Everything is Unfinished

I went to the salon today to have my hair trimmed. Then in a spur of the moment decision, I went a little more drastic and got about 10 inches cut off instead!

It looks a little flat and frizzy because I didn’t have it styled. For comparison, here’s a picture from about 3 weeks ago with my hair pulled back in its standard ponytail:

I do this all the time. I grow my hair out, because then I’ll be able to do more with it. So it grows long, and all I do is pull it back into a ponytail. After a few months I get tired of pulling it back all the time and decide to cut it off. I like it short for a while, then decide to grow it out, because then I’ll be able to do more with it. And so on.

I was actually just thinking the other day about how much time and energy people spend worrying about hair. We always want hair to grow where it doesn’t, and we want to get rid of it where it is. If we just decided, as a society, to stop all of this and let our hair do what it wants to, think of all the money we could save! Of course, we’d put several multi-billion dollar industries out of business, not to mention look like we just came out of the makeup department of a B movie. Well, I would anyway. Maybe it’s better if I just keep doing my part to help those industries stay in business after all.

Not only am I blogging tonight, but I BAKED too. I’m not quite motivated enough to provide pictoral evidence, but I really truly did. See, tomorrow is my last day of work and we’re having a potluck lunch so I decided to make a cream puff pie. And yes, it’s just as yummy as it sounds - there’s a puff pastry type crust (that you make from scratch, hence the baking) filled with a pudding and cream cheese filling then topped with whipped cream. Hopefully it will make it to work without me digging into it.

Let’s go back to that last day of work thing. I have to tell you, going back to work after maternity leave sucked, even though it was only for 7 days and only 5 hours a day. I mean, I didn’t want to just leave them high and dry so I offered to come back from noon to 5 for a week and a half to help straighten all the files out and train my replacement. But at the same time, having 3 months off to spend with the best baby ever makes it hard to go back. And as you can imagine, I’m very excited about the prospect of being a full-time domestic engineer. In fact, once I realized that my main career goal was to be a mommy, it took a big weight off my shoulders. And even though I consider myself a feminist, the great part is that I don’t feel guilty about it. Because part of feminism is being able to be confident about your decisions, even if your decision is to stay at home with your kids. Besides, who could leave this at home every day?

We have two cats: Chessie, aka the big one and Scamper, aka the stupid one. That may seem like a mean nickname for a cat, but seriously, I’ve never seen a cat this clumsy! I’ve witnessed her roll down several stairs, jump up to a ledge and miss, and get herself wedged UNDERNEATH our kitchen cabinets. She also likes to get into closets and cabinets and then cry and cry before realizing she can get out. She does this sometimes in our downstairs bathroom too - she’ll jump up and put her paws on the door and swing it shut, then cry for a while until she remembers that she can paw the door open enough to get out. She usually does this when I’m in the bathroom (which is very annoying when I go in to pee and don’t turn the light on, then she shuts the door so I’m in there in the dark) but she’s been known to do it just on her own too.

So…when we got home from Colorado, after being gone for 8 days, we immediately heard the sound of Scamper meowing. This was not surprising, as she seriously knows the sound of our cars and will sit in the kitchen window and meow at us until we come in, or will greet us at the door. But this time she didn’t greet us, and the meowing was kind of muffled, as if it was from behind a door. That’s when we noticed that the bathroom door was shut. And not just pushed shut, it was latched closed. As soon as I opened the door, a black streak shot out as Scamper escaped her prison. Surveying the damage, we saw a pile of cat poop neatly mounded in the middle of the floor mat (which was nice and easy to just pick up and throw away), a puddle of cat pee in the corner of the room, and black hairs EVERYWHERE. It looked like Scamper had shot fur out of her skin. It was on the floor, on the sink, on the mirror, on the toilet, all over the toilet paper, on the towels. And here it was, 1:00 am and we have to clean the bathroom. Fortunately Johnny accepted that task and made quick work of it.

We don’t know for sure how long Scamper was trapped in there, but we think that it was a day and a half, tops. There wasn’t a whole lot of poop and when she got out she didn’t even go immediately to the food and water dishes. She’s certainly no worse for the wear and she still goes in the bathroom and shuts the door, although she’s only done it when I’m in there since then. Maybe she’s not *quite* as stupid as we thought. But next time we go out of town, we’ll close all the doors in the house first.

Edited ten minutes later to add: Is she psychic or something? Did her little cat ears hear my fingers typing this story? Because she just went into the bathroom and shut the damn door again! Stupidest. Cat. EVER.