I’m sitting here, my hair all gooey because I finally got enough energy to do the coloring it has needed for weeks. When I can’t wear my hair anything but barretted back, it’s way past overdue for color.

I don’t lie about coloring my hair – I never have. When people compliment me on the color, I smile and say thank you, and if they ask if it’s my natural color, I reply “as close as I could get”. I’m not going to volunteer the information, mind you, but if someone comes right out and asks, what’s the point in lying? I’m not ashamed of it. I’m a Miss Clairol girl. In a way, it’s kind of fun.

I color to cover the gray. It’s the only reason I would go through this hassle on a regular basis. For years during college I had this yen to go red. I tried semi-permanents but they never stuck. I tried permanent color but it, too, didn’t stay. I even got my hair professionally colored, and she did it while perming to try to get the color to stay. My hair was gloriously auburn for a few short weeks, and then it all faded, leaving me with my permed and extra-dry coif. I gave up on it after a while, figuring that my hair just wanted to be difficult. After all, it wasn’t much after that that my hair decided it didn’t like perms anymore either and those started to wash away. When your hair won’t hold a permanent color or a permanent curl, that’s a sure time to accept defeat.

Flash forward to a few years ago, when I began to realize that those ‘few strands of gray’ were becoming a lot more than just a few. My whole family grays early – I can’t help my genes, and as much as I respect my mom for deciding to go with the gray, I am just not ready to be silver-headed at my age. Darn it all, I don’t look my age – no reason why my own hair should betray me.

So the white hair on my head drove me to the supermarket where I stood in front of a boggling array of boxes, holding them up to a lock of my own hair to match the color. I had learned my lesson about trying to be something I wasn’t – all I was aiming for was to just get back to the pre-gray me.

So it’s been a bit ironic that when I wasn’t trying, is when I finally get the red. Oh, it’s not as much as I’d wanted in those younger years, but there’s a gold tint to it when the light hits and hey, you know what, I like it better this way anyway. And except for that bare hint of red highlighting, I really did manage to get it pretty darn close to natural. If it weren’t for this pesky grey, you’d have to look really hard to figure out my roots might not be quite the same as the rest of my head.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with my hair most of my life. It’s poker straight, and to make it even worse, it nearly always refuses to hold a curl. I’ve always envied the girls who had long lush hair with just the right amount of wave – hair that could be left uncombed for days, attacked with a wind tunnel, and steeped in all manner of chemicals and still look absolutely stunning. Oh, they tend to complain about how heavy their hair is, but I have no pity. None whatsoever. Walk a mile in my tresses and trust me, sweetie, you’ll be clinging to your perfect hair the instant you get it back.

In high school I started perming, if only to try to add some body and life to my limp locks. Since I was also involved in synchronized swimming, the combination of the chlorine and the perm solution tended to give me blond streaks that looked as if I’d been given a highlighting job by a color-blind stylist. It also had the lovely side effect of sucking all the remaining moisture out of hair that was already dry to begin with. When I stopped swimming, and eventually gave up on perms, it still took years for my poor hair to finally recover.

It took me thirty years of perming, cutting, and dying before I started to like my hair. Oh, if someone with the perfect hair I’ve always envied were to offer to trade, I’d still do it in a heartbeat. But I’ve grown used to my locks now. We have an understanding – my hair and I, and so far that seems to work well for both of us.

Of course, if we go by history, it’s only a matter of time before the gray in my hair refuses to be washed away, but for now, I’ll take what I can get. Who knows – maybe by then the bald look will be in.

After several months where the only thing wedding related we did was talk sporatically to a seamstress while my mom searched – without success – for reception entertainment, this weekend was rather overflowing with the stuff. She emailed me, elated. She’d finally gotten in touch with the guy from the Folsom Renaissance Faire.

But first, off to get the invitations. Seems a bit early, I suppose, but my mom wanted to get them soon enough so that we’d have time to send them back if there were any errors. She and I drove down to the little store and huddled on the floor, crouched over three huge folders overflowing with wedding invitations.

There are some really ugly, tacky, cutesy invitations out there. Did I mention they were ugly, tacky, cutesy, or sometimes all three together – a rather scary combination. I flipped hastily through the stacks of flowery vellum, shuddered at the ones decorated with Precious Moments couples and touching seaside engravings, and giggled with my mom over the ones dripping with saccharin poetry. The good news is that, despite the abundance of ugh, I did find something I really liked.

