Britta, you put one wash-away blue streak in your hair. I lost an arm.

  I really love the idea of dying my hair but in actuality, I'm far too lazy to keep up with it. The last time I dyed my hair was before I got married, and that was at my mom's urging. It was fun, though! It was kind of red because spending my formative years watching The X-Files made me YEARN for red hair.

That was like two years ago, though, and my hair hasn't seen a drop of dye since, as evidenced by the gray hairs that peek through whenever I pull my hair into a ponytail. I kind of like them, though, all streaky and silver, so I haven't really felt any need to cover them up. I do like the idea of a complete makeover, though. I mean, aren't those the best part of any reality show ever anyway? YES. (Yes is the correct answer, don't argue with me.) So I found this website (completely addictive, as all the best websites are) where you can try on different hair colors and styles before you totally ruin your hair AND IT IS SO MUCH FUN.

Here is me but like Three Years Ago Me not Now Me. The problem with this website is that you need a full-frontal (hee), normal picture of just your face and I have, like, zero of those.

Bleep bloop.

Scully me:

That's completely illogical, Mulder.

Blonde Curly me:

Country music star!

Cher Hair:

Or whatever.

What I will look like once all of my hair turns gray (fingers crossed!):

I've gone Total Rogue!

Tami Taylor!

Hey, y'all!

Is this my worst post ever*?



*yes

Excuse me, would you mind not farting while I'm saving the world?

It's not an issue of the curtains matching the carpet; the problem is matching the curtains to the... I don't know, valances? Because left unchecked, my eyebrows would rival Eugene Levy's for Supreme Overlordship over Planet Eyebrownia. My eyebrows, they are like giant face caterpillars perched above my eyeballs. What I'm trying to say is that my eyebrows are conspicuous. And since I'm not pretty enough for this:



I end up looking like this:



So no, I cannot pull off another hair color.

I could take away the salt from your eyes

  My hair goes swoosh swoosh swoosh when I run. From shoulder blade to shoulder blade it swings back and forth, forth and back. I cover pavement, dirt, clay, grass. Last night, I accidentally stepped into a six-inch deep dark murky puddle. Swoosh swoosh swoosh.

It's brown hair. I don't know what other color to call it. It's not dark brown, so I guess it's light brown. It doesn't have highlights, so I guess it's plain. It's only been dyed once. That time it was dark brown. Or dark red brown. Or dark red black. It was dark. And it was hard to maintain.

I want it out of my way, out of my sight. I want it back in a long pony where it catches the sweat and protects my neck from the sun. I don't care what color it is, though I assume all this running will turn it light brown. Or light, light brown. Not the color of pavement or dirt or grass, but maybe the color of clay. Swoosh swoosh swoosh.

And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.

This week's Collective topic is: Could you pull off a different hair color.

And my answer is: We're about to find out.

'Cause, y'all, at the tender age of 33, grey hairs are starting to take over my head! I saw the first one on my 28th birthday, and I was like, "LOL, that's cute!" And then when I was 30, I was plucking out a couple of them every month. And now I'm this age and every time I look in the mirror, it's like they're manning an assault on my skull. People keep telling me to stop ripping the hairs out of my head, but they weird me out. I guess I could get my hair colored or something, but then I'd have to get it re-colored and re-colored and re-colored and frankly I'd rather spend that money on comic books.

Huh. I guess I'll stop this hair nonsense and only start worrying about getting old when I'd rather buy groceries instead of Avengers Legos.

All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

  I live in (and am from) Dayton, OH. People like to shit all over Dayton (literally...OK, not really that I know of, except for birds and stuff) but it's not that bad. Like a lot of manufacturing towns, Dayton was hit hard by the economic clusterfuck of the last few years, but things are getting better. In my view, anyway, which ADMITTEDLY is narrow. But whatever, Dayton is home of:

Paul Laurence Dunbar

I write poems and stuff!

The Schuster Center, which is pretty and shiny:

Oooh, reflecty.

The Victoria Theatre, which has history coming out of its ass:

AND IS HAUNTED.

The Dayton Dragons...some people like baseball!

People will come, Ray.

