At the beginning of 2008, this blog would have been called "Just another shitty day..." a lot can change in a short period of time and I'm so thankful for it!
Ok, that might be a wee bit of an exaggeration, but a lot of it is gone.
Ten, maybe eleven, inches is gone from my life, hopefully to bring joy to someone else.
This...
...met the scissors...
...and became this.
It was actually very hard for me to sit and get my hair cut with those three bundles of hair sitting on the counter in front of me, just mocking my trichous inductus vomitus.
The decision to cut my hair off was not made lightly. I am actually very vain about my hair, despite the fact that I don't do anything with it. I love it long and healthy. But it was getting too hot and, frankly, it was pissing me off. I was getting hair cramps from putting it up and it was too heavy to stay on top of my head at bedtime, so I'd wake up with it wrapped around my neck.
I wasn't sure I'd be able to go through with such a drastic change, but I knew if I chickened out, I'd regret it, so I took a deep breath and willed myself into the chair.
I haven't decided if I love it yet, but it is only hair and it will grow back.
In the meantime, I hope some sick kid gets some use out of what used to be my hair.
Friday was graduation for my students and I'm kind of getting sick of the whole ponytail for everything look, so I decided I was going to try to do something with my hair for the ceremony. Only, I own no product and my hair never holds a curl, and I've been doing ponytails and an ocassional french braid as my hair "style" for years. If I needed to get girled up, I just had Ashinator do it for me.
I went to YouTube and searched "easy hairstyles for long hair" and found some really cool and easy hairstyles, but doubted my ability to pull them off. And then I ran across the waterfall braid...it's essentially a horizontal french braid where you drop one of the strands. I took a deep breath and dove in.
The hardest part was dropping the strand I needed to and picking up a new one without incorporating it into one of the existing strands, but I managed.
Bad overhead self-pic,
but you can see the dropped strand
Not too bad for first time out.
I was pretty pleased with it, and it only took me about ten minutes once I got my fingers sorted out. I hate the top of the back of my head, but next time, I'll probably part my hair so I don't end up grabbing from the wrong side. I'll also probably attempt to throw some curls in the "falling" portion of the braid.
The downfall to this braid is that it's not hug-proof. I get hugged a lot during graduations and someone went home with one of my bobby pins in their gown. At least the other three pins held 'til after the ceremony.
If I can continue to find really easy - and I do mean really easy - hairstyles, I might continue to give them a try, because I'm fairly sick to death of my ponytail. Since I love my long hair, though, and have to have it pulled back while in the lab, the ponytail seems to be the easiest way to go. *shrugs* Guess we'll see.
But I never anticipated that this little jobby would get the best of me...
It's just a little resistance band and while I've worried about them breaking, I know they're unbelievably strong and that I'm not BA enough to snap one.
Last night, I was working with my trainer and we had the resistance band looped around a pole. He had me facing away from the pole with one handle in each hand so the band was behind me.
So far, so good.
Now my trainer has me figured out. If I get to throw something, or punch something, or do anything to improve my shooting muscles I'm in. The exercise was to step forward with one foot and extend the arm on the same side, like I was throwing a hook to someone's jaw. Of course, I was good with that.
I took my position, stepped forward and threw a right hook with the resistance band in my hand. Apparently, I didn't have my elbow up high enough though because the resistance band came up over my shoulder instead of passing underneath my arm. Since I threw my right hook and really put my body into it, my ponytail swung with the momentum.
And that's about when thing went south quickly.
My ponytail swung around my right shoulder, right about where the resistance band ended up since my elbow was too low.
I completed my punch and relaxed back into the starting position. Well, I tried to relax. Once the tension on the band was released, it grabbed my ponytail and rolled it up like a roll up sunshade.
I felt the pull on my scalp and realized what had happened and froze.
"Um...release it...releaseit...release..." I practically begged my trainer.
