Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Friday after work, Logan said he wanted to go to the "Wall O' Beer". So we went to Central Market, bought some Sam Somebodyerother's Nut Brown Ale, some McKewan's Scottish Ale, some Belhaven, and a six pack of my favorite, Ace Perry Cider. Logan also picked out some pita bread, salad fixin's, smoked turkey breast, mesquite smoked ham, baby swiss cheese, two different kinds of olives from the incredible olive bar, and some artichoke hearts. After paying (almost $90 for one little sack of groceries and four six packs of hearty drinks (wait... one was a FOUR pack, not a six pack, the cheap bastards!), we sat out on the patio and listened to the house band play a mix of oldies and Texas Swing. We ate our sandwiches, drank a couple of the drinks of our choice, and smiled at each other. I was feeling good. Hard cider is 5% alcohol, so I was just starting to catch a buzz when we decided to go home.

As we pulled up to the house, I mentioned that the kids had been unsupervised for almost three hours, and opined as to whether or not they had buried an ax in each other's head, since they hadn't called the whole time we were gone. Logan figured neither had so much as looked up from the computer screens. Sure enough, when we walked in, there they were, seemingly biolinked to the monitors. My pale, wimpy children who don't play outside but have superhuman stamina when it comes to staying parked in a chair, playing games online, fine tuning their websites, and hacking their parents' passwords. Here's a link to one of Brighid's websites: http://jiyu-rutherford.tripod.com/

I haven't really worked on my own website, http://home.earthlink.net/~janesitton. I need to learn more about building a website, though, because I have a (rimshot!) hair-brained idea to have a website about my hair. My hair is really long now, but I'm thinking of cutting it. I don't know how I want it to look, though, so I thought I'd let complete strangers vote on what kind of hairdo I should have. I would even include a PayPal link so people could donate to my salon fund! My website would have pictures of previous hairstyles, a place where people could grab animated scissors and dye bottles and fool around with my hair online. I can visualize what I want. I just don't know how to make it happen.

Other than my hair, I'm constantly obsessed with my health. But I'm a lazy hypochondriac, so all I do is contemplate fantastical illnesses. I never bother to go see the doctor until something really happens. Chalk that up to my Scottish ancestry, I suppose. Save myself some money by diagnosing myself.

The latest entry into my medicine bag of horrors is that I have some new female trouble. I've had four children, all via natural childbirth, so sex shouldn't hurt, right? Well, it did. Logan and I attempted to make love early Sunday morning, and to my surprise, it caused me a great deal of pain. I started bleeding. We had to stop. I'm supposed to see my doctor tomorrow (He didn't have anything sooner.), but now I've got my period on top of it all, so I'm thinking of rescheduling. Seriously, not to be gross, but can the doctor really tell anything when the playing ground is muddy? I suppose he's seen it all, but it makes me uncomfortable (both physically and mentally) to be examined while on the rag.

Saturday was a good day, though. Logan spent most of the day with a few SCA buddies, planing wood, then having dinner and drinking beer (after planing the wood, of course... just call me stubs!!). When he got home, the kids and I went to a bardic. I hadn't been to one in a while, so it was good to see the people I've missed and even the ones I haven't missed so much. I did notice that my breath support while singing wasn't what it used to be. I've fallen out of practice, and am somewhat rusty. But nevertheless, it was good to sing so much.

Other than goofing off on the weekends and doing laundry during the week, I haven't been very busy. The only think of import is that I've decided to do Oprah's Debt Diet, and have already got one credit card company to knock two points off my interest rate AND waive the yearly fee. Not counting my defaulted student loan, I'm not quite $3,500.00 in debt, which isn't bad compared to the majority of people in the United States. My goal is to be out of debt in nine months or less, and have enough saved for a new (or new to me, at least) car by this time next year. Wish me luck. I think what's going to work for me is to close the accounts once they're paid off, keeping only one bank card for emergencies and a couple of gas cards to keep from having to carry cash.

I'm back... I think.

Eric and I were yakking on the phone the other night, talking about nothing of great import, when my mind strayed to the house in which I grew up. It was at 1404 Grand Avenue, on the North Side of Fort Worth. (It was burned to the ground by Bill Chappell back in the mid 80's.) It must have been built around the turn of the century, during the Cattle Baron days of Cowtown because it had an Edwardian look about it and because there had been a fireplace in the kitchen which some previous owner enclosed with drywall.

