the camera doesn't lie... or does it...

so today . . . i am on diandra's blog...

i have mixed feelings about this.  i have come to the conclusion that i am not photogenic, so being featured on a photography blog makes me a little uneasy.  however, the photography blog belongs to my daughter, who thinks i am "cute."  i think she is blinded by love.  but, whatever, there i am...

i don't think the pictures are horrible.  the dress was beautiful, the light was gorgeous, the shoes were unexpected--yet sparkly!  and the photographer was amazing!  the problem was my hair...

...my hair.  the bane of my existence.  my hair has always been an issue for me.  until a few years ago, i was never happy with how it looked.  i tried it long and straight.  i tried it short and curly.  i tried it short and straight, and long and curly.  when it was straight, my ears would stick out.  to get it curly, i had to perm it.  my life has been a constant battle with my hair.  until a few years ago...

a few years ago, my hair got long--longer than it had ever been before.  i didn't plan it that way, i just neglected to go in and have it cut.  for months!  and as it got longer, rollie and diandra really liked it.  even now, when i talk about cutting it short again, they both say, "NOOOOOO!"  of course, they have both seen me with short hair--they know it is not going to be good.  i always have great hope that this time will be different.  this time the short hair cut will look good.  but it never does.

but long hair has it's own issues.  like when do i get it cut?  i just tend to sort of ignore it until one day i decide it is driving me crazy and must be cut immediately!  (these are the days when it is good that i live in a big city and can just walk into super cuts and get my hair cut.  diandra is horrified that i trust my hair to super cuts, but then, she has the patience to wait for an appointment at a better salon.  i do not.  and if i can't get in somewhere for a haircut immediately, i have been known to do it myself...  usually that is not the best decsion.  usually.)  and so, there are days when i walk around with witchy hair... those in between days when it is really too long, but i haven't noticed it yet.

this was the sort of day when we decided to take pictures in my wedding dress.  a witchy hair day.

sadly, i did not know it was a witchy hair day.  i was too focused on diandra's upcoming wedding and the fact that it was only a few days away, and i had said i was going to make her a bolero-type jacket out of my wedding dress for her to wear with her wedding dress.  we had been planning this for several months, so it isn't like i just suddenly had this great idea at the last minute.  and yet, there we were, at the last minute.  but i wanted to take photos first, and between my schedule and diandra's schedule, and the weather (winter, you know,) we hadn't been able to make it happen...

... until just a few days before her wedding.  i suddenly realized that if i didn't get started on making the jacket immediately, i would not have time to finish it before the wedding.  so when i got home from school, i threw the dress on, we walked down to the park, and took some pictures.

it was a beautiful day.  the light was warm and golden.  i loved wearing my dress, realizing that this would be the last time i would wear it...  and then, there i was, looking into the camera without a clue as to what to do next.  diandra tried to help me.  she put me different places and gave me ideas of what to do with myself, but i just felt awkward.  i sooo wanted the pictures to be beautiful and perfect, but people were looking at me (ok, there were only a couple of dog walkers, but they LOOKED at me, like "what the heck is she doing?!?!)  and the wind was blowing.  hard.  my hair kept blowing in my face.  but diandra just kept snapping pictures...

and then we went home, and i cut up my dress.  diandra showed me the pictures she had taken, and to be honest, i was disappointed.  all i could see was my unruly hair.  why hadn't i taken a few minutes to curl it or straighten it or something?  why hadn't i planned ahead and at least had my bangs cut so you could see my face??  why hadn't i done something besides twirl around???

oh well...  it was too late to do anything about it.  my dress was in pieces, just waiting to be sewn into a jacket for diandra...  there were no "do overs."

i didn't give the photos much thought after that.  diandra got married.  we moved.  i went back to school in the fall...  and then last week i got a text from diandra.  "guess who is going to be on my blog this week?"  yep, it was me.  in my wedding dress.  with my witchy hair. 

i protested.  "mom, stop!" she said, "you look cute!"  as i said, she was blinded by love... and so, i waited for the blog with both dread and hope.  and waited.  and waited.  because although she had planned to post the blog last week, i got bumped.  to monday!  what a way to start the week...

