PS: I hope everyone has a happy & healthy 2009!
I have a brother who is six years older than me. Growing up, he never let me forget that he was an only child until he was six and it's all my fault that he still wasn't an only child or that I wasn't a boy so he could get the bunk beds he really wanted.
Six years is a pretty huge gap and as kids, we never had anything in common. He teased me endlessly, always knowing the exact thing to say that would infuriate me enough to charge him at full-speed. He never felt threatened because within 2.4 seconds of charging him, it would always get turned around and end with my "bloody murder" screams as he made me slap myself in the face.
He always was able to push my buttons when I was small enough to let people push my buttons. As I got older, he wasn't there. He was away at college and then married. I always felt I never really had my chance to make digs at him. And, since two adults physically fighting could result in jail time, I never thought to grab his hands and make him slap himself in the face on the rare times we did see each other.
MANY years ago, at a family dinner, my Mom remarked about how when I was a baby, I was a "good" baby. I rarely cried and fell asleep right away. She went on to mention that my brother was not a "good" baby. She said he would scream for hours and eventually, the only way to get him to shut up was drive him around in the car until he simply dozed off. This bit of information was my only chance: I made jokes about it through the entire dinner. I laughed at him for being such a retarded baby. I was flawless in my deliveries and didn't let up.
I haven't spoken to my brother in about three years for reasons that I clearly won 't go into on my blog, but I think not speaking to him, especially on a day like today, is a great thing. You see, it started snowing like crazy this afternoon- right around the dogger's 3rd daily walk. [By "walk" I mean that we walk 5 houses in one direction and then walk home. We then stand in front of the house so she can make eye-contact with every person in every car that passes. She has bad hips so that's the extent of it. I then bribe her with the promise of several treats in order to get her back into the house.]]
Winnister Magoo has an internal clock and she lets you know it's time for her walks by coming up to you, standing or sitting right next to you, making what has been called "Chewbacca" noises. It's cute for the first minute. After twenty minutes, it's not cute. At all.
And so, it's snowing. The ground is already covered and the temperature is dropping by the minute. I put on my hat, mittens, scarf, and coat. I warmed up my car to melt the ice that has accumulated on all the windows. I did all of this just so I could put the dogger in the car and drive her around the neighborhood in place of a walk BECAUSE SHE WOULD NOT STOP CRYING.
The teasing I have just avoided by being from a dysfunctional family is priceless.
Something very scary happened this morning while on my morning walk with The Dogger. It was something that had me wondering if perhaps the world was coming to an end:
I saw a Benny. In December.
The reason this is so scary is that, well, it's DECEMBER. Had it been any time after Memorial Day and before Labor Day, it wouldn't be scary. Bennies are people who swarm here during the Summer months. They are usually from Northern NJ or New York. They refer to the area in which I live as their vacation playground and they have the inability to use the letter "H" whenever it is placed in a word after the letter "T". For example: the word "throw" is pronounced as "trow" and the word "three" becomes "tree". Bennies are the people who refer to this area as "The Shaw" which is Benny-speak for "The Shore". Locals never call this area "the shore" - we say "the beach". [another popular Bennyism - "youse guys"]
The offensive Benny I saw today was driving down my street in a pimped out bright purple-blue car. I'd like to say it was a Camaro, which is is the vehicle of choice for a Benny, but I pretty much only know how to identify cars by color and not make and model. [Much to my very technical and precise father's dismay, I also only know how to judge distance by saying everything and anything is "about 100 feet away" - for example, J.'s sister lives in California and I live in New Jersey. That means she lives "about 100 feet away."]
There were only two things that gave me a glimmer of hope that this wasn't a full-blown Benny Invasion: 1) he wasn't wearing a wife-beater, and 2) I did not hear "Seaside Tony" on the radio. "Seaside Tony" is a song that was written ages ago by a local band [7 Minds] who, thanks to their anti-Benny anthem, received lots of radio play from local stations. To this day, the song is played at the start of every summer. After seeing the scary December Benny, I came home and went through all of the local radio stations to make sure "Seaside Tony" wasn't playing. Since it wasn't, clearly this was just a weird Benny-fluke and there isn't a need to build a bomb shelter. Well, at least not until May.