Then we had the fun of confusing the poor salesgirl by reading her what the invitation should say. Toss in a few ‘thy’s’ and ‘thou’s’, add a dash of English (not American) spelling, and by the time we were done, we had her completely bewildered, but admitting at least that this was a wedding that was sure to be…erm…different.

Later in the weekend, Mom and I huddled around the phone to talk with the guy from the Renaissance guild. Success at last! We managed to score the rental of some gorgeous banners for the reception hall, and a whole list of names of people who were willing to help. A few short phone calls later and we’d tracked down a recorder and drum group, and a dance troupe who are also willing to teach the guests a few of the simpler steps. We ended this weekend with a sigh of relief – after such a dry spell, it was nice to know we’re finally at least a little ahead of the game again.

Tiny speckles. Larger pebbly chunks of speckles. Speckles interspersed with randomly strewn threads.

This is the selection that awaits you should you be so inclined to go picking out kitchen countertops. For whatever reason, the entire counter top industry seems besotted with speckles, in any shape or size.

The only problem with this is that neither Richard nor myself is a speckle-lover. In fact, we prefer almost anything except speckles, especially those lovely selections that had not just speckles, but random bits of thread intermingled within.

I can only assume that someone, somewhere, is very proud of their speckle-dynasty. Someone out there – or even a group of someones – in each counter top-covering company, is responsible for coming up with new designs, and based on the sheer volume of speckled varieties, I’d hazard a guess that those people get extra credit for coming up with yet another way they can incorporate speckles into their work.

Our big task for the house this week, in case you hadn’t figured it out by now, was to pick out the kitchen countertops. The contract called for tile, but as neither of us is really all that enamored of tile either, we were shepherded off to a countertop store, there to peruse the selection. And of course, while we were there, we just happened to come upon the (boxes and drawers and cabinets of!) little squares of Corian.

This is the stuff that forms a solid block on top of your kitchen counter. This is the stuff on which you can set your hot pans, fresh from the oven, without fear of cracking or burning. This is the stuff that cleans easily, that rarely stains, that looks marvelous over the years.

This is the stuff that costs an arm and a leg. Therefore, this is, of course, where we found the sample we liked best.

On the plus side, since we skillfully avoided all speckles by choosing a solid color (pale green that looks wonderful with deep golden wood stains), it at least came from the cheaper side of the spectrum. But then they started talking about how they could mold a sink out of the stuff for us if we were so inclined, and add lovely trims and embedded designs, and stripes of alternating color.

Hey, I was happy we were able to find a single color we both liked. I’m not artistic enough (or motivated, for that matter) to try to coordinate something fancy into the countertops.

We left with the promise that they would price our selection and let us know how many arms and legs we would have to trade for our beautiful green counter. They also tossed in the mention that we might be able to get a coordinating stripe on the front trim for free.

They knew exactly what they were doing. We didn’t even bother to choose a back up – we just went with our little square of Beach Grass green and a pamphlet detailing all the nifty trims and extras we could add. Only problem is, now this has got me thinking about coordinating colors (something I was really trying to avoid with the whole countertop issue in the first place). Whatever we decide, I’m sure it will be lovely.

Just as long as it doesn’t have any speckles.

It turns out that the dryer isn’t really broken. Near as I can figure, it simply decided it needed a break, or else it was just annoyed with me – who knows. It’s not explaining, but I’m not going to push it. It dries perfectly fine now, so I’m happy.

Well, as happy as I could be considering the fact that now the garbage disposal is broken. I was finally inspired enough to clean out the refrigerator, and after filling a garbage bag with the scary odds and ends that seem to accumulate in the darkest corners as time progresses, I pulled out the remnants of a casserole I’d made weeks ago. It hadn’t quite made it to the fuzzy stage of moldering, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I scooped the dish out, stuffed a fair bit of it down the drain, and then flipped the switch for the garbage disposal.

Unfortunately, the disposal did not immediately start grinding. Instead, it made a pathetic hum and then there was silence. Not even climbing under the sink to press the reset button worked. That puppy is dead, dead, dead.

