Haircut

I have a history of cutting my own hair.

It all started when I was 3. And had thick, thick bangs. One day I must have decided it was all too much hair flopping around on my forehead, and I found some scissors and snip by snip managed to cut off all evidence. Since I can’t remember what it’s like inside 3-year-old Kristin’s head, I can’t say exactly why I took the scissors to my bangs. Curiosity? Rebellion? I had no idea what I was doing and it didn’t mean anything? Who knows. But ultimately it wasn’t a big deal. My mom probably had to answer the “Oh my! What happened?” question a million times (sorry, Sue!), but all in all I was still pretty much owning the look:

Now, I wish I could say my impulsive haircutting ended in this moment at the innocent, low-stakes age of 3 when the only people I interacted with were my family and friends from primary. But we all know I wouldn’t be blogging about it if it did.

Fast forward to Mt. View High School. I’m an awkward and self-conscious Junior taking AP classes and just trying to be normal! Blend in! No one look at me, please! I think it goes without saying that the last thing I needed was a terrible haircut to draw attention to me. (I mean, that’s the last thing any teenager needs.) We all know where this is going, but I’ll share the gory details anyway. One day while I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, it suddenly felt like a brilliant and rebellious and bold idea to cut my own hair. I took my long blondish, brownish hair in my hands, and I began chopping away. One chunk at a time. Cut after cut. Until there was a huge pile of hair on the floor and only a few precious inches left on my head. Layers. And chunks. And then the overwhelmingly, deep, devastating horror that comes when you realize you’ve just done something that can’t be undone. There are only so many hats you can wear. And so many hours you can spend in front of the mirror trying to convince yourself that it’s ndb. All you can really do is wait it out. Pictures exist of this time in my life, but I just can’t. It’s too soon.

Again, I wish I could say that the high power of teenage self-consciousness was finally able to cure me of the compulsion. But wait.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. It’s 2015 and I’m a 28-year-old adult with a full-time job and a house and my life together. And somehow, again, I find myself in front of the bathroom mirror, scissors in hand, and cutting my own hair feels like a really solid plan. To be fair, about two months ago I gave myself a haircut. And it actually turned out pretty well. I only took a few inches off, added a few layers, and it mostly looked normal. So, the idea of a haircut wasn’t as crazy and rebellious as it was back in high school. But as I took the first cut, I had that sinking feeling. The this-is-a-terrible-mistake-but-now-I've-done-it-and-there's-no-turning-back feeling. I cut an inch off. Then an inch became two. Then layers became higher. And weirder. And then I put the scissors down and realized that it was all wrong. That I wanted my hair back. That I’d made a huge mistake. I spent at least an hour washing it, blow drying it, straightening it, curling it, and straitening it again, trying to find something that looks normal. It’s no use. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but I hate absolutely everything about it, and I want my two inches back, and I never want to leave my house again.

25 years later and some things never change. See you in a month. (Or two.)

Magic

It's time to blog about my magical childhood. It's May, the days are getting longer, the outside air has a hint of mowed grass, and when I sit on my back deck and close my eyes, I can almost imagine myself in jellies pretending to get the milk from behind the waterfall like someone from The Boxcar Children. I am obsessed with my childhood. 

I had an exceptionally magical childhood. First, I was always creating something or pretending things. I made American Girl crafts, moccasins out of paper towels, tacos out of leaves and dirt, scrunchies, slingshots, friendship bracelets, beaded geckos, a bow and arrow, forts, accurate blueprints of my house to try to discover secret passageways, yarn dolls, teepees, and puff-painted t-shirts to name a few of my projects. I was really into wood creations too. I made a wood go-kart that actually rolled down the hill that you could steer with a rope, and I made multiple tree houses in our poor plumb tree, complete with rope ladders, hinged doors, and a rope bridge to the neighboring playhouse. And I was always pretending to be characters from books. Imagining that our playhouse was a boxcar and I was Violet from The Boxcar Children was a favorite. I had a pretty long Harriet the Spy phase where I would walk around all day taking notes in my notebook. I desperately wanted a dumbwaiter. I associate elementary school with getting off the bus, dropping my backpack in the kitchen, eating a chocolate chip cookie, and then diving into a project. 