At first, he had no idea what I was talking about. And then he stepped to my side and saw my hair wound around the band. I still couldn't move. If I let go of the band, it would have wound my hair up even tighter. I tried reaching forward again and only succeeded in pulling my hair more.
He sputtered a bit and fumbled around trying to figure out how to get my hair unwound from the devil band. I'm pretty sure I heard him muttering about a job description. I couldn't do anything to help since the mess was behind me and my arms don't bend that way. Eventually, he was able to take the band away from me and carefully unwind it from my ponytail before we both lost it.
I'm pretty sure that my abs got more of a workout from laughing than from any of the other exercises he had me do after that.
And sadly, that's not the only time my long hair has caused me discomfort...
For our only full day together at High Country Rendezvous, we all planned a nice ride in Roosevelt National Forest. Knowing the trails we'd be riding, I was a bit nervous about doing it bareback, since the trails we were going to be on were a little steeper than I was used to riding.
Compass over at the Livery offered me the use of her new treeless saddle, so I brought it on over to the Lodge and thunked it on Estes (ended up not using it though).
I was completely unsuspecting of the evil swirling around me. Bill was laughing at something, but I wasn't paying attention to what he was laughing at.
"What the???"
"RockCrawlinChef, did you do this?"
Bill. Of course.
Oh. Yes. He. Did. Defiled my Ripley.
Poor thing may never be the same again.
It gets worse. Not only did he defile the driver's side door, but he covered all of his bases and got the passenger side door, which I didn't discover until the next day.
You know, there are some weeks when nothing happens that's blogworthy. Not the case this past week. Thanks to Rachel and Mr. Daddy at Once Upon A Miracle, I now have a platform to share my oh, so embarrassing story.
Some time ago, I regaled you with an explanation of my affliction, Trichous Inductus Vomitus. I knew that publically sharing my weakness would result in some harrassment good-natured ribbing. Bill over to It's A Horse Life and K. at Preachers and Horse Thieves had a good run of how to make GunDiva puke posts a few weeks ago. Click here for Bill's initial post and here for K's escalating post.
I should have known that Bill doesn't need much encouragement to torture me.
So...
I drove Ripley up to the Lodge earlier this week to get Estes all dressed up, not knowing that she had no place to go. Mom and I brushed out our respective horses' manes and tails; Ash painted Estes' hooves; we hung out at the livery for a bit and then got ready to go.
I gathered everything up and climbed into the car. It was a bit overcast out, so I opened my center console to put my sunglasses in and found something that looked like this...
Side note: just looking at the picture is making me heave.
Well, hell, I did what any tough girl with a nickname like GunDiva would do: I squealed like a little girl, slammed the console shut, and jumped out of the car, calling Bill all sorts of not-very-nice names at the top of my lungs in between the heaves.
Let me tell you, I can project from the diaphragm (and I don't mean puking - this time). I projected my displeasure so well that Compass at the livery across the street heard me.
Bill finally dug the grossness out of my car and threw it away.
Ash just laughed.
Hysterically.
Brats.
~~~~~~~~~~
Blogfia Call-out
T!nK at This Is How It Feels has applied to be on a documentary about being gay in America. I think he's got a good story to tell, especially about how he was discharged from the Army under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Part of how the documentary is cast is based on public voting. What I'm asking of my Blogfia family members is to vote for T!nK (real name: Nathanael) daily and repost this if you'd be so kind. He's currently in second place, behind a woman who has also applied, but who is not gay. Yeah, go figure. She's applied to be on a documentary called "Out in America", which will highlight life as a GLBT person in America and she's straight.
It's been cold in Colorado lately. And I don't mean a little on the chilly side, but booger-freezing cold. So cold that when you step outside your boogers, even if you didn't know you had any, freeze into solid boogercicles. When it's that cold it's easy to let a few grooming habits, like leg shaving, go by the wayside. After all, don't Polar Bears have a layer of hair close to their bodies that traps the heat in the dead airspace? Aesthetically speaking, who is actually going to see my legs anyway? It's winter. I'm in long-johns and jeans or long-johns and scrubs. Who cares if my leg hair gets a little on the long side? And if Happy Hubby has too big an issue with my prickly legs he can just sleep on his own side of the bed.
