To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
~ e. e. cummings
Remember how I posted recently about being nominated for a Major Award - an SPD Blogger Award in the Humorous Blog category? (If not, welcome to my world, and I'm glad to have company that probably, like me, gets in the car and drives directly to the grocery store for three things you need and then, upon entering the store, forgets at least two of those things. And yet, can still sing *every last word* of any number of pop songs from the 80s.... Also, check out the post preceding this one, 'cause that's the one I'm talking about.)
Well, I have tried to be, as Jane Lynch put it while accepting her own Major Award (that one being a mere Golden Globe, since she's not an SPD Blogger as far as I know), falsely humble, but as the clock winds down to the end of the voting period and I see my fellow nominees campaigning on Twitter and the like for their own blogs, I find myself reverting to true form.
I have always been competitive. It's not that I'm not a good loser, because I can be gracious in defeat. Really. I just hate to lose. Ever since I was a small child, I relished the opportunity to beat anyone, anytime, at any game. It started out with Candyland, Chutes & Ladders and my favorite - Missing Match-Ups. I particularly adored Missing Match-Ups. It was a "Memory" style game, with several different combinations available of several different boards. I, with the freakishly good memory powers of my youth, memorized all the possible combos of each board and became unbeatable. My parents (and any other grown-up unfortunate enough to cross my path or face me over a game board) quickly gave up the pretense of "letting the kid win" and would play all-out in an attempt to keep the game close. Didn't usually happen. (In fact, I was often admonished by my parents to let my younger siblings win sometimes, because I was that competitive. Didn't matter that my competition was still in Pampers, though I preferred to beat grown-ups over a drooling toddler....) By the age of 5, I had graduated from the kiddie games and was playing cribbage against my Dad. It had been one of his favorite games and he was happy to teach it to me. At first, anyhow. MWAH HA HA HA HA. Once I began playing crossword games like Scrabble, it was Good night, Irene for the vast majority of my opponents. Trivial Pursuit? Pictionary? Taboo? Scattergories? I killed in 'em. Games that revolved around words, like Balderdash? Oh yeah, right up my alley. When computers became commonplace in the home and the first, majorly pixelated Jeopardy* home game became available, I'd disappear for hours on Christmas day, parked at the PC up in my dad's office and waiting for new victims - erm, opponents - to take on. At work, we started a lunchtime Scrabble thing, where we'd play a round of 9-tile "speed" Scrabble (4 players using 9 tiles each can knock a game out pretty quickly - plenty of time to finish a game in one lunch break). For over a decade now, my own beloved Hubby refuses to play Scrabble with me except on my birthday, because I always win.
So, yeah, I'm competitive. And, as I feel the end of this Awards voting period drawing to a close, I'm starting to twitch. To panic. I didn't want to be one of those bloggers who begs and pleads for votes, really I didn't. But, now I am. Begging and pleading. Pretty, pretty, pretty please, wontcha hop on over and cast a vote or two (really, you can vote twice according to the rules - I like to win but I don't like to cheat) for me? Please?
Pretty please?
Okay, I'll stop begging now....
(That one's a vintage Kiddo shot)
So, for the last time, please click the conveeeeenient link below and vote for me!
I might even be convinced, should I win, to repost my Clooney song video for your entertainment.....
* PS - I once, back in the early '00s, appeared on the actual TV show.... My coworkers, they of the "we lose at Scrabble to Heather on a daily basis" variety, signed me up to try out for the show.
I'm really, really feeling strongly like I should just give up on the whole "growing it out" thing and just go back to a short(er), Mom 'do.
I want something sassy.
Something chic.
Something hip.
Something cute.
Problem is, my hair just. Doesn't. DO THAT. Not without major fussing.
And that, my friends, is the major issue. I want short, sassy, chic, hip and cute hair without having to do anything to it to get it that way. Or, not to have to spend more than, say, 5-10 minutes maximum to get it that way. AND, once I do get it that way, I'd like for it to stay that way. Because remember this hair?
Yeah, here's the thing about this particular look. Within a few hours, and despite the generous application of gobs and sprays and spritzes of hair products designed to keep follicles from frizzing or flying away or even thinking of moving, my hair was back to Wolverine Fawcett Van Beethoven.
ARGH!!!!
So here are some pictures of my hair at present. Let's call these the Before Pics, mmmkay?
