colored carpet or that you are a house guest and its your first day, or that, on top of everything else, you appear to be bleeding from the shin all week because you only brought 2 pairs of pants and you sure can’t fit into your jean capris after 20 bucks worth of airport food. Oh, and their house is on the market.

BUT if you decide, for some reason, to carelessly paint someone else’s carpet red, make sure you at least have a best friend who will not panic, who will google “carpet stains” while you run around whimpering No-no-no-no-no-no, who will gather all the nail polish remover, hair-spray, stain stick and carpet cleaners in the house and take turns scrubbing with you for 40 minutes. That’s a good friend.

2. If ever you try to bring 5lbs of baby clothes as a carry-on in a stretched-out plastic trash bag, you will not only be stopped at every security checkpoint along the way, inevitably the bag will break at gate A72 and your flight will be at gate A10, and when you reach the end of the two mile concourse with a heaping pile of baby clothes, you’ll spot a Mrs. Fields cookie stand and reward yourself with 6 cookies (that’s normal, right?) but as soon as you shove the first cookie in your mouth, they’ll announce that your flight was canceled and re-booking is at gate A46. You’ll look to your right and left and see, in slow motion, other passengers around you throw aside their chairs and sprint for the gate because there are only, like, 2 seats available on the next flight. Don’t worry though, you’ll have an edge. You can just follow the trail of 18-month onesies back to A46.

I would suggest that when the airline gives you 2 five-dollar meal vouchers, you just skip right over dinner and get busy at the chili’s bar with one or five of those giant sunrise margaritas, but you’ll find that when you walk away, crooked, pushing your giant holey trash bag on one of those squeaky little carts, you’ll get mistaken for a homeless bum, and people will stop to wonder how you even got in the airport off the streets of Detroit. Also, it’s best not to drunk dial your mom. She’ll just flip out and start saying things like ‘which gate are you supposed to be at, and when does the plane take off’ And you’ll be like, it’s cool mom, I’m sitting right here at A57. Nashville. She’ll remind you that you’re going to Indy and will hang up on you so you can go ask for some help (as IF anyone’s going to help the crazy drunk bag lady).

The lesson here is to always carry at least 12 hours worth of Kathy Griffin on your ipod in case of an emergency.