Tag Archives: Attitude

Rapunzel, Rapunzel…

Leave a comment

I’m growing my hair out.

It just something I do.

It’s not a girly thing.

It’s just a service thing.

Don’t worry you’re not going crazy, you read that right I said SERVICE.

I have thick hair, that seems to like growing. So I grow it until I am no longer patient and then I cut it, and then I donate it.

Sometimes I apply heat to it.

Most of the time it’s up in a bun. (Or a side braid).

I don’t dye it. Or Bleach it. Nothing crazy. Just wash, rinse, towel dry, comb, put up, and repeat a couple of days later.

I’ve been thinking about my hair a lot lately. Mostly I’ve been thinking back to 3rd grade me, who sat down in the chair at the salon one day, pointed at my brother sitting and waiting, and promptly told the stylist, that I wanted “that” hair cut. She asked me multiple times if I didn’t just want to take off a couple of inches, that my long beautiful hair didn’t need to all go away. But I insisted, and she took out her scissors.

Needless to say my mom had quite the surprise waiting for her, when she came to pick us up. But she wasn’t upset. I was happy to have less hair, and she was happy I was happy.

That’s the key. I was happy. It didn’t matter that the stylist had tears in her eyes as she sheared away 11 inches of thick brown hair. To her credit she followed through, however I did notice the lack of clippers being used on me, and I distinctly remember her using them on Mark. It was a compromise. But in the end I had gotten what I wanted and jumped out of that chair being happy with the cut, and ready for the next thing. I didn’t really give much thought post-cut, I was just happy.

My stylist didn’t want to cut my hair due to her fear that I would look too boyish. I mean I already ran around in hand-me-downs from my brother and family friends…the hair would have just added to the already “tomboy” look. But so what? Why was that her problem? I wasn’t labeling myself as a tomboy…that was everyone else. And really who cares if I was mistaken for a boy? Not me. I just wanted the freedom of waking up running a brush through my hair and being on my way.

The joke is that even as a kid with longer hair I just woke up and ran a brush through my hair. I didn’t learn how to put my own hair in a pony tail until I was 11.

I was also being a very pragmatic 9 year old. Summer was starting, my hair was hot and heavy I was just lightening the load, so to speak. We were also preparing to head to Atlanta in July and I had been forewarned that it would be hot and humid, and again I was thinking about my own personal comfort. I mean have you ever been to Atlanta in the middle of July? It’s brutal.

I was a very confident and precocious kid, I wasn’t going to regret the haircut, it didn’t matter to me what I looked like. I just wanted to be comfortable. So soccer shorts, t-shirts, and short hair were the peak of my fashion sense. If I was ever going to be able to pull off that haircut it would have been then. Simply because I didn’t care.

The haircut I wanted at 9 is now a pretty fashionable haircut these days, think Emma Watson post Harry Potter or American Sweetheart Jennifer Lawrence. The problem is, I hit puberty, I started letting what people said about my looks get to me, I started to judge myself critically. Now I could never pull off that haircut. Not without being self-conscious.

Yes I’m still self-conscious. I’m okay with it. I don’t get down on myself, I haven’t take extreme measures to change myself. I am just aware of myself. So I don’t think I look good with super-short hair. Cool. I just won’t cut my hair that short. Easy. I’m still me. I’m still happy. I’m still confident. Yeah, okay every once in a while I have a bad “me” day. And I feel sorry for myself. But those occasions are few and far between, and let’s be honest, everyone has those days, it’s how we deal with the next day that matters. My hair and how I look don’t define me.

So be happy, be you. Love yourself and have your bad days. If you need to make a change, do it, but in a healthy and realistic way. Don’t live up to others’ standards of who you should be, live up to your own standards. Be girly, be androgynous, be boyish, be a princess, be whatever…at the end of the day just make sure that you’re being you.

The good news about always keeping my hair in low maintenance do’s, is that when I need to look a little more “dressy” all I have to do it wear my hair down.

That Unholy Little Light

Leave a comment

When I first started driving my dad was very firm in the fact that if you take care of your car, your car will take care of you.  This is so true; in the last 11 years I have driven four cars, and all were/are very good to me.

