- Because of my insomnia I was able to see the lunar eclipse. It looked like a big eyeball in the sky. It was one night I was happy to be up in the middle of the night. Who says good things can’t come out of something bad? LOL
- My 15 year old cat had a thyroid check up with the vet. Not only is his condition staying stable but he gained some weight.
- I got my haircut and I really like how it turned out. This is the shortest I ever went.
- I am finally starting to feel less depressed. Why should I allow other people’s bad decisions ruin my life?? Especially since I don’t have any control over it. Letting go is a process and I finally feel like I am accepting things the way they are. I am in a pretty good mood so I am going to enjoy it while it lasts.
- I’m grateful for my husband. He has two days left of his month long detox diet. He did an awesome job with it. He is also willing to make some positive changes and compromise which I appreciate.
- Angel took me out to eat and to see a comedian Friday night. I’m thankful for a daughter I can go out and do fun things with. We spent the evening laughing and didn’t talk about problems.
- Yesterday I spent the day baking with my best friend. We made four batches of cookies and two batches of candy. We both made some new recipes. We aren’t much for baking but it was nice to spend a couple hours together chatting.
- I’m sitting next to a roaring fire while I write these words. I love having a fireplace on cool wintry days.
- I finished reading the first edition of my book and started the writing process again.
- I am getting excited for the holiday season. My husband, daughter, and I are ready for the race on Thanksgiving day. We will be hosting a small party at our house that evening. Then the following day we will be getting our Christmas tree and decorating the house.
- This past week Dan, Angel, and I met up with the DJ. All of the major things are now done for the wedding which is a relief.
Hair
Fortune cookie wisdom #29
You emerge victorious from the maze you’ve been travelling in.
Sometimes I feel like a lab rat in a maze. I solve one problem then I’m removed from the maze just to be placed into another maze. It’s hard to find the way out sometimes. Sometimes I search for clues from paths I’ve travelled down before to try to figure things out. But sometimes instead of answers I find myself triggered.
It seems like I find myself triggered by a lot of things lately. For example, last Sunday Paul and I went to church. The pastor was talking about bringing in Christmas season donations of new comforters for the homeless shelter. This is an admirable undertaking to give to an area of our community in need. The problem is that our daughter is currently staying at the same homeless shelter which has been very painful for us. Just mentioning the homeless shelter triggered pain in both of us. I realize it’s not the pastor’s fault for causing us pain. But sometimes that is how being triggered works.
I’ve been feeling triggered by other things lately too like my hair. I know this sounds totally crazy and it is. I mentioned this before but not recently that my autistic/schizophrenic brother Matt physically attacked me on a daily basis throughout my childhood. One of the things he did often was grab my mom and I by our long hair. A ponytail was a sure way to get abused by him. He would just grab on and yank. It was swift and painful. Sometimes he would pull my hair gently in a teasing way and laugh. He pulled my mom’s hair while she was driving which was terrifying. Hair=pain.
There was a point in my life when I was a teenager that I felt sickened by my hair. If I didn’t have long hair my brother couldn’t pull it. I felt this urge to cut off all my long hair. One day I grabbed a scissors and hacked off my hair. He couldn’t hurt me in that way anymore.
Lately I’ve been feeling triggered by my hair again. I couldn’t stand to look at it. I wanted to shave my head. I googled what it means for a woman to shave her head. From my research I gathered that a woman with a shaved head could mean she is confident, rebellious, ready for change, or having a mental break. Oh, it this what my nervous breakdown is going to look like??
Yesterday I went in and got my hair cut shorter than I have ever had it before. I’m still not certain it is short enough. I wondered why did I want to cut off all my hair. I had to go back and examine a time I wanted to do that before. I came to this conclusion. There was a time in my life when I was in a lot of emotional distress. During this time cutting off my hair made me feel like I had some control over what was happening to me. It stopped the abuse of the hair pulling. It was a successful coping mechanism.
Twenty-five years later I am feeling attacked by my daughter. I am under emotional distress. I am in a similar mental state that I was in back then. One of the successful coping mechanisms was cutting off my hair. Is it any wonder why I would want to cut off all my hair? It gives me a false sense of control and getting rid of it makes me feel like I am letting go of something. It makes sense for me to think cutting off my hair could decrease some of my pain because it worked before.
I also decided to update my profile picture on WP. It’s been over 3 years since I changed it last so it is time.
