Personal Grooming

If there's one thing I love more than all that stuff I named yesterday, it has to be plucking my eyebrows and trimming my nose hair. What does this have to do with office supply art and my quest for inner peace? Not much, but it's the subject of the blog today anyways.

If you know me, you know I have some eyebrows. Everybody has eyebrows, I know. But mine, without semi-hourly trimming are like the browner, female version of Martin Scorsese's. The thing is, I'm not that great at the whole trimming, plucking, torturing, waxing thing.

I try to keep them to two scary brown caterpillars instead of one, but other than that I'm not big into the eyebrow maintenance thing. One time a hairdresser waxed them for me for free because she was so late starting my appointment. They looked great except for the red rash around them that lingered for two days.

Anywho, since I've got so much free time on my hands I decided to do some tweezing yesterday morning. As I was plucking away I noticed that something smelled really funny. Cat food funny. I had forgotten that I was too lazy to find the measuring cup to portion out the cat's dry food a few minutes earlier and instead had used my hands. And neglected to wash them. So now I was performing a very unpleasant task and smelling cat food at the same time.

I pressed on and my eyebrows look a little less scary for the moment. I decided that since I'd done that yesterday maybe today I'd take a stab at trimming my nose hair. The whole time I just kept thinking, "this would be a lot more fun if my hands smelled like cat food." Actually, what I kept thinking was, "Wow, I really hope I don't slip and jam these scissors into my brain. That would be a totally embarrassing way to die." Luckily I survived and now have a few less nose hairs.

Since I was so perfectly groomed, making some more tree art seemed to be the thing to do:

Thank goodness this turned out well, because this is what happened to my bread yesterday:

Before baking

It's 100% whole grain - I knew it wasn't rising like it should, but I hoped that in the heat of the oven it would do a little better.


Can you see how little it rose, even after all that time in the oven?? It didn't even expand to the edges of the pan and it's only a few inches tall! Also, I went to check on it at one point and went to turn off the oven light but apparently turned off the timer instead. When I went back to it I had NO CLUE how long it had been in there, so I just took it out. It's still pretty tasty, just little. Maybe some cat food would have helped?

Things I Love

Do you know what I love? (Those of you who said pancakes, cats, hot showers, making fun of the television, being able to scratch a really bad itch in public without embarrassment, seeing my name in print, and making lots of money: you're right, but that's not what I'm talking about right now.)

I love not having to go to work.

It's kind of like breaking up with a boyfriend. You no longer have to be somewhere specific at a certain time or tell someone when you're not going to be were you said you'd be. You no longer have to take place in stupid rituals (like signing the birthday card of the person you don't know, contributing to the pool to buy some guy over in sales a retirement present, or showering everyday) and you definitely have more freedom. Even if the job didn't exactly prevent you from hanging out with your friends or wearing your hair a certain way, it certainly got in the way of you being who you truly are.

There are downsides, though, just like a break up. You no longer have something to do much of the time. You don't have someone to blame when you're in a crappy mood. You no longer get as much free stuff as you used to. You may not be able to afford a place to live and will have to move back in with your mother. But these are the sacrifices I was willing to make.

I am reminded by how happy I am to be jobless because my friend and ex co-worker, Amy, is back at work today after more than a week off (and she went on a freakin' cruise while she was gone!), not too mention she had quite a bit of down time prior to leaving because of the holidays. This morning she had 58 emails (which doesn't seem too bad) and her boss (my former boss) was already having a mild to moderate breakdown over something (my guess is they're out of Starbucks coffee again). I would not want to be Amy right now.

Me, I'm at home, in my bathrobe, preparing myself to take an afternoon nap, and scanning in a picture of what I started to draw this weekend:




Kind of hard to see, but it's a bunch of oddly colored trees with fall colored leaves. I might even work on this later, but I'm also making a loaf of whole wheat sandwich bread and doing some laundry, so I'm not sure if I'll get to it. See, it's not all naps and cat-petting for me.

I'm going to go now and get my hands a kneadin' and continue to thank my lucky stars I'm jobless.

Unproductive?

I'm feeling kind of grumpy and unproductive today, and I'm going to blame that on the fact that this is the second or third or bazillionth day in a row of rain and I miss the sunshine. It's also possible that I should be blaming this cranky-pantsness on myself, but I don't feel like doing that right at this moment.

I think I have a good excuse for blaming the rain. Wanna hear it? Okay, this area has been in a drought for the last few years; in fact it started shortly after I moved to the area. Therefore, I've become accustomed to experiencing and enjoying mostly sunny and dry Western North Carolina days. That means I can go outside and be active and enjoy the sun almost every day. For the last few days this hasn't been an option. Okay, I did go walk yesterday, but where was my friend the sun??? I know, I know, we're very short on water and I am selfish. But I am also cranky, so now is not a good time to bring that up!!

I think I may also be cranky because last night I finished reading Eat, Pray, Love. I LOVED this book. I am convinced I should be very good friends with the author, Elizabeth Gilbert (bet she hears that 12 times a day! "Oh, Elizabeth, I feel like I know you! We should be best friends! Please love me!) Reading this book has greatly increased my desire to meditate regularly, so last night before bed I did so, but it made me feel all wacky and disoriented. Isn't meditating supposed to have the opposite effect? I fell asleep while meditating and then woke up and then went back to sleep but in a funny position, so when I woke up my legs were asleep and I was immediately convinced they'd be that way forever, so I freaked out and got up and walked around and then finally went back to bed, though I woke up quite a few more times.

Wait, where am I going with this? Oh, right, I'm cranky and it's not my fault. In my crankiness I did continue to work on this project, though.

And then I got super creative, or something, and now it looks like this:

And I had some leftover paint, so I also started this project:


And then I blogged while I ate lunch. Hey, maybe I'm not as cranky and unproductive as I was claiming.

The thing is, what the heck am I producing?? What am I going to do with this weird art? Who is ever going to be interested in reading anything I write?

I know, I know, it's normal to worry about this stuff. Us creative types have to freak out every once in a while (at least three to four times an hour) to feel like we're leading a meaningful life.

I do have something to look forward to, because the rain seems to have stopped for long enough for me to take a walk, even if the sun isn't out.

And by the way, being at home being unproductive and grumpy is, oh, ten trillion times better than being at work and being unproductive in grumpy, in case you were wondering.

Um, wait, it's pouring out now...