cranky pixels

A thing I learned today? When toddlers vomit, there is little to no preamble. One minute they’re cranky and clinging, and the next, a fountain of unpleasantness is erupting from their mouths. The first time, the poor kid fixed his big eyes on me, giving me such a look of panic that I almost didn’t care that he’d soaked my shirt in baby puke. Poor monkey. It’s hard to be two.

At least it explains some of the crankiness from last night, and the fact that he pretty much slept the morning away. No fever, no other symptoms, just a lot of lethargy and several changes of bedding. (I changed my shirt, but long for a shower.)

He seems better now – had a long nap, woke up cheerful and grinning, and is now eating goldfish crackers like they’re going out of style. I’m glad, because I really want to go to the PMI meeting tonight but I don’t want to leave if the kid’s too ill. Already had to cancel a (potential) client call at the last minute, since I can’t exactly chat on the phone while my baby’s actively being sick. Guilty as I feel about bailing on work like that (so unprofessional!), I made the right choice. Prioritizing. If I don’t get this project, the world will not end. (I just hope they reply to my email at some point…)

So everyone knows I loathe and despise my hair (and, show of hands: who is surprised by this?). I’ve been thinking for a while of getting it cut, which is sort of entertaining, since some people (cough*NotSo*cough) think that since I used to cut my hair using nothing but scissors and the force of my will, I ought to be able to pop into the bathroom and emerge looking like…if not a million bucks, then at least  a crisp $20.

All of that is true. Other things that are true? I am a) not twenty-five anymore and b) somewhat lacking in the copious and under-appreciated free time that allowed me to spend a lackadaisical afternoon trimming my hair in front of a mirror. Because when I was twenty-five, the choppy haircut was cute and a little bit punk rock. Now? Well, there’s a reason hair salons make so much money, and being able to entrust the attractiveness of your head to a qualified professional is a big part of that.

Anyway, I was (re)watching Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and decided that Willow’s cute college hair would totally be cute on my head. Of course, I am conveniently ignoring the fact that Alyson Hannigan (that’s her on the left) has straight, agreeable hair, while mine has just enough wave to cowlick all over the damn place. I hate my cowlicks. I really do. There is nothing cute about hair that insists on growing in the wrong direction.

But I could rock that look, right? Let’s assume for the moment that I don’t intend to dye my hair red (which…hey, never say never, right?). Would the flippy layered thing work, or would I just look like I was growing out some cuter, shorter style?

My big worry is that I will swerve right past cute and look something like this:

(That’s me at age 11, in case you were wondering. And oh my god, I loved that sweater.)

The point could end up being moot, since I am somewhat disinclined to leave the house these days and salons tend to prefer it if you actually, you know, show up. Plus everyone – everyone – likes my hair long. The kid is absolutely obsessed with it; he grabs on to it at night like a security blanket. Which, uh, is kind of one of the reasons I want to cut it, actually. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to be woken out of a sound sleep by someone yanking on your hair? I will tell you: very annoying.

Yeah, we’ll see. I might just shave it all off and be that aging woman with a buzz cut. Sort of like a chubbier Susan Powter. Yeah, that would be a good look for me.

I was reading Work Happy today, as I do, and there was a quote from Tiger Woods about his philosophy on life:

The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today.

And I realized…that’s pretty much the antithesis of the way I look at my life.

If I’m not good at something now, I feel like a failure. The idea that I might be a better mother in a year? Is practically admitting that I am a horrible parent now. I might as well just hang a sign around my neck that says “Still Not Good Enough.” I mean, I fully anticipate that I will be a better designer in the months to come…but I cringe in anticipation of how sophomoric my current work will look to me by that time (no matter how pleased I am with my skill level now).

