SHINY!!!

The Husbandly One surprised me yesterday with a brand new MacBook Air!!!

I was not expecting a new laptop this soon at all.  I mean, I was hoping for one, since my Vaio died such an ignominious death (and I'm still hoping I can recover the hard drive), but not expecting one at any time before my birthday... maybe.  So... I'm really happy!

Writing while out and about has been difficult since losing the Vaio.  In fact, the last two times at the library while the kids were at their summer Animanga Club meetings was... frustrating.  Trying to use THO's netbook sucked, because... one, it's Windows, and two, THO spilled liquid in the keyboard and thus, some of the keys are sticky, plus it's only got a partial version of Windows 7 (it came that way, if you want the actual full OS... you have to buy it.  Extra.  Yeah.) so it runs a little slow and it doesn't like using Word.  I mean, it will run it, but it considers Word a bit dodgy and thinks less of you for using it.

I admire the Husbandly One's fortitude in using the damn thing.

The second time we were at the library, I borrowed the Impertinent Daughter's MacBook, and realized only after getting to the library that while I had installed Word for Mac on it (at her request, since her school uses Windows), I had not yet installed Pages... and the files on my USB drive were for Pages.  I managed a work-around and did fine after that, but that should be one of my goals today, to install iWork on her Mac.

I finally asked THO about taking the Vaio somewhere to get it fixed, because, dammit, I need something to write on, something portable!!  Dammit!!

And it wasn't like yesterday wasn't surreal on its own, you know?  The Impertinent Daughter finished up the classroom instruction part of the driving course offered at the high school (by an independent driving school) and came home much earlier than I expected, and hit her own version of the Wall of Fatigue.  So I left her at home to take a nap, with a guardian little brother, and went for a blissfully peaceful grocery shopping trip.  And I'm glad, too, because that's where the surreal part of my day started.

It started with an unexpectedly deep voice behind me saying, "Can I get that for you, Mrs. J?" when I was on my tiptoes trying to get to a package well out of my reach.  And I turned around, fully expecting to see my usual Helpful Tall Shop Assistant... and discovered one of my daughter's friends standing there.  And I realized three things.

1.  He was VERY tall.

2.  His voice has gotten deeper since I last spoke to him five weeks ago.

3.  He's old enough to work at the grocery store.




Two weeks ago, he was in first grade, shyly introducing himself to the Impertinent Daughter, with pale blond hair and apple red cheeks.  Last week, he was sitting on the sidelines of a soccer game, tears streaming down his cheeks as I cleaned and bandaged his bloody knee while his mom was gone on a snacks run for half-time because the parent who was supposed to have brought snacks forgot.  Yesterday, he was in fifth grade and excitedly telling me how he was going to be in marching band when he started junior high.

There is no way he's old enough to be working at the grocery store!!!  NO!!!

Later, I was grabbing a bag of sugar, and heard, "Hi, Mrs. J!!" And there was a girl my daughter has known since... third grade.  And... no.  Just... no.

I found yet another teenager that my daughter played youth soccer with in the paper aisle.  And it just went on and on, all these kids that in my head are still... little... and they're not.  And then, when I was checking out, again, a girl from my daughter's class at the cash register, and a boy sacking my groceries, and saying, "Hey, Mrs. J, let me get the ice for you so you don't forget it."

AAAAAAAAH!!!! STAHP!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!

*hyperventilating*

It was bad enough when I realized three years ago that I could no longer perv on the high school boy's cross country track team, because... it was now half populated with boys I had known since they were four and five.  But now, they're... turning into people!!

Totally skewed my world view, man!!

My daughter pretty much laughed at me when I got home and related all of this to her, and I had to confront the fact that my daughter is a senior and will be graduating next MAY!!!

*more hyperventilating*

Then, I went to get my hair cut, and she went along with me, and as my uber-awesome stylist was cutting my hair, she started saying, "Oh... my God."  She'd cut more, huff, then go, "Oh.  My.  God."  Then a grimace, another huff, and, "Omigod."  Then, "Oh, my fucking GOD."

After the seventh repetition of this, I finally said, "Uh... what's going on?"  Because the last time I heard that, I was 18 and the lady who had been cutting my hair since I was 11 was ready to kill my hair.

Ms. Stylist grimaced and said, "Your hair is frustrating me.  It's never frustrated me before!  I've been cutting your hair a long time, Jo, and I've never seen it do this."

"Do what?" I asked, stunned.

"Well... it's... baby fine, and so... thick... and it's just... every time I cut a section and start to move on, something pops out and I realized I missed something, and I have to go back and cut it, and then something else pops out, and... it's kinda making me nuts here," she said grimly.

