Author, Historian, Storyteller

Today at lunch a friend of mine asked me what I thought of her hair. As this is a friend that I see on a regular basis, I knew that that this question had to be because she had just done something new with her hair. Which of course meant that my brain went immediately into panic mode because I hadn’t noticed anything different. I started through the checklist. New cut? Don’t think so, it’s still the same length. Did she style it differently? Nope, that looks the same too. New color? Not that I can tell, but I have my sunglasses on, so maybe that’s hiding the new color. Crap!

Is there a subtle way for me to look at her hair with my sunglasses off without letting her in on the fact that I have no idea what she’s talking about? No, not really. Besides, I tend to be about as subtle as a brick to the teeth. So I decided to go with blunt.

“Did you do something to it?”

She explained. Yes, she had colored it! Now that the subtlety option was gone, I lowered my sunglasses to get a better look. Nope, still couldn’t tell the difference. So I listened to what she had done and why she had it done, the whole time trying to call up some sort of memory of what her head used to look like before this new color job. Maybe if I had a time frame!

“When did you do this?”

Again she explained. Last week, and then a fix last night. Holy crap! No wonder she was asking, that’s two dye jobs in two weeks without word one from me. I’m the worst friend ever! Okay, not the worst friend, but definitely the most inobservant friend. Again I listen and get a bit of a glimmer of what she’s talking about as she describes the reason that the fix was necessary. I nod my head as I listen, but then she stops. It is clearly my turn to say something. I can’t really agree with her that the fix was necessary, because hell, I didn’t even notice the change in the first place! I decide to go with the truth.

“It looks really nice, I like it.”

Then I hold my breath. It does look nice, I do like it, but is that going to be enough of an answer? God, I really hope she doesn’t want me to discuss the differences in blond highlights vs red highlights in terms of washing people out. Not because I don’t care, but because I have nothing to say on the matter. I’ve never once thought about it! And I’ve especially never thought about the differences that you have to do with your make-up to compensate for the different colors of highlights. Truth be told, most mornings I don’t even look in a mirror while getting ready. If I do, it’s an afterthought, or to check to see if I have food stuck in my teeth. Make-up and hair is sooooooo not my thing! At this point, I’m fairly certain that I am failing at hiding the look of abject horror on my face. I smile and repeat myself.

“I like it. It’s pretty.” She looks at me for a moment and then, takes pity.

“I really need to ask a girl.”

“Yes! Yes you do! Because honestly, unless you dye it blue or chop it all off, I’m not going to notice.”

And then she laughed. Oh thank goodness! And thank goodness for friends who realize that my inobservance of all changes in appearance have absolutely no bearing on how I feel about them as a person. This is why every time I’ve ever played Battle of the Sexes, I have to team with the boys.

Anybody that has spent any time with me knows that I am not a fan of nature. Not the views and such, I can sit and take in the beauty of nature all day long . . . from a patio. When you stick me in nature, sans patio, I become the whiny camper. Okay, in Colorado I was known as the whiny camper, here in LA I’ve been called outdoorsy. That’s because I am fine with the outdoors as long as all conditions are perfect, and my exposure is limited. As long as I’m not too cold or too hot, as long as I don’t see a snake or get something gross on me, as long as my food doesn’t wind up with a bunch of dirt/sand in it, and I don’t get blisters on my feet . . . you get the idea. I’m the whiny camper.

Therefore, I tend to stay out of the wild and all involved are happy. This attitude toward nature strikes many as strange, since I grew up in the wilderness. In school we learned how to make snow caves and what to do should you run into a bear or a mountain lion. I wore bright orange while playing outside during hunting season. Tick checks were an almost daily occurrence during the summer. I was inundated with nature. So you would think I would be a bit more comfortable in it. The thing is, I know quite a bit about nature, therefore, I also know what lives in nature.

As a human being, I enjoy my placement at the top of the food chain. It’s comfy up there, I like the view. The cows and chickens and carrots are all below me and I can find them nicely packaged for me at the grocery store. Life is good. It makes sense. But the second that I go out into nature, I am no longer at the top. Bears, lions, alligators, sharks, etc are all most definitely above me in the food chain should they wish it to be so. I am not really cool with that. I have nothing against them, per se, and believe that they should be allowed to live and let live. However, as animals don’t always agree with me on the “let live” part of the equation, I choose to stay out of their habitat. After events earlier this week, I feel even more justified in my decision.

Like most of the world, I have become obsessed with watching the footage of that Australian surfer, Mick Fanning, being attacked by the great white shark. It is beyond amazing that he was able to escape completely unscathed, and it is beyond brave that fellow surfer Julian Wilson swam toward the attack to help, instead of heading to shore like Fanning was screaming for him to do. If I had been Wilson I probably would have turned into a cartoon character and run so fast that I ran across the top of the water with my legs rotating like pinwheels. (I tend to instantly levitate onto whatever is nearest me when I see a snake, so I feel that this is totally possible.) Despite the bravery, heroics and fast action by the water rescue folks, I am left with one lingering feeling every time I watch that footage: THAT IS WHY YOU STAY OUT OF THE WATER!!!