If wanted to play armchair therapist, I’d hazard the guess that this has something to do with the fact that I was a “gifted” child, which is just another way of saying that I was ahead of the curve for so long that average sounds like an obscenity. Oh! Can we talk some more about my issues from my childhood? Pretty please? Because there was this one time when I was five…

Seriously, there is nothing wrong with personal growth, okay? I just expect that any growth I require for my life now will have already occurred. Which is totally reasonable, yo.

I took a week off over the holidays. When I tell people this, they’re all “Great! You need to take breaks! It’s good to take the time to relax!” They usually sound a little shrill, also, which gives the impression that my insistence on working during every possible minute of every possible day is a little, I don’t know, weird or something. Pff.

Except, well, ever since then, my head has felt fuzzy and my limbs have been heavy and my motivation has been…not. Perhaps you are getting your husband’s cold, you say, to which I respond HA! I have worked through colds. I have worked through EVERYTHING. Why should this be any different?

I will save you the trouble of answering. Obviously, taking time off was a colossal mistake and my sudden inability to give a crap about drumming up new work is evidence that I should never take time off again. I mean, duh, right? It’s all about entropy, baby.

I just – just! – had lunch, so my brain is all ping-tastic and fluttering hither and thither. Thither. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word without hither attached to it – have you? I am scampering to Merriam Webster right now to see the fun I have been missing.

Well, so. Here I am in the unexpected silence of my house (silence being a term I use loosely, as the whoosh-whoosh of the dishwasher is providing this afternoon’s background noise). The kid and the cat (one of them, anyway) are napping adorably on the bed, and I’m sort of nominally waiting for a phone call from a potential client while searching the internet for cookie recipes using agave nectar. Oddly, I am not finding very many. I think it’s time for a baking experiment, don’t you?

I also think that I need to think of a new moniker for Happy Fun Baby. He’s a toddler now, so the “baby” bit is somewhat outdated, and “Happy Fun Toddler” sounds weird. I could call him by his name, since it’s not like that’s a big secret or anything, but I like using aliases because it makes me feel like a spy. I would have made a very poor spy, although I would have liked the outfits. Probably. As long as I wasn’t undercover as a badly-dressed person. Certainly there’s more call for those than for Jennifer Garner-esque wigs and push-up bras, yes? I mean, way to blend, right?

But speaking of the kid, and my brain, and the two together…he woke up last night at midnight, cheerful as you please, and then would not go back to sleep. He snuggled. He sang songs. He played with my hair. But sleep? Sleep is for losers! At 3am I finally broke down and went to get Not So, who (of course) was still awake, since insomnia apparently runs in the family. Even after he came to bed, the kid was all wriggles and kicks, so basically I shared my pain instead of finding a way to fix the problem. Hey – YOU try thinking rationally at 3am when you’ve been repeatedly yanked from the edge of sleep by a tiny grinning demon baby. Er, toddler.

All I can say is: it’s a good thing he’s so cute.

Happy New Year, internets! It’s an even-numbered year, which always makes me feel vaguely twitchy, but I have high hopes for 2008. If I knew anything about numerology I’d probably have something pithy to say about the auspiciousness of all the numbers adding up to 1, but I don’t, so I’ll just…move on to something I do know about. Like resolutions! I resolve things. I do. And sometimes I actually do the things I resolve. More often not, since I tend to forget my resolutions by roughly January 2, and don’t remember them again until the last days in December, when…well, it’s a bit too late to lose 20lbs by that time, yes?

So in an effort to keep this year’s resolutions in the running, I give you my list:

* Finish at least one novel (incl. rewrites – I technically *finished* at least one during NaNoWriMo, but it needs to be reworked, to put it mildly) and submit to agents
* Exercise at least 2x/week
* Schedule 2 afternoons/week to devote to playing/spending time with the kid
* End next year with at least $5000 in our savings account (current balance: 68 cents)

I feel like there ought to be more in there, like “Get thee to therapy!” or “Learn to Salsa!” but I’m going with what I have. Optimism! Optimism is my friend.

Except maybe there should be something in there about my hair.