Trying Some New Color

Is this purple? It's supposed to be purple.

And my hair is brown. No pictures yet. It is brown brown, chocolate brown, which is, I guess, what it was when I was a young'un. It's hard to tell what it was up until today, Ray (who does my hair) says it was two shades lighter than black. It did look very dark against the gray, but my hair was never that dark before, back in the olden days. See?


Speaking of which, R was over today and we had a lovely long talk about all things wedding. I wrote yesterday that this is fun, which it is, but also very weird. My baby? Married?

Fourth Period Begins

Oh god, it's only the beginning of fourth period. It seems to be a never-ending day of drudgery and boredom. The reason for that is that it has come to be the time of year for me to be consumed with keeping the list of which kids owe what to the school before they can graduate or move up a year, and I am focused on that, but it's an off-day, so I don't have much business, which is to say, not many kids coming to clear what they owe today. Yet I can't get involved in any other chore that requires thought or room on my desk, because I have to be ready to accept cash/books/notes from the nurse or cafeteria at any moment. So far today, I have refined my system of paperwork for this nonsense, have double-checked one thing against another to make sure no kid is listed as owing something that's been paid for, and have called a half dozen kids out of homeroom to clear stuff up (which they mostly did, because we have mostly nice kids.)

It's also that time of year when teachers are sending kids to the library without passes all day, kids are staying here for two or three periods in a row and hiding out in corners where I can't find them, and not signing in, so it's an administrative nightmare. Everybody's finishing up final projects or showing final presentations, and there aren't enough computers in the school. In any given period, I have a class in the library classroom (24 computers), another class in the library's main room (16 computers) and 20 to 30 kids coming in with passes from class (if I'm lucky) to use computers, most of whom I have to send back because their teachers didn't think to call me first and see if there was any room. Attendance-wise, all I can do is remind everyone to sign in when they get here, and hope that nothing troubling comes up, like the office is looking for a kid who can't be found.

After today, there are only three more regular school days. Final exams start on Wednesday, so that's four half days, followed by a full day for no reason, and then a half day with graduation at night. As you can see, our computer network isn't the only thing in school designed by monkeys.

Excuse me for a moment ...

Back from a Crohn's break ... more at home.

Home, and with a haircut I'm very happy with. I won't be able to get it to look like this tomorrow morning, but it's exactly what I want. I guess after 17 years, Ray either reads my mind or understands the nonsense I'm spouting when I tell him what I want.

Tomorrow is Friday; isn't that nice?





watching THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #2064
READING: American Lion: Andrew Jackson by Jon Meacham

Hello Out There in Internet Land

I'm having a silly morning, and it took forever to fall asleep last night, so I'm not too clear about the whole thing. My car is in for service, so I'm driving my nephew Little K's car (since he's away at college), which rides very nicely for a car with 130,000 miles on it (and, as my sister reminded me, once had an unpleasant encounter with an 18-wheeler.) It took me forever to find the cup holder in it this morning.

I have a new mindset when it comes to the mice. Kill'em, kill'em all. After I posted yesterday, I went in to finish the shelf cleaning and such that the Hubs had started for me, and we ended up doing it mostly together, and while I didn't find more signs of mice presence, I am just fed up with the whole cleaning up thing. It seems they found a bag of soup beans on a high shelf, and wouldn't you know, this must be their favorite thing in the whole world, and everything we had to move on every shelf below it spilled more bean pieces onto the floor. Everything is safe now, clean, in a plastic container if necessary. I told K that I expected wake up in the middle of the night last night and hear a squeaky indignant voice yelling "What the FUCK??!!", but it turns out I wasn't asleep anyway, and wasn't even asleep when I got a wrong number text message around two. Anyway, kill the damn mice; I just want them out of my house.

