Really, that sounds fun and all, but this year I just can’t stomach any more pink. That pepto bismol pink is everywhere I turn. Nausea, heartburn, indigestion? Check.

Believe me, I’m not bitter, I even enjoy romance and chick flicks from time to time, but for some reason I’m more excited about Friday the 13th than February 14th. I think it is fate that the two holidays have fallen in the same weekend because now when people ask what I am doing for the big holiday, I can say something like “drinking tequila and watching Saw IV.” (It’s not like they said which holiday!)

Some of you may be thinking that Friday the 13th isn’t a holiday, but you’re wrong! Friday the 13th is a day of horror movie marathons filled with snack foods and drinking games; it’s the day when some of the best scary movies of the year are released in theaters; and, of course, an excuse for a theme party. To kick off the big weekend of terror, I included my top 5 horror movies of all time.

5. Scream- Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but Scream will always be in my top favorites list. After all, it started the era of my favorite sleepover pastime: prank calls asking strangers, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” Classic.

4. The Ring – I don’t know what scared me more; the girl climbing out of the TV screen, the creepy images, or the music. Either way, it’s all terrifying.

3. The Shining - “All work and no fun makes Jack a dull boy.” Words to live by.

2. Friday the 13th – Add teens, a deserted summer camp and a serial killer and you got yourself endless gory fun. I still have issues going camping.

1. Psycho- One of the classics, so it obviously made my list. I couldn’t shower alone for a week after I saw this. And to this day I refuse to stay at a motel.

I know what I’ll be doing Friday night and may even extend the festivities into Saturday. Scary movies just fit my mood a little better than The Wedding Planner or any other crap they’ll be showing on TBS.

If I thought I was shocked when I was suddenly barred from my own home, I was even more surprised when I learned the ropes of actually going to small claims court. Why does this lesson fit into Money Matters? Because you actually have to spend quite a bit of money if you want to get what is owed to you in the long run.

In order to file your claim, you will need any articles of evidence pertaining to your case. Any contracts, agreements, or legal statements should be compiled and photocopied. Then you will have to pay a fee just to have your case processed. For me, I had to pay to get several of my documents photocopied, and then cut a check for $100 to the court just to proceed. $100 when I was already out over a grand. Still, at that point, it had become a pride issue, and I wasn’t going to let this snake take advantage of one more poor, naive girl.

Depending on the rules of your particular state, you may also have to pay for an officer to personally deliver the small claims summons to the other party. The problem with that is that the officer can only try the house so many times before all of your paperwork is returned to you, with a stamp that reads “Undeliverable.” So I had to try again. After the second set of docs was returned, I found my villain’s work address (ironically, he was a bank teller) and the po-po brought his small claims summons to the bank where he worked.

Once the opposing party has received their summons, a date will be set, and you will arrive in small claims court, where the judge will listen to both parties and set a declaration. If one party does not show up (in my case, the defense was absent), the present party will automatically win. The downside? Just because I automatically won my case, there is actually nothing that the court can do to retrieve your money.

When the verdict is passed, the court will add all fees that you have spent on the case to the opposing party’s debt to you– in my case, it was decided that I was owed my claim PLUS $100. Whatsmore, with every passing year, a certain interest rate will be tacked on as well. For me, it’s 11% interest.

The d-bag who wronged me now has a lein out on his name, which means that his credit is ruined, and, in some way that I don’t quite understand, he can’t sell anything of immense value (e.g. his car) until the debt is paid off. But I have not received compensation to this day, since I have stated that the court can’t actually force the guilty party to make a payment. For the record, as far as I know, the sketchball married some girl in order to put most of his things in her name, and the amount of money he owes me has doubled.

I think it’s ironic that in order to fight for the money that is owed you, you have to spend quite a bit AND can’t always get what is owed to you, even if you win. That’s why it’s important not to go Judge Judy just because you’re pissed at someone who owes you a few bucks. In my case, it was worth it, because I faught the bastard, and won, but it might not be the smartest bet every time.

What?! But everything was going so well!

“I’m sorry,” he explains. “I just got out of a bad relationship, and I don’t want to get involved.” Read: he was tainted by a crazy chick.

Since the beginning of time, bad boys have been toying with women’s emotions – playing us, and hurting us. Well, guess what ladies — this isn’t the suffrage era, and some girls out there think they have the power to level the playing field. Unfortunately, these crazy girls ruin the perfectly nice boys for the rest of us perfectly nice girls.

You might think you’re in the clear, but are you? Read on to make sure you don’t fall into the “Crazy Ex Girfriend” category. And if you do, thanks; you’re the reason I’ve been single for so long. Well, at least part of the reason.

The Cheater

This ex-girlfriend broke the guy’s heart, maybe more than once. Perhaps they were together for years, and he walked in on her and his friend one night. Maybe she had multiple “flings,” and confessed them all, in tears, and he forgave her time and again. No matter what, cheating hurts for girls and guys. This girl probably made your guy weary of being cuckolded again and wore down his trust in women. He thinks you’ll cheat, and he’s not ready to be played for a fool again.

