Fifty Shades Dorkier

I took the day off to work on the edits that are due at the end of the week (side note: I curse a lot!).

But an immense flaw has just appeared in my plan.

My library hold just came in. 

I already know what happens in this book, more or less, because I've been reading Jennifer Armintrout's AMAZING recaps.  (PS Cute haircut, girl!)  This is not a deterrent.  Fifty Shades is exactly the kind delicious train wreck that I crave when I have a lot of work to do.

Public Libraries: Enabling Tomfoolery Since 1981.

(I don't remember exactly when I learned to read, but that seems about right, right?)

OK, back to work.  I'm going to hide my nook in my Red Room of Procrastination until tomorrow.  Damn you, Christian Grey!  Damn you, public libraries!

Write what you will, at some point, know.

This is a post about hairdos which contains some spoilers for my book, which has yet to be published.  But this will happen soon (the published part), so if you are the kind of reader who does not want to know anything about the plot of a book before you read it, be forewarned: you will get spoiled.  I mean, it's sort of a minor incident, but it is sort of a turning point.

But if, like me, you are the kind of reader for whom knowing some of the stuff that happens does not necessarily affect your enjoyment of the book, well, read on.

OK!  Who's still with me?  Nobody?  Fine, I'm used to it.  Won't stop me from telling the story.

In book 1, the heroine has a jacked up hairdo.  Mostly a bad dye job, but it doesn't suit her.  But she has it anyway because it made a previous relationship work, and by work, I mean not at all.  It's a metaphor people.  Later in the book, things are getting sorted out but also sort of getting worse, so she decides, screw it.  I'm chopping my hair off.  (She does it herself, but don't worry, it has a happy hairdo ending.)  And, once a trained professional gets involved, it's a wonderful freeing experience and she can move forward with her new, surprising, authentic life.

And that is what I did today.

It's maybe not that dramatic for me.  I don't have her troubled past.  My past would not make much of a novel, to be honest.  But I do have some serious hair issues.

Before I go to far, I have to say that I tried.  Really.  I have a wonderful guy who has been cutting my hair for several years.  His name is Troy, which I think makes him cut my hair even better.  But some things cannot be helped.  I have really really thick hair.  It is coarse and dry and I dyed it with semi-permanent dye almost a year ago and it is still sort of red, except for the roots that are about half the length of my hair.

Perhaps most importantly, I am the laziest hair person ever.  Troy is willing to work with this, and he always gives me minimal-fuss hairdos.  But I like it short, which means there has to be some fuss or there will be extreme volume issues.  I have spent more time than I care to remember with a mushroom head (that was before Troy, I assure you).  Seriously, this last cut, all I had to do was blow it dry and it would be fine.  Even that was an issue.

Let me give you an example from a recent vacation:

Vacation face!

It is a little bit curly, and if my head was straight (never happens), it would be large on both sides.  Don't try to explain it away.  It is big hair.

So I usually end up pulling it back, but since Troy is a wonderful person, he cuts lovely layers in that make it less huge, but also make ponytails (which he hates)...difficult.  So I look like this:

That's me and my friend, Jodi.  Hi Jodi!  Also, I bought new sunglasses on that trip.  And it was a trip to pixel-land.

OK, so the point is.  My hair is like always a mess, and my laziness does nothing to help it.  And I also try to look professional at work, but I always just look a mess.

So I chopped it off.  Like the heroine in a romance novel!  And now it is this:

I'm not wearing the wrong foundation.  My neck is just a different color from my face.

So there it is.  We'll see what happens tomorrow when Troy is not there to style it, but the general consensus from everyone in the salon and everyone with hair this short is that it will be easy.  Yes.  That is what I want.  Easy.

So, anyway.  Life imitating art.  Now I just need to have a burly horse farmer fall in love with me, and the transformation will be complete.

Also, here is me making a face, as is my wont:

You're welcome.

Productivity

This is what I did this morning instead of getting ready for work:

I mean that I watched this video, not that I took a bath with a dachshund. 

