Thanks to everyone who wrote me about my last entry. I think I got five emails about this one, which is five more than I usually get, so I appreciate y’all’s comments and feedback. It’s really hard for me to know where my good intentions are, so it was nice to know that other people think about this sort of thing too.
Also I have now had two suggestions re: What To Get For A Tattoo: Nudibranch and some sort of book, either the kind you read or the kind you write in. A brief census of bellydance class yesterday yielded several votes in favor of some sort of marine invertebrate, with Octopus narrowly edging out Chambered Nautilus. I am also quite partial to the lovely and amazing Cuttlefish, but that sounds almost as funny as saying “nudibranch” aloud, so I don’t know. “Hey, what kind of a crazy body modification alternative lifestyle tattoo do you have there, Chiara?” “Uh, it’s some sort of cephalopod.” So I don’t know. I still am not so sure about the pain factor of this imaginary tattoo, so maybe I’ll go for something simple and relatively pain-free like a belly pierce. That can’t hurt too badly, can it? Oh, why am I lying. I think we all know I’m a big chicken and I’m not going to do anything that involves any sort of pain. I don’t wear makeup on a regular basis, and I’m going to get some ink permanently injected into my skin? Surely not.
Yesterday, though, I had one of those moment when you look in the bathroom mirror at work and go, “Is that what I really look like?” and the thought that that is, in fact, what you really look like, is enough to send a tiny chill down your spine. I want to lose eight hundred pounds and get a whole new wardrobe and a whole new face. I was at work, though, and there was nothing along those lines that I could really do, and so I called up my hair lady Zan (or rather, the person working the front desk at the salon) and asked if I could have an appointment, like, right that second. She didn’t have a spot for me so she said she’d put with another hair lady, Fay. I asked the person at the front desk if Zan would be mad at me if I saw another hair lady, and she said no, so I said okay. I had no idea, no idea, that Fay would end up having tri-colored waist-length heavy metal circa 1988 hair. I had no idea that she would have on brown and gold eyeshadow almost past her eyebrows. I did not know she would be wearing tight jeans and heels. Everyone else there, including my beloved Zan, is very cute and hip. Cute, hip knee length skirts. Cute, hip slides for summer, and boots for winter. Cute, hip earrings. I just had no idea.
I was a little afraid that Fay would transform me into Nikki Six or something, but instead she transformed me into Tracy Flick. She gave me a flip bob. I can’t work a flip bob, my friends. I’m not…I don’t…it just doesn’t work, okay? It just can’t be. I just sat there in horror as Fay did her thing. Zan was coloring someone else’s hair and I looked in her direction, desperately trying to make some sort of eye contact to beg her to save me from Anchorwoman Hair. She didn’t catch it, and I walked out of there with straightened, shortened hair, all flipped up at the ends. Fay! Why? Why did you blow-dry like that?
You’ll all be thrilled to know, however, that I rinsed all the goop out and put a teeny bit of cheap drugstore product that I got at the CVS on Key Biscayne, which bears a disturbing resemblance to truck stop lemon meringue pie—it’s that exact color—but which gets the job done, and today am back to my regular curly head. Just…less of it. I don’t know. I wanted to look kind of good today because this evening I’m going to a book club with Sundry and I’m going to meet several Seattle area journallers, including Peachy and Mrs. Roboto. I’m very nervous. It’s always strange to meet someone that you already sort of know from her journal…you don’t really know her, just what she wants you to read, but still, you might recognize a story she tells, or get a reference she makes, and feel as though you have some connection, but still have some nerves about it. I am positive everyone is going to be cuter and cooler and smarter than me. It’s almost guaranteed that everyone won’t have messed up their new nailpolish last night, and will have ironed their skirts a little better than I did. Sigh.
I do like the book we’re supposed to be discussing, though: The Botany of Desire. I got it for Christmas, so I’d read it before, and it’s just as good if not better the second time around. I love books like that; I guess you can call them pop science if you’re being mean (and you’re not, are you?) but I prefer to think of it as Science in Layman’s Terms…like, okay, I just want to read about a little evolutionary biology without having anything to do with organic chemistry, okay? Is that so wrong? I have a couple of animal books by Richard Conniff along these lines and I re-read them all the time. Good stuff. Anyway. I’m excited to meet some new (cooler, cuter, smarter, almost definitely less insecure) people, and happy that I like the book we’re supposed to discuss, but otherwise I am paralyzed by abject fear. I don’t know if my hair and I are up to it.