Why are all the good ones single?

Ever since reading "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" I've been thinking about single women, and why kind intelligent women are often left unmarried by 35 or 40, and I think we can blame our parents and teachers...

Don't get me wrong, no one was trying to make a generation of spinsters, I think it was quite the opposite.

Women's Lib did a lot of good things, but I think it put love in the background. Education and career are so important, and no one wants to see their little girl or star student get knocked up and married right after high school, so I think those of us who grew up after 1970 had parents and teachers and mentors that didn't encourage us to develop romantic relationships. Not that they discouraged them, but school and then a career were definitely priorities over love and relationships.

I think that relationships aren't seen as a serious topic, but boys turn into men and boyfriends turn into husbands and relationships become serious and life altering. Maybe we aren't programed to grow in relationships the way we are told to grow up in the rest of our lives. Boys are just these silly things that get us pregnant and ruin our lives, but men become husbands and we become dependent on them; they become our life partners.

Maybe boys don't grow up as fast as they used to. I'm coming up on 25, and I still feel that single males my age are boys, not men. That potential dates are boys, not men. Maybe we're waiting for men, and that's why we're staying single longer.

Am I sad that I went to school and didn't focus on finding a husband? Not at all. 1 in 6 married women say they were happier when the were single. I'm young, I'm not too worried yet... but ask me in 5 years.

Breakfast... at Subway?

Subway has recently added breakfast to its menu at all locations and I am obsessed. Fast food breakfast has traditionally been super greasy and heavy in bacon sausage and processed cheese and made on greasy biscuits or even pancakes in some cases. Don't get me wrong, I love greasy breakfast sandwiches here and there, especially after a night of imbibing. They're like the cheeseburger of breakfast, but with pork and egg. But to eat these sandwiches on a regular basis will add inches and pounds to your tummy.

The best thing about the new Subway breakfast, veggies. Your bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin can now be accompanied by all of those great veggies that you can get on your regular sandwiches. Don't like English muffins? no sweat, you can get your breakfast on flatbread (my favorite) or your favorite Subway bread.

The other thing that sets Subway apart, your choice of regular egg or egg whites. The eggs definitely look like they were cooked and frozen at a factory somewhere, but they're surprisingly not rubbery. Unless your doctor told you to avoid them get egg yolks because they are healthy and full of nutrients, and you don't save that many calories cutting them out.

My Subway breakfast is an egg and cheese with pepper jack cheese, spinach, green peppers, tomato and cucumbers. I might add bacon if I'm in the mood. I prefer the flatbread, but they have a special introductory price on English muffin and a coffee. Did I mention that they offer awesome Seattle's Best coffee?

So the next time you leave the house without breakfast stop at Subway, they're everywhere. Get a veggie-packed breakfast sandwich and a coffee for $2.50. Enjoy!

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me...

Okay, so maybe not, but it's easy to feel like that when you're under-employed or unemployed. You can tell yourself to stay positive and it's just the economy but when you send out application after application and put so much effort and get excited about new positions that pop up and when you never hear anything it can be so heart breaking after months and months and months of it. Feeling like a loser comes easily when potential employers don't tell you otherwise.

It's so hard to stay positive. What it if it isn't just the economy, what it if it's me? What if I suck that much? And being under-employed can take a hit on other parts of your life. I'm scared to even try dating because who wants to date a chick who works at a store? Who wants to date someone with a ton of student loan debt? The truth is, in most states you marry someone you marry their debt, so why even start something with someone who has a ton of debt? My lack of money combined with my ridiculous school debt and my small fortunes worth of credit card debt make me feel even less attractive than my 15 extra pounds or perioral dermatitis could.

Sometimes you just need to stop with the job applying for a week or two. New positions will be posted and it's two rejection-free weeks. But I keep telling myself this old adage a professor at Bemidji State used to tell us, "If you apply for it, you probably won't get it, but if you don't apply for it, you for sure won't get it."

Bella Swan can be a good role model

She's pale! We've been a tan-obsessed country for almost 50 years, and while it's started to wane, characters like Bella Swan help us embrace the pale.

I love tanning. I love being dark with my hair all bleached out from the sun, or the tanning bed. In fact, I have tanned every spring since I was 16, at first in preparation for prom (you just couldn't go to prom pale in my hometown) and then just for summer. But this spring, I'm not going to. I'm going to embrace my pale.

Having pale role models like Bella and all the other stars of the Twilight Saga makes it so much easier for this new trend to take off.

So please, everyone, embrace the pale!

ps: the new healthcare reform will include a 10% sales tax on indoor tanning. I'm not sure this will include spray tans or not...

Is Bella Swan good for young girls?