Front:
Back/side:
(Please also note the wall of boxes in the background of the top picture; those are the 34 boxes I collected from the friendly and accommodating liquor store earlier today. They've become our own, personal Mt. Everest for both Kiddo and Crazy Cat. I'm amazed the wall is still standing at this point...)
So, you see what my hair does when left to its own devices? See how it wings this way and that, curling at just the bottom in weird, opposing directions? This is the end result of washing, conditioning, towel-drying, anti-frizz seruming and combing, then letting it dry naturally. Not. Pretty. At. All.
*sigh*
Tomorrow, my plan is to go and get my hair cut. At the very least, I need to get it trimmed, to de-split-endify and get my bangs back in their official neighborhood (that being just north of my eyebrows). I can't get rid of my bangs entirely - my hairline at the front is weird and not pretty and I hate my forehead. So, bangs in some form shall stay. (I learned this lesson the last time I grew my hair out, when I grew out my bangs for like 2 years and when they'd FINALLY reached a length that I no longer actually had any more bangs, I promptly marched into my hair salon and had her cut them back in, breathing huge sighs of relief as she did.) If I could achieve one of the cute-n-sassy, short cuts, that wouldn't require crazy upkeep and daily maintenance, I would do it, at this point, I think... But then, there's a whole year (actually, 15 months!) of suffering through the growing-out hell hair that I've done, all down the drain in one, fell cut. Would I regret giving up after perservering for so long? Maybe...
So, dear blogosphere friends (and random strangers who happen across this post), what do you think I should do? Please keep in mind that whatever hair I come up with has to flatter (as best it can - I realize it is just hair after all, and not a full-head plastic surgery substitute nor an opaque, paper bag) my head, cheeks and chins... I'd rather not look too matronly, but it also has to be age-appropriate.
Choices are:
A) Cut it! B) Keep the faith and keep growing it out! C) Seriously, Heather, there are way more important things to be carrying on about than your stupid hair! I mean, have you heard about the economy? The wars? Global warming?
If you vote A, any style suggestions (links to actual photos especially) would be greatly appreciated.
If you vote B, any style suggestions for the next interminable stretch of growing it out (links to actual photos especially) would be greatly appreciated.
And if you vote C, I know. I totally know.... And yet, I obsess. I moan, I stare at myself in the mirror, I try things, then I come here and I whinge on and on. It's my blog and I'll foist my follicle crisis upon the world via this post if I want to!
Stay tuned.... I will post After pictures tomorrow of whatever winds up happening atop my crazy noggin!
Kiddo informed me over breakfast this morning that what woke her up in the wee, small hours was a dream that her one arm had stretched and was a lot longer than the other one. She further explained that she had this same dream repeatedly throughout the night, which explains certain, sudden movements she was making where she'd throw her arms out and then toss about. She said in her dream, she tried to line her arms up and couldn't get them both to be the same length... Methinks this dream was planted in her head thanks to the Tooth Fairy's delivery of the Stretchy Frog (click for a picture - Kiddo has the red-eyed tree frog) that Kiddo had so long coveted. (Note: Kiddo is excited to have freed up a spot now on her list for Santa, as this was one of the four things on this year's list.) Kiddo majorly *hearts* the Stretchy Frog, but I betcha anything it was the whole stretchy-ness of the frog that implanted the thought waaaaay down deep in her subconscious that led to the one arm stretching dream. (Nightmare? Hard to say.)
The crazy cat clearly exhausted herself from her middle of the night, Chicken Little, It's the End of the World as We Know It carryings-on, and spent the entire day up until about 10 minutes ago passed out on the couch. At least someone in this family got to take a nice, long nap today... She's now attempting to help me type this by sitting half on my lap, half on the edge of my pull-out keyboard tray and repeatedly pressing the space bar and alt key. Thanks, Peep McFuzz.
Since I've already opened the TMI door with my Pitchforking Aunt Flo reveal in the last post, I must put in a plug for the World's Greatest Maxi-Pad. (And heck, I don't think I have any male readers anyhow - if I do, holler and I promise I will never post of such things again!) I won't go into too gory a detail here, but let me just give a major shout out to the Always folks for coming up with these. Seriously serious protection from Aunt Flo's evil ways.
