hair dryers

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Seven for Sunday

Even when everything is awful, I have so much to be grateful for. Thank you to Elisabeth for driving that point home for me this past month, with her F.I.G. Collective.

Saturday, February 22: My husband and I undertook a very tedious house project I have been wanting to do since we moved in. (Going through all the paint in our basement, removing the paint that we will never need to the garage where we can let it dry out and then finally dispose of it, and moving the heavy, hideous shelving units on which the paint has been living so I can clean behind it. It was AWFUL, and it’s done, and I am very thankful I don’t have to think about it anymore.

Sunday, February 23: A very lovely friend has arranged an adventure for the two of us, as a birthday gift, and I am so touched by her generosity and also excited to see her. (We have an earlier adventure planned, which I am looking forward to as well. One adventure is food-focused and the other is book-focused, and I think you know food and books are two of my favorite things.) Sunday also came with a bonus dinner out with my parents. They took us to a restaurant we’d never been to before: I had delicious filet mignon and shared a scrumptious crème brûlée with my husband and kid, and the company and conversation were a balm against my (our collective???) current uptick in anxiety.

Monday, February 24: My local writing friend and I went for a nice long walk, during which we discussed all the non-writing concerns and triumphs in our lives, and then we headed to my house to write. I started our writing session doing exactly what I have promised myself I won’t do, which is rereading old chapters and editing them as I go. This story, as every story seems wont to do, has meandered away from where I originally thought it was going, so some of the early chapters are just plain wrong. It feels impossible to leave them like that! And yet this is some of the quicksand in which I get deeply and irretrievably stuck: I keep rewriting and rewriting and never finish the writing portion of the story, which, as you might agree, is pretty crucial. My friend and I checked in with each other after our designated sprint, and I admitted to her what I’d been doing, and she very gently and very kindly asked me if I could make a choice to leave those old chapters alone and write something new. It was a very simple suggestion, and a technique I am familiar with from parenting, and my initial reaction was resistance. But she looked at me without judgment and I looked at her, and I thought, okay, yes, I can do this. I can go back to the other chapters once this draft is done. And I ended up writing nearly 3,000 new words in new chapters. I feel like I am not conveying properly how kind and also freeing her suggestion was. I feel so grateful to have her as a friend and as a writing partner.

Tuesday, February 25: After my stellar writing day on Monday, I had time to make cupcakes. And I was very grateful on Tuesday to have fresh cupcakes to eat. But my main source of gratitude Tuesday was spending the afternoon with my parents. My dad I hung out and talked about finances and politics and health. My mom and I looked at her latest paintings. The three of us watched at least a dozen squirrels tear around the lawn and one of their trees. Then we went for a walk and ended up at the woodshop where my dad showed me his latest carpentry project. I hope I never take for granted that I can just pop over to their house and chat with them for a few hours. I hope we have many, many afternoons just like that in our future. Okay, maybe my time with my parents is tied for top spot, because I spent the evening with my husband and kid. My husband picked up the kiddo from school, which is always a treat for me (and for both of them), and then they picked up Mediterranean takeout for dinner, which we ate together around the table. It has historically been very difficult for the three of us to eat dinner together, but my husband and I are making more of an effort to make it happen, and I love it every time.

Wednesday, February 26: This was a hair washing day, and I was for once excited to wash my hair because – YOU GUYS – my husband got me the dryer/straightener of my dreams. It is truly magical. I have straightened my kid’s relentlessly wavy hair twice so far, and my own twice as well, and I love it so very much. Moreso than my gratitude for the hair dryer itself: I am deeply touched that my husband a) heard me when I was discussing the various merits and disadvantages of replacement hair dryers and b) that he would be on board with such an extravagance and c) that he would buy it FOR me as a surprise. (I hope this doesn’t sound too much like “I like my husband because he gets me fancy gifts” – I’m more thankful for the deliberate thoughtfulness. I trust you understand.)

Thursday, February 27: Engie emailed me to tell me that one of my all-time favorite books is going to be a movie! She and I agreed that the star – a Great Dane named Bing – is reason enough to watch the movie.

