Three new scarves posted in my Etsy shop, more coming soon.
50% silk, 50% merino wool, 100% soft, warm, and gorgeous!
DSCN0332
My So Called Scarf (Heathcliff)
50% silk, 50% merino wool, 100% soft, warm, and gorgeous!
Cloud Around My Neck (Dark Denim Blue)
100% baby alpaca. sooooo soft...
So my Trying Something New blogpost has resulted in me being contacted privately by a few people, apologizing if they've ever made me feel uncomfortable. Thing is, they haven't. They probably have no idea what it is I'm actually referring to.
I attend conferences where the average adjusted age for maturity is about 16, where I can be standing in the lobby dressed up to go out and waiting for a friend, and listening to a group of 5 or 10 guys about 20 feet away talk really loud about the hot redhead, or calling 'hey redhead' trying to get a reaction from me (and the really stupid thing is that one of the guys knows my name). I don't ask for drunk texts saying 'we gotta hook up sometime' (no, we don't), or 'I'm out with X Y and Z and they're impressed I know the hot redhead and want you to come out with us' (which guaranteed I didn't go out that night, even though I actually enjoy the company of the people in that case). I don't appreciate questions about my personal hygiene or sex life. I don't ask to be propositioned almost every conference. I don't ask people to IM me out of the blue with a url to porn asking me what I think of the picture. I don't ask strangers in the grocery store to ask if my haircolor is natural and then go on to tell me about their personal sexual fantasies.
Some of the behavior towards me I can see how I contribute to. Sometimes I joke and talk with the guys as if I'm one of the guys, and forget I'm not. Then when someone gets a little too forward I don't respond assertively - I've always felt like I had to be nice and polite and uber-nonbitchy, so I would just change the subject or laugh it off/make a joke. This summer for the first time I told someone to @#$! off when they made me uncomfortable, and probably need to do that more often.
Those are the more extreme examples, but each one is true. I wish I didn't have so many. I haven't been to a conference as a brunette yet, but grocery shopping, going out to dinner, and generally anything I have done in public has been way more comfortable, I don't feel as many eyes on me which has been kind of nice. And it isn't that I don't like the brown or the short cut. I just loved my hair before. I'm going to have to learn how to be more comfortable being myself as a redhead and setting boundaries with people who make me feel objectified.
Mid September I had a bad couple days and in a morning driven by a desparate need to change SOMETHING in my life and feel different, I went and had my hair dyed brown and chopped off. There were a lot of reasons for this. I was really unhappy with myself, and had been a redhead for 16 years, and desparately wanted to feel different about myself. Now I'm the first one who will tell you that changing your hair won't change your life - the issues you had pre-hair-change will still be there post-hair-change. But I felt like it was the only thing in my power to change at that particular moment (because I'm still way too uptight to get a tattoo). Plus, I wanted to see if people would treat me differently (SPOILER: they did). When I had red hair I would get a lot of inappropriate sexual comments/advances from people. Friends, acquaintences, co-workers, strangers in the grocery store... It was making me really uncomfortable in public, like people weren't seeing me as a person but an object. I ended up not trusting that anyone was actually interested in me, the person inside the biological container, but that they were just saying whatever they thought I wanted to hear. I always said if I weren't going to be a redhead, I'd like to try a chocolate brown, so that is what I went to the salon and asked for.
The next morning I woke up and was startled in the mirror. And a little freaked out that the my identity, both IRL and online as KymPossible wasn't what I had known and been familiar with for so long. It definitely took some getting used to. I started wearing makeup regularly though, and I did like how the color and cut made my eyes really stand out.
So it's a month later, and what do I think of it now? The social experiement was a success and people did treat me differently, and I made a point to not dress or act any differently than I had as a redhead. That was actually pretty awesome, to feel like people were seeing me as a person. Sure, I still had the occasional guy who talked to my chest (I think a tshirt with a picture of eyes across the boobs would be pretty funny) but overall it was a lot better. It is a lot more maintenance to style, and there was a fair amount of trial and error figuring out how to make it look decent and not all foofy like a muppet. It is less maintenance (and thus less $) in color, red fades pretty quickly and the roots are visible sooner than the brown. It didn't quite turn out chocolate brown, a lot of the red shines through.
Net: I like it.
BUT.
I miss the red. I was looking through photos this morning and when I hit this one I suddenly realized that I miss my hair.