this morning diandra sent me this text, "you are on my blog."  "AAACCCKKKKK!"  i replied.  "i guess i'd better go look."  and so i did.  and again, all i could see was my witchy hair.  i texted diandra, "i was right.  my hair was awful!  i wish we had taken a few more minutes to fix it better.  and my nose always looks so big in pictures.  does it look that big in person?  i did love the pictures that didn't have my face in them."

and then diandra texted me these words, "um... no.  you look happy and beautiful.  stop it."

well, you know, she is my daughter.  that is how i look through her filters.  i just hoped i wouldn't scare people away from visiting her blog again...

later in the day i went back and looked at the pictures a second time.  and i liked them a little better.  and then i looked at them again before i started blogging, and you know what?  i don't know about beautiful, but i do look happy.

in diandra's blog, she said i hated being in front of the camera.  that isn't completely true.  i like having my picture taken, because i am always hopeful that the results will be good.  but they rarely are, which is why i also hate having my picture taken.  i'm always worried about my bangs or my posture or that weird smile i get when i'm forced to hold a smile.  and i never think i look like myself.  i mean, i look at myself every day when i get ready for work, so i think i know what i look like.  but then i look at pictures of myself and they don't really look like me, or at least what i think i look like.  and so then i wonder, what do i really look like?

i take pictures all the time.  of diandra.  of rollie.  of the dogs.  they all look great in my pictures--probably because they are used to having their pictures taken.  i am not.  i am always the one taking the pictures, not the one getting my picture taken.  and so i think i am just not comfortable in front of the camera, and that's why i don't think i look like myself.  i look like a flat, two dimensional caricature of myself.  at least, that's what i think.

but i've also been thinking about diandra's words today.  it doesn't matter if i looked cute or beautiful.  cute and beautiful are just a matter of someone's opinion.  clearly!  what does matter is that i looked happy.  whether i like it or not, i looked like myself, on that day, witchy hair and all.  it was a beautiful day, i was out in the park with my darling daughter, and we were laughing.  i was happy.  even though my hair was trying to swallow my face...

so i think i'm going to stop avoiding the camera.  i think i'm going to step in front of it once in a while, even if i have to put my camera in someone else's hands and say, "take a picture of me."  i'm not going to worry about my bangs being perfect.  (well, that's a lie.  i will worry about my bangs until the day i die.  but if they aren't perfect, i'm going to try not to let it ruin my picture.)  diandra has said that she doesn't always take her good camera with her, because she finds that if she is focused on taking pictures, then she isn't really experiencing the moment.  i think that is probably true.  i think i haven't really been a part of a lot of moments, because i have been busy taking pictures.  but i need to have pictures to remind me of the fun times we have had...

i guess it comes down to this.  pictures document our moments.  and all of our moments aren't perfect, so neither are our pictures.  but perfection shouldn't be the goal!  the goal should be documenting a memory, imperfections and messy hair and all.  it doesn't matter if i look beautiful.  what matters is if i look happy.  or contemplative.  or tired.  or whatever the moment brings.

so thank you, diandra, for documenting my wedding dress's last day.  thank you for taking the time to take those pictures.  and blogging them.  thank you for making me laugh.  and thank you for reminding me today that although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder,  happiness can be seen by everyone.

(although, it could be seen more easily if i could remember to get my hair cut...)

beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder...

so today . . . my hair is driving me craaaaazy!

my hair has always been the bane of my existence. it is baby fine which makes it hard to work with. it has been short, shorter, ridiculously short, medium length, and now finally long. it has been layered, blunt cut, permed, spiral permed, and colored red. yes, red.

i have always loved red hair. so when i was about 30, with the encouragement of my current best friend, i decided to give it a try. even though i knew gazillions of women colored their own hair, i had absolutely zero experience with it. and since i was thinking about such a drastic change, i thought maybe i should get some professional help. (my mom was not a fan of my red hair. she probably thought i should have gotten some professional help before i changed the color!)

the problem was, i didn't have a lot of extra cash just lying around waiting to throw itself at a hair coloring specialist. so i did the only thing i could think of--i went to a beauty school!

i thought this was a great solution. because even though these budding hair stylists needed guinea pigs, i was pretty sure they would be supervised by fairly competent instructors. wouldn't they? i was pretty sure they would. however, i didn't actually see any competent instructors. or incompetent ones. or any instructors at all! this made me a little uneasy, but i convinced myself that there must be some instructors somewhere who would be monitoring this procedure. surely they wouldn't leave my hair to the mercy of some untested trainee. would they?