Bart Simpson Nancy Cartwright...hey, my mom went to HS with her!

Whatever and stuff!

West Wingers Martin Sheen, Rob Lowe (well, raised in), Allison Janney (AND CJ Cregg!)

FUCK YEAH SAM SEABORN

John Dorian, friend of Turk Turkleton, choreographer of the greatest dance of our time:

AND FUCKING FLIGHT:

So dapper. And aerodynamic.

So. You know. We've got that going for us. (Other stuff, too, probably!)


Why yes, I have written something very similar to this (but better and with more effort) before.

Also, I because I grew a zucchini.

Ah yes, hometowns. Mine is small, barely more populous than the small university to which I ran away an increasingly long time ago. It's a town, yes, but it never much felt like home. Wikipedia tells me it's "a sweet place to kick back and just lax," but that's never been my experience.



I have a new home now, so that's nice. Mostly because these guys live there too:

there and back again

When I'm in New York I don't walk fast enough or talk fast enough or avoid enough eye-contact. I say way too much "please" and way too much "thank you" while I hold open doors and give up my seat and pass money to every panhandler. I can't make a long "i" sound. I drop all every "ing." Even my posture is Southern. Back in the South, I am too quick with words, too swift with reason, too far from the straight and narrow. I'm cynical below the Mason-Dixon, hard around the edges, calloused from battling everyone else's Bible. A hillbilly there, an abomination here. A Took clan kind of hobbit.

My hometown isn't "home" so much as it's "town," but these woods and these streams and these mountains, where I've crashed my bike and scarred so much of my body — that is where my heart is.

this is completely off topic and makes very little sense because apparently the change in season makes me CRAZY

I feel like I got completely cheated out of my favorite seasonal change, that is, the moment frigid, stupid winter turns into beautiful, frolic-through-the-field spring. Not that I mind that we didn't get much snow or ice, but I feel like now I'm just taking the nice weather for granted. I mean, I appreciate the nice weather, I do. But am I appreciating it enough? There's something about that first warm day after months of below freezing temperatures. That thrill as you walk outside, feel the warmth on your skin, like you've just arrived on the planet, and blinking, you step out of your spaceship and into the sun. You feel like there's more to see than can ever been seen. More to do than can ever be done...THE CIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIFE.



Ahem. I just ripped off both The Lion King and Doctor Who, I think!

 

[WARNING: the random nonsense below contains Doctor Who spoilers through series 4ish. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.] 

Can I tell you about the Doctor Who dream I had the other night? Please? I know that writing about your dreams is breaking, like, Blogging Rule Number One and if I keep going, I might get kicked out of the Bloggers Alliance* or something, but just pretend it wasn't a dream and it really happened (that's what I'm doing, since it involved making out with David Tennant) and that should make it more interesting, OK? OK, so, I was me and yet not me, if that makes sense. Well. Even if it doesn't make sense, it's still true. I was not really me, obviously, because I wasn't married and I was in space with fictional characters. DUH ANYWAY. I was on my way to a party at a really rich girl's house, but she lived on another planet (like rich girls so often do) so I needed my friends the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory Pond, Rose Tyler, and the 10th Doctor Clone. DON'T ask me how Rose and the Clone Doctor got out of their parallel universe because I DON'T KNOW.

So we got to this party and everyone hated us for some reason. Maybe because we were from the wrong part of The Universe. Or because I was hanging out with two Doctors and they were jealous, which is completely understandable. I somehow got separated from all of my friends (MY SPACE FRIENDS) and ended up wandering around the party, running into people like Beyonce and Martha Stewart, who are so obviously aliens, it all makes sense now THANK YOU, BRAIN. Also, this girl (whoever she was) had such a massive mansion that there was A STORE INSIDE. What? That doesn't even make sense, BRAIN, I revoke my earlier gratitude!

Eventually I found the Clone Doctor and we fell in love. It all happened very quickly and yet made total sense. Like dreams do. And I felt really bad about it because I was friends with Rose Tyler and I didn't want her to be sad, but I ALSO didn't want to miss out on the chance to make out with my favorite Time Lord (WE WERE IN LOVE), so WHATEVER, fuck you, Rose Ty-lah! So Clone Doctor and I walked around the party looking for a private place to make out but we kept running into the 11th Doctor, who took a picture of us kissing and texted it to Rose. WHAT AN ASSHOLE. I don't remember anymore because I woke up the end.

