Author: Elaine

Why I want to cut my hair short:

It’s always tangled.
It takes forever to wash.
It’s in my way for biking, swimming & other physical activity.
It’s just in my damn way all the time.
It’s hot in the summer & staticky in the winter.
It sheds & makes my house messier.
Scarves get tangled up in it.
My neck breaks out.
It feels like time for a change.

Why I want to keep my hair long:

It’s pretty.
I like trying out different braids, etc.
I’m afraid I’ll miss it after I cut it off.
I get compliments about it (esp from C & S).
I hate trying to figure out what haircut to get.
It feels like a change in identity, and I’m not sure I want to do that.

So long is half about pleasure, half about sunk costs. Short is about frustrations and lifestyle.

In any case, I’m going to finally call & make an appointment, since even if I were to keep it long, it badly needs trimming.

There’s a decent chance I won’t make up my mind until I sit down in the chair….

I have 10 minutes before we’re going to go play Pathfinder, so I should write something, as part of this ongoing experiment in blogging regularly again.

Today I blocked a scarf that I finished to give away as a gift. It grew several inches after I got it wet & stretched it out, which is actually sort of annoying, because I would have stopped it sooner if I’d known. It’s pretty, and I think/hope it will be well-received. But the pattern was such that I could only work on it with my complete concentration, which is counter to what I like about knitting. I’d rather work on something where it only takes a tiny bit of effort to stay in pattern, so I can talk, go to meetings, watch shows, whatever.

I’m getting a better sense of what I like doing in my new(ish) hobby. Yay!

I’m looking around my front room, seeking something to write about. I’ve sort of committed myself to trying to write — here, in my public blog, not just in a diary — as often as I can. And the morning, while I’m getting my brain in gear, seems to be the time for it.

We didn’t really decorate for Christmas, which is a bad confluence of a bunch of things, since usually I love Christmas decor. But C bought a pot of paperwhite narcissus, and I love their look and scent. Then I bought a small centerpiece of greenery on Christmas Eve, at the last day of the Farmer’s Market until April. And that too has felt right. So new traditions, perhaps? As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been feeling tired and stuck, and I’m looking eagerly to even symbols of new growth. That next year, perhaps, will be a bit better than this year. But hope is insufficient: instead, small plans & actions.

And knowing boundaries.

The team had a planning retreat yesterday, just the three of us, going through all of our projects and figuring out what we want to do next year, or at least in the first half of next year. At least a couple of times, I looked at something thinking that I want to do it right away…and then remembering to look at the rest of the whiteboards, and what else was on them. And I could actually say: “no, that will have to wait.” It can wait, because I know what is important. It’s very clarifying.

So it is, to some extent, making time for this. It’s not yet anything major or meaningful: it’s not a novel; it’s not my essay about morning glories/bindweed. But it is getting back into the habit of getting words out. Because I know in my heart that putting words together, expressing things in writing, is one of the things that brings me joy.

I have a bunch of other things I need to get done on this Saturday morning: planning for my D&D game; cleaning; laundry; making apple butter before the apples go bad; buying a train ticket to Portland. But it seemed important to do this for just a little bit before all that.

Little random images/memories from 2012:

Sitting in the hall at PNW Drupal Summit, talking yarn with Ariane & others. (I can see faces but can’t remember names. Sorry.)

Biking to Pioneer Park with C, being able to lay in the sun & be warm as late as the end of September. In particular, thinking of the day I got back from a conference in Atlanta and being the only people there.

Saying goodbye to the old couple who were always at the Starbucks near TwinStar in the morning, and they wished me good luck.

Raina’s birthday weekend at a retreat near Mount Rainier: a May almost as warm as July, playing frisbee in the sun, lounging on the couch in the big lodge listening to Jackie play clarinet. Going for a run in my five-finger shoes on a quiet mountain road. (I was getting into that for a while, I should start again.)

And then the drive up to Lake Cushman for the first time, with C, during my long vacation. Still May, still gorgeous, and so hardly anyone there. Followed by a trip to the Bagby hot springs. Dozing in the tent with the fire crackling.

