Wise Maid

Happy Dote Upon Yourself Day!

You... you look confused.  (That's right.  I can see you.  Are you creeped out?)

...Big Brother is watching you...

No, just kidding.  I know you look confused because I just wished you joy for a holiday that doesn't officially exist.  But I tell you this: it is a holiday, one that actually has quite a tradition.  It occurs every year on this day: February 13, the day before the most corrupted holiday in history.  But more on that later...

Dote Upon Yourself Day was a notion born in our junior year of high school.  Before you scoff and ignorantly declare that no good ideas come out of high school students, let's remember that the Zombie Apocalypse Protection Unit might one day be the only thing saving you from total annihilation.  Are we agreed that our high school conversations were of merit?  Good.

On the day this holiday was first conceived, I was, as usual, sitting against the taupe-colored walls, blocking the hallway with my freakishly long giraffe legs, and gabbing with FoxyFriend and PurpleFriend.  That day's subject: the dreaded Valentine's Day.

PurpleFriend had, as usual, been wasting a lot of time on the internet, and had printed off for our reading enjoyment some anti-boy gems, such as, "'Can you feel the love tonight?'  Yes, and it's making me want to puke!"

As we pored over these, bursting out into random, raucous laughter, we got on the subject of how awful Valentine's Day was for us single high school girls.  The more we talked about it, the more cynical we got.  Love -- bah!  Boys -- ha!  And all that red and pink -- BLUGH!

We came to a decision.  No more would we mourn our solitary relationship status on a cheery Hallmark holiday!  No more would we swim through a sea of frilly hearts and insincere cliches!

We would create a holiday of our own, to balance the scale, as it were.  We would create a holiday in which a woman could turn the attentions and admirations usually directed at males onto a much more deserving target: herself.  We would create a guilty pleasures day, and day of indulgence, and Anti-Valentine's Day.  And most importantly: NO BOYS ALLOWED!!!

This day had enormous potential!  This holiday would be a day to worry about only one person, to toss aside the stress of everyday life and simply relax in whatever way suits you best.  Dote Upon Yourself Day is your excuse for an entire day at the spa.  For a luxurious bubble bath in low light, with scented candles all around.  For braiding hair and painting toenails, and eating as much ice cream, chocolate, and/or McDonald's as you want!

It just so happened that in our junior year of high school, Valentine's Day was on a Saturday.  That meant that, quite appropriately, the 13th of February fell on a Friday.  We could think of no better day to launch our newly-created holiday than the day before its opposite, and you can bet we took great pleasure launching it on Friday, the 13th.

That first year, we determined the first of many traditions to come.  FoxyFriend, PurpleFriend, BlueFriend and I all participated, ignoring the strange looks we received all day (we were quite used to them to begin with).  We wore all black, from head to toe, in protest of the varying shades of red and pink that would assault our eyes the next day.

To bedeck our outfits in a holiday-appropriate manner, we also wrote slogans on strips of duct tape.  These slogans were statements of our independence as females, and our complete disdain for love (until tomorrow)!  PurpleFriend's shirt read, "They say someday my prince will come.  I think my prince got lost and is too stubborn to ask for directions," which went well with my, "Love lifts us up where we belong... Yeah, until you hit your head on the ceiling."

The final tradition from that first year was actually deemed optional.  FoxyFriend and I, being hard-core and quirky as we always have been, refused to speak to anything with a Y chromosome (excluding teachers and family) for the entire day.

I happen to know that I offended some people following that tradition.  I have a very specific memory of walking down the hallway, late for Geometry, next to a boy whom I had always considered to be rather cute, and certainly nicer than most of the other 400 people in attendance at my high school.  This was not a normal occurrence.  I rarely saw this boy outside of chapel, where he usually sat in the pew directly behind me.

I had never walked alone with this boy in the hallway before, and I would never have it happen again.  But of course we did both end up late for geometry on the one day I would refuse to speak to him.

Despite my charades, and despite pointing multiple times at the duct tape wristband advertising the name of the holiday, I don't think I ever managed to communicate to him just exactly why I was dressed all in black and stubbornly silent.  I think he was under the impression I was in some kind of weird mourning.

Oh, well.

Although the holiday primarily began as a public statement, it gradually developed quieter traditions.  In the eclectic college environment, black clothes and duct tape lost some of its oomph.  And although eschewing male conversation was still a noticeable statement, I found myself losing the feeling of novelty and rebellion.