I then had the true joy of scooping out all of that moldering casserole from the sink drain…with my bare hands. I had hopes that if I simply emptied the drain, I could feel around inside and perhaps figure out what had jammed it. I’ve done this before and usually after I rescue the mangled remains of what was once one of my (sadly diminishing) supply of measuring spoons, the disposal perks up and grinds merrily away.

The garbage disposal is just one more thing in the long string of problems that have popped up in the past few months. The shower faucet leaks unless you turn it to the exact perfect place on the knob. Half of the window screens would fall off if I were to look sternly at them. The garage door opener remote died months ago, and the opener itself has been retreating slowly, often taking several presses of the button on the wall before it will – grudgingly – agree to open more than a few inches at a time.

I think the house has simply discovered that we’re going to leave it soon, and has decided to offer as much encouragement as necessary, by slowly falling apart around us. I wish there was some way I could convince it that we really don’t need any more encouragement – that we will miss almost nothing from this house, this town when we leave.

But somehow I’m not so sure it will listen.

The dryer is broken. I have discovered this because I did laundry Monday night and put it to dry, and then this morning went to pull out a pair of jeans and found they were still soggy. They’ve been drying now for probably over an hour and everything is still damp.

It’s getting hot – that’s for sure. And there’s hot air coming out when I went out to check the outside vent. And it’s actually spinning the clothes because I stood there and listened to them clump around inside. So I’m not exactly sure what the problem could be – just that it has apparently decided it doesn’t feel like its optimum best.

I have a few choices. I can call and get it fixed. I could let it sit and stew about it. I could decide that when we move we get a new dryer because gas dryers are more energy efficient and cheaper to run (well, supposedly they are, assuming natural gas prices ever drop back to ‘normal’ again), and heck, we set up the laundry room for just such a thing, so why not use it?

Any of these choices, however, leave us in the unenviable position of having to do laundromat runs, possibly through the next several months til we move. It’s not exactly something one anticipates having to do when one finally graduates to a house where one can have one’s own washer and dryer.

Sigh. I hate things like this. Another fix-it project. Gee.

********

Things I learned today.
• When you put a pan of rice on to boil, and you are supposed to turn it down to simmer, but you accidentally turn the other burner to simmer and leave the heat under the rice on high, and then you run over to feed your friend’s cats for only a few minutes, when you return, the house is full of wispy clouds of smoke, there’s the chemically smell of metal in the air, and you discover that not only has the water boiled out of the pan and the rice adhered themselves permanently to the bottom, but the pan itself will actually begin to melt and weld itself to the burner.
• When your house is full of wispy clouds of smoke and the smoke alarm is *not* blaring its little heart out when you walk in, this means it’s probably a good idea to change the battery.

There is a new sense of urgency in the air at work. There is a buzz of activity, and an undercurrent of excitement. Things up top have shifted, and perhaps finally in our favor. Assessment of current status is to be implemented, and along with this, the technical document review I’ve been begging for for months. Whoever this new regime is, they seem to understand that it is worth spending a bit of time in the beginning to save time later.

And yet I’m having a hard time getting too excited. I’ve had my hopes built up before, only to watch them crash to oblivion as the project careens toward yet another last-ditch effort for salvation.

I want to believe that this will finally mean things are going to improve, I really do. But it’s been over a year now living in chaos mode. It’s a bit hard to see that beautiful vision glimmering on the horizon and not immediately assume it’s yet another mirage.

And speaking of building up hopes, I had a meeting tonight for the Board of Directors on which I serve – the one I was highly reluctant to return to. It was quick, calm, and with one exception, concise. And there is a relatively new board member on board whom I’m liking more and more. She’s upfront and honest – qualities we’ve needed in this little group – and she’s motivated by what would be best for the organization, not what’s best for her. And she’s pointing out things that others haven’t wanted to notice or discuss – but with her naivety of the politics and history, she forces it into the open. I adore this. She is wonderful. And tonight she managed to escalate an issue that we’ve all danced around for years, escalated to the point that we will be finally attempting to do something productive about it.

I am amazed. Once again I’m cautious against outright optimism because I’ve seen this fail too many times, but how can I not let some of that excitement spill over? A chink in the stone wall we’ve all rammed our heads against to no avail, and perhaps this time it will be enough to turn the tide and begin the tedious process of removing that which has hurt this organization too many times already.