Which is a disaster. We may have to postpone Christmas until April, since there is no place to put the tree. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The next step in the Great Mouse Hunt is to have K's bedroom closet taken care of. Last week, I got a clothes rack on wheels, a temporary place for all the stuff that was in the closet, and someone can always use a clothes rack on wheels. She put it together, it was good, and then Saturday afternoon, she brought it down to the living room, in pieces. She needs another one! Mommy needs to call the handyman to get the closet worked on! Y'know, we went to Target, and when we came back, she said Oh, we forgot to get a new clothes rack. Oh, did we? Must have been my mistake, or else my intention, because I'm not spending more money on another one and then on the closet and really, why don't I just take my paycheck and flush it down the toilet? Anyway, I have no idea where her clothes are and I don't want to know, but I have someone coming to give me an estimate on the closet Wednesday after school, which you know certainly means that I will sit by the phone, straining to hear the doorbell and no one will ever come. But we shall see.

In another case of something I had no intentions of doing, we had a breakdown in the computer network at school this morning, and naturally, all the work I needed to do was computer-related, including checking in a copy of Twlight which had just been returned and was on my desk. So I read the first page or two and now I have to read the rest of it. The cat-in-the-library book will have to wait. I'm in the mood for another page-turner, or at least a grabber, which the cat book is not and everyone knows Twilight is. It seems I have no choice in the matter.

My haircut, btw, rocks. It's exactly what I had but a little shorter, which means it'll last a longer time, but I had no trouble getting it to look just right today and I love it. I am terrible at that thing where you hold your arm out and take your own picture, but I'll see what I can do. It's actually impossible in the iPhone, because the back of the phone faces you, of course, and you can't even tell by touch where the button is to press since it's part of the screen. Perhaps I shall step away from my desk a moment and see what I can do with the real phone.

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lalalala
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Okay, I took a picture, but it didn't look cute, it just looked fat. What I need is some kind of remote for the mirror, and when I get myself to look in the mirror exactly the way I want it to look, I click the remote and there's a picture. Why hasn't anyone thought of that yet? Isn't this already the most narcissist society of all time? (Rome, maybe Rome. But maybe not.)

It's about 1:30, and I am going to have the coffee in my thermos now.

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We moved into The Mouse House 23 years ago today.


WATCHING WIFE SWAP (from last night) :: ENTRY #1912
READING: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

I've Done It

Yes, I've gone and done it. Got my hair cut short again. Not super short, but shorter than I've had it for some time, and it feels .... ahhhh .... good. No more frizzy wavy bounce of Buster Brown hair hanging there. Ray, who cuts my hair, just grabbed the back and took it off. (And then spent considerable time shaping it.)

So far, so good. It's anybody's guess what tomorrow morning will bring. And of course, I am itchy from all that cutting, but that passes too, no?

My sinus headache is no better but no worse, which means I can live with it. In general, I've been feeling pretty good lately, other than the eternal tired.

Work is just so strange. It's not that the SCM and I aren't speaking to each other, it's that we have so little to say. I came in this morning to see another little list of dates he won't be there. One of which is a day I already told him that I won't be there, so I guess the library just drifts that day. He's leaving, but I still have to make it work, you know? Anyway, my sister says this is why I'm going to a therapist, to help me deal with crap like this. And it is. I wish he were just gone, now, and I could move on.

Heroes is on tonight, which I'm starting to wish they made Cliff's Notes for, because there's so much going on that as soon as each episode ends, I'm not sure what I saw or didn't see. I do hope there's a good season of Lost coming up, whenever that is.

Well, that'll do me for now. I got all my rant out yesterday, but I make no promises for Wednesday.

WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1873
READING: Dear Senator by Essie Mae Washington-Williams

Part One

[copied from dland]

(At school.)

I am having just the kind of day I like to have at school. Surprise! The SCM is out and I have been very busy all day and actually had a project to keep the sub busy all day as well, a project that would have been done by student aides, if we still had any, but we don't, so now it's getting done and he's not in my hair or hanging around being bored. I have been doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that and even had a class that wasn't scheduled until this morning sign up and come in and do an interesting project. (It's the Forensics class and they're learning about serial killers.) And I've helped kids individually WITH BOOKS, and with documentation questions, and checked out books and checked some in, and worked on some budget stuff, and made some signs to put up, and finished a yearbook project for an alumni group, and I even managed to get a bottle of water finished off. That's the way I like it. Uh huh.