We have officially had our first snowflakes of the fall - the Weather Channel is rarely wrong, and once again they were right. Kiddo watched our Local on the 8s forecast with me this morning, and grew extremely excited at the thought of snow falling while she was at school. I tried to explain that this was not going to be the kind of snow she was envisioning, but I think she may still be a bit disappointed to not be able to follow through with her post-school plans of creating a snowman family ("with different hats and noses for each, Mommy!") and then having a snowball fight. I, on the other hand, am hoping for one last, extra spell of Indian summer, though I know we're full-on into the downhill slide to winter... Kiddo will have plenty of days (months, actually, as we tend to be snowy from November through April, and sometimes from late October right into early May) for snowpeople creation, so I don't mind her being disappointed right now!
The other night on Jeopardy (yes, I do still watch the show, despite having come in second - my less harsh way of saying "lost" - when I was on) there was a category that totally cracked me up. In my present foggy-brained state, I can't think of the exact category title, but the answers were all words that sound weird without their typical prefix. Like "couth" for "uncouth" and "plenish" for "replenish" but the one that cracked me up most of all was "gruntled" for "disgruntled" - I never knew that gruntle was an actual word! Anyone else? (Besides, I mean, Alex Trebek - he really does know just about everything; as of the season I was on the show, he'd taken every contestant test for 19 seasons and had never failed one. The man is legitimately smart, y'all.)
As my day has not included a nap (confession: I watched a couple of episodes of Miami Vice I had TiFauxed a week or two ago when I could've - should've! - been trying to sleep), I'm dragging right now. I have to bundle up and go collect Kiddo (who took Stretchy Frog to school with her to show her friends what wonders the Tooth Fairy hath brought) from the bus stop, and then I'm going to change into my jammies and stay in the rest of the day. I know I'll try to stay up to see Hubby when he gets home, but I'm not sure I'll make it... I laid off the caffeine by 9am. Caffeine really gets me wired, and if I have it later in the day (say, after 2pm), I'm guaranteed not to sleep, so I'm just foggily wandering through life for the rest of the day 'til I can go to bed. Kiddo will enjoy it, as Overtired Mommy tends to evolve into Very Silly Mommy. I sense Opera Day coming on.....................
In closing (boy, I'm managing to really ramble on here considering I don't have a heckuva lot of important things to say - another symptom of Overtired Heather), let me say that I never thought that Sylar would become one of my favorite characters on Heroes, but he totally has! And I'm glad that Leanne won PR (which I finally watched off the DVR over the weekend), though if Korto had won I'd have been happy, too. I'm still rooting for McKey in ANTM, though Marjorie has some seriously intriguing weirdness to her, as does Elina. I'm really, really happy that Michael asked Holly out (I adore Amy Ryan. No, I haven't seen Gone Baby Gone yet, but she kicked ass on The Wire.) and I hope that Roy's reappearance this week doesn't spell trouble for Jam. And, ONE MORE WEEK until 30 Rock is back, woo-hoo!
Okay, I'm out of here. I've probably managed to ramble my way out of keeping any followers at all. (Though, I do finally have a blog reader and now I'm following all sorts of y'all, woo-hoo, I feel so coooool!) I promise, I shall not post again until my brain has rested!
At 12:04 this morning, when the house was dark and quiet, I heard the kiddo's door open. As usual, I went from soundly asleep to wiiiiide awake (the kiddo rarely gets up in the middle of the night) and bolted into the hall to see why she was up. Turns out she was thirsty, so I sent her back to bed and fetched her a cup of water from the bathroom. When she finished it, she asked me to snuggle her, so I climbed in bed with her to cuddle until she fell back asleep.
I love cuddling the kiddo, especially now that she's too big to hold the way I could when she was a baby. I was dozing off to sleep again myself when BAM! Kiddo's head jerked back all of a sudden, catching me right smack-dab in the upper lip.
OWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! I screamed (on the inside - it was the middle of the night, after all). Aloud, I just whispered quietly to the kiddo that I had to go. She was mostly asleep again by that point, so there were no objections. I stumbled (without my glasses and with the nightlight in the bathroom burnt out, so in much darker dark than usual) into the bathroom to survey the damage. Squinting at myself in the mirror, the injury didn't look too bad. I opted to skip going downstairs for ice and instead rinsed out my mouth with water (my lip got cut a bit on my teeth - Kiddo has one hard skull!) and went back to sleep.
