Cold and Colderer (and Word Meme)

If you are here for “Succinctly Yours,” please skip to below the quote, and thank you for visiting!

So far we’ve weathered (get it?) stuck cars, frozen locks and lots of shoveling. Still, that sci-fi-sounding polar vortex aside, I don’t really despise winter. I’m just superstitious enough that I feel like I must whisper this, however, lest some wicked winter warlock decides to make me regret admitting it.

Today was the day we were supposed to head back to school, but I do usually wish I had just one more day off. And in many ways, the experience brought back my youth in Nebraska.

The difference is that now I have no problem dressing for the cold, whereas when I was young, I was more concerned with unflatteringly puffy coats and ugly hats. Today when I emerged from the bathroom in my snow shoveling gear, the cat ran for his life, clearly fearing I’d morphed into the Abominable Snowmom. Even after treats and reassurances, he hugged the walls and cast wide, wary eyes at me. It was funny until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized I looked like a Monsters, Inc. creature. I swished when I walked and had hair that sprouted out of the top of my ear warmers like a freakishly huge pea hen.

Shoveling didn’t improve the hairdo any—and this from someone who regularly plays the “Which Male Lord of the Rings Character Does My Hair Now Resemble” game (hint: it’s never Legolas, and when it’s Aragorn, it’s always that end-of-war do when it’s clear he hasn’t washed it in at least six Orc battles…only way, WAY less sexy on me).

Now that the shoveling is accomplished, snow (and my hair) aren’t so bad again. This storm produced a sparkling white magic that so silently whipped up a new landscape, submerging scenery so that benches were buried and swing set seats were erased, whited out, their chains seemingly anchored to nothing.

For some of us, living in the tropics would be like eating nothing but chocolate all the time. Sounds heavenly until you get a hankering for chicken or even Aunt Roberta’s string beans.

So for now, anyway, at least while I sit here with leftover Christmas treats and the premiere of Downton Abbey on DVR, I’m okay being snowed in. Happy 2014.

In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip. ~Daniel L. Reardon

Thanks to the extra time our snowstorm has given me, this week I’ve decided to try participating in “Succinctly Yours” over at Grandma’sGoulash. The idea of this meme is to use the photo as inspiration for a story of 140 characters or 140 words (or fewer). Mine is 133 characters, not counting spaces, and the bonus word was "theory."

Gary, ever the perfectionist, had a theory about how Elvis impersonation should be done. When he played “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound dog,” he got a bit literal. 

10 Deeply Insulting Ads That Show Up on My Facebook Homepage

1. Wrinkle creams. These ads have been there since I first signed on to Facebook. But from this very first one, I’ve wondered if there is an actual, human Wizard of Ad hiding behind a curtain somewhere who looks at your picture and decides what you need, or if it’s automatically generated when you enter your birthdate? Either way….
2. Diets. To throw them off I’ve actually Googled things like “clothing for people who are way too thin,” and “products for really skinny people,” but for some reason they don’t believe me.
3. Plus Sized Clothing. I may not be minus-sized, Facebook, but I’m not plus either. In fact, size shouldn’t enter this equation in the first place.
4. Ads about ridding myself of belly fat. Again…you know what you can do with your ads.
5. Ads for older single men who are looking for faithful women. Who says I want older ones? Or that I’d be faithful? Let’s be fair here. Is my picture appearing on some 30-year-old man’s wall as an older woman looking for faithful men? 
6. Orthodontics. Really? Bite me, Facebook.
7. Truly unflattering photos of celebrities. Am I supposed to care that they look ugly sometimes, too? Is that supposed to make me feel better by comparison? It doesn’t. It just kind of confirms for me that you are skanky and low in your advertising practices.
8. List of suggested movies that I might like. Exactly what about liking “Pride and Prejudice” makes you recommend “Curse of Chucky?”
9. Free Trucker Schwag. I don’t know what that is, but I bet the wizard who thought I’d like this was the same one who suggested the Chucky movie.
10. Ads inviting me to join Alzheimer Trials. This one appeared right after I posted that I’d caulked my hair. Which also happened to be right before my birthday. The hair-caulking had more to do with not having a decent and honest handyman than with dementia. I was outside, and caulk was naturally on my work gloves, because how else are you supposed to smooth it down? I had climbed through some bushes to caulk some siding, and suddenly I could feel something WALKING in my hair. And the footsteps felt rather large. Not only am I known for attracting spiders, but I once had a hidden alien pod filled with baby praying mantises hatch in my sunroom after I brought the plants in for winter, and those things are the stuff of which nightmares are made. For one thing, they have necks—which no bug is supposed to have—and they have these robotic movements and little E.T. faces that they tilt just so to give you the evil eye. And then there are the big, green, spikey Popeye arms—like if Popeye fell into a vat of radioactive spinach and sprouted Edward Scissorarm blades from his anchor tattoos—that they hold out in front of them like dukes-from-hell. Praying? Ha. They are ironically holding out their giant green lobster-arms to threaten you like pointy Mohammed Alis with vicious little scythes where the boxing gloves should be. So this was what it felt like was taking giant steps on my head, so naturally it would have been a sign of dementia not to have swiped at it, even if it did leave a big plastic loogie in there that was horrible to get out. Ads for Alzheimer trials? Just because I caulked my hair? And the day before a birthday? Facebook, you are deeply evil.