That's when Dote Upon Yourself Day became more like its name.  It became a day for me to eat as much popcorn as I could, with as much parmesean cheese as I wanted.  It became a day to drink half my stock of Dr Pepper.  To watch any movies I so desired.  It became a day of true, girly indulgence.

Oh, I still spent plenty of time being cynical about love, in the spirit of the Anti-Valentine's Day we had created it to be.  I still get fired up about the terms for people who stay single their whole lives.  A man becomes a "bachelor," which by all accounts has pretty good connotations, in general.  A woman?  Old maid.

But I learned the value of just taking a day to do whatever struck your fancy.  Of going on an adventure, if you wanted, or staying in and pigging out, or laying in bed until 3PM before going outside to lay in the sun and read.

One memorable Dote Upon Yourself Day, for instance, was spent in a bowling alley.  We laughed at each other's poor scores, and ate pizza like it was going out of style, and started calling Valentine's Day by another name: Single Awareness Day.

Another was spent in my dorm room with Roommate and BrownFriend, painting each other's nails and watching a cheesy movie, and getting into self-renewing laugh cycles that brought our disgruntled suitemates into the room wondeing what the heck we were doing.

This year, I am spending Dote Upon Yourself Day with BrownFriend again.  I intend to celebrate the holiday to its fullest.

So I'll say it again:

Happy Dote Upon Yourself Day!

Alchemy

n. the power or process of transforming something common into something special; an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting.

Every day, you take oxygen into your lungs, and expel carbon dioxide.  You do this approximately 17,280 times every day.  And you don't even realize that you're doing it.

Con-Text

I support T9 Word.

I'm not saying you have to agree, so don't get your knickers in a knot.  You should know by now that a blog post isn't generally four words long, since I am a verbose sesquipedalian.  And I intend to give that opening statement its usual attention and expansion, so that you will fully understand why I said such a thing.

I am aware that most new-fangled cell phones (including mine) now have keyboards for our thumbs.  I do not care.  I use T9 Word every day (unless I am on mobile Facebook, which hates me as much as regular Facebook does, and therefore hates T9 Word probably just because I like it).  I have been described as a "T9 fiend" by GreenFriend, who watched in amazement as my muscle memory took over one night.

As a person who hates talking on the phone with the fiery passion of one thousand suns, I have become an avid texter.  Texting makes it easy for me to avoid actual human contact by making it possible for me to communicate simple concepts sans vocal chords.  No more do I have to actually call and speak to my mother just to ask her if she wants something from WalGreen's!  Text messaging to the rescue!

This loss of verbal phone communication has been bemoaned by many-a scholarly person.  The swift onset of "txt-spk" being one of the lamentable side-effects of the spike in dependance on texting, the intelligent human beings of Earth are (accurately) projecting a directly proportional degeneration in the spoken word. 

However, as I have stated before, my texting is grammatically immaculate (betcha think that's more impressive now that you know I use T9 to do it).  So this is not a fear I apply to myself.  And I hate the phone.  So I'll text until the day my thumbs fall off.

But that's just the justification for my initial sentence.  Now I will tell you the real reason I am a fan of predictive texting:

T9 Word makes me giggle.

Seriously!  Some of the suggestions it foists on me are like little gifts from above, sent to cheer me in a world of gray winter doom.

I know that T9 has its drawbacks, specifically when it comes to small words.  If you want to type "me," T9 inevitably gives you "of" first.  If you want to type "go," T9 insists you want to say "in."  And I can't tell you how many times I have furiously backspaced after typing "I an" instead of "I am."

T9 also has a startling ability to recall every fake word you have ever typed or selected by accident.  My current phone decided that when I tried to type "its," I would always mean "Gtr."  I don't know what "Gtr" is, but it made me want to growl at the screen every time.  It also has a strange attachment to the word "sacred," over "scared," to the point that I actually spent a significant amount of time selecting "scared" from the drop-down list over and over and over and over and over to teach it the better habit.

But my old phone would not be taught.  I had a very small, very inexpensive phone when I was first venturing into the world of texting.  After I figured out how T9 worked, my phone showed its strange quirk.  Whenever I tried to type the word "think," my old phone invariably inserted this collaboration of letters: "thhok."  I am absolutely positive that I never typed that odd-looking word (perhaps it's an onomatopoeia?).  To this day, I believe that my phone was insulting my intelligence; clearly it didn't thhok I could think at all.

But despite these little time-consuming setbacks, I find T9 word to be intensely amusing.  There are several specific examples I like a lot.  To the point that I actually select the wrong thing on purpose before typing the correct word, because I don't want it to learn new habits for these particular things.