Seriously! Stay out of the water, there are things in there that will eat you! I know the odds are incredibly low. I’ve seen all of the statistics and I even follow Mary Lee the Great White on Twitter. I know that sharks rarely hunt humans on purpose, but I’m sorry, have you seen this graphic?

Forget the shark, if I take my glasses off, I can’t tell the difference between those three! Therefore, if you need me, I will be sitting on a patio, sipping a fruity cocktail and feeling completely justified in being the whiny camper.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping, well, almost all year. Which isn’t overly surprising as I have been an insomniac off and on since I was 16. But in the past several years it hasn’t bothered me at all, so when it hit hard earlier this year I had forgotten most of my coping strategies, and the ones that I did remember weren’t working. So it’s been back to the old drawing board with lots of trial and error. That trial and error has finally come to fruition, and for the past week and a half I have actually been sleeping. Whoo-hoo! Until last night.

Last night I found myself in the middle of this god-awful dream that had snakes, and more snakes and crocodiles all along this path that I had to walk. It was like the Wizard of Oz Australia edition. And right as I was about to completely lose my shit I woke up to see this gigantic spider crawling across my pillow straight toward my face. This was not a dream. Real spider on my real pillow and now I did lose my shit. I screamed one of those soundless screams and flailed wildly. The result of this flailing was that Bubba got kicked in the head and the spider got spooked and started to crawl up the wall. At which point I looked around frantically for something to smash it with, but being in bed I had nothing. Before I could think better of it, I reached out to smash the damn thing with the palm of my hand.

I think it must have been mid-smack when my brain finally broke through the haze and screamed, “What are you doing idiot! That thing is the size of quarter!” Well, by this time it was too late to reverse the momentum, so I redirected it and smashed my hand into the wall right next to the spider . . . At which point it either fell back down into my bed, or scuttled away so quickly that I didn’t see it. Obviously, I assumed that the damn thing was back in my bed. I froze. Maybe if I just stayed very still it would crawl its way back up the wall, we could part company and never speak of the incident again. No such luck, and I gave the little fucker plenty of time. So I gingerly started moving my pillows one by one, in the hopes that when I did unearth it, it would crawl across my hand. I eventually got through all of the pillows and even pulled the blanket back a bit, and no spider . . . anywhere. Not on the wall, not on the bed, not anywhere. Fuck.

It was at this point that I figured I had three choices. 1 – Eradicate with fire. Burn down the entire apartment. 2 – Abandon all belongings and find somewhere else to sleep for the night. 3 – Suck it up, assume that it has crawled away in fear, and go back to bed. Number one got ruled out, because I’m pretty sure that my renter’s insurance won’t cover destruction from spider eradication. Number two got ruled out because the living room was still hella hot, and while I can sleep fairly comfortably in the back of my car, there was no way that 75 pounds of puggle and me were going to be able to sleep in the back of the car. So that left option number three. Suck it up, and go back to sleep. I was not a fan of this option, but reminding myself that I am indeed an adult, and I had to get up in a couple of hours for work, I sucked it up . . . after building a pillow wall and moving to the other side of the bed.

Now here’s the problem with this solution. Several months ago I rearranged my room with the end result being that a shadow box filled with tchotchkes hangs partially over one side of my bed. Instead of going to the trouble of rehanging the box, I simply sleep on the other side of the bed. That way, in the event of an earthquake, I don’t get beaned in the head with a tchotchke. So my option was sleep on the spider’s side of the bed, or possibly get beaned in the head. Obviously, I chose the possible head injury route, and settled myself down to sleep.

However, at this point, I am not only awake, but my brain is on full alert. That’s when a horrifying thought hit me. What if that spider has a vindictive side, and is waiting for me to fall asleep so he can come tap dance across my face, and explore the inner workings of my nose and ears. Which is ludicrous, spiders aren’t intelligent enough to be vindictive. But at 3 in the morning, feeling a little shell-shocked, that seemed like a perfectly plausible scenario. I feigned sleep for a bit, then would look really quickly to see if he was making his move. He never did, and this got old really fast.

Then I realized, what’s the point in having dogs if they won’t protect you? So I grabbed Bubba, and repositioned him between me and the wall of pillows. He was not a fan of this plan, probably still disgruntled over being kicked. So I grabbed Zoey, which I should have done in the first place, after all she chases spiders and eats them for fun. She was perfectly amenable to this plan, as long as she got to sleep on my pillow, above my head. I was finally able to fall asleep for a bit before my alarm went off. I still have not seen hide nor hair of that stupid spider again. He’s probably set up residence in my new memory foam pillow and is selling timeshares to his buddies.

Needless to say, I don’t think I’m ever going to sleep again.