The most disappointing part of all of this (aside from not being able to find a private room in this GIANT MANSION) was that the 9th Doctor wasn't there, I guess because even in my dreams, Christopher Eccleston is so totally over Doctor Who. I told Joe about my dream the next morning and how my brain was writing fan fiction (that my body can't cash) and he said that I basically had a dream about Gossip Girl but cast Doctor Who characters in place of Gossip Girl characters. I like to think that I at least cast myself as Blair. A girl can dream, can't she?

Driving in the sun

  I go camping twice a year to the same place: a canyon by a beach right outside Los Angeles. It's fireside and ocean side and city side and it is my favorite place. When I go in September it's 70 degrees with a chill at night. When I go in January it's 70 degrees with a chill at night. The seasons don't change here. I live in paradise, every day.

So I walked across that Grain Belt Bridge into a bright new Minneapolis.

This year is not like the others. There are no cold beers to drink or pools by which to lounge, no trips to the beach to await eagerly. The season is changing or so I'm told, but really all I feel is... nothing much, actually. A certain numbness has pervaded my waking hours and in between bouts of panic over this pain or that, all I've been able to muster is a vague sort of regret for the winter we didn't have.

I'm pretty limited in what I can do these days both on order and in ability. Best I can do is putter around my "garden" and live vicariously through Hold Steady albums, go to bed early and often. It's not a life I'd recommend. BUT! At least it's possibly only temporary, right?


Future zucchini.


Future tomatoes.


TWO KINDS of basil.


Lettuces that I'm not allowed to eat.


Parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, etc.

And lest you think life is all misery and woe...



I still have my playoffs tickets. (So sometimes life is EXTRA miserable and woeful.)

Oh, look, Indiana Jones and the apartment of perpetual viginity.

This week's Collective topic is: What does it feel like when the seasons start to change? Which is a pretty ironic question since the changing of the seasons is the reason I'm posting almost two full days late. See, because when spring starts rolling into summer, two very wonderful things happen in my life: 1) Amy gets out of school. 2) It's mountain biking weather. Basically that means I spend every non-working hour playing outside with my best friend and riding my bike around. So, like, the changing of the seasons essentially feels like Peter Pan Syndrome. Even worse than usual, if you can believe it.

Here's a pretty photo I took on a ride on Saturday.

I took it right before I crashed so hard I almost broke my face.

That's also what summer feels like to me: OUCH!

She calls it a MAYONEGG.

I tried and tried (for real this time) to think of something that creeped me out and came up with pretty much nothing. Nothing that hasn't already been mentioned, anyway, because that Flickr thing is creepy as hell.

This, however? Makes me gag. Egg Bland Ann Veal is totally creepy. In the best way.

 

Also, I'm a little creeped out by how long I played this game:

I CAN'T HELP IT, I AM RIDICK-U-LUS.

That is all.

What creeps me out?

My 29-year-old sister has the Tumblr of an emotionally unstable 12-year-old girl. Homework is haaaaaaaard! I'll be alone and miserable foreeeeeever! Manga! Instagram! Boys! Boys! Boys! Emo self portraits! Gotye lyrics! Boys!

Someone really needs to get a grip.

  A lot of things gross me out. Lotion, beans, sponges, cockroaches, getting wet, babies, etc., etc. Not a lot of things creep me out. I have little-to-no stranger danger and I find shifty individuals entertaining.

But I have a flickr account (that I used to use) and there are these CREEPERS that CREEP THROUGH old PHOTOS and FAVORITE them. Which do they favorite? Super weird fetish related things. My pictures never seem weird (just me and my girlfriends being funny and/or drunk) until I get a CREEPER favorite it and then I see the picture with whole new eyes. Like, I mean, I guess I shouldn't have posed with that stack of hangers at Ikea.

And how do I know it's a creeper? When you click on their profile and all their favorites are hanger pictures. What the hell. HEEBIE JEEBIES.