Gratitude week 2
- We spent the weekend in Chicago and didn’t get murdered. The girls and I went to Chicago with Paul. He attended a conference and we went shopping. I had a nightmare before we left that the girls got murdered. I was a little nervous being the “chaperone” of my daughter and our two foreign exchange students. I was afraid because they do not understand our culture and might not know what is safe. All the people that we met were wonderful. We walked 6 miles then took an Uber back to the hotel and didn’t get murdered. I don’t know what I was so worried about. Ah, I am too much country mouse.
- We were supposed to get a major snowstorm on the way back from Chicago. Instead we only got a dusting of snow which made the drive a lot better than we were expecting. Gotta love when the weather forecasters are wrong!
- I met with my therapist who read my book over Christmas break. She said it was a Christmas present to herself (which is good I told her, since I didn’t get her anything). She thought it was so wonderful she wanted to read it again. She thought I should go deeper with my writing. I am grateful that so far two out of three readers were very happy with my book. I am meeting with my third test reader tomorrow.
- I decided to get an even shorter haircut this week. I also am growing out my blonde hair color and letting it go grey. I think it doesn’t look the greatest. However, I got complimented by two strangers on my hair this weekend after wearing a hat on it most of the day. Bizarre. Two people raved over my unbrushed hat hair. Then another stranger complimented me on my new glasses.
- I am grateful my son was in a really good mood all week. Although now that I think about it, maybe it was because we were all leaving for the weekend and he had the house to himself. I also found a really cool shirt for him that he loves.
- I am grateful to find a beer that I am not allergic to. Also, I am grateful for goat and vegan cheese so I can enjoy macaroni and cheese and pizza. Although we had good Chicago style pizza, I am grateful that my husband makes the best pizza around that I can eat.
- Although I love to travel, I am grateful to be sleeping in my own bed tonight with fresh clean sheets.
- I am grateful we stayed at a really unique hotel called Fieldhouse Jones in Chicago. The decor was amazing, all antique sports stuff. Our bedroom wall was about 10 feet from the L which was cool. Paul and I played a game of air hockey in the hotel basement this morning. Although he beat me by one point, it’s been a long time since we had fun together.
- Although there were periods of rain and snow, I am thankful it wasn’t too cold to walk around Chicago.
- I am grateful that I don’t have a lot of plans for the rest of the month and can finally have some down time.
Forever 21?
It has been a rough month. If only I could wipe February off the calendar this year.
There were a few good things that happened though.
The most difficult thing that happened this month was burying my MIL who fought death and wasn’t ready to go.
That was followed by the break up of my daughter Angel with her boyfriend of 3 years, Mitch.
Let’s just say I would rather think about the possibility of planning a wedding instead of a funeral…
It wasn’t in the cards I guess.
Talking about cards… Guess who got carded??
There is someone living out there that thinks I could possibly be under 21.
I went to the grocery store and bought a 6 pack of Madtown Nut Brown Ale. Great beer, by the way. The lady looked at my driver’s license which clearly stated 1974 and glanced at my face several times. I am hoping that she couldn’t believe I looked so young for my age versus she was visually impaired in some way.
Just for a quick comparison…the picture on the left was taken a few days after I turned 21. I remember the night well.
After sipping (not slipping) on mudslides, I decided to highlight my own hair.
Great! Now I’m thinking of songs…slip sliding in the rain…singing in the rain…what a glorious…anyway, back to my hair…
Highlighting my hair was a royal pain. Come to think of it, I don’t know of anyone else that did it besides hairdressers with their own hair.
Highlighting…I remember putting what was like a swimming cap on my head. Then I had to pull through small strands of hair out of tiny holes in the cap with what looked like a knitting needle.
I would not be considered a person that has a lot of patience to sit down and do crafts like knitting.
In fact, the only crafts I like is craft beer.
So, I said screw it, pulled the cap off, and highlighted all of my hair. Kind of gave me the grunge Kurt Cobain hair that was so wicked in the 90’s anyway. Who says that anymore?? That is so wicked.
The picture on the right was taken after I turned 21 for the second time.
I don’t look a day older from picture to picture, right??
Okay, maybe a couple of years**cough**cough**decades..
Forever 21?? Ah, who am I kidding??
It was fun while it lasted though…I chuckled in wicked mad laughter at the thought as I sipped my Madtown Nut Brown…slipped down…sliding…singing in the rain..Great!
