Coiffure Continued

One of my concerns with the change of hair was being able to communicate with the hair dresser in English. I thought this might be important for a big change like this. Oddly enough, it's been a very international hair experience despite my thinking I was being careful to take care of this before departure.

My mom recommended a lady. On the phone she sounded...foreign, far east, but her name sounded Hispanic. In person, she was definitely Asian. Her English was heavily accented. I explained what I wanted while one part of my brain wondered how her English was. Does she know what I'm saying? About that point she scissored off the majority of my hair in three cuts. As my time in the chair passed, I realized she speaks English very well. She told me she was "Vietnamee". Her husband, Spanish. (Thus explaining the name.) On a side note, she was outraged at her husband's aunt for telling her children that Christmas is really in July. Auntie is a Jehovah's Witness. This is the all-American-melting pot in one family.

So today, I decided I need product. I'm having to learn what to do with the new hair and it hasn't gone well each day. I headed for the beauty supply place and ask the two nice ladies - one older lady with gray funky hair, and one an African American girl. The younger defers to the elder who takes me back to look at gels. She's German I'm guessing from the accent though her name is Suzie. She touches my hair a lot and proceeds to tell and also demonstrate how to "scunj" my hair. She says scunj so many times I'm trying not to get tickled.

We'll see if the product works or not, but I've got very international hair already. Definitely not plain white bread in the JoCo suburbs! Now I have to go scunj my hair.

Ah, freedom

I finally did it. I got my hair cut off. It needed to be done especially since I'd gotten the bad perm last fall. Why wait? I was, on the one hand, unsure of what to do and on the other hand waiting for it to have enough length to do something with. I'd gotten to the point I dreaded showering because I was going to have to comb my hair. It was a lengthy ordeal, no pun intended. Today I showered and there was no 10 minute combing and applying products to tame my hair needed. This is freedom. I may decide I like the short hair thing. I'd post a picture but I don't know how to do that yet. I'll see you soon.

Nature, my enemy

I got in my head I wanted to get the weeds and grass out of my herb garden.(I use the term loosely since I only have a couple of herbs and a few flowers). I know we're moving, but it was just something I wanted to do. It felt like something I needed to do. I realized today as I was wrestling shrubage from the earth that my gardening is a love-hate relationship. I love the flowers, herbs, an nice things that grow. I'm not sure I actually like the act of gardening.

Have you ever seen an area that was once a yard or a nice garden that has been left uncultivated a year or two? Nature is vicious. It takes over the once nice little patch with an intensity that I find fascinating and frightening. I believe we're to be good stewards of nature, but I also see that it can certainly take care of its own.

And how come Martha Stewart or garden people on TV can just push their trowel into this lovely fresh, dark, loose dirt? I have to beat a big shovel into the ground and fume and fuss to open up a hard rough hole that my plant sort of fits. They must have a staff that unloads bags of potting soil onto the ground so they can make it look that easy.

It can be satisfying to work hard and get dirty gardening, but usually my back is killing me and at some point I've scuffed and scraped myself. Today my enemy was these "weed trees" that's what my mom calls them. They are all the trees that propagate themselves enthusiastically in every crack of sidewalk or any other microscopic spot of dirt. I don't want these in my herb garden. I have dug and hacked at these seedlings for several years trying to remove them. Each year the little stick I couldn't get out turns into another tree.

I found a tool in the garage today that is used for scraping tile off floors. It also said it was good for cutting roots. Ha-ha. Perhaps this would help me. It wasn't pretty and I grunted like a maniac, but I won. The little trees were all cut off below dirt level. Probably they can still come back but the stick part is now gone. Score one for me.

Time management Rice Krispie style

I once tried to microwave an entire package of marshmallows. I had used the microwave to heat things up, not to cook. I decided to make Rice Krispie squares when we were first married. The microwave seemed like it would "melt" the marshmallows faster than the double boiler method. You may all be fully aware of what happened. I had no clue what I was getting into. After a little while in the microwave the package of marshmallows expanded from their bowl to fill the entire device wall to wall, ceiling to floor. Marshmallow everywhere. I don't remember how long it took to clean the microwave out, but it was a challenge. I've never made them again come to think of it.

I tell this story because I ran across an entry in a journal about goals and time management from a talk I'd heard. It said to look at how you spend your time in regard to goals because a given task will expand to take the time you give it. Like the marshmallows, expanding to fill the given space -- the entire microwave.

This struck me because I've been analyzing my use of time lately. It feels like I'm jogging in peanut butter a lot. I am able, like all of us, to let the computer suck a lot of time out of me. Check emails, verify a file is in the right location, scan a picture place it, but not don't finish the whole project, check something else. Little errands for my mouse. They make me feel busy, productive. It soothes my need to get things done. Click, click, click. Ahhh. While what I do here is valuable, I have not set a time for it, thus it eats up extra time. More than I mean to give it.

None of this is bad per se. It's just that I know from my years on the planet that I tend to take more time for a given task than other people and more time than I meant to. While my mouse jockeying feels like productivity, it may only be making me feel busy. It would be good if I plodded my slow way along on other tasks besides just clicking. I suppose it makes me hark back to the idea of setting goals and time periods for myself to work on specific things, and not to let them spill over.

Do I smell smoke?

When people think grandma, it's usually touchy feely thoughts of warm cookies. I do have a grandma like that, but then there's the other one.

Have you ever met anyone who has a propensity to insult you, but doesn't seem to mean it deeply? Granny, we'll call her, has a way of insulting everyone. She likes a good joke and always has one to tell you. She's always ready with an insult though it seems like she doesn't realize she's insulting. So far this week, I've been stupid, talked too much, and mumbled. Everyone right now mumbles because she doesn't wear her hearing aid anymore. Lest you think I'm just the bad granddaughter, she's also insulted Dar, and my mother, and other people who were thankfully out of ear shot. She can be a trial, but she's also a hoot.

Strangely enough, she really likes us, well most the time, despite her comments. She's the only grandma I've been around who is not afraid to use swear words and occasionally have a drink in front of me or even offer me one. Despite these quirks, she is a secret smoker and has been my whole life. When she's getting too crabby, we know to let her sneak off to the bathroom by herself in the mall or a restaurant. We just pray it doesn't have smoke detectors.