Curly Headed Woman

Be forewarned, this post contains a lot of pictures of me. And most are selfies, too, God help me. Not because I think I'm so gaw-geous or anything, but simply talking about my hair without the accompanying visuals just ain't gonna cut it.

Last September, I wrote about my short (and greying) hair and how I was trying to grow it out.  It took a long time, pretty much the whole year, but my hair is all grown out (and I do mean "out," as in width vs. length). 

This was me last year, at my aunt's pool party:

And this is me now (taking my selfie-taking so seriously!).

 My hair is,  and will still grow "longer" than this, but it's hard to tell, because of shrinkage.  That means my hair is one length when it's wet out of the shower, and about 3" shorter after it dries.  So in the photo above, my hair, when wet, is actually about as long as where my shirt puckers on both sides above my chest, but it's all dried and "shrunk."  My hair is extremely curly, not just a little, and it dries into tight little corkscrews, especially in the back.

 I knew I was going to write here about my hair, because I've had some breakthrough/revelatory feelings about it lately.  So I had the Husband take a few shots of me last week:

I've found that my hair can be just as non-photogenic as the rest of me. While my face gets all fake and tense and my body language stiffens up, my curls are just hard to actually see.  I had the husband take my photo because it was a good hair day, i.e, I had lot of good curl separation and definition. But in the photo above, it just looks like one big dark clump of hair, especially on the left.

Let's try it with a flash, I told him.

The flash does help show more of the tight little curls I have going on back there.  But still, it's hard to get a sense what exactly is going on back there (and under there, too).

So maybe you've read this far and are thinking I feel bad about the whole drama that is my hair. (And maybe or probably, you're feeling bad for me.) But in the last month, after years of cowering under my hair and it's...size, I feel proud of it. Happy that it's mine, and healthy, and even glad that it's so terribly, ridiculously thick.

Last month, I was getting a bit fed up and wanting to hack my hair off again and go back to short. I was trolling images of hair on Pinterest, looking for inspiration. (There's not a lot out there for curlies like me.)  While there, I stumbled upon some of  the graphic cartoons and the blog of "Tall n' Curly."  The woman who writes Tall n' Curly not only has ginormous big curly hair, but she's also 5' 11.5." So she might know a thing or two about never being able to be invisible or disappearing in a crowd. She might know something about wanting to hunker down and just be "normal" looking. 

I'm only 5' 6 1/2", but related to just about everything she had to say.  I spent over an hour clicking through her site, smiling and nodding at so many of the graphic cartoons describing all the stupid things straight-haired people say to curly-heads: "have you ever tried to straighten it?" "don't you ever moisturize?" "oh my god, you look so much BETTER with it straight, you should wear it like that EVERY DAY!"  and especially, "it's SOOOO humid/rainy today I can't do a thing with my hair!"

But I also got a little emotional reading her "About" page, where she talks in length about her evolution of accepting herself and her hair. This part in particular hit me:

Looking for the truth everywhere, I now believe everything happens for a reason. And in “everything”, there is my hair. I was born with this hair. There must be a reason for that too. So although I still – and will always – get angry a lot at it, I now respect my hair for what it is : a part of me.
Actually it’s not that different from who I am. I’m pretty stubborn and rebellious too. What was I expecting from it ?

Well, yeah. What she says.  And it seems so simple, but it really shifted my feelings about my hair. Not to imply that I've always hated my hair, because I don't, and I haven't. On the other hand, I've always felt the need to make apologies and excuses for my hair, like it's my bad monkey-child that I just have to drag along everywhere I go, like it or not.

Most of that guilt and embarrassment comes from my mother, who, in a nutshell, just doesn't like my hair.  And she REALLY doesn't like it when I choose to grow it out.  (Like now.)  That topic is a whole other post, but let me just say: I spent my childhood with her brushing my hair. Daily. (I know it's not her fault that she didn't know how to handle it, but all that fighting with my hair made her actively dislike it, except when it's cut very short.)

 Speaking of humidity, I must be all grown and wised-up these days, because I've (mostly) been able to control my hair in the crazy heat & humidity that's lingered here for the last two weeks. In the past, I'd have been forced to just throw it in a pony-tail every day to deal.  But my hair has been mostly behaving with the products I've been using. (And paying my crazy-expensive Deva stylist is also a big part of it.) Yesterday I did wear it up in a great big, top-of-my-head up-do. (My daughter said it looked like a hair-tsunami!)