Things are hovering, circling warily. The push has been made. Now, in both situations – work and personal – I must impatiently wait to see what shall result.

I am failing in my nerdness. I may bear the title, but I’m sorry to report that I’m simply not cut out to be a full-fledged nerd. I’m so ashamed….

We went to a gaming convention this weekend – DundraCon. We drove down Saturday morning, early enough to make it to the sign-up sessions for the afternoon games. We’d intended to stay til late tonight, but by lunchtime we were both tired and more than ready to leave.

I’m not sure if this is simply a sign that I’m getting old, or that we were just too tired from everything else. I’m hoping it’s the tired part, not the age – heh.

I did try to have fun, and the seminars we sat through were rather interesting, even if not quite what I was expecting. I think perhaps the biggest problem I had was simply that when I game, I prefer to game with a group of friends. The social aspect of hanging out with people I know is just as important to me as the actual game itself, so the idea of signing up to game with perfect strangers just wasn’t too appealing.

Regardless, we did sign up for a few games, but unfortunately they were all cancelled, and I was a bit relieved about it anyway, because there was just no way I could have stayed up til 4am like one of the games required. People were gaming 24 hours a day. Heck, I was never able to pull an all-nighter back in college; there’s no way I could do it now for table-top roleplay. I’d be snoozing amid my dice before we’d even ventured beyond the inital startup period.

And speaking of dice, we each bought some – a required activity when one is at a gaming convention. I prefer the marbled or smoky ones, while Richard prefers the spotty ones. It works out well, really it does. No squabbling over whose dice are whose – he gets those ugly speckly types and I get all the pretty ones. We’re both happy, and so, of course, are the cats because they now have a 30-sided die of their own to bat around the house.

I’m not a complete failure though. Even if I didn’t see the excitement in gaming til the wee hours of the morning with perfect strangers, going to this thing did inspire me to game again. I miss the roleplay on the Pern-related MUSH’s I belong to, and going to the con got me excited about them again. I don’t expect to have as much time to game as I once did – back when I was still in college and working parttime, or simply working closer to home, but I do want to find *some* way of fitting it into my schedule. One of these days. Soon. I hope.

We are driving down 680, visiting friends or family (I don’t remember which). You’d never had a pomegranate before, so I am cutting one apart with my less-than-sharp pocket knife. There are no napkins in the car, so I’ve got newspaper on my lap, and one of those free shirts nerds like us always get from our companies on top of that. Purple juice is, nevertheless, splattering the dashboard. There is no way you can eat these neatly while driving, so I shell the seeds and drop them into one of the cup holders, and you scoop out small handfuls to eat. Later on, finished and sticky, we stop at a mall to wash hands and try to swab the juice spots from the car.

********

We are driving down to Monterey for a weekend of relaxation. You’re driving because we’re in your new car and it has a CD player, so we grabbed Stunt by BareNakedLadies, and two Billy Joel albums. We sing along at the top of our lungs all the way there and back. It doesn’t matter if we don’t carry the tune quite well. We point out the scenary along the way and I realize that I will carry this with me, hoard this memory and bring it out every time I hear those songs play again.

********

We are headed for a barbeque at friends’ house and we stop at the produce stand. They have English peas and since we both love them, we buy a huge bag. While I drive, you hand me pods and we shell together, piling the empties in unsteady heaps in the cup holders, popping the sweet green rounds into our mouth greedily, until the bag is done and we are full, even then wishing we’d bought more.

********

We are driving, late at night. You’re behind the wheel and I’m falling asleep in the passenger seat. Our hands are clasped, and you say it’s alright if I want to close my eyes. I doze off, still holding your hand, waking every now and then to watch you through sleepy eyes as you drive, and every once in a while you look at me and smile, and as I sit there, curled into the seat, watching you as I drift in and out of sleep, I am reminded all over again why I love you.

********

Happy Valentine’s Day, Richard.

Sunday started with the best of intentions. I called my older sister to let her know that we were going to come up to meet the new baby, just as soon as we swung by the house and took the weekly pictures. Armed with digital camera, we headed off to the house, where we were greeted by the large and fluffy black cat again, who has apparently decided that the roof is an extremely inviting place to play. We snapped a few shots, obligingly pet the cat – the usual.