I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. ~Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Still Held High

Several years ago, I posted here about a female Family and Consumer Science teacher who proudly sported a head that was bald as a bowling ball—presumably from cancer treatments.  In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this is an update.

I recently saw her walking through the halls.  She now has a nice, thick head of hair.  I remember hearing once that post-chemotherapy hair can be even thicker and better than before, and it certainly seemed true in this case.  I’m pleased to report that she looked healthy and rosy and ready to take on the next adventure that life has to offer. 

And even more than ever, she walked like a winner.

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.  That will be the beginning. ~Louis L’Amour

Improper Poll: Dis-Tressed

Recently I was having a deep discussion with a friend, and she revealed—get this—she doesn’t shampoo, rinse, and repeat. She only shampoos and rinses! I’m pretty sure that “shampoo, rinse and repeat” was originally found etched into Middle Eastern papyrus scrolls thousands of years ago, so I was stunned that my friend was flouting the sacred rules. Since then I discovered that the shampoo rules have changed. Changed! I didn’t know this because I can no longer hope to read shampoo instructions, plus I figure that since I’ve probably washed my hair some 17,000+ times (I did valuable research on this one by consulting my calculator), I possibly had it down by now. Not so.

In fact, thanks to other valuable research, this time implementing my trusty Old-People-Magnifier-Plus-Light-Apparatus-Sold-in-Drugstores-to-Keep-People-Like-Me-From-Overdosing, I discovered fully half of my shampoos do not require the repeat. The madness!

I also discovered another interesting fact: some of my shampoos have clothing in them. One, for example, claims it has silk in it, and the other has pearls. One is wearing cashmere. I find it depressing that my shampoo dresses way better than I do. Where is the shampoo wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a taco sauce stain, or maybe with fleece and scuffed Reeboks in it?

I also discovered I have a lot of shampoos. There’s the one that makes my hair smell like my grandma’s house, if my grandma had lived in a spa in the South of France. Never mind that it makes my hair look like Grandmamma Addams and is insanely expensive—it gives a whole new component to the idea of personal fragrance, so I am willing to make the trade-off at times. Then there’s the one I got using a coupon. I don’t like it very much, but I’m so proud that I managed to remember the coupon—an actual unexpired one—that I just can’t throw it out. Then there’s the one I bought because it was supposed to do something wonderful for me, but since I can’t remember what that was, I hang onto it in case it comes to me. And then of course there’s the one I really use.

How many shampoos are in your shower? And The Most Important Valuable Research Question of all: do you still repeat?

Ten Good Things About Getting Old

(Accompanied by garden pictures taken in the past couple of weeks.  The top is viburnum carlesii, and the bottom is passiflora 'Incense.')

1. Your face no longer breaks out. Unless you’re me, that is! But I mean if you’re normal, meaning not me, you probably stop getting zits.
2. The fact that you’re coloring the gray gives you an excuse to change your hair color often.
3. You and your hair have cohabited so long you’ve been forced to get along with each other. You’ve worn it poodle-permed and stick-straight. You’ve had almost every hair length, cut, and color that exists, so you know firsthand whether a certain style will make you look like Betty Boop…or poopy-doop. You even know exactly where to put the perm rods, how long to hold the hair in the curling iron, and which products make it look stringy. You have the home number of that perfect stylist who knows, via some sort of divine telepathy, exactly what cut you need even if you aren’t terribly sure yourself. You’ve had years and years to learn exactly how to subdue, control, and manipulate your hair in all kinds of weather. As a result, you have A LOT fewer bad hair days.
4. Young men no longer do favors for you as an excuse to get your phone number. They do favors for you because you look like their mom. Then they say, “You’re welcome, Ma’am” and go on their way.
5. You can be crabby and people sort of expect it.
6. Nobody heckles or grabs your rear end anymore.
7. Better friendships. Your best friend no longer breaks your plans to spend time with her boyfriend. She breaks her plans with her husband to spend time with you.
8. You can take a crisis better because you’ve been through only too many of them and know the pattern. You’ve learned that you are strong, and that this, too, really shall pass.
9. That whole wisdom thing. What you lose physically, you really do gain emotionally.
10. You can wear what you want because nobody cares. No one looks at your arms or legs, anyway, so you might as well go sleeveless and wear shorts! And make them purple!

“’Tell me one last thing, said Harry. ‘Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?’

Dumbledore beamed at him….’Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?’” J.K. Rowlings, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Caught by the Principal

In honor of school starting again, here is the true story of something that happened to me last year.