After I took it out of the heavy-duty hair elastic, I had some REALLY big hair and volume going on. I tried to capture it at bedtime, but even these shots don't capture the true size of the event happening on top of my head:

My first and middle names have Celtic/Teutonic roots, and my names, respectively, mean "woman warrior" and "famous in battle."  With those kind of names, it's no wonder that so often I go through life fighting everything (especially myself) and making not-so-complicated choices into arduous, drawn out battles.

But I think it's time to stop fighting myself, my hair, and my true nature and declare: you know what, mom world? Life & DNA gave me some really crazy-thick and curly hair. And I actually like it. And my husband loooves it and thinks its sexy.

Deal with it. I'm a woman warrior, and I've got the hair to prove it. ;) 

The BIg Pink, Revisited

It's been a year and a half since I shared the re-do of my daughter Lily's bedroom.  In the original post, I wrote about how it all evolved, and also about the (many) things I don't love about the room.

Fast forward to this spring, and my irritation with the general look and feel of the room hadn't changed.  In fact it was worse, because now the room was thoroughly lived in and thoroughly messy and more, it was clear that Lily couldn't hang out in the room with her friends because there wasn't anyplace to sit. 

Around this time, in my despair to find a way to rearrange a room that just can't be very rearranged, I remembered the little orange futon that used to live in the playroom. After rearranging the playroom/guestroom, the futon was living out in the garage, waiting for me to put it up for sale on Craigslist.

One Saturday afternoon when I went in to dust and straighten the bedroom, I got completely fed up and started hurling piles of crap out into the hall and getting that "thousand mile decorator's stare" as I leaned in the doorframe and started cooking up a plan.

Within the hour, I had the husband hauling that heavy orange futon out of the garage and up the staircase. (I have such a nice husband. Have I mentioned that?)  Anyway.

Before:

And After:

I rearranged the room and later that weekend, hung up the shelves (that used to live in my entryway).  I'd been promising to do that forever, and Lily and I were both glad that I finally came through.  It allows her to display her Josef birthday doll collection (note that they stop at 9 -- because she didn't have any display space, they didn't get purchased these last 2 birthdays).  It also lets her display the "potion" crafts that were a big part of her summer.

So her room was completely rearranged, but still needed a good sorting and re-organization of so much clutter. But then summer hit and the kids were out of school, and so for the entire summer her room was merely different, but still not really done (or cleaned). 

Now they're back in school, and this week I've been cleaning and cleaning and throwing things out and helping to find better storage and organization options for her.

She's been a Japanese manga and chibi drawing fool lately, which is cute, but also means that her desk (and the surrounding floor) have been littered with papers in various stages of creation.  Since she's in middle school now, and since she's starting to do her homework alone in her room, we needed to clean up the chaos and make it a better space for studying along with the creativity.

The drawers are cleaned out, the crayons and markers are sorted and contained, and I bought her the pink paper organizer at Ikea this weekend. 

Her vanity area is now next to the door, and the surface was also a big cluttered mess of lip gloss, earrings, Harry Potter wands, marbles, papers, etc.  And she'd stopped wearing most of her earrings, because they were lost in her equally cluttered little jewelry box.

I bought the earring tree at Michael's, and she loves it, and loves that I found & sorted her earrings.  Let's see how well she can keep up with actually using it!

 Some cheap purple Command hooks serve to display her soccer medals and Disney pin lanyard. I want to buy some nicer, real hooks to install to the left of the mirror for necklaces and scarves. So far I haven't found anything I like, but  a trip to Anthropologie would probably solve that. 

The futon has just enough room under there to fold out into a full sized bed, once you move out the little table. We've used it for a sleepover, and it worked out great. (In the old version of the room, there was no space to sleep on the floor.)

While I'm still a long way from loving this room, I like it a lot more now that its more functional. Lily is able to invite friends into her room and have a place to actually sit and hang out.  This is a small room already, and it's packed full of furniture -- but every piece serves a function

The fact that she still prefers to crawl into my bed on lazy weekend mornings to sit and read gives me hope: it tells me that in a couple years, she'll likely get tired of exotic loft-sleeping, and want a regular bed again.  Already, she has to duck down to get into the bed, and she certainly can't sit up in it.  She's mentioned wanting a chandelier -- until I reminded her that she can't have any hanging fixtures while the loft is up. 

I'll be more than happy to oblige when that time comes. Until then, she's an eleven-year-old girl who still feels that she has a pretty awesome bedroom, no matter what mom thinks.

And mom just thinks she's a pretty awesome kid. 

You can see all the bedroom Before shots in my original post about her bedroom, here.

Linking up with Jules for the William Morris Project.