Friday, February 28: I am delighted that the month, the week, and my FIG collection efforts are all ending on the same day! So fun when things line up like that. I am also grateful for the penguin photos I keep getting from a friend who is in Antarctica right now. Nothing brightens a day quite like getting a text and finding out it’s another photo of PENGUINS.

This exercise of gratitude has been worthwhile, necessary, and more difficult than I anticipated. I have so much good in my life, and I don’t know why it can be so hard sometimes to find the glimmers amid the darkness. I strive to be more like Nicole, and devote regular time to giving thanks for the things I take for granted every day: clean water, electricity, abundant food, good health, a roof over my head, a safe place to walk, a loving family, wonderful friends. If this month has taught me anything, achieving that goal takes – like anything worthwhile – effort.

Thank you, Elisabeth, for leading this practice of gratitude. Thank you to everyone who participated, and whose FIGs brightened many of my days all month long.

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Nothing Says Valentine’s Day Like Shopping for New Hair Dryers

It has been an extremely challenging parenting week around here. Let me be clear: Carla is a fantastic kid and I love her with all my heart and feel so lucky to be her mom. And also, a lot of the time, I feel completely unfit to parent her. Yes, yes, I know – we’ve got the bases of food, shelter, and love covered, so we’re already ahead of the game. But I spend a lot of time, especially when things are tricky, feeling like I am doing her a grave disservice by being her primary source of guidance. (My husband is a wonderful father to whom parenting seems to come much more naturally/with less anxiety; he is just, by nature of his job, not with her as often as I am. And, much as I’d LOVE to, I can’t simply direct my child to wait for her father to come home to be parented, you know?) (Or CAN I?????)

My husband, after I’d leaked tears all over him immediately upon his arrival home from work yesterday, said kindly that he thinks every parent feels this way. I am pretty sure some of us (cough cough me) are simply inept. Developmentally appropriate challenges or not, I feel like I am flailing around without any idea how to help my kid.

Anyway, I am going to distract myself by turning to a problem I CAN solve, maybe, which is that I need a new hair dryer. 

My now-dead hair dryer was this medieval torture-looking device by Drybar  and I really liked it. It made my hair smoother and less frizzy than the standard Conair I use as a backup. I could operate it one-handed, which left my other hand free to turn the pages in my book or choose invariably wrong answers in my daily French lesson. I also think it tamed my wavy hair much better than a regular hair dryer, which always seems to leave a few ripples near the crown of my head. In fact, on days when my hair was being particularly accommodating, I didn’t even need to use a straightener.

When I bought it, I had never spent more than $50 on a hair dryer, and it seemed so ridiculously expensive. But now that I am considering a new hair dryer, I see that it is quite reasonable. In terms of pricey hair dryers, of course. I could just use AIR, which is FREE.

A very good friend of mine – and a person with what I consider to possess the platonic ideal hair – said that this combo straightener/dryer, while spendy, is worth every penny because it dries and straightens simultaneously, no need for a separate straightening device. I mean, if it would transform my hair into hers, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Like, a horrified, “am I really spending this much money on a hair dryer” arrhythmic heartbeat, but still. However, I suspect that no hair implement could ever perform that magic. Her hair is supernaturally beautiful.

If I’m going for brand name, there is the slightly less-expensive Dyson… but I have no idea what superpowers it claims and I feel too exhausted by, you know, everything, to look into it.

Drybar also has a straightening hair dryer, MUCH more reasonably priced than the Dyson.

Or maybe I just need a good ol’ Revlon dryer/brush combo for $37.

Of course, I could go in the complete other direction and get this $720 beauty that Sarah has heard great things about. 

What are you using to dry your hair? 

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House Guest Hosting and Philosophies of Personal Space

The other day my mind was wandering from topic to topic as minds do, and somehow ended up back in summer of 2000 when I decided I was destined to become a lawyer and my mother (a lawyer) decided that I needed some intervention more data points. So she sent me to California to spend some time with my aunt and uncle (both lawyers) to get a sense of whether or not it was the right field for me.

