I went back to the hair and day spa last night, the first time in about five months...makes ya cringe, doesn't it? Yes, well I was indeed in a sad state of neglect. My maintenance as of late having left much to be desired, my self confidence following suit.

Sitting in the chair, inhaling the hypnotic fragrances of pampering products of the studio, and reconnecting with that crafty Shampoo Girl, it felt good investing some time in me. I didn't feel nearly as guilty with the process as I was expecting to feel...as I felt when I made the appointment. It is hard to explain, I guess. Nothing seemed important after Mom passed away. Everything seemed cheap.



And, last night, as Nick told me that I was beautiful, I began to feel like a part of me decided to live again...I'm sure it all seems very vain, but it isn't. The ever-growing blanket of "I don't care" was beginning to smother me...and there have been days in past months that have frightened me with their themes of "What's the use?" The thing is, I do care...and I've finally admitted so to myself...reconciling myself too, that my mother wouldn't have had it any other way. "If you're not living, you're dead...which is it gonna be?" she'd demand.

I choose life...I choose liking myself...I choose moving forward.

---

Just a quick blurb to finish 'er off:

I walked in the studio last night and my stylist welcomed my return with a bear hug. She said, "Here I thought you found another Salon! But, I can see for myself," she continued around a smirk, "that you just stopped going completely."

The girl knows how to flatter! That's why I tip her the big bucks...and I hope she buys something really wonderful with that 29¢.

For awhile, his antics seemed to have been outgrown. It was likely, I hypothesized, that the little glutton's pot belly proved to be a hindrance when committing thievery, vandalism, and other altogether immoral deeds.

But then two weeks ago, I noticed my deodorant had gone missing. I always leave it sitting atop my dresser, which isn't something to which I happily admit. I need to enroll myself in a brush up course on OCD...because the meticulous neatness I once possessed has loosened substantially and can now only classify myself as "tidy"...which is wandering a little too close to "normal" for my liking.

Fortuitously, the OCD hasn't regressed so much that I don't have multiples of nearly every daily product I use and the missing antiperspirant wasn't as ghastly of an absence as it might have been otherwise.

My temper was already short with the felines in residence, as several yucky messes were left all around my bed and furniture and I seemed to have stepped in every one. My once total adoration of cats has diminished considerably and I've donated serious thought to adopting a pet paperclip instead.

It wasn't difficult to point the finger toward the orange one, the once renowned and often celebrated bane of my existence, and easier still, when my new armband radio's armband vanished just last week. I had opened the radio case quickly before heading to Nick's to watch his family play volleyball, stowing the contents in my purse and rushing off. Later that evening, when I could not find the elasticized band, I surmised it must have fallen to the floor, and thus, must have been commandeered by what I hypothesized to be a subhuman life form. With a bushy, ginger-hued tail.



Well, and bless her, Brenda looked everywhere for my armband last weekend when she cleaned house, finding nothing. I found this very surprising, as Clem could not, seemingly, squeeze his girth beneath furniture with the ease of days past. I was huffy but accepting of the situation—how many tubes of my beloved lip balms have I had to sacrifice now, after all?

One morning, as I was reaching in the top drawer of my dresser for a pair of my moisture wicking socks to pack with my running gear, my fingers brushed cool plastic. My face went hot. I counted to ten. If my inkling was correct, the cool plastic would prove to be my missing deodorant. I closed my eyes and extricated the object only to open them again and groan. If my inklings are nothing else, they are dead-on. Great. I remembered each and every curse I directed at Clem for the perceived misdeed. I cursed him anew then, for his dexterity in hiding my deodorant in my sock drawer. How diabolical can you get!? Seriously! Damn that cat!

And yesterday, as I found the armband zipped in my purse's middle compartment, I fumed that Clem should be so fiendish in his mind games as to hide my missing objects in among my things. To quote my aunt, "That just ain't right," and, as an afterthought, a paperclip-pet is becoming less bewitching as I conclude that office supplies aren't quite as adept at being the fall-men for their owners' lacking mental capacity.

I remember being a young girl who celebrated in tidiness yet detested tidying. They still tell the story of the picnic we had in the early 80's. I was seated next to my cousin Jean, younger by a year. They still tell of my horrified expression and refusal to eat because Jean was such a sloppy eater and I was duly turned off.

I displayed signs of my inherited OCD early in life, though it took the better part of two decades to come to terms with the fact that I was everything that annoyed me most about my mother.

She might not have been successful with her overprotecting, but at least she bore a neat freak. My aunts reflect wonderment that Charlie and I learned to climb stairs before reaching adulthood, not to mention that Mom broke down and bought square, 90° cornered end tables before we graduated high school. She had an unjustified fear that my brother and I would fall into injury. Unjustified, totally. Well, I did fall down the basement stairs that one time when I was six and landed myself a black eye. I'm sure that looked fishy at the emergency room.

"...and, how did she get that shiner?"
"...uh...fell down...the stairs? Yeah, go with that."

Oh, and not to mention, I did crack my head open over that large, floor-standing clay jug with a minutely chipped lip. I was a real trooper when they stitched me up though. Mom didn't allow me to leave my padded room for what seemed like that whole summer, though.