So during the last cold spell, I ignored the leg shaving for a week or so. That was about as long as I could stand sleeping with my own prickly legs. The weather finally warmed up to freezing, literally we got up to 32 degrees, and I'd had enough of sleeping with my own prickly legs. Into the shower I went, armed with shaving cream and fresh razor.
I took care of the basic shower duties: hair wash and rinse, body wash and rinse, armpit shaving. Life was good, time to take the hedge clippers to the legs. I squirted the shaving cream into my hand, leaned over to slather it onto my legs and, oh shit *blech* there *blech* were two *blech* loose hairs from my head *swallow, swallow, don't puke* stuck to my *gross* leg hair *oh God, I'm going to puke*, which was acting like velcro.
See, I've got thing thing about loose hair. It grosses me out. Loose, wet hair? Well that's just a puke-fest waiting to happen. In fact, I can't even watch this commercial...
I had to have my husband preview it for me before I posted it, as just the thought of all that *blech* wet *swallow, swallow* hair makes me want to puke. Some people would accuse me of having trichophobia, an unnatural fear of hair. I'm not afraid of it. It just makes me puke.
What I really have is Trichous inductus vomitus, hair induces vomiting. Attached hair is fine.
Loose hair = dry heaves.
Wet, loose hair = puke fest!
Oh boy, I'm a ton of fun at a public swimming pool. And the pool deck when I took Scuba diving lessons - that was a deck full of potential landmines as far as I was concerned. I'm pretty sure I was the only one who mastered getting her airtanks on while standing on tippy-toe between clumps of hair on the deck. It's been years and the memory still makes me gag.
The thought of a nice, long, hot soak in the tub? No way, Jose. Do you know what goes down the drain? Hair. Do you know what floats back up into the tub? Hair. No effing way! A nice, long, hot soak in the tub, for me, involves duct tape. After the drain is closed and before the water starts running, there has to be some of this involved...
...covering the drain or a bath ain't happening!
I'm not sure where my affliction came from, but it hasn't gotten any better through the years. In fact, it may have gotten a tad worse. One of RockCrawlinChef's biggest jobs is to "save" me from any loose hair in the shower. When he hears, "ooo, oo-oo" like a monkey and sees my hands flailing about helplessly he has to come save me from the wet hair that has attached itself to my body before the dry heaves start. The worst, by far, is fingers and toes. Again, just thinking about it makes me gag.
Sadly, during the shaving incident a couple of weeks ago, RCC wasn't around to save me. I had to do it myself. I pulled down the shower head and attempted to just rinse the loose hairs away. Have you ever tried to rinse hair out of velcro? Doesn't work. In fact, it just makes it worse. Whereas before, I had two hairs hung up on the velcro-like leg hairs, now I had the loose hair stuck to both my leg and the leg hairs. I had no choice, I had to do it. I had to actually touch the hairs with my fingers and pull them off of my leg. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw against the impending puke fest and resolutely plucked the hairs off of my leg. I tried to ignore the dragging sensation as the hair pulled off of my leg and tried to ignore the feel of it between my fingers, but to no avail. I did manage to sort of save myself from the hair, but I spent the next five minutes bent over the shower drain with the dry heaves.
I managed to get my dry heaves under control, quick shave my legs and get out of the shower before the dry heaves started in earnest again. I spent another ten minutes bent over the sink, praying that there was something in my stomach to puke up rather than the rhythmic contractions of the dry heaves.
I learned an important lesson from having to save myself: don't let the leg hair grow long enough to become velcro, no matter how cold it is outside! It just ain't worth it.
