I think it's time for me to really start owning the fact that I'm not (and never will be) like most other women.


There always been a fair number of clues.

I never dreamed about having a wedding. I think expensive weddings dresses, diamond rings and huge, complicated events that cost more than the down payment for a house are lovely. For other people. Please feel free to invite me to yours - I love tasty food, enjoy dancing to 80s music and I buy generous gifts.

I don't particularly like babies. I liked my kid as a baby just fine but I'm enjoying her more now. I'll say your baby is cute (if they actually are, otherwise I'll say nothing because I'm crap at lying about stuff like that) but I don't need to hold it. I can admire the delicious chubby thighs from a distance thanks.

I hate having long hair. I never knew what to do with it. I resented the time it took to make it seem even remotely "styled". I dreaded going to the hairdresser and paying for a cut I knew I'd loath.

Don't even get me started on understanding how to accessorize. When I try to put on a scarf, I'm pretty sure that I look more like a novice trying their hand at auto-erotic asphyxiation than Coco Chanel.

And then there's the latest evidence: as much as I was a gushing loser puberty-re-enactor for the Twilight series, I couldn't get into the 50 Shades of Grey series at all.

Frankly, I just thought it was lame and boring. Insipid even. After I read the end of the second book, I couldn't even muster enough interest to bother starting the third. I didn't care at all how the series ended. And I'm normally someone who needs some closure from their reading.

It just felt like something was missing. Maybe I'm just jaded. Or spoiled.

For me, the Twilight series perfectly captured that hormone-filled, sexually-repressed roller coaster thrill ride of adolescence. With the addition of some cool vampire/werewolf action to keep it from being essentially a rehash of every Dawson's Creek episode ever.

I've also read and really enjoyed all of Anne Rice's old stuff like the Sleeping Beauty series. I thought her take on kink and love in "Exit to Eden" was both erotically entertaining and intellectually interesting. For me, Rice's books all did a nice job of capturing a more advanced take on hormones and sex. Titillating and readable at the same time.

50 Shades of Grey, not so much. A bit too much Danielle Steel meets "Story of O". A bit too canned (note: not "caned" - ha! get it?) and formulaic.

Ah well, I guess I'll just add this item to the list of reasons I find it impossible to enjoy going to "mommies" groups. Right up there next to the fact that I refused to use a shopping cart cover (it would have gotten in the way of her joyful chewing/drooling on the cart key) and frequently let random strangers touch my baby.