Dance the night away!

Back-to-School Essay

WHAT I LEARNED ON MY

SUMMER VACATION

1. Blogging is as addictive as cocaine. You try commenting a few times, decide you'll only check other people's blogs once or twice a week, then you make the leap to your own habit: getting a blog. Pretty soon you're commenting obsessively, changing your template, checking people's blogs hourly hoping for that new post...just a few more comments...or better yet, pics & imagery. Suddenly, blogging has taken over your life and you can't remember what life used to be like before every social event or weird occurence/interaction became blog fodder: I could totally pair that story with a bizarre 80's movie poster! Are there blog rehabilitation centers? Blogging has changed my internet landscape and I want to know what it feels like to be normal again.

2. I think I chose the wrong career. I had an absolute blast crafting this summer, be it comic book design or pancake art while babysitting, bizarro collages for hate packages, ransom note-style party invites, and the one or two pics I took at various events this summer. I'm beginning to wish I was a professional craftsgirl, if that title even exists? Or maybe under a different career goal, I could find a job that lets me craft all day, cut stuff out of magazines and go to Hobby Lobby, for a purpose? Because right now, even though I'm part of this start-up unit at my career, it's only mildly exciting since I have no aspirations to be a salesgirl. Blah. I know it's "gaining experience" on the way to something better, but why can't I have something better right now? I still feel awkward I accepted this offer because I knew taking the corporate/cubicle route wouldn't satisfy me, even if my cubicle is now semi-livable, with my purple rhinoceros mini-clock, inspirational photos of Mulligan, and my "You Say I'm a Bitch Like It's a Bad Thing" post-its. I feel like a creepy lady with too many troll dolls though.

3. All this babysitting has left me with Hot Dad Syndrome (heretofore known as "HDS", which sounds a bit like a veneral disease). Moms are great and admirable and multi-taskingly brilliant, but dads are hot! I try not to look at the dads whose kids I babysit for, but when I'm driving around the burbs, there's hot dads everywhere: coaching soccer in Candy Cane Park, taking football teams out for ice cream at Baskin Robbins, waiting in line at Walgreen's photo counter with 2 kids in tow, a dad-and-daughter sushi date night at Sushi House in LG...it's creepy that the list could go on of all the places I've been turned on by hot dads. And they don't even have to be traditionally attractive, like those Calvin Klein family ads for cologne/perfume with Christy Turlington and her sexy no-name model "husband", plus their beautiful "children"; there's just something wonderful about dads that make them hot. Maybe this is where feminism rears its ugly head at me again, but whenever I see a dad I think, awww, he's a hands-on dad who talks college football with his sons or ohhhh, he's hanging out at the grocery store with his kids on a Sunday morning, as if dads are only supposed to drink beer and watch tv after work, just grunting at the family occasionally. That's so "Wonder Years"; New Millenium Dads are hot! So, this summer I learned to tell my biological clock: slow the fuck down! You're only 22-turning-23! I mean Sarah, it's not like you have Britney Spears' class and wealth to get married and pregnant within a year's time.

4. Good segue...I'm just as obsessed (if not moreso) with celebrity trash rags as I always have been, and I don't see this interest abating any time in the near future. Or even in my lifetime. For some reason, the chaos that is Hollywood media is fascinating to me, and my trash rags not only keep me UTD (up-to-date) for cocktail party discussions, but also keep me (somewhat) normal, or at least at normal as I can be, which is probably up for debate. Many wonder (though few have asked--except my mom, who repeatedly asks me multiple times a year:) why is that interesting to you? And I could cite the giant readership of these tabloids, or even our collective national (international even) obsession with celebs if I wanted to take the easy way out, but the short answer is: I don't know. This disease was something I was born with. I don't kkow how to get rid of it; all I can do is feed it.

5. Argonne is a heavily-guarded national laboratory, not a place for science geeks to do research. And sneaking in under a purple sleeping bag while drunk will probabaly get you in trouble. Like big trouble, especially when you can't talk any sense into the security guards: hey, it was a mistake! We're dumb! See, look, we're barefoot! Tommy and I were dumb for even assuming that hiding-in-the-trunk-of-Danger would possibly work. Well, in our defense, dumb AND drunk. But still, I feel bad that Tommy almost lost his job and Mulligan & I were waiting on the lawn of the Visitor Center while his professional career hung in the balance...so lesson learned #1: Tommy + Sarah + all-night drinking = stupid decisions. Lesson learned #2: at least our crazy antics were overshadowed by the crazy antics of a more insane couple, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, so we look far less crazy (maybe) by comparison. Tommy, their wedding is in the winter (says the Star): wanna fly to LA and crash it as ecstatic members of the Church of Scientology? Maybe this time we could really get arrested!

6. There weren't enough thunderstorms, or roadtrips, this summer. My fingers are crossed for fall.

7. Why is summer always the most fun, and most controversial, season of the year? Because, as Alice Cooper said, school's out for ever, and it feels like you have forever and you can fuck around with no one (really) caring. This leads to lots of wild nights and crazy vacays and beach hangouts and fights and makeups and illicit hookups and drunken conversation and dance parties and tv-watching-in-the-freezing-AC afternoons and Sunday brunch and...I miss it. But I don't. Fall always comes, and summer always ends, and that's why God created "The OC", because it's always summer in Orange County. (But not in Chino. It's always winter in Chino.)

8. At this point, I never plan on joining the Mile High Club. I currently have an F-I-T card (flyer-in-training), which was fun to get (but a little shameful) however I don't see myself escalating to full-fledged membership in this club. Maybe on my honeymoon or something, if I like really love my husband, but as far as sitting next to a likable/lustable passenger and then going to do it in the APB (airplane bathroom) after talking for a while? Hmmm, not my speed. Transatlantic flights maybe, because that gives you at least a couple hours or so to get to know your seatmate, but domestic flights? Now that's risky. Plus I never understood how 2 people could pull it off. Not physically, because obviously it's a tight squeeze so you work with the space, but logistically like, how do you avoid sneers from passengers who see you both go in there, trying to be separate but of course everyone guesses you're not going to wash hands together? Or the knowing nods from the stewardesses, who don't look forward to cleaning the bathroom after you've sexed it up, or refuse to serve you more cocktails because they don't want you any drunker than you already are? Obviously, it's a question of logistics. And maybe morals, but I guess you can gloss over those if you're drunk enough. So, lesson learned: keep the F-I-T card in your wallet but only pull it out on special occasions; don't graduate to the real club unless your husband wants to (or you convince him to).

9. In shuttling all over this summer, between houses in the burbs, apartments in the city, lakehouses in WI & IN, trip to Bethesda, MD, and having a jumbo pile of crap consuming my bedroom, I've misplaced 1: my black star wedges. These are like maybe my fav pair of shoes, and I can't seem to find them; 2: my Napoleon Dynamite cd--I've covered this in an earlier post, but I'm still lost without it. Also, I'm missing Chicane, if anyone knows where that blue disc is; and 3: my mind! Gosh darnit, I just keep losing it! Supposedly I went a little crazy this summer, and it doesn't help when my mind is missing. Very confusing. If you can help me locate any of these items, my end-of-summer realizations will feel more complete.

10. "Anyone can change, as long as they bring enough clothes." --Trevor Easterling, age 10

10.5 I don't know who this Trevor kid is, in case you're wondering if I babysat him. This was copied down from a greeting card of "kids say the darndest thing"-type quotes from my bookstore

posted by SES @ 6:31 PM