DeeRSco

Honestly, I never thought it was such a huge deal. And then I cut my hair last summer and all of a sudden I found that I was making a “statement” when I never intended to. For starters, I’ve been “natural” since birth. My hair has never been chemically altered aside from dye. Now, I never really had any identity issues surrounding my hair but I very rarely wore it curly - a choice that had more to do with lack of knowledge about styling than anything.

My parents divorced when I was in elementary school and since my father had primary custody of myself and my 2 brothers, if I wasn’t with my mother I was either sent to the hair dresser every 2 weeks, stuck with whatever style Ms. Roxanne (my father’s neighbor and the sweetest lady ever) could fix before I got too antsy, or left to my own devices to wash blow-dry & style my hair. And if you’ll note the photo below, I had a lot of hair as a kid.

So that meant when my hair did get “done” it was usually blow-dried & hot-combed/flat-ironed because that was a way easier style for kid me to maintain.

Now let’s fast forward 20 years to early winter 2011. I bought a brand new shiny flat iron that I fell in love with because A) it came in purple & 2) it flat-ironed my hair in less than an hour, which was record time. The unintended side effect was that I damaged the bejeezus out of my hair with the weekly heat routine I was giving it. Over the summer I tried to give it a break and wore it “natural” more often. This was partly because I was biking a lot and straightening would’ve been pointless but that will get me started on an entirely different tangent…

So by the end of the summer, I realized I had two completely different textures on my head and cut off about 6 inches of straight hair. Since then I’ve almost exclusively worn my hair curly and that’s it.

It wasn’t an “I am a free woman” thing or an “I’ve finally accepted myself and everyone else should” thing or an “I reject mass media’s ideals of beauty” thing. It was a, my hair is damaged and needs time to chill thing. I mean, I guess if you get down to the root of it, it is some of those things I just said it isn’t - my mother definitely raised me to be comfortable in my own skin - but eh, it’s also convenient and a lot less time-consuming.

So that’s it. That’s my rant. Any other questions, feel free to drop me a line.

(Source: DeeRSco.com)

And if you know me well enough, you should know that I HATE peanut butter. But it just so happens that peanut butter gave me one of my most memorable vocabulary lessons which I thought I’d share with you.

So sometime way back in the 90’s when I was a wee tot (and I mean that - I was midget sized until about 17) one of my elementary school teachers gave us a reading comprehension test. Being the nerd that I was am, I was super excited because all I did was read all day and night and I expected to do really well.

One portion of the test included a short story about a boy and girl who come home one day to find some peanut butter &  jelly sandwiches on the table. Biting into one, the little girl exclaims “This sandwich is scrumptious!”. Now, without any visual aides and using that brief story, we were supposed to determine what word was most likely a synonym for scrumptious. I chose disgusting which clearly was not the right answer.

I now know better, but seriously; I hate peanut butter. And I think it’s silly to assume that all children love peanut butter. And I’m pretty sure I tried to get my teacher to give me the points for that using my logic but she probably thought I was just lying to get extra points. Oh well.

But if you happen to be a peanut butter lover, enjoy your day with your oddly tasting snacks. And if you’re not, welll Girl Scout cookies are back! Yes, random I know. But they’re awesome.

But I’ve definitely set some goals for this year.

• cook/bake more
• be healthier
• write more often

Yea… that’s about all I’m sharing for now.

somehow I ended up on the phone with my boyfriend for 2 hours last night and we started talking about how affectionate our parents were with each other when we were growing up. I never realized it but I really don’t have any memories of my parents actually being together. Granted they did get divorced by the time I was in 3rd grade but I have tons of memories prior to that but never with both of them. Somehow I remember when we all lived together and I do have really great and happy memories from that but it never occurred to me until yesterday that even when I can remember them being in the same room (birthdays, Christmas, etc) they were never interacting with each other. My only real memory of them speaking was a huge argument and I’m pretty sure it was also the last time they spoke for quite a while….