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After reading the Twilight books (twice) and re-watching Twilight and New Moon last night I can't help but wonder what type of girls look up to Bella Swan, the series' main character and narrator. She's obsessive and codependent upon Edward AND Jacob, after Edward leaves. She has no real personality traits (clumsy isn't a personality trait) and she isn't even that pretty (per the books, not Kristen Stewart) and yet she has two guys (plus Mike Newton) fall head over heals for her. Will girls get the message that they don't need try to fall in love? (I believe that cute and charming are a must to attract any decent guy.)

And then, after careful consideration ***Spoiler Alert*** she does agree to marry Edward, when she's 18. I'm not saying that you can't find "the one" in high school, but more often than not to marriages end in divorce, or become loveless marriages. I'm worried that a whole generation of young readers will think they have to get married right out of high school. I think that love is often left out of life lessons for young girls. You can fall in love with more than one person in your life. Maybe parents don't want to bring this up because they don't want to think of their little girls having sex with more than one partner (or any partner, for that matter, they want grandchildren via immaculate conception), or maybe they feel that love by example is enough, but it's not. Every love is different.

**Spoiler Alert*** And then, to top it all off, Bella becomes a teen mom. Not a single or unmarried mom, but a teen mom just the same. Does no one see the danger in this? It's one thing to get married and have a honey-moon baby when you're in your late 20s or early 30s, but in your teens it could possibly present all sorts of problems later in life.

I think this is where the author's world and Bella's world get mixed up. Stephanie Meyer grew up Mormon, which is a faith dominated by large families, and in that culture it's not uncommon for couples to marry young and start families early. Meyer herself was married and pregnant before she finished college, and has often said she loves being a mom, and looked forward to that as a career. Which was her choice, and she finished college before she completely settled down.

Bella, on the other hand, grew up with parents separated by divorce because they rushed into marriage at an early age. Which is a major struggle and why Bella doesn't want to marry Edward. But she gives in and the topic of safe sex is never mentioned. Granted, who would think you could get knocked up by a vampire anyway, but still, condoms or the pill or something should have been mentioned, at least as an after thought, at some point in Breaking Dawn.

I guess my biggest fear is that girls who read Twilight and love Bella will think they don't need to develop into an independent person.

I think older readers, such as myself, strongly dislike or hate Bella. I don't like her because she gets everything she ever wants and more. And no one good dies. In Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books, everyone close to Sookie dies. She has to deal with loss in a real way, and it's related to her relationship with a vampire, to pull the similarities.

Bella Swan: fun to read about, bad to be like.

Dating...

does anyone do that anymore?

I was talking to a friend of mine who recently joined the dating scene, and we both agreed that no one seems to want to date anymore. It's either no-strings-attached sex or relationships, or no-strings-attached sex that magically leads to a relationships. (rarely happens, pregnancy is usually involved if it does, and it often ends in divorce)

I want to go out on a date. I want to know the person a little, but I want to get to know someone outside of my apartment in a safe environment without too much pressure to force it into something more, but the possibility that it could.

And I don't need to eat a fancy meal or to see an expensive show. I would love to walk through a museum on a free day or picking up a coffee and just chilling and getting to know one another.

I don't quite like where the dating world has gone. Dating is gone and it sucks because I don't want to fuck you before I know you, and I don't want to automatically be your girlfriend because we hung out once... or you called me and then decided that you didn't want to hang out but now you think that calling me at midnight is acceptable and will make you like me but it doesn't in fact it makes me queezy so I had to block your number. Or something like that.

I don't want to automatically become someone's girlfriend, and I don't want to be just another notch in your belt. I want to be that cute girl that becomes that charming girl, and either you fall for the cute, charming girl, or you don't, but there are no hard feelings either way. (Why are there always hard feelings when love was once there? I guess maybe it wasn't love?)

So, can we hang out, maybe you can get me flowers and make me fall head over heels, I'll put out after an acceptable amount of time and then we'll live happily ever after, or not? I think that sounds like a good plan.

Sarah Killen

Everyone's up in the air about Sarah Killen (@LovelyButton on twitter) because she is the only person Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) is following on his recently created twitter account, and she's been getting all sorts of swag because of it, including lots of free stuff for her wedding.

This does not bother me, what does is the fact that Ms. Killen is only 19, and she's getting married, to a 21-year-old. Why has no one said anything about this and how crazy it is. Yeah, she didn't have anything planned because she's fucking 19! What the hell do 19-year-olds know about wedding planning?

I guess an old spinster like me is a bit jealous, but if I could go back to 2005, change a few things, and get engaged I definitely would not.

I guess I'm surprised the media isn't questioning her (and her fiancé's) young nuptials. I thought that mid-to late 20s was becoming the standard first marriage age, with early thirties in a close second place for the more career-minded.

And maybe Ms. Killen isn't planning on getting married for a few more years, anyway. We really don't know that much about her. Who knows, maybe that free wedding dress won't be her style when she does get married.

Best of luck LovelyButtons!