The Jas Says. . .

I have reached new levels of pathetic when I have been carrying around a journal topic in my head for literally a week and have not yet written it down. Especially when it is something so superficial as MY HAIR. But I have to get it out now before I forget again and have to lament that I haven’t talked about my hair in my journal like I meant to.

So. I’m growing out my bangs. This should be quite a shock for anyone who knows me, because I have literally had bangs since I’ve had hair on my head at all. I have never not had bangs. I don’t think I have the right face or forehead or hairline to pull off the no-bangs looks. But Vicki has been sending “no bangs” vibes my way since we were sophomores (and don’t try to deny it either, Vic. Remember that day you made me to to school with my bangs combed back and it looked like I got caught in a rainstorm and high wind directly after applying hair spray? Yeah.) so I finally lost my will to fight and decided “What the hell? If it looks bad I just chop the hair back to bangs. No big deal”

Except that now I’m growing out my bangs so I have to do something with them. I can’t style them the normal way (which means blow dry and spray) because they would hang into my eyes. I can’t have that. . . back in ’99 I let my bangs get a little too long and they bothered a co-worker so she sat me down and trimmed my hair at work. I felt like I was five years old getting a haircut from my mom in the kitchen. I do not want to go through that again, although she did a nice job. Right. So, what I have been doing is styling them so MOST of my bangs sweep to the right side of my head and the rest to the left, where they fall next to my eyes and hopefully will not attract scissor wielding co-workers. But now I’m afraid that I am thisclose to 80′s hair. I’m not sure exactly what constitutes mall bangs anymore, but I have a fear of doing anything that will make me look more at one with my Hell Neighbors (trailer park, remember). Every day I fight a battle with my hair, trying to get it OUT of my eyes, but contain it to less than an inch in height. I do not use a curling iron. Maybe that is what is saving me.

The other part of this is that I feel the need to add chemicals to my hair again. I want some kicky streaks for summer. Maybe blonde, although I don’t think I have the complexion to pull off blonde (glowing white skin). . .plus my eyebrows are nearly black so that would be an odd combo. I’m thinking red. I love me some red hair and it was hard for me to stop dying it exceeding redder shades, but my stepfather is a fireman and I didn’t want him spraying flame-retardant in my direction. After I went back to my natural colour, my mother told me he said it was a relief to see I had stopped dying my hair strange colours. Bah. He should be glad I never went blue, like I wanted to. So, if anyone has opinions on what I should do with my hair, let me hear them.

Before we get to the Friday Five, here is an exerpt from an e-mail I got from my dad today, regarding the incident from Wednesday. The only thing I added were quote marks around the speaking parts:

“Funny about your neighbor kid. Reminded me of when you were little, marching out to the goat barn with your plastic armour and sword chopping on the chicken cages hollering ‘ha ha!’. I was in the hay loft and hollered down ‘ha!’. You about shit.”

That’s my dad, always bringing up the good memories. I laughed my ass off for about 10 minutes after I read this, because while I don’t remember this particular incident, I did love that little plastic sword and armour set. I chopped at a lot of things yelling “ha ha!” in a way that was supposed to taunt my enemies.

OK Friday Five. I can see whoever wrote this was going for a whole deep, philosophical theme, but I do not feel like being either today:

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?

Being a nice person with a loving heart . . . who was pretty.

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?

“I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?” – Richard Bach

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?

I got The Man to put a door on the bathroom. WOO!

4. What about the past ten years?

I didn’t die! WOO! And I was never arrested! Double WOO!

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?

“What people think of you is not nearly as important as it seems to be in your teenage years. It definitely isn’t worth acting like an idiot to get someone to notice you.”

I talked to my mom last night. I originally called to find out how one properly cares for geraniums, because I’d never grown them before. But, she gave me a couple of other pieces of good news. The first is that they have gotten a new refrigerator, which means that soon we will be getting their old one, which is not OLD really — it’s about 10 years old, true, but I think our current one is like 20 years old so it’s still an upgrade. Our fridge will be going to D– and C–’s house because apparently the menfolk need a BEER fridge in the basement for when they are playing D&D. And the second is that my stepdad told us to buy the biggest air conditioner we could afford and he would help us either plug up the hole in the wall or trim it out. Which is much better than The Man’s plan of plugging the hole with wood and probably old rags. Tonight after work we are going to look at air conditioners. Whee! I’m so excited! Our air conditioner has been broken since last August. I can’t go the whole summer with no air conditioning, and I also don’t want to bake the cats alive. So this is a good thing.

I got a message from my cousin Shawnsie today, passed on through our new official intermediary, a guy at work who also DJs at a bar she frequents. This is the same guy who told me that she had broken her neck a few months back. . . you have to understand, in my family bad news never comes from the source. When my dad broke his shoulder, Shawnsie was the one who called and told me. And a few years ago when the really heavy shit went down, my aunt called and told me. So, Shawnsie might have ran out of relatives willing to pass on messages and located a sufficient substitute — the DJ/Co-worker. Anyways, apparently, Shawnsie is mad that I never call her. Dork. The phone works both ways! So I will have to call her and tell her that she is a dork. Then I will invite her over for drinking and barbecue, since the weather is getting warm.

Tomorrow we’re going to D– and C–’s to hang out at their new house with Michael. Should be fun, although I hope that I have caught up on my sleep by then. I’ve been feeling rather worn out for the past couple of days. I slept in a half-hour today too. . . not that it was really restful sleep with the alarm going off every 7 minutes.

I stayed home from work yesterday. Lucky me, it turns out that during the day is when the next-door neighbor (yes, the one with the teeny dog) yells at her child. A lot. So I got to enjoy the sweet, sweet sounds of a happy home. Plus, while I was sitting on my couch reading a book, the little kid came over and started violently shaking my shepherd’s hook where my bird feeders hang. !!! What the hell? I didn’t want to arouse the mother’s wrath in my direction, so I basically just stood at the window and watched incredulously. The bird feeders were empty anyways. And I made sure the little dork didn’t go digging in my flower beds. The kid is TWO years old. What the hell is it doing outside unsupervised and in someone else’s lawn? I hate our neighbors.

Oh, while I’m speaking of the Hell Family. . . I have not yet called the Humane Society regarding the little dog. For one thing, I hadn’t seen it or heard it since I posted that story, so I thought they had gotten rid of it. But last night I heard it barking inside the house. The people were actually playing with it. Wow. So, I am going to keep an eye on the situation. Maybe they wised up (yeah right) or maybe they just haven’t both been gone so they haven’t tied it out. No clue.

I think I’m going to have to add the Hell Family to my cast list. I miss our previous neighbor, even if he did accidentally mow down my trumpet vine. He was a nice guy. He had a little yappy dog too, but he just about doted on that dog and it was always going for rides with him and basically hanging out. It escaped his clutches once or twice and ran to see me on the deck. Cute dog. Nice guy. Like I said, I miss him. The Hell Family is no replacement.

We had a nice little rainstorm last night so my flowers got a good drenching. I hope they start growing soon. I chose a few plants that spread to give ground cover, because me and The Man like flower gardens that look a little haphazard. Last year the moss roses came up again and after I fought against it for awhile, I gave in to The Man’s wishes and let them be. They filled in the holes around the other flowers and made everything look kind of wild, which was nice. This year, the garden has purple pansies, purple salvias, some little clumpy purple flowers that look like a cross between violets and johnny-jump-ups, white “wave” petunias, and pink geraniums. I was going to put in blue stuff, but there are not a lot of blue flowers to be had out there. Purple is much more prevalent so that’s what went in. Plus yellow marigolds out by the road — I couldn’t find any vinca. I think it will be pretty.

I actually got to talk to Vicki yesterday, even if she was (rightfully) not in the best of moods. She only had a few minutes before work, so she unburdened herself of some rather frustrating problems and then we made plans to get together on Sunday. I’ve really missed her. O Vicki, where art thou??

I tried to do a bit of housecleaning yesterday, but I didn’t have a lot of energy so I cleaned some weird things: I scrubbed the fingerprints off the door, cleaned out part of the fridge, washed the front and sides of the stove which were matted with cat hair and spaghetti sauce, and vaccuumed in the “cracks” — where the carpet meets the wall. That stuff all needed to be done anyway. Little things make your whole house look dirty. I think I’m going to see if I can rent a steam cleaner this week(end) so I can clean at least the carpet in the kitchen. It’s looking pretty nappy.

It’s pretty bad when the most excitement you see in a day is realizing you have a half-hour before you’re due to instruct and knowing that you don’t have enough handouts. The mad dash to the printer! The collating! The stapling! Why, it makes me positively giddy. Except not really.

My latest round of classes for a new system is over. I only have to do one more makeup class for all those who were on vacation or just missed their regularly scheduled training. Absolutely no one likes this new system. I’m afraid I became rather snippy with some people when they started complaining. I was so tired of listening to people say “Oh my god, this SUCKS!” that I was ready to just tear into someone. At the worst part is that the system really doesn’t suck. There are a few annoyances, true, but really it’s a pretty neat little system. It’s a bridge system — it will take us from crappy to something really cool. This system is neither crappy nor really cool: it is merely functional with a few neat features. But it is NEW and DIFFERENT (two bad things) so everyone hates it. It’s kind of discouraging to train a bunch of haters.

Only a half-hour and I can go home. I’m so proud of myself lately for coming to work at a real hour instead of somewhat late. I have more energy in the morning for some reason when I get up early. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe I am a morning person. The energy doesn’t usually kick in until I am halfway to work, though. When I first wake up I am the grumpiest of all Grumpy Bears.

The strange chill in the air at work from last week continues, slightly abated, but not really. I still feel like I did something wrong that I don’t know about. Maybe it’s a very subtle hazing process, although I don’t remember signing up for the Marines or anything.

I’m trying to get a site for the wedding built. It will be password protected because I will be using not only me and The Man’s real names, but also the real names of our family and wedding party. However, if you want the username/password, just drop me an e-mail and request. If I know you, you’re likely in like Flynn (who is Flynn anyway?).

I’m not quite sure what look I’m going for today. I’ve got on the khaki capri pants, the “smart girl” glasses, and the Rainbow Brite T-Shirt. Mmmmhmmm. People are not going to know what to make of me.

Sorry about the crappy photo quality. That’s from my little $30 web cam.

And yes, my skin really is that pale.
And yes, I do really like dark coloured lipstick.

OK I’m off to Kroger to encounter people wearing sweat pants and sporting camel toe. I will no doubt be the best-dressed person there.