The first of these encouraged failures occurred when I tried to call my mother ancient (I was being sarcastic).  My text ended up saying, "Mother, you are so ambient."  I actually laughed out loud (no, I didn't lol.  Don't use that abominal abbreviation around me, please [also note that the word "please" has multiple vowels, and is therefore not spelled "plz"]).  I couldn't decide if calling a person "ambient" was a compliment or an insult.  But I think it is probably a compliment.

I just discovered a new enjoyable one a few minutes ago, when I was responding to Ex-BF-in-Law about PinkFriend's upcoming birthday.  I wanted to say, "Since I have zero clones or doppelgangers..."  And now I am purposefully not going to speculate what you may or may not be thinking about the kind of text conversations I have.  "Doppelgangers" is hardly a commonly used word, so T9 understandably did not know it.  My text ended up reading, "Since I have zero clones or forefingers..."  I will admit to emitting a few audible chuckles while I painstakingly taught my T9 to recognize "doppelgangers" as a word.

A golden oldie, and the one I am most careful to preserve, is one that came about after I started getting Predators Tweets to my phone.  As any good Preds fan knows, the very impressive Preds goalie is spectacularly named: Pekka Rinne.  Were you aware, however, that the same numbers it requires to type "Rinne" in T9 Word are also the numbers necessary to type "phone?"  Of course you weren't.  But guess what?  Every time I go to type "phone," I get to be reminded of one of the best hockey players living in the shadow of the Batman Building.

The last one I like is kind of... um... petty.  You see, my dramatic, whiny saga with BlueEyes sort of began with the introduction of a girlfriend.  This girlfriend was an extremely nice person, and very good for him.  But you can understand, since I am sort of a mess over him, why I didn't exactly warm to her.  Although he is no longer with this girlfriend, seeing her name still makes my heart go all achey and weird.  So when my T9 Word automatically corrects her name to "malaria"... well, it comforts me for myriad reasons.

T9 is just one of those things for me.  It's one of those things that can always make me giggle, even on days when I would rather scowl at the world and wrap up in my socially challenged cocoon.

You know what I'm talking about.  For some people, it's seeing highly amusing Engrish somewhere, like, "Unbelievable! This Is Not Butter," slapped on the top of a tub of I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter.  For others, it might be seeing that the Adult Store sits under a towering billboard that says, "Jesus is watching you!"  And sometimes it might be as simple as driving by a Feminist Bake Sale.

We have daily recommendations for how much water we should drink, how much Vitamin C we should take in, and we even have a completely unrealistic recommendation for vegetables (eight servings?  I say no, sir!).

I tend to think we should have daily recommendations for other things.  Things like how many times you should laugh until your sides hurt.  Or how many times a single girl should flirt with a handsome stranger.  Or, like the examples above, how many servings of irony you should take in.

Hey, at least I didn't focus on my overexaggerated love for puns.

Havasupai

When we were in college, BrownFriend, Roommate, and I had a discussion about which one of us was the most intimidating.  I won.

Before they argue that point, let me explain.  What we decided in the course of that conversation is that everyone is intimidating in some way.  BrownFriend, for instance, is intimidating because she was/is drop-dead gorgeous, in that Venezuelan way that can't be achieved through surgery, make-up, or tanning booths.  Roommate was intimidating in that she was/is so overwhelmingly nice.  But me?  I was just downright intimidating, in the most conventional understanding of the word.

People have tried to make this sound softer.  I have been described as a "fierce friend" on more than one occasion, and that is a title I accept gladly.  I have also been told that I have a "very strong personality," which is essentially a roundabout way of calling me a stubborn mule with loud, unswerving opinions (better a mule than a giraffe, I suppose).  This is also something I admit to.  I am who I am; there is no malleability in this personality.

But the plain and simple truth is that I am an intimidating person.

It is possible that this perception of me stems from my complete inability to interact properly with other humans, especially in a first meeting situation.  Despite the number of colored friends I mention with every post, you ought to know by now that I am actually an introvert.  I live more in my own head than outside of it, and my friends are the people that accept, and sometimes appreciate, the depth of insanity that results from that mindframe.

My tendency to retreat into my imagination is amplified upon a first encounter by the fact that I am watchful.  Besides just being a people watcher, I find it comforting to observe before venturing forth.  I am the clown fish of the social world (sorry, BrownFriend).  I would rather chill in my anemone for a little bit, if you don't mind.  Don't get too close, or my buffer will sting you.

