Thanks For Nothing

While looking a spray can of Halloween hair color:

Me: I wish these things had a picture of the actual hair color on them.

Stranger Lady, pointing to a different row of cans than the one in my hand: The tops of the cans show you the color.

Me: Right.

Charlie: Except this brand, all the caps are black.

Me: My point.

Now, I have three issues with this woman butting in, showing off her point-out-the-obvious muscles.  1- She was wrong.  The bottles we were looking at all had black caps no matter the color of the spray.  So by her indication, the bottle advertising blue spray would be as black as the bottle advertising red spray.  Hmmm.  2-  I HAVE EYES.  And a brain.  I can figure out that the pretty caps indicate the color contained in the can.  3- The cans with the color-indicative caps, I would assume, would look different on your hair than on the bottle cap.  I think the colored caps simply say to the consumer, "I'm yellow" or red or blue or pink.  I don't think they're trying to tell me, "Your hair will look exactly like this color on my cap, " and I care more about how it will look on my head than on the bottle.

And to wrap up our beautiful experience at Longs this afternoon, I believe I was overcharged for a witch hat I bought.  I was really pissed off about it, but decided not to make a big stink over a dollar or 2.  After all, I'm a witch, not a bitch.

An Open Letter to Parents, Guardians, and Other As Written From The Perspective of Another Parent

Dear People,

Please remember that volunteering to chaperone a field trip does not mean "hang out with your child."  If you enjoy spending time as a family at the zoo, theatre, aquarium, etc, might I recommend doing so during your free time.  Field trips enhance curriculum.  What benchmark are you meeting by allowing your child to wander from the group to go buy a soft drink at the snack bar?  Yes, that's what I thought.  You might think it's wonderfully independent of your child to take her thirst into her own hands, and you might be right.  But getting lost during school time in this popular tourist attraction isn't independence, it's trouble.

I would also like to point out that buying a soft drink for all the children in the class doesn't make the situation better.  Not only have you just offended half the other parents, but you may have just creeped out a few, too.  Kudos to you, though, for thinking of everyone and not just your Princess.  More parents should be conscious of the other 4 students in their group so as not to unknowingly misplace them or allow harm to come to them.  The look on your face isn't encouraging-- did you already lose one of those pesky students?  They can be quite tricksy, I know, especially since so many of them are short and stuff.

Which is why we have rules and a written agenda!  Clever, those teachers, eh?  Don't forget to review the schedule prior to leading your group into somewhere NOT found on the map.  Oh, and the indicated time to meet the bus to return to school isn't a suggestion no matter how much time it took YOU to drive the distance in your car just last weekend.

Non-chaperones, I haven't forgotten about you!  I know it's hard sometimes, but could you pretty please not accidentally show up at the field trip?  You just happened to be at the aquarium on field trip day before it was even open to the public, sack lunch and camera in hand?  TERRIFIC!  Unfortunately, we already have an adequate number of parent volunteers and do not need another pair of meddling, I mean HELPING hands.  Also, showing up unannounced (or otherwise) in the middle of the field trip is not the wonderful treat you think it is and can potentially disrupt a perfectly well-functioning learning experience for every student.

I thank you, Parents, Guardians, and/or Other for your understanding.  When in doubt, please employ Common Sense and/or Common Courtesy.  If you have any questions, feel free to delay volunteering until you understand all safety guidelines and expectations.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Please Don't Lose My Kid Or Get Her Hurt

Remember

In looking for old videos and pictures of Keala, I had to fire up my old desktop computer.  Before I bought my laptop in the spring of 2010, I made a backup of my desktop on the external hard drive that Shani gave me.  Before THAT,  I had been making copies of my picture files onto discs.  I deleted some pictures off the computer, but not all.  I couldn't tell you the last time I turned on the desktop, but I thought that today it would be the fastest route to finding these images of Keala.

Not that the computer helped any.  I landed up using Charlie's laptop to browse the photos on the external HD and then discovered that nothing was in order. While I had moved everything onto the HD, I hadn't done it in any meaningful way.  Nothing was organized so I didn't actually find anything with Keala in it, but luckily I had these pictures on my laptop of her at camp 2010.

Had I anticipated the eventual need to dig up old photos, I might have paid more attention the last time I used that computer.  I might have organized the files, I might not have dismantled all its peripherals, and if I hadn't done any of that, maybe I should have at least written some shit down.  Because I had a new computer, because I was more than eager to abandon the old, crappy one, I was less than attentive when I said goodbye  to it.