I’d dealt with an incident involving several high school kids. Although everything had worked out as well as it possibly could have, it’s always a good idea to document, so I started a rough draft of my documentation on a piece of scratch paper I had with me.

Earlier that day, I had been helping out in a history class where the teacher had been showing a PowerPoint presentation on Vietnam. Not having anything to do at the moment, I doodled.

I am a doodler. So I started doodling the picture of this Vietnamese dude. I know I should know the name, but I don’t. I’m sorry—I’m not a history buff. And I certainly mean no disrespect to anyone’s leaders. But the thing is, I was working on the guy’s beard when the teacher switched slides…so my doodling hand had to improvise. And I just don’t feel terribly responsible for what that doodling hand does.

The beard became a long braid.  Then I added a polka-dotted bow. Then earrings and a nose ring. I surrounded him with helicopters (á la M*A*S*H), palm trees, and for no explicable reason, volcanoes.

So these were the notes I used to draft my documentation. Except…just as I was finishing up the rough draft, the principal showed up at the door and asked to see me in the hall. He was happy with the way I had handled the situation, but he needed the names of the children who were involved. I started to check my notes and told him I had been drafting a statement.

“May I see it?” he asked. Um. Well. I sort of hid the paper behind myself, guiltily.

“I need to recopy it,” I explained. “But first I could just check the names….”

He told me that was okay—he could just read my draft. He held out his hand. I stood there like an idiot. “I’ve drawn all over the page,” I blurted out. “It’s a…habit. It was Vietnam, and I….It might be hard to read. Why don’t you let me recopy my notes quickly?”

He wasn’t buying it. He needed to see it, please. Now.

So I shuffled my feet and looked at the floor. Here I was, a forty-something-year-old-teacher, summoned by the principal, admonished to hand over a paper with silly drawings on it. I handed it over.

I watched his eyes dart around the page, and the corners of his mouth quivered ever so slightly. Still, I have to hand it to him, he held his face as still as possible and read my notes without giggling. Then when he was done, he sort of winked and said, “I’ll let you get back to Vietnam.”

In all fairness, it could have been much, much worse. I’m partial to silly hairdos, and I’d given the guy a sort of modified “Betty Boop” earlier but had erased it off because it just wasn’t the look I was going for.

I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam ~Popeye the Sailor Man

A Head Held High

I’ve had several friends who’ve had breast cancer. So I can’t help but wonder how I’d handle the hair loss issue if my turn came.

One friend has Facebook contests modeling different wigs. Some are pretty outrageous. People vote on which one she will wear for the week. So far no one has voted on the hot pink one, but if they ever do, no question she will wear it.

I’ve always thought I would like to go au naturelle. Why hide? It seems ridiculous in ways to wear fake hair. The thing is, though, I would never have the guts. Not to mention how horrible I’d look bald. Shoot, I often don’t like how I look with hair.

Then the other day, for the first time in my life, I saw someone do it. I was walking through the hall at school, and a spunky home ec teacher was practically bouncing along, making eye contact with everyone, absolutely daring them to admire her beautifully bald head. Her message was clear: I have cancer and I AM NOT GOING TO HIDE.

I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself and tell her how I felt, so I gave her my biggest grin that I hope conveyed every ounce of the admiration I feel. And what’s more, she does look beautiful. Truly. If I told her that, would she believe me? I believe she would. More than beautiful, she looks like an amazing woman who isn’t afraid of a fight.

Go, girl. Win. We are cheering for you.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Just got my hair cut the other day, and she managed to make it do cool things.

Of course it slowly undid itself as I was driving home despite the many products designed to subdue it. The hair eventually won. The hair always wins.

Except once. I lived in Savannah, Georgia for two years, and I once had a hair stylist there make my hair bouffant. I didn’t think my hair could ever do bouffant—I have hair that doesn’t want to do anything completely other than hang in strings. It doesn’t want to have a good wave, doesn’t want to hang straight…and definitely doesn’t want to be bouffant. That giant, bouffy hair was an amazing phenomenon to behold.

I had a hard time driving home because I wanted to look at The Hair in my rearview mirror—which wasn’t hard to do since it took up the entire thing. It was so big, I seem to remember that it hit the roof of my car. When I got The Hair home, I had to examine it carefully to see how she had done it.

All I can tell you is this: It’s still a mystery. It defied gravity. She hadn’t teased it at all. Powerful styling products were involved, but they always are. As I’ve said, my hair laughs at powerful styling products. After much examination, I finally decided it’s another Southern woman mystery. If you’ve ever known Southern women, real ones, I mean—I’m talking the kind who not only know what grits are, but how to pronounce the word with two syllables (“gree-its”)—you know that all Southern women seem complacently aware that they have charms that the rest of the country—or world, for that matter—doesn’t possess.

Now my hair, which was cut and styled by a non-Southerner, is hanging in its customary strings again.

Sigh.

When reporters started to ask at about 50 if I would have a facelift…the truth is I'm afraid I'd become like the guy with a bad toupee; when you're talking to him, you can't think of anything else. ~Gloria Steinem