I have been forced to recognize the fact that the combined force of these bashful tendencies probably comes off as frigid.  This is particularly likely in situations where the new person I'm introduced to has had ample opportunity to observe me with my Friends, with whom I am crazy and loud and quirky and all over the place.  The contrast must be shocking, particularly when I throw out my anemone stings in the form of scathing sarcasm.  I can understand why people might be... a little... cautious with me.

Add to that the very real possibility of me kicking your butt (be it verbally or literally) if you ever hurt someone I love, and you arrive at the summation of all these aspects of my socially challenged self: I am intimidating.

As an intimidating person, you can imagine that it is not often I meet someone who can, in turn, intimidate me.  I admit that I am a person who makes snap judgments.  I evaluate you the first time I meet you.  If we meet again, I assess my original impression for accuracy.  After the third meeting, I will interact with you as loudly as with my friends, through the lens of my fully formed opinion.

This means that after I have made a decision about you, you become just another person in my scope of acquaintance, and I will treat you thusly.  I have three interaction modes: strangers, acquaintances, and special friends.  Once you get to special friend mode, you are stuck there forever, unless you completely betray my confidence in every way possible (this has actually happened only once).  Most people get acquaintance treatment, in which I tell you whatever I think and you may respond accordingly.

Now that I have been in my office environment (a quite literal Hell for a socially challenged individual) for almost eight months, and now that Coworker is no longer working with us (three cheers for justice!  Hip, hip!), I have hit acquaintance mode with everyone.

Except Supervisor.

Supervisor intimidates me.

Supervisor is very, very nice.  She is understanding and accessible, and she has a sense of humor.  But honey, she commands respect.  I have now seen firsthand the definition of that expression.

I have downplayed this inferiority complex in the office, but I am more than aware of the complete cowardice she alone can create in me.  As such, I have strived to be invisible.  I tread lightly, I do my work, and I don't make waves.  Our working relationship is, therefore, consistently indifferent.

But last week, I got a glimpse into Supervisor's private life, and now I don't know how to act.  Apparently, her boyfriend called her as he was on the road to his job, and proceeded to inform her that he thought he might be having a child with another woman.

Understandably, Supervisor got loud.

She got loud enough that I could hear her over my headphones (which were currently blaring We The Kings), and thinking that perhaps she was trying to get someone's attention, I freed up one ear to assess the situation.

"Tell me who it is," she was saying.  Then, "What do you mean you don't know?!  Of course you know!  You're going to tell me who it is right now."

This was the "oh, crap" moment for me.  I knew now a) that she was on the phone, b) that whoever was on the phone was in serious trouble, and c) I couldn't inconspicuously stop eavesdropping.

A moment later, the boyfriend coughed up a name, and upon hearing it, Supervisor got louder.  She repeated the name he had supplied, tacking on a last name for verification.  When he responded in the affirmative, she got deadly serious and fast.

"Do you mean to tell me you're having a baby with a woman living in my house?!  While you're living in my house?!"

By now, she was so loud that people were coming down from the second floor to check on her.  She was, not surprisingly, oblivious to the audience she now had.

She slapped the desk hard, saying over her boyfriend's audible protests, "You are going to turn that car around right now, get your sh*t, and get out of my house right now!"  She repeated this sentence three times, and hung up.  Then she broke her phone throwing it onto the desk.

Not long after that phone call, she took the rest of the day off.

I actually admire her for handling the situation so well.  If that had been me, I would have broken more than my phone.  And they would have heard me three buildings down.  I think, considering the information she was assaulted with, she comported herself with considerable poise and great aplomb.  The others in my office must have thought so, too, because it has not made the gossip mill runs that all office happenings must endure.  The incident died then and there.

But I have a dilemma.  I have to ask Supervisor about an approaching Monday, when I will be in Houston, Texas (I know, I know -- only BrownFriend could be enough incentive for me to brave travel to a state that means me mortal harm).  That Monday just happens to be Valentine's Day, and the following Monday just happens to be Presidents' Day.  Presidents' Day is an optional holiday for us, and I need to ask permission to take the holiday a week early, and work on Presidents' Day itself.  But I don't know how to act.

After you bear witness to such an intimate exchange in someone's life, how do you treat them with the usual professionalism and degree of separation without seeming like a heartless jerk?

I have mulled over this question for days now, and I have not come up with an answer.  Therefore, I have decided that I need to move to the Grand Canyon, where my socially challenged disasters and dilemmas will be completely irrelevant.

