In cahoots with Oprah

Dude. I was totally going to rant about my hair today. Then I went online to the Oprah and low and behold if she and Chris Rock aren't having a show about Black women and their hair. I was stunned to say the least.



I pretty much detest my hair. My accursed, no good, bane-of-my-existence hair. I am ridiculously close to going to the Cost Cutters and having them shave it all off. It annoys me at all times and for all seasons. And I notice a marked change in my mood when I am having the rare good hair day. I feel better about myself when my hair has been de-bigged and and I again have contact with my scalp.



My hair is nappy, straight, curly and kinky. The straight parts are embracked by the trifecta of nappy, curly and kinky causing severe breakage, usually in the back of my head, which is often exacerbated if I am stressed or if I rub my head against my pillow, the back of a jacket or a couch and/or chair.



I would get a weave or wear a wig, but I am too classless to pull off such a look. I know that I would rountinely be scratching my head and move the wig around or pull it off at inopportune times. And I have had braids before. Once in high school, one braid fell out as I was bending over to go in my backpack for a pencil.



I grant you that the hatred of the huge pile of hair on my head is not that big of an issue. I know that were I to lose all of my hair because of an illness that I would be sad and wish that I had appreciated the hot mess while I had it, but I am not in that situation right now. I am in a situation where my hair gets bigger and badder (and not the cool version of bad, but the malevolent meaning) with each passing day. My hair truly has a mind of it's own and I think it is intriguing that Chris Rock has seen the impact that the hair has on his daughters and is trying to do something about it. My father also tried. Once he told me and several others how my hair made me look like a black Shirley Temple.

So, maybe that isn't the same thing.

Anyway, you work with what you got, and my hope is that at some point in my life, my hair and I will agree to disagree. Until then, I think I just might be heading to the Cost Cutters.

Useless

When you are regularly asked to do pointless grunt work, it messes with your brain. I just had a chat with a coworker and we were joking that we should be grateful for this mundane work. I said: "I shall pray to the god of shame, hopelessness and uselessness praising him for the opportunity to let yet another part of my brain atrophy from underuse." But it made me realize that this is yet another reason I am not content with my work. I don't feel like I am using my brain the way it is meant to bend and for better or worse, and it seems to me, mostly worse, I take EVERYTHING personally, so this sort of routine work can start to make you feel that the only purpose you serve is to do purposeless work.

It is always impressive to me the people who are routinely asked to perform such tasks but who maintain a cheerful attitude. I think these people must be able to find a purpose outside of their job. They are content on the inside and so being asked to do the thankless task by a person who doesn't want to do the dirty work, doesn't touch their sense of self-worth. I would like to be one of these people because my entire job is pointless. I think it would help me if I could go to some zen-like place when someone asks me for a stapler or if I could look up some information for them, information they themselves would have found in the same time it took them to ask me to do it. It is not worth it to be so upset about everything here all the time. I am doing the work. I just have to keep trying to do it and find other ways to feel good. Interestingly, this helped: http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/200910-omag-oprah-interviews-jay-z. It was a really good interview. Jay-Z is crazy smart and I was impressed by a lot of his insights.

Now back to the useless

32

I have decided that getting older gets a bum rap.

I have always liked my birthday even though I don't celebrate it. I love it. I love getting older. Another year that you have survived. More things you have learned and seen and experienced. Ultimately, it would mean more wisdom and inner peace and then the glory ages when you get to say whatever crazy thing you want and people just have to take it because you are old.

What I don't like is feeling regret. That I have aged so far and have done so little. Or that the little I have done has been a waste. Looking back at my life and seeing my mistakes and what I missed breaks my heart. And makes me plead for forgiveness.

Friday I turned 32. The weather was overcast and cool and it even rained a little bit which I like because it is usually overcast and rainy on my birthday. There were a few years in the middle when it was all day sunshine and it just seemed wrong. It was a pretty uneventful day except for me and the kabillion other people who also gained a year over the weekend, but it meant a lot to me.

I feel like it is unrealistic of me to think that this year I will become some other person or that I can have a some miraculous change. What I do want is to just keep trying to grow and become a more complete person. To figure out who I am and be that and have peace. So that when I get uber old, I can go to town on some fools.