They say when you lose someone close to you, you never truly get over it. I've suffered loss in my life and even though time lessens the pain, it never erases it completely. It is with a deeply saddened heart that I am here to say that I lost J.
He is gone. I feel as though the shock hasn't worn off and I don't know if it ever will.
I miss him so much already.
I still talk to him as though he can hear me. I still wait for a response. And... nothing.
There is nothing but silence.
Just... silence.
On Friday, December 26, 2008 J. made me a widow.
An Xbox 360 widow.
My hair and I have been through a lot together. We have a love-hate relationship. Starting from the time I realized I even had hair, things usually never went my way when it came to style, color and anything else hair-related.
At an early age, before I was able to make my own decisions, it was decided that my hair would be long, often worn in pigtails or in one ponytail, as this was the way in which my mother could torture me without being accused of child abuse. She would rip the comb through my tangled mess of wavy curls and pull my hair back as tight as she could. [Since I am working on offending less people, insert your own politically-incorrect joke involving Asians here.] My Mom would take that pink hair tape and stick it across my forehead to cut my bangs. As any girl would know, this never leads to perfectly cut bangs, but instead a very UNEVEN cut.
I grew older and more able to defend myself against the injustices known as "home hair cuts" and "home perms" and the "Dorothy Hamill Cut" so I decided to let my hair grow all one length, to mirror that glorious head of hair that LS had in elementary school. In sixth grade, I was told the ends of my hair needed to be trimmed. I sat in a chair to have my chain-smoking Aunt give me a trim. She cut off 7 inches of my hair. After that horrific experience, I blacked out any and all memories of having hair until I was in high school.
Once in high school, and once I began hanging around with older, cooler degenerates, I decided it was very important that I chop all of my shoulder-length hair off. And by "chop off" I mean shave off. And so, there I was in all my rebellious-hair glory: head shaved, bangs hanging over just my left eye [which is now stronger than my right eye]. At that point, I knew the importance of doing things in stages, as my parents were getting older and the risk of heart attack was therefore greater. So, shaved head first.
Dying my hair, or should I say "bangs" since that was technically the only hair left on my head, came next. First, blue. Then green. Then black. Then faded black until my natural brown returned. At one point, I somehow got confused and thought a shaved head with bleach strategically placed as "leopard spots" would be cool. On top of that, I had grown out one clump of hair to braid down the side of my head. That braid eventually became one lone dreadlock.
Several years later, when I stopped drinking and smoking so much weed, I decided to let my hair grown out again. It took some time, but it grew. As I matured, my hair did too- with only one minor incident which I'm still too traumatized to discuss.
Now my hair is shoulder length. I can't quite remember its natural color, though. I stopped dying it myself and now have a very capable colorist/stylist/hair-cutter who is hip and cool, and always suggests hip and cool colors that will make me feel hip and cool, despite my age. Over the past 4 years, we went from a chestnut brown to burgundy and then to blue-black. From the blue-black we went to shiny black. From there we went to black with cherry red strands placed throughout. From that, in a two and a half hour session, we lifted all color out and went to a dark brown. I got frustrated with the boring brown, and decided to dye it back to black myself. At my next hair cut appointment, I was scolded for going to black again after spending two and a half hours and lots of money to lift the black out to begin with. We lifted the black out again a few months later and did a deep wine color.
And now, here we are. Dye doesn't last as long the older you get. Greys creep in faster. The deep wine color faded too quickly. And despite no less than 14 warnings, I dyed my hair black again two weeks ago. It's what lasts the longest and it's the easiest since it's SO BLACK you don't have to worry about doing roots first or last, you just slop it all over.
In the two weeks time since I dyed it myself, I had to cancel a haircut appointment and an eyebrow wax for fear of what my hair chick will do to me when she sees me with black hair again. I have been only doing grocery shopping late at night for fear of running into her during the day.
And then, Christmas came and my Mom gave me a gift certificate for my salon. I know I will eventually have to go to the salon- plucking only takes you so far- I need the BIG GUNS. People have started to mistake me as Bert from Sesame Street and I'm pretty sure J. is going to start questioning his sexuality if I don't have my lip waxed soon.
Pray for me.