In my defense, this all came about because I had to look up how to spell dachshund (that is a lot of extra consonants!) because Word was not happy with how I guessed it was spelled.  And I was spelling it while working on my novella, the second in the world of Harlequestrian.  I mean the second story.  The first is a novel.  

And I will probably have some sort of happy announcement soon.  Unrelated to dachshunds.  Or babies.  Although, you never know.

OK, no babies.

I'm seriously going to be late for work.

Nighttime Edit: The first time I saw this, I thought it was amazing.  I mean, there's nothing better in the world than BabyLaugh, right?  Fat BabyLaugh!  But now that I see it again, it feels like a sad metaphor.

And I was not late for work.

What am I going to do with this giant zucchini?

*snort*

Anyhoots, when my landlord goes out of town, I am allowed to go out back and legitimately rape the garden for produce that will be overripe by the time he gets back.  Today's haul was just this one gigantic zucchini. 

Honey Bear included for reference.

I feel like this photo taken with my Commodore 64 cell phone is not doing justice to the massive amounts of zucchini I must now consume.  I'm thinking zucchini bread or just the normal cook it with oil and onions.  Or!  Oh!  Once I made zucchini parmesan and I breaded it and baked it, but then the zucchini was so good I didn't even bother with pasta and tomato sauce.  

I ate the hell out of it.  

With ketchup.

Mostly I just wanted to practice uploading pictures.  And write a post with a pervy headline.  Get used to it.

Here for the Right Reasons

Should I be detailing every step of this getting-published project?  Or should I just admit that I am watching Bachelor Pad?  In my defense, I do have my laptop open.

Why do I love this shit?  I mean, honestly.  OK, I don't love BP (although we're on an acronym basis), but I do love the Bachelor/ette.  I especially loved this last season with Emily (and not just because she was from WV, although my heart had a little thrill when I found out); there was not as much drama, just people trying to fall in love.  And confusing notions of masculinity which might explain why I will be single forever.  But, seriously.  Who are these dudes?  Where do they come from?  Why does the montage music always make them take their shirts off?

Also, why do they always wax their chest hair.  Fellas (all the fellas reading this blog), why are we doing this? 

Anyway, the Bach(s) is my fave reality show, and it can be yours too if you just let go of the notion that it is in any way real, and just watch the romance unfold.  It's sort of anthropologically interesting for a person who is not at all like these Greek system graduates.  (No hate there - I'm just saying I went to a school with no fraternities or sororities.)  Also, if you can survive bungee jumping off of a skyscraper, you can survive any problem in a relationship.  It's true.  There have been studies. 

But this obsession with Being There For The Right Reasons.  It makes things confusing, and that makes people take their shirts off.  Because it's a TV show, and it's a game, but it's also love and marriage which is sacred and so we cannot admit that it's a prize on a TV show and also if you are gay you can't have it.  (There's a lot to parse in that sentence.  I'm just going to move on.)  And, so, even though we know in real life that love is hard to find and to maintain, we still like the illusion that it is somehow simple enough that with the right sparkle gowns and helicopter rides, it can still happen.  But if anyone even remotely smells like they are playing the game (which, aren't they all?  The Game of Love?), that person is swiftly kicked to the curb.

I also like watching the men get all competitive and cat-fighty.  I mean, it really does some solid work for breaking down the gender dichotomy.

But that's for another time.  For now, everybody take your shirt off!  It's time for a montage!

Eeyore Moment.

Googling "stud business" does not yield the hilarious results I hoped it would.

*sigh*

The Obligatory First Blog Post

Hello friends,

Uh, so.  Blogs.  Mostly I just read blogs for celeb gossip, because that enables me to keep up with the World of the Fabulous while still Pretending Not To Care.  Also, it enables me to say "celeb" with comforting regularity. 

But now I am trying to be a writer ("You ARE a writer!" says every writing teacher ever), and that means blogs.  It took me about six years to get comfortable with Facebook, so I feel like I'm right on schedule. 

Welcome to my blog!  I have no idea how you got here, and you probably don't either.  So check back in two months and I'll probably have an update! 

Kisses,

Sarah Title.