I can go back to red pretty quickly. But growing the length back out will take a couple years. I'm glad I changed it, its just hair and will grow back. And I needed the change at that moment. And I did like feeling like people were treating me like a human and not a fembot. But I miss the red. Guess I know for sure now how I look as a brunette, and know that it's pretty good and still a viable option for the future if I ever decide to grow up and look more mature (I had several people tell me the brown looked more mature and sophisticated, to which I tried really hard not to cringe and roll my eyes).
In the past I tried to be someone I wasn't in order to try and make other people happy. It was a long, hard, painful realization that I was unhappy doing that. Some women change their hair all the time and it's no big deal. But my hair was such a big part of my self identity, and I changed it so rarely (chopped it off but kept the red in 1994 and 2001, roughly a seven-to-eight year cycle) that this just doesn't feel like me. I knew it would be temporary, but I'll admit I thought it would be longer than 6 weeks. :)
It was a good experiment and I'm glad I did it. I'll miss the feeling of freedom I have now when I go out, I don't feel like I'm being hunted anymore. But I'm going to go back to red soon. Hopefully I'll do a better job shutting down inappropriate comments and advances so I can still feel like a human instead of an object to acquire.
I had a wonderful trip to Riga, Latvia last weekend. I went with Jenn and Betty, some of my best traveling companions ever. We flew in early Friday morning and had a van waiting to take us to our hostel – Friendly Franks! I never stayed in hostels before this year, and I don’t know why not, because they are awesome! We walked in the door and the lady said, “Welcome to Friendly Franks, would you like a free beer?” Then she gave us maps and told us all about things we could do in the city and all the events the hostel had going on.
Our room was a six person dorm with a bathroom across the hall. The whole place was spotless, and there was no one else in our room, or bathroom. Oh yeah, and did I mention it was 8 euro/per night?
Right away we decided to go to the beach and we split a cab (the same one, actually) with 4 Finnish guys that turned out to be hilarious. We split up upon arrival at the beach (on the Baltic Sea) and ended up running into them again and learning all about Finland. We also learned that they were there on a “stag night” because one of them was getting married. We then learned that this seems to be the most popular reason to come to Riga, and large groups of drunk men in costumes are ubiquitousThe beach was lovely, and we were very surprised as we walked around to discover that Riga seems to closely resemble…wait for it…America! There were old wooden houses that looked like they belonged in New Orleans with giant SUVs parked in front. I never found out what was up with that, but it was sure interesting to see!
After enjoying the pristine white sand and semi-frigid temps, we showered and went out for Traditional Latvian food. We ate buffet style and I have absolutely no idea what I ate, and it was unspectacular, but interesting. All the waitstaff was in traditional dress, which looked very similar to Bavarian style.
We wandered around the old town a lot that night and it was just beautiful. The whole place is a UNESCO world heritage sights and there are lots of cool things to see in a small area, so it’s very manageable. It’s also one of the Art Nouveau centers of the world, so I was constantly looking up and enjoying the architecture.
The next day we toured the town and saw lots more of it, and even climbed (okay, and elevator was the only option) to the top of the spire in the church and got to look out over everything. We also took a boat tour and I went for a run, so I got to see some of the outskirts of town as well. In general, it was beautiful and not at all what I expected. It was clean, modern, and lovely. The people were very friendly and no one made any attempt to rip us off, at all, which all the guidebooks (and hostel employees) warned us of.
We left early on Sunday to come back, and overall had a very fun, inexpensive, easy weekend in Riga!
Speed - This is a birthday gift for a friend who rides a red Ducati 999 superbike. 20"x20" square. His helmet is white. Jacket is black. get it?
Tonight I am incredibly aware of how fortunate I am. I am the oldest of five children, and we never had much money growing up. All of us have crooked teeth, mine had a big gap in the middle and a huge overbite. Most of my siblings refer to their teeth with the term 'snaggletooth'. My grandparents paid for me to have orthodontics when I was in 6th grade, but not any of my siblings. I don't know why they paid for me and not the others. I don't know if the fact that my orthodontist was an ass and after 3 years said it was taking longer than originally estimated and he would need more $ played a part, since my grandparents paid cash up front and we didn't have the money to keep paying, he took the braces off before I was totally 'done' and gave me a retainer with a spacer tooth in it to fill the gap he had just created a couple months earlier by having an impacted tooth extracted. It is possible my grandparents got disillusioned by that experience, I really have no idea.
