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A Room with a View to Rue

9/24/2012

Nope. Not my house. Not my mess.

I have a house.

I have a house with rooms.

My house has the usual rooms: bed, bath, living. My house has a kitchen (which for some reason is not called a kitchenroom).

And then there is that other room.

In my house that other room is called the "Flex Room." This is what the architect named it on the original plans, and my imagination couldn't come up with anything snappier. So the Flex Room it is.

The Flex Room is a room in a space that has no obvious purpose. It doesn't qualify as a bedroom because it doesn't have a closet. Nor is there a door to the hallway. It's not a large room, but it does have a window, a door to the garage and a door to the outside.

I've filled the Flex Room with some shelving units. And I've put in a small table, which perfectly abuts a second, drop-leaf table. The table-on-table provides lots of room for doing projects or wrapping gifts. It's a place to set groceries when I come home from the store. It's doubled as a dining table for serving guests who couldn't make it upstairs. It's turned out to be a great little room.

But the room is also a void.

And you know how trouble likes a void . . .

Home from the garage sale, where does all that junk go that I didn't know I needed?
What to do with the old VHS player? The retired computer? The outdated cables?
Where to stow that stuff hauled inside quick-like, out of the rain?
A great place for the Goodwill donations while I'm collecting a "few more" things.
Just for now, I say to myself about the empty jars, discarded magazines, perfectly serviceable empty boxes, the little container of doo-dads to sort.

I've been reviewing my to-do list which, not to sound smug or anything, is actually looking shorter these days. On the other hand, there's that Flex Room, which is certainly looking, uh, fuller these days. To-do List, Flex Room—those crazy kids: Think there might be an inverse relationship going on?

Guess how I'm spending the rest of my day . . .

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It's About the Hair

9/17/2012

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WHICH HAIRCUT WOULD YOU LIKE, LITTLE GIRL?

I had my hair cut Friday.

Not styled. Not shaped. Not highlighted (as a friend would advise). Not even blown dry. What I do with my hair is quite simple: I have it cut.

I have difficult hair. Thick and tough and wiry, it has more kinks than a cheap hose. Little wings flare out from my temples, from behind my ears. Depending on the season, the back might actually sport a nice wave, but the top salutes like a Marine. Well, several Marines. Saluting all seven seas. Think whisk broom. Think Chia Pet.

When I was a child, my hair was a fuzzy bubble. My mother would try to tame it by installing three fat, foamy curlers around my face, a process I hated and squirmed straight through. When I was about 10, a neighbor lady recommended a place in Santa Ana (17 miles away!) called "De Puppe," which the neighbor inelegantly pronounced Dee POOP-ee. Despite the grotesque embarrassment of the name (that shame somewhat by the fact that it was far far from home, thus minimizing the risk that I would see someone there I knew), I was optimistic. The hair lady pointed at some images on the wall, and I selected as my model a pretty girl in a blue dress with shiny, to-the-shoulder, auburn hair. The girl wore a sleek, powder blue barrette which pulled her long bangs away from her face and held them attractively at the side of her head.

I would be that girl.

I understood this was a process, that the promised transformation would involve several visits before the new and more beautiful me would emerge. So my mother drove. The De Poopy lady tugged and pulled, pinned and cut. Conditioners were applied. A special hair brush was purchased. My mother drove and drove. The De Poopy lady cut and cut. But the Chia Pet stood fast. I never got that blue barrette.

Over the years there have been attempts. There have been consultations. Hushed, Frito-breathed advice over the shampoo sink.There was even an unfortunate experiment with a lightening product. Unexpectedly and at last, liberation came in the guise of an outdoor job, when practicality demanded I crop my hair short.

And short it has stayed: #6 clippers on the sides, hand cut on top, rounded at the neck, no points on the sideburns. This formula courtesy of Barb—Barb with a touch like Edward Scissorhands. Barb, who for years had me in and out of the chair in 15 minutes and still managed to catch me up on all the gossip. Barb who never tried to sell me color. Or conditioner. Or Amway or Tupperware or Pure Romance products. Barb who never once had Fritos on her breath.

And then she was gone. One day her arm swelled up and turned purple, and that was it for the haircutting career. Barb had been poofed to the netherworld of carpal tunnel syndrome.

The magic wasn't just the clipper/cut formula. The magic was Barb. And without her I've been adrift for nearly three years, back to the tutorials, the micromanaged instructions. No no to flipping through stylebooks. No no no to the gels and creams in their gold-lettered bottles.

It was a coupon that led me back on Friday to Barb's old place. My loyalty could be bought for $7.99, the price of getting me by for 6 more weeks. And guess who was there at the salon, who ran to hug me when I stepped through the door?! Barb snapped the cape and tied it around my neck. Pumped up the chair and tugged on those wings behind my ears. Are we still using a 6 on the sides? She was one week back at work, and it was as if my heart had never skipped a beat. Though, this time the haircut took an entire 20 minutes. We had a lot of gossip to catch up on, after all.

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iPod Replay Replay Replay

9/10/2012

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Joan Baez singing "Winds of the Old Days."

That was the song that my iPod randomized into my ears this morning as I was walking down Crescent Avenue.

It made me smile.

And then I thought, Hmmmm, what year was that? Well, it must have been around 1976 or 77. I remember sitting in Wayne Engstrom's geography class and writing down the memorized lyrics instead of taking notes on, what, the 50 shades of shale? (Interesting that I would have been paying so little attention in class, given my small crush on Dr. Engstrom, the crush crushed when a friend and I drove by his house and saw a woman out front planting flowers.)

Ah, my lost education . . . but that's (yet) another blog for another time . . .

What I'm thinking about now is how my gadget is chock full of musical winds from the old days. How after nearly forty years, all those songs still evoke a joyous something. And it's not always the song itself, but the way a particular song is able to unfreeze a certain moment in time. All I need are three notes of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" to know exactly where I am: driving down The 57 on a California spring morning, arm draped out the open window, radio full-blast on KRLA, and Wayne Engstrom's geography test something I won't even bother to worry about until it's right there on the desk in front of me.

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A Box, Not Botox

9/9/2012

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So, we were talking about first loves . . .

Mine, sigh, was a box. A cardboard box. Not just an ordinary cardboard box, but a refrigerator box that my father brought home in his pickup truck and put out on the back lawn for "you kids" to play with.

And play with it we did, one kid clambering into the box while the others (there were always kids around, weren't there?) folded down the flaps and began shoving at the box until it flopped over once and then over again, over and over, around the yard until the kid inside was stunned with tumble and all the other kids fell in a laughing heap to the ground.

And then it was someone else's turn.

I don't remember much of being on the pushing end, just a vague memory of a wall of cardboard with no place to hold on to and a sudden, painful jab to the belly from shoving on a corner that wouldn't be shoved.

But inside the box . . . well, that was heaven: the sudden darkness with slashes of light angling through the flaps; the odd quiet, how the outside sounds were strangely muffled; the musty, clean-cardboardy smell; the dry shushing smoothness against my bare legs; the tremors and heart race of that first push; the soft, rolling landings inside a safe and papery cocoon.

I don't remember ever making forts or buildings of these boxes. I only remember that huge thing on the lawn growing more battered and limp with each round, finally collapsing in on itself. By and by, the remains would somehow magically disappear. And one day a new box would just as magically reappear!

You don't forget a first love. And you don't let go of it too easily, either. Which may explain my passion to this day for boxes and cartons and just about any other sort of container. These things that once held other things—what potential they have to yet again hold other things, surprising things they weren't intended to hold. You never know what a box might contain. One still holds this young girl's heart.