apparently they would. apparently all the instructors were at lunch. or home sick. or in the back watching soap operas. but they were very definitely not checking up on my procedure.

i chose a color--without any help at all. the beauty school student mixed it up, and started applying it to my hair. i thought the solution looked kind of purple. i said, "that looks sort of purple to me. are you sure that is the right color?" the beauty student looked at it and said, "no, that is what it is supposed to look like." ok, well, i had never seen hair color before. maybe it was supposed to be the color of an eggplant...

i left a couple of hours later with burgundy hair. yes, burgundy.

i cried. it was awful! and i had no idea what to do. i just thought i was going to have burgundy hair until it had grown enough to be burgundy hair with long brown roots. i thought it would probably take two to three years to completely grow back out!

this was not a workable solution, in my opinion.

thankfully(?) i had a friend who had vast experience with hair coloring. yes, this is the same friend who encouraged me to go red in the first place, but apparently i was still listening to her. she said all i had to do was go to the store, buy a box of color stripper to take off the horrible burgundy color, and then recolor it myself. she proceeded to explain how to do this, but i was still kind of wrapping my brain around the fact that you could buy a solution to strip all the color off of your hair!! it sounded so drastic! but something had to be done. burgundy hair was not a look i was willing to live with. so off i went to payless...

i came home and immediately applied the stripping formula to my hair. i didn't really know what to expect, but i think i sort of thought my hair would be kind of platinum colored. isn't that what hair would look like without any color to it? again, apparently not. because when i was done stripping the color, my hair was streaked in several shades of bright red to white. it was a mess!

now i was really worried. things were going from bad to worse! i was starting to think i might have to cut my hair really, really short and wear a wig!

about this time, four-year old diandra came out of her room. "oh mommy," she said, "your hair looks so pretty!" aww, you are probably thinking, how sweet! and it was. it made me smile on a day when tears ruled.

but then i remembered how much she loved rainbow brite.

i managed to get some color on my hair--a lovely shade of red--and it turned out pretty nice. i liked it a lot. but i quickly found out that it was going to take a lot of maintenance to keep that red color looking so good. so after a few months, i went back to my normal color of brown, even though i did love the red...

...anyway, back to today. the reason my hair is driving me crazy today is not the color--it is the length! my hair has never been this long before. i didn't set out to grow it this long, it is simply the result of inattention--if you don't cut it, hair continues to grow. (i know, rocket science...) i think it is too long. i think it makes my face look horsey. but every time i talk about getting it cut, diandra and rollie go on and on about how much they like it. which is nice, but it just feels too long for me.

i admit it. i have sensory issues. i can live with the way it looks, and even the horsey face, but i cannot live with the way it feels. even when i think it looks pretty good, it feels like it is just hanging there, limply. (i am sure this is a flashback to my high school years when it did hang limply.) and so, i think i am going to have to cut it.

the only remaining question is, how short. i long for a shortish, flippy cut that will blow in the wind when i am driving and stay out of my face when i am sleeping. but then i think how nice it is to be able to gather all my hair up into a ponytail when it is really hot, and get it up off of my neck. and so i think for now, the ponytail trumps the flippy cut. maybe i will just get a couple of inches trimmed off, and see how i like that.

i wonder if there is a beauty school anywhere around here...

today's plan? errands and a movie :)

so today . . . i ate bar-be-que potato chips and went to a movie by myself.

neither of these things are earth shattering, but they sort of sum up my day.

this is my last full day alone, and i woke up still thinking about getting my hair cut. i have been putting it off, because my bangs are just the perfect length, and that only happens for about three days every few months. my hair looks fine, but it feels heavy and annoying. and i was afraid that if i didn't go in and get it cut by someone who knew what they were doing, i might just break out my own scissors and see what happened. i have been known to do that before--usually late at night, when my hair is at it's worst and there is no place i can go for a haircut--not even supercuts! and the results are never good...

this morning i walked into supercuts, and for the first time ever in my experience, there were no customers in the store--not one! i sat down and got the full sales pitch on all the hair products that were on sale... none of which i wanted. i finally got my hair cut, and it felt much better. except for the bangs... they are now too short.

