• Scaredy Cat

    It’s three o’clock in the morning.

    I’m posting now because I’m trying to burn off that shakey energy that you get after you’ve had the poop scared out of you (also know as adrenalin).

    It’s been a long time since I’ve been really scared, for any reason, and I’d forgotten what a horrible feeling it is.

    So here’s the deal: I’m sleeping peacefully. Baby starts screaming. It shouldn’t be a big deal as I live in a house with a baby that occasionally wakes up during the night. Then I realized the screaming (and I mean the top-of-the-lungs kind) wasn’t coming from my baby’s room and wasn’t showing up on the monitor.

    With the haze of sleep still fogging my mind I think, “Why is that baby crying? Why can I hear it? Why is the sound coming from my front porch?”

    Next thought: “OH MY GOSH! The murderer who uses the sound of crying baby to lure women to open the door is standing on my front porch. What am I going to do?”

    Heart pounding, the screaming continues. Laying in my bed with 911 dialed on my cell phone (seriously) I realize all the “screams” sound exactly the same.

    Wait. That’s not a baby, that’s got to be a cat.

    What’s it doing on my front porch roaring (not screaming) at 2:30 in the morning? Is it hurt? Is it dropping its litter on my door mat? Should I go see if it’s okay?

    OR is it a murderer using injured cat (instead of baby) crying to get me to open the door?

    The howling continues, now with a muffled whimper in between, and I start to worry about Gavin in the front bedroom. Is he okay? Is he scared?

    I develop a plan. After checking on Gav, I crawl down the entryway (’cause the scary-boogie-man won’t be able to shoot through the door and hit me if I’m on the floor, right? ) and peek through the blinds. Slowly raising the fourth slat from the bottom, and praying I don’t see a big scary shoe, I peek outside.

    Whew! No scary shoe, but two cats laying not five feet from my front door waving their tails sinuously back and forth. And still making that god-awful cat howl.

    Should I open the door and scare them away? Why are they staring at my front door? Is there a cat-training-master/murderer out there, somewhere waiting for me to open the door?

    I crawl back down the entryway and hop in my bed surrounded by a wall of pillows…and send a text message to my mom. (Isn’t funny how when I’m scared and have no one here to turn to, the first person I think of is my mother?)

    She replies, “Don’t open the door. Just try to ignore.” Good advice, especially since I’ve woken you up in the middle of the night. Thanks Mom.

    I lay down in my bed and the howling stops. After five minutes of relative silence I make my way (still army crawling) down the entryway. The cats are gone. Silence reigns the night again (except for the occasional pop of my fridge that keeps making me jump).

    I realize that even though Jamie is halfway around the globe (do you honestly think I’d be this scared if my big and brave husband was laying next to me?) I can call him and not wake him up.

    He answers the phone on the fifth ring and his hello is shaky, I’m sure I’ve made him nervous. Why would I call at 3 a.m. if there wasn’t an issue?

    I tell him the story (leaving out the part about my stealthy army crawling skills) and he says, “I would have opened the door.”

    Of course he would! He hasn’t read the emails about the sound-effect-using-murderer-men, which is not a figment of my imagination (right?). He agrees that a cat could have been injured or delivering kittens or more likely hunting the doves that live in our front bushes.

    To make me feel a little better, he says, “It’s good you didn’t open the door. Maybe they cornered a snake.”

    Great. One more thing to add to the bevy of images feeding my nightmares, snakes on the front porch.

    He goes back to work and I try to go to sleep. Not likely.

    Now it’s four o’clock. I feel a little less hyped-up. I’ll turn off the computer, lay in my bed, and probably not sleep as I’m wondering if I’ll find a litter of kittens, dove carcass, or cottonmouth snake when I open the door tomorrow.

    Sweet dreams.
  • Don’t Desp-hair! It Will Grow Back

    So I was wrong…I look more like a Long-Haired Afghan than an English Sheep Dog. The proof is below:
    Either way, this still ain’t a Heidi Klum hair cut!

    Seriously want to vomit when I look at that picture. I’m only posting it so that people will laugh with me rather than at me. Right? Cause I swear I’m laughing.

    Luckily with a ton of hairspray and some inventive parts, I can sort of get my hair back to normal. Not like that’s a good thing. This post will act as a great reminder the next time I want to do something stylish with my hair. (Note: Smiles in all pictures are fake. Including the dog. You decided which one is the real dog).
  • Disast-hair

    This is Heidi Klum. Gorgeous right? Great eyes, great hair, great smile and of course, great body.
    This is an Old English Sheepdog. A loveable, precocious pet famous for its shaggy hair.
    Guess which one I look like? Yep, the sheepdog.

    Mind you, this should not be a surprise. Hair is so not my forte. I blow dry my hair a maximum of twice each week. Ponytails and buns are so much more functional. The humidity doesn’t mess up a ponytail and neither do children (most of the time).

    The evidence against changing my hairstyle started stacking up before I even walked into the salon.

    Exhibit A: My normal stylist wasn’t available for more than a month. Sarah totally would have talked my out of more layers. She knows all about my round-brushing deficiencies.

    Exhibit B: I explain to the stylist (who will remain anonymous for this post) that I want bangs. And she says, “OOOH! I’m totally envisioning Heidi Klum layers. They would totally accent your eyes!” Who’s going to say no to that?

    Exhibit C: Instead of combing, clipping and pinning my hair like most stylists do, she “mussed” it between each snip. Mussing is what you do to your younger brothers hair…sort of like a tender noogie.

    So the haircut was finished and I’m looking in the mirror thinking, “Okay. I can do this. Just a little roll-brushing and flat-ironing.” I’m pretty sure my dismay was evident because the stylist kept saying, “Seriously! It makes you look so SASSY!” Right. Cause I can pull off sassy.

    Exhibit D: I get home and Jamie looks at me and says, “It’s different.” Excellent observation, Love. “The stylist says it’s like Heidi Klum’s hair.” Jamie laughs hysterically. Literally, full-on belly laugh.

    The next morning I get up and proceed to put my hair into a ponytail. One small problem: When you have 800 layers you are required to A) use a gallon of hairspray to get it to stay up or B) use 800 bobbie pins to secure each layer to your head. I opted for the hairspray, which lasted for about an hour in the humidity. Awesome. Now my back-up hairstyle is not an option.

    Exhibit E: Blow-dried my hair for the first time this morning. And that was when I knew beyond a reasonably doubt that I AM NOT HEIDI KLUM. I actually worked with my hair for about 20 minutes (that’s an eternity for me) before I slipped on my sunglasses/headband and walked out the door.

    I figure that if I can’t round brush, flat-iron, pin down or hair spray my new layers, I can hide them under a pair of sunglasses or a baseball cap. Great. The next six weeks should be interesting.

    P.S. I also paid $125 for this disaster.
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