Let’s go back to the future
Today is the future day that Marty McFly time traveled to in the 1985 movie Back to the Future. I wonder if his character would be pleased to see how the future really turned out if he traveled here from 1985 today. We do have some pretty cool inventions since then like the cell phone, ipads, kindles, the internet, etc. Technology few of us thought would be possible back then. I can liken it to what it would be like going back hundreds of years and telling people about electricity or indoor plumbing. It would be hard to imagine. We still don’t fly around in cars, but can see the possibility of self driving cars for the future. Will we be telling our great-grandchildren about how we had to get a driver’s license someday? Maybe it will provide a solution to the problem of drunk driving.
I don’t think that Marty would like our hair and clothing today. Clothing and makeup do not reflect a neon geometrical style anymore and our hair is ho hum boring. If you were a teen in the 80’s, you would know what I mean. Big hair was fun! While the movie was right on with a few predictions, quite a few were way off. Where were you in 1985? Could you have predicted the future of the world much less the future of your own life? Were you even born? In 1985, I was younger than my youngest child is right now. My future life was a mystery. Who would I marry? Would I have children? What kind of career would I have?
The last 30 years have been a winding road. Most of it reflecting consequences, either good or bad, of the life that I have chosen. I became set in my beliefs over this time. I got married, had children, went to college, found hobbies, made and lost friends. Some things happened that I did not choose, this was also within the framework of who I would become.
What will happen over the next 30 years? My husband wants us to start planning for retirement. The next 30 years scare me. There are too many unknowns. I don’t want to think about getting old and declining physically and/or intellectually. I think I will probably have grandchildren. I will most likely enter into retirement. I will possibly face the loss of my spouse and have to face the possibility that I may not be a part of this future in 30 years. Sometimes I want to focus on the past instead, it is certain and known. But focusing on the past also makes me unsettled. Sometimes the good old days were not always good.
I try to focus on the here and now. I want to make myself the best person that I can be in the present so I can be a gift to those around me today and tomorrow. I am thankful to have all of you in my life as I am living it.
Where were you in 1985?
Sheerly not cut out for it
I really suck at cutting hair. I could use the left handed excuse of having to learn how to cut with my right hand, but I don’t even think that would cut it. I didn’t always think that I sucked at it. As a teen, I got sick of my autistic brother constantly pulling my hair. It hurt. I noticed that my younger brothers didn’t get their hair pulled, probably because it was too short to pull. Just my mom and I got our long hair pulled. I got really sick of it so one day I took a scissors in my right hand and hacked off around 6 inches of long tresses and lot of stress. People commented. They liked my new hair cut. I thought that I wasn’t terribly bad at it.
Then I got married and had kids. My oldest daughter needed her bangs trimmed as a toddler and I was on it. I cut her bangs, but they were crooked. So I kept cutting until they were straight and about a quarter of an inch long. I didn’t really suck. She wasn’t sitting still. People commented. Ah, your daughter decided to cut her own hair. Poor thing. She wasn’t talking too much yet, so I didn’t argue that I was the one who hacked her hair. It wasn’t too long after that when she started to cut her own hair. She was better at it then I was.
Then my husband got the idea of buying a hair cutting kit to shave some money. He liked to cut his hair short so it really wasn’t that complicated. I could almost handle that. I decided to take on bigger things, my dad’s hair. First, let me tell you that he looks exactly like Santa Claus. He has a humongous stomach, everything else is flat. He has long gray hair with an equally long beard that children could try to yank off and find it to be real. He has the glasses that he looks over, worn on the lower part of his nose. He would be a perfect Santa Claus in appearance. He would just have to work on being jolly. He would have to smile and tolerate little children. He would have to give them candy instead of hiding it to eat himself. Darn, it would have been so perfect otherwise.
I made the mistake of offering to cut my dad’s hair. This is a job that my mom always did, but for some reason didn’t have time for. At one point in her life, my mom wanted to be a hairdresser. During her senior year, the high school had a career day. They brought in someone that worked with the disabled doing what she does now. That person probably never knew that by telling high school kids about his career changed my mother’s whole career and life path. I don’t see her being happy as a beautician. She loves her career and finds it very fulfilling.
The day came for my dad’s hair cut. He came over to my house. I realized quickly that I was in a little too deep. My dad’s hair was long. My husband’s hair was short. I decided to buzz my dad’s hair using the longest setting. It really wasn’t going very well. As I was buzzing the back of my dad’s head, the guard came off. I gave him a very noticeable bald spot down the back of his head. Thankfully, he just laughed the whole thing off. After that incident, things such as scissors and hair cutting kits mysteriously vanished from my house. My mom made time to cut my dad’s hair. My husband stopped complaining about $20 hair cuts.
I realized that cutting hair was sheerly not my thing.
Outrunning my demons 