Lisa Frank never warned me about this

Guess what , kids?  It's that time of year again!  BACK TO SCHOOL!  Every year at this time, we ask ourselves and everyone around us one very poignant question.  "Where did summer go?"  We've all successfully personified summer into our dear friend or lover who, the night before school starts, decides its had enough of our cut off shorts and late nights at the beach, packs its bags and leaves for Mexico.  We're heartbroken and left stumped, looking around wildly for any explanation as to why summer may have deserted us.  Did the past 3 months of sun bathing and whining about the heat mean NOTHING to summer? I really thought we had something special.  But it's time to move forward into that next chapter of our year....ya know the one that smells like eraser marks and bus emissions.

However, this particular fall has actually caught me completely off guard.  For the first time in my entire cognizant life, I will not be returning to school.  Scanning those aisles of school supplies in Walmart that crop up like shanty towns somewhere around the much too premature second week of August has always evoked a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach.  But this year as I felt the urge to buy a 50 pack of Bic pens and a Lisa Frank notebook, I realized that I really had no use for them.  If I thought I knew metaphorical school supply panic before, I was sorely mistaken.  You see, the day you graduate college, you most likely haven't slept in the past 3 weeks what with finals, packing, and saying goodbye the only way you know how...drinking yourself into a stupor on a Tuesday night at a bar named after a drunken farm animal with your friends.  And so you return to the sanctuary of home nursing the bags under your eyes and your malnourished body after 4 years of a strict diet of Lean Pockets, toaster strudel, and tequila.  A job??? Psh. You'll get one of those.  You have two whole Bachelor degrees, Neil Young once said "Hi" to you, and your hair is extra shiny.  No probs here.

Then after weeks of practically stalking employees on LinkedIn who work your dream job, scouring Monster.com, and therapeutically shopping your way into credit card debt, you realize this job hunt might kill you.  Or get you a restraining order.  And then come the interviews.  The soul-sucking, bullshit-inducing questions like "tell me about a time you were a great leader", "how would your friends describe you?", "how do you feel about data entry slavery? Pro? Anti?"  Which leads to greater questions within yourself like, What the hell am I doing with my life?, Should I just run away to Guatemala and cultivate cocoa beans?  Where do cocoa beans grow? ....The bottom line is, though, you just want someone to like you and your shiny hair enough to pay you and your two degrees above the poverty line.  Thank you for your kind offer, sir or ma'am, but I feel like that ditch on the West Side Highway off Canal St. is too much of a fixer upper for my real estate taste.

So fellow graduates, this beginning of fall, when you WOULD be headed back to school in that fluffy land of learning, you are instead back home fighting with your mom over when you will detonate the dog crap minefield called the back yard...and by the way, the pooper scooper is broken.  This fall stirs a panic far more frightening than anything a 3 ring binder can induce.  This fall marks the end of carefree, you-still-have-time summer.  This fall means one thing: we are officially unemployed.

50 Shades of Confused: A book review.

In the lull and laziness of my family beach vacation last week, I was in my usual voracious reader mode.  I tackled a great classic because I feel that everyone should have a grasp on some truly genius old literature, a witty best-seller recommended by Anderson Cooper because I want to slip it into conversation the night we meet, compelling him to have no choice but be straight and fall in love with me since our reading habits are so in tune, and FINALLY...Fifty Shades of Grey because I needed to see what all the damn fuss was about.  I gotta say that I was actually a little embarrassed to be reading the thing.  Every time I heard some horny old lady talk about it at the hair dressers or my horny best friend blush over the fictional sex addict, I felt a sense of superiority in that I hadn't read it...and yet secretly I was dying to join their smutty world.  And so on an undisclosed beach in North Carolina, with my visor pulled over my eyes and 50 Shades downloaded on my Nook so no one could identify a cover, I started.

Now I don't describe myself as a prude...not even close... but this book really rubbed me the wrong way...sexual innuendo absolutely included.  First and foremost, this book is TERRIBLY written.  I would love to purchase that woman a better thesaurus with an instruction manual outlining, in cave man English and a few subliminal messages, how to use it.  (Find word. See more word. Stop writing. Forever.) She also attempts to recreate how hip, young Seattleites might talk when in reality every character reads like the same 73 year old woman from Surrey.  I don't THINK I'm a literature snob, but I only read well-written books.  This isn't necessarily by chance, but more just through good judgement.  For example, if you're in line at the grocery store and you see a book with the cover featuring a bare-chested Fabio with hair longer and blonder than your own, I would suggest skipping over that one and opting for something on the Pulitzer Prize list.  Hell, consult Oprah if you must.  I once accidentally skimmed a Lauren Conrad novel in a Barnes & Noble and lost 13% of my brain cells and could only speak with a valley girl accent for the next 48 hours.  Poorly written books are no joke and should be banned.

