Be Amazed

My family and I know better than most that life can change in the blink of an eye. You know, burying small children and pulling chisels out of eyes and that sort of thing.

Yet I am constantly surprised and amazed by the fragility and beauty our lives hold, even during our most mundane moments.

The sheer intricacy of our body's biology working every second of the day to allow us to take our children to badly made comedies or make an arse out of one's self while proving to a bunch of ten year olds that this momma can bowl just as well as that fat dude two lanes over who throws strike after strike (I sooo totally sucked but at least my ass looked cuter than his as I bent over); is awe-inspiring when you stop to think about it.

I have stopped to think about it. A lot. I don't know if it's because I bought the kids a bunch of books about the marvels of the human body, or because I miss my son more than usual or because someone dear to me recently had a severe stroke.

I can't stop imagining this sweet lady complaining about being tired and going to take a sip of her tea only to drop it down the front of her shirt. I can imagine the frustration and annoyance she would have felt as she looked down and saw what a mess she made and then looked across the room to see the television blaring on as her favorite hockey team, the Edmonton Oilers, skating for their chance to play in the NHL playoffs.

I can see her sigh as she started walking to her room to change her shirt. She would have hated to take any time away from her precious hockey game. She may even have waited for a commercial. I can envision her slowly unbuttoning her shirt while wondering if her headache would ever go away.

What I'm having a hard time with is picturing her sprawled out, face down, half on the bed half on the floor, when her daughter came into to find out what was taking her so long to change her shirt.

I'm having a hard time picturing her being loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital.

I'm having a hard time blocking out the image of her slacken, twisted face as she barely clings to life.

I'm having a hard time coming to terms that I will never hear her laugh again or tease me about my hair or hold me tight and tell me again that God will help me through the pain.

In a blink of an eye, the mere whisper of a breath, her life and those who loved her, has inalterably changed. Forever. Her biology failed her. Like my son's failed. Like inevitably, yours and mine will fail us.

I had to walk past the floor where Bug spent most of the first couple of years of his life to say goodbye to my friend. Memories of forgotten moments with my son flooded my senses as I drew in the familiar scent of hospital air and viewed the same tired scenery I stared at for more hours of my life than I care to count.

I was at once saddened and overcome with gratitude to have this small sliver of my son's life back.

Until I had to walk past the same emergency room that took my son and never gave him back.

Then I was just another vacant soul wandering the empty halls of the hospital, trying to keep my grief in check and the tears well held behind my tired eyes.

I had to say goodbye to a dear friend who always had a smile and kind words for everyone. Life has once again changed in the blink of an eye.

The blink of her eye.

I'm taking today to spend with my kids. I'm going to revel in the constant beat of our hearts and other biological wonders pointed out in the books my children like to pore over at the breakfast counter.

I'm going to take the moment to be amazed.

Because life really is amazing. No matter what the next blink brings.

Hall of Fame Hair

The other day as I was getting my jacket on and getting ready to leave, my daughter came around the corner and asked me where I was going.

"I'm leaving to get my hair done," I answered as I bent over to slip on my shoes.

"Oh no!" She moaned.

"What do you mean, oh no?" I asked. I mean, there was no question about it; I was starting to resemble Medusa so I figured a haircut was a good thing.

"Frac! Mom's getting her hair done!" she called to her brother. Then Frac came racing into the room and skidded to a stop on his dirty socks.

"You're not going to do anything funny with it, are you?" he asked suspiciously.

I looked at my ego bruising spawn and then looked in the mirror by the door. I didn't look like a freak. Why were they suddenly acting like I just morphed into one? "Um, no. I was thinking of just getting a trim. But now that you think of it, maybe I'll shave it off."

"As if," Fric said as she rolled her eyes at me. (Sometimes I just want to take those pretty blue eyes and staple them into one place so she can't do the whole eye rolling snotty preteen routine with me.)

Instead I just asked her to define a funny hair cut.

Before I barely finished my sentence, Frac chimed in with "Any of the weird hairdo's you used to have before you decided to start growing out your hair. You're so pretty now." Clever boy, trying to sway me with compliments.

I patted my little minions on the head and hopped in the car to leave them wondering if I was going to pull a Dennis Rodman and come home with multicolour hair and MOM shaved into the side of my skull.

As I drove into the city I started thinking about my hairstyles of the past. Surely they weren't all bad, I thought to myself. When I got to the salon, my stylist, the incredible, amazing and most beautiful Carolyn asked if we were going to try something different.

"I think you'd look really great with that new bob Posh Spice is sporting," she said as she played with my hair.