i decided since i was out, i should just do some errands. so i whipped out my list and headed to wal-mart. i got crayola crayons for 25 cents per box! and these were the boxes of 24!! (i know, i sound waaaay too excited.) i watch for this sale every year, because whether you are buying crayons or markers or watercolors, crayola is the best!! i don't know if they use special pigments or what, but their colors are definitely more vibrant than any others. which is probably why they cost more. and when you are buying for a whole classroom, you have to watch for the really good, back-to-school pricing. of course, this put me smack in the middle of the school supplies... (luckily, because i found the coolest folder! i have no idea what i am going to use it for, but it made me smile for only $1!)

wal-mart is also where i found the bar-be-que chips.

i got the last bag. clearly bar-be-que is the flavor of choice, since several other flavors were still on the shelves. i brought the bag home, and ate almost all of it. by myself. but it's ok, because that is all i ate today. and according to the package, it had 11 servings at 150 calories per serving. since there are a few chips left, i figure i ate about 9 servings which equal 1350 calories. and you know, people lose weight on 1500 calories a day, so i think i am good...

...except i did eat a hot dog at the movie theater. i went to the cheap theater to watch iron man 2. all by myself. i really wanted to see it, because i loved the first one, but it just hadn't happened. so when i saw it was at the cheap theater, i knew i had to go! i walked up to the ticket booth and asked for one ticket. the cashier, who was probably 15, just looked at me. then he gave me a big smile. i could almost see his thoughts--"it's perfectly ok that you are here by yourself. lots of people come to the movies by themselves. although most of them are alone because they have no family or friends or job. but hey! i'm sure that isn't true of you. i'm sure you have a ton of people you could have asked to come with you today. you are probably always surrounded by family and friends showering you with love and attention, and you came by yourself today because you were craving some alone time. right???"

uh huh... whatever...

the movie was really good. then i came home and vacuumed. yes, i vacuumed. rollie and diandra are coming home tomorrow, so i needed to pick up the debris that seems to collect around me (papers, magazines, photo albums, chip bags...) and prepare to share my space once again.

because while i really like my alone time (that 15 year old kid wasn't all that wrong,) i will be glad when my family comes back. as cute as my dogs are, neither of them are great conversationalists...

... and i think i might be ready to eat something that is not a snack food...

vacation: a time to try something new . . .

so today . . . we shaved rollie's head.

he's been thinking about it for a while. i think it was originally diandra's idea. i was not really on board, because while a shaved head looks good on some people, it looks equally not good on others. and how can a person tell which way it will go?

i felt the same way the first time he shaved off his moustache. it scared diandra (of course she was only two,) and i didn't like it at all. he quickly let it grow back and kept it in place on his face for the next 20 years. then, when he decided he wanted his hair short--really, really short--i didn't like that either. but when i got used the the short, short hair look, i found that i did like it. and now that the moustache has been gone for a while, i like that too.

he almost had a shaved head several months ago. it was time for a haircut, but i forgot to put the attachment on the shaver that regulates the length of the hair. i started at the back of his neck and went straight up to the crown of his head, and was horrified to see that i had just shaved a bald strip right up the back of his head!!! i just stopped and looked at it. i didn't know what i was going to do. he was laughing, but i was crying. it was terrible! and to make it even worse, this was on a saturday, and he had to get up and preach on sunday!! i tried to fix it by cutting the rest pretty short, and then sort of blending the edges of the shaved part in. and then i told him not to turn his back to the congregation on sunday . . . i must have done a good job of camouflage, because hardly anyone noticed. but i was still horrified.

rollie is on vacation this week. i still have to work, so he hasn't planned a lot of activity for this time. he will mostly be hanging out at home, reading, watching movies, napping . . . so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give shaved a chance. (you notice how i said shaved, not bald. because bald is what we are trying to avoid. apparently bald=bad, but shaved=good.) because if we shave his head this week and it looks terrible, it won't matter. he can just stay home or wear a hat if he goes out. and his hair grows very quickly, so if he decides he doesn't like the shaved look, he will have time to grow some fuzz on top before he really has to go back to work.

so it is done. and it doesn't look bad. but i'm not sure i really like it either. yet. it may be like the moustache and shorter hair, and after i get used to it, i will like it. it is just too early to tell. i was going to post a picture, but i am having issues emailing pics from my phone. so until i can get the pictures from my phone to my computer to my blog, you will just have to use your imaginations.

which may be a good thing. because i think once you have let your imaginations loose on the idea of rollie with a shaved head, a picture of the real thing will be a relief.