Hopefully the Native Americans there won't be too intimidated by the crazy, pale-faced recluse in the caves.

Achtung!

I am a Grammar Nazi.

No, don't try to sugar over it.  I can admit it.  I am a Grammar Nazi.

I am that chick who eloquently harpoons internet trolls, who have no concept of capitalizations, apostrophes, or pluralizations.  Even when I text, my grammar is immaculate -- it is physically painful for me to send a text with errors in it, even down to punctuation and appropriate abbreviations.

I am the girl that points out errors in billboards, pamphlets, and subtitles.  I'm the girl who plays Bananagrams and Scrabble and Word Twist until the wee hours of the morning.  I'm the girl who knew that a possessive "its" doesn't take an apostrophe by age eight.  I am that girl: The Grammar Nazi.

Recently, there have been several grammatical issues that have been driving me up the wall.  I need an outlet for the frustration these constantly niggling mistakes have caused in me.

Unfortunately, I can't ban people with poor grammar from using the English language until they learn to use it properly.  The "Linguistic Time-Out" would be my unequivocal first choice, if that was an option.  In lieu of a figurative Dunce Cap, I am going to have to settle for a snarky blog post, in which I detail the coping mechanisms I have developed for these issues.  Hang on tight, kiddies.

Reprehensible Grammatical Error #1: Substitution of a Preposition in a Compound Predicate

or

"Would Have" vs. "Would Of"

It is an increasingly common error to write, "He would of gone if he could of found a way," instead of the correct grammar: "He would have gone if he could have found a way."

Obviously I am aware that when a person is speaking, "would have" often sounds like "would of."  But if you wish to reflect this phonetic anomaly, you ought to do it with a contraction, like so: "would've."

You may use "would have" or "would've."  Everything else is wrong.

RGE#1 Coping Mechanism: I have taken to coping with this error by thinking of the comment as the transcription of a medieval sports announcer, written on ancient parchment, with some fragments having faded away.  That way, the error becomes an antiquated title, and you can fill in the blanks to make it all right.  Observe:

"He, Would of [the land of] Gone, [will be the winner] if he, Could of [the town of] Found, [goes] a-way."

It isn't very scientific, but it makes me feel better.

Reprehensible Grammatical Error #2: Misrespresentation of Common Figures of Speech

or

Learn Your Homonyms, People!

Too many people like to utilize frequently used colloquial expressions, without knowing how to spell them properly.  As a Grammar Nazi, this is something I have never done (in fact, there is a particular phrase that I never use in my writing, simply because I don't know which homonym is appropriate: "to say one's piece/peace").  Since I hold everyone I meet to the same grammatical standards that I myself adhere to, I do not tolerate the misuse of homonyms.

There are three simple examples of this barf-worthy mistake, listed below.  I shall show you how to cope with each (and laugh while you're doing it).

1.) Ensure vs. Insure -- The word "ensure" meaning to make certain of, and the word "insure" meaning to purchase liability equal to the value of the direct object.

2.) Bated Breath vs. Baited Breath -- The word "bated" being a derivation of the word "abated," meaning subdued, and the word "baited" meaning a dangled temptation, as on a hook or in a trap.

3.) Bear With Me vs. Bare With Me -- The word "bear" meaning to carry, as a burden, and the word "bare" meaning uncovered and without embellishment.

RGE#2 Coping Mechanisms: I find that merely taking each incorrect homonym at face-value does a lot for a sentence with this type of error.  Behold the enumerated examples below:

1.) "I am going to insure she doesn't do that." -- Picture the speaker/writer seated across the desk from an insurance agent, filling out forms to insure a She-Doesn't-Do-That for $250,000 ($35.00/month).

2.) "He waited with baited breath." -- Picture a mouth-breathing male standing on a dock, with a fishing line extending from his mouth, lure and buoy and all.

3.) "Please bare with me while I check that information." -- Picture this. You're welcome.

Reprehensible Grammatical Error #3: Redundant Repetition in Popular Melodic Songs

or

Pick One Modifier and Stick With It

If you are into hip-hop music, you have probably heard the very popular song in which this line is repeated multiple times on a catchy melody: "It was only just a dream..."

This makes the editor within me writhe uncontrollably.  When there is more than one word with the same meaning modifying a single word or phrase, you should choose the more effective of these words and use it exclusively.

RGE #3 Coping Mechanism: Think of as many synonyms as possible and list them after the original redundancy.  Like so:

It was only just merely simply exclusively singularly insignificantly a dream.