Second, my mom is a genius and established a summer reading program. With seven children, I'm sure to her this was something like a last-ditch effort to stay sane in the summer, but to me, it's one of my favorite childhood memories. It's called The Box. For every x number of pages that we read, we got a ticket (think carnival ticket). The number of pages varied based on reading levels, but it was typically 100 pages per ticket. And then each week we had The Box where we could redeem our tickets for prizes. These weren't cheap plastic prizes either--there was legit stuff in The Box. And you could request things to be put in the box and then read away for a couple weeks to save up. I read so much. Granted, some of this reading was purely motivated by the It's a Small World jewelry box that I desperately needed, but most of it was just motivated by summer boredom and genuine interest in books. The books I read during the summers of my childhood are still some of my favorites. Some stand-outs: Great Brain books, From the Mixed up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler, Nancy Drew books, The Key to the Treasure, Boxcar Children, Babysitter's Club, all Ramona books, Tuck Everlasting, A Wrinkle in Time, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and The Trumpet of the Swan. 

Birth to ten years old was a dream. I was totally nailing it. 

And then it all got terribly awkward. 

The World of Tiny Humans

Children are the most fascinating creatures on Earth.

Let me back up. I haven't spent much time with kids. Since I come from a big family, when I hit babysitting age people kind of assumed that I was good with children. The fact that I am at the tail-end of my family and therefore had absolutely zero experience taking care of anyone younger than myself never seemed to click. When I was twelve years old, I got my first babysitting job. And I mean babysitting. My back-door neighbor asked me to watch her couple-month-old daughter for two hours. Since a $4/month allowance doesn't go far, and since in fourth grade I tried to get people to call me Kristy because I desperately wanted to live within the world of The Baby-Sitter's Club, I said yes. But I was terrified. I climbed over the fence separating our backyards, knocked on their screen door, and put on a brave face as the mom handed me the squirming little bundle. For two hours straight I paced around their house, holding tight to the baby in constant fear that something would go terribly wrong. Like it would cry. Or I would have to change a diaper.

I eventually recovered from this trauma and did a smattering of babysitting during high school where I picked up key skills like how to boil pasta and how to switch from TV to DVD on almost any remote. But I spent the last seven years living in a college town where I often went months without seeing anyone below the age of 18.

I'm a little out of touch.

Spending the last six days with my sister's three kids hurled me back into the world of tiny humans. This world is exciting, loud, and repetitive. And I desperately wanted to be accepted. For the most part, this world is really straight-forward. Let them boss you around, laugh at their jokes, have the patience to repeat something over and over and over, and occasionally give them a quarter or a piece of candy, and you will undoubtedly win them over. For example, my niece Jane was constantly telling me jokes. I guess the plural form of "joke" is probably inaccurate because it was always the same joke: "What did the elephant say to the hippo?" she would ask expectantly. I would thoughtfully pause and enthusiastically say, "What???" And she would squeal, "Be quiet, I'm trying to swim!" Obviously. And she would tell the same joke again and again, plugging in new animals or objects in the "elephant" and "hippo" slot. I listened and laughed and she loved me.

But sometimes the rules of this world are confusing. Most significantly, the rules surrounding a high five constantly baffle me. Sometimes when you hold up your hand and invite a high five, children enthusiastically giggle, slap your hand multiple times, and then want you to play patty cake for the next forty-five minutes. But sometimes, for no apparent reason, they coyly run away and, no matter the coaxing or bribing, will not bestow that high five.

Not that this happened to me. And if it did, I'm totally over it. And I'm definitely not lingering on the fact that my nieces and nephew always high five my sister Emily.

Life Archive

I have always had an odd obsession with documenting my life. I have written in a journal since 1994, I have thousands of pictures of me, including hundreds of pictures from my childhood, and I have kept ticket stubs, school IDs, stacks and stacks of school assignments, wood cookies from camp, paintings, drawings, spiral-bound friendship notebooks, notes from friends, foreign money, hotel keys, cards from friends, collections of friends' school/homecoming/prom pictures, smashed pennies, name tags, and Disneyland maps. I'm sure that part of this obsession stems from a million Young Women lessons on journaling/family history/scrapbooking, but part of it comes from this weird sense that if I don't document it, no one will.

In the past couple years, I have become less sentimental. I rarely keep a journal. I don't think twice about tossing ticket stubs and deleting pictures that I don't like. And I've thrown a lot of stuff away. Granted, by "throw stuff away" I mostly mean I scanned all of my school work, school IDs, notes from friends, and ticket stubs and disposed of the original copies. Some gems:

But I've largely lost my sense of urgency to record everything about my day-to-day actions and my minute-by-minute feelings on everything. Partly, so much of my life happens online (email, google calendar, facebook, twitter, blogger, Pinterest), that it feels redundant to supplement my unconscious www trail. But mostly, while I used to think that every little thing that I had ever written, created, seen, or been to was some key to piecing my life back together on the off-chance that I want to look back and try to make sense of it all, now I think that a. very few things matter, b. I have absolutely no interest in looking at my life as some sort of archive, and c. almost 97% of everything I wrote between the ages of 10 to 23 is super embarrassing.

