Monthly Archives: June 2014

Vanity, thy name is Jane

strawberry blondI was a strawberry blonde for twenty years and loved it.  People called me the redhead and I loved that as well.   However, a few years after I passed forty, I decided it was time to go back to my real color, whatever that was.  I’d had boring light brown hair before I became a redhead.  My thought was I needed to know what my real color was now and how much gray I had and I should do this while I still looked pretty good.  I figured the older I got, the more I might fight old lady with red hairlooking old, the more I might want to cling to my red hair and rapidly vanishing youth.  Didn’t want to become one of those elderly women with pink hair and heavily rouged cheeks who wore white go-go boots.

I figured my hair had darkened over the years so I bought a box of dark brown hair dye and, over the weekend, went back to brown.

The reaction was funny.  If you know thirteen-year-olds, you’ll understand this.  When I walked into my eighth-grade Spanish class, the students didn’t look at my face.  Their mouths dropped open and their eyes were riveted to my hair for the entire fifty minutes.  Usually noisy and chatty, they were silent–aghast or horrified.

My friends said, “You had such beautiful hair.  Why did you dye it brown?”   I was amazed they believed my hair was natural.  For goodness sakes, I have brown eyes!  And there were times that I didn’t get around to coloring it and had half-an-inch of roots showing.  I’d thought everyone knew I wasn’t a natural redhead.

When I became a brunette, I had a little gray which relieved the dark brown my hair had become.   LIttle by little, of course, I got more gray and less brown.   Recently, I’ve felt very washed out because my skin is so pale–perfect for a redhead–and my hair is so white.  I tried bronzer and rouge and darker makeup but none of that helped.

Some people look good with gray hair.  I don’t.George Clooney

I decided to change my hair color, only a little and just around my face .  Truly didn’t want to become a brunette.  People might notice.   I found a temporary hair color that came in what looked like a large mascara wand.  Perfect.  Yesterday I opened the package and brushed the dark brown on the gray around my face, not too much. Merely enough so I didn’t look washed out.  Looked pretty good.

A few hours later, I reached up to touch my hair.   It was hard and had dried in clumps.   When I removed my hand, my fingers were brown.   I rubbed my hair with a Kleenex.  It turned brown.  I ran into the bathroom to look at my hair which had turned a garish russet color.  I no longer looked washed out.  I looked as slutty (hope this word doesn’t offend you but I couldn’t think of another way to say it)  as a woman my age can.   I immediately took a shower and watched the water turn brown.

Fortunately, it all came out.  I do not believe I will try this again.

Have you made any mistakes due to vanity?  I’d love to know.

 

 

Odd things people believe

red houseI watch HGTV shows a lot, especially programs about people looking for a new house.   Several things people have said amaze me because I never realized people thought this way.

1)  THE BATHROOM  In a few shows, people looking through oddly flipped homes find a bathroom next to the kitchen and say with great disgust, “A bathroom next to the kitchen.  That’s horrible.”   Now, I’m not the greatest housekeeper in the world but there is nothing in my bathroom–other than the litter box which I keep very clean–that has disgusting stuff in it.  According to these people, disease emanates from a bathroom and will infect anything prepared in the kitchen, leaving venom and disease on every dish of food.   If that is so, why would having it down the hall from the kitchen make any bathroomdifference?  That miasma of infection would just drift down the hall and–bammo–right into the kitchen and the food.  Might even attack whoever is in the living room and whatever is on the dining room table first.

In another show, a woman said, “I don’t like the toilet next to the shower.” Does she not know which is which?   Did no one teach her how to use a toilet properly or how to get into the shower?

Perhaps there should be no toilets in houses because they’re obviously the source of every illness known to a family.

In addition, I’m very proud of myself.    As mentioned earlier, I’ve never considered myself to be a great housekeeper but my bathrooms are so clean I have no worries about a plague.

2.    A woman looked around the master bedroom of a house she was touring and said, “There’s no place to get dressed.  I don’t like to dress get dressedin the same place I sleep.”   What?   I’ve never lived any place where I didn’t dress where we slept unless it was in of those houses where I kept my clothes in a closet in the guest room.