But anyway, my childhood grace is neither here nor there. The point is that I came to display the very neat freak tendencies I loathed as a child.

I hate, really really hate, an unmade bed. It bothers me most severely. Miles didn't get it. I would make the bed just before turning in for the night if it, for some unforeseeable reason, hadn't been made by that time, because I needed my bedclothes straight and crisp before crawling between the covers. His position was that if you don't make the bed, it's ready for sleeping already. Miles wasn't known for his neatness. I never led you to believe this was so, did I? No, I believe I was quite outspoken about the messy one.

I hated, really really hated, an unmade bed even as a child. Competing in the hatred rating race, was the act of making the bed. This caused quite a conundrum as one might imagine. So what did I do? I slept atop the covers beneath an afghan—note: I'm referring to a blanket crocheted compliments of Aunt Debbie, not a foreign dude.

Each morning I would neatly fold the blanket and place it at the end of my bed. Somehow this seemed more agreeable than pulling up sheets and smoothing covers. I don't understand it either, I'm just saying that's how it was. Eventually, and the change happened so gradually that I couldn't say for sure when it happened, I began sleeping under the covers, and making the bed mere moments following my exodus.

It's all very automated and I'm less human and more mechanical when it comes to areas such as these.

However, lately I've noticed a fall back to old patterns. I sleep curled into a parallel-positioned body pillow, two queen sized feather pillows beneath my head...oh it's luxurious. How could one think to ruin such a harmony by involving the sheets? No, better yet to huddle beneath my favorite blanket, a woolly bouclé throw, and then a short, wall-hanging-sized log cabin quilt to cap off the assembly. The alarm sounds, I fold the quilt, draping it artistically over the chair to lend to the air of inviting comfort I like to keep in mind when decorating. Next I fold the bouclé throw, padding to my quilt rack and hanging it pristinely from the front-most rung. then, I fluff the pillows, feel my way through the turns of the foundation, and find a light switch.

Most of this occurs before I've even been granted realization that a new day has come. The nonsensical is derived from an inner source of contrived volition, which perhaps makes it all the more pathetic.

...love is resetting the coffeemaker to begin its brew at 4:00 instead of 5:00 so that it's ready when I start my day...love is helping me in a job search that will cover my sickly tush to the moon and back in benefits...love is giving me unlimited access to the crazy pill supply if I should ever feel the need...love is making me promise to be all that I'm capable of becoming.


Thank you, dear aunts...I love you and all the little things you do.

I've found it difficult, writing. Not on an ability stance, but on subject matter. I have so many wondrous things happening, so many beautiful people touching my life...yet, when I write, it is the quieter, sadder feelings that come through. The quieter, sadder feelings that maybe I don't give enough credence to in the spoken word.

The above picture was taken at Devil's Lake. Practically the first time I spoke with Nick, he vowed to take me there. I remember his expression of disbelief upon learning that not only do I love to hike, but that I have a keen fondness for nature, and yet, being a Wisconsinite, had not partaken of Devil's Lake.



For the first time in months, I felt as though I could breathe with full breaths.

The excursion came to me on a day when I was beginning to suffocate.

I gave up my position as team captain for Relay for Life...did I tell you? I suppose it was about a week ago that I cried into Debbie's arms with the weight of everything I felt too inept to accomplish. Brenda, being softer than she'd like people to know, circled me from behind, and I felt sustained by their combined strength and nurturing. Debbie took care of it, and while I still feel like a lousy slacker, I can admit that my head aches less, even if only marginally. It's tough struggling against the ropes you yourself tied.

The toughest.

I ran in the Crazy Legs run just last Saturday. I wasn't thrilled to do it...I was a poor sport and I owe Nick a huge apology for my bad mood...because it was one of the most thrilling experiences in my life...running among 10,000 others and feeling the Earthbound binds tear as I set my soul free.

I returned home afterwards and doped up on sleeping pills...it had been so long since I've slept more than a couple of hours together. They didn't work. I spent the entire afternoon laying in bed with my eyes closed, as Pride and Prejudice, the movie my mother and I so dearly loved last December, played twice from my television. It comforted me, absorbing something that I know my mother loved, something we shared. Maybe the comfort was too precious for me to lose to sleep.

Nick called early-evening, asking if I would like to join him and his friends for dinner. "No," I said, achy and so very tired. He called again a little later, just taking a moment to chat after dropping a friend off and having his SUV to himself once more. With very little coaxing, I agreed to be social after all...and it was a much nicer way to spend the evening than the sullen course in which I was otherwise enrolled.

And Sunday, I rested. I was able to relax deeply. Nick and I covered most of the East Side looking for an open coffee shop...and ended up at Einstein Bros, then a little shopping, a fruitless search for a 2-pack of "C" batteries, before catching a movie. On the return, Nick suggested, "Maybe you could blog while I catch up on some laundry?" Nick feels guilty, I get the impression, because of my lacking entries. He added then, though, "But I look at it as a good thing...that your life is so full that you don't have time to write."

Indeed. I have no problem living for awhile and slacking on the documenting. Especially with the wolves of unsolicited advice and opinionated strangers recently emerging. The blogging community has been very supportive in this matter...apparently it's a rite of passage. In any event, it's time to go to work. Until next time....