I was tempted to try it, but my children's faces and their looks of horror flashed before my eyes. "No, let's just stick with a trim," I sighed. So boring.

When I came home my children peeked behind their hands that were plastered over their eyes and sighed audibly with relief when they saw I didn't do anything drastically different to my hair. "Nice 'do," they called as they resumed whatever game my entrance had interupted.

Still, I couldn't stop thinking about my hair choices in the past. I decided to crack open the photo albums and walk through time. Nothing like a little photographic evidence to prove my children wrong. That I am indeed, a high fashion guru, whose style choices are always bang on.

Snicker.

It started well enough. I was a cute kid, if I say so myself.

 
 

 

Of course, my mom was in charge of my hair style back then. 

Then I moved onto grade school pictures and remembered the time in grade five when my best friend Jen, cut off all her beautiful hair. I had to have the same cut. My mom pleaded with me to change my mind but I was adamant. I wanted a boy's cut.

 
 

 

My tenth birthday. I look like my son. 

So I may have made one bad choice. Big deal. I was ten. In the eyes of the law, I can't be held accountable for my actions.

Fast forward several years (it took that long to grow out) and I was 16, almost 17. It was a lovely day out on the Pacific ocean, just off Vancouver Island. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.

 
 

 

I pined for Boo the entire trip, only to break up with him a week after I got home. I blame my hair for my idiocy. 

Then I found this. Ouch. I was twenty. And decided I no longer liked being blonde. So I switched to strawberry blonde.

 
 

 

Reason #564 why my brother-in-law is not allowed to have a camera near me.

 

Which led me to this photo. It was Fric's first Christmas. Try and ignore my lovely 'do, and focus on the cute bald baby.

 
 

 

To think I conceived Frac with hair like that. My husband must have been blind.

 

Shortly after Frac was born, I decided hair maintenance was too much work with a thirteen month old and a newborn. So I made the decision to hack it all off, just days after giving birth.

 
 

 

>This is why you never hack off your hair when your hormones are in flux. You could look like me. 

I actually didn't mind the short hair, but my husband hated crawling into bed with a carrot-topped boy who sprayed milk from her boobs. He found it disconcerting. So I promised to try and grow it out.

 
 

 

That's when I discovered wings really can't help you fly. 

Turns out the length wasn't really the problem, but the colour. Boo wanted my blonde back. So I hacked it all off to try and get the orange out and start growing it from scratch.

I'll do anything to please my man. Heh heh.

 
 

 

I was going for a sexy brillo pad look. 

But I was easily bored and schizophrenic. When it finally got long, I quickly tired of the bland blonde and decided to switch things up by going dark.

 
 

 

Bug wouldn't come near me for weeks. Either would Boo. 

The brown wasn't rocking me. Turns out this gal has more fun blonde than brunette. But I was feeling bogged down by motherhood and heck, I was still young. I decided to try something more spastic trendy.

 
 

 

This is what my best friend calls my Oreo Cookie days. She's supportive like that. She had to hug me to keep from crying. 

Alright. That was definitely a bad choice. Compounded a few weeks later when my mother went out and got the exact same cut and colour. We were two Oreo's from the same package.

My husband threatened divorce if I didn't fix my hair so I hacked it all off and went back to blonde.

 
 

 

He was much happier with me. 

My hair was threatening to mutiny so I decided to let it be for a bit.

But then I got restless. Nothing like changing your hair to make you feel like a new woman.

 
 

 

I can't decide what's worse, the hair, the colour or my double chin. 

It was shortly after this photo was taken that my son died. I remember coming home from his funeral and looking into the mirror and not recognizing myself. I looked so empty. So sad.

I decided right then that I would never dye my hair another hideous colour again. I know it's ridiculous to correlate hair colour with death, but I'll never be able to be dark haired again with out being reminded of the worst time of my life.

So I stripped it and went back to my normal colour.

 
 

 

Much better. Even if I'm not sitting up straight and every guy in the room can see down my shirt. Heh. 

As I gathered up all the photo albums and put them back on the shelf, I realized my kids were right. I have made some facked up funny hair choices.

(Literally. The kids won't stop laughing as they look at these pictures. Ingrates.)

No wonder my husband lives in fear every time I tell him I am going to get my hair done.

Heh. That's half the fun of being a girl.

It's my hair and I'll do what I want to. And right now, I want to look, er, normal.

The Naked Truth

Yesterday, I had a parent-teacher meeting with my darling Fric's teacher. While she is excelling in her academics and frightening me with her emotional and intellectual wisdom, she has been having problems with bullying.