While I was there – touring their offices and going to court with my aunt’s brother (uncle in-law?) – I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s beautiful house in Beverly Hills. The guest room turned out to serve double duty as a TV-watching room for my three cousins. I have no idea how old they were at the time; whatever ages are known for Peak Rambunctiousness. But I remember very clearly that it caused me a great deal of angst to have them eating snacks and jumping around on my bed.

I am a very private person with a strong sense of personal boundaries, not to mention an introvert who needs – NEEDS – time alone to recover and recharge. And being around virtual strangers all day, learning about The Law in It’s Various Forms (my aunt did some sort of real estate law, my uncle did tax law, my uncle-in-law did litigation – I think; it didn’t really stick; clearly The Law was not my jam), away from home/college/familiar territory and routines meant that I was in severe need of my own space. So trying to grab a few minutes alone in my room, only to be bombarded by three noisy humans clambering all over one another was not especially fun. Not to mention feeling like my sheets would be full of goldfish crumbs or whatever they were snacking on/throwing at each other. Blech.

That experience really defined for me one of my personal Key Principles of Hosting: that your guest should have his/her own space. If I have a guest over, I will not for any reason go into the guest room. This is simple, because our guest room really has no purpose outside of baby clothing repository clean laundry dumping ground Guest Room. On the rare occasions during which we have guests, I want them to feel like they truly have a place to call their own.

(Sidebar: Other people don’t feel this way, I acknowledge. I have been a guest in a home where the guest room has a Working Closet, and the hostess feels comfortable coming in to retrieve clothing from that closet whenever she needs to. Which I get! It is her house! But it still makes me uncomfortable. [However, I also come from a place of not wanting people to be in my bedroom EVER, and this woman is comfortable popping into my bedroom to look in the full-length mirror or to borrow my hairdryer from my personal bathroom without asking.] [There is a hairdryer IN THE GUEST BATHROOM!] [Also, many people BRING THEIR OWN HAIRDRYERS when they travel!!!] [People have different comfort levels and different boundaries and different expectations.] [My blood pressure is rising. Kittens. Birds bathing in puddles. Gentle rain. Babies sleeping with their rears in the air.])

The problem is that we have two bathrooms. I mean, this is great, right? One bathroom for me and my husband, one for our guest. But… the non-master bathroom is Carla’s bathroom.

When we have guests, I have tried to be conscious of the Shared Bathroom issue. Instead of leaving Carla’s foam letters and numbers all over the tub as we do on a normal night, I would put them away in the closet. But our guests were still sharing a bathroom with her.

And maybe that’s… not in line with my Hosting Philosophy? Maybe we should have Carla share OUR bathroom the next time guests stay here (which, at the rate we host people, could be in five years)?

I guess this question just popped out at me when I was thinking back with such displeasure at having to share my bedroom with my cousins. Have I been making guests feel uncomfortable by having them share a bathroom with Carla?

Of course, it probably depends a great deal on the guest. But I think if it were ME, staying at someone else’s house, I would want my own space.

This is why I plan to mainly stay at hotels. But the topic of hotels is a whole different post. (Sometimes it is not practical. At my parents’ house, for instance, where the nearest hotel is many miles away. Or at my in-laws’ house, where they have an entire separate WING for guests and the nearest hotel costs $500 a night.)

I would be very interested in how other people approach hosting and guesting. Where do you stow guests at your house? What’s the bathroom situation like? What kind of expectations do YOU have for your situation when you stay with someone else?

And I have Strong Feelings about other aspects of hosting/guesting, but for now I am trying to stick very closely to Issues of Personal Space.

Sigh. I feel like I should qualify things – like I need to say, “Of course, I know this all sounds spoiled and picky! And if someone is kind enough to open her home to me, I should be gracious and grateful for whatever the accommodations are!” And YES. Of COURSE. My dear friend Ilse has invited me and Carla and my husband to her house this summer, and we are going. But Ilse has no guest room, so we’d end up either displacing one of her daughters or on the floor of the living room, and there’s only one bathroom. That situation would make me so uncomfortable, it wouldn’t be worthwhile. So we already have our hotel BOOKED.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that MY hosting/guesting philosophies are purely a result of MY personality. And I am DEEPLY INTERESTED in how other types of people see and handle the same kinds of situations.