The Bitch

This is the girl who takes out her frustrations on her man, picks fights in public, and reprimands him for the little details. He buys her a thoughtful Valentine’s day present; she throws a temper tantrum because he didn’t spring for a pair of earrings from Tiffany’s. He makes a joke at dinner, and she storms away from the table, leaving him alone and waiting for the check, embarrassed. Yet, for whatever reason, he put up with it for months, or even years. (Maybe it was the make-up sex.) Mean guys get a bad rap for being “emotionally abusive,” but these mean girls often slip under the radar because their behavior is chalked up to being a high-maintenance diva. Now that your crush is finally single, free, and thinking for himself, he likes it, and he’s not sure if he emotionally or financially ready for the drama he associates with being in a relationship.

The Clinger

We’ve seen these girls parodied in movies– see Wedding Crashers‘ term, “Stage-Five Clinger.” The clinger might not have even been a long-term girlfriend: even a one-night stand turned Fatal Attraction vixen can make the guy cautious of returning a girls’ affection. If it was a long-term relationship, the Clinger behaves like Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, except she’s not putting on an act to win a bet, she really is that clingy. After either having a casual hook up try to plan a wedding or going for months without being able to have a day with the boys over football on Sundays, the guy is now so happy to make his own plans that he’s willing to choose freedom over sex.

The Girl Who Went Psycho After the Breakup

Everything was going well for the guy, until he gently tried to break it off with his girlfriend. She snapped, and may have turned into The Clinger post-breakup. He tried to date again, and she was waiting to scare his new prospects away every time. This girl is personified by Miranda Lambert in her song “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Thanks to her, he’s not only afraid to commit to a potential nutcase, but he fears that getting close to you will instigate another confrontation and that she’ll scare you away and ruin his chances anyway.

The False Alarm Liar

As the relationship begins to fizzle out, this girl takes drastic measures to keep the guy. What does she do? She lies about getting pregnant. It’s the perfect way to keep a guy, right? Wrong! Eventually, she has to come clean, and the trauma from thinking he’s going to be a father followed by the news that he’s been had is going to keep him off the market for a while.

Any of these girls can ruin a perfectly good guy for the rest of us. Why do girls behave this way? There’s a million answers for that. But the bottom line is, ladies, treat your man the way you would want to be treated. Don’t ruin him for the rest of us!

Depending on the relationship you had with the guy before the hook-up; the scenarios in which you’ll interact after the hook-up; and how much discussion you had before, during, and after the hook-up, the first “reunion” can be totally smooth, or completely cringe-worthy. And, for the record, the first reunion does not include your first words the morning after when both of you are still in bed…naked…and possiby still drunk.

How do you deal? If your first meeting with your last fling falls into one of the following categories, you need to work on your post-play approach.

1. The Awkward Aversion

You don’t know how he feels, and if it means avoiding rejection, you’re fine not knowing. You may respond to his presence by interrupting someone else’s conversation to avoid having to talk to him, fumbling with your phone to appear busy, or simply leaving the room. This will come off as either immature or disinterested. If he does like you and you blatantly ignore him, he’ll think you regret it. Unlike girls who want what they can’t have, guys are more likely to give up if you’ve bruised their ego. If you do like him, I suggest developing a different method.

2. The “Sex? What Sex? We Never Had Sex” Approach

You’re trying to play it cool. Too cool. You smile at him -great!- and follow it with a punch to the shoulder and a “Hey, buddy! Did you catch Monday Night Football last night?” You probably won’t catch his eye for more than a nanosecond, and rapidly come up with small-talk conversation starters because you’re afraid of a lull in the conversation, which may or may not lead to the line, “Should we talk about last Saturday?” You may use this approach if you were comfortable with him before, and afraid that you’ve ruined the friendship (or acquaintanceship) you used to share with the guy. This could be taken two ways: like the aversion approach, your guy could assume that you want to forget about it; on the other hand, you could come off as being too casual in the wake of the hook-up. Perhaps you’ve done this before, and often.

3. The Shameless Strut

You want him to remember what he had, and want it again. Even if you aren’t looking for a relationship, you want the satisfaction of knowing he’s still attracted to the cow after he’s gotten the milk for free. If you anticipate the reunion, you dress up for the occasion. Even if it’s unexpected, you immediately try to be the center of attention and the life of the party, so he can see that along with your hot looks you’ve got a great personality. Perhaps you’ll even place yourself in the middle of a passionate conversation with another guy, just so the recent fling will see what a hot commodity you are. But this isn’t the best idea; like the “We never had sex” approach, this can make you look like you bedhop more often than a European backpacker.

4. The Far-Too-Forward Front

He obviously wanted you on Saturday, so why should he feel differently on Monday? As soon as he enters the room, you’re glued to his side, cracking inside jokes that you shared last weekend (well, inside jokes to you, but neurotically minimal details to him). You find flirty ways to touch him, and don’t let him get a word in edgewise with any other girl in the room. This move immediately raises a red flag, because even if he was interested in moving into a relationship, he’s now seeing the next few months flash before his eyes, and it involves a clingy, controlling girlfriend. It’s the moment when you brush his hair out of his eyes and call him a brand new nickname that he realizes how much he loves being single.

