Missing: one summer vacation, nearly new, sorely missed by perplexed owner who could have sworn she just finished her last exam last Thursday. If found, please return to Kim Shable, who intends to use it for a trip to Fiji or some other tropical locale where the men wear thongs and are suitably shiny and waxed.

I don't know what happened. It was just May yesterday, and the summer stretched out in front of me as depthless and serpentine as the lines at Convo (with special thanks to the evil black boxes we now know are the Future). I had so many well-laid plans-- this would be the summer I finished my novel, the summer I got serious about my career as a writer, the summer I watched a lot of Springer (for research purposes only.) I was supposed to make something of myself this summer.

Unfortunately, that pesky real world I've heard so much about had to poke its big ugly horse head in my business, and the whole thing went straight to hell.

No novel, no writing, not even any Springer. My only real accomplishment (and granted, it was pretty astounding) was to learn all the words to Barenaked Ladies' "One Week," a skill I'm certain will come in very handy some day, perhaps when I am in need of a song to soothe the savage lost aborigine tribes of the Outback, who only respond to fast-paced, pop-culture reference ridden infectious rock ditties. It was as if I had gone to bed in May and woken up in August with a bad back, twenty more pounds, an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the complex world of auto insurance endorsements, and a lot of prim looking, old-woman dress clothes in my closet (I didn't get the bulletin about the necessity of tank tops and high heels this quarter.)

Of course, there were some bright spots to this summer-- namely, the all you can eat lunch buffet at Pizza Hut on Thursdays-- but for the most part it was a big towering column of pure quivering evil. I can't place the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the unstoppable force of the Real World-- after all, my friend Amy claims (she may have been brainwashed) that her foray into the real world was more than satisfying-- but I know it played a large part in the poopification of my summer vacation.

Things were so much simpler when I just went to day camp in the summertime. I learned essential survival skills (such as sailor-knot tying and the ever-necessary orienteering, or "How to Find Your Shoes with a Compass and the Sun," a skill that has aided me well in my life thus far), got pushed into the lake by Otto Pawlakowski, and generally had nary a care in the world. There was none of this nonsense about resumes and money and self-worth. The real world plays a very small part in a place where children are taught to shoot plastic-tipped arrows and sing songs about wishy-washy washer women.

But at any rate, my first summer in the real world is over, and good riddance. Now it's time to get back into the swing of things-- this is going to be the school year that write my novel, get serious about my career, make something of myself, and watch lots and lots of Springer.