New F.I.A.T. and clean hair

I was thinking about just abandoning this di altogether, since I barely ever write anymore. But Mollie liked this little story about, not surprisingly, my hair. It is a favorite topic, after all. I saw my mom Friday and she said my hair looked nice, and I said, "I can't remember when the last time I washed it was." Then I started really thinking about it, and it was not good. I am out of my normal exercise routine, which seems to dictate my hair washing. Anyway, I started worrying about it a little and decided I'd wash it before bed. But I kept falling asleep on the couch. I would wake up, and decide to go to bed, then remember about my hair, be unable to muster the energy to get up and deal with it, and fall asleep again. This kept happening until around 2:00 am, when I decided to go to bed without washing it. I remember worrying that my head would slide off my pillow, but I don't think it did. Then I woke up around 4 and the first thought was, "I should wash my hair right now." Like it really couldn't wait until morning? Luckily I fell asleep again before I could actually follow through.


So, nice, huh? I thought I'd share with you that my hair was pretty dirty on Friday. It's nice and clean now.


Mollie liked that story, and Pam liked my new way of drawing F.I.A.T. She thinks it's a little more urban, kind of edgy - the citified cousin of the previous F.I.A.T., with a sleeker look and sharper lines. I think her words were something like, "He's always moving so fast." Compared to that less sophisticated version, you know?

Wake-Up Calls 4 Hair

I have recently had three separate wake-up calls regarding my hair, casting an aura of doubt around my head area. That aura is a really gruesome smoky yellow color, by the way.

First, I found myself behaving kind of bizarrely last week. I was having a meeting with two women who I am working on a schooly project with. I don't know them very well. We worked on our project for a couple of hours, then started making plans for our next meeting. Everyone else took out their calendars or planners or whatever. I opened my bag to get mine, but absently noticed that my brush was in there. That's strange, I thought. Without even realizing I was doing it, I took it out and started brushing my hair while having a conversation with these ladies. Like, "Yeah, I think if we align the benchmarks from kindergarten to fifth grade with the blah blah blah..." - all while brushing my hair for what felt like ten minutes.

It didn't even occur to me until I was driving home that that might have seemed kind of weird. Also, I never did write down the date of our next meeting.

So then, I was talking to my students the other day and realized I had a giant knot in my hair, on the side. It's the dry weather and the bunching up that happens with scarves (not scrunching up with scrunchies). I suddenly realized that they weren't chatting and ignoring my fascinating insights about math; instead they all seemed mesmerized by something. They were mesmerized by what my fingers were doing to my hair. Like, pulling it all apart out of the knot in the most violent way possible.

That scene repeated itself almost exactly today, except I was waiting in line at the pharmacy. God, I thought. That guy keeps looking at me. Do I know him? Or is it just because I'm so mesmerizing in general? Then I realized - the hand. Another knot. The basic motions of pulling my own hair out (depilating?).

So, those aren't normal ways to be out in society. They are totally normal ways to be in my apartment, but that's different. So I think I need to do something. But then, I think that a lot, and it doesn't generally translate to any action, due to my inherent fear of fancy salons.

Anyone have a vision for my hair?

comeuppance (warning to jen: includes birds)

I got a major comeuppance about my supposedly transcendent hair tonight. I met Alice at the WAB for fresh air and beer. I got there first and sat a spell with my Hefeweizen. Then Alice came, and within a few minutes, she said, "I think you have a stick in your hair. Or is it a feather?"

It was the latter! I had a nasty, dirty, fresh-from-a-flying-thing feather woven into my hair. I don't know how long it had been there or where it came from. Was it there all day? I was really grossed out. I'm not like the mom of the kid in my class who came on our field trip and picked up a wild duck and stroked it and cooed to it, OK?

But back to my hair. I'm not planning on talking about my hair in EVERY entry, really. But only because I couldn't ever hope to do it as well as this dude.

Gots to go wash bird-ridden hair now.

Homework and horror

It's been troubling me a little that Pam thought that my profile picture was actually my thumb, dressed in a costume and posed. Ummm... no, it's a little gnome pushing a wheelbarrow containing a candle. I only get out the thumb outfits for very, very sacred purposes. Anyway, it has made me think about changing my profile photo. Lately I've been preoccupied with both my hair and with horror*, leading to these two photos.

I am perplexed about how I suddenly got all this hair. While I have been distracted by stuff and other whatnot, my hair has been following an independent and aggressive growth agenda. Now I think of it more like a pelt. A 1970's pelt.



Because of the Shirley Jackson books, I also took a scary picture. I apologize for any preoccupation with horror it may cause in the night.



I'm supposed to be doing homework right now. Homework! I'm doing a two-week workshop. Here is one of the best sentences I've ever read:

"Quintessentially and overly simplistically depicted through the juxtaposition of synthetic phonics-based instruction versus holistic whole language approaches, this vacillation has resulted in the artificial and detrimental segmentation of concurrently complex and codependent literacy skills, processes, and practices."

So many pretty syllables!


* horror lite, of course