Later, when I was an adult, I got braces again. I think I was 24 at the time, and paid $100 a month for a couple years while working full time and attending grad school at night. It was a lot of money from my budget, but would have been much worse if I hadn't already had 3 years of orthodontics when I was younger. Now I've got straight teeth and a great smile that I take for granted most days. But I am very lucky. My siblings almost certainly wish they had been given the opportunity to get orthodontics when they were in 6th grade. I know how horribly self conscious I was of my teeth and smile when I was younger. If I won the lottery I think offering to get them braces would be on my list of things to do. Unfortunately when I was in grad school I studied statistics and probability so I don't play the lottery though. Maybe I can strike oil like the Beverly Hillbillies...
Apprehension|Dread - 24"x30". Commissioned by Stepto.
The pictures I took of Dawn didn't turn out very well, but here is a low quality iPhone picture of a painting I completed on July 7. This canvas started its journey in January. I haven't settled on a name for this yet, I'm considering a couple options. This painting is also 24"x30" and will be available for purchase once it dries. It was 'painted' with palette knives instead of brushes, so the paint is very textural (which doesn't really come through in an iPhone photo).
I also finished another painting that I'll post photos of next week. And I've discovered that for the type of painting I'm doing, I can buy brushes at Home Depot instead of art supply stores for less $ and the same results. Which is good because I plan on doing a lot of painting this month and I hate washing brushes. The little brushes are easy, but I'm mostly working with 2" to 4" wide brushes and it takes forever to clean oil paint out of 8 of those. eeesh. I am a little lazier when it comes to soapy-soapy time with a $6 brush than I am with a $30 brush. It's not like I'm making any money at this so far.
As I trudged through the Frankfurt Airport this morning, I was forced to hold on to my stretched out jeans with one hand like a Siberian prisoner. Feeling extremely groggy due to not sleeping while my ovaries committed suicide on the plane packed with screaming babies, I reflected on the absolutely amazing things I’ve seen and done in the past three weeks. It all started with a weekend trip to Southern Italy.
Jenn, Bill, Brandon, Matt, Sean and I went to Sorrento on Friday night, then did Pompeii and Capri on Saturday. Sunday we headed to an island called Ischia, which was the highlight of the trip for me. We arrived by ferry to discover our hotel was idyllic and situated right on the beach. After two days of packed itineraries, we were thrilled to put on our suits and relax and swim. The hotel provided kayaks, and we were able to paddle around and see some of the insanely picturesque coastline. That afternoon we decided to check out another beach and it was even more lovely, with pristine white sand. The water was warm and we swam out to a sand dune that was like the most beautiful natural pool I’ve ever had the pleasure to bathe in. You could see right down to the ocean floor even in the deepest parts, and it was completely clear, down to the soft clean sand.
The beach completely cleared out about 6pm, but we stayed and watched the sun go down. It was definitely one of those moments when you just feel so satisfied with where you are and what you are experience that absolutely nothing could be wrong in the world. Bliss…
Sadly, we returned home on Monday, and I did a quick run and repack, then left Tuesday morning for Bahrain. The flight was mostly empty and I was able to sleep, leaving me fairly refreshed after the 6 hour flight. I worked and went to bed early that night in preparation for a big week. I spent my days there doing quality control, and training our Field Rep in marketing. I met with faculty to discuss future plans and ideas, and also met with the various people on the Navy base that assist with making our program a success. In between I also managed to see a bit of Bahrain, which is a very unique place.
It’s a small island that is actually growing thanks to the magic of land ‘reclamation,’ where they basically create land and then put big glass buildings on top of it. The culture is a mixture of Arabic and European, and you can find just about anything there, from Old Mosques to the Ritz Carlton to a street lined with fast food restaurants dubbed “American Alley.”
I mostly ate on the base, but did have the chance to eat dinner in the Gulf Hotel, which is a 4 star hotel, and a sight to behold with gigantic chandeliers, piano players, Saudi Businessmen, women for hire, and a host of other unusual and expensive things. I ate Thai food that was delicious and even managed to get a White Russian in an outdoor bar for dessert. I ate off base a couple of other times, but nothing too interesting. I did have an amazing fruit/yogurt/ice cream treat in a local café that was lovely, but nothing else to write home about.
After a jammed packed 4 days, I left late on Saturday and flew overnight back to Frankfurt. I had a four hour layover and then hopped my next flight to Washington DC. At 4pm on Sunday I arrived at the University of Maryland University College Inn and Conference center, after having traveled for about 27 hours straight. I unpacked, watched Fletch, and was asleep by 8pm. I had a long run the next morning after waking up bright eyed a little before 6am. I spent most of the day training on a new database we’re going to be implementing, and then ventured out with two other girls who’d also come over from Europe. We had a hilarious time trying to walk to the metro station down roads with no sidewalks, through two foot tall grass. Apparently, people in American think walking is overrated, and prefer to sit in traffic and talk on their cell phones.
