Now that you mention it, my parents were kind of hairy

Just out of college I lived in a somewhat scary basement apartment on an even more scary itsy-bitsy salary with a most-scariest-of-all credit card debt leftover from middle of the night runs to Dallas's 24 hour Super Walmart. I didn't have cable or a lot of friends or even a car. But I did have this sweet book Frugal Indulgents. It was all about having fun with no money and making wise financial choices.

In that first year I paid off all my debts, made a good dent in my student loans, and found all sorts of ways to entertain myself for under $5/day. (And here I am 11 years later, making 4 times the salary with 100 times the debt. How exactly did that happen?) I loved that book!

Parent Bloggers Network recently sent me Were You Raised by Wolves: Clues to the Myseteries of Adulthood by Christie Mellor. This would be a great book for someone about to leave the cozy world of college for the realities of evil things like bills and cooking. (In fact I have several people in mind, but they aren't the reading types. Maybe if I highlight certain sections?)

The mysteries of my current adulthood include
1. How can I get a 17 month old to entertain herself for more than 90 seconds without latching onto my leg?
2. Why do I feel so overwhelmed? I only have one kid, for gosh sake!
3. The laundry. God, the laundry. Does it asexually reproduce?

And so forth. Maybe that comes in volume 2. This book is aimed at a slightly younger, childless audience. Advice sections include everything from how to make gravy to stop mooching off your parents, you lazy good for nothing! (Warning to vegetarians - skip over the gravy section. Any task that begins by informing me to buy two or three extra turkey necks will leave me dry heaving.)

Find out at what point you are allowed to go to work dressed like you climbed out of a cardboard box. (Hint: it will be awhile.) Learn why should freeze your credit cards in a giant block of ice. (Actually you should shred them. But the ice is a good step for those without the nerve.) Throw a dinner party! Enjoy being single! Really. DO IT. Because one day you will get just what you wanted and you will be married with child and you will long for the days that your days were not devoted to pleasing other people.

I loved her section warning cute slurring 22-year olds that after too many drunken nights out the day will come when they will one day no longer be adorable. "It will get back at you...by making you look like you're sixty-five and feel like you're a hundred." I used to have a friend that said she wasn't a smoker. She just smoked "socially," i.e. only when she drank. Of course she drank EVERY NIGHT. Don't fool yourself into thinking regularly drinking to excess and smoking are habits that will just magically disappear one day. You will be an old wrinkled smelly drunk.

Her illustrations quite cute and surprisingly informative, like how to build a "bad boy bar" and how to set a table, though no amount of detail in a drawing could teach me to tie a bowtie. Then again humans have not been able to teach me this skill either. Perhaps this is why I was not born a man and have not succeeded as a profesisonal clown.

I was less taken with advice that appeared to be based on stuff like stain removal that she read on the internet but had not actually tested herself. If there's one skill a college graduate has, it's how to google. And if there's one thing I've learned from having a baby, it's Shout takes out anything. Just get the gel kind, not the spray, and leave it on for like a week before washing. The end.

If after reading this book you find yourself following every single piece of advice, please invite me over. I would love to meet someone with a fully stocked bar who knows how to use it. Someone whose home is stocked with goat cheese and olives and crackers just waiting for me to drop by unexpectedly.

My favorite advice: If you are staying with someone and they have young children, take them on an outing - the park, a restaurant, both! Now who wants to come visit?!