Small talk

During the past week, I had very similar conversations with an assistant at my physical therapist’s office and my hairdresser. For some reason, neither woman wanted me to sit in silence as she ultra-sounded my shoulder or cut my hair.

I prefer silence to being asked by someone I just met if I have any kids. Come to think of it, my acupuncturist (with whom I have broken up) asked me the same thing when I told her I went to Disney World. My response, naturally, is, “No, but we have a 1-year-old German shepherd.”

I wouldn’t mind if they then asked me tons of questions about my dog, or told me stories about theirs, but the follow-up question is usually, “Do you plan to have kids?”

How deeply personal. Especially since in most cases, the asker has kids, so it seems rude to say, “Oh God no, why would I want to ruin a perfectly lovely life?” Which isn’t really how I feel, but it’s just not a conversation I want to get into with my hairdresser, acupuncturist or assistant to the physical therapist.

I have the same problem with my married girlfriends, whose weddings are precisely the reason why I don’t want to have one. “But, you always wanted to get married!” they exclaim, thinking I’m sacrificing my girlish dreams to be with Rob. How can I tell them, “Yeah, but then I was in your wedding and I realized how pointless the whole thing is. Also, you’re in a lot of debt, and I own a house…”

I digress.

In the physical therapy setting, since it was my first session, I would have preferred for the woman to make conversation perhaps by explaining what the ultra-sound was for, because for a second I thought she was going to tell me the sex of the baby gestating in my shoulder.

I know that hairdressers like to chat, or they think we expect them to chat, but I really felt like mine was having to work pretty hard to keep a conversation going with me, and if it’s that hard, honey, just give up; I must not feel like talking. I tried asking her about herself, but that didn’t really get us anywhere either.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…I fired the acupuncturist because it wasn’t doing much for me, whereas the doctor-prescribed physical therapy has worked wonders already. I’m like, Duh! Why the hell did I think acupuncture was the answer? (Because physical therapy didn’t occur to me. Guess that’s why doctors go to med school.)

Wrong, wrong, wrong

Critics who pan “The Brave One” are simply wrong. Contrived? No. Boring? Absolutely not. Morally ambiguous? Sure, but who says that’s a bad thing?

One review calls it a “revenge fantasy,” and I think that’s an appropriate description of the genre. (Spoiler ahead, but not of the ending.)

Let me say first that I find Jodie Foster fairly unbelievable in romantic roles, so I was sort of relieved to know that her lover was going to die early on. But then, I couldn’t believe it, Terrence Howard became a possible love interest. And I bought it.

The film reminded me of “Unbreakable,” the very underrated movie by the overrated M. Night Shyamalan. It’s like a comic book movie set in the real world. Except it’s still a movie world, so let’s allow for some suspension of disbelief, shall we?

No, probably one could not shoot people in very public places and then walk calmly away without getting caught or noticed. And New York probably isn’t that senselessly violent. But what if it were and what if you could? Wouldn’t you kind of want to?

Honestly, there was only one thing I didn’t like about the movie, and that was the sex scene montage blended in with the hospital sequence. As described in this review.

Follow up

A few things I didn’t have time to type up yesterday before I headed out to the state fair. For work. (This is the third time I’ve been to this fair by myself, but usually it’s to see Weird Al. Rob’s taking me to see Weird Al on my birthday next month, but I was kinda bummed to discover that Weird Al actually played the fair this week, the night before I was there. And I could have gone on any day.)

  • Huge disappointment re: my hair. None of Yahoo! Avatar’s hairstyles are quite right. Except the one with the purple hat. And it’s not raining yet, but the poncho/rubber boot look just seemed appropriate.
  • In the first “after” photo, what you see on my shoulder is an Aladdin band-aid, covering up one of my itchy mole scabs. The hairstylist admired this, and my Aurora/Belle/Cinderella watch and then after I went on about having recently been to Disney World, I paid with a Snow White check. What a freak I must have seemed.
  • I really should wear lipstick when having my picture taken.

Too much of good thing = bad

As much as I enjoyed wearing my hair in pigtails during our vacation, my hair is just too long.

I don’t have the patience to blow it dry and wind up braiding it every day anyway. Beauty magazines’ll tell you, if it only looks good up, your hair is too long.

Another thing that bothers me, even more than having my hair stay wet most of the day, is the sensation of a strand that has shed and hangs longer than the rest of my hair, tickling my arm. And the long hairs themselves on my sleeves and furniture. It’s interfering with my enjoyment of the dog hair all over everything I own.

So I’m getting a drastic haircut today.

After picture to come. Here’s the before. Note the kinks from wearing it in a braid.

Oh what this hair could be if I had a personal stylist to blow it dry every day…

Neck and neck

I couldn’t bear to go to my actual medical provider just to have her say, “Huh. You should try icing your neck,” so I made an appointment to have a mole sliced off my back. At least that way I’d have accomplished something.

The offending mole on my shoulder was non-threatening, but had a way of getting scratched and kinda bugs me. The doc was like, “Hey, let me slice off these five other offenders too.” Okey dokey. It didn’t hurt, but the scabs are sort of itchy now.

And she referred me to a physical therapist. I really hope this involves some kind of massage, and not just, “Stretch your neck 65 times a day.” Because who has time for that?

To have seen what I’ve seen

Oh, woe. Poor little me. Life was so much fun before Disney World. Now, how can it compare?

On the plus side, there was no Isis in Orlando. The first couple of days were rough. I kept wondering what she was doing and whether she was worried we weren’t coming back. Then it became clear that she was having a delightful time with Rob’s folks. Then she took off after a deer and Rob’s mom had to chase after her in a car. I kinda wish I’d been there, just to see the athletic prowess of my dog. I’m glad it happened. It was like an “I told you so” to keep an eye (and a leash) on her.

So we reunited and cuddled all weekend. And now she’s in her crate and I’m at my desk, in mine. Rob shaved his head bald against my wishes and I’m moving ahead with my plan to chop off about 12 inches of my hair. As revenge.

Wondering if the sheer weight of my hair is contributing to my neck problems. Or if I actually have whiplash from riding Expedition Everest three times. (I’m wearing my Yeti T-shirt today). All I know is that I napped a lot this weekend, and it hurts most when I first wake up, and last night before bed I felt generally achy and weak. This was after eating a filet of salmon I didn’t really like.

Fish are friends, not food

OK. So I’ve been eating salmon. It’s served at all my work functions, and just seemed like the thing to do. My intent was only to eat work-related salmon, but now my acupuncturist tells me that I’m not eating enough protein.

Guess that doesn’t come as a great shock, as I consider a baked potato to be a perfectly balanced dinner, but I didn’t realize it could affect my body’s ability to heal a sore neck. So I’m reintroducing other kinds of seafood, such as shrimp and tuna. Have to say, it did improve my ability to eat well while at Disney World. For instance, my lunch options one day were ice cream or a tuna sandwich.

I wasn’t too disturbed by eating fish. I don’t really mind watching a salmon be chucked into a boat and thrash around for breath. Unlike the decapitated elk I recently watched being butchered.

But then I saw the fish farm on the “Living with the Land” ride at Epcot. Where they quote “There is no governing nature except by obeying her.” Oh yeah, so why are you trying to grow hydroponic tomatoes on trees?