We made it to Georgetown and had a great time wandering around and checking out a few shops. We ate a fabulous sushi dinner in a swanky joint called Mate’ and I must admit I was feeling quite chic and international. Plus, it turns out that these two girls were very good company!
The next day we had more meetings and training, and we had a work dinner scheduled for 6pm. Much to my surprise, we were picked up in a big SUV and we all went to Union Station in DC, which is the HUGE train station that’s right across from the capital building. We are in a gorgeous restaurant called B. Smiths, which was upscale modern southern food. We shared fried green tomatoes, fried catfish, clam and corn chowder, cornbread, spinach salad, and a bottle of wine so modern it actually came in a carton. Everything was delicious. The entire experience was almost fairy tale like for me, having been to Union Station once on my 8th grade trip, and now suddenly being a grown up enjoying a decadent meal. I know I should get used to being able to do such things, but somehow I never seem to!
Wednesday was not lost on us, and we went to the local mall after work, did a bit of shopping, then braved a monsoon to eat at a local restaurant called Franklins where I drank a house brew called “Anarchy Beer.” It turned out to be a lot like normal beer, but the place was fun, sort of an urban cracker barrel with a store full of goodies, and of course, delicious food.
Since this is turning into a tale of awesome places to eat in DC, I’ll just skip right ahead to Thursday, when Amanda’s father took us out to dinner in the city. We went to Maggiano’s, which is a very, very cool Italian restaurant. As we walked in, a jazz duo was playing and the bar area was packed with smart businesspeople drinking martinis. We continued on to the restaurant portion, which was enormous, and very beautiful. The place has a very vintage feel, like an Italian Restaurant in New York, complete with red velvet curtains, dim lighting, and lots of black and white pictures. We split spinach salad, gnocchi, spicy angel hair with shrimp, and then finished with tiramisu and coffee. I was having another blissed out moment listening to Frank Sinatra and feeling high on good food and company, and we had a limoncello before heading back to Maryland for the night.
I honestly did not think it could get much better than that, but it did. I checked out of my hotel on Friday, and Jeremy M. came and picked me up! Bless him for doing this, since it was raining and I had no idea where to go. He took me into the city and we ate burgers and fries at Five Guys that gave In N’ Out a run for its money. After that we went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and saw dinosaur bones, mummies, whales, bugs, and the Hope Diamond. After that we weren’t sure what to do, so we thought we’d get some coffee and discuss. As we searched for a café (because I was hoping for one that wasn’t Starbucks, which are basically extinct at this point), we came across the Warner Theater with a big sign showing that PJ Harvey was playing there! I had a total spaz attack in the middle of the sidewalk and Jeremy indulged me and we got tickets. I was SO happy after that and still basking in the joy of anticipation while we at a nice Sushi Dinner in Chinatown with another old friend from Murfreesboro. After dinner I practically glided back to the theater and was very pleasantly entertained for the next two hours. It was only her work that she’s done with John Parish, and I knew about 50% of it, but the show was fantastic. She sang better than ever, and the band looked great in suits and fedoras, backlit to create silhouettes. The effect was very cool, and the sound in the theater was great. I really liked the way the whole thing came together as a performance in a specific style, showcasing her talent, but only a portion of it. She’s a true artist to me in every sense of the word. Needless to say, stumbling upon this show felt like a gift, and like Jeremy so succinctly put it, it only happened since I started eating more bananas since I found out Libras should do that.
The next morning, my last, I wanted a big American style breakfast, and Jeremy was more than accommodating, convincing me to eat a warm Krispy Kreme on the way to the diner. MMMMMMmm. I then gorged on waffles, eggs and bacon until I thought I would explode, but I was glad, and it was enough to get me through 3 hours of exploring the Air and Space Museum that’s out by Dulles Airport. In fact, you can go up in a tower and watch all the flights coming and going from Dulles from the museum, and we did that for a bit. The museum was awesome and had a full scale space shuttle, and tons of neat planes, including a stealth blackbird and the Enola Gay. Overall it was spacetastic, and I am very grateful to Jeremy for acting as my own personal DC tour guide and chauffeur – a very fun one at that.
Now it’s time to catch up on sleep and see how long I can drag out my jetlag…
Dreaming - 24"x30", hangs in my bedroom. not for sale. This was Painting Experiment v2.0.
Hope - 24"x30", hangs in my bedroom. not for sale. This is my fourth painting.
Hell - 24" square, hangs in my dining room but available for sale if someone really loves it enough to want to buy it. This is #3.