I was supposed to go to a meeting this afternoon, what I used to call the Dreaded Monthly Meeting, but it's been canceled, which it usually is and that's why I don't call them Monthly anymore. They're actually scheduled for every two weeks now, but maybe we have one every other month. And there's allegedly a general faculty meeting today, too; I don't think we've had one of those since early December. My former principal, the Psycho, had one every other week, the maximum she could have by contract, and had us there and kept us the whole allowed time even if she had nothing to say. Even if she was out of the building, she made the vice-principal hold the meetings and keep us there, but the last VP would let us out early because really, who was gonna tell on her?

I am starving! Because my friend the Other Chai is away this week -- she takes a group of kids to Washington every year for a week to do government research projects -- I didn't bother to go down to the faculty room for a break; I just had the coffee in my little thermos here at my desk, and so I didn't eat anything. That saved me a point or two. But I sure am ready for lunch, which is coming up in ... about 25 minutes here, at noon. I should have lots of points left for dinner tonight, but I have no idea what I'm having. I'll have to wait for K to get home to figure that out.

Part Two

(At home.)

The day slowed down some, and by the end of the faculty meeting I had a killer headache, but in general, a pretty good day for having to be there. I cut my errands short after school and only went to the make-up store and then to the ShopRite for a few items, and then home, where I snacked shamelessly. Which would have been okay, but then K and I ended up going to TGI Friday's for dinner, where I ate mucho food this is Not Good For Me, and there we are. I don't care, we all know that if I lose this weight it's going to take me years to do it. Anyway, I had an unusual experience before.

We were about to leave for the restaurant -- yes, we really must eat at home more, and we will -- and I was in the bathroom washing my hands and chanced to look up at the mirror and thought "Hey! Who the hell IS that?" The amazing thing here is that I was not thinking "Who is that old fat woman?" but rather "Hey, I don't look so bad!" I rather enjoyed that. Here's why I look so different to myself lately. One, it's the make-up. I no longer look like death warmed over on a regular basis. And when I saw myself in the mirror today, I even had eyeliner on, because they had put it on me at the make-up store. Two, I am wearing my more comfortable clothes because the weather is so nice, no sweater today, and I much prefer the look of a collared shirt with a t-shirt under it, which is what I have on. But Three, and this is the big one, is my hair.

My hair is completely different from any way I have ever worn it before in my whole life. I have had relatively few different hairstyles as a grown person, which I won't bore you with the details of at the moment, but I started with waist-length hair in college, had shoulder length on and off for a while, and have mostly had very short hair for the last very many years. I like short hair because it's so easy to take care of.

But my hair now is much longer than very short, although it would probably be called short by anyone else. The layers are longer, although the length is not terribly long. But the coolest thing about my hair is this: I am turning gray. The length of the layers that I have now makes the gray show up much, much more. Most of my gray is at the sides, over my ears, and some more in the front; I have very little gray in the back (according to my hair-cutter.) The gray looks all silvery and pretty, kind of like highlights I don't have to pay for, and they make the rest of my brown hair ... well, kind of pop, if you know what I mean. I LOVE my hair! I don't think I've ever been able to say that before! Perhaps I will try to take a picture of myself and put it up here for you, although I can't promise that getting such a picture will be easy. I'll see what I can do.

Okay, day is done. All I have left to do is change my bag for tomorrow, since the one I changed to for today sucked. I have very specific bag requirements, and my perfect bag that I love is now just a biiiit too small for what I need to carry every day, so I'm testing replacements from among the billions and billions of bags I already have. (I have bag issues, which I'm sure I've mentioned before.) Our featured bag for this evening is a navy paisley SportSac that the Chum gave me for Christmas. My hopes are not high. I ain't a paisley sorta gal.


WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1399