As in those mean little beyotches at school are making my first born miserable.

My first reaction is to storm into the school, grab them by their scrawny little throats, throw them onto the sticky floor, sit on them and threaten to gob into their faces until they beg for forgiveness and cry for mercy until I let them up and stuff them into their messy little lockers.

However, I think there may be some kinda law about that so I decided to go with the grown up route and discuss the situation with the teachers instead.

If that doesn't work, I'm putting on my combat boots and heading off to the school to show those little cows whose momma can roar the loudest.

Fric's teacher is a young thing, with perky boobs and a waist I could probably circle with both of my small feminine hands and she is really pretty. She's yet to fall into that vicious trap of giving up her youth, beauty and dignity to breeding small humans.

The competitive inner raging bitch in me tells me that I have to present myself in a good light in order to be taken seriously.

This means I can't just storm into the school demanding for several preteen heads be served to me on a platter looking like a sloppy soccer mom whose gut is bulging out of the top of her pants and has enough grease in her ponytail to squeeze out and slather on the bottom of several baking dishes.

Which is how I normally look. Because why bother grooming oneself if the only persons who see you are the ones you sprung from your loins I am comfortable in my body and how I look.

But common sense and vanity told me the best way to make an impression on her was to NOT look homeless.

I have no qualms going shopping looking like a hillbilly. As long as my face is washed, my hair is combed and there is nothing in my teeth, I'm generally good to go to troll the aisles of the supermarket.

It's not like my husband is coming home and I was going to get laid so I'd better get purdee fast.

The truth of the matter is I'm vain. I'm a decade older than Miss Perky Teacher. My insecurities can sometimes get the best of me.

I'm normal.

We all know women can be catty bitches. And even if my darling daughter's teacher didn't think anything would be amiss with me showing up au naturel, surely some other lady would see me and secretly scorn me.

That or those mean hyenas Fric goes to school with would race home and tell their mean-girl breeding momma's that Fric's mom showed up to school today and you should have seen how she looked! She looked so bad. She was wearing yoga pants with camel toe; dirty slippers and she had a giant zit right in the middle of her chin. I'm so going to steal her kid's lunch money tomorrow and then make her cry about how ugly she and her mom are tomorrow at recess.

Which of course, would defeat the purpose of me going to school in the first place.

So I gussied up and headed in to the school. I mentally envisioned grabbing one of the little cows trouble makers by her hair and dunking her in the boy's urinal when I bumped into one of the punks upon entering the class.

It was difficult but I managed to resist temptation.

I don't know how fruitful my meeting with Fric's teacher was, nor do I know if my daughter's social situation will improve any time soon. But I do know that by showing up and addressing the problem, at the very least I brought the situation to light.

I want Fric to know her momma's got her back at all times. Especially when the tough times roll on through town. I just wish there was something more I could do that wouldn't land my ass into jail.

That's not exactly the example I want to set for my kids.

As I was driving home from the school, I contemplated everything I had discussed with the teacher and everything Fric had told me. How my daughter is struggling to fit in and still be herself.

It's something I struggled with growing up and still struggle with. Hence the war paint and fancy clothes to meet with another woman I barely knew. I want my daughter to be comfortable with who she is, how she looks and the person she will become.

I want her to be comfortable enough in her own skin to go grocery shopping with out a stitch of makeup while wearing her most comfortable pants.

I want her to know that it shouldn't matter how she looks, it should only matter what she does. Even if society disagrees with me.

I want her to know that no matter how she looks she will always be good enough for me.

That is unless she starts dressing like a two bit hooker with goth-inspired makeup. Then we may have to talk.

This is why I'm taking up Sweetney's challenge and showing you how it really is. What I really look like. And how I most normally look. Because this is it. The real me. The unvarnished truth.

If HBM, MotherBumper, Chocolate, and OTJ plus a whole other schwack of other great ladies can face their morning demons, then darn it, so can I.

Besides, I'm doing it for my daughter. Because she hasn't been stuffed into a locker enough times, I feel the need to add fuel to the fire.

Heh heh.





This is what I look like FIRST thing in the morning.

The horns kinda itch first thing, so I generally have to scrub them off. Wouldn't you know, they keep growing back each night. I don't know what that is about.


This is how I look once the horns and red eyes go away.

It's a well known fact I enjoy my rubber ducky time. Heh heh.





Ya, I'm topless. I told you, I'm NAKED a LOT.

This is what greets my children, my dog, my husband and my mirror every morning once I've chased my demon away.

I'm learning to love her more every day.