I'll take pictures of Apprehension (24"x30", commissioned) and one I'm provisionally calling Dawn (16"x20") once they are dry, I just painted them last night. It was my first time painting since getting frustrated on January 9th by a painting that I hated. Guess what that one will be called when I finally finish it?
Making babies is fun. If it isn't, you might be doin' it wrong.
Having babies is painful but brief, and hormones insure that you later develop amnesia for that bit.
How challenging being a parent is appears to be directly correlated to how good a parent you are trying to be.
Since coming back from vacation I have been focused on being a better parent, and have been doing a good job of remaining calm in challenging situations with the kids. Tonight I am emotionally exhausted though from a near one hour battle of wills with my almost 3 year old. I didn't lose my cool despite getting frustrated. I was trying to get him to use words to tell me what he wanted instead of pointing and grunting or crying. He is non-verbal to the point that I am very worried about his speech development - he completed 8 weeks of speech therapy this winter, and despite the short term improvement I think he is going to have to go back.
So here is what happened: Chris has a tantrum because his hands are dirty and he wants me to wipe them for him. He has a napkin. He isn't asking for help, he is just holding his hand out and holding the napkin towards me, and making non-verbal noise. When I won't help him and tell him he can wipe his own hands with his napkin, he melts down and throws his napkin on the floor. So I take his food and water before he throws those as well. He calms down and starts pointing at them. I say 'what do you want? tell me what it is called. use your words' and a variety of other things to try to get him to verbalize. This goes on for almost an hour. He is crying and frustrated, and clearly STUBBORN. I am feeling like a bad parent, starving my kid to make him speak when he is clearly communicating, just non-verbally. Finally I give up and get up to put him in his jammies and he panics. I ask him 'do you want this?' while pointing at the food. He nods yes. I say 'what is it called?' and he says 'bood'. FINALLY. So I hand him the bowl and this look of relief washes over his face. He didn't understand what I wanted him to do. Now he asks for his agua and nap (napkin), which I give him, and he eats. By this point the fact that he was using his hands to eat mashed potatos was out of scope for me to worry about. One battle at a time. For the rest of the evening he is an adorable happy little peach.
While sitting at the dinner table I am also having a conversation with Allyson. This morning she snuck downstairs and stole about $2.50 worth of change from my change basket to put in her purse. We have had this same sort of problem before with candy, granola bars, and taking toys that are going to be hers but I haven't given her yet off the counter and opening them/taking them upstairs to play with them. In all cases she knows she has been bad because she tries to hide the evidence. Each time, whatever she has stolen gets confiscated for a week or some sort of privilege is suspended. Today she is heartbroken to have lost her new fancy beaded purse for a week. We had a serious talk this morning about my being disappointed and if she is as sorry as she says she wouldn't keep doing this (she was hysterically crying and just repeating 'I'm sorry mommy', which makes me sound awful, but I didn't yell or raise my voice or anything, I swear). At the dinner table tonight she brings it up and says she is sorry she stole from me and she will never do it again. I said I hoped she didn't because it made me sad when she was naughty. I told her that if I stole something just because I wanted it the police would come and put me in jail.
Allyson: If I am a teenager and I steal, will I go to jail?
Me: yes, a special jail for kids.
Allyson: and all I could do is read all day?
Me: you could read, but you would also have to work, and you wouldn't be able to play with or see your friends and you wouldn't get to see your family and I would miss you. But you are a good girl and that is why I am trying to teach you to be good so you don't get in trouble like that.
Allyson: and Santa would be upset with me and not bring me gifts.
uhhhh, yeah, Santa would be upset too. It was at this point that she started getting a little sad and needed a hug, saying Santa knew she stole money from me that morning and probably wasn't going to bring her any gifts at Christmas. Then she asked if the police were going to come for her. I assured her that the police weren't coming and Santa was okay, because she and I were talking about it and she is sorry and learning from this and I'm not mad but trying to teach her that there are consequences for her behavior.
Parenting is hard. I love my children so much it hurts. And I only get one chance to raise them and be a good parent. But knowing what the right thing to do sometimes is hard, especially when it comes to discipline. I don't just mean 'you're in trouble' discipline, but being consistent about rules and expectations, and what is age appropriate. There is a lot of worrying not just about their development but about whether I'm doin' it right. I will inevitably make mistakes. I just am trying to avoid making big ones.
*The chart above obviously doesn't take into account the child's temperment or special issues either. Save your flame comments, it is an oversimplification for entertainment purposes. Lighten up.