When I woke up this morning, I could see the damage much more clearly (having my glasses on also helped). Besides the fact that it was hurting, I had a sort of Angelina Jolie thing going on in my upper lip region. I tried ice and Advil - which did bring the swelling down - and then I tried Listerine to cauterize and numb the cut area on the inside. For the record, you should NEVER try to swish with Listerine when you have an open mouth wound.OWWWWWWWWWW!!! I yelped once more - again inside my head, because I didn't want Hubby to know the brilliance of my Listerine plan. (Hey, it seemed like a good theory at the time - kind of like using peroxide on a cut, you know? I figured it would sting a bit, as Listerine does because, you know, it's Listerine..., but then it would feel better. Um, no.)
My upper lip injury wouldn't have been quite as big a deal if I hadn't been signed up to sing a solo in church this morning. I was a little worried that the cut would really bother me when I was trying to sing. I also wound up serving as worship leader this morning, which meant reading a nice, long passage from the Bible immediately before singing. (It also meant doing the opening prayer, which I did off the top of my head and which I fear may've sounded a bit like Ben Stiller saying grace in Meet the Parents...
Okay, it wasn't quite that awkward, but it sure wasn't eloquent!)
At any rate, the song went okay. (Once again, I was glad that our choir director/accompanist is one of those people who is able to transpose keys in his head and whip up an accompaniment out of thin air, because that meant I could sing the song - Through it All, an oldie but goodie - without having to go into my head voice once. I definitely prefer taking the easy way out and staying down in alto-tenor range whenever I can!) By the time church was over, my lip was really hurting, so I'm going to hit the Advil bottle again shortly.
By the by, this is not the first time I've been conked in the face by the kiddo's skull. This wasn't even my first fat lip caused in this manner. (The worst Kiddo-Noggin-Conking injury I incurred sent me to the urgent care clinic to check for a broken nose. It wasn't broken, but it did re-deviate my septum, which has led to fewer sinus infections in the winter ever since, so: woo!) Hubby thinks it is all my own fault because I will roughhouse with the kiddo (SPD major sensory seeker = a kid who loves to play rough) and nine times out of ten, this is how my skull-on-face injuries occur. (Okay, I'll further 'fess up that at bedtime last night, the kiddo also bonked me in the face, but that wasn't nearly as bad as the middle-of-the-night hit - more of an "ow" than an "OWWWW" type bump. So, yeah, it actually was a two-fer that gave me my aching, Angelina lip by morning.)
I think I need some ice cream. For medicinal purposes, of course - to help relieve the pain and swelling. Yep, definitely LOTS of ice cream, and no more Listerine...
For some reason, I've always been hesitant to use an actual, unadulterated photo of myself as an online avatar. Not just here on my blog, but also in other online spots, like my Facebook page, various message boards and forums to which I belong, etc. Over the years that I've been avataring online, I've used everything from pictures of the kiddo (from when she was a baby; I stopped using her face online a few years ago as well) to Simpsonized cartoons of myself to other cartoon avatar images. Heck, for a while there I even had a picture of my cat.
Well, I'm taking the plunge, at least here and on my Facebook page. I'm using a real, un-retouched picture of myself as my avatar, crazy Wolverine Fawcett-Van Beethoven, growing-out hair, Magoo-thick glasses, blotchy, un-made-up skin, multiple chins and all. Okay, I did slap on a little lipstick, but that's as fancy as I got. (If I thought there was the slightest chance that someone like, say, George Clooney were going to drop by my blog, I might re-think the entire enterprise, but I'm going to assume that this blog will chug on in its relative obscurity without worrying that photos of me will ever be seen by his eyes.) (At least pictures of me online, anyhow...) (I kid. I've never sent George any photos of myself.) (But that's only because I don't have his address, so if anyone wants to help me out....) (Kidding, again.) (Not really.)
Ahem.Anyhow, assuming no one throws tomatoes or draws little handlebar moustaches, goatees, devil's horns or the like on it, I think I'll leave it up, at least for a while. It's a self portrait done using my current digital camera and I'm waiting quite excitedly for the camera I won in last week's giveaway over on SITS to arrive in the mail, so I may wind up using myself as a test subject for that one when it arrives. It promises loads of cool features my present, aged and creaky camera lacks, so it may take a George-worthy shot with the press of a button, in which case you KNOW I'll be swapping out my avatar pic immediately!