---

To all those who have committed these errors, or who will commit them in the days to come: Consider yourself warned.  Though I be but little, I am fierce.  Do not doubt that I will hunt you down and use your eyes in an ellipsis...

Ahem.  Excuse my ranting.

This is the end of the post.

Big Daddy

I sat down to write a post about grammatical faux pas, but this happened instead.  Grammar will have to wait.

Let me preface this post by pointing out the "imagination" tag I have put on it.  The things that go on in my head are often ridiculous, highly unlikely, and rather fantastical.  Nevertheless, I can't control what comes into my head, and well, my imagination is more fun than real life, anyway.

In fact, I am writing this post so you will see just how overactive my poor brain really is (in case you haven't already figured it out).  Believe me, I am well aware that the situation I am about to outline is all but implausible, so spare me any scathing comments, please.

Now, then.  I have mentioned before that I have two cats, whom I call Thing1 and Thing2 on this blog just to keep you less confused.  I got these cats as a birthday present from my across-the-way-neighbor (NumberEight), and from my apartment complex in general.  That's actually a rather boring story, so I will spare you the details.  The two things you need to know for purposes of this scenario are as follows:

1.) My two kitties are actually a mother and son, who were strays, roughin' it on Building A's back patio.

2.) When I brought them in, Thing2 was only six weeks old, and so small he could fit in the palm of your hand.  This led me to call him "Piccolo," which is Italian for "little."  Well, he's five months old now, and... let's just say he ain't so "piccolo" anymore.

I will admit to being very curious about Thing2's pedigree from day one.  I obviously know all about his mother, what with her living in my apartment and all.  But who is Thing2's daddy?

Thing1 is the sweetest cat.  She'll rub anyone's legs, if they get close enough, and especially if you venture into the kitchen.  If you feed her, or pet the sweet spot behind her right ear, you are her best friend for life.  She's a wonderful mommy, too, always loving on Thing2 and trying to keep him out of trouble (though she rarely succeeds at that).  And markings-wise, they are clones, stripe for stripe.

But, Thing1 is tiny.  She's almost two years old, and the only way she's growing is round, in the belly.  At five months of life, Thing2 is as big as she is, and topping her fast.  He's got a long tail and big paws that promise lots of growth to come.  Not to mention the vehement declarations of the vet, who vows that his rapid weight gain between check-ups indicates that he will be a "monster cat."

So where did he get his size?  From his good-for-nothing father, of course.  Naturally, I began to wonder what deadbeat feline got my Thing1 teen-pregnant, and then left them to fend for themselves.

For a while, I nursed the theory that a certain elderly neighborhood cat was responsible.  Butch hangs out in my apartment complex, enjoying the attentions of multiple cat-lovers, and the freedom to roam where he pleases (until he gets hungry).  Moreover, he looks like a darker, bigger version of Thing1, which would fulfill the genetic criteria I'd put up for Thing2's father.

That was before NumberEight debunked my theory by explaining that Butch has been fixed (which is a nice way to say "thoroughly de-sexed").

Never fear!  My mind doesn't put up with mystery for long.  I now have a new theory, which I shall unfold to you in the paragraphs below.

As usual, my theory requires a little back-tracking, in the interest of full comprehension.

This new theory of mine was born on Saturday.  If you live in The Music City, like I do, you know that Saturday was the first truly beautiful day in a long winter of gray and snow and cold (three things I do not even pretend to be friends with).  I woke at noon, and I knew immediately from the sunlight streaming through my windows that this was a day to be outside.

Too excited to follow normal wake-up routines, I popped out onto my balcony still in my PJs, and with bed-hair, too.  Thankfully, no one walked by.  It was perfect, just as I had suspected; the sun was shining, the air was a balmy sixty degrees and climbing, and I could hear the Siamangs from the Nashville Zoo just around the corner.

"Come to the zoo!" the monkeys seemed to say.  "Come and hang with your animal neighbors on this beautiful glimpse-of-spring day!" (As always, pun intended).

I could not ignore their puffy-chinned calls.

Along with Mom and Brother, I obeyed the Siamangs' orders and frolicked through the zoo all afternoon.  I saw five baby meerkats (so tiny!), the new habitat with the flamingos (so orange!), and I learned the meaning of the word "crepuscular" (so many syllables!).

But that's beside the point.  My latest theory regarding the paternal half of Thing2's parentage occurred to me as we were leaving, when we paused at the small habitat of the Eurasian lynxes.

Do you see where this is going?