Trying out Basic D&D with “the Keep of Chaos”, trying to figure out how to adjudicate climbing a rope, killing Acey’s character with a 10′ pit. And then later having the lovely experience of watching the guys getting really creative approaching the lower level of Quasqueton, lowering a character down a hole to spy on a cave full of goblins, figuring out how to defeat said goblins by unleashing their own owlbear on them.

Being horribly sick with a cold during the big snow last January (whole town basically shut down for a week), but also being one of the very few houses in our neighborhood with power, so I could stay warm, watch Netflix, and eat homemade chicken chili.

Jam. In particular, having the brainstorm to use the grapes on our fence (planted by the neighbor before we moved in) to make grape jelly. And even the stuff that didn’t turn out still smelled really good.

Brunch with the ladies. Lots of brunches with the ladies. And becoming a regular someplace. (New Moon Cafe, downtown Olympia. It’s fabulous.)
Which reminds me of my birthday with Elizabeth: brunch, but more so biking to pick blueberries, when it was the farm owner’s birthday too. When he heard that he and Elizabeth had the same birthday, he gave her a hug. Walking down the rows of bushes picking berries and just talking. And then playing Munchkin while watching…a Star Trek movie? episode? Not sure now.

The changing view from my office window. At least twice I’ve seen rainbows. The trees going from fully leafed out to red/gold/brown, and now the sticks of the deciduous trees amongst the deep green of the evergreens.

I’ve written about my new job (seven months now!) a couple of times already…and it’s tricky to write too much without violating my blogging prime directive. (Write about work, but not people at work.) I guess maybe I don’t need to write about it as a year-end thing, since my posts on specializing/generalizing and being on a team are fairly recent and still valid.

But it’s also a change in the flow of my days — I’ve lived in Olympia just over 10 years. The first four, I was in a vanpool to Lakewood; a good chunk of that time, I was biking to Lacey to meet it. The next five, I was also going east to Lacey, some bus, a lot of bike, and until the crash, sometime driving. Now I’m going to the west side of Olympia, and I haven’t been biking hardly at all. (Three times? Four?) Instead, I’m on the insanely crowded bus from downtown to Evergreen. I haven’t been on buses this crowded since I was in high school, only now I’m the grown-up amidst the students. Also, it’s cold instead of hot. But it is that crowded: standing room only, and a few times the bus having to pass people at stops because there just. wasn’t. room. All that said, I like it. Where my office is, I don’t have much contact with students; with the bus, I hear them talking about what they’re doing: social lives, schoolwork, whatever. Some of it is pretty hilarious. (Justin & I both occasionally tweet with the hashtag #evergreenbus for things that are particularly…interesting.) But in a way, it keeps me focused on the point of my job, where I think otherwise it might be too easy to get caught up in the internal dramas. And yes, there are internal dramas, and no, I’m not going to write about them, unless I can find a way to generalize or something.

I do miss biking on the trail terribly. And I’m having a hard time mustering the enthusiasm for the ride to the college: hills both ways, dark stretches, spots w/out bike lane, etc. Maybe come spring I’ll get back into it, because I know how good cycling is for my body, including my brain.

At least I have the gym handy, and I’ve been taking an exercise class off and on since last summer. There’s three of us in College Relations (my larger department) who take it, which is enough that usually at least one of us can coax the other two into going. And it’s good stuff. I keep meaning to start swimming, which is one of the reasons I’m considering cutting my hair short. But so far I’ve neither cut my hair, nor gone swimming.

This year: continuing to deal with the accident, feeling old & tired & sore; Sasha (the cat) getting sick & dying; and then entirely on the flip side, going to work at Evergreen. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know what I’d be thinking of this year. Spending February through September worrying about Sasha, trying to take care of her, struggling over what to do with/for what was after all just a tiny little cat. And feeling old because of that too, because we’d had her for 15 years, and that measures how long we’ve been together, and her passing is the passing of time in some nebulous way. And then I’m just sitting in a coffeeshop crying over a cat. I’m grateful, too, for Matt & Rosalyn (?) & Bridget at Dylan’s birthday party for giving — I don’t know what to call it, but the understanding of fellow animal lovers and a bit of Buddhist wisdom helped hugely when we put her down two days later. Even if remembering the walk down the alley to the vet’s with C, with her in the laundry hamper, brings the tears right back.