I talked on and on about the house, things I remembered doing in it, being able to see the fireworks downtown from the front porch, being a block from a park, playing hide and go seek with the kids across the street. I never realized before how happy my childhood was for the most part, taking into consideration the fact that my mother was bi-polar, and tried to drag the whole family along on her mood swings.

Last night, Eric and I were at the Shamrock, and I forced him to play dirty Scrabble with me. I won, of course, since he wasn't much inspired to play in the first place, and the best he could come up with was "ho". My best was "quim". Q's are worth 10 points each (or it it 8?), and it was on a triple letter score, so the play was worth around 35 points. I drank five glasses of pear cider, and had a headache when I got home (I suspect more from smelling cigarette smoke than the alcohol), but I drank some water and took an aspirin before going to bed, and was fine this morning.

Physically, I've been feeling really tired lately, as the period from hell hasn't ended. That isn't entirely true. I've had maybe two or three days without bleeding, but I cough, sneeze, or tighten my abdominal muscles for any reason, and the period starts back up. It's not a full-fledged period, but pretty much a continuous pinkish discharge. My guess is the fibroid is somehow being assaulted by the progesterone from the IUD. I'm not having heavy periods any longer nor am I having terrible cramping which causes me to take a flexaril and sleep for two days, but the flow is never ending. This is getting tiresome. I used to have to wear pads everyday because of stress incontience. Now I have to wear them everyday because of the fibroid. If reincarnation is true, I'm coming back as a man in my next life. In the meanwhile, I need to buy stock in Proctor & Gamble, makers of Always With Wings.

Nice Weekend

I've sort of been taking a break from writing. Not on purpose, but just because I've been too lazy to write. I've been feeling very tired lately, probably due to IUD induced anemia. After having the IUD inserted, I had a period that lasted 12 days. It wasn't as heavy as my periods used to be, pre-IUD, but Jesus Christ in Prada, as Eric says, 12 days! This month, I'm on day 11 with no end in sight, but the flow is even lighter. I'm not sure I like this change. I've had almost no pain since getting the IUD, but it's wearisome, having the cycles last so much longer. It's like it just trickles now, taking longer for the same amount to come out. The biggest difference, though, is the lack of blood clots, which is odd considering that progesterone can cause clotting. I used to pass things that looked like grapefruits, but now, nada. At least I don't have a parasitic twin. Weyland and I caught a program last night about a fetus in fetu. Gross, but strangely fascinating.

I actually thought my period was over yesterday, and managed to coax Logan into bed in the late morning. We had a nice romp (after which I discovered he must have knocked something loose because my period started back up), then took a lovely nap together for almost two hours. When I woke up, Logan was smiling at me. I was about to tell him that I love him when he told me he could see the yellow feathers sticking out of my mouth. Apparently, I was smiling like the cat who ate the canary.

Saturday, Eric and I went for lunch at Pappadeaux where we had a pound of crawdads, a pound of peel and eat shrimp ("skrimp", Eric likes to call them), and a lobster and seafood salad, finished off by a nice slice of key lime pie. We then went to the Shamrock where we sat and burned copies (backup copies... yeah, that's it!) of each other's CD collections. I now have lots of Bauhaus, some Cabaret Voltaire, and some International Conspiracy Project. Eric's also going to send me some Chris and Cosey and some Skinny Puppy. Old stuff from our punk days. He got a real eclectic assortment from me, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, and Bessie Smith.

After we were finished with that and had had a few drinks, we went to what used to be called 651 but is now called, I think, Hotshots, to go dancing. But the place was dead because all the queens were in Dallas for the gay rodeo. Eric was in one of his moods, but I refused to cooperate. I didn't want to go trolling the other dives on Jennings. I poured his butt in the Avalanche he borrowed from his mom, turned up Sisters of Mercy, and hit the highway. I was going to head back to the Shamrock, but Eric fell asleep on the way, so instead, I drove down Jacksboro Highway and did the loop. Well, partially. I drove 820 S all the way from where it intersects 199 to where it turns into I-20. Then I went south on I-35 and went home. Eric woke up when I pulled up to the curb. Since it was around 9 p.m., I went inside and cooked omelets for everyone, plain cheese for the kids, and asparagus, portabella mushroom, and onion for the grownups, which I served with some pecan smoked sausage, orange juice, and hot tea. Eric sobered up sufficiently after that to make his way home around 10:30 p.m. or so. All in all, it was a very pleasant weekend.