The habitat of the Eurasian lynxes -- who have lived at the zoo since their kittenhood -- is located on the back edge of the zoo.  Since the zoo is a hop, skip, and a jump away from my little apartment, I started to fantasize.

Thing1, in her small, nimble way, could probably have gotten into the zoo at some point.  That is by no means unfeasible -- there are all kinds of un-caged animals running around the zoo.  So I proceeded from that thought as though it were factual.

When a young cat is in heat, any tomcat will do, but I was beginning to suspect that Thing1 might have a weakness for Asian guys.  Since the zoo keeps all their animals well-fed, I don't think a satiated lynx's first instinct would be to kill a smaller cat.  So the instinct that's second only to eating would be?... And if she was in heat, then maybe...

Well, now the idea was in my head.  And as I watched the wildcat, I began comparative analyses.  He held his head at exactly the same angle as Thing2.  He blinked slowly as he began to fall asleep, so regally, just like Thing2, and with the same contented squint.  That very squint covered the yellow-brown of his eyes, and Thing2's eyes are just a shade darker than Thing1's...

Then I started to think about all Thing2's little quirks, which I chalked up to him being a kitten.  And it's possible they are related to his youth and spryness, and will diminish as he grows and gets older.  But I feel that Thing2 is pretty darn impressive.

He has crazy climbing abilities, for starters.  And sometimes he gets these uncontrollable bursts of energy, and goes ripping through the house with his kitten eyes on ("ripping," being used very literally here).  He recently attacked my feet with a loud growl, slicing me open in several places, and by all accounts, his claws are unusually sharp.  Add to that the longer kitten fur that only just started to disappear, his rapid growth and projected size, his monstrous purr-box, and that long yowl he lets out sometimes...

I know, I know.  Stupid, ridonkulous, improbable, silly.

But I am still gonna keep an eye out for tufts on Thing2's ears.

Tangled

Recently, GreenFriend wrote a blog post about going to see a certain animated movie (which title appears as the name of this entry).  She remarked that the title was hardly appropriate to the movie, at least in the most literal sense of the word.  While she is correct, since Rapunzel's hair was consistently shiny, brushed, and silky smooth, I saw the title in a different light.

GreenFriend made it very clear to me that she was not ruling out other possible meanings for the title.  This post is not a response to hers, so much as it is an expansion of it.  In regard to my comment to GreenFriend's post, and as a means of ammending it thereof, I would like to submit the following blog post into evidence.

I am convinced that hair controls lives.  I've been employing my Anti-Bill-Nye Science and doing some research, and I have several documented examples to support my theory (or, well... they'll be documented when I finish this post, anyway).

Take, for example, the dreaded Bad Hair Day.  The legend and folklore of the Bad Hair Day rivals that of the tales collected by The Brothers Grimm (and considering that the goats of a similar name probably had a few Bad Hair Days themselves, you might say the history of the Bad Hair Day comes out ahead).  Pun(s) definitely intended.  Let's look at it in more detail, shall we?

A Bad Hair Day has the inexplicable and inconquerable power to completely ruin what would otherwise have been an average day.  And it only takes one Bad Hair Day to make everyone forget all about your ten million good ones.

There is Science here -- hair is often the first thing people notice about you, and it tends to be a large part of how people recognize you later on.  Just get a drastic haircut or change the color to something outrageous if you don't believe me, and your acquaintances will have to do a double-take before they realize who you are.

How your hair looks can also be linked with how healthy you are.  If you have good hair hygeine, you probably have pretty good hygiene overall.  (Coincidentally, this is also true with cats.  A healthy cat will have a glossy, smooth coat that is well-groomed and soft to the touch.  An unhealthy cat will have a nasty mange that sheds every time you touch it.  My cats have excellent hair!).

But aside from the way others perceive it, the most important way hair controls lives is through your own obsession with it.  Since I am the writer of this blog, I suppose we ought to use my hair and life as an example, oughtn't we?

Let's begin with my second grade year.  I hadn't cut my hair in a few years at that point, so my hair was pretty long.  As is pretty common with me, I had a bad habit.  These bad habits interchange over the years: sucking my thumb, smacking on gum, biting my nails, etc.  The second grade version of my bad habit was chewing on my hair.

I gnawed on my hair, sucked on it, chewed it all to pieces.  As you can imagine, this was not an attractive habit.  It wasn't charming.  It wasn't cute.  It was just... gross.

My mother, realizing that this was not a habit I would willingly break, decided to cut it off at the root of the problem... literally.  She took me to the hairdresser, telling me I was just going to get a trim.  Then when they got me into the chair, they started saying the words, "Page-Boy Cut."