Exhibit A: my Opendiary from high school. You remember Opendiary (RIP?). It was the less trashy, but equally dramatic, Livejournal. Before I deleted my account, I copy/pasted my opendiary into a word document. As I started writing this blog post I decided to read it. I thought it would be amusing and endearing in a silly, high school kind of way. And it sort of was. Except I would replace "amusing" with "horrifying" and "endearing" with "annoying." I'm sure I'm being a little harsh to my 14-year-old self, and maybe if I wait 30 years and read it again I'll have more distance to see it as humorous, but it first made me want to take a red pen to it and scream CAPITALIZE "i" and use some punctuation other than ".. . ." and second reminded me that not all writing has use and meaning.

Celeb obsession

Confession: I went through a celebrity obsession when I was about about 14. (Yes, I know that anyone who has recently heard me talk about Tina Fey is thinking to themselves, what? You think this celeb obsession was contained to your early teen years?)  My main obsession was Meg Ryan--this was at her You've Got Mail prime. Not only can I quote all of You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and Joe Vs. the Volcano, but I also picked up trivia about Meg Ryan that has stuck: full name is Margaret Mary Emily Ann Hyra (Ryan is her mom's maiden name, I believe), married on Valentine's day to Dennis Quaid in '91 (they met on the set of Innerspace, now divorced), has a son named Jack Henry who is probably close to 20 now, was voted most beautiful in high school, and each November 19 I think  to myself, "happy birthday, Meg." (This may seem like a weak list compared to the massive amounts on wiki or IMDB, but quite frankly it would be pathetic if I could remember more.) I even remember staring out the window of the family Astro van as we drove to the Oregon Coast on a family vacation, thinking about how great it would be when her 30-something, NYC celeb life fortuitously crossed paths with my middle school, Vancouver, WA life. She asks me to be her babysitter. And I travel with her family all over the world. Our friendship is sealed. So over-the-top cliche that it's endearing, right? RIGHT? Whatever, I was 14. And you've done it too. Just a little bit of "if we met in real life we could be friends." It's all in the same family.

I tried writing her a letter (pre-twitter days). I did some extensive online research and found a website that listed addresses to mail letters to famous people. And I went a little crazy. I of course wrote to Meg Ryan, but I also wrote to everyone that sounded remotely familiar. I wrote in Crayola marker (the fat kind so the page would fill faster), and I wrote the same thing to everyone: "Dear _____, I am your biggest fan! I loved you so much in _____ and _____. I know you're busy, but I would really love an autographed picture! Your biggest fan, Kristin." And because these letters were probably opened by PR robots rather than the actual celebs, I got a fair number of autographed pictures back (most fake, of course): the entire cast of Friends, Bill Gates, Bob Saget, Richard Gere, Rob Lowe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, Richard Simmons, Martha Stewart, Bob Barker, the cast of Everwood, and Ani DiFranco (it was the 90s/early 00s?). But, the pride and joy of my responses was . . . no, not a letter from Meg Ryan inviting me to be best friends, but a personal letter from the band Nine Days. Yup, that band that sang "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)." You know, the girl who cried a river and drowned the whole world? They didn't have a picture to sign, but they drew a little "Nine Days" logo on a sheet of paper, and Jeremy wrote me a letter. A real, pen-to-paper letter that filled an entire sheet of notebook paper. He even gave me his email address in case "[I'd] like to know anything." Isn't that endearing?

But back to Meg. I never got a letter back. That jerk.

To help ease the sadness of this tragic ending:

Christmas

I decorated the tree, finished my shopping, and purchased Barbra Streisand's "Jingle Bells." Ready for Christmas. 

The Sound of Music

It doesn't matter how many times I watch this movie, It gets me every time. It makes me want to go to Austria, to wear a dirndl, to marry a captain, and to be Julie Andrews. I love it. All 174 minutes.

Day 26: Something Old

My dad made this gumball machine, and I think it's as old as I am (maybe older?). You spin the ears to make gumballs roll out the mouth--nifty, huh?

Sitting this one out

BYU started classes on Monday and the Evergreen School District starts classes today, so I'm officially beginning my first school-free fall since the above picture was taken. I think I'll walk around all day with an information sheet pinned to me to appropriately come full circle. Luckily, I can cross out "Teacher: Mrs. Wright" and all of the info will be the same.