Fabulous Monday
Late and delicious breakfast, relaxed stroll, massage, and then a hot shower.
All Mondays should be like this. Hope yours is good, even if it’s not this fabulous.
Late and delicious breakfast, relaxed stroll, massage, and then a hot shower.
All Mondays should be like this. Hope yours is good, even if it’s not this fabulous.
Despite the assurances of the Disney Express man at the airport, I am not “dazzled” by our hotel.
However, I’m didn’t come to be dazzled, I came to relax and eat. And the salmon I had for dinner was fabulous. So there you go.
Let’s hope tomorrow’s meals are just as good–and that I can get a spa appointment…
Also? It’s surprisingly cool in Florida. Which is fine with me, since I hate the heat.
Also, either our hotel was built by midgets, or they were trying to do it on the cheap, because I can touch the ceilings without stretching.
But tomorrow? Tomorrow starts the relaxing.
Once Michael and I moved to an apartment that allowed pets, I wanted to get a cat. So in 1998, on my birthday, we went outside the city and picked out Kat.
Now let’s let’s go back a couple decades…
On my 4th birthday, I had been playing outside when I appeared at the door holding a gray cat, and saying, “Look! I got cat for my birthday!”
Despite my parent’s best efforts, no on in the neighborhood would claim him, so Smokey came to live with us. They got him fixed and all his shots and he joined the family, consisting of me, my parents, and Ari the dachshund.
One of the first things Smokey did was claw the kitchen chairs. So was taken to the vet to get declawed. (I think my parents were also concerned that he might scratch me.)
Unfortunately, one night–in the middle of the night of course, when everyone was sound asleep–there was a commotion in the basement. A very loud commotion. A crashing and crunching and rattling and rolling commotion.
My parents rushed downstairs to discover that Smokey had used his back claws to shred a 50 lb bag of dog kibble, which then cascaded down the wooden basement stairs.
Smokey quickly went to live somewhere else.
Thus, I wasn’t sure if it was auspicious or not when we got Kat on my birthday. Yet despite his really bad attitude (which to be honest, is not all entirely his fault), I’ve enjoyed having him around, and hope he stays healthy so we can keep him around for awhile longer.
Avery at Stereo Describes my Scenario recently went to see the film Good Hair, and as usual when the subject of hair comes up, it got me thinking.
For those of you who have not met me, I have very thick, very curly hair. I’ve always had people tell me they wish they had my hair, and although I’ve come to terms with it in recent years, I don’t think I’ll every say that I love my hair.
When I was a toddler I had straight blond hair. As I grew up, I got lots of bristle brushes, and whatever other utensils my mom would use for her hair. And whatever shampoo was on sale.
If you have curly hair, you can probably see where this is going: My hair was a mess.
All the time.
It’d tangle if you looked at it funny. It would never lie flat and neat, but would instead fly away and generally look like a mare’s nest.
Add to the mix the fact that I was a tomboy. Pull my hair into a ponytail to keep it out of the way and keep the tangles to a minimum and I was good.
My mom, however, hated my hair, and in 7th grade she ordered me to get my hair cut off. And I do mean ordered. I walked up to the barber shop, put my name on the list, and when Larry asked what I needed, I burst into tears and said I had to get my hair cut off.
Larry told me to have a seat and he’d get back to me. Then he went off and called my Dad. “Your daughter is in here crying saying I have to cut her hair off.” That’s how things were, my Dad said. So I sat there and Larry waited until everyone else had left the store and then he cut my hair. Before he started, he pulled out a baggie and told me I could keep the hair if I wanted.
I did.
But a funny thing happened as he cut. The hair my mom had always treated as just a little bit wavy stared popping up curls all over the place when he cut it. He was shocked at how curly it was, and I remember him commenting that no wonder I had problems with it.
That should have been the end of things.
But it wasn’t.
No one ever told me you had to care for curly hair differently than straight hair.
Needless to say, things didn’t get much better.
In high school I ended up cutting my hair extremely short (hey, it was the late 80s. That was the thing to do anyway) and I discovered that if I used mousse I could reduce the volume a bit. Of course this left me with crunchy hair, but in my opinion, crunchy was far better than the alternative.
To be honest, I was in my 20s before I learned that you have to treat curly hair very differently from straight hair.
Once I truly started to understand this, my world changed completely. I suddenly had the ability to get my hair to behave the way I wanted–or at the very least keep from turning into a mass of knots when I wasn’t paying attention.
As I said, I still don’t love my hair, but I’ve come to terms with it. I spend a lot of money on expensive shampoos and conditioners and treatments and anti-frizz serums and creams and gels that moisturize my hair and help tame it. And half the time I still get giant hair. But I’ve also learned that the perfect length is where I can pull it back into a ponytail if it gets too bad.
All of this is to say I don’t quite get why hair is a racial issue. My hair has been a hassle most of my life. If I could have hair that was easy to take care of, why wouldn’t I want that? I never wanted straight hair because that’s what all the models and movie stars had. I just wanted straight hair so it wouldn’t hurt when I ran a brush through it. I’ve always figured that’s all anyone else would want as well.
Just an update for those of you not playing along here in Morgantown, the Mountaineer Week Craft Fair is November 13, 14 & 15.
That means there will be FUNNEL CAKE in front of the Lair. WOO!
Today’s word is…
remote
Since Jim is suffering from a humor fail:
We’ve got apples, but I just didn’t feel up to making a pie or a crumble or anything like that, so I looked up a recipe for apple cookies. I had to make several adjustments, some for Grandmom’s diet and some for what ingredients I had available, but all in all, they turned out pretty well.
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Don’t forget to add your entries for the Vogon Poetry Slam!
Multiple entries will be accepted. Whether I want to or not.
At about 7:10 Sunday night, as I was pulling the last batch of cookies from the oven, I looked at the refrigerator and noticed the Kathy Mattea tickets.
For 7:30.
Luckily, we live very close to the CAC, so we weren’t even late.
For those of you who don’t know who Kathy Mattea is, she’s a singer-songwriter-guitarist from West Virginia (Cross Lanes) who went to Nashville to make a name for herself.
As a WVU native, and as someone who went to WVU, she was very excited to be playing in Morgantown, and had stories about her time at WVU (she was here when some students added the “flush handle” to the CAC one night).
But of course it was mostly about the music. She has a fabulous voice. I mean really. She did a couple of acapella pieces (including one by Hazel Dickens) that were marvelous.
She’s out touring for her latest album, Coal, which she started to put together after the Sago Mine disaster in 2006, and as she joked, it made for a somewhat melancholy set, so she did play other pieces. The last piece they played sounded like an Irish reel and may have been my favorite piece of the night.
I’m not sure how widely she’s touring, but if she comes to your area, I highly recommend you go see her.
Brandon Elliot
10 October 2009
8 pounds, 11 ounces
Congratulations Heather and Andy!
It’s a beautiful day here right now. Morning looked stormy, but then it cleared up. Temperatures are in the upper 50s and low 60s, which are pretty much perfect as far as I’m concerned.
Even better, today at the Farmer’s Market, we put down a deposit for our Thanksgiving turkey. And checked with another farmer about getting tongue for Grandmom (she is SO cooking that herself).
I’ve got pumpkins to cook down, and apples to make into pies…. I love fall.
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