5. The Fatal Attraction Fiasco

Your first meeting with him since - you know – is an encounter with him and at least one other girl. It could be as harmless as him tutoring a girl from his English class, or talking to a few old female friends around a keg. Maybe he’s simply holding a door for a stranger who happens to possess two X-chromosomes. No matter how innocent, it triggers some sort of jealous rage that prompts you to bitch him out, call him a player, and basically look like a complete psycho. Do I need to explain why this is going to put him off?

It can be difficult to play your cards right the first time you bump into a former fling, especially if you have your own doubts about the way you left things when you said goodbye. The best thing to do is be yourself, and try to read his own body language. If you want to talk about what happened, approach the subject honestly, and at the right moment. You don’t want to call him out in front of your friends, but you also don’t want to corner him and put him on the spot to evaluate all of his feelings for you.

If you play it cool, you have a far better chance of getting what you what (if it’s him that you want), and if things don’t work out, good news: you’re young, you’re single, and you’re on a college campus with thousands of other cuties to choose from.

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Three nights ago, as I’m spooning in bed with my ex-boyfriend/current fling (the lines are a little blurred), he, out of the blue, drops a line that no ex-girlfriend ever wants to hear spoken about herself: he called me crazy.

I was speechless. Everything had being going rather well all night: I looked super-hot, we were flirting like mad and we had just engaged in a no-fuss, delicious two-hour romp on his blow-up mattress, resulting in the big “O” for both parties.

And then he had to go and ruin our post-coital snuggle session with the dreaded “C” word.

Now, let me set the record straight. This is definitely not the first time a male in my life has called me crazy. Everyone from my dad and brother to my high school gym teacher has felt the need to express their opinion about my level of sanity.

I can’t deny that maybe, they were right to drop the C-bomb. Let’s just say that high school was rough for me. I was involved in a serious relationship, which led me to act like a serious fool. I yelled really loud, pushed really hard and generally caused extreme amounts of unnecessary stress for everyone involved in my life. But hey, I was sixteen, riding high off the fumes of sweet adolescent hormones, and I didn’t think – I just DID.

Of course, douchebag ex-boyfriend heard all the juicy details of my teenage drama during our first year of dating. I mean, if I had to endure all the pain and horror – it was only fair that I pass it onto him, right? (Note: I realize now this was a huge mistake and that some skeletons really are better kept in the closet – forever.) So, after I got upset about a girl attempting to kiss him in front of me after a little too much jungle juice, he decided it was time to break out the one insult he knew would cut straight to the heart.

Okay, back up and let’s examine this. I don’t have a Psych minor for nothing.

Recently, a fellow CC blogger discussed the legit-ness of the idea that “once a cheater, always a cheater”. I’m here to tell you that cheating is not the only habit that can be broken, so is psychotic-obsessive-crazy girlfriend syndrome.

I was psycho/obsessive/crazy because I was one thing and one thing only (and it wasn’t crazy). It was insecure. I was blatantly, unabashedly wearing my insecurity on my sleeve, much like Brit or LiLo. I didn’t really know or understand that I was insecure, but all of my behavior stemmed from the little insecurity seed that had at some point sprouted in my impressionable brain.

So, many years (and cocktails, therapy sessions, The Secret-esque books,, and Positivity Blog entries) later, I find that a lot of my craziness has kind of…vanished. Poof. No more obsessively calling my boyfriend twenty times when he doesn’t answer. No more late-night drive by’s of his apartment to see if there is a girly-looking car in the driveway. No more incessant complaining and/or crying when a boy doesn’t respond to my every beck and call.

Nope. I, my friends, am cured. I am secure. I am confident. I am happy. I am whole. And most importantly, I am NOT f-ing crazy!

Some people (namely, the douchebag ex) will argue that craziness is something that doesn’t completely go away. And maybe, to an extent, this is true. I think we all have a certain amount of craziness in us. But, thankfully, L-O-V-E is probably the only thing that brings it out in most of us – and only if we let it.

But, for the most part, I don’t see myself engaging in crazy behaviors – at least to the level I did before – ever again. I have realized that if a stupid boy makes me feel crazy, or makes me feel that I need to act crazy, he is just not worth it. My sanity is much more important than some relationship that is (obviously) not even worth fighting for.

I encourage all of you to let go of all the ‘labels’, all the names you might have been called over the years – whether that be crazy, slutty, weird, prude, whatever – because in the end, we can all change. As humans, our personalities and our behaviors are not set in stone. Yes, it can be hard to change. But if you want something – you can have it. And remember, the labels other people give us mean absolutely nothing if we know in our hearts what we really are.

So, I let the douchebag ex call me crazy. I bit my tongue and pulled the covers slightly tighter around my body, letting him know that whatever other activities he had planned were officially cancelled…and let him whine and moan and complain. And, frankly, act a little crazy himself.

Funny how the tables can turn.

[photo from the talent pool company]