Still dreaming ...

Last night I dreamed that I was flown to Japan for some preliminary Foreign Service interviews.  It was a wonderful adventure in a new place, surrounded by other excited and interesting applicants.  One of my meetings was with a pair of hairdressers.

"Honey, the dreadlocks are going to have to go," they said.

"I plan on getting rid of them the instant I hear I've made it into the Foreign Service," I replied.

"Made it in?" say the hairdressers, "This is the Foreign Service.  You're in already!"

"No, no," I say, "That's impossible.  I didn't even pass the test."

"Honey," they say, "We don't fly people all the way out to Japan for an interview.  You're here.  This is it."

And that was it.

I Used to Do Stuff

Does anyone else remember when I used to live in one of the biggest cities in the world?

I do.

Remember how I had tons of friends?  So many that I started to complain about their abundance and try to find ways to thin out the herd?

Remember how there were always too many things to do?  I don't mean like a 'To Do' list, either.  I mean all of the social stuff, all of the cultural stuff, all of the ... just stuff.  There was so much stuff to do.  Always.  I got so sick of it that I'd block out sections of my calendar months in advance to dedicate to doing nothing, because there was just plain too much stuff going on.

I remember that.  I remember when I used to do stuff.

Those were the days ...

I didn't really think so then, to be honest.  Sometimes I did, but I'm not really cut out for big group interactions, and I get overstimulated pretty easily.  I got sick of all the stuff.  I remember that.

The thing is, it's been over nine months since I moved away from that big city, and into my parents' spare room.  Nine months of no cool friends.  Nine months of no social stuff.  Nine months of no cultural stuff.  Nine months of no stuff at all, really.  And now I miss it.  I miss it so much.  I'm going crazy with the missing of it.

But what to do?  If I were still in that huge city, I'd find some thing to do (It would be easy; there was always stuff to do.) and call a few of the herd of friends until someone either expressed interest in joining me, or invited me to do some different thing.

Here ... who do I call?  And if I called them - what would we do, anyway?

So, I'm trying a different approach.  I found a thing to do.  (It was pretty hard.  I had to get help from my 23-year-old brother's buddy, but we found something.)  It's a small venue concert - two bands I've never heard of before and may or may not enjoy.  I bought a ticket online, and I'm going to go to this concert.  I'm going alone.  My goal is to talk to at least one stranger.  It's a big goal for me, but maybe that stranger could be a friend.  I understand from the movies that people go out into the world and turn strangers into friends all the time.

Tonight I'm doing a thing.  If I like it, maybe it will lead to me doing more stuff in the future.  If I hate it, hopefully it will help me remember that I don't really like doing stuff all that much, and I will stop missing all that stuff that I used to do.

We'll see.  Hopefully, one way or the other, it works.  Hopefully, sitting alone at a concert in Oklahoma City turns out to be better than sitting alone in my parents' house.

Hopefully.

If not, at least in the future I'll be able to say, "Hey, remember when I did that one thing?"

That's something, even if only a very small something.

Spare Room Dweller

I'm a spare room dweller.

I open boxes of storage - things I haven't needed in half a decade, or more, and drape the contents over the furniture you got from your ex-sister-in-law's great aunt.  I leave it all out, because I still don't need it; I won't put it back in the boxes, but I can't get rid of it either.

I'm a spare room dweller.

I spend a whole day on your sofa watching BBC interpretations of Trollop's novels, filmed in the 70s.  I leave partially dried loads of towels in the dryer, and you wonder how I came to have so many dirty towels to begin with.

I complain about the weather, politics, the job market, and the dryer that can't seem to get a load of towels dry.  Your dryer, that you worked so long to buy.  I don't like it.  I complain.  Also, we're out of gas, again, and by 'we' I mean 'you' because it's your car.

And thank you for letting me borrow it ...

is what I should say, but never do.

I'm a spare room dweller.

I ate the bagel that you planned to take for lunch.  It was okay.

And your jokes about when will I be moving out?  Your jokes ...?

Well ... let's be honest Mom and Dad, you knew what I was when you let me back in.

I'm a spare room dweller.

vent

I needed a forum to vent, so, even though I said that I'm not going to blog anymore, for now at least, I'm writing this blog.

I am sad and furious.

I was watching America's Next Top Model (It will be hard to take anything I say after that seriously. I understand this.) and one of the girls got a haircut that I really liked. I thought, "Denice, that haircut would look great on you. It's perfect. It will show off your glasses well, and look super sheek. Go get a pair of scissors right now and see if you can make it happen."

It would not have been surprising if I'd jumped straight up and done this. I am not afraid of wrestling my own main, despite my stunning record of losses on that front.

But this time I said, "No, Denice, your hair's finally getting a little length to it, and this haircut might be a little out of your luck range. Go pay a professional."

So I did. I walked in and showed her the pictures of the hopeful top model that I'd put on my iPod. She glanced at them and told me to sit down. I left the iPod out for her, and even told her to feel free to pick it up and look at them again. She didn't.

For me, one of the worst things about another person cutting my hair, is that I have to take off my glasses, and the mirror is so far away. So, I really have no idea what's going on. I never have a chance to say, "Wo, that's going a little shorter than I want. Please refrain." Instead I just put my glasses on when she's done and think, "This doesn't really look the way that I expected it to."

That's about all that I thought while I was still in the salon. It wasn't until I was back home, and comparing the pictures of the modelling prodigy with my own reflection that I understood why it didn't look the way I expected it to. It was because it wasn't the same haircut. Where the model had lovely tapered bangs that angled down toward her eyebrows on one side, I had straight Frankenstein bangs that barely covered my hairline. And, the model still had some length in the hair on the top of her head, a clearly visible 4-5 inches at least, while mine had been shorn down to 2.5 inches, in the longest places.

In short, I asked for top model hair and instead she gave me a crew cut.

I know this is a lot of blog about getting a bad haircut, a human experience that probably each of us has had many times, but I'm so angry that she did this to me, and I'm sad. I'm sad, because I've spent the last year working on growing my hair out of the crew cut that I gave myself last year, and now I get to do it again, but by absolutely no fault of my own.

I'm trying to decide if I should go back to the salon and complain. I don't see how it could help. I mean, I'd probably get my money back, or a coupon, or something, but that's not what I want. I want my hair back.

Oh, the fury. The fury of me.

11 Days

I'm wrapping things up in Korea and leave plenty soon enough. Just wanted to let ya'll know where you can find me next.

See Me Run

Thanks for reading!

Denice