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

Last week I finished "The Yonahlossee Riding Camp For Girls," a coming-of-age novel set at an exclusive riding/boarding camp for rich Southern girls in 1930.  I really enjoyed this book; the voice of the narrator, Thea Atwell, is strong and sure and terribly self-possessed for a sheltered fifteen-year-old. 

I was a couple of chapters into the book before it dawned on me why I was enjoying it so much: back when I was a teen/tween, I inhaled books about girls at boarding schools and summer camp.  Going away to school, and particularly summer camp, is something taken for granted if you're at least middle-class on the east coast (or so I learned), but that reality was terribly exotic and foreign to me, a barely middle-class girl from SoCal.

 I also have a huge weakness for books set in the South, especially the wealthy South prior to the 1960s, where manners and etiquette and good breeding were so much a part of the culture. Again, growing up I knew nothing of debutantes and cotillions and family names, but I soaked it all up like I was studying for some future test. (I read Gone With the Wind at least 3 times.)

So when wealthy young Thea is shipped from her isolated home comprised of acres of wild north Florida landscape, and shipped off to the mountains of North Carolina as punishment for some unnamed transgression, I was hooked. 

I liked the plot of the book, but what I liked even more is how DiSclafani chose to make Thea such a fiercely strong and feminist character in that insulated world of wealthy young horsewomen. Yes, she is sexual, and has strong sexual desires and fantasies, which maybe upsets people, but her desires are perfectly normal -- for 15 and 16 year old girls now, and those back in 1930.

Not to give too much away as to why Thea is abruptly sent hundreds of miles away from her beloved home and twin brother, but in our current culture of "slut-shaming" and blaming the victim, I loved how Thea understood and tapped into her own female power to navigate her new surroundings.

Very strong and engaging first novel, and I look forward to more from DiSclafani. 

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So, as I got a few chapters into the book and remembered how much I loved "boarding school books," I remembered my favorite one of all.  But I couldn't recall the name.  Thanks to the internet, a few minutes of searching provided the answer:

It was "They'll Never Make A Movie Starring Me," by Alice Bach.  Despite re-reading the book several times, all I can recall now is that the narrator is a well-to-do young woman from NYC, sent to boarding school in New England.  She's obsessed with the young Katherine Hepburn, and tries to live her life by mimicking Kate's wealthy blue blood/dryly witty persona of her early comedies.  What I most remember from the book is that protagonist wants to attend Bryn Mawr, the exclusive women's college that Hepburn actually went to.

Since I had no clue about New England blue bloods or what the heck "Bryn Mawr" was or implied, I lapped up all this fascinating cultural stuff. And since it feels like I also spent huge chunks of my adolescence trying on personas and mimicking famous people or characters, it's no wonder I responded to this book so much. 

And I'm happy that "The Yonahlossee..." novel brought it all back to me.  

Love and Eydie Gorme

Last Friday, a chill went through me when I learned that Eydie Gorme had passed away at 84.  Celebrities die all the time, and sometimes it gives us pause, and more often we say, "who? Oh....right. Her/Him."

But sometimes we get a little misty and take a longer pause, like the last time I was inspired to write about music.  If George Jones was the artist who most reminds me of my dad (for so many reasons), than it's probably the sound of Eydie Gorme who most makes me think of my mother. Well, her and Johnny Mathis.

Eydie Gorme reminds me of so, so many things. Of being a child in both my parent's and grandparent's homes, sitting and listening to their stacks of albums.  Of late Sunday brunches that my dad worked over all morning, eggs benedict with creamy cheese sauce and Bloody Mary's (for them) and Sunny Delite for me, both served in tall glasses that he'd chilled first in the freezer. And Eydie Gorme and her Amor album on the hi-fi. 

It's the Amor album that we all loved best, and by "we all" I mean most of the members on my mom's side of the family.  As I have (or haven't?) mentioned here before, I'm half-Mexican American, on my mom's side. If I mention this, people who aren't familiar with the cultural makeup of Southern California will ask, Ohhh. So where's your family from?" implying that my mother was born in Mexico or a Latin American country. But no, my mother's family are from here, from this native ground of Santa Ana winds and palm trees and balmy Christmas mornings.

(If you are from SoCal, or have at least lived here long enough, you know that half-breeds like me, who don't look or sound at all Mexican, are a dime a dozen. Turn over any Mission tortilla, and there we are.)

What this all has to do with Eydie Gorme is that I find it funny and ironic, how a white girl from New York City produced an album that’s so beloved in so many families like my own.  What this all has to do with me is that, in a way, Eydie Gorme is the reason I'm writing a memoir, rather than sticking to my first love, fiction. 