Everything was going hunky dory until we were ready to head out and I tried to start my car and it didn’t quite work. The engine would start for a few seconds and then promptly shut off. I tried several times, but no luck. There was plenty of gas, and the battery was certainly just fine, as suggested by the plethora of little warning red lights all over the dashboard.

Ended up having to have the car towed, and since I’m not familiar enough with the town we’re moving to, to know where there might be a reputable mechanic, I simply had them take it back to the dealer’s where I’ve gotten all the maintenance done anyway. We dropped the car off, filled out a little envelope with the symptoms, sealed the key inside, and then waited for my parents to come rescue us.

Ah, the miracles of modern computer technology. The mechanic called today, and to make a long story short, apparently the computer brain of the car’s anti-theft system decided that it no longer recognized the main computer brain.

In other words, my car thought I was trying to steal it, so it turned off the engine in response.

I’m a bit torn between finding this amusing, being glad of the display that shows me the anti-theft system really does work, or being a tad worried about the fact that the computers got out of synch in the first place.

I guess we’ll just have to sit back and wait to see if this happens again. I’m kind of hoping this was a one-time glitch. Ah the wonders of modern technology. Or something. Heh.

I am obsessing over house colors. I can’t stop myself – when we are out now I am looking at houses for the color scheme – trim plus all the other bits. Does that look nice? How would that look on ours? They have a high roof too – maybe that theme would be okay. How does one choose something like this? It’s not like a room where you could simply paint over in a day if you just couldn’t stand it. This is an entire house. To change it will require much money and time and effort. How can I choose? How is anyone supposed to pick just one?

This house is making me dither on more things than I’ve dithered on probably in the last several years. All these tiny inconsequential things that mean nothing to anyone else, and I’ve done my best to not bore friends and family with my little petty issues (so of course I dump them here, because where else should I talk about them, after all).

And the funniest thing is that I’m not even worrying about the cabinets any more. At least not now. Even though the color of the house is going to be one of the last things on the list, I’m worrying about that. Go figure.

We have a week’s reprieve on the whole question of electrical outlets and lights. We were to go out and do our (what has now become a) weekly meeting with the builder to discuss wiring, but it’s been raining so hard that he called to cancel. They weren’t even going to be there yesterday and there was just no sense in it. No need to let a little rain and mud stop us – we drove by last night to see. The boards once laid out to form a rather wobbly sidewalk have been moved so we picked our way carefully through the mud, trying to jump from random board to the odd pile of gravel that was deposited weeks ago in what will become our front yard, and has remained there ever since.

It was cold and windy, but we could see that they’d made a bit more progress with the siding, so we were compelled to go inside and see what it was like from there. We tromped around a bit, guided only by a little flashlight and the glare from the headlights of the car, but didn’t stay too long because it really was cold.

One side effect of that little trip is that reality is beginning to raise it’s funny little head. See, I had this marvelous idea for a disgustingly mushy and goofy romantic dinner – drag out a card table and a few chairs, set them up in our unfinished dining room, and have a candle-lit picnic dinner in our almost-a-house for Valentine’s Day. But standing out there last night, it occurred to both of us that it’s probably still a bit too cold, too windy, and the house a bit too open for any sort of comfortable dining experience. If this were several months down the road, we’d be just fine and the open design of the mostly uncovered frame wouldn’t be an issue. But it’s still February, and with the rain and wind lately, we decided that perhaps it might be better to have a Plan B.

Plan B is to have dinner at home – make it together, and actually eat at the dining room table. Scoff if you will; perhaps it’s boring to you. But for two people who are so often busy that we rarely get a chance to even go grocery shopping, dinner at home – and not something we ordered over the phone, or picked up at a drive-thru on the way from work – is a rarity, and therefore classifies as special. I’m looking forward to this far more than I would if we were simply doing what everyone else is doing and going out to a fancy restaurant. Heck, we can do that any day of the week.

We’ll make dinner, side by side, in the tiny little alcove they call a kitchen in this house we’re renting, and we’ll set the table with cloth napkins and napkin rings. We’ll dim the lights and light the candles, and there will be soft music playing in the background. We’ll have a quiet dinner, just the two of us, talking, laughing, spending time together.

And it will be lovely.