Which brings me to the reason for this blog:  we aren’t all alike.  We have different outlooks and backgrounds and educations and lifestyles and . . . pretty much everythings.    Yes, there are many beliefs and feelings that united us but we’ve approached those through different paths.  Can’t we accept that people and cultures are different and start from there?  I’d never force anyone to live in a house that has a bathroom off the kitchen although I’ve known friends who’ve survived that okay.   But shouldn’t we be able to start with a fact–people like indoor plumbing–and go from there?    We can discuss topics like why people like having bathrooms and where they should be and what’s the problem with a bathroom near the kitchen without calling each other unclean or doo-doo heads.   We learn from each other.  We hear different ideas and can bounce them around in our brains and toss the conversation back and forth without infuriating each other.

The fact that we don’t all think the same is a joy of diversity. I learn from you.   I hope you learn from me and we accept and change or understand why our opinion is the right one for me but not for you.  Sadly, we don’t.  The fact that we refuse to listen to the other person is a loss to all.  The fact that instead of discussing, we call each other names must make George and Ben and John and those who faced great danger to start this nation to sob.

Congratulations, grads!

felicitaciones2Yes, I know I’m late with this but I’m going to a party for a 2014 graduate this afternoon and began to reflect on graduation.

I don’t have good memories of my graduations.   I was one of 428 in high school and sat between two guys I’d never seen before.   I graduated from college in January and didn’t return for the June ceremony.  My friends tell me the speaker was a famous physicist and they didn’t understand a word he said after, “Congratulations.”    Nor did I attend the HUGE ceremony when I received my master’s from the  University of Louisville.  However, I promised I’d attend after I earned my M.Div. in a class of thirty.    Unfortunately, because I’d taken my classes mostly in the summer to complete the degree, no one recognized me in the pictures of the class and identified me as Hilda someone.

However, I’ve attended many more.  As a high school teacher, I always into the futurefelt graduation was a celebration of attainment, meeting the goal.    Many time, I was one of many in the audience.  In Fort Bend County, TX, I always volunteered to escort the class forward.   In other schools, attendance by faculty was required but, again, I never minded that–well, except for the times it was held on the football field and we processed in over wet soil and were attacked by flying insects as well as various pollens that had us scratching and sneezing.

But with every one of those, I felt such pride, both in the completion of all those years of study and in the awareness that young people I’d taught were going out into the world, speaking fluent Spanish, I hoped, or perhaps that they’d find a use for the language.

So to all those who graduated, from Rogene and Becky to Sam and Luke and today to Jon, congratulation and Godspeed.

 

 

My obsession with words

POWer of words aI love words.   I roll them around in my mouth and taste each.    When I hear a new word, it tickles my ears and delights me.   Words carry history with them and emotion.   They are not formed only of letters but of  feelings and experience and much more.

My obsession began when I was in eighth grade.  In English class, the dictionary 2teacher would leave a dictionary on the desk in front of each row so we could look up a word and check spelling while we wrote a theme.   I usually finished my theme early and would spend those extra minutes in that front desk, reading the dictionary, learning new words, savoring them.

No wonder I majored in English and Spanish in college:  new words in two languages.    I loved the study of language, the history of words.  I could go on forever talking about root word, about how, in Spanish, words that began in F centuries ago changed to the letter H.  Consider yourselves lucky that I’m not going to discuss the verb satisfacer and how it’s conjugated.

My favorite word is from Spanish:  carcajada which means a deep belly laugh.    It sounds like what it means and has such beautiful rhythm.

words I loveI understand not all people love words as I do.  When I got excited about a word in Spanish and attempted to explain its origen or uses or something equally fascinating to my classes,  students looked at me as if I were absolutely nuts.   And, yes, I may be.

Do you have a word you like?  Perhaps because of meaning or sound?  Please share that.  I’d love to know and I won’t feel so alone.