When I left the hairdresser that afternoon, I was traumatized.  All my hair was gone.  I looked like a boy.  People kept calling me 'young man' and 'sir.'  My mom said they simply weren't observant, but it wasn't like there was anything else for them to go by.  I hadn't exactly developed any feminine assets by that time.  And my face is not really all that feminine.  Besides, I was wearing a haircut that had the word "Boy" in the name, for heaven's sake!

After the second grade, I stubbornly refused to go back to the hairdresser.   If Mom suggested a trim, I locked myself in my room until she forgot about the idea.  She would ask if I wanted my hair cut, and I would start crying.  I started chewing on my fingernails instead of my hair, so she wouldn't have that excuse anymore.  People began to call me 'young lady' and 'miss' again.  My hair grew longer and longer and longer (though it was never as long as these chicks').  Still, I fought a return to the hairdresser for seven long years.

In my freshman year of high school, I managed to get my waist-length hair in such a snit of a tangle that my mother broke a comb trying to straighten it out.  She had reached her breaking point again.  She declared that we were going to get my hair cut, and I was forced into the car with a sense of foreboding settling over me.

When we arrived, my mother had to promise me that I could decide the length before I would get out of the car.  After she had made that promise, she marched me through the doors.  I was weak at the knees and trembling, trying not to cry.  The extremely nice hair-stylist they set me up with was very understanding, showing me several length options and talking to me soothingly while she loaded my hair with detangler spray.

Before I could call out in protest, she had detangled my hair enough to put it in a ponytail below the length I wanted.  And in one swift snip, there went half a foot of hard-earned hair.  Horrified, I watched her throw my hair callously into the trash can.

But my horror was short-lived.  The shorter hair (still past my shoulders), was easier to take care of by a factor of ten.  And after that, my haircutting days were less dramatic.  With each passing year of high school, my hair got shorter and shorter.  Right before I went to college, I snipped it too close once again, and ended up covering my short cap of hair with a Newsies hat for about a year straight (no really-- I wore it so much that when I came back sophomore year and didn't wear it, people literally did not recognize me).

That experience led me to decide I shouldn't cut my hair for a while.  That didn't stop me from dyeing my hair pink, however, when my mother learned that she had breast cancer.  It wasn't pink all over, just highlights, but it was crazy enough that I started getting hit on by rednecks and middle-aged men.  The fuschia dye eventually faded to red-orange, then to just orange, and finally to dead blonde.  My hair was so dead after the pink dye was through with it that it wouldn't even curl anymore (and believe me, my hair curls).

By the time the pink dye was out of my system, my hair was long again (and dead), so I got it cut again.  First I got a bad haircut in Houston (I should have known better than to trust a Texan with my hair).  Then I got it fixed when I came back to the good ol' Volunteer State.  I added in some red highlights for good measure.

That haircut lasted all summer, and as usual, when winter came, I wanted it cut.  I wanted it cut even though it meant that there was going to be less hair to keep my head warm when the cold blasts came with December.  I think my brain has convinced itself that I can cope better with change if I do something drastic to my hair -- exchanging something I can't control for something I can.

That last winter haircut was too short again.  It was Tonks hair, as described in the book (not like that chick in the movie), short and spiky and purple.  You read it right: purple.
Well, I was forced to live with that hair for quite a while, even though I would have liked to cut it when several huge changes assaulted me all at once.  But I survived despite the lack of haircut control, and in spite of the numerous Cracker Barrel patrons who called me 'sir' (by this time, I had developed certain, *ahem*, features that those people really should have noticed).

Recently, I am trying to recognize my hair's amazing, ominous ability to dictate my life.  I like to pretend like I am controlling it, but really my hair controls me.  I am trying to take back control from my hair by resisting the (constant) urge to cut it short again.  Not too short, mind you, but shorter than it is.  And that's without mentioning the bright blue peek-a-boo streak I want to get...  I am proud to say that I have triumphed in this battle -- my hair is longer now than it has been in almost a decade.  And there's not a speck of blue in it.

But I still went and got it layered and trimmed the other day.

~And now, ladies and gentlemen, watch and be amazed as I come full-circle!~

Because of these experiences and observations, I think that movie we discussed has a very appropriate title.  Rapunzel spends the majority of the movie defined and controlled by her hair.  She's tangled in it, if you will.  It isn't until she is freed from that over-arching vanity, and the world's preoccupation with it, that she discovers who she really is.

After all, her prince has a thing for brunettes.