Also: a fiction (mostly) piece that I did get published is titled "Don't Go to Strangers." Which is the name of the title track from this album, another fixture in my household:

That album, and my story, which is also thinly-veiled memoir, are another story altogether. Which is why I'm finally writing that memoir. So many stories to tell.

For now, here's "Piel Canela", that first song on the Amor album that starts playing when the record needle drops into the grooves.  I know all the songs by heart and sing along --- phonetically.  I still have no idea of most of what she's singing about.  Except, you know, love. What else is there to sing about?

R.I.P., Eydie. 

The Post-Tahoe Post

Hola, world.

I'm still here! Still alive.

I've put off blogging since we went to Lake Tahoe earlier this month, because I planned to do a big post-Tahoe post and show you all the cool things we did. And we really did have a great family time -- we hiked, we biked, we rafted down the mellow Truckee river. We even had a black bear go loping through the backyard of our cottage.  (No photos of that, it happened so fast.)

But returning to post-vacation life, with its attendant laundry, laziness, and lack of anticipation, has left me feeling really blah.  I could blame the kids, and how they're constantly here, they're constantly behind my desk chair, bickering and whining and wanting apples sliced up. (Because God forbid they'd have to eat, like, a whole apple.)

It's not really the kids, because I could blog after bedtime  (though bedtime averages around 10 this summer). I think that this summer has sort of sucked my creative juices dry, and there's nothing I really feel a need to talk about much. 

In a nutshell, Tahoe was beautiful, if crowded, and we'd like to go back again, but as the husband says (quoting me), it's a great big world and there's a lot to see.  Meaning, we're not the type of family who repeats going to the same spots over and over. (With the exception of Palm Springs. But that's like, totally different.)

Right now, there are no upcoming trips, except the ones to the mall, to buy the kids new shoes and argue about why I won't spend that same amount of money at Build-A-Bear or Game Stop or etc. etc.

Alright then.  School starts in just over 2 weeks.  I'll probably be back with a real honest-to-God and enthusiastic post before then, but no promises.

Until then, here's one of my favorite photos, from the 400+ we took during the Tahoe trip.  I have a lot of gorgeous shots of the lake, but neither the time or inclination to sort through and edit them quite yet.

(No lie, I was just about to hit "Publish" when Tucker came up behind me and asked for an apple.) Gotta go...

Writing News

Remember back in late April & May, when I talked a lot about my writing, how I was working on a particular piece and feeling all braggy about sitting at my kitchen table and writing almost every morning?

I talked more about it back in this post, how I was working on an essay about shopping, and the department stores of my youth.

Well, last week I received word that my  essay "I Dream of Department Stores" has been accepted for inclusion in a book of personal essays, all themed around different takes on shopping. The anthology will be published by Seal Press, a small yet well-established publishing house out of Portland that specializes in women's interests.

Actually, I knew that I was potentially in as a "yes" awhile back, through e-mail correspondence with the editors, and I felt especially writerly when I received the (minimal) edits for the piece last month, which meant I was working with an editor. Heady stuff!

But I knew it was Officially Official when I received my contributors contract last week, which outlines the details of my publishing rights and payment (again, minimal) and all that. Also, I knew it was official when in another e-mail, the editor told the contributors, "Yes! Feel free to tell everyone!"

This is not the first time my writing has been published. I've had a few short stories appear in small literary journals (including this one), and had some journalism published way, way long ago in the OC Weekly. But this was certainly the first contract I've ever received, and it will easily be the most I've been paid so far for putting pen to paper. It also goes without saying that this is the first book that I've been in, which is the most exciting part of it all.

The best and worst part is that this is my first piece of memoir that I've had accepted. Best, because this is the genre that I'm working in now, and it feels great to have this finished piece accepted so easily (easily, after the accumulation of rejection slips for my short stories that were eventually published).  Worst, because its memoir. It's all true, all just out there. I was driving around last week, and the sudden realization that the names of some of my family members would be out there in the world made me want to pass out. Or take it all back: "wait, can I change some names here??"  But I'm not going to change names, or take anything back.

The book, titled The Dressing Room, won't be published until the fall of 2014. That feels like a long time, maybe even long enough to  work up to telling my extended family. (Ha!) In the meantime, this news is a great, great boost to my motivation to keep going with memoir, and telling my family's particular story.  (Although I've been incapable so far this summer at figuring out how to write with the kids at home.)

Onward!
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All photos from my Instagram account. Also, it's July 1 and I'm in total denial about the demise of Google Reader. (As of this morning, it was still working.) Follow me on Instagram at "readingnest1," my Facebook page (where I always link to my new blog posts), or at Feedly, though I haven't actually figured out how to properly navigate around there yet.