my dirty little secret

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Shhh!! Get closer now, I’m not going to tell this to just anybody. (Thankfully, it appears that none of my coworkers has as yet found this little corner of blogdom.)

Are you ready? Closer!

Okay, here goes.

I am a Summer TV-Smut whore.

There, I said it. I know, I know, who would believe it, right? (*ahem*) Until recently, this sickness was limited to really only two embarrassing shows, at least for this summer: So You Think You Can Dance (go Jeanine!) and (*hangs head in shame*) The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

Granted, I have watched Secret Life since its entangled inception, watching with rapt attention the metamorphosis of Amy from naïve good girl to hormonal pregnant teen to jealous teenage mother (and my personal favorite metamorphosis: Grace, from the quintessential *Jesus Barbie* to new med camp graduate, with a little “My dad’s plane crashed because I got laid” in between). I could go on about the little quirky things that make me so addicted, or the moments that actually make me laugh out loud (“GROIN INJURY!!!!!!”), but I won’t get into all that here. Honestly, I don’t think I would have even classified this show as “smut” until recently, especially since this is a show directed to the tween & teen stage-of-lifers. But a week or two ago, I watched the show with a friend of mine who had never seen it before. And honestly? Trying to explain who all the different characters were made me realize this is a teen version of a late-night drama, or at best (worst?), a teen soap opera.

That guy is dating the girl with the baby.
That’s the father of the baby, who is sleeping with the girl who broke up the Jesus Barbie and her boyfriend the first time around, but who really wants to be with his baby mama.
That woman is the mom of the girl with the baby, who is currently pregnant with her ex-husband’s baby, and who just broke off an engagement with some other dude and is now contemplating dating some old friend before she decides if she’ll let her ex-husband move back in. (granted, the “old friend” turned out to be the ex-husband.)
That’s the slut. She dated her brother for awhile.
That’s the dad of the guy dating the girl with the baby. He’s engaged to a woman he doesn’t know was an internet-order prostitute, who went on a date with the Down’s syndrome kid.
He’s the dad of the girl with the baby. He installed a urinal in the garage.

Um, yeah.

So anyway, until recently, Adrian, the Teenage Whore and SYTYCD were pretty much my only two “I’m ashamed I watch this” shows. And then, one night, I just happened to be flipping through a few channels, nothing much was on, and I randomly stopped on some good ol’ Fox reality fun. And I can’t stop watching. Like, I’m addicted. And I can’t figure out why. But honestly, More to Love has me sitting on my couch on Tuesday nights, eating frozen pizza and trying to figure out just how that larger woman is going to manage to belly dance. I don’t really know what else to say at this point, other than I probably lost more brain cells last night than I inhaled calories. The show has sucked me in, and although I’m super glad the loud-mouth witch went home last night, and I’m not really sad about the loss of the painfully shy girl who had never dated before, I can’t wait until next week to find out which two are going home next (and which four aren’t).

The fall season needs to hurry up and get here. I can’t take the loss of any more of the few brain cells I have left.

Should I have been weirded out?

I think so too.

So I walk into the rest area on my most recent trip south, and they have put signs over each bathroom door. The women's restroom says "TEMPORARY MEN'S," while the men's says the opposite: "TEMPORARY WOMEN'S." Both bathrooms were open, usable. So I walk into the "temporary women's," and am slightly startled as I round the little corner, when there in front of me is a teenage guy scrubbing the urinal. Another person of the female persuasion has entered the washroom just before me, and asks, "Um, is this open?"

The kid responds, "Yeah! Go ahead."

So I hurry about my business, still kind of creeped out, and finish up and wash my hands. As I'm finally walking back out, I pass another woman starting to walk in the door. She sees the kid, who is about to start on the first stall, and the urinals along the wall, and stops dead with the deer-in-the-headlights look, then glances back to make sure she didn't walk in the wrong door. (I think it's that age-old childhood fear of accidentally walking into the wrong restroom at school.)

I laughed. (Is that wrong of me?!)

But, um, can anyone figure out WHY there would ever be a need to switch the men's bathroom & the women's bathroom? When both were completely usable? Weirdness.