I'm too tired to write tonight. I never had a chance to get back to sleep after everyone left for the morning. Five and a half hours of sleep is not enough. No. I'm going to tell you the truth. I watched a couple of movies when I should have caught up on sleep instead. It seemed as though I had the time at the time.
What do you do when you get eight movies from your holds list at the same time from the library? You let them sit on top of the television for six days while you're busy, then watch as many as you can on the one day you don't have a million appointments and errands to run. And you overdo it because you haven't had a day like this in weeks, maybe months.
Plus, my friend Rachel called and, rather than talk for an hour or more on the phone, we decided to have a long overdue lunch. Long overdue. She'd been sick. Then Nick was sick. Then Teddy was sick. I hate when my best friends need to be out of touch for more than a month. Oh, we facebook, but that's not the same. Even a couple of phone calls isn't quite the same. This is the person I want to see when I've spent too much time with someone else who's vindictive in her gossip. She's the one I want to talk to when I'm making a new friend, but they don't know how to read me. This is the one person I miss when I find I can't talk about something that's really bothering me, that's verboten. You know. No one wants to hear about the illnesses or the ways we aren't pretty any more at nearly 52.
She does.
Today, I told her that I'm tired of being stoic about my hair.
Oh, here I am being honest with you again. I'm not pretty. I used to be pretty, but I have a couple of issues that have made my hair really thin. There it is. There is the big truth, that I'm not a beautiful young woman with the perfect kid, an adoring husband, and a Martha Stewart house. I'm a mess. People occasionally call me 'Sir.' Mike tells me that he doesn't see me that way. Is he blind or just very sweet? I used to tell Rachel that I would never get a wig because if people treated me differently because of my hair, then that made them too superficial for me to consider relevant to my life. I used to tell her that I wished that it would be a fad for women to shave their heads the way it is with men instead of being an indicator of breast cancer. Then I could happily join in and shave it all off. I still believe these things, but it hurts my feelings when people won't give me the time of day because of my looks or when careless people call me 'Sir.'
I showed Rachel my awful new driver's license and we both laughed. It was more the stupid look on my face that we laughed about, but still. We talked about our kids, about clearing out junk from our houses and our yards, about how the barista made me the wrong coffee then instructed me to say it correctly when I ordered it. I had said it correctly. We talked about men and sex and sleep.
Then, when we'd begun to run out of time, I dropped her back off at her house.
"Come it for a minute," she said. As I walked in, she disappeared for a moment and the next thing I knew, she handed me a blonde curly wig. I looked like a character on 'The Golden Girls.' Ha! Ridiculous! Then she gave me a black pageboy with strands of tinsel. Not the Liza Minnelli look. Then, she handed me a short purple wig that said Carol Channing. Perfect!
We laughed until I had to head home to meet the bus. Hugs, more hugs, and I'm all better now.
Thank you for listening.
You too Rachel, jb
What do you do when you get eight movies from your holds list at the same time from the library? You let them sit on top of the television for six days while you're busy, then watch as many as you can on the one day you don't have a million appointments and errands to run. And you overdo it because you haven't had a day like this in weeks, maybe months.
Plus, my friend Rachel called and, rather than talk for an hour or more on the phone, we decided to have a long overdue lunch. Long overdue. She'd been sick. Then Nick was sick. Then Teddy was sick. I hate when my best friends need to be out of touch for more than a month. Oh, we facebook, but that's not the same. Even a couple of phone calls isn't quite the same. This is the person I want to see when I've spent too much time with someone else who's vindictive in her gossip. She's the one I want to talk to when I'm making a new friend, but they don't know how to read me. This is the one person I miss when I find I can't talk about something that's really bothering me, that's verboten. You know. No one wants to hear about the illnesses or the ways we aren't pretty any more at nearly 52.
She does.
Today, I told her that I'm tired of being stoic about my hair.
Oh, here I am being honest with you again. I'm not pretty. I used to be pretty, but I have a couple of issues that have made my hair really thin. There it is. There is the big truth, that I'm not a beautiful young woman with the perfect kid, an adoring husband, and a Martha Stewart house. I'm a mess. People occasionally call me 'Sir.' Mike tells me that he doesn't see me that way. Is he blind or just very sweet? I used to tell Rachel that I would never get a wig because if people treated me differently because of my hair, then that made them too superficial for me to consider relevant to my life. I used to tell her that I wished that it would be a fad for women to shave their heads the way it is with men instead of being an indicator of breast cancer. Then I could happily join in and shave it all off. I still believe these things, but it hurts my feelings when people won't give me the time of day because of my looks or when careless people call me 'Sir.'
I showed Rachel my awful new driver's license and we both laughed. It was more the stupid look on my face that we laughed about, but still. We talked about our kids, about clearing out junk from our houses and our yards, about how the barista made me the wrong coffee then instructed me to say it correctly when I ordered it. I had said it correctly. We talked about men and sex and sleep.
Then, when we'd begun to run out of time, I dropped her back off at her house.
"Come it for a minute," she said. As I walked in, she disappeared for a moment and the next thing I knew, she handed me a blonde curly wig. I looked like a character on 'The Golden Girls.' Ha! Ridiculous! Then she gave me a black pageboy with strands of tinsel. Not the Liza Minnelli look. Then, she handed me a short purple wig that said Carol Channing. Perfect!
We laughed until I had to head home to meet the bus. Hugs, more hugs, and I'm all better now.
Thank you for listening.
You too Rachel, jb
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