On Hair, or a Distinct Lack Thereof

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you already know that this happened:

Yep, I shaved my head. Yep, my shirt says "Kiss Me" in Spanish. Nope, Rob doesn't know.

Basically I decided to shave my head, and shortly thereafter had my friend Natalie shave it.  I'm not sick, I'm not making a point, I just wanted to shave my head and here it is in all its awesomeness.  And I love it, like seriously love it.  My head feels light and cool and awesome. 

Have a lovely Wednesday all!

Your Questions Answered Part I: I Married my Brother and Other Thoughts

So here is my first post aimed at answering some of the questions you posed to me in this post.

This post's questions come from Deanna and Kristina (hi ladies!).

1. Does anyone ask you if Rob is your brother instead of your husband?

I have to say that this question made me laugh out loud. We get this so much, especially since I cut my hair in '03 and started wearing glasses full time instead of contacts ('05 or so).  No one has outrightly asked us if we are siblings, but I can't even tell you how many people have mentioned how much we look alike. Even his brother and mother have made comments about it. I always wonder how many strangers see us and wonder the same thing, particularly after we have shared some sort of decidedly not sibling-appropriate sign of affection. Once we went to a movie theater with Rob's dad and Rob said to me, "I wonder how many people assume we are two siblings walking with our dad." Creepy.

Taken at Christmas, 2003

2. Can you ever imagine yourself with long hair again?

Yes and no. I love the idea of long hair, but not the required maintenance.  When my hair is long it is poofy, frizzy, unruly, and obnoxiously curly.  I was reminded of this when I tried to grow it out earlier this year; I made it to the helmet-head stage before I finally gave up (if you recognize your hairdo on a man in a movie from the 1970s, it might be time to quit).  I think Rob would prefer I have long hair again, though he would never impose that on me or even admit it, but right now I just can't be bothered.

First picture together, 2002 or 2003. Notice the great variety in my husband's t-shirts.

3. Are you far- or near-sighted?

I am near-sighted.  I wore a reading glasses in second grade or so, but between you and me, I think I lied about not being able to see well to my parents because I wanted glasses (that's how cool I am and was).  They went along with my little charade since we had great eye insurance.  When I was in 5th or 6th grade my family's great myopic tradition was passed on to me and I started wearing glasses, and later contacts, then back to glasses, full-time.

4. What is your favorite gluten-free food?

I would have to say all Udi's bread products--muffins, bread, pizza crust, and bagels in particular.  They can be treated like "real" bread (as in, you don't have to freeze and then toast them) and they actually have a decent consistency.  They were the only gluten-free bread product that didn't cause my teeth to squeak against them.  If you have frozen and toasted other gluten-free breads you know what I mean by the "squeaking."

5. Have you ever had an imaginary friend?

In fourth grade I used to imagine a little man that sat inside my desk, but I never went all that far with it.  I grew up with two sisters who were relatively close in age to me, so I had scant desire to dream up one more person I'd have to fight with for space.

I'll answer some more questions as the week goes on. Hope you all are having an amazing Monday!

Come on in to my Inferiority Complex

Those of you who have stuck around this blog for awhile know my struggles with depression, anxiety, and an inferiority complex in regards to...well, just about everything. I constantly compare myself to others' marriages, tattoos, appearances, lives--indeed, just about anything you could think of. As you can imagine this is not a particularly healthy exercise and means that I often find myself feeling miserable and hopeless.

One of the downsides to becoming more active in the blogging community is that it gives me ample opportunity to scrutinize everyone else's lives and compare them to my own.*   I start to admire another blogger's tattoos and may start to wonder if my tattoos meet the same standard. I lust after the long, beautiful (sometimes blue - so awesome) hair that so many bloggers have. I bemoan the fact that my crafting skills are slightly below the level of a sight-impaired three-toed sloth.  I worry about the fact that my blog lacks a "niche." If my blog posts don't receive comments, or not many people view my blog in a day, or if I write multiple posts in a short period of time (worrying about that now) I obsess over how horrible my writing must be or what an ineffective blogger I am, especially in comparison to all those AWESOME bloggers who kick blog ass on a daily basis.  Truly, for me, these are all real and justifable reasons to feel down and, you guessed it, inferior.

