Monday, January 15, 2007

Resolve This

We've been talking recently about cooking at home more, and not eating out or ordering take out/delivery quite as much. I wouldn't call it a New Year's resolution, though, because if I did, it would surely be doomed to failure. It has less to do with saving money and more to do with me being generally sick to death of our regular haunts for take out and delivery. Between you and me, that list of "regular haunts" is pretty darn big. So, without really meaning to, we've been cooking at home a bit more for the last couple weeks.

But again: not a resolution. Many days, it's so much easier to pick up the phone and hop in the car (I need to get out of the house sometimes anyhow) than to go grocery shopping, clean the indoor grill and wash the dishes. Take, for example, our New Year's Day feast, which I impulsively took a picture of because it struck me as amusing, yet typical of our idea of a "sit down dinner":



That would be Indian for me (butter chicken (R), channa masala (L) and naan from Bombay Bhel (that's at least 2 meals right there), KFC for Daniel (across the road from the Bombay Bhel - he likes indian but wasn't in the mood that day), and Starbucks for both of us.

A good start to the year, I say. Huzzah.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Hairy Thoughts

I have one grey hair.

In fact, I have had my one grey hair since age 13.

In general, my hair is thick, wirey, long, and messy. There is a considerable amount of it. I shed profusely, especially after I wash it. When I brush it all out completely, I have to clean the brush (using scissors to cut the hair out) a couple times before I'm done. In the end, the pile on the table could make a small wig, that is how much I shed. It grows fast.

I usually tie it up in a strange loopy ponytail-with-the-ends-tucked-in, which I devised a few years ago, taking it down only every few days to wash it. By day 3, the tied-up pseudo-ponytail-bun-thing is looking pretty ragged, which I like to think of as "having character."

My hair clogs drains. It backs up sewers. No lie, when I was 7, my father had to dig out the sewer in our backyard only to find that it was clogged with MY HAIR.

But my grey hair is different from the rest of my hair. It's easy to spot... right in front, just to the left (from my POV) of the widow's peak. It always seems to stick out a little, its natural wave just a teeny bit different from the surrounding hair. It catches the light nicely.

I've always liked my one grey hair. It's different from all the other hair on my head. It never comes out in the hairbrush or the shower. It seems to be a hardy hair. Stuck in the scalp but good.

Some day, if family genetics continue on track (so, in my 40s), I will have more grey hairs. But this one will always be the first, and the oldest.

I am inordinately proud of my one grey hair.


One Grey Hair, a self portrait