The Girl with the Curl

I now have curly hair. Of course, I've always had curly hair--or wavy, depending on the weather and travel. In particuarly dry climates (El Paso, for example) it goes almost straight on its own. But the authentic self of my hair is a curly self.

I didn't always accept this. There was a point--not a point, years and years actually--where I spent time daily blowing it out to a discreet wave or a tidy sleekness. Well I'm pushing 40 now and I figure it's time to embrace what I really am. I used to think that a sleek, tidy, blown-out 'do would be a better reflection of my inner self. But who am I kidding? I'm someone who will make the bizarre comment the more diplomatic souls would avoid. Whose idea of decorating is more, more, and then top it with a weird knick-knack that makes the Mr. blanche. I'm a gal who can't organize herself out of a Hallmark store.

So I went here and met the lovely Hareg. And Hareg praised my hair, told me how wonderful it is, and then proceeded to give me the best haircut I've had lo these many years. That was in the late summer and I haven't touched a hair dryer since. My hair and I are rolling merrily along in all our twisty, bendy, curly glory.

Representin'

The X-Man attends a great preschool. They have a nice array of preschool activities--cooking, gardening, riding around on trikes like maniacs, crafty things, and art. The art includes painting, drawing, stamping, as well as other things I'd never want to clean up after. I noticed last year (when X-Man was three) that some of the kids his age where already drawing fairly detailed pictures. Pictures you could look at and figure out what they were: "ah, a mermaid." or "oh, that's a house." I also observed that many--not all--of the artists were girls.

Well, we now have representational drawing happening at school and at home. And it's not totally what I expected, but I'm pretty thrilled. A few weeks ago X and I were drawing together.

Poppy: I'm going to draw a house.
X: I'm going to draw a house too.
Poppy: Here's the roof and some birds in the sky.
X: My house has a big roof.
Poppy: I'm going to add some polka dotted curtains to the bedroom windows.
X: See this circle on the roof? That's a satellite dish. These are the cables that go over here and then connect into the house. Over here, this thing, this is the dryer vent. The air comes out of there when you dry clothes. This is the power line into the house for the phones and electricity.

Well okay then.

Yesterday he was doodling around and showed me what he had made. I could actually tell it was something--not random scribbles, but a real something. I just wasn't sure what.

Poppy: That's a nice drawing X. What is it?
X: (very patiently) It's a chainsaw Mommy. See, this is the cutting part, this is where you hold on. This is the part you pull to make it go.

And by God it was. No mermaids here, but plenty of power tools.

How Did I Get Here?

So I guess this means I've got a blog. I wasn't setting out to have a blog. I was just avoiding the mountains of paperwork that I routinely avoid by goofing around on the computer and then wandering around the house randomly tidying things (different from decluttering--much to the Mr.'s chagrin). But I've been reading some inspiring blogs from on-line friends (hey, I've met some of them IRL so I think the friend title applies) and I got to thinking it would be a nice way to make some form and sense of my days. Baby Z is taking a long nap--so why the heck not try it out?

I have been thinking of that Talking Heads song a lot lately "This is not my beautiful house/This is not my beautiful wife" etc. Where we live feels a lot like Stepford sometimes and I do ponder--between bottles and diapers and time outs--how I ended up with exactly this life. I'm not sure it's the one I set out to have. Actually, I'm very sure in many ways it's not. How happy would I be in the life I thought I wanted? Can we end up somewhere we think we had no intention of getting to--yet the steps we took along the way have added up to this?

And since my days are organized, it seems, by sleep--who sleeps, when, where, for how long, how early or how late--I need to go. The end of the nap calls. Welcome to my world.