1. Taxes
2. When you're single and decide to move back to your college home, you constantly have to struggle with "Am I looking like the loser who wants to relive past glories of the college days?" Yes. I probably do.
3. When you get old enough so that your body starts getting and feeling old in some ways, it's not fun. Especially when you have to go to the doctor often and take phenergan on a daily basis and have ga-zillions of medical tests, and, eventually, surgery, which kind of made it worse more than it made it better. You just can't be fun like you were in college, ergo, you are that loser who can't live in the present.
4. Household responsibilities. Cat-proofing the house, making the bed, running the dishwasher, doing the laundry, trying to stay warm, paying all the bills, keeping everything clean.
5. Dressing appropriately. I'm a girly-girl. I like dressing up. But I don't like dressing conservatively. But then, I can't dress trendy because that is too young looking and I'm too old to dress young. Not fun. And I can no longer get away with wearing sweatpants and t-shirts. It looks schlumpy.
6. Cars. I have to have a car to get to work (and sometimes to do my job). But when some high school girl without a driver's license and insurance and a car of her own totals your trusty Accord, the last car your parents said they would buy for you, and you loved that Accord because it was so reliable and you were counting on driving it for a couple more years, and you have to get another car, which ends up being a piece of crap, and you have to get another new car, which is a grown up car that symbolizes everything you don't want to be at the moment, it's just not fair.
7. Make up. I used to wear it for fun and to look nice. Now I have to wear it so people don't think I'm older than I am. (Not that I wear it as much as I should, but I am wearing it more than I used to.) I've probably bought more make up in the past year than I have in the past four years (the up-side of having a boyfriend who just doesn't care).
8. Going from having a boyfriend that just doesn't care how I look to realizing I can't get very far looking schlumpy.
9. Other responsibilities. I volunteer, I work, I am trying to establish a career, and my family always seems to need me. How do get things done? I don't.
10. Career. How do I pick just one? It would be much simpler if I could get paid to do my volunteer work. I enjoy it. I'm good at it. Too bad the economy is in flux and federally funded organizations have to cut back. It also doesn't help that I have a political science degree and the volunteer work I do is in the health field. So, what's my next step. Real estate school? I'm there, but I'm not motivated. Massage therapy school? I would love to, but I have three options: Go to Southern Union (where I have to wear black and white scrubs, give up a year of Monday-Thursday nights, not have the flexibility to work in Birmingham, and I would have to take my anatomy classes online), go to Birmingham School of Massage (where I would give up six months of my life, which includes Summer and most of football season), or go to Virginia College (where I have to wear KHAKI scrubs, pay an arm and a leg for tuition, and give up the flexibility I have for two years). Open a store? Yes, please. But then, I would have to deal with even more grown up things and I wouldn't make instant profit. (Unless I get really lucky by some fluke of economics.)
