Gradually, A Milestone

Yesterday I bought a wedding dress. A "taffeta A-line tank," if you believe the description on my receipt. But I swear it's pretty. And now, after going through the tortured crazy-woman stages of being underwhelmed and then second-guessing my decision, I'm so excited I can't stop pulling up the crappy picture of it on the designer's website. If you've ever read wedding magazines, you know that you're supposed to know it the minute you put on Your Wedding Dress, and late last night I realized (and this brought me out of my funk once and for all) that I did know. And the three lovely ladies (mom, sister, aunt) who were with me knew, too. But because it was only the second dress I'd tried on (out of probably 15), and because we're all pretty level-headed (we mocked the people crying and saying "It's sooooo pretty!" in the next room over), the moment passed without much more fanfare than a collective intake of breath.

I can't wait.

Break for Spirit

I just finished wrapping (almost) the last of the Christmas presents and arranged them artfully under the tiny twinkly tree. Then, with the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas still playing, I poured myself a glass of egg nog (Straight up--it's a little early for brandy.... I'm not that kind of writer.) and parted the living room blinds to watch snowflakes rush through the blue-gray evening sky past street lamps and bare tree branches and the snow-capped bird feeder Eric erected in our building's front yard.

And now...

Back to dishes and laundry and manic writing.

Because If Cybill Shepherd's Worth It, So Am I

I'm breaking my writer's block-driven blogging strike to announce that the $40 I gave to a hairstylist today was entirely well-spent, even in light of the fact that we have nothing but lint in our pockets these days. In fact, it would take huge units of measure, like tons and eons and miles, to quantify how much better I feel. This is a truth I started to suspect while paying attention to some of my students, who I know make less money than I do and have two, three, four, five kids besides, but still show up to class with brand new hair weaves and professionally groomed eyebrows. I, in contrast, tend to dispense with my personal appearance first when money is tight, until it all melts down into a puddle of I-can't-remember-the-last-time-I-bought-a-new-shirt-and-I-have-to-pin-my-bangs-back-when-I-eat-so-they-don't-go-in-my-mouth. And then I go crazy. So I'm starting to develop a strategy for taking care of myself that doesn't involve credit cards or having to occasionally skip paying the electric bill. The haircut I couldn't really afford was step one.

Also, on a totally unrelated note, since I'm still refusing to get a Twitter account: over the last few days, I think my downstairs neighbor has given up on recording music and switched to recording industrial noise.