Bad Hair Day

I wish I'd taken a picture of the bad haircut I gave Nathaniel the other day. It didn't even fall into the "so bad it's cute" catagory. He looked like a 30 year old man from 1970. I ended up by taking him that same day to get his hair buzzed.In lieu of a picture, I have recreated what his hair looked like after I was done.....

My future indie rocker

glimpse into my day

Halfway through the morning, my co-worker untucked my shirt collar where it was massively folded and crumpled under. How many patrons did I serve looking like that? Then tonight, as I climbed into bed, I noticed I had put my underwear on inside out this morning.

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Mmm, life as a single mom. Priceless.

Independence Day

I hadn't planned on taking Nathaniel to any fireworks display tonight. I didn't think he'd notice or care, or even know what a firework was. Halfway through Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a friend called to encourage me to go out to see the fireworks. I asked Nathaniel if he wanted to and was surprised how eagerly he said yes and then how he went on to warn me that they would be loud and scary. Where does he learn this stuff?

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It was fun and I'm so glad we went. I've never really struck out on my own to do things like that...too shy, too self conscious. How will I know where to park when I get there? What should my posture look like when I'm standing around? What if people look at me? While Lexapro helps with much of this, there are still times when I am reluctant to try something new and that's where Nathaniel comes in.

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It was such a cool feeling just the simple act of pulling my car out at the end of the night, joining lines of other cars driving over the grass field down to the highway and then a long, long line of us heading back to town. It felt "grown up," while at the same time feeling nostalgic...a hundred half remembered nights driving home in the back seat from some event, windows open, summer.

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All these small rites of passage from child to adult that I'm only now beginning at 42. What an odd and interesting experience.

Frontline

Leeloo caught fleas the last time she was at the vet's. I can hear her even now, wimpering a little as she tries to scratch her itches. Earlier in the day, I vowed to go on line tonight and buy her a batch of Frontline...budget be damned. And then, oh the simple yet much appreciated gifts from the cosmos, I found half a dozen treatments of the stuff in her doggy supply box left over from some previous time I'd used it. These are the victories I measure.

The bra

One good consequence of having hubbie move out is that I now get the occasional opportunity to go shopping ALONE while he has Nathaniel. I reveled in wandering down the aisles of Walmart a few days ago, dawdling here and there. Chance brought me to the Ladies Department and I celebrated my newfound shopping freedom by trying on a pile of braziers. I wear only granny bras. It is my plight in life. Not only am I a full cup size different on each side, I have absolutely no natural "lift." Push-up bras look hideous on me, creating not rounded valleys of tempting flesh, but an unappetizing décolletage of jiggling jello.

I was delighted to find a $9.00 that fit nicely and was a little more tailored than my usual. I chose one in black and, on mad impulse, a second one in an animal print. I hesitated, wondering if that was really "me." And then I shoved it into the cart thinking "it COULD be me, I could be that person."

Still, it nagged at me. Finally, I felt compelled to show it to a friend. "It's animal print," I confessed sheepishly. "I don't know what exactly, leopard or tortoise shell maybe." She looked at it and then looked at me with pity. "It giraffe print."

I returned the bra.

Night Time Trials of an Abandoned Woman

Okay, this latest experience tops the one I had in the middle of the night during the last rain storm when the door that leads to the outside had blown open and it was actually raining ON me in my BED. I stumbled out of my dank blankets, across the wet floor to reach Nathaniel who was standing up in his bed, intermittently illuminated in the great shocks of lightening, crying "Mommy, I want to sleep in your bed! I want to sleep in your bed!" It was all pretty dramatic, yet has been topped now by just the absurd discomfort and horror endured as I awoke in the wee hours of dawn to a bed full of macaroni and cheese, spilled juice and blood from baby's nocturnal nose bleed.

The Child Catcher

During this first week of my husband's and my separation, Nathaniel and I have now watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang about 14 times. My three year old now knows it so well that we can play out the menacing Child Catcher scene together. When I'm The Child Catcher, I skip around the house in my best imitation of Robert Helpmann in the movie, brandishing lollipops in my hand.

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"Children!" I croon evilly. "Lollipops and candy! And all free today!"

Nathaniel has interpreted the character of The Child Catcher a little differently. First of all, he calls him Fuzzy Wuzzy. He doesn't find him at all scary. When he plays "Fuzzy Wuzzy," He creeps around the house calling "Children, children," but then when he finds me he simply offers me a lollipop and then merrily says "Goodbye!" before going off somewhere to eat the rest of the candy by himself.

I can't say my take on the character is "better" than his. I mean, we just have different artistic visions, no doubt equally valid. It's like William Makepeace Thackeray developing Becky Sharp as a very flawed - and often unpleasant - character in Vanity Fair, but Focus Films totally changing her into a honest, plucky and charmingly irrepressible heroine for the 2004 movie.