Apology accepted?

We haven't been able to buy one full rainy day here since - probably the beginning of April. I'm not complaining but I have to apologize to everyone who lives in my geographical vicinity. This morning when I woke the sun was shining and it was humid. During my morning ablutions I carefully applied sunscreen to every centimetre of my face. I then did a load of laundry, hung it on the clothesline and left the house for a couple of hours. Naturally all of the above invited the rain goddesses, who were sitting up in the ether, to start poking each other and laughing. I didn't re-wash everything but I did put it through a rinse-and-spin cycle. Sorry neighbors and friends.

Yesterday I got a much needed haircut. I have slow growing hair so I don't really think much about regular cuts until I hit that hormonal week and it becomes oh-so obvious. My bangs were getting pretty long and when I told my hairdresser (lord, that sounds like something out of the 50's) that they were getting kind of long, she said they were no longer bangs, just hair. ha! ha! I was having one of those after lunch snoozes while I was sitting in the chair, I closed my eyes as she was doing the bangs. I thought I was dreaming or had an odd perspective of time because I was almost dropping off but it seemed she was spending an awful lot of time up there and the snip-snip-snip seemed to go on forever. Yeah well, I wasn't sleeping because when I opened my eyes the bangs were short. Real short. This short. I mean, what is a 48-year old woman supposed to do with this?

They look somewhere between a cross of what they looked like when I was four years old and took the scissors to my own head and what I did when I was twenty-four and tackled them one night when I was drunk and tired of them falling in my eyes. Stunning memories. Thank heavens they were cut on the full moon, my hair always grows faster when it's cut then. But until then...



While I'm on wild and varying subjects, it's time to give Patti Digh's, "Life is a Verb" its proper due. This was a book I bought at the same time as three other "self help" books or, as the Queen of Arts calls them, "soul help" books. Out of all the books of that genre I had to choose from (and I flipped through them all, reading bits and pieces here and there), this was the one that stood out. I was partly drawn to it because the author and I are the same age (perhaps a year apart) and we both had a small child about the same age and I'm always curious to see how someone else is coping with all that. But it's a beautiful book. The pages are a nice weight, there are worthy quotes throughout and the art is beautiful. Take a look at a shot of the top of the book, you can see how beautiful it is just from this angle.


One of my favorite things about it is the idea that you can take one small aspect, and try to re-make your habits one at a time over 37 days. The author doesn't imagine that in 37 days you will be a totally new person, her perspective is quite clear that you should try just one thing for 37 days and see. She has many suggested "focus free writes" which I found have been enormously helpful (my post-its are marking these) . I have been using this exercise before I head into the studio and find it can clear up some of the gunk that keeps me procrastinating or slightly blocked. I would say it's an exercise that is similar to Julia Cameron's morning pages. I found the book offers an opportunity for immediacy in moving forward, assuming you're willing to do the grunt work. It's worth it. And she's funny.