The same way that six or eight months ago, I could end up dazed or weepy by just a flash of memory of the truck crash: the look of shock (?) on the guy’s face when he realized, I guess, that he was in fact running a red light, and going to hit me, and there was nothing either of us could do about it. And as much as I said that I was “ok,” I don’t remember this time last year really at all, except that I went to the “Apocalypse Party” that the library girls put on for New Year’s Eve, and that I got horrible stomach flu right after. (As in, ended up in the urgent care getting rehydrated.) I can still close my eyes and see the front of the truck crumpling up in front of me.

But really, once I got over that, it’s been the slowness, the way that the aftermath of the crash connected to every other thing I’ve ever been through with my body, having to treat myself gingerly, having to remember to have exactly the right posture and wear the right shoes and do my exercise…or I can spend hours of just barely bearable discomfort. And for a big chunk of the year “discomfort” meant too much pain to do dishes or knit or write or anything that meant moving my right shoulder at all. Massage and physical therapy and heat and cold and naproxin sodium, and all that making me feel old too, because every little thing is connected: the way I tilt my head or how I sit at the computer or a fall off of my bike 10 years ago. And also dealing with insurance: who gets paid what when, how are the bills handled, who talks to who. I still haven’t replaced the truck, even though I got paid for it, because I don’t know what I want, or even if I really want a car again. (We still have the Kia…which needs work.)

I’ve felt too stuck and shell-shocked to really get much else done this year. Which feels stupid at the same time, because I wasn’t “seriously” injured, and Sasha was just a cat. But at the same time I feel mostly relief at having dropped most of my volunteering obligations, even if I didn’t use the time or space to get anything useful done.

I have to stop here to go catch a bus to go to work. Maybe later today I’ll write a second year-end-ish post about that, since changing jobs has been one of the highlights of the year. And then maybe I can write a year-end-ish post that doesn’t make me cry. :\

The last time I had a “real” haircut was the day of C’s big bike crash, aka July 2010. I’ve had one trim, back in May, but other than that it’s been an experiment in growing my hair out again. (Again, as in: I had almost waist-length hair in college, cut it shoulder-length, then pixie; have gone back & forth no longer than shoulder length until this last time around. It’s currently at the middle of my back.)

The last few days it’s been particularly wild and frizzy, and last night when I was undoing a braid, I ran into little tangles at the nape of my neck so horrible I almost started to cry. I trimmed off the ends myself, and was _this_ close to having C just cut it all off. [Edit: here’s a photo I took the day after I wrote this post.]

In a less emotional state, it seems like I have two options: another trim — since I was almost at this state with it in May, got a trim, and then enjoyed the length again — or something significantly more radical.

Two opposing thoughts keep batting around in my head: “It’s hair, it grows” (Mom, when I showed up as a teenager with an impromptu haircut by friends) vs “I wish I had grown mine out longer when I was younger, I can’t do that with my hair now.” (Grandma N, when I grew it out at the end of high school)

And yet, today, having trimmed it a tiny bit last night and then washed it this morning, I was actually enjoying doing up a french braid. I keep wondering if I’ll regret it the second I’m done.

I’ve looked at an Ask Metafilter that I did years ago, asking for help the last time I went from longish to shortish. And found the photo of what I did with that advice…a pic from my 34th birthday. It wasn’t too bad, really. I could be pretty happy with that. I’ve also thought about something sort of the opposite of that, short in the back, longer in the front, although I’d need something fairly complicated for it to not be totally annoying.

So, yeah. For right now I might just get a bit more of a trim, some shaping and long bangs, see if I like that and if not…well, it might be time for something interesting. (Hmmmm, maybe I should get a streak of color in the bangs. Purple?)