And there it is, my friends.  Did I know that camp would be the last time I'd see Keala?  I'm a little ashamed to say that I didn't even give it much thought.  Though we weren't friends, we'd met and talked a few times because of Jonah.  She seemed to be an intelligent and kind person.  Strong.  Because we already knew she had been battling cancer and working and everything.  But despite the disease and entirely because of her positive attitude, I assumed we'd see her again.  Then I look at those pictures and I wish I'd paid more attention.  I wonder if I had hugged her goodbye.  I remember sitting around the campfire and talking to her that night after she and Jonah and Josh took the kids crabbing.

Had I been paying attention, I would have hugged her.  I would have said goodbye.  It wouldn't be a blur.  Your rational mind tells you that you'll see your friends/kids/co-worker/terrier again, so you feel a little silly for living in the moment/telling people how you feel.  But nothing's guaranteed, folks.  Just remember.

Be Here Now.

Heroes

I was flipping through a recent issue of The Week magazine.  A blurb about Lea Michele caught my eye, and I read it in its entirety.  Just something about how she's an unlikely success because she wasn't discovered by Disney and because she has that nose.  Good for her, I say!

And then I saw the little column beneath that blurb where Brad Pitt is called a hero because while shooting his latest film, he stopped mid-scene to help a woman (an extra, I believe) who fell from being trampled by other people.  I think the article even mentioned that the woman must have been so surprised to see Brad Pitt helping her up.  Why?  Because he displayed humanity?

That this incident even warrants a couple of paragraphs in a magazine is ridiculous.  A human being acting like a considerate, humane human being?  No way.  I'll bet that only happens every day.  I don't know if the story is supposed to be that Brad Pitt was nice enough to help a lowly non-Angelina Jolie lookalike, or that a person helped *gasp* another person.  I do, however, agree that Mr. Pitt was a hero, but only in the sense that all humanely behaving humans are heroes.  Like the librarians who let me renew books a second time when the policy states a person can only renew once.  Like the woman who gave a stranger an extra 50 cents to pay for her purchases yesterday at the garage sale.   Like the child who runs out to meet the car and asks to help carry the groceries in.  They're all heroes.

Pretty Girl Rock

One of the more fantastic husbandly qualities my husband possesses is his ability to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world.  Not just the only girl for him, but the only worth being with, worth looking at, worth knowing.  And while I know this to be false (in general, not necessarily for HIM), it can be the most reassuring and lovely feeling especially since it's grounded not in how I look, but WHO I AM.

The other day we were leaving the library when I said that I was glad Lilly cut my hair because the natural waves in my hair give it so much more body and texture.  It makes me feel pretty.  To which my awesome husband did not respond until an inappropriate amount of time passed (he was looking at a book, after all) and he said, "I always think 'pretty' when I look at you." And I believe him.

Charlie hasn't ever seemed to base my beauty in how I look or how much I weigh or what I wear.  There is  a picture I have that was taken of me and Noah just after Noah was born.  I was young and thin and Matt used to say to people who saw the photo, "Didn't Kanani look good?"  Notice the past tense.  A husband shouldn't speak of his wife in such a way, but what was worse to me was that he actually THOUGHT of me that way.

Anyway, this blog is getting away from me.  The important thing here isn't how my husband makes me feel, although that's a wonder all it's own.  It's that I know I need to do that for myself.  My friend Meredith recently posted a blog (to which I hope she doesn't mind me linking) about what we see on the outside and what's going on inside, and it served as another reminder that I should love myself no matter what.  If Charlie, who is obviously not me, can love me for me, why shouldn't I?  No matter the size.  Meredith's blog poses several questions you might ask yourself to perhaps remind yourself that the exercise is more than the vanity of looking good.  It's about getting healthy and feeling better as a whole. And though the small, most insignificant part of my brain wants so badly to be skinny again because it equates skinny with looking good and being loved and accepted by others, I really just want to be healthy.

But even beyond that, I wish I could love and accept myself exactly as is.  I wish it were just and only about being healthy and having a more active lifestyle.  It should be about the quality of my character.  It should be about how well I love others and how I can help to make life better for all of us, even if on the small but totally relevant level of family and not necessarily the world.  I am, after all, still me no matter the size of my shorts.  I still matter no matter what store I shop at.  It's not that I'm suggesting that I should never challenge myself.  What I'm suggesting is that the reasons matter sometimes more than the outcome.  That perhaps a cadre of questions similar to those Meredith poses should be created to measure how accurately we see ourselves and love ourselves, as is.  And maybe those questions, and the eventual questions your answers will raise, are equally important in gauging our ideas of personal fitness.