Danielle from Sometimes Sweet shared an article last week that explains how social media actually makes us feel more isolated because of this tendency to endlessly compare ourselves. Indeed, as we tend to primarily show the best of us online, it means that we are constantly aware of how we can't stack up against all the absolutely "perfect" people around us.  We know that we aren't perfect, that our hair doesn't always fall in the right place and sometimes we yell at our significant others for tripping over a rug or giving off too much body heat in bed, but because we don't always read about this happening to others it's easy to assume it's just us, and it's probably something we're doing wrong.

This isn't to say that any of these bloggers who I imagine probably walk on water ever try to promote the idea that they are flawless.  But somehow, the flaws that others do put on display seem to make them even more endearing because, and maybe this is just me, their flaws just don't seem as real and obvious as my own. Their flaws seem (to me) to come from being too awesome and too beautiful. 

One thing I admire about myself is my ability to be incredibly self-aware about the thoughts I have on a daily basis.  I know for a fact that everything described above, things I think and feel very acutely on a daily basis, have no basis in reality.  I know for a fact that a lot, if not most, bloggers and people in real life have the same issues with inferiority and insecurity that I do.  I know that my tattoos, photography, appearance, life, marriage have no bearing on anyone else's, and vice versa. 

In short, I know that I shouldn't live my life in the context of anyone else's life. I, and really all of us, need to learn to live our own lives free of these constraints.  Because I have learned that no matter how much I compare myself to someone else, I will never stack up.    And if I continue to compare something as trivial as my blog to others', I will quickly burn out on it, and who wants that?  Writing and connecting with people is awesome, and it's so cool that I get the opportunity to participate.  Why make it into a chore?

Am I alone in these feelings? Totally fine if I am, I'm used to being the crazy one.

To end on a lighter note:

Happy Friday!

*I wanted to say in this footnote that I compared myself to other people long before social networking was around...it just makes it easier to do so when you're around more numerous and diverse types of people.  Totally awesome to be able to communicate with amazing people worldwide, but if you're anxious or depressed it opens up a whole new world in a completely different way.

Give me a Head with Hair

As with a lot of women, my hair has been a relatively constant struggle.

When I was young, I rarely brushed or spent time on it, which meant many hours with my mother dragging a brush or comb through my hair (my scalp just tingled in nostalgia).

At age 14 I'd load my hair with gel and make it curl into ringlets, or as close to ringlets as it would get. Frankly I'm glad I don't have access to pictures where it looked like that because I'm still embarassed to look at my awkward self.

By high school, I had cut it shoulder-length and wore it relatively straight. This is how my hair looked when Rob and I got together:



This was our first picture taken together. My hair was really thick, the ends were curly, and it generally drove me crazy because my hair was always crowding my face. When I was 17, I had a job as a counselor at a summer camp. On a whim I decided to chop off all my hair into a pixie cut and unveil it in front of the entire camp during an event (before I had even seen it).

In college I could hardly be bothered to work with my hair and it usually looked pretty messy. I was frequently mistaken for a boy or a lesbian (I went to a pretty liberal college, it happens) so I was constantly striving to look more feminine.

Eventually I started to do the whole, parted in front, spiky in back, which is how it looked on my wedding day.

I wore it like this for quite awhile until after the wedding when I switched back to a pixie cut (all parted forward kind of a thing). After seven years of short hair, I decided to grow my hair out again. The result, as of this morning, was this:

I tried, I really did. I tolerated the little Carol-Brady flip I developed in the back. I tried to tolerate the hair once again in my face and obfuscating my vision. I tried ignoring the tickle at the corners of my eyes and the increasing difficulty with styling.

But I gave in.

So now I'm back to the pixie. I think it's pretty perfect for summer and does make my beady little Irish eyes look somewhat bigger. But most of all, It's nice to spend a total of 5 minutes on styling my hair. Any hair horror stories from anyone else?