And that's when it dawned on me.  My hair was coming back.  The endocrinologist changed me off the Synthroid/Cytomel combo he had me on and put me on Armour Thyroid, because the S/C combo just wasn't helping.  My hair was still falling out, I was still very fatigued, and just not getting better.

I knew my hair was coming back, and I was getting it cut because it was like wearing a wool mop on my head.  And I knew it was getting thicker, because I was having to use heavier pony tail holders to pull it back.  But... I didn't realize it had come back to the original texture of being baby fine and deceptively thick.

Ms. Stylist kept cutting and cutting, and fluffing and fluffing, and cutting more, and finally, she said, "Next hair cut, we're thinning this shit out!"

*dies laughing*

After we got home, the Impertinent One and I settled in for a "Bones" marathon while the Impossible Son went off to do boy things with his friend across the street, and the Husbandly One texted that he was going to have to work late.

Yeah, he was totally off buying my new SHINY!!!

*dance of joy, dance of joy*

Coolest.  Husband.  EVER.

Epic Adventures in Hair...

My friends... a rite of passage has been approached, and has now been navigated.

The Impertinent Daughter... has dyed her hair.

*is full of glee*

Because she liked the sound of the scissors...

What is it about the number four??

Ten years ago, when the Impertinent Daughter was four, she waited until I was busy washing dishes and grabbed the pair of scissors we'd been using for some project or other, and... cut her hair. She chose a chunk on the left side of her face and cut her long, beautiful, waist length hair to her chin. Right there in front. No way of hiding it.

My wild fey little fairy had a large chunk of hair missing.

I don't know who cried harder, me or the Husbandly One. Because... it was a big enough chunk that it couldn't be hidden, or "fixed." She had to have a haircut, and oh, she didn't like it, not one bit, because she enjoyed having her hair braided, and being able to do all kinds of fun things with her hair. We took her to a salon, and she had a cute little chin length pageboy cut that made her look absolutely adorable... but we missed our wild fairy, oh, so much!

Okay, so... cut to last night. The Impossible Son is over his bout with strep and went back to school yesterday, but now I'm fighting it off, and by the time I picked the kids up from school, I was shivering and had a very nasty headache and just wanted to lie down. So I did. Miss Impertinence came in to tell me she was bored, and I remember feeling a little anxious about this because truthfully? A bored Impertinence is NEVER a good thing.

I told her to find something to read, because seriously, we have a house crammed with books that she's barely cracked one fourth of, and she wandered out, shouting something vague over her shoulder, and I sort of dozed off. She came in my room sometime later, but since she didn't say anything to me, I didn't bother opening my eyes. Then THO came home, and I heard some loud talking, and a rather... dumbfounded silence, and then the ominous words, "Does your mother know about this?"

Okay, when my husband, when talking to the kids about me, addresses me as your mother... it's never a good thing.

So, she comes ditty-bopping in and says, "Look, Mum, I cut my own hair!" and turns around so I can see the back of it.

I can quite truthfully say that I completely and intimately understand the term, "shock and awe," now.

Before I lost my battle with the Wall of Fatigue, the back of her short haircut had come down just below the base of her neck. When she turned around to show me her handiwork, it was mostly right at or just above the bottom of her hairline. Where it wasn't skewing madly off at the diagonal. Because she had used a small hand mirror to see the back of her head when she cut it.

Y'all should be proud of me. I'm pretty sure I managed to keep "aghast" out of my expression, though I'm sure the "polite interest" I was aiming for probably looked more like "crazed serial killer." Or "my eyes are about to spontaneously pop out of my head while my eyebrows ascend into my hairline."

"Do you like it?" she asked with that big grin that really means, "please don't kill me or make fun of me."

"Oh, it's... um... um..." I floundered, then finally gave up and said, "Okay, that's gonna have to be fixed." Because there was just no way I was going to be able to adequately describe just how awful it looked.

And when she finally understood what I was saying, she said, "Well, what kind of cut do you think I'll have to get to fix it?"

I said, "Um... okay, think... Emma Watson..."

And I could see panic in her eyes because... she gets mistaken for a boy now with the feminine haircut she had before she'd mangled it, and I knew she was thinking it would only get worse if her hair was that short.

THO drove her into San Marcos after ordering me back to bed (because I'm trying not to come down with strep) to get her hair fixed because... there are no salons open after 5 in our small town. No, seriously, a lot of the businesses here roll up the sidewalks and lock the doors at 5 p.m.

They managed to salvage what she did to her hair and make it cute and girly without going the Emma Watson route. And she's actually taken my advice and today wore a shirt that leaves no doubt in anyone's mind that she is, indeed, a girl. However, I told her that should she continue this trend and decide to cut her own hair when she's 24, she's on her own as I will be officially not responsible for bad haircuts, dubious fashion choices, or shoe fails. They will all be on her ticket!

Now if I could just convince the Impossible Son to get his hair cut...