With this said, the book sort of mind-ninja'd me somehow.  Christian Grey seeped into my consciousness without me realizing and suddenly I couldn't tell the difference between reality and fiction.  I went shopping and picked up a card that I thought Christian might find funny.  I made mental notes to tell him about pieces of my day.  I went to text him wondering why he wasn't listed in my contacts ...oh yes. BECAUSE HE DOESN'T EXIST.  I was mortified that such a shitty book could actually affect me.  I was also mortified that I was highly disappointed to come back to reality.

But no, Christian Grey is not real because he lives among the pages of a novel written by a kinky old bat.  And the brass tacks fact is that if Christian Grey WERE real, I don't think I'd actually be into him.  I don't know...call me old fashioned, but if a dude shows up at my house unannounced without me previously giving him my address and then proceeds to smack me and stick metal balls up my beaver, I'm sorry but I'd be running...no wait...SPRINTING for the hills.  Probably even beyond the hills.  No guy is hot enough to stick around for that crap, it's not hot.  It's not even kinky.  It's DEMEANING.  Sure Ana battles with "the right thing to do", but honestly, the right thing to do is have a little respect for yourself and move on.  In math terms, anything times zero always equals zero. No exceptions.  In man terms, ostentatiously rich, power hungry, emotionally unavailable men who get off with you on your knees avoiding eye contact, always equals douchebag.  No exceptions.

Despite all my qualms with the mindless protagonist, I know I have to read the second one. I can't just leave her hangin', especially in such a  fragile state!  Not to mention since I'm a single, unemployed woman with one friend to my name in a 50 mile radius, I'm obviously not gettin' any myself.  Might as well read someone else's tedious description of their fictitious canoodlings.  And maybe on my way to the library to reserve the next installment, I'll pick up a few hundred cats as well.

I'm single and I know it

Last night I went out with a group of old high school friends...with their group of significant others in tow for happy hour.  Maybe I'm overly sensitive to my single status, but I couldn't help feeling like the lone Yankee fan in a sea of Red Sox hats.  Just the left flip flop.  The sore thumb.  While my best friend attempted to console my irrational fear of being singled out...no pun intended...I couldn't help but feel anything but awkward.  The happy couples were all equally charming and sweet; milling about speaking to everyone, but always coming back to each other to steal a kiss, a little reminder of their love in the crowded, noisy bar.  Once during the night, someone asked me about my boyfriend and if he still lived in LA.  I'm sure I looked a little confused as I explained that there was no Mr. Caitlin Skelly...on the west coast or otherwise.  Although she made a valiant attempt, the girl who questioned me couldn't seem to straighten her face out of her own perplexed twist in time for me to not notice, or pass it off as gas.  No boyfriend?! At one point I thought I had met a kindred single spirit in a girl who hadn't boomeranged back to any of the button down clad men for a smooch.  And then she mentioned how much her husband would love the bar...if only he could have made it.  Ah, yes. Married.  So there I stood, Chardonnay in hand in the midst of vodka cranberries and beers, warily concerned about my pinky inadvertently sticking out and any unnecessary sashaying that may increase the notion that I've become that swinger chick who moved to LA and who now thinks that she's better than everyone in her singledom - which by the way could not be further from the truth.  Well, the latter half at least.

 I'm just not used to being around large groups of relationshipped people.  My friends in California and I forge into our Friday nights with battle cries of "GIRLS' NIGHT!!!" Well of course it's girls' night.  There are no constant men in our lives to inhibit it...therefore making basically every night of our lives girls' night.  And yet we insist that this particular weekend is something singular and special...which ironically is much like how we would describe ourselves.  We cling to the comfort that we have each other to call when that guy stood me up, or the one who forgot to mention the 4 year relationship he was currently in with his girlfriend, or even the one who cheated and casually mentioned it over a dinner out while the beef bourguignon was being served.  Being single has not become a form of leprosy.  It just means that we haven't found a guy who will show up, be single himself, and remain faithful.  The right flip flop.  And above all it means that we single folk should go out and enjoy the company of those who HAVE found the match, and bask in our table-for-oneness alongside their honeymooning.  Because hey, you know you've seen this week's Real Housewives of New Jersey twice already.