Random for Saturday

I am upset. I wonder how long it will be that seeing someone from my former life will make me upset and spiral into hurt and anger and tears. That gets old fast and I am tired of feeling that way. I feel like my chest and back are splitting apart and everything makes me want to cry. I wanted to cry telling a friend about an upcoming meeting. And I wanted to cry about my delicious margharita and I wanted to cry seeing people I used to hang out with spending time together. I wonder how they could have chosen each other and neglected me. And I am upset that I lost those 10 years. That I have physical symptoms because of the choices I made. I could cry for years for that.

I told a friend about my dad. About how there isn't too much comfort to me about his having died. And she said, "it's like you lost him twice." And while that doesn't make me happy, it helps to have someone acknowledge that. And it makes me sad.

I feel lonely. But not for lots of people to be around. To be understood.

I just broke up with the facebook. I know that the reason I was always on it was because I wanted to be connected and it was a way to do that without having to really be connected but I didn't feel good about it. The break up is awkward though, because I really liked the games I was playing on it and I had a great sense of accomplishment looking at my farm on the farmville and all of my weapons on Mafia Wars.

What I miss most is peace. It was my promise to myself as a child and I haven't kept it.

I think I need some more sleep.



I think I am going a touch crazy.

Song from Junior High

To the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know it"...

When you're miserable and you know it pluck a string
When you're miserable and you know it start to sing
And ya sing
And ya pluck
And ya pluck
And ya sing
And it doesn't really help a stinking thing.

I had mad skills, even then.

Dear Collard Greens

I love you. You make me so incredibly happy. Like when you are made very well, you can literally transport me to another place. Another place of pure light and beauty and tranquility and non-annoying things. The complete opposite of what this day was. A day where I felt that I couldn't possibly stand to answer one more person's question about the same thing I had said eight thousand times earlier. A day that ended with my giving a 15-second presentation to a room full of professors with: "So far so good," and a thumbs-up sign. I am getting to the point where I start laughing when I talk to some of these people because I am so frustrated and so incredulous that no one ever listens to what I tell them.

I know it isn't their fault. I know they are frustrated and that my job, for which I get paid and can pretty much support myself, is to help them. But I think that, as it turns out, I am not a helper. I am operating on less and less patience. I think I need to keep a zen garden at my desk or candles or someone who could repeat a lovely mantra to me when the murderous rage refuses to ebb. Someone like Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp could totally sit next to the huge Bucky blanket in my office and chant a blood-pressure lowering mantra. He could sing it even. I feel almost certain that I could be a better person then. Probably. If he brought food. And drinks. And was only repeating the mantra for one day, the day that was also my last day workig there. Then I would be the most amazing employee ever. Oh, Johnny. You always solve everything. You and the collard greens.

Dead Thumb

This, I believe, is the seventh plant I have killed since I moved into my apartment a year and a half ago. This one was a gift from a friend who had a beautiful, thriving rubber tree plant. She'd had to cut it back and was giving out shoots so that others could start their own. She gave one to me. This is what remains. It survived three months in my tender care. There is some green at the top, so you know, there is that.

I have a great desire for there to be something living, either than myself, in my apartment, but I don't appear to sustain any other life there but my own. In fairness to myself, I do have one green plant that isn't dead quite yet. But I am not resting too much hope on it. I water, I don't water, I sun, I don't sun. I look for plants that don't require sun, considering the lack of it in my home. Plants that are labeled for the exact conditions in which I live. And shortly there after, they are croaksville. I had one plant which sizzled when you added water. Like the sound that you hear when you add milk to Rice Krispies. It was all spikey and I had named it Clay on account of its leaves looking like his hair when he was fancied up on the American Idol. So I even did the chatting thing with the blasted things and they still bit it.

I have some fake plants, but that just isn't the same. THERE SHOULD BE ACTUAL LIFE, carried by loving hands, not my dead thumb. I hope no horticultural society comes after me for my many kills. None of them were intentional. Maybe I could plead my case in the presence of a kind judge, who also can grow nothing but mold and dirt in empty pots. Surely someone understands.