In November of 2011 I started the process of buying my first new vehicle. So with my father’s guidance and a lot of research I decided upon a Subaru, they are affordable, continually perform well past 200,000 miles, have all wheel drive, which would be important during the winter months, and their Kelley Blue Book and Consumer Report ratings were off the charts.  So I worked out a loan and what I would pay out of pocket, filled out the paper work, shook the dealer’s hand and walked away feeling pretty good, minus the intense feeling that I needed to wash my hand.

A month later, just in time for Christmas I picked up my brand new 2012 Subaru Impreza. It had 8 miles on it. I had never had a car with less than 100,000 miles before. Needless to say everything was perfect. The one thing that took some getting use to however, was not jumping to conclusions every time I heard something a smidge out of the ordinary. I was so conditioned from my previous “rides,” that everything was going to cost me days in the shop and a couple hundred dollars. With my new car this was not the case as I was assured by my father…and the service department at the dealership…I trust my dad, I was just leaning towards being cautious.

Everything with the Subie has been great, I just had my 25,000 mile check up and all was well. 

Then last week happened. It got really, really, cold, and I mean it went from mid 60s to about 35 overnight. Even I have to admit that, that’s cold. I get in my car and this little orange light pops up on my dash. So I immediately pull out the owner’s manual and begin my search as to what the problem is, and I discover that this light’s purpose is to tell me that my tire pressure has dropped to an un-pleasurable level. I grab my pressure gauge and check the tires. They’re a little low, but not by much, maybe my car is just having one of those extra sensitive days.  So I head to the gas station and put a little love into my tires.  But that unholy orange light would not go off, I drove and drove and drove, and nothing. Normally I would schedule an appointment at the dealership to have this sorted out immediately, but last week was exceptionally busy. After about 5 days and 200 some miles that little light went off. Without warning. I don’t even know if I noticed it right away. This freaked me out more. I called the dealership immediately to find out if this meant that my car was going to explode and if I should bring it in. They told me it was nothing to worry about that sometimes when we have extreme weather change it can cause the sensor to trip, but I would only need to get the sensor changed if it became a continual issue.  I hung up the phone relieved. 

Though if the car were going to explode I would tell the driver to stay away too.

Image

After this roller-coaster of worry about my car, I remembered something my mom had told me about becoming a first time mom. She said that the first time my brother had gotten sick with a fever, she flipped out, she read all the books she had on hand (this was pre-WebMD, which is probably a good thing), called my grandmother, everything and everyone told her it would be okay, to just give him some baby Tylenol and wait. However, she went to the doctor anyway, he told her the same thing. This and only this assuaged her fears. Dr. Gould, a wonderful man, told her that it was okay for her to come in, she’s a first time mother, everything is a little more high alert, you care so much that you need to make absolutely sure that everything is fine, he then told her to wait until her second kid, she’d be an expert then. He sent her home and didn’t charge her for the visit.

Now it’s not to say that I’m comparing my car to a baby. But there are a few similarities.

1.) When you invest in something, be it your time, your life, your money, your body, your emotions, or a combination therein, you take special care of those things and you want to make sure that nothing is wrong. When it’s your first time around the block, you take extra special care of it. 

2.) The second time around will always be easier, but only in a certain respect. When it comes to children, you will be an old pro, it will become easier to judge when to take the child to the doctor, when to potty train them, or how to deal with tooth pain, but the person will always be different, you’re not creating exact little replicas (man that’s a terrifying thought).

3.) Observation is everything, it is this amazing gift that we all have, to observe and take in what we are seeing, and all of our senses lend themselves to this skill.  

It is worth your while to observe and make notes, especially when it comes to something that you are invested in. It’s how we grow. How we make things and ourselves better.

It’s okay to be overly cautious and a little nervous about something you care about, as long as you take the time to learn and grow from that experience. Otherwise you will just continue to exhaust yourself for no reason. It will never go the same way twice, but being prepared